The Black Market

by Kiki Swinson

I drove a 2015 Nissan Maxima, and it wasn’t anything fancy, but it was mine and I loved it. When Terrell and I were together, he tried on several occasions to buy me a few nice cars, but I always turned him down. I remember one time he tried to buy me a Mercedes-Benz, and it was nice too, but I told him no thanks. I’m good with what I already have.

  As I drove away from my apartment I thought about what store I was going to go into. Where I live we didn’t have a lot of high-end stores, so I called Jillian and asked if she wanted to ride with me to Richmond. When she said yes, I drove by my grandmother’s house, picked her up, and then we hopped on Highway 64.

  While we were driving, Jillian kept getting one phone call after the other from street hustlers wanting to get their hands on a few bottles of Percocet and Vicodin. With every phone call she got she would look at me and try to give me the guilt trip. I told her butt to leave me alone because I was not taking another bottle of pills from the pharmacy.

  “Misty, we could make a whole lot of money.”

  “Don’t you think I already know that?”

  “Well, you act like you don’t.”

  “Listen, I’m not trying to go to jail behind you and whoever you were talking to on the phone. I’m trying to stay out here on the streets. A prison uniform will not look good on me at all.”

  “Stop being dramatic. You know you got this weak setup at your job and you won’t even take advantage of it.”

  “Call it what you want. But I’m not taking another pill bottle out of the place.”

  “Yeah, whatever.”

  * * *

  As soon as we arrived at the mall in Richmond, we headed straight into the Saks Fifth Avenue store. I’d been here once or twice before, so I knew where the handbags were. I walked over to the handbag department and saw the bag I wanted from ten feet away. “There it is,” I said aloud as I walked toward the signature Louis Vuitton bag with a pink design on the inside.

  Jillian followed me. “Yes, I love it,” she agreed.

  Fortunately for me there was a salesperson in the department, so she helped me retrieve the bag from the shelf. “How much is it?” I asked the Caucasian woman.

  “Fifteen hundred dollars. That’s not including tax,” she told me.

  “Okay, great, I want to get it,” I said while I was taking money from my purse.

  “Misty, that bag is really nice,” she pointed out. “Now just imagine, if you get down with the program you could buy at least two or three of them a month and put a few dollars towards your high-ass student loans. You know them bills out of control,” she continued.

  I sighed. She had a point. “You’re going to find a way to get me to change my mind, aren’t you?” I questioned her.

  “I just want to see you shine. And what better way to do it than to pull in some coins?”

  “Ma’am, how much do I owe you?” I asked the woman, refusing to entertain what Jillian had just said.

  “The total is $1,630.21.”

  I pulled out $1,700 and handed it to the woman so I could purchase my bag. While I waited for the change, I stood there proudly because it felt good to treat myself to something as nice as this without worrying about a man taking it back from me. I can honestly say that I really feel good about myself.

  Immediately after the saleswoman handed me my bag and the change, Jillian and I decided to have lunch. So we went to a nearby restaurant, sat down and had something to eat. It was an American cuisine type of restaurant. Their signature meals on the menu were all American cheeseburgers. I ordered a bacon cheeseburger with fries and Jillian had a regular cheeseburger and an order of onion rings. She even topped it off with a strawberry milkshake. I am lactose intolerant, so I got a Sprite and it was good.

  While we sat there and ate, my cell phone started ringing. I pulled it from my purse and looked at the caller ID. I started not to answer the call when I noticed it was my mother. It takes so much of my energy to deal with her. “Who’s calling you?” Jillian asked me while I held the phone in my hand.

  “My mother.”

  “Answer it,” Jillian said as if it was an easy task.

  “Why don’t you answer it?” I said and pushed the phone in her direction.

  She took it and before she answered the call I instructed her to tell my mother that I was busy doing something and that I would call her back. Jillian agreed. And when the call went to the fourth ring, Jillian answered. “Hello,” she said and then she put the call on speaker so I could hear every word of the conversation.

