Red Light Wives

by Mary Monroe

  “You rich?” I asked, squeezing my thighs because his hands were making me tingle. My eyes were still on the money in my hands.

  Arthur gave me a strange look and didn’t answer my question. “Have you done this before?” he asked, rubbing the hair on the back of my neck. I was glad I had a perm. My hair could get pretty mean if I let it.

  “Oh, yeah. Lots of times.” I looked at his face. He seemed nervous, because he kept looking toward the door. And, he was sweating so much it was dripping off his face onto his shirt. “Don’t you like the way I look?” I asked, getting nervous myself.

  “Sure. Sure, you’re beautiful. Nineteen, huh?”

  I nodded so hard my neck hurt. “Yep.”

  “You seem, I don’t know, innocent, I guess.” Now he was kissing me up and down my neck. “Do you have a room we can use?”

  “For what?”

  He gave me an even stranger look this time, blinking at me like he had something caught in his eye.

  “Listen, you seem a little out of it. Maybe I should wait until Rockelle is available,” Arthur said in a serious voice.

  “Miss Rocky had something else to do,” I said. “She won’t be back until late. Real late.” Miss Rocky had left the house with that Mexican woman named Ester. God knows where they went. I had asked Miss Rocky if she was going off to take care of the bedridden old man she had told everybody she took care of. She must not have heard me because she didn’t answer. But that Mexican woman had laughed. Who could figure out normal people? I know I couldn’t.

  “Where is your bedroom?”

  “Uh, this way,” I answered, leading him to Miss Rocky’s room. As soon as I shut the door, he got naked and grabbed me around the waist. He ripped my blouse trying to get it off me so fast. I didn’t like what he did to me, ramming two fingers inside my pussy for a long time. He let me go, and then he ran over to where he’d left his pants on the floor and took out something. Before I knew what was happening, he ran back to me, stopping close to my face. I didn’t know a man his age could move so fast.

  “What is that?” I asked while he played around with his dick and that thing he’d removed from his pants pocket.

  He moved back a few steps, his eyebrows shot up. “It’s a condom.” His face froze and he stared at me for a minute. “Honey, don’t you use protection?”

  “Huh?”

  “You don’t use condoms to protect yourself and your partner?”

  “Oh yeah. I do.”

  Arthur finished putting that rubber thing on and pushed me down real hard and fast on the bed. He let out a grunt and climbed on top of me, but he didn’t stay long.

  I was glad when it was over. Happy now, Arthur started rubbing my titties and butt, and kissing me. His spit leaked all over my face.

  After he got tired of doing all that, we got up off Miss Rocky’s bed, got back in our clothes, and went back into the living room. That’s when he lit up that nasty cigar and stunk up the whole house.

  Before Arthur left, he kissed me some more and he told me to call him in a few days. But I made him promise not to tell Miss Rocky, explaining that she was the jealous type. He frowned when I told him that Miss Rocky would probably want more money, and that it would take him a lot longer to get her out of her clothes because she was so fat. He thanked me and kissed me again before he left.

  I didn’t know it that night, but it wouldn’t be long before another man called up looking for a good time. Two nights later I had another date in Miss Rocky’s house. Others had called, and I promised to see them when I could find the time. I didn’t know that there were so many more men in this world just like Arthur. I was lucky they all brought the condom things with them, but they seemed upset because I never had any.

  I never dreamed that I would get so busy. It got even better after I got on my computer. It was not easy, because not knowing how to read a lot of strange words slowed me down. But somehow, I managed to surf around on my Dell until I had all the information I needed about condoms.

  I didn’t waste no time getting over to the Walgreen’s drugstore. But at the first one I went to, a nosy woman who used to visit my mama worked there. I just bought some gum. I went back home to get my bus pass, and I rode all over the place until I seen another Walgreen’s. I went in and used some of the money I’d got from my last date, and I bought up a whole bunch of condoms.

  Chapter 20

  LULA HAWKINS

  Clyde had asked me if I wanted to go on the cruise to Mexico that he finally took Ester on yesterday. I told him that I didn’t want to go. From the looks that Ester had given me as she leered at me over Clyde’s shoulder, I knew she didn’t want me to go with them anyway.

