The Vulture (4 page)

I could hear the sound of light laughter as I approached John’s door; a good time being had by all. I entered without knocking and was greeted by a startled smile from Debbie Clark.

‘Hi, baby,’ I greeted.

‘Everything’s all right,’ she said. ‘But you’re late.’

‘Thass impossible, hon. The ball don’t really ball till I show.’

‘Yeah, but one night you’re gonna come in drag-assin’ an’ we all gonna be gone.’

‘Aw, you sweet young thing. If I hadda known you wuz gonna be here early, I woulda been here all day.’

‘Bullshit!’ she said, smiling.

I chucked her chin lightly. ‘Where’s John L.?’ I asked.

‘He’s further on in. I’m the hostess.’ She struck a pose. ‘Look for him at the bar.’

‘Why don’t you hostess me on back, so I can see what I can get into.’

‘Wow! You do move fast!’

‘I wuz jus’ thinkin’ over what you said, an’ decided I might be a little late.’

‘You ain’t
that
late.’

‘An’ my rap ain’ that good?’

‘No comment.’

Someone knocked on the door, and Debbie pushed by me, muttering about leaving the door open. Her nicely built chocolate frame rubbed a part of me that I liked to have rubbed, and I plunged into the darkness looking for a drink.

Already passed out was one nigger who had had a little too much of whatever it was he had had. That was one of the good things about our neighborhood, however, among the booze brothers, anyway. When a man had too much to drink, he didn’t cramp, he camped until he and the room got back on friendly terms. There was very little wine in the air, and less liquor. John had everything under control. It seemed that the people were content to sip beer and do some dancing.

I walked through the small hallway toward the living room and the two back bedrooms, where the people were doing their thing. The people were spread along the walls and jamming the middle of the floor with some wild dancing. There was only one red bulb lighting the room with the bar in it, and that was where I knew I’d be operating from. I sensed rather than saw people. I checked for a path by looking for a silhouette and then blundering forward until I hit something.

‘So Debbie is hostessin’ John L.’s gig, huh? Another innovation on the block.’ I was thinking out loud. John had been after Deb for almost a year, but she would never give him a play. I had always told him that it was because she didn’t want to be tied down to any one man, but I really thought that it was because everybody believed that John was a nowhere cat.

My eyes started focusing, getting accustomed to the light. Bodies took on form, and faces had names. I was hailed from several parts of the room, and I waved and shook hands like a politician.

My main record started spinning, and I caught a glimpse of a mini-skirt that revealed a fine pair of legs. So I said to myself: Why not? I touched her hand with mine, and she grasped
my fingers firmly and followed me onto the dance floor. Somewhere out of the walls Smoky Robinson was crying ‘
Ooo Baby Baby
.’ Our bodies touched, lightly at first, a gentle probe on my part. You can never tell when you’ve got somebody’s Cousin Minnie from Over the Ridge, Ohio, who’s going to scream bloody murder and go home telling everybody that she was raped on a dance floor in New York. This was nobody’s Cousin Minnie.

‘I thought I knew every fine chick on this side of the Mason-Dixon Line, but I seem to have missed someone. Who are you?’ She took the compliment with a smile. I knew that at best it was only a variation on a theme she probably knew by heart.

‘I’m Crystal Amos,’ she said. ‘Who are you?’

In truth I was Humphrey Bogart, romancing a good-looking young woman in a darkened, secluded hideaway. My voice was noticeably deeper as I went into my thing.

‘Eddie Shannon,’ I bassed. ‘Some folks call me Spade.’

She stopped dancing. ‘Eddie Shannon?’

‘Yeah. Is it
that
bad?’

She relaxed in my arms again. Our bodies began to touch, rhythmically, more firmly with each beat of the song.

‘No, it’s not bad, but I’ve heard the name.’ Her smile was genuine.

I let it drop and pulled her closer to me. The song was coming to its climax, Smoky begging and pleading for the woman to give him that chance he needed. Crystal flattened her hips against me, and we touched completely. The record ended, and I took her arm.

‘I’m afraid you lost your seat,’ I said, indicating the fact that a woozy cornerboy had fallen in her spot.

‘That’s all right. I was tired of sitting anyway.’

‘You been sitting? What’s wrong with these niggers, anyway?’ I asked. ‘They blind?’

