Leaving Gomorrah: Chapters 7-11
CHAPTER 7
It was a Saturday afternoon. Otis went into the city to hang out and do some shopping. He walked along Seventh Avenue on his way to get something to eat when his phone rang.
“Hello?”
“How do you know Nathan Price?”
“What’s going on, Emory?”
“Yeah. Hi. So how do you know Nathan Price?”
“We go back a bit,” Otis answered.
“I was surprised to see you at the exhibit the other day.”
“I didn’t know you were going to be there either. You’re a member of The Sons of Amistad?”
“Uh huh. Where are you?”
“Seventh, ‘bout to turn onto Thirty-First.”
“Is he with you?”
“Who?”
“Nathan.”
“No.”
“Okay. Stay there. I’m on my way up.”
“I don’t know how long I’m going to be here.”
“Were you about to leave?”
“No. I was going to get some lunch.”
“Why don’t you come over to my place? I can fix lunch.”
“Nah, I...”
“You act like it’s so much trouble to visit me.”
“What?”
“I mean, you come into the city and I’m right down in Chelsea. You never stop by.”
“Man … Okay. I’m on my way.”
Otis arrived at Emory's apartment.
Emory opened the door. “What? You actually made it.”
“I said I would be here.” Otis walked in.
They had lunch then went out and sat on the balcony with their drinks. “You should move here. Get away from Brooklyn,” Emory said as he looked over his balcony.
“I like Brooklyn.” Otis looked around recalling his and Emory’s times together. “I like Brooklyn a lot.”
They talked awhile before Emory moved the conversation back to Nathan.
“Are you and Nathan seeing each other?”
“No.”
“Is he gay?”
Otis cocked his head. “Why do you want to know that?”
“Just wondering. He seems like it.”
“How?”
“He just does.”
“I don’t think that’s my place to be discussing his business.”
Emory crossed his leg. “Why not?”
Otis just looked at him.
“Have you ever been to bed with him?”
“Okay, this shit is getting crazy again, just like it used to. I don’t think we have that kind of relationship where I tell you about who I’ve slept with.”
“You’re right,” Emory said, with a dip of his head. “Want another drink?”
“Yeah.”
Emory went in to refresh their drinks. Otis thought about the conversation they were having. He and Emory had gone out on a few dates in the past and he had spent the night once or twice in this very apartment, but it didn’t work out. Otis had too much on his mind at the time and Emory seemed too unsure of being in a relationship, so the two of them agreed to call it off. Since then they had become friends; not good friends, just friends as well as co-workers.
“Here you go,” Emory said as he returned with the drinks.
“Thanks.”
“You know, you said we don’t have that kind of relationship,” Emory commented as he sat down.
“Not for me to tell you who I sleep with.”
“Mmm.” Emory looked down at his drink. “What kind of relationship do we have now?”
Otis looked past him, then back to him. “Friends. Co-workers.”
“And that’s it, huh?”
“That’s it? What more do you want?”
“I don’t know.”
Otis shook his head. “So let me ask you the same question: What kind of relationship do we have?”
“You know what we have.”
“Tell me.”
Emory gave a blank look.
“Why did you act the way you did the other day?” Otis continued.
“What do you mean?”
“At the exhibit.”
“Like how?”
“You dissed me.”
“No I didn’t.”
“Yes you did, man. You were like, ‘shit, what is he doing here?’ I saw it in your face and then you proceeded to just play me off.”
Emory thought a bit. “I was probably bothered by you being with Nathan.”
“Nah man, that wasn’t it. Nathan wasn’t even there yet.”
“I don’t remember playing you off.”
“It wasn’t until Nathan came that you approached me.”
“I was working.”
“With your Sons of Amistad,” Otis remarked sarcastically.
Emory moved uncomfortably in his chair.
“See it’s the same ol’ shit, man. You don’t want anybody in your circle to know you’re gay.”
“I told you before, when we were dating. The two don’t go together.” “Black and gay,” Otis asserted.
Emory didn’t answer.
“Like I told you years ago, Emory, man: that’s bullshit, so don’t give me that.”
“Look, we’ve been through all this before. We disagree and that’s the way it is. I don’t care how you feel about it.”
“Then you need to stop trying to hook up with me.”
“Why?”
Otis leaned forward, “Because it means you’re gay. And in case you haven’t noticed, you’re black. The two don’t go together, remember?”
“Nobody has to know.”
“You know how you sound? A grown ass man acting like a boy.”
“It’s over your head.”
“Good. If it means sacrificing myself to satisfy somebody else, then keep it away from me.”
“If you did the type of work I do for the community you’d understand,” Emory declared.
“C’mon man, don’t give me that shit. If you were doing work for the community you’d try to enlighten minds instead of playing along with ‘em.”
“As usual, this conversation is over,”
“Fine with me.”
A few minutes passed before Emory spoke. “We may disagree, but we shouldn’t let it get in the way of our relationship, okay?”
“As long at it doesn’t mean anything more than friends.”
“Nah. I can’t let that ride,” Emory said as he lifted his drink. “I’m not gonna let that happen.”
****
~ 1981 ~
The bloated sky finally broke and the rain rushed to the streets below. Otis ran into the phone booth and slammed the door shut, pushing once more to secure it. It was night and the streets had been emptied by the assault of the rain that came down in large staffs.
He wiped the water from his face and stood under the light of the booth as he thought about what to say. Staring out at the night, his mind went over the words that had accumulated in his head over the past three years. Words and phrases culled from the look in his father’s eyes; taken from the mouths of his detractors, from the choking sound that came from his mother’s throat, from the silence of the onlookers as he was led from the courtroom, from the cold cell, from the smell of body odor and urine, words that created the text of his life. He knew the words, but had never rehearsed them, had never heard them, and now it was time.
In the light of the phone booth, dead bugs lay in the cover of the lamp. He looked at them for a moment before pulling the coins from his pocket and laying them in front of the phone. For a second an opposing thought came to him that maybe he shouldn’t make the call. Maybe he should just go back to his room at the Y and wait it out just as he had for the last three years ... but it was only a second’s thought; only a flicker of sorrow that he couldn’t afford.
He made the call.
“Momma?”
“Otis!” His mother called his name then fell into a confused silence. “Where are you?” She had become used to an operator stating the nature of a prison call.
“I’m out.”
His mother gasped. “Oh…” She caught her breath. “You want us to come and get you? I’ll wake your father up and we’ll come and get you. Why didn’t you let us know?” she called out of joy.
“Momma...”
“Jesus, thank you, thank you.”
“Momma.”
“Yes baby? Oh thank, thank you,” she prayed.
“I’m in New York.”
Stunned silence.
“What…”
“I’m in New York. I need to get away.”
“Otis, what are you talking about? Why?”
“You know why, Momma,” his voice softened. “You know why.”
“Don’t...”
“I need to do this Momma. I’m sorry, but I need to do this.”
“Baby ... don’t … ”
“Momma, please … It’s just for a little while. I have to get my head together.”
“Me and your father will send you a plane ticket. Where are you staying?”
“Please.”
“Where are you staying?”
He heaved a heavy sigh as he fought back the tears. “I’m not ready to come home.”
His mother began to cry and the tears became heavy until her cry became the same choking sound he had heard in the courtroom.
“Don’t cry, Momma. Don’t cry. I’ll be alright.” But she didn’t hear him. She couldn’t.
“Momma,” he called. “Momma, I love you. Don’t cry. Please Momma, don’t cry.” His voice sunk under the tears that rose in his throat. “Please, Momma... Please...”
The rain roared outside the booth and rushed through the streets.
****
Otis caught the train back to Brooklyn. He felt the silence as the train moved under the East River farther and farther away from the city and the memories.
CHAPTER 8
The photo in the window caught Antonio’s eye. It was a black and white photo of a man sitting alone on a bench in Battery Park. On the right side of the photo, a tree lowered its naked branch near the man’s head and in the background the Statue of Liberty stood, banked against a gray winter sky. He watched the photo, unable to move. The form, the gradation, all elements foreign to him, held him still in front of the window. But more than anything, it was the narrative. He felt he knew the man and, like the man in the photo, he understood loneliness.
Standing in front of the store window, he saw the cameras, compact and balanced in design, set to fit his hands. Maybe he could create visions like the one framed in the photo.
He went into the store and began looking in the counters. They were all beautiful objects, but the prices weren’t. The salespeople were busy with other customers so they hadn’t come over to help him. One camera in particular caught his eye. There was something just right about the way it sat in his line of sight, cradled in its display as if it was waiting just for him.
Finally a salesperson came over.
“Can I help you find something?”
“How much is this camera?”
The woman carefully lifted the camera from the case. “Twenty-seven ninety-nine.”
“Twenty-seven ninety-nine?”
“Yes.” She saw the astonished look on Antonio’s face. “Maybe you’d like to look at this one,” she said, replacing the camera and picking up another one. “It’s less expensive and does much of what the other one does.”
“Can it take pictures like the one in the window?”
“It can give you shots like any in the window,” she smiled.
“Oh.” He looked at the price and saw that it was out of his range as well.
“Do you do installments?”
“No. But we do get these models in often. Just save up and let us know when you’re ready.”
He stared at the camera.
“You’ll have enough saved up before you know it and you’ll be out there shooting just like the pros; even the one in the window.”
“Yeah,” he muttered. “Thanks.”
It was his day off and Antonio decided to spend it alone. He had spending money in his pockets so he avoided Kamon, whom he was sure had gone through all the money he had made and would start to ask that Antonio ante up. It seemed to be happening more and more lately, and LaVonte was at work.
He hadn’t made too many other acquaintances since he arrived in New York, just as he had never known many people in his life at all, only an assortment of faces, and people with appetites that he fulfilled. For the most part, he had come to expect it to be that way. His mother had warned him of it. People were dangerous, she had warned. Dangerous, spiteful little animals who only took things.
When he became a teen he found his mother's warnings overwrought with paranoia. He discovered this when he met a young woman one day while taking out the trash. Her name was Felicia and she had been staying at a neighbor’s house in back of theirs. She saw him and she smiled and waved to him. He remembered how his immediate thought was to turn and hurry back into the house when she waved, but something brightened inside him and before he knew it, he smiled and waved back.
Felicia didn't seem dangerous or spiteful. In fact, she was kind and giving. Over time, he would sneak out to the back yard while his mother was at work in her salon and he and Felicia would talk. It was harmless, he thought, and his mother would never know. But eventually he began to fall for the young lady and in time had to choose between denying his feelings for her or accepting them and facing his mother's wrath.
It was an ugly scene the day he told his mother about Felicia. His mother sat in her easy chair, knitting while soaking her feet in a plastic tub. The house was quiet except for the old Muntz TV that still functioned. Outside, life moved across a palette of sounds. “Listen to them,” his mother said as she looked up from her knitting. “You finish your homework?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Good. I don’t want you being like them. Niggers,” she mumbled.
Antonio sat on the couch and felt his muscles twitch as he worked up the nerves to tell her. His buttocks tightened and loosened and he arched and relaxed his back, preparing to end the only life he had ever known, his life with his mother.
Suddenly, his mother looked at him. “Get the tea pot off the stove and freshen up my water.”
He got up and went to the kitchen and returned with the tea pot. Kneeling at her feet, he watched the hot water move into the tub. He told her.
“Momma, I ... I made a friend.”
She stopped making the loops with her needles and eyed him. “What friend?”
“Just a friend.”
“Where you meet him? School?”
“Yes ma’am.” He figured placing Felicia as far as possible from his mother would be safer for the both of them, him and Felicia.
“Is he a good boy?”
Antonio nodded his head as the water thinned from the spout.
“You just make sure he don’t break your concentration in that classroom.”
He didn’t respond.
“I’m glad you told me. Maybe you can bring him by so I can see what he’s like. You are getting older now. I guess you gotta have some friends. You gotta be careful, though.”
Still, he was quiet and the silence caused his mother to become curious.
“Why you telling me this?” Miss Susie asked as she looked down at her son.
“Well, um, I, uh…”
She looked closer.
“I think I wanna get my own place.”
As if the water had suddenly become too hot, she snatched her feet from the tub. “What?”
“I...”
“I heard what you said. No. Boy you sound crazy.”
“It’s time. I'm almost seventeen.”
“Don’t you know they’re out there? They just been waiting for you to make some damn foolish decision like that so they can get you,” she said, making a quick, grasping movement through the air.
Sixteen years he had been with her, and for sixteen years he had heard about the people, or things that were after him. He was tired. He had never seen them, had never heard them, and hadn’t even picked up a scent from them. For sixteen years he listened to her ramblings and now he had to ask.
“Who?”
In a heated instant she reached down and slapped the pot from his hands, causing him to jump up.
She glared at him, her eyes becoming lost in unfathomable anger. “Where does he live?”
“I don’t know.”
She stood and walked up to him, her feet padding wet across the floor. “Boy, you better tell me something!”
“With her sister!”
Miss Susie stumbled a bit but caught herself. She looked down at the trail of water she had left, then back to her son. Suddenly she grabbed him by the collar and slammed him against a wall. “You been fuckin’ some girl!” She held him there and searched his face.
“No!”
She continued eyeing him. “Some damn whore,” she muttered almost incoherently. “A muthafuckin’ whore.” She pressed him harder against the wall with one hand and with the other began undoing his pants.
Antonio struggled. “Momma! No!”
She pulled until she had his pants and underwear down mid-thigh. “You been fuckin’, ain’t you. Ain’t you!” She lifted his dick and lowered her head to his crotch and began sniffing.”
“Momma, please,” Antonio begged.
“She want some of this, don’t she?” She said, squeezing his dick in her hand. “Don’t she!”
“Stop it!” Antonio yelled as he pushed her hand away.
She backed off a distance to the center of the living room and began walking in circles, “It’s just like your father’s. She want some of it. I know she do.”
Antonio pulled up his pants and stormed off to his bedroom, leaving the old woman walking and talking in circles.
After that evening he felt unsafe in the house. His mother had stopped talking to him. Humming had replaced her words. All she did was hum whenever she was around him. He became afraid to eat her cooking, so he started fixing his own food, and at night he stayed awake as he watched her shadow pass under his bedroom door. Every night she paced back and forth, stopping to say something to his room and sprinkling dust, and then walking more. It was all he could take, so he left.
His time with Felicia lasted a little over two years. The passion they had for each other outgrew them. Eventually she sought other men, and he sought other women. Then one night a man stopped him on the street and he discovered something else about himself.
Evening settled over Manhattan and the city lights came on to lead it to night. Antonio sat on a bench in Battery Park and looked out at Liberty Island just as the man in the photo had done. He put one of his arms up on the back of the bench and stared out at the deepening water and the bright beams of light that washed over the statue, wondering what had held the man’s attention.
Then once again, just as he had throughout the day, his thoughts drifted back to his father. The conversation the other night. He knew what his father was talking about. He was surprised, yet he understood and once again, as he had done for much of the day, he imagined himself walking in the footsteps his father had left for him many years ago. Did his father work the Hell’s Kitchen area like he had? Had his father moved under the ghostly lights of the bookstores in midtown like he did? The alley where he had gotten his dick sucked the other night; had his father stood there years ago just as he had done the other night? And the man in the photo; could it have been his father sitting right here in this very spot looking out at the water, wondering if he could ever go home again?
Antonio sighed and threw his head back as he thought what his father must have gone through being alone so far away from home.
Suddenly there was movement on the bench a bit away from Antonio. In the street lamp he saw an old woman sitting. The sound of his sigh had pulled her attention to him. He couldn’t see her face very well, but he could tell she was looking over at him.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I … just remembered something…”
She didn’t answer. She got up, picked up her bag and walked away, and as she did so the scent of sweet peas rose to his nostrils.
****
The photos on the wall retired in the growing darkness of Antonio's room as night came. They were photos meticulously arranged, his own gallery, sheets of paper torn from books and magazines and mounted with tape: mountains and cityscapes; a small girl looking at the body of her deceased mother.
His love with the camera was growing. Now when he walked he framed things with his eyes. Sometimes he would find himself drifting from conversation into the frame of his eye. “What the fuck are you doing?” Kamon would ask. “Nothing,” he’d reply.
His father’s eyes sparkled the first time he saw the gallery and he offered to help him buy the camera. But when Antonio told him he would buy it on his own, his father left without saying another word.
Antonio lay in bed with his hands behind his head. He knew his father was onto what he was doing but he wasn’t going to step away yet, not with the money he was pulling in. He lay there and watched the photos, the little girl’s eyes closing in the darkness.
There were two more photos in his room; one was of his mother and one was of his father. In the one photo his mother sat at a table at a party in a nice black dress with an organdy wrap around her shoulders. He remembered seeing that dress in her closet; it had tiny specks of glitter that winked colors of red, blue, silver and green but the colors didn’t show in the black and white photograph.
And she was smiling in the picture. Her face was unlike the face he saw growing up; it was younger and open, not the ragged face with the wild eyes he recalled. In the photo she sat in front of a cake with candles that said ‘Happy New Year’ and on a banner in the background were the numbers ‘1947’. He wondered what took that smile from his mother’s face and what could have turned the eyes that once held crystals to stark, red sockets.
In the frame next to his mother’s photo his father leaned against a car. He was grinning and pointing to the temporary tags on a ’67 Olds. Antonio knew what took the smile from his father’s face. If only his father had known what was going to happen to him the day he posed for that photo, he would have gassed up that car and drove until he came to another city, another place.
The faces faded into the dark and Antonio turned on his side as he tried to imagine what photo of himself he would put on the table. He thought but couldn’t imagine himself in a place on the table alongside his parents.
CHAPTER 9
It was 1978 when the cell doors closed, and that was the year Otis’ world fell into darkness. Ever since then he hadn't been able to recover. Even when there were people around him they would fade to gray in the area of desolation that surrounded him.
For years he walked through light and sound, numb and with very little sense of reckoning. But it was the loneliness he wrestled with the most. It was beside him every move he made and it sometimes led him to places he didn’t want to go.
This is how he felt this evening and it's why he called his mother. Even though he had spoken to her a week ago he needed to hear her voice again. He needed to hear her tell him how he could make it through the hard times. He needed someone to keep him sane for another night.
“How is Antonio doing?” his mother asked.
Otis stared ahead, disconnected from her question, staring, as if summoned by someone or something on the other side of the wall. “Fine,” he finally said. He walked into the living room and stood staring at the window.
“That's good,” she said. His mother understood her role tonight. She understood that she was needed. She felt it, and she set about doing what she could to comfort her son. “Are you listening to me?” she asked, feeling his distance.
“Ma'am?”
“Are you listening to me,” she repeated.
“Yes ma'am. He's doing fine.”
His mother became silent for a few seconds as she sought to connect with him. “Otis, sit down.”
“Ma'am?”
“Sit down. I can feel you standing and looking out somewhere. You need to talk to me and bring your thoughts back.”
“Oh.” He sat down. Just the fact that she saw him from so far away brought him back. This was his mother.
His mother waited until she felt he was relaxed before continuing their conversation.
“That poor boy. It’s a wonder he ain’t gone stone crazy ... he’s not showing any signs, is he?”
“No, ma'am.” He leaned forward with his elbow on his knee, listening to her. He needed to hear her voice.
“It’s a wonder,” she repeated. “Susie put that boy through some unnatural stuff.”
“Yeah.” He didn't like hearing the stories about what happened to Antonio as a child. If it were left up to him he wouldn’t talk about it at all because the conversations left him feeling helpless. But seeing the man his son had become, it was hard not to listen so he could understand him. “What happened to Miss Susie anyway?” he asked as he relaxed and sat back on the couch. “I don’t remember her being so crazy.”
“She was already that way when you two ... well, you know … you know what I mean.”
“Yeah Ma, I know what you mean,” he remarked, with a bit of exasperation.
“Let’s just say things happen to people and it did to her.”
“So she wasn’t always that way?” The story held his interest. He put his feet on the coffee table and listened.
“No … no she wasn’t. It just happened over time. Before then she was just like everybody else. A humdinger, but for the most part she wasn’t that much different from any other woman.” His mother paused for a second to gather her memory. She was feeling that he was feeling better. “Just fast,” she continued. “Fast and flirty as a woman can be. She was pretty as a blackberry though. Just glowed in the sun with all that beautiful dark skin … and the men loved her. That was the problem though. They loved her too much and she couldn’t get enough of them either. We used to go out together - this is before me and your daddy met - we would walk into a nightclub and she would tell me which man she was going to catch that night.”
“Wow.”
“Mmm hmm. I think she was trying to make up for the fact that she wasn’t light-skinned.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. You know how dark she was. She would stand in the mirror and say ‘Gloria Jean, I think I look prettier than Cora Lee and them, don’t you think so? Cora Lee Brooks was high yellow and had good hair. She only ran with people who looked like her. Thought she and her friends were God’s gift to everybody! And Susie would say, ‘Don’t I look prettier than Cora Lee?’ and I would tell her she was, because she was. Cora Lee just had light skin and pretty hair, but that’s all.”
“When did she start losin’ it, though?”
His mother sighed. “By the time she was a full grown woman Susie had had most of the men in Lincoln Heights and beyond.”
“She was a ho?”
“Don’t be saying that about her. She just wanted to be loved.”
“Okay, okay.”
“Anyway, Susie mostly went after married men. Especially the ones who married snooty women. I think it was revenge. She had so many women riled up at her that she couldn’t even walk down the street without somebody threatening her or just talkin’ nasty about her. Eventually she disappeared. Didn’t say nothing to nobody, not even me; just up and left one day.”
“Just like that, huh?” Otis asked.
“Yeah. I figured she musta been chased out of Cincinnati by so many hatin’ women. But that wasn’t it. A few months later I got a phone call from her. I asked her why did she move? She just laughed and said she had got all the men she wanted in Cincinnati. Said she wanted to see who else was out there. I felt sorry for her because I knew she was just trying to love herself through other people … She was changing.” His mother stopped to assemble an extra thought. “But you know what I remember most of all about that phone call? It was silent. I asked her where she was and she said ‘nowhere,’ and it sounded like it. Just silent. No sound of people. No sound of cars passing by ... not even that airy sound you heard sometimes over the phone. Nothing. It ‘bout scared me half to death so I decided I didn’t want to know where she was. Eventually she moved to New York. She stayed there for a while then came on back to Cincinnati.”
“She told me she used to live here.”
“She came back more classy and prettier than ever. But she still hadn’t changed her ways. Soon as she got back she searched out other men with snooty wives, and there she went.”
“Man...”
“Mmm hmm. But you know Susie. She enjoyed every bit of it, until she started getting older. That’s when things really started happening to her. You know, the usual. A gray hair here, a gray hair there.”
“How old was she?”
“About forty-five, I guess. She held her looks longer than most of us, though. And then she started becoming depressed because she couldn’t turn heads like she used to. The younger men wanted the younger girls...”
“The daughters of the women she hated,” Otis interjected.
“Right. That’s when she started becoming angry. One day, she was sitting in front of her mirror, with me sitting off to the side ... funny how she always had me sitting there like that ... and she said, ‘Gloria Jean, I think somebody put a curse on me.’ I said, ‘What?’ and she said it again. She started thinking some of the women put a curse on her to make her turn older and less attractive to the younger men.”
“Why would she think that?”
“Said somebody told her. I asked who, and she just said, ‘You don’t know him.’ Said he told her since her mother stayed looking young for a long time, she should too. I told her it’s natural to get older, but she didn’t want to hear it. And that’s when she started becoming all paranoid and things. Thinking everyone was after her.”
“Not you and Daddy.”
“Oh no, no. She loved us. She said we were her only friends.”
“Wow, that’s sad to hear how she started going down, Ma.”
“Well … you just make sure Antonio don’t get like that. I don’t know if mental illness runs in her family or not.”
“I think he’ll be okay,” Otis said as he glanced at the window.
“You know, baby?” his mother realized. “I don’t think I remember many sunny days over her house. Do you? It was always overcast.”
“That’s just your imagination.”
“I don’t know … But you make sure you take care of that boy. None of that was his fault.”
“I will.”
“Okay … And you take care of yourself too, baby. Don’t let things get you down.”
He continued staring at the window. “Okay.”
After his mother hung up, he walked over to the window and looked down into the street. Her story about Miss Susie stayed in his head. He had promised Miss Susie he would look after Antonio, but how could he keep him from what might be in his blood?
Outside his window a bug flitted in the light of a street lamp and people and cars moved along the night streets.
It wasn’t just Antonio he knew he had to keep an eye on, but himself as well. The sounds of the streets climbed up to his apartment. He stood at the window for a while, trying to hold onto his mother's voice. Finally he walked into the bedroom, changed clothes, and headed out the door.
****
It was later that night when Otis sat across the room from the man, a stranger he’d met. They drank from their glasses and watched each other. Otis watched the man squirm as he watched Otis' dick through his pants.
“Whatchou' lookin' at?” Otis asked. But he knew the answer. He knew when he followed the man from the bar to the man's apartment, and he knew when he positioned his dick along his thigh when he sat in the chair across from the man.
“That.” The man spoke in a voice weakened by desire.
“You want this dick,” Otis said as he squeezed it through his pants.
“Yeah.”
They looked at each other. The man with pleading eyes and Otis with a ragged smile.
“C'mon,” Otis said, motioning with his hand. “Don't stand up,” he said, and the man got on his knees. “C'mon,” Otis repeated as he widened his legs and squeezed his large dick.
He watched the man coming to him. An older man with thinning hair and small arms crawling to him. He watched and he smiled.
The man rubbed his face along the imprint of Otis' dick.
“Kiss it.”
The man began to kiss Otis' dick through his pants, licking it, wetting Otis' pants with saliva as his dick grew more and more down his thigh.
“Yeah, that's it,” Otis breathed.
The man gasped at the sight and began rubbing his face and lips more along the raging dick.
“That's it. You want it?”
“Yeah,” the man breathed. “Yeah.”
“Take your clothes off.”
The man jumped to his feet as fast as he could and began to remove his clothes until he stood naked in front of Otis.
Otis turned him around and smacked his ass. Then once again, this time hard, causing the man to jump.
“Get back down there and turn yo' ass to me.”
The man obeyed.
Otis got up. “You should see how stupid you look,” he said as he turned and walked out the door.
As Otis walked home that night he breathed deep as the night opened before him.
CHAPTER 10
Antonio watched LaVonte come back into the bedroom. It was early morning and in the soft light he watched him as he came towards the bed, his clipped walk causing his dick and his balls to swing like a pendulum against his thighs; his weakened legs seemed to have gained knowledge over the years on how to give him what little balance they could offer. He watched him because he was always afraid his buddy would stumble and he wanted to make sure he was there to catch him if he did.
LaVonte clambered back into bed and pulled the sheet over himself. “We gotta get some groceries in here. I almost didn’t have enough soap to wash my hands. Guess we gotta shower with shampoo today.”
“I’ll get some.”
“Me or Kamon’ll get it.”
“Nah, I got it. I’m here all the time. I might as well.”
“Okay. Oh, and while you’re at it, we’re almost outta toilet paper, too.”
“Damn. You need to get a shopping list together.”
“Yeah. What’re you doin’ today?
“I wanna find some jeans. I was thinkin’ we could go down on Broadway.”
“Not today. I think I’m gonna stop by my moms. I might join you later.”
“You gonna be okay?” Antonio asked the question knowing LaVonte’s history with his family, a family whose parents asked their then fifteen-year-old son to leave home after they found out he was gay. “And they didn’t even care if I had a place to go,” LaVonte had said when recounting the story. An older gay couple took him in and saw that he finished school before he moved out on his own. His parents, charismatic Christians, were concerned that his presence would invite God’s wrath on the family if he stayed around. To them, his crippled legs - going unhealed for so long - was a sign of God’s displeasure with him.
LaVonte told him he would be okay and that he needed to see them every now and then because he missed them. Then he patted Antonio’s chest. “I’ll be alright,” he said.
Talking late in the night or early morning was becoming custom for them. Antonio found in LaVonte someone he could share his dreams without feeling weak or stupid. They lay in the growing light and talked a while longer before they started to drift back off.
“Better get some more sleep before we head out,” LaVonte said, turning his back to Antonio.
“Yeah.”
Antonio moved behind LaVonte and wrapped his arms around him and drifted off.
Lower Broadway buzzed with the electricity of a Saturday afternoon. Antonio and Kamon headed down the avenue. Their pockets were full and they went into every store that caught their eye.
Kamon was walking and waving his arms. “I just want these jeans I saw on this dude the other day. I started to ask him, ‘Yo, like where did you get those jeans?’ but his girlfriend pulled him into a store before I got a chance.”
“How did they look?”
“I can’t explain ‘em, but I’ll know ‘em when I see ‘em. All I know is they was tight, man. I mean tight.” Pointing at a store window, he huffed, “Now that store ain’t got shit. Three floors and only one section for men.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Coming to another store, they went inside. It was busy just like all the stores along Broadway on a Saturday afternoon. Once inside, Kamon went one way and Antonio another as they checked out the clothes.
As Antonio was looking through a table of shirts, a young lady caught his eye. He tried to keep his attention trained on the neatly folded tees before him, but each time he attempted to concentrate on them his eyes would go to the young lady.
He hadn’t given it much thought, but he hadn’t been with too many women since he had moved to New York. He had been so well compensated and so obliged by his street encounters that he hadn’t given much thought to his need for a woman. He didn’t have a need for companionship from any because he had his boys for that and he knew he could bust a nut anytime he wanted. But there was still the space only a woman could fill, and it had been a while since he had let a woman in there.
The young lady looked along a table, and he watched her, imagining how smooth her brown skin might feel. He could smell the hint of roses or some sort of flowers on her soft breasts and could feel her nipples in his mouth as she caressed his head and looked down at him with an easy smile on her lips. Suddenly his dream was interrupted.
“Whatta ya think ‘bout these?” Kamon was standing in a pair of jeans looking at him with slight annoyance in his eyes.
“I like those. Yeah. They tight. Where’d you get ‘em?”
“Over there,” he said pointing.
Antonio glanced at the young lady once more before walking to the other end of the store.
“So what’s up with you and ‘Vonte?” Kamon asked, calling LaVonte by his nickname. He and Antonio sat at the City Hall Park fountain.
Antonio looked at him. “Me and ‘Vonte? Ain’t nothin’ up. Whatchou mean?”
“You two ain’t got nothin’ goin’ on, do you?”
“We woulda told you if we did but it ain’t like that.”
“What’s it like then?”
“It ain’t like that,” Antonio answered sarcastically. “You know I ain’t gay.”
“Then whatcha doin’ with ‘Vonte?”
“Huh? Friends. We’re just friends.”
“Friends.”
“Yeah.”
“You and him haven’t fucked, have you?”
“A few times. Why?”
“ ‘cause you need to stop, man.”
“Who the fuck are you?”
“You need to stop playin’ with ‘Vonte. He’s been hurt enough.”
“Playin’? Nigga, I ain’t playin’ with ‘Vonte. He knows what he wants.”
“And you give it to him. ‘Tonio, man, he ain’t one of your tricks.”
“I know that. I didn’t say he was.”
“Just givin’ him what he wants. Do you even know what he wants? Do you even care?”
“Hell yeah, I care.”
“Look. ‘Vonte’s been hurt a lot, man. He’s good lookin’ an’ all, and got a nice body an’ shit. But as soon as people see his legs, they just turn off. I seen it happen too many times. Like he would be a burden or somethin’ or ... or he might mess up their image.” Kamon fell silent, looking down at the bags of clothes in front of him. “He's my friend and I don't wanna see him hurt like that anymore,” he finally said.
“I wouldn't let that happen. He's my friend too.”
“Then what're you gonna do?”
Antonio thought a minute before answering. “I don't know. I guess it’s just like that with me and him now.”
Maybe Kamon didn’t understand it like he did. That’s what went through Antonio’s mind as he spread his legs and watched the man suck on his balls. Slouched on the couch, he watched the top of the man’s head and the shape of the man’s fist as it gripped Antonio’s dick, squeezing it like it was the last act the man would ever commit, sucking, nuzzling and mumbling incoherently against Antonio’s nuts.
Being with a man was just something to do, an easy nut with no commitment and most of the time the rewards were often his. He had been with a few women in the last few years but they were nothing more than a good fuck. And that was far and in between, because being with a woman risked his freedom, something he enjoyed for the moment. He had tried it with Felicia and all he got were demands that he commit to her. With a man, he figured there would be no commitment and there would be easy money coming his way without the prospect of kids. He definitely wasn’t ready for no babies, so busting a nut with another man was quick and painless. Besides, a hot mouth and a hot hole were all the same. Being with a man was convenient and rewarding, but he knew that being with a woman was something he desired most.
Nevertheless, it was sex, more than anything, that allowed Antonio to glorify his life and his dick was the center of it. Everyone wanted it. Even his mother sought to protect it by keeping it a secret, but she couldn’t; and it was his sex, his dick that finally broke her stranglehold the day he offered it to Felicia at the back yard fence. It was his dick. He had seen it answer the prayers of the needy and comfort the lonely; and it was his dick, this dark hanging member, that brought him both pleasure and assurance when the world told him he didn’t deserve either. He didn’t see his dick as something to counsel, but as something to offer as counsel, so he had no intention of using it to hurt LaVonte, only to comfort him.
He didn’t know if Kamon understood that, but he did, and the man with his face buried in his nuts did.
Leaning forward, he whispered in the man’s ear. “Twenty more and I can git up in that ass.”
Antonio bounded up the stairs from the station. His sex had been emptied into the man but his pockets were full of cash. He came up onto the street and stood at the intersection. He was getting closer to buying the camera and he wanted to get one more look at it before heading home and preparing to meet his father at a movie.
The light changed and he criss-crossed to the other side of the street. The evening was going right. Extra money and hanging out with his father. They hadn’t done much of that in the last month or two and in spite of what his father thought, Antonio did miss going out with him. But he would have to hurry to make it home in time to put the money away and clean up.
Walking up to the window, he slowed and his chest filled with pride as he looked at the camera, resting under the light, waiting to go home with him. 'Soon', he thought. 'Real Soon.'
He stood for a minute or two longer, admiring the camera, when a voice broke through.
“Hi!”
He turned suddenly to see a woman standing beside him. It was the woman he had seen with Marcus Bond. She was with another woman.
“We met briefly at Corso’s,” she reminded him. “I was sitting with Marcus Bond.”
“Yeah. Yeah. Last week. Yeah.”
“You left a good impression on me and Marcus. Oh, we didn't formally introduce ourselves that day, did we? My name is Tamara ... Tamara Calloway and this is Gisette.”
Gisette smiled and gave a short wave. “Hi.”
“Hi. Antonio,” he said as he shook her hand.
“Marcus has a party coming up and we need help. We like the way you handled yourself. Would you like to make some extra money by working his party?”
“Yeah. Doin' what?”
“You know, serving, taking away dishes ... stuff like that. We'll pay you well.”
He felt the camera nudge his back. “Okay. Yeah.”
“Great. Here's our information,” she said, pulling a card from her holder. “It'll be next Saturday. Hope that's not too soon. Our guest list is ballooning and we could use all the help we can get. Call us so we can establish contact with you. We'll be looking to hear from you, now.”
“Oh yeah, you will.”
He hurried back down to the station, leaping from excitement, and hurried home.
The night was warm and clear. All the lights along the streets cut like crystal as he headed to the theater. Things were beginning to look up for him. Working for someone like Marcus Bond could open doors to bigger things, and God only knew he needed bigger things to happen in his life. He couldn’t wait to give his father the news.
As he came upon the cinema he saw his father standing out front. People passed behind him into the theater. His father motioned for him to hurry. He waved back and broke into a sprint, grinning at the news he was about to tell him. Then he stopped.
That’s when he saw her. An old woman in a gray coat with a scarf on her head. It was the same woman he had seen that night on the bench. She moved slowly and silently behind his father and disappeared into the theater. She didn't look Antonio’s way or at his father, but moved quietly into the theater.
“Come on!” His father cupped his hands to his mouth and called out.
Antonio walked the rest of the way to meet him.
“What's wrong with you?” His father asked.
He looked at his father, then into the lobby of the theater. She wasn't there and no one seemed startled by an old woman in a coat in the middle of summer.
“The movie's about to start.” His father put his hand on Antonio's back and ushered him into the building.
They had always been there. He knew it, but he only saw them in the dark; men and women who would watch him, silent and with cautious eyes. There were no precise outlines to their forms, just soft edges that blended into the darkness of his room. Watching.
When he was a boy he would tell his mother about them but she would quickly deny what he saw, telling him it was his imagination. A child's imagination. But he never forgot the look in her eyes the first time he told her. A flash of reckoning crossed them and blazed for a while until she was able to quiet them.
He knew she had understood what he was saying about the men and women, but she fought, fought hard to dismiss them. When he was older and his mind was able to connect the incidents, he figured two things about the visitors and what his mother knew: that either they were spirits ... or that her son was beginning to suffer from the same madness that gripped her.
Antonio didn't tell his father what he had seen that evening because he wasn't sure himself, and after all the years of seeing the men and women in the shadows he still hadn't made up his mind whether he was gifted or insane.
Going to bed that night, he looked at his mother’s picture beside his bed. It was her he had seen that evening. Even though he couldn’t see her face, he knew it was she.
He turned out the lights. Even in the dark he could feel her eyes watching him.
CHAPTER 11
The bar wasn’t too far from his apartment but far enough for Otis to leave behind the loneliness. The bouncer was sitting on a stool in front of the bar talking to another man. The stool he sat on was dwarfed by his large frame.
“ ‘sup man?” he smiled, as he and Otis knocked fists.
“Had to get outta that house,” Otis said. He lifted his head, acknowledging the other man. “‘sup?” The man lifted back.
“I know that feelin’,” the bouncer said.
“Well I’mma get on in here and get me something to drink.”
“It’s waitin’ on you.”
Otis laughed and went inside.
He waved at the bartender as he walked through the narrow space searching for a seat. He found one near the end of the bar.
The bartender came down to him with his drink already made. “I figured it was about time you showed your face,” he laughed.
Otis slid the money to him. “I hadn’t planned on it, but it’s too nice to be sittin’ up in a damn apartment. Whatcha’ gonna do sittin’ up in an apartment on a nice night like this? Never mind. Don’t answer,” he said, knowing the bartender’s reply.
“Now you know I would tell you,” the bartender grinned as he walked back to the cash register.
As Otis lifted the drink, the cold glass and the white ice cubes leaning in the amber liquid caused a release in him, a rush that escaped from his chest. He drank the mix, tasting the sweet-bitter on his tongue before letting it roll down his throat.
He liked coming to this bar because there were people like him there. Not too many young kids; and the music was music he understood. The bar had a room to the back of it, just beyond where the DJ sat. A large screen played music videos and there were tables and one long sofa that stretched along the wall. The back room was darker than the rest of the bar and in the middle of the floor people danced under swirling lights. He watched the people sitting along the wall, moving in their seats and singing to the music. He smiled and moved his head. “Sugar Pie Guy.” He remembered that song. Always loved it.
He took another drink as his memory skirted along hot summer days back in Lincoln Heights … sitting along the curbs or on top of cars on Steffens Street with his buddies, drinking sodas and checking out the scene. Hearing the voices of Curtis Mayfield, Aretha Franklin and Isaac Hayes rising from cars that rolled slowly through bright streets. Reggie Sinclair sitting next to him, his lean pecan colored arms streaked with tributaries of large veins touching Otis’ arm whenever they laughed at a sight. Otis and his buddies flirting with girls wearing tight bell bottoms, while he secretly enjoyed having Reggie next to him ... the clack of shoulder pads and the booming voices of his teammates. Dewy nights. Walking Terrell to the car; finally getting to know him…
“You ready?”
Otis looked at the bouncer. The bar had closed. He nodded his head and the two of them left.
The sharp pop of glass breaking under their feet announced them as they walked through the darkened abandoned building. Moonlight from outside spread through dirty, bare windows as they made their way to the spot. The blankets were still there. “Fuck me good,” the bouncer said as he slid his pants down and got on his knees.
****
“I’m holding you up, ain’t I?”
“Yeah. But it’s cool.”
(The click of an eight-track. Al Green comes on)
“If I gave you my love,
I’ll tell you what I’d dooo
I expect a whole lotta out of you, huh, huh…”
“So where are y’all headed to?”
“A party. Wanna come?”
“Nah. I can’t.”
“You got to be good to me
I’m gonna be good to you
There’s a whole lotta things you and I could do
Hey, hey…”
“Want a little help gittin’ out? I can show you around.”
“It ain’t that easy … my father. He wouldn’t understand.”
“When you need me
I’ll be right there beside you…
Sometime when you’re feeling low
All you got to do is call me…”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Well, I better go.”
“ ‘ey. What’s your name?”
“Terrell.”
Smiling. “Otis.”
“I know who you are.”
“Simply Beautiful…”
Otis shivered as he walked away from the building into the thinning night.
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It was a Saturday afternoon. Otis went into the city to hang out and do some shopping. He walked along Seventh Avenue on his way to get something to eat when his phone rang.
“Hello?”
“How do you know Nathan Price?”
“What’s going on, Emory?”
“Yeah. Hi. So how do you know Nathan Price?”
“We go back a bit,” Otis answered.
“I was surprised to see you at the exhibit the other day.”
“I didn’t know you were going to be there either. You’re a member of The Sons of Amistad?”
“Uh huh. Where are you?”
“Seventh, ‘bout to turn onto Thirty-First.”
“Is he with you?”
“Who?”
“Nathan.”
“No.”
“Okay. Stay there. I’m on my way up.”
“I don’t know how long I’m going to be here.”
“Were you about to leave?”
“No. I was going to get some lunch.”
“Why don’t you come over to my place? I can fix lunch.”
“Nah, I...”
“You act like it’s so much trouble to visit me.”
“What?”
“I mean, you come into the city and I’m right down in Chelsea. You never stop by.”
“Man … Okay. I’m on my way.”
Otis arrived at Emory's apartment.
Emory opened the door. “What? You actually made it.”
“I said I would be here.” Otis walked in.
They had lunch then went out and sat on the balcony with their drinks. “You should move here. Get away from Brooklyn,” Emory said as he looked over his balcony.
“I like Brooklyn.” Otis looked around recalling his and Emory’s times together. “I like Brooklyn a lot.”
They talked awhile before Emory moved the conversation back to Nathan.
“Are you and Nathan seeing each other?”
“No.”
“Is he gay?”
Otis cocked his head. “Why do you want to know that?”
“Just wondering. He seems like it.”
“How?”
“He just does.”
“I don’t think that’s my place to be discussing his business.”
Emory crossed his leg. “Why not?”
Otis just looked at him.
“Have you ever been to bed with him?”
“Okay, this shit is getting crazy again, just like it used to. I don’t think we have that kind of relationship where I tell you about who I’ve slept with.”
“You’re right,” Emory said, with a dip of his head. “Want another drink?”
“Yeah.”
Emory went in to refresh their drinks. Otis thought about the conversation they were having. He and Emory had gone out on a few dates in the past and he had spent the night once or twice in this very apartment, but it didn’t work out. Otis had too much on his mind at the time and Emory seemed too unsure of being in a relationship, so the two of them agreed to call it off. Since then they had become friends; not good friends, just friends as well as co-workers.
“Here you go,” Emory said as he returned with the drinks.
“Thanks.”
“You know, you said we don’t have that kind of relationship,” Emory commented as he sat down.
“Not for me to tell you who I sleep with.”
“Mmm.” Emory looked down at his drink. “What kind of relationship do we have now?”
Otis looked past him, then back to him. “Friends. Co-workers.”
“And that’s it, huh?”
“That’s it? What more do you want?”
“I don’t know.”
Otis shook his head. “So let me ask you the same question: What kind of relationship do we have?”
“You know what we have.”
“Tell me.”
Emory gave a blank look.
“Why did you act the way you did the other day?” Otis continued.
“What do you mean?”
“At the exhibit.”
“Like how?”
“You dissed me.”
“No I didn’t.”
“Yes you did, man. You were like, ‘shit, what is he doing here?’ I saw it in your face and then you proceeded to just play me off.”
Emory thought a bit. “I was probably bothered by you being with Nathan.”
“Nah man, that wasn’t it. Nathan wasn’t even there yet.”
“I don’t remember playing you off.”
“It wasn’t until Nathan came that you approached me.”
“I was working.”
“With your Sons of Amistad,” Otis remarked sarcastically.
Emory moved uncomfortably in his chair.
“See it’s the same ol’ shit, man. You don’t want anybody in your circle to know you’re gay.”
“I told you before, when we were dating. The two don’t go together.” “Black and gay,” Otis asserted.
Emory didn’t answer.
“Like I told you years ago, Emory, man: that’s bullshit, so don’t give me that.”
“Look, we’ve been through all this before. We disagree and that’s the way it is. I don’t care how you feel about it.”
“Then you need to stop trying to hook up with me.”
“Why?”
Otis leaned forward, “Because it means you’re gay. And in case you haven’t noticed, you’re black. The two don’t go together, remember?”
“Nobody has to know.”
“You know how you sound? A grown ass man acting like a boy.”
“It’s over your head.”
“Good. If it means sacrificing myself to satisfy somebody else, then keep it away from me.”
“If you did the type of work I do for the community you’d understand,” Emory declared.
“C’mon man, don’t give me that shit. If you were doing work for the community you’d try to enlighten minds instead of playing along with ‘em.”
“As usual, this conversation is over,”
“Fine with me.”
A few minutes passed before Emory spoke. “We may disagree, but we shouldn’t let it get in the way of our relationship, okay?”
“As long at it doesn’t mean anything more than friends.”
“Nah. I can’t let that ride,” Emory said as he lifted his drink. “I’m not gonna let that happen.”
****
~ 1981 ~
The bloated sky finally broke and the rain rushed to the streets below. Otis ran into the phone booth and slammed the door shut, pushing once more to secure it. It was night and the streets had been emptied by the assault of the rain that came down in large staffs.
He wiped the water from his face and stood under the light of the booth as he thought about what to say. Staring out at the night, his mind went over the words that had accumulated in his head over the past three years. Words and phrases culled from the look in his father’s eyes; taken from the mouths of his detractors, from the choking sound that came from his mother’s throat, from the silence of the onlookers as he was led from the courtroom, from the cold cell, from the smell of body odor and urine, words that created the text of his life. He knew the words, but had never rehearsed them, had never heard them, and now it was time.
In the light of the phone booth, dead bugs lay in the cover of the lamp. He looked at them for a moment before pulling the coins from his pocket and laying them in front of the phone. For a second an opposing thought came to him that maybe he shouldn’t make the call. Maybe he should just go back to his room at the Y and wait it out just as he had for the last three years ... but it was only a second’s thought; only a flicker of sorrow that he couldn’t afford.
He made the call.
“Momma?”
“Otis!” His mother called his name then fell into a confused silence. “Where are you?” She had become used to an operator stating the nature of a prison call.
“I’m out.”
His mother gasped. “Oh…” She caught her breath. “You want us to come and get you? I’ll wake your father up and we’ll come and get you. Why didn’t you let us know?” she called out of joy.
“Momma...”
“Jesus, thank you, thank you.”
“Momma.”
“Yes baby? Oh thank, thank you,” she prayed.
“I’m in New York.”
Stunned silence.
“What…”
“I’m in New York. I need to get away.”
“Otis, what are you talking about? Why?”
“You know why, Momma,” his voice softened. “You know why.”
“Don’t...”
“I need to do this Momma. I’m sorry, but I need to do this.”
“Baby ... don’t … ”
“Momma, please … It’s just for a little while. I have to get my head together.”
“Me and your father will send you a plane ticket. Where are you staying?”
“Please.”
“Where are you staying?”
He heaved a heavy sigh as he fought back the tears. “I’m not ready to come home.”
His mother began to cry and the tears became heavy until her cry became the same choking sound he had heard in the courtroom.
“Don’t cry, Momma. Don’t cry. I’ll be alright.” But she didn’t hear him. She couldn’t.
“Momma,” he called. “Momma, I love you. Don’t cry. Please Momma, don’t cry.” His voice sunk under the tears that rose in his throat. “Please, Momma... Please...”
The rain roared outside the booth and rushed through the streets.
****
Otis caught the train back to Brooklyn. He felt the silence as the train moved under the East River farther and farther away from the city and the memories.
CHAPTER 8
The photo in the window caught Antonio’s eye. It was a black and white photo of a man sitting alone on a bench in Battery Park. On the right side of the photo, a tree lowered its naked branch near the man’s head and in the background the Statue of Liberty stood, banked against a gray winter sky. He watched the photo, unable to move. The form, the gradation, all elements foreign to him, held him still in front of the window. But more than anything, it was the narrative. He felt he knew the man and, like the man in the photo, he understood loneliness.
Standing in front of the store window, he saw the cameras, compact and balanced in design, set to fit his hands. Maybe he could create visions like the one framed in the photo.
He went into the store and began looking in the counters. They were all beautiful objects, but the prices weren’t. The salespeople were busy with other customers so they hadn’t come over to help him. One camera in particular caught his eye. There was something just right about the way it sat in his line of sight, cradled in its display as if it was waiting just for him.
Finally a salesperson came over.
“Can I help you find something?”
“How much is this camera?”
The woman carefully lifted the camera from the case. “Twenty-seven ninety-nine.”
“Twenty-seven ninety-nine?”
“Yes.” She saw the astonished look on Antonio’s face. “Maybe you’d like to look at this one,” she said, replacing the camera and picking up another one. “It’s less expensive and does much of what the other one does.”
“Can it take pictures like the one in the window?”
“It can give you shots like any in the window,” she smiled.
“Oh.” He looked at the price and saw that it was out of his range as well.
“Do you do installments?”
“No. But we do get these models in often. Just save up and let us know when you’re ready.”
He stared at the camera.
“You’ll have enough saved up before you know it and you’ll be out there shooting just like the pros; even the one in the window.”
“Yeah,” he muttered. “Thanks.”
It was his day off and Antonio decided to spend it alone. He had spending money in his pockets so he avoided Kamon, whom he was sure had gone through all the money he had made and would start to ask that Antonio ante up. It seemed to be happening more and more lately, and LaVonte was at work.
He hadn’t made too many other acquaintances since he arrived in New York, just as he had never known many people in his life at all, only an assortment of faces, and people with appetites that he fulfilled. For the most part, he had come to expect it to be that way. His mother had warned him of it. People were dangerous, she had warned. Dangerous, spiteful little animals who only took things.
When he became a teen he found his mother's warnings overwrought with paranoia. He discovered this when he met a young woman one day while taking out the trash. Her name was Felicia and she had been staying at a neighbor’s house in back of theirs. She saw him and she smiled and waved to him. He remembered how his immediate thought was to turn and hurry back into the house when she waved, but something brightened inside him and before he knew it, he smiled and waved back.
Felicia didn't seem dangerous or spiteful. In fact, she was kind and giving. Over time, he would sneak out to the back yard while his mother was at work in her salon and he and Felicia would talk. It was harmless, he thought, and his mother would never know. But eventually he began to fall for the young lady and in time had to choose between denying his feelings for her or accepting them and facing his mother's wrath.
