I noticed her there behind Dupree; he had her in tow like a child’s toy wagon.
“Hi, Easy,” she said in a soft voice.
“Hey, Coretta, how are ya?”
“Fine,” she said quietly. She spoke so softly that I was surprised I understood her over the music and the noise. Maybe I really didn’t hear her at all but just understood what she meant by the way she looked at me and the way she smiled.
Dupree and Coretta were as different as any two people could be. He was muscular and had an inch or two on me, maybe six-two, and he was loud and friendly as a big dog. Dupree was a smart man as far as books and numbers went but he was always broke because he’d squander his money on liquor and women, and if there was any left over you could talk him out of it with any hard-luck story.
But Coretta was something else altogether. She was short and round with cherry-brown skin and big freckles. She always wore dresses that accented her bosom. Coretta was sloe-eyed. Her gaze moved from one part of the room to another almost aimlessly, but you still had the feeling that she was watching you. She was a vain man’s dream.
“Miss ya down at the plant, Ease,” Dupree said. “Yeah, it just ain’t the same wit’out you down there t’keep me straight. Them other niggahs just cain’t keep up.”
“I guess you have to do without me from now on, Dupree.”
“Uh-uh, no. I cain’t live with that. Benny wants you back, Easy. He’s sorry he let you go.”
“First I heard of it.”
“You know them I-talians, Ease, they cain’t say they sorry ’cause it’s a shame to’em. But he wants you back though, I know that.”
“Could we sit down with you and Odell, Easy?” Coretta said sweetly.
“Sure, sure. Get her a chair, Dupree. Com’on pull up here between us, Coretta.”
I called the bartender to send over a quart of bourbon and a pail of chipped ice.
“So he wants me back, huh?” I asked Dupree once we all had a glass.
“Yeah! He told me this very day that if you walked in that door he’d take you back in a minute.”
“First he want me to kiss his be-hind,” I said. I noticed that Coretta’s glass was already empty. “You want me to freshen that, Coretta?”
“Maybe I’ll have another li’l taste, if you wanna pour.” I could feel her smile all the way down my spine.
Dupree said, “Shoot, Easy, I told him that you was sorry ’bout what happened an’ he’s willin’ t’let it pass.”
“I’m a sorry man alright. Any man without his paycheck is sorry.”
Dupree’s laugh was so loud that he almost knocked poor Odell over with the volume. “Well see, there you go!” Dupree bellowed. “You come on down on Friday an’ we got yo’ job back for sure.”
I asked them about the girl too, but it was no use.
At midnight, exactly, Odell stood up to leave. He said goodnight to Dupree and me, then he kissed Coretta’s hand. She even kindled a fire under that quiet little man.
Then Dupree and I settled in to tell lies about the war. Coretta laughed and put away whiskey. Lips and his trio played on. People came in and out of the bar all night but I had given up on Miss Daphne Monet for the evening. I figured that if I got my job back at the plant I could return Mr. Albright’s money. Anyway, the whiskey made me lazy — all I wanted to do was laugh.
Dupree passed out before we finished the second quart; that was about 3 A.M.
Coretta twisted up her nose at the back of his head an said, “He use’ to play till the cock crowed, but that ole cock don’t crow nearly so much no mo’.”
Chapter 6
They done throwed him outta his place cuz he missed the rent,” Coretta said.
We were dragging Dupree from the car to her door; his feet trailed two deep furrows in the landlord’s lawn.
She went on to say, “First-class machinist at almost five dollars a hour but he cain’t even pay his bills.”
I couldn’t help thinking that she wouldn’t have been so put out if Dupree held his liquor a little better.
“Throw’im in there on the bed, Easy,” she said after we got him through the front door.
Dupree was a big man and he was lucky that I could pile him in the bed at all. By the time I was through pulling and pushing his dead weight I was exhausted. I stumbled from Coretta’s tiny bedroom to her even smaller living room.
She poured me a little nightcap and we sat on her sofa. We sat close to each other because her room wasn’t much larger than a broom closet. And if I said something halfway funny she’d laugh and rock until she bent down to clutch my knee for a moment and then she’d look up to shine her hazel eyes on me. We spoke softly and Dupree’s deep snoring drowned out a good half of whatever we said. Every time Coretta had something to say she whispered it in a confidential way and shifted a little closer to me, to make sure I heard her.
When we were so close that we were passing the same breath back and forth between us, I said, “I better be goin’, Coretta. Sun catch me tiptoein’ out your door and no tellin’ what your neighbors say.”
“Hmm! Dupree fell asleep on me an’ you jus’ gonna turn your back, walk out the door like I was dog food.”
“You got another man right in the next room, baby. What if he hears sumpin’?”
“Way he snorin’?” She slid her hand into her blouse, lifting the bodice to air her breasts.
I staggered to my feet and took the two steps to the door.
“You be sorry if you go, Ease.”
“I be more sorry if I stay,” I said.
She didn’t say anything to that. She just laid back on the sofa, fanning her bosom.
“I gotta go,” I said. I even opened the door.
“Daphne be ’sleep now,” Coretta smiled, and popped open a button. “You cain’t get none’a that right now.”
“What you call her?”
“Daphne. Ain’t that right? You said Delia but that ain’t her real name. We got real tight last week when her date an’ my date was at the Playroom.”
“Dupree?”
“Naw, Easy, it was somebody else. You know I never got just one boyfriend.”
Coretta got up and walked right into my arms. I could smell the scent of cool jasmine coming in through the screen door and hot jasmine rising from her breast.
I had been old enough to kill men in a war but I wasn’t a man yet. At least I wasn’t a man the way Coretta was a woman. She straddled me on the couch and whispered, “Oh yeah, daddy, you hittin’ my spot! Oh yeah, yeah!” It was all I could do not to yell. Then she jumped off of me saying, in a shy voice, “Oooo, that’s jus’ too good, Easy.” I tried to pull her back but Coretta never went where she didn’t want to go. She just twisted down to the floor and said, “I cain’t get up off’a that much love, daddy, not the way things is.”
“What things?” I cried.
“You know.” She gestured with a twist of her head. “Dupree’s right there in the next room.”
“Fo’get about him! You got me goin’, Coretta.”
“It just ain’t right, Easy. Here I am doin’ this right in the next room and all you doin’ is nosin’ after my friend Daphne.”
“I ain’t after her, honey. It’s just a job, that’s all.”
“What job?”
“Man wants me to find her.”
“What man?”
“Who cares what man? I ain’t nosin’ after nobody but you.”
“But Daphne’s my friend…”
“Just some boyfriend, Coretta, that’s all.”
When I started to lose my excitement she gave me her spot again and let me hit it some more. In that way she kept me talking until the sky turned light. She did tell me who Daphne’s boyfriend was; I wasn’t happy to hear it, but it was better than I knew.