Chicago Hustle

by Odie Hawkins

  Elijah felt a nervous spasm work through his right shoulder, the desire to smash his fist into her jaw flowing up and away. Who did this bitch think she was? Cleopatra or somebody?

  Toni studied his reactions carefully.

  “Look!” he finally burst out. “You say that to say what!? awright! awright! take me off into you li’l ol’ thang if you want to. I was just askin’ a real question, tryin’ to get a real answer.”

  The continued calm in her voice made him seeth with anger. “Brothers be playin’ games sometimes, Elijah. Some of ’em get off so far into games that they forget how to stop playin’. You know what I mean?”

  The sincerity in his voice even surprised him, it had sunk to the same quiet level as Toni’s. “Toni, I dig you. I know, comin’ from a lot of people that wouldn’t be meanin’ too much … but, from me, it means a whole lot. Yeah, you right … a lotta brothers do be playin’ games, but this one ain’t … not this time anyway.”

  She nodded slowly, as though agreeing with him, and skirted back to answer an earlier question. “You were askin’ me if what I did was illegal? like I said, no … I’m what you might call a hip square in business for herself.”

  Elijah, feeling like a player in some kind of abstract chess game, frowned. “A what?”

  “A hip square, a businesswoman, in other words.”

  “Run it down to me.”

  “Nothing to run down. I have some connections that I use to help other people get ahead with, and myself in the bargain.”

  Elijah’s frown lines deepened.

  “I do p.r. work for several rock groups, a couple well-known stand-up comedians and, occasionally, as a favor, a guy named Billy Eckstein,” she added with a sly smile.

  Elijah slumped back on the sofa, his mouth forming a large, round O.

  “That all you got to say?”

  “What else can I say, it’s obvious that you on your job.”

  “Thought you might like to know how much I gross every month?”

  Elijah stood up slowly, the coke making him feel taller, and started for the door. What sense did it make to be going through all these kinds of changes? He felt insulted because his honesty was being pissed on.

  “Elijah?” She stood up and held her arms out to him.

  He turned and hesitated. Was she playing a game? “Elijah, I’m sorry,” she said, drifting to him. “I’m sorry, baby … you just get so used to protecting yourself sometimes that it’s hard to stop. It’s like I was sayin’ about brothers playin’ games? sisters get so caught up at protectin’ ourselves from the games sometimes, that we don’t know when to stop.”

  They stood, swaying in each other’s arms, locked up.

  “No, baby … this is no game, I’m fo’ real,” Elijah mumbled into her ear and squeezed a little more gently.

  Yeahhh, Momma … I’m gon’ get my shit together for you … yessuhhhh …

  CHAPTER 12

  Elijah peeked around the shoulder of the woman in front of him, number four in line.

  Damn! what’s taking so long?

  He gazed around the airport lobby, trying to look nonchalant, just a dude with a stolen airlines credit card, doin’ a li’l number.

  “Heyyy, ’Lijah baby, gimme fifty for this?” Li’l Bruh, the dope fiend’s dope fiend, had asked, knowing that he would never put the card to any use, and had accepted twenty grudgingly, one foot shuffling off to the pusher before the money was in his hand good. Another five was enough to buy the wallet and the identification papers that it contained. What did Li’l Bruh care? He was satisfied with the eighty-five he had pulled out of it … a double score for a score.

  It had only taken Elijah a few seconds of close questioning to find out that the card had only been ripped off hours before; Li’l Bruh was never more than two hours before, or two hours after any theft, which made him an ideal to deal with.

  Elijah’s first impulse was to put the card on the open market himself, but, feeling romantic, he decided to work it a bit before passing it on.

  He pushed his shades up on his nose and fingered the tips of his shirt collar. Wonder what kind of reaction I’ll get when I plunk two tickets to Jamaica down in front of her?

  “Be rally great to get out of the country for a while, won’t it, fella?”

  “Huh?” Elijah responded, torn out of his dream-thought.

  “I said …” the voice started to repeat.

  “Oh yeah, really!” Elijah cut him off, too nervous for small talk, and moved two steps closer, number three now.

  He half turned for a peripheral look at the dude who’d spoken to him.

