Doom Fox (9 page)

'Isn't it beautiful!?' she exclaims.

'Yeah, I guess. But ain't it kinda big' he says as they turn away for the car.

'Probably not big enough.' Delphine waves an arm toward the nearby intersection of Central and Vernon Avenues, the ghetto's busiest hub.

It is teeming, even on Sunday, with mostly women window shopping, alighting from or waiting for east-west or north-south streetcars.

They get into the car. As he drives away she says 'I visualize at least ten booths with really expert beauticians.'

He shakes his head dubiously. 'That's gonna cost a lotta bucks to set up, ain't it? ... more'n the four or five bills I maybe could help you with.'

She says, 'You angel! I won't need your help. I haven't told you the most wonderful part. One of my father's lifelong friends, an L.A. doctor, has promised to back the whole venture with cash and the necessary credit back-up with his co-signature. I'm so happy!' She scoots close to him with her cheek against his shoulder. 'Let's have a picnic, Sweetheart' she says.

'That's mellow! ... you got goodies packed there in the trunk?'

She says, 'No, but we can get everything we need at that delicatessen on Broadway.'

When he parks in the crowded lot beside the popular store, he takes out his wallet.

She opens the car door, says 'Baby, this is my treat. My lawyer in the Windy sent me some money against that big money my father left me. He expects to recover most of it from the I.R.S. before the year is out.' She gets out.

He watches her go across the lot into the store. When she returns with the picnic bag, she folds four twenties and shoves them into his shirt pocket.

He says, 'What's this?' as he removes them and stares at them.

She takes them from his palm and slips them back into his shirt pocket. 'That's the four weeks' rent you loaned me to save me from eviction. Don't break your promise to let me pay you back. Remember?'

He kisses her, says 'Girl, you something else' as he pulls the Lincoln away into traffic.

She says, 'Stop at a liquor store.'

A half-mile later he pulls past a police car besieged by shouting black teeners, into the parking lot of a liquor store at Central and Florence Avenues.

He says, 'The juice is my treat. What do you want?'

'I'm in the mood for sloe gin' she says 'but with that hassle on the street shouldn't you get it somewhere else?'

He gets out. 'I know those kids. I'm gonna see what's going on. Stay put.'

She shakes her head as she watches him walk toward the melee. As he reaches the mob of club and bicycle chain armed teenagers, a cop hurtles his cruiser away, knocking several of the cursing teeners to the pavement.

'Nigguhs! What the fuck is going on!?' Joe roars.

In utter silence the twenty-odd boys turn and stare at Joe. The leader, a six-four brawny giant of sixteen steps forward with a hostile face. 'Kong, we tired of that muthafuckah rousting us all the time' the kid growls.

Joe shoves him hard. 'Benny, don't call me Kong no more. Nigguh, you don't know me that well.'

Benny's fortress of muscles tightens as he glares at Joe. Joe says, 'Jump frog! I dare you.' Then he eyesweeps the gang, says 'That cop is gonna call in for a firing squad. What you suckers waiting for? A trip to the morgue?'

Benny snarls, 'Fuck 'em! We ain't getting in the wind. Ain't that right, guys!?'

The gang cheers half-heartedly.

Joe rams his face into Benny's, shouts 'You chumps don't wanta listen to Benny. This sucker don't know his ass from a stiff in a coffin. Now break up and hit that alley.' He dips his head toward it behind the parking lot. 'G'wan, split before the Gestapo shows.'

Benny says, 'Gang, we ain't fleeing' as he casts apprehensive eyes down the Avenue.

Joe seizes him, roughly mock frisks him.

'What you doing, Man!?' Benny asks as he backs up, brandishing a bicycle chain.

'Since you staying to face shotguns, Nigguh, I was frisking you for the machine gun you oughta have' Joe intones.

Benny's cohorts snicker. Benny swings the chain at Joe's head. Joe ducks it and decks Benny with an uppercut, snatches the chain and lashes Benny's buttocks.

He helps Benny to his feet. 'Now, all you Nigguhs hit the alley!' Joe commands as he whirls Benny and boots him in the rear end.

The gang fidgets and stares at Joe. There is a faint yowling of sirens.

Joe says, 'Please nigguhs, get in the wind 'cause I don't wanta bawl like a crumb crusher at your funeral.'

They and Benny bolt into the alley and disappear. Joe goes to the Lincoln, pulls it into the street. A block away he pulls to the curb as a half-dozen police cars, blasting sirens, roar past on their way to the liquor store.

