by Omar Tyree
She said, “Okay, I don’t really feel like staying down here anymore, so are you coming up to my room, or am I going to your room?”
Before he could close his wide open mouth to respond to her, Chelsea stood up from the sofa, handed him back his earphones and CDs, and said, “Matter of fact, let’s just go to my room. I’m willing to bet that my room is neater. You young, hot musicians never know how to keep a tidy hotel room.”
She started to lead him toward the elevators before he even answered her. He followed her and complained, “That’s a stereotype. I do keep a clean room. You wanna see it?”
She turned him down without hesitation. “Nope.” She figured he may have had managers or a young entourage somewhere nearby that she didn’t want in her way. She would rather deal with the nuisance through irritating phone calls than intruding strangers. In fact, if she went back to his room, then she would become the stranger.
I probably won’t do shit with his young ass anyway, but it’ll be fun to fuck with him for awhile for the hell of it, she plotted. What is life for? I’m in New York with nothing else to do.
When Amber Cunningham finally showed up at the Brooklyn sports bar to meet DeWayne Double D McDonald, she walked in wearing designer blues jeans with holes so big that they showed all of her legs. She matched the jeans with a red, cut-up T-shirt that exposed her stomach, shoulders and the bottom half of her black bra. She looked as if she was auditioning for an erotic pop video for Madonna.
D looked her over in confusion and asked her, “What the hell are you wearing? Did you buy your jeans and shirt all cut up like that?”
Her straight, dark brown hair flowed to the back in a ponytail, displaying her silky smooth, light brown forehead with perfect eyebrows. But D was more focused on her outfit. Outside of the red Adidas sneakers that covered her feet, the rest of her clothes were barely there.
She smiled his question off and answered, “It’s all good.”
“No it’s not good,” D argued. “You actually walked outside and caught the buses and trains wearing that shit?” He thought the outfit was ridiculous and way over the top.
Amber sat on the empty barstool to his left as the bartender watched her carefully. “Stop tripping,” she responded casually.
“How are you doing tonight?” the bartender spoke to her.
“I’m good.”
DeWayne eyed him and chuckled. This nigga want her bad, but he can’t have her, because I got her, he thought to himself with a chuckle. And by then, he was good and drunk. Amber had obviously taken too long to get to him.
“How long you been here today?” she asked.
D leaned forward and wobbled in his stool. “A couple of hours.”
The bartender overheard him and smiled. Bullshit, you’ve been here longer than that; more like four hours, he noted.
“Are you drunk?” Amber asked him. He was leaning in his chair.
Still grinning, the bartender nodded his head to her before he moved down the bar to pick up his next drink order.
D said, “I had a few drinks while waiting on you.” He was also tired, and a mix of alcohol and exhaustion would bring any man to wobble. D knew it himself. He attempted to stand and said, “But let’s get out of here.” He took a few steps toward the door and remembered his box of books below his stool.
“Oh shit, can you get that for me?” He pointed down at the box of books below his barstool. But Amber looked at him as if he was crazy.
She said, “I didn’t come over here to carry no damn box.”
D thought fast and countered, “Ain’t I supposed to have something for you tonight?” He wasn’t that drunk. He still knew how to deal with a spicy young female.
She said, “And I’m not supposed to have something for you? I thought you would like what I’m wearing.”
D stopped and had to rethink it all. “So, you wore that just for me? Is that why you so late getting here?”
“Duuhh,” she quipped. “I had to get dressed.”
D chuckled and was close enough to sniff her. He said, “You smell good too. Shit, let’s get up out of here then.” He walked back and reached for his box of books but struggled to carry them.
Amber watched him and said, “You really want me to get that? I don’t want you falling out in the street and shit. That’s embarrassing.”
D straightened up and handed her the box without an argument.
“Oh, this is light,” she responded with the box in her arms. “I thought it was heavy.”
“Naw, they’re advanced copy soft backs. But if it was hardbacks it would be heavy.”
She started to walk for the door immediately.
The bartender hollered, “All right, y’all take care!”
D smiled again at his inside joke. As soon as they walked outside the bar and hit the Brooklyn sidewalk, he let Amber in on it. “You know that ma-fucker like you. That’s why he was all extra friendly in there,” he told her. “He probably would have given you a couple of free drinks if we stayed longer.”
She said, “That’s what’s up. I need to come back and see him then. Maybe I can get him to give me a tip,” she joked.
