As I passed through the storeroom and went to Yasmin, I said, “You can collect your cut from Abdoulaye, Hassan. You’d better do it fast: I think he’s losing big.” Hassan nodded but said nothing.
“I’m glad that’s taken care of,” said Yasmin.
“Not any more than I am.” I folded the receipt and pushed it down into a hip pocket.
We went to Chiri’s, and I waited until she’d finished serving three young men in Calabrian naval uniforms. “Chiri,” I said, “we can’t stay long, but I wanted to give you this.” I counted out seventy-five kiam and put the money on the bar. Chiri didn’t make a move toward it.
“Yasmin, you look beautiful, honey. Marîd, what’s this for? The stuff last night?” I nodded. “I know you make a thing about keeping your word and paying your debts and all that honorable choo. I wouldn’t charge you Street prices, though. Take some of this back.”
I grinned at her. “Chiri, you risk causing offense to a Muslim.”
She laughed. “Muslim, my black ass. Then you two have a drink on me. There’s a lot of action tonight, a lot of loose money. The girls are in a good mood, and so am I.”
“We’re celebrating, Chiri,” said Yasmin. They exchanged some kind of secret signal — maybe that kind of occult, gender-specific transfer of knowledge goes along with the sex-change operation. Anyway, Chiri understood. We took the free drinks she’d offered, and got up to go.
“You two have a good night,” she said. The seventy-five kiam had long since disappeared. I don’t remember seeing it happen, though.
“Kwa hen.” I said as we left.
“Kwa heriniya kuonana.” she said. Then, “All right, which one of you lazy, fat-assed whores is supposed to be up on stage dancing? Kandy? Well, get your fuckin’ clothes off and get to work!” Chiri sounded happy. All was well with the world.
“We could pass by Jo-Mama’s,” said Yasmin. “I haven’t seen her in weeks.”
Jo-Mama was a huge woman, nearly six feet tall, somewhere between three and four hundred pounds, with hair that changed according to some esoteric cycle: blonde, redhead, brunette, midnight black; then a dull brown would start to grow out, and when it was long enough, it was transformed by some sorcery into blonde hair again. She was a tough, strong woman, and no one caused trouble in her bar, which catered to Greek merchant seamen. Jo-Mama had no scruples against pulling her needle gun or her Solingen perforator and creating general peace in gory heaps all around her. I’m sure Jo-Mama could easily have handled two Chirigas at the same time, and simultaneously still have the unruffled calm to mix a Bloody Mary from scratch for a customer. Jo-Mama either liked you a lot or she hated your guts. You really wanted her to like you.
We stopped in; she greeted both of us in her usual loud, fast-talking, distracted way. “Marîd! Yasmin!” She said something to us in Greek, forgetting that neither of us understood that language; I can say even less in Greek than I can in English. All that I know I’ve picked up from hanging out in Jo-Mama’s: I can order ouzo and retsina; I can say kalimera (hello); and I can call somebody maláka. which seems to be their favorite insult (as far as I can make out, it means “jerk-off”).
I gave Jo-Mama the best hug I could manage. She’s so plentiful that Yasmin and I together probably couldn’t circumscribe her. She included us in a story she was telling to another customer. “ … so Fuad comes running back to me and says, ‘That black bitch clipped me!’ Now, you and I both know that nothing gives Fuad a thrill like being clipped by some black whore.”
Jo-Mama looked questioningly at me, so I nodded. Fuad was this incredibly skinny guy who had this fascination with black hookers, the sleazier and the more dangerous, the better. Nobody liked Fuad, but they used him to run and fetch; and he was so desperate to be liked that he’d run and fetch all night, unless he ran into the girl he happened to be in love with that week.
“So I asked him how he managed to get clipped this time, because I was figuring he knew all the angles by now, I mean, God, even Fuad isn’t as stupid as Fuad, if you know what I mean. He says, ‘She’s a waitress over by Big Al’s Old Chicago. I bought a drink, and when she brought my change back, she’d wet the tray with a sponge and held the tray up above where I could see it, see? I had to reach up and slide my change off the tray, and the bottom bill stuck on the wet part.’ So I grabbed him by the ears and shook his head back and forth. ‘Fuad, Fuad,’ I said, ‘that’s the oldest scam in the book. You must have seen that one worked a million times. I remember when Zainab pulled that one on you last year.’ And the stupid skeleton nods his head, and his big lump of an Adam’s apple is going up and down and up and down, and he says to me, he says, ‘Yeah, but all those other times they was one-kiam bills. Nobody ever done it with a ten before.’ As if that made it all different!”
Jo-Mama started to laugh, the way a volcano starts to rumble before it goes blam, and when she really got into the laugh, the bar shook, and the glasses and bottles on it rattled, and we could feel the vibrations clear across the bar on our stools. Jo-Mama laughing could cause more damage than a smaller person throwing chairs around. “So what you want, Marîd? Ouzo, and retsina for the young lady? Or just a beer? Make up your mind, I don’t have all night, I got a crowd of Greeks just in from Skorpios, their ship’s carrying boxes full of high explosives for the revolution in Holland and they got a long way to sail with it and they’re all nervous as a goldfish at a cat convention and they’re drinking me dry. What the hell do you want to drink, goddamn it! Getting an answer out of you is like prying a tip out of a Chink.”
She paused just long enough for me to cram a few words in. I got myself my gin and bingara with Rose’s, and Yasmin had a Jack Daniels with a Coke back. Then Jo-Mama started in on another story, and I watched her like a hawk, because sometimes she starts the stories so you’ll get all caught up in them and forget you’ve got change coming. I never forget. “Let me have the change all in singles, Mama,” I said, interrupting her story and reminding her, in case my change had slipped her mind. She gave me an amused look and made the change, and I kicked her a whole kiam for a tip. She stuffed it into her bra. There was plenty of room in there for all the money I’d ever see in my lifetime. We finished our drinks after two or three more stories, kissed her good-bye, and wandered further up the Street. We stopped in Frenchy’s and a few other places, and we were satisfactorily loaded by the time we got home.
We didn’t say a word to each other; we didn’t even pause to turn on a light or go to the bathroom. We had our clothes off and were lying close together on the mattress. I ran my fingernails up the back of Yasmin’s thighs; she loves that. She was scratching my back and chest; that’s what I like. I used the tips of my thumb and fingers to touch her skin very lightly, just barely tickling her, from her armpit up her arm to her hand, and then I tickled her palm and her fingers. I ran my fingertips back down her arm, down her side, and across her sexy little ass. Then I began touching the sensitive creases of her groin the same way. I heard her start to make soft sounds, and she didn’t realize her own hands had fallen beside her; then she began touching her breasts. I reached over and grabbed her wrists, pinning her arms to the bed. She opened her eyes in surprise. I grunted softly and kicked her right leg aside, a little roughly, then I spread her left leg with mine. She gave a little shudder and moan. She tried to reach down to touch me, but I wouldn’t let go of her wrists. I held her immobile, and I felt a strong, almost cruel sense of control, yet it was expressed in the most caring and tender way. It sounds like a contradiction; if you don’t feel the same thing sometimes, I can’t explain it to you. Yasmin was giving herself to me wordlessly, completely; at the same time I was taking her, and she wanted me to take her. She liked me to get a little wild now and then; the moderate force I permitted myself to use only aroused her more. Then I entered her, and we let out our breath together in a sigh of pleasure. We began to move slowly, and her legs lifted; she put her heels on my hips, digging in and holding on, as close to me as she could get, while I was driving into her as close to her as possible. We jammed like that, slowly, drawing out every gentle touch, every surprise shock of roughness, for a long while.