Cruising down Heckler Street in his new pre-owned Pontiac with Guns and Roses blasting on the tape deck, –  “I used to love her but I had to kill her she bitched so much,” – Angel had been thinking about Caroline Shorter and the sweat he was putting up with from that rich bitch. Last time he’d run into Caroline at The Mall it has been almost suppertime and he had done something he rarely did with a woman, he suggested and then paid for a movie. He’d held her hand in the dark theater, very nice, like the gentleman his mama always told him to be. When he let it go, she moved her hand to his thigh and when the movie was over she had taken him home to her plushy Stoney Hill house up by the river. It was something right out of a magazine. Angel had been drinking it in trying not to whistle or grin and she’s cool as a cucumber like there’s nothing odd about bringing home the dopeman from Camper Street for a little visit to Stoney Hill. She glides into her living room, tosses her coat on the couch and disappears upstairs. 

“Make yourself at home,” she tells him over her shoulder.

Angel’s thinking he’d sure like to do just that. He’s just getting his bearings, trying to stay loose, to maintain his attitude but shit, this place is a palace. There’s a goddamn swimming pool out there through the French doors with the moonlight shining on it prettier than any painting he’d ever had to gawk at and he’s feeling like a kid suddenly transported to Disney World, although this Angel has never been that fortunate. Then she’s back, this time in a satin robe that looks like something that rich bitch detective would wear on Moonlighting. It’s pale yellow and so inviting he wants to touch, knows that’s what she wants, what he’s here for but he’s agitated at the pace of the thing. He wants to look around, wants to feel himself a part of this room, a guest even, not some stranger just passing through like a handyman maybe, providing some service and then going his way quick as possible. He wants to sit, be offered a beer, be stroked and petted. Women do that for Angel Machado, but this one is not interested in preliminaries; she’s not putting herself out, not offering him a beer even. She’s all business, clear about just who’s the one be doing the strokin’ and if there’s any to be done. It’s all right with Angel, considering who she is, considering where he is, except suddenly he’s feeling no confidence about the one thing he’s always known he could count on to perform.

 She’s on him like an octopus and his mind is telling him what he needs is to sit and look around, to catch his breath; the real nightmare is his goddamn cock is crawling up behind his testicles looking between his legs for a back door escape.

 “Hey, lady,” he growls, pushing her away by her shoulders. He wants to see her face and when he does he sees she’s pissed. Goddamn, bitch! What the hell does she think I am, he’s thinking but Angel goes right into the heavy charm even as he’s treading water and his cock is still leaning towards a strike. “Aren’t cha even going to offer me a brew?” He asks, coolly affronted, smiling his million-dollar smile.

The bitch laughs at him.

“A beer? Angel, you are so working class. I’m sure I don’t have any beer.”

He’s still smiling but what he’s thinking is that this woman needs a slap. Since when did beer become so uncouth, he wonders somewhat frantically, defensive but then suddenly he’s thinking of Archie Bunker and knowing he can make her laugh. 

“Stifle yourself,  Edith,” he quips, flashing that smile again and her face lights up as she gets it.

“Well,  hun, I don’t know about beer but I’m sure I’ve got something to drink. How about wine? I’ve got some wonderful Chateau Mouton … let’s see…” And off she strolls to a fucking wine rack with twenty bottles resting sideways, nestled in and looking totally laid-back, like Angel himself just can’t seem to feel.

He sits himself on the sofa which is white leather and gobbles his ass so he sinks down ten miles. No quick exit if the man comes banging on this door. But his fleeting panic makes Angel smile and a deep, warm pleasure floods him. No cop’s coming anywhere near this chick’s place and here’s the Angel, safer than he’s been since he was in his mama’s cocky little dude. He’s right where he deserves to be, sitting pretty in a leather couch no dope money ever paid for, thinking of putting his feet up on the marble coffee table no gun has ever rested on, but knowing better, knowing he’s got to show this broad some elegance along with the attitude and feeling suddenly like it can be done.

