Drive Me Crazy (9 page)

Her silky moans echoed. Water splashed. Echoes. Water. She was in the bathtub.

“You got my pussy so wet. Was imagining when I was rubbing your dick. Would be nice to let you slide inside me. You could hold my ass. Put your mouth on my neck. I could suck your tongue. Ride you nice and slow. Then you could fuck me good and hard.”

Delicate sounds became deep breathing, harder panting, and orgasmic swallowing.

“God. I just ... I just ... I came.” Water splashed again. “Came ... so ... hard.”

I imagined her damp face, her wet breasts rising and falling with her erotic breathing.

“Yeah, think I had too much to drink. Good thing you didn’t answer. ”

She ended her pleasure call.

My night had been horrible. She was the last thing I needed right now. The last thing.

But I needed to escape the pain and the memories. Needed a good-feeling reality.

I dug in my suit pocket and found the napkin she’d given me, dialed her digits. It didn’t ring, just beeped three times. A pager. I punched in my number. Waited for her to call back.

Ten minutes later I was back on my side of town, hunting for a parking space.

My cellular didn’t ring. My head didn’t stop throbbing.

Shaken and stirred, I listened to Arizona’s message again. Then again. Again.

That was why I didn’t notice I had been followed.

The 7-Up gave them away. The same 7-Up can Lisa had branded me with, that dented can warned me. I’d parked, gotten out of my car, started heading to my apartment.

Then somebody stealthing up behind me kicked that 7-Up. It whined across the concrete.

I swung around. Two men were closing in, a lion and a jackal. Both had intent and stone faces, coming at me the way men came at you on the yard and treated you to a shank down.

What was surreal became real.

My defenses went up, body came alive.

They stopped just beyond striking distance, still close enough to be point blank.

I asked, “There a problem?”

They just stood there, soundless, like they were waiting on the wind to change direction.

Four eyes stared down two, the tension between us muting out the sound of street traffic, sirens, and music coming from one of the apartments across the way on Hoodrat Row.

I repeated, “There a problem?”

The square-head brother to my left, the lion, he was the one who answered me. “We’ll know in three days.”

He had a head bigger than O.J.’s. His nose had been broken at least once, was smooshed and took up too much of his face. He had baby teeth. Like everything around his teeth had been supersized and didn’t send the Tooth Fairy an update. He was a big guy, a six-footer. Loose jeans. Lakers jacket. Built like he played defense for the Raiders. He weighed about two-ten, give or take a Big Mac with cheese, steroids on the side.

The other one, the jackal, kept his narrow face and slanted eyes on me. Cold as hell out here and all he sported was a wife beater. He was a pock-faced, thin man. Markings up his neck to his throat. If his skin was a ride at an amusement park it would be called Tattoo-land. My first guess was Tehachapi, maybe Wayside. Either way, both of them had studied at Penitentiary State. The question was whether they earned their bachelors, masters, Ph.D., or dropped out.

My hands became sledgehammers.

Lisa said she had two men to do her dirty work. I felt alert, my buzz gone. I didn’t notice how much the temperature had dropped anymore.

A million cars roared by and not a soul on the broken and slanted sidewalks but us.

I tried to guess which one was going to rush me first, or maybe look for the weak link, rush that motherfucker before he could charge at me, take out one and hope for the best.

Another car pulled up and parked a few feet down on La Cienega. It was a young man, his girlfriend, and their five-year-old son, all neighbors who lived in the next building.

The lion and jackal regarded the car, its passengers, then they both took steps back.

The brother said, “Fifteen large. Three days.”

I stood tall, bared my teeth. I stepped toward them. Neither moved or batted an eye. Fear didn’t paralyze me; it motivated me toward a violent conclusion, usually in my favor.

My neighbors unloaded, went into their building. That’s how long we stood there.

I said, “Why wait? Bring it on.”

The lion looked at the jackal. “He’s an arrogant fuck.”

“Yeah, he’s an arrogant fuck.”

“He won’t be in three days.”

“Not at all.”

