They danced on glowing jade cords strung high above the lime floor.
The ice-cream-yellow moon seemed close enough to lick. I walked to the pearl parapet. I looked out at a brilliant sea of emerald and ruby neon bursting pastel skyrockets toward the cobalt blue sky bejeweled with sapphire stars.
I thought, “Sweet sure has caught lightning in a thimble. He came out of the white man’s cotton fields. He’s pimped himself up to this. He’s living high in the sky like a black God in heaven with the white people. He ain’t no Nigger doctor. He ain’t no hot-sheet Nigger preacher, but he’s here.
“He pimped up his scratch passport. That barbed-wire stockade is a million miles away. I got more education, I’m better looking, and younger than he is. I know I can do it too.”
I remembered Henry and how religious he was. Look what happened to him. I remembered how I used to kneel every night by the side of the bed to pray. I really believed in God then. I knew he existed. Now I wasn’t so sure. I guess the first prison rap started to hack away at my belief in him.
I often wondered in the cell how, if he existed, he could let the Dummy destroy Oscar who loved him. I told myself at the time, maybe he’s got complicated long-range plans. Maybe even he’s got divine reasons for letting the white folks butcher black people down South.
Maybe some morning about dawn all the black folks will sing Hallelujah! God’s white board of directors will untie the red tape. God will roll up his sleeves. He’ll smash down the invisible stockades. He’ll kill all the rats in the black ghettos. Fill all the black bellies and con all the white folks that Niggers are his children, too.
Now I couldn’t wait. If he were up there or not, I had to go with the odds. I stared into the sky. It was the first time I’d prayed since Steve, the tramp. I know now it was more a fearful alibi than anything else.
I said, “Lord, if you’re up there, you know I’m black and you know my thoughts. Lord, if the Bible is really your divine book then I know it’s a sin to pimp. If you’re up there and listening you know I’m not trying to con you.
“Lord, I’m not asking you to bless my pimping. I ain’t that stupid. Lord, I know you ain’t black. Surely you know, if you’re up there, what it’s like to be black down here. These white folks are doing all the fine living and sucking up all the gravy. I gotta have some of that living and some of that gravy.
“I don’t wanta be a stickup man or a dope peddler. I sure as hell won’t be a porter or dishwasher. I just wanta pimp that’s all. It’s not too bad, because whores are rotten. Besides I ain’t going to croak them or drive them crazy. I’m just going to pimp some real whitetype living out of them.
“So Lord, if you’re up there listening, do one thing for me. Please don’t let me croak before I live some and get to be somebody down here in the white man’s world. I don’t care what happens after that.”
I looked down over the parapet. I wondered if the undertaker had been born yet who was slick enough to paste a sucker’s ass together after a Brodie fifteen-stories down. I heard “Tuxedo Junction” pulsing behind me. I had pitched my pipes dry. I upended my drink.
I turned and walked toward the glass door. I saw the Japanese lanterns splashing color on the polished alabaster-topped tables. The Filipino had sure been busy flopping his mop. I slid the door open to a chorus of profanity. The whore scent flared my nostrils. There must have been thirty yapping pimps and whores lounging around the spacious pit.
I stepped down and slid the door shut. An ebony satin-skinned pimp was sprawled in the blue velour chair. A tawny tan tigress was kneeling before him between his legs. She had her chin rammed into his crotch. She clutched him around the waist like a humping twodollar trick in an alley.
Her dreamy maroon eyes rolled toward the top of her long skull. She was staring at his fat blue lips. It was maybe she expected him to whistle the “Lost Chord.” The rock on his finger exploded blue-white, frozen fireworks. He raised his glass to curse all square bitches. He was con-toasting all whores. The room got silent. Somebody had strangled the gold phonograph in the corner.
He toasted:
It was the first time I’d heard it. It was the first time for the crowd, too. They roared and begged him to do it again. He looked toward the hand-painted Chinese screen.
All eyes turned to Top and Sweet coming into the room. An old black stud wearing a white silk patch over his right eye trailed behind them. Peaches followed him. He looked like a vulture decked out in a gray mohair vine. Peaches stood before the white velour couch and bared her fangs.
The three pimps sitting on it scattered off it like quail under a double-barreled shotgun. They thumped their rear ends to the carpet. Sweet, Top, and Peaches sat on the couch.
I sat on a satin pillow in the corner near the glass door. I watched the show. I saw Patch Eye go and sit behind the bar. Everybody was in a big half-circle around the couch. It was like the couch was a stage, and Sweet the star.
Sweet said, “Well how did you silly bastards like the fight? Did the Nigger murder that peckerwood or did his black ass turn shit yellow?”
A Southern white whore with a wide face and a sultry voice like Bankhead’s drawled, “Mistah Jones, Ahm happy to repoat thet the Niggah run the white stud back intu his mammy’s ass in thu fust round.”
Everybody laughed except Sweet. He was crashing together his mitts. I wondered what madness bubbled in his skull as he stared at her. A high-ass yellow broad flicked life back into the phonograph. “Gloomy Sunday,” the suicide’s favorite, dirged through the room. She stared at me as she came away.
Sweet said, “All right you freakish pigs. Patch Eye’s got outfits and bags of poison. You got the go sign to croak yourselves.”
They started rising from the satin pillows and velour ottomans. They clustered around Patch Eye at the bar.
The high-ass yellow broad came to me. She stooped in front of me. I saw black tracks on her inner thighs. The inside of her gaping cat was beef-steak red. She had a shiv slash on the right side of her face. It was a livid gully from her cheekbone to the corner of her twisted mouth. Smallpox craters covered her face. I caught the glint of a pearl-handled switch-blade in her bosom. Her gray eyes were whirling in her skull. She was high.
I was careful. I grinned. Sweet was digging us. He was shaking his head in disgust. I wondered if he thought I oughta slug her in the jib and maybe take that shiv in the gut.
She said, “Let me see that pretty dick, handsome.”
I said, “I don’t show my swipe to strange bitches. I got a whore to pamper my swipe.”
She said, “Nigger, you ain’t heard of me? I’m Red Cora” from Detroit. That red is for blood. You ain’t hip I’m a thieving bitch that croaked two studs? Now I said show that dick. Call me Cora, little bullshit Nigger. Ain’t you a bitch with one whore? You gonna starve to death, Nigger, if she’s a chump flat-backer. Nigger, you better get hip and cop a thief.”
A big husky broad with a spike in one hand and pack of stuff in the other took me off the hook. She kneed Cora’s spine.
She said, “Bitch, I’m gonna shoot this dope. You want some? You can Georgia this skinny Nigger later.”
I watched Cora’s rear end twist away from me. She and the husky broad went to the bar and got a spoon and a glass of water. I looked at Sweet. He was giving me a cold stare.
I thought, “This track is too fast I can’t protect myself. With young soft bitches like the runt I’m a champ. These old, hard bitches, I gotta solve. I gotta be careful and not blow Sweet. If I sucker out anymore tonight he’ll freeze and boot me.”
I sat in the corner bug-eyed for two hours. My ears flapped to the super-slick dialogue. I was excited by the fast-paced, smooth byplay between these wizards of pimpdom.
Red Cora kept me edgy. She went to the patio several times. She was Hed out of her skull. Each time she passed she cracked on me. She was sure panting to view my swipe.
Several of Sweet’s whores came in. None of them had been at the Roost with him that first time I saw him. All of them were fine with low mileage. One of them was yellow and beautiful. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen.
