Prudence Couldn't Swim (24 page)

When he was on top of her, she reminded herself that she was doing this for little Netsai.

“My daughter will have no future if her mother remains a simple accounts clerk in Harare,” was her thinking.

Baba Charity was slipping his pants off. She reached down to help him. Some nights they got stuck around his knees.

“Next month I'm going to Paris,” he said, “the city of love. We can go together.”

Tarisai had always dreamed of seeing the world. She'd read books of love and romance in Paris and London. She had a postcard of the Eiffel Tower that Alberto had sent her.

Baba Charity's offer prompted a vision for Tarisai. She saw herself coming through the customs at Harare Airport laden with dozens of plastic bags from duty free shops in Paris. She'd be carrying perfume, clothes for Netsai, and her dream of dreams: a full-length black leather coat with a fox fur collar.

A few weeks later Tarisai was lifting off from Harare International, her first time in the air. Baba Charity had the middle seat, pinning her against the window. As the plane rose into the night sky, her stomach rocked. She glanced at the lights of the city out of the corner of her eye. The cars looked like little fireflies moving down the roads. The inside of her knees started to sweat. In fact, she was sweating almost everywhere. The little round vent above her head kept blowing cold air but the flow of perspiration didn't abate.

One of the air hostesses, Svikai, was an avenue girl who lived on Tarisai's street. She slipped Tarisai and Baba Charity several extra tiny bottles of Johnny Walker Red. When Baba Charity took a trip to the bathroom, Svikai stopped by to chat.

“Wakakecha mari,”
she said to Tarisai, “you've caught a lot of money there. Taking you to France while the wife stays behind.
Uri tsotsi.
You're too clever.”

“I pay for this,” said Tarisai. “He has the face of a giraffe and the body of a hippo. I make him keep his trousers on. That way I can feel his wallet from start to finish. Makes it all worthwhile.”

Svikai promised Tarisai more of those little bottles of whiskey.

“That way he'll be too drunk to think of anything but sleep tonight,” she told Tarisai.

The two women giggled. Avenue girls were full of tricks.

In Paris Baba Charity spent most of his days in meetings. Tarisai played tourist and shopper. While roaming the streets she attracted the attention of dozens of men who spoke to her in French and halting English. Tarisai didn't understand a word of French but she learned a few phrases. Her mind was still as sharp as in those university days. She just applied it in different ways.

One handsome fellow from Congo invited her to meet him at the Club Congolais that night.

“Kanda Bongo Man is playing,” he promised her. Tarisai and her friends loved Kanda. When they partied with their sugar daddies, they always played his cassettes. The rumba music gave them a chance to, as Tarisai liked to say, “unleash an optimum display of our assets.”

After Baba Charity fell into his drunken snores at 9:30,Tarisai sneaked into a skin-tight leopard body suit and headed for the Club Congolais. She didn't find the man who had invited her but she had no shortage of partners willing to buy her drinks.

She wasn't looking for conversation or any quick sexual liaison. Her relationship with Cephas had hardened her against any notion of romance, even in Paris. As she always told her friends, “Relationships are a pragmatic affair. I get what I can from them. Let the old men spill their hearts. Mine is steel.”

She danced the rumba the whole night, fighting off arms, hands, lips, and more intimate parts of her pursuers. The excitement of the music, the thrill of being surrounded by an energetic young crowd took her attention away from any notion of time. No one put on a better show than Kanda Bongo Man. Tarisai especially admired the two women who sang backup. Their tantalizing twirls and twists gave Tarisai many ideas about how to liven up her avenue girl routine.

By the time she finally looked at a clock it was nearly six in the morning. Baba Charity came from the old school: early to bed, early to rise. He'd have been awake for at least an hour by now; probably have taken a shower, shaved, maybe even have put on his tie and jacket. Ready for business. This morning, for once, business would not be uppermost in his mind. A much bigger issue would be plaguing him: where was his sugar plum?

Though Baba Charity was a calm, calculating businessman, he
tolerated no nonsense in his sexual companions. A girl who didn't show him proper respect was a bad investment.