The lion took a step back. He kicked the 7-Up can toward me again, letting me know he had kicked it on purpose the first time. He turned around and headed in the other direction. The jackal took a few steps backward, then followed. They headed down La Cienega toward a black Expedition. Same one I’d just seen stalking outside Rufus’s place. I ran to get back inside my car and catch them before they left this concrete jungle. By the time I fumbled my keys out of my pockets and got my car started, they had vanished into the night. I went down La Cienega with as much speed as I could handle, but about a mile away the street split. Either they had zoomed to the left and got on the 405 South, or stayed right and went deeper into Inglewood.

I stopped chasing that vapor trail and drove back home, found another space. Sat there holding the steering wheel with the car engine throbbing in my hands, thinking deadly thoughts.

I wanted to hunt them down, but it was better to kill a master than hurt a slave.

My cellular rang. Lisa’s cellular number showed up. Her bullyboys had called her.

I answered with a snap, told her, “You have my attention.”

“Do I? And how did I finally get your attention?”

I battled with my breathing, fought to hold on to the last edge of my calm the way a drowning man held onto a rope. I rocked, my damp hands still struggling to dry each other.

My brain was working overtime, looking for something to say to fix this. I remembered what Rufus had told me to do. Wolf was my friend, but if that would get his wife off my back, I’d do what I had to do. I never should’ve started up with her. She’d become my bete noire.

She said, “My husband is waiting for me to come to bed and be his wife.”

I wiped the stress sweat away from my eyes, said, “Lisa—”

“You’re a big guy. A rock-hard body. Rough around the edges. A bona fide certified playa. Laying the pipe all over the city. Get my money from your women, Playa.”

“I’ll drive to Hancock Park.” My tone was raw. “All three of us can have a sit-down.”

“Come this way, I’ll activate an acceleration clause in your three-day grace period.”

“Meaning?”

“Start driving toward Hancock Park, you’ll be dead before you make it to Wilshire.”

She hung up.

Sunrise tapped on my shoulders three hours later. Hours had gone by like minutes.

My tension headache didn’t let me sleep much. But I dozed long enough to get rid of the edge and keep from feeling postal. I woke up to the smell of Tunisian oils, gurgling grits, and turkey sausage. Rollerblades and snow skis were on the wall by the front door. Peach and red walls with erotic art by Kimberly Chavers, another artist I’d never heard of. Lots of pillows and scented candles. I wasn’t at my apartment. I’d grabbed a few things and left Inglewood last night. Headed south of LAX and squatted at a colorful studio apartment in Manhattan Beach.

“For real, Momma? The IRS went to Buckhead and jacked all of Peabo’s stuff? Everything in the man’s house? How much he owe in back taxes?
A million dollars.
Dag.”

She had been up all night. She didn’t get off work until somewhere between one and two-thirty and was as nocturnal as Dracula. Daylight wasn’t her friend.

“Momma, you have to go online and sign the petition. Uh uh. Then send it to everybody you can. Yes, ma‘am. Got a pen? Okay, it’s
Helpmarcus.com
. Uh huh. It is absurd. I mean, they found something to make him guilty. Well, that’s what those women do. Have consensual sex then when their daddies find out start hollering rape. No, ma’am, times ain’t changed, not at all, not for us. I wrote him a letter and let him know that there are people out here who care.”

They went on for a while, talking about a young brother who was getting railroaded in that good old Southern injustice system. I only got crumbs of the conversation.

I pulled the covers from my eyes, saw a stack of crumpled one-dollar bills on her dresser, six-inch stilettos tossed on the floor next to black leather thigh-high boots, then caught her moving around over by the small stove, first scratching one of her breasts, then stirring the grits, her cellular phone up to her face, trying to talk low and failing, irritating me. She had on thick white socks, black T-shirt, and red boy shorts.

“Momma, you get the shoes I sent you? They fit? Good. You wore a pair to church already? You’re worse than me. Cooking breakfast. Yes, ma‘am. Love you too, Momma.”

She didn’t look anything like she did when she worked. Minus the G-string, scanty bustier, and vivid makeup she wore at her night job, she was plain and simple, body withstanding, because she was a cornbread, fish, and collard greens kinda woman.

