God Ain't Blind (2 page)

“Happily married, my ass.” She guffawed. “You show me a happily married woman, and I will show you a woman who has at least one spare. And I don’t mean a spare tire.”

“I’m glad most people don’t think that,” I shot back. “That’s one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard you say. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

“If you are so happily married, why are we sittin’ in this motel parkin’ lot, havin’ this conversation? Why did you ask me to lie to your husband about where you were goin’ tonight? Is that what you call bein’ happily married?”

“You know what I mean. Having an affair could ruin my life.”

“I’m married, too! I’ve been havin’ an affair with my husband’s 8

Mary Monroe

best friend for almost twenty years. Do I look ruined? And for the record, I am about as happily married as a woman can be.”

“I should go back home before it’s too late.”

“Look, Annette, if you’ve come this far, it’s already too late. Now stop actin’ like this is your first day of kindergarten. Get a grip.

You’ve got four hours to play with. And from the looks of that young stud, you’re goin’ to need every last minute of those four hours to satisfy him. Shit!” Rhoda laughed as she looked in the rearview mirror to check her makeup and hair, something she’d do even on her way to her execution. “I hope you douched with some vanilla extract, like I told you. I noticed his tongue, and it’s long enough to make a woman very happy. He sure seems like the type who likes to do a little
grazin’ in the grass.
And he should. As a matter of fact, I haven’t seen a tongue that length since I saw
Godzilla.
” Rhoda laughed some more.

I didn’t like the fact that she was getting such a kick out of this.

Now I really was sorry that I had ever told her about Louis and the fact that he’d been trying to get into my panties for weeks, tongue and all.

“You’re making me nervous, Rhoda.”

“You’re not nervous. We’re both way too old to be gettin’ nervous about fuckin’. You’re just confused.” Not looking away from the mirror, she fished a Kleenex tissue from the beaded purse in her lap and blotted her plum-colored lipstick. “This is just, uh, jit-ters. But you’ll get used to that. I did.” She paused and gave me a thoughtful look, then a quick but weak smile. “I am so happy for you. You’re finally goin’ to get what you need after sufferin’ for so long.”

“I am not suffering,” I protested.

“Whatever you say,” she said with a sigh, balling the tissue and tossing it into a litter bag hanging from the dashboard. “I don’t know how you’ve managed to last this long without mountin’ the pizza delivery guy and humpin’ the hell out of him. Almost a whole damn year without some dick is not normal!”

“It is for some people,” I insisted. “And what’s so bad about going without sex for a year, anyway? Some women go their whole lives without it.”

Rhoda nodded. “They are called nuns, invalids, and freaks. Of GOD AIN’ T BLIND

9

which you are neither. Or we wouldn’t be sittin’ here.” Rhoda glanced at her watch, then gave me an exasperated look. “I’m too through.

Are you goin’ into that motel room or what?” She started her motor and adjusted her rearview mirror.

“I’m going,” I said quickly, opening the door on my side.

“I’ll pick you up around eleven fifteen. I want to be home in time to watch at least part of
Jay Leno
!”

The woman who had been my best friend for most of my life gave me a hearty push with her hand. I practically slid out of the front passenger seat of her SUV and onto the ground, landing on my feet like a panther. She sped off before I could even catch my breath.

Despite all the shit that Rhoda had said, I couldn’t determine what she
really
thought. And I couldn’t understand how she could pressure me into having an affair and still grin in my husband’s face. This was one of the few times that I wished they were not friends. But no matter what she thought or said, this was my call. I wanted to have an affair with Louis Baines. It was nothing for me to be proud of, but I had to pat myself on the back for attracting such a young, handsome brother in the first place. And he was the one who had come on like gangbusters, not me. That was something that had rarely happened to me, even when I was young.

My marriage had become a stale joke. My husband had already put me out to pasture, like I was a Guernsey cow that he had milked bone dry. Louis had come to my rescue just in time. His actions had done wonders for my ego. At least that was what I kept telling myself. But before Louis entered my life, I had almost convinced myself that my sex life was over at the age of forty-six.

