Airtight Willie & Me (9 page)

At nine, the housekeeper brought the throw rug and installed new peach drapes. Fifteen minutes later, a bellman brought the Jeroboam of Mums, nestled in a solid silver ice bucket with crystal glasses on a silver tray. At ten fifteen, I opened the door to Helene. She was decked out in a sable-trimmed white walking suit. A bellboy set down a huge matched pair of chic luggage. She looked like a seventeen-year-old double for Kim Novak, only taller and more pulchritudinous.

She stood in the doorway and gazed at me like I was Tyrone Power. She said in a pro's sweet husky voice, “Oh, Slim! My Gawd, you're so handsome.”

I nodded toward the sofa and said, “Helene, I'm bullshit proof. I'm not buying pussy; I'm buying whatever acting skills you've got. Understand?”

We sat down on the couch. I gave her three bills. She flicked her tongue across the back of my hand and hooded her electric-green eyes. I ran down her role. She opened her bag and extracted sheer black baby-doll pajamas. She stripteased naked before me to the racy beat from the console, Brook Benton's and Dinah's “You Got What It Takes.” She slipped into the baby-dolls. She flung herself into my lap and licked my nipples.

I said, “Helene, get your clothes off the floor, unpack, and hang everything in the closet. The curtain will be rising any moment now.”

Helene was painting my toes scarlet to match her nails when the chimes sounded. She opened the door, stepped aside, and said, “Hi. Come in.”

Maurice and Rachel hesitated, awed by the pastel vision for a mini-instant. Their coats were slung across their arms. The tic in Rachel's cheek jerked as it always did when she was excited, or jolted. They stepped in. Helene came back to the sofa to resume the painting of my toenails.

Rachel cowered behind him as per the protocol for a defected ho. Her tic was rioting on her jaw. Maurice had his right duke rammed into his suit pocket. He darked his dreamy, but resolute grey eyes across my robe in a check out for cemetery bulges. To tout her pussy, Rachel had probably conned him that she'd opened my nose. Which she had in a way.

I said, “Helene, this is Maurice and Rachel. Maurice, no doubt, you already know who I am by reputation.”

A shadow of surprise moved across Maurice's face that I knew his name.

I nodded toward a love seat across the way and said, “Take their coats, Helene, and pour them a taste.”

He led Rachel to sit on the love seat. Helene poured champagne from the coffee table. She took glasses to them and reached for their coats.

The doll-face infant said, “We're not staying long.” He looked at me and said, “Slim, how about a few words in private?”

I thought,
Damn, that motherfucker's eyelashes are long and lacy.

I managed a suave smile and said, “Sure, Maurice, we can rap while Helene is helping Rachel pack her things.”

The girls went to the bedroom. He came to the sofa and sat down beside me and sipped champagne. His fresh unlined face was earnest as he looked me dead in the eye. I remembered my own pristine face, and I felt a pang of sympathy that he was dumping his youth and life down the rat hole of pimping. I had the insane desire to preach him out of his poisonous trance. But I knew it was too late.

He said, “Slim, you've been my idol since I was a teenage street bum down at Thirty-first and State. You had a new player's ride
every year, the finest ladies, the most fabulous threads, and so much class. I swore a thousand times I'd never chump off my life in a steel mill like my old man. I was gonna pimp like you, be admired and respected by the niggers on the corner like you. Why, Slim, I took a fall at sixteen and your name was ringing like a motherfucker even in the joint. I took a vow I'd stop stealing and pimp like you, live the sho' nuff good life like you, be famous like you.”

He paused to light a cigarette. I heard the girls clearing out Rachel's piles of makeup bottles and perfumes. I thought,
Ain't it a bitch for this young chump that hoes, pressure, and age will rip off his rose-colored glasses and kick his ass.

He continued, “Slim, Rachel gave me a lick first. I swear I didn't hit on her. She gave me claiming bread and freaked off in my bed. I had no choice. But you know the game . . . It's cop and blow. What I'm trying to say is . . .”

I cut him off. I said, “L'il bro, you don't need to run down hearts and flowers to a stoned ice player. I celebrate when I blow a ho . . . hones me to cop two in her place.”

The girls came into the living room with Rachel's bags. We stood up and shook hands. I leaned and whispered, “Son, take an old player's advice. Don't hold on to the brass ring until it turns to shit.”

