Shella (5 page)

I said “Ssssh” from behind her—she gave a little jump.

“You
scared
me, honey!”

“It’s okay. I didn’t know it was you.”

“I didn’t want to wake you.”

“It’s okay.” I sat down on the chair, watched her as she took off her clothes.

“I got a job,” she said. “Dancing. First place I went to, that’s good luck, right? I worked a whole shift too.” She took some bills out of her purse. “Look, baby. Tips. For only one night. A new girl always does real good.”

She handed me the money, the same way the flunky handed me Duke’s radio.

In the morning, Misty moved real soft in the bed, pulling off the little blue silk wrapper she was wearing, put her head down between my legs, licking, like she was going to wake me up that way. I shifted my body to let her know I was awake.

She looked up at me from between my legs. “I’ll do whatever you want,” she said, voice rough and soft.

I closed my eyes. She was a dancer now, Misty. Like the woman I saw in the bar last night, dressed in little-girl clothes. She liked me, Misty. Because I didn’t get any nasty fun out of hurting her, the way the hammer did. That was enough for her.

It made me sad.

Shella came into my mind. One night, I came home later than her. She was dressed in a little-girl outfit, like that woman last night. Sat on my lap, made baby noises. I slapped her so hard she fell on the floor, started crying.

It was the first time I hit her, the only time. The only time she ever cried too.

“I only wanted to please you, Daddy,” she said. “Men like little girls. I know.”

I held her for a long time while she cried then. Promised I’d kill her father for her one day. So she could watch him die.

Thinking about Shella, I grew hard in Misty’s mouth.

New York City is a cross-hatch. The streets run east to west, the avenues north to south. The poolroom wasn’t more than a couple of miles away. It was a little before ten o’clock when I started out, walking. Misty had gone to her job.

Walking downtown along Eighth Avenue, I saw everything. Cop cars drove past like they didn’t.

The poolroom didn’t have a sign or anything, but the number was on the door. I opened it, climbed up some metal stairs. It smelled like a housing project.

Upstairs, it was a big room, maybe forty tables. Old-style, all green felt, leather pockets. Sign on one wall. It just said NO in big letters, then little words next to it: Gambling, Foul Language, Alcoholic Beverages, like that.

The place was mostly empty, a dozen tables in use. Just like the prison yard: blacks in one piece of space, whites in another. Spanish, oriental. All separate.

The guy at the desk gave me a plastic tray of balls, pointed to an empty table over in a corner, by the windows.

I carried the tray over to the table, took the balls out one by one. I rolled them around the table with my hand, testing for drag and drift on the felt. The cloth was worn, but it ran true.

I checked the cue sticks racked along the far wall. Numbers are burned into the sticks to tell you the weight.
The highest number was 22. I looked through them until I found one with nice balance, good tip. Put some talc from a dispenser in my left palm, worked the stick through until it slid smooth. Racked the balls, rubbed the cue tip with a little cube of blue chalk I found on the table.

I broke the balls, started sending them home, one by one. It was peaceful there, the table clean and flat, the ivory balls clicking together, going where I sent them.

“You’re pretty good,” a guy said, coming up behind me like a surprise. I’d seen him when he first started to move. Red-haired guy, light eyes, little scar at the corner of his mouth.

“Thanks,” I said.

“You … wanna play somebody for somethin’?”

“No thanks. I’m just practicing.”

He took a seat on one of the stools, lit a cigarette like he was going to be there for a while. I like the feel of things in my hands. I like making them move, do what I want. When I look close, get locked in, I can see the weave in the felt, the grain of the ivory. The balls look big—I can see the edges where they start to curve. The cue feels like it’s coming out of my arm, like a long fingertip. I ran a couple of racks, never looking up. Kiss shots, banks, getting the feel of the rails. I pocketed the last ball, racked them up again, locking the balls against the front of the wooden triangle with my thumbs to make them tight, squaring the angles, getting it perfect. I chalked my cue again, sighting down.

“You calling a shot?” the guy asked me.

“Yes.”

“Out of a full rack … you
calling
a shot?”

“Yes.”

“Which one? Corner ball?”

“Head ball in the side, two rails.”

“Twenty says you don’t make it.”

“It goes about every five times,” I told him.

“You want five to one?”

“Okay.”

He put a pair of fifties on the table rail. I put down a twenty.

“The five ball?” he asked, making sure. “Five ball in the side?”

“Your side,” I said, stepped to the table.

