Free The Busting Out of an Ordinary Man by Odie Hawkins Page A

don’t even know how to roll.
    Cynthia laughed self-consciously as her sloppily rolled effort fell apart. “Ohhh damnit! I just can’t get the hang of it! I guess you have better fingers for this stuff than I do.”
    â€œDon’t let it ruin your day,” he spoke softly to her and handed her his smoke. “No reason why you should be able to do everything good.” He watched her puff, knowing she’d be out there in three tokes. “Whatchu been doin’ with yourself all week?” he asked, slouching down to let his robe fall open slightly.
    She coughed a little of the smoke out, getting up to full lotus her legs under her on the chair.
    â€œWell, Monday I had classes, as you know, … yesterday Mother practically forced me to spend the day with her, visiting some perfectly dreadful friends of ours they have a son,” she paused cleverly, took another hit and passed it back to him, “that, well, they’ve been trying to make the marriage of the season out of for the last three years.”
    â€œThis the dude with the three names?”
    â€œYes,” she answered, and giggled at the thought … Mrs. Stanley Smyth-Frazier.
    Chili smiled cynically, watching her blue eyes glaze. “Why don’t you wanna get married to the dude, make the ahhemm marriage of the season?”
    Cynthia frowned and accepted the joint, “Don’t talk silly, Arnold, please!”
    â€œI’m sorry, baby,” he apologized lightly and leaned over to pat her thighs affectionately.
    â€œAnd you, what’ve you been doing?”
    Chili’s mind flashed on the Italian girl’s breasts that he had squeezed, mashed and sucked on Monday afternoon, knowing, praying that Cynthia wouldn’t come over, and she hadn’t shot to last night’s session with the Jewish hippie-artist bitch from the next block.
    â€œWell,” he started into his lie carefully, “I told you, at the restaurant Sunday, that I was gon’ check out that airlines reservation thing and I did, but all they seemed to be interested in is whether or not you served honorably in Vietnam.” He took the last short length of the joint from her fingers, sliding past everything else, knowing she wouldn’t probe too far, even if she was high, because that would make him angry, or sullen, or unaffectionate, or all three.
    For a year they had been playing this game, and both of them were so good at it by this time, so into where each of them was coming from, that there were seldom any slip-ups.
    Cynthia smiled lazily at him. They had an understanding. Black dudes were so groovy, especially dudes like Arnold “Chili,” … so full of fire and, at the same time, so helpless, it was like, like you really had to take care of them or they’d be completely lost.
    And that’s what she did; took care of him, financed his schemes, paid for the sporadic quarters he felt an urge to attend at the various universities around town, his rent, the clothes, his car … a noble experiment with a beautiful black animal. What would come out of it, eventually?
    Chili uncoiled himself from the chair and stood in front of her, the front of his shortie robe jutting out at her aggressively. How much better could it be? she asked herself, flushing slightly at the uninhibited sight of his erection.
    How much better could it be? she reached for his slender brown fingers, a submissive look in her eyes.
    Strolling toward the bedroom, arms swathed around each other’s waists, she flashed back to the roots of their relationship. Recently resigned from the city’s welfare police corps, meaning social work in the ghetto, at an interracial party with a girlfriend, head spaced from two exciting, eerie, weird, frightening, enlightening, erotic years working on the Southside, wondering whether or not it was going to be Europe or Brazil, resisting Mother’s insistent pleas that she become a member