D said, “A tip for what?” He didn’t catch the humor in it.
“For turning his ass on,” she answered. “I saw how he was looking at me too. I’m not slow. I just don’t respond to all that.”
“Why you respond to me then?” D asked her. The question just popped out of his mouth.
Amber shrugged as they walked. She said, “I don’t know. I wanted to see what you were working with, I guess.” Then she stopped at the curb and put the books back down. “Okay, so are we getting a taxi or what?”
D looked and frowned at her. “You know I only live a couple blocks away from here, right?”
Amber looked appalled and said, “What? I know you’re not thinking I’m carrying those books all the way to your house. When you said to get ’em for you, I thought you meant to get ’em out the fucking bar, not get ’em all the way to your house.”
DeWayne couldn’t help but laugh at her. The girl could be so outrageous that she was funny to him. He said, “I thought you told me the box was light.”
“Yeah, but it’ll get heavy after walking a block with it. What you want me to be all sweated out from a work out and shit?”
D kept laughing.
She said, “I don’t think it’s funny. That’s not how you treat a lady.”
He had already moved on from her carrying his books for him. He was laughing now at the thought of giving her a sweaty work out in his bedroom.
He said, “Yo, it’s cool, I’ll call a taxi. But you are gonna get that sweaty work-out you was talking about,” he teased her.
“As long as you have what I need,” she teased him back.
D stopped and didn’t like the sound of the tease, especially since it revolved around taking his money. He said, “Yeah, that shit ain’t funny to me. You keep making it sound like I’m buying a hooker or something.”
“No, we already talked about this. And I was only joking?” she told him.
“Well, don’t joke like that no fucking more,” he barked at her.
“Whatever.”
D stopped and stared at her. He said, “Girls just have to run their damn mouths, don’t they? In jail, ma-fuckers would . . .” He trailed off his comment and shook his head.
Amber finally got the message and remained silent. I’m not in jail, she thought. So I can say what the hell I wanna say. And if he don’t like it, I can fucking leave! . . . after I get this money though.
D walked out into the Brooklyn street and hailed a taxi. After they climbed into the back of a cab with the box of books, D gave the driver the address and they both sat quietly.
But Amber couldn’t take the silent treatment. She was used to talking. “Oh, so now you wanna have a tantrum and don’t wanna talk to me? Okay . . .”
Double D looked at her pretty girl face as she pouted, and he began to smile.
I’m gonna fuck her brains out tonight, he plotted. She gon’ earn that two hundred dollars.
“What’s so funny?” she asked him.
He shook it off. “Nothing.”
When they pulled up to the curb in front of his building a few blocks away, Ollie, the weed man, watched them from down the street. Even at a distance, DeWayne’s walk looked shaky and suspect. He began to feel a headache and nausea coming on as soon as he stepped out of the cab and reached the pavement. He then keeled over.
Ollie continued to watch from his stoop and mumbled, “That nigga look like he ’bout to hurl.”
Amber looked him over suspiciously herself. “Are you okay?”
D wasn’t well enough to answer her. Instead, his mouth cocked open and dripped with saliva. He hung there in suspended animation, awaiting the force from his stomach to hit him like a brick. He could feel it coming.
“ARRRRGGHHH!”
Beer mixed with barbecue chicken wings, celery sticks and Ranch dressing all launched out of his mouth and onto the cement pavement right in front of Amber.
“Shit!” she shouted, jumping back from it. But it was too late. Some of DeWayne’s projectile of nasty spit-up splattered onto her fresh red Adidas and the cuffs of her blue jeans.
Amber looked down and spotted it immediately. “Fuck! Now you’ll have to buy me some new shoes and jeans.”
D looked up to protest her money-grubbing but was stopped by a second wave of spit up.
“ARRRRGGHHH!”
The second time he splattered his box of books. Amber saw that and said, “Well, that’s the end of that. You can throw them books away.”
D shook his head but still wasn’t well enough to speak. His stomach was still convoluting.
With a big-ass grin on his face, Ollie climbed to his feet and headed in their direction. “That’s exactly why I don’t drink like that,” he told himself as he approached them, laughing. “Good weed don’t do that shit to you.
“Is he all right?” he asked Amber once he arrived in front of them.
She looked at him and paused, attempting to size him up. “He’ll be aw’ight.”
“You need me to help you wit’ ’em?”
