Airtight Willie & Me by Iceberg Slim Page B

Red and his dope loose. Soon!”
    She coasted the machine into the gleaming reflection in the window of her barred boutique flashing SATIN’S in blazing turquoise neon on its gold-flecked black marble facade. She parked and wentto the window to feast her eyes on the darkened elegant interior of her independence. She was appalled at how old and decadent the tear-marred makeup made her face appear in the white-lighted mirror of a jewelry display.
    She thought of Pony as she used tissues and lotion from her bag to scrub her face clean. She applied fresh lipstick—Eros Scarlet. She got into the car and floated in it on steamy clouds of passion through the night toward Pony’s loving.
    At Sixty-third Street and Cottage Grove Avenue, she slowed the car beside an alley mouth crowded with gawkers. An ambulance squealed behind her. The crowd scrambled to the sidewalk as the ambulance turned into the alley. Satin got a flash view of a nude female child lying lifelessly in the filthy snow. In minutes, the ambulance pulled to the street and moved casually away without siren.
    Shocked, Satin left her car and asked an elderly spectator, “What happened to that little girl?”
    The oldster shook his gray head. “Pore chile, no more’n twelve. A dope fiend! A overdose kilt her. Guess her chums or the heartless bastid that sold her the dope dumped her like a poison dog.”
    Satin said, “I . . . uh . . . didn’t realize kids that young shot up . . . died.”
    The oldster grunted, “Shoot, just last week they found a lad younger than that girl dead and stiff in a vacant house in my block . . . been so many of ’em they don’t even make the papers no more.”
    She saw a vision of the wee girl’s corpse with its only clothing a pert polka-dot ribbon in its hair, the blued discoloration of its pathetic underdeveloped breasts and bald pubic mound. She shuddered with the thought that perhaps the dope that killed the child was Red’s dope, dope that she had delivered!
    Satin went back to her car. As she drove away, her head vibrated with concern. “That child was just a few years older than Mimi! My God! Just a few years older than my baby!”
    Satin pulled her machine to the curb in front of the Jones’s neatbeige stucco house in the Woodlawn District of the mid-Southside, got out, saw the flutter of living room drapes, then tread a squishy carpet of snow to the front door that opened. She rushed into Pony’s arms. They kissed and clung.
    â€œPony, I’m so glad I didn’t take you. It was so sad,” she whispered.
    Pony squeezed her close. “I was feeling for you, baby.”
    He shut the door. Arm-in-arm they went down a hallway toward his bedroom. They paused at Pony’s mother’s open bedroom door. They looked lovingly at the porcelain-hued, pink-gowned, delicately featured, once-beauteous belle, propped up in her canopied bed, her long fingers furiously knitting a colorful sweater for Pony. Her silky silver tresses lashed her shoulders as she cocked her head, birdlike, in that alerted way of the blind. Her unfocused hazel eyes glowed.
    â€œMuh, dear, Etta’s here,” Pony said as they moved to her bed.
    â€œHi, Mama Lula,” Satin said as she kissed and embraced the old woman.
    She sighed. “Bless your darling heart, Etta, you’re here. Now Malique can stop walking the house like a ghost with a toothache.”
    They all laughed as Pony led Satin from the room into his bedroom. They stood in the blue-lit lair deep tonguing and swaying in each other’s arms with Lou Rawl’s muted “You’ll Never Find” creaming from the record player. They disengaged to remove her coat and boots. She sank down on the side of bed and thought she saw an odd bulge beneath the blue silk shoulder ridge of his robe as he went to the closet. Her eyes widened when he turned, with a shining