Fifty-Boy
13
If Only You Knew
I needed a room in Atlantic City. The flight to Florida turned out to be more than I thought. I was so desperate to save money and not have to go home before Molly got to missing me, yeah, right.. that I actually comtemplated sleeping at the Atlantic City Rescue Mission.
Luckily I met a guy at White House Hoagies named Cally-G, an older black gent with wavy hair and a gray streak at the front, tall and slim, honey-mustard colored suit, homey smile, silky tie... He turned me on to a place called the Hotel Chelsea. I paid for his lunch. He tried to say no, but a friend like him, just then, was something I didn't think existed. He said I looked like I needed a hot bath, a big bed, and a woman who liked men. A re-spite (respite) he called it.
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| A Woman Who Likes Men |
I said, "Cally, if you only knew."
I said to him, "Cally, I was with the same woman twenty-seven years and she didn't always treat me like... She kind of took my confidence in my desirability away." I took out my journal. "I even kept notes, like poems about it."
Cally had my number. He looked at the quilted floral journal." That explains a lot. Oh, yeah, I noticed. You got a funny way of putting words together..."
"I do read a lot, or I used to. And I used to do more writing... I really miss that time I had. I miss my books... You know this town doesn't have a bookstore, right? Maybe we could open one, me and you..."
He laughed. I could see him picturing it. "Yeah, me in a bookstore. You could see that, huh?"
"Why not? You seem like you got that entrepreneurial spirit."
"Hmm." He closed his eyes. "Yep, you' a dreamer. But... it takes a dreamer sometimes, takes a lot a' dreamin'... and you definitely a dreamer. But I like it." He laughed. "An entrepreneur. I like that too."
His hands were folded across his belly, contented, just sitting back digesting his surroundings. Then he pointed at me, quick. "How you being married no twenty-seven years." The returned his fingers to his upper lip and stroked his skinny mustache like it was helping him to decipher a code. "Shit, man, I can count. You ain't that old." He had the same comfortable smile, like a funeral director, sad, like he was sharing your burden, but comforting at the same time.
And his shoes, suede to the back and leather over the toe, somehow they reminded me of an old fashioned coffin. He was just so familiar. He leaned in close over the onions and chips left lying on the paper plate, over the crumpled oily napkins and hot pepper leftovers, the hoagie remains tattering his breath. "I got something for you... fix that desirability 'perplexion."He poured a little more Pepsi over the ice at the bottom of his plastic tumbler, then poured some for me, sat back, reached in his vest pocket, got out two tooth picks, handed one to me and stared picking his teeth. "Go 'head." He motioned.
I'm thinking, this is going to fix my desirability thing, picking my teeth?
His eyebrows rose up, like he spotted someone he'd a'rather not seen. "Wan-nay..." Cally stretched out his hand to a woman getting up from the next booth. "How you doing, Miss J?"
She looked at the gold watch on his wrist and said, "Not as good as you, Mister G." The dark skinned lady was on the broad side, not fat, but athletically built, maybe five-nine or ten, all dressed in black, turtleneck, mid-length leather jacket, corduroy pants, leather jump boots with a jazzy little beret tilting over chin length dreads pulled straight back, silky and black with gray highlights just beginning to show. "The California Gold Boy," she called him.
"You and your Beemer feel like running us over to the Hotel C?" Cally said.
"C'mon." The lady had a gap in the uper middle of her polished smile.
"This here is my friend, Jake."
I extended my hand.
Cally said, "Jake, this here is the famous detective from over Summersea Island, Wanamaker Summersea Jones... Couldn't find the ocean on the beach." He laughed. "But she's got a whole damn island named after her dumb ass, after the light skinned side of the family."
The both laughed. I didn't get it. "You over here to see who...? Janice Hammer about her bank being robbed, or your thug cousin, Blue?"
She didn't answer. We followed her outside.
Cally said, "I know you're not over here for no hoagie... Le-B-B, Janice's husband?"
Wanamaker unlocked her car, a small orange BMW convertible. She dropped us at the door of the hotel and wished me luck.
"Thanks, Miss Jones."
She smiled and drove off.
"She doesn't say much." I said.
"Always been the jealous type." Cally said.
"Were her eyes blue?"
"I believe so. Now what's say we get outta' the wind."
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