Smoke and Mirrors Issue 2 - When You Ain't Here the Circus Ain't Fun
When You Ain't Here the Circus Ain't Fun
by Franchot Lewis
"Yo, Wanda?" He called from the other side of the park. She turned. She looked, taking care not to lose her place in the Book. She placed her finger on the word where she had stopped. She looked again. The blurred shape of his face formed. He was not in range. She sighed. She wished he would walk faster. She hoped he would learn to come on time. She mumbled to herself, "Why should he?" He knew that she would wait.
His features formed slowly. Her eyes went back and forth, from him and to the Book. He took small steps. She mumbled, he was waiting for her to get up and jump. He was her favorite one. She mumbled, she would go anyplace with him, and even in a room where he had broken wind - providing he had cracked open a window, enough for a breeze.
She saw him now. He brushed his hand across his crotch. The heat of the summer-like day was shrinking the cotton of his slacks. He smiled at her, as she squinted her eyes to see him. "Where are your glasses?"
She squinted more. He shook his head, "Stop peeping at me like that." He took her glasses from the purse in her lap. "Put them on, four-eyes," he said.
She glanced away from him, and at the Book in her lap, then she looked back, and when she did her eyes glared. They went through the puffy whites of his eyes and the red that seemed to have drifted to the side. She smiled when she realized, he was teasing and asking her to laugh.
"How dare you call me four eyes?" she said. "Imagine how I would look with four eyes? I would have one in my forehead, the other extra one in my ear."
He quickly bent forward and kissed her cheek. She frowned again. The stubble of his beard scratched her, and she remembered him bearded, with hair growing wild around his face, and her hair, bunched up, and in dread-lock rolls like his, and growing down to the top of their backsides. She wanted no more hair like that, or of them in their little hut house, the one room, and the shared bath down the hall. He shaved, kept his hair short, and she kept hers shoulder length and combed, but for some reason, he had not gotten all the hairy stubs. To her, for a moment, they looked the same as the thick beard that grew when he and she lived gross.
He sighed. He said, "I can't think of anything that could make me happier now."
She pulled back. He took her face in his hand and gazed as if considering kissing her again, then he heard her complaining, "You didn't shave?"
"Man, I did," he answered.
She pulled free, gently, and smiled softly, blushed. If she was not careful, then she would be right back in a grungy room. She knew why he was there, though he was late.
II
She awoke. She saw her Daddy's eyes, his hawk face glaring. His gruff voice has caused her head to buzz like a swarm of wasps had stung her. She sat on the bed, shaking from remembering while she slept what her father had told her about junk. "I don't mess with that bad ass stuff anymore," he said. "Not this hard head, no way. When I got off the stuff, back then, in the not enlightened times, when nobody shed a tear over a fool. The way they got you off of stuff was to put you in a straight jacket and lock you in a cell. And they let you scream. I remember how I screamed - and everyone of the giant spiders that crawled out on me - and the gorillas, grabbing my bounded arms, and my legs, biting them."
"Ugh,"she groaned at the crumbs and the trash in the bed, the residue from the box of cookies he had eaten. She mumbled, "He's making roaches." He always left crumbs on the bed and floor. She knew the crumbs would draw more roaches. "Gawd!" she cried. He wet the middle of the bed with sticky glop. "What is that?" Chocolate syrup. She wondered what had he been doing? "Shit, this place stinks," she said. The smells of the sheet, the sweat and syrup, the sex and the feet were almost as bad as that of the dead mouse, she found under the bed the previous week. She had almost died. She only stayed in the room because the manager promised that professional exterminators had been killing the mice, and he gave them a night's free rent. The smells of the sheet on the bed made her almost barf, but she could not barf. She had nothing on her stomach. She coughed up spit, and placed her hands over her mouth to prevent the spit from running. Still, some spit dripped from her fingers and on the sheet. She flung herself up from the bed and wobbled on her legs as she tried to stand, then she leaned against a chair.
Four pages - one a summons, one a warning, one a notice, the other with the numbers of her lawyer and of her mother - lay on the night stand. These were important papers dealing with her court dates. She glanced at his paper - one raggedly, wrinkled sheet, with many stains, soiled like a mat on which a barnyard rooster had stood. The paper lay on the floor where he left it. Pieces torn from the paper, as though a rooster pecked and tore the paper - All over the paper, numbers and letters were written as though the rooster had scratch them there.
