“He ganders a lot of attention, too. Despite his race, the man is hood.” He cackled. “He sounds intelligent, I’ll give him that, but I can see it in him.”
“Oh, you’ve met him?” Xenia asked sarcastically.
“I had to study who my competition was. I hurt, but I had to see who pulled this shit off. The man is straight out of the gutter, Xenia! He’s from New York, right? He reminds me of an Asian, one-man Wu Tang Clan, dressed in a suit! But, he is hood...” he repeated, as if that would have some ill effect on her. “Straight out the damn projects!”
“I’m from the projects originally, too, Sinclair. Watch your damn mouth. It isn’t where you’ve been, it’s where you are going.”
“I know, but...this is different. I even think he might be dangerous. I’m worried for you.”
Xenia burst out laughing. “I’ve been married for a while now, Sinclair. I have three beautiful children with this man. He has never hurt me, never laid a hand on me! He has never verbally abused me or treated me like a second class citizen. The only danger here is your lies and paranoia. I can see in all of this time, you haven’t changed one bit. Just playing games as usual. How pathetic!”
“Listen to me, Xenia, please. I’m only saying this because I care. He is an enigma. I’ve never heard of an Asian hood guy… oh, that’s right, he is half Egyptian, too.” He laughed, as if Saint’s ethnicity was somehow funny. “No one can turn that on and off, like that. I see we sort of favor, too. You always had a type.”
Xenia burst out laughing. “Sinclair, I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“No, I mean, I know we don’t look alike. I’m talking about the eyes.” He pointed to his own. “We both have light eyes. You were always a sucker for that.”
“So now we are talking about eye color? Look, I have things to do and I am serious, we are finished discussing this.” She turned to walk away once again.
“He has a past, doesn’t he? A checkered one,” he went on. “Saint Aknaten is not trustworthy, Xenia. I just don’t want to see you get bit.”
Xenia paused and pivoted. She stared at the man, her eyes narrowed in disgust.
“You are a devious, shifty, filthy scumbag. So stay the hell out of my way,” she snapped, only causing him to laugh in her face.
“Well, yeah, But, like I said, all is forgiven. Let’s just get ready for the show. This doesn’t have to be hard.” He made one final ditch to turn the conversation back in his favor.
“You’re right, it doesn’t,” she said calmly as she continued to walk away. “Because I won’t be working with the likes of you. I signed an agreement and didn’t know about you. That’s unfair and I won’t have it. I quit, motherfucker!” She hastened her steps, leaving him there, but not daring to look back at him as she made her grand exit…
~***~
“And that is exactly why Donna told you that!” Jagger taunted Lawrence as he waved a thick finger at his long time buddy. Saint sat across from them in the rounded high posh booth wrapped in faux black leather. Empty, finger-print smudged glasses with the remnants of dark, intoxicating drinks piled up along with messy plates with streaks of steak sauce and stumps of asparagus tips, empty wooden salad bowls and bread baskets. A waitress approached and within seconds, the table in the bustling contemporary Friday night eatery, ‘Food Jones’, was cleared.
Saint leaned back, still savoring the pink salmon steak he’d devoured. He extended his arm across the seat railing, taking the scene in. For a rare treat, he was able to relax on a weekend with some of his favorite people. Raphael had to make a trip to Vegas on business, and there was no way Saint could be that close and not stop by to see his best friend in the entire world. The two chums sat close together, laughing and vibing. Saint enjoyed how Raphael interacted with Jagger and Lawrence—one would think the three had known each other their entire lives. Raphael was the only non-Angel Child sitting amongst them, but he didn’t appear to feel the least bit awkward or out of place. Saint had briefed him on the situation, letting him know that Jagger was a lot of man with a heart of gold and that Lawrence was their peace-pipe—he kept them in check and grounded. Saint glanced at Raphael as the man burst into fits of laughter at Lawrence telling a familiar story of his close call with an angry ram with a horn to grind. A story the Angel Child trio had heard several times over, but it still rang funny each and every time it was shared. Saint appreciated his friend now more than the man realized. Raphael was Saint’s link to the old him, the ‘him’ that had existed before he knew of his gifts, accepted them and searched for them. He also was his future—reminding him that with a good support system, anything was manageable.
Jagger glanced at Raphael, offering a smile. “Raphael, can I talk to you about something in private later? Something I think you can help me with?”
Saint’s curiosity jumped. He shot a look between the two, not liking the sound of this.
“Of course, man.” Raphael smiled back. Saint knew it was none of his business, but he wanted to know what Jagger was cooking up. Before he could launch into a line of questioning, Raphael broke the silence.
“Did Saint tell y’all the time we were running from NYC’s finest in the subway?” Raphael’s eyes narrowed to slits and a naughty grin creased his brown face. He ran his hand over his baldhead, cocked his head to the side proudly, the diamond earring in his right ear glowing in the dimness of the establishment, and exposed the gleaming teeth he was so very proud of.
