WIDOW

by Billie Sue Mosiman

  “I say we get in the bucket and leave her here.”

  Mac turned to the one who had said that. She tried appealing to him with her eyes. "That's right,” she said. “This boy's right. I didn't do nothing to you. Why don't you go off and pester somebody else?”

  “Whassa matter you, Shank? You boned out? You think we oughta do a ghost?”

  Mac had no idea what they were saying. The way the gangs spoke was like a foreign language. She just hoped she'd see it coming if they rushed her or if they lifted the “breakdown” to kill her. She needed at least two seconds to prepare herself for heaven. The inside of her mouth had dried into a desert floor and her heart thumped like an agitated Gila monster trapped against her breastbone.

  “What you say, old eastly mama? Think we ought to bust you?”

  Mac thought the speaker was probably the leader. He talked more than the others and looked the most menacing. There was a hardness in his eyes that she had seen before. They were killer eyes. Stone and ice. Merciless.

  “I . . . I just wish you'd go away. I don't want no trouble. I was just . . . just sleeping here.” She didn't want to stutter, but couldn't help herself.

  The leader rattled off something in Spanish to his companions and they laughed. She tried to smile, but expected it came out more of a grimace. She could feel her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth. She was trembling, but hoping they wouldn't notice. She held onto the bar of the shopping cart to keep her arms steady.

  “My friend . . . my friend's a cop. Anything happens to me, he'll find out who did it.”

  “Hey, essey, this bitch must drop a dime on the pigs for her living. ‘Nother good reason to bust her.”

  Ray-Man cocked the shotgun.

  Mac felt her heart lurch. “Wha . . . what's dropping a dime? I don't mess with no dope.”

  The boys laughed and slapped one another on the back. Suddenly the leader said, sober and serious now, “That's a snitch, eastly. You snitch to the cops, that what you do?”

  Mac pondered her answer. Decided the truth would serve her best. “Yeah, I'm a snitch, I drop a dime. And my cop's in Homicide and he's a hard man. He'd track you punks down and step in your faces if you mess with me. I seen him do it before. I don't think you want him on your case.”

  The leader looked over to Ray-Man, thinking it over. The boy to Mac's left, the one who wanted to leave said, “Let's bail. This eastly ain't worth it, man. She's just an old Sopwith Camel and she don't need jacking up.”

  The leader spat toward her. Mac turned her head aside and watched from the corner of her eye.

  “Okay, Shank's prolly right. We do what he says this time. She's just scuz, not worth our time. Let's bail.” He waved the gang toward the car and then backed away slowly himself, keeping his steady gaze on her.

  “You tell your friend and we find you again, eastly. Next time I don't let nobody talk me outta busting you.” He nodded and left then. The Chevy roared to life, tires squealing and smoke trailing as it raced from the alley into the night.

  Mac stood a long time with her hands locked on the metal bar, leaning into it for support while her heart slowed. She knew her escape this time had been narrow, merely a spit and a whistle between her and the grave. Things on the street were getting worse than they ever used to be. Once, you could depend on people leaving you alone when they could see you had nothing, when you slept on cardboard, and dressed in rags. No more. It was people like her who were the easy victims, the ones taken out just for kicks or for initiation into a gang. The news on the street was that the latest floater in the bay had been a homeless man.

  She had to find Samson, tell him she'd changed her mind.

  She wanted to see what a roof over her head and a safe haven at night might feel like. She was entirely too old for this shit. And too scared.

  ~*~

  The time was closing on noon when Mac saw Samson at a hotdog stand. She trundled the shopping cart up to him and bumped his backside.

  “Hey . . . ! Oh, it's you. How's it going, Mac?”

  “I needta talk to you about that offer you made.” Samson squinted down at her over the hot dog he held. He took a bite, chewed, spoke with his mouth full. “Let's go sit over here.”

  She followed him to a low brick wall beneath the shade of blooming crepe myrtle trees unruffled and still in the hot air. They sat next to one another.

  “There was a gang of boys woke me up last night,” she said. “Might have killed me with a shotgun. Just dumb luck they decided not to.”

  Samson frowned. “Fucking gangs. There's more and more of them.”

  “Anyway, it scared me like I ain't been scared in a long time. It seems living out here just ain't what it used to be.”

  “Will you move into my house then? I'd be less anxious about you if you would.”

  Mac waited a beat and then nodded. “I'd like to try it. Maybe part of the day I can stay out on the street and still feel . . . free. And at night I can stay there. Would that be all right?” She looked at him, asking for his permission and hating having to ask anyone for anything.

  “However you want to work it is all right with me, Mac. I'm hardly ever home, you might not see me much. I sleep there. But sometimes I don't come in at night either. We'll live our separate lives, how's that?”

  “I don't have to cook your dinner and shit?”

  Samson laughed and that made her grin too. She realized, after she'd said it, that it sounded like she was saying she might cook his dinner and then go shit.

  “I'd rather you not cook my dinner. I don't eat there much. My hours are just as erratic as yours. But at least you'll have your own room and there will be food in the fridge when you want it.”

