She Walks in Beauty (34 page)

“So that’s why you’re here? To bust my chops?”

Billy could feel himself getting wet under his armpits. He hated that. He’d have to go take another shower before he checked Uncle Pennybags. He couldn’t go in there stinking.
If
he went in there.
If
Angelo didn’t decide to give him two in the kneecaps right now. You could never tell with these guys. They’d as soon cripple you as look at you.

“I’ll tell you, Billy.” Angelo had walked him out into the lobby now. He wouldn’t blow him away in the lobby, would he? In the middle of old folks looking to make a quarter, a dime. Big spenders, thought they were having a great time, dentures smiling.

Oh, Jesus. Please, let him live that long. Collect on his Social Security. Angelo saying, “Reason I went to the Miss America thing tonight, I was looking for another guy who owes me. I thought maybe he could do me a favor, but he wasn’t around. Kind of missing in action, you know what I mean?”

Billy laughed nervously.

“But then I saw you up on that stage, doing your singing and dancing—”

“Yeah? How was I?”

“You stink. But, anyway, I said to myself, you know, Ange, there’s more than one way to skin a cat.”

Billy really wished Ange wouldn’t say things like that. He could just see himself, like Saint Whatsit, flayed, walking around with no epidermis to speak of. Guys like Ange knew people who did things like that.

“I watched you real close up there, and I said to myself, Billy, who owes you, would be more than happy to do you a little favor.”

“You’re right about that, Ange. You are sure as hell right about that.”

“So, Billy—”

33

Michelangelo didn’t know what the hell was going on.

First, he gets a call from his mother saying she has a bone to pick.

“Mama,” he said, “what’s the matter with you? Is your arthritis acting up again? Call the doctor.”

“I don’t need a doctor for what ails me, Mikey. I want you to come over here.”

“I will, darling. But later, if you’re not sick. If you’re sick,
butta la pasta,
I’m on my way.”

“I’m not sick. Well, not that kind of sick. What I’m sick and tired of is your butting in my business.”

“Mama! What’s got into you?”

“Nothing, that’s what. Nothing for a very very very long time, and now that something’s about to, you’re standing in the way.”

“What are you talking about?” She couldn’t mean what he thought. His mama didn’t talk like that. Didn’t
think
like that.

“He didn’t say nothing to me, but I know this is your fault. You said something to Ange, didn’t you?”

“Mama, I—”

“Don’t lie to me, Mikey. I always know when you’re lying. I didn’t live with your father for thirty-five years not to know lying. Where have you been, Sal? Out. Out I know. Out where? Out with the guys. Out with the guys named Malzina the Whore. But that’s water under the bridge, and now it’s my turn.”

“Your turn to what?” He knew he shouldn’t have asked that.

“My time to have a good time. To kick up my heels. To go dancing.”

“I’ll take you dancing, Mama. Just last month you danced at Cappy’s wedding.”

“Cappy’s wedding. I don’t want to sit around with all the other old ladies in black lace down to my ankles. I dance, the kids all say, Isn’t that cute, Gramma is dancing? Forget that. I wanta do the hootchy-kooch.”

“Mama!”

“I’m not talking about getting married. I’m too old to get married. But I’m not too old to have fun. Isn’t that what that Madonna said, Girls just wanta have fun?”

No, it wasn’t Madonna, but what difference did it make, details, when his mama had gone
pazza
?

“Everybody talks about what a shame it is, a nice Italian girl like her running around in her underwear. I say, Have all the fun you can while you’re young. I never did. I did what every girl in the neighborhood did—got married, got pregnant. Not that I would trade you for anything, Mikey, but, enough already. I read, you know. I read those magazines, I watch the TV. The world has changed. Girls have fun.”

“Mama, you’re not a girl.”

“Don’t talk back to your ma, son.”

*

Then Eddie from Tommy’s is on the phone.

“This better be good, Ed. I’m not in the mood.”

