Get Some Page 3

  Well, one night Lil Steve’s mother was watering the lawn and Tony crossed the street with a drink in his hand. He’d garnished the rim with pineapples and cherries; a green monkey held an umbrella. Tony winked at her and left the tall drink by her screen. His mother waited for Tony to get all the way back inside Dee’s before she picked up the drink and took a sip. The liquid was sweet but it burned going down, so she spit the drink out and splashed the rest across the grass. But she saved the small monkey and fingered the umbrella while looking at Dee’s from her porch. And one long, lonely night after twisting in the sheets and biting her pillow, she bolted straight up, knocking her water glass to the floor. She smeared on her lipstick and crossed the dark street toward Dee’s.

  Tony had two old-time hard-drinking friends. One was an out-of-work drunk named Stan and the other was a jackleg mechanic named Earl. They were the kind of men who preyed upon middle-aged women. Women with pensions and old, roomy homes. Places they could live free and eat.

  Earl started coming over and forgot how to leave. Like a mouse you couldn’t get out your house. His mother acted different whenever Earl was around. She fawned over him. She spoke high-pitched and phony. Laughing too loud when stuff wasn’t funny. Wearing extra makeup and heavy perfume. Saying all the time, “Earl, you kill me.”

  Lil Steve couldn’t see what she saw in that fool, but the next thing he knew they were married. Ol’ nasty Earl with his mechanic fingernails that were permanently black and that large retarded daughter of his. The first thing Earl did was put bars on the windows. He killed the front lawn with the gasoline jugs and dented car parts he stacked all over their grass.

  But the worst was when his mother gave that retarded girl his room. Just gave it away like he was nothing. Made Lil Steve sleep on the couch.

  Lil Steve tried his best to make his bad feelings heard. He stared Earl down, flashed him cold, evil eyes, calling Earl “son” even though Earl was thirty-nine years older, anything to make Earl mad. But Earl didn’t care. He just laughed all the time. All he wanted to do was play dominoes or checkers or drink with his buddies. Yelling for Lil Steve’s mother to bring his greasy ass a beer. Like his sloppy ass ruled the whole house.

  In one swig his mama wasn’t his anymore. The family life he’d known was a memory now. It had slipped through the cracks like a black row of ants. His mother stayed so busy with cooking or cleaning or drawing the girl a bath. Earl and the large girl both lounged around all day while his mama waited on them hand and foot like a slave.

  He couldn’t understand why she gave them so much. Why she sacrificed her life for two total strangers, just so she could say she had her a man.

  One day Lil Steve just asked her point-blank, “Why you let that ignorant nigga pimp you like this?”

  His mother stood there with both hands on her hips. “Boy, a woman has needs, a woman has wants. There are some things you can’t understand.”

  Lil Steve couldn’t stand watching her act so damn stupid, so he packed up and moved into his car. It was just after high school, so not many of his friends knew. He parked that car all over, traveling all over town, from Crenshaw to Compton, to Venice Beach or Pacoima, staying with anyone who’d feed or let him crash on the couch. He kept a gym membership so he had a place to shower and keep clean or to park for long hours without worrying about all those signs saying NO STOPPING.

  But the simmering hate and street life scorched his heart. He started smoking crack to black out his brain. He started hustling full time to make money to eat. When his money ran low he broke up with Trudy and sold her nude video for cash. After that, he only dated honeys with money. He didn’t like it but it gave him time to spy on his mother. Make sure she was all right.

  But as much as Lil Steve hated Earl, he hated Tony more. He blamed him for what happened last summer to his mother. But Lil Steve didn’t even know the worst part of the story. If he did, Tony wouldn’t be breathing today.

  See, last summer, Lil Steve’s mother had gone over to Dee’s. She was looking for Earl, who was having trouble finding his way home lately.

  Tony blocked her path when she got to the door.

  “Hey, girl, how you doin’?” he said, leading her away from the giant black gate that led to the gambling room upstairs. “Come on, have a quick drink on me.”

  Tony was always trying to get Lil Steve’s mother to drink. He always stayed after her about it.

  “Come on, sugar, it won’t hurt you none. It’s real nice and sweet. Guar-an-teed to make all pain go away.” Tony poured her a white creamy piña colada, garnishing it with a dead-looking pineapple wedge.

