Doom Fox (2 page)

A soot black stringbean, with a Mephistophelian visage, struts through the door adazzle in puce gabardine. Tongues of frozen fire lap the blue mist as his gem infested hand pats his glittery helmet of processed hair. He brakes his puce alligators, bares his shark teeth in recognition, stares at Delphine's puzzled face in the back bar mirror. He seats himself in a booth behind her. She is certain she's seen him before but can't remember where.

Joe flings the fourth double whiskey down his gullet, hooks an arm around her waist as he orders a fresh round of drinks. 'Be cool, pretty lady' he slurs, "cause bad Joe Allen is bodyguarding you.'

Doe-eyed, she says 'I like you again Joe ... very much.'

She leans to brush his lacerated nose with feathery lips. Excitement quivers him as he opens his mouth in a smile revealing gigantic, snowy, perfect teeth. His solitary claim to beauty.

She cuts an eye back at the stringbean. 'Let's try another spot, Joe.'

'Okay baby, soon's I get back,' he says as he rises from his stool, pats her now receptive thigh. He hurries down the aisle to a pair of john doors gothically stenciled: Kings / Queens in luminous paint aglow at the rear of the room. He enters, dancing in the crowd around the urinals as he awaits his turn.

She fidgets, stares into the mirror as she sips her drink. She stiffens to see the stringbean's image swoop in the mirror. She struggles when he armlocks her beneath her breasts as he bites and sucks the nape of her neck.

She makes wild cat-spitting protests, and butts him hard between the eyes. The pimp gallery hee-haws as he flings her away and cocks a diamond-knuckled fist to bomb her out. She whirls her bottom, feral-faced, to brace him. Her bodice bursts silver flame as her hand streaks out with a clicking naked switchblade.

He defuses his fist to finger stroke his forehead. He grins hideously as he documents his moniker with a raspy whisper, 'Peaches! You blind? I'm Whispering Slim from the Big Windy.'

She shuts the blade, returns it to its spectacular nest as she rummages her memory with a quizzical face.

To jog her recall he spills, 'Girl, your mama, Big Louise, worked my girls in her joint when you were just a teeny bopper. I pushed a pink La Salle to pick up my money. Why shit, seven years ago I was in the Mellow Fellow Bar when Jelly Drop copped you and turned you out on the fast track. Later that night, you and Drop snorted up my cocaine. Remember, girl?'

She smiles bitterly remembering that Louise had really turned her out at twelve with an elderly white trick who paid Louise a 'C' note to go down on her.

She nods, says softly, 'Yeah, I remember ... how is L.A. treating you, Whispering?'

He hunches his bony shoulders as he waggles his riotous diamonds under her nose, 'L.A. the sweet bitch is sucking my dick and teasing me with the motherfucking moon. How you doing, Peaches?'

She shrugs. 'I been traveling, fighting back since I got my monkey's ass kicked at Lex last year.'

Poisonous charm softens his face as he leans in, 'Girl, you the prettiest trick ball-blaster there is ... I'm taking qualified applications for my stable. You got a shot to be queen bitch.'

She says, 'I'll think about it, Whispering ... my customer is on the turn' as she spots Joe exiting the Kings room.

Whispering says, 'Girl, don't think so long that you blow your shot to star as my woman. Oh yeah, I got a wire your papa beat his life rap, got croaked last spring in Joliet penitentiary about a faggot.' He turns back to the booth.

Guilt and sorrow pang her. Guilt because for months she had neglected to write him and send him money for cigarettes and necessities. Sorrow because he was the only human being she had ever loved and worshipped.

She stands as Joe reaches her, totters a bit, shutters her eyes for an instant to fake intoxication. He embraces her waist to steady her.

She mumbles against his chest, 'I just can't deal with liquor, Joe. I'm sorry if I'm embarrassing you.'

Siren zephyrs of Paris perfume waft from her bottle curves to swoon him giddy, rut his basso profundo squeaky.

'Hush baby lady, you cool' he says as he kisses the crown of her apricot glory.

He pays his tab and shepherds her to the cacophonous street under the gimlet gaze of Whispering Slim.

'Outlaw Bitch! I got your boss. Hoss!' he exclaims aloud as he fingers a packet of pure 'H' taped behind his knee.

She leads Joe to a new Forty-Seven Lincoln Continental Cabriolet convertible sheening like alabaster in the razzle of neon. She makes a mental note to explain the car in her con tale.