By the time Tarisai dragged her sweaty, alcohol-reeking body through the door of the hotel room. Baba Charity had already swallowed three shots of cognac. The old guard drank early in the day. To top it off, Tarisai had forgotten that this was his day of respite from the meetings. He'd planned to walk through the streets of Paris with his showcase girl garnishing his arm. Instead he smelled the smoke and perspiration of other men polluting the luxurious suite his money had paid for.

“Sorry, Baba Charity,” she said, “I couldn't sleep so I went out for a drink. I didn't want to disturb you. I'll shower and be ready just now.”

Baba Charity didn't reply. He twirled his brandy snifter in his hand while she undressed for the shower. Then he set down his glass and loosened his belt.

Tarisai had never feared Baba Charity. He was a big, slow man. Methodical, not the type for violence. Along with his enormous pocketbook, his tranquil demeanor was one of the reasons Tarisai chose him over Alberto and the others. She never realized that the combination of jealousy, alcohol, and humiliation could transform her sugar daddy.

She wrapped a towel around her waist, her breasts bouncing freely as she searched for the shampoo. She sensed his approach. She turned to embrace him. A few touches to the right places and the old man would melt, especially when there was only a towel between him and the naked splendor of this young beauty. She could wash off his mess in the shower.

He caught her off balance with a flat hand to the chest. She tripped and fell onto the bed.

“Come to me, Daddy,” she said, holding up her arms. If she could change the mood, everything would be all right. The belt cracked against her cheek. She could smell the blood. As she tried to retreat he hit her twice more across the back. She felt the buckle slice into the skin on her shoulder blades.

“You bitch,” he screamed, “you don't take my money to make me a fool. When I pay, you stay in my bed.”

The blood leaked slowly down her back as she scrambled toward
the headboard and tried to regain control of the situation. Once sex was off the agenda, her naked state lost all its power.

Baba Charity's glasses had fallen onto the floor but he still had a firm grip on his belt. He moved around the bed. She slid away from him and ran toward the door. He caught her with a slash to the buttocks as she crossed the threshold to the living room. If the suite wasn't so huge, he would have pummeled her far more. While she fumbled with the chain on the front door, she felt his hands wrap around her throat. She twisted around enough to look him in the face. She saw only a monster. The whites of his eyes looked as big as soccer balls. Hatred flowed though him like an electrical charge. For a few seconds, she thought she might perish right there, naked in a hotel room far from her home and her beloved Netsai. She couldn't breathe.

She knew his body well enough to find his wrinkled up old balls and squeeze them with all the force she could summon. If she could deliver pleasure, she could also deliver pain.

As her hand tightened into a fist, he screamed and let her go. She grabbed a tablecloth and rushed back to the door, wrapping herself like an African princess in the elegant white linen on which they'd eaten
coq au vin
just a few hours earlier. Tarisai had even enjoyed the red wine.

As she closed the door, Baba Charity lay on the floor groaning and rolling from side to side like a wounded rhino.

Tarisai had little trouble convincing the hotel manager that her husband was the aggressor in what she called an “unfortunate domestic confrontation.”

With the discretion of the French, the manager persuaded Baba Charity to depart from the hotel and arranged for Tarisai to get back into the room to retrieve her luggage, passport, and return air ticket.

As she gathered her things, Baba Charity informed her in Shona that she was now on her own. When she looked inside her wallet, she found he'd removed every cent. She was alone in a foreign country and flat broke.

The hotel manager offered Tarisai a free night's lodging in order to smooth over the cracks and ensure no untoward publicity emerged from the incident.

Tarisai considered returning to the Club Congolais and attempting to befriend some free-spending males in an effort to extend her stay. But she found the bustling world of Paris too difficult to tackle with an empty pocket and a language she couldn't understand. At least the hotel nurse attended to the gash on her cheek, applying butterfly tape. She promised Tarisai there'd be only a tiny scar.

