Holy Death (3 page)

It took her another few seconds to realize she had been sleeping in the wet spot.

It made her giggle.

She sat up and let the sheet fall and walked over to the windows, arms stretched wide, yawning, not at all ashamed of her naked body. Not like anyone could see her this high up, the windows facing the beach, but even if they could, she wouldn’t have minded. She might have even enjoyed the attention. Maybe eight guys out of ten would look at her and cringe—the fat rolls, the cellulite, the sweat rash here and there—but those last two guys, they’d been all over her. And she knew she was good enough to get another two of those eight assholes to give it up.

Sexy was a state of mind. She’d learned a long time ago, watching how the black guys loved the curvy chicks, watching how the white guys would call her a pig, or a fucking whale, or make moped jokes, and she would sigh, shrug and tell them “Your loss.” And sure enough, a couple of them would find her later, in private, looking around nervously, wanting...
something
.

Melissa was no slut, though. She didn’t give it up for every high school boy who had given her corner-of-the-eye glances because she dared to wear short dresses, flip-flops, and heavy lipstick, a bit of the old 50s pin-up style that worked so well on larger women. No,
she
shamed
them
. Shamed them for having mocked her. Shamed them for thinking she was a vending machine. Shamed for not owning up to what it was making their cocks hard. Once they had apologized and groveled a little, she’d let them kiss her. She might rub her palm across the bulge in their jeans. It never took long. They didn’t make fun of her anymore, even if they didn’t stop their friends from doing it.

The one she lost her virginity to, he was the one who was not ashamed. Tall, truly and deeply black, with a French accent because he’d moved there from Haiti. All her rubbing did for him was make him grow larger, and larger, and she started to get worried. But what he did to her that afternoon, the second floor of the high school library while the final bell rang...yes, what she’d hoped it would be, not the disappointing stories of the skinny bitches with their jock boyfriends and the fumbling with the condom and the “I didn’t feel anything.” Fuck that. Melissa felt it. She felt it good.

Since then, a couple of lackluster semesters at Southern Miss between jobs at Waffle House and Lane Bryant and Wal Mart and then the truck stop. She’d figured out she wasn’t college material. She’d told her mom, and Mom had shrugged and said, “Only thing college gets you is a job you can’t turn off at quitting time.”

She’d dropped out of school, she’d partied some—booze, dope, but nothing harder. She took too much pride in her fat ass to turn into a meth zombie. And yeah, she’d hooked up with a couple of other black guys before, a few wiggers, and a couple of country boys, the current boyfriend one of those, stuck somewhere between kid and “great white hunter” or some shit. Constantly in a trucker cap with the word “ass” on it somewhere. Or worshipping those Duck guys with the beards. Playing video games. Spending too much money on a pick-up truck he never hauled anything in, especially not the deer he kept claiming he had
almost
bagged. Always almost. She should have known better. He was one of the ashamed ones. But Melissa was getting older, almost twenty-six, and she hadn’t found anything near enough to the way Phillipe had made her feel in high school.

That’s why she took a chance hitting on DeVaughn Rose. He had been sweet to her last night at the diner. He looked older, maybe close to forty, but he had it together. Money, manners, and class. The tequila he’d been pouring into his coffee was top-shelf. She had liked how long his legs were. Liked how he sat easy in the chair, knees wide, slumping just so, and his voice was just right, too. Rough but smooth, right? Deep but not Barry White.

Whatever. She’d made a play, expecting to be shot down because here she was in her diner clothes, stinking of grease and sweat, hair twisted up, and not a trace of make-up. Not even lipstick. Not even base. Zits on her chin, not to mention where else on her body. But even then, as she’d known since eighth grade, sexy was a state of mind. Instead of turning her down, he had handed her a twelve-dollar tip and asked, “You still want to give me that ride?”

While standing at the hotel windows, goosebumps rising on her arms and legs, her nipples growing hard in the chill, Melissa let her hand fall to the hair between her legs, fluffed it out. Crusty from his cum. At some point she had decided DeVaughn wouldn’t need a condom with her. She was on the pill, yeah, but still made the cowboy use ribbed Trojans. Same as every other man since Phillipe. She’d gotten lucky with him, no baby, but it had been a moment of weakness. If she ever felt anything even close again, maybe she’d let the weakness wash over her, but not sooner.