I looked around the parking lot some more. Summer was just around the corner, so the weather was nice. But the wind was howling in a way that made me even more nervous. This was a rough neighborhood, so nosy acquaintances were not the only people I had to be concerned about. A couple of months ago somebody had attacked a man from behind and robbed him in the same parking lot that I was in now. A few weeks before that, somebody had dragged a woman between two cars parked behind the motel, sexually assaulted her, and taken off with her purse and jewelry.

I coughed and tightened my grip on my purse. One thing I had 10

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learned from growing up around rough people was that it was stupid to look too prosperous. The woman who had been raped and robbed had had the nerve to come to this neighborhood in a fur jacket, wearing diamonds on everything but her toes. She had to be either stone crazy or suicidal, because that was like waving a piece of raw meat in front of a wolf. I was sorry about what had happened to that woman. But like everybody else, I felt that she should have known better. I had some very expensive clothes and jewelry, which I never wore to this part of town. I rarely carried much money or more than two or three credit cards in my purse in this neighborhood, or anywhere else. I had a large can of Mace in my purse, which I prayed I would never have to use. The air was foul. It reeked of gasoline and oil, dust, and despair. I sucked in some of that air, anyway. Then I looked around and checked my surroundings one more time.

At night when the Do Drop Inn sign was turned on, some of its letters blinked on and off; some didn’t light up at all. And if that wasn’t tacky enough, the molelike Pakistani man who owned this motel had had it painted pink last year and had propped up some plastic flamingos in front of the entrance. There was a truck stop a block away. Tired hookers brought their tired truck driver tricks to this motel.

A huge buckeye tree loomed over the building like a gigantic umbrella. In the fall, the buckeye nuts fell off the tree and covered the motel roof like brown rocks. I knew about the buckeyes because my mother used to clean the rooms in this dump thirty years ago, and I used to help her.

Louis had told me that he’d be in room 108 and had warned me that he’d already be naked. “I just hope you can handle this dragon in my pants, baby,” he’d also said. “I’ve got something that has made some women weep from joy and others weep from pain.” You would have thought that he had a footlong brick between his legs, the way he was talking. But I knew better.

“I hope I can handle it, too,” I’d replied, rolling my eyes. I didn’t know why Louis, or any other man for that matter, felt the need to brag about the size of his dick. As a former prostitute, I was pretty sure that I’d seen it all when it came to sex. For one thing, there was probably nothing left that could surprise or scare me. I didn’t GOD AIN’ T BLIND

11

think that there was anything that could top the trick that had a two-headed dick, which I’d encountered one rainy night. But Louis didn’t need to know all that, though. As a matter of fact, he already knew more about me than I wanted him to know.

The way I was dragging my feet, you would have thought that I was on my way to a job I despised. I was glad that the room was on the other side of the motel, so I’d have a few more minutes to compose myself. However, before I could do that, a pay phone on the corner in front of the motel caught my attention. Before I knew it, I was rooting through my purse for some loose change so I could make a call.

“Hello,” my husband answered on the tenth ring. Even though one of the four telephones in our house was never more than a few feet out of his reach, he always took his time answering one when it rang. This was just one of the things he did that had irritated me for years.

“Hi, baby,” I began.

“Who is this?”

I gasped so hard, I almost dropped my purse. I couldn’t respond right away.

“Hello? Who is this callin’?” Pee Wee asked, sounding truly annoyed.

“I want you to tell me how many women call you up and address you as baby, fool,” I demanded, anger rumbling inside me like gas.

I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do with that husband of mine! No wonder I was about to have an affair.

C H A P T E R 3

“After all the years that we’ve known each other, don’t you know your own wife’s voice by now?” I snarled. This was not the first time that my husband had not recognized my voice on the opposite end of a telephone in the last few years. I usually gave him the benefit of the doubt, because I wasn’t as sharp as I used to be, either. But this time it angered me. In a strange way I was glad. It made it that much easier for me to justify the reason I had come to the Do Drop Inn.

“Oh, it’s
you.
Hi, baby. Where you at?”

“Uh, I’m with Rhoda on our way to the bowling alley. I joined her bowling team, and I’ll be bowling with them every Thursday night, starting tonight. Don’t you remember? We’ve discussed it several times. Even this morning.”

