Free Form Jazz. Lee Lamothe
He’d always hated being fat but found it was delicious to see her slim figure vanish under him.
She came out with a bath towel, a box of condoms, and a tube of gel. He watched her hands quickly make him hard and skin the rubber on. She stayed down there massaging the gel onto the condom and stared at him. He made her wait a few moments then took a tube of crank from beside the bed. He positioned her, then tapped a mound onto the sticky tip of the condom. Her ass was his favourite delivery system.
* * *
While Agatha Burns was in the washroom, cleaning up and crying, Connie Cook called Harvey on a cellphone. “Hey, where you?”
“Cookie? What’s up, man?”
“Well, I was, a few minutes ago.” He laughed.
“You at Ag’s? She got the stuff ready to go?”
“Yeah, soon. Give her a couple of hours. She’s got to work standing up for a while.”
“Hoo.”
“You been dealing with those Chinese guys, Willy Wong’s kids, out in the east end? Aggie says you got yellow fever, trolling the massage parlours. Meeting bad people and pressing and cooking for strangers. Anything to that, Harv?”
“Fuck, no. C’mon, Cookie. She said that, eh? She wouldn’t say that.”
“Yup. And she wants to cook. I said you’d give her a tryout.”
“Ah, well, okay, I guess,” Harv said. He waited a few seconds. “But it isn’t the kind of thing you can just teach someone, like baking brownies, you know. You make a little mistake they turn out, taste a little bitter, sprinkle on some sugar and eat ’em anyway. This is different. There are tricks. You know I got tricks and you can’t ask me to just give ’em to some scrag you’re banging. That ain’t right, Cookie.”
“Harv, don’t worry about it. She’s just trying to get ahead. When you come by to pick up the chicklets for your snowbank, you arrange to take her out for a drive. See if she’s got the chops.”
“Well, if you’re sure, Cookie. I got lots of people want me to give ’em night school lessons in avoiding crank combustion.”
“Well, look, Harv, I’m not asking you to make her a wizard like you. Just take her to the first step, okay? Let her make suds. She’ll feel useful, like she’s going ahead. You do the real work.”
“Yeah, okay.” Harv clicked his teeth. “She said that, eh? That I’m with the Chinamen?”
“Don’t worry about it, Harv. She probably meant some fucking fucker.”
Agatha Burns stayed in the washroom while he dressed. It took a long time and he was breathing heavily when he finished. He slipped his feet into loafers: it was impossible for him to contort himself to secure shoelaces. He could hear the shower blasting. He cracked the door called into the steam, “Hey, you okay, Ag?”
She sobbed. “Go away. You said you wouldn’t bite.”
“C’mon, Ag. A little fun. You gonna be okay to work? Do some stuff with Harv later, become a journeyman cooker?” He stepped in and twitched back the shower curtain. “I decided to move you up. Harv’s okay on the X but he needs an apprentice for the crank.”
Agatha Burns was crouched on the floor under the hard, hot water, holding a soapy face cloth to the back of her neck. The face cloth was stained pink with watery blood. “Really?” For a second her face had a residual cheerleader’s glow that hadn’t quite been burned away by chemistry.
“Yep. The Harv’s a master maker. Don’t mention to him that I know about the Chinamen, though, okay? That you told me. I want to move you up quick. I don’t think Harv’s gonna make it and I want you to have all his secrets.”
“Okay, wow.” She stood up, beaming. Of all of her, only her eyes remained gorgeous. “Okay.”
He could count her ribs. There were bruises on her hips and knees where she’d fallen while high. She suddenly had sagging breasts and he regretted that. She smiled and her teeth looked wobbly and grey, off-kilter. He again felt a bit of sadness. “Finish up the chicklets, and when Harv comes to pick them up he’ll take you with him, get you started.”
“We going to the super lab?” She laughed gaily, his excesses forgotten, forgiven. “Okay, okay, Connie, I’ll do good.”
He felt a chill at the echo of her words. The super lab. What was that all about?
He left the building whistling, knowing he’d never need to come back again, and he was sad he’d never see her again. Harv was primed and would make his move, giving Agatha Burns a lesson in crank combustion. Harv, he knew, didn’t fuck around.
Chapter 4
When his wife threw him out after he’d shot the second black guy, Ray Tate had poked at the rental section of the newspaper, then went to the nearest police station and leaned on the duty sergeant’s table. The duty sergeant, an old Irish squarehead with rockers on his stripes, knew everything about his kingdom: the smokehouses, the homes with domestic violence, what was a rental and what was owned. He knew every neighbour dispute, every squat, every house infested with mental patients who only came out after dark, shy of the light, fearful of eyes.
The duty sergeant shook Tate’s hand across the table. “Fuck ’em, Ray. You go forth and smite thine enemies and, well, fuck what they’re trying to do to you.” He took the slip with the apartment building’s address, turned to a civilian operator, and said with polite command, “Run it.” To Ray Tate he said: “I know it. Old man Lilly’s place. It’s okay. Parking kinda sucks. Where they got you working? You got a company car?”
Ray Tate had told the squarehead he was relaxing on paid leave until they sorted out the latest shooting. No gun, no badge, no car.
“No problem, then.” The CO handed the duty a printout. “Okay. We got a domestic, we got a domestic, we got a B&E, we got another domestic, another B&E, noise, noise, noise. A suicide by blade. What the fuck?” He read through the page. “Oh, hang on. Okay. You’re going into three-o-five, right? That’s the domestics and the noise complaints, and the suicide. That’s why it went vacant, the guy killed himself. Cutting. A mess.” He’d dropped the sheet on the desk. “Make sure old man Lilly gives you a new carpet.”
The apartment was one big room with a partial partitioned-off kitchenette with a fragrant gas stove, a half-fridge, and a table that snapped down off the wall, landing on a folding leg. The bathroom was compact but had a tub. Ray Tate had spent many after-shifts sitting on the edge of a bathtub, soaking his feet in salts and soaps after walking his many posts. Calluses on his feet were buttery and rife and as familiar as his thumbs. There was no furniture and no carpet. The floor was scuffed but solid and an attempt had been made to sand it. There was no seepage onto the wood from the suicide. Ray Tate wasn’t worried about being haunted by a suicide: he had two black guys who sometimes came around late at night and stirred up his sleep.
The windows faced glorious, indirect north and Ray Tate had instinctively thought about painting. He’d used a butter knife to chip the encrusted paint on the windowsills until he was able to force the windows open all the way.
Old man Lilly liked having a cop in the building and gave Ray Tate a key to the storage area in the basement. “Go on down, take what you like. When you move out, just leave it.”
There was no bed in the basement but a serviceable wooden table and chair were stacked in a corner, upside down on a sprung-out couch. There were two mismatched lamps, a set of cups, saucers, dishes, and some odd pots. He’d never lived alone in his life. Every place he’d ever lived was already someone else’s home: first the State homes, then the foster homes, the rooming house with two other recruits near the academy, and finally with his wife. He went to an art store and bought bags of paints and brushes and an easel and set it up at a forty-five degree angle to the window.
While he was on paid off he’d stood at his easel