Gather Together in My Name - Maya Angelou [68]
The winners and losers looked equally disordered but were distinguishable by their company. Beggars, grifters and petty losers hung on their words, pulled chairs out for them, and shouted at slow-moving waiters for faster service.
The street women who met their men at the dining tables (Cain didn't allow hustling in the restaurant, and no women at all in the gambling room) were of particular interest to me. They came in tired, the night's glamour gone from their faces and the swing from their hips.
The men who drank whiskey for steadiness of diversion took their women's money in the open, counting it out bill by bill, then ordering a flunky to run to the liquor store and quickly bring a “taste.” The women's faces surged with pride and defeat. They had proved they were successful and trustworthy whores, but they also knew the men would return to the gambling tables to chance the night's earnings, and the women would be sent home exhausted to empty beds.
A man who got his highs from heavier narcotics never treated his woman so carelessly. He would wait impatiently, drinking heavily surgared coffee. As soon as his woman passed the window, he stood up and paid the small check. The woman waited at the door and the couple walked away eagerly and together. I knew they were hurrying to the fix. I knew that the woman had already made the connection before she came to pick up her man. I knew, and could see nothing wrong. At least they were a couple and depended on each other.
Cain had little time to notice that all was not well at the restaurant, since he spent his days engrossed with his fighters. The operators of his cleaning shop and gambling house were hewing to the traditional lines, and their businesses were booming.
I had to speak to him.
“Mr. Cain, I'm afraid this month, we, er, slid back a little.”
He thought. “Lost money, huh?”
“Yes. Actually, the menu doesn't seem to appeal to the regulars and there aren't enough of the others to equalize the loss of patronage.”
“I see what you mean.” And he did. “Let's keep it like you got it for another month. Give those backward Negroes a chance for something better.”
He tucked up a large fork of greens, and crumbled corn bread in the pot liquor. “Some people don't appreciate the better things in life.”
The second month showed the restaurant deeper in the red, and although I brought Guy to the restaurant daily and fed him T-bone steak while I ate veal cutlet, the chef complained that his refrigerator was jammed with spoiled food.
Mr. Cain told me not to worry. “They scared to go downtown and eat, and when I bring them the same food to their own neighborhood they won't even eat it. That's all right with me. I did my best.” He told the cook to clean out the refrigerator and go back to the old menu.
“Can you drive?”
“Yes.”
“I want you to take the car and pick up my boxers in the mornings. You drive them to Lake Merrit. They'll get out and run while you follow them. When they go clear around the lake, you pick them up and take them to the gym. Then you pick me up and I'll take you home, then I'll go back to the gym.”
Hooray! At last! A chauffeurette.
I guided the Cadillac slowly around the dark curves, and the sounds of the three men panting mixed with the soft slaps of the waves. Two boxers were large, muscular heavyweights who gave me unsmiling grunts when I picked them up at the run-down hotel. They sat like huge black monoliths in the back seat, while Billy, a cute little flyweight, joked in the front seat with me.
“Baby, I'll burn 'em up … with the uppercut. I'll cut their flab … with a little jab.”
Billy reminded me of the old Bailey and I determined to see him fight.
Cain bought me a brown suede suit and a matching snap-brim hat. My shoes, gloves and purse were suede, and I knew I was as sharp as anyone had a right to be.
I sat up front with him and four other fat old men who smoked cigars and passed fistfuls of money in the glaring lights. The whoosh of sound in the auditorium, and the frenetic