"Hey," she called to him. She reached for the paper, her legs were still wobbling. She mumbled. "His paper probably's too ruin to touch." She left it. "Do you know your court date?" she yelled.
The door to their room opened and he walked in, "What you yelling about?" His hair was wet. He wore a robe. He had showered.
"Oh? You were out there?" She spoke in a trembling, loud whine.
"If I were you, I would get to the shower while it's empty, before the rock stars wake up, and the hot water's gone."
"We're out our minds," she whined. "What are we doing here? On this floor are the rock stars, on the top floor, the winos."
"You want me to help you in the shower?" he asked.
"No."
"You better put some speed on the rump," he said. He slapped her on the butt.
"Darn, don't hit me," she said.
"Don't be flaky," he said. "I don't hit you, that was a sexy slap on the butt."
"I've got to get something solid on my stomach before I throw up."
"Don't you want to shower first?"
"Where are the crackers?"
"Gone."
"Food disappears when you are around, don't it?"
"Do you want me to run and get you something?"
"No, if it's not too much bother."
"What do you want?"
"Food."
"Let me get dress."
She dropped into a chair and waited. He dressed and went out for food. The room was quiet, except her head buzzed. Loud people in the hall, on the floor above, in the street outside her window, kept making noise. She cursed. The noise did not stop for a blessed moment. She mumbled, why had she followed him to this rat and roach hotel?
III
"What would Mama say about him? Daddy would hate him. He reminds Daddy's little girl of Daddy ..." she whispered and mooed softly, as she lazily rolled her tongue up his sleeping face, pouring gross amounts of love that she long held, stored for her prince. She stopped at his lips. Her tongue pushed opened his mouth. She showered her love on his two chipped teeth. "I've got bowls and bowls of good stuff for you," she cooed in his ear. "If you wake up now, you will think you've got yourself one flaky woman."
She met him on the bus while she dropped sixty pennies, one penny after another, into the fare box. The fare was one dollar. She held up the line for two long minutes. The bus driver became angry. He growled, "Lady!"
"What?"
"There are people who want to get on this bus, some of them are on their way to work, others are on their way home to their children."
She barked back, "I'm paying my damn fare."
"Humf!" the bus driver grunted.
At sixty pennies, she stopped, waited. The driver gave her a hard stare. After a moment, she sneered, "Now who's holding up the bus? Give me my damn transfer."
"Put the rest of the fare in, lady."
"Say what? You've got the fare from me, a solid dollar in pennies."
"Look, this bus is going to sit here, and these people are going to get mad at you until you put the rest of the fare in the box."
"I've put a solid dollar in. You want me to open up that damn box and count out all of those pennies for you, again?"
"Look, lady, bring your head around here and look down there. See that? It's something new, an electronic coin register. Metro is concerned about passengers being short with the fare. This here registers the amount that people drop in the box."
She looked. On the back of the fare box was a digital dial showing the number sixty in red light. "It must be broken," she said.
"Lady, put the rest of the fare in or get off the bus."
"I've given Metro all I've got," she said.
"Lady, get off the bus."
"Bertha," he called. He was waiting to get on the bus. Three people were ahead of him. "Girl, what you doing getting ahead of me? I told you, I've got the damn transfers. What you doing paying that man for? God in Heavens knows we can't have the same mother. Let me get up there." He pushed his away passed the three people ahead of him. He climbed the steps and pushed her away. "Bus driver, our mama dropped her when she was a baby and she ain't been right since." He stopped and glared as she rolled her eyes at him. He pushed her. "Girl, get back there and get a seat."
"What?"
"Get back there."
As she sneered, he turned to the bus driver. "She's retarded. Here are our transfers."
The driver nodded, "Thank you."
"C'mon, Sis."
She kept sneering as he walked toward the seat across the back of the bus.
"Lady will you take a seat and let the other people on the bus?" the driver asked.
From the back of the bus, he whistled, "Sis," and smiled. She went to him.
"Who in the hell are you?"
He put his finger to his lips and whispered the word hushed.
"Fool, who are you?"
"Sit, Sis," he grinned. "You're on the bus, right?"
She pouted, "Will you answer me? Who in the hell are you?"
He smiled.
Her prince, that is whom he was. She looked toward him and smiled as she lifted a half pint carton of milk to her lips.
"You like to drink milk, don't you? " he asked, displaying his elastic grin.
She held the carton from her lips, showing the white circle on her mouth. "Don't you wish it was you drinking milk from my titties?"
