After an hour, all the time I could spare, I crawled out and listened. The fresh air tasted amazing, much better than confinement with Jack’s hot Purina Chow breath. The wide open reminded me that under no circumstances would I ever go back to a concrete cell.
Twenty minutes later the cab dropped me three blocks from the Landmark in Huntington Park, code red rumba south side. The Landmark was in Little Cuba, the Rumba. North of Willowbrook, which is opposite of south side, the code Marie thought I was being paranoid about making her memorize. Along with five others that would now never be used. This was it, our last day in the States. We were on our way. Not necessarily the land of milk and honey but freedom just the same, a different sort, for all of us.
The Landmark, as with most all motels in Huntington Park, was a hot-pillow fleabag, populated by the bottom rung of society. It’s a mildewed structure with rotting doors and peeled dull, institutional lime-green paint that no longer wanted to stick to its corrupt walls.
If Robby and his crew had outsmarted me, it no longer mattered. I walked right up to the large, majestic queen palm with the dried out yellow uncut drooping fronds, a graceful lady too embarrassed to show her base trunk, and pulled out the green Gatorade bottle. Inside was a balled up paper that meant absolutely nothing to anyone else. Written on it was 212.
I walked up the stairs, wiping my sweaty hands on my pants. When I saw her regularly, I didn’t question her love for me. The Gatorade bottle reaffirmed her desire to hang with an old, overly obsessed, broken-down black man on the run from a society he once coveted. Three weeks apart renewed the anxiety, let the insipid fear of rejection weasel-wedge into my common sense. Why would a woman of Marie’s caliber even give me a second look, let alone fall in love?
At the top of the stairs a big man, a white supremacist in a white wifebeater t-shirt and broad, youthful shoulders, entered the stairwell. We both paused, enemies confronting each other, his face tattooed with AB for Aryan Brotherhood, and three teardrops at the corner of his eyes, his large arms sleeved with black ink, jailhouse tattoos touting his hate for his fellow man, the mud people. His blue eyes reminded me of Deputy Mack.
The two were one and the same, each working the opposite sides of the street yet on the same side. The man hesitated, the hate oozing from him as he decided, made a choice, the business that brought him to the Landmark was more important than the oath he’d sworn allegiance to. We passed, me going down the hall, I stepped backward, watching as he continued on down the stairs, his awful glare on me as it disappeared lower and lower with each step until he was gone. I waited by the door marked 212 until I was sure he wasn’t coming back, then rapped softly, two, one then two.
“Bruno?” Her voice barely a whisper, made my heart soar.
“Babe, it’s me.”
The door jerked open. She froze, her soft brown eyes large and teary. The code red, the signal to drop everything and run for it, had scared the hell out of her. To talk about it was one thing; to live it was all together something else. She had not known if I was going to make it or not. A lump rose in my throat. The woman genuinely cared for me. She reached out, took my hand, and pulled me into the room. At least her brain was working on the right level, at the moment enough for the both of us. She closed the door and gently put her head against my chest. I hugged her. She felt so damn good.
She didn’t complain about the tattered clothes, the bruises, scabs, dirty, bandaged hands, Jack’s Purina Dog Chow breath that permeated every pore. She took hold of my sleeve, guided me into the bathroom, and shut the door, the light off. For a moment, the heat from her body moved away. I yearned for her. In the perfect dark, the water in the shower went on. Steam roiled up. I smelled it, felt it on my face and lungs, my hands reaching out for her. She was back tugging at my belt. I let her as I stroked her hair and felt her long neck, stroked her breasts, her nipples instantly hard under my fingers.
She pulled down my pants and underwear quick, took hold, softly took hold, pulled me along to tub’s edge. Both of us over and into the water jets.
“Marie.” Her name came out in a rush.
I pulled her sopping top over her head and unhooked her bra. Her breasts released and moved against my arms. I buried my face in her neck and kissed her deeply. She groaned, renewed her grip, squeezing harder, tugging. With her new handle, she pulled me closer and pulled some more. She stood topless, water sluicing between her breasts, fabulous breasts; I was pantless, our clothes going hot and wet under the spray. I found her mouth with my tongue. At the same time she let go with one hand and worked the buttons of my shirt. My hands ineffectually tried to release the wet button to her pants. Her breasts pressed hard up against my stomach, her legs pushing me up against the Formica, pinning me against the wall. I was too caught up in her, her feel, her smell, her touch. I wasn’t going to last, the hot water worked as a catalyst to heighten all sensation. I put my head back. “Marie.” Warm water spattered my mouth.
My body convulsed.
She froze. “Bruno?”
“I love you, baby.”
She giggled.
Chapter Thirty-One
We sat on the bed naked, Indian-style while she rebandaged my hands after she’d given them a thorough cleaning. She could only shake her head and wonder why infection hadn’t set in. Said as much. I wasn’t entirely sure myself.
The whole time I read hesitation in her eyes. She had something to say.
When she finished, I laid her back on the bed, and put my mouth on hers when she tried to talk. The next session went longer and slower with sweat, little nips with cautious teeth, kisses, and long, damp licks.
The entire time the executioner’s ax hung poised over us. We both felt it. At any moment it could swing down on us in a slow arc, end it all. We’d never see each other again. Thrown down hard into the slammer. The possibility remained very distinct, thus the lovemaking all the sweeter, but a little desperate. We reveled in every stolen minute. We finished up with her on top. She dropped down, rested her cheek on my chest, her head turned away, and though I couldn’t see her, I knew she gnawed on her knuckle—a nervous tic. She said, “Are we really going to do it tomorrow? Are we really finally going to go through with it? Leave here and never come back?”
“Don’t be scared.”
She nodded, “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t.” Her voice quiet, childlike.
She hesitated. I waited for it.
“What’s it like inside?”
There it was, a big ugly beast. It had sat on my subconscious feasting on my guilt, the possibility that we could fail in this mission, and she would suffer immensely for my folly.
I closed my eyes. My voice lowered, in a cracked whisper said, “I won’t make it better than it is. We’re talking about a small, ever-so-tiny concrete room with walls that collapse on you every night, snatch your breath away, bury you under tons and tons of invisible weight until you scream. That’s the best part. Then you have the food, bland starch, pale, washed-out pastel colors that salt can’t flavor. And there’s an odor about the place that reeks wherever you go and penetrates your clothes and skin, sour sweat, mixed with fear and hate. But still that’s not the worst. The worst is the people. These people are put there for a reason—”
Marie’s fingers involuntarily dug into my chest as she braced for it.
“These people are the worst society has to offer: the malcontents, the predators, the sociopaths, and psychopaths, all churning together in one ungodly collage of putrefying corruption. But there are those few who are not absolutely corrupt when they first get there. Folks with four drunk driving arrests in five years, paperhangers with a yen for gambling, all family men, victims thrown into a sewer of humanity that will eventually eat them. You try every day to stay the same, not change and turn into one of them. It’s impossible. You change or you don’t make it out.”