We went along the blacktop for ten miles and the trees broke on either side and there was a great hill up ahead and the blacktop quit there and turned into a gravel road, and at the top of the hill the half moon, which had finally shone itself through fading rain clouds, seemed to be balancing, like half a loaf of round white bread, on its rim.
We kept going. Down on the other side the hill fell away into a wide pasture and in the center of the pasture was a big old white house. It was well lit from the inside and by porch lights, and on either side of the house by two tall pole lights that shone on the pasture and revealed it was full of cars and rain puddles.
The house was three stories with columns and a long wide porch that wound all around it. It had a new roof sprouting four brick chimneys. One for each side. All four were breathing smoke. You could see the smoke against the moon, which now sat just above the house like some kind of soiled halo.
“Business is good,” Leonard said, and stopped at the bottom of the hill and rolled down his window and spat outside. He took several deep breaths. I could hear music coming from the house, and I could hear some laughter and some other sounds. It seemed to be a raucous place.
“Well, brother,” Leonard said, “what’s the score?”
“Park far out. I’ll walk.”
“And when you come out,” Leonard said, “I’ll be too far away.”
“I know. But they see y’all sitting out in the car, it’ll make them wonder.”
“You’re trying to say these boys may not like niggers?”
“You said it first, remember.”
“I tell you what I’m gonna do,” Leonard said. “I’m going to give you the time to get down there. Then I’m gonna give you fifteen minutes to line up things, like you’ve come to shop. Then I’m going to move on down about halfway and park. I’ll be on the right. Where you see the gap in those cars. That’s where you want to head. You’re not out of there in twenty minutes, or I hear some kind of hootenanny goin’ on, I’m comin’ in.”
“That’ll just cause more trouble,” I said.
“Not if they’re gutting you with a knife,” Brett said.
“I guess that’s a point worth considering,” I said.
I got out, started walking toward the house.
The wind gathered up the scent of incense and passed it on to me. It was a nice smell. Any other time I might have appreciated it. The music was country. Tanya Tucker. It was cranked up so loud it seemed to be responsible for the leaves blowing off the trees.
When I was on the porch, a guy big enough to fill a bus and stick his ass through the door came outside and made the porch creak when he walked. He was wearing a dark suit with a white shirt and a dark tie. He had a head about the size of an atlas globe and his hair was cut so short, in the porch light I could see razor scrapes on his blue-veined head. He smiled at me.
“Hello,” he said. “Come on in.”
“Thanks.”
He walked down the porch, around it, out of sight. Inside was a brightly lit foyer, and the music was really loud. Tanya Tucker was over with and some guy whose music I didn’t know was singing about something I wasn’t listening to. Loud as that music was, it wasn’t as loud as the thumping of my heart, the pounding of blood in my temples. The incense was so strong in the foyer it made me sick.
A woman in her sixties, carrying about two hundred pounds, and not carrying it well, wearing a multicolored, loose-fitting dress that had all the style of a horse blanket, sort of sprang up in front of me. She had blue hair and loose dentures and too much powder and rouge on her face. She looked as if she ought to be somewhere else, baking cookies.
She said, “Young man. You come for a good time?”
I hesitated, fearing she might think she was supposed to be my good time.
“Yes, ma’am, I suppose I have.”
“Well, there’s a small cover charge. Any other charges, that’s between you and the girls.”
I realized then she was a door greeter, sort of like they have at Wal-Mart. Need a shopping cart? Want to buy some pussy? Man, that was cold. A sixty-year-old woman to warm you up. Like Grandma guiding you around on your first day at kindergarten.
“How much?”
She told me and I gave her some of my bouncer money.
“You need to come into the sittin’ room, son. Look around. See if there’s anyone you like. The girls are real friendly.”
I went past her, through a half-open door and into the sitting room. It was busy in there. Lots of men, all white, were sitting on couches and lots of girls were flittering around them, as if the men were magnets and they were flecks of iron.
The men’s talk was loud, to compete with the music, to try and not show nervousness. I figured there were plenty of husbands in here who weren’t regular whoremongers, but who were trying to start out in style. Most of the men in the room looked to be either businessmen or farmers, and all but one looked to be past thirty.
The women were all young and looked to be whores, of course. You could tell from the lack of clothes. I checked each one individually, trying to determine if any of them were Tillie. Well, maybe that wasn’t why I looked so carefully, but it was part of the reason.
Over by the crackling fireplace was a Steroid Jock wearing an expensive hand-tailored suit, but that didn’t make it pretty. He had chosen to have it made out of a kind of olive green material the texture of grape leaves. His head was square, like a block, and it was topped with black hair cut close to the scalp. His ears reminded me of radar tracking devices. He was talking to a handsome blond man in another hand-tailored suit, only this one was blue and smooth and more tasteful. Then again, who was I? A fashion critic?
The guy in the blue suit was huge too, but it didn’t show right off, he was so well proportioned. I realized utility instead of fashion had more to do with the hand-tailored suits these guys wore. You looked like they did, you couldn’t pick a suit off the rack. The guy in the blue suit was watching me, like a bird stalking a worm. He had one hand on the mantel and he was playing with a smoking pot of incense.
I glanced around the room and saw more of the boys. Not the customers. Just these big sonsabitches. They were trying to look casual, but they looked about as casual as warthogs in jockstraps and snowshoes. There were six of them altogether, packed into those expensive suits, housing enough steroids inside their flesh to accommodate the entire Mr. Universe competition. I wondered how many more like them were upstairs. I thought about the one on the porch. Maybe he and Leonard were sitting on the steps right now, talking about the moon.
Naw.
I took a deep breath and put a smile on my face and started walking among the women, like I was shopping. A redhead looked at me and smiled. Bless her heart, I’d seen more sincerity in the grin of a presidential candidate.
I grinned at her, just to be sociable, but tried to discourage her by turning away and looking at my watch. Only problem was I wasn’t wearing one.
How long had I been inside now?
Five minutes?
Ten?
Soon, Leonard would be moving the car closer, and not long after that he’d be inside looking for me.
I turned slightly and the redhead was at my shoulder. She wasn’t gorgeous, but she was cute. She had a lump of a nose, good teeth, and freckles to go with the red hair, which was the color of copper and probably that way naturally. She was a little thick in the hips, but if she’d been wearing more than thin black panties that wouldn’t have been noticeable. Another ten years those hips were going to give her trouble.
She had me by the elbow. She said, “You need some company?”
“Well, I’m looking for somebody.”
“Here I am.”
“I’m looking for someone named Tillie. I hear good things about Tillie.”
She frowned. “You don’t hear good things about Darlene?”