Airtight Willie and Me. Iceberg Slim

all the way. I feather stroked the inside of her wrist with my fingertips. Her bottom lip trembled. I glanced past her. Phil glared cutthroat murder at me and whirled out the front door into the rain. That was good. Phil could pull my coat if the gorilla drove up. I pressed her hands against my lips and gazed into her eyes. She swept a fearful glance over the joint.

      I crooned, ‘Baby Sue, let’s flee to a taste and some talk in my crib upstairs. I’m convinced something boss is happening between us . . . dollface, maybe you need me . . . let’s find out.’

      She said seriously, ‘My old man is Jabbo Ross . . . you hip to how he is . . . about me?’

      I said, ‘I’ve heard.’

      She murmured, ‘And you ain’t leery?’

      I said stoutly, ‘I’m not into pussy. Sugar Pie, I’m game to climb up the devil’s mother-humping ass with you this morning.’

      She laughed shakily, ‘Well, let’s go, sweet Chicago Slim.’

      I dropped the twister to Phil’s pad on the table top and said, ‘We might give some jokers in the joint diarrhea of the jib if we split together. I’ll cop some blow and wine and follow in a moment.’ She scooped up the key. She squeezed my hand and started to slide her awesomely curved rearend from the booth. She braked and dug into her midnight cleavage. She excavated a roll of bread. She peeled off a ‘C’ note and shoved it into my shirt pocket.

      I felt my scrotum spasm. I was zeroed in on her now, reading her tactics. She was playing star ’ho test shit on me. I wasn’t uptight about that. After all she had to check out my pedigree. She was at the very least unconsciously considering me as her new boss! I leaned and eased the booby trapped ‘C’ note back down between her epic peaks. The plum colored tips gleamed through the chiffon gauze.

      To certify my pedigree, I slipped on a mask of terminal pain and cracked a mild reprimand, ‘Sugar Sue, you got to know what starts right, goes right . . . up front, I’ll spring for the nitshit refreshments.’

      I flashed my fake bankroll with the solid funny money guts.

      I said, ‘You’re sweet to be concerned about me just out of the joint and all. Now you can stop worrying about the little things.’

      She smiled crookedly and split. Phil came in from the rain with his silky black hair shining in wet ringlets. He sat down across from me.

      He said, ‘Nigger, the joint sure as hell didn’t damper your speed. Too bad it’s Ross she’s gotta dump.’

      Phil slipped a thirty-eight snub nose from his waistband. I took it off beneath the table top. He rammed a balloon of blow into my shirt pocket as he got to his feet.

      He said, ‘Some ploy to prime the ’ho . . . I’ll send up some sauce.’

      I got up and said, ‘Sugar Baby, I know you’re royal blue and I’m your horse if I never win a race.’

      He said, as he moved away, ‘Pally, kiss my yellow ass ’til it’s royal blue.’

      I left the joint. I stood on the sidewalk for a moment engorging my lungs with rain-spiced air. I went next door through the hotel entrance to the dim musk of the lobby. An elderly desk clerk, with a brown clown face, nodded toward the stairway. He winked obscenely as he made a lopsided circle of A-OK with pudgy fingers shiny greasy with bar-be-que he was gnawing. I slowly ascended the foot-mauled stairway carpet to polish the next stealing card I’d play.

      I went to the suite door and pressed my ear against it. I heard the erotic confection of Dinah’s voice dripping her sugary ‘I’m Confessin” from Phil’s Hi Fi. I heard the muted thunder of the shower.

      I turned the knob. Surprised that she hadn’t locked the door, I stood at the threshold gazing about Phil’s pimp dream arena. I’ve guested at the Chase in St Louis, the Ambassador East in Chicago, the best at the Drake in the Big Apple. Phil’s white and gold ’ho trap paled the other cribs.

      I chained the door. I moved beneath a crystal chandelier in the entrance hall to the airy carpet of the living room. I familiarized myself with the three rooms so I could move about with assured ease when she joined me. I hung my jacket in Phil’s closet and slipped on a gold satin smoking jacket. I selected a blue silk pajama top for her.

      I went to the living room’s white satin sofa. I arranged my bag of coke into sparkling columns on the blue mirrored cocktail table. Across the way she suddenly opened the bathroom door. She stood still lifed, naked holding a towel. Her blue black curves shimmered like sealskin in the amber glow. I got an instant, throbby, quality erection. Small wonder. I had a helluva time willing my hoodlum organ limp again.

      She looked so young, the crafty eyes now softened and fawn like. I realized she was like me and every other street poisoned nigger spawned behind the invisible walls of ghetto stockades. She was trapped, vulnerable, but hurtingly human beneath the tough facade of leopard rage and bravado. But in the cruel nature of our special entrapment, and my survival, my comrade in pain was ironically my prey. I would have to scrape to the raw nerve ends of her emotions, put her on the rack to steal her.

      I stood up to break our trance. She patted the towel against her splendor coming to me. I kissed the tip of her nose and the plum blossoms of her swollen nipples. I toweled off the wet sheen as tenderly as a mother would a baby.

      I heard a feline purring in her throat as I blotted her vulva. I assaulted her mouth with teeth and tongue. She squealed in the painful thrill of it. I vanquished her tongue in a sugary duel. She seized me. She clung to me moaning gutterally.

      I finger stroked the invisible forest of fuzz on her buttocks, the insides of her thighs, across her shoulders, the pits of ecstasy beneath her ears, the valleys behind her knees. I never once touched her skin. I was certain each one of the super-charged, zillion hairs was jolting her with the electricity of inexpressible excitement.

      I swooped her off her feet down to the couch. I slipped her into Phil’s pajama top to break the action. I moved away across the cushions. She pursued. To escape, I rolled up a ‘C’ note and dipped my head to snort up a row of coke. I passed the paperhorn her way to cool her fever. I watched her snort up a row of blow.

      I’d have to be cool to out-play her. Otherwise I’d wind up at dawn with just a belly full of pleasure. No money, no ’ho. No contract!

      I watched her go into the bathroom to rummage among her things. I watched her squat and extract a thin package from her vaginal stash. She detoured on the way back to the Hi Fi in the corner. She belly danced her way back to the sofa to Hamp’s ‘Flying Home.’ She dropped the soggy package from her cat on the cocktail table top. I guessed it was a sting she hadn’t checked in to daddy gorilla. She fell on to the sofa with her head on my lap. Her big pony eyes were all a sparkle, gazing into my face.

      She sighed, ‘Slim, I feel so good with you . . . really good! You feel groovy, too, with me?’

      I gently knifed a fingernail across her kneecap. She shivered.

      I cracked, ‘More than I ever remember . . . with somebody else’s girl.’

      I knew it was an off key crack as soon as it exploded against my ears. She leapt up and went to the floor to ceiling windows. She stood there staring out at Miss Rain tap dancing a zillion diamond feet against the window pane.

      She said over her shoulder, ‘I like rain . . . Jabbo thinks it’s a drag.’

      I had broken the stealing spell and unveiled the threat, the reality of the gorilla. I checked myself just as I decided to join her to recast the spell. I had to keep her coming to me to cop.

      I lit up two bomber sticks of dynamite gangster. I blew several blasts of pungent smoke her way. The vision of her four-inch cone of thick bush between the sculpted thighs was lost for an instant. I wondered if my chance to steal her was lost.

      She turned and walked over. I handed her a joint. She pranced back to the window hitting the joint. I unwrapped her toilet paper package a bit to peep. A dime sized circle of jewels winked