It was an ugly scene the day he told his mother about Felicia. His mother sat in her easy chair, knitting while soaking her feet in a plastic tub. The house was quiet except for the old Muntz TV that still functioned. Outside, life moved across a palette of sounds. “Listen to them,” his mother said as she looked up from her knitting. “You finish your homework?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Good. I don’t want you being like them. Niggers,” she mumbled.
Antonio sat on the couch and felt his muscles twitch as he worked up the nerves to tell her. His buttocks tightened and loosened and he arched and relaxed his back, preparing to end the only life he had ever known, his life with his mother.
Suddenly, his mother looked at him. “Get the tea pot off the stove and freshen up my water.”
He got up and went to the kitchen and returned with the tea pot. Kneeling at her feet, he watched the hot water move into the tub. He told her.
“Momma, I ... I made a friend.”
She stopped making the loops with her needles and eyed him. “What friend?”
“Just a friend.”
“Where you meet him? School?”
“Yes ma’am.” He figured placing Felicia as far as possible from his mother would be safer for the both of them, him and Felicia.
“Is he a good boy?”
Antonio nodded his head as the water thinned from the spout.
“You just make sure he don’t break your concentration in that classroom.”
He didn’t respond.
“I’m glad you told me. Maybe you can bring him by so I can see what he’s like. You are getting older now. I guess you gotta have some friends. You gotta be careful, though.”
Still, he was quiet and the silence caused his mother to become curious.
“Why you telling me this?” Miss Susie asked as she looked down at her son.
“Well, um, I, uh…”
She looked closer.
“I think I wanna get my own place.”
As if the water had suddenly become too hot, she snatched her feet from the tub. “What?”
“I...”
“I heard what you said. No. Boy you sound crazy.”
“It’s time. I'm almost seventeen.”
“Don’t you know they’re out there? They just been waiting for you to make some damn foolish decision like that so they can get you,” she said, making a quick, grasping movement through the air.
Sixteen years he had been with her, and for sixteen years he had heard about the people, or things that were after him. He was tired. He had never seen them, had never heard them, and hadn’t even picked up a scent from them. For sixteen years he listened to her ramblings and now he had to ask.
“Who?”
In a heated instant she reached down and slapped the pot from his hands, causing him to jump up.
She glared at him, her eyes becoming lost in unfathomable anger. “Where does he live?”
“I don’t know.”
She stood and walked up to him, her feet padding wet across the floor. “Boy, you better tell me something!”
“With her sister!”
Miss Susie stumbled a bit but caught herself. She looked down at the trail of water she had left, then back to her son. Suddenly she grabbed him by the collar and slammed him against a wall. “You been fuckin’ some girl!” She held him there and searched his face.
“No!”
She continued eyeing him. “Some damn whore,” she muttered almost incoherently. “A muthafuckin’ whore.” She pressed him harder against the wall with one hand and with the other began undoing his pants.
Antonio struggled. “Momma! No!”
She pulled until she had his pants and underwear down mid-thigh. “You been fuckin’, ain’t you. Ain’t you!” She lifted his dick and lowered her head to his crotch and began sniffing.”
“Momma, please,” Antonio begged.
“She want some of this, don’t she?” She said, squeezing his dick in her hand. “Don’t she!”
“Stop it!” Antonio yelled as he pushed her hand away.
She backed off a distance to the center of the living room and began walking in circles, “It’s just like your father’s. She want some of it. I know she do.”
Antonio pulled up his pants and stormed off to his bedroom, leaving the old woman walking and talking in circles.
After that evening he felt unsafe in the house. His mother had stopped talking to him. Humming had replaced her words. All she did was hum whenever she was around him. He became afraid to eat her cooking, so he started fixing his own food, and at night he stayed awake as he watched her shadow pass under his bedroom door. Every night she paced back and forth, stopping to say something to his room and sprinkling dust, and then walking more. It was all he could take, so he left.
His time with Felicia lasted a little over two years. The passion they had for each other outgrew them. Eventually she sought other men, and he sought other women. Then one night a man stopped him on the street and he discovered something else about himself.
Evening settled over Manhattan and the city lights came on to lead it to night. Antonio sat on a bench in Battery Park and looked out at Liberty Island just as the man in the photo had done. He put one of his arms up on the back of the bench and stared out at the deepening water and the bright beams of light that washed over the statue, wondering what had held the man’s attention.
Then once again, just as he had throughout the day, his thoughts drifted back to his father. The conversation the other night. He knew what his father was talking about. He was surprised, yet he understood and once again, as he had done for much of the day, he imagined himself walking in the footsteps his father had left for him many years ago. Did his father work the Hell’s Kitchen area like he had? Had his father moved under the ghostly lights of the bookstores in midtown like he did? The alley where he had gotten his dick sucked the other night; had his father stood there years ago just as he had done the other night? And the man in the photo; could it have been his father sitting right here in this very spot looking out at the water, wondering if he could ever go home again?
Antonio sighed and threw his head back as he thought what his father must have gone through being alone so far away from home.
Suddenly there was movement on the bench a bit away from Antonio. In the street lamp he saw an old woman sitting. The sound of his sigh had pulled her attention to him. He couldn’t see her face very well, but he could tell she was looking over at him.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I … just remembered something…”
She didn’t answer. She got up, picked up her bag and walked away, and as she did so the scent of sweet peas rose to his nostrils.
****
The photos on the wall retired in the growing darkness of Antonio's room as night came. They were photos meticulously arranged, his own gallery, sheets of paper torn from books and magazines and mounted with tape: mountains and cityscapes; a small girl looking at the body of her deceased mother.
His love with the camera was growing. Now when he walked he framed things with his eyes. Sometimes he would find himself drifting from conversation into the frame of his eye. “What the fuck are you doing?” Kamon would ask. “Nothing,” he’d reply.
His father’s eyes sparkled the first time he saw the gallery and he offered to help him buy the camera. But when Antonio told him he would buy it on his own, his father left without saying another word.
Antonio lay in bed with his hands behind his head. He knew his father was onto what he was doing but he wasn’t going to step away yet, not with the money he was pulling in. He lay there and watched the photos, the little girl’s eyes closing in the darkness.
There were two more photos in his room; one was of his mother and one was of his father. In the one photo his mother sat at a table at a party in a nice black dress with an organdy wrap around her shoulders. He remembered seeing that dress in her closet; it had tiny specks of glitter that winked colors of red, blue, silver and green but the colors didn’t show in the black and white photograph.
And she was smiling in the picture. Her face was unlike the face he saw growing up; it was younger and open, not the ragged face with the wild eyes he recalled. In the photo she sat in front of a cake with candles that said ‘Happy New Year’ and on a banner in the background were the numbers ‘1947’. He wondered what took that smile from his mother’s face and what could have turned the eyes that once held crystals to stark, red sockets.
In the frame next to his mother’s photo his father leaned against a car. He was grinning and pointing to the temporary tags on a ’67 Olds. Antonio knew what took the smile from his father’s face. If only his father had known what was going to happen to him the day he posed for that photo, he would have gassed up that car and drove until he came to another city, another place.
The faces faded into the dark and Antonio turned on his side as he tried to imagine what photo of himself he would put on the table. He thought but couldn’t imagine himself in a place on the table alongside his parents.
CHAPTER 9
It was 1978 when the cell doors closed, and that was the year Otis’ world fell into darkness. Ever since then he hadn't been able to recover. Even when there were people around him they would fade to gray in the area of desolation that surrounded him.
For years he walked through light and sound, numb and with very little sense of reckoning. But it was the loneliness he wrestled with the most. It was beside him every move he made and it sometimes led him to places he didn’t want to go.
This is how he felt this evening and it's why he called his mother. Even though he had spoken to her a week ago he needed to hear her voice again. He needed to hear her tell him how he could make it through the hard times. He needed someone to keep him sane for another night.
“How is Antonio doing?” his mother asked.
Otis stared ahead, disconnected from her question, staring, as if summoned by someone or something on the other side of the wall. “Fine,” he finally said. He walked into the living room and stood staring at the window.
“That's good,” she said. His mother understood her role tonight. She understood that she was needed. She felt it, and she set about doing what she could to comfort her son. “Are you listening to me?” she asked, feeling his distance.
“Ma'am?”
“Are you listening to me,” she repeated.
“Yes ma'am. He's doing fine.”
His mother became silent for a few seconds as she sought to connect with him. “Otis, sit down.”
“Ma'am?”
“Sit down. I can feel you standing and looking out somewhere. You need to talk to me and bring your thoughts back.”
“Oh.” He sat down. Just the fact that she saw him from so far away brought him back. This was his mother.
His mother waited until she felt he was relaxed before continuing their conversation.
“That poor boy. It’s a wonder he ain’t gone stone crazy ... he’s not showing any signs, is he?”
“No, ma'am.” He leaned forward with his elbow on his knee, listening to her. He needed to hear her voice.
“It’s a wonder,” she repeated. “Susie put that boy through some unnatural stuff.”
“Yeah.” He didn't like hearing the stories about what happened to Antonio as a child. If it were left up to him he wouldn’t talk about it at all because the conversations left him feeling helpless. But seeing the man his son had become, it was hard not to listen so he could understand him. “What happened to Miss Susie anyway?” he asked as he relaxed and sat back on the couch. “I don’t remember her being so crazy.”
“She was already that way when you two ... well, you know … you know what I mean.”
“Yeah Ma, I know what you mean,” he remarked, with a bit of exasperation.
“Let’s just say things happen to people and it did to her.”
“So she wasn’t always that way?” The story held his interest. He put his feet on the coffee table and listened.
“No … no she wasn’t. It just happened over time. Before then she was just like everybody else. A humdinger, but for the most part she wasn’t that much different from any other woman.” His mother paused for a second to gather her memory. She was feeling that he was feeling better. “Just fast,” she continued. “Fast and flirty as a woman can be. She was pretty as a blackberry though. Just glowed in the sun with all that beautiful dark skin … and the men loved her. That was the problem though. They loved her too much and she couldn’t get enough of them either. We used to go out together - this is before me and your daddy met - we would walk into a nightclub and she would tell me which man she was going to catch that night.”
“Wow.”
