Deliver Me From Evil (6 page)

“T
alk to me, Christine. I asked you what done got in you, girl.”

“It could be you,
in me,
if you want it to be,” I said, trying to imitate a look I'd just seen on HBO the night before, on Kathleen Turner's face in
Body Heat.

“What are you up to? Could be me what?” he asked, with a dumb look on his face. My hands were still on his dick, and it was as hard as a rock.

It disappointed me to see that this boy was not as smart as I thought he was. Couldn't he tell what I was up to? Did I have to come straight out and tell him I wanted him to fuck me? Or just go ahead and get naked and start the job myself! I didn't think that I could make myself more obvious. “It could be you
in
me,” I offered, pushing myself up against him and grinding. He was several inches taller than me, so I was grinding against his thigh. “I've been asking around about you, and I hear that you are going to be an actor,” I added. I wanted him to know that he was already on my agenda. “Going to be in the movies and on television and stuff. Just like John Travolta.” I spoke in a firm and serious tone of voice. I wanted him to know off the bat that I was not just trying to be funny. “But you are way cuter than John Travolta, so you'll be more rich and famous than he is.”

That got his attention real fast. His eyes got big, and his lips curled up at both ends into the biggest smile I'd ever seen on a boy. “Uh, I sure hope so. It's all I ever wanted to do,” he said hopefully, turning his head so I could see his profile. “I'm going down to Hollywood as soon as I get out of school,” he announced, with a sniff and a glazed look on his face. He was no longer looking at me; he was looking over my shoulder at the wall. When I cleared my throat and pressed against him a little harder, he returned his attention to me. He shook his head and looked at me, blinking a few times before he spoke again. “I figured I'd do a little television first. You know, so I can get my feet wet. I cut my teeth on
Cheers,
but I think I'll concentrate on the serious shows when I get down there. There are too many black clowns out there already. They should have stopped with Eddie Murphy.” He paused and gave me a sideways look. “You really think I can do it?”

I nodded. “Uh-huh. I was kind of thinking about doing that same thing myself,” I lied. “You seen
Body Heat?
It's my all-time favorite movie. I am going to do movies like that.”

His smile faded, and he gave me a harsh look. “Yeah, right.” The sarcasm in his voice was so thick, you could stir it with a spoon. Then a sad look crossed his face, and he attempted to move away from me. But I still had my arms around his waist and his back was against the counter. “I really am going down to Hollywood. I will show you. I will show everybody. And, I don't appreciate you coming up in my mama's house, making fun of me! Gimme that money!” he snarled, snatching out of my hand the money that I had come to deliver to his mama.

I stumbled back a few steps, bumping into the wobbly kitchen table. “I would never make fun of you,” I whimpered.

That comment didn't seem to impress him. He shot me a dirty look and started to walk away, stuffing the twenty-dollar bill he'd just taken from me into his pocket. “Look, I gotta empty the trash so Mama won't be on my ass again,” he said, nodding toward a large trash can in the corner, by the door. “What did you really come up in here for?” he asked, with an impatient wave of his hand. “And don't tell me it was to discuss my show business future.”

“I came to return your mama's roasting pan and to bring that money she wanted to borrow to buy her lottery tickets. Honest to God,” I said, nodding at the pan I'd placed on the kitchen counter. “And—”

“And what?”

“And to see if you wanted to have some fun.” I moved back up against him again, parting his legs with my knee. I didn't care how uninterested he tried to be. That hard bulge between his thighs told me a different story.

“Girl, how old are you?” the boy asked, looking at me out of the corner of his eye. I knew he wasn't too concerned about how young I was, because both of his hands were on my butt, squeezing and sliding up and down in such a way I could barely stand still.

“I'm old enough for you,” I insisted. “I know you like older women, but there ain't nothing they can do that I can't do.” The “older” women that this boy had already fooled around with were in college. And one already had a baby by some other boy. I hadn't even had my first period yet, so I wasn't worried about getting pregnant. As a matter of fact, I was wearing my first training bra, even though my titties were about the size of two marbles. Which was why I had stuffed both cups with toilet paper.

He leaned back and looked at my face for a long time. “You are kind of cute,” he admitted, squeezing my butt even harder. When he looked at my titties and started reaching for them, I got as stiff as a board. “What's wrong?” he asked, both hands inside my bra. Then he froze and looked at me out of the corner of his eye.

