Mitchell tipped an imaginary hat and kept walking.
He slipped in the door of the Hot Spot at fifteen after eleven. It was a weeknight, Tuesday, and the clientele were few. One drunk sat hunkered over a draft beer in the corner booth.
Two younger men, blue-collar types dressed in jeans and plaid short-sleeve shirts, sat together at the long bar sipping whiskeys and calling out to the dancer when they thought she needed more encouragement to swing her bare tits.
Mitchell took his usual table and ordered an Irish coffee. The bartender already had the pot brewed, waiting. Mitchell regularly hit this place on Tuesday nights. He always ordered Irish coffees. He stayed until twelve or one in the morning, until after a dancer called Jezebel came on, and then he moved on to the next topless bar on his list, one right down the block where the dancers were younger and firmer and earned quite a bit more money for dancing in a G-string for horny men.
The coffee came steaming with whipped cream on top. Sometimes bartenders dropped in a sprig of mint, but not here at the Hot Spot. What did he want, class or naked women? He wanted the naked women. He did. His day wasn't complete without them.
He stirred the light cream into the liquid, savoring the smell, wondering for the hundredth time if maybe he wasn't getting too infatuated with the drink, the way he had become enamored of the dancing girls. This was a worry. If he turned into a lush, his job might fall into danger. Or was it already in danger? How would he know something like that?
He shrugged, took a small swallow of the doctored coffee, and felt it go down real smooth, like honey that coated the tongue and swelled the taste buds. Before he reached home tonight, he'd be half drunk. So be it. There were a lot worse things to be half of than drunk. Like hungry and having to depend on handouts.
The girl in the pink spotlight center stage was no longer a girl, but she could move. The platter-player, the DJ, called her “Babycakes.” She was nobody's baby, but she'd make a helluva birthday cake surprise. She could move like a boa constrictor, and did so, sinuously, wrapping her long white legs and arms around a center pole in the dance stage floor. She rocked to the beat of an old blues song, humping at the pole, leaning back all the way until her head reached the floor. Her breasts—not young, not that large, but real, not silicone injected biscuits—slipped up her ribcage, nipples standing, teetering on their mounds of flesh. God! There had to be a God, given nipples like that.
She looked right at Mitchell and he looked back, sure she knew his game. He wished to hell she'd tell him what it was. He'd be most grateful for that.
She lifted her torso oh so slowly and unwound from the pole. She did a few dance steps, a few bumps and grinds for the boys at the bar who gave her appreciative whistles, and then she moved to the back of the runway and, peeking with a smile from the curtain, disappeared as the last strains of music died.
Mitchell drank the coffee, asked for a refill. His waitress was the girl he watched dance on Friday nights. She now wore a red babydoll pajama top over her G-string, but it did nothing to camouflage the voluptuous figure. You could see all the way through the material as if it were gauze, or a red spider web. That was a jolly thought. Imagine those legs on a spider. Those tits. That ass.
Every time she brought him a drink he tipped her another dollar. Off him she made a dollar every twenty minutes or half hour. Not good. Not bad. But it was acceptable. He wasn't rich, they knew that. They even knew he was a cop, a clean one, which explained why he wasn't rich. The whole damn street knew he was on the force. But they didn't fear him. He wasn't out to bust anyone. He was just another one of those guys who liked to watch the female body undulate to the music. He didn't proposition them. He didn't even make any remarks. He just watched.
And that was his secret—The Secret, as Mitchell Samson thought of it. His buddies at the station didn't know about his late-night encampments in Houston's inner city sleaze joints. They probably would have been stunned, if not properly indignant. Mitchell? Got a thing for the topless girls? Not Mitch, Jesus no. Not good old dependable quiet laid-back Mitchell, gimmee a fucking break. The only cops who knew were from Vice. And they didn't care one way or the other. If they happened by a place where he was, their gazes slid over him without pause. Girls were his thing, they didn't give a damn.