“Mmm hmm. I think she was trying to make up for the fact that she wasn’t light-skinned.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. You know how dark she was. She would stand in the mirror and say ‘Gloria Jean, I think I look prettier than Cora Lee and them, don’t you think so? Cora Lee Brooks was high yellow and had good hair. She only ran with people who looked like her. Thought she and her friends were God’s gift to everybody! And Susie would say, ‘Don’t I look prettier than Cora Lee?’ and I would tell her she was, because she was. Cora Lee just had light skin and pretty hair, but that’s all.”
“When did she start losin’ it, though?”
His mother sighed. “By the time she was a full grown woman Susie had had most of the men in Lincoln Heights and beyond.”
“She was a ho?”
“Don’t be saying that about her. She just wanted to be loved.”
“Okay, okay.”
“Anyway, Susie mostly went after married men. Especially the ones who married snooty women. I think it was revenge. She had so many women riled up at her that she couldn’t even walk down the street without somebody threatening her or just talkin’ nasty about her. Eventually she disappeared. Didn’t say nothing to nobody, not even me; just up and left one day.”
“Just like that, huh?” Otis asked.
“Yeah. I figured she musta been chased out of Cincinnati by so many hatin’ women. But that wasn’t it. A few months later I got a phone call from her. I asked her why did she move? She just laughed and said she had got all the men she wanted in Cincinnati. Said she wanted to see who else was out there. I felt sorry for her because I knew she was just trying to love herself through other people … She was changing.” His mother stopped to assemble an extra thought. “But you know what I remember most of all about that phone call? It was silent. I asked her where she was and she said ‘nowhere,’ and it sounded like it. Just silent. No sound of people. No sound of cars passing by ... not even that airy sound you heard sometimes over the phone. Nothing. It ‘bout scared me half to death so I decided I didn’t want to know where she was. Eventually she moved to New York. She stayed there for a while then came on back to Cincinnati.”
“She told me she used to live here.”
“She came back more classy and prettier than ever. But she still hadn’t changed her ways. Soon as she got back she searched out other men with snooty wives, and there she went.”
“Man...”
“Mmm hmm. But you know Susie. She enjoyed every bit of it, until she started getting older. That’s when things really started happening to her. You know, the usual. A gray hair here, a gray hair there.”
“How old was she?”
“About forty-five, I guess. She held her looks longer than most of us, though. And then she started becoming depressed because she couldn’t turn heads like she used to. The younger men wanted the younger girls...”
“The daughters of the women she hated,” Otis interjected.
“Right. That’s when she started becoming angry. One day, she was sitting in front of her mirror, with me sitting off to the side ... funny how she always had me sitting there like that ... and she said, ‘Gloria Jean, I think somebody put a curse on me.’ I said, ‘What?’ and she said it again. She started thinking some of the women put a curse on her to make her turn older and less attractive to the younger men.”
“Why would she think that?”
“Said somebody told her. I asked who, and she just said, ‘You don’t know him.’ Said he told her since her mother stayed looking young for a long time, she should too. I told her it’s natural to get older, but she didn’t want to hear it. And that’s when she started becoming all paranoid and things. Thinking everyone was after her.”
“Not you and Daddy.”
“Oh no, no. She loved us. She said we were her only friends.”
“Wow, that’s sad to hear how she started going down, Ma.”
“Well … you just make sure Antonio don’t get like that. I don’t know if mental illness runs in her family or not.”
“I think he’ll be okay,” Otis said as he glanced at the window.
“You know, baby?” his mother realized. “I don’t think I remember many sunny days over her house. Do you? It was always overcast.”
“That’s just your imagination.”
“I don’t know … But you make sure you take care of that boy. None of that was his fault.”
“I will.”
“Okay … And you take care of yourself too, baby. Don’t let things get you down.”
He continued staring at the window. “Okay.”
After his mother hung up, he walked over to the window and looked down into the street. Her story about Miss Susie stayed in his head. He had promised Miss Susie he would look after Antonio, but how could he keep him from what might be in his blood?
Outside his window a bug flitted in the light of a street lamp and people and cars moved along the night streets.
It wasn’t just Antonio he knew he had to keep an eye on, but himself as well. The sounds of the streets climbed up to his apartment. He stood at the window for a while, trying to hold onto his mother's voice. Finally he walked into the bedroom, changed clothes, and headed out the door.
****
It was later that night when Otis sat across the room from the man, a stranger he’d met. They drank from their glasses and watched each other. Otis watched the man squirm as he watched Otis' dick through his pants.
“Whatchou' lookin' at?” Otis asked. But he knew the answer. He knew when he followed the man from the bar to the man's apartment, and he knew when he positioned his dick along his thigh when he sat in the chair across from the man.
“That.” The man spoke in a voice weakened by desire.
“You want this dick,” Otis said as he squeezed it through his pants.
“Yeah.”
They looked at each other. The man with pleading eyes and Otis with a ragged smile.
“C'mon,” Otis said, motioning with his hand. “Don't stand up,” he said, and the man got on his knees. “C'mon,” Otis repeated as he widened his legs and squeezed his large dick.
He watched the man coming to him. An older man with thinning hair and small arms crawling to him. He watched and he smiled.
The man rubbed his face along the imprint of Otis' dick.
“Kiss it.”
The man began to kiss Otis' dick through his pants, licking it, wetting Otis' pants with saliva as his dick grew more and more down his thigh.
“Yeah, that's it,” Otis breathed.
The man gasped at the sight and began rubbing his face and lips more along the raging dick.
“That's it. You want it?”
“Yeah,” the man breathed. “Yeah.”
“Take your clothes off.”
The man jumped to his feet as fast as he could and began to remove his clothes until he stood naked in front of Otis.
Otis turned him around and smacked his ass. Then once again, this time hard, causing the man to jump.
“Get back down there and turn yo' ass to me.”
The man obeyed.
Otis got up. “You should see how stupid you look,” he said as he turned and walked out the door.
As Otis walked home that night he breathed deep as the night opened before him.
CHAPTER 10
Antonio watched LaVonte come back into the bedroom. It was early morning and in the soft light he watched him as he came towards the bed, his clipped walk causing his dick and his balls to swing like a pendulum against his thighs; his weakened legs seemed to have gained knowledge over the years on how to give him what little balance they could offer. He watched him because he was always afraid his buddy would stumble and he wanted to make sure he was there to catch him if he did.
LaVonte clambered back into bed and pulled the sheet over himself. “We gotta get some groceries in here. I almost didn’t have enough soap to wash my hands. Guess we gotta shower with shampoo today.”
“I’ll get some.”
“Me or Kamon’ll get it.”
“Nah, I got it. I’m here all the time. I might as well.”
“Okay. Oh, and while you’re at it, we’re almost outta toilet paper, too.”
“Damn. You need to get a shopping list together.”
“Yeah. What’re you doin’ today?
“I wanna find some jeans. I was thinkin’ we could go down on Broadway.”
“Not today. I think I’m gonna stop by my moms. I might join you later.”
“You gonna be okay?” Antonio asked the question knowing LaVonte’s history with his family, a family whose parents asked their then fifteen-year-old son to leave home after they found out he was gay. “And they didn’t even care if I had a place to go,” LaVonte had said when recounting the story. An older gay couple took him in and saw that he finished school before he moved out on his own. His parents, charismatic Christians, were concerned that his presence would invite God’s wrath on the family if he stayed around. To them, his crippled legs - going unhealed for so long - was a sign of God’s displeasure with him.
LaVonte told him he would be okay and that he needed to see them every now and then because he missed them. Then he patted Antonio’s chest. “I’ll be alright,” he said.
Talking late in the night or early morning was becoming custom for them. Antonio found in LaVonte someone he could share his dreams without feeling weak or stupid. They lay in the growing light and talked a while longer before they started to drift back off.
“Better get some more sleep before we head out,” LaVonte said, turning his back to Antonio.
“Yeah.”
Antonio moved behind LaVonte and wrapped his arms around him and drifted off.
Lower Broadway buzzed with the electricity of a Saturday afternoon. Antonio and Kamon headed down the avenue. Their pockets were full and they went into every store that caught their eye.
Kamon was walking and waving his arms. “I just want these jeans I saw on this dude the other day. I started to ask him, ‘Yo, like where did you get those jeans?’ but his girlfriend pulled him into a store before I got a chance.”
“How did they look?”
“I can’t explain ‘em, but I’ll know ‘em when I see ‘em. All I know is they was tight, man. I mean tight.” Pointing at a store window, he huffed, “Now that store ain’t got shit. Three floors and only one section for men.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Coming to another store, they went inside. It was busy just like all the stores along Broadway on a Saturday afternoon. Once inside, Kamon went one way and Antonio another as they checked out the clothes.
As Antonio was looking through a table of shirts, a young lady caught his eye. He tried to keep his attention trained on the neatly folded tees before him, but each time he attempted to concentrate on them his eyes would go to the young lady.
He hadn’t given it much thought, but he hadn’t been with too many women since he had moved to New York. He had been so well compensated and so obliged by his street encounters that he hadn’t given much thought to his need for a woman. He didn’t have a need for companionship from any because he had his boys for that and he knew he could bust a nut anytime he wanted. But there was still the space only a woman could fill, and it had been a while since he had let a woman in there.
The young lady looked along a table, and he watched her, imagining how smooth her brown skin might feel. He could smell the hint of roses or some sort of flowers on her soft breasts and could feel her nipples in his mouth as she caressed his head and looked down at him with an easy smile on her lips. Suddenly his dream was interrupted.
“Whatta ya think ‘bout these?” Kamon was standing in a pair of jeans looking at him with slight annoyance in his eyes.
“I like those. Yeah. They tight. Where’d you get ‘em?”
“Over there,” he said pointing.
Antonio glanced at the young lady once more before walking to the other end of the store.
“So what’s up with you and ‘Vonte?” Kamon asked, calling LaVonte by his nickname. He and Antonio sat at the City Hall Park fountain.
Antonio looked at him. “Me and ‘Vonte? Ain’t nothin’ up. Whatchou mean?”
“You two ain’t got nothin’ goin’ on, do you?”
“We woulda told you if we did but it ain’t like that.”
“What’s it like then?”
“It ain’t like that,” Antonio answered sarcastically. “You know I ain’t gay.”
“Then whatcha doin’ with ‘Vonte?”
“Huh? Friends. We’re just friends.”
“Friends.”
“Yeah.”
“You and him haven’t fucked, have you?”
“A few times. Why?”
“ ‘cause you need to stop, man.”
