B007JBKHYW EBOK Page 5

  She looked at me a long moment. “Ed?”

  “What?”

  “Are you gay?”

  I rubbed my toes together to see if they were as damp as they felt. “Yes.”

  Sylvie heaved a big sigh. Her breasts heaved with her. “Ed?”

  I looked up at her.

  She crossed her arms and pulled the T-Shirt over her head.

  “Damn,” I whispered.

  “Something wrong?”

  I nodded. “You lied.”

  “Did I?”

  “They’re not plastic.”

  “No.”

  “They’re trouble.”

  “Most of the time,” she took my arm, pulled me up, “but not tonight…”

  I had to tear my eyes away from the wobble. I forced myself back down on the awful couch with a will. A fast crumbling will, but a will.

  “I’m sorry, Sylvie. Don’t be—“

  “I’m not. A little surprised maybe. Not used to being turned down.”

  I nodded quickly. “I can certainly believe that.”

  She sat there watching me a long moment. I think she was smiling. “So. What’s her name?”

  I sighed. “That obvious, huh?” I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to talk about her, like just speaking her name would break some kind of trust. But it did. “Clancy.”

  “Clancy.”

  I nodded.

  “Cute. As I’m sure she is. Are you very much in love with her?”

  I sighed louder. “I don’t know. We just—we hardly know—“

  Sylvie nodded. “That much, huh?”

  I shrugged there in the dark, shook my confused head. “I must be.”

  I felt her warm palm cup my check, her warm lips peck my forehead.

  She sat back, still cupping my cheek. “Ed, old kid, you just made my day. No, you made my whole week. Thank-you.”

  She started to get up, turned back. “You’re still welcome to share the bed. I promise to behave. I wouldn’t wish that couch on an Indian fakir.”

  “No. Thanks. This is fine. Thanks.”

  “Okay. Open invitation.”

  And she wiggled back to the bed, climbed between the soft sheets, and went right to sleep again.

  To my amazement—atop that bedrock of “cushions”—so did I.

  * * *

  “Singin’ in the bathtub!—la-de-da-de-dahh!”

  Bright sunlight fried my optic nerves as I squinted away on the awful cushions, turned on my side and tried to find the doorway to sleep again. My entire lumbar region soon made short work of that. I tried to reposition and the shaft of sunlight through the slit in the motel curtains assaulted me again. Motel Hell, wasn’t that the name of an old horror movie?

  “…ohh, singin’ in the bathtub!—la-da-de-da-de-dahhhh! You up yet, Eddie?”

  “Who could sleep through that caterwauling?” I shoved up on the couch, muscles shrieking.

  “There is nothing cat-like about my ‘wauling. I have near perfect pitch!”

  I heard splashing sounds from the bathroom.

  “Remember that one, Ed? Warner Brothers, Porky Pig cartoon? Chuck Jones, I think, 1940’s!”

  I stretched, scratched, found my sea legs. Which also hurt. “Bob Clampett cartoon. 1930’s. Think it was called Polar Pals.”

  “That’s it! Porky’s an Eskimo or something. Has this shower in his igloo and when he turns it on the spray turns to ice sickles! He has to jail-break out of it, remember? And he does this little fanny-dance drying off with the towel, singing that song. Only I never heard all the lyrics—just what’s in that cartoon! What are the rest of the lyrics, Eddie?”

  “I have no idea. Little before my time.” I stumbled to the open bathroom door, wincing at every step. Sylvie was bent over the tub, rear in the air, in shorts and T-Shirt—a red one this time—Mitzi on her back in sudsy water under strong, stroking fingers, kicking luxuriously like a baby being tickled, big pink tongue lolling. The bathwater was the color of mud.

  “Having fun?”

  “Oh, Ed,” Mitzi swooned, “you’ve got to keep this one! She’s has the fingers of an angel! Forget that ditsy blonde Clancy, this one’s solid gold! Was she good in the sack? I bet she was great in the sack, right?”

  “Hardly any of your business,” I snorted from the jamb.

  “Really?” Mitzi giggled bubbles, “that why you’re staring at that hard round butt waving in the air?”

  Sylvie turned her head, looked past the round butt with surprise. “Well! Good-morning sunshine! Sleep well?”

  I offered a bleak smile. “The term ‘like a rock’ comes to mind.”

  She grinned, stuck out her tongue sassily. “Had your chance!”

  Mitzi struggled suddenly to look over the lip of the tub. “Tell me you didn’t stay on that stupid couch all night!”

  I ignored the poodle. “You don’t have to do that,” I told Sylvie’s back.

  She grinned down at Mitzi, scrubbed her lathered chest. “I don’t mind. Besides, she loves it!” And in a cloying baby voice: “Don’t you, baby girl! Don’t you wuve it when mama scrubs yer furry chest!”

  Mitzi groaned. “Oh, Eddie, this is heaven! You lucky bastard! Seriously, how many times? Are you sore? Is she a laugher? Did you take pictures?”

  “Mind you own damn business!”

  Sylvie jerked around in hurt surprise. “What?”

  There I went again. I shook my logy head. “Nothing. I…sometimes I say things aloud I don’t-- they just pop out sometimes.”

  “That’s not all that’s poppin’ out, Sport!”

  I looked down at my tented pajamas, turned away before Sylvie could see. But I think she saw anyway.

  “It’s just urine retention,” I muttered to Mitzi.

  “Surrrre it is! Ohhh…singin’ in the bone yard, la-de-da-de-dah--!”

  “Stupid dog. What would you know about it, anyway!”

  I stumbled back into the main room. “When you two are through playing, I’d like to pee, get some breakfast and get back on the road!”

  “Oooooo, somebody’s grouchy this morning!”

  That may have been Mitzi or maybe Sylvie, I couldn’t be sure…

  FIVE

  We took the new Illinois 110 expressway all the way into Chicago. It was still under construction during our trip. 532 miles total.

  You begin on Interstate 35 in KC and leave the city in a northeast direction. Along the way you bear east on U.S. 36 and cross Missouri through towns like Chillicothe and Macon. Then continue through Hannibal on to I-72 and across the Mississippi River. The 110 crosses into Illinois from the Mark Twain Memorial Bridge. A big thrill for me. I loved Twain. I don’t care that it took him nine years to write Tom Sawyer and that he later dismissed the book, and that his editors gutted Huckleberry Finn on first publication; they’re still two of the greatest American novels ever written.

  Where was I? Anyway, I wanted to stop in Hannibal where Twain lived and see the fence (it’s still there)Tom had whitewashed and the cave he explored with Becky Thatcher and Injun Joe, but Clancy’s own lovely face kept getting in the way with its urgency. Strangely, I never doubted she was still alive. Only in great danger. And me still without any cohesive plans about what to do about it. Like Twain’s bridge, I guessed I’d cross that when I came to it.

  From the Illinois 110 and the “CKC” Logo Banner posted above the signs you take the I-290 before terminating at the Circle Interchange near the Chicago Loop. Sylvie and I took turns driving and napping until we neared the city, where Sylvie took over the helm with her native familiarity of the Windy City.

  “I…don’t think I’m going to like this place, Sport…”

  I had actually nodded off in the passenger seat when Mitzi’s inimitable voice filled my head jouncing lightly against the side window.

  I stirred awake just as the big U-Haul shuttered to a stop and Sylvie set the brake.

  I yawned wide, stretched some badly needed blood into my legs, sat up and peered out the front windshield.

  At blight.

  Sylvie already had her door open and was sliding from behind the wheel to a patch of cracked, weed-choked concrete. Beyond which was more weed-choked concrete. Beyond which was an endless vista of urban slums and rundown-looking projects.

  “Ed? Tell me this isn’t Chicago…” Mitzi was over the back seat and in my lap now, staring bleakly along with me. “Tell me this isn’t where we’re going to live. Because if it’s a choice between Topeka vampires and Chicago street gangs I think I’d prefer Topeka…”

  I opened my door and stepped down.

  A group of African-American toughs turned to look at me from a ruined corner of tenements and liquor stores down the street.

  “Ed, will you get back in the truck, please?” Mitzi whined.

  I heard a rattle behind me and walked back to the rear of the truck where Sylvie was just putting her cell phone away, busy with the big Dexter lock at the double doors.

