Evan Hunter - Candyland

"You got a taxi waiting?" she asks.

"No, no, I just wanted to make sure…"

"There's still time," she says.

Her eyes meet his.

"It's almost three," he says.

"Plenty of time yet."

Their eyes hold.

"What's your name," he asks.

"Lokatia," she says.

"You don't have a pimp who's going to beat me up, do you, Lokatia?"

"I used to have one," she says. "Who used to beat me up. This is ready," she says, and takes the pot off the stove. She pours coffee for each of them into two large mugs, adds sugar and milk to his, leave her own black. Steam rises from the mugs as they drink.

"What do you mean used to have one?"

"I stabbed him."

He looks at her.

"I killed him," she says. Her eyes hold his. "I done six years in jail for manslaughter," she says. "He's the one put the red tattoo on me. His brother gave me the blue one. You don't want to hear this shit," she says.

"I do."

"Nah, come on. Drink your coffee."

"Tell me."

"Nah. Stabbing people is boring," she says, and smiles.

Her teeth look very white against the deep brown of her face "be is wearing the blond wig, but it does nothing to disguise her essential blackness. This lady is black, he thinks, no question about it, this lady is virtually African. Her lips are thick, her nose is flat, her eyes are a very dark brown, with that somewhat moist look you sometimes saw on very black people, as if they were still crying over centuries of slavery.

"You mind if I take this off?" she asks, and walks out of the kitchen.

He follows her into the living room, and past the bird perch — the damn cockatoo squawking again — and through the beaded curtains, a light snapping on to reveal a small bedroom with drawn Venetian blinds, a queen sized bed, more mirrored pillows on it, red velvet curtains, and a gilt-framed mirror over a dresser with a wig stand on it.

"Who invited you in here?" she asks, but she is merely pretending annoyance, arching an eyebrow, turning to the mirror and saying to her own image, "Can't a lady have no privacy these days." Totally ignoring him, she begins removing bobby pins from under the wig someplace,her fingers probing, until at last she lifts the wig off her head and settles it gently on its stand.

"You didn't really stab anyone, did you?" he says.

"I wish."

She has a rat tail comb in her hand now, and is picking at her nappy black hair with it. She looks at him in the mirror.

"How old are you, Ben?" she asks.

"Forty-three. I'll be forty-four in November."

"You look older."

"Gee, thanks."

“All battered up, I mean. You know they's two teeth missing the front of your mouth?"

"I know."

"You could maybe ask for them for Christmas," she says, and grins like a little girl. "You get it?"

"I get it," he says.

"You upset I said you look older?"

"No".

"Don't be. I'm forty."

"Just wondering how I can explain it."

“You could say you fell out a third-floor window."

“I could.”

“You married, Ben?"

"Yes."

"How long you been doing this, Ben?"

"Doing what?"

"I think you know doing what."

"Too long," he says.

"You care what she thinks?"

"Not really."

"Then fuck it. Tell her the truth."

"That'd be the end."

"Maybe it's already the end."

He looks at her.

Maybe it is, he thinks.

There is a very long silence.

He thinks maybe he should go. He almost looks at his watch again, but that would be rude. The silence lengthens. She puts down the comb, and looks at herself in the mirror.

"I really must have a shower," she says, "'fore the Board of Health closes me down. You mind bein alone for a few minutes?"

"Maybe I should go," he says.

"What's your hurry? I won't be but a minute."

"I have a plane to catch."

"What time's your plane?"

"Eight."

"There's time."

"Well…"

"Stay," she says. "Ain't no hurry." She takes his hand. "Come." she says, and leads him through the beaded curtains back into the living room again. "Shut up, Whitey," she says to the squawking cockatoo. "Nothin personal," she explains. "It's just cause he so damn white. You like Sinatra?" she asks, moving around the small living room while she speaks. "Let me put on some music." Opening one side of a long cabinet to reveal a CD player and a stack of discs. "Would you like a drink?" Opening another door, behind which Ben sees an array of liquor bottles and glasses. "Fix yourself a drink, okay? The cat's name is Francis, you get it?" Kneeling at the CD player, short purple leather skirt and shiny knees, long legs and ankle-strapped pumps. "Make yourself comfortable," she says. Fiddling with the player. "Five minutes” she says, "I promise," and Sinatra's lush voice floods the room.

She is gone.

He sits alone. Hearing Sinatra. Hearing his father's golden horn. hearing the sound of the shower behind the closed bathroom door. He leave now. Pull a Karen on her. Split while she's in the bathroom. Take a taxi back to the hotel, what time is it, anyway? He looks at his watch. It is nine minutes past three. Grace will be angry, of course. He will go home to Los Angeles with his face looking like a club fighter's, and he will explain to Grace that he was walking back from the restaurant where he'd gone to pick up his credit card, just walking back the rain minding his own business when these two big black guys attacked him and left him for dead in the gutter, boy, what a city, he will tell her, boy. And everything will be all right again. Everything be just fine and dandy.

How long have you been doing this, Ben? Too long.

Too long.

How long is too long? he wonders. Well, that all depends on the meaning of the word "is," doesn't it? What was was, so who cares the first one was, or what she looked like, or whether she was any or not, or what led him into that place in the first place? Why is he here now, for that matter, listening to Sinatra singing while a very black showers in the other room? She must've been absolutely terrific, first girl, otherwise why is he still here, wherever here is? The truth does not know where he is. Has perhaps not known his exact abouts since that first thrilling time. If, in fact, it was the first. Or thrilling — who remembers? Who can possibly remember?

She looks clean-scrubbed and fresh-faced and she is wearing a fluffy robe belted at the waist. Barefooted, she looks to be about five or — eight. She is a very tall Masai woman who has just come from the well and is tending her cattle with a long stick in her hand, although her toenails are painted green, he notices.

"You didn't make yourself a drink?" she says, surprised.

"I was just sitting here enjoying the music," he says.

"Did I take too long?"

"No, no."

"What shall I fix you?"

"What have you got?"

"Anything you might like," she says.

“Little gin on the rocks would be fine," he says.

"Gin on the rocks," she says. "Corning up."

He listens to the music. Closes his eyes and listens.

"My father used to play trumpet," he says.

"No kidding?"

He opens his eyes. She is kneeling in front of the cabinet now, the flap of the robe failing open over one knee, reaching in for the of gin.

"Had his own big band," Ben says.

"What made you think of that?"

"I don't know. Sinatra?"

There is a flash of upper thigh as she rises, a fleeting glimpse of crisp black pubic hair. The white robe falls again like a curtain, but she knows he caught the display, and cuts a knowing look in his direction, as she carries the bottle of gin into the kitchen. He watches as she op c n s the refrigerator door, takes out an ice cube tray, cracks it, drops cubes into two short glasses.

"You want an olive in this or anything?" she asks.