God Ain't Blind Read online

  “You’re making me nervous, Rhoda.”

  “You’re not nervous. We’re both way too old to be gettin’ nervous about fuckin’. You’re just confused.” Not looking away from the mirror, she fished a Kleenex tissue from the beaded purse in her lap and blotted her plum-colored lipstick. “This is just, uh, jitters. But you’ll get used to that. I did.” She paused and gave me a thoughtful look, then a quick but weak smile. “I am so happy for you. You’re finally goin’ to get what you need after sufferin’ for so long.”

  “I am not suffering,” I protested.

  “Whatever you say,” she said with a sigh, balling the tissue and tossing it into a litter bag hanging from the dashboard. “I don’t know how you’ve managed to last this long without mountin’ the pizza delivery guy and humpin’ the hell out of him. Almost a whole damn year without some dick is not normal!”

  “It is for some people,” I insisted. “And what’s so bad about going without sex for a year, anyway? Some women go their whole lives without it.”

  Rhoda nodded. “They are called nuns, invalids, and freaks. Of which you are neither. Or we wouldn’t be sittin’ here.” Rhoda glanced at her watch, then gave me an exasperated look. “I’m too through. Are you goin’ into that motel room or what?” She started her motor and adjusted her rearview mirror.

  “I’m going,” I said quickly, opening the door on my side.

  “I’ll pick you up around eleven fifteen. I want to be home in time to watch at least part of Jay Leno!”

  The woman who had been my best friend for most of my life gave me a hearty push with her hand. I practically slid out of the front passenger seat of her SUV and onto the ground, landing on my feet like a panther. She sped off before I could even catch my breath.

  Despite all the shit that Rhoda had said, I couldn’t determine what she really thought. And I couldn’t understand how she could pressure me into having an affair and still grin in my husband’s face. This was one of the few times that I wished they were not friends. But no matter what she thought or said, this was my call. I wanted to have an affair with Louis Baines. It was nothing for me to be proud of, but I had to pat myself on the back for attracting such a young, handsome brother in the first place. And he was the one who had come on like gangbusters, not me. That was something that had rarely happened to me, even when I was young.

  My marriage had become a stale joke. My husband had already put me out to pasture, like I was a Guernsey cow that he had milked bone dry. Louis had come to my rescue just in time. His actions had done wonders for my ego. At least that was what I kept telling myself. But before Louis entered my life, I had almost convinced myself that my sex life was over at the age of forty-six.

  I looked around the parking lot some more. Summer was just around the corner, so the weather was nice. But the wind was howling in a way that made me even more nervous. This was a rough neighborhood, so nosy acquaintances were not the only people I had to be concerned about. A couple of months ago somebody had attacked a man from behind and robbed him in the same parking lot that I was in now. A few weeks before that, somebody had dragged a woman between two cars parked behind the motel, sexually assaulted her, and taken off with her purse and jewelry.

  I coughed and tightened my grip on my purse. One thing I had learned from growing up around rough people was that it was stupid to look too prosperous. The woman who had been raped and robbed had had the nerve to come to this neighborhood in a fur jacket, wearing diamonds on everything but her toes. She had to be either stone crazy or suicidal, because that was like waving a piece of raw meat in front of a wolf. I was sorry about what had happened to that woman. But like everybody else, I felt that she should have known better. I had some very expensive clothes and jewelry, which I never wore to this part of town. I rarely carried much money or more than two or three credit cards in my purse in this neighborhood, or anywhere else. I had a large can of Mace in my purse, which I prayed I would never have to use. The air was foul. It reeked of gasoline and oil, dust, and despair. I sucked in some of that air, anyway. Then I looked around and checked my surroundings one more time.

  At night when the Do Drop Inn sign was turned on, some of its letters blinked on and off; some didn’t light up at all. And if that wasn’t tacky enough, the molelike Pakistani man who owned this motel had had it painted pink last year and had propped up some plastic flamingos in front of the entrance. There was a truck stop a block away. Tired hookers brought their tired truck driver tricks to this motel.

