Cotton Comes to Harlem (12 page)

She turned quickly on her high heels and started towards the kitchen. Her walk was exaggerated, like that of a prostitute soliciting trade. But he had to follow her, cursing his instincts which kept defying his will.

She searched in the pantry, paying him no attention. He felt a slight trace of trepidation, fearing she might come out with a gun. But she found what she wanted, a brown paper sack. She turned and tried to put it over his head, but he jumped back and warded her off as though she held a live rattlesnake.

“I just wanted to try it for size,” she said, trying it on her own head instead. “What are you anyway, a pansy?”

He was incensed by her allusion to his masculinity, but he consoled himself with the thought that in different circumstances he’d ride that yellow bitch until she yelled quits.

She switched past him, looking at him through the corners of her eyes and brushing him lightly with her hips. Then she deliberately
shook her buttocks and waved the sack over her head like a dare and went into the bedroom.

He debated whether to follow her. This bitch was getting on his nerves, he told himself. She wasn’t the only one who could make love, hell, his wife — He stopped that thought; that wasn’t going to get him anywhere. Finally he gave in and followed her. Orders were orders, he told himself.

He found her with a pair of nail scissors in her hand, cutting eyeholes in the paper sack. He felt his ears burning. He looked about the room for a telephone extension, but didn’t see any. Against his will he watched her cut out a place for his mouth. Unconsciously his vision strayed to her wide luscious mouth. She licked her lips and stuck out the tip of her tongue.

“Now, ma’am, this has gone far enough,” he protested.

She acted as though she hadn’t heard, measuring his head with her eyes. Then she cut out a place for his ears, saying, “Big ears, big you-know-what.” His ears burned as though on fire. For a moment she stood looking at her handiwork. He looked too.

“You’ve got to breathe, haven’t you, baby?” she cooed and cut out a place for his nose.

“Now you come out of here and sit down and behave yourself,” he said, trying to sound stern, but his voice was thick with tongue.

She went over to the small record player against the wall and put on a slow sexy blues number and stood for a moment weaving her body tantalizingly, snapping her fingers.

“I’ll have to use force,” he warned.

She swung around and threw open her arms and advanced on him. “Come on and force me, daddy,” she said.

He turned his back and stood in the doorway. She stood before the mirror and took off her ear-rings and necklace and ran her fingers through her hair, whistling a low accompaniment to the music, seemingly paying him no attention. Then she took off her dress.

He turned around to see what she was doing and damn near jumped out of his skin. “Don’t do that!” he shouted.

“You can’t stop me from undressing in my own bedroom,” she said.

He went over and snatched up the dressing-table chair and planted it in the doorway and plopped himself down with an air of determination. “All right, go ahead,” he said, turning his profile towards her so he could watch her for mischief through the corners of his eyes.

She tilted the dressing-table mirror so he could see her reflection, then pulled up her slip over her head. Now her creamy
yellow body was clad only in a thin black strapless bra and tiny black pants trimmed with lace, over a garter belt.

“If you’re scared, go home,” she taunted.

He gritted his teeth and continued to look away.

She took off her bra and pants and stood facing the mirror, cupping her breasts in her hands and gently caressing her teaties. With only the garter belt and nylon stockings and high-heeled shoes, she looked more nude than were she stark-naked. She saw him peeping at her reflection in the mirror, and began doing things with her stomach and hips.

He swallowed. From the neck up he was blindly furious; but from the neck down he was on a live wire edge. His insides were a battleground for his will and his lust, with his organs suffering the consequences. Whole areas of his body seemed on fire. The fire seemed breaking through his skin. Centipedes were crawling over his testicles and ants were attacking his phallus. He squirmed in his seat as it became more and more unbearable; his pants were too tight; his coat was too small; his head was too hot; his mouth was too dry.

With a flourish like a stripteaser removing her G-string, she took off one shoe and tossed it into his lap. He knocked it violently aside. She took off the other shoe and tossed it into his lap. He caught himself just in time to keep from grabbing it and biting it. She stripped off her stockings and garter belt and approached him to drape them about his neck.

He came to his feet like a Jack-in-the-box, saying in a squeaky voice, “This has gone far enough.”

“No, it hasn’t,” she said and moved into him.

