I saw no doorway that had what I wanted. I should have gone home, but I walked up and down the alley/lane again.
Finally, in frustration I looked up and saw a crimson glow from a third-floor apartment.
It was a lantern.
I climbed the stairs. Reaching the red light, I came upon a green door.
I knocked and the door came open almost immediately.
Mum had been lovely in her waitress getup but she was a knockout in her orange silk gown.
“I wondered if you were going to come,” she said.
“Not me,” I replied. “I been thinkin’ about this for a long time.”
Mum had nothing on under the thin material. I wanted to take her in my arms right then, but I could tell by the way she held herself that she needed a different approach.
She ushered me into a large room that was sumptuous; there was really no other word for it. The light was low but unlike Jerry Twist’s — you could still see. On one side there was a large bed covered by a canopy with gossamer violet-colored silk hanging down on three sides. Next to the bed stood an eight-foot mirror in a cherrywood frame. A red hassock sat before the mirror; to its side was a small table covered with makeup containers, cream pots, brushes, and perfumes. I could imagine Mum sitting before her mirror, preparing herself for our rendezvous.
The other side of the room had a low couch and table. The couch was golden with red pillows and the table was blond, set for drinks.
Mum shut the door and came up close to me. She reached into my breast pocket and retrieved my cigarettes and matches. She put a cigarette between my lips and lit it. Then she guided me to the sofa and pressed until I sat.
While she poured me a drink in a deep bowl of a glass, she said, “I’ve been waiting for a man to make me laugh.”
She passed me the glass. Cognac. Good cognac.
“You just moved in here?” I asked.
“I know how I like things,” she said.
“I can see that.”
“I want to give you pleasure, Paris,” she said.
Why was in my chest, but he refused to make himself known.
Mum sat next to me and gave me a kiss. It wasn’t as passionate as Loretta’s had been, but it was nice. We did that for a while: kiss and then sip fine liquor from the big glasses, then kiss some more. My hands wanted to feel her orange fabric, but she kept them down.
After our third drink she lifted me by the elbows and brought me to another room. It was a bathroom with a huge freestanding, high-collared tub. It was filled with water. She tested it with a bare foot up to the ankle and then turned on the hot.
“I’m going to undress you,” she told me. “Just let me do it. Don’t help or touch me.”
I didn’t.
The water was hot and the liquor did exactly what it was supposed to. I was very excited sexually, but I would have been happy going to sleep while Mum cleaned me with a sea sponge scrubber.
I closed my eyes and let my mind wander. Somewhere between here and there a thought came to me in the form of a question: Why would Hector LaTiara want a French dictionary?
But even that didn’t disturb me.
When I opened my eyes Mum had disrobed and was stepping into the tub with me.
“You’re a nice man, Paris,” Mum said. She had one arm behind my head and the other across my chest. We were in her big bed, enveloped in silk and soft, soft cotton. I was clean and completely satisfied.
“What a man wants to hear is that he’s big and strong and almost scary,” I replied, though I was thinking about a door that had opened in my mind.
Mum giggled.
“I’m stronger than you are,” she said.
“We’ll never find out now, will we?”
“Why were you at Jerry’s with Fearless Jones?” she asked then, and I wondered again why she had lured me over.
“Lookin’ for my cousin Useless.”
“Useless Grant is your cousin?”
“Everybody says that in the same way,” I said. “And I know why. Useless is a motherfucker. Have you seen him?”
“Every once in a while he talks to Ha Tsu. They like to laugh together.”
“They do business together?”
“I don’t know Ha’s business. I’m just a waitress.” She was getting nervous.
“And I’m just a bookseller,” I said. “What can you do?”
“You sell books?” Mum seemed shocked.
“Yeah. Why?”
She jumped up and pulled back the red fabric at the head of the bed. There were eight bookshelves filled with hardbound Chinese texts. I perused them. Most were complete ciphers to me. But on the bottom shelf I saw the names Aristotle, Plato, Marx, Spinoza, and Hegel printed over Chinese cuneiforms.
“I like some’a these guys,” I said. “But I prefer the older generation. Herodotus, Homer, and Sophocles.”
“You have read them?”
“Sure.”
“I used to study ancient thinkers. My father sent me to New York to study. But then the Japs came and killed my family. They destroyed everything and made my country crazy. I came here and Ha Tsu took me in.”
I put my arms around her, and after a while she fell into a deep sleep. I was soon to follow, but before I nodded off I thought about the man looking for the French dictionary, the man who was after Useless.
My dreams were darker than Jerry Twist’s office.
Chapter 22
If Hector LaTiara had been to my store, he was probably there looking for Useless — that was the thought going through my mind when I was almost awake, lying there between floral-scented sheets. And if Hector had been to my place once, he might have been there twice, even three times. He might have been armed and he might have run into Tiny Bobchek.
But what did any of that have to do with smoked bacon?
I hated Useless, hated him in that way you can only despise a family member. All of a sudden I was worried that the Bobchek murder could be tied to me in some way. If the police could somehow identify the corpse, they might tie him to Useless and then Useless to me. The next thing I knew, somebody who knew more than I did would be confessing to the crime, incriminating me, and getting a reduced sentence as he did so.
I would have liked to pour orange juice and hot butter all over him.
“Paris,” the breeze whispered.
I should have agreed with Fearless the night before. We should have gone to Hector’s house. It was too late to go to the police. They wouldn’t understand us taking Tiny to the strawberry field. Killer Cleave wouldn’t understand me telling them about it.
“Breakfast,” the gentle wind sighed.
I opened my eyes to see Mum kneeling before me, naked and proffering a silver tray holding bacon and eggs, orange juice, and coffee.
My waking dream had put a pall on the day, but I smiled for Mum and kissed her gently.
“This what you call a Chinese breakfast?” I asked the young woman.
“No. But you’re not what I call a Chinese girl’s boyfriend either,” she replied.
We ate and talked about her family. I asked where they had come from in China and why were so many people killed.
Mum told me that her clan hailed from central China originally. She blamed the Japanese for their demise. She hated that people with a virulence that rivaled the worst white racists I had met in the South. While she spoke I thought of Loretta. I wondered if Mum would have hated my Japanese friend.
Then I wondered about the people I hated because of their skin color or whatever. It seemed rather arbitrary to me — unnecessary, or maybe not that, maybe it was necessary to hate someone, just capricious who it was that you hated.