Get Some (3 page)

As the night wore on, the liquor set in. His mother started to sway back and forth in her chair. The warm room was beginning to spin.

“Come over here, girl. Give ol' Tony a kiss.” Tony circled her waist with one of his arms. His other hand rested over her knee.

“Earl don't want me,” Lil Steve's mother slurred.

Tony slid another drink in front of her face. “Pretty as you is, that's hard to believe.” Tony let his hand roam farther up her thigh. “Shoot, I bet every man in here wants you.”

“I know I do.” Tony's friend Stan laughed. He was holding his fifth whiskey, sitting on her left side. Lil Steve's mother's breast kept grazing his elbow. He was having himself a grand time. But when he noticed Tony's hand creeping up her thigh, Stan started feeling uneasy.

She smiled and rolled back into Tony's warm arms. “Where's Earl? Did you tell him I'm over here waitin'?” She almost fell from her chair.

“Whoa,” Tony said, sliding her back up. “Girl, let's get you some fresh air.”

Tony stood up. He started to guide her outside.

But Stan stood up too.

“Man, don't mess with her. Can't you see she's sick?”

“So? What difference does it make?”

Stan's lip began to tremble. He struggled to get the words out. “That's Earl's woman, man.” Stan said the words low. He hated to contradict Tony.

“Listen,” Tony said, taking a step back toward the bar, “you like that drink?”

“Yeah.”

“Whiskey taste okay?”

“Uh-huh.”

Tony handed Stan the whole bottle but didn't let go. He leaned right inside Stan's wrecked, plastered face. “Then sit down and shut the fuck up.”

Sweat began to drip from Stan's desperate brow. He worriedly glanced at Lil Steve's mother. She was swaying back and forth under Tony's whale arm. She had a tormented look on her clean, pretty face, like a puppy about to be gassed at the pound. But Stan was a drunk. His right knee was shaking. He couldn't pass up a free liquor bottle like this. He grabbed at the bottle but Tony snatched it away. Stan's sorrowful eyes pleaded. His mouth started to water. His shaking hands reached for the bottle again. Tony slammed it down hard on the table.

“You got something else to say?” Tony asked him again.

“Uh-uh,” Stan said, sitting back at the bar.

Stan never looked back. He drank heavily that night. He drained the whole bottle and kept his bloodshot eyes glued to his glass.

Out back from Dee's was a cluster of trees. A mountain of cardboard boxes hid an old, beat-up mattress. Tony would sometimes sneak lonely drunk women back there. The old mattress reeked of cheap booze. There was a cat laying at the mattress's frayed edge, Tony kicked the cat with his boot.

He laid her down gently. He lifted her dress.

“Wait, Tony. Sto—-op it. What we doing out here?” Lil Steve's mother squirmed but she was too drunk to move.

“Earl may not want you,” Tony's gut straddled her body, “but I been wanting you for months.”

Lil Steve's mother struggled, but the liquor had made her weak.

Her twisting body got Tony more excited. He stuck his tongue out and licked her whole cheek. She squirmed underneath him, but his giant girth held her firm. Tony's sandpaper tongue slid inside her mouth. The whole world spun fast. She felt dizzy and sick. All the trees began to fly past her eyes.

Earl found her later, passed out on the mattress. He didn't know what had happened and tried to wake her up, but she wouldn't budge. He poured the rest of his beer in her face.

Lil Steve was on his way home to his mother's house that night. He was only a mile and a half away.

Earl and Lil Steve's mother stumbled out into the street from Dee's bar. Earl was walking way ahead of his mother. She was trying to keep up, teetering on spiky black heels. Her dress was a mess. Her hair was on end. She was arguing with Earl and he was waving her away. She suddenly stopped and got sick on the lawn. Earl got in his car, slamming the door hard, and she got in, slamming hers too.

Now, Tony swore up and down she was driving that night, but Tony was damn good at lying for his friends, especially when they were running from their wives.

Earl and Lil Steve's mother used to fight in the car in front of their house so his big lazy daughter couldn't hear. Fussing until way after midnight sometimes. But this time, Earl revved the car's engine. He backed out the driveway, crushing the hedge on their front lawn, gunning down the street like some nut.

Everybody living heard that hard, deadly crash. The wild screech of brakes. The crashing of glass. The horrible twisting of metal. Folks rushed out their homes in house robes and socks. They came out of Dee's Parlor in droves.

Lil Steve heard the crash too as he skidded around the corner. He jumped from his car, leaving the door open, and ran right up to the wreck. When he got there, the car was completely turned over. The passenger side was horribly smashed. The whole front window was gone. His mother had been tossed straight through the windshield. Glass was all over her arms and her legs. Earl stumbled out and cried on the curb, drooling like some idiot boy.

Tony lit a Winston and sized up the damage. “What a waste of a Regal,” he said, blowing out his smoke. “Shoulda bought that bitch when I had the chance.”

And that's how Earl got Lil Steve's house. Everything his mama owned was all Earl's now, and there was talk going around that his big retarded daughter wasn't no real daughter at all.

