Doom Fox (12 page)

One down and one to go, she tells herself now, thinking of Young Joe Allen's banked nest egg.

After packing, she showers, grins wickedly as she soaps her sex nest. She thinks of how she has shut out Young Joe from it for over a week to puff his testicles obese with desire, to distract him in her presence later, to trance him during her swindle game in play.

At ten a.m. her arsenal of curves is abristle inside a short tight, nearly transparent orange silk dress. She pays a pair of loser loiterers on the apartment building stoop to carry her luggage to the Lincoln's trunk. She drives away. Before the Lincoln's engine warms up fully, she pulls through an alley into a Vernon Avenue parking lot behind a building housing a complex of doctor and lawyer offices. She locks the Lincoln and takes a cab back home to her phone.

She dials Young Joe at home, laments, 'Oh Joe! I've got bad news. That sweet old doctor, lifelong friend of my father's, just paid me a pre-office visit. He tried to crawl into bed with me on the basis that my "you know what" would be the fee and the interest for the thirty-five hundred dollar loan.'

Joe says, 'What happened?'

She says, 'I threw him out! ... and the loan. But what else could I do? As you know, today I'm supposed to complete the business arrangements necessary for "Delphine's Beauty Box" to become something except a dream. I'm so blue.'

There is a pit of silence for a long moment before Joe says, 'Cheer up. I been thinking ever since you told me about him, that I oughta loan you the money. Without interest!'

She exclaims 'You're wonderful! I'll pay you back every cent.'

'You ain't got to pay it back in no big hurry. Pay me back when your Chi Town lawyer unties the geeters your father left you from the I.R.S. I know you'll have it in hand soon.'

'I will. Cross my heart!' She sighs. 'Damn, Joe! I just remembered more bad news.' She hears Joe catch his breath. She continues, 'I promised you my car would finally be out of the shop today for our first date in so long. It isn't and I've missed you so much, heart-breaker.'

'We gonna take care of your business and then take care of bed business. Today! We can ride cabs. Okay?'

She says, 'I hate cabs! I'd rather borrow a girlfriend's car.'

Then she laughs, 'That is, Daddy Ice Cream Cone, if you don't mind riding in a stone jalopy. Huh?'

'Mind? No, baby, that's mellow.'

She says, 'Since you want to go to the bank, shouldn't I pick you up earlier than planned? I can't be late for my appointment with my lawyer.'

Joe says, 'Noon is still cool. I'll walk to the bank when I hang up. It ain't but a coupla blocks from home. See ya, Fox.'

She exclaims, 'Heartbreaker, I can't wait!'

They hang up. She goes to the battered Ford, gets in, starts to drive away. She keys off the motor, writes a note to Joe. She seals it, with the Ford's pink slip and bill of sale, into an envelope before she drops it into her purse.

She sees him waiting for her, crisp and clean in a blue jean suit, on the usual corner of sun-glutted Avalon Boulevard. As she pulls into the curb to pick him up, she wishes he were an older, tougher, less pathetically vulnerable mark. He hops in, kisses her. His blue-black brutish face is softened and radiant with infatuation as she drives away with her strategically hiked up dress magnetizing his puppy eyes for a long moment with the satiny exposure of lush thighs.

He looks at his wristwatch, says, 'It's just twelve thirty. You got a half-hour. I could stand a sandwich. I forgot to eat breakfast.'

She drives to park in front of a fast food restaurant on Vernon Avenue across the street from the building where ostensibly her lawyer has an office. A beer bar sits across the alley from the restaurant.

He says, 'Wanta sandwich or a beer?' as he gets out of the jalopy to the sidewalk bustling with pedestrians.

'Maybe a cold Budweiser, baby' she says as she notices the bulge of his father's thirty-eight pistol rammed into his belt beneath his jean jacket.

She watches him lope his giant frame into the cafe. Within minutes, he returns to the car. She sips beer as he wolfs down a pair of hamburgers, washed down with a bottle of beer. He wipes his mouth with a paper napkin. He reaches into his trouser pocket, extracts a fat doubled brown envelope, removes a sheaf of currency.

She casually watches him count out thirty-five hundred dollars in small denominations on the car seat. He replaces the bills into the envelope, shoves it into her purse on the seat between them.

'Thank you, darling! You're a stone sweet gentleman to come to my rescue' she bubbles as she scrambles across the seat to pepper his face with kisses. 'I won't disappoint your faith in me, heartbreaker. I'll repay every cent the day I get that chunk of my father's inheritance from Chicago.'

