Dirty Old Men [And Other Stories] (Zane Presents) (17 page)

“So, what kind of pills are you talking about?” she asked him again. She seemed to be particularly interested.

“Viagra,” he told her straight up.

Her girls were startled. After their embarrassed laughter, one of them
stated, “Well, you ask the man a question and you get a frank answer. That’s how older men are.”

“That’s about right,” M.J. admitted. “Yup.”

“Like you said, we running out of time for bullshit,” his friend commented from his bar stool. He was in his late forties himself, and extra dark.

Jessica remained poised and intrigued. She smiled. “That’s what’s up. You’re still active. I even ain’t mad you.”

M.J. joked, “Yeah, I feel like I’m
forty
years old again.”

“Well, how old are you?” she asked him.

“Eighty-five,” he teased.

One of her girls overheard him. “
Damn!
And you still walking around popping Viagra pills?”

M.J. looked at Jessica. “She didn’t catch it, did she?”

“Nope, it flew right past her.”

“But I still will be popping them pills if I’m alive at eighty-five. What about you, you had a kid and haven’t kicked that habit yet?”

His conversation was fluid, probing, and witty. He kept Jessica smiling.

“Ahh…not quite yet, but I’m not as
regular
as I used to be.”

“Shit, well, welcome to the crowd,” he told her. “If I get it twice a
week
now, I’m in heaven.”

Jessica grinned. “They have pills now to make you feel like that, too.”

He grimaced. “Make you feel like
what,
like you having sex twice a week? They got
pills
to do that?”

It sounded incredible to him. Technology was something else.

Jessica laughed it off again with her girls. “Maybe one day. But I was talking about feeling like you’re in heaven.”

“Oh, here she goes with that shit,” one of her girlfriends spoke up. They had all begun to give their food and drink orders from a large table awaiting nearby.

“All I need is a good woman now to keep
me
in heaven,” M.J. stated.

“Well, why you taking Viagra if all you need is a
‘good woman’?
” one of her girls called him out.

“I said, all I need is a good woman
now,
since I’ve started
taking
this here Viagra.”

He had no shame to his game at all. So his friend laughed out loud at the bar.

“You tell ’em like it is, M.J.”

Jessica couldn’t seem to get enough of him. She stood right by him and asked, “Have you ever tried anything else?”

“What, for sex?”

She nodded, still grinning at him.

“Oh, now, you don’t wanna go there with her. She’ll have your ass addicted to ecstasy,” another one of her girls commented.

M.J. responded, “Ain’t that illegal?”

“So are weed, steroids, and underground gambling,” the same woman responded.

“And
prostitution,
too,” M.J. shot back.

The women laughed out loud again.

Someone said, “Well, we can see where
his
mind is tonight.”

As their food and drinks began to arrive, they got comfortable in their seats at the table.

“Well, nice meeting you,” Jessica told him with an extended hand of her own.

He took her hand. “So, what are these pills you’re talking about?”

“Ahh…I would have to umm…contact you about that.”

“Well, you need my number?”

M.J. was suddenly pressed about her. She had a great attitude and everything.

She took out her cell phone from her purse. “M.J., right? What’s the number?”

“Yeah, Marion Jefferson,” he told her. And he gave her his 3-1-4 cell phone number.

When Jessica joined her girls at the table, the oldest one asked her,

“Now, what you plan on calling that old man about?” They all wanted to know; all five of them.

Jessica grinned. “He’s just sweet. It’s nothing. It’s good to see an old man continue to have a sex life.”

“Well, you ain’t planning on calling him up about what I
think,
are you?”
her concerned older friend asked her. “Because he’s still a little too
old
for that, Viagra or not. And
I
would
know.
”

Jessica grinned. “I know. Don’t worry about it. I’m not calling him for that.” She took a sip of her drink, case closed.

Her older girlfriend gave her one final stare down anyway. She knew that Jessica liked to buck the rules and go her own way sometimes. That’s why she was hanging out with them instead of women closer to her age.

“All right now,” her concerned friend warned her.

Over at the bar stools, M.J.’s buddy had some questions of his own.

“Hey, man, you really took some of that Viagra?”

M.J. sat down beside him. “Yeah. I’m not walking around here with
my
dick not staying hard, Black. So, if you wanna do that, then be my guest.”

Black grinned. “I have don’t no problems in that department.”

“Well, when you
start
to have problems, then you’ll have to make your own decisions about it,” M.J. advised him.

Black looked back over toward Jessica at the table, while holding his drink in hand. “Like you said, you give me a young fine one like that one, and that’s all the doctor
ordered
for me.”

M.J. chuckled and looked back over toward Jessica himself, longing for her.

Black asked, “You think she gon’ call you?”

