Chicago Hustle (8 page)

“The main one,” Zelma answered heavily, and kept on stepping.

Elijah stood, rooted to the spot, watching Zelma's roly-poly shuffle, sweat streaming down the sides of his face. The airport … guess she must've decided to go on back to the Coast, to 'Frisco. “Come on, Elijah, let's pack up 'n get on out to the Coast, you'd love San Francisco. Not only that, things are a helluva lot easier out there.”

He slung the corners of his mouth down, feeling rejected, disgusted, sad, hurt, mad, and walked the twenty-five steps to the first bar.

For the rest of the day, during the heat of the middle of the day, and into the early cool breezes off of the lake, he slowly made his way through the bars in the neighborhood. First on one side of the street and then the other, hoping, on one hand, that the Lord, or whoever was responsible, would return his bottom woman. And, on the other hand, that he could get drunk.

By the time he reached the Tiger Lounge, having saved it for last, he had guzzled and swizzled his way through eight beers and fourteen gin 'n tonics and felt sober as a black Presbyterian preacher. He sat at the bar, trying to decide whether or not he should have two double shots of Jack and probably get sick, spilling it in on top of the beer and gin 'n tonics, or continue with the gin.

“You want me to come back to you, brotherman?” Sly Bob the bartender asked, checking Elijah's melancholy state out with a seasoned eye.

“Huh?”

“You want me to …?”

“Ohh, uhhh, lemme have a double gin 'n tonic.”

Sly Bob swabbed the place in front of Elijah with a couple quick flicks of his wrist. “A double gin 'n tonic, huh?” he repeated the request as a semi-question.

“Yeahhh, a double gin 'n tonic.”

Elijah looked over the assembled slicksters from the bar, nodding casually to the people he knew, ignoring those he didn't know. He lushed the double down in four swallows, paid the tab, and stumbled off the stool and out of the door, fucked up at last.

“Mannnn,” one of the regulars leaned across the bar to comment to Sly Bob. “What's happenin' with 'Lijah? I ain't never seen him to down like that.”

Sly Bob watched Elijah bump into the side of the door frame on his way out. “Ain't no tellin' what's goin' down. Lotsa shit be happenin' secretly in a dude's life sometimes. Some shit be so deep that you can't do nothin' but weep 'n drink.”

The regular, a player and a tender heart himself, reached over and slapped Bob's fat palm lightly.

“Right on, brother! righteous on!”

Elijah trudged up the dim steps to his apartment, stumbling from time to time, drunk, but still careful to keep his hand on his knife on the dark staircase.

For the second time he felt shock opening his door. Leelah lowered the confession magazine and held the joint she was smoking out to him.

“From the looks of you, I don't guess this would do anything to you,” she said, and scooched her back up a little higher on the pillow.

Elijah reached behind him and missed the door with his first move, kicked it closed instead.

He did a little superstraight stutter step over to the high iron railing at the bottom of the bed.

He stood looking down at Leelah on the bed, her royal blue robe slit open to the thigh, not sure of whether he wanted to strangle her or jump on top of her and start humping like a love-crazed Congolese gorilla.

“Leelah, where've you been and where is all my stuff?” he asked evenly, trying not to slur.

She laid the magazine on her stomach, took a long hit on the smoke and answered coldly, “You got mo' nerve than a brass-assed monkey, askin' me where
I've
been! That's what I oughta be askin' you!”

Elijah, seeing the dangers in trying to make something of the fact that they hadn't been in the same space for a couple days almost, decided to stay with more concrete questions. “Damn where anybody's been! What happened to all the stuff we had in here?”

“What the fuck do you think happened?”

Elijah started around the side of the bed, no longer shocked or puzzled, just angry now.

“Don't be playin' games with me, woman!” he snarled.

She smiled indulgently at his blustering behavior and sucked on the joint again before answering.

“Awwww, you know I sold that shit, 'Lijah. You don't have to stand there wolfin' at me. I ain't scared o' you, and you know it.”

He took a couple deep breaths, cooling himself out, satisfied that they had it all back together again.

She passed the half-smoked tuskie to his outstretched fingers.

