Ace Atkins - Dirty South

A 1950s drive-in movie theater sat between a decaying motel advertising AC and color televisions and a defunct steak house. The lot had been surrounded with wire but the tall screen and speaker boxes still stood. Everything still neat and tidy, only a few weeds growing through the cracked asphalt as if the owner waited for the day that the old highway would be back. Until then, it seemed the movie would remain private, only something a few could imagine.

“I just bought this,” Teddy said, thumping his steering wheel. “You like it?”

“Did you really need it?” I said. “Why don’t you put that money to some good use?”

“What, you a communist, Travers?” he asked.

“No, man,” I said. “I just don’t like to see a waste.”

“You remember that community center where we had Malcolm’s wake?”

“Sure.”

“Ninth Ward Records built that shit, man.”

“Good.”

“But you think all the jewelry and cars and homes and women are… what did you say? A waste.”

“Aren’t they?”

“See, you still don’t get it,” he said. “The culture of our world, right. That’s what my people want to see. They want to see you livin’ large and steppin’ out with the Gucci and Vuitton and all them suits from Armani and your woman wearin’ Versace and gold and platinum and diamonds.”

“Maybe you could be different,” I said. “Maybe you could set a better example for the kids who buy those CDs in Uptown, spending the only thirteen dollars they have on a Ninth Ward record.”

Teddy turned down the Master P and looked over at me, the highway whizzing past. “You ever been black?”

“One night,” I said. “But I was very drunk. Someone told me about it later.”

“No playin’,” he said. “You got to know what it feels like to walk into a restaurant or bar or Saks or some shit and have people not wait on you. Have security guards followin’ you while you tryin’ to pick out some goddamned gloves for your brother’s Christmas or bein’ asked to leave a movie theater ’cause you talkin’ too loud.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” I said. “I never thought you wore blackness on your sleeve.”

“I wear something else, man,” he said. “I wear the car, the jewelry, the two-thousand-dollar suit ’cause that makes people respect me. When I walk into Canal Place, man, people waitin’ for me at the door. They don’t see black no more; they see green. You understand?”

Teddy parked close to the door of the strip club and we could hear the bass-driven funk rattling the corrugated tin of the building. He locked up the Escalade from his key chain and buttoned up his black suit.

He carried a carved wooden cane under his arm as we walked inside.

He didn’t even try to pay a cover.

The little black girl in leather pants and snakeskin bikini top just giggled when he walked in, and ran to get the manager.

“Clout,” I said. “You got it.”

“I got the cash.”

Teddy didn’t look around at the women or the layout, he just took a quick turn and walked up a small flight of steps where there was a circular table and booth. A card on the table read RESERVED.

“This is Stank’s place,” he said. “He called ahead.”

We took a seat. A waitress came over, tight T-shirt with no bra, hoop earrings, and bleached hair, and asked what we wanted. I ordered coffee and Teddy wanted some brandy. He asked for the best they had and I was wondering if Teddy thought the Body Shots had some kind of private reserve.

“What ever happened to that good-lookin’ girl you was seein’ when we played?” Teddy asked.

“The blonde?”

“Yeah.”

“She left me when I quit,” I said. “I wasn’t as good-looking without a salary.”

“Wasn’t into that whole cool blues professor shit?”

“She thought McKinley Morganfield was a former president.”

“Who the fuck was McKinley Morganfield?”

“Never mind.”

As the waitress laid down the drinks, the manager of the bar – a short, swarthy little guy in a black polo shirt and pants – took a seat with us. He shook Teddy’s hand and presented him with a few cigars. Teddy handed one to me but didn’t introduce us. I nodded at the guy and drank my coffee.

The song changed to “Don’t Mean Nothin’” by Richard Marx. I wondered if I’d just entered some kind of eighties time warp or if Richard Marx singing about having self-worth had somehow made him a patron saint to strippers.

“You like Richard Marx?” I asked the little manager.

“Sure, yeah,” he said, snorting, giving Teddy a “you believe this guy” look. “Whatever.”

“Beni?” he asked. “Stank drop some money here.”

“You know it.”

“He works for me.”

“I know.”

“Nick, show him the picture.”

I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the photo of Dahlia. The good one from Pat O’s.

“Know her?” Teddy asked.

Beni nodded. He looked up at me and back at Teddy.

“She don’t work that way,” he said. “The girl onstage. The little one with the chain-mesh bikini. You have an hour with her in the back room for free. On the freakin’ house. For him, how ’bout a hundred.”

“We don’t need our dicks jacked, Beni,” Teddy said. “We need a name.”

“She rob you?” Beni asked.

I shook my head.

“Cut you?”

I shook my head again.

“Don’t tell me you’re in love.”

“That’s it, Beni,” I said. “I’m in love. What’s her name?”

“He ain’t in love,” Teddy said. “What’s her name?”

Beni looked down at his hands and adjusted some horrible gold rings on his hairy knuckles. “How much?”

Teddy reached into his wallet and laid down four hundred dollars.

“I shouldn’t pay you shit with all the business that Stank give you.”

Beni scraped up the cash and said, “She quit last week. Left with some other rapper.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.”

“What did he look like?” I asked.

“He was a freakin’ black guy. What can I say?”

Teddy shook his head and then shook it some more.

“What’s her name?” I asked.

“Dahlia,” he said. “That’s all I know.”

“What’s her Social Security card say?”

He looked over at Teddy and raised his eyebrows. “Is this guy joking?”

“Didn’t she fill out anything to get paid?”

“Let me check.”

He returned about ten minutes later with a little index card marked with the name Dahlia, a social with the name Dataria Brown, and an address in Midcity off Esplanade.

“You won’t tell her that we seen each other,” Beni said.

“Why do you care?”

“I just don’t like her is all,” he said. “The way she’d look at me made me not want to turn my back. Like she’d stick a freakin’ knife in it if I looked the other way.”

“Dataria,” I repeated. “You know a guy named Bloom? Boyfriend or something. Has a bad ear?”

“That’s all I know.”

“You sure?”

“She danced, got naked, took her cut, and left,” he said. “What can I say?”

“Was she a good dancer?”

“What?”

“Was she a good dancer?” I repeated over the music.

“Yeah,” he said. “She was. The best I’d ever seen. She could move.”

We drove back in silence. Teddy just kept watching the road, steering with those two fingers like he always did.

“Sure would like to find that money,” he said.

“I know.”

“You want me to go with you?”

“No, I’ll handle it.”

“Nick?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Open that bar up,” he said. “Be true to your dreams.”