M.J. thought about it for a minute. In his wildest dreams, he hoped that she
would
call him But, in reality, he figured it was unlikely. So he shook it off. “For what? I basically put her on the spot right there, man. She didn’t want to hurt an old man’s feelings. But my sons and daughter are older than her.”

With that said, he turned back to the bar and ordered his first drink.

“Now let me look around in here for somebody that I can
really
get.”

M.J. didn’t get lucky enough to go home with a second woman that night. But he did score a new phone number from another forty-something. Then at work the next day at the hardware store, he got an unknown call on his cell phone.

“Hmm, who’s that?” he asked. He read the number on his cell phone screen inside the storage room toward the back of the store.

“Hello,” he answered.

“Hey, M.J.” It was the sweet, young voice of a woman.

Marion paused. “Who is this?” He had a hunch, but he didn’t want to jump to any wishful conclusions.

The woman chuckled. “This is Jessica from last night. How many new women did you give out your number to in there?” she teased.

He immediately got excited. “I
knew it.
” Then he had to calm himself down. He was still at work. “Now what you doin’ calling
me,
and asking me about my
women.
”

She laughed. “I wanted to follow up with you about our conversation last night.”

M.J. spotted a coworker in the vicinity and was forced to camouflage his subject.

“About
that?
” he asked her in code, referring to sex pills.

“Yeah, you still wanna know about it?”

“Yeah, ahh, call me back after six. I’m still at work.”

“You want me to meet you somewhere?”

Shit!
he thought to himself.
She’s putting me on the spot now.

“What part of town you on?”

“Southside.”

“Well, you can meet me at the Botanical Garden after six. I work near there, off of Forty-four. Is that all right?”

“That’s perfect.”

When he hung up the phone, he couldn’t believe what had happened.

“Did that girl just call and ask me to meet up with her?” It felt like a dream.

“Hey, M.J.! We need you back out here on the floor. We got customers in here,” the manager yelled to him through the storage door.

“All right, I’m coming,” M.J. answered, strolling forward. And his smile was worth gold in there.

He pulled up in the parking lot area of the Missouri Botanical Garden after six, and Jessica had already beaten him there. She was waiting for him inside of her burgundy Ford F-150 truck.

“Shit, this girl play for
keeps,
” he stated when he spotted her. “She got a damn
F-150.
” She made him feel like a wimp, especially working at a hardware store. He had given up his old Dodge Ram for a Chevy a few years ago. But she had him thinking about upgrading back to a truck. She even had nice rims on it.

He pulled up in an open space beside her and rolled down his window as she rolled hers down.

“Hey, you looking good in that thing. I wouldn’t have thought you had it in you,” he told her. He looked up from his window; she looked down from hers.

She smiled. “You want me to follow you somewhere? I can’t talk about it out here.”

M.J. paused. He thought,
Shit, she must really be serious about this.

“You don’t want us to be out in the public?”

“Not if we can help it.”

Damn!
he thought.
She’s straight up with it.
So he went for broke.

“You wanna follow me to my place?”

“Where you live?”

“Right off Page Boulevard.”

She nodded and turned her engine back on. “All right. Lead the way.”

Holy shit!
M.J. thought.
She’s following me to my house and we just met. Either this girl has a lot of trust or she’s plain crazy.

He didn’t believe she would be
that
impressed with him. He was still an old-ass man. So he led her to his apartment with apprehension. He didn’t need a big house anymore. After his grown kids were off and gone, he divorced his wife of twenty-six years and jumped back into the single life for the rest of his days.

Nobody’s gonna tell me when I can’t have no pussy. I was tired of that damn fish every year anyway,
he noted.

When he pulled up into the back parking area of his low-key, third-floor
apartment, atop a block of retail storefronts, he marveled again at his great stroke of luck.

“Had I known this would happen, I would have taken Viagra a lot sooner,” he joked to himself as he climbed out of his car.

Jessica climbed out of her truck a few parking spaces over from his car. She walked over to join him with a large white bag over her shoulder, wearing a black skirt, a white top, and black stockings with her black heels.

She must have a can of mace or either a loaded gun in that big-ass bag of hers,
he imagined. He couldn’t help but to remain a little pensive and skeptical. She was making things far too easy. So there had to be a catch to it.

“So, you live in these apartments? I’ve passed this place before a
few
times. A couple of my girlfriends live near here,” she told him.

“Yeah, a lot of people pass this place by. That’s why I like it here. It’s right there in front of you, but because of the storefronts on the bottom, people barely notice the apartments up on top.”

He led her into a security entrance area with his key, and awaited two elevators next to the exit stairs.

She nodded. “Nice. So nobody can just walk up in here then.”

“Nooo, I wouldn’t live in no place like that at my age. I don’t have time for the extra drama.”