But Mitchell's precinct homeboys didn't know, and if he had anything to do with it, they never would. Also, Patty didn't know. His fiancée. Though he wasn't quite sure how that had come about—that engagement business. He had been married once, and once was all one man should have to try to find out he wasn't the best marriage material on the planet Earth. But nevertheless, some way, he had proposed. Kind of. And Patty had accepted. And she thought he was bringing her an engagement ring one of these days. Just as soon as he could remember to go to a jewelry store to shop for one. What with all his time taken up with his work, she might give him a little time, a little leeway to produce the package.
As he sipped the second Irish coffee, Mitchell figured he could hold out on the ring thing for another couple of months at least. Who could afford a diamond anyway? Had Patty ever looked at those price tags? He thought she probably had. Some women knew these things demanded sacrifice, monetary and otherwise, and wanted them made. Have to secure the Goddess's favor, whatever the cost. Not that he blamed her for that. They all wanted the same things anyway. Was she supposed to be different?
As for getting married, really tying the knot, well, he'd have to see. Patty was sweet and all, hell, she was top notch, any man's catch. Smart, three diplomas hanging on her wall, on her way up at the Housing Authority, on a first name basis with the mayor, but . . .
But what, he pondered? Every time he turned around there was a but. Life was just chockfull of them. But for the grace of God he was not homeless and beaten down. But for his misgivings, he might really marry again. But for the sake of his old dog, Pavlov, he might sometimes even admit to fleeting bouts of true loneliness. But, but, but.
Jezebel came onstage and all those anxious thoughts swiftly vanished from his mind. Jeze was something else again. Not as full-bosomed as his waitress, not as young and firm as the girls he would see at his next regular hangout, but damn she was a man's kind of woman. Legs, man would you look at those legs, they made his eyes want to fall from their sockets. Beautiful ankles, the dip between foot and calf just right, the curve behind her knee smooth and pure as French vanilla ice cream, the thighs thick but luscious, the hips like magnolia blooms, milky, soft-looking without appearing loose. Waist not more than twenty-two inches around, he'd have to swear. And eyes. Dark, liquid, suggesting darker nights and darker deeper sex than he had ever experienced.
Oh, he knew it was illusion and lie. All of it. From the flesh to the paint, from the lust in the sometimes dilated, drugged-out pupils to the swish of the unclothed buttocks, but it was the best lies and the best illusions and it caused him to swell where he sat, which is what he was supposed to do, which is what her dance was supposed to accomplish, and accomplish it did. Magnificently.
He smiled, a gentle curving upward of his lips, enjoying the titillation overwhelming him. Jezebel. The reason he came here on Tuesday nights. So untouchably beautiful and full of promise, so ethereal that she might be an angel with tattered wings dropped onto the stage, soaked through with aquamarine spotlight, her gaze casting about in the dim club for a man's look, any man, to judge if her performance was getting through.
He did not sip the coffee while she danced. He hardly breathed. He ignored the men at the bar who thought, as he did, that she was really something, really special. And when she finished her set, having drained from him whatever tension it was that brought him back week after week to watch her, Mitchell Samson stood from the table, dropped another dollar beside his cup, and wandered outside into a limpid midnight world. He had to adjust his erection. It was too painful the way it lay, though now the blood and fantasy feeding it were slowly washing away, sand from a shore.
He still had two hours to kill
at Chez Tigress. Where the girls were younger, though no more beautiful than Jezebel.
And the bartender never failed to drop the sprig of mint into his Irish, whatta guy.
Four
The wind outside the window rustled a mass of green bushy hydrangea leaves against the window pane. The woman in the bed turned off the radio and listened, decided what made the noise, and spent some time looking at her empty water glass.
“Son? I hate to bother you, Son, but could you refill my water pitcher?” Her voice was high and a little breathless as she called out from the back bedroom of the house.
Son squeezed shut his eyes. He reached up and massaged his temples before raking his hand down over his face. His lips silently mimicked his mother's words. Son? Fill my water pitcher? Will you, Son? Being a gifted mimic, his voice would have sounded almost identical to his mother's had he been speaking out loud.
