“Are you expecting me to play matchmaker? Oh, hell no, and—hold on. I’m pulling into a coffee stand.”
“Not that nasty one with the anorexic women serving coffee while wearing thongs with flat booty cheeks and bras with size-zero breasts?”
“Sounds as if you like their coffee to know all that. Now look who’s not being nice. And I’m not at that place, so hold on.”
“Are you at Espresso Africa?”
“Yeah, I am, and there is a line, so hey, let’s finish this convo when I get to the office.”
“Okay, but bring me a Café Bombón in a grande clear glass. I’ll pay for the glass, and tell them I’ll stir it—and don’t spill it in your fancy sports car.”
“Damn, what else can I do for you?”
“Darcelle and Mintfurd Big Boy.”
“I’m not going to stop you from getting in the middle of some boy-girl shit, but asking me to be a part of that—oh, hell no.”
“Hurry up with my Café Bombón, so we can talk about this.”
“You got selective hearing. I pay your medical. Go to the doctor about that problem.”
“Velvet? Velvet—”
She hung up on me.
I step into the office and give Velvet her extraordinarily expensive coffee. Hell, it doesn’t even have a shot of 80 proof or anything. I let her know I’ll be right back.
In the back yard of the bungalow, my dog is in lousy shape. She doesn’t have water or food, and it looks like it’s been days. I’m pissed! My sweet Doberman—I take her to the vet right away, and drop her off. I want her kenneled and watched for a day or two. I call Evita again. No answer.
Even though I have some expensive, classic stereo equipment and furniture in the house, it is her place to live and come and go as she pleases. I don’t go in the house unless she invites me or I ask. I don’t run her life, but I’m pissed. She is normal in her behavior almost every day, but then, she’ll suddenly step off a cliff. She has definitely stepped off.
CHAPTER 18
Vulnerabilities
“You think you want to live. There may not be an option.” The Voice chuckled. “A nasty little piece you are. A little dick and a pussy…what kind of circus freak are you? You have nice-sized chi-chis.”
Evita felt a hand roam her breasts, and then a forceful hand grabbed the back of her neck. In her defiance, she didn’t flinch. The hand forced her onto her stomach. The hand slapped her behind hard, twice, then twice more with more stinging vigor.
“Ah yes, that feels good to really lay in to a piece of chocolate ass. That excites me; I need to go fuck a little now, but not you, my little, sweet, nasty girl. It’s too bad I cannot do you, but then again, I would never want your little dick to touch mine. Oh but, your ass is perrr-fect.” He spanked her again with what felt like a belt.
She groaned but refused to scream. A few seconds later, the sound of a belt buckle being refastened relieved her ears.
“Don’t try to escape or you’ll feel a lot more of that.”
Evita recognized the voice from the night she was drugged and kidnapped. This was the first time someone had spoken to her, days after she’d been tied to a bed.
She still wasn’t sure about his accent. She wasn’t sure that first night, either. She was guessing—guessing someone cared enough to have not killed her yet.
“Has she been drinking fluids and eating?”
No one verbally responded to the voice.
“Good. Get her in the shower. She’s starting to smell, and her pussy or dick—whatever that is—it looks unwashed after sex.”
Because Evita had both male and female genitals, she had to wash often. She was the type of woman who seemed to stay wet, with or without any sexual arousal. Adding to the current problem, she had been sexually played with; her body had responded, although her mind did not appreciate the molestation.
Evita had been there before. Her father had a good old time playing with his little girl from early on in her life until the day she ran out of the rear of the house, naked and bleeding.
At sixteen, Daddy had been touching her for at least ten years. Some days he touched her as if she were a boy. Sometimes he fondled her as the girl she really was, but then came the day he entered inside her as a man, an ugly man. Her father thought she’d lie there after he finished his business with her. The moment he got up, he pulled up his pants and went to untie her mother. Father forced Mother to watch. When he stooped down to untie her mother’s ankles, Evita jumped up and ran.