But then she glides back over with these two fat goblets of wine. Angel’s thinking they’re  big as the chalice at St Anthony’s. She sets them down and gets her hand to his nuts before he can taste the stuff. 

“Hey…” he protests to his own surprise. “Where’s your kids?” he asks sounding like some altar boy,  like he’s nervous about getting caught by some first grader with his pants around his ankles and his cock dancing, which he is not. It’s happened. He just wants to slow her down, wants a little conversation, a little vino. Resentment is starting to get in Angel’s way. This broad’s disrespecting him bad. What does she think he is anyway a fuckin’ machine? Fucking machine. Yeah, that’s it, he realizes. Screw machine. He’d heard all those jokes a million times in the neighborhood. Every brother claims he’s a goddamn screw machine but no one can bring them around like the Angel, who doesn’t brag, because he’s got the talent. Just now, however,  his cock is like a small dead mouse curled up behind his balls and not participating. Angel takes a deep breath, telling himself that if this night is going to be his entire career in rich-bitch-ville, he wants to make it last as long as possible, wants to make it last long enough to remember the visuals and not just the skin. Skin he can get in the projects.

“Don’t you fret about my kids, Angel,”  she’s lording it over him again. “ They most certainly are not here.” Her answers are cool like she’s above talking to him about her kids, turning away, reaching for her wine. Just a little bored maybe.

What’s her problem? I’m not good enough to ask about her kids? Most women Angel knew love to have a guy ask about their kids even when they aren’t his. How come this bitch can make me feel like scum even when I’m asking nice about her kids?

 “I’m not fretting.  Just wondering,” Angel answers, stalling and reaching for his wine.

 The stuff tastes like blood. Angel can feel the blood leaving his fingers and feet, like when he’s around blood, like when the guns first start sounding real close, when someone’s knife goes into someone else’s bone. He closes his eyes, breathes deeply. He’s far from the neighborhood and he’s like to get down with it.

Caroline’s watching him, curious. She can see he’s got secrets. She’s studying a sensitive man, he assures himself. Maybe he’s meditating, thinking about things, about involvement. Maybe he has a slow hand.

 “Well, hun, how about we do a line or two with our wine?” she asks sweet as sugar. Her wine’s gone and Angel knows it’s not her blow she’s talking about snorting. Pulling the works from his pocket and he’s thinking he hates this broad, she makes him do stuff he’s never done before including too much coke, including keeping her nose filled, picking up her tabs for goddamn cappuccinos and movies and where is it getting him? Lining up the white powder carefully on a glass top of the marble coffee table, poking it delicately with his razor blade, he remembers he’s heard the guys talking about having trouble getting it up after doing too much coke or ‘ludes, about having to take valium to counter the coke, Even without the coke Angel’s cock is still somewhere south of his asshole. The wine’s making him sweat, but he’s betting the dizziness will pass with a line. He passes her the rolled bill.

I want to fuck this broad so good she never wants anyone but me; he surprises himself with the desperation of the desire. Calm yourself, boy, this one ain’t no different, just richer. Let her come to you

 So Angel played it out. Reminding himself she was just a drunk, he fed her lines and when she lunged at him again he told her he was a man of rare and delicate sensibilities, that he didn’t hop into bed with every woman who jumped his bones. Caroline didn’t like it much but Angel had to go with it because he could sustain no confidence whatsoever that evening and the last time thing he wanted to chance was failure at the wrong moment. This bitch would humiliate him big-time.

 “Hey, don’t be hurt, little girl,”  he whispers rooting around her neck, “‘Cuz I  like you a lot.”

Should I be calling her little girl,  he wonders. This broad’s forty,  easy.

She suddenly shoves him away.

“‘ Like me a lot?’ What kind of fool do you take me for? I don’t care if you like me a lot or not, you crude…” she’s sputtering she’s so mad and Angel doesn’t know what the hell is her problem but he’s on automatic pilot now soothing like he does with his mama when she’s angry enough to throw him out.

