Soupspoon sat back, a look of frustration on his emaciated face. The bags of his eyelids filled with tears.
“Can’t you see that he’s hoarse?” Kiki said. “Can’t you see that you got to get up next to him?”
By example she went over to Soupspoon and bent over.
“I... can’t... live... in... no... shelter,” he rasped. His lips brushed against Kiki’s ear.
Kiki blushed and felt a twinge in her side.
“He said that he’s staying here with me.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“He said that he likes it here and that I’m his girlfriend now and that you better get your Yankee butt outta this house.”
“I will not leave without knowing that it’s his decision to stay,” she declared. And then to Soupspoon, a little loud, “There’s already a hospital bed assigned for you, Mr. Wise. I can take you there tomorrow.”
“If you want to hear what he has to say, then go put your ear to his mouth so you could understand him,” Kiki said.
“That’s ridiculous.”
Kiki wanted to slap her face but that would have torn stitches and she needed to be healthy. She needed to be strong.
Soupspoon lifted his hand three inches from the table, beckoning Miss Tatum.
“What?” she asked, not moving.
He waved her to him again.
She took slow steps around the table. When she was in reach he took her hand.
“Oh.”
He pulled her hand until he could grab her lower arm. He pulled that until he could reach her biceps.
It looked to Kiki like a drowning man trying to pull himself out of the drink.
From her shoulder he reached her neck, and she said “Oh” again but still she allowed him to pull her head to his mouth.
“Please... please...” he said.
“What?” Miss Tatum was trying to pull away but Soupspoon had her with both hands and he was holding on for his life.
“Don’t take me from outta here... I’ll die... please leave me here,” he said. Then he lost all strength and let her go, falling back into his chair.
“Oh! Oh!” Miss Tatum pulled away as quick as she could. She went right for the door, stopping only to pick up her bag on the way.
“A senior agent will be sent,” she said while looking around the floor for something, anything, she might have dropped. “An agent will be notified.”
She left without getting Kiki’s name. But that didn’t matter, Kiki knew, because they knew where she lived.
An agent never came. Miss Tatum took her report back to her office the next morning. It was flagged with a red paper clip and filed in a cabinet labeled Open Files. An agent was even assigned. But there was some confusion and he went to Soupspoon’s old apartment on the first floor. When he found the apartment empty he marked Soupspoon’s open file Deceased.
Four
He awoke to the smell of whiskey over lemongrass; remembering the small bare breasts of the redhead, Kiki, and how she came to bed in just underpants — a big hospital bandage on her left side.
“How are ya, honey?” Her speech was slurred from the sour mash.
He could barely nod.
“Motherfuckin’ bastards.” She propped herself up on one elbow and looked down on him. “They don’t give two shits ’bout what happens to us. They don’t care.”
When she bounced around to get her place on the pillow, Soupspoon could feel his bones jostling.
“You hurt, Soupspoon? Don’t worry, I’m not gonna jump around anymore. I’m not gonna let anything happen to you. Tomorrow I’m gonna get Randy, I mean Ran-dall” — she pronounced the name in a southern impression of an English accent — “and we’re gonna get you to a doctor.”
Soupspoon saw the girl’s ghost hovering halfway next to her like an afterimage on a snowy TV. He wanted to go to sleep; he wanted to die with no pain. But instead he beckoned Kiki to his lips.
She butted his head leaning forward in the bouncy bed.
“What?”
“That your boyfriend?”
Kiki’s grin was toothy, half-wise.
“Why?” She leaned back toward him — a child playing games in bed after the lights are turned out.
“ ’Cause I don’t wanna be layin’ up in his girlfriend’s bed.”
Putting her cheek to his and whispering into his ear, she said, “Don’t worry, baby. I fuck him sometimes, but Randy don’t own me.”
The whole of his life Soupspoon had been around hard-drinking, hard-talking women, but he never got used to it.
“Anyway,” Kiki said, “he’s not like you. He’s just a wannabe; wannabe white. He says he’s South American and Caucasian North African, that means a light-skinned Arab.”
Kiki leaned over to reach across Soupspoon, her pea-sized nipple poking at his eye. When she heaved back she had the whiskey bottle and swigged at it from the neck.
“When he comes up here I tell him that I wanna see his hard black dick.” She sucked her tongue in a way she must have thought sexy. “You should see all the changes he goes through. You should, see him.”
The young woman was all of a sudden sad. She swigged down another drink and leaned across to put the bottle back.
“He goes down there to Pace University to be a stockbroker. Wants to play polo with the peckerwoods down there. He told me he wants me to be his wife so we could hang out at some fuckin’ country clubs where they got fish eggs an’ fuckin’ Nazi polka music... He thinks he’s somethin’ just ’cause he wannabe. But he ain’t no more than these wild nigger boys roamin’ up and down, up an’ down.” For a moment the girl was lost in thought. “Like dogs.”
When he sighed, Soupspoon didn’t know if it was from the pain in his leg or from the pain he felt from that girl.
“What’s wrong, honey?”
“Hip.”
“Your hip?”
“Mm. Yeah,” he whispered.
“Is it better on your back?”
Soupspoon nodded but he didn’t know.
“Is it your right side? Here, let’s get you up on your left side and then you could lean back against me.”
Kiki moved him gently and molded her body right behind his. He could feel her alcoholic heat work its way down into his bones. It felt good.
“That’s okay, baby,” she whispered. “Don’t you worry. Nothin’s gonna happen to you. I’m here. Shh, I’m here.”
Soupspoon let himself lay back against the hot girl. He listened to her words and felt her light touch on his ear and forehead.
And he felt okay for the first time in a very long time. The closeness shaking loose the loneliness that had been his life for years.
Now he was alone in the big purple bed. His head full of dreams about catfish frying and juke joint dancing and women laughing open-mouthed while he played his red guitar. Only it didn’t feel like a dream. It felt real. More real than this strange bed.
The scent of sour mash was in the air. There, on the dresser next to the bed, was the half-empty fifth of Jack Daniel’s.
Crackling pain moved around in his leg.
If I could sit up then I won’t die this mornin’, he said to himself.
It felt as if there was a clawing lion digging in from behind, into his heart and head, but Soupspoon sat up. By bending over double and holding on to the side of the bed he could stand. Taking baby steps, he made it to the far end and rested.
A tune came into his head.