A Red Death

4

I was resting on the couch at about midnight, watching a bull’s-eye pattern on the TV screen. I was smoking Pall Malls, drinking vodka with grapefruit soda, and wondering if Mouse could kill me even if I was in a federal jail. In my imagination, he could.

“Easy?” she called from the bedroom door.

“Yeah, Etta?”

Etta wore a satiny gown. Coral. She sat down in the chair to my right.

“You sleepin’, baby?” she asked.

“Uh-uh, no. Just thinkin’.”

“Thinkin’ what?”

“ ’Bout when I went down to see you in Galveston. You know, when you an’ Mouse was just engaged.”

She smiled at me, and I had to make myself stay where I was.

“You remember that night?” I asked.

“Sure do. That was nice.”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “You see, that’s what’s wrong, Etta.”

“I don’t follah.” Even her frown made me want to kiss her.

“That was the best night of my life. When I woke up in the morning I was truly surprised, because I knew I had to die, good as that felt.”

“Ain’t nuthin’ wrong with that, Easy.”

“Ain’t nuthin’ wrong with it until you tell me that ‘it was nice’ stuff. You know what you said to me when you got up?”

“That was fifteen years ago, baby. How’m I s’posed to ’member that?”

“I remember.”

Etta looked sad. She looked like she’d lost something she cared for. I wanted to stop, to go hold her, but I couldn’t. I’d been waiting all those years to tell her how I felt.

I said, “You told me that Mouse was the finest man you ever knew. You said that I was truly lucky to have a man like that for a friend.”

“Baby, that was so long ago.”

“Not fo’ me. Not fo’ me.” When I sat up I realized that I had an erection. I crossed my legs so that Etta wouldn’t see it pressing against my loose pants. “I remember like it was only this mo’nin’. When we got up you started tellin’ me how lucky I was to have a man like Mouse fo’a friend. You told me how great he was. I loved you; I still do. An’ all you could think of was him. You know I had plenty’a women tell me that they love me when we get up in the mo’nin’. But it only made me sick ’cause they wasn’t you sayin’ it. Every time I hear them I hear you talkin’ ’bout Mouse.”

Etta shook her head sadly. “That ain’t me, Easy. I loved you, I did, as a friend. An’ I think you’s a beautiful man too. I mean, yeah, I shouldn’ta had you over like that. But you came t’me, honey. I was mad ’cause Raymond was out ho’in just a couple a days after I said I’d marry him. I used you t’try an’ hurt him, but you knew what I was doin’. You knew it, Easy. You knew what I was givin’ you was his. That’s why you liked it so much.

“But that was a long time ago, an’ you should be over it by this time. But, you know, it’s just that some men be wantin’ sumpin’ from women; sumpin’ like a woman shouldn’t have no mind of her own. It’s like when LaMarque want me t’tell’im that he’s the strongest man in the world if I let him carry my pocketbook. I tell’im what he wants t’hear ’cause he just a baby. But you’s a man, Easy. If I lied t’you it would be a insult.”

“I know, I know,” I said. “I knew it then. I never said nuthin’, but now here you are again. An’ here I am wit’ my nose open.

“You know somebody saw you get on that bus, Etta. Somebody told somebody else that they heard you went to California. And Mouse could be outside that door at this very minute. Or maybe he be here tomorrah. He’s comin’, though, you could bet on that. An’ if he finds you been in my bed we gonna have it out.” I didn’t add that I knew Mouse well enough to be afraid. I didn’t need to.

“Raymond don’t care ’bout if I got boyfriends, Easy. He don’t care ’bout that.”

“Maybe not. But if Mouse think I done taken his wife an’ child fo’ my own he see red. And now here you are talkin’ ’bout him bein’ crazy-how I know what he might do?”

Etta didn’t say anything to that.

Mouse was a small, rodent-featured man who believed in himself without question. He only cared about what was his. He’d go against a man bigger than I was with no fear because he knew that nobody was better than him. He might have been right.

“And here I am again,” I said. “Tryin’ to keep offa you when I got so many problems I shouldn’t even think about it.”

Etta leaned forward in the chair, resting her elbows on her knees, revealing the dark cleft of her breasts. “So what you wanna do, Easy?”

“I…”

“Yeah?” she asked after I stalled.

“I know a man named Mofass.”

“Who’s he?”

“He manages some units up here and I work fo’im.”

When Etta shifted, her gown slid and tremors went down my back.

“Yeah?” she asked.

“I think I could get him to find a place for you and LaMarque. You know, some place fo’ you t’live. Without no rent, I mean.” I was talking but I didn’t want to say it: I wanted her for myself.

Etta sat up and her gown rose over her breasts. Her nipples were hard dimes against the slick material.

“So that’s it? I come all this way an’ now you gonna put us out.” She stuck her lower lip out and shrugged, ever so slightly. “LaMarque an’ me be ready by noon.”

“You don’t have t’rush, Etta…”

“No, no,” she said, rising and waving her hand at me. “We gotta settle in someplace, and the sooner the better. You know chirren need a home.”

“I’ll give you money, Etta. I got lotsa money.”

“I’ll pay you back soon as I find work.”

We looked at each other awhile after that.

Etta was the most beautiful woman I’d ever known. I’d wanted her more than life itself, once. And the fact that I had let that go was worse than the fear of the penitentiary.

“’Night, Easy,” she whispered.

I made to get up, to kiss her good night, but she held her hand against me.

“Don’t kiss me, honey,” she said. “ ’Cause you know I been thinkin’ ’bout you long as you been thinkin’ ’bout me.”

Then she went off to bed.

I didn’t sleep that night. I didn’t worry or think about taxes either.