Her hair was long and colored deep brown with highlights, tied back in a ponytail. The rest of her was all a gift from above, maybe below, depending on your relationship with her.

Words that described her arranged themselves inside my aching head, phrases I never used because they sounded corny as hell, shit like
hauntingly equine
and
beauty so enchanted.

She hung up her phone. “Driver, you sleep?”

I yawned and sat up, pain, anger, and dehydration clinging to me like a tick.

I played it all off, put on a smile and said, “Was in the middle of omphaloskepsis.”

“Omfa-what-the-hell?” She laughed. “You and them big words. What the heck is that?”

“Fourteen-letter word.” I reached for my cellular phone. “Form of meditating I do in my drawers with my eyes closed.”

“You and your faux-cabulary.”

“Always using ten-dollar words and ain’t got but two in my pocket.”

She laughed. So did I. She had an easygoing way about her that lightened my soul.

“Didn’t mean to wake you, Driver. Momma called. That woman can talk.”

“It’s cool.” My voice was thick, gruff. “Gotta get up. Gotta get to work.”

I called her Panther. Her sobriquet. Doubt if that was her birth name. She was born near Atlanta, had a small waist and the fullness of a Southern gal, and still owned edges of an accent.

I struggled with a yawn, sat up, and punched the number one on my speed-dial. My cellular dialed Rufus’s home phone number. Pasquale answered on the third ring, sounding sleepy. I’d called twice through the night and nobody had answered.

I asked, “May I speak to Rufus?”

“He’s sleeping. Who’s this?”

He was fucking with me, he knew my voice. “His brother.”

“He’s asleep.”

“Wake ‘im up.”

“Call back at a decent hour.”

“Look, Nigga. Man, stop playing. Tell him his brother called.”

“Good morning to you too.”

“Tell him I called.”

“How’s about some respect?”

“How’s about telling my brother to holla at me?”

I hung up feeling both irritated and relieved. Nothing crazy had happened overnight. Lisa had hurt me, scared me, left me tripping. She’d bluffed me hard last night.

Panther was watching me, her eyes telling me she didn’t know what to think, do, or say. Just like I’d done with Rufus, I’d shown up at her door looking like a wounded warrior.

I created another smile, let that become my mask, faced Panther, tendered my tone, asked, “When did you move from Hawthorne and 119th down to this spot?”

She paused, got tight around her mouth. “Gave that apartment up after Christmas.”

“Cool studio. Nice area.”

“Yeah. Love having the beach right outside my door.”

I made my way to her bathroom, cozy space, more candles, lipsticks and mascaras, pretty little bars of soaps, sweet-smelling lotions, the accoutrements of a woman. I looked in a colorful basket she had on the counter. Scented shea butter. Exotic butter body cream. Fizzling bath grains. Everything had a label on it that said she had bought it at
www.pamperingu.com
.

A boom box was on the counter next to the basket, CDs by An nie Lennox and Jonny Lang at its side. So were bottles of medicine. I hit play on the CD player, let Jonny Lang’s singing “Red Light” cover my being nosey.

You could tell a lot about somebody’s problems by looking in their trash and medicine cabinets. You find out all you wanted to know about a person’s diet. Their bills. Credit. Things left in the trash told a man when a woman’s cycle was on and popping. Garbage cans and medicine cabinets, info people didn’t want the world to know was in those two places.

Her medicines were both Nefazodone and Paroxetine, antidepressant meds used to treat panic attacks, social phobias, all kinds of anxiety. The Nefazodone was unopened. The Paroxetine was forty-milligram tablets, a prescription of ninety pills almost gone.

Her real name was on the bottles. Cynthia Smalls.

I thought about the bottles of miracle drugs my brother had in his medicine cabinet.

Jonny Lang’s guitar and grizzled voice sang me back into the front room. Panther was putting the food together, singing along. She had an untrained church-singing voice, Southern and spiritual, moving. I pushed the colorful quilt and red sheets to the side and sat on her futon. She put a bowl of cheese grits, turkey sausage, homemade biscuits, and herbal tea on a tray.

I asked, “You eating?”

“Can’t. My bedtime. It would settle on my thighs.”