Free Chicago Hustle by Odie Hawkins

drunk.
    â€œThe bitch done cut out on me,” he mumbled once more, on the way out, two hundred and fifty easy pieces burning a hole in his pocket.
    Downstairs, on the street, he paused in front of his apartment building, looking up one side of the street and down the other, both fists on his narrow hips, wishing that he could spot Leelah somewhere.
    Walking south on Prairie, toward 47th Street, he somehow had the feeling that everybody on the street, even the old people hanging out on their porches knew about his woman’s desertion.
    Turning the corner on 47th, heading for the Tip Tap Lounge, he spotted Leelah’s best friend and sometimes lover (whenever her love came down on her that way), Zelma Mercer.
    â€œHey Zelma!” he yelled across the street, untypical of him, and dodged some afternoon traffic to skip across to her.
    Zelma, a firmly built lesbian person with a permanent scowl and a profound disgust for trifling niggers, like the one skipping over to her, glared at Elijah’s approach.
    â€œZelma, you seen Leelah?” he asked breathlessly, trying to conceal his anxiety.
    She showed her teeth to him in a caricature of a smile. “Yeahhh, I saw her, earlier.”
    Elijah resisted the urge to throw a shot at her jaw. Never could tell, not with a bitch that looked strong as Zelma, and it would be terrible to get your ass kicked on the street … even if it was by a bulldagger … like, well, after all, she was still a woman.
    He decided to spool out honey rather than spit vinegar. “Uhhh, how long ago? She asked me to cop a half a piece for her and I did, now I can’t find her. And if I don’t find her soon, I’m gon’ have to do it myself … hahh hahhhah.”
    Zelma, realizing that what Leelah had, Zelma could get some of … and she loved girl … blurted out, “I saw her a few hours ago, I heard her ask Mickey Mouse to give her a ride out to the airport.”
    Elijah’s jaw slopped down. “The airport! what airport?”
    â€œThe main one,” Zelma answered heavily, and kept on stepping.
    Elijah stood, rooted to the spot, watching Zelma’s roly-poly shuffle, sweat streaming down the sides of his face. The airport … guess she must’ve decided to go on back to the Coast, to ’Frisco. “Come on, Elijah, let’s pack up ’n get on out to the Coast, you’d love San Francisco. Not only that, things are a helluva lot easier out there.”
    He slung the corners of his mouth down, feeling rejected, disgusted, sad, hurt, mad, and walked the twenty-five steps to the first bar.
    For the rest of the day, during the heat of the middle of the day, and into the early cool breezes off of the lake, he slowly made his way through the bars in the neighborhood. First on one side of the street and then the other, hoping, on one hand, that the Lord, or whoever was responsible, would return his bottom woman. And, on the other hand, that he could get drunk.
    By the time he reached the Tiger Lounge, having saved it for last, he had guzzled and swizzled his way through eight beers and fourteen gin ’n tonics and felt sober as a black Presbyterian preacher. He sat at the bar, trying to decide whether or not he should have two double shots of Jack and probably get sick, spilling it in on top of the beer and gin ’n tonics, or continue with the gin.
    â€œYou want me to come back to you, brotherman?” Sly Bob the bartender asked, checking Elijah’s melancholy state out with a seasoned eye.
    â€œHuh?”
    â€œYou want me to …?”
    â€œOhh, uhhh, lemme have a double gin ’n tonic.”
    Sly Bob swabbed the place in front of Elijah with a couple quick flicks of his wrist. “A double gin ’n tonic, huh?” he repeated the request as a semi-question.
    â€œYeahhh, a double gin ’n tonic.”
    Elijah looked over the assembled slicksters from the bar, nodding casually to the people