trailed him, each holding candelabras with five candles.
Last in the processional was a young girl, short and curvy with engorged breasts. Her arms outstretched before her as she held a cup. Pure gold inlaid with precious stones, the cup produced its own luminescence. The hall filled with a suffuse light, dimming the lights produced by the candles. The girl turned and presented the cup to Percy.
'What do you think it means?' Percy asked, his voice held the slightest hitch of a restrained stammer.
'Means you dream of being a pimp,' Merle said.
'Really?' Percy sat up, surprised at himself.
'Simple Percy, pure and true. Simple Percy, purehearted fool.'
'I'm not stupid.' Percy's eyes turned downward, stung by the words of someone he wanted to be his friend. Merle put his hand on the boy's beefy shoulder.
'No, no you're not. Far from it. You're probably the best of us. Thus a pure fool. And still, here you are yearning for the infinitely desirable, yet unattainable.'
'A woman?'
'Her love? See, you aren't so dim.'
'Why won't King let me come along when they go out?'
'It's dangerous work.' Merle turned from him.
'I ain't scared.'
'No you're not. And you're more ready than they realize. Don't worry, your time draws near.'
'How do you know?'
'Your dream says so.'
A nearing thwack-thwack-thwack interrupted them as Rhianna Perkins padded along the carpet in a pair of flip-flops with an orange band. With good hair, though tender-headed, and fine-boned, she walked with a slight waddle, a stride developed because of the fullness of her pregnancy. Her breasts, swollen and tender, stretched out her black and white striped tank top over a lacy pink bra. Her belly protruded as if she attempted to hide a basketball under her shirt. She bent forward. Percy caught a glimpse of her panties rising above her jean line.
'Boys.' She caught him peeking. His eyes retreated and he turned his head.
'Milady.' Merle bowed. 'I see your most sacred of ovens bears up nicely. May I?' He reached out his hands.
'Sure.'
Merle placed his hands on either side of her belly. Then pressed his ear to it. 'Oh my. Yes, you are. Be patient.'
'What's he saying?' Percy asked.
'What happens in the womb stays in the womb.' Merle winked.
Life made her tough, not brave. Sex was a position of surrender, a searching for sorrow, a space to fill the loneliness. There was nothing special between her legs or in her center, and she went to bed with men — boys really — with easy aplomb. The idea of rejection or abandonment or being used never entered her calculations. She was a tabula rasa of femininity. One could write any story onto her and she was happy to oblige for the semblance of a relationship; the presence of a man was all the illusion of a relationship she required. She found it easier to open her legs than her heart: a brash emotional laziness. Her mental efforts focused more on figuring out how to stay alive from day to day.
'He active though.' Rhianna grimaced, then pressed her palms into her lower back. 'Got no sense. Just like his daddy.'
'A hard road, raising a young one alone,' Merle said.
'She's not alone,' Percy said.
'True.' Merle, again, patted the young man.
'Anyway, I'm looking for a new man. King's taken.' Rhianna toyed with the gangsta set. She believed that she wanted a thug, just not too much of a thug. Enough to be tough, because she definitely didn't want a softie.
'What about Lott?' Merle asked. His voice had the timbre of urgency, a desperate urging.
'I don't do yellow men, but he's nice.'
'Love. It never ceases to baffle me.'
Sweating in the field, King's back ached, stretched by the day's labor. Little more than a boy stripped from his mother; man enough to do the work and live the life. A bit filled his mouth. With an angular face and tubercular frame, the white overseers had checked his legs and teeth on the auction block, little more than a work horse's inspection. They didn't take full measure of the wildness in his eyes when they put it in his mouth. Chains clanged with his every movement. The twinge of anger burned, a constant fever beneath his sweaty skin. Drawn up and yanked back, his lips parted. He tasted the iron in his mouth. Spit pooled in it but he couldn't swallow. He vomited, choking as it oozed back down his throat with nowhere to escape around the bit. His tongue brutalized, both by the bit and the bile. And the clenched hatred. His eyes untamed, savage and unbroken, yearned to be free. Not letting anything — not the pain, not the humiliation, not the self-hatred — into his personal world.
King snapped awake on the green checked futon in his living room, legs akimbo. The cuff of the chains still bit into his waking flesh, where he rubbed his wrists. Lady G sank between his spread legs and nestled her back into him. His arms wrapped around her and she felt a rare moment of being safe. He shifted slightly, but there was no hiding from the erection her very proximity caused. She didn't mind. She rather enjoyed the effect she had on him, if only because she knew he'd never make a move she wasn't comfortable with, no matter how much he burned. She liked that.
The living room of his Breton Court town house doubled as his bedroom. He might as well not have owned the second floor as he never ventured up there. He lived without roots. Sweatshirts, T-shirts, and jeans in their respective piles between where the futon stretched out into a bed and the wall. A large television was on another stand, a tray of burning incense beside it. A small stereo system and a stack of books were the only other furnishings in the room. A basket held folded socks and underwear (which he covered when Lady G was over). An end table held an array of colognes, an odd affectation, as if he were never pleased with his own scent and was constantly in search of his true one.
This was their time, their special time. Away from their friends, away from their family, away from their responsibilities, they carved out this space, this time for them, if only to sit and hold one another. They shared the little things, the secret things and the unspoken things.
'What is it, King?'
'I haven't wanted anything in a long time. Haven't felt…' He didn't know if he could find the words to express that, around her, the pain in his chest ebbed and died. It was dangerous to love anything too much. Better to love just a little bit. How he feared that he might be desperately in love with a woman, little more than a girl, whom he should not risk loving because he couldn't afford to lose her. How he had spent a lifetime shying away whenever he thought he found such a love, but she managed to slip under his radar, his wall, and sneak upon him. He leaned down and whispered. 'I don't want to give you up.'
'I have no intentions of letting you.'
'You're a… I should know better.' He couldn't stem the spread of weakness, love, when it came to her. His foolishness made him think fondly of himself. So feeling. So ordinary. So full of the helplessness of love. What was it about her that penetrated his defenses? Her woundedness, her strength, her light, her innocence? She had a bird- like defenselessness, fragile pieces of glass, which was his to protect. And he swelled at the idea of being her champion. In his arms, she came to feel unorphaned. He had grown addicted to their moments together and often bent his schedule to maximize their time together. To live for her, to die for her, to never want to let her go. She was his drug of choice and he planned to ride the high for as long as possible.
'You're a child molester!' She exclaimed in faux shock. He talked to her, really talked to her, not talking down to her. He not only listened to her, but expected intelligence and great things from her. She liked being seen and treated that way, though she wasn't always present with him. Not in any real way. Bereft of a part of her soul, she thought. Stingy with her affections, she guarded a virtue only present in her own mind.
'Don't joke.' He touched her face. 'You're not just eighteen. You talk and act much older.'
'There are no children out here.'
'I should have the sense and strength to send you off to find someone your own age. Some simple boy.'
'You want to be with me. I want to be with you. Eyes wide open.' She thought there was space for her in