  “Now, Earl ain’t doing nothing but gamblin’ some. A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do. You don’t want to chase him away.” Tony knew about Lil Steve’s father leaving. He knew where to put in the knife.

  As the night wore on, the liquor set in. His mother started to sway back and forth in her chair. The warm room was beginning to spin.

  “Come over here, girl. Give ol’ Tony a kiss.” Tony circled her waist with one of his arms. His other hand rested over her knee.

  “Earl don’t want me,” Lil Steve’s mother slurred.

  Tony slid another drink in front of her face. “Pretty as you is, that’s hard to believe.” Tony let his hand roam farther up her thigh. “Shoot, I bet every man in here wants you.”

  “I know I do.” Tony’s friend Stan laughed. He was holding his fifth whiskey, sitting on her left side. Lil Steve’s mother’s breast kept grazing his elbow. He was having himself a grand time. But when he noticed Tony’s hand creeping up her thigh, Stan started feeling uneasy.

  She smiled and rolled back into Tony’s warm arms. “Where’s Earl? Did you tell him I’m over here waitin’?” She almost fell from her chair.

  “Whoa,” Tony said, sliding her back up. “Girl, let’s get you some fresh air.”

  Tony stood up. He started to guide her outside.

  But Stan stood up too.

  “Man, don’t mess with her. Can’t you see she’s sick?”

  “So? What difference does it make?”

  Stan’s lip began to tremble. He struggled to get the words out. “That’s Earl’s woman, man.” Stan said the words low. He hated to contradict Tony.

  “Listen,” Tony said, taking a step back toward the bar, “you like that drink?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Whiskey taste okay?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Tony handed Stan the whole bottle but didn’t let go. He leaned right inside Stan’s wrecked, plastered face. “Then sit down and shut the fuck up.”

  Sweat began to drip from Stan’s desperate brow. He worriedly glanced at Lil Steve’s mother. She was swaying back and forth under Tony’s whale arm. She had a tormented look on her clean, pretty face, like a puppy about to be gassed at the pound. But Stan was a drunk. His right knee was shaking. He couldn’t pass up a free liquor bottle like this. He grabbed at the bottle but Tony snatched it away. Stan’s sorrowful eyes pleaded. His mouth started to water. His shaking hands reached for the bottle again. Tony slammed it down hard on the table.

  “You got something else to say?” Tony asked him again.

  “Uh-uh,” Stan said, sitting back at the bar.

  Stan never looked back. He drank heavily that night. He drained the whole bottle and kept his bloodshot eyes glued to his glass.

  Out back from Dee’s was a cluster of trees. A mountain of cardboard boxes hid an old, beat-up mattress. Tony would sometimes sneak lonely drunk women back there. The old mattress reeked of cheap booze. There was a cat laying at the mattress’s frayed edge, Tony kicked the cat with his boot.

  He laid her down gently. He lifted her dress.

  “Wait, Tony. Sto—-op it. What we doing out here?” Lil Steve’s mother squirmed but she was too drunk to move.

  “Earl may not want you,” Tony’s gut straddled her body, “but I been wanting you for months.”

  Lil Steve’s mother struggled, but the liquor h
ad made her weak.

  Her twisting body got Tony more excited. He stuck his tongue out and licked her whole cheek. She squirmed underneath him, but his giant girth held her firm. Tony’s sandpaper tongue slid inside her mouth. The whole world spun fast. She felt dizzy and sick. All the trees began to fly past her eyes.

  Earl found her later, passed out on the mattress. He didn’t know what had happened and tried to wake her up, but she wouldn’t budge. He poured the rest of his beer in her face.

  Lil Steve was on his way home to his mother’s house that night. He was only a mile and a half away.

  Earl and Lil Steve’s mother stumbled out into the street from Dee’s bar. Earl was walking way ahead of his mother. She was trying to keep up, teetering on spiky black heels. Her dress was a mess. Her hair was on end. She was arguing with Earl and he was waving her away. She suddenly stopped and got sick on the lawn. Earl got in his car, slamming the door hard, and she got in, slamming hers too.

  Now, Tony swore up and down she was driving that night, but Tony was damn good at lying for his friends, especially when they were running from their wives.