He says, 'That's mellow, 'cause my ... uh ...' Since he plans to propose to her momentarily, he checks himself before he childishly says, 'Mama will kill me and drop dead if she finds out that money ain't in the bank.' Instead he says, 'Well, I remember you said that day we had a picnic that you wanted to be with me forever. So, hold out your hand, Mrs Joe Allen, which I hope you'll be, soon.'

He takes a black satin ring box from his jacket, opens it. A credit, 'C' note down, twenty a month, white gold mounted carat diamond blazes quality, blue-white fire. She stares at his happy ugly face through the black windows of her sunglasses. She shifts her eyes to appraise the ring, guesstimates it accurately as an eight to nine hundred dollar item. She is about to extend her hand when the look of pure adoration on his pitifully unattractive pug face stirs her slumbering conscience.

She says, for her surprised ears, 'Daddy, yes! You're wonderful! I thought you'd never ask. But please save the ring delight until you know, later when we're at my place with candlelight, champagne and all. Okay?'

He says, 'You sure know what to say, beautiful' as she shoves the ring box into his pocket.

She looks at her wristwatch, leans to kiss his cheek. Half out of the car door she pauses. 'I'm so glad my lawyer is qualified to handle everything for me, the paperwork, the buying of all the shop's equipment. Isn't that a break!?'

Joe says, 'That's mellow!' as she steps into the street, slams the car door shut.

She gives him the sealed note and jalopy papers from her purse.

'Keep this for me baby, until I get back. They're terribly important personal papers' she says as she drops the envelope on the seat.

He picks it up. She's half-tempted to extend her hand and say 'I can't wait!' and rip off the ring as she watches the envelope go into the ring pocket. Instead she sighs and turns away.

He watches her jaywalk across the street and enter the office building. Almost immediately, his thirst unquenched by one bottle of beer, he gets out of the car and goes down the sidewalk into the beer bar flush with the alley mouth. He takes a stool and sips a beer as he stares into the back bar mirror at the street and alley beyond, leading to the rear entrance of the lot behind the building where Delphine's Continental is parked.

In the meantime, Delphine has hurried through a rear door of the building to her car. She moves it to the alley mouth to make a left turn down it away from Vernon Avenue where the jalopy is parked. She sees a large truck move up the escape end of the alley to block her as she moves the Lincoln several yards into it.

Inside the bar, Joe's eyes balloon in flabbergast as he stares at the reflected rear of the white Continental in the mirror. He is first stricken by mega surprise, then immobilized for a long moment by the sudden shock of sucker insight.

A graven image of Kong, he watches the Lincoln's back up lights flash on as Delphine backs her car up the alley towards him, then out of sight into the office building parking lot. He leaps off his stool and onto the sidewalk when the truck pulls through the alley toward him on its way to Vernon Avenue.

When the truck pulls free of the alley, he sees the grill of the Continental ooze into view. He trumpets the maniac riff of the fleeced as he halfbacks through a steel line of hurtling doom machines. The torrid sun skitters mini pebbles of light off his sweat wet dome, aimed like a blue-black projectile toward the full profile of the Continental. His muscles rope and spasm against the thigh denim as he gallops toward Delphine, fright paralyzed staring at him.

She finally manages to stomp the engine stallions into a careening left turn at the instant that Joe reaches her. He leaps onto the rear bumper, haunches across the trunk, claws at the top canvas, as she torpedoes the jouncing Lincoln down the potholed alley. He draws the pistol, aims it through the rear window at the back of her head.

A star trick, he ironically bellows argot like a killer mack man. 'You dirty motherfucking 'ho! Unass my geeters out the window or I'll blow you away!'

He glares into her horrified eyes reflected in the rear view mirror above her as he feels his trigger finger roll the pistol cylinders. But his finger freezes, limply disengages from the trigger. The front wheel of the car, accelerated to seventy miles an hour, suddenly dips violently into a deep pothole, hurling him off to the alley floor. He rolls and tumbles through a pool of old crankcase oil to break his fall.

Oil tarred and feathered with debris and alley grit, he struggles up to sit and watch the Lincoln turn into the street out of sight at the end of the alley. In a fugue of despair and rage he stumbles back to the Ford past a horde of mute gawkers. He sits behind the wheel for a long moment vacantly staring through the windshield. A vision of Reba, his real love, cushions his trauma as he idly pulls Delphine's sealed envelope from his pocket.

