Geoffrey Philp

“Coward Men Keep Sound Bones”

Randall Edwards had always been a cautious man. During the last year of his six years of marriage to Angela whenever he went out with his friend, Wallace, on a Friday night, and turned to the girls from the Palace on 79th and Biscayne, he would only get hand jobs from the hookers or if she was really cute and he checked her gums, he would allow her to give him a blow job. And when he came home to Angela, he would make sure that he had bathed and washed properly before slipping under the comforter and beside Angela’s body before she moved away from him.

Six months after the final settlement, on the Friday before the Labor Day weekend, Wallace, who had been his friend since high school, slurred over a frothy mug of Bud,

“Man, you would never believe who I saw last week.”

       “Who?”

       “Desiree Marshall.”

Randall placed his mug on the counter and wiped his lips a clean napkin.

       “You’re lying. You’re lying, bro.”

       “I ain’t lying, man. I ain’t lying. And you would believe where.”

       Randall imagined that Wallace had seen Desiree at the Aventura Mall or downtown in the Government Center, and wondered if he had gotten her number, so he could look her up.

      “Where?”

     “Down by the back of the Black Madonna, man.”

      “Now I know you’re lying.”

      “If I’m lying, you’re paying.”

       “I know you’re lying.”

“Come with me and you’ll see.”

Wallace gulped down the rest of the beer in his mug, and Randall left his on the counter. Wallace drank the rest of Randall’s. Randall paid for the five rounds and tipped the bartender before they left Club Paradiso, their favorite place to drink ever since their company, Xymax Inc. crashed with the other dot.coms. Club Paradiso was the only bar where Randall and Wallace could drink without fear of being recognized by the kids from Biscayne College, one of the few surviving HBC’s in Miami.

As they drove through the streets of Liberty City, Randall wondered how Desiree had come to this. When they were in high school, “luminous,” was the only word that could describe her. He and his cousins used to walk by her house every day on the way to school, even though it was out of the way. It had become so much of a habit that the younger generation of Edwards now, without thinking, took the same circuitous route to school even though most of the people from the neighborhood were either in jail, died or simply moved on.

Randall and Wallace were the survivors and they prided themselves on the fact that they had done it all without their families. Randall’s mother had left his father when he was three, so Randall had been brought up by his father and several “aunts.” The strange thing was Wallace thought Randall was the lucky one.

They had remained friends even from the early days of starting a technology club in high school where they learned how to design software for video games, and a chess club, where they led their team to three consecutive victories over the rich kids from Coral Gables. They retired the trophy to Mr. Reid, the principal, as a tribute to him because he was the first one to recognize their talent and taking a cue from the football team, he bought them T-shirts with their names across the back. For a brief moment, they were as popular as the guys on the football team and weren’t just those “Black Geeks.”

Randall gave Desiree his T-shirt. She had worn it to school every day since they won the state championship and he thought that soon he would have the courage to ask her out on a date or even get a kiss. They continued smiling and talking with each other at lunch and he would walk with her home after school. She had even touched his hand one afternoon when he left her by her gate. Randall couldn’t have been happier.

Then one day Desiree just handed the T-shirt back to him. The next thing he knew, Angela, the most popular girl in the school and the principal’s niece, was kissing him in front of Desiree and the whole school which made them a couple. Everything happened quickly after that.

He soon learned that Desiree was seeing another boy and that they were going to get married after graduation. Randall would have been depressed if Angela hadn’t invited him over to her house one Friday night when her parents were out. Looking back now, he realized Angela had seduced him. It was his first time with a girl and she was always willing. He would be having sex with Angela four times a week while her mother worked as a private nurse for some rich white people on La Gorse Island. Life was sweet

            He and Wallace were offered jobs to train with Xymax to design software. Their starting salary was thirty thousand a year and by the time he had left they were making seventy thousand. Before Randall knew it, he was married to Angela who until she found her vocation as a consultant for a loan company, stayed at home and took classes at a Biscayne College.

After six years of marriage and the Xymax folding, Angela moved to Texas and Randall remained in South Florida. Through it all, Wallace had stuck with him and got him a job at the college. Then, they started drinking together. They had started with sports bars, then to nightclubs and strip clubs and from one dingy bar to the next. There were no new prospects on the horizon and fixing computers at the college wasn’t cutting it.

Randall thought Wallace was lost as they kept circling from Little Haiti and back to Liberty City until he spotted a group of hookers hanging out behind Club Nouveau. And then he saw Desiree. She was high. He could see it in they way that she staggered up the street. But when she stopped and steadied herself, he could still see the pride was still there. She was still living up to the name that her mother had given her so she would stand out from the rest of the girls with names like Sheniqua, Raywanda, and Tirabella. He could still feel the place on his hand where she had touched him and then left him. Maybe he would allow her to give him a blow job.