Without the anticipated armloads of clothes for her daughter or the full-length leather coat, Tarisai got back on the flight to Harare the night after her encounter with Baba Charity. Her legs and back ached from where he'd swatted her with the belt and she had bruises on her throat from his choking fingers. She had, though, seen another world—a world full of glitz, bright lights, and elegantly dressed people. No one in Paris rode in a dilapidated Matambanadzo bus, walked barefoot on dirt paths, or drew water from a river. The trip had whetted Tarisai's appetite. She would find a way to pick the fruit of the tree of abundance that grew overseas. The future of her daughter depended on it.

I
drove Red Eye straight from the jail to my house and poured him a big shot of Wild Turkey. The three floor fans had made a little progress on getting rid of the stink.

Red Eye on the other hand looked like he'd been in ten train wrecks. Tsiropoulos neglected to tell me about his broken nose.

“We've got to get you to a doctor,” I told him.

“I gotta sleep first,” he said as he flopped down on the couch, Jap flaps and all.

“The body needs time to recover from hot dog overdose, then getting the shit beat out of you. I think I'm suffering from that disease the soldiers get.”

“Post-traumatic stress disorder?”

“That's it. PTSD. I'm gonna sue their ass.”

“You ain't gonna sue nobody,” I said. “You told me you're going to Rio.”

Red Eye tucked two of the sofa pillows under his head and stretched out like he was down for the count but his eyes were still wide open

“You overdid it with the Pine-Sol, bro,” he said.

“Rio,” I said, “what's up with Rio?”

He said he needed another shot of Wild Turkey, then we could talk about Brazil.

“It's scary,” he said.

I set the Wild Turkey bottle down on the coffee table next to him and teed up another round. He downed it in one gulp. Red Eye never talked about “scary.”

“Washkowski said we were going down for that African bitch,” Red Eye told me, “said the next stop for you and me would be death row at Quentin.”

“He's a punk. That's all small talk. Tsiropoulos was just here. He had a talk with Jeffcoat and his lawyer. They're gonna call off their dogs if we back off.”

“You mean that's why they cut me loose?”

“Yeah.”

He grabbed the bottle and took a big hit. Red Eye never liked glasses that much anyway.

“Kirkland was pissed as hell,” he said, “told me Washkowski was on his own mission here. They're going to discipline him.”

“You already handled that with the bucket,” I said. “Besides, Kirkland's no big boy, just a squirrely little PO.”

I let Red Eye hit on the bottle again before I told him about the connection between Washkowski and Jeffcoat.

“They go way back,” I said.

The fans hummed quietly in the background as Red Eye rolled into a ball and started to fade away.

“At least you saved your carpet,” he said as he drifted into a deep sleep. After a few seconds, he was snoring like a sick warthog.

He didn't even budge when I slipped the Jap flaps off his feet. No one had ever slept on my couch with their shoes on. It was no time to start compromising. In the meantime, the answers to my other questions would just have to wait; I still had the Jap flaps in my hands when the phone rang.

M
andisa was calling me to let me know she got a reply from Garikai Mukombachoto.

“He's Prudence's brother,” she said. “Told me how sad all the family was to get the news. How they would miss her.”

“Sounds like a gut buster.”

“He said she'd been their role model and provider for years, that things were getting harder and harder in Zimbabwe with the evictions and all.”

I had no idea what evictions she was talking about. Were landlords on the rampage, throwing people's furniture off apartment balconies? I wasn't even sure they had apartments in Africa.

“So how was she a role model, hustling tycoons?” I asked.

“I told them she died in a car crash while driving her new BMW. It seemed easier that way.” I didn't think Mandisa knew how to lie like that. You always have to keep your eye on a liar.

“Can I see the letter?” I asked.

“Of course,” she said. “I've got something else for you too.” She told me to visit her at work that night. “Newman's been bothering me again,” she added.

“Be careful,” I said, “he's a straight up j-cat.”

“A what?”

“I mean like he's kinda crazy.”

“Don't worry,” she said, “I can take care of myself.”

I didn't know what to say. Mandisa was good at resuscitating old men in the park but she'd be in over her head if someone like Newman got heavy with her. And if Jeffcoat was telling the truth, Newman could be a suspect again. But then could I really even believe what Mandisa
was telling me? Maybe Newman was bonking her instead of harassing her, for all I knew. Why would an African woman worry about lying to a white ex-con?