He laughed, "Yeah, why not?"
She finished, discarded the carton in the waste can, and she belched.
"Full?" he asked, grinning again.
She shrugged her shoulders. "I'm full of fast food."
"Fine, get your shower and we're going out."
"I stink?" she frowned.
"Yeah."
She smiled, "I supposed I do. But, let me sit here for a moment. I suppose, I might need you to help me - to scrub my back and to help me lather up."
She waited for a moment, until she felt steady enough to stand on her legs. She leaned on his shoulders and giggled girlishly, as he took her two hands in his and cradle her chin. She brought her hips up close to his. Her breasts pulsed, as she felt the heat in him, surging like something liquid. "Don't I smell?" she asked.
"I can't notice," he said.
"Why did you bring me steak-in-cheese when you know I don't like cheese steak?"
"You needed something solid on your stomach."
"Where are we going after I shower? Out to get something more to eat?"
"No, I thought -"
She stopped his mouth with her lips. His body shuddered. He pulled her tight, with one hard move, then he relaxed, accepting what his nose was telling him, that she needed to shower.
"Let us go to Trios?" she said.
"The Restaurant?"
She giggled.
No, I don't think so," he said.
She remembered Trios as an early experience in their relationship. The day was warm - blue skies and bright sunshine- a perfect day for lunching in the sidewalk cafe. The food was fresh and good. They ate a big meal, double helpings of everything, and two desserts. The waitress was nice, a foreign girl from Tanzania who was going to school. They were both nice to her until the check came.
"Leave the rest of the dessert," he whispered. "Don't stuff too much, remember you've got to run."
"It has an almost light taste, I never had cake like this," she said too loud, her eyes trying to focus on the morsels still inside her spoon.
He put the green colored check under the empty red wine bottle on the pastel colored plastic table cloth. He took a napkin scratched a note, begging the waitress pardon, and he placed the note under the empty bread basket. He breathed in once, then twice, and waited until the waitress had gone inside for another patron's order. He whispered, "C'mon, now, babe, time to split."
They were both tall, with long legs and could run. "Trios has fat people working in the restaurant," he had told her to get her to join him for lunch at Trios. "The food is good. You can tell by the fat people working there. They got fat on the food. They are good cooks, but no good at chasing customers who walk out without paying, and customers like us who are going to split and run. Those fat people will get a heart attack if they try to chase us. They'll get heart attacks and die. They're all middle age anyway. The youngest one is thirty, and he's fatter than a hog."
"C'mon, babe," he said, as she wiped her hand on the table cloth.
She heard a scream. The waitress returned and suddenly realized the two of them were running out on the check.
"Stop! Stop!" the waitress screamed. " Help! The manager is going to dock me. Stop!"
"C'mon, babe!" She was running. She felt her breasts swelling, jiggling, as though she was not wearing a bra. Carefully, she picked up her feet and ran, as the waitress behind her howled. She placed her feet down faster and faster in front of herself, as she raced to cover the ground between herself and his bouncing butt, and his both of his thumping legs. He had the point, pushing people aside, opening a path for her to run. Her dress whipped up as she ran, exposing her thighs. She usually was careful of how she looked, making sure she covered her self. Now, she did not care how much her dress showed.
The waitress, the cooks and the others in the restaurant never came close to catching them, and nobody along the escape route tried to stop them.
As she walked with him to the hall bathroom to shower, she reminded herself of the incident's thrill. She smiled warmly at him. They were younger and invulnerable, and running was not as painful. After lunch at Trios, he took her to his apartment. It had a sitting room, and a bed, and a bath of its own. They fell into bed, she on him. She grinning in his face.
She looked at him now with a look of appreciation. He had her stripped. He and her were in shower. He lathered both of their naked bodies.
Somewhere along the line they had found their way into a rat hole. Rent had to be paid on the apartment, and the rent money went to the newest thrill he showed her, the injection of the juice delivered by the crack man. The landlord booted them out of the apartment.
She was not dwelling on the lost of their private bath. She was shrieking. He was on her back with his tongue. She swore, she felt a telephone pole somewhere on her back. She howled and sent both of them flying to the shower floor, giggling.
IV
A week later, they were in the hotel bed. She had cleaned the room a little. He told her, he had a couple of dollars for food, and a couple of dollars was all the cash he had. She winced when he told her of his plan to get some cash by robbing a store.