As soon as DeVaughn wrapped his arms around her, the decision was made.

After calling her boyfriend and telling her she wasn’t coming right home—“What you doing then?” “Going out.” “Like fuck you are.” “Well, I am.”—she had driven DeVaughn’s Cadillac down to Gulfport, half-hour to the south. He’d kept drinking straight from the tequila bottle, and offered her some. It was bright, sweet stuff. He wasn’t like any man she’d been with. He could
talk
, really converse. He asked lots of questions about her, listened to the answers. He’d been around and could talk to her about Harry Potter and New Orleans history and eighties music, Prince and LL Cool J. But he wasn’t into rap. His CD changer was full of blues and r&b, and he tried his best to teach her about it. This was the only bad part. Blues was boring. It wasn’t Melissa’s jam.

DeVaughn was all like, “You ain’t heard Black Joe Lewis before?” and “Robert Cray, Smokin’ Gun, baby. Listen to that,” and “This here’s Gary Clark, Jr., listen, listen.”

Yawn. But, okay. Seriously, after a while the grooves actually made her feel relaxed, and the tequila kept her warm. She didn’t mind he was wearing a tracksuit worth, what, several hundred bucks while she was in her diner-stained t-shirt and black pants. He made her not mind. Once they got down to the Coast, he told her to head towards Biloxi, then told her to pull up right to the front door of the Beau Rivage Casino. Let the valets handle the car. And they did, knew his name and everything. He held out his arm for Melissa and held his chin high and said, “Want to play some slots?”

The slots were fun, but not cause they won, cause they didn’t. He wasn’t worried about money. Fed in a couple of hundreds to last a while, then they kept on talking. She was telling him about the music that moved her, veering wildly between pop, hip-hop, and country, and about how she usually glammed up like a fifties rockabilly girl and how she really wanted to be a nurse or an x-ray tech because it was where all the money was. He laughed, said, “Girl, they just telling you that. Being happy is what makes you money, makes you
want
to go to work. Working for a paycheck, shit, there’s enough of that in the world already.”

“Are you telling me I shouldn’t work? Let a man take care of me?”

He squinted at her sideways. “Shit, I’m not Beaver Cleaver. What I mean is you find what you want, and you show the people who do it that you’re as good at it as they are. Even if you’re not yet, you make them think you are.”

She had no idea who Beaver Cleaver was. “How’s that?”

He shrugged. “Before I became the man I am now, I was a mess, don’t you know? I was a dumbass banger, but then I saw Phil Ivey on TV playing cards. Boy all Tiger Woods-looking, except knowing math and statistics and shit. I looked around my place, pretending I was some sort of gangsta. Shit, my brother had already got himself killed by a cop. I wasn’t up for it no more.”

“What, you play cards now?”

“Sure do.”

“Like, blackjack?”

“Texas Hold ’Em. Poker, baby.”

“And you’re actually good at it?”

Big smile. Good teeth, no grill, no gold. “You just drove how good I am. You just gambled how good I am. And, baby, you want to, we can go upstairs and I’ll show you how good I am.”

They had a few more drinks—Melissa loved daiquiris—and wasted away another hundred before she took him up on it, and they were all over each other in the elevator. But this wasn’t TV romance, no “fall into the room ripping each other’s clothes off” nonsense. He led her in, offered her some bottled water, showed her the view, and then sat on the edge of the bed. Told her, as he took off his own shirt, “Let’s take a good look at you.”

Here she was the next morning, standing naked in a hotel suite overlooking the blue-green Gulf, miles and miles, thinking about how much she liked it last night. She came, what, three, four times. Wore her out. Then when he came, it made her eyes go wide and made her bite her lip and made her forget about Phillipe.

Her fingers slipped a little lower, across her pussy, still wet. Getting wetter.

Confidence. It had always worked before. Seemed to be working now.

She heard her cell phone buzz. Looked around, found her pants on the armchair, and pulled her phone from her pocket. Seven missed calls, six from the boyfriend and one from Mom. She listened to that one: “Tell your son of a bitch to stop calling me. He’s pretty sure you’re cheating on him. You’ve got to lie better.”

Sigh. She texted the boyfriend.
Don’t call me no more. Get out of my apartment by five p.m. If you’re there at five oh one, I wouldn’t want to be you.

Dropped the phone back onto her pants, ignored the next buzz and walked across the room to the bathroom door.

There was DeVaughn, toothbrush in his mouth, shower running, steaming up everything, neck bent to hold his phone. “Uh huh. Uh huh. Uh...well, I don’t know. I’ll be there. Keep watching. Don’t do anything. Sure as fuck don’t fuck with him.” He saw her reflection in the mirror. He smiled. A good sign. She mouthed “Good morning.”

DeVaughn said, “I gotta let you go.” He hung up the phone.

Yeah, definitely working now.

*

D
eVaughn looked into the mirror and saw her standing there, stark naked with bedhead, and he thought,
Damn those eyes
. Something about them, he couldn’t look away. The way she looked at a man, like,
I want you
, and there wasn’t nothing the man could do but give in. And he was glad he did, because,
damn
.

Maybe because he was in a good mood. He’d finally done it. Finally seen Billy Lafitte with his own two eyes after all these years. So much had changed since then—this wasn’t the same Coast Katrina had hit, not by a long shot—but Lafitte’s name was never far from the front of his mind. If there was one person in life DeVaughn was sure enough going to kill, there he was. Last night, watching the man eat, watching him talk to Melissa like a normal person, watching him walk to the men’s room to see the message on the wall, it had put DeVaughn in a righteous mood.

And this waitress, she’d been giving him the eye. Pretty eyes. Hazel. She was one of those women that had a small head and a wide body. A man might look once or twice, and maybe if that man was drunk or lonely, sure. She wasn’t
ugly
, not one ounce. Just, you know, the situation. Greasy, stanky, some pimples on there, pimples on her ass, but, goddamn, she was
nice
. She could speak without speaking, you know?

So yeah, he took a chance while he was in a good mood, and the next morning he was still feeling good. Good God, man, the girl could
fuck
. Drained him dry. By the time they were done, both were sweating like they’d run a race, and they were laughing cause it was some funny shit. She draped her arm and leg across him, and he didn’t mind it at all.

He got up, made some coffee, and watched her sleep. Girl had a husky snore on her, but that was okay, too. Something about her, he couldn’t put his finger on it. No need to kick her out right away. They could go get some breakfast. Treat her to Waffle House. Maybe even go buy her a couple dresses from the Lane Bryant, see what she was like dolled up. It wasn’t as if Lafitte was going to slip the net now.

His phone rang—a Little Richard yelp—and he fumbled it, went to the bathroom. No need to wake her. So he answered it in there, quiet.

Lo-Wider said, “We getting tired, man. He still ain’t up.”

“Y’all didn’t take shifts?”

“Shifts? You didn’t say nothing about shifts. We powered through on Pimp Juice.”

“Shit nasty.”

“It’s not so bad, you add the Three Olives whipped-cream, man.”

“And you wonder why you’re tired.”

“I’m only
sayin.
You coming or not? Or we got to bring him to you?”

“It ain’t like that. We still need to follow him. I know where he’s going, I just don’t know
when
.”

“Then you need to tell Crocker or Shack to take over.”

“Alright, alright, I’ll holler at them.” DeVaughn reached into the glassed-in shower, separate from the bath, and turned on the heat, wide-open, with a little cold. The steam billowed out, fogged the mirror. “But don’t let Motherfucker leave your sight. You stay your ass awake until they get there.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“Now you talking shit.”

DeVaughn thought he heard something behind him. He looked in the fogged mirror, saw Melissa standing there, arm raised, braced on the doorframe. Hip cocked. The smell of her spread all over the bathroom, and those eyes were bright and wide.

“Rider, I gotta let you go.”

“You
better
get Shack down here before I start snoring.”

DeVaughn ended the call and set the phone on the vanity. “Morning, baby.”

“Nice room.”

“Yeah, they comp me here.”

“I thought you might need some company.” Eyes flicked towards the shower.

He could already feel himself getting thick. Damn, what sort of potion had she slipped into his coffee last night? No, he knew what it was. It was
confidence
. Some women made up for what they lacked in the beauty department with pure gumption. But this one, she was one-hundred-percent
damn damn damn
. He nodded his chin toward the shower. She teethed her bottom lip and stepped over, opened the door and slid inside. She held her head back in the stream and moaned nice and easy.