Chicago Hustle

by Odie Hawkins

  Benny bounced down the steps behind him, proud to be given the chance to hang out, if only for a little while, with, next to himself, one of the rottenest motherfuckers on the Southside.

  Elijah slumped down in the seat next to Benny, feeling tired, despite the fact that he had been in bed for a whole day and all night.

  Monday morning, ten-thirty, hot already. He looked out at the people in the corridor between the Westside and the Southside, the black folks who were not off to spend their day doing the white boy’s work … the too old, the too young, the too lame, the too hip. Made matters very simple for the police … if you were on the street doing anything, anything at all, it was very likely that you might be stopped, searched, incarcerated, just like that. Simply because you were black, in the ghetto, and likely to be doing something illegal for those very reasons.

  Benny paused at an intersection to allow five young brothers to cross the street. Obviously lacking anything else to do, they hung traffic up by stopping in the middle of the street so that two of their number could stage an impromptu karate exhibition.

  Taking their time, they went through a series of violent movements. Benny sat patiently, whispering to Elijah out of the corner of his mouth, “Look at these assholes, blockin’ traffic with they bullshit!”

  Elijah said nothing, simply looked at all of the vitality and energy being wasted in the middle of the street.

  Finally, drifting on, the gang members contemptuously released the traffic flow, satisfied with their show of strength. Elijah saluted them with a raised fist. They looked at his move scornfully … an older dude trying to be hip, into their thang. He slowly lowered his fist, feeling slightly put down, but understanding.

  Yeahhh, it is a different scene, it’s your scene now, li’l brothers, I sure in fuck hope y’all do a lot better with it than we did.

  He eased out of the car in front of his apartment, anxious to shave, shower again, change clothes and take care business … it helped to have two hundred and fifty dollars to start the day off with too.

  He slammed the car door and leaned back in the window to lay a sarcastic parting shot on Benny. “Looka here, dog nuts … the next time you get ready to go stick somebody up, be sure ’n come get me, okay?”

  Benny hung his head a little. “Awwww, well, you know how it goes sometimes, man.”

  “Yeah, brother,” Elijah replied, a more sympathetic tone in his voice. “Yeahhh, I know how it is. What comes around, goes around.”

  Benny shrugged and pulled away slowly, knowing that it would be most unlikely that he and Elijah would be getting together to do anything, ever again.

  Elijah, off onto other motions, spent the two hundred and fifty bucks on his way up to the apartment he shared with Leelah, whenever the both of them were there together. Replaced the two hundred and fifty seconds before he opened the door with four hundred and something he would get, somehow.

  He glided into the apartment, expecting to go through a little lightweight number with Leelah Almost in a state of shock, he closed the door; where were the clock radios, the six two-hundred-dollar suits, the two portable color television sets? and Leelah? where was Leelah?

  He stumbled across the room to the dresser, to the small wooden box with the wristwatches in it. He fingered through them. All of the expensive ones were gone.

  He rushed over to the closet to check on his own personal wardrobe. Nothing missing. He sat on the side of the bed and thought it out carefully. That dirty, dirty rotten bitch! She had taken all of the shit he had fenced from the dope fiends and made off. Dirty rotten punk bitch!

  Tears swelled up in his eyes at the thought of her betrayal. It wasn’t so bad that she had split … but to have taken all of his shit too. That was too much.

  He sat, staring into space, for a few long minutes. His main lady, the one who was going to not only see him living on a hill, but the one who was going to help him get there. The bitch was gone … He stood up stiffly and walked over to his closet for a change of clothing.

  Draping a dark ensemble on his body as an indication of his murky mood, he stood in front of the cracked mirror mounted over the dresser. Could you ever trust any bitch? he asked the image buttoning his shirt with wooden fingers. Could you ever trust any bitch, fo’ real?

  He felt vaguely like crying but he hadn’t done that in such a long time that he wasn’t certain if his bad vibes contained tears or not.

  What should I do? he formed the words carefully in the mirror. What should I do? he almost spelled the words out to himself. Get drunk! his image said to him, and winked.

  “Goddamned right!” he spoke aloud to himself and decided on the spot, at eleven-fifteen in the morning, Monday, July twelfth, to get sloppy pissy drunk.