  “Lula, you turnin’ down a free cruise?” Clyde asked, a surprised look on his face. “You didn’t go out with us for Christmas or New Year’s Eve. I want you to be happy, girl.”

  “I am happy, Clyde. I don’t need to go on no cruise,” I said.

  “She gets seasick,” Ester threw in. It was a lie, but a good one. Clyde stopped asking me to go on that cruise.

  I was glad to have the apartment to myself. It gave me time to think. Lord knows I had a lot of things to think about.

  Even though Clyde’s main function was to arrange the dates, some of the regulars called us on their own when Clyde was not in town or if he didn’t get back to them soon enough, or if they couldn’t cut a deal with one of Clyde’s competitors. I had turned down six dates in the last two days. Like I said, I needed some time to think. Time to myself was the only thing I needed more than money.

  I couldn’t do much thinking without including Larry Holmes and how he had deceived me. And as much as it still hurt, I thought about him all the time. I thought about Bo, too, and how nice he had been to me. I believed in my heart that if he hadn’t been killed, I would have had a good life with him. After all, Bo had been the kind of man any woman in her right mind would have been proud to have. I was glad that I had had him, even for what seemed like only fifteen minutes. Even dead, he still brought a smile to my face.

  Verna and Odessa had called and left me a lot of messages and sent me Christmas cards. I took my time getting back to them.

  “Girl, we was beginnin’ to think you was dead,” my stepsister yelled when I finally did call her back after she’d left her last message five days ago.

  “Verna, I’m fine,” I told her. “How is Odessa?”

  “That horny bitch is layin’ right here next to me, her pussy itchin’ like she got fleas.” Verna laughed. “What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  Verna clicked her teeth and snorted. She never did have much patience. “You gettin’ any?”

  “Uh, I haven’t met anybody yet.”

  “Girl, you better get out there and meet you somebody. I’m sure you know by now that life is too short. You here today, but you could be gone tomorrow, just like poor Bo. You can’t spend the rest of your life pinin’ over Larry and Bo.”

  “I won’t.” Just hearing the names of the two men who had meant so much to me, caused a tight feeling in my chest. It was so severe I could hardly breathe. Before I could rub it away, a huge lump rose up inside my throat. I had a hard time swallowing, too. As much as I loved talking to Verna and Odessa, I couldn’t wait to get off the phone.

  “Where’s your roommate?”

  “She’s on a cruise in Mexico with…her boyfriend,” I replied, rubbing my chest so hard that the rubbing was hurting me more than the tight feeling I’d been trying to rub away.

  “Well, the next time I call you, I hope she tells me the same thing about you.”

  I chatted with Verna for a few minutes more, getting an update on Daddy, my stepmother, and the twins. Daddy’s latest girlfriend, a twenty-year-old, had attacked him with a frying pan when she caught him with her sister. Now he was walking around with a bandage cap on his head. Etta, my long-suffering stepmother, was threatening to divorce Daddy. But that was not news. She’d been threatening to divorce Da
ddy as far back as I could remember. I was glad to hear that the twins were behaving themselves.

  I rarely called Daddy and he rarely called me. When I tried to reach him, he was out almost every time. I didn’t like talking to Etta, so when she answered the telephone, I was as brief as I could be with her. But not brief enough. She made it her business to tell me every time she saw Larry and his little family and how happy they looked. That old wench wondered out loud what a handsome man like Larry had seen in me, and then she softened that blow by telling me that at least I was better looking than Verna, her own daughter.

  “When you comin’ for a visit?” Odessa was on the phone now.

  “Maybe in a few months,” I said, knowing I had no plans or desires to see Mississippi again any time soon.

  “How’s your job at the police department?” Odessa asked.

  “Huh?”

  “Ain’t you workin’ as a receptionist for the police?”