“Now don’t you get all riled up, little girl. Take it easy. You’re all tensed up. Let Angel sooth that tension away… Go on, now,  just put your head back… go on…” He ordered firmly and in a moment she had put her head back and he’s taking her foot and starting to rub it, to massage the ball and then the arch and then the calf.  Fortunately, she’s got those fat piano legs he hates so that gives him some space. No wonder she’s always wearing the pants, he’s thinking and she lets her eyes close so he can look all around that beautiful room, all muted and soft with light like candlelight. He’s guessing those doodads on the mantelpiece be worth a pretty penny but that’s not his business here. Remembering business, he looks at the rug, this thick creamy thing cushioning his feet.

 “One of these days I’m going to fuck you right here on this rug,” he tells her and her eyes flash open and he smiles wide and sweet. “Right on this creamy rug here. You’re going to get yourself some rug burns on your elbows that time, little girl, you’re going to get cum all over those creamy thighs of yours. And, lady, you are going to love it. I do promise you that.”

 She half-smiles then but Angel doesn’t think she’s laughing at him so his fingers keep moving up her legs carefully, slowly moving past her knees to those thighs he’s already laid claim to. He tosses her robe aside like he owns the place.

 “And another night, another day, when the weather is warm I’ll take you out there on that patio in the moonlight right in that swimming pool there. I’m going to be sitting on the edge with my toes in the water and you’re going to be sitting on my cock having yourself one fine ride.” He says the word cock like it’s something special. He’s talking like he’s taking over this turf and when her eyes flash open again, there is a mysterious little curl to her lip. Scorn? What the hell is she thinking, Angel wonders. “But right now, this is all you’re going to be doing because I don’t take my cock out for just any woman…”  Her eyes open again. “ I got to see what the lady is like…” He’s whispering and putting his hands behind her knees, he pulls her abruptly toward him so her knees open up for him but she is not affronted,  not pulling away any, like she’s beginning to see how it’s going to be maybe, so Angel’s willing to reward her some. He looks at her coolly, without smiling and then lowers his head to join his hands. Suddenly he’s feeling powerful, unbeatable, in control. He can handle this. The material of the robe slinks across his cheek, across her skin with a rustling noise that sounds like money to Angel, whose senses are bombarded with her smell, too. She’s got nice skin for an old broad, he thinks. feeling better because the funk is familiar, that thick heavy smell of a clean woman’s cunt like no other smell in the world – she’s moaning now and they sound the same at that, rich or poor, just begging for more and Angel knows he’s golden once again.

                                                                         2.

But she doesn’t call. Two fucking long weeks have passed and Angel’s rich pigeon is nowhere on the horizon. It is absolutely against his principles, as well as his instinct, judgment, and experience to call her but he surely wants to. For the first time in his life, he’s yearning for a woman he has been with. Not yearning in his groin, that sucker has stayed completely out of this gig, but yearning in his soul. He feels haunted, preoccupied, frightened even. He’s got it bad, he thinks about her all the time and finds himself unable to do anything except peddle his dope and tool around in his car. He carries on conversations with her in his head but he isn’t calling her. He knows better than that. But the effort of sticking to the program is just about driving Angel nuts. He is so distracted even his mama has mentioned it. But Angel just smiled mysterious-like and kissed her cheek.

“Sure isn’t chemical, Ma,” he assured her and she waved him away, but she was smiling, He didn’t have her fooled much anymore about where he made his money, but she was a good-hearted woman and a practical one as well. She took his donations and didn’t give him too much lip. And then suddenly, now and then when he was smiling in his sleep over something going right in his life, like Caroline Shorter, she was his old mama again, smiling from her soul to see her boy happy.

Suddenly in his rearview mirror he recognizes the girl he’d been eyeing. It’s Rhiney, limping down Heckler Street toward the niggar’s house, where he’d taken her once. What the hell is she doing in this neighborhood, he wonders. She sure didn’t seem smart enough to be setting up her own business with the man.

