Walter Mosley - A Red Death

“That was fifteen years ago, baby. How’m I s’posed to ’member that?”

“I remember.”

Etta looked sad. She looked like she’d lost something she cared for. I wanted to stop, to go hold her, but I couldn’t. I’d been waiting all those years to tell her how I felt.

I said, “You told me that Mouse was the finest man you ever knew. You said that I was truly lucky to have a man like that for a friend.”

“Baby, that was so long ago.”

“Not fo’ me. Not fo’ me.” When I sat up I realized that I had an erection. I crossed my legs so that Etta wouldn’t see it pressing against my loose pants. “I remember like it was only this mo’nin’. When we got up you started tellin’ me how lucky I was to have a man like Mouse fo’a friend. You told me how great he was. I loved you; I still do. An’ all you could think of was him. You know I had plenty’a women tell me that they love me when we get up in the mo’nin’. But it only made me sick ’cause they wasn’t you sayin’ it. Every time I hear them I hear you talkin’ ’bout Mouse.”

Etta shook her head sadly. “That ain’t me, Easy. I loved you, I did, as a friend. An’ I think you’s a beautiful man too. I mean, yeah, I shouldn’ta had you over like that. But you came t’me, honey. I was mad ’cause Raymond was out ho’in just a couple a days after I said I’d marry him. I used you t’try an’ hurt him, but you knew what I was doin’. You knew it, Easy. You knew what I was givin’ you was his. That’s why you liked it so much.

“But that was a long time ago, an’ you should be over it by this time. But, you know, it’s just that some men be wantin’ sumpin’ from women; sumpin’ like a woman shouldn’t have no mind of her own. It’s like when LaMarque want me t’tell’im that he’s the strongest man in the world if I let him carry my pocketbook. I tell’im what he wants t’hear ’cause he just a baby. But you’s a man, Easy. If I lied t’you it would be a insult.”

“I know, I know,” I said. “I knew it then. I never said nuthin’, but now here you are again. An’ here I am wit’ my nose open.

“You know somebody saw you get on that bus, Etta. Somebody told somebody else that they heard you went to California. And Mouse could be outside that door at this very minute. Or maybe he be here tomorrah. He’s comin’, though, you could bet on that. An’ if he finds you been in my bed we gonna have it out.” I didn’t add that I knew Mouse well enough to be afraid. I didn’t need to.

“Raymond don’t care ’bout if I got boyfriends, Easy. He don’t care ’bout that.”

“Maybe not. But if Mouse think I done taken his wife an’ child fo’ my own he see red. And now here you are talkin’ ’bout him bein’ crazy-how I know what he might do?”

Etta didn’t say anything to that.

Mouse was a small, rodent-featured man who believed in himself without question. He only cared about what was his. He’d go against a man bigger than I was with no fear because he knew that nobody was better than him. He might have been right.

“And here I am again,” I said. “Tryin’ to keep offa you when I got so many problems I shouldn’t even think about it.”

Etta leaned forward in the chair, resting her elbows on her knees, revealing the dark cleft of her breasts. “So what you wanna do, Easy?”

“I…”

“Yeah?” she asked after I stalled.

“I know a man named Mofass.”

“Who’s he?”

“He manages some units up here and I work fo’im.”

When Etta shifted, her gown slid and tremors went down my back.

“Yeah?” she asked.

“I think I could get him to find a place for you and LaMarque. You know, some place fo’ you t’live. Without no rent, I mean.” I was talking but I didn’t want to say it: I wanted her for myself.

Etta sat up and her gown rose over her breasts. Her nipples were hard dimes against the slick material.

“So that’s it? I come all this way an’ now you gonna put us out.” She stuck her lower lip out and shrugged, ever so slightly. “LaMarque an’ me be ready by noon.”

“You don’t have t’rush, Etta…”

“No, no,” she said, rising and waving her hand at me. “We gotta settle in someplace, and the sooner the better. You know chirren need a home.”

“I’ll give you money, Etta. I got lotsa money.”

“I’ll pay you back soon as I find work.”

We looked at each other awhile after that.

Etta was the most beautiful woman I’d ever known. I’d wanted her more than life itself, once. And the fact that I had let that go was worse than the fear of the penitentiary.

“’Night, Easy,” she whispered.

I made to get up, to kiss her good night, but she held her hand against me.

“Don’t kiss me, honey,” she said. “ ’Cause you know I been thinkin’ ’bout you long as you been thinkin’ ’bout me.”

Then she went off to bed.

I didn’t sleep that night. I didn’t worry or think about taxes either.

The Government Building was on Sixth Street, downtown. It was small, four stories, and built from red brick. It almost looked friendly from the outside, not like the government at all.

But once you got past the front door all the friendliness was gone. A woman sat at the information desk. Her blond hair was pulled back so tight that it pained my scalp just to look at her. She wore a gray businesslike jacket and dark horn-rimmed glasses. She squinted at me, wincing as if her skull might have actually hurt.

“May I assist you, sir?” she asked.

“Lawrence,” I said. “Agent Lawrence.”

“FBI?”

“Naw. Revenue.”

“IRS?”

“I guess that’s what you call it. Spells taxes no matter what way you say it.”

As government workers went she was polite, but she wasn’t going to smile for my joke.

“Go down to the end of this hall.” She pointed it out for me. “And take the elevator to the third floor. The receptionist there will assist you.”

“Thanks,” I said, but she had turned back to something important on her desk. I peeked over the little ledge and saw the magazine, The Saturday Evening Post.

Agent Lawrence’s office was just down the hall from the reception desk on the third floor, but when the woman called him he told her that I had to wait.

“He’s going over your case,” the fat brunette told me.

I sat down in the most uncomfortable straight-back chair ever made. The lower back of the chair stuck out farther than the top so I had the feeling that I was hunched over as I sat there watching the big woman rub pink lotion into her hands. She frowned at her hands, and then she frowned again when she saw me staring through her glistening fingers.

I wondered if she would have been performing her toilet like that in front of a white taxpayer.

“Rawlins?” a military-like voice inquired.

I looked up.

There I saw a tall white man in a crayon-blue suit. He was of a good build with big hands that hung loosely at his sides. He had brown hair, and small brown eyes and was clean-shaven, though there would always be a blue shadow on his jaw. But for all his neat appearance Agent Lawrence seemed to be somehow unkempt, disheveled. I took him in for a few seconds. His bushy eyebrows and the dark circles under his eyes made him seem pitiful and maybe even a little inept.

It was my habit to size up people quickly. I liked to think I had an advantage on them if I had an insight into their private lives. In the tax man’s case I figured that there was probably something wrong at home. Maybe his wife was fooling around, or one of his kids had been sick the night before.

I dropped my speculations after a few moments, though. I had never met a government man who admitted to having a private life.