"Ain't got no money, we need some cheese," he said. She did not like his plan or the sound he made as he explained it. He spoke in sputters, in a voice, strained and hoarse. "Gotta get some cheese," he croaked like a frog. He cocked his head. "Think I'm breaking wind, talking through my ass?"
She stumbled from the bed, opened the night stand's drawer removed her four papers, and the raggedly one, his.
She said, "Don't need no more beefs, gotta speak to these first, Babe."
He looked grim. "Hello?" he said. "No, you don't have the wrong number. There's no one here named 'Kennedy' or 'Rich Heiress.' Either we get the cheese to pay the lawyer or that rat is gonna dump us on the tender mercies of the merciless. We'll be locked down in a hole until our short hairs turn white."
"No."
"If you're scared, say you're scared."
"I'm scared," she said.
"Ain't that terrible? Obviously, you think I don't know what I'm doing? I know what I'm doing. That is why I don't worry about what I'm doing."
"Man?" she said.
"Put those papers down. They scare you with them. I don't look at such things when I plan."
"Man, how are you going to rob a store?"
"With a plan, a gun and a ... backup lady."
"No," she said.
"Look at yourself," he said. "Every morning, we wake up about this time, and every morning, I get out a ten spot and you tuck it in your hot little jeans, and you run out, if I haven't already run out for you, and you get a little piece of the rock. You never say no then. You never can wait to say yes. You need that little piece of rock, Man, like I need cheese. I ain't got no more cheese to get you those rocks, Man. You're hungry for it like you're hungry for me. I need cheese, Man. I need you to back me up."
Then, she shook her head and softly said, "Oh, shit."
He whistled and grinned.
She remembers, something from high school, "Once more unto the breech dear friends. Once more unto the breech."
V
She screamed, "Hallelujah! My Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!" From the back of the hall, she opened her mouth and let out another scream. The scream came deep down from her stomach. She had screamed like that only once before, when early in her relationship with her lover, she wrapped herself in him, while he thrust in her, deeply, showing his love. Jesus was in her now. She felt Jesus deep, moving in her. Every head in the hall turned to her. The preacher lady laughed and clapped her hands. The other women, except one, joined in the clapping. This one person stood in the back of the room, and watched the ladies' assembly. This one chuckled to herself, when her intended silent laughter got too loud, this person coughed, and then began to clap with the others.
The guard was clapping, the preacher lady was clapping, everybody was clapping. The clapping got louder. She knew what it meant. Soon she would have to stand, let her emotions burst, and testify. Fifty of her fellow prisoners by their thunderous applause urged her to stand.
She fretted. Her mind filled with thoughts, rolling all the scenes of her deeds and misdeeds that her conscious credited had merited her being there.
He had robbed a store, and she was with him. They got caught. The detective said, they were such bad robbers, they were asking to get caught. She did not remember much of the robbery. He had let her get a toot. She needed courage. She was geeking. Her legs wobbled. She spoke fast, sounding like a bird who chirps. She needed the stuff to stay on her feet.
After the police arrested her this time, her mother took charge, got her a legal aid lawyer. Her mother fussed like fussing was something a mother must do. "He is no good for you. How many times have I told you that? Look at yourself and think about where you are, and who you are. Did I raise a child to be a fool?" Her mother and her lawyer insisted that the court separate her trial from his. He entered a plea of innocence. Her mother and her lawyer got her to confess. The judge gave her only a quarter of the time he could have given for the crime.
The court released her lover on personal bond pending his trial. He came to visit her in jail, asked if there was anything he could get her. "No, nothing," she said. She asked him how he was getting along. He said he would be sweating until the trial. "Gotta get some money for my lawyer," he said. "I had a legal aid lawyer," she said. "Yeah," he said. "And you're in here." She said, "But, we did wrong." He said, "Yeah, but we can't give up. After I leave you, I've gotta hit the bricks hard. I've gotta get a thousand dollars in my lawyer's hot little hands. I gotta sell, gotta sling some rocks -" She said, "What?" He said, "You know, I've gotta stay out of jail, gotta get the lawyer's money." She said, "Be careful."
Now, she was being cheered. In a calm voice she was telling her story of how she found Christ, and was in the process of being born again. She was nervous when she stood, but their cheers were like magic. That is how she will describe it in a letter to him.
VI
"Yes! Yes! YES! I feel fantastic and clean, indeed," are words she wrote him. "I am a witness to the awesome, forgiving power of God."