He rips it open, reads: 'Sorry, stone sweet young gentleman, it had to be you, 'cause you are, no bullshit, the nicest guy I ever met. It's maybe a sad bitch of a present, but I want you to have the Ford from this street poisoned junkie whore who was growing fond of you, and so blue this week, 'cause you got in my way. Believe me, I didn't have to bed you to beat you. Guess you were like the big brother I have always yenned for or something ... Heartbreaker, please try not to hate and hurt too much and long. Hey, lucky guy, you're worth ten of me!'

He shreds the note into the ashtray, shoves the Ford's papers into his pocket before he guns away to search the ghetto catacombs for the Lincoln until late afternoon.

That same warm afternoon at five, silk gloved, blue straw hatted Phillipa, cool and impeccable in navy linen and white and blue spectator pumps with matching bag, leaves a cab at the Allen house. Carrying a shopping bag, and an overnight case sapped across her shoulder, she goes to the fence gate. Zenobia, home early from work, stops trimming hedges to let her into the front yard.

'Oh Zenobia! What a pleasure to see you again' Phillipa exclaims.

'Chile, it sure is a treat to see you again looking fine as any magazine model' Zenobia says warmly as they embrace.

'Your sweet daughter's home.' Zenobia stoops to pick up her trimming shears.

Phillipa goes down the walk at the side of the house to the front door of the back house.

Almost immediately, Young Joe chugs the Ford to a stop in front of the house, gets out. Zenobia flings her shears away again, stands staring at disheveled Joe as he enters the yard. She blocks his path to the house, hands on her hips.

'You look scand'lous! You been alley fightin' again, Lil Joe?' she asks. 'And whose wreck you did in?'

He manages a grin to throw her off. 'Naw, Mama, I ain't had no fight. I been working to get that machine started that I stole for thirty dollars. I'm gonna fix it up and paint it up 'til I make it stone cherry wheels.' He pecks her cheek and limps up the walkway and through the front door of the house.

In the living room of the back house, Phillipa and Reba embrace and cling together for a long moment. Arm in arm they go to the kitchen. Phillipa dumps the contents of the shopping bag on the kitchen table, an assortment of every conceivable delicacy known to gratify the eccentric palate of the pregnant. They put the groceries into the refrigerator and kitchen cabinets.

They go to sit on the living room sofa. Phillipa sweeps disparaging eyes about the dismal room, furnished with a grimy potpourri of outdated, mismatched furniture and fake Oriental carpet, pocked with stain and wear spots.

Reba says, 'Mama, I haven't had the time and money to fix up the place the way I plan. Next time you visit it's going to be real cozy and bright with color.'

Phillipa snorts, 'Oh dearie! You can't have serious plans to stay in this dungeon of a house.'

Reba says petulantly, 'Don't knock my home, Phil. It's all I've got. I'm stuck here for awhile.'

'Oh no you're not. I've got a solution. I've come to rescue you. I'll tell you details shortly,' Phillipa says with a smug face.

She lights a cigarette, offers one to Reba, who declines.

'No thanks, no good for the baby I heard on the radio.'

Phillipa says, 'The Devil just pooted, as my mother used to say.'

Reba says, 'What?!'

Phillipa laughs. 'It means he's cross because I remembered all those things to bring you and I forgot demon scotch for me ... Dearie, tell me you've got an aging bottle of mood lifter stashed among the stalagmites in this drag cave.'

Reba shakes her head. 'I don't drink anymore. The baby. But I'll run up to the corner drugstore to treat you with a bottle.' She rises to her feet.

Phillipa pulls her between her knees, embraces her waist, plumped inside her flowered print maternity dress.

'Let Mama get her own poison,' Phillipa says as she looks lovingly into Reba's face, enhanced by the ultra glow of the pregnant.

Reba bends to kiss Phillipa's lips as she gently strokes her abdomen, says 'I want to go, the exercise is good for us.'

Phillipa releases her waist. 'All right, don't let Baptiste kidnap you.' They laugh. Phillipa continues, 'I have to make several collect calls to New Orleans. Oh yes, bring me Johnny Walker Red.'

Reba nods, goes to pick up a change purse from a table top near the door as she leaves the house. Neighbors, in yards and on porches on both sides of the tree shaded street, greet her or wave as she walks to the corner.