She looked at Mahalia. “My sister doesn’t wear one.”
Deloy said, “Well, that’s because she was someone else’s property for so long. It left a bad taste in her mouth to be called PROPERTY. But I don’t suppose you have the same stigma.”
I hadn’t even thought of that. Mahalia had been the fortieth wife of the prophet himself, Allred Lee Chiles, who had died in a shootout with some feds. She’d escaped his clutches before that, however. “It’s up to you,” I told Oaklyn.
She smiled seductively. “I think I’d like that. To go on my new leather jacket.”
Deloy was frowning at something in the distance. “Why’s that ambulance here?”
The crowd now sort of surged away from Maximus and toward the front bar area. A certain feeling came over me, and I stood to fight my way toward the side door where the biggest concentration of people seemed to be. I found myself crowded next to Maximus anyway. He was an inch or so taller than I, so I asked,
“Do you know what happened?”
“Someone said the mayor was sick. But that’s not the mayor they’re carrying out on that stretcher.”
I jumped to see over or in between heads.
“Here,” said Maximus, “let me give you a boost.”
He threaded his hands together and I put my dirty boot in them as a stirrup so I could jump up and see what the fuck. What the fuck, indeed. Shumway was on his back on the stretcher flailing around blindly, as if he couldn’t see. It looked like he was puking, but had nothing left in his stomach, so he was dry heaving. His face was bloated and red and he looked like the miseries of a hundred plagues had been visited upon him. It was my crowning glory in a night full of victories, but there was more to come.
Maximus let me down, and suddenly Deloy was next to me. He asked, “Someone said something about the mayor being sick?”
“Yeah,” said Maximus. “A couple of guys came from the men’s room. Said he was giving the ol’ technicolor yawn into the toilet, then he’d sit on it because it was coming out the other way too. Well, that’s one way to win the election, right? If only we could keep him shitting through his other mouth the rest of the year.”
Something dawned on me. “Deloy. What did you do?”
The boy shrugged innocently, but he’d never been a good liar, and I saw right through it.
“Come clean. You’ve never lied to me before.”
He sank his hands deep in the pockets of his cargo pants. “Well, ah, I may have put some…”
“Some what?”
“Some, ah, mannitol into the mayor’s glass of white wine.”
Maximus and I looked at each other blankly. Then we burst into a hearty round of laughter. Mannitol was a common cutting agent for coke or meth. I recalled from the old days you could always tell when someone had cut your stuff with that, because immediately you had to run to the bathroom.
The words flowed freely now as Deloy raced to explain. “I was so hurt by that fucking nasty article in the paper! I knew it came straight from the pen of Ladell Pratt. He was in on it the day they kicked me to the curb, too, and I fucking hate the guy. Please don’t tell anyone what I did. I just don’t want to be his patsy anymore. I wish I could let him know it was me.”
I had to bro hug it out with Deloy. Pratt wound up going off in the ambulance with his buddy Shumway, probably mystified by his extreme reaction to a small amount of salad and crab. Rumors abounded in the room and the debauch was never the same, because some people believed the crab was bad and wouldn’t touch it. It left all the more for us, and we were full to bursting when we finally tapered off. We had giant Ziploc bags of crab to take home.
Nothing could stop us from going upstairs and dancing the night away to a DJ. The MC had already attracted its share of hang-arounds, lambs who were passed from brother to brother. These gals alternated their dances with the bachelors, everyone other than me and Gideon. I stayed with Oaklyn, even during the chicken dance, and once I took Mahalia as my partner.
But I stayed with Oaklyn the entire night, escorting her drunk ass back home, and even being cavalier and giving her privacy in her own room and bath. There would be plenty of time for all that. I didn’t want to push her.
CHAPTER TEN
OAKLYN
It was eight in the morning, and I was wearing my nurse’s uniform.