This worried him considerably. If she felt that way about money, what kind of exchanges could he ever hope to have with her? For all he knew, she wore a biological hazard suit to bed and those nails of hers could cause him damage in tender places. Woooo, he thought. What if she dug them nails into his horsie? Why did she wear a perfume called Poison, too? He ought to know better than to pick up somebody at the tollbooth. Last time he picked up a woman he knew nothing about, the situation had been similar. Letitia Sweet worked in the Shell Quik Mart not far from headquarters, and Macovich was minding his own business one afternoon when he popped in for a coffee and popcorn. Letitia was built like an old Cadillac and probably had just as many miles and layers of paint, but Macovich was in a mood because of that pool shark Crimm girl.
“What you got on?” he asked Letitia when he stepped up to the counter and impressed her by pulling out a twenty-dollar bill.
“What you mean, what I got on?” She gave him a smirk as she bent over the cash drawer in a way that exposed her bulletlike headlights.
He had to give her credit: That woman was a handful no matter which way he grabbed her, even though their first date was their last.
“Who you think you are?” Letitia yelled at him in the car. “What you think you’re doing grabbing at me like that? You think I ain’t got no nerves beneath all that flesh? How you like it if I grabbed and twist you like a rag I’m wringing out when I clean up the nacho bin at the end of the day?”
She demonstrated, and Macovich had to admit that he didn’t like it a bit. So why did he go from her to Hooter? He was lost in the space of his own dysfunction and bad experiences, and decided it was best not to protest when Hooter said she needed air and if he was lucky, would talk to him briefly next time he came through her Exact Change lane. Typically, she ended the date in a forsaken place and had no ride home, and she was feeling a little sorry for herself when she emerged in the alleyway and spied a fat white man sitting on a package by the Dumpster. For a minute, she forgot her own problems.
“Why honey, you look like you ain’t feeling too good,” Hooter said, making her way to him on her wobbly heels. “What’chu doing out here in this cold alleyway? Want me to call the ambu-lance?”
“My zipper’s stoppered shut,” Trader told her, squeezing himself and yanking the slide to no avail. “Damnation!”
“I have that happen sometimes,” Hooter sympathized with him, coming closer and getting a good look at him to make sure he wasn’t some crazy person. “I tell you, it’s a whole lot worse when it’s in back.” She indicated the back of an imaginary long evening gown. “I had that happen one time when I went to this fancy New Year’s Eve Ball at the Holiday Inn, and I couldn’t get my dress zipped up and was ‘fraid if I yanked too hard, I’d rip that beautiful thing for sure.”
She went on to explain in detail how she had finally waited out in the hallway of the motel until some nice Arab man had passed by and helped her unzip her dress so she could start all over again and zip it up without getting snagged on chiffon. But the Arab man hadn’t wanted her to zip the dress back up and in fact had insisted that she take it off along with everything under it, so she had had no choice but to beat him up. Hooter lit a cigarette, caught up in the memory, as Trader held himself and begged the zipper to deliver him from captivity.
“Please lit me free. Please lit me free,” he begged, near tears, in a dialect Hooter was unfamiliar with.
“Why sure, baby.” She bent over and lit a cigarette for him. “You can have all the smokes you want and I won’t charge you a cent ’cause I don’t touch pennies anyhow. I think it’s a sin to let someone bum a cigarette and then charge him for it, don’t you? What’s that you sitting on, baby?”