  “Who is this?” my mother asked.

  “Aunt Kathy, it’s me, Jillian.”

  “Where is Misty?”

  “She’s in the grocery store picking up some stuff and I’m sitting in the car waiting for her to come back out,” Jillian lied.

  “What store are you guys at?” my mother wanted to know.

  “Walmart,” Jillian lied again.

  “Well, go in there and tell her to buy me a twelve-pack of Coronas and bring them by here,” my mother instructed Jillian.

  “Aunt Kathy, we’re not at a Walmart in your area.”

  “Then where the hell are you?”

  “We’re in Richmond.”

  “Why the hell are you in Richmond?”

  “Because I needed to get a new birth certificate.” Jillian’s lies continued. I mean, she was pulling one lie after the next out of her bag.

  “Well, tell her to call me when she comes out of the store,” my mother said.

  “All right,” Jillian said and then she disconnected the call.

  “At one point I thought you was about to fold on me,” I commented while Jillian cracked a smile.

  “I wasn’t expecting for her to ask me all those questions,” Jillian explained.

  “You know how my mother is. She’s so freaking nosy. And she always wants money or for me to bring her a case of beer. I’m so tired of her bullshit!”

  “Hopefully one day it’ll get better.”

  “Girl, please, she’s going to be like that until she dies,” I stated and then I started digging back into my plate of food.

  Not too long after we finished our food, Jillian and I got in my car and headed back to our city. Normally driving from Richmond to the Tidewater area, it would take an hour and a half, but for some reason I got us back to the area in one hour.

  “Coming in?” Jillian asked me after I pulled up to our grandmother’s house.

  “No, I’m kind of tired. So I’m gonna go home. But I’ll probably come back over here tomorrow.”

  “A’ight, well call me if you need me,” Jillian told me.

  “All right,” I said, not knowing what she meant by that because I don’t remember the last thing she did for me. She was more likely to call me because she might need something. As a matter of fact, that’s what she should’ve said. After I blew my car horn at her, I drove off.

  * * *

  When I drove away from my grandmother’s house, my first thought was to go home. But five minutes into the drive, I thought about Sanjay and how his day was going. I also thought about if he noticed the bottle was gone, but didn’t know how to question me about it. Not knowing what was going on around me was a mind game I don’t like playing. So instead of going home, I made a detour and headed toward the pharmacy.

  The moment I pulled up curbside on the opposite side of the street, I could see his car parked on the side of the building, but I wasn’t able to see if he had any customers in the store. While my stomach muscles did somersaults, I sat there a moment and wondered what I was going to say to him. Because I knew he was going to ask me what I was doing there, especially on my day off. The only explanation I could conjure up was that I was in the neighborhood and decided to stop by. I wasn’t sure if he was going to believe me, but I wouldn’t know if I didn’t try.

  I took a deep breath, turned the ignition off, and got out of my car. With each step that I walked toward the pharmacy, my heart rate increased. I began to give myself a pep talk. “Come on
, Misty, you can do it. Just take a deep breath, smile and act normal. You’ll be fine,” I continued to say while I put one foot in front of the other.

  As I approached the glass front door, it opened and out came an elderly black woman that I recognized. Her name was Mrs. Landry. When she saw me, her eyes lit up. “Hi, darling, how are you?” she asked as she embraced me.

  “I’m great. How are you?”

  “I’m doing okay. But I hate that I have to go down the street to the other pharmacy to get my prescription filled.”

  “Why you can’t get it here?” I asked her. This was a cause for concern for me.

  “Well, my doctor is putting me on a higher dosage of my pain meds, but y’all don’t have it. Sanjay said that you guys ran out of it. So now I’ve gotta get in my car and get it from somewhere else.” The lady sounded irritated.

  “I’m so sorry that we’re putting you out of your way,” I apologized.

  “It’s okay, baby, it ain’t your fault. Your boss needs to stay stocked up with the medicine the people need. We don’t wanna be running all over town for it.”