  “I ain't giving up Big Macs.” The very idea of doing without a daily Big Mac made her queasy. What was she going to eat in Samson's house? Macaroni and cheese? Frozen pizza?

  “You do what suits you. C'mon, I'll take you there now so you can get settled in. I don't have to be at work for another couple of hours.”

  She rode in his car without talking too much. He asked about the gang. What they were like? Had she seen them around the area before? Did she think they were really dangerous types? And she answered with monosyllables. He decided they might be Mexikanemi.

  “In nineteen-eighty-four,” Samson said, “Huerta, while in prison, founded the Mexikanemi. Or La Eme, as they call themselves. He went to war with the ‘Texas Syndicate’ and there was a bloodbath. Forty-seven inmate murders and more than four hundred stabbings in one year. We've been trying to get them on the RICO laws, but it's tough sledding. They get together in prison and grow stronger. Now they're not only in the prison system, they've moved out into the cities. We have a big problem here in Houston.”

  “They sure were a problem, all right,” Mac agreed. “Only way they let me go was I told them I had a cop friend.” She grinned at him. “You come in handy sometimes.”

  At his house, within walking distance of the Montrose area where she had lived on the street, he took all her things from the cart and into the house, leaving them in one of the bedrooms. She stood looking around at the twin-size bed covered with a quilt, a small chest of drawers, and a bedside table with a reading lamp. It looked cramped to her. The walls felt as if they were closing in.

  Then she thought of the gang leader's eyes looking at her as if he were a cobra and she a rabbit, and she knew it was either accept the enclosure of walls or die badly at the hands of a snake.

  “Thanks,” she said to Samson when he had made a few trips and brought everything inside. “This is just fine. It's . . . nice.”

  He showed her the kitchen and opened the cabinet doors so she would know where the dishes and food were shelved. His dog, Pavlov, followed her around grinning and hopping and butting her legs with his backside. She never much liked animals. Could she abide this place, really? It had been so long since she lived indoors. A lifetime ago.

  “I have to leave for the station now, but you'll be
fine, won't you?”

  She said she would, she knew she would just as soon as she got used to things.

  Then he was gone, the front door closing, and she was alone with the dog standing in the kitchen. Feeling lost. Wondering why the world had to be so relentlessly unforgiving to people like her who never really fit in anywhere.

  ~*~

  “It's a funny thing about falling in love. You never expect it to happen and then it does. It's like finding a goldfish in your bathtub.”

  Shadow thought about what Frank was saying to her. He sat at her table having a beer and she had talked about feeling something for Mitchell. She didn't name him, of course, she just said he was a male acquaintance who was turning into more than that.

  “I'm not sure I'm ‘falling in love,’” she said, shaking her head in denial. “I mean, I don't know him well enough for that yet. I don't even like the idea of love. The last time I ‘loved’ someone, he destroyed . . . everything.”

  “I knew a woman once for approximately three hours and I was in love with her.”

  “Oh, really? When did this happen?”

  He looked down at his bottle of beer. “It was a long time ago. I was a lot younger. I met her at a roller skating rink, of all places. I watched her for a while out on the floor and then I skated out and put my arm around her waist. We talked while we skated and then we sat down and talked some more. Pretty soon I thought: I'm in love with her. And I was.”

  “How did it work out?”

  “Not very good, actually. She had another steady boyfriend and they were both going off to the same college that fall. I think they were married in their senior years.”

  “Oh. That's kind of sad.”

  He shrugged. “It happens. But now I know falling in love can be something instantaneous. It doesn't have to grow over a period of time.”

  “Well, I didn't say I was in love with this man I was talking about. I . . . like him a lot. He's . . . well, he seems to be a good man.”

  “Are there any good men?” Frank laughed. “Besides me, of course.”

  She smiled at him. “Not that many, take my word for it.”

  “But you run into some pretty skaggy men in this place, that's all it is. It's warped your view of them.”

  “They're everywhere, Frank. Not just in here. There are bad men everywhere.”

  When Frank left her, she sat thinking about what love was and if she would ever feel it for a man again. It was hard enough to find a man she might trust, much less love. And she could not say why she trusted Mitchell Samson, knowing it had nothing to do with him being a cop; she should have distrusted a cop above all people considering the things she had done. It was the way Frank had said—some people just inspire you to confide in them or to love them, some attract you in a way that has no rhyme or reason. They appear in your life, goldfish in the bathtub.

  She smiled.

  Then darkness spread over her thoughts and she remembered the people who so easily tempt you and convince you they'd be better off dead.

  “Hey, honey, mind if I join you? I don't go on for a few minutes.”

  Shadow was so lost in thought she hadn't seen the other woman near the table. She gestured for her to take a seat. She noticed her dress. It was a breakaway red-spangled number held together in appropriate places by Velcro strips. When she reached beneath the sleeveless arm she could rip the dress straight down to the hem and pull it forward to reveal the body beneath. The straps were also held together with Velcro so she could detach it from her pale white shoulders and drop the entire garment to the floor of the stage.