  “The bitch done cut out on me,” he mumbled once more, on the way out, two hundred and fifty easy pieces burning a hole in his pocket.

  Downstairs, on the street, he paused in front of his apartment building, looking up one side of the street and down the other, both fists on his narrow hips, wishing that he could spot Leelah somewhere.

  Walking south on Prairie, toward 47th Street, he somehow had the feeling that everybody on the street, even the old people hanging out on their porches knew about his woman’s desertion.

  Turning the corner on 47th, heading for the Tip Tap Lounge, he spotted Leelah’s best friend and sometimes lover (whenever her love came down on her that way), Zelma Mercer.

  “Hey Zelma!” he yelled across the street, untypical of him, and dodged some afternoon traffic to skip across to her.

  Zelma, a firmly built lesbian person with a permanent scowl and a profound disgust for trifling niggers, like the one skipping over to her, glared at Elijah’s approach.

  “Zelma, you seen Leelah?” he asked breathlessly, trying to conceal his anxiety.

  She showed her teeth to him in a caricature of a smile. “Yeahhh, I saw her, earlier.”

  Elijah resisted the urge to throw a shot at her jaw. Never could tell, not with a bitch that looked strong as Zelma, and it would be terrible to get your ass kicked on the street … even if it was by a bulldagger … like, well, after all, she was still a woman.

  He decided to spool out honey rather than spit vinegar. “Uhhh, how long ago? She asked me to cop a half a piece for her and I did, now I can’t find her. And if I don’t find her soon, I’m gon’ have to do it myself … hahh hahhhah.”

  Zelma, realizing that what Leelah had, Zelma could get some of … and she loved girl … blurted out, “I saw her a few hours ago, I heard her ask Mickey Mouse to give her a ride out to the airport.”

  Elijah’s jaw slopped down. “The airport! what airport?”

  “The main one,” Zelma answered heavily, and kept on stepping.

  Elijah stood, rooted to the spot, watching Zelma’s roly-poly shuffle, sweat streaming down the sides of his face. The airport … guess she must’ve decided to go on back to the Coast, to ’Frisco. “Come on, Elijah, let’s pack up ’n get on out to the Coast, you’d love San Francisco. Not only that, things are a helluva lot easier out there.”

  He slung the corners of his mouth down, feeling rejected, disgusted, sad, hurt, mad, and walked the twenty-five steps to the first bar.

  For the rest of the day, during the heat of the middle of the day, and into the early cool breezes off of the lake, he slowly made his way through the bars in the neighborhood. First on one side of the street and then the other, hoping, on one hand, that the Lord, or whoever was responsible, would return his bottom woman. And, on the other hand, that he could get drunk.

  By the time he reached the Tiger Lounge, having saved it for last, he had guzzled and swizzled his way through eight beers and fourteen gin ’n tonics and felt sober as a black Presbyterian preacher. He sat at the bar, trying to decide whether or not he should have two double shots of Jack and probably get sick, spilling it in on top of the beer and gin ’n tonics, or continue with the gin.

  “You want me to come back to you, brotherm
an?” Sly Bob the bartender asked, checking Elijah’s melancholy state out with a seasoned eye.

  “Huh?”

  “You want me to …?”

  “Ohh, uhhh, lemme have a double gin ’n tonic.”

  Sly Bob swabbed the place in front of Elijah with a couple quick flicks of his wrist. “A double gin ’n tonic, huh?” he repeated the request as a semi-question.

  “Yeahhh, a double gin ’n tonic.”

  Elijah looked over the assembled slicksters from the bar, nodding casually to the people he knew, ignoring those he didn’t know. He lushed the double down in four swallows, paid the tab, and stumbled off the stool and out of the door, fucked up at last.

  “Mannnn,” one of the regulars leaned across the bar to comment to Sly Bob. “What’s happenin’ with ’Lijah? I ain’t never seen him to down like that.”

  Sly Bob watched Elijah bump into the side of the door frame on his way out. “Ain’t no tellin’ what’s goin’ down. Lotsa shit be happenin’ secretly in a dude’s life sometimes. Some shit be so deep that you can’t do nothin’ but weep ’n drink.”

  The regular, a player and a tender heart himself, reached over and slapped Bob’s fat palm lightly.

