Airtight Willie and Me. Iceberg Slim

get the chance to play for Sue, the airtight way Ross bird dogs her. He’ll shoot or stomp a mud-hole in your ass.’

      I said, ‘Phil, I gotta figure an angle to make her hit on me. You know, give me the first lick. How about laying a rod on me . . . to back me up?’

      Phil shrugged. ‘Not now, Pally. I got to think about it nigger, it’s gonna take more than my flash and your bedroom eyes to make that ’ho give you that lick. Guest of Honor, you better just handle the licks you gonna get here in the joint before daybreak . . . lots of qualified black and white ’hos gonna be here letting their hair down.’

      The joint’s band drifted in and started tootling and blowing a few practice riffs on a bandstand beside the bar.

      Single mud-kickers, black players and their interracial stables started to park far out pimpmobiles up and down the block. They peacocked into Pretty Phil’s all decked out in psychedelic threads.

      Phil introduced me to the strangers. Many of the players I knew. The inside of my mitts were flaming from the palms I slapped. It was phantasmogoria. They wantonly danced to the funky band’s erotic pound. In the red-lit murk, there was the counterpoint bedlam of profane ribaldry as they loaded their skulls with cocaine and the bubbly. The mirrored globes revolving in the ceiling speckled their faces with flashing light. The meld of their perfumes was a near suffocating cloud. It was like Dante’s Inferno updated.

      By four a.m. the joint was claustrophobic. I had gotten several ’ho licks and birthday wishes galore. But I felt lonely and blue, like a joker in a haunted house. I was in the basement of a pit. The superfox ’ho target hadn’t shown and I was still just a welfare case of Phil’s.

      I retreated into a booth in the absolute rear of the joint next to the ’ho crapper. I eyeballed the front door with the radiant zeal of a weasel.

      Bubbles, the Dane, had taken station near the front slammer. She was coldly sweeping her eyes over the crowd like the stompdown security guard Phil had cracked she was.

      Phil threaded his way to my booth. He leaned into my ear and whispered harshly, ‘You blind or something, Pally? That redhead white ’ho at the bar is pinning you and about to come on herself. Latch on to the ’ho’s eye! Honor the lick! It’s catching time, nigger! Flow and glow, Pally.’ He shook his head and moved away.

      I was turning my head to yank the package he’d fingered, when Miss Superfox herself pranced through the front slammer. Alone! Appropriately, a drumroll of summer thunder announced her entrance. A shard of lightning flashed like a klieg light behind her.

      My ticker rioted. A delicious stealing lust electrified my genitals. She was dap and down in a black chiffon chemise vine. A white mink stole was draped casually across her shoulders. She smiled frostily as she side stepped through a gauntlet of cracking and hitting players to a stool at the bar.

      I had to string together a stealing tune based on Bitsy’s rundown. Like I said, I was just a welfare case. You know, with no stable and power like Phil. With a powerbase I would’ve blitzed her. You know, dazzled her witless. At least I’d have to fake a bankroll. I wrapped Phil’s welfare handout of ‘C’ notes around a wad of play money.

      I was forced to take my shot at the Superfox’s soft underbelly. I’d have to be like a mirror reflecting her secret needs and dreams. She’d have to see me as the means to these gratifications. It was a long shot and dangerous all right since Ross, the gorilla, was her boss.

      The dynamite package had seated herself beside the redhead Phil had fingered. I sipped rum and spied the bar through my booth’s wall mirror.

      Phil stood near Bubbles at the door. He hawk-eyed me and Miss Superfox with a salty look on his girlish face. The perspiring band blazed out raunchy toe-tappers. The dancers whirled and boogied as if energized by demons.

      The redhead, Lucille Ball’s look-alike, rocked on her stool to the music. The tipsy flat-backer turned her back to the bar. She zeroed in on me with hooded blue eyes. Her dress was hiked nearly to her moon, and aimed at me.