Joe gets sloe gin at a quiet liquor store several blocks away. They go to a nearly deserted park on the fringe of the ghetto. They spread their Kosher corn beef sandwiches, potato salad and rice pudding on an oaken table beneath shade trees in a cool cul de sac. They top off the food with the fifth of sloe gin. Delphine gets a bedspread from the car trunk. They go into an odorous maw of bushes ringing the clearing and make frenetic love. Then spent, briefly nap pressed together.

She kisses him awake. He lights her cigarette. They lie on their backs gazing through a lattice of lilac branches at lamb's wool clouds appliqued against a tapestry of afternoon sky.

She says softly, 'I feel so wonderful when I'm with you ... I want to be with you forever.'

He gobbles the dizzying bait, closes his eyes, palpitates at the vision of their wedding. He remembers Zenobia's warning. His eyes pop open. He gazes at the marvel of Delphine's delicately fashioned profile, thinks he'll get the ring, maybe even marry before he somehow gets Zenobia's acceptance of a 'pretty' daughter-in-law after the fact.

'What are you thinking about, Daddy?' she says.

'About what a fine fox I got and thinking how wonderful I feel too when I'm with you' he says in a tremulous whisper.

She crawls atop him, feather kisses every inch of his face as she massages her crotch against his quickening organ. She says, 'You're the first and only man I've wanted to do this to' as she licks and bites her way down to cannibalize him until he bellows in climax.

They rise and dip themselves into a creek, dry off each other with paper napkins. Delphine drives the Lincoln from the park. She cruises the outer fringes of the ghetto.

At a stop light on upper Central Avenue Joe hears a frantic voice holler his name. He and Delphine look toward a tenement stoop, see a boy teener and girl struggling to lift a drunken old man, in Sunday suit, into the vestibule of the building.

'Delphine, that boy is Lester, usta be our paper boy. Turn the corner and pull into the driveway.' Joe gets out and walks past a group of young adult winos lounging on a dilapidated couch in the bottle strewn yard.

'Me and Sis sure glad you showed, Joe. Them nigguhs is laying to rob Grandpa' Lester says as Joe stoops and picks up the cursing old man.

Joe follows the teeners to a second floor apartment bedroom, dumps the old man into a bed. His grandkids lock him in, serve Joe a glass of lemonade before he goes back to the Lincoln incongruously parked in the shambled tenement yard.

As Joe gets into the car Delphine says 'Whew! Let's put these streets down and go to a movie. Okay, sugar?' Joe grins, and nods as he drives into brisk traffic.

6

That same day, several minutes before midnight, terrier Susie and Baptiste appraise his bizarre reflection in a full length wall mirror in his bedroom. He has costumed himself as an out of fashion Sunday-go-to-meeting silk gloved elderly woman with grey riddled long wig, black bustled dress, over trousers, and ostrich feather plumed floppy chapeau, all acquired from a Salvation Army thrift shop.

He breaks the hat brim down to obscure his horn rimmed spectacled face, three shades darkened with make-up. The backs of tennis shoes flash beneath the nearly floor length dress hemline as he bends in close to the mirror to widen and thicken his dainty lips with dark red lipstick.

He steps back, arches his spine a bit in the posture of the very old. He goes to the dresser, picks up a double-barreled derringer. He stares at it in his palm for a long moment. He replaces it on the dresser top. It could dirty a clean, blind grab and run heist he tells himself. But then he realizes his risk against two of them at the drugstore. He thinks that certainly there will be a pistol carried by old man Havelik or his son to protect eight to ten grand in loot. He picks up the gun and stuffs it into his bosom, protrusive with falsies.

He scissors a football bladder in half, dumps three large cans of cayenne pepper into a half bladder. He inserts it between the sections of a foot long rectangular rhinestone evening bag. He snaps it shut. He points it toward a cologne bottle, squeezes the bag in his palm. Like a bellows, it blows a jet of pepper that endusts the bottle.

He turns, walks toward the door. Susie pirouettes on her hind feet, helps excitement at the prospect of a walk. She follows him to the back door.

He pauses, picks up Susie, nose nuzzles her chest, smooches her muzzle, says 'Lil baby, you can't go with Papa. Take care of the house. I'll be back right away.'

He stoops to release her on the floor, steps into the backyard's pitch blackness. He locks the back door and goes into the alley and begins to walk down it with a berserk heartbeat. At the mouth of the alley he halts, peeps at the still brightly lit drugstore plate glass across the street on the corner.