  A huge buckeye tree loomed over the building like a gigantic umbrella. In the fall, the buckeye nuts fell off the tree and covered the motel roof like brown rocks. I knew about the buckeyes because my mother used to clean the rooms in this dump thirty years ago, and I used to help her.

  Louis had told me that he’d be in room 108 and had warned me that he’d already be naked. “I just hope you can handle this dragon in my pants, baby,” he’d also said. “I’ve got something that has made some women weep from joy and others weep from pain.” You would have thought that he had a footlong brick between his legs, the way he was talking. But I knew better.

  “I hope I can handle it, too,” I’d replied, rolling my eyes. I didn’t know why Louis, or any other man for that matter, felt the need to brag about the size of his dick. As a former prostitute, I was pretty sure that I’d seen it all when it came to sex. For one thing, there was probably nothing left that could surprise or scare me. I didn’t think that there was anything that could top the trick that had a two-headed dick, which I’d encountered one rainy night. But Louis didn’t need to know all that, though. As a matter of fact, he already knew more about me than I wanted him to know.

  The way I was dragging my feet, you would have thought that I was on my way to a job I despised. I was glad that the room was on the other side of the motel, so I’d have a few more minutes to compose myself. However, before I could do that, a pay phone on the corner in front of the motel caught my attention. Before I knew it, I was rooting through my purse for some loose change so I could make a call.

  “Hello,” my husband answered on the tenth ring. Even though one of the four telephones in our house was never more than a few feet out of his reach, he always took his time answering one when it rang. This was just one of the things he did that had irritated me for years.

  “Hi, baby,” I began.

  “Who is this?”

  I gasped so hard, I almost dropped my purse. I couldn’t respond right away.

  “Hello? Who is this callin’?” Pee Wee asked, sounding truly annoyed.

  “I want you to tell me how many women call you up and address you as baby, fool,” I demanded, anger rumbling inside me like gas. I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do with that husband of mine! No wonder I was about to have an affair.

  CHAPTER 3

  “After all the years that we’ve known each other, don’t you know your own wife’s voice by now?” I snarled. This was not the first time that my husband had not recognized my voice on the opposite end of a telephone in the last few years. I usually gave him the benefit of the doubt, because I wasn’t as sharp as I used to be, either. But this time it angered me. In a strange way I was glad. It made it that much easier for me to justify the reason I had come to the Do Drop Inn.

  “Oh, it’s you. Hi, baby. Where you at?”

  “Uh, I’m with Rhoda on our way to the bowling alley. I joined her bowling team, and I’ll be bowling with them every Thursday night, starting tonight. Don’t you remember? We’ve discussed it several times. Even this morning.”

  “We did? Hmm.”

  “We did, Pee Wee.” The more I talked to this man, the more his credibility plummeted.

  “Oh! If you say so, we must have. I sure enough don’t remember nothin’ about givin’ you permission to join no bowlin’ team.”

  Permission? Oh, he must have been entertaining a death wish. Had he said something like that to my face, I wouldn’t have been responsible for my action
s.

  “Look, goddammit, I don’t need permission from you or anybody else to do a damn thing,” I hollered. “My damn daddy lives across town, and I don’t even ask his permission to do what I want to do.”

  “Hold your horses now, baby. You know I’m just talkin’ off the top of my head. I didn’t mean no harm. You don’t have to be gettin’ all loud and ghetto on me. Did you take your pill today?”

  “What damn pill?”

  “Them change-of-life pills I heard you and Rhoda talkin’ about the other day.”

  “I think we need to end this conversation immediately, if not sooner,” I suggested.

  “That’s a good idea. I can see that you ain’t in no good mood.”

  “All right. Like I just said, I am going bowling with Rhoda and her bowling team tonight. I will see you around eleven or eleven thirty. Understand?”

  “What’s there to understand? I ain’t no dummy. You goin’ bowlin’ with your girls. I understand that.”

  “I’ll see you when I get home, Pee Wee,” I huffed.