  “Uh, no, that didn’t work out, Odessa.” I had forgotten all about that black-ass lie I’d told. I prayed that neither Odessa or Verna had tried to call me there. “Uh, I got on at this engineerin’ firm downtown. Typin’, filin’, makin’ photocopies. It’s a real strict place so I can’t take no personal calls. I got a mean boss, too.”

  “Sounds like that hellhole I work for. Well, you keep your eye on them California dudes. All that sun and sand done gone to their heads, but don’t let them go to yours.”

  “I won’t, Odessa.”

  To this day, I don’t know where my mind was when I met Richard Rice. Other than Clyde and my tricks, I had not paid much attention to any other men since I’d moved to California eight months before. For the rest of my life, I would remember in detail how Richard happened to me.

  Right after my conversation with Odessa and Verna that day, a Saturday afternoon in January, I got dressed and took a cab downtown. My original plan was to catch some of the after-Christmas sales.

  As usual, there was a ruckus on Powell Street where I’d had the cab drop me off. For a country girl like me, a trip to downtown San Francisco was like a trip to a circus. In addition to the mob of tourists, most of them foreigners with cameras slung around their necks, there was a strange collection of individuals crowding the street. Dozens were in line waiting for a ride on the famous cable cars.

  But some of the things I saw that day almost made me forget why I had come downtown in the first place. There was a man who had been spray-painted all over with gold paint, even his clothes and hair. He was standing in one spot, like a statue, holding a tin can and a sign requesting donations. A blind man wearing dark glasses was sitting on the ground with a German shepherd squatting next to him. The dog had on dark glasses, too. There was a cigar box on the ground between the man and his dog for the donations. An Asian midget impersonating Elvis was gyrating his hips and singing “Jailhouse Rock.” An elderly Black man was preaching and handing out religious flyers. A group of rough-looking Hispanic boys stood glaring at another group of rough-looking Hispanic boys, shouting angrily at one another in Spanish. I decided to move on when a transvestite tapped me on the shoulder and asked me if I was Paul, the bartender from the Cock Pit bar.

  I lost interest in shopping and ended up walking a block up Powell Street to Tad’s Steakhouse to eat lunch instead. As usual, the loud cafeteria-style restaurant was crowded, so I had to search for a seat after I got and paid for my lunch. I almost didn’t notice the handsome man with skin the color of pecans and just as smooth, waving and grinning at me from a corner in the back of the room. My heart started racing because at first I thought he was one of my tricks.

  Most of the men I slept with were from out of town, and White, but I had an occasional local trick. Unlike Rosalee, Rockelle, and Ester, I didn’t have a problem turning tricks with Black and Hispanic men. Rockelle flat out refused to deal with either race, claiming she didn’t trust them, and that the few she had slept with had treated her like shit. Rosalee and Ester avoided them, too. They felt that they were too judgmental, rough, and sometimes mean. White men were often just as much trouble, but we all agreed that the best tricks were the Japanese. Especially the super rich ones from Tokyo. With them, it was all about business. They bowed and grinned more than they talked. After they got off, they handed over the money and sent us on our way.

  If the man in Tad’s Steakhouse beckoning me had been Asian, trick or no trick, I would have joined him without hesitation. With the exception of that nasty-ass Daniel Wong in San Diego—a trick I had to do when Rosalee wasn’t available—my experiences with Asian men had always been pleasant.

  There was another thing that was bothering me about the man looking at me. He had on a dark brown uniform, similar to the ones the UPS men wore. Just like Larry. And it was the same color of the vehicle that Larry’s wife had climbed out of that day she attacked me in that parking lot.

  It didn’t take long for me to decide that the Black man looking at me wasn’t somebody I knew. And being that my complexion was dark brown, I realized just how silly it was to let a uniform the same color disturb me. There were no other empty seats, so I moved toward the table with the handsome Black man in the dark brown uniform.

  “Go on and sit down, sister. I ain’t goin’ to bite you…unless you want me to,” he said, grinning. He was even better looking up close. His black eyes sparkled as he looked me up and down. He had a neat, thin goatee, which was nice because with it, his face didn’t look as round as it really was. He had on a uniform, but that didn’t hide his muscular build. His head was full of wavy, dark brown hair, parted on the side. It made him look like a choirboy.