  She glanced up at me with a practiced smile. “Welcome to Chicago, Mr. Magee.”

  I looked around us. The bangers at the corner were no longer at the corner, they were moving with casual deliberateness our way.

  “S’matter, Eddie?” Sylvie chuckled, “don’t like the architecture?”

  “It’s not the architecture I’m concerned about. Uh…this is where you live?”

  She was pulling the chain through the hasp, yanking at the steel lever. “Not quite. I’m a little closer to State Street. This is 67th. The South Side. Woodlawn, specifically” She glanced around us casually. “Nice, huh?”

  “Lovely. Which…tenement is yours?”

  Sylvie started to smile wider, then turned to look past me at the approaching slap of sneakers on concrete. “Yo! What you callin’ a tenement, white boy!”

  All four bangers were indiscriminant. Which is to say, indiscriminately bad-ass. The only difference was, the one in the middle—the one who’d spoken to me—was bigger and taller and already had his knife out.

  I held up both hands in a peace gesture. “Hey, guys, no offense intended! Looks like a nice neighborhood, actually!”

  The big one took a step closer to me. “Looks like a piece of shit neighborhood, peckerwood, but it still got no room for the likes of your ass!” He had deep ebony skin, a vivid pinkish scar from his left jaw up through and over his eye.

  “As much right as anyone,” Sylvie said, stepping up on the curb to face the toughs, hands on her hips.

  “What in the hell are you doing?” I asked incredulous in my head, before remembering she couldn’t read minds.

  The bangers sniggered in unison, every eye running rapidly over Sylvie’s considerably formidable lines. “Well, now, look at this! S’what I call about five foot four of pure tit!”

  “Pure plastic!” from the smaller one with a length of chain.

  “Hey,” I told him, “they’re not plastic!”

  I have no idea what made me say that.

  Sylvie looked over at me. “Thank you, Edward, for that complete non-sequiter.”

  The big leader moved closer to Sylvie, grinning salaciously. “I don’t care what they is, I’m ‘bout to get my hands full of ‘em!”

  Sylvie sighed bored patience. “Is that right?”

  “Bet your tight ass that’s right, bitch!”

  She nodded. “Huh. And suppose my boyfriend doesn’t like it?”

  They all turned their heads to look at me.

  Then they all jeered again in unison.

  The big leader spat in my direction. “That?” Another group guffaw. “That homeboy already soiled hisself!”

  Sylvie smiled straight into the leader’s eyes. “Maybe. But you aren’t going to do anything about it.”

  The big one got right in her face then. I tensed, flicked a look at the pickup’s cab, realizing I’d slammed the door behind me, shutting Mitzi in. Also realizing she was more than smart enough to work a door handle and get out, come to our aid. So why wasn’t she?

  “What you know ‘bout it, bitch?” his nose an inch from Sylvie’s.

  Sylvie didn’t budge. “I know this neighborhood,” she told him.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Woodland south. Population 27, 000 living in 10.000 households. 98% Afro-American, over half on some form of public aid. Medium household income $13,000. Entire area run by The Black P. Stone Nation--aka the Moses.”

  All the bangers’ expressions shifted at once.

  The leader tried to hang tough but some of the bluster was gone. “Yeah? So what?”

  Sylvie closed the distance between their noses and the leader pulled his head back.

  “So, the Black P. Stoners rule everything between Stone Street and Stony Island Avenue is what. Lately they’ve even spread further south to the suburbs of Calumet Park and Harvey.”

  The leader swallowed once, confidence fading. “They does, huh?”

  Sylvie got that peering look in her eyes again. “They does when they aren’t busy stompin’ smart ass Gangster Disciples.”

  The other bangers were looking over their shoulders now, huddling closer.

  “How you know all that shit?” the leader demanded, perspiring lightly.

  “I know gang outfits,” Sylvie told him flatly, “and you boys are wearing Disciple’s colors. Now is there something else you wanted to discuss about my bra size? Or Chicago real estate values, perhaps?”

  The leader took another stop back. “You’re bluffing,” he said.

  “Am I? Why don’t you tell my other boyfriend that?” She pointed up indiscriminately at the tenement windows above her. “He’s up there now with a modified Ruger .45 trained on your smartass left temple. Ex 1st Army sharpshooter. But you can call him Mac.”

  The big leader swallowed again.

  The others went owl-eyed, caught somewhere between looking above them at the rows of begrimed windows and immediate flight.

  “So here’s how it’s going to be,” Sylvie said, stepping off the curb again and pointing across the way. “See that building? That’s the Ellis Elementary School. In ten minutes the recess bell is going to ring and an army of fifth and sixth graders are going to pour onto the playground. Not one of them has probably had a decent birthday present in his life. Today is going to be different. Today, instead of the usual crack and bennies your try to shove into their trusting little hands, you assholes are going to unload this truck and carry these boxes of plastic monsters and comic books over to that playground. And give those kids the best Halloween of their lives.”

  She threw back the double doors of the U-Haul just as the cab she’d phoned pulled up behind her.

  “Anybody got a problem?”

  She waited. No one seemed to.

  “By the way,” she mentioned, opening the back door of the cab, “my boyfriend up there behind the curtain knows exactly how many boxes are on that truck! Are we cool?”

  The crestfallen leader nodded limply. “We cool,” and headed toward the open doors of the truck, motioning to his crew, most of them studiously avoiding eye contact with the upper windows now.

  “Ed,” Sylvie called, holding the cab door, “want to get your poodle?”

  I let Mitzi out of the cab. “Thanks for all your help.”

  “Look who’s talking,” she sniffed, trotting past.

  Mitzi and I slid in beside her and Sylvie gave the cabbie an address.

  He pulled quickly from the curb, looking glad to be out of there.

  As we drove out of the neighborhood I turned to Sylvie. “Maybe you really are a witch.”

  She wrinkled the pert nose. “Nah, just an old street-wise Chicago girl.”

  “I want to have this woman’s babies,” Mitzi said inside my head and leapt into Sylvie’s lap.

  “Aw, there’s my good girl!” Sylvie hugged her.

  I looked down at my empty hands. “I just want you to know I was fully prepared to dazzle and confuse them with your wax finger trick.”

  Sylvie laughed, slapped her knee. “Actually, you were perfect. I was just thinking what a good team we’d make.”

  “I’ll join the team!” Mitzi exclaimed excitedly. “I would drink this woman’s bath water!”

  I took a deep, cleansing breath (the first one in ten minutes) and turned to the pretty profile. “Take it under advisement. So, where to now?”

  “Now,” Sylvie smiled coyly, “we go to my little tenement!”

  SIX

  Twenty minutes later the cab pulled up on State Street in downtown Chicago.

  I looked out the side window.

  Mitzi looked out the side window.

  Mitzi and I looked at each other.

  “No freakin’ way!”

  I assumed Sylvie paid the cabbie, I don’t recall; I was too busy pushing out to the sidewalk with Mitzi, both of us staring upward, mouths agape.

  Two enormous columns, like giant corn cobs, loomed above us against clear blue Chicago sky. This couldn’t be real. Surely this wasn’t where--

  I heard Sylvie click up behind us as the cab pulled away.

  “You guys okay?” she scratched Mitzi’s head.

  I still stood there gawking.

  “Ed?”

  “This is a joke, right? We’re just picking up some stuff before we go to your real tenement.”

  “The cab left, Ed. You know this place then?”

  I gave her a disbelieving look. “Everybody knows this place! It occupies an entire city block!”

  “So, you know where we are.”

  “On the north bank of the Chicago river across from the Loop. Two huge towers 587 feet high, including the five story elevator and physical plant penthouse.”

  Mitzi smiled, impressed. “Plus a saddle-shaped auditorium building and a mid-rise hotel. All sitting on a raised platform adjacent to the river. Beneath which—at river level—is a marina for pleasure craft. Which is why they call it—“

  “Marina City,” I nodded, “I know it well. Designed by Bertrand Goldberg—1964. Cost over $36 million dollars. At the time the two tallest residential buildings in the world. A city within a city. All kinds of on-site facilities--a theater, a gym, a swimming pool, stores, restaurants—“

  “—House of Blues concert hall, Sax hotel. My!” Sylvie beamed, “and I thought I was the real estate expert! Sure you’ve never visited this place?”