by Weber, Carl
I walked out to the street and, absent any clues, returned to the apartment. Feeling helpless, I watched the clock, checking out the window every ten minutes or so while panic gave way to fear then sadness.
I wasn’t familiar with despair, but it was having no time cozying up to me as I restlessly paced back and forth under the clock’s slow, grinding gaze.
Every random noise set me on alert, preparing for joy or pain. But they were just that—simple random noises. Then a depressing thought invaded my mind.
Maybe Niles was testing me in London and I failed him by not following orders. And this was his way of washing his hands of me. Bye-bye to the liability from Queens with no drama. I had to face it. I had a track record now. Couldn’t listen to my family and couldn’t listen to Niles. Maybe that’s why my own family had abandoned me in Spain rather than wanting me in the trenches with ’em. Maybe I really was some kind of fuckup.
But Niles wouldn’t have been here waiting for me after London. He could’ve cut his losses there and I would’ve never found him. And he certainly would not have brought me back to his home if I were just some jump-off. Even he wasn’t cold enough to just want a final fuck. And like he said, he never killed me when he had the chance. No. We had something. Something real.
And I couldn’t be apart from him.
So that brought me back to my first conclusion. Something happened to him.
So was this it? Was he dying somewhere while I stood around hopeless and helpless? I didn’t have any resources to find him. Nah. Fuck that. I did have resources. I was a Duncan, dammit.
Hang on baby! Help is on the way, I thought as I considered my next move. But my happy tune was halted right as I opened the door to a shadow quickly converging on me. I dropped everything I carried and delivered a vicious palm thrust where their nose ought to be. We startled one another, but they were a tick faster and sidestepped my first move. I’d already spun around, ready to engage and unleash my frustrations when my eyes recognized the figure.
It was easy. Because it was the same person who’d left me in the room in the first place.
“Easy! Easy!” Niles called out, waving his hands to calm me. And other than looking a little weary there wasn’t a mark on him. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“I . . . I thought something had happened to you. You . . . you were gone,” I gasped as my adrenaline faded just as quickly as it had climbed. “I thought you were dead,” I admitted, feeling foolish.
“Nah. I’m good, ma,” he said as he cradled me in his arms to comfort me. “It’s okay,” he cooed in my ear as I felt his heartbeat next to mine. On his shirt, I smelled a familiar scent beyond his sweat.
Perfume.
A fragrance I recalled from Valencia.
“Niles, where the fuck were you? Where’d you go?” I asked as I stepped back, seeing he was still barefoot and couldn’t have traveled that far like this.
As his eyes widened, my fists clenched.
Panic, fear, and sadness had left on a fast train out of here.
Leaving me with more familiar emotions of anger, and more anger, which I knew how to deal with instead.
Niles
59
“I . . . I was with Nadja. Something came up. Then we had car trouble,” I offered feebly, knowing that excuse sounded weak. “More like trouble in the car . . . then she put me out. When I couldn’t find anyone nice enough to stop for me, I walked over a mile barefoot. That was when I flashed and flexed some muscles for a car of party girls who were more than willing to give me a ride after dropping a sob story on them about car trouble. On my suggestion, they took me to a hotel for some fun, but I promptly stole their keys and ditched the car several blocks from here.”
A lot of shady shit for an evening, but the longer I stayed away, the more I knew Paris would react just like she did. While I stood there on my sore, dirty dogs, somewhere Nadja was smiling.
“Dammit!” Paris yelled, barely relaxing her fighting stance. “Why is it always about Nadja? What? She wasn’t the person who called you?”
“Well . . . yeah,” I admitted. “But she was here when she called. Outside.”
“Damn, I hate her ass,” she cursed, her beautiful face marred by a scowl as she turned and retreated into the next room.
“She hates you just as much,” I inappropriately volunteered as I followed, closing the room door behind us. “What is it with the two of you anyway?” I threw out there, pushing the dial even further up the ignorance meter.
“You, Niles! You’re what it is with the two of us! Dumbass,” she muttered as she hurled a pillow at me. “And to think I was having second thoughts.”
“Second thoughts about what?” I asked, almost missing her comment as I caught the pillow. “What’s going on here, Paris? Is this about the call you got?”
“Look,” she commented with a sigh as she gathered her things. “I’m leaving. Going back to school. I got duties to fulfill. And don’t need this bullshit.”
“No!” I shouted. “We already talked about this. Me and you together. Remember?”
“Yeah. Before I got all worked up thinking you were in trouble. But instead you were doing who the fuck knows what with Nadja.”
“I work with Nadja, Paris. And I’ve never tried to hide that from you,” I exclaimed, passing on sharing the details of my encounter with her. “What do you expect? Huh?”
“That’s just it. Maybe I expected too much from you,” she said as she slapped my outstretched hand away. “I smell her perfume on you. Doesn’t smell like car trouble to me. Did she get my sloppy seconds, Brooklyn? Did you fuck her?”
“No. I didn’t fuck her,” I said as I stood there frustrated and getting heated.
“You should have,” she spat out as she walked out the door.