He wrote back, carefully to print the words slowly, so she could read his handwriting. He had gone to trial and been acquitted by a forgiving jury of senior citizens, the majority of whom were old ladies who lived in government housing. Clean shaven and rid of his long hair, and showing watery, contrite, puppy eyes, he looked like somebody's grand son, a nice, sweet boy. His lawyer beat the prosecutor, like the prosecutor was somebody's raw hamburger from a Jewish delicatessen. Feeling regrets, because she was were she was, but feeling no regrets because he was free, he wrote her a sweet letter, telling her how much he missed her and that he could not wait until she is free.
She wrote back. "Baby, it is by God's Grace that I feel good about myself. I have grown spiritually and am a true witness for God. I am saved. Baby, I love you, and I want you to find Jesus too, and be saved. To help you, I want you to be my prayer partner. I want you to kneel everyday at the same time everyday and pray. Write me back and let me know what time is best for you, and at that time I will kneel with you, and stop whatever I might be doing and pray for us. Is that a deal? Things will start going better for both of us. I just know it. Stop frowning and smile, and pray with me.
Believe it or not, this will work."
He wrote back. "Okay, Babe, how about at seven every morning for ten minutes?"
"I hear you laughing," she wrote. "But, do this for me. If you haven't tried prayer yet, try it. Please?"
He wrote her back, swearing that every day at seven he was on his knees.
VII
He sat on the bench. "What do you want me for?" he asked. "In D.C., they shoot wayward lovers, I know. They shot six of them in one night last week, all at about half-past three in the morning."
"You're safe, it's just past three in the afternoon," she said.
"What do you want me for? To put me against the wall and shoot me? To have pools of my blood at your feet?"
"I want to talk to you," she said.
"Why? We're like dead leaves in the park even though it's a sunny day."
"Shit," she said.
He asked, "Why do say that?"
"I love you," she said.
"Love me? I'm a bit lost. Isn't this the woman who is still telling me that she won't leave that other dude?" He took her hand and squeezed. She thought of pulling away and stopped. She was drawn to the scar on his arm, and she remembered a drug deal that went bad. She and he were selling crack to a blonde couple. The blonde girl did not want to pay. He threatened the blonde girl and her blonde boy friend. The blonde girl began to curse. She slapped the blonde girl. The blonde girl went to a car and returned with an aluminum bat, and beat her about the back and legs. And, he was beaten up by the blonde girl's boyfriend.
The blonde couple chased them down the street.
"Baby?" he called her from her thoughts.
She answered, "Man, I really wished you had come back in my life before I fell in love with him. You know, I really had intentions on marrying you. Maybe if we had been together, and I had been stronger -"
"You're in love with him? Why do you keep calling me?" He scratched his head. "Man, I get this mental image of you with this middle age, old dude. He's sixty. He's dressed up in a black suit. You have on a black dress. It's a cold, gray day, like night, though it is day time. He's dropped his black pants and has pulled up your dress. He's got you bent, face up, across a short brick wall, and he's doing it to you. I know why you keep calling me. It is because you need some. You need to melt again. You get no thrill, no nothing from him. I see no love there. It gets messy between your legs with him. It gets like a waste dump. Maybe if you would come clean we can get to developing something. We can get busy together and make something happen."
As he talked, she turned out some of the stark ugliness of his words. She heard herself thinking, almost aloud. This muffled some of his mocking tone. She saw herself walking.
She walks up the stairs toward the bedroom, to sleep with dear, old, weather beaten, hard working, long-time employed by the same employer, Mister Green. Mister Green is four years her senior, but he seems like a thousand years older. Her mother likes him. When her mother comes to visit, her mother always looks at Mister Green's face and smiles. Her mother keeps a smile for Mister Green. Like her mother, at the first sight of Mister Green, she looked up and smiled. She calls him, Greenie. However she feels, she always has something nice to say to him. She likes him. She is like a child toward him. She trusts him. Mister Green is like the windows of his house, clean and clear, giving light an easy surface to pass. She opens the door to the room. Though the house is big and they are alone, Mister Green wants the door closed when they are in the room together. Mister Green said, closing the bedroom door is a good habit to develop even before the children come. Mister Green wants children, as many as he can count on one hand, five. Mister Green has a bathroom on every floor for the children. Yes, she is willing to be the mother of his babies. She feels Mister Green will be a good father. Mister Green has been borne again and is saved.
"Maybe this is not a good day for this, you're in a moody mood."
"One thing I want to know is, does that dude know about me? And what did you tell him? And have you told him about me recently? No, I bet?"