He tried to push her away but she clung to him with all strength, pushing her stomach into him and wrapping her legs about his body. The odor of hot-bodied woman, wet cunt and perfume came up from her and drowned him.

“Goddamned whore!” he grated, and backed her to the bed. He tore off his coat, mouthing, “I’ll show you who’s a pansy, you hot-ass slut.”

But at the last moment he regained enough composure to go hang his holstered pistol on the outside doorknob out of her reach, then he turned back towards her.

“Come and get it, pansy,” she taunted, lying on the bed with her legs open and her brown-nippled teats pointing at him like the vision of the great whore who lives in the minds of all puritanical men.

He stripped the zipper of his pants getting them off; popped the buttons from his shirt. When he was nude he tried to dive into her
like into the sea, but she fought him off.

“You got to put on your sack first,” she said, snatching it up from the floor and pulling it down over his head backwards by mistake. “Oop!” she cried.

Blinded momentarily, his hands flew up to tear it off, but she snatched it off first and slipped it on him the right way, so that only his eyes, mouth, nose and ears were showing.

“Now, baby, now,” she cried.

At that moment the telephone rang.

He jumped out of bed as though the furies had attacked him, his lust going out like a light. In his haste he knocked over the chair in the doorway, bruising his shins, and slammed into the doorjamb. Curses spewed from his gasping mouth like geysers of profanity. His lank white body with stooped shoulders and reddish hair moved awkwardly and looked as though it had just come from the grave.

With a quick lithe motion she opened a secret compartment in the bed-table, snatched up the receiver of the telephone extension, and cried, “Help!” then quickly hung up.

In his haste he didn’t hear her. He reached the telephone in the sitting-room and said breathlessly, “Henderson speaking,” but the connection had been broken. She could hear him jiggling the receiver as she slipped on a sport coat and snatched up a pair of shoes. “Hello, hello,” he was still shouting when she went barefooted from the bedroom, locking the door behind her and taking the key, on back to the kitchen and went barefooted out of the house by the service door.

“Your party has hung up,” came the cool voice of the telephone operator.

He realized instantly the call had come from the police cruiser parked down the street. Panic exploded in his head as he realized he didn’t even have his pistol. He ran naked back to the bedroom, snatched his pistol from the doorknob and tried to open the door. He found it locked. He became frantic. He couldn’t risk shooting off the lock, he might hit her. The detectives from the cruiser would be there any instant and he’d catch hell. He had to get into the goddamned room. He tried breaking in, but it was a strong door with a good lock and his shoulder was taking a beating. He had forgotten the paper sack over his head.

The detectives from the cruiser had rushed there post-haste and had let themselves in with a pass-key. Over the telephone they had heard a woman cry for help. God only knew what was going on in there, but they were ready for it. They went into the apartment and spread out, their pistols in their hands. The sitting-room was
empty.

They started through towards the rear. They drew up as though they had run into an invisible wall.

Down the hall was a buck-naked white man with a paper sack over his head and a holstered pistol in his hand, trying to break down the bedroom door with his bare shoulder.

No one ever knew who was the first one to explode with laughter.

Iris went down the service stairway barefooted. The sport coat was a belted wraparound of tan gaberdine and no one could tell she was naked underneath it. At the service exit on St Nicholas Avenue, she slipped into her shoes and peeped out into the street.

A car stood at the kerb in front of the apartment next door with the motor idling. A smartly dressed woman got out and ran towards the entrance. Iris cased her as an afternoon prostitute or a cheating wife. The man behind the wheel called softly, “Bye now, baby,” and the woman fluttered her fingers and ducked out of sight.

Iris walked rapidly to the car, opened the door and got into the seat the other woman had just vacated. The man looked at her and said, “ ’Lo, baby,” as though she was the same woman he’d just told good-bye. He was a nice-looking chocolate-brown man dressed in a beautiful gray silk suit, but Iris just glanced at him.

“Drive on, daddy,” she said.

He steered from the curb and climbed St Nicholas Avenue. “Running
to
or
from
?” he asked.

“Neither,” she said and when they came to the church at 142nd Street she said: “Turn left here up to Convent.”

He left-turned up the steep hill past Hamilton Terrace to the quiet stretch of Convent Avenue north of City College.

“Right here,” she directed.