“No, he didn’t.” Lawrence shot Saint an artificial look of disapproval, crossed his arms over his light blue perfectly ironed shirt and looked back at Raphael. “Do tell...”
“Why’d you want to tell them this shit, Raphael?” Saint asked, laughing lightly as he waved to a waitress that wasn’t their own to come to the table.
“Because your new friends here need to know what type of man you were.” He grinned, taunting his best friend, knowingly making him squirm.
“They already know...” Saint slumped back into the seat as the waitress smiled at him and put her finger up for him to wait one moment.
Raphael ignored him and started in again. “We had been hopping trains for weeks. We weren’t going to pay any fares anymore, we decided. We saw our homeboys gettin’ away with it, so,” he shrugged his shoulders, “we thought we’d do it too. We were two poor inner-city kids and the little bit of money we had was spent on—”
“Kicks, weed, blunts, chicken hoagies, movie tickets, rubbers, tapes and CDs, bootleg porn tapes, custom jewelry, oversized t-shirts and wife beaters, jackets with fur and other miscellaneous bullshit,” Saint interjected, running his fingers along the table. He laughed at the resurfaced memory of his common teenage grocery list comprising what he deemed adolescent boy essentials and commodities.
“That’s right!” Raphael said. “So, they’d started crackin’ down, you know, on people doing that. We always knew where they were, so we’d avoid that time of day if we could and we knew how to slip over real fast, so that it almost looked natural. We were two skinny mothafuckas, so it was nothin’.”
Saint nodded in agreement, catching the gleam in Jagger’s eyes. He knew the man relished stories like this about Saint. Though they were friends, there was still an air of competition between them and the discovery of any weakness or frailty in Saint, Jagger enjoyed just a bit too much, though he wouldn’t dare admit it. Regardless, they trusted each other as brothers would, so the man’s quirks rolled off Saint like water off a greased duck.
“This one time, the police had changed up everything. We came through, as we always did, and did our thing, you know,” Raphael grinned even wider, slicking his tongue over his bottom lip. “And just then, we heard, ‘Hey! Stop!’ Shit man!” His husky, deep voice soaked in his B-Boy New York dialect cut through the surrounding semi-annoying banter from intoxicated patrons.
Saint burst out laughing and nodded as he ran a hand over his face.
“Saint and I looked at each other—Saint’s eyes we
re huge! Looked like two big gold platters!”
Lawrence and Jagger laughed then turned and looked at the waitress that approached the table.
“Hey.” Saint leaned in closer, coming out of his dark recessed corner of the booth, now enveloped in muted light. “Can we get another round of beer? Our waitress, I think her name was Katie, didn’t come back so...”
“Oh sure, no problem! She might be on her smoke break. I’ll take care of it.”
“Thank you and you tell Katie that you will be getting her tip.” Saint grinned as the waitress laughed and walked away. “I’m not kidding! She hasn’t been here in a long ass time. That cigarette must be a foot long,” he called out after her, annoyance brewing inside of him like a slow simmering potion.
“What’s wrong, man?” Jagger asked, leaning back. The light drew striped rays across his dark buzzed hair, showcasing his almost white scalp. The man’s blue eyes glowed a bit too brightly—he was tuning in to Saint, trying to dig deep.
“Smoke break my ass...we been sittin’ here for damn near thirty minutes, no mothafuckin’ drinks. Some other person came and cleared this junky ass table, and her ass keeps disappearing,” Saint complained. “Ahhh.” He sighed and briefly closed his eyes, ran a hand over his face once again, as if fighting sleep. “I’m just tired and need to relax. It’s been a stressful week is all.”
Lawrence and Jagger nodded.
“Agreed,” Jagger said, running a finger up and down the protruding edge of a soiled napkin. “You’ve been on edge lately but anyway, I want to hear the rest of this story and then we’ll get to that.”
Saint smirked, knowing what Jagger was doing. The man was trying to worm his way in, press him, find out what was really making him tick. He looked back at Raphael. He appeared to be taking it all in, processing the shit.
“You know, y’all are really cool but I have to admit, it is a little weird to be sitting at a damn table with Superman, Spiderman and Batman.”
The three looked at each other and burst out laughing.
“I’m serious...y’all are some serious bad asses. I knew Saint was different, I knew he had something special and I think it is really important that he has y’all, too—someone he can identify with. But, before all of this saving the day shit, Saint was jumpin’ trains.”
“Yes! Tell the rest of the story Raphael since you seem so hell-bent on embarrassing me tonight,” Saint taunted, laughing heartily and smiling appreciatively at the waitress who dropped off their new round of beers. He took a sip, the foam tickling his upper lip, and leaned back again into his shadowy dark corner of the booth.