Turing off the lights on the car, Wallace coasted up to the sidewalk where the hookers had already unbuttoned their blouses and were baring their breasts. Desiree walked up to the car and tapped on the window. Randall rolled down the window.

“Back for more, eh. I sucked you off real good the last time, didn’t I. Real good. I told you I could suck the cork out of a wine bottle.”

Wallace turned to Randall and gave him a sheepish apologetic look, but Randall didn’t care. Ten years ago, it would have mattered.

Desiree’s eyes focused and when she saw Randall in the passenger seat, she wanted to back away, but when Wallace shook a bag of rocks in front of her, she knocked on the back window of the car. Wallace unlocked the car door.

“Let’s go,” she said as she piled into the back seat to the cheers of the other hookers,

“You go, girl. Treat em real good.”

Wallace turned on the lights and peeled away from the corner. He did a u-turn on Biscayne Boulevard, and headed straight for the Vagabond Hotel. He could have done it in the car like the last time or gone back to her place, but he knew Randall only too well, so he paid for the room.

“I’ll go first cause like I said if I’m lying, you’re paying.”

Randall nodded. It didn’t matter

As Wallace walked up the stairs with Renee he passed her the rocks. Randall watched everything from the car.

He watched the lights go on and Wallace’s shadow, bounce against the window, sometimes tall, sometimes short. In five minutes, Randall came out of the room smiling and zipping up his fly, said. “She’s all yours, bro. You can pay me later for everything.”

Randall hesitated. It wasn’t the first time that he’d been with a hooker since his marriage fell apart, but was this was Desiree. He climbed the stairs.

When he opened the door, he glanced over at the lamp on the scuffed night table with plastic flowers and a condom beside a brown ashtray. Renee had taken off all her clothes and was wearing a red teddy. Stretch marks curved around her waist and stomach down into a mass of pubic hair.

He had dreamed about something like this all through high school, but not like this. Her hair was tangled and she had dark circles under her eyes. Still, her face was still beautiful. Despite the years of abuse, her cheeks still had a glow like copper and the long black hair she had inherited from her Seminole grandmother rested in a clump on her shoulders.

“So, how much do I owe you.”

Desiree began to cry. She patted on the bed for him to sit beside her but he refused until she looked up at him with her beautiful black eyes. She still had it. Randall sat beside her and held her shoulder. She sobbed on his chest and he let her. This was the closest he had ever come in contact with a hooker’s body fluids.

“What happened, Desiree?”

She cried for another ten minutes before the words could come out, but she told him about when her mother died and she didn’t have a home, so she moved in with an uncle who took her in. For a price. It started out with a little weed, then crack and when he died from AIDS, she was out on her own.

“I mean between us in high school?”

“You mean you still don’t know?”

“What?”

“Angela told me that you both were a couple and that I was trying to steal her man. And when she came up and kissed you in front of me, I knew she was right and that you were playing me. Why did do me like that Randall? I didn’t deserve that, Randall. I didn’t deserve that. Not from you.”

“Why did you give me back the T-shirt?”

“What was I supposed to do? Keep on wearing the T-shirt when you belonged to another girl? I ain’t no fool, Randall.”

Randall was about to get up from the bed, but Desiree held him down and began unzipping his pants.

“No, I can’t do this. Not now.”

“He promised me more rocks next week if I did this.”

The beers were getting the better of him and Desiree’s seemed stronger now that Wallace had given her the rocks. She pulled out his penis and as he looked down to see her lips, he exploded in her mouth.

“Damn, you are quick. A hundred dollars your friend told me. He wasn’t paying for time, just work.”

Randall threw five twenties on the bed. It was too much, but he didn’t care. He just wanted to be out of the room and as he walked down the stairs, he never looked back.

As he zipped up his pants and got into the passenger’s seat, he looked up at the lights in the hotel room.

“Man. You must have fucked her real good. Did you use the helmet I left for you on the table?” You must have been a stallion, bro. Finally got that puss, you always wanted too. Damn, bro, I always told you were the lucky one.”

‘Yeah.”

He wasn’t angry with Wallace, he meant well. And Wallace did leave him a condom after all.

The lights in the hotel room went off as the car pulled out of the driveway. Wallace headed straight for the I-95. The building and the lights if Miami blurred by the window. Randall looked down at his hands. When he slipped alone into bed tonight and as he bathed, he wondered how he would ever be clean again, for he knew he would never wash off that night.

Cover Design: Joseph McNair