“I’d feel safer if I had my little Ladysmith in my pocket, Blue.”
Blue and Lady were packing their things up. Lady didn’t have much stuff, what she had amassed in her other life went to her daughter and to the Goodwill. She’d been living in a furnished place off St. Vicente in Brentwood, and for a few weeks now, since he got out of the hospital Blue had been living with her. Their plans were made. Tomorrow night on the way out of town, they would park a ways from the guy’s house, Lady was going to go in, Blue would follow. Afterwards, they’d head toward Vegas. Then to anyplace else they felt like going. Maybe Mexico. You could live cheaply, and the food was good there, Lady had heard.
Blue told her, “Do you what you want, darlin’, just don’t lose it. If they find a gun and trace the gun to you, fun and games are over. You got that?”
“Yes.”
“Come here!”
Photo: Joel Goodman
They had taken lately to doing it on the floor after planning a certain stage of the crime they would commit tomorrow night. Sinners know the presence of evil can bring you to God, and Jesus, and also that God and Jesus are not altogether absent when the sex is great. Crime can make you horny. Great sex can make you see God. What’s the connection? Neither Lady nor Blue, were thinking about any connection other than theirs. So attuned were they to one another these days they came at the same time, and this made them shout and laugh.
“Last chance to back out, doll.” This from Blue the next night. Lady’s hand was on the handle of the door. She stopped. And for a moment, Blue thought she was going to turn around and say, “Who cares? I sure don’t anymore!” But she didn’t say that. She was carrying the last of the things she wanted to take with her, and he was following behind with his own small stash rolled neatly in two Whole Foods plastic shopping bags.
Down the hall of the second floor of the apartment complex. Down the concrete steps. They were in the elevator now, going to the underground parking. He still had twenty dollars on his food card. It wasn’t much, but it was something. It was he knew, so easy to get used to food and shelter. If they lasted the year out together, and she went ahead and died like she meant to, maybe he’d go with her. He knew now he never wanted to be without her. It was something, a baby, then a child naturally felt for its mother. A need safely desired. I am myself when I am near you. That had not happened with him and his own mother. Or anybody else. But Blue knew the old feeling of want. And that’s what Lady had given him, something no one else ever had: that sense of belonging. He’d do anything for Lady.
Can a man be saved? Would his terrible anger return like clouds covering the sky on a perfect day? Or somehow had his anger gone into her? So much had gone on between them, maybe he had become her, and she God-help-her, had taken him in. It was a funny thought, himself living with a version of himself. It put an edge on things. He was the bad ass, not her. Or maybe not.
Blue had spent time inside with an inmate from Louisiana. His Grandmother had practiced voodoo. She sent him food and she sent him little dolls stuffed with odd smelling puffs of old skin and hair, according to the guy who everyone called Louisiana. He’d punch the dolls and they’d give off a smell: garlic, rot, blood. Louisiana claimed children could be gotten a hold of and used for voodoo. Blue didn’t like anything happening to children. But Blue had been very interested in hearing about the voodoo practice of exchanging energy.
Someone had killed Louisiana. Hung him from the pipe on the ceiling, it wasn’t suicide. The yellow eyeballs bulging from their sockets were part of the memories that melded of jail.
They were in Lady’s car now, and Blue holding in his hand the wire he would use soon around the guy’s neck. Lady was in a thoughtful mood. Very clear about checking her mirrors. Very clear about backing out carefully and not hitting the badly placed poles. And very definite now, as if the garage itself understood: “Goodbye, and thank you for everything I’ve learned here!”
They were still quiet as they drove up his street: the soon to be dead guy’s street. They were still quiet when they parked the car, filled with their stuff and cut the lights. And sat there.
“I called him. He’s expecting me,” Lady said. She turned to him and they kissed passionately, he folded his hand over her breast, and she rested hers over his thigh.
She was the one who broke the kiss. Broke it and opened the door.
He watched her until she disappeared. It was dark in the car, it was a dark night, and up here in the rich shit’s part of town, the only lights came from the big houses. Not many people were home. He and Lady had been noticing this on their nighttime walks. They called them shadow houses, because no one seemed to live there but the lights went on. Once upon a time, he would have been casing them.
Five minutes went by. Ten minutes. He kept pressing the bezel of his Timex that lit up in the dark. He was supposed to start walking after fifteen minutes. Now it was twelve. Thirteen. He was gripping the wire in his hand, readying himself.
Now all at once a house shone with every single light. It looked like a Hollywood Premier, maybe they were even floodlights. Sirens now. One siren. Two sirens. Four, five, six police cars coming up the hill. Parking a little ahead of where Lady’s car was parked.
Sirens, bright lights, and now the front door opened like a gateway into hell. Two big police officers, one of them black, one of them tall and blond were holding Lady by her arms, leading her out. She appeared like a rag doll in rough children’s arms. Her head bowed, her feet had lost their liveliness.
She looked up suddenly, a dazed look on her face. Their eyes met. He cried out, “Lady! Lady!” and headed out of shadow into the light, his arms outstretched.
The first bullet grazed him. The second made it’s mark, dead center in the middle of his chest.
As he fell, he heard Lady call out! “Blue!”
The rich guy who was supposed to die was now standing in an expensive bathrobe in his doorway. A young woman, way younger than Lady stood next to him, also in a bathrobe.
They looked at the ground at Blue bleeding.
“I don’t understand…” The rich guy put his arm around the young woman. Then he turned, as if the sight of Blue bleeding on the ground made him sick.
He shut the door behind them.
The last thing Blue heard, lying on the gravel drive that was surprisingly soft, was Lady urgently calling out his name.
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