      The Superfox got off her stool and wafted Chanel #5 up my nose on her way to the john. I saw Phil peer out the front venetian blinds. He spun and frantically winked his eye. A moment later a brute faced colossus, togged to the teeth in a shocking pink ensemble, stopped his six eight or nine feet of bulgy muscles past the top of the front door.

      Despair descended. It had to be Ross and my stealing dream was lost. He strode the length of the joint with his Neanderthal skull swiveling as he shook down the joint. He was two booths from me when he stopped. He leaned into a booth. Moments before a pint sized loser, in a tattered vine, had slid into that booth beside a brunette silk girl. Phil had introduced her to me as one of the girls employed at Aunt Lula’s cathouse.

      The loser copped a heel in terror. The alabaster beauty fled the joint like Ross had goosed her with an icepick. Ross went out behind her.

      The front door was still closing when Superfox came past me from the crapper. I suffered the thought of what a miserable break it was that she didn’t dig him leaving with the white girl.

      I was sitting there regretting that she didn’t have to just pee when a loud mouth ’ho called Miss Bowlegs, eased out of a booth ahead. She went to the bar grinning. She whispered into Sue’s ear. She swirled on her stool like she was making a country break for the door. Instead she frowned and hailed a bar-maid like she was settling in for some sho ’nuff tippling. The fire and brimstone patron saint of pimps was in my corner all right.

      Black Sue was tossing double shots of Scotch down her gullet as fast as the harried barmaid could lug them. She had a lulu lump under her right eye. The sight of it shot a thrill my way. Had the gorilla’s right cross and the wire from Miss Bowlegs put him in the cross to blow the fox to me?

      After a band break, Phil went to the bandstand and rapped with the leader. A barkeep unveiled my birthday cake and hors d’oeuvres on a table set up on a corner of the bandstand.

      Lanky Phil adjusted the mike up to his jib and shouted, ‘Pallies, damper the rapping! My main man, Candy Slim, from the Big Windy is gonna cut his cake and rap a taste.’

      I rose and moved out to applause. As I passed the redhead, she grabbed my arm and slurred, ‘Candy, as a pair we’d be dandy. Huh?’

      Sue leaned in close, with bright racist eyes, to dig my response to the symbol of black women’s pain and mortal enemy. I nearly swooned with joy to play my opening card.

      I batted the alabaster hand away and cracked icily, ‘Look you jive flat-backing zero bitch, stay out of my face! Don’t fuck with me. Huh!’

      The redhead, moist eyed and humiliated, sagged and about faced to the bar. Sue’s eyes glowed with admiration as I boogied away to the bandstand. The band struck up a raucous ‘Happy Birthday.’ I polished the next card I’d play as I cut the cake. I went to the mike and swept the crowd with doe eyes. I slipped on a mournful mask, faking the emotions of a dude with hurtful blues.

      I stood there in the silent red haze for a dozen heart-beats before I pitched, ‘Sugar Babies, most of you are hip that I just got up from a fall. Only Phil, my home boy, is hip that I lost my bottom rib and our daughter in a car crash a month before I split the joint. She was a thoroughbred, my woman! She stacked up long scratch in the kip for me. I’m happy if I don’t look it. Sugar Babies, you’ve lifted me like a blow of crystal. I know that somewhere way out there past the sky, my woman and angel kid are happy this morning, happy ’cause I’m honored here by blue ribbon people. You can’t stop a stepper, Sugar Babies, and I love ya!’

      I went back to the booth through a chant of ‘Happy Birthday, Slim!’ back slapping and warm congratulations. Black Sue followed me into the booth like a doll on a string.

      She just sat there studying me, with our eyes locked. It was a long time before she said, in a satin drawl, ‘Sugar, Black Sue is gotta tell you, you something else and then some. Them sweet words relating to your dead daughter and bottom lady nearly got me bawling like a squealer. Slim, you something else! . . . lemme buy you a taste.’

      I