Walter Mosley - Debbie Doesn't Do It Anymore

After eating I went to a big toy store in Santa Monica and bought Edison a boy’s computer that had learning games and a place to keep his diary.

By the time I got home I was happy. There was a silly grin on my face and a lightness in my spirit that I hadn’t felt since I was a little girl. I wasn’t worried about leg breakers or bill collectors, letting down my family, or the loss of people I loved or might have loved.

Even my breathing was cheerful. The air felt good coming in and going out. My entire life had been leading to this moment. No one could take it away. I didn’t have to run or hide or pretend I was somewhere else while a man shoved his nine-inch-long, four-inch-wide dick into my rectum.

The feeling I had was exactly the same as when a young girl falls in love. I was in love with the beauty of finality and I had Theon to thank for that.

I got three sheets of paper from the office desk and sat down to write the eulogy. I sat there for hours writing slowly and surely. I didn’t cross out a word. I wrote the whole thing in medium blue ink from an old-fashioned ballpoint pen. It was a retractable that I had taken from a Best Western motel when we had used a room on the sly to shoot the final scene of Debbie Does It All .

It was well past midnight when I finished the tribute. I slid from the chair onto the carpeted floor and smiled at the ceiling. I closed my eyes and was instantly asleep.

That was the best night of sleep I ever had — ever. It was dreamless and seamless, dark and soft. Any lingering trepidations I had about death were dispersed by the peaceful ecstasy of those eight hours.

I still had a few sore spots from the beating Coco gave me but the pain would end. I felt sadness about Theon and my son, my mother, and others but I knew that the dead were gone and the living could go on without me — had been doing so for years.

It was a lovely, balmy morning. I went barefoot out upon the blue-green grass that Theon cultivated just outside our dinette. He shaded that small lawn from the summer sun and made sure that it was well watered and cooled even in the L.A. desert.

The spiky blades tickled my bare soles, exhilarating me. I was naked out there. No one could see me and that was fine.

I couldn’t remember the last time that I had solitude. I mean, I’d been alone often enough, but to know that I didn’t have to strip down and oil up, to take a preparatory enema for the afternoon shoot, to manicure every square inch of flesh, nail, and hair...

I bathed for an hour listening to Mingus, my father’s absolute favorite musician. I used lavender bubble bath and thought about Perry Mendelson. While I was sitting there, luxuriating, it struck me that I hadn’t turned on the security system. Maybe I was reminded because I might have heard something behind the jazz. The sound, I thought, might have registered without my awareness, because the moment I thought it Richard Ness walked into the bathroom — the same room where my husband had died with the child I could not save.

“Dick,” I said, only mildly surprised.

“I told you I don’t like people calling me that.” He was wearing a shit-brown suit and a green Borsalino hat.

“And I said that I don’t like you.”

“You owe me money, bitch.”

“I thought you sold the debt to Manetti?”

“He gave it back. He said that you had my money now and I’m here to collect. I came here to see your green or your red.”

“How festive.” I had to hold back to keep from laughing.

My obvious good humor disconcerted him.

“Why you got to be like that, Deb?” he said. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“How can we ever come to an understanding if you lie to me, Dick?”

“Say what?”

“You want to hurt me but you know if I die Jude Lyon will be unhappy. And if he’s unhappy you might get damaged.”

“This doesn’t have anything to do with him,” he said.

“But it does, sweetheart. It has to. You’re mad and you’re scared, so you came here to bully me to show that you can’t be bossed around.”

I’d hit the bull’s-eye on Ness’s shame. He grimaced and considered mayhem.

“You know I’m gonna have to kill you,” he said.

“I know that you want to, Dick. The only question is if you’re brave enough to murder an unarmed woman in her bath.”

He was like a lover who couldn’t perform. Everything but Dick’s dick was willing. He sat down on the toilet seat and glowered at me.

“You are one crazy bitch.”

“Yeah.”

Warm steam was rising from my tub. My breath was still magical.

“I’m gonna go through your house and take enough stuff to make my nut offa Theon.”

“Be my guest,” I said. “I don’t own this house or anything in it. I don’t want it, and besides, Theon has everything in hock. Take it all, Dick. I don’t care about it or you. You can take everything, but I will call the cops and tell ’em you did it. I sure will.”

Ness stood up and took a pistol from a shit-brown pocket. It was a small revolver made to look even smaller by his big hand. He pulled back the hammer as I had done with him a few mornings before.

I smiled and then grinned.

“You know what I’m gonna do, right?” he said.

I fluttered my eyelashes at him. It was the pretense of innocence that I’d used in a dozen films where I was some chaste child about to be indoctrinated into a brutal carnal world.

Dick raised his arm, leveled the pistol.

He fired. It sounded like a cap gun. Shards of shattered tile pelted my left shoulder from behind.

“You missed,” I told him.

He fired again, this time to my right.

“Maybe you should get a little closer, Dick.”

I fully expected to die in that same bathtub where my husband expired, in the place where Jolie Wins had electrocuted them both. I could have saved myself. I could have begged. I had the money for Ness in the trunk of my car. I didn’t need it. But I wasn’t going to give in. He would have to kill me and I didn’t give a damn.

Dick’s face, already crushed from a lifetime of angry blows, fell in on itself. He lowered the pistol and shook his head.

I wondered if he was looking inside himself for the strength to murder me. I had given him enough reason, enough disrespect. But he just turned around and walked out of the bathroom. I had no idea of the content of the chain reaction of emotions set off inside him.

It was late in the afternoon before I was ready to go out again. I drove my Jaguar down to Threadley Brothers Mortuary. Talia Dean was sitting at the stone desk.

Talia was young and waiflike. Her loose tie-dyed hippie dress and white sandals made her an anomaly in the house of the dead. But there was something perfect about that odd juxtaposition of intense life moving among the shadows of death.

“Hello, Mrs. Pinkney,” the young woman said.

She rose and came around the marble slab to shake my hand. After this friendly and oddly perfunctory welcome she leaned forward and hugged me.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered in my ear.

Then she leaned back and stared into my eyes.

I tried to smile at her. Maybe I succeeded.

“Lewis is downstairs with your husband,” brown-haired Talia said. “I can call him and ask if he’s ready for you to come down.”

I nodded. We both went to sit at the Fred Flintstone desk. While she pressed the right buttons to get to Lewis, my red phone rang.

“Hello,” I said.

“Lewis?” Talia said on her line.

“Sandra?” Marcia Pinkney said over the red phone.

“Can Mrs. Pinkney come down to view her husband?” Talia asked.

“I decided to take you up on your offer,” Marcia said.

“She’s right here,” Talia said.