Read Online A Red Death: Featuring an Original Easy Rawlins Short Story "Si (Easy Rawlins Mysteries) by Walter Mosley - Free Book Online Page B

It’s like this here TV would be for everybody.”
    “Uh-uh!”
    LaMarque jumped up, balling his little fists.
    “LaMarque!” Etta shouted. “What’s got into you?”
    “Comanisk gonna take our TV!”
    “Time for you to go t’bed, boy.”
    “Nuh-uh!”
    “I say yes,” Etta said softly. She cocked her head to the side and tilted a little on the couch. LaMarque lowered his head and moved to turn off the set.
    “Tell Unca Easy g’night.”
    “G’night, Unca Easy,” LaMarque whispered. He climbed on the couch to kiss me, then he crawled into Etta’s lap. She carried him into my bedroom.
    We’d decided after the meal that they’d take my bed and I’d take the couch.

CHAPTER
4
    I WAS RESTING ON THE COUCH at about midnight, watching a bull’s-eye pattern on the TV screen. I was smoking Pall Malls, drinking vodka with grapefruit soda, and wondering if Mouse could kill me even if I was in a federal jail. In my imagination, he could.
    “Easy?” she called from the bedroom door.
    “Yeah, Etta?”
    Etta wore a satiny gown. Coral. She sat down in the chair to my right.
    “You sleepin’, baby?” she asked.
    “Uh-uh, no. Just thinkin’.”
    “Thinkin’ what?”
    “ ’Bout when I went down to see you in Galveston. You know, when you an’ Mouse was just engaged.”
    She smiled at me, and I had to make myself stay where I was.
    “You remember that night?” I asked.
    “Sure do. That was nice.”
    “Yeah.” I nodded. “You see, that’s what’s wrong, Etta.”
    “I don’t follah.” Even her frown made me want to kiss her.
    “That was the best night of my life. When I woke up in the morning I was truly surprised, because I knew I had to die, good as that felt.”
    “Ain’t nuthin’ wrong with that, Easy.”
    “Ain’t nuthin’ wrong with it until you tell me that ‘it was nice’ stuff. You know what you said to me when you got up?”
    “That was fifteen years ago, baby. How’m I s’posed to ’member that?”
    “I remember.”
    Etta looked sad. She looked like she’d lost something she cared for. I wanted to stop, to go hold her, but I couldn’t. I’d been waiting all those years to tell her how I felt.
    I said, “You told me that Mouse was the finest man you ever knew. You said that I was truly lucky to have a man like that for a friend.”
    “Baby, that was so long ago.”
    “Not fo’ me. Not fo’ me.” When I sat up I realized that I had an erection. I crossed my legs so that Etta wouldn’t see it pressing against my loose pants. “I remember like it was only this mo’nin’. When we got up you started tellin’ me how lucky I was to have a man like Mouse fo’a friend. You told me how great he was. I loved you; I still do. An’ all you could think of was him. You know I had plenty’a women tell me that they love me when we get up in the mo’nin’. But it only made me sick ’cause they wasn’t you sayin’ it. Every time I hear them I hear you talkin’ ’bout Mouse.”
    Etta shook her head sadly. “That ain’t me, Easy. I loved you, I did, as a friend. An’ I think you’s a beautiful man too. I mean, yeah, I shouldn’ta had you over like that. But you came t’me,honey. I was mad ’cause Raymond was out ho’in just a couple a days after I said I’d marry him. I used you t’try an’ hurt him, but you knew what I was doin’. You knew it, Easy. You knew what I was givin’ you was his. That’s why you liked it so much.
    “But that was a long time ago, an’ you should be over it by this time. But, you know, it’s just that some men be wantin’ sumpin’ from women; sumpin’ like a woman shouldn’t have no mind of her own. It’s like when LaMarque want me t’tell’im that he’s the strongest man in the world if I let him carry my pocketbook. I tell’im what he wants t’hear ’cause he just a baby. But you’s a man, Easy. If I lied t’you it would be a insult.”
    “I know, I know,” I said. “I knew it then. I never said nuthin’, but now