"Baby-"
"Man, you know yourself, I'm the one who will go over there and tell that dude about us, and if shots get fired, well, let the thing be."
"Why?"
She has asked herself many times, "why?"
Why? The need, she answers. The buzz in the head like fuzzy whizes until she can't see. She needs clarity. The charity of of his penis, she thinks, as she needed the charity of his dope.
She became angry. "Look, Baby. I don't know what kind of women you've been dealing with, but I can tell you they were not on their jobs." She stopped, listened to what she had said, heard herself whining, and started softly. "Don't mean to talk about them, but that is really how I feel."
"My women?" he shook his head. "What about your dude?"
Her dude, Mister Green - Mister Green or him? She thought. With him people disappeared, friends, associates, people you knew. They were in jail. Some were dead. Some got tired and left. She did not see them anymore - only him. With Mr. Green - well, Mr. Green was Mr. Green.
She thought, she dreamed, she remembered.
Even with light in her eyes as she lay naked, waiting for Mister Green to begin the baby making, and feeling that she likes him an awful lot, probably loves him, she can not help thinking of him who was her lover before she was born again and saved. After sex with Mister Green, she feels less tired than she had with her ex-lover. On that first night with Mister Green she felt a slight buzz. With her ex-lover, she thought of a rooster, saw a barnyard cock. Mister Green is a dependable husband, a homebody. To her, sex to him is like climbing the front steps on a slippery icy day - careful, so not to fall and hurt herself. She remembered racing up a hill with her ex-lover, fleeing around the corner, to the blacksmith's, watching the hammer going hard. She has not counted the number of steps Mister Green climbs as he huffs and puffs. Sometimes while Mister Green is climbing, she turns and looks at the closed door; other times, she recites in her head a poem she learned in the third grade, a poem that starts, "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways."
"Babe," he tapped her gently on the shoulder. "Where 's your mind?"
"Huh?"
"You 're not listening."
"I am," she said. "And, if I left him, I wouldn't have you, you're still messing with that crack."
"What?"
"Still letting it get the best of you? Huh? I told you when I got out of jail if you were still messing with shit -"
"Shit? Watch your language. You're a church lady now."
Her face twitched and she looked from him to the ground. He laughed. She glared. "If you had stuck with me when I got out and stopped messing with all those crack head bitches, you'd be better off. Now, see if I left him where I'd be?"
"Crack head bitches?" he grinned. "Church lady has dropped her religion. Her religion is a twitching corpse, fallen into the dust." He giggled.
She asked, "Did you ever love me?"
He replied, "Yes."
"When?"
"From the beginning, when I first saw you on the bus. Why do you think I gave you my transfer?"
She smiled. "Are you still hustling transfers?"
"Man, where is this going?"
"You're on shit, aren't you?" she asked. He did not answer. "Because if you weren't you would have been at the circus, yesterday."
"I'm here today."
"After I had to call you and leave messages everywhere. Anyway, I still love you, though I had to spend my damn money on tickets, and I spent the whole afternoon waiting for you."
"I didn't want to go to the circus," he said.
"You said you did."
"I didn't want to go."
"It was your idea."
"I talked about going -"
"That's was all you talked about the other day."
"Since I was a kid, I've always liked going. I mentioned it, and you took up the ball and ran with it, said you would get the tickets and we would make a day of it together. You even suggested a little nookie afterward. But, I couldn't go."
"Because?"
"Don't know."
"Because?"
"Not going to tell you."
"BECAUSE?"
"The circus wouldn't be fun, with you not there for me to take home afterward."
"Baby," she said, "I can't."
"You've got to go home to that dude, don't you?"
"Yes."
"Nothing I say can change that?"
She stood. She knew. Each night when Mr. Green finishes with the baby making, Mister Green smiles and is happy. Knowing that Mister Green is happy makes her feel better.
"My birthday is next month, " she said.
"You don't want me to forget that, I won't forget that."
"Don't forget," she said.
"Wait," he said. "Maybe we can go someplace for the next couple of hours?"
"No, you promised me you would get off the shit first."
"Oh, Man," he said.
"No, baby," she said.
He raised his hands up in the air, said, "See you," and he began to walk away. She called to him, "I'll call you?"
He waved, acknowledging, and kept walking without turning to look back. She watched him until she could not see him any longer, then she tucked her Bible under her arm and took the subway home.
-end-
Copyright (c) 1993 Franchot Lewis