Joe glowers behind her as he remembers her crack about being down on her luck. She's rich, Joe tells himself, she's a liar like Reba. Maybe she ain't no lady. Maybe she's a nasty stinking rich 'ho. All of 'em is 'hos and liars.

She unlocks the door curbside, says 'You drive, Joe' as she gives him the keys and eases into the machine.

Whispering watches through the bar plate glass, rising to follow them. Joe steps into the street, and leaps back an instant in time. A mortal enemy, Leski, a killer cop, hurtles past in his personal Chevy. He has a smirk on his boyishly handsome face, marred by a slightly askew nose. Joe remembers that he broke it six months before after disarming Leski when he tried to arrest him at gunpoint on G.P. Joe recalls that it had taken six cops to beat him into submission for arrest.

He gets into the Continental, studies the controls for a moment before he violently guns the machine into traffic. She push-buttons the top down, stares at his grim profile.

'Delphine, how do you score for your grits and greens and the dough for wheels like this?' he asks in a sullen voice dripping sarcasm.

She smiles delight at the cue to pitch her con tale - spun from desperate fantasy to escape the trauma and shame of her sleazed childhood in the carnal phantasmagoria of her hated mother's brothel, the shock and misery of her loving and beloved father's imprisonment for a bank stick-up-murder when she was twelve. She says, 'I've been a waitress in Hollywood until several days ago. My father gave me this car for my birthday in April ... a week before a stroke killed him ...' she muses sadly.

She pauses to light a cigarette.

'Where we going?' Joe asks at a red stop light.

'Just let's ride,' she says.

As Joe pulls away on the green, she continues the con tale. 'Marva, my mother, one of Chicago's leading black socialites, died when I was born. Father was one of the most respected doctors in the city ... set me up, a month before his death, in the plushest beauty shop and boutique the Southside had ever seen ... left me a mansion and two hundred thousand dollars that were confiscated by the government for back taxes they claim he owed. My lawyer is sure we can get most of it back.' She shrugs, 'That could take years. I'm flat broke, Joe. But I'm a fighter like Daddy. I'll ...'

Joe interrupts. 'What happened to the shop and boutique?'

'A numbers banker, my landlord, put a torch to the building when I wouldn't go to bed with him ... his building was insured. I wasn't. I dream of setting up a shop and boutique in L.A. when I get financing. Wish I could sell the car, but I borrowed thousands on it in Chicago to pay for my grandmother's cancer treatments. She passed last month ... left me alone. Oh Joe! I'm so lonely and confused.' She sobs as she scoots against him.

He loops an arm around her shoulders, pulls the car to a halt at the curb. Grifter tears flood her eyes as she clings to him. They kiss deeply and long before they disengage.

'I'm so afraid here alone in L.A.' she sighs.

'Ain't nothing to fear with Joe Allen here in your corner,' he says stoutly as he pulls the Lincoln into the snailing traffic.

'Take me home Joe, and hold me' she whispers.

His heart maniacs as he croaks, 'Where!?'

'Two blocks ahead, turn left' she says as she adjusts a frilly garter on a maddeningly sculpted thigh.

As they inch down the avenue, they stare at a colorful potpourri of people spilling to the sidewalk from the front door of the CLUB ALABAM, premier black and tan cabaret. White tourist nigger-watchers, sepia hustlers with their gaudy women mill on the sidewalk. Familiar figures from the silver screen, resplendent in evening clothes, saunter to chauffeured limousines parked on both sides of the avenue.

A one-armed Uncle Remus panhandler costumed in a tattered soldier suit, hustles the sidewalk. He doffs a battered officer's cap, bows his nappy white head, flashes a Halloween pumpkin grin to acknowledge stings from several of the movie luminaries.

Joe stomps the Lincoln forward as traffic unclogs. Sudden Santa Ana winds blast Delphine's steepled mane loose into a streaming banner of flame. Joe drives blindly for a long moment, gazing at the celestial radiance of her profile haloed in the neoned ambience. A corrupt angel gracing the night. He heaves a sigh as he thinks, maybe Delphine is a finer fox than Reba. He cruises the Lincoln left into her block.

She says, 'Pull in here,' when they reach the middle of the block.

He parks, keys off the ignition. His heart arrests for an instant when she says in a stricken voice, 'Oh Joe! We can't go to my place.'

'Why Baby?' he murmurs.

She shakes her head as she stares at a three story red brick building with a manager sign gleaming starkly in a lighted first floor window. A corpulent image, reading a book, is silhouetted against a window shade.

'Because she's up waiting for me!' she exclaims.

