Our Dark Prince (The Scottish Play)

X. God Save Your F*cking Soul

3
Robin
Natchez, Louisiana
October 31st, 2014
Time: 6:00 AM
____________________________

"Oi!"

Cursing in Cuban Spanish, Robin jolted awake with a startling fright – and slammed into the steering wheel of her 2011 Chevy. Grabbing a half empty bottle of Jack Daniels, Robin rubbed her eyelids and listened to her phone sing with a piercing screech and groaned. Sleep came with the ebbing of light ʼround these olʼ parts. As Robin listened to the recession of a babbling brook, foaming at the mouth like the grand olʼ Mississippi, the warmth of the world began to fade and sleep grew more and more enticing. Not even the naked selfies of l*sbian chics she wanted to hook-up on her phone roused her from her exhaustion. Tragic, really.

"Pick up, pick up, pick up the phone b*tch..."

Robin cursed.

Lafayette changed her ringtone. Again.

Robin looked at the passenger seat of her Chevy, the ripped up seating and the quilt Olivia, her youngest daughter with down syndrome, made her in a crocheting class with Lafayette and sighed with impatience.

       Sleep would have to wait.

"This is Robin DeMarcus," Robin grunted into the phone, rummaging through her purse for a packet of Marlboros or Lucky Strikes or anything to pass the time and make the mascara streaming down her face a bit more grunge-y and presentable.

"Lafayette, gimme the phone d*mn it–"

"Hey-y-y, baby girl. How you doing? What you doing?"

Cigarette plumes flowed from Robin's mouth like ink from the Gods as she stared at the streets that faded like her smoke rings. The black sky framed by a mirage of anger – rage and hate – and soon enough, LʼAmant de Nid, the Loverʼs Nest motel (™ʼd, of course), swallowed her smoke. Wincing as her head pounded, the shadows seemed to dance. Robin tried to block out everything: her baby boyʼs death, the pr*stitution, the r*pe. But no matter how much she tried, it bled into her mind – dripping into her brain like a leaky faucet. Etched there in stone.

      She was losing her mind, g*ddamn it.

"Nothing. Iʼm good, Lafayette, really," Robin muttered starkly.

Lafayette snorted.

"B*tch, donʼt lie to me. I saw you with a big-*ss bottle oʼ Jacks Daniels with some ganja on the side. Mine. Now listen, donʼt you go drinkinʼ that  sh*t. Do somethinʼ more proactive. Get mad. Tear into something. Sebastian is a dumb piece oʼ sh*t, same with that sidepiece oʼ yours, Scott. Robin, baby, take it from me: men ainʼt sh*t and you ainʼt gotta waste time being sad on them."

Crimson bundles of moonlight sunk their jagged teeth into her tattooed body, dissecting every calligraphic curve. She smoked like a chimney: furious, steely-eyed, hardened like a rock. The edges of her eyes, once dark brown, were now rimmed in red. She stared at her phone hopelessly, feeling almost...guilty. Adulterous. Horrible. The rain swept over the land in unison; not cleansing, or baptizing like the clichés would describe, but suffocating. She was suffocating, and she couldnʼt focus. Couldnʼt concentrate, couldnʼt –

"Sorry about that, love," Wil Harris – her handler – said into the phone breathlessly, British accent bleeding into the receiver.

  A Vietnamese man and a Black man walk into a bar.

  Robin needed another d*mn drink.

"Lafayette was being a pompous fool," he reiterated.

"The pompous fool in the room is you, homie. Leaving that fine-ass country oʼ yours with their fine-*ss men for a sh*t hole- like Catahoula County. Talkinʼ about pompous fools. F*ck you."