He right-turned north on Convent and when he came opposite the big apartment house she said, “This is good, daddy.”

“Could be better,” he said.

“Later,” she said and got out.

“Coming back?” he called but she didn’t hear him.

She was already running across the street, up the steps and into the foyer of a big well-kept apartment house with two automatic elevators. One was waiting and she took it to the fourth floor and turned towards the apartment at the back of the hall. A serious-looking man wearing black suspenders, a white collarless shirt, and sagging black pants opened the door. He took himself as seriously as a deacon in a solvent church.

“And what can I do for you, young lady?”

“I want to see Barry Waterfield.”

“He don’t want to see you, he’s already got company,” he leered. “How ’bout me?”

“Stand aside, buster,” she said, pushing past him. “And quit peeping through keyholes.”

She went straight to Barry’s room but the door was locked and she had to knock.

“Who is it?” asked a woman’s voice.

“Iris. Tell Barry to let me in.”

The door was unlocked and Barry stood to one side wearing only a purple silk dressing-gown. He closed the door behind her. A naked high-yellow woman lay in the bed with the sheet drawn up to her neck.

Clothes were draped over the only chair so Iris sat on the bed and ignored the naked woman. “Where’s Deke?” she asked Barry.

He hesitated before replying, “He’s all right, he’s holed up safe.”

“If you’re scared of talking then write it,” she said.

He looked uncomfortable. “How’d you get away?”

“None of your business,” she snapped.

“You’re sure you weren’t tailed?”

“Don’t make me laugh. If the cops wanted you they’d have had you long ago, stupid as you are. Just tell me where Deke is and let others do the thinking.”

“I’ll call him,” he said, going towards the door.

She started to go with him but pressure on her hip stopped her, and she said only, “Tell him I’m coming to see him.”

He went out and locked the door from the outside without answering.

The woman in the bed whispered quickly, “He’s with Mabel Hill in the Riverton Apartments,” and gave the street, number and telephone. “I heard Barry talking.”

Iris looked blank. “Mabel Hill. The only Mabel Hill I know vaguely is the Mabel Hill who was married to the John Hill who got croaked.”

“That’s the cutie,” the woman whispered.

Iris couldn’t control the rage that distorted her face.

Barry came in at that moment and looked at her, “What’s the matter with you?”

“Did you get Deke?” she countered.

He wasn’t clever enough to dissemble and she knew he was lying when he said, “Deke’s cut out but he left word he would call
me. He’s changing his hideout.”

“Thanks for nothing,” Iris said, getting up to go.

The naked woman underneath the sheet said, “Wait a minute and I’ll give you a lift. I got my car downstairs.”

“No, you ain’t,” Barry said roughly, pushing her down.

Iris unlocked the door and opened it, then turned and said, “Go to hell, you big mother-raping square,” and slammed the door behind her.

Deke hadn’t left Mabel’s apartment but he’d had some close shaves. Two Homicide detectives had shown up at ten o’clock to question her again. He had hid in the closet, feeling defenceless and stark-naked without a gun, listening to every word with his heart in his mouth for fear he might have left something incriminating in the room, sweating blood from fear they might decide to search the house, and literally sweating in the close dusty heat. The dust had tickled his nose and he’d had to bite his lip to keep from sneezing.

Later, Mr Clay, the undertaker, had come and caught him in the bedroom and he’d had to hide under the bed. They had talked so interminably about money he had begun to wonder whether they intended to bury John Hill or hold his body for ransom.

Then Mabel had again turned into the weeping widow and bemoaned her fate with buckets of tears and enough hysterics for a revival meeting and nothing turned them off but to console her in bed. He had consoled her in bed so many times he’d concluded that if John Hill hadn’t been shot she’d have loved him to death. Or was she like that because her mother-raping husband was dead? he asked himself. Was this some kind of freakishness that came out in her? Whore complex or something? But if she had to wait for her mother-raping husband to get killed before she could get her nuts off, hadn’t he better take care himself? Or was he the exception being her minister; a minister is supposed to minister. Or was it that she thought if she sinned with her minister, God would forgive her; and the more she sinned, the greater would be God’s forgiveness? Or did this bitch just have a hot ass? Anyway, he was godamned tired of her everlasting urge and he was mentally damning John Hill to hell for getting himself killed.