She ran out of her house buck naked and through the back door of her teenage friend, Psalms Black. Evita’s father ran behind her, more worried he would be found out than wanting her to come back.
Once inside the basement of Psalms’ house, all hell broke loose. Twenty seconds later, Boom! Boom! A gun ended the possibility of Evita’s father molesting her ever again. Justice had been served; the judge and jury sentenced a man to die for his sins.
Psalms was not home at the time, but his grandfather and his twelve-gauge shotgun were. Grandfather dressed Evita and told her what to say when the police came. Psalms’ grandfather was not fazed by Evita’s nakedness, and of whatever he had seen in her genitals, he never said a word.
This was in the days before women were always examined by a doctor in a hospital. Psalms’ grandfather’s midnight lover at the time was a female doctor. He called her to his home, and everything was taken care of with the police and Evita’s privacy long before Psalms came home from a school track meet.
Psalms wrestled with the fact that his grandfather had to kill a man because he had been protecting a friend who knew to run to Psalms for help. His grandfather helped him to understand that, as his grandfather, he would sleep just fine for doing what had to be done. He encouraged Psalms to be there for Evita all her life if he could; she would need him. Grandfather knew Evita was going to need someone she could rely on with what he knew about her sexual situation physically and emotionally. Grandfather decided he was not the one to tell Psalms that Evita was a hermaphrodite.
• • •
Evita’s body shivered, not from being cold, but the cold feeling of knowing people had died when she had been in trouble.
“Keep her feet tied and neither one of you touch her. Make sure her hood cannot come off.”
Evita smirked under the hood knowing now she could cause some form of a rift between her captors. She could blurt out now that she had already been touched, but she had to think. She had to figure out the best move, and when to make it.
There were two people who had been watching her and the voice belonged to their boss. A bit of inner relief made Evita take a deep breath. She would get a shower. Evita felt nasty having used the toilet several times, and her genitals had been played with, twice.
“Is something funny?” The Voice wanted to know why it appeared Evita was laughing under her hood. She coughed several times trying to change the Voice’s train of thought.
Evita noticed the other two never spoke: a man and a woman. She heard the man’s grunts and groans while he jacked off when he touched her. The woman’s pussy scent gave her away. Her scent sprayed the air with female aroma whenever she played in her own pussy while touching Evita. She smelled of a woman with a bad diet who ate fast-foods and not much else.
The two had some apprehension about what they were doing. They had fear of being caught. The Voice had no fear. He was in control and with the tone of his speech, he verbalized that control. The other two were disposable. Evita assumed those two would flee rather than fight if put in a conflict.
The smell of fast-foods permeated the air. Evita heard a few steps and then the door closed. The Voice left, and she was alone with her thoughts and the knowledge that the two left behind to watch her were vulnerable.
Tied and hooded, Evita felt less vulnerable herself after hearing the Voice, yet a twinge of fear still weighed on her heavier than hope. She’d had a nervous tic ever since childhood, either to bite her nails to shar
p points or grind them against each other to sharpen them. Evita was nervous.
CHAPTER 19
Mojo Melodies
Psalms shifted gears, speeding up and passing other vehicles in the rain. Seattle’s bipolar weather, with sunshine and rain at the same time, confused whatever season it’s supposed to be. He was driving his classic 1962 Pontiac station wagon, a much different ride than his Mercedes Gullwing Coupe. Psalms had inherited his grandfather’s classic. From the days when people ordered options such as a stick shift for any car they wanted, it also had a big, powerful engine. Psalms had it restored to look as if it had just come off of the showroom floor, and added some modern updates: nice wheels and tires on the slightly lowered body, tinted windows, cruise-control, air conditioning, and a high-end stereo.
Driving the classic 1962 Pontiac station wagon lightened stress, taking his mind back to childhood days of riding along with the man who’d raised him, his grandfather. He could drive the station wagon and feel as if he was riding along in the countryside of the Puget Sound inland and islands.
