Free Disappearing Acts by Terry McMillan

kind of job we’ll start in three days. Fuckin’ Italians. “Frankie, don’t I always take care of you, man?” he ask me at least once a month. And I always say, “Yeah, just like the IRS.” At least I get paid under the table. In cash. But if this Wop expect me to work on his new building, he’s gon’ have to come up with more money. Fifty dollars a day. Who the fuck can live off that? Shit, I got kids to pay for. I can’t even afford to
buy
no pussy, which is what it’s getting down to.
    My beer was gone, and I felt muscle spasms in my shoulders, so I got up and rubbed some Ben-Gay on ’em, then poured myself a stiff one. I looked at the clock again and fell back down on the bed and closed my eyes. When I woke up, it was only two o’clock. I looked at the
TV Guide.
Soap operas. No more basketball games till fall. This is gon’ be a long summer. I hate baseball, especially the Yankees. Ever since Reggie Jackson left, the team ain’t shit. If they would get him back and keep that crazy-ass Billy Martin, they might win a game and fill up the stands like they used to.
    I was bored shitless, so I decided to go to the bar. Since I was sweating again, I turned the air conditioner up, then splashed some aftershave on my face and put on a clean white shirt and some dress pants.
    I was walking down the street before I even thought to see how much cash I had. I pulled out my wallet and counted seventy-three dollars. The music was coming from halfway down the block. Just One Look always got a crowd, don’t make no difference what time of day it is. Shit, half of Brooklyn is unemployed. When I walked in, wasn’t nothin’ happening. On Fridaynights, you can’t hardly get in the door. They got the best DJ in Brooklyn, right here in this little off-the-wall joint. A lotta black folks think they too good to come in here—mainly the new ones moving into this neighborhood. Faggots and black yuppies. All of ’em wear Gucci this and Yves Saint Laurent that. Driving BMWs. Sporting tortoiseshell glasses. All the dudes wear identical Paul Stuart trench coats. They sickening, really. It is a fact that a few people been shot and killed in Just One Look, but I ain’t seen nothin’ like that go down in the two years I been comin’ in here.
    I sat down at the bar and ordered a Jack Daniel’s. I was hoping not to run into Jimmy, but that woulda been asking for too much. He was the first person I saw after I swiveled around on the stool to check out everything—which amounted to nothing.
    “Brotherman,” he said, slapping me on my damn shoulder. Shit, it was still sore from putting in those floors. “What’s happening?”
    “Nothin’, brother—you got it.” I took a sip from my drink. “I’m beat, but you get that way when you work for a living.” I love to fuck with Jimmy.
    “I’m making a living, sucker. It’s work, any way you look at it. You ain’t seen Sheila in the past few days, have you?”
    I shook my head no and downed the rest of my shot in one swallow. It felt good, so good that I ordered another one. Four is my limit. And when my cash is low, I drink beer, or I keep my black ass at home, buy myself a pint, get drunk, and watch TV till the static or a prayer wakes me up.
    Jimmy hopped up on the stool next to me. “That broad owe me over a hundred dollars, and my shit is raggedy, man. I can’t cop till I get this twenty dollars. You ain’t got twenty on you till later on this weekend, do you, blood? I’m good for it, you know that.”
    I knew that was what Jimmy was leading up to.That’s what he always led up to. But the little fat fuck been my buddy since high school. We used to tease him ’cause he had gray hair when he was fifteen. He got a whole head full of the shit now. Jimmy was always able to get older women because of that hair. Back then, I envied him. “Man, you ain’t had it good till you got it from a thirty-year-old broad. Especially one that’s done had a baby. They know how to