Months ago, before hooking up with the Crowes, Cuba first set eyes on Layla the Dragon Lady.
It was in the Blue Grass Room at Keeneland, the thoroughbred racetrack on the outskirts of Lexington; his boss Mr. Harry Burgoyne telling him, “Go on wait at the bar till I motion you to come out on the floor. out on b
Meaning they’d be doing one of their Boss and Dumb African routines. Cuba watched Mr. Harry walk out to address tables of horse lovers applauding his winning the three-hundred-thousand-dollar Maker’s Mark Mile not an hour ago.
The girl next to Cuba at the bar, Weezie, her dad one of the trainers, finished sucking up her Collins and said, “Doesn’t it piss you off the horse is called Black Boy?”
“They had to call it Black Boy,” Cuba said. “What else you gonna call this stud’s got all the fillies flippin their tails at him.”
The girl went off grinning to tell what he said and Cuba was looking at Layla the Dragon Lady, facing him in her dark glasses and shiny black raincoat a few feet away.
“Excuse me,” Cuba said, “but can you tell me what is the time?” Giving the words that clipped African sound he got from cabdrivers in Atlanta.
He watched her slip off her sunglasses this overcast afternoon in April to show her brown eyes holding on him like bullets. She smiled and her eyes turned soft.
“That was funny, what you said to Weezie.”
Cuba checking her nice nose and mouth, that kind of lower lip on a woman he liked to bite.
“But,” she said, “you forgot your African accent.”
He did, talkin about that fuckin stud Black Boy and trying to sound cool. He could ask how she recognized the accent, but didn’t. Cuba took a moment and said, “East or West Africa?”
Giving it back to this woman wanted to play with him.
She said, “West, Nigeria. I spent an entire year in Lagos with a transplant team. Came back to my home base, UK Medical.”
Cuba said, “I drove Mr. Burgoyne there one time, his kidneys actin up.”
“His kidneys are still working,” Layla said. “It’s his liver needs a rest.”
“Man likes his booze. Has a few he turns into a human being,” Cuba said. “So you’re a nurse, huh?”
She said, “Why not an MD?”
“You wouldn’t be playin with me,” Cuba said.
She told him she was a transplant nurse and Cuba said, “You like foolin with people’s organs?”
“When I can fool with them,” Layla said. “It depends on who’s doing the surgery. I’ve been assisting as long as some of the older guys’ve been switching organs, going on eleven years. I’ve seen enough kidney transplants I can make the switch myself and close up. One of the young guys, all he wants me to do is slap instruments in his hands and go to bed with him.”
She waited.
Cuba said, “You go for the older guys, huh?”
“You’re missing the point. The young guy comes out of the OR thinking he’s God, he’s just saved a patient’s life and expects me to reward him.”
“Yeah…?”
“I tell him I’m worn out. I’ve worked twelve hours, pre- and post-op besides surgery, I’m beat. He can’t believe I’m turning him down. We’ve had coffee a few times, he’s told me to call him Howie if I want. He goes, ‘Come on, I’ve got an empty room lined up. We can make it a quickie or do the other.’ ”
“You meet his desires?”
“Listen, will you? I can do the same surgery as Dr. Blow Job, who makes close to a million a year while I’m paid eighty-seven five. Does that mean I should go down on him?”
Cuba had to pay attention, quit thinking about biting her lip. She sounded pissed off, so he didn’t think she gave the doctor with the hard-on what he wanted. Now she switched to Cuba, asking him what he did in his previous life, before he became Mr. Harry’s boy. He told her he drove, raced dirt track, ran moonshine, dealt some reefer.
She said, “How much prison time have you done?”
He saw it coming and told her, “It took some years from me.” He said, “You want my sheet? I’ll see I can get you one. Cars, what I did time for, expensive ones.” Pretty sure he was telling this Dragon Lady what she wanted to hear.
It was that chick in the funnies she reminded him of, the Dragon Lady, used to be in Terry and the Pirates. Terry the ofay kid with the hair never got mussed. If he wasn’t fucking the Dragon Lady Cuba believed he must go the other way.
Layla seemed calm now, staring at him with those brown bullets she could turn soft as he looked on.
Layla said, “Cuba?” n La Ks (nt›Yeah…?”
“I’m tired of hospitals. Tell me what you’re tired of.”
Cuba saw Mr. Harry waving at him and said, “You gonna see it in a minute.”
T ime for the routine: Mr. Harry waving Cuba out to the tables of horse lovers, Mr. Harry holding a drink now. Good, ready to show his friends his idea of a regular guy. He watched Cuba coming around to the front of the room and Mr. Harry began to frown. This was part of the act, seeing Cuba in his black suit and black shirt, a bright lavender necktie popping out of the dark look.
Mr. Harry: “Who said you could wear my colors with your chauffeur’s uniform?”
Cuba telling himself to sound Ah-frican. A real African ever showed up at one of these he was fucked.
Cuba: “Was your missus, Boss.” He waited a couple of beats before saying, “It is your missus dresses me.”