“Uhh, well, you know … I thought … I thought, with all the shit goin' on these days that maybe somebody had kidnapped you and ripped us off too.”

Leelah's laughter shook the bed and forced tears out of her eyes. “Elijah! Elijah Brookes, the first! hahhh hahhh! hahhh! stop! please stop! hahhh hahhh hahhhaaahh! you 'bout fulla shit as a Christmas turkey!”

Elijah permitted himself a slight smile, realizing that she was right.

“How much we get? Browney take everything?”

“Yep, everything, for six bills.”

He passed the roach to her with an incredulous look on his face. “Six bills!? Six suits was worth six bills.”

“Well, actually I got seven,” she purred at him, pushing the magazine off her stomach as she arched her back yawning, “but I bought a few things, and I copped a li'l taste for us. You want some?”

“Yeahh, yeah, I could dig some. Who'd you cop from?”

“Chink,” she answered as she reached down under the side of the bed for her purse.

Elijah settled himself down on the side of the bed, the beers, gin 'n tonics, the heavy smoke and now, looking forward to the cocaine, he felt relaxed. Not to mention the release of tension he felt because his woman was back.

“Chink. Yeahhh, Chink usually has pretty nice shit.”

Leelah took a couple medicine vials out of her purse and four hundred and fifty dollars in fifty-dollar bills. She counted the money out into Elijah's outstretched hand.

“Goddamn, Leelah baby! I thought you said we cleared six bills!”

She glared at him fiercely.

“Don't I get none of it? I mean, after all, I had to pay a couple dudes to take the shit outta here.”

He frowned and jammed the money down his pocket. What could he say? knowing Leelah, more than likely she had probably gotten seven fifty. Sliced a hundred and half off the top for herself. Paid a hundred for the girl and nibbled fifty off to party with, or whatever. Slick bitch.

He watched her sprinkle a small mound of the white alkaloid powder on her compact mirror, divide it into four neat lines with the edge of a ten-dollar bill.

“I really thought you had cut out on me, baby. I really did.”

She snorted up one line and down another before handing him the mirror, being careful to breath off to one side, so as not to blow any of the stuff away.

“What made you think a thing like that?”

Elijah snuffed up one line and down the other, his actions precise and well-ordered.

“Well, when I was worried about you today, lookin' everywhere … Zelma told me you had gone to the airport.”

Leelah took the mirror and tapped a little more coke out onto it, dividing it once again into four straight lines.

Elijah, his nose turning to hot ice, stood unsteadily to take off his shirt.

“Nawwww, baby,” she began slowly. “Momma was just out there takin' care business as usual. I thought it might be hip to stash the grab bag out there for a change, since you haven't done the airport for months.”

He took the mirror and did two lines, handed it back to her.

“Yeahhh, well, I really got scared for a bit. I thought you had decided to make it on back to the Coast, to 'Frisco.”

She snorted the last two lines up, licked the powdery residue from the mirror and dropped the compact and the bill into her purse.

Elijah settled himself beside her on the bed again, folded her up into his arms and felt like crying.

Leelah, stroking his neck and back, whispered into his ear, “How could I ever leave a motherfucker as rotten as you?”

He found himself, smiling over her shoulder despite the gentle insult, pushed her back onto the bed and stood up to take off the rest of his garments. What the hell! he rationalized, no one was paying him to be himself, they all wanted him to be someone else. Fuck 'em!

He slid back into Leelah's embrace under the cover.

“You know, that was really a dirty rotten thing for you to do?”

“What?” he asked, knowing already.

“You know, to leave me by myself in the Tiger the other night.”

“Yeahhh, that sho' was rotten,” he conceded after a moment's reflection, determined not to get caught in that bag again, and wrapped his naked thighs around hers.

CHAPTER 4

Elijah sat in the barber's chair, half asleep in the mid-day heat, digging on the scene around him.

Stacey, the seventy-year-old shoeshine “boy,” popping his shine rag across a young brother's new platforms, the MOQ station beaming out jazz for sisters and brothers, a few early gambling men heading into the back room to get their third race bets down, Pauline the manicurist sitting in the window of the shop doing her own nails and flirting with the occasional, potential customer, Marvin, O.D. and Home cutting hair.