I drove the cue ball past the rack, hard against the back rail, spinning off, cracking into the rack from behind, right between the corner ball and the next one over. The five ball flew toward me, hit the left-hand long rail, banked into the short rail right where I was standing, and dropped into the side pocket like it was ducking out of sight.

“Holy shit!” the guy said. I put the money in my pocket.

He stood there, shaking his head. “You’re here to see Monroe, right?”

I swept the balls off the table, put them back into the plastic tray.

“Yes,” I said.

He followed me over to the front desk, where I paid for my time on the table. There was a door behind the desk. The red-haired guy knocked, stood there a minute. I heard bolts being turned, and we went inside.

It was a big room, eight-sided poker table in one corner,
four men sitting there. Monroe was at the table, back to the wall.

A thick guy put his hand on my shoulder, like he was going to pat me down.

“Don’t bother,” Monroe said.

I walked over, stood looking at him.

“Ghost! My man! Haven’t seen you in years. You haven’t changed a bit, huh?”

“Neither have you,” I told him. His black hair was thinner—I could see pale scalp. And his face was heavy, jowly. But I meant what I said.

“Sit down, sit down. You want a drink?”

“A glass of water,” I said, sitting down. The guy to Monroe’s left laughed. Nobody paid him any attention.

“Man, you should see this guy play, Monroe. Like a fucking machine,” the red-haired guy said.

“I’ve
seen
him play,” Monroe said, looking up at the redhead with his little eyes. “You wouldn’t like it. Go get him his glass of water.”

The redhead went away.

“So what’s up, Ghost? This a social call?”

“No,” I said, glancing around me. Meaning I didn’t want to talk in front of a crowd. Monroe never asked my name—always calls me Ghost. I never asked why.

“Take a walk,” Monroe told the others.

I waited a couple of beats. The redhead came back with a glass of water. I thanked him. He didn’t say anything, just went away again.

“I’m looking for someone,” I told Monroe.

He held up his hands, like he was pushing somebody away. “I don’t get involved in other people’s business.”

“It’s not for that,” I said. “A woman. My woman. I lost
track of her, last time I was locked up. She’s a dancer. I figure, maybe you could ask around, reach out … help me find her.”

“It’s not business?”

“No.”

“What’d you have?”

“Her name is Candy. Big girl, late twenties, early thirties. Real light blonde hair, about my height.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “A blonde named Candy, dances topless … There’s a thousand girls fit that description.”

“She’s got real light eyes, like a gray color. And a little dot, a beauty mark, just over here,” I told him, touching the spot on my face. “And a long thin scar, like a wire-mark, on her right thigh, all around the outside.”

“What else?”

“She won’t turn a trick. She’ll B-drink, dry hustle, strip. But she won’t sell pussy. Not out of a bar anyway.”

“They all will, the right guy comes along.”

“She won’t have a pimp.”

“She’s a lesbo?”

“No. I don’t know, maybe.… It doesn’t matter. She won’t give her money to anyone else.”

“Okay. You know her righteous name?”

“No.”

“She got people anywhere?”

“No.”

“She could be dead, in jail, whatever. Could be married, have a couple of kids. Those broads, they can’t strut the runways forever, you understand?”

“Yes.”

He took a long aluminum tube out of his jacket pocket, unscrewed the cap. It was a cigar, wrapped in dark paper.
He clipped off the tip with a little round knife, cracked a wooden match, got it going. “You want this as a favor?” he asked.

“No.”

“Same old Ghost. Nothing for nothing, huh?”

“Right.”

“So what you got?”

“Money?”

“How much?”

“How much do you want?”

“No money. I
got
money. How about you do what it is you do
for
money … for me. One more time.”

“Okay.”

“Just like that, huh? It don’t matter to you?”

“No.”

“I’ll start tonight, looking. You come back, say, Friday night, same time, okay? Maybe I’ll have something for you.”

“Thanks.”

“And I have your word, right, Ghost? You’ll do this other thing for me?”

“Yes.”

“It’s a deal,” he said, leaning forward to shake hands.

Misty got back to the hotel just after I did. She should have been tired from working a shift, but she was all bouncing around, excited.

“I made even more money tonight, baby. It’s really good here. We’re doing good now, right? Could we, maybe, get an apartment or something? So we didn’t have to live in this one room. It’s like a prison cell.”

“No, it isn’t,” I told her.

“I didn’t mean like
actually,
honey. But, if we have a place of our own, we could have … stuff, you know? Our own furniture, maybe. So we could eat a meal inside once in a while, not all this take-out. Could you just
think
about it, okay?”