  “Thank you.” I sat down, hoping he was not the chatty type. I hated when strangers struck up conversations with me. It seemed like everybody I’d met in California wanted to tell me their business and wanted to know mine. This brother was no different.

  “I’m Richard,” he said, wiping salad dressing off his lips with a wad of napkins.

  “I’m Lula,” I told him, talking with my head down. I felt like a frumpy old maid. I didn’t have on any makeup and a red scarf covered my hair. I figured if I started reading the paperback copy of The Coldest Winter Ever, which Rockelle had left at the house, he would take the hint. I was wrong.

  “Now that’s a book you don’t wanna put down ’til you finish,” he said.

  “So I’ve heard,” I said, flipping to the page where I’d left off.

  He was chewing and talking at the same time. “I’ve seen you around.”

  My head snapped up. “Where at?”

  “You ride on my bus every now and then.”

  “Oh.” A bus driver.

  “I always remember the pretty ladies.”

  I was reading but I was not retaining a single word. But every word coming out of the man’s mouth across from me was going straight to my head.

  He ignored the annoyed look I gave him and kept right on talking. “Uh, you married, sister?”

  I dog-eared a page and slid the book back into my purse, giving him a look that I hoped would let him know he was annoying me. “Yeah, I mean no. My husband died.” The steak, with swirls of steam still floating from it, almost slid off my plate every time I cut off a piece. I felt uneasy, and I suddenly lost my appetite.

  “Sorry to hear that. My wife died in the big quake we had in ’89.”

  A wave of sadness swept over me like a warm blanket. I bit my bottom lip and cleared my throat. “Did y’all have any kids?”

  He nodded, chewing so hard his whole face moved. As soon as he swallowed, he coughed to clear his throat. I noticed tears in his eyes. “My two-month-old son died with her. They were drivin’ back from Oakland when the Cypress Freeway collapsed.”

  I felt a wave of sympathy. Just being in the company of another person who’d also lost a child did that to me. My son would have been crawling by now, if he had lived. And as spooky as it was, Richard was what Larry and I had agreed to name our child. Oh, I was good and ready to conclude this c
onversation and hightail my ass on back home. But I didn’t. “I’m sorry to hear that. I read about the freeway and part of the Bay Bridge goin’ down.” Blinking hard, I gave him a thoughtful look. “And I was still crazy enough to move to this doomed state anyway.” I sighed and speared a huge piece of meat.

  “Well, you ain’t the only one crazy. I never thought I’d leave my hometown to move out here. But once you set foot in this pretty place, you don’t wanna leave. It grabs ahold of you and won’t let you go. Sometime I be walkin’ around some of these streets, so dazzled by the beauty, I feel like I done landed in the Land of Oz.”

  I nodded. “Tell me about it,” I murmured, knowing just what he meant. I didn’t know if it was the beauty of San Francisco that had me so whipped, or if it was all the misery I’d known in Mississippi made me want to stay here.

  Richard sipped from a tall class of Coke. Like a child staring at a monkey in a cage, I watched his Adam’s apple bounce up and down. He noticed me staring at him. “I hope you like what you see,” he teased.

  “I’ve seen better,” I shot back.

  “I bet you have. A lot better.”

  I gave him an exasperated look. “Were you here when that earthquake happened…Richard?” It hurt for me to say the name out loud, or to even think it. But it also kept my deceased child’s memory at the front of my brain. Richard.

  “I was in New Orleans for a family reunion. My wife, she wouldn’t go with me on account of she and my mama never got along.”

  “You from Louisiana?”

  “Uh-huh. Bigfoot country.” Richard sniffed and laughed. “And I’m a country boy to the bone.”

  “I’m from Mississippi,” I chirped. I don’t know why I suddenly felt the way I did that day, but the stranger across from me didn’t seem like a stranger anymore. He had a gentle way about him, and a way of looking at me that made me feel warm all over. I found myself wondering why men like him always found women like me too late.