His grandfather, Leo, was a landscape engineer and surveyor. Highly sought after for his expertise during a time when a black man could be, and usually was, harassed for being in the outlying area where blacks didn’t live and so few Negroes ever ventured, he was contracted by rich whites to design and tend to outdoor living spaces and golf courses in the 1950s and 1960s. His station wagon carried tools, a portable drafting-drawing table and surveying equipment, and always a dog.
As his grandfather had access to the best hunting and fishing in the state of Washington, Psalms learned to shoot firearms as a young child. As a young child, he was the only black entrant in marksman competitions and archery tournaments, and always the winner. The place Psalms loved the most was a sprawling piece of property on Orcas Island. There was a small replica of a castle there, with rolling hills and small ponds.
Psalms and his grandfather would stay in a small house adjacent to the castle. Almost every weekend, his grandfather tended to the many gardens and other parts of the land.
There was one thing Psalms never understood until much later in life—his grandfather seemed to have a love-and-hate relationship with the castle. After school on Fridays, Psalms and his grandfather would joyously drive an hour north of Seattle and ride across on a ferry to Orcas Island. Once there, they’d settle into the small house adjacent to the castle. They’d build a fire in the cobblestone fireplace and cook dinner over the warming blaze. In the morning, they’d go shooting, hunting, or fishing, and in the afternoon, Grandfather went to work on the property. On Sunday morning, Grandfather and Psalms would have a two-man church service, playing old-time gospel music, listening to Sam Cooke and The Soul Stirrers and Psalms’ favorite, “Touch The Hem of His Garment.” Even now, along with his old school soul music playlists, he listened to a playlist of Sam Cooke’s gospel music.
The two would have a prayer service and Bible readings. After the two-man church, Grandfather worked until an hour before sunset, when they would catch the ferry back to the mainland and head home.
The people who lived in the house kept their distance, but there was the teenage girl who sometimes stared in the window. She tried to hide herself, but Psalms often looked out of the corner of his eye and she was there. Grandfather said she wanted to see what a black child looked like.
The classic station wagon had a 45-record player, the kind they installed in cars in 1962. Psalms did not want to remove it. He’d had Mintfurd use his computer-tech skills to redesign it in to a modern car sound system. Psalms switched the music to Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On CD.
Psalms drove the station wagon now as if he was going to run every other vehicle off the road. The normally calming ride of the classic with good memories had little effect today. His dog was sick from eating things out of its normal diet in order to survive. The old man who slept on the hill had given the dog a sandwich to help her. A good deed, but the Miracle Whip on the bread was not good for the animal’s stomach.
Psalms was in warrior mode. He could be mean. As a former Navy SEAL, he had to do things on foreign grounds that the government would never declassify. But he never did them out of anger. As a private security company, Psalms and Suzie Q had done things to a few people while representing clients. Again, never out of anger, but necessity.
Psalms had a steely control of his emotions when working. Today, the fact that Evita had left his dog unfed, and with no water for three or four days, had him burning rubber on wet roads. He understood he had to harness these emotions when they showed their ugly heads. He was right to be angry as he was now. Evita had neglected a responsibility she had chosen. Her actions had hurt his feelings and his dog.
Born in an angry situation…
Grandfather was a gentle, quiet man who had chosen to tell Psalms only few things about his birth father, and why he had never been in his life. As a young child, Psalms understood the subject was taboo. Grandfather had decided he wanted Psalms to only know so much.
He’d heard more than a few times that Psalms’ dad was an angry man, who used his anger to hurt, seek revenge, and to cause destruction.
He knew his young, teenaged father had impregnated a girl, and that Grandfather and Grandmother had ended up with custody as his father was too young. Grandmother died while Psalms was still in diapers, so he had no memory of her, but Grandfather would tell Psalms he looked like her and he still had a part of her. Pictures showed that she had the same wine stain birthmark under her eye as Psalms. When Grandmother died, Psalms’ young father, DaDa Q Black, had run away angry because he could not be with the girl, and his mother had died. DaDa Q became a rebel with a cause, using criminality as a tool that later got him killed.