I waited for hours in the dark, daylight, and the birds announcing it was a new day. Hoped I’d hear our special knock at the door, signaling Paris’s change of heart after some time alone.
No knock came.
Nor a ring on the phone whose number I’d shared with her.
So, having not been so utterly alone in a long time, I decided to be the one to act.
All it took was a lazy drag of my thumb across the smooth glass surface of my phone.
So simple. Yet so hard.
By the third ring, just when I thought she wasn’t going to answer, she picked up.
Silence on her part greeted me. I was the one who called after all.
“I apologize,” I uttered.
“And?” she said.
“What?”
“What about Paris?” Nadja asked.
“She’s gone,” I murmured. “I want to keep working with you. Just you and I, like always.”
“So you can go back to being dependable? And lucrative?”
“What do you think?”
“Ignoring my lapse last night, I might be agreeable to it,” she said coolly.
“Then bring on the work. Feed the beast,” I joked.
Rio
60
Paris and I had been playing phone tag since my little talk with Navid. Each message left me more relieved than the last but I still needed to actually hear her voice live. The shit he spilled made me hella nervous. Fuckin’ Fatal Attraction chick tripping behind Niles choosing my sis was straight-up lethal. I couldn’t tell Paris the truth without worrying that she would seek revenge on this trick. My twin had no ability to let bygones be bygones and if I mentioned the aborted hit put on her she’d track this bitch down and end it . . . for good.
I was just leaving the hotel for work when my phone finally rang.
“How’s life out of the closet?” She laughed, which immediately put me at ease.
“More swinging dicks than I know what to do with. Damn boss acting all sprung out and shit.”
“’Cause your ass didn’t follow Vegas’s rule number one,” Paris jokingly admonished me.
“Don’t shit where you eat.” We spoke the words in uni
son.
“Duncans are lethal. I know niggas get up in the cut and never want to leave. Remember all those chicks sobbing over Vegas?” Paris laughed.
“And moms always had to sit them down and tell them that if they were her daughter she’d want more for them.” I groaned remembering the line of women: young, old, black, white, Asian, Latino, educated, hood-rats. “Vegas loved women and women loved our brother as much and as often as he’d let them,” I added. “Shit is seriously in the genes. But, Paris, where the hell you been?”
“Don’t matter. I’m on my way to de Gaulle. Getting the hell out of here!”
“Wait, you’re rushing to leave Paris? Land of shopping? Food? Sophistication? Your mother ship?”
“Yeah, muthafucker think he can tell me anything. I’m ghost.”
“Oh, so, Niles isn’t coming back with you?”
“I don’t give a fuck what he does,” Paris said, really fuming.
“Wait. Wait. What the fuck? You were all about him two days ago.”
“And now I’m all about me.”
“I saw the way you looked at him and you ain’t never looked at a man that way. I didn’t even recognize you.”
“Yeah, well, I got to get up out of here. Like I’m supposed to believe everything he says.”
“Sis, Niles had it for you as badly as you got it for him. Is he really lying to you?”
“I don’t know. Probably not but that’s today. They all lie eventually.”
“That means you’re just gonna run away from someone you care about?” I tried to give her my two-minute-older big brother speech.
“Look, I’m not used to feeling like this and I’m done.”
“Oh, it happened to you.”
“What the fuck you talking ’bout, Rio?”
“You got bit. Never thought I’d see that love bug get your ass.”
“Did not,” she huffed, refusing to acknowledge the truth; but I knew her and I also knew that I was right.
“You think this shit happens every day? Why you running away?”
“I ain’t running nowhere. I gotta get back to school.”
“You scurrrred. Girl, your nose is going to grow like Pinocchio you lying so hard. Just admit that you have fallen on your ass for this man. At least you picked one hot as hell. Shit, you’d have to be superhuman not to want what he was serving.”
“Rio, all this feeling stuff? Not in my plans,” she swore. It felt kind of sweet to hear my tough-as-nails sister wrestling with real human emotions.
“How does he feel?”
“I don’t give a fuck what he says. You don’t leave me waiting in your apartment alone for hours.”
“He took you to his home?”
“Yes.” She reluctantly admitted this.
“So he loves you too?”
“Yes. But it can’t work.”
“You just gonna walk away from all that fineness. And you said he had a big dick?”
“Stop! I gotta go. I’m hopping a plane. I’ll see you later.”
“I’ll be at the club.”
Paris hung up the phone but I could tell some shit had gone down. To have her nose all swollen over a man. Wow. This was serious.
I stepped out of the hotel only to see Eduardo had sent his driver to pick me up. Normally this would be real cool except I knew it was his way of keeping tabs on me and I didn’t like it at all. Shit was getting real creepy and I was gonna have to put an end to it. Made me rethink this whole thing about living in Spain, although I had become convinced that I’d found my calling in the nightclub business. Sure that would never fly with my pops, but there had to be some other option aside from Eduardo or law school, and I wasn’t about to settle, so I had better find it and quick.