“I don’t know if it’s good or bad. Probably bad.”

“Then make it quick.”

“This long tall brunette broad comes into the place a little while ago. Good-looking. Wearing a short black skirt, them black stockings, and a red—”

“This is quick?”

“Sorry, Ma. She’s looking for Angelo. I ain’t never seen this broad before, you know, so I tell her he ain’t in.”

“Was he?”

“Nawh.”

“Great, Eddie. What if he had been?”

“What?”

“Never mind. So, you tell her he’s not in.”

“Yeah. And she starts asking all these questions, like I think the twist is wearing a wire. She’s dropping stuff about what a good gambling town AC is, how she’s bored with the casinos, understands Ange can turn her on to some other action. She don’t know what’s she’s talking about, you know what I mean, Ma?”

“Like she’s humming it?”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. So you think she’s a cop?”

“I think so. Except she didn’t have a cop’s eyes.”

“Tell me, Eddie, she have short dark curly hair?”

“Yeah, and a short black skirt. I mean, she ain’t no spring chicken, Ma, but for an older broad, she’s like—”

“An accent?”

“Yeah. Now that you mention it. A little. Kind of like—did you see that movie
Steel Magnolias,
boss?”

“A Southern accent, Eddie?”

“Yeah. How’d you know that?”

“She ain’t a cop, Ed.”

“No? You know her?”

“She’s a newspaper reporter.”

“Same thing.”

*

That’s not enough, Lana DeLucca’s on the phone screaming bloody murder.

“Lana, calm down. Are you hurt, sweetheart? Can you tell me where you are?”

“I’m standing backstage at Convention Hall in my underwear. And somebody stole my pink Marilyn number! One of these bitches stole it, Ma.”

He didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.

“Your pink Marilyn number?”

“My dress! Somebody lifted my dress!”

Oh, Jesus. Girls. “We’ll get you another dress, darling.”

“You
don’t
understand.”

Wow, the girl could cut cold steel with that voice. She ought to register it.

“In twenty minutes, half an hour tops, I’m supposed to be onstage singing ‘I Want to Be Loved By You’ exactly like Marilyn in
Some Like It Hot
wearing my custom-made $8000 nude-colored organza sequined gown, high in front, the back V-cut to my butt. As it stands now, I’m wearing the pink chenille bathrobe some bitch left in my garment bag when she lifted my dress.”

“Start with your bust measurement and calm down before you give yourself a heart attack.”

*

It was Mama again. “Mikey, I been thinking, what you said.”

Thank God. She’d probably forgotten to take her medication and now she had and she was back on keel.

“I’ve been thinking maybe you’re right about Ange. Maybe I’ll wait and look for a younger man. Knows some things I don’t know. Can teach this old bitch some new tricks.”

“Mama, stay right there. I’m on my way.”

“Better bring your key. I’m out of here.”

*

Not an hour later, Lana’s on the phone again.

“Wow! Where did you
get
this dress? It’s not the same, but—wow!”

“I know a guy.”

“You’re fabulous! And I just wanted you to know, I mean, I was really spazzed there for a while, but I’m gonna be fine.”

“That makes me happy, sweetheart. I want you to be happy. Big John wants you to be happy, too.”

“And, Ma?”

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“Listen.”

The cut-through-cold-steel voice was back again, though this time she’d wrapped a little velvet around it.

“I’m sure it was Miss Louisiana and Miss Texas. Those girls are farting around all the time, acting Miss Goody-Two-Shoes. The next thing I know they’re sucking up to me like they’re my friends.
They
took my dress, Ma.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m positive.” She paused for a count of three.

Oh, this girl was good. The real Marilyn had nothing on her when it came to timing.

“And I think Big John would like for you to do something about that. Don’t you?”

34

Who was that knocking at her door? The Big Bad Wolf? Gloria hoped so. If it wasn’t him, it had to be the cops. And what was she going to tell them about Junior?