He swiveled the office chair around from the computer at his desk, and stood up. “I'm coming, Mother.” I'm coming, I'm coming, he breathed into the dimly lighted room, looking around, orienting himself so that his anger might leak out enough to allow him to pass inspection when he went to her assistance.
The hallway that led to the bedroom was dark. If he wasn't so damn economical, he'd turn on a light. That's what he was thinking just as he stumbled on a fold in the carpet runner. He cursed beneath his breath, halted and waited, counting backwards from ten. Nine, eight, seven, six . . . He stooped and felt for the fold, smoothed it flat, his exasperation growing. I will not turn on a light.
She was lying propped up like a duchess in her four-poster bed, all those lacy and crocheted pillows at her scrawny back. There must be a dozen. That's how she spent her bedridden days—sewing, crocheting, piling her bed with the efforts of her nimble fingers, the only part of her that still worked without giving her pain. The pillows were ugly. They were useless. And the thread cost him too much money.
She smiled when he entered the room. Son tried to smile back, but he wasn't a smiler. His mouth didn't work well when people watched him. He hoped there was warmth in his eyes. If she picked up on his resentment, she'd run her little game of martyrdom on him. Next time she wouldn't call when she had to go to the bathroom until it was nearly too late, and she might accidentally wet her gown. She had done it before, by God. Then he'd have to help her change. Bring a fresh nightgown to the bathroom, stand outside to walk her back to bed. Why didn't she let him get things done on time? Why did she always wait until there was a skim on the water or her bladder was full to bursting? Didn't she know that only made him feel worse than if she'd asked for his help when it was really needed?
“I'm sorry to call you away from your work, Son. But this water . . . it's been here since yesterday and . . . well, there's a coat of dust on the top of it.”
“I should have changed it before now. It's my fault.” He gripped the thick glass handle of the pitcher and was about to turn. Glancing down at the water, he saw there was indeed a film topping the water level. Dust, just as she said. He hated dust. It was time he thoroughly cleaned her room again. Wasn't it just three days ago that he . . .?
“It's not your fault,” she said. “I'm too much trouble. I think we should hire someone to help, Son. It's not fair you have to do so much work because of me.”
“No strangers in the house!”
He clamped his mouth shut and swallowed hard. His eyes had flashed, and he could see by the surprised look on his mother's face that she had seen it.
“I didn't mean . . .” she began.
“No, Mother, it's all right. I just don't think hired help would be worth it. You know what it's like with other people around. I can't work. I can't concentrate. That one girl we tried, remember how sloppy she was? I found empty potato chip bags beneath your bed. I didn't tell you that, did I? You thought it was because she took naps, but she was a pig, Mother. And she never wiped the sink when she washed her hands.” He did turn from her now, renewed anger creeping into his face at the thought of the day nurse he had let into the house to care for his mother's needs. Slob. Take the money and run. “Besides,” he said, passing from the room to the hall. “I don't mind doing for you. You know that.”
He thought he heard her sigh. He steered the hallway by moving toward the light coming from the kitchen. The air was fresher here outside Mother's room. Her ancient flesh was ripening, filling his nostrils with an undeniable stench of decay.
He mustn't think that way. He must go to the kitchen sink. Clean the pitcher. Fill it with ice and tap water. Wouldn't take long. It wasn't that bad, the chores he was forced to do for his mother. They were just endless. Not difficult or beyond his abilities. He cooked for her, he cleaned, he washed her clothes and ironed them, even her sheets and pillowcases. She had to have someone do it, and he'd be damned if he'd let her think he couldn't measure up to the task. He was her son. Her last remaining relative. She was eighty-two. He had been a child produced in her midlife, planned and wanted and loved. He knew she loved him. How could he not do his duty when she was now old and sick and helpless? What son could turn his back on his own mother?
The ice trays fought him. He ran water over them and cracked them into the sink, the clacking sounds grating on his ears. Finally they gave up their bounty and he filled the empty pitcher to the top.
