Free Drive Me Crazy by Eric Jerome Dickey Page A

imagining when I was rubbing your dick. Would be nice to let you slide inside me. You could hold my ass. Put your mouth on my neck. I could suck your tongue. Ride you nice and slow. Then you could fuck me good and hard.”
    Delicate sounds became deep breathing, harder panting, and orgasmic swallowing.
    “God. I just ... I just ... I came.” Water splashed again. “Came ... so ... hard.”
    I imagined her damp face, her wet breasts rising and falling with her erotic breathing.
    “Yeah, think I had too much to drink. Good thing you didn’t answer. ”
    She ended her pleasure call.
    My night had been horrible. She was the last thing I needed right now. The last thing.
    But I needed to escape the pain and the memories. Needed a good-feeling reality.
    I dug in my suit pocket and found the napkin she’d given me, dialed her digits. It didn’t ring, just beeped three times. A pager. I punched in my number. Waited for her to call back.
    Ten minutes later I was back on my side of town, hunting for a parking space.
    My cellular didn’t ring. My head didn’t stop throbbing.
    Shaken and stirred, I listened to Arizona’s message again. Then again. Again.
    That was why I didn’t notice I had been followed.

5
    The 7-Up gave them away. The same 7-Up can Lisa had branded me with, that dented can warned me. I’d parked, gotten out of my car, started heading to my apartment.
    Then somebody stealthing up behind me kicked that 7-Up. It whined across the concrete.
    I swung around. Two men were closing in, a lion and a jackal. Both had intent and stone faces, coming at me the way men came at you on the yard and treated you to a shank down.
    What was surreal became real.
    My defenses went up, body came alive.
    They stopped just beyond striking distance, still close enough to be point blank.
    I asked, “There a problem?”
    They just stood there, soundless, like they were waiting on the wind to change direction.
    Four eyes stared down two, the tension between us muting out the sound of street traffic, sirens, and music coming from one of the apartments across the way on Hoodrat Row.
    I repeated, “There a problem?”
    The square-head brother to my left, the lion, he was the one who answered me. “We’ll know in three days.”
    He had a head bigger than O.J.’s. His nose had been broken at least once, was smooshed and took up too much of his face. He had baby teeth. Like everything around his teeth had been supersized and didn’t send the Tooth Fairy an update. He was a big guy, a six-footer. Loose jeans. Lakers jacket. Built like he played defense for the Raiders. He weighed about two-ten, give or take a Big Mac with cheese, steroids on the side.
    The other one, the jackal, kept his narrow face and slanted eyes on me. Cold as hell out here and all he sported was a wife beater. He was a pock-faced, thin man. Markings up his neck to his throat. If his skin was a ride at an amusement park it would be called Tattoo-land. My first guess was Tehachapi, maybe Wayside. Either way, both of them had studied at Penitentiary State. The question was whether they earned their bachelors, masters, Ph.D., or dropped out.
    My hands became sledgehammers.
    Lisa said she had two men to do her dirty work. I felt alert, my buzz gone. I didn’t notice how much the temperature had dropped anymore.
    A million cars roared by and not a soul on the broken and slanted sidewalks but us.
    I tried to guess which one was going to rush me first, or maybe look for the weak link, rush that motherfucker before he could charge at me, take out one and hope for the best.
    Another car pulled up and parked a few feet down on La Cienega. It was a young man, his girlfriend, and their five-year-old son, all neighbors who lived in the next building.
    The lion and jackal regarded the car, its passengers, then they both took steps back.
    The brother said, “Fifteen large. Three days.”
    I stood tall, bared my teeth. I stepped toward them. Neither moved or batted an eye. Fear