He looked puzzled for a moment. He said, “Use your phone, Slim?”

I nodded. He called a bellman. Rachel kissed my cheek as they were moving out with her bags.

She murmured, “Good-bye, Daddy.”

I shut the door, went to the sofa, and sat down beside Helene, curled up seductively. I said, “You were great, Helene. The curtain has dropped. I want seclusion.”

She kissed me and went into the bedroom to pack and dress. I went to the window and watched the bellhop load Rachel's bags into Maurice's pimpmobile. Then I watched it disappear with the star that Slim built. I wanted to bawl like a crumb crusher to see her go, to see all those big potential bucks hit the wind.

I stood there at the window long after Helene had gone. Finally, I cooked up a dangerously big shot of dope and tried, unsuccessfully, to jolt myself numb from the pain of losing Rachel and to escape the excruciating loneliness of the suite.

I packed my bags and dressed. Then I sat on the side of the bed and lit a cigarette. Suddenly, bitter, frightful déjà vu seized me. I recoiled like a mad man. I cringed away from ghostly shadows cavorted by the wind-flogged branches of the ancient tree outside the bedroom window. My wild crying echoed through the suite as I wept for Mama's tears and her dreams I'd stomped on. I wept for Gold Streak, Opal, Maurice, and Rachel. I wept for all my wasted years and wasted friends and girls between treacherous Mutt and Jeff night when I had lay in the suite wanting for the child-ho Phyl to check in. I bathed my face and called the bellboy. On the way out of the suite, I paused and looked back at her ruin.

As I turned away, I whispered, “Good-bye . . . good luck, Old Girl.”

N
otorious Etta “Satin” Lewis tooled her El Dorado from Chicago like the Furies through ranting wintry winds. At last she arrived in Milwaukee. The car skittered on the icy street as she pulled it into the curb to park. Her fabulous legs trembled with tension as she walked across the snow-clogged sidewalk to ascend steps.

She squared up her shoulders inside her white mink coat, pausing on the stone steps at the door. Her black satin Cover Girl face was sad as she paused. She stared at a brass plate on the door engraved: PASTOR MARY LEWIS. Stricken, she fought tears as she heard the deacon's eulogy rising above the moving “Amens.”

“Mother Lewis, our pastor, our saint, is gone on her trip into divine infinity. Her doctors reported her ticket home was stamped heartbreak and hypertension. This church, this city, all of us have lost a powerful warrior for love, compassion, and human rights.” The shaky voice broke. “I tell you, if I didn't believe deep in the pit of my soul in God's divine wisdom and plan, I'd ask, ‘Why, God? Why? Why did you call Mother Lewis from us?' Oh, Lord, it hurts so bad! Please, Lord, light the way, show us heavy-hearted sheep the way to do without her! Help us, Father!”

Satin stiffened her backbone and thrust her chin high as she opened the door to step inside the crowded ghetto church.

Late.

She removed her coat, slung it across her arm. Burning with
embarrassment, she went down the aisle through a silent sea of faces to a front pew near the flower-banked open casket. She sat down heavily between Ora, her older sister, and Mimi, her seven-year-old daughter. They clung to her as she kissed them. She squeezed and held their hands as the deacon sat down behind the pulpit.

The choir sang the final hymn of the service. The string bean deacon stood and smiled sadly, looked at the family survivors, and dipped his head toward the casket. The black-clad trio rose and went to the casket. Pews emptied at the rear of the church as mourners formed a line to view the body.

Ora and Mimi broke into hysterical weeping as they looked down at the seamed, finely-sculpted black face of Mother Lewis. Satin's lips trembled as she stared at the ruined image of her own face. She struggled to keep her vow not to cry, not to let the self-righteous mob of squares, who hated her for breaking their Mother Lewis's heart, see her emotions bared.

She remembered that just five years ago her mother's snowy hair had been jet-black with only a few sprinklings of gray. She remembered the town's outrage, the disgrace, the pain in her mother's eyes when she cried and begged her not to leave town with dope-dealer pimp, Chicago Razzle Red. Despite her courage, Satin wept. Beneath her wild sobs she whispered, “I'm sorry, Mom. I made a mistake . . . Forgive me.”