  “Right on, brother! righteous on!”

  Elijah trudged up the dim steps to his apartment, stumbling from time to time, drunk, but still careful to keep his hand on his knife on the dark staircase.

  For the second time he felt shock opening his door. Leelah lowered the confession magazine and held the joint she was smoking out to him.

  “From the looks of you, I don’t guess this would do anything to you,” she said, and scooched her back up a little higher on the pillow.

  Elijah reached behind him and missed the door with his first move, kicked it closed instead.

  He did a little superstraight stutter step over to the high iron railing at the bottom of the bed.

  He stood looking down at Leelah on the bed, her royal blue robe slit open to the thigh, not sure of whether he wanted to strangle her or jump on top of her and start humping like a love-crazed Congolese gorilla.

  “Leelah, where’ve you been and where is all my stuff?” he asked evenly, trying not to slur.

  She laid the magazine on her stomach, took a long hit on the smoke and answered coldly, “You got mo’ nerve than a brass-assed monkey, askin’ me where I’ve been! That’s what I oughta be askin’ you!”

  Elijah, seeing the dangers in trying to make something of the fact that they hadn’t been in the same space for a couple days almost, decided to stay with more concrete questions. “Damn where anybody’s been! What happened to all the stuff we had in here?”

  “What the fuck do you think happened?”

  Elijah started around the side of the bed, no longer shocked or puzzled, just angry now.

  “Don’t be playin’ games with me, woman!” he snarled.

  She smiled indulgently at his blustering behavior and sucked on the joint again before answering.

  “Awwww, you know I sold that shit, ’Lijah. You don’t have to stand there wolfin’ at me. I ain’t scared o’ you, and you know it.”

  He took a couple deep breaths, cooling himself out, satisfied that they had it all back together again.

  She passed the half-smoked tuskie to his outstretched fingers.

  “Uhh, well, you know … I thought … I thought, with all the shit goin’ on these days that maybe somebody had kidnapped you and ripped us off too.”

  Leelah’s laughter shook the bed and forced tears out of her eyes. “Elijah! Elijah Brookes, the first! hahhh hahhh! hahhh! stop! please stop! hahhh hahhh hahhhaaahh! you ’bout fulla shit as a Christmas turkey!”

  Elijah permitted himself a slight smile, realizing that she was right.

  “How much we get? Browney take everything?”

  “Yep, everything, for six bills.”

  He passed the roach to her with an incredulous look on his face. “Six bills!? Six suits was worth six bills.”

  “Well, actually I got seven,” she purred at him, pushing the magazine off her stomach as she arched her back yawning, “but I bought a few things, and I copped a li’l taste for us. You want some?”

  “Yeahh, yeah, I could dig some. Who’d you cop from?”

  “Chink,” she answered as she reached down under the side of the bed for her purse.

  Elijah settled himself down on the side of the bed, the beers, gin ’n tonics, the heavy smoke and now, looking forward to the cocaine, he felt relaxed. Not to mention the release of tension he felt because his woman was back.

  “Chink. Yeahhh, Chink usually has pretty nice shit.”

  Leelah took a couple medicine vials out of her purse and four hundred and fifty dollars in fifty-dollar bills. She counted the money out into Elijah’s outstretched hand.

  “Goddamn, Leelah baby! I thought you said we cleared six bills!”

  She glared at him fiercely.

  “Don’t I get none of it? I mean, after all, I had to pay a couple dudes to take the shit outta here.”

  He frowned and jammed the money down his pocket. What could he say? knowing Leelah, more than likely she had probably gotten seven fifty. Sliced a hundred and half off the top for herself. Paid a hundred for the girl and nibbled fifty off to party with, or whatever. Slick bitch.

  He watched her sprinkle a small mound of the white alkaloid powder on her compact mirror, divide it into four neat lines with the edge of a ten-dollar bill.

  “I really thought you had cut out on me, baby. I really did.”

  She snorted up one line and down another before handing him the mirror, being careful to breath off to one side, so as not to blow any of the stuff away.

  “What made you think a thing like that?”

  Elijah snuffed up one line and down the other, his actions precise and well-ordered.

  “Well, when I was worried about you today, lookin’ everywhere … Zelma told me you had gone to the airport.”