He carried the water back to his mother's bedroom. She was tired, dozing. Her eyelids raised slowly as he came into the room. Her old gray orbs were shiny and filmy as the water had been, yet she followed his movements. She always said he was like a cat burglar, that sometimes she didn't know he was in the room when she was asleep. Son took that as criticism and snapped back, “Should I knock first before I enter then?” She had given him that hurt look and turned away her face. She had said no, that's not what she meant. She never said what she meant, it seemed to him. She was always skirting around the issues, confusing the meanings. How was he supposed to read her mind?
“Your water,” he said. “Shall I pour a glass for you?”
She shook her head. “I can do it.” She groaned, trying to lean near the bedside table to reach the glass.
“Let me, Mother. If you'd let me do things for you, it would be easier for both of us. I don't mind, really.” He filled the glass and handed it to her waiting hand. She drank as if she had come from a week's walk in the desert.
That burned him up. She had gone without water because it was scummy; he had been remiss in his duties. She had been without a drink so long she was parched and she never called him. Goddamnit, why did she do that anyway? He could throttle her sometimes. She was long-suffering and making a fool of him.
“Are you hungry?” He looked at the Timex on his wrist. Eight o'clock. He had fed her dinner, hadn't he? He brought his hand up to his temple, trying to think. Surely he'd given her something to eat. He had taken a bologna and cheese sandwich to his computer around six. He ate while he worked. But before that, he had brought her . . .
“I'm not hungry, Son. The soup was delicious. I was just a little thirsty. Thank you. You're a good boy.”
Her lips were wet from the water, glistening, catching the rose light from the lamp with the frilly flowered shade. It looked for just a second to him like blood on her mouth.
Crazy. She was driving him crazy and didn't even know it. At least he had brought her dinner. He remembered now. The chicken-vegetable soup. That was good for an old woman, wasn't it? He probably should have made a green salad, too. He was not a good boy.
“Then I'll go back to work. Anything else you need while I'm here?”
She reached out a thin, blue-veined hand and shook her head. He took her old thin fingers into his cupped palms. Her skin was cool and dry. He wondered if her heart was pumping the way it should. Her extremities were always so cold. He'd bet ten bucks her feet beneath the two quilts were icy as a mountain stream. She had a weak heart. A diseased heart. Too old and feeble for the surgeons to operate. She took medicine that kept her alive, kept the battered,
broken, tired old organ beating. For how long? Oh God, for how long would he have to be her nursemaid?
“You go,” she said, withdrawing her hand from his. “I'll be asleep in minutes. I'll listen to the talk shows on the radio a while.”
He nodded, reached for the on knob of the radio before she could make the move. He adjusted the volume, leaned to kiss his mother's papery cheek, and left her alone.
Maybe he should install an intercom in the house, he thought, making his way through the rooms to his study. Or at least give her a bell she could pick up and ring. She didn't like calling out for him. She hated imposing on his time. She was so sweet. So good. So . . .
She was so awful, weighing a hundred and four pounds, nothing but bones in a sack of sagging skin, not enough energy anymore to get up from bed and go to the toilet alone. Soon she wouldn't be able to wash herself. Or make it down the hall to the bathroom. Then there would be bedpans and maybe IVs and piss bags hanging off the side of the bed. There might be baby food jars and protein-supplement powders to mix, and hours where he couldn't leave her alone.
He found himself standing in the middle of the study staring at the blue screen of his computer, his hands clenched, his brow dimpled with sweat.
“I'll listen to the talk shows,” he mimicked, his voice low and frail and feminine. As if that was news to him. She always listened to the talk shows. Strangers' voices, her best, most dependable companions.
He stared fiercely at the computer screen. How could he work anymore when she interrupted him this way? How could he be expected to create a puzzle for his amateur sleuth to solve when he never had a block of time to himself where he could think? The publisher wanted this book, the fifth in the Eddie Lapin series, by September. He had exactly one chapter written and it was June already.
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