Elijah nodded cooperatively as Home chattered into his ear and snipped his Afro. “I don't care what y'all say … George Wallace is awright with me, at least you know where he is. What y'all thank about that, home?”

Elijah nodded, using his head to stay in tempo with Home's monologue. He never really needed any consensus, just an audience … and with a barber's apron around a customer's neck, that's what he had.

“Now you take somebody like that li'l ol' rich boy from Massachusetts … what'shisname? the one with all the teeth 'n hair? Kangstiddy! yeahhh! Kangstiddy! that's the boy's name! lotsa folks thank he's for
us
, but it's really hard t' say, he ain't nothin' but a good politician, that's all he is, ain't that right, home?”

Elijah nodded on cue, his mind flirting with the idea of visiting Mabel. Or Dee Dee. Or maybe going to Detroit to play some funny cards at Mayburry's house.

“I bet you even dug Bilbo, didn't you, Home?” a middle-aged brother asked.

Home snipped a few stray ends from Elijah's head before answering. “Nawwww, naw, I didn't dig 'im. Not the way you mean, home.”

Elijah opened his eyes. Who in the hell was Bilbo? who had he been? He searched around in his head to place the name. Ohhh yeahhh, the racist senator from Miss'ssippi, 1930s section.

“Well, if you didn't dig 'im,” the brother pressed, “you was down there then, why didn't you rebel against 'im?”

Home screwed his lips down and snipped silently for a few naps, getting his retort together.

“Well, brotherman, since you really wanna know … one of the reasons why we didn't re-bel, one o' the reasons is that we was too busy reasonin' it all out, outsmartin' 'em, gittin' the thang together so that young bloods could git out in the streets 'n shoot that dope, kick sisters in the ass and have ol' motherfuckers like you ask dumb questions.”

The barbershop suddenly seemed to be stricken with silence, despite the Coltrane's sounds sweeping out over the raidio and the noise of the streets flickering into the shop. Home?! was this Home being pissed off?! Wowwwww! but, once again, he re-discovered his good nature and whipped everything back into perspective. “Yeahhhh, that's what he is, Kangstiddy, a good goddamn politician, but then again, he just might really be sincere. Ain't no tellin' about a lotta these new white boys.”

He finished Elijah's hair off with a final artistic snip, brushed his neck off and whipped the striped cover off with a flourish.

Elijah stood up, straightened his collar out, patted his hair narcissistically and laid a generous tip on Home.

Home stared at the extra dollar, realizing immediately what it meant. Like, hey … haircuts themselves cost too much. And a tip too!

“Certainly wants to thank you, home.”

“Don't thank me, Home … thank that blue-eyed devil. He's the one who made it mean somethin' to you.” Home stared up from the dollar tip to Elijah's cold expression, trying to put some meaning from it all into his feelings.

“Right on! home! right on!” he replied enthusiastically, not really understanding the undercurrent.

“Ohhh, and another thing,” Elijah added, on his way out, “you can lump all them jiveass motherfuckers together, Republicans, Democrats, Communists, whatever … and if they white, they don't mean your black ass one bitta good.”

“Sho' is cold, home! sho' is cold,” Home sang out to one of his favorite customers, still uncomprehending, but more in tune.

Elijah winked at Pauline on the way out and called back to Home. “It's a cold-blooded game, Home … a cold-blooded game.”

Elijah stood in the entrance of the Stickhall, looking around, hat slashed to the side of his head, his nose a little bit in the air … shoes gleaming, pants creased straight through the bell, mint-green, hand-stitched silk shirt, nails done, mustache shaped, money in pocket, looking cleaner than the Board of Health.

He strolled into the poolroom slowly, arrogantly, paused in front of the cue rack and lit a cigarette, waiting for one of the ever-challenging suckers to give him a play.

Looking over the field, he nodded soberly to the dudes he knew and stared past the ones he didn't know.

One of the proven brotherhood, Sidney Robeson, better known as “Sidepockets,” eased up to Elijah's left shoulder. “What's the word, bruh Sides?”

Sidepockets rolled the plastic martini toothpick around, from one side of his mouth to the other, before answering. “You got it, blood. I'm waitin' for mine to come in.”