  Large, square, broken veins in his nose, what was it they called dudes like him? Ruddy? yeah, he was ruddy, half-ass rich. “Be rally great to get out of the country for a while, won’t it?”

  You motherfucker you! If it hadn’t been for motherless bastards like you I never would’ve been in this fucked-up place in the first place.

  The man behind checked out the sideward glance being laid on him and acknowledged it with a benevolent smile.

  Elijah frowned and snapped his eyes forward. Number two now. The svelte, understated pantsuit in the Dache hat leaned both elbows up on the counter and slid from one patronizing attitude to another with the reservations person, a Scandinavian type with cold blue eyes and a warm, fixed smile.

  Elijah, taking advantage of the hostility being generated in front of him, smiled superpleasantly around the Dache hat’s shoulder.

  The Scandinavian smiled back, her eyes glittering like ice cubes, digging on his appreciation of the shit she had to deal with.

  Finally it was his turn. He stepped forward and removed his shades, the model nigger dealing with a blonde white-white woman, 1974 variety, on both sides.

  “Hi, how are you today?” The brighter-than-white smile glistening out of her mahogany tan, into his naturally brown one.

  “Fine, fine,” nodding his head after the Dache hat. “Givin’ ya a rough time, huh?”

  Blue eyes rolled momentarily skyward in theatrical exasperation. “Aw, well, you know how it is, some people want you to give them service and … well …”

  Fake joviality. “Hahhahhah, I can dig it. Uhh, the name is Louis Michaels, I have reservations for two on your ten-fifteen flight to Kingston, in Jamaica.”

  The blue eyes melted for a second, memories of what it felt like to be a blonde-blonde, in Kingston, in sixty-two.

  “The party flight, huh?”

  “The what?”

  “The party flight. That’s what everybody calls it, you know? what with the rum ’n all.”

  “Oh, uh, right on! hahhahhah.”

  He tried to twist his eyes upside down as she began to write. “Michaels? that’s Mi-ch-ae-ls?”

  “Right! first name Louis, Lo-u-is.”

  They both tripped quickly through the prosaic business of her writing out the two ticket forms, each of them playing his role as though they had been rehearsing for days.

  Elijah looked down at the card between his thumb and forefinger and, for a split second, panicked, thinking … nawww, this’ll never work, somebody’s goin’ to pop out of the woodwork and do me in. But his nerves steadied themselves on an old hustler’s proverb, you can’t cheat an honest man. And Lawd knows there’s no more a corrupt system in the world than the one I’m rippin’ at right now.

  The reservations clerk treated his card unremarkably and explained, with the patience born of many such explanations, exactly what time he should be at gate ten to board the ten-fifteen.

  Elijah nodded calmly to it all. Wowwww! I’m gettin’ away with it! I’m gettin’ away with it!

  He clapped a lascivious nod and wink on the Scandinavian and strutted away, his mental energies concentrated now on selling the credit card itself, as quickly as possible.

  His mind buzzing, he stomped through the automatic opening doors. Lemme see … reschedule the flight for Saturday, that’ll give me time to see if Toni’s head is at gettin’ it
righteously on or not.

  “Elijah, I’ll go and do what my man wants to do. If he says, let’s go sit on the curb ’n spit watermelon seeds in the gutter, that’s what we’ll be doin’. I’m with my man.”

  He hummed a few stray bars of “Matilda” on his way to the airport parking lot.

  “Remove your parking ticket and lock your car, please, thank you.” The continuous announcement cut into his humming, made him smile. Wonder how they say that in Jamaican?

  Having carefully placed the information on the wire in the early afternoon that he had a “clean” airline credit card, he had made contact with a buyer in the late afternoon, and now, at ten p.m., sat in the Afro Lounge, sipping and waiting for his “client.”

  The well-shaved brother with no dip to his knees, no sly movement of his hands or shoulders, and nothing spectacular on his back, caused several of the regulars to double-check him. Elijah gave the bartender an eye sign that the dude was cool, that she could tell him which one was Elijah. She directed him to Elijah’s table with a casual nod of her chin.

  “Uhh, pardon me, may I join you?” the man asked.