He jerks up the dress to his trousered hips. He darts across the deserted street, moves like a phantom from shadow to shadow cover until he stops, panting and peering from behind the trunk of a giant oak tree twenty yards from the stoop of the drugstore. Excitement and fear twirl a rope of vomit in his gullet when he sees the store lights extinguish.

He glances up at the darkened windows of Erica's apartment above the drugstore. He steps onto the sidewalk with quivering legs, freezes as he sees the door open. He stands paralyzed, losing his nerve for an instant. He sets his jaw, forces himself into the decrepit posture of his role, goes toward them as they step out, and turn back briefly for the lock-up ritual.

The old man faces him, looks at him curiously without alarm as his son locks the door.

'Lawd a mighty! I come to get Sal Fayne for my toothache and ya'll done closed' Baptiste says in a high-pitched voice reeking agony as he presses the back of his hand holding the pepper loaded purse against his jaw. He extends a dollar bill in his other hand.

The son clutches the target sack as he turns from the locked door to face Baptiste, looks at his father.

The old man shrugs, says 'Unlock the door Harry. I'll get it for the lady in a jiffy.'

Harry turns and unlocks the door. Baptiste sees the glint of a pistol butt rammed into Harry's belt. The old man steps inside. As Harry turns back to say something, Baptiste leans in close and shoots a cloud of pepper into his face. The paper sack falls to the concrete as Harry hollers and plasters his palms against his eyes.

Baptiste scoops up the bag. Harry blindly grabs for Baptiste. Baptiste falls, evading him. Harry draws his nickel plated pistol, fires a wild shot several feet above prone Baptiste as his father dashes to the sidewalk, screams 'Help! Police! Help!'

Baptiste aims the derringer at Harry's head. But his finger freezes on the trigger. Baptiste rises and runs. He falls again, tripped by the long dress. Baptiste scrambles to his feet. He jerks the dress up to his waist as the elder Havelik dashes back into the store. Baptiste sprints away down the sidewalk to the middle of the block. He streaks across the street, pauses in the mouth of the alley that runs behind his house.

He peeps at the corner, sees old Havelik dabbing tissues at Harry's blinded eyes. He glances up at Erica's apartment windows as light flashes on behind the shades. He turns and races down the alley. He goes across his backyard and into his kitchen. He locks the door and collapses on the linoleum.

Susie yelps, tinkles and leaps in wild excitement around him. He rips open the paper sack and dumps its contents. Traumatic shock and disappointment jiggle his head as he stares at his loot. Strips of newspaper are cocooned inside a dozen-odd dollar bills.

He rolls and moans as he weeps. Finally he sits up, drained, his back propped against the refrigerator. He rips the bills into confetti as he stares tear drenched eyes into space. He listens to the insistent ringing of the phone on the wall across the room. He dredges himself to his feet to answer it.

It must be Erica, he tells himself as he picks up, says 'Hello' in a voice gravelly with fake drowsiness.

'Da Dee!' she says in a voice staggering the crest of hysteria, 'there's been shooting! A woman held up Harry and Lou!'

He manages to say calmly, 'Don't go down there. Call the police.'

She says, 'It's all over. She got away.' Then she chuckles. 'But the joke's on her. Harry always carries the store receipts next to his skin in a money belt around his waist. She got a decoy paper bag for her trouble. Da Dee, I'm coming over as soon as the police leave.'

Baptiste says, 'I'm going back to sleep Erica. See you tomorrow.'

He hangs up, staggers up the stairs to get something from the medicine chest to relieve the pain in his head that sledges like a dozen toothaches.

At dawn in the guest house behind the Beverly Hills mansion of the Sternbergs, Pretty Melvin, sleepless for most of the night, gets out of bed. He compulsively glances at sleeping Reba as he paces the carpet, tries to think of the kindest way to tell Reba that their wedding is off.

He sits down on the bedside, lights a reefer. He languidly draws himself high. Tranced narcissistic, he gazes with pleasure at his soft girlish face reflected in the bed's mirrored headboard. He lights another stick. Reefer dangling from his mouth, he shifts his eyes to scrutinize the manicured tips of his long fingers.

He remembers his father's early evening ultimatum: defer the marriage for pre-med school or marry and be self supporting. He is unaware his father meant the ultimatum purely as a test of the quality of his emotional status, of his depth of feeling for Reba and the responsibilities of husband and father.