Red Light Wives (14 page)

He grunted and took it from there.

“Rock-elle.” He said my name like it was two words. “Meet me tomorrow at Alfredo's at noon. Not one minute after noon, not one minute before noon.”

“How will I know you?” I asked. Carlene was standing right next to me with her ear close to the telephone. There was an anxious look on her face. She was breathing so hard, her dangerous titties had popped a button off her blouse.

Before Carlene gave me Clyde's telephone number, she'd confessed that he paid her a hefty finder's fee for each girl she sent his way. She'd also told me that she had scoped me out the minute she walked through the door.

“I'll be the best-lookin' man up in there,” he said with enough confidence for him and me both.

“Okay. But what do you look like?”

He laughed. “I'll be the only Black man up in there, sister.” He hung up before I could say another word.

I turned to Carlene and gasped. “He didn't even ask what I looked like.”

“So? Clyde knows I wouldn't send him no baboon!” Carlene hollered.

“But how will he know it's me when I get there,” I asked, feeling light-headed and apprehensive already.

“I'll be hookin' up with the brother later on tonight to cook him dinner. Brother loves him some down-home cookin'. He's been laid up,” Carlene said with her eyes watering. “Poor Clyde.”

“What's wrong with him?”

“He just got circumcised, so he's been a little testy,” Carlene explained.

“Huh?”

“He was born at home in some little hick town in big-foot country. Them dumb-ass midwives in Mississippi; they don't do nothin' but catch babies once they slide out.”

“Oh,” I mumbled, wondering what I was getting myself into, but not caring enough to run as fast as I could away from Carlene.

“Clyde knows he'll get a more honest description of you from me, than he would from you.” Carlene brushed my hair back off my face. “Now you go home and pick out a classy, clean outfit to wear when you go to meet Clyde tomorrow. Don't go there lookin' like you wanna sell pussy. The only time you goin' to act and look like a tramp is after you get with a trick. Come on, sister. Let's get a cab down to the financial district where I can buy you a real drink in a clean glass. And…so you can see the kinds of men you'll be dealin' with.”

I left the bar with Carlene's arm around my shoulder.

I met Clyde Brooks the next day, and was with him ever since. My bills were all paid up and I even had money in the bank, in a safe deposit box. Clyde had been good to me and for me.

The other girls were good to me, too, because they could feel me and I could feel them. I felt this Lula woman sitting on the couch next to me at Rosalee's place, and I didn't like what I felt. I told Clyde so as soon as I got him alone.

“She's going to bring trouble, Clyde. I just know it.”

“Well, you let me worry about Lula, and you worry about Rockelle. Do you hear me?” Clyde said, giving me one of his mean looks. “I can take care of Lula. Real good.”

“S
huck it! You know I don't like workin' no double dates with a girl I just met! You said it was goin' to be me and Rocky doin' that thing with them guys from that army base. Or me and Rosalee. Shit!”

Since the day I was born, me and Clyde had a real deep understanding between us. He was my homeboy, my man, and sometimes, my best friend. I could talk much trash to him any way I wanted, and I didn't have to worry none about him jacking me up. You show me another girl who can talk trash to her man the way I talk trash to Clyde, and I will show you a girl who's got a miserable relationship with her man. “What's the matter with you,
papi?
”

Clyde could turn his face to stone and stare at me like he could see clean through me. He could be sweet-talking me one minute and cussing at me the next. “Ester, please do me this one favor, baby. See the best—dammit! I ain't playin' with you, girl! Shit.”

“Clyde…go masturbate!”

Clyde held up his hands, bucked out his eyes the way he did when I took his gun from him and pointed it to his face. That Glock he carried was still in the waistband of his pants where it always was. He was just fucking with me.

He laughed a little and waved his hand at me. Clyde was not the kind of man I could get mad at and stay mad too long, no matter how much he pushed the wrong buttons on me.

“One day you gonna wake up and I will be gone, man,” I threatened. But he didn't even listen to that because he already knew better. Clyde always got his way with women, and I couldn't figure out how. Me, I had my own reasons for being in his corner, but other women had a hard time letting him down, too. He ain't no Denzel in the looks department, and he sure ain't no Romeo in the bedroom. That didn't stop him from always getting his way when it came to women. He just got it like that.

“Ester, baby, everything you do, you doin' for
us
, remember?” Clyde said, looking at me like I was the one with the problem. “I want you to go with Lula to pay Mr. Bob a visit.” Clyde stopped talking and sucked in a loud breath, slapping his hands on his hips. “My man's been askin' for two girls all week, and you know how tame he is once he gets drunk. Everybody in the business knows that Mr. Bob is the easiest trick in the world after he done had a few drinks. Even I could go out there to his pad and tickle his dick and he wouldn't know the difference.” Clyde covered his mouth, but a laugh squeezed out anyway. “He ain't goin' to give Lula no trouble, and that's the kind of trick she needs to get herself broke in! She ain't never done this kind of shit before…or so she says.”

