Airtight Willie and Me. Iceberg Slim

when I cracked to see the contents?

      I restored the wrapping and went to the bedroom. I was on my way to the shower when the doorbell chimed. I opened to the old joker on the desk with Phil’s jeroboam of bubbly and glasses. He nearly tripped himself gazing at Sue’s caboose as he went to the cocktail table with the tray.

      I said, ‘Thanks Pops, I’ll take care of you when I come down tomorrow.’

      He made that lopsided circle with his fingers before he split.

      I speed showered and added on French cologne with its dusting powder. I heard the pop of a cork. I slipped into a pair of Phil’s crimson satin pajamas. I stood before a mirrored wall and brushed my hair until it shone. My reflection, with my widow’s peak and slumberous eyes made me look a bit like Satan. Well anyway, at least like one of Satan’s pets afire in the red pajamas. I was beginning to feel like a pimp again, all right. I hit the gangster roach and stepped into the arena.

      She was lounging on the sofa with her legs agape. As I passed her, I paused to check for trance. She sipped and gazed up at me over the rim of her glass. She was on her way under again. Her eyes were getting dreamy and smoky hot again.

      She gave me a glass of wine. I dipped a finger in and painted her lips. I licked and sucked it off her mouth. She pressed her cheek against my crotch. She kissed the imprint of my organ as I moved to sit on the cushions at the other end of the sofa. The big vein on the side of her neck was swollen and jerking.

      ‘What a womb sweeper,’ she exclaimed.

      She lunged to my side and glued her curves against me. I held her and silently sipped my wine for several minutes like a joker with his mind on a private expedition to secret things and places. Sweet Dinah was dripping ‘I’m Confessin” from the Hi Fi again. She nibbled through the satin to my nipple.

      It tickled when she whispered into my chest, ‘You thinking about her . . . your dead lady . . . ain’t you?’

      I said, ‘No, Babykins . . . a living lady . . . my Mama.’

      She snuggled closer and said, ‘What’s she like? Tell me about her.’

      This was my cue to push her emotional buttons to prep her for the contract. I sang the tune slowly from the bitter roots of my own pain and poisonous ambivalence for Mama.

      I stage whispered, ‘All right, but something bothers me, Babykins. I can’t figure why I’m not with Mama . . . after the joint . . . on my birthday. Jesus Christ! She’d be so happy. She was a country girl . . . barefoot ’til she was sixteen. My old man ambushed her with sucker sweet talk and popped a squealer in her gut . . . me . . . they split the Big Foot cotton slave scene and hit the Big Windy kitchen slave scene in Nineteen Eighteen. You know, white folk’s mansions and hotels. They had discovered the promised land all right.

      ‘Right off, my old man copped some loud mouth suits . . . his introduction and sample of white pussy . . . it freaked the nigger out! I was six months old . . . must have been a sonuvabitching stumble block to his night life chumping around. He and Mama fought like pit bulldogs one early bright . . . he pranced home stone broke with his fly fouled with “come” . . . his mustache starched with cunt juice . . . he beat the puking, living crap out of Mama . . . he bounced me off a tenement wall to close his act . . . he split with a cardboard suitcase and his pearl grey spats flashing in the zero wind. Mama had a nice round ass, with a Watusi face and lollipop knockers. Why shit, any other young country broad equipped like that would’ve dumped a squealer and split to the bright lights and some high class dick.’

      Sue trembled against me as she finger stroked my temple. Her eyes were damp with empathy.

      ‘. . . But Mama was a blue ribbon Mama to the bone . . . she bundled me in an old army jacket . . . took a curling iron and some grease to the streets . . . dressed hair door to door for a lousy half buck a shot . . .’

      She pressed her glass against my lips. I took a sip, then raced my tongue, a few laps, inside her mouth.

      ‘Tell me more, Slim! Tell me more!’ she pleaded.

      I went on with the painful narrative, ‘Well, somehow she put together a survival kit that took us through the soup kitchens, bread lines, apple hucksters on every corner nightmare of the great depression. I was nine . . . maybe ten when she got tired, I guess . . . you know, the struggle must have been a bitch of a drain . . . anyway, a big, ugly black galoot chased her until she caught him. He wasn’t her style . . . she was a sucker for good looking bums . . . like my old man.

      ‘I remember how Mama would cringe away from Henry’s kisses . . . she hated him. But he was the only father I ever knew . . . and I loved him! Mama dreamed I’d be a lawyer . . . Henry swore he’d see to it . . . opened the plushest black beauty shop in Rockford, Illinois for Mama. She got the hots for a two bit hustler one day who brought his pretty face her way . . . dropped in to get his nails done. Just like that, she split with him back to the Windy. I cried until my guts dry locked . . . the pretty bastard was so cruel to us! Tried to turn her out. Mama cut him loose finally. But it was too late for me . . . I was already street poisoned. Maybe I got a secret hate for Mama hidden deep in my soul, because Henry died from a broken heart after she split. Maybe that’s why I’m punishing her. Why I’m not with her on my birthday. Maybe I want her dead and stinking like Henry. Maybe that’s why I don’t want to see her happy for even one day.’

      The Mama rundown worked like a MoJo. She leapt to her feet with eyes brimming tears. Her body was twanging emotion.

      She said with righteous heat, ‘Slim, you all fucked up in your head about your mama. You ain’t hip she’s a saint? Shit, lemme tell you about my chippie ass, dead and stinking Mama – that half-white Creole bitch treated Papa and me like dogs. You know why? ’Cause we had black skins. She only married him ’cause he had a farm and a few bucks. Her ass was dragging. She was played out as a chicken-shit flat-backer ’ho in Baton Rouge.

      ‘I got an older sister that thinks she’s white – she got the new shoes and pretty dresses. She was high and mighty Miss Anne. I had to wait on that bitch hand and foot or get my head busted. Papa and me picked the motherfucking cotton and slopped the hogs. Papa and me did the cooking and the washing. Mama and Miss Anne kept their asses pretty and prissy like muckety muck white bitches. Papa caught her sucking a white man’s dick in the barn. He killed her and the white man.’

      Her voice broke, staggered the bitter rim of hysteria: ‘I’m glad he did. I’m glad she’s in her grave, dead and stinking. I’m just so sorry poor Papa had to do it.’

      I pulled her down beside me. I said, gently, ‘What happened to your papa?’

      She made a strangulated sound of anguish in her throat. She stared into nowhere like a sleep walker.

      She almost whispered, ‘I found him in a pond. I didn’t know what the thing was at first there in the bloody water. They beat, shot and axed him to pieces . . . poor Papa!’

      She collapsed in my arms. Great heaving sobs of sorrow racked her. I rocked her in my arms like an infant until she got herself together somewhat.

      She said, ‘Slim, will you do something for me?’

      I said, ‘Sure, anything.’

      She looked me dead in the eyes. ‘Go over there and call your mama.’

      I said, ‘What the hell am I gonna tell her?’

      She said, ‘Tell her you love her, Slim. Make her happy . . . make me happy, Slim.’

      She followed me to the phone, embracing my waist from behind. I put through the call and awakened Mama in Milwaukee. I talked to Mama for twenty minutes. She kept whispering to me to introduce her. I did and she and Sue hit it off swell for an hour.

      Before Sue hung up, she made me happy. She said to Mama, ‘Honey, we will be dropping in on you one day soon.’

      She looked into my face for a long moment. She said, ‘Kiss me. I wouldn’t bullshit your mama. I’m your girl!’

      I