  Earl and Lil Steve’s mother used to fight in the car in front of their house so his big lazy daughter couldn’t hear. Fussing until way after midnight sometimes. But this time, Earl revved the car’s engine. He backed out the driveway, crushing the hedge on their front lawn, gunning down the street like some nut.

  Everybody living heard that hard, deadly crash. The wild screech of brakes. The crashing of glass. The horrible twisting of metal. Folks rushed out their homes in house robes and socks. They came out of Dee’s Parlor in droves.

  Lil Steve heard the crash too as he skidded around the corner. He jumped from his car, leaving the door open, and ran right up to the wreck. When he got there, the car was completely turned over. The passenger side was horribly smashed. The whole front window was gone. His mother had been tossed straight through the windshield. Glass was all over her arms and her legs. Earl stumbled out and cried on the curb, drooling like some idiot boy.

  Tony lit a Winston and sized up the damage. “What a waste of a Regal,” he said, blowing out his smoke. “Shoulda bought that bitch when I had the chance.”

  And that’s how Earl got Lil Steve’s house. Everything his mama owned was all Earl’s now, and there was talk going around that his big retarded daughter wasn’t no real daughter at all.

  It gnawed on Lil Steve awful to see Earl living in his house. It made all his insides bleed and feel raw. He struggled each day to not bash someone’s head. To not pick something up and smash it back down. To just rip up something to shreds. He bit his own fist just to shift off the pain. But nothing made it go away. Sometimes he did shit to just mess with Earl’s mind. He’d dump out their trash, spread it over the lawn, or let out the air in all of his tires, steal his rims or take off his gas cap. Sometimes he’d just pee on their grass. But whatever he did, Earl was always unfazed. When Lil Steve dumped the trash, Earl left the trash there. When his hubcaps were gone Earl didn’t replace them, and he stuffed an old rag in his tank for a cap.

  Lil Steve’s only satisfaction came from cheating Tony out of his money. He used every card-playing trick to break Tony’s bank. He hated his smug face and nicotine breath. How he dogged out Miss Dee and stole her club and her money. But nothing was worse than how Tony did his mother. Lil Steve knew some, but not the worst parts. If Tony hadn’t given his mother her first drink, she’d still be alive. He could barely stand to look at him now.

  “See, my man here will have five Gs on Friday,” Lil Steve went on coolly. After the bank job this Friday they’d have plenty of money. “We have an anonymous investor.” He smiled at that statement. They all did. Tony was listening. He didn’t mind where folks got their Ben Franklins, as long as they could be recognized at the bank.

  “We just want to place a little wager. Everybody saying Jones is going to take him in the seventh.”

  “You can have Liston to win or Jones if he goes eight.” Tony took a small pad from his coat pocket, scribbled on it and tore the sheet off. “So where’s the money at, boy?” Tony asked.

  “We don’t have access to all the funds now. We’ll have it all to you by Friday.” Lil Steve glanced at Ray Ray and back at Tony again.

  Tony took a long drag and smashed it out in the ashtray. He’d heard so much yin-yang about money, he could hardly keep track. He smiled at the young junior flips and stood up. “Yeah, well, until you get your investor together, don’t come in here and waste my damn time.” He crumpled the paper and tossed it in the trash.

  Big Percy came upstairs and followed Lil Steve down.

  “You boys need anything else?” Tony asked, waiting.

  “No, man, we cool. We’ll be back.” Lil Steve nodded.

  “What them fools want?” Percy asked Tony when they walked out.

  “Just some young-ass bullshit. I don’t know, hell. Probably be calling someone’s mama tonight to bail their punk asses out.”

  3

  Tony and Flo

  Tony walked to the kitchen and spit in the sink. His buddies Earl and Stan were sitting at a card table in the living room. It was afternoon, when the club wasn’t open yet; Tony liked to play cards at home with his friends.

  “Probably serving that skinny nigga right now,” Earl yelled to Tony. Earl loved instigating shit.

  He sneaked himself a quick shot of gin while Tony was in the kitchen and drank it down before Tony came back.

  “Charles, you know that fool, the one who took Tony’s woman. They say he owes Tony a whole bunch of money.” Stan snuck himself another quick shot too and poured more in the flask he kept inside his jacket.

