They got high. This time around, with everyone gone, with no late customers, Bill and Marie went out back of the building to smoke a joint. However, for whatever reason she had in mind, Lexi came looking for Bill. He called to her when he heard her calling to him and she came out the door too. So there they were, the three of them, standing on the side of the building getting high.
Lexi did not have any reason to have come looking for him other than to ask for piece of pie for her and Lorraine. Bill would have given it to her right off the bat if they were in the kitchen. But seeing them getting high, Lexi did not ask. She simply reached out her hand for the joint and told him what she’d come for while she smoked.
It was cold. They did not linger. They smoked the one joint, then a second, and only did the second because there were three of them. Bill didn’t care. He had plenty of weed. Lexi didn’t care. She was done with customers. Marie was happy. She was drinking beer, getting high and finally enjoying the white boy.
Bill would continually ask Marie about this. She would continually tell him that he was different from any of the black men she’d known. She’d tell him she was sure he wasn’t different from black men, just from the ones she’d known. The ones she’d known, like the ones Mary had known, according to what Mary had told Bill, satisfied themselves first and if they satisfied the female it was only a side effect.
Mary had described in detail what the men in her life had done to her sexually. She had done this only to characterize for Bill what her life had been like. As for Marie, Bill knew, everyone knew, Marie’s husband hit her. Bill knew, they all knew, he cheated on her. Payback’s a bitch.
Cheating. Down-low. On the DL. In one way or another, in both the west and east stores everyone was cheating and/or on the DL. Everyone. And people in glass houses…
So Lexi went back out into the dining room without a piece of pie. What she actually did was head out and head right back in, out the out-door and right back in the in-door.
“Almost forgot,” she said. “Can I have that piece of pie?”
Bill thought about it for a moment. What he was actually considering was whether or not he could get away with it without Tommy giving him a hard time. The answer to that was a definite yes. The answer was that Tommy wouldn’t care about a piece of pie after the day they’d just completed. So he gave Lexi a double piece of blueberry pie and asked her to do her best not to let Tommy see it.
“What you giving me?” Marie asked when she and Bill were alone in the kitchen.
Unobstructed by having to do other things, Bill was on his knees doing the first fryer. He was tired and high and feeling like he just didn’t give damn about anything at the moment.
“What you want?” he asked.
“That’s a dangerous question,” said Marie.
“Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t,” said Bill.
“What’s my options?”
“Everything’s on the table at this point.”
“Everything?”
“And anything.”
“Well…” Marie walked up beside Bill, leaned over and whispered something in his ear. It was a detailed something because she spoke for a bit. Whatever she said made Bill flush solid red in the face, a full crimson.
“And what do I get?” Bill asked.
“Sky’s the limit,” said Marie.
