Drive Me Crazy Read Online Free PDF Page A

way to Granny’s house. She was on her way to a scheduled booty call.
    “Your body ... your arms.” She reacted like most women, stared at my arms the way men stared at loaded guns. “Like ... muscles etched in ... in ... in chocolate.”
    “You ain’t seen my muscles.”
    “Maybe you should show me.”
    “You like chocolate?”
    “Love chocolate.” She licked her lips like she was addicted to the taste. “Love chocolate. Love mature men. Love mature men in nice suits and nice shoes.”
    Our stares became tropical.
    She touched my leg. “Cuff links, silk tie, shoes, suit, that tells a lot about a man. Tells me who he is or who he wants to be.”
    I touched her skirt, rubbed the leather over her inner thigh with two fingers. “Same goes for a woman.”
    We abandoned our drinks and she followed me out the front door into the bright lights and traffic in this part of the big city. Music followed her sugary walk, John Lee Hooker was back to singing, telling me that his woman left him early one morning and the blues had healed him, sang that the same blues could heal me too. Carlos Santana was cosinging with his guitar.
    Outside, a brother was hustling incense and oils with names like Black Sex, Bootylicious, even had Pussy; the Afrocentric sister next to him had every knockoff perfume ever made.
    Arizona said, “It’s cold as hell.”
    “Yeah. Unseasonably cold. Weatherman said it’s gonna be that way a few days.”
    “Been gloomy all week. Freezing out here.”
    Cold as hell in Southern California meant you might have to put on a T-shirt and socks with your shorts and sandals. Tonight, by L.A. standards, it was fur coat weather.
    Back Biters was situated in a rundown strip mall, between Geral dine’s Fish and Grits and Luther’s All Nite Washerette. Outside the pool hall stood a wall of chain smokers living in nicotine clouds. A few feet away there was a line of people getting fried catfish, trout, snapper, salmon; that high-cholesterol aroma fattening the air. The Washerette was packed with apartment dwellers, reminding me I had a couple of loads to do tomorrow. At least four women were inside Platinum Beauty getting their weaves and perms hooked up at midnight. One was sleeping underneath a dryer. Music bumped from every passing car.
    Arizona was moving her honey at a mellow pace, taking deep breaths like she was trying to get it together. Halfway across the uneven parking lot, I stopped her stroll, brought her to me.
    She tiptoed, put her arm on my waist, let the spirits on her tongue dance with mine in slow motion. I held her face in my hands and drank her for a while, the brisk air flowing over us.
    I kissed her neck, her ear, whispered, “What we gonna do?”
    She slid her hand between my legs, rubbed John Henry, gave me her tongue again.
    “You’re a fine man with so much duende, you know that, Driver?”
    “You have a lot of charm yourself.”
    “I’m serious.” She moaned. “Something about you excites a woman and makes her want to do things she knows she shouldn’t be doing. You have pheromones to be reckoned with.”
    Jermaine Dupri had Janet Jackson. Tonight I had Arizona.
    Bright lights covered us when somebody sped into the lot, hit a speed bump hard enough to make some noise. I jumped, blinded. Arizona reached into her purse, grabbed something and turned defensive. Vehicles had body language and that ride moved like a death threat.
    It looked like an armored car with chrome rims, but it was a Hummer. The nose-and-mouth-shaped grille looked like bared teeth. Those bright lights like angry eyes.
    That vehicle bulldogged past other cars, came to a sudden stop near my ride.
    The driver killed the lights, got out, moving fast.
    A few people stopped and checked out the bringer of the drama, others moved on.
    Five-five, but her heels made her five-eight. Caramel skin. Bambi-like eyes. Shoulder-length auburn hair underneath a scarf, Audrey Hepburn style. Low-rise jeans and a leather coat with