  Leelah took the mirror and tapped a little more coke out onto it, dividing it once again into four straight lines.

  Elijah, his nose turning to hot ice, stood unsteadily to take off his shirt.

  “Nawwww, baby,” she began slowly. “Momma was just out there takin’ care business as usual. I thought it might be hip to stash the grab bag out there for a change, since you haven’t done the airport for months.”

  He took the mirror and did two lines, handed it back to her.

  “Yeahhh, well, I really got scared for a bit. I thought you had decided to make it on back to the Coast, to ’Frisco.”

  She snorted the last two lines up, licked the powdery residue from the mirror and dropped the compact and the bill into her purse.

  Elijah settled himself beside her on the bed again, folded her up into his arms and felt like crying.

  Leelah, stroking his neck and back, whispered into his ear, “How could I ever leave a motherfucker as rotten as you?”

  He found himself, smiling over her shoulder despite the gentle insult, pushed her back onto the bed and stood up to take off the rest of his garments. What the hell! he rationalized, no one was paying him to be himself, they all wanted him to be someone else. Fuck ’em!

  He slid back into Leelah’s embrace under the cover.

  “You know, that was really a dirty rotten thing for you to do?”

  “What?” he asked, knowing already.

  “You know, to leave me by myself in the Tiger the other night.”

  “Yeahhh, that sho’ was rotten,” he conceded after a moment’s reflection, determined not to get caught in that bag again, and wrapped his naked thighs around hers.

  CHAPTER 4

  Elijah sat in the barber’s chair, half asleep in the mid-day heat, digging on the scene around him.

  Stacey, the seventy-year-old shoeshine “boy,” popping his shine rag across a young brother’s new platforms, the MOQ station beaming out jazz for sisters and brothers, a few early gambling men heading into the back room to get
their third race bets down, Pauline the manicurist sitting in the window of the shop doing her own nails and flirting with the occasional, potential customer, Marvin, O.D. and Home cutting hair.

  Elijah nodded cooperatively as Home chattered into his ear and snipped his Afro. “I don’t care what y’all say … George Wallace is awright with me, at least you know where he is. What y’all thank about that, home?”

  Elijah nodded, using his head to stay in tempo with Home’s monologue. He never really needed any consensus, just an audience … and with a barber’s apron around a customer’s neck, that’s what he had.

  “Now you take somebody like that li’l ol’ rich boy from Massachusetts … what’shisname? the one with all the teeth ’n hair? Kangstiddy! yeahhh! Kangstiddy! that’s the boy’s name! lotsa folks thank he’s for us, but it’s really hard t’ say, he ain’t nothin’ but a good politician, that’s all he is, ain’t that right, home?”

  Elijah nodded on cue, his mind flirting with the idea of visiting Mabel. Or Dee Dee. Or maybe going to Detroit to play some funny cards at Mayburry’s house.

  “I bet you even dug Bilbo, didn’t you, Home?” a middle-aged brother asked.

  Home snipped a few stray ends from Elijah’s head before answering. “Nawwww, naw, I didn’t dig ’im. Not the way you mean, home.”

  Elijah opened his eyes. Who in the hell was Bilbo? who had he been? He searched around in his head to place the name. Ohhh yeahhh, the racist senator from Miss’ssippi, 1930s section.

  “Well, if you didn’t dig ’im,” the brother pressed, “you was down there then, why didn’t you rebel against ’im?”

  Home screwed his lips down and snipped silently for a few naps, getting his retort together.

  “Well, brotherman, since you really wanna know … one of the reasons why we didn’t re-bel, one o’ the reasons is that we was too busy reasonin’ it all out, outsmartin’ ’em, gittin’ the thang together so that young bloods could git out in the streets ’n shoot that dope, kick sisters in the ass and have ol’ motherfuckers like you ask dumb questions.”

  The barbershop suddenly seemed to be stricken with silence, despite the Coltrane’s sounds sweeping out over the raidio and the noise of the streets flickering into the shop. Home?! was this Home being pissed off?! Wowwwww! but, once again, he re-discovered his good nature and whipped everything back into perspective. “Yeahhhh, that’s what he is, Kangstiddy, a good goddamn politician, but then again, he just might really be sincere. Ain’t no tellin’ about a lotta these new white boys.”