'Who?' he asks even as he remembers her remark in the bar about a squabble with her landlord.

'My landlord ... she swore she'd throw me out and plug my door if I didn't come in tonight with every penny of back rent ... Darling, guess we have to rain-check the rest of tonight's pleasure ... drive yourself home, Joe ... just lend me a pillow so I can bed down in the car.'

Panicked by the thought that his bankroll will not cover her problem, his voice splinters, 'How ... uh, much uh ... you owe her?'

'Four weeks ... eighty dollars,' she whispers hopelessly.

He digs out his wallet, extracts the amount, lays it in her lap. Tears glisten her grey blinking orbs as she scoops up the score, idly juggles the bills in her palm, turns to gaze into his face with tremulous lips.

'You're beautiful and wonderful, Joe ... but I can't take money from you ... money you might need, when we've just started our friendship' she says as she leans to slip the money into his shirt pocket.

'Delphine, I ain't gonna worry about you sleeping in the streets. You gonna put the hurt to me, girl, if you don't take it.' Joe snatches the bills from his shirt pocket and shoves them into her bosom.

'All right Sweetheart. I don't ever want to hurt you ... but remember, this is a loan. I'll pay you back. Okay?'

He nods, starts to open the car door.

She says, 'Joe, you better not show until I've squared up the old witch. Lock up the car and come in when I signal "all clear" from the vestibule.'

She kisses him torridly and leaves the car. Shortly, Joe sees the obese shadow rise and disappear.

At the manager's door Delphine smiles apologetically when the frowning manager opens the door and grunts, 'What the hell is done gone wrong now in your apartment, Miss Starks?'

Delphine says, 'I'm sorry if I disturbed you, Mrs Lee. I would appreciate it if the exterminators came in and went over my place. I saw a roach this morning.'

The old woman snorts, 'You kill him?'

'Yes, I did, but there may be others.'

The crone jiggles her braided hog head in exasperation.

'Oh shit, Miss Starks, he wasn't nothing but a scout. Don't bother me no more 'less you see some sho 'nuff roaches.' She slams the door.

Delphine goes to the vestibule, dips her head at Joe through the door glass. Joe gets out with his gym bag, locks the car, goes up the sidewalk to join Delphine in the vestibule. His scrotum spasms as he follows her lush swaying derriere. They go up clean but frayed red carpeted stairs, through the odor of reefer, to her moon splashed door near an open back door at the rear of the shadow haunted second floor. The squealing of rats feasting on garbage in the alley below pierces the night air. She fumbles in her bag for the key.

The ominous bellow of a swain who thinks he's cuckolded issues through a nearby door. 'Gloria, I ain't gonna ask you but one more time. Where you been and whose jism is this in your drawers. I'm gonna cut your chippie head off if you don't confess.'

A fist impact sound is followed by the hysterical screeching of a woman. 'I ain't been nowhere but Mama's. That ain't come! I swear, Franklin! Mama said that's pus from my ovaries from you punching your long dick in my guts night and day. Please, Daddy! Don't beat me no more.'

'I pity her,' Delphine says, as she unlocks her door.

Joe turns and starts to go down the hall. 'I got to stop that nigger from abusing her, or maybe wasting her.'

She seizes his sleeve. 'He won't kill her. It happens all the time with them. She'd probably scratch out your eyes if you tried to rescue her.'

She pulls Joe into her rose lit trick lair and shuts the door. He blinks in the dimness, redolent of jasmine incense as they move to sit on a blue satin couch. Her foot nudges his gym bag on the carpet.

'I think I know, but what do you do to score for your grits and greens?' she growls in comedic mimicry of his basso profundo question in the car.

They laugh.

He says, 'I'm a pro fighter and I go on my old man's plumbing gigs when his arthritis lays him up ... which lately is too often for me.'

She flicks on a table radio beside the couch, stands, arms open as Jimmy Lunceford's sizzling music plays. He rises, takes her in his arms. They dance frenetically to the end of the number, then deep tongue, locked together.

'Whee babee, your kissing drives me mad,' she moans. She sucks his bottom lip as she unfastens his fly and feather strokes the crown of his blood bloated organ with her fingertips. His monster lunges into the rose glow when she nibbles through his shirt at his nipple.

She disengages, says 'Excuse me, heartbreaker,' as she goes into the bedroom.

He stands palpitating for a long moment before he crams his organ into his pants and plops down on the couch with gluey palms. He glances at the luminous face of his wristwatch glowing eleven p.m. He remembers Zenobia's strict curfew. He fidgets nervously.