  “I’ll make sure this doesn’t happen the next time,” I tried to reassure her.

  “You have a nice day.”

  “You too, Mrs. Landry.”

  Mrs. Landry was a regular customer here at the pharmacy. According to Sanjay, she’s been coming here to have her prescriptions filled for the past four years. So to lose her business would really hurt the store.

  While she headed toward her car, I opened the door of the pharmacy and entered. There was one other customer waiting for their meds, so I spoke and then I walked around the counter. Sanjay was typing something in the computer when I greeted him. He smiled at me and I knew then that he wasn’t aware of the missing pill bottle. If he was, he wouldn’t have smiled at me when he laid eyes on me.

  “I told you to take the day off,” he said while he continued to type on the computer keyboard. The angle he was sitting, I immediately noticed a fresh bruise underneath the right side of his eye.

  “I was in the neighborhood so I decided to stop by and see how you were doing. What happened to your eye?” I said as I took a seat in front of the consultation booth.

  “Oh nothing. One of those boxes fell down from the shelf up there when I walked by it,” he replied as he pointed toward the self near his workstation.

  “A box left a scar like that?” I pressured him. I wanted him to be honest with me and let me know if this was a one-time occurrence. Because I was on the other side of the door and watched those guys push him and this brother around.

  “I thought the same thing when I got up this morning and saw how bad it looked. I put some of that aloe cream we have on it, so it should go away in the next few days,” he explained. “So what did you have to do in the neighborhood?” He changed the subject.

  “I had to pick up dry cleaning from down the street.”

  “How long are you gonna be here?”

  “What? Here in the area? Or the store?”

  “In the area.”

  “Oh, maybe another five minutes,” I told him as I watched his body movement. I knew he meant to say the store, but didn’t have the gumption to say it because he didn’t want to sound weird.

  “How is your mother?” he asked. And what’s so crazy about it is that he never asks me how my mother’s doing. He knows that we have a rocky relationship and that I barely talk to her, so what was the reason behind the question?

  “She’s doing okay,” I finally replied.

  “What about your grandmother? How is she?”

  “She’s doing okay too,” I answered.

  “Tell them both I said hi,” he continued. Now it took every fiber within me not to question Sanjay about all of these weird questions about my family. I even wanted to ask him why he was interested in them. I’d worked for Sanjay for some time now, and he’d never asked this many questions about me and mine. Was he crying out for help, but didn’t know how to ask?

  My interest in figuring this all out ended when Sanjay handed the gentleman his prescription and, in so many words, asked me if I would walk him out. I swear I was dumbfounded. I was even more shocked that he just indirectly asked me to leave the store while the elderly man was right in front of us.

  “Am I coming to work at my regularly scheduled time tomorrow?” I asked him as I made my way around the counter.

  “Yes, come in at your regularly scheduled time,” he confirmed.

  “Okay. See you then,” I replied and then I left.

  I sat in my car, feeling really troubled. Every move and sound Sanjay made a few minutes ago made me so uneasy. This, combined with those dudes that I saw bullying him, made me feel like I needed to find myself a new pharmacy tech job at another pharmacy.

  7

  THE AHA MOMENT

  Looking back at the size of Sanjay’s bruise had me convinced that he was in deep with some dangerous guys. Guys I wanted to stay clear of. I had too much drama going on in my life now as it was. So, adding another level of bullshit wasn’t how I wanted to live my life. I mean, I just got rid of Terrell.

  Moments after I got back into my car, I called Jillian. Thankfully she answered quickly. “What’s up, Cousin?” she asked me cheerfully.

  “Yo, you ain’t gonna believe me when I tell you this shit,” I said and then I fell silent.

  “What happened?”

  “I just went to the pharmacy to see what was going on and to see if Sanjay finally noticed that I took the bottle of Percocet, and guess what I saw?”

  “What?”

  “This nigga had a big-ass cut and bruise around his right eye.”