“My titties just started growing,” I admitted.

He laughed under his breath as he pulled out the tissue, looking at it like it was a snake. I turned to leave, with my head bowed and my eyes already filled with tears. Some sexpot I had turned out to be.

“Where you going, girl?” he asked, grabbing my arm.

“Home to watch
Cheers
reruns. I guess you don't want me now, huh?” I sniffed.

“All I want to know is if you are clean.”

“Huh?” I rotated my neck and gave him a puzzled look. “Yeah, I'm clean. I took a shower this morning. I take a shower every morning.”

The boy rolled his eyes and grinned. “That ain't what I meant.”

I shrugged.

“Some old, funky, Jamaican girl gave me the crabs last year,” he confessed, looking embarrassed.

“The what?”

“Never mind,” he said, waving his hand and rolling his eyes. “You can stay, and we can have a good time. But, uh, I am telling you now, if you burn me, I am going to kick your butt!”

I had no idea what he was talking about, so I shrugged again.

“Did you know that today is my birthday?” I mentioned.

His eyes were on my breasts as he spoke. “No shit? Damn we gots to celebrate now! Happy birthday. You look clean enough to me, so I'll take a chance on you. Um … my room's upstairs. The first one you get to when you get to the top of the stairs. You go on up there and wait on me,” he ordered. “I need to go feed my dog first, and then I need to go lock all the doors.”

I ran up the stairs leading to the second floor, taking the steps two at a time. I had to force the door to his bedroom open with my foot. There was just that much junk on the floor. It wouldn't be the last time that I entered this same messy bedroom to get fucked like so many other girls before me. But I didn't want to be like the other girls this boy had been with. I wanted to be special in somebody's life, and he was a good start.

He shuffled into the room a few minutes later, nibbling on a candy bar and unzipping his pants at the same time. I sat up as soon as he sat down on the bed.

“Yeah, you are kind of cute. What's your name again?” he asked.

My heart felt like it had dropped down to the soles of my feet. “Christine,” I mumbled.

“Oh, that's right. Listen, I got a feeling you and me just might get into something real big one day. And, by the way, my name is Wade.”

“C
hristine, this is Wade. Why are you sounding so strange? What's the matter with you?”

“Huh?” I had been so deep in thought recalling my first time with Wade that I hadn't heard the telephone when it rang on the stand next to the bed. I don't even remember picking it up. But when I heard Wade's loud voice on the other end of the line, I realized where I was and what time it was. “Where are you? What's going on?” I looked around the dreary motel room, frowning.

“Listen, baby, and listen good. This is the thing, see. I know this shit is getting crazy, but I might need for you to talk to our boy again,” Wade said, sounding tired and disappointed. “I'm getting real aggravated with your old man.” He sounded angry and even more impatient now.

“What did he say? What's the problem?”

“He ain't saying what I want him to say. That's the problem.” Wade let out a groan and started cussing under his breath. “That's why I can't stand niggers with money! They ride on such high horses, they done rode clean out of reality. Them
stingy
motherfuckers!”

“Is he not going to pay the ransom?” I gasped.

“He'd better! I didn't go out on this goddamn limb for my motherfucking health!”

“Well, did he say he would, or did he say he would not?” I demanded, my heart beating. Now I was angry and impatient. Not just at Jesse Ray, but at Wade, too. I wanted him to get to the point. “Talk to me, Wade. Is Jesse Ray going to pay you the money or not?”

Wade took his time responding. “Well, I think so, but not without a little more encouragement.”

“Wade, please tell me what my husband said. I've talked with him. So … so doesn't he believe I've been kidnapped?”

“He said he didn't know if he could pull together half a mil by Friday.” There was a lot of uncertainty in Wade's voice.

“Pull it together? Is he trying to tell you that he doesn't have the money? He's got the money in the bank!”

“I believe you, baby. And I'm just as frustrated as you are with that … that scalawagging cocksucker myself! Now I wish I had snatched up Mick Jagger's half-black daughter. You know where she live?” Wade snorted and cussed some more under his breath. “Never mind. Knowing that uptown heifer, she won't be that easy to grab, no how. We'll just have to make this here thing with you work. You just might have to chat with your old man again. Sound real bad; cry; beg; do whatever.”

