Free Chicago Hustle by Odie Hawkins Page B

her purse.
    Elijah settled himself down on the side of the bed, the beers, gin ’n tonics, the heavy smoke and now, looking forward to the cocaine, he felt relaxed. Not to mention the release of tension he felt because his woman was back.
    â€œChink. Yeahhh, Chink usually has pretty nice shit.”
    Leelah took a couple medicine vials out of her purse and four hundred and fifty dollars in fifty-dollar bills. She counted the money out into Elijah’s outstretched hand.
    â€œGoddamn, Leelah baby! I thought you said we cleared six bills!”
    She glared at him fiercely.
    â€œDon’t I get none of it? I mean, after all, I had to pay a couple dudes to take the shit outta here.”
    He frowned and jammed the money down his pocket. What could he say? knowing Leelah, more than likely she had probably gotten seven fifty. Sliced a hundred and half off the top for herself. Paid a hundred for the girl and nibbled fifty off to party with, or whatever. Slick bitch.
    He watched her sprinkle a small mound of the white alkaloid powder on her compact mirror, divide it into four neat lines with the edge of a ten-dollar bill.
    â€œI really thought you had cut out on me, baby. I really did.”
    She snorted up one line and down another before handing him the mirror, being careful to breath off to one side, so as not to blow any of the stuff away.
    â€œWhat made you think a thing like that?”
    Elijah snuffed up one line and down the other, his actions precise and well-ordered.
    â€œWell, when I was worried about you today, lookin’ everywhere … Zelma told me you had gone to the airport.”
    Leelah took the mirror and tapped a little more coke out onto it, dividing it once again into four straight lines.
    Elijah, his nose turning to hot ice, stood unsteadily to take off his shirt.
    â€œNawwww, baby,” she began slowly. “Momma was just out there takin’ care business as usual. I thought it might be hip to stash the grab bag out there for a change, since you haven’t done the airport for months.”
    He took the mirror and did two lines, handed it back to her.
    â€œYeahhh, well, I really got scared for a bit. I thought you had decided to make it on back to the Coast, to ’Frisco.”
    She snorted the last two lines up, licked the powdery residue from the mirror and dropped the compact and the bill into her purse.
    Elijah settled himself beside her on the bed again, folded her up into his arms and felt like crying.
    Leelah, stroking his neck and back, whispered into his ear, “How could I ever leave a motherfucker as rotten as you?”
    He found himself, smiling over her shoulder despite the gentle insult, pushed her back onto the bed and stood up to take off the rest of his garments. What the hell! he rationalized, no one was paying him to be himself, they all wanted him to be someone else. Fuck ’em!
    He slid back into Leelah’s embrace under the cover.
    â€œYou know, that was really a dirty rotten thing for you to do?”
    â€œWhat?” he asked, knowing already.
    â€œYou know, to leave me by myself in the Tiger the other night.”
    â€œYeahhh, that sho’ was rotten,” he conceded after a moment’s reflection, determined not to get caught in that bag again, and wrapped his naked thighs around hers.

CHAPTER 4
    Elijah sat in the barber’s chair, half asleep in the mid-day heat, digging on the scene around him.
    Stacey, the seventy-year-old shoeshine “boy,” popping his shine rag across a young brother’s new platforms, the MOQ station beaming out jazz for sisters and brothers, a few early gambling men heading into the back room to get their third race bets down, Pauline the manicurist sitting in the window of the shop doing her own nails and flirting with the occasional, potential customer, Marvin, O.D. and Home cutting hair.
    Elijah nodded cooperatively as Home chattered into his ear and snipped his Afro. “I