It gnawed on Lil Steve awful to see Earl living in his house. It made all his insides bleed and feel raw. He struggled each day to not bash someone's head. To not pick something up and smash it back down. To just rip up something to shreds. He bit his own fist just to shift off the pain. But nothing made it go away. Sometimes he did shit to just mess with Earl's mind. He'd dump out their trash, spread it over the lawn, or let out the air in all of his tires, steal his rims or take off his gas cap. Sometimes he'd just pee on their grass. But whatever he did, Earl was always unfazed. When Lil Steve dumped the trash, Earl left the trash there. When his hubcaps were gone Earl didn't replace them, and he stuffed an old rag in his tank for a cap.

 

 

Lil Steve's only satisfaction came from cheating Tony out of his money. He used every card-playing trick to break Tony's bank. He hated his smug face and nicotine breath. How he dogged out Miss Dee and stole her club and her money. But nothing was worse than how Tony did his mother. Lil Steve knew some, but not the worst parts. If Tony hadn't given his mother her first drink, she'd still be alive. He could barely stand to look at him now.

“See, my man here will have five Gs on Friday,” Lil Steve went on coolly. After the bank job this Friday they'd have plenty of money. “We have an anonymous investor.” He smiled at that statement. They all did. Tony was listening. He didn't mind where folks got their Ben Franklins, as long as they could be recognized at the bank.

“We just want to place a little wager. Everybody saying Jones is going to take him in the seventh.”

“You can have Liston to win or Jones if he goes eight.” Tony took a small pad from his coat pocket, scribbled on it and tore the sheet off. “So where's the money at, boy?” Tony asked.

“We don't have access to all the funds now. We'll have it all to you by Friday.” Lil Steve glanced at Ray Ray and back at Tony again.

Tony took a long drag and smashed it out in the ashtray. He'd heard so much yin-yang about money, he could hardly keep track. He smiled at the young junior flips and stood up. “Yeah, well, until you get your investor together, don't come in here and waste my damn time.” He crumpled the paper and tossed it in the trash.

Big Percy came upstairs and followed Lil Steve down.

“You boys need anything else?” Tony asked, waiting.

“No, man, we cool. We'll be back.” Lil Steve nodded.

“What them fools want?” Percy asked Tony when they walked out.

“Just some young-ass bullshit. I don't know, hell. Probably be calling someone's mama tonight to bail their punk asses out.”

T
ony walked to the kitchen and spit in the sink. His buddies Earl and Stan were sitting at a card table in the living room. It was afternoon, when the club wasn't open yet; Tony liked to play cards at home with his friends.

“Probably serving that skinny nigga right now,” Earl yelled to Tony. Earl loved instigating shit.

He sneaked himself a quick shot of gin while Tony was in the kitchen and drank it down before Tony came back.

“Charles, you know that fool, the one who took Tony's woman. They say he owes Tony a whole bunch of money.” Stan snuck himself another quick shot too and poured more in the flask he kept inside his jacket.

Tony stumbled back into the living room, where the other two men sat at a tiny card table.

“I saw Flo,” Tony told his old drinking buddies.

Earl and Stan nodded their heads. They'd heard this sob story so many times, but they never complained. They always agreed with everything Tony said. The drinking was free, the ham sandwiches too. Shoot, he could talk as long as he liked.

“I will say this,” Tony said, blowing a long trail of smoke out his nose. “That girl knew her way around a kitchen, man. Nothing like these honeys today.”

“All young girls want to do is go out all the time, and the small ones can eat just as much as the big ones.” Earl eyed the pickle jar Stan was holding.

Stan filled his sandwich with thick slabs of meat, carefully layering the pickles on top.

“All womens is the same.” Earl made his voice go real high. “‘I'm not really hungry, I just wanna taste.'” He bit down and spoke with a mouth full of food. “Women'll sit there and wolf down a whole four-course meal and have the nerve to start eyeing yo' plate.”

“Damn straight,” Stan agreed, wiping his bread in the juice. “When the time come to cook it's some nasty-ass meat or some fake mashed potatoes, some canned peas and cheap Gallo wine.” Earl laughed so long that he choked.

“None of 'em like Flo.” Tony shook his head and studied the rug. “Flo could throw down in the bed and kitchen. Black-eyed peas, collard greens, pork chops or chicken . . .”

“. . . rum cake, peach cobbler or sweet potato pie,” Earl said.

“Coconut pralines and pone,” Stan added. They both knew the story by heart.

“You know it was one of them cakes she threw at me when I pushed her.”

“Yellow cake with thick chocolate frosting,” Earl said without looking up. He was licking the mustard off both of his hands. Tony told this story whenever he got drunk. Must have heard it nine hundred times.

“I came home late after that six-hour streak. You remember, Earl. I tore the place up. Nobody could touch me that night!”

“You were a firecracker, all right.” Earl poured them all another round.

“Won thirty-six hundred in two fuckin' hours. Bought the whole room a round, everybody had doubles, even that three-piece-suit nigga who lost.” Tony scratched his wide belly and looked at the ceiling. “Man, I was so happy. Been trying to bust that punk ass all week. You was there, Stan. You know I was rollin'.”

“You couldn't hit nothing but sevens.”