“If I have to, I will. I just hoped that we'd be able to get this over with as soon as possible with just a couple of phone calls,” I said, with a heavy sigh.

It was a good thing that this was not a real kidnapping. A real kidnapper would not have put up with the shit from Jesse Ray that Wade was putting up with. I would have been dead by now.

“Baby, I don't know what he's up to. That's why I think you might have to put another bug in his ear,” Wade told me in a gruff voice.

“I just spoke to him yesterday. You told him he had until Friday to get the money to you.” I sniffed. If this plan failed, my life was over. I had run out of options. “I'm … uh, in a world of trouble. What is it going to take to get him to realize that?” I didn't even try to hide the desperation in my voice.

“Calm down, baby,” Wade hollered. “You just hold on there and calm yourself down. We can't afford to have you falling apart when we so close to the prize.”

“Look, I just want this to be over with so I can get up out of this dump,” I said, with a heavy sigh, looking around the gloomy room. “I'm nervous and … and I'm scared.”

“I can understand you being nervous, but you ain't got nothing to be scared about. I got your back.”

“Then what do we do now?” I asked, rubbing my nose. “I … shit! Somebody's at the door!” I whispered, gripping the telephone with both hands.

“Don't you open that door!” Wade ordered, shouting so loud, it sounded like he was in the same room with me.

I held my breath and stood stock-still, covering my naked body with the thin bedspread.

“Housekeeping,” the person on the other side of the door yelled, jiggling the door handle.

“It's just the maid,” I said, breathing a sigh of relief. “Let me get rid of her.” I didn't wait for Wade to respond. I laid the phone on the bed and put on the sunglasses and the cap. Then I cracked open the door and peered into the tired moon face of a woman who reminded me of my beloved late godmother. I had to blink back a tear that was threatening to slide out. My godmother had not been dead that long, but I got emotional every time I thought about her or saw somebody who resembled her. I smiled as I looked over the maid's shoulder.

“Housekeeping,” the woman said again, nodding toward the room, trying to look over my shoulder. She could glimpse just enough of me to see that I was wrapped up in the bedspread. From the smirk on her face, something told me that she assumed I was one of the hookers.

“Um, I don't need any service today,” I said quickly. She seemed relieved to hear that. “As a matter of fact, I won't be needing any housekeeping services any other day, either. I'll be checking out on Friday,” I said hopefully.

“No towels, toilet paper?” the maid asked, still trying to look over my shoulder.

“No,” I said, shaking my head and trying to shut the door. “I have enough toilet paper, towels, and everything else. I brought my own soap, so you don't even have to worry about that, either.” The maid had a puzzled look on her face as I shut and locked the door, securing it with the dead bolt and the chain. I stood with my back against the door until I heard her knock on the door of the room next to mine.

“I'm back,” I said, picking up the phone. “I got rid of her.”

“Don't you open that door no more,” Wade hollered.

“It was just the maid,” I hollered back. “If I hadn't opened the door, she would have entered the room. What was I supposed to do? I got rid of her for the rest of the week.”

“Just don't open that door no more. Do you hear me? I ain't going to jail for you or nobody else.”

J
ail was the last place I wanted to be. I tried not to even think along those lines. And, it made me angry when Wade brought it up.

“Can we get down to business? I'm naked and smelling like hell, and I want to take a shower. Now what is the deal with Jesse Ray?” I barked. I wanted to make sure that Wade knew I was angry and impatient.

“I told him I'd call him again so I could prove that you are still alive. In the meantime, Jason's going to make sure he sees them pictures we took first.”

I didn't like to think about the pictures I'd posed for. I had been hoping that we would not have to show them to my husband. As strange as it seemed, even to me, I wanted to make this monkey business as painless as possible for Jesse Ray. But I knew it was going to hurt him like hell to part with half a million dollars. That part couldn't be helped. Besides, I was in a lot of pain myself and had been for a long time. And, the money from Jesse Ray was the only thing I knew of that could ease my pain.

And, speaking of pictures, yesterday was not the only time that I'd posed for pictures for Wade. One night a few months ago, in a room at the Marriott—paid for with one of my credit cards at that—I'd allowed Wade to take some Polaroids of me. Not a few head shots of me grinning into the camera like a drunken fool, but shots that were so sexually explicit that I could only stand to look at them that one time. Even though I looked much younger in each picture, and in a couple, I didn't even look like myself.

That same night Wade made a video of us making love. I had protested and tried to get out of doing that, too, but after he'd plied me with about a gallon of wine, I became putty in his hands. He'd whined and pouted so much about needing something to help him “get through the days and nights” that I couldn't be with him that I'd agreed to do it just to shut him up. Since he had
promised
me that it would be a one-time thing, and that the video would not end up on the Internet, I'd put on the performance of a lifetime.

I didn't like what I'd done, and the next time I saw Wade, I made him give me the pictures and the tape. As soon as I got home that day, I fed the pictures into my shredder, and I ripped the video apart, disposing of the pieces in four different Dumpsters in Oakland.

When, and
if
, we got the money from Jesse Ray and I made it to Sacramento to start my new life, one thing that I was sure I'd never do again was let somebody photograph me, naked or any other way. The world had become too small, so I didn't want any new pictures of me floating around that might end up in the hands of somebody who knew me. My break from Jesse Ray had to be complete in every way.

“How?” I asked Wade.

“How what?”

“How is Jason going to show my husband those pictures? He can't go up to him in person! And, if he mails them, it could take a day or two before Jesse Ray receives them. Who knows who else might see them first.” I rose from the bed, rubbing my stomach with one hand and clutching the telephone in my other hand so hard, my fingers tingled. “And what if they find Jason's and your fingerprints on those pictures? With all this DNA shit going on these days, a serious criminal doesn't have a chance anymore. All they need is a drop of sweat, a strand of hair so tiny that a naked eye can't see it, or a piece of lint off—”

“Listen up! DNA, BNA, triple A, or any other kind of A. Fuck it all. Look, baby.” Wade paused and let out a deep breath. “In the first place, I got enough sense to wipe them pictures off real good before we do anything with them. In the second place, I doubt very seriously that our boy is going to call the cops. Fingerprints is the last thing we need to worry about. We need to focus on getting that money and getting the hell up out of Berkeley.”

“Then how will you get the pictures to Jesse Ray? He's got cameras all over that video store. Even if you or Jason go there in a disguise to deliver those pictures, these investigators these days have come up with all kinds of ways to identity folks in disguise.” I stopped to catch my breath. “Even if he doesn't call the cops now, he probably will once he delivers the money and I'm safely returned. Jesse Ray worked too hard to get the money he's got. He is not going to let it go that easily.”

“We'll worry about crossing that bridge when we get to it,” Wade snapped. “Me and Jason will be back at the motel in a couple of hours. What do you want me to bring you to eat? You must be hungry as hell by now. You want some tacos? Some ribs? How about a bucket of KFC?”

“A sandwich will do,” I mumbled. “And while you are at it, pick me up some deodorant and some clean clothes. And don't forget some underwear.”

It was the middle of May. Even though Berkeley was breezy throughout the day and near a lot of water, including the San Francisco Bay, the weather was fairly hot. The sun was already beating down on the cheap motel. The thin plastic curtains on the motel windows didn't keep the sun's blinding rays out. I was sweating everywhere on my body.

I had not cleaned myself since I'd left home the morning before, and I had not showered after my bedroom romps with Wade in his mama's house and in the motel. I was beginning to feel and smell pretty ripe and musty. I was a clean woman. I was used to taking a shower every morning and a long, hot bubble bath every night. There was nothing more disgusting to me than the smell of day-old sex and dried cum caked up on my thighs and face.

I took a quick shower, and I do mean quick. The shower area had water bugs crawling up and down the moldy walls, and roaches sliding across the plastic shower curtain, and the hot water was almost as cold as the cold water. I almost fell when I noticed a used condom in a cracked soap dish on the windowsill.

After I dried myself off with one of the stiff towels in the bathroom, I slid back into the same clothes that I'd worn the day before and stretched out on the bed.

I could not relax or get too comfortable, because I had so many disturbing thoughts swimming around in my head. As hard as I tried to focus on the present situation and my future, my past came back to haunt me again.