“I’m too full now.”
“I ate too much too,” I said. “Do you want the brandy now?”
“Yeah, I’ll have a little. You?”
“Yes.”
He leaned back and closed his eyes. I went over to the table, filled the glasses, my back to him, then brought him his. He smiled and took the glass. I got my glass and sat down on the bed beside him.
“Come, sit closer,” he said.
I sat closer. He held me around the belly with his left hand, drinking from the glass with his right. I drank.
“You had some earlier, didn’t you?” I asked. “I didn’t think you could tell.”
“Yes, I could tell.”
He rubbed my belly, patted my belly, thumped my belly, drank. I drank.
“I should have a duplicate key made for you,” he said.
“I didn’t think you’d planned to be here long,” I said. “Or have me here.”
“Still, you should have one. Where were you living?”
“I was between places.”
“It’s good to be between places.”
“Is it?”
“But you might wont to go on living here.”
I didn’t answer. Then I said, “Yes, I might.” Then I asked, “When will you be leaving?”
“I don’t know. It’s better not to know.”
“Maybe.”
“I’ll have one made anyway,” he said. Then he gripped my waist. I had my back to him and didn’t watch. But he gripped my waist hard enough to break my ribs. “Bitch.” I belched.
He didn’t see me at first and then he saw me and came back where I was. I was leaning against the seat with my eyes open. He asked if anybody was sitting there. I said “Naw.” He put his bag up and sat down. He said he was on his way to Denver, Colorado. I said I was on my way to Wheeling, West Virginia. He’d looked young until he got up close, and then I could see the lines around his eyes.
I put my hand on his hand. I kissed his hand, his neck. I put my fingers in the space above his eyes, but didn’t close them. They’d come and put copper coins over them. That’s why they told you not to suck pennies. I put my forehead under his chin. He was warm. The glass had spilled from his hand. I put my tongue between his parted lips. I kissed his teeth.
“That kiss was full of teeth,” James said. He stood back and laughed and then kissed me again.
I opened his trousers and played with his penis. My mouth, my teeth, my tongue went inside his trousers. I raised blood, slime from cabbage, blood sausage. Blood from an apple. I slid my hands around his back and dug my fingers up his ass, then I knelt down on the wooden floor, bruising my knees. I got back on the bed and squeezed his dick in my teeth. I bit down hard. My teeth in an apple. A swollen plum in my mouth.
“How did it feel?”
A red swollen plum in my mouth. A milkweed full of blood. A soft milkweed full of blood. What would you do if you bit down and your teeth raised blood from an apple? Flesh from an apple? What would you do? Flesh and blood from an apple. What would you do with the apple? How would you feel?
“All women need the fork in their road,” Alfonso said, laughing.
“Come home with me.”
“I’m not good tonight. I’m bleeding.”
“Then we’ll wait.”
Blood on my hands and his trousers. Blood in my teeth. “A woman like you. What do you do to yourself?”
I got the silk handkerchief he used to wipe me after we made love, and wrapped his penis in it. I laid it back inside his trousers, zipped him up. I kissed his cheeks, his lips, his neck. I got naked and sat on the bed again. I spread my legs across his thighs and put his hand on my crotch, stuffed his fingers up in me. I put my whole body over him. I farted.
“You didn’t tell me.”
“I thought I told you.”
“No.”
The blood still came through. “Bastard.”
I reached in his pants, got my comb, took the key he’d promised, washed my hands, finished my brandy, wiped his mouth, and left.
I no longer smelled of perfume and menstruation, I smelled of brandy and sausage. People were watching me. I remembered I hadn’t combed my hair. I stood back inside a doorway and picked it out. They passed and glanced at me and walked on.
I went into a liquor store. “Do you have a telephone?”
“Yes, over there.”
I went toward where he pointed, but didn’t see it. I looked back at him.
“No, around the corner.”
I found it, and called, and told them about the man in the hotel room.
“What’s your name, lady?”
I wouldn’t tell them. I hung up. I walked out. I went to the toilet of a filling station, picked out my hair again. I’m Medusa, I was thinking. Men look at me and get hard-ons. I turn their dicks to stone. I laughed. I’m a lion woman. No, it’s the men lions that have all that hair. I got close to the mirror and fingered the streets under my eyes. The mirror needed cleaning. I peed. I went out.
I went back to the bar where they sold the good cabbage and the well-done greasy sausage, where they cooked the cabbage with smoked bacon.
“Yes ma’am?”
“Cabbage and sausage, please. And put a lot of mustard on the sausage. A can of beer.”
I ate, drank beer. I ate plenty. I was already full from the cabbage