This got a burst of laughs from the horse lovers.
Mr. Harry: “ Mrs. Harry told you to wear my racing colors?”
Cuba: “Because when we out, you always have me racing to get you to a men’s room, so I wear your colors.”
Mr. Harry: “When did I tell you to do that?”
Cuba: “You never have, Boss, but I believe is what you thinking.”
Mr. Harry, to the room: “I explained to Cuba that calling my winner today Black Boy was never meant as a racial slur.”
Cuba: “Yes, sir.”
Mr. Harry: “Tell my friends what you think of the name Black Boy.”
Cuba: “I’m proud the horse was name for me since it wins all its fuckin races.”
Bursts of laughter.
Mr. Harry: “Cuba, we don’t use African words here in polite society.”
More laughter, but not as much.
L ayla watched from the bar. She had told Cuba s Kd t="The was tired of hospitals; now he was showing her what he was tired of: playing the grateful darky, grinning with this asshole’s arm around his neck, Cuba reciting his lines on cue.
Mr. Harry was telling the Blue Grass Room it was unfortunate Old Tom got sick and passed away on him. Old Tom, bless his heart, had become fearful of traffic, always drove with his foot on the brake. “You weren’t patient,” Mr. Harry said, “it could make you irritable.” Mr. Harry paused for the Blue Grass crowd to laugh kindly at him. “But now Cuba,” Mr. Harry said, “he’d put his foot on the gas and leave it there. I asked him one time, ‘Cuba, you never stole cars by any chance, have you?’ What’d you tell me?”
Cuba saying, “I believe I tole you no, Boss, that is one thing the devil never made me do.”
Mr. Harry slapped Cuba’s shoulder, told him, “Get outta here,” the horse lovers laughing, and Mr. Harry joined a front table making room for him.
C uba walked back to the bar raising his hand to people applauding, Cuba nodding, grinning until he reached the bar and Layla set her drink in front of him. Cuba picked it up and finished the vodka without looking around. He said, “You know how many times I been the grateful nigga?”
“Everyone believed you,” Layla said.
“What he said about Old Tom was bullshit. He hired me and fired the old man, why he took sick and died.”
“Watching your skit,” Layla said, “I couldn’t help thinking, one day you’re gonna turn around, take Harry by the throat and strangle him in front of his friends. They’ll think it’s part of the act.”
Cuba said, “Drivin him in the Rolls, I’ve thought of aimin the car to send it off a curve, top of the grade. I bail out and watch the man lose his ass. Car hits and blows up, like in the movies. Real life you don’t get that much explosion. I’m drivin Mr. Harry… the man already has to take a leak. I see in my brights a stretch of road comin up, the side droppin away steep… I say to him, ‘Mr. Harry, get out your dick, we almost there.’ ”
Layla’s eyes on him turned warm. She said, “I think I’m falling in love with you.”
“Try me out,” Cuba said, “it won’t hurt none.”
He watched her take a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from the pocket of her raincoat-expensive-looking, a shiny black one-waited till she was smoking it before he said, “You know it ain’t allowed in here.”
“If they catch you,” Layla said.
“You like to cause a scene?”
“They say anything I take one more drag,” Layla said, “and put it out.” She moved closer. “Something I’ve wanted to tell you about Harry’s kidneys-”
“The time I brought him in?”
“He comes in once or twice a year.”
“The man takes a leak every twenty, thirty minutes. Set your watch by it.”
“That’s his prostate. His kidneys aren’t too bad. He has a pinched nerve in his lower back.”
“His sacroiliac fuckin with him,” Cuba said. “I had that. Kept me in bed till a chiropractor fixed me up.”
“Harry tells us to get donors with his blood type ready.”
“You need a kidney,” Cuba said, “I thought you had to wait in line.”
“Harry gives a million a year to the hospital fund. The donor gets a hundred grand the moment he shows up.”
“He wants a kidney so bad,” Cuba said, “give him one.”
“Or take the old one out,” Layla said, “and put it back in?”
Cuba grinned. “Come out the hospital a new man.”
He saw Mr. Harry getting up from the table as Layla said, “That’s kind of what I’m thinking.”
Cuba heard her but kept watching his boss shaking hands with people at the table. He said to Layla, “I expect to see you pretty soon now we lovers.”
She said, “How about tonight?”
Didn’t hesitate.
“Could be late, I get done haulin his ass around.”
“Come anytime. I’m in bed I’ll leave a light on.”
“Tell me where I’m going.”
She laid her hand on a cocktail napkin, folded, and brought it along the bar to Cuba. “It’s all here,” Layla said, “with a key to let you in.”
Cuba liked how her eyes turned soft looking at him. This was a cool woman with evil ways. The best kind. He said, “Why don’t you lift the kidneys offa Dr. Blow Job?” He said, “No, he’s too close. I think so’s Mr. Harry.”
“I have an idea how we’d do Harry.”
“You’re exposin your intenti ons,” Cuba said, “to a lover?”
“As soon as I heard you’re Ah-frican,” Layla said, “I knew you were my guy.”