Dirty Old Men [And Other Stories] (Zane Presents) (20 page)

“Look, stop talking ’bout me dying so much. Okay? Now I’m still here.”

“And I’m gonna make sure I
keep
you here,
too.
So we’re gonna be good friends.”

As she finished getting dressed at his kitchen table, Marion frowned at her. “
Friends?
Does that mean I don’t get to fuck you no more with a couple of Blue Dolphins?”

Jessica cracked that easy smile of hers again. “You should be grateful I did you this time. So you can consider yourself
special.
”

He smiled back at her. “Is that right?”

“Yes,” she answered immediately. “Well, let me go on and go, so I can get home, take a bath, and get ready for work in the morning.”

“Where do you work?”

“At Jefferson Hospital. I’m a registered nurse.”

M.J. was stunned. “What? You’re an R.N., and you walking ’round selling sex pills?”

She grinned. “That’s why I’m qualified to deal them. I know all that they can do,
and
all of the side effects.”

M.J. stated, “Well, I’ll be damned! No wonder you like older men. You gotta deal with us in the hospital all the time.”

“Exactly. But I thought you were one of the healthy ones from all of your Viagra talk.”

M.J. boasted, “I
am
healthy.”

“Just not healthy enough to deal with
me
,” Jessica concluded. Then she walked toward the door. “But like I said, we can always be friends. So don’t hesitate to call me.”

It took Marion three days to recuperate from all the fucking he had done that week. He hadn’t used all of his pelvic muscles like that in
years!
And by the weekend, he remembered to get his gray hair trimmed down nice and neatly.

“Give me one of them young man’s cuts, low all around, with a nice gray goatee, Harvey,” he told his long-time barber on Page Boulevard after work that Saturday evening. He had just made it into the shop before it closed.

Harvey Greenfield, a few years younger than M.J. at fifty-nine, with plenty of gray of his own, grunted, “Uh-oh. What’s her name?” Then he started laughing. “That gray hair is the first thing to go when old guys like us fall in love again. Guys start dying it black and everything.”

M.J. laughed with him and couldn’t deny it. “She told me I would look more handsome with it trimmed down, Harvey. And you know you gotta do what a woman tell you, if that’s gon’ make her like you more.”

“Yeah, as long as she don’t start changing
everything
about you,” Harvey warned. “But a good haircut and a goatee ain’t bad. So, how old is she?”

M.J. grinned. “Twenty-nine.”

Harvey froze. “Man, you ’bout to kill yourself. Are you
crazy?
”

“I am now,” M.J. quipped with a chuckle.

“Shit, you know how many old guys kill themselves messing around with them young girls? And it may not be that same night, but the damage is accumulative.”

M.J. argued, “Well, how come
Hugh Hefner
can have
three
young girlfriends and still get away with? And he’s
eighty
-something.”

“Hell, you know how much ass Hugh Hefner dun’ had in his life? Gettin’ young women is like
breathing
for him. That man just know what the hell he
doing.
But
you
ain’t no damn
Hugh Hefner.
And you ’bout to
kill
yourself. You even got me afraid to cut your damn
hair
now.”

At that point, a few of the other guys who were left inside the shop overheard them and began to laugh out loud.

“Look, Harvey, go on and cut down my hair now,” M.J. demanded.

Harvey stared at him for another minute before he shook his head. “Mmmt, mmmt,
mmmph,
” he grunted. “You got your plot of land already picked out for your burial?”

The guys inside the shop continued to laugh hard, but M.J. only smiled. Then he joked back, “And you make sure they put it on my tombstone, ‘He died in some pussy.’”

“Hey now, watch your mouth up in my shop, man. You know I don’t go for that kind of language in here,” Harvey told him. “Now I’ll let a few small ones
slide,
but that word there is out of bounds. What if I had women and children in here?”

“But you
don’t,
” M.J. told him. “We all
men
up in here now. And men love
pussy.
Now go on and cut my hair down.”

After getting his fresh low haircut and trimmed goatee at the barbershop, Marion Jefferson looked
damned
good! He looked like a magazine model for older men. The pharmaceutical companies could put him in a Viagra
commercial.

Since the barbershop was only a few blocks away from his apartment building, he strolled through the St. Louis streets toward home feeling
good.
He mumbled, “I gotta do this more often, walk around and take things in.”

He could even feel the cool evening breeze whipping over his head now.
I’m gon’ need to wear me a hat until I can get used to this,
he told himself. He continued to stroke the smoothness of his goatee as he walked. It felt good to him.

His walk to the barbershop that evening was all a part of his change of attitude to get back in shape for fucking. He didn’t look out of shape
physically,
or at least for his age, but he damn sure couldn’t keep up with the circulation and respiratory he needed to stay busy in the bedroom. So he wanted to make a few changes, including more check-up trips to the doctor to make sure his heart was all right for it.

