“What?” a woman’s voice called out.
“Come on out here!” Mavis commanded. It was the first time Soupspoon heard her voice like that. It was the first notion he had that they wouldn’t be together forever.
The woman who came out was a mess. Her Cleopatra wig was crooked on her head, her eyes were two colors, and the sheet wrapped around her big body was covered with stains — some of them still wet with bloody patches in them.
The man, who came out second, was small. He wore gray pants and a shirt with no sleeves.
“What?” the messy woman asked again.
“I come about your kids.” Mavis was no taller than Mrs. Peckell but she managed to look down on her just the same.
“What about my kids?” Mrs. Peckell glanced at the floor where the two infant boys had been eating.
“I better be goin’, Jessie,” her little boyfriend said.
“Richard, sit’own!”
He almost did it. Even though he was nowhere near a chair he let his butt slump back as if he meant to fall down on the floor and await her next command. But instead of falling down he took a long step forward like a Russian Cossack dancer — then he took another.
“Richard!”
But he was gone out of the door. He took Mrs. Peckell’s brass along with him. All of a sudden she seemed slack and flabby — aware of how messy she and her house were.
“What about my kids?” she asked Mavis again.
“I fount Rudy in the street breakin’ glass.”
“Is he hurt?” Jessie Peckell asked.
“He’s fine. But now I come up here an’ find yo’ other babies eatin’ wit’ they hands on the flo’ while you layin’ up wit’ that sorry li’l coward...”
“That’s Juanita’s fault,” the sad mother said. “I told her to feed them an’ take ’em to the park. I’ma beat Juanita’s ass when she come home.”
“Are they your kids?” Mavis’s voice shook.
Jessie shook too, like a kid herself, caught smoking behind the house.
“Are they?” Mavis lifted her fist, causing Jessie to flinch.
“Are they?” Mavis asked again. “Are they yours? Because if they your babies — an’ you don’t watch’em ev’ry minute — then they gonna be dead an’ not nuthin’ you say to nobody else gonna bring ’em back. When you look at his chair an’ ain’t nobody there, ain’t no flowers gonna, ain’t no sea breeze gonna help...”
Mavis walked right up to Rudy’s mother with her fist still raised. Jessie fell backwards, not because she was afraid, Soupspoon thought, but because of the hurt that Mavis showed her.
“I’m dyin’, Rudy,” Soupspoon said. “Got cancer in my bones an’ I’m almost homeless. I did some radiation an’ now I’m gettin’ ready t’go on keemo. An’ all I want is to play the blues.”
“A’ntee know that?” Rudy called Mavis his a’ntee.
“Mavis in New York?”
“Uh-huh,” the boy inside the man answered.
“Well, I ain’t talked to Mavis in years. An’ I don’t want you t’tell’er nuthin’ neither. All I want from you is yea or nay.”
“I don’t even know what you want.”
“I wanna play music. I wanna play it here. All I need is a chair.”
Rudy twisted his face like a little boy again. Soupspoon remembered the first time that Mavis took him home: his face was all twisted then too. He didn’t want to stay for the night away from home. He didn’t want to until he tasted the roast pork and potatoes with gravy; he didn’t want to until he had buckwheat pancakes and bacon for breakfast and then a pony ride in Central Park.
“People don’t come in here to hear music, Soup. They come here to gamble; gamble an’ drink.”
“I’ont care what they want. They gonna get me,” Soupspoon said. “You know you owe me, Rudy. You owe me sumpin’.”
“I cain’t pay ya.”
“That’s okay. I take donations.”
Rudy downed his scotch. He sat back in his chair and then he sat forward, bringing his elbows to his knees. Then he sat up again and covered his lips with his hand.
Soupspoon smiled to see the fidgety boy grown into a man.
“Keemo be over in three weeks. If that don’t kill me I might got six months, maybe more. I figger I be strong enough t’come in in about a month or five weeks. We try it on, an’ if it don’t fit... well then, I’ll leave.”
Billy Slick and Sono were listening to the conversation from the bar behind Rudy.
“Do it, Rudy,” Sono said.
“Yeah,” chimed in Billy Slick. “Do it.”
“You gonna take responsibility for it, Billy?” Rudy asked in a threatening tone.
“Sure I will. I’ll set’im up an’ break’im down too. Shit! I used to do that at the Palladium till they fired my ass.”
Rudy nodded. Sono grinned at her new friend.
“Okay,” Rudy said. “Listen, I tell you what, you call me when you ready in four or five weeks an’ we see. All right?”
She slapped him hard across the face as he was tiptoeing in.
“Where the hell have you been?” Kiki stood only half a foot from Soupspoon — her breath was ninety proof. She cocked her fist and reared back. Soupspoon knew that if she hit him again he’d be on the floor, so he pushed out with both hands as hard as he could against her chest. He swung out to slap her but only clipped the top of her head as she was already falling.
When she hit the floor, Soupspoon took a step backward intending to get outside, but he bumped into the door and it swung shut. He couldn’t open it because he didn’t dare to turn his back on Kiki when she was wild.
But he didn’t have to worry. Kiki rolled herself up into a ball and sobbed.
“Don’t touch me!” she shrieked when he crouched down beside her. His hip throbbed along with his left cheek but the real pain was a hollow aching that came from the very center of his heart.
“I ain’t gonna touch ya. I’m just gonna sit here next to ya. That’s all. I ain’t goin’ nowhere.”
While Kiki cried, Soupspoon pressed his fingers against the left side of his chest. The pain was like a hard pea lodged in his clenching heart. It was the memory of love and the onset of death all at once. It set off a wild glee in him.
“You didn’t have to hurt me,” Kiki said, her face still buried between her knees.
“I was just scared, honey. I’as afraid that you might start hittin’ me an’ then not be able t’stop.”
“I didn’t mean it,” she said and then gulped. “I was just worried because it was so late and you didn’t call or leave a note or anything. You were just gone and I was scared that you wouldn’t ever come back.”
Soupspoon put his hand on her heaving side. She brought her arm down and clamped the hand to her.
“Where’m I gonna go, baby? I’as just tryin’ t’get ready for what I’ma do after this keemo shit.”
“What do you mean?” Kiki asked as she sat up. She wiped the tears from her eyes and brushed back her hair in the same motion.
“Doctor says I’l be real sick for a while. She says that keemo is poison for the cancer. But I figure that if they got me takin’ poison then I gots to be real sick already. Sick almost to dyin’ — an’ maybe even dyin’.”
“Don’t say that, daddy...”
“Don’t cut me off now, girl. You know since you brought me up here I been thinkin’ — I started playin’ the blues ’cause I had a feelin’ that I would die young an’ all I wanted before that happened was to play. An’ now that I’m dyin’ for real I wanna do it again. I wanna make sumpin’ an’ leave sumpin’ behind.”
“I’m sorry,” Kiki said.
“Yeah, baby. Me too.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” she said.
“I know you didn’t, baby. I know it.”