Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned (Socrates Fortlow 1) by Walter Mosley Read Free Book Online Page B

more’a me.”
    He got up and kissed her on the cheek before leaving. When his lips touched her skin a sound came from the back of her throat. Socrates heard that satisfied hum in his dreams every night for a month.
    {6.}
    Socrates only had four dimes, three nickels, and eight pennies left to his name. If he took a bus he’d be broke, but he was just as happy to walk. On the way home he thought about finding a job somewhere. Some kind of work, he thought, where you didn’t have to bleed and die for your meal.

D OUBLE S TANDARD
    {1.}
    It was an L.A. rain, straight down and hard. Socrates stood under the shelter of a glass bus stop. The walls had been smashed away but the roof was still intact. He stood in the gloomy twilight waiting for the RTD bus because there was a chill in his chest and three miles walking in the rain might have been his last walk.
    Across the street two lovers stood under a doorway. At least she stood in the shelter of the small adobe ledge that jutted out over the abandoned shop’s door. Socrates thought that the store was a baker’s shop at one time because there was a faded sign that had wan blue and white checker squares across it; the letters HEL were all that was left of the word spelled out over the blue design.
    A baker’s shop, Socrates thought. He could see in his mind’s eye the black men and women waking up at three a.m. and taking the same bus that he waited for to get there by four-thirty. He could almost feel the sleep in their eyes and the stiff yawns that came out when they tried to say good morning; the shiver in their bones as they uncovered the big blending machines and the bitter taste of coffee on the back humps of their tongues. A pattern as regular as those blue and white checks. Each one a perfect little square, each one exactly the same size as the one before it—and the one after.
    The paycheck had little blue and white squares on it, Socrates was sure. They made good money at the bakery, on the whole, because bakers worked long hours and long weeks.
    Socrates was happy thinking about those prosperous black people. Hard workers making money, taking the bus to their little houses down on Central, sending their kids off to school.
    He smiled and saw again the lovers wrestling in front of the boarded-up shop.
    The man was large, verging on fat. His unprotected backside was getting soaked by the rain cascading off the ledge. But he didn’t care at all. He hunched down over the small woman kissing and touching, pressing her hard against the door. She held on to his big neck with both hands, doing pull-ups to get to his lips in those few times that he reared back to look at her.
    The violent rhythmless rain accompanied their passion. They lunged with their mouths, moved their hands like blind beggars hustling after a dropped coin.
    “Ralphie,” she cried.
    Socrates barely heard her over the din of rain.
    Ralphie suddenly leaned back, taking her up with him until she could wrap her legs around his waist. She was wearing a short skirt. Her legs were bare. If she had on any underwear Socrates couldn’t make it out.
    The young woman rested her head on Ralphie’s shoulder and called out things into his ear.
    For some reason it all seemed to fit. The rain, the lost business, the lovers out in the empty street in the failing light.
    He turned away, giving them what privacy he could, and saw a bus coming down the avenue. He peered out intently, hoping that it was his bus—that he’d be home soon.
    {2.}
    “Ralphie! Ralphie!” the young woman screamed.
    Socrates stared harder at the bus.
    “Ralphie! The bus, baby!” she cried.
    The lovers came running across the street, splashing through puddles and squealing from the cold rain.
    In the shelter of the bus stop she smoothed down her short skirt and pushed back her gold-frosted, straightened hair. Even though their eyes met she didn’t really look at Socrates. Her smile was not for him. But he reveled in the glistening dark