  “Listen, if you ain’t too mad or too tired when you finish bowlin’, would you stop by Al’s Rib Shack on Patterson Street on your way home and bring me some ribs and coleslaw? And tell them stingy Negroes not to be so scarce with that slaw.”

  “Is that all you’ve got to say?”

  “Have Al throw in a few pieces of chicken, too. All wings. I keep tellin’ you and him that I do not like nothin’ on a chicken but the wings.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” I complained.

  “Huh? Then what did you mean?”

  “Nothing,” I said in a tired voice. I took a deep breath and continued. This time my voice was full of vigor. “I might go with the girls to have a few drinks after bowling. And I’m not asking for your permission. I’m just letting you know in case you need me to come straight home for something else.”

  “As long as you drop off my order from Al’s first, you can do whatever the hell you want to do.”

  “Don’t worry about that. I will make sure you get everything you got coming,” I quipped. The sarcasm was lost on my husband. Just like so many other things lately.

  “And another thing, get me some mild sauce. As long as we been together, you ought to know better by now. I only like mild sauce. Last week, when you came steppin’ up in here with that hot-ass sauce, it danced through my bowels like James Brown. And every time I peed, my dick felt like I’d struck a match to it. I was useless for days.”

  Useless was right. As far as I was concerned, my husband’s dick was the most useless appendage on his body these days. No matter what I did, he didn’t want to do it with me. I ate and slept alone most of the time. And even when we were in the house at the same time, it seemed like I was alone. It saddened me to know that after ten years of an almost perfect marriage, it had come to this: my husband was no longer attracted to me. Well, he didn’t have to be now! There was a handsome young man waiting on me in room 108, with a dick that had my name on it.

  “I’ll see you when I get home,” I said in a weak voice, knowing now what I had to do if I wanted to hold on to my sanity.

  “You’ve been lookin’ and actin’ mighty gloomy these days. So you need to go knock yourself out, baby. You need to go have some fun. Y’all go drinkin’ after you leave that bowlin’ alley and have at least one on me.”

  “Oh, you can count on that,” I said with a smirk. I hung up so hard and fast that the coins I had dropped into the slot dropped into the hamper. I sniffed as I scooped them out and dropped them back into my coin purse. Then I marched back across the motel parking lot, itching to get my hands on the hard, young body reserved for me in room 108.

  Louis must have been peeping out of the window, because he opened the door just as I was about to knock. “Hey, baby. It’s so good to see you. Girl, every time I look at you, I get an instant hard-on.”

  I was taken aback by his comments, but I tried not to show it. I was so cool and calm, you would have thought that handsome men said things like that to me every day. The truth of the matter was, Louis was the first man to be this bold and frisky with me. “Thank you,” I managed. “I needed to hear something like that, Louis.”

  “Let me tell you one thing, sweetheart. Now that I’ve got you where I want you, you will be hearing everything you ever thought you might want to hear from a man,” he vowed.

  He took me by the hand and pulled me into the semi-darkened room, with its dull furniture. He kicked the door shut with his bare foot and wrapped his arms around my waist. Then he cupped my face in his hands and stared into my eyes. I couldn’t figure out how he was able to look at me for several moments without blinking. I was blinking like a railroad signal.

  “I am so happy,” he said, swooning.

  I tried to speak, but nothing came out. I just blinked again.

  Louis was as naked as the day he was born. I could feel something rock hard between his legs, pressing against my hip bone. It didn’t feel like anything that was big enough to scare me, but it felt big enough to put a big smile on my face. I finally got up enough nerve to reach down. I was impressed with what I felt. When I did look down, I was impressed with what I saw. I was too shy to look down long enough to give his goods a thorough inspection. But I had seen and felt enough to know that he wasn’t as well endowed as my husband. I knew that I couldn’t have everything, and besides, I didn’t want it to be so good that I would forget about my husband altogether. I wasn’t that kind of woman.