“I will!” Raphael laughed. “Okay, so the police called after us. Saint was like scared shitless because we had no idea they were there, so we took the hell off! I mean, we were bookin’ it. Those dudes, back then, you didn’t see a lot of fat cops like you do now. These mothafuckas were in shape, just like us.” He imbued his voice with drama like a master storyteller. “We hadn’t had to run from the police or anyone in months and in the subway, things are much harder. No open areas to dart out in, no stores to race around, walls to climb—none of that shit. You just had a left and right, and people all over the fuckin’ place. Trains goin’ by, and if you were lucky, you’d see some of your boys and they’d help, you know, cause a distraction like yelling and screaming or forming a human wall by clustering together, forcing the cops to slow down.
“Nah.” Raphael shook his head as he grasped the memory with both fists and retold the tale. “It was just us, and the cops. In times like that, you might get shot, but you prayed you didn’t because there were so many people, you know? No need for the police to take a chance like that with a crowd that thick. So anyway, Saint was a little ahead of me and I felt my chest burning we were running so damned hard and fast. There was a cop ahead of us, coming from a different direction and man! We shot each other a quick look, turned toward an approaching train and we didn’t have to say a damn word, it was understood. We weren’t going to juvey, hell no...”
“This was where lives could’ve been lost; all over a damned dollar didn’t we pay.” Saint shook his head in disbelief. “We did some stupid shit, Raphael,” he said, grinning.
“Yes, indeed! So the train is approachin’, right? It’s not our damn train, not the one back to the Brooklyn, but—”
“Brooklyn? Were you two going home?” Jagger asked.
“Yeah.” Raphael nodded, seemingly confused by the line of questioning.
“I thought you two grew up in the Bronx?”
“We did,” Saint interjected. “This was after that; we were like sixteen at this point—had moved years before.”
“Ahhh, okay, I see. I remember now.”
“So, yeah,” Raphael continued. “We didn’t give a shit. If we ended up in Staten Island, we just did. Anything was better than what was goin’ on right that fuckin’ minute. The cops in back are like on our damn asses and the cop in front, this big Buffalo Bill lookin’ mothafucka is barreling down on us. We were about to be sandwiched or one of us was going to get caught, no doubt. So, as soon as those damn doors opened and people started coming out, we made a mad dash and got on. We were pushing people out the way like we were on fire! The cops swerved over, the doors closed, and they barely missed us. Two more seconds, they would have been on there, grabbing our asses! We made sure to keep looking straight ahead until the last second and even though I can’t read minds like this mothafucka right here,” he pointed to Saint, causing an uproar of laughter at the table, “we were in tune that damn day, no doubt!”
“I don’t think we’d ever run that hard in our lives.” Saint shook his head. “We’d been chased before, for other shit, but they could never catch us on the streets. We knew all the dips and dives too well in our hood. People would cover for you, divert and start a ruckus. Anyway, we found out later though why they were on two jumpers so hot ’nd heavy. That pursuit was ridiculous, we just figured they were on some racist shit but come to find out, a tall, skinny Hispanic guy, that I guess kinda looked like me, and his black friend had just robbed a store and shot the owner. They more than likely thought it was us, because it happened like less than a block away from the train.”
“Damn.” Jagger took a sip of his beer. “You are definitely lucky you didn’t get shot.”
“Yes, blessed because if it hadn’t been for all of those people, I know they would have taken shots at us. We didn’t learn shit from it though,” Saint picked up his beer and looked down into the golden pool. “The following week we were doing the same shit. Makes you wonder about the teenage mind, how we didn’t really value our lives. That and the adrenaline rush became addictive.”
“...Yes, it does, doesn’t it? You want some action?” Jagger shot him a menacing look swirled with mischief as he spoke to Saint telepathically. The man’s lips curled upward in a fiendish grin. He looked like a savage cat that had cornered an injured mouse.
Saint tried to turn away, but Jagger kept right on. He knew he was too annoyed to put up much of a fight and besides, he was correct.
“Things been too quiet, huh?” Jagger continued the silent conversation while Raphael and Lawrence spoke amongst themselves. “You want to fuck some shit up, don’t you? Want to run in the wild and make some shit happen? All that pent up energy... Well, I just may have a cure for what ails you and this fucking watered down beer and you snapping at waitresses isn’t going to help...”
“What is your suggestion?” Saint said in a low voice.
“What the hell is going on? Did I miss something?” Raphael asked.
“Yes, but you don’t want to know.” Lawrence shook his head and stared down into his lap.
Jagger reached inside his black leather jacket and pulled out a wad of cash, slamming it on the table. “Come on boys, let’s ride out!” He shot from the table as if he were a mountain springing from the earