Sucking her teeth reminds her.
Baby takes eyes sheened green by their wet and the neon across the street. She watches her own hand pick at a thing between her teeth. Doesn’t help to look, but she does; it’s automatic, like certain instincts. Still, she sighs and makes herself stop before she chips off her new blue polish, slumping further into her arms, folded on her knees.
Pushes her tits right up so they might be stuck in her teeth.
She smiles at nobody with teeth sheened green by their wet and the neon across the street.
E’rything’s wet. Grunt, a heave of her shoulders. Tries to roll it right off her tongue – even though she’s not speaking – the way Cokie would. E’ry. Sou’ern. So there ain’t hardly a ‘th’ in it though that’s the strongest thing about it. The soft, deep, cleft of that ‘th’. The ‘r’.
The way it opens her throat, trying, reminds her of other things and she stubbornly forces her mind back to Cokie. Hell of a night – ain’t nobody out – it’s going to rain over there. She don’t have to think that way.
Somepeople don’t pay attention to nothing – smells or winds or anything, that’s why she’s here – but Baby’s a mind full of details, and sucking her teeth reminds her.
A bit of green stuck in her teeth. Baby never had much direct use for greens, but Cokie insisted on them, twisted and turned their budget around them.
“Don’t need no goddamn perfume, Baby,” she grumbled in her big coat, at the table, making room for rutebegas. And when Baby pouted, “Use your damn magazines, you cheap ho.”
She didn’t mean it mean. She just got sullen right before she was about to do something for you. Like put a long pencil streak through ‘rutebega’ and save up for four months to buy your perfume she doesn’t even like.
“At least it ain’t garlic,” Baby would say, mimicking the memory of herself to an empty alley and emptier street.
Cokie always smelled of garlic. Didn’t care. Meant she worked. Though sometimes, when they went out, she would sit over the sink with lemon juice and salt and scrub and scrub and scrub, getting right up under the nails. A curse on her face if not off her lips.
Was it salt? Baby’s head cocked like a bird, but there wasn’t any way for her to answer. A car sputtered past and she flinched but it was nothing. Looked like salt. She could almost taste lemon juice and salt on her tongue, and the taste of Cokie’s skin...
Something sick. Something not good. If she didn’t get to wash that was, and Baby didn’t always wait. Sick, wilted greens. Old garlic, mushed and rotten. The way food goes bad and still smells like food.
Weren’t nothin’. That was just the way she smelled. Cokie, because Baby didn’t hear her name right and blurted it out and didn’t ever get to fixing it. Cokie because Baby kept saying it, kept coming round, wouldn’t let her leave her sight the first time they met. Cokie because she was nervous and Baby was not and the taste of sweat and rotted vegetables didn’t bother her. Cokie was brave about a dozen things, good about a dozen more, but not about meeting Baby, and not about staying with Baby, which made sense when you thought about it. Baby’s memories are good. Baby remembered her taste.
Garlic does strange things to a body. Cokie had a very particular taste.
Lightening had been flashing some time, and now it rolled out the thunder, like the tongue of a barking dog realizing it’s met a friend not a foe. Baby stands, working the feeling back into her knees. It ain’t wet, but it might as well be; so much water in the air it’s like the lightening will boil them from afar.
Them.
Paces; stride long, hard-soled shoes like stone skipping on the pavement. Almost sounding like puddles. Baby fiddles with her purse, squeezes out a bottle of perfume, digs at the bottom, fingers scratching on the wrong side of fake leather. She flicks the lips of seam because it’s been that kind of night. Tongue between her teeth.
Scritch scritch. Holds out the bottle of perfume. He knows she’s there because she ain’t trying to be silent. He can smell her – should’ve been able to ages ago. He’s looking where she’ll be as he passes the alley mouth. Just lookin’. He’s got to get in. It’s going to rain.
Sees the perfume bottle. Misses the spike. She puts it in his stomach, because she can put it anywhere she damn well likes, the thing’s silver. He kind of stares, and if it weren’t for the bubbling and frothing of black blood, Baby might think she’d made the sort of mistake she never makes. He’s still looking at her with that stupid, I’ll just look a minute, it’s going to rain, look.
It’s going to rain over there.
Wind isn’t right for it to come this way, as any damn fool can tell. You’d think a thing with senses like that would pay attention to the damn wind.
Some people don’t pay attention to nothing.
Baby don’t want to be out, all the same, and he isn’t even fallen by the time she’d moved on. Sucking her teeth as she steps over the body in her big high heels. She’s thinking home – she’s thinking meals and smells and taste – because sucking her teeth reminds her–
Has to stop herself in the middle of the street, lit up and green, red nail half-way to her teeth to dig out something green.
Stupid. Some people don’t pay attention to nothing. She tromps back to the body in tiny little steps – stomp stomp stomp, sounding wet in the heat and humid – and wipes her hand clean on Mr. I-Don’t-Have-A-Nose’s fancy boardroom coat. Taking a second thought, she wipes the spike off, too.
Sticks it to her teeth, and... relief. Sucks them once to make sure.
Enough foolishness. All she’s thinking of is home.
Gloria is there.