  “You're not dancing tonight?”

  Shadow was trying to remember the woman's name. What did she call herself? “No,” she said, “not tonight.”

  “I've been watching you, you know. I think you move like an angel up there when you're dancing. You don't even work at making the men get hard-ons. It comes as naturally to you as snapping my fingers to a good beat comes to me. You wouldn't happen to be bi, would you? I sure think you and me would make a good couple. We'd light up the night sky, you better believe it.”

  Shadow felt herself harden inside. As much as she had learned about the club scene and the women in it, she was always startled when one of them came onto her.

  “No, I'm not bisexual.”

  “Hetero, I guess, huh?” She sighed and glanced up at the stage to the dancer there. “What a fucking shame. I heard them saying you didn't go with the guys so I just thought maybe .

  “Sorry, no.” Shadow was ready to leave the table and the conversation, but the other woman spoke again.

  “Know where I pick up the best-looking guys?”

  “Wouldn't have a clue.”

  “The gay bars. Bi-guys cruise there and they're all dolls, some of them the most handsome men you've ever laid eyes on. God in his heaven would fuck one of those beauties. You ever want a date . . .”

  “No thanks.”

  “Well, Jesus, hey, I was just trying to give a little friendly advice. I guess you don't do drugs or even smoke cigarettes, either. I guess maybe you're slumming here with the rest of us just for the kicks or something.”

  “Listen, don't start getting hostile,” Shadow said. “I don't care what you or anyone else in here does in private. It's not my business. But it's not your business what I do or what I think or what I had for dinner last night. Okay? Now if you'll excuse me. . .”

  “You're excused. Bitch,” she added.

  Shadow made a hasty exit for the dressing room. Most of the girls were tolerant about lifestyles given they had unusual ones of their own. But once in a while a girl came along who was a militant lesbian, or had a chip on her shoulder, or was just plain jealous and those women were the ones who could spell trouble big-time. The manager had just fired a lesbian who had mocked the girls who prostituted with men and showed no interest in her.

  It seemed to Shadow that the more she learned about how women handled themselves in the world, the less respect she had for them. They went to such extremes! They were puritans living and working in the suburbs, raising families and looking down on their sisters who happened to have to work as strip dancers for their living. There were those women who hated men and loved women exclusively. There were women so confused about their sexuality they had turned to sex toys for gratification over any relationship with another human being. Women who were punching bags for their violent husbands; women who let themselves turn into breeding factories for babies; women who wanted to be men, by God, and rule the world for a change.

  Mom came out of a toilet stall. “Shadow Girl! How's it shakin' tonight out there on the floor?”

  “Oh, about the same as usual, Mom. I think I'm going to call it a night, though.”

  “Make your money already?”

  Shadow considered the bills stuffed in the cup of her bra. “Not as much as I'd like, but it doesn't matter.”

  “I hears how you and that cop got a thing going.”

  Shadow turned to her. “Who told you that?”

  “This ain't no secret, girl. People's seen you with him at the table. I even know something's happening when that man sits at a girl's table.”

  “Why is that?”

  “He got a rep. He never before come on a girl in the clubs. He's been hanging in these places for lotsa years and not once before any of us seen him get hisself attached. He got to be in love, child. Maybe I ought to be congratulatin' you. I ‘spect he soon want to take you outta all this.” She laughed at the idea of it.

  Shadow turned away to find her street clothes in the gym bag. “Hold off on congratulations for a while. I don't know what to think about him yet.”

  “He a fine-looking man. Yes, ma'am, fine-looking. Most law men got a real hard face, but his ain't so hard. No more'n yours is.”

  “And he's never hurt a woman or a child.”

  “Say huh?”

  “Nothing, I was talking to myself, Mom.”

  Mom, whose hips were so large she
had to turn sideways to move through a normal doorway, brushed past Shadow to the cosmetics counter. Shadow smelled her scent and liked it. It was a mixture of a cheap flowery perfume and sweat that, combined, smelled rich and opulent. She had known this scent from somewhere before, maybe from childhood, or just in passing on a street, or in an elevator, or in a crowded mall. Few people managed to have a strong personal scent that did not confront and confound the nostrils. Mom was one of them and it made Shadow like her better than she might have just from their brief and shallow conversations.

  She must hurry now. She stripped off the tight black dress and withdrew the folded bills from her bra to stash in her purse. Soon Mitchell would meet her in the parking lot and she would go to his house.

  She would, wouldn't she? Or would she back out of it? It came to her that she was afraid of having to walk through the rooms of a real home, feel the presence of a man stamped on his choice of furniture, his offerings of drinks to her, his expectations when he came to take her into his arms . . .

  Oh, to hell with it, goddamnit, son of a bitch! She was going, that's all there was to it. She needed to have his heat near her, feel his hands on her body, make love to him. She didn't care what demons she had to wrestle from the past, demons that came carrying remembrances of a home lived in, a home where people lived decent, prudent, innocent and secure lives.