RL's Dream

Twenty-Four

As the hours go by Kiki stays where she is — settling into her chair. Settling into her new life. Into the whiskey and through the dread.

Home. That’s what Mavis had said. Angels and home. The room is chill and silent. The bills just two weeks past due. They sit in a corner of her mind gathered with the stone boy and her father’s hand soaked in her blood and feces. With big-bellied white men and all those years on the twenty-seventh floor. Sitting and answering phones and smiling.

All gone.

There’s nothing she wants and nobody can hurt her.

“I got an angel for a good-luck charm,” she says out loud. The studio is dark except for the light on the broken windowpane.

The knock comes just when she thinks it should. She rises up smiling at how light she is, at the ease of standing, at her hand brushing against the light switch. The room comes as no surprise. Her heart thrills — one hand on the pistol and the other on the doorknob.

Her finger is on the trigger in her purse but she knows she won’t be shooting.

“Hi,” Billy says. He’s got on a raspberry-colored suit.

She feels a grin and says with her eyes, “Come in.”

She throws Soupspoon’s blankets on the floor and they sit.

“Whiskey?”

“Naw, uh-uh, thanks anyway.”

“What do you want then?” She’s talking like Hattie, feeling Hattie’s big black body filling hers. Her skin tight and full with a black goddess.

“Soupspoon sleep here?” Billy slaps the cushions and she just has to kiss him. Her tongue pushing against his teeth for a moment and then past, inside his mouth. She licks the stale smoke from his last cigarette.

“Yeah,” she answers.

“Where is he?” He’s not afraid of her. He’s not full of sad love and kisses like Randy. Billy is a meat eater. He’s cold-blooded and fine. If he wanted to he could fly.

“Out,” Kiki says, and then, “Talk to me.”

“What you want me to say?”

“I don’t care, just talk. Tell me something real, something about you.”

“You nuts, girl?”

“Where you from?”

“I don’t know. All over I guess.”

She takes his hand and splays it against her chest.

“Come on, talk to me,” she says.

For hours they say very little. Make hardly any noise at all. Billy moves like a snake; he’s burrowing down, hugging her closer and closer still. She comes in pictures tinted in red. Her gun in Hattie’s hand is fired and a horse falls dead to the ground. A thousand pounds of dead horseflesh falling hard. Sometimes he falls on top of her and sometimes she’s thrown. Then she’s riding again. First at a canter, then a gallup. At a full run she holds the gun to his ear...

“What you thinkin’ ’bout?” Billy asks.

“Have you ever killed anything big?”

“Caught a catfish weighed twenty-two pounds once.”

“You got a pistol in your drawers.”

She laughs when he reaches for the pants next to the bed.

“You ever kill anything big?” she asks again.

“With this gun?”

“Yes,” she says clearly.

“How come?”

“I want to know what it feels like. What it feels like on the inside. Like when you fuck me like you do. Can you feel it like that? Does it hug you from the inside? Suck something out that you didn’t even know was in there?”

“What’s wrong with you, girl?”

Instead of answering, Kiki grabs for the pistol in Billy’s hand. He jumps backward, away from her, and she laughs. A bright pain comes into the middle of her forehead and she laughs again.

“You scared I’ma take your gun, Billy?”

He doesn’t answer, just sits there leaning back on the bed.

“I got my own gun, hon,” she says softly, moving her hand down over his belly. “I don’t need yours.” Her hand goes all the way down to his balls. She squeezes, gets a rise. “You can keep your gun. Lie back now.” Kiki’s breath comes as clean and deep as it did in the woods with Hector. “I’m gonna get on top now, Billy. But you don’t have to be scared because you got the gun.”

“You are crazy,’ he says, but he doesn’t fight her.

He doesn’t let go of the gun either.

At Ayer’s American Café, Soupspoon and Chevette sat across from each other at a rust-spotted chrome and torn red Naugahyde booth. Soupspoon had on another of his old suits. It was crayon-blue with navy lapels and buttons. Chevette wore a fake leopard leotard and purple velour hot pants with flat-soled shoes of matching material.

“You got a girlfriend, uncle?” Chevette had a chocolate milk shake. Soupspoon played with his oatmeal.

His chest ached and he could feel the outline of that blood-black splinter in his hip. He took two Percocets from his pocket and used the ice water to down them.

“You sick?”

“Naw. Ain’t a thing wrong wit’ me. Not a thing.”

Chevette smiled. “I like you.”

“I love you,” Soupspoon said.

“So?” she asked.

“So what?”

Chevette’s hand slid across the table right under his. “You got a girlfriend?”

“I got you.”

“You wanna go up to Sono’s? Her an’ Gerry took the kids to the Bronx.”

“She like Gerry?”

“I’ont know. I mean she think he kinda retarded-like but at least he like her kids an’ stuff. You know the kinda mens Sono usually be wit’ wanna lock the kids in the bathroom until he done his business.”

“She gonna marry him?”

“I’ont know — they just gone to the zoo.”

“But I mean is she gonna play like his girlfriend or she gonna be serious?”

Chevette smiled. “When the last time you been wit’ a girl, uncle?”

“Last night.”

“I mean before that.”

Soupspoon thought of Mavis. He had a few women after her but she was the last one that he cared about.

“I don’t know, baby. It’s been so long I can’t remember.”

“You let Gerry get his own girl then,” she said in a woman’s voice.

Later that night, while Kiki lay in her bed begging Billy to fire his pistol, Soupspoon and Chevette reclined on her sofa fully clad. The babies were asleep and Sono and Gerry were in their own bed.

“Sumpin’ wrong, uncle?” she whispered in his ear.

“Uh-uh.” He’d just been half asleep dreaming about running fast down a creek bed. His heart had picked up its pace and he had the notion that if Chevette hadn’t spoken it would have stopped from the exertion of the race.

“How come you don’t wanna kiss me then?”

“You too young for me, girl.” He put his arm around the back of her neck and she raised up to look down on him.

“I’m eighteen. I’m old enough.”

“You need a young man to make you feel good. Shoo’, I can hardly keep my attention.”

She let her hand trail down along his chest.

“You do just fine,” she said. “You know I don’t like to do it all that much anyway. I just like to hug mostly. An’ I like how you talk t’me.”

“You like my sweet talk, huh? I guess I got a lotta practice at that.”

“It’s not what you say, uncle. Not all of it. But I could tell by the way you sound that you like me an’ you need me t’feel sumpin’. I mean you like me. It’s not like how I dress or if they’s sumpin’ special I gotta do. You like me like I am.”

Soupspoon didn’t have an answer to that. It was true. Chevette was the last woman in his life. He cried inside even at the thought of her.

“I need somebody t’be nice t’me, uncle,” she said. “I don’t need no boyfriend an’ no babies. I just wanna start livin’. An’ I been lonely up here in New York.”

“I’ll be your friend, Chevette. I don’t have to kiss you to be here.”

“You don’t think I’m pretty no mo’?”

He kissed her in answer. She smiled and pulled on his ear.