She smiled a warm, shy smile. She had a cute face that a smile did things for. Her eyes were light brown, and everything was complemented by her caramel complexion and soft brown hair.

‘Can I get you a drink?’ I asked, discovering the makeshift bar abandoned behind us.

‘No . . . I don’t drink. It, uh, tastes like medicine.’

I smiled. ‘I’m gonna have one,’ was all that I said. I poured a shot of Scotch and threw in two ice cubes and lit a smoke. As I leaned back against the wall, I struck another pose and maintained my scowl as much as possible.

In Chelsea, Spade was supposed to be the closest you could come to witnessing a walking death mask. I had picked up the tag ‘Angry Man’ because I seldom decorated my looks with a grin. I thought about that and chuckled. It was just another part of being onstage twenty-five hours a day.

My thoughts shifted to the little thing next to me. She had turned down a brother’s invitation to dance while I was pouring my drink. I saw her now looking up trying to catch my eye. I just wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of acknowledging her attention. I was actually trying to figure her out. It had been a long time since a young lady in my neighborhood had said that liquor tasted like anything but a good time. Most of the chicks were so hung out on acting grown that they fell into the parties in worse shape than the cats. They were buying their own Bacardi Light and really struggling into gigs with too much drink and too little coherence to offer any kind of companionship. Most of the time they weren’t even good for screwing, because they passed out or threw up all over everything.

‘I didn’t expect you to be a gentleman,’ I heard Crystal say.

‘What?’

‘You know what I mean. Like not drinking when the young lady that you’re with refuses.’

‘You can only refuse for you. You can’t refuse for me. What I think you’re talkin’ about iz some real phony shit,’ I said. ‘All it really turns out to be iz coppin’ out on yo’ manhood. What do you care if I drink or not? I’m gonna enjoy it, an’ it won’t get you high . . . Excuse me if I don’t make a big deal out of it.’

She looked a bit deflated. I didn’t know if it was because I had been so blunt with my disdain for manners that she appreciated, or because I hadn’t gone out of my way to get in tight with her. She turned her head, so that only her profile was visible. She started to pay a lot of attention to the dancers.

‘By the way, was I a good guy or a bad guy?’ I asked.

‘Nothing like that,’ she said. ‘My cousin Delores mentioned your name a few times during our gossip. You know how girls talk.’

‘And you remembered me from that?’

‘. . . And the way you came in tonight, with everybody calling you and speaking to you. I couldn’t help but notice how well known you are.’

‘Well, to tell the truth, I don’t know yo’ cousin too well. I guess she’s mostly into a younger thing.’

There is a social caste system in the neighborhood. Since the Dock Battle I had been accepted anywhere I wanted to go. My running men during the corner years, fourteen to seventeen, were always all at least two years my senior. The legend reads that after you go through the corner stage you evolve into a lounge-and-bar man. That was the period I was entering now. When I hit eighteen, I went straight to the Man and got my card. I had been drinking and buying taste in the neighborhood for a few years, but that was simply because my reputation told the liquor-store man that if he didn’t sell to me he might have some repairs to make on his store when he showed up the next day. Immediately after my signing to go to war if my number came up, I started hanging out at places like the Cobra on Tenth Avenue. The customers were generally bigshot
whiteys. Businessmen, tourists, career women, and entertainers all flocked to the joint because it had a write-up in
Playboy
and a few other magazines that said it was ‘in.’

‘Delores is seventeen,’ Crystal said. ‘How old are you?’

‘Eighteen.’

‘What’s one year? A lot of girls have boyfriends older than themselves. Most girls feel like they need it.’

‘I can unnestan’ all that, but what I mean is that she ain’t trav’lin’ in the same circles that I am.’

‘Which means that she’s too young for you?’

‘It simply means I ain’t got time for no lead weights aroun’ my legs right now.’

‘Few people can stand lead weights around their legs.’

Somehow Crystal and I had gotten into this tug-of-war thing, each of us trying to make a point.

‘Yeah, but a lot of people don’t see the situation as I do. To me, you’re either a girl or a woman, a boy or a man. I’m not really speakin’ now only in terms of age. I mean the way you dig life.’

‘What decides which?’ Crystal asked.

‘You either live life or you don’t. You either get out an’ go for what you’re after, or you watch the world drift away from you.’

‘And?’

