Free White Butterfly by Walter Mosley Page A

she didn’t either.
    A long time later the knocks came on the door again.
    “You gotta get dressed,” Marla said.
    I put on my pants and she slipped on her shift.
    I got my money’s worth. Bonita Edwards was from Dallas and had only been in L.A. three months. She came right to Max and Estelle’s. She had an apartment but hardly ever went there. She didn’t know Willa Scott, but Marla wasn’t sure about Cyndi Starr.
    “Marla?”
    “What?”
    “You ever do any work outside of here? I mean, does anybody ever hire you to meet’em on you’ day off or sumpin’?”
    “Sometimes.”
    I knew from her smile that she’d hate me.
    “Did Bonita?”
    “That what you wanna know?” she snapped. “Why’ont you go on down to the mortuary an’ jump on her?”
    “Com’on, Marla. This is how I get paid.”
    “I don’t know.”
    “You don’t know what?”
    “I don’t know nuthin’!” she yelled, putting her fists up to her ears. Then she jumped up and ran out of the door.
    I took a moment to grab my shirt before going after her.
    When I made it to the hallway a snakish white man was standing where Marla was supposed to be. He wore a tapered green suit that was large in the shoulders and thin at the hips. The suit matched his eyes. He smiled the way a snake would smile if serpents had lips.
    “Hold on there, son,” he hissed. “Playtime is over.”
    I was drunk, but not so drunk I didn’t know that my reflexes were shot. I became as quiet as I could be, gathering all of my strength for one move.
    “Why you after Marla?” Snake-lips was almost polite.
    He raised his eyes a little, glancing over my right shoulder.
    I heard the man behind me grunt. That was enough warning for me to avoid the blackjack aimed at my head. I moved to the right long enough to see a squat Negro stumble behind the force of his thrust. I let him fall and I threw a punch that landed on the side of Snake-lips’s jaw. He fell back against the wall.
    Little men are, on the whole, more agile than larger ones. The little Negro was already on his feet and swinging his sap. I moved enough not to take the full brunt of the blow but it did graze my head above the left ear.
    The impact felt much like when a large vehicle, a bus for example, hits its brakes and sends you reeling. Then came the colors: red amoebae cut by yellow shards and peppered with black holes.
    I aimed my fist for the place that I had last seen the little man’s face. I felt a meaty impact.
    Then I was stumbling down the stairs. I ran into a woman wearing a black negligee in the room where the Mexican woman and her child had been learning to read.
    “Oh!” she exclaimed with a laugh in her voice. But when she looked at my face she backed away. I reached out to her after we’d collided; as she pulled away the material of her gown felt rough against my palms.
    My bare feet were cold on the pavement outside. Marla’s strong perfume and her female scent permeated my clothes. Maybe she liked me? I laughed and hurt and almost threw up. I shouldn’t go home smelling like I did but I had to go home.
    It took a long time for me to read the time off my copper-faced Gruen “very thin” watch. By then it was two forty-five. I took a deep breath and started the engine.
    I drove very slowly down to my street, parking far enough away that Regina wouldn’t be awakened by the familiar sound of my motor. I spent a whole minute opening the gate so it wouldn’t squeak. Then I went in through Jesus’s side door.
    Jesus lay on his back with his mouth open. He would have slept through an earthquake. I took off my clothes and shoved them under his bed.
    I sat in the bathtub letting the water trickle in slowly. Marla’s smell was down my legs and under my fingernails. It was in my hair and on my breath.
    After a long time I came out of the tub. I put on a robe and went to the baby’s crib. Edna was hunched over one arm on her stomach and sucking her thumb. There was a dried web of mucus on