  Elijah felt like laughing in his face, the dude had obviously gotten into how-to-do-illegal-things from watching the late late show. Uhhh, pardon me, may I join you? Wowww, where is the brother comin’ from?

  Seeing that it would shoot matters along, Elijah decided to get down for the square’s sake.

  “Yeahhh, go ’head, sit down,” he mumbled, looking off.

  The man sat across from Elijah, trying to give a casual impression of himself, but failed miserably, he was obviously up tight.

  “Uh, you are Mr. Brookes, are you not?”

  “Uhhh, I think so,” Elijah put him on, crinkling his forehead, “but sometimes I doubt it. You must be Monroe.”

  Paul Monroe, a martini sipper, Beefeater only, university grad, doubles player and a pretender to upper crustic origins, pushed his horn rims up on his nose and looked around quickly. Well, it wouldn’t be too likely hat anyone I know would be in a place like this.

  “Ahhemm, yes, my name is Monroe. You have the … uh … ticket’ for sale?”

  “You got a grand, Monroe?”

  Monroe felt around inside his collar, so good a caricature of Peter Lone in desperate straits that Elijah almost laughed aloud. “Yes, yes, I have it.”

  Elijah stood up. “I’m goin’ the shithouse, follow me in a couple minutes.”

  For the regulars, who knew that something was going down, but not exactly what, Elijah’s play was hip drama.

  He fired up a joint in the men’s room and leaned in Chink’s spot beside the barred window.

  Two tickets to Jamaica and a grand, plus a dynamite lady. How much better could it be?

  He stared up at the sky through the bars for a few seconds. Gotta get Browney off my back … maybe I’ll stay in Jamaica.

  Monroe walked in stiffly, squinching up his nose at the rank smells.

  “Awright, what can I do for you, bruh?” Elijah teased him, coming close to blowin’ a stream of smoke in his face.

  Monroe’s paranoia almost caused him to step back, away from Elijah, the Afro Lounge, the hostile black faces in the bar, the neighborhood he was in, the ghetto, everything. “The card you have for sale?” he asked quickly, greed overcoming his paranoia.

  “Here it is.” Elijah held it out to him.

  Monroe whipped a long, white envelope out of his breast pocket. “Here’s the money.”

  “Lemme see it, shit! that ain’t nothin’ but a fuckin’ envelope!”

  Monroe grimaced, fumbled the flap open and nervously counted through nine hundred-dollar bills and two fifties.

  Elijah sucked in a deep hit and jetted the smoke into Monroe’s face as he accepted the money. “Bon voyage,” he said, in a low, sinister voice.

  Monroe’s eyes buckled once, twice, and he was gone, practically racing back to a car that had been gleaned of its tape setup, hubcaps and battery.

  Elijah, a dead, high, calm in him, paused to squeeze a blackhead from his left cheek, richer by a grand of untaxable money.

  Monroe. What makes a dude like Monroe tick? scared as any white man in the deep ghetto after dark. And … what the hell can he actually do with that card? What’s it matter? I got the money ’n he got the card.

  Yeahhh, I got the money ’n he’s got the card. I bet that booshie ass nigger can get that card doctored up a li’l and use it for a whole bunch of things.

  He made his re-appearance, to the sound of silent, visual applause, keeping a cool front, but seriously wondering now, if he had just been ripped off.

  Oh well, you win some and lose a few.

  He leaned his chin into his palm, a cigarette in the other hand, fascinated by the sight of the city gently revolving before his eyes.

  Having lunch with Toni. Having lunch with Toni in the Round Wheel, the revolving restaurant that tried to give a clear view of every part of town except the black part. Downtown, slightly north. Having lunch? Boy, you really gettin’ up in the world … used to be a time when every meal was called just that, a meal, except breakfast, if there was any.

  He stared at her as though she were a stranger as she coolly wove through the maze of white-covered tables, a beautifully dark vision in saffron and creme de menthe.

  She really is a beautiful black woman and she’s mine … all mine.

  “What’re you sittin’ here daydreamin’ about?” she asked, gracefully reoccupying her place across from him.

  “I wasn’t daydreamin’, I was beginnin’ to wonder if you were constipated or somethin’.”