Years later, Gabrielle used her connections in the government to find out the whole truth after Psalms’ grandfather took the complete story to his grave. The information led Psalms to his birth mother and family and they paid Psalms to keep the truth hidden. They paid millions.
The music changed somewhat oddly in nature. An old Muddy Waters song, played by Jimi Hendrix, began to haunt the speakers.
“I got a black cat bone
I got a mojo too.”
Psalms wanted to hear the song, but another car broke his concentration. The car next to him slightly veered into his lane. The driver’s head was down—most likely texting. The asshole driver also had a Starbucks coffee cup in hand on the top of the steering wheel—with a cigarette hanging out his mouth.
Psalms honked his horn. He had a setting that sounded like a police siren. The asshole driver was in the curb exit lane and drove his car onto the gravel at seventy miles per hour. Psalms was sure a tow-truck was the next call or text for the asshole driver. He did feel bad that maybe the man had spilled his hot coffee.
Psalms focused back on the song.
“On the seventh hour
On the seventh day
On the seventh month…”
Psalms looked to his left. He gazed at the location where the old Kingdome, the multipurpose domed stadium, used to be. All Seattle pro sports teams had played there at one time, but now the Kingdome was gone. They had blown it up in a Northwest Mardi Gras-type celebration. That was the day his grandfather died: March 26, 2003. A rainbow shone over the Puget Sound today where the Kingdome used to house sports battles.
The separate stadiums sat near the old site now. The Mariners baseball stadium and the Seahawks football stadium now sat in a place that stayed in Psalms’ heart.
Some landmarks and some events in history mark a person’s memorable moments, whether they’re happy or sad, and they visualize or relive those moments.
It wasn’t so much that it was the day of his grandfather’s death that made him recall the date of the Kingdome explosion. It was other deaths that marked Psalms’ soul. Grandfather had taken the life of a bad man, Evita’s molesting daddy, on March 26, 1983.
When Psalms learned the complete story of his criminal
father, whose real name was Cinque Black, he learned the man was killed along with several other people in a bank robbery on March 26, 1973.
When Psalms killed the man that had mutilated Evita’s body, it was on March 26, 1993.
“I got a Black cat bone
I got a mojo too.”
Psalms hit “replay” as he made it back and parked his station wagon. He went across the street to the beach and worked out an extra twenty minutes. He kicked sand in the sea and punched the air until it seemed the air asked for a break, and started pouring rain. He sweated more than the rain that touched him. His workout clothes appeared to have just come out of the washing machine, thoroughly wet. When he walked in to the office, Velvet raised her voice, “Hell no, get your stinky, wet ass out of here.”
“Why is it a woman wants a man to work up a sweat all over her if he’s putting in work, but if a man comes around already sweaty you have a problem?”
“You of all people don’t like people to ask questions when you know they already have the answer. So, don’t be asking a stupid question. But if you don’t know, Mr. Know-It-All-Any-Other-Time, a woman wants sexual sweat from alluring pheromones, but not that pure, salty smell you have in here reeking up my office.
“Now get out of here and take a shower so we can talk.”
Psalms stared hard at Velvet, and she called his bluff.
“I’m not your problem. Your other woman is out of pocket, and hurt your dog. I hate that she left your dog unattended, but I don’t care that you’re mad at her, so don’t be looking at me all crazy. Did you ever think it might be time to downgrade her to a business partner?”
Velvet was the only woman ever that spoke to Psalms as she did, and he loved that she did—but she could get away with it.
“Psalms, I know you care about her. You have explained from A to Z the history and all that has happened between you two. But as a woman in a man’s world, I have seen the danger. I have been assaulted in many different ways, and I have acted out to get my fair share of attention for deflection or emotional support in all the wrong ways. I have grown through it all. She has not!”
One Safe Place Page 14