  “You bullshitting!”

  “No, I am not.”

  “Did you ask him about it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He said a fucking box fell down on him from one of the shelves near his workstation.”

  “Damn! That’s fucked up!”

  “Tell me about it. I swear, I ain’t gonna be able to work around there in that type of environment. I mean, what if one of those guys hits me?”

  “Come on now, you know he’s not gonna let that happen to you.”

  “What the fuck is he going to do? Tell em to stop? He can’t even defend himself.”

  “Just calm down.”

  “Fuck that! I’m gonna look for another job,” I said with finality.

  “And go where? You can’t leave there. You’re sitting on a fucking goldmine at that place.”

  “Look, Jillian, I told you I’m not taking another fucking pill from that place,” I spat.

  “Will you be quiet long enough for me to finish my thought?”

  “If it has anything to do with opioids then I don’t want to talk about it,” I expressed. I needed her to understand that I was a nervous wreck when I took the first bottle. I couldn’t rest in my own bed the entire night thinking about the fact that if Sanjay realized that it was gone, then I could be fired and hauled off to jail.

  “Okay. No problem.” Jillian finally waved her white flag. “So, when are you going to start looking for another job?”

  “I’m gonna go online tonight to put in a few applications. And who knows, I may get a hit,” I said optimistically.

  “Are you going to give your boss two weeks’ notice?”

  “I haven’t thought about it. I don’t know. I guess I’ll figure that part out when I cross that bridge.”

  “Look, just take your time and don’t do anything hasty,” Jillian advised me.

  “Believe me, I won’t,” I told her. “Where’s Nana?” I changed the subject.

  “She’s in the den watching Two and a Half Men.”

  “She still watches that show? I mean, didn’t they fire Charlie Sheen?”

  “Yeah, but she doesn’t care. You know, she watches the same thing every day.”

  “Did Nana cook dinner?”

  “She made a pot of chicken and dumplings.”r />
  “Oh damn! I love her chicken and dumplings. Save me a bowl of it and I’ll stop by in the morning to pick it up so I can have it for lunch,” I instructed her.

  “A’ight,” she said. “Oh yeah, did you ever get your mother’s beer and take it to her?”

  “Fuck no! And I’m not. If she dies one day of alcohol poisoning it won’t be because of me.”

  Jillian laughed. “You so damn funny!”

  “I wasn’t intending it to be. And on that note, I’m gonna get off this phone and tend to my own mess.”

  “I love you, Cuz,” Jillian said to me.

  “I love you too,” I replied sarcastically, but she knew I meant it.

  8

  FAMILY DRAMA

  I didn’t realize how tired I was until I walked into my apartment, threw my things onto the floor, and flopped down on the sofa. Wanting to rest for a few minutes turned into an hour-long nap. I knew that if my cell phone hadn’t rung, I’d probably still be asleep. I wiped my eyes with the palm of my right hand so I could focus on where my cell phone was. After sifting around in my purse, I finally located it down in the bottom of it.

  I didn’t bother to look at the caller ID. I was more interested in stopping the phone from ringing because it was driving me crazy. “Hello,” I said after I placed the phone to my ear and laid my head against one of the cushions on my sofa.

  “What happened to you bringing me a case of beer?” my mother griped through the phone.

  “Ma, I never told you I was going to bring you beer.”

  “Jillian told me that she was going to tell you to pick me up a case of Coronas.”

  Now, I’d heard the whole conversation between my mother and Jillian, so why was my mother lying? This addiction of hers was fucking up her mind. “Mom, aren’t you tired of drinking?”

  “Are you my sponsor?”

  “No.”

  “Well then, stop questioning me about my drinking and carry your ass to the store,” she spat.

  I let out a long sigh. “A’ight, I’m leaving my apartment now,” I told her.

  “Good. And bring me a bag of tortilla chips and a jar of salsa too,” she added.

  “Okay,” I replied and then I ended the call.