Mama, they’d say, it’s after ten o’clock. Do you know where your child is?

Well, it was a whole lot easier to ask that question on a bumper sticker than to answer it in real life, especially if you had a teenage son. Gloria’d tell ’em that, if she let ’em in, now peeping through her peephole.

“Gloria? I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

“Lavert? Lavert Washington, is that you?”

“Me and my cousin Lucinda.”

What was Gloria gonna do? Let ’em stand out there in the dark? Homefolks? Even if she was in her tatty old robe.

“Y’all come on in.” But wait a minute. This wasn’t just any Cousin Lucinda. This was Miss Louisiana. Big Gloria recognized her from her picture. She pulled her robe tighter, feeling fat, saying how she wasn’t dressed for company.

“We’re the ones who ought to be apologizing,” said Lucinda. “Sorry to be disturbing you so late, dropping in like this.”

“Don’t be silly. Come on, y’all sit yourselves down. What can I get you? You want some coffee?”

“Not a thing, Gloria. We know you’re tired. We just wanted to come over and talk with you for a little spell, about some things seemed important,” said Lavert.

Wasn’t it amazing, a man big as that could speak so gently? Just listening to the sound of his voice made Gloria’s mind feel easier. She thought Lavert had missed his calling. He should have been a preacher man.

She told him that, and Lavert laughed. “I don’t know as how the Lord would hold with a man spreading His word who’d served time in Angola.”

“The Lord knows what’s in your heart now,” said Gloria. “He ain’t studying what’s over and done.”

“But that’s what you’ve been doing,” said Lucinda.

Now, Gloria knew that Lucinda’s nickname was Magic. She’d heard Magic could work it, too. Ladies from her church, proud to have a sister in the pageant, had been saying, You seen that Louisiana girl, she gone conjure herself up that Miss America crown, you just see if she don’t. They were Christians, those church ladies, but, like Gloria, they held onto the old back-home ways, too. It’s all mixed up together, Gloria had tried to explain to Junior more than once, if you be from the South. ’Course, that’s what voudou was in the first place, the way of Africans practicing their religion, hiding it from Massa and Miss Ann.

“What do you mean?” Gloria asked Magic. “What do you mean I been studying what’s over and done?”

“What Junior did bad is over and done. And it’s not what you think he did, in the first place.”

“Oh, Lord!” Gloria covered her face with her hands and rocked back and forth in her chair like she used to when Junior was a baby. Before he got all big and bad. “Oh, Lord! I knew that boy was in trouble.”

“He is and he ain’t,” said Magic, dropping back into the language of home, comfortable as Gloria’s bathrobe, which she wished she was wearing instead of this tight black dress, pantyhose, and underwire bra she couldn’t wait to get back to her hotel room and take off. “What you think he did, he didn’t. But he did something else bad. I see two things. I dreamed them last night, why I wanted to come over here and talk to you, this is the first chance I had.

“Now I can’t exactly describe them for you. But they’re not like what you think. They’re silver, not red, and silver you can always put back. It’s not spilled, like the blood, that once it’s gone and made its stain—well, we women know, don’t we, blood never comes out?”

“We do, we do.” Still Gloria was rocking. “What’s my Junior done? What’s he? What’s he?”

“Shhhhh,” said Lavert, laying his big sweet hand on her shoulder. “We ain’t here to tattle on the boy, and truth is, Magic don’t exactly know. Do you, cuz?”

“I don’t have a clear picture,” Miss Louisiana said. “But when Lavert came and was telling me about how he and Harry Zack are looking for that Kurt Roberts, and he’s telling me this long-drawn-out story, and then he gets to the part this afternoon about running into that young boy Rashad, Junior’s friend, and how something Rashad said reminded Harry of Wayne, another
bad
white man, and they went off to see him, and that didn’t lead anywhere, I said to Lavert, You missed something important there, Big L.”