“We did? Hmm.”

“We did, Pee Wee.” The more I talked to this man, the more his credibility plummeted.

“Oh! If you say so, we must have. I sure enough don’t remember nothin’ about givin’ you permission to join no bowlin’ team.”

Permission?
Oh, he must have been entertaining a death wish. Had he said something like that to my face, I wouldn’t have been responsible for my actions.

“Look, goddammit, I don’t need permission from you or any-GOD AIN’ T BLIND

13

body else to do a damn thing,” I hollered. “My damn daddy lives across town, and I don’t even ask his permission to do what I want to do.”

“Hold your horses now, baby. You know I’m just talkin’ off the top of my head. I didn’t mean no harm. You don’t have to be gettin’ all loud and ghetto on me. Did you take your pill today?”

“What damn pill?”

“Them change-of-life pills I heard you and Rhoda talkin’ about the other day.”

“I think we need to end this conversation immediately, if not sooner,” I suggested.

“That’s a good idea. I can see that you ain’t in no good mood.”

“All right. Like I just said, I am going bowling with Rhoda and her bowling team tonight. I will see you around eleven or eleven thirty. Understand?”

“What’s there to understand? I ain’t no dummy. You goin’ bowlin’

with your girls. I understand that.”

“I’ll see you when I get home, Pee Wee,” I huffed.

“Listen, if you ain’t too mad or too tired when you finish bowlin’, would you stop by Al’s Rib Shack on Patterson Street on your way home and bring me some ribs and coleslaw? And tell them stingy Negroes not to be so scarce with that slaw.”

“Is that all you’ve got to say?”

“Have Al throw in a few pieces of chicken, too. All wings. I keep tellin’ you and him that I do not like nothin’ on a chicken but the wings.”

“That’s not what I meant,” I complained.

“Huh? Then what did you mean?”

“Nothing,” I said in a tired voice. I took a deep breath and continued. This time my voice was full of vigor. “I might go with the girls to have a few drinks after bowling. And I’m not asking for your permission. I’m just letting you know in case you need me to come straight home for something else.”

“As long as you drop off my order from Al’s first, you can do whatever the hell you want to do.”

“Don’t worry about that. I will make sure you get everything you got coming,” I quipped. The sarcasm was lost on my husband. Just like so many other things lately.

14

Mary Monroe

“And another thing, get me some
mild
sauce. As long as we been together, you ought to know better by now. I only like mild sauce.

Last week, when you came steppin’ up in here with that hot-ass sauce, it danced through my bowels like James Brown. And every time I peed, my dick felt like I’d struck a match to it. I was useless for days.”

Useless was right. As far as I was concerned, my husband’s dick was the most useless appendage on his body these days. No matter what I did, he didn’t want to do it with me. I ate and slept alone most of the time. And even when we were in the house at the same time, it seemed like I was alone. It saddened me to know that after ten years of an almost perfect marriage, it had come to this: my husband was no longer attracted to me. Well, he didn’t have to be now! There was a handsome young man waiting on me in room 108, with a dick that had my name on it.

“I’ll see you when I get home,” I said in a weak voice, knowing now what I had to do if I wanted to hold on to my sanity.

“You’ve been lookin’ and actin’ mighty gloomy these days. So you need to go knock yourself out, baby. You need to go have some fun. Y’all go drinkin’ after you leave that bowlin’ alley and have at least one on me.”

“Oh, you can count on that,” I said with a smirk. I hung up so hard and fast that the coins I had dropped into the slot dropped into the hamper. I sniffed as I scooped them out and dropped them back into my coin purse. Then I marched back across the motel parking lot, itching to get my hands on the hard, young body reserved for me in room 108.

Louis must have been peeping out of the window, because he opened the door just as I was about to knock. “Hey, baby. It’s so good to see you. Girl, every time I look at you, I get an instant hard-on.”

I was taken aback by his comments, but I tried not to show it. I was so cool and calm, you would have thought that handsome men said things like that to me every day. The truth of the matter was, Louis was the
first
man to be this bold and frisky with me. “Thank you,” I managed. “I needed to hear something like that, Louis.”