  Tony stumbled back into the living room, where the other two men sat at a tiny card table.

  “I saw Flo,” Tony told his old drinking buddies.

  Earl and Stan nodded their heads. They’d heard this sob story so many times, but they never complained. They always agreed with everything Tony said. The drinking was free, the ham sandwiches too. Shoot, he could talk as long as he liked.

  “I will say this,” Tony said, blowing a long trail of smoke out his nose. “That girl knew her way around a kitchen, man. Nothing like these honeys today.”

  “All young girls want to do is go out all the time, and the small ones can eat just as much as the big ones.” Earl eyed the pickle jar Stan was holding.

  Stan filled his sandwich with thick slabs of meat, carefully layering the pickles on top.

  “All womens is the same.” Earl made his voice go real high. “‘I’m not really hungry, I just wanna taste.’” He bit down and spoke with a mouth full of food. “Women’ll sit there and wolf down a whole four-course meal and have the nerve to start eyeing yo’ plate.”

  “Damn straight,” Stan agreed, wiping his bread in the juice. “When the time come to cook it’s some nasty-ass meat or some fake mashed potatoes, some canned peas and cheap Gallo wine.” Earl laughed so long that he choked.

  “None of ’em like Flo.” Tony shook his head and studied the rug. “Flo could throw down in the bed and kitchen. Black-eyed peas, collard greens, pork chops or chicken . . .”

  “. . . rum cake, peach cobbler or sweet potato pie,” Earl said.

  “Coconut pralines and pone,” Stan added. They both knew the story by heart.

  “You know it was one of them cakes she threw at me when I pushed her.”

  “Yellow cake with thick chocolate frosting,” Earl said without looking up. He was licking the mustard off both of his hands. Tony told this story whenever he got drunk. Must have heard it nine hundred times.

  “I came home late after that six-hour streak. You remember, Earl. I tore the place up. Nobody could touch me that night!”

  “You were a firecracker, all right.” Earl poured them all another round.

  “Won thirty-six hundred in two fuckin’ hours. Bought the whole room a round, everybody had doubles, even that three-piece-suit nigga who lost.” Tony scratched his wi
de belly and looked at the ceiling. “Man, I was so happy. Been trying to bust that punk ass all week. You was there, Stan. You know I was rollin’.”

  “You couldn’t hit nothing but sevens.”

  “I come home yelling, ‘Flo, look-a here, come here, gal. Look what yo’ daddy done brung you.’”

  “That’s when you kissed her and fell flat on yo’ ass.” Stan was trying real hard not to bust out and laugh. He bit down deep into his sandwich.

  Tony drank two shots and shook his head back and forth.

  “She hauls off and calls you an ol’ sloppy drunk, didn’t she?” Earl said, holding his smile underneath his hand.

  “Shouldn’t have said that,” Tony said sadly.

  “It wasn’t yo’ fault. She shouldn’t have called you that, man. Women need to learn how to give men respect.” Earl gulped his drink and belched loudly.

  “Next thing I know, she started packing her clothes.” Tony almost cried, then wiped his face with a napkin.

  “Um, um, um,” Earl said, barely listening to Tony. He was holding a knife and a new slice of bread. He spread some more mustard on it slowly.

  “So she walks out the room, huh? Earl, it’s your move, man.” Stan wanted him to play. He nudged Earl’s elbow. Earl took his turn while Stan poured more liquor into Tony’s empty glass, then he poured more into Earl’s and his own.

  “Man, I stormed toward her. I was so mad I wanted to rip off her clothes. I say, ‘Woman, you better talk to me, girl!’ I grabbed her head and pushed it against the kitchen wall. ‘Don’t you ever walk away from me, bitch.’”

  “Called her a bitch, did ya?” Earl said it like it was the first time he’d heard it. He sucked on each finger and then moved his checker. “Boy, I bet she was mad.”

  “‘Talk to me,’ I screamed, but she stands there all quiet, just blinking her big eyes. ‘Talk to me dadgummit,’” Tony screamed again. He leaped from his seat and knocked over his glass. “She ran but I grabbed her and slammed her against the cabinets. All them damn glasses rattled like mad.”