“Clyde—”

“Baby, I need you to make sure Lula don't go up in that White man's house and get loose, act ignorant, clumsy, and countrified. I can't let nobody fuck up my reputation with my clients,” Clyde whined. “She ain't as sharp as you. And, she ain't as pretty.”

Clyde got a real strange look on his face after his comments about Lula, and I know why. I'm smarter than I look, see. He had probably been thinking the same thing about Lula that I been thinking. Was she for real? I mean, I know some dude killed her husband the other night when I was at the motel. I seen the whole damn thing go down through the window of that store, see. I even knew the shooter's name and where he lived, on account of me and him used to live with the same foster family at the same time. Whatever, whatever. Five-O got the goods on the dude anyway because he blabbed to his homies and then they blabbed. I didn't need to say nothing no way, not that I ever would have. Dude knew where I lived, too.

Oh well. I had to get my mind back on Lula. I believed everything else she had told me about her baby daddy playing her and then the baby dying. Now, I did believe that story Lula told me about her mother dying when she was a little girl and her mean stepmother she had to live with, too. But this Lula woman didn't just get out of diapers. She had been around this crazy world for a while. She had more years than my twenty-five. Shit. What seemed crazy was her saying she never done no tricks before and then, at her age, she slide right into the game like her booty been greased with butter.

“You think Lula smart enough to play me…us?”

“Heeeellllll no!” I hollered.

I almost choked on the toothpick I held been between my teeth. I still had on the trick clothes that got me the most attention: jeans ripped at the knee, a plain tight T-shirt, and sandals. My hair was parted down the middle of my head and in two braids with ribbons tied to the ends. Everybody said this kind of shit made me look like a teenager. A real young teenager at that, like around thirteen or fourteen. I never knew much, but one thing I'd known all my life was every straight man wanted to poke a real young girl at least once. I handled my business with men and it was a full-time job. I had to stay on top of shit if I wanted to get paid. I didn't need Clyde dumping more shit on me.

Clyde stood there looking at me. He was still holding the Benjamins I had greased his hand with as soon as he came through my door a few minutes earlier.

He shrugged and looked at the bills and frowned, like he was wishing the wad was thicker. He didn't say that, but I knew Clyde as good as Clyde knew Clyde. So I always knew what he was thinking. He knew me real good, too. So he knew how to respect and treat me to keep me happy.

“I know Mr. Bob is a easy trick, baby. That's why I'm sendin' Lula to him. I told her it would be like takin' candy from a baby.” Clyde followed me to my little kitchen, his arm around my shoulder. “Whether she done turned tricks before or not, she new to us. I can't turn no new girl loose on one of my best clients by herself. She fuck up and I'm fucked up.”

Without him asking me to, I poured Clyde a tall glass of orange juice into one of my best glasses. I drank my juice straight from the carton, batting my eyes at Clyde because the juice was so cold it made me shiver. It felt good going down my throat, though. Much better than some trick's slimy pecker. Since AIDS took the fun out of fucking, a lot of tricks didn't want straight intercourse. Not even with a condom. For some reason people thought they couldn't get AIDS from oral sex. Well, I got news for them. We got a homegirl, a White girl name Sherrie Armstrong, over at this clinic where AIDS people go to get attention. She caught AIDS from giving bareback blowjobs. The odd thing about that was, she caught it way before she started selling her stuff. She was from some rich-ass family over in Berkeley and studying at U.C. Berkeley. She was a real smart girl, but she done some dumb shit.

Anyway, our girl, Sherrie, she was the prettiest White girl you ever gonna see outside of the movies. Blond hair that didn't need no help from no dye bottle, big clear blue eyes, lips that should have been on a Black girl's mouth, and legs so long she used to straddle two tricks at the same time. Girlfriend used to be hella hot. Almost as hot as me. Once upon a time, you could stand her up next to that Michelle Pfeiffer, that movie star I seen in
Scarface
, and you couldn't tell one from the other.

Thinking about Sherrie made it easier for me to deal with Clyde. Just knowing how much luckier I was than her eased my anger.

Right after I swallowed my orange juice, I closed my mouth real tight and looked at Clyde. He was standing there looking at me like I just swallowed a rock. I didn't want to say nothing I would regret. Not with Clyde standing so close to me. I wiped my lips with the back of my hand and just nodded. I shook my head real hard so I could get my mind off Sherrie and back on Clyde, because thinking about Sherrie always made me sad.

Clyde put his hands on my shoulders and looked down at me, his eyes in mine, talking to me in his sweetest voice. “Baby, we can't take a chance on Lula goin' up in that White man's house alone and gettin' loose. For all we know that sister might go out there and knock Mr. Bob upside his head and steal everything he got. Then where would that leave us? Didn't I tell you that Mr. Bob told me you was his favorite girl?” Clyde blinked real hard, one eyebrow lifted and stayed up until he blinked some more. When he did that, I knew he was trying to play me.