D heard that and shook his head. He didn’t want Ollie’s help. He didn’t trust the man, and he had never let him up into his place before. He was even embarrassed the weed man had spotted him like that.
Amber read D’s hesitance to accept his neighbor’s help, and she agreed with the rejection. “Naw, we got it. Thanks,” she told Ollie.
Ollie raised his palms and backed away in surrender. “Ai’ight. I was just trying to help.”
D gave him a doubtful look, as he began to feel strong enough to collect some of his books from the soiled box.
Amber asked him, “You still gon’ try and get those books out?”
D ignored her and did the shit anyway. “Stay out here wit’ ’em,” he mumbled to her. He reached for his key to enter his building with an armload of books.
Amber watched him disappear into his building and was pissed. She looked down at her shoes and clothes again and blasted, “This motherfucker! All this shit ain’t even worth it!” She was even tempted to leave, but she didn’t want to climb into the back of a taxi with spit up still on her shoes and jeans. “He’s gon’ wash my shit tonight, watch!”
Ollie continued to watch the scene, tickled by the whole damn thing as he backed away, still laughing to himself. That’s what that motherfucker get.
D returned with a dark green trash bag and went back to collecting his books from the soiled box. He felt a lot better and stronger after hurling, and his books weren’t soiled; only the sides of the box were. So he planned to leave the box and take the books.
Amber asked him with attitude, “Can I go inside now and take this shit off to wash it?”
D gestured hard with his hand, as if she was irritating the hell out of him. But Amber didn’t care, as long as she could get that funky spit-up off of her.
After discarding the box and carrying the remainder of his books into his condo, DeWayne looked for Amber’s shoes near the doorway. When he didn’t see her shoes or her near the door, he shouted throughout his condo, “I hope you didn’t track that shit all over my house!”
Why the fuck wouldn’t she take her shoes off? he asked himself. It only made common sense of she had spit-up on them. Why track spit-up all over his beautiful hardwood floors?
Amber was already inside of his laundry room, ignoring everything he had to say. She had taken her shoes off the moment she hit the doorway, then rolled up the bottom of her jeans, and walked to the laundry with her Adidas in hand to wash them out in the laundry room sink.
And this motherfucker gon’ say some stupid shit to me like that, like I don’t know what to fucking do, she fussed to herself. I’m out of here as soon as I finish washing my shit!
“Fuck that two hundred dollars!” she spat out loud. “He’ll never have to worry about me asking him for shit again. I’m deleting his fucking number from my phone.”
D found her rinsing off her Adidas in his laundry room sink. He looked down at her pants and saw that she had rolled them up and the bottoms, so he began to relax and breathe easy.
“Aw’ight, so you took ’em off,” he commented calmly.
Amber stopped what she was doing and looked at him as if he was stupid. Then she shook her head and returned to rinsing off her sneakers under the sink.
At that point, D realized that he had gone a overboard. His embarrassment made him do it. He said, “Aw’ight, my bad.”
Amber continued to ignore him. I don’t give a fuck! she raved to herself. I just want my money and I’m leaving. And please don’t think you gon’ get some pussy with spit-up breath. He don’t even treat me right to get none. I know a million guys who would treat me better than this shit. So fuck him!
As D continued to look in on her, he felt guilty about his overreactions that evening. Amber then stopped and looked at him in silence a second time.
DeWayne told her, “I’ll give you the money to get another pair . . . and some more jeans too; jeans that actually cover your legs this time.”
Amber asked him, “Why are you so concerned about that? You’re not my man. Why do you even care how I dress?”
It was a good question. And she was pleased that he would give her more money to replace her clothes, but she was still pissed about how he treated her that night, after she had prepared herself so thoughtfully to come out and see him. He obviously didn’t care much about her. He was only horny on a hot Friday night.
Double D thought about it and said, “You just too pretty to be dressing like that, man. You don’t want motherfuckers staring at you all like that.”
She said, “Why not? They do it anyway. So why not give them something to stare at? They can’t have it.”
“Yeah, but dressing like that makes somebody just wanna take it from you” he countered.
Amber looked at him vengefully and said, “Go ’head and try it then,” as if she was challenging him directly. “Go ’head and try it,” she repeated. Before D could respond to her, she pulled out a switchblade from inside the panty line of her left hip and snapped it closed, revealing a shiny four-inch blade in his face. She said, “And don’t think that I don’t know how to use it. I will fuck a motherfucker up, just when he thought he was about to get something.”