“Who the fuck are you?”
“You need to stop playin’ with ‘Vonte. He’s been hurt enough.”
“Playin’? Nigga, I ain’t playin’ with ‘Vonte. He knows what he wants.”
“And you give it to him. ‘Tonio, man, he ain’t one of your tricks.”
“I know that. I didn’t say he was.”
“Just givin’ him what he wants. Do you even know what he wants? Do you even care?”
“Hell yeah, I care.”
“Look. ‘Vonte’s been hurt a lot, man. He’s good lookin’ an’ all, and got a nice body an’ shit. But as soon as people see his legs, they just turn off. I seen it happen too many times. Like he would be a burden or somethin’ or ... or he might mess up their image.” Kamon fell silent, looking down at the bags of clothes in front of him. “He's my friend and I don't wanna see him hurt like that anymore,” he finally said.
“I wouldn't let that happen. He's my friend too.”
“Then what're you gonna do?”
Antonio thought a minute before answering. “I don't know. I guess it’s just like that with me and him now.”
Maybe Kamon didn’t understand it like he did. That’s what went through Antonio’s mind as he spread his legs and watched the man suck on his balls. Slouched on the couch, he watched the top of the man’s head and the shape of the man’s fist as it gripped Antonio’s dick, squeezing it like it was the last act the man would ever commit, sucking, nuzzling and mumbling incoherently against Antonio’s nuts.
Being with a man was just something to do, an easy nut with no commitment and most of the time the rewards were often his. He had been with a few women in the last few years but they were nothing more than a good fuck. And that was far and in between, because being with a woman risked his freedom, something he enjoyed for the moment. He had tried it with Felicia and all he got were demands that he commit to her. With a man, he figured there would be no commitment and there would be easy money coming his way without the prospect of kids. He definitely wasn’t ready for no babies, so busting a nut with another man was quick and painless. Besides, a hot mouth and a hot hole were all the same. Being with a man was convenient and rewarding, but he knew that being with a woman was something he desired most.
Nevertheless, it was sex, more than anything, that allowed Antonio to glorify his life and his dick was the center of it. Everyone wanted it. Even his mother sought to protect it by keeping it a secret, but she couldn’t; and it was his sex, his dick that finally broke her stranglehold the day he offered it to Felicia at the back yard fence. It was his dick. He had seen it answer the prayers of the needy and comfort the lonely; and it was his dick, this dark hanging member, that brought him both pleasure and assurance when the world told him he didn’t deserve either. He didn’t see his dick as something to counsel, but as something to offer as counsel, so he had no intention of using it to hurt LaVonte, only to comfort him.
He didn’t know if Kamon understood that, but he did, and the man with his face buried in his nuts did.
Leaning forward, he whispered in the man’s ear. “Twenty more and I can git up in that ass.”
Antonio bounded up the stairs from the station. His sex had been emptied into the man but his pockets were full of cash. He came up onto the street and stood at the intersection. He was getting closer to buying the camera and he wanted to get one more look at it before heading home and preparing to meet his father at a movie.
The light changed and he criss-crossed to the other side of the street. The evening was going right. Extra money and hanging out with his father. They hadn’t done much of that in the last month or two and in spite of what his father thought, Antonio did miss going out with him. But he would have to hurry to make it home in time to put the money away and clean up.
Walking up to the window, he slowed and his chest filled with pride as he looked at the camera, resting under the light, waiting to go home with him. 'Soon', he thought. 'Real Soon.'
He stood for a minute or two longer, admiring the camera, when a voice broke through.
“Hi!”
He turned suddenly to see a woman standing beside him. It was the woman he had seen with Marcus Bond. She was with another woman.
“We met briefly at Corso’s,” she reminded him. “I was sitting with Marcus Bond.”
“Yeah. Yeah. Last week. Yeah.”
“You left a good impression on me and Marcus. Oh, we didn't formally introduce ourselves that day, did we? My name is Tamara ... Tamara Calloway and this is Gisette.”
Gisette smiled and gave a short wave. “Hi.”
“Hi. Antonio,” he said as he shook her hand.
“Marcus has a party coming up and we need help. We like the way you handled yourself. Would you like to make some extra money by working his party?”
“Yeah. Doin' what?”
“You know, serving, taking away dishes ... stuff like that. We'll pay you well.”
He felt the camera nudge his back. “Okay. Yeah.”
“Great. Here's our information,” she said, pulling a card from her holder. “It'll be next Saturday. Hope that's not too soon. Our guest list is ballooning and we could use all the help we can get. Call us so we can establish contact with you. We'll be looking to hear from you, now.”
“Oh yeah, you will.”
He hurried back down to the station, leaping from excitement, and hurried home.
The night was warm and clear. All the lights along the streets cut like crystal as he headed to the theater. Things were beginning to look up for him. Working for someone like Marcus Bond could open doors to bigger things, and God only knew he needed bigger things to happen in his life. He couldn’t wait to give his father the news.
As he came upon the cinema he saw his father standing out front. People passed behind him into the theater. His father motioned for him to hurry. He waved back and broke into a sprint, grinning at the news he was about to tell him. Then he stopped.
That’s when he saw her. An old woman in a gray coat with a scarf on her head. It was the same woman he had seen that night on the bench. She moved slowly and silently behind his father and disappeared into the theater. She didn't look Antonio’s way or at his father, but moved quietly into the theater.
“Come on!” His father cupped his hands to his mouth and called out.
Antonio walked the rest of the way to meet him.
“What's wrong with you?” His father asked.
He looked at his father, then into the lobby of the theater. She wasn't there and no one seemed startled by an old woman in a coat in the middle of summer.
“The movie's about to start.” His father put his hand on Antonio's back and ushered him into the building.
They had always been there. He knew it, but he only saw them in the dark; men and women who would watch him, silent and with cautious eyes. There were no precise outlines to their forms, just soft edges that blended into the darkness of his room. Watching.
When he was a boy he would tell his mother about them but she would quickly deny what he saw, telling him it was his imagination. A child's imagination. But he never forgot the look in her eyes the first time he told her. A flash of reckoning crossed them and blazed for a while until she was able to quiet them.
He knew she had understood what he was saying about the men and women, but she fought, fought hard to dismiss them. When he was older and his mind was able to connect the incidents, he figured two things about the visitors and what his mother knew: that either they were spirits ... or that her son was beginning to suffer from the same madness that gripped her.
Antonio didn't tell his father what he had seen that evening because he wasn't sure himself, and after all the years of seeing the men and women in the shadows he still hadn't made up his mind whether he was gifted or insane.
Going to bed that night, he looked at his mother’s picture beside his bed. It was her he had seen that evening. Even though he couldn’t see her face, he knew it was she.
He turned out the lights. Even in the dark he could feel her eyes watching him.
CHAPTER 11
The bar wasn’t too far from his apartment but far enough for Otis to leave behind the loneliness. The bouncer was sitting on a stool in front of the bar talking to another man. The stool he sat on was dwarfed by his large frame.
“ ‘sup man?” he smiled, as he and Otis knocked fists.
“Had to get outta that house,” Otis said. He lifted his head, acknowledging the other man. “‘sup?” The man lifted back.
“I know that feelin’,” the bouncer said.
“Well I’mma get on in here and get me something to drink.”
“It’s waitin’ on you.”
Otis laughed and went inside.
He waved at the bartender as he walked through the narrow space searching for a seat. He found one near the end of the bar.
The bartender came down to him with his drink already made. “I figured it was about time you showed your face,” he laughed.
Otis slid the money to him. “I hadn’t planned on it, but it’s too nice to be sittin’ up in a damn apartment. Whatcha’ gonna do sittin’ up in an apartment on a nice night like this? Never mind. Don’t answer,” he said, knowing the bartender’s reply.
“Now you know I would tell you,” the bartender grinned as he walked back to the cash register.
As Otis lifted the drink, the cold glass and the white ice cubes leaning in the amber liquid caused a release in him, a rush that escaped from his chest. He drank the mix, tasting the sweet-bitter on his tongue before letting it roll down his throat.
He liked coming to this bar because there were people like him there. Not too many young kids; and the music was music he understood. The bar had a room to the back of it, just beyond where the DJ sat. A large screen played music videos and there were tables and one long sofa that stretched along the wall. The back room was darker than the rest of the bar and in the middle of the floor people danced under swirling lights. He watched the people sitting along the wall, moving in their seats and singing to the music. He smiled and moved his head. “Sugar Pie Guy.” He remembered that song. Always loved it.
He took another drink as his memory skirted along hot summer days back in Lincoln Heights … sitting along the curbs or on top of cars on Steffens Street with his buddies, drinking sodas and checking out the scene. Hearing the voices of Curtis Mayfield, Aretha Franklin and Isaac Hayes rising from cars that rolled slowly through bright streets. Reggie Sinclair sitting next to him, his lean pecan colored arms streaked with tributaries of large veins touching Otis’ arm whenever they laughed at a sight. Otis and his buddies flirting with girls wearing tight bell bottoms, while he secretly enjoyed having Reggie next to him ... the clack of shoulder pads and the booming voices of his teammates. Dewy nights. Walking Terrell to the car; finally getting to know him…
“You ready?”
Otis looked at the bouncer. The bar had closed. He nodded his head and the two of them left.
The sharp pop of glass breaking under their feet announced them as they walked through the darkened abandoned building. Moonlight from outside spread through dirty, bare windows as they made their way to the spot. The blankets were still there. “Fuck me good,” the bouncer said as he slid his pants down and got on his knees.
****
“I’m holding you up, ain’t I?”
“Yeah. But it’s cool.”
(The click of an eight-track. Al Green comes on)
“If I gave you my love,
I’ll tell you what I’d dooo
I expect a whole lotta out of you, huh, huh…”
“So where are y’all headed to?”
“A party. Wanna come?”
“Nah. I can’t.”
“You got to be good to me
I’m gonna be good to you
There’s a whole lotta things you and I could do
Hey, hey…”
“Want a little help gittin’ out? I can show you around.”
“It ain’t that easy … my father. He wouldn’t understand.”
“When you need me
I’ll be right there beside you…
Sometime when you’re feeling low
All you got to do is call me…”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Well, I better go.”
“ ‘ey. What’s your name?”
“Terrell.”
Smiling. “Otis.”
“I know who you are.”
“Simply Beautiful…”
Otis shivered as he walked away from the building into the thinning night.
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