“I come home yelling, ‘Flo, look-a here, come here, gal. Look what yo' daddy done brung you.'”

“That's when you kissed her and fell flat on yo' ass.” Stan was trying real hard not to bust out and laugh. He bit down deep into his sandwich.

Tony drank two shots and shook his head back and forth.

“She hauls off and calls you an ol' sloppy drunk, didn't she?” Earl said, holding his smile underneath his hand.

“Shouldn't have said that,” Tony said sadly.

“It wasn't yo' fault. She shouldn't have called you that, man. Women need to learn how to give men respect.” Earl gulped his drink and belched loudly.

“Next thing I know, she started packing her clothes.” Tony almost cried, then wiped his face with a napkin.

“Um, um, um,” Earl said, barely listening to Tony. He was holding a knife and a new slice of bread. He spread some more mustard on it slowly.

“So she walks out the room, huh? Earl, it's your move, man.” Stan wanted him to play. He nudged Earl's elbow. Earl took his turn while Stan poured more liquor into Tony's empty glass, then he poured more into Earl's and his own.

“Man, I stormed toward her. I was so mad I wanted to rip off her clothes. I say, ‘Woman, you better talk to me, girl!' I grabbed her head and pushed it against the kitchen wall. ‘Don't you ever walk away from me, bitch.'”

“Called her a bitch, did ya?” Earl said it like it was the first time he'd heard it. He sucked on each finger and then moved his checker. “Boy, I bet she was mad.”

“‘Talk to me,' I screamed, but she stands there all quiet, just blinking her big eyes. ‘Talk to me dadgummit,'” Tony screamed again. He leaped from his seat and knocked over his glass. “She ran but I grabbed her and slammed her against the cabinets. All them damn glasses rattled like mad.”

Earl and Stan didn't look up anymore. Stan took a napkin and wiped up Tony's drink. There were only a few checkers left.

Tony was standing and twisting his napkin.

“‘Always quiet,' I yelled, ‘ass always out of whack. Speak up, I know you got something to say.'”

But Flo hadn't said nothing. She had looked at Tony with this sad, heartbreaking stare, like a hound you done whipped on too long.

“Your move,” Earl said quietly to Stan.

“So I grabs her neck. I try to make her talk,” Tony said, twisting the napkin inside both fists.

“She says ‘Stop, Tony. Stop, I can't breathe.' ”

“I bet she was breathing all that liquor on your breath,” Earl said, mocking.

“Sucking a mint woulda helped,” Stan added, smiling.

Tony's face was scowled up, like he smelled something burning.

“Nigga, we both know how you can go off.” Earl and Stan both laughed in Tony's pained face.

“Veins be all bulging out the side of his skull.” Stan grinned.

“Nigga looked just like Godzilla,” Earl said.

Tony swayed on his feet, both fists twisting his napkin.

“So I let go, but not without ripping her robe. I tore the thing off her. Ripped the whole thing to shreds.” Tony violently tore the napkin to bits. Greasy shreds fell to the floor. He slumped to his chair and downed his whole glass. “I should have treated her like royalty,” Tony said.

“Queen me.” Earl nudged Stan's hand.

Stan crowned the queen and put two fingers in the jar. He plopped a sliced pickle onto his tongue.

“Never bothered getting dressed. Flo just stood there, knifing the icing on slow. Oh, she had it so nice. I couldn't wait for it to be done. Nothing like having something warm from the oven, and Flo's yellow cakes with their thick chocolate frosting were the best I tasted in life.”

Earl put the checkers inside the can. Stan folded the worn board in half.

“We always made good love after a blowout. The girl was real good at that too.”

“Never saw that cake coming,” Earl said, shaking his head.

“No, I never did,” Tony answered back. “She must have thrown it straight from the kitchen. The glass pan hit the wall and crashed down my back. Cake bits splattered all over my shoulders; chocolate was all on the wall.

“She grabbed a big bottle of whiskey and busted it against the sink. ‘You put your hands on me for the last time, god damn it!' She held up the neck like it was a mallet.”

“Got her voice then, didn't she,” Stan said, getting his jacket.

“Oh, Flo got her voice—got her coat and her car keys too. Good thing, 'cause I probably would have killed her that night, the way I felt after that cake hit. She moved the next day. Cleared everything out. Next thing I knew, she had Charles.” Tony slumped his large body down to his chair. Just saying Charles's name made Tony sick.

“I'm going over there now!” Tony leaped to his feet and grabbed a gun from a drawer. “That fool better give me my money!”

Earl and Stan both held Tony back down.

“Don't be no chump. Right now he don't know nothin',” Earl said.

“Keep playin' him, man,” Stan added mildly. “Keep giving him chips, make him feel like he owes you. Percy'll do the dirty work for you.”

Tony struggled free, but he tossed the gun back in the drawer. His face was pure rage but he never said a word. He'd pretended this long to be Charles's friend. But he hated him, hated that cocky half-smile, hated that young, confident strut. He hated that Charles had Flo.

All Tony wanted was to get Flo to come back. He'd love to snatch Flo behind Charles's back.

Tony got up and spit in the sink.