Devil in a Blue Dress

Chapter 6

They done throwed him outta his place cuz he missed the rent,” Coretta said.

We were dragging Dupree from the car to her door; his feet trailed two deep furrows in the landlord’s lawn.

She went on to say, “First-class machinist at almost five dollars a hour but he cain’t even pay his bills.”

I couldn’t help thinking that she wouldn’t have been so put out if Dupree held his liquor a little better.

“Throw’im in there on the bed, Easy,” she said after we got him through the front door.

Dupree was a big man and he was lucky that I could pile him in the bed at all. By the time I was through pulling and pushing his dead weight I was exhausted. I stumbled from Coretta’s tiny bedroom to her even smaller living room.

She poured me a little nightcap and we sat on her sofa. We sat close to each other because her room wasn’t much larger than a broom closet. And if I said something halfway funny she’d laugh and rock until she bent down to clutch my knee for a moment and then she’d look up to shine her hazel eyes on me. We spoke softly and Dupree’s deep snoring drowned out a good half of whatever we said. Every time Coretta had something to say she whispered it in a confidential way and shifted a little closer to me, to make sure I heard her.

When we were so close that we were passing the same breath back and forth between us, I said, “I better be goin’, Coretta. Sun catch me tiptoein’ out your door and no tellin’ what your neighbors say.”

“Hmm! Dupree fell asleep on me an’ you jus’ gonna turn your back, walk out the door like I was dog food.”

“You got another man right in the next room, baby. What if he hears sumpin’?”

“Way he snorin’?” She slid her hand into her blouse, lifting the bodice to air her breasts.

I staggered to my feet and took the two steps to the door.

“You be sorry if you go, Ease.”

“I be more sorry if I stay,” I said.

She didn’t say anything to that. She just laid back on the sofa, fanning her bosom.

“I gotta go,” I said. I even opened the door.

“Daphne be ’sleep now,” Coretta smiled, and popped open a button. “You cain’t get none’a that right now.”

“What you call her?”

“Daphne. Ain’t that right? You said Delia but that ain’t her real name. We got real tight last week when her date an’ my date was at the Playroom.”

“Dupree?”

“Naw, Easy, it was somebody else. You know I never got just one boyfriend.”

Coretta got up and walked right into my arms. I could smell the scent of cool jasmine coming in through the screen door and hot jasmine rising from her breast.

I had been old enough to kill men in a war but I wasn’t a man yet. At least I wasn’t a man the way Coretta was a woman. She straddled me on the couch and whispered, “Oh yeah, daddy, you hittin’ my spot! Oh yeah, yeah!” It was all I could do not to yell. Then she jumped off of me saying, in a shy voice, “Oooo, that’s jus’ too good, Easy.” I tried to pull her back but Coretta never went where she didn’t want to go. She just twisted down to the floor and said, “I cain’t get up off’a that much love, daddy, not the way things is.”

“What things?” I cried.

“You know.” She gestured with a twist of her head. “Dupree’s right there in the next room.”

“Fo’get about him! You got me goin’, Coretta.”

“It just ain’t right, Easy. Here I am doin’ this right in the next room and all you doin’ is nosin’ after my friend Daphne.”

“I ain’t after her, honey. It’s just a job, that’s all.”

“What job?”

“Man wants me to find her.”

“What man?”

“Who cares what man? I ain’t nosin’ after nobody but you.”

“But Daphne’s my friend…”

“Just some boyfriend, Coretta, that’s all.”

When I started to lose my excitement she gave me her spot again and let me hit it some more. In that way she kept me talking until the sky turned light. She did tell me who Daphne’s boyfriend was; I wasn’t happy to hear it, but it was better than I knew.

When Dupree started coughing like a man about to wake up I hustled on my pants and made to leave. Coretta hugged me around the chest and sighed, “Don’t ole Coretta get a little ten dollars if you fines that girl, Easy? I was the one said about it.”

“Sure, baby,” I said. “Soon as I get it.” When she kissed me good-bye I could tell the night was over: Her kiss would have hardly roused a dead man.