It had been a week since I got fired from Aunt Mattie’s place. Working as a bouncer/handyman in a whorehouse had been hard, but I’d enjoyed it. I’d never tell Joyce that, though. I wanted her to feel sorry for me, and I didn’t think she would if she knew how much fun I had had working in a whorehouse. The women who worked for Aunt Mattie liked my looks, so free pussy on the sly had been a nice bonus. And I got free alcohol when Aunt Mattie wasn’t breathing down my neck. She had let me share a pallet on the floor of her pantry with Rufus, the mulatto that played the piano during business hours. That old bitch was so greedy she made us pay two dollars a week for room and board. But I’d never complained because she’d let us have our meals for free. Almost every day by midnight, Aunt Mattie would be so drunk she couldn’t tell her head from her feet, and we’d have to carry her to her bedroom. And then me and Rufus and the whores would do whatever we wanted.
I’d had a good thing going until I got greedy. I was sorry I had been careless enough to get caught going through the pockets of one of Aunt Mattie’s regulars. When she fired my dumb ass on the spot, I slunk out of that place like a shamed hound dog with all my belongings in brown paper bags. I moved into Miss Mabel’s boardinghouse—which was one step above a glorified flophouse—a few blocks away that same night.
I had seen the STOCK BOY WANTED sign in MacPherson’s window a couple of days before Aunt Mattie fired me and was glad to see it still there the day after I’d moved into the boardinghouse. I’d immediately looked into it. As soon as I told Joyce’s gullible daddy that I’d been “laid off” and was about to be homeless, he hired me.
He’d sat looking like a giant blob in a squeaky swivel chair at an unorganized, wobbly metal desk. His wife had stood over his shoulder with her thick arms folded in a small, cluttered room in the back of the store that they called an office (it was supposed to be a storeroom). She didn’t say nothing until after I’d accepted the job. “Most of the boys that stock our shelves still in school, so they’ll work for almost nothing,” she pointed out.
“Ma’am, I’ll mop the floors and haul out the trash, too, if you want me to. I just need a job and I don’t care what you pay me. No matter what it is, it’ll be more than what I got.” There was a pleading tone in my voice and a desperate look on my face.
“We can’t pay too much. I’m sure you know times is still real hard. Would thirty cent a hour suit you?” Mac asked with a look on his beefy face I couldn’t interpret.
“Yes, sir! That’ll suit me!” I had not expected that much to start because the few stock boys I knew made only twenty cent an hour and some made even less.
“Good. We need you to start straightaway,” Millie told me. “Come on and let’s go get you a smock, and we expect you to wear it the whole time during business hours.” She unfolded her arms and waved me toward the door.
I was pleased as punch to have a new job stocking shelves. I had just been talking off the top of my head about me mopping floors and hauling trash, too, but when they told me that those two chores was also part of my responsibilities, I didn’t care.
Just thinking about how easy it had been to win Joyce’s parents over had given me a lot of confidence in my ability to talk a good game. I knew that if I told Joyce what she wanted to hear, I’d have her deep down in my hip pocket. But I had to move faster because I wanted to get her sewed up real soon.
When she got back from the toilet, the top button on her blouse was unfastened. I was not surprised because the blouse she had on looked like it was a size too small anyway. Her bosom looked like it was about to bust out, and I was enjoying the view. My mama told me once that when I was a baby, I’d loved being breastfed so much it had took her two years to wean me. If I got my mouth on Joyce’s titties, it would take even longer for
