Free Headhunter by Michael Slade Page A

and apples-on-a-stick, everyone shuffling through a carpet of confetti and broken bottles. The jazz rose up over the sea of costumed masked revelers infiltrating the crowd, the "He-Shebas" dressed in drag as butterflies and snails, a King Kong here, a Zigaboo there, the Queen of Hearts and a fig-leafed Adam and Eve. Away from "the Big Shot of Africa" and the Zulu King's retinue, away from a one-eyed cyclops, away from the white leather cowboy garbed in front and bare-ass naked behind, up and away from Royal Street with its banners and its streamers, up until the jazz slid softly through the wrought-iron balcony where the black girl stood at the window.
    The black girl was naked.
    Crystal stood with her back to the room, swaying, her breath quietly hissing through white, even teeth. A trickle of sweat ran down between her shoulder blades toward the small of her back. As her body was still tingling with the aftershock of orgasm, the fireworks that exploded over the city seemed to explode in her head. She felt good. Secure. For just a moment she wondered if her father would turn his sexual advances on her younger sister now that she was gone. Then she managed to push the thought aside since it spoiled her mood. From fifteen feet away, Elvis begged her, "Don't be cruel." Crystal smiled and slowly rocking, began to sing along.
    "You want some of this?" a voice asked, louder than the radio. "It'll ice the top of your head."
    Crystal turned from the window and walked over to where Suzannah sat at a glass table chopping up cocaine. The razor blade cut through the powder and tapped on the glass to the music. Finished, the white woman put the blade down and picked up a crisp $100 bill, rolling it into a tube and handing it to the girl.
    Crystal plugged one nostril and put the tube to the other. Leaning over the table, she inhaled the drug. Then she switched hands and sniffed cocaine into her other nostril. During the process, she felt a hand cup one of her breasts. The nipple puckered.
    "That ought to cool you, honey," Suzannah huskily whispered into her ear. The woman's other hand slipped up between the girl's thighs.
    Crystal shuddered, uncertain whether it was Suzannah's touch or the spreading effect of the snow. But she didn't care, for all that mattered was the warm shiver tingling through her body. After a while she closed her eyes and abandoned herself to the woman.
    Suzannah laughed and said, "Better watch that. Crystal dear. Pussy is addicting."
    Then the woman turned her back on the girl and herself bent over the table. She ran the bill around the glass and sucked up most of the powder. Finished, she wet her index finger and washed it across the surface, completing the ritual by rubbing its tip around her gums.
    Suzannah was a woman who dripped sexuality. Twenty-eight years old, she stood five-foot-ten in her bare feet and had a luscious figure. Her head was shaved bald, and she too was naked. As Suzannah bent over the table, from behind her Crystal could see six small gold rings piercing the labia and glittering among the hairs of the woman's crotch.
    Suzannah straightened up. Pinching her nostrils several times as she sniffed in deep breaths of air, she glanced up at the. Gustav Becker clock ticking on the wall. The time was 11:33. She turned to Crystal and said: "We haven't much time, dear, until our guest arrives. He'll be here in an hour."
    Frowning, Crystal walked over to the window. At the end of the side street, where it intersected with Royal, she could see the parade of floats and, for a moment, even the figure of Comus holding his goblet high. The crowd cheered as he went by, swept away as if caught up in a surging tide. Crystal sighed.
    "Must we miss the party?" she asked.
    "Sweetheart," the woman said softly, her eyes now glazed and her face flushed by the cocaine's effect, "you must realize that some things are more important than others. Like this man tonight. He is very important for us."
    Crystal nodded