  She playfully spanked his hand. “Elijah! you’re terrible! Worse than a bad li’l boy, at times, I was powdering my nose, that’s what girls do when they go to the powder room.”

  “They also take a shit too, every now ’n then.”

  Elijah spoke loud enough for an elderly white couple across from them to hear, the kind who say, “My word!” and “Oh dear!” when they get pissed off. They slanted identical frowns across at them, pissed off by Elijah’s language.

  Toni and Elijah, a li’l bit of the naughty boy in each of them leaned their heads close together and giggled.

  “May I take your order now, sir?”

  “Uhh, yes, we’d like two more margueritas.”

  The waiter tipped Elijah a slight European bow, from habit, and strode away frowning. Six margueritas already! Don’t they know about the famous Round Wheel T-bone? The baked Idaho potato with tub butter and sour cream? with chives yet?

  The giggles gave way to smiles, the smiles were replaced by solemn, soulful expressions. They sat, watching the world turn, not saying anything for a minute, oblivious to the unreal world around them, aware that they were into another realm of feeling.

  The waiter placed the drinks in front of them. “Would you care to …?”

  “Later,” Elijah said out of the corner of his mouth, his eyes dancing with Toni’s lips, her cheekbones, her nose, her eyes, the narrow trail between her full breasts.

  “Yes, of course, sir … whenever you are ready.”

  “They must think we’re lushes,” Toni whispered, watching the waiter march away.

  “I don’t care what they think. Listen, I have an idea.”

  “What is it?” she asked, sipping.

  “I’ve been up half the night and I’m pretty tired … yawnnnn … why don’t we go to my place?”

  “You ain’t sleepy, nigger,” she practically purred across the table. “You just want to play with my body.”

  “Call me Sweet Nigger when you talk like that,” he shot back at her, an In joke established between them.

  I just wanna play with your body, huh? he spoke to her with his eyes, high from the tequila but drunk on her. Remember the first time? his eyes asked … at the party? in the library? on the floor. And the other time, and after that, the next time, up ’til there was no way to keep track.

  Yeahhh, baby … I wanna play with your body.
I want to lick it all over, go deeper into you than I’ve ever wanted to go into any woman. I want to play a new tune on you.

  I just want to play with your body? shit! that don’t even get close to what I want to do with you.

  He licked the salt from the rim of his glass, took a sip, and cupped his hands under his glass, as though he were cradling both cheeks of her buttocks in his palms.

  The gesture made her feel self-conscious enough to want to change the unspoken subject. “Elijah, don’t you ever get tired of playin’ games?”

  The corners of his mouth sagged. Don’t tell me that you gon’ take me through your li’l ol’ thang again. I thought we had finished with all that.

  “What do you mean?” he asked cautiously, a bit of the spell broken.

  “You know what I mean, baby,” she cushioned it. “Playin’ games on people.”

  “When I get tired of eatin’—” He patted his flat stomach. “Then I’ll be tired of playin’ games.”

  Damn! damn it! why did I ever break down and tell her what I do, what I really do? Home was right, a man will do anything when he gets his nose open.

  “You ever think about gettin’ into anything … anything legitimate?”

  He drained his glass and caught the waiter’s eye to signal for a fresh round. Is she talkin’ to me about gettin’ a job?

  “What’re you talkin’ about, Toni? gettin’ a job?” he voiced his thought, on the edge of hostility.

  “No, not just a job … something that would allow you to use your talents, and not run the risk of being popped.”

  He felt his hostile reactions being cancelled out, one by one. She was right, about being popped. That’s the way it always seemed to happen.

  Just when the whole thing seemed to be falling into place, Pop! He counted back through a dozen games that had been worked successfully until … Pop!

  If they couldn’t get the goods on him, they could shelter him on a jive time vagrancy beef … with his rep and sheet, what the hell did it matter?

  The waiter suavely cleared the old glasses away and replaced them with fresh ones, reconciled to the fact that he had drinkers and not eaters on his station.

  “Yeah, I’ve thought about a legitimate thang, from time to time.” He paused for a sip and discovered he was drunk. Hip, stoned drunk, not square, goofy drunk … rappin’ drunk.