Tempest Rising - Diane Mckinney-whetstone [43]
“And smacked his lips and asked for more.”
“Take that shit back to Africa. Shit, I came to party.”
“Wait a minute, y’all, the brother got a point.”
“Yeah, the point his hair is shaped in that needs to meet the barber’s shears.”
The red, black, and green dashiki walked to the center of the circle and planted himself between Tyrone and Larry. He directed himself to Larry. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself. You old enough to be his father, ought to be teaching him about the struggles of peoples of African descent all over the world, and all you can do is call him out for a fight.”
“Hey, man, fuck you.” Larry started to swing at the dashiki, but the bouncer caught his fist, told him both he and dashiki had to go right this second, or he was gonna signal for his posse. He opened the door. Dashiki half pushed Larry into the outside sounds of the Strip.
Tyrone was surprised at the rate his heart thumped in his throat right now as Candy ran her hands up and down his back, told him he was not only cute and smart, but brave too. “Larry’s a serious boxer, plus all the people he knows in here,” she said, “you could have put that good-looking face of yours in serious jeopardy.”
Perry knew that too. He’d been sitting in a dark corner of the club, sipping vodka and stroking the arm of the woman sitting in his lap. Saw Tyrone come in, gawking as if he were a first-time tourist to New York amazed by the skyscrapers. He didn’t want to make his son feel like he couldn’t handle himself; he sensed he had that effect on Tyrone. So he kissed the shoulder of the woman he was with, laughed and clapped as the dancers did the bop and watusi, and tried not to keep watch over his son at the bar. Then he saw Candy walk by, knew she was working tonight because she always wore that yellow headband when she did her night job of coming on to the men at the bar, getting them to buy her drink after drink of scotch and soda that the bartender knew to fill only with soda, plus it kept the men at the bar keeping up with her, ordering drinks of their own. He whispered to Candy that he needed a favor for old times’ sakes, then pointed out Tyrone. He had just settled back down to kiss the arm of the woman he was with, whose name he could not remember, when Dashiki approached him and asked him if he could speak to him about the plight of black men. Then the voices got loud at the bar, the rest of the club silent, and Perry almost threw the woman from his lap as he jumped up to see about his son. He told Dashiki if he was for real about saving the lives of black men, take this ten-dollar bill as paternal gratitude for saving the life of that young man with his shirt collar sitting on the outside of his windbreaker jacket.
Candy could feel Tyrone’s fast breaths as she rubbed her hand up and down his back. She glanced at her watch; it was after two, and the club was still packed. This had been a good night; she knew that the 50 percent of the take at the bar that her conversation and soda guzzling brought in was at least forty dollars tonight. Not a bad take, and she didn’t even have to be touched. But suddenly she wanted to be touched. Not by the likes of Perry, who filled this bar every weekend, wives or steady women waiting up for them to finally creep home, waiting for that hello kiss so they could confirm their sugary lies. Tonight she really did want this young blood to touch her with his honesty, his fear, his newness to the life on the Strip.
She pulled off her yellow headband and wrapped it around her wrist, and then squeezed his neck and pulled his neck down to whisper in his ear, “Come on, young blood, I’m feeling shaky after what almost went down. Come on home with me tonight, baby; help me settle down. Please. Please.”
Tyrone tried to get his breaths to flow one into the other the way they were supposed to. His lungs wouldn’t cooperate. So he had to concentrate on his breathing. Told himself that’s why he couldn’t ponder over his love for Ramona right now. Nor could he try to figure out why, as