Paris
61
The announcement in both English and French warned us to be careful trusting our bags to strangers and not to leave our shit unattended.
Duh.
The cab had dropped me off at Charles de Gaulle International Airport. And I wasn’t doing it as no damn “Paris Wimberly.” I’d burned that ID and passport in a garbage can before coming here. I didn’t care who knew it was me, Paris Duncan. A first-class trip of fabulousity to enjoy my last free days lay ahead.
But no, not in Valencia.
My Spanish experience was maxed out with too many searing memories of Niles, not to mention too many pro bono kills beside him. It was time to let my party-girl flag fly and I felt like taking in a fashion show, so I was headed to Milan. Far away from Niles.
Yeah. A little retail therapy with all the latest couture a sister could dream of were a match made in heaven. Besides, unless they subscribed to Vogue Italia or were freshly out the closet, I doubted any of my family’s enemies would be gunning for me there.
“I hope I’m seated next to you. But if not I’m willing to bribe someone,” a tall, lean brother in an olive sweater, jeans, and a pair of sandals said as we stood in line for the X-ray machine and body search.
“Used to getting your way with a few flattering words?” I asked, not the least bit interested in his answer.
“You tell me, lovely lady. I’m Randy. It’s a pleasure.” He used his best smooth daddy voice as he put out his hand.
“Look . . . I’m flattered. And I admire your confidence,” I admitted. “But I’ve entered into a man-free phase.”
“And this is your way of telling me you’re not interested and I have zero chance with you. Is that the game you’re playing?”
“Wow, you’re a smart one,” I said sarcastically, as I began digging in my purse for my ID. Unfortunately he wasn’t done.
“Brothas like me are hard to find, in the States, let alone Europe. Truth is, we’re damn near extinct. For every five hot women there is one suitable mate so I wouldn’t be so hasty to walk away.”
“Wow, and modest. My father always says that if you have to tell someone how great you are then it usually means you’re hiding some real insecurities. Excuse me but I need to go.”
“Running?” he asked, leaning in way too close.
“Excuse you?” I said.
“That outfit is hella attention grabbing. I saw you before you saw me. Most of the men in here did. So quit playing hard to get and maybe I will take you to dinner in Milan.”
“I know you’re not used to dealing with rejection ’n’ all, Randy, but I have really high standards and, well, you don’t meet them.” I threw up my fingers, deuces to him, and I was out, stepping into the first-class line, which moved swiftly. This dude Randy had distracted me too long, so I was still fumbling for my ID as I walked up.
“Ma’am, I need to see your identification or passport,” the Indian man requested impatiently as he held my boarding pass.
“I know, I know,” I replied. “Just a second.”
But my hand brushed up against something metallic inside my purse.
No, I gasped internally.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
I still had Niles’s blades. Blades that had been used in a recent murder in London.
The X-rays machines and metal detectors were up next. And I was a foreigner.
This could go so bad right about now.
“Ma’am, your passport,” he repeated as he signaled for the people behind me to remain patient a moment longer.
I hesitated, visions of my parents visiting me in prison right before my eyes.
I was too pretty for prison, but of course that wasn’t the thing that scared me the most. What scared me more was getting on the plane and leaving Paris. Rio’s words kept ringing in my ears. Damn, I hated anybody knowing me that well.
Niles
62
“There is a big job coming your way. That’s why I need you to step up your conditioning and training,” she said as I maneuvered the Audi down the beltway, exiting the city.
“So you’re thinking Paris threw me off my game?”
“No, I know that she did.” Nadja glared at me.
I wante
d to cuss her out but the last thing I needed was one more altercation with an angry female. I seemed to be on a streak and needed to ice it. So I decided to squash this topic of conversation. “We are not going to talk about her.”
“She can be dead as far as I’m concerned. A non-issue. I don’t know what you saw in her anyway.”
“Do not go there.”
“You just need to understand that I will never tolerate you putting anything or anyone else before our business. You want to get messy and undependable you are going to do it on your own and not risk my reputation.”
“Whatever, Nadja. You’re trippin’ on me. I handle my work.”
“Yeah, and since that girl there were extra collateral damages that were not as easy to explain away.”
“So what is this? A ride so you can smash things in my face? You want me to get all apologetic and beg your forgiveness for living my life? Then I should let you know it’s not going to happen.”
“No, of course not, Niles. I only want your assurance that you won’t fuck up the next job just because you finally like fucking somebody more than once.”
“It’s like that? And so we’re clear. I’ve never fucked up on a job. Shit happens. This ain’t some legit situation where everything is gonna be all smooth. So just back up. I’m asking you.”
“Fine. Anyway we’d like you to stay at the compound. Under the radar for a few days while you brush up on your target shooting and regroup,” she said, trying to act professional, but we both knew that what she wanted was me as far away from Queens as she could get me.
“Tell me about this job.” I pressed her to spill the details.
“Not yet. I’m getting all the particulars worked out first. Lots of other offers are circling so I’m going to see what’s landing on our plate. But this job will be a big one. Double your normal commission and possibly set you up with more jobs in the States.”