‘And if you know what you want when you’re twelve, you’re grown.’

She was watching me drink, and I had a sneaking suspicion that she wanted a drink. I thought she was about to show me a little independent action to show me that she was mature. I was reaching for the bottle.

‘I still don’t want a drink,’ she said.

I stopped in midair and smiled at her. She was watching the couples in the middle of the floor dancing and weaving in time to the beat.

In the distance, Derek Martin was singing a song called ‘You’d Better Go,’ and an angel soprano accompanied him, telling him that his time had run out, but he kept on rapping strong. I watched a few couples appear from the shadows and cling to each other. I wrapped an arm around Crys and led her onto the dance floor.

By eleven o’clock John’s party had turned into a downhome ‘sweat box,’ with barely enough room between people for a man to know what in the crowd was his and what belonged to someone else. The fast records were for breathers and time-outs. All of the windows were open, but late June is no time to be looking for a breeze in Manhattan. Crystal and I were sitting on the stairs even with the next floor. I was smoking one of the joints I had rolled from John’s bag, and Crys was holding a cigarette to camouflage the sweet aromatic drug.

‘Take a drag,’ I coaxed.

‘I don’t want any, Eddie.’

‘Look here. I ain’ tryin’ to turn you into no junky or get you high so I can screw you. You ain’ gonna get high the first time you smoke anyway.’

‘So why should I do it?’

‘’Cause damn holy rollers iz always preachin’ ‘bout the evil a this an’ the evil a that an’ come to fin’ out they wouldn’t know a joint an’ couldn’t identify one if they got bit on the ass.’

‘Have I been criticizing you or what you do?’ she asked slowly.

‘That’s not the point,’ I said. ‘Look, what am I s’posed to be? A pusher or what? Like, I want you to start smokin’ to add to my income, right?’

The effect of the liquor and the Novocain reaction that comes with marijuana had me talking and listening in slow motion. I was starting to ramble about nothing. Behind the lenses of the reflector sunglasses, tears were welling up in the corners of my
eyes as I began to nod and lean on the stairs and lose parts of the conversation.

‘All right,’ Crystal agreed.

She took the stick from me and tried to imitate the way I had inhaled it, taking it straight down to my lungs. She only succeeded in damn near choking herself to death. I couldn’t help but laugh, and in spite of everything. Crystal fell all over me, laughing at her own ineptitude.

She looked at me carefully when the laughter subsided and took the sunglasses from my eyes.

‘Do you always wear these?’ she asked me.

‘Yeah. I wear them most of the time, anyway.’

‘Why?’

‘To be cool, I guess.’ I started laughing again.

‘I can never really see a person who wears these things. People just aren’t the same when their eyes are hidden.’

Softly she wiped the tears from my eyes, tears that had been uncontrollably released when I became temporarily hysterical at her attempts to get high. Everything always seems to be a million times funnier when you’re high, and I was sorry that I couldn’t stop. I could nearly feel the embarrassment that Crys felt.

‘I’m too young for you too, aren’t I?’ she asked.

‘Well . . . aren’t you? You claim seventeen, but how old are you really? How long have you been livin’ insteada just watchin’?’ My eyes weren’t focusing properly. I took another drag from the bush and then stubbed it out and put the roach in my shirt pocket. I felt as though Crys and I were caught somewhere in a mist between life and reality.

Her face was very close to mine. I felt very masculine and in control of everything that happened between us; lord and master of a slow-motion jungle. I draped an arm around her and looked away. The dim lights flickered at the bottom of the stairs, and the smoke fought its way across the ceiling. I
turned her face to mine and kissed her very gently. I felt her lips parting under mine. Very tenderly I touched the fabric covering her breasts, and her sighs began, her breathing ragged in my ear. I touched the cloth of her skirt just above the knee. She gasped for air and clung to me. The drowsiness that had grabbed me blunted my senses and kept my mind away from her small sobs.

‘No, Eddie. Please, no . . . Will that prove that I’m a woman?’

I removed my hand and touched her face softly. She kissed my cheek and mouth as I struggled to light a cigarette. There was nothing I could say.

August 3, 1968 / 4:00 P.M.

Memories of the party faded. I started working for Zinari on the Monday following John’s gig, and I was raking in more money than I had planned to see for quite some time. I got involved with the job and lost sight of friends from the block. I was determined to do a good job.