Then he decided to call Jessica back on her cell phone.

As soon as she answered the line, he told her, “You were right.”

She paused. “Right about what?”

“About me getting a low haircut, and trimming up this gray goatee. I look
good
and feel even better now,” he bragged.

Jessica laughed over the line. “You got it cut?”

“And I’m walking home from the barbershop now. In fact, if you don’t believe me, then I can get you a second opinion right now.”

He saw a group of young women with kids, having a conversation on the sidewalk in front of them. He planned to ask them.

Jessica continued to laugh. “I know you look good. That’s why I told you to do it. But who you gonna ask?”

“These young mothers standing out here with their kids. They look younger than
you.
”

“They probably are. But twenty-nine ain’t that
young,
” she noted. “Maybe a little young for
you
though.”

“Not with how I feel right now. I could swing with the
rookies
tonight.”

Jessica couldn’t stop laughing. “I miss talking to you. You are so
crazy.
”

“Crazy like an old
fox,
” he bragged again. His swagger was increasing by the minute. So he asked the opinions of the young mothers out in front of him.

“Ahh, excuse me, ladies. I don’t mean you no harm. I need one of you guys to tell this young woman on the phone whether I look good for an old man or not.”

The young St. Louis mothers immediately looked at each other and laughed. Then they all observed him seriously.

“Yeah, I’ll tell her,” the boldest young mother answered. She took M.J.’s cell phone. “Yeah, he looks good. He look like he just got a haircut. And he got that smell, too, you know from the barbershop.”

She listened to Jessica’s response and laughed again. “Is that right?” She eyed M.J. with a grin. “Well, I’m scared’a him.”

“Don’t be scared of me. I’m a friendly old man,” he teased her.

“Yeah, I
bet,
” the bold, twenty-something mother countered with a smile. She handed his cell phone back to him. “Y’all have a good time tonight.”

When M.J. got back on the line, he asked Jessica, “What you say to her?”

“I told her you think you can swing with people her age. That’s why you gave her the phone, right? I’m not slow. I read people’s real intentions all the time.”

M.J. ignored her comments. “Well, you know I want to see you again tonight.”

“I have my son with me this weekend. And you remember what I told, right?”

“What, about gettin’ my haircut? I did that already,” he cracked.

She chuckled. “You know what I’m talking about.”

“Well, I’m gettin’ myself back in shape for you right now.”

Jessica laughed. “You gon’ have to do a lot more than walking and getting haircuts to hang with me,” she challenged.

“Well, that’s what I’m gonna do then. Anything you need me to. I promise.”

He made her laugh again. “Well, I’ll call you back a little later. I gotta do quality time with my son right now. I answered to make sure that you were all right.”

“Yeah, I’m all right,” he told her. “But you call me back then.”

When he hung up the phone with her, he thought about it. “Yeah, she’s with her son tonight. So ain’t nothing going on there,” he grumbled.

Then he overheard some younger guys, standing outside of their clean and souped-up cars, talking about going to the movies.

“Yo, you see that
Notorious
movie yet? I heard it’s good. I’m ’bout to go see it with my girl tonight.”

“Yeah, I’ll probably see it tonight. I ain’t got nuttin’ else to do. But why would you take your girl to that? That’s where you
meet
girls at a movie like
that.
A Biggie movie’ll get ’em
right.
Especially downtown when they’re ready to party afterwards.”

M.J. grinned, taking it all in. He hadn’t been out to the movies since the past summer, with his grandchildren. They all wanted to see Will Smith flying around to save the day in
Hancock.

Shit, maybe I need to go to the movies,
he mused. “I damn sure don’t wanna sit around in the house tonight,” he mumbled to himself. “And I don’t want no
old
pussy tonight either,” he stated in reference to his older sex partner. By the time he made it back to his apartment, he decided that he
would
go to the movies.

I can go right downtown by myself, and probably head over to East St. Louis or the Riverboat tonight,
he plotted.

“Then I can try out this new look and see how many phone numbers I get.”

At 9:05 P.M., Marion stood in line at the multiplex movie theater downtown. He wore stylish dark-blue slacks, black shoes, a leather St. Louis Rams jacket he hadn’t worn in years, and some fresh cologne patted on with his new haircut and goatee. And as soon as the line started to fill up with young folks in the teens, twenties, and thirties, three young women walked up to the stand right behind him, all wearing ass-hugging jeans

M.J. angled himself to get a look and thought,
Damn, right behind me! I don’t even get a chance to concentrate out here!

One of the girls, who were all in their twenties, gave him a quick eye to acknowledge his look, or
something.
M.J. jumped right on it.

“Hey, how you doin’ tonight?”

“Oh, I’m fine,” she answered civilly.

Then the other two looked at him. M.J. didn’t waste any time with them either.

“So, I hear this Biggie flick is a pretty good movie. What you guys hear?” he asked them all.