She embraced Mimi and Ora and led them back to sit and watch, through a fog of tears, the congregation filing past the casket for their final glimpse of their beloved Mother Lewis. In a trance of sorrow, Satin took the arms of Ora and Mimi and followed the pallbearers with the casket to the sidewalk. The funeral director helped her into her maxi mink coat.

A crone poison-monger in the crowd spit venomously into the snow and stage-whispered, “The Lord's surely gonna put a curse on Satan's imp and her luxuries for killing Mother Lewis.”

Satin turned to flog the crone with her masterwork of street profanity, but the funeral director gently, but firmly, shepherded her into the family limousine behind Mimi and Ora. Satin slumped on the rear cushions of the limo in shame for her near loss of control, all the way to the snow-choked cemetery. The grief-stricken sisters and Mimi wept convulsively at the rim of the grave as Mother Lewis's remains were lowered into the earth.

Satin told herself again and again, “I didn't kill her! Red did! Red took me away! Red killed her!”

The limo took them to Satin's car. Satin drove to the front of the brownstone house where she was born. She wanted to go in and visit for a while, but she was sure the memories inside would break her down again.

“Etta, aren't you coming in for a moment, at least for coffee?” Ora asked.

Satin shook her head. “Sorry, Ora, I've just got to get back to some very important business.”

Ora leaned across the seat and kissed Satin before she got out. Satin rolled down the window. Ora stuck her head inside the car. She watched Satin place a gold necklace from her purse around Mimi's throat.

“Please, Et, don't go! Stay this time with me and Aunt Ora for always.” Wide sable eyes, set in the moppet's tearstained black cherry face, were pitifully hopeful.

Satin kissed her, held her to her bosom, and whispered into her ear, “Not this time, baby, but I'll be back soon to stay. I'm even going to bring you a wonderful daddy with me. I promise. Soon. Aunt Ora is not well, so be a good girl. Help with dishwashing and keeping the house clean and stuff. Okay?”

Mimi pressed herself close against Satin as she said, “I already do, Et. I can even iron my dresses for school. Gimme some idea when you coming home. Auntie and me gonna really need you with Granny gone to Heaven.”

Ora looked into her sister's eyes as Satin said, “Before spring, angel . . . in a couple of months.”

Mimi's voice was muffled in her bosom. “No jive, cross your heart and hope to die, Et?”

Satin pressed her lips against the crown of Mimi's head. “No jive, cross my heart and hope to die, darling.”

The moppet's eyes were radiant as she blotted tears with her coat sleeve. She slid reluctantly from the car as Ora opened the door and slammed it behind her. Satin turned the ignition key, watched them go across the sidewalk hand-in-hand, turn, and wave.

Ora opened the gate to the white picket fence. She turned and said, “Wait a moment.”

She took Mimi into the house. Shortly she came back to the car with a letter.

Satin said, “Oh, by the way, Ora, will you take your phone off the hook this evening until morning so the usual check-up calls from Red can't come in from Chicago?”

Ora nodded, gave Satin the letter, kissed her again, and returned to the house.

Satin opened the letter, frowned, and groaned as she read it. She gunned the Caddie and parked a mile away in front of the site of her expensive dream, the dream threatened by the letter on the seat beside her.

She scanned the three-story red brick hotel. Its bleary neon sign blinked out: SIMS'S HOTEL on its weather-sleazed facade. The room curtains were frayed and dingy behind grimy windows.

Her eyes were bright with excitement as she visualized how the building and its rickety room furnishings could be transformed under her ownership. She saw a sandblasted building looming freshly gleaming: ETTA'S INN rippling neon fire above the lobby entrance.

She noticed an elderly waitress and ancient Mister Sims behind the bar in the hotel's tavern, stooped and laboriously serving a sparse
crowd. She imagined a gigantic mirrored sphere whirling from the ceiling, spraying pastel jewels of light on sex pots in bikinis, serving wall-to-wall people in the posh womb of ETTA'S CABARET.

Instead of queen of Razzle Red's eggshell empire of hoes and dope, she thought, I'll be queen of black Milwaukee's businesswomen. If, her heart sank, I can take off that ton of geeters this week, if plans stand up. “Don't panic,” she told herself. “You'll convince Mister Sims to extend the option to buy for at least until next week in case the big score is delayed.”

She slid from the gold Caddie to the street. She felt hooligan winds maul her as she crossed the sidewalk into the bar. She magnetized all eyes as she took a stool near the door.