“Hey, what you doin’ around here, little girl?” He calls, pulling over.

She had this tight, scared little face that breaks into sunrise and flowers when she recognizes the Angel. In a split second, she is in his car.

She sits there grinning at him silently, happy as a clam, like she is finally home. It warms Angel’s heart. This little one is so stupid, she thinks she belongs to him, like he would have her. 

“Hey, little girl, how’s it goin’ with you? I ain’t seen you in a long time. You been okay? I heard you were sick.” He asks these questions tenderly, tucking his chin. He’d run into her brother at The Mall and Dez had told him something about her being sick, like mental sick.

“Yeah, I was in the hospital,” she tells him solemnly but like it was something special. Angel knows a hospital is a place they send to dry you out, but he knows Rhiney’s no big-time user. 

“Yeah, so what happened?” he asks, but even as he does he is remembering. Dez said she’d try to off herself. Angel felt a wave of protective fury. It drove him nuts when the little ones, the unprotected ones got jammed up. “So, what happened, lovey? You just get strung out? Too much stress?”

“Yeah, it was my grandmother,” she half whispers. Angel remembers now. The grandmother is always throwing them out. No money coming in. He’d helped her out that other time. Bought her some sneakers. Let her deliver some crack in the neighborhood for him. Maybe he’ll do that again.

“You gotta get yourself a better situation. What’s the story now?” he asks solicitously. “You heading to the dopeman’s place? You got a plan to generate some funds?”

But Rhiney looks puzzled.

“No, Angel. I was just looking for you,” she tells him like it is right as rain for her to be out looking for him.

 “You going to stay with your grandma tonight?”

 “Nah, she’s pissed again. I don’t know why.  It’s Dez more’n me she’s mad at but he  always splits so she has to take it out on me.” She heaves this heavy sigh. “I just wish my mother would come back. Or maybe just send us some money.”

 “Did your mama come and see you when you were sick?” Angel asks, going to the heart of the matter.

 She hangs her head. He lifts her chin, feeling her pain. She’s got those eyes like Springsteen sings about – “make your heart stand still” – and Angel’s soft heat is moving him along.

“ Let’s go find your mama, Rhiney. I got nothing to do this afternoon. You know where she lives with that boyfriend of hers? You think we can locate her and maybe shake a little jing out of her?”

Rhiney looks uneasy but she loves being with Angel so off they go out of the neighborhood onto the highway south toward Brockton to the nail salon where Cheryl works as a nail technician. They find her to fussing over the hand of a plump suburban matron who can not figure out what has happened when Cheryl, who’s been hustling her for a big tip, suddenly looks up then down again and hisses, “Shit, it’s my goddamn daughter.”

 “I beg your pardon?” the customer asks, flummoxed.

 “‘Scuse me. I got this crazy  kid. That’s her. Looks like she’s got her boyfriend, too. My very own retard.”

 “Hi, Ma,” Rhiney offers softly, appearing at her elbow. Angel takes his stand back at the door. The smell is toxic but he’s curious. He leans against the frame looking around,  hanging back, a little intimidated by this utterly female scene.

 “Whadda ya want?” Cheryl demands harshly. She looks up once defiantly and then down quick and defensive before she asks what she cannot stop herself from asking, “Your sister have that  kid yet?”

 “Yeah, Ma.  Baby boy. Justin.  Don’t you even want to see him?”

 “No, I don’t,” she snaps coldly looking Rhiney in the eye. Angel’s watching her narrowed eyes. This one is hard as nails; she just hates the idea of being some kid’s grandma. He starts strolling over.

 “Jay!” Cheryl calls to the faggot cutting hair at the other end of the linoleum cavern but he ignores her. What she think, some fag is going to throw Angel Machado into the street? Fat chance. 

“Whadda ya want ?” Cheryl asks Rhiney again, confrontational.  “I gotta work here. I can’t have no visitors,” she snaps. The woman she’s working on pulls her hand back abruptly.

