She said, “They’ll be coming soon,” and then gave me three fast kisses that said this was just the beginning.
My pants were down before I could stop myself. As I leaned forward she let out a single syllable that said, “Here I am, I’ve been waitin’ for you, Ezekiel Porterhouse Rawlins. Take my arms, my legs, my breasts. Take everything,” and I answered in the same language.
“They’ll be coming soon,” she said as her tongue pressed my left nipple through thin cotton. “Oh, go slow.”
The clock on the wall behind her said that it was seven-oh-two. I’d come to the door at six forty-nine. Less than a quarter of an hour and I was deeply in the throes of passion.
I wanted to thank God — or his least favorite angel.
“They’ll be coming soon,” she said, the phonograph of her mind on a skip. “Oh, go slow.”
The desks all sat at attention. Pharaoh whimpered from his cell.
“Too much,” she hissed. I didn’t know what she meant.
When the desk started rocking I didn’t care who might walk into the room. I would have gladly given up my two years of accrued pension and my two weeks a year vacation for the few moments of ecstasy that teased and tickled about five inches below my navel.
“Mr. Rawlins!” she cried. I lifted her from the desk, not to perform some silly acrobatics but because I needed to hold her tight to my heart. I needed to let her know that this was what I’d wanted and needed for two years without knowing it.
It all came out in a groan that was so loud and long that later on, when I was alone, I got embarrassed remembering it.
I stood there holding her aloft with my eyes closed. The cool air of the room played against the back of my thighs and I felt like laughing.
I felt like sobbing too. What was wrong with me? Standing there half naked in a classroom on a weekday morning. Idabell had her arms around my neck. I didn’t even feel her weight. If we were at my house I would have carried her to the bed and started over again.
“Put me down,” she whispered.
I squeezed her.
“Please,” she said, echoing the word in my own mind.
I put her back on the desk. We looked at each other for what seemed like a long time — slight tremors going through our bodies now and then. I couldn’t bear to pull away. She had a kind of stunned look on her face.
When I leaned over to kiss her forehead I experienced a feeling that I’d known many times in my life. It was that feeling of elation before I embarked on some kind of risky venture. In the old days it was about the police and criminals and the streets of Watts and South Central L.A.
But not this time. Not again. I swallowed hard and gritted my teeth with enough force to crack stone. I’d slipped but I would not fall.
Mrs. Turner was shoving her panties into a white patent-leather purse while I zipped my pants. She smiled and went to open the door for Pharaoh.
The dog skulked in with his tail between his legs and his behind dragging on the floor. I felt somehow triumphant over that little rat dog, like I had taken his woman and made him watch it. It was an ugly feeling but, I told myself, he was just a dog.
Mrs. Turner picked Pharaoh up and held him while looking into my eyes.
I didn’t want to get involved in her problems, but I could do something for her. “Maybe I can keep the dog in the hopper room in my office,” I said.
“Oh,” came the breathy voice. “That would be so kind. It’s only until this evening. I’m going to my girlfriend’s tonight. He won’t be any bother. I promise.”
She handed Pharaoh to me. He was trembling. At first I thought he was scared from the new environment and a strange pair of hands. But when I looked into his eyes I saw definite canine hatred. He was shaking with rage.
Mrs. Turner scratched the dog’s ear and said, “Go on now, honey. Mr. Rawlins’ll take care of you.”
I took a step away from her and she smiled.
“I don’t even know your first name,” she said.
“Easy,” I said. “Call me Easy.”
2
Hi, easy,” EttaMae Harris greeted me in our common Texan drawl. She was an old friend who I was almost always happy to see — but not then. Etta worked with me, and the business I had just gotten through was nowhere near my job description.
She was standing outside of bungalow C. Behind her sprawled the nearly empty asphalt yard. The pavement gave off a yellowish glow in the dawn light. There were already two girls playing tetherball and a small group of boys sitting on the ninth-grade lunch court. Beyond them, at the southern end of the school yard, sat the fenced-off gardens. Up on a high grassy hill, behind me, stood the old brick buildings that housed the administration offices, library, and most of the classrooms of the school.
“Hey, Etta. How you doin’?”
She didn’t answer me, just turned her gaze down toward the shivering dog in my arms.
“It’s Mrs. Turner’s dog. They fumigated her house and she had to bring him in with her,” I said, happy that my old-time lying reflex was still intact. “I’ma put him back in the hopper room in the main office.”
“Uh-huh,” she said. “Yeah.”
We walked across the playground, past the nine classroom bungalows, to the larger tan structure that was the maintenance building; a building that the custodians and workmen called the main office.
“Nice day,” I said.
“Uh-huh,” Etta replied.
She rolled back the steel-encased fire door and I followed her in. It was a large room with a long rectangular table down the middle. The cluttered table was strewn with newspapers and magazines that the janitors, carpenters, and electricians read on their union-guaranteed coffee breaks. The walls were lined with shelves that held various cleaning materials.
In the back corner stood a large ash desk where I sat every afternoon administering the laborers who kept the school running.
Behind the desk was a door that led to my personal hopper room.
I unlocked the door to the deep storage closet and tossed Pharaoh in among the steel shelves. He yelped when he hit the chilly cement floor and I felt a coldhearted satisfaction.
“I thought you couldn’t have no animals not in a cage around here, Easy?” Etta asked.
“It’s just a special thing, Etta. Dog’ll be gone tonight.”
“Uh-huh,” she said for the third time.
“What’s wrong wit’ you?” I asked.
“All I can say is that you could take a niggah out the street but you sure cain’t pull him outta his skin.”
“What the hell is that s’posed t’mean?” My language got closer to the street as I got angrier.
“What you doin’ moanin’ an’ groanin’ up in that woman’s classroom?”
“What you doin’ sneakin’ at the door?” I asked back.
If we were men it might have come to blows. But EttaMae was nobody I wanted to fight. She was a large woman with powerful arms and I’d been in love with her, off and on, for my entire adult life.
Before she could reply the fire door slid open and Jorge Peña walked in.
Peña was a red-colored Mexican-American who was loose-limbed, chubby, and fast with a grin. He had a deadly handsome mustache and dark eyes that laughed silently and often.
“Mr. Rawlins, Miss Harris,” Peña greeted us. “How are you?”
“Jorge,” Etta said, pronouncing the name in English fashion.
“Hey, Peña.” I waved and went to sit down at the head of the table. I lit up the best-tasting cigarette that I’d had in a month and remembered, with a slight shock, what had happened down in bungalow C2.
Over the next fifteen minutes my whole day staff reported in. First came Garland Burns, my daytime senior custodian, a hale vegetarian from Georgia who was the only black Christian Scientist I knew. Helen Plates dragged in moaning about how tired she was. Helen was an obese blond Negro from Iowa who claimed her good health was due to the fact that she ate a whole pie every day of her life. Archie “Ace” Muldoon was right on time; he was the first white man who was ever properly in my employ. And finally, last as usual, Simona Eng appeared. She was an Italian-Chinese girl who was working her way through night school.