  It was so refreshing to see a nice firm body again. Despite the fact that my husband’s body had turned into something that resembled Silly Putty, and he now had more hair on his legs than he had on his head, he was still attractive to me. That didn’t matter, though. He no longer felt the same way about me, and I looked much better now than I had when we got married ten years ago! Louis had already told me several times how much he appreciated the way I looked. And I never got tired of hearing it.

  He must have read my mind. “Annette, I swear to God, you look so damn good to me,” he said.

  “You should have seen me last year,” I mumbled as I stumbled behind him across the floor. I didn’t know what made me say something that stupid. It didn’t mean anything to Louis, anyway. I could tell that from the puzzled look he gave me. The truth of the matter was, had he known the husky, muumuu-wearing plain Jane that I was last year, we probably would not have been in this motel room right now, preparing to fuck each other’s brains out. Well, he might have still been in the room, but not with me.

  Losing four dress sizes and getting a complete makeover, from my thin, thorny hair down to my flat feet, had given me a lot of confidence. For the first time in my forty-six years, I didn’t consider the mirror my worst enemy. A lot of men had begun to notice me. A few had been so aggressive that I’d had to cuss them out and threaten to beat them off with a stick.

  Unfortunately, the only man who didn’t seem to be the least bit fazed by my improved appearance, or even to notice it, was my husband. And he was the main person that I’d hoped to impress by going through my long-overdue metamorphosis!

  “Annette, you don’t know how long I’ve been waiting for this moment,” Louis whispered in my ear. Then he licked it like he was licking a stamp. He kissed me gently on the lips and started to unbutton my white silk blouse and tug at the side of my leather skirt. “The first time I saw you, I said to myself, ‘If that was my woman, I’d treat her like a Nubian queen.’ From that day on, I dreamed about you, with your sweet self, day and night. I never thought such a dream would become a reality.” This time I kissed him. “Now tell me what you want me to do for you. This is all about you. How much time do we have?”

  “We don’t have to worry about the time. We’ve got plenty of it,” I assured him, my hand massaging the prize between his legs.

  “Is that right? Well, what about…uh…the dude?”

  “What dude?” I asked, my voice sounding so husky that I almost didn’t recognize it.r />
  “Your husband,” he said, giving me an incredulous look. “The last thing I want is for the brother to come busting through that door to reclaim his…uh…stuff.”

  I tilted my head back, patted the micro braids wrapped around my head, and let out a loud sigh. “My husband wouldn’t bust through an eggshell to reclaim any stuff from me.” I pulled Louis to the bed, and for the next four hours, it was all about me.

  CHAPTER 4

  I was already dressed and standing outside the motel room when Rhoda rolled up into the parking lot at ten minutes after eleven. Not because I was anxious to leave, but because I didn’t want her to blow her horn and attract attention, or knock on the door and strike up a conversation with Louis. For some reason, I wanted Rhoda to be as far removed from this situation as possible. She knew all the rest of my deepest, darkest secrets, but this one was special. And I wanted to keep most of it to myself for as long as possible.

  “How was it?” That was the first thing she said as I climbed back into her SUV. My legs were so sore, they almost buckled. I wasn’t sure if it was because of my age or the thorough workout I’d just received. The blinking light in front of the motel made her vehicle look white, but it was silver. And she kept it in such pristine condition, it still looked and smelled new, even though it was almost two years old. She already had thick pads on the seats, but I noticed a sheet of plastic on the passenger seat, which had not been there before she dropped me off. I got offended right away, thinking that she had put it there so I wouldn’t drip or spread anything nasty on the seat after my tryst. I wanted to say something about it immediately, but I didn’t. Because had it been my car, I might have covered my seat with some plastic before I sat down, too. Even though I had taken a quick shower with Louis, I still felt a little unclean, to say the least.

  Now that I’d seen the extra protection that Rhoda had put on her seat, I was more determined to keep her as far out of the loop as possible. I was sorry that I had agreed to let her drive me to and from the motel, but she had insisted. The more I thought about that damn shit she’d put on the seat, the more it bothered me, so I knew I had to say something right away.