 Rhiney is not speaking just staring but Angel can feel she’s about to cry. The smell of the salon’s noxious chemicals moves Angel to action.

 “Hey, lady, what kind of mother are you anyway? The little girl needs her mama. She needs a little jing, too. She’s been sick.” Angel informs her but he can tell she knew that from the way she stiffens and turns back to the customer, trying to smile. He watches the customer stiffen, too, her breath halted on the intake.

 “Who the hell are you?” Cheryl asks, grabbing the hand again.

 “Somebody who’s taking better care of this little girl that her mama is,” Angel informs her self-righteously. Despite the smell, Angel likes himself in this scene

 “Cheryl,” the fag’s getting involved now, signaling Cheryl to get them out of the place. Her customer is visibly uncomfortable, looking nervously from her fingernails which are half-covered with an acrylic mold to the two interlopers who have zeroed in on her technician. You can cut the tension with a knife and Angel is feeling powerful as well as righteous. This is just not right.

 “Your kid needs some support, lady. Money, to start,”  Angel announces ominously and sees immediately that Cheryl is about to cave. She’s looking nervous at the customer who is mumbling something about how she’d be glad to hand over the tip. Within seconds Cheryl’s coughed up some tens and she’s pushing them on Rhiney, who is beaming.

 “Satisfied? Now get out of here!” Cheryl snaps and Rhiney, looking stricken again, is again on the verge of tears. Angel takes her arm.

 “Come on, little girl, your ma is not worth it.”

 “Who the hell are you?” Cheryl,  brittle now and aggrieved at her financial loss is on her feet nearing hysterics. “Why don’t you find someone your own age?” she asks stupidly and Angel snorts at her. “Rhiney, you stay away from this guy, you hear me? Whassa  matter with Noona that she lets you hang out with thugs?”

“He’s not a thug, Ma. He’s my boyfriend. He cares about me.” 

 Angel is strutting his stuff.

 “We’re out of here, little girl,” he announces looking straight at Cheryl, showing her his attitude, showing her that he’s in charge here, that he’s the hero. 

Later he took Rhiney’s $40 bucks and provided her with a stash to sell from the oxycodone he’d lifted from Caroline Shorter’s medicine cabinet. He’d only taken a few, not wanting to piss her off, thinking she might not even notice. He was sure she didn’t know the stuff had street value. Even if Rhiney could only get $10 a pill, she’d be way ahead. Angel’s not sure she can handle it so he walks her through it, slow and steady. 

 “Don’t do any of this stuff yourself, little girl. You hear me? The last thing you want to do is use up your own stash. That’s for losers. You sell the pills one at a time. Give you a grandma the money a little at a time, when she’s ready to blow. It’ll cool her some. I’m going to take you over to the Franklin Project, see if you can stay with Jermaine tonight. She’s all right. She let you stay one night or so, favor to me. But she’s not a mission. You know you gotta work out your own situation. You come back and find me when you run out of these. We’ll see. Just play it cool. You goin’ to high school soon? Good. Here’s what you do. You tell your customer, put this in your mouth for a few seconds. See? Then take it out and wipe off the coating. See?” An orange  streak appeared on Angel’s tee shirt where he wiped the coating off the damp pill. A small mound of white remained in the palm of his hand. “Now this is the stuff. You tell ‘em to snort it for the real high. Or swallow it. Some like it like that. But it is better for you if they snort. They’ll want more that way. Now, let me repeat. You do not try any of this product yourself, you hear me?”

Rhiney nodded, soberly, her brown eyes adoring him. Angel’s cock immediately kicked in.

 “Let’s cruise, little girl. We’ll go sit in The Mall parking lot? Whadda ya say? You wanna do a little neckin’ with the Angel?”  He asked rhetorically. Suddenly, he remembered he had not thought of Caroline Shorter in hours. But he had just peddled the pills he’d lifted from her bathroom. Just let her come to me, he reminded himself. She’ll come around eventually, and if she doesn’t, it isn’t as though there’s not always another one waiting in line for the Angel.

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