“Look, Clyde,” I had to stop talking long enough to laugh, but just a little. Clyde was quick to tell anybody he wasn't no Eddie Murphy and didn't appreciate nobody laughing at him when he was trying to be serious. “Look, you know you can't pull that shit with me. Me and you go back to the beginnin'. You told Rosalee that Mr. Bob said the same thing about her last month.”

Clyde scratched the side of his head and rolled his eyes back in his head like he was trying to remember something. Then, still scratching his head, he looked at me. “Oh,” he mumbled. He let out a deep breath, looked at me real hard, and then put his hands in his pockets. When he did that, his jacket flew open and I seen the handle of his Glock sticking out of the waistband of his pants.

As long as I been knowing Clyde, he never had to use that gun. Well, just one time. One night we was walking down Army Street from a Salsa nightclub. Out of nowhere, a big rat—not some thug—but a real rat, came charging at us like a bull. Clyde let him have it. I seen people get killed before, but it was something I never got used to. Not even when it was a rat.

Rockelle told me that Clyde kept that gun in his pants near his crotch, the way some men put balled-up socks down there, so that when women in bars sit on his lap, they'll feel it and they'll think he's packing a big dick. Of course I told Clyde, and the next time he seen Rocky, he showed her his dick. She didn't say nothing else about what Clyde was packing in his pants. That's the kind of man Clyde was. He didn't have no shame, except when it came to his daughter or business.

Clyde seen me looking at his piece, so he looked down. He pushed that bad boy off to the side and buttoned himself up. Then he blinked at me and swiped his lips with his hand.

“You wanna finish tellin' me that lie?” I asked, glad I didn't have to look at that Glock no more.

“Well, I wasn't lyin'.” He pouted, looking straight-up guilty. “Mr. Bob did tell me that same thing about Rosalee, and I believe he meant it. See, last month, Rosie was Mr. Bob's favorite girl. This month, it's you.”

I let out some hot air and sucked on my teeth. “Shit, man. I was lookin' forward to trickin' with Rosalee or Rockelle tonight.”

“Baby, you'll be trickin' with Rosie and Rocky tomorrow or the next night. Tonight, Lula needs you.”

“All right. But after tonight, you owe me a big favor.” I shook my finger in Clyde's face, but that didn't stop him from smiling. “I want that cruise you been promisin' me.”

Clyde clapped his hands around mine, squeezing first, then kissing them. “Baby, I already got the tickets. This time next Saturday, me and you will be floatin' on the ocean outside of Mexico, smokin' some of the best dope they got down there. Remember them
hombres
from Cabo who we hooked up with in Mexico City last year? They got some good shit, and they know how to party. Who knows, we might even stumble across some of your kinfolks this time.”

 

Clyde knew where my buttons was and he knew when and how hard to push them. He would have kept at me for as long as he had to until he got his way.

Clyde wasn't just my man, he was family. Well, not by blood or even by marriage, but by other things. We go all the way back to the beginning of my life.

I didn't find out about myself and how I got where I am today until I was eleven. I had heard bits and pieces of my story, but it didn't all come out until I got with Clyde. I should say, got
back
with Clyde, on account of he was there for me from birth.

From what I'd heard, from what people told me, and from some old newspaper clips I seen, I found out all about the things in my sad past. Things that happened when I was too young to remember. See, Clyde was hella older than me, but I knew his story, too. He told me.

When Clyde was a teenager, he was always in trouble. It was the usual “boys will be boys” type of shit. He fucked up in school, beat up on kids, and broke into cars. He spent some time locked up in juvie and was always on some kind of probation. They made him go back to school and work part-time jobs after school and on weekends, so he wouldn't have too much time on his hands to be getting into trouble.

Clyde was being a real good boy. He came all the way from Oakland to San Francisco on the bus every Saturday morning to work at this Mexican restaurant in the Mission District. To break up the boredom, and to make a little extra spending money, him and one of his boys who worked at the same restaurant came up with a scheme.

Before they started working, they would shake down drunk men for just enough money to buy a good lunch and a bag of weed. To show he had a good heart for a thug, Clyde would only take what him and his boy needed, and they never, ever hurt these men. One time he told me that after they robbed one man, they walked him home so he wouldn't get jacked up by nobody else that morning. If one drunk man didn't have no money, they moved on to the next one. They did it while it was still too early for too many folks to be out walking around to witness something they shouldn't be seeing in the first place.

One morning Clyde and his homie followed a drunk old man to the alley behind the restaurant where they worked. They was only going to take him for enough money so they could go to the movies after work. Just before they caught up to the man, they heard some noise coming from the Dumpster behind the restaurant. Thinking it was the puppy he always wanted, Clyde peeped in that Dumpster and got the surprise of his life. He come to find out somebody had dumped a baby! Well, that baby was me.

Clyde fished me out and took off his shirt and wrapped me in it. I was almost dead, and the doctor that examined me said that maybe one more hour in that trash would have done me in. My grave would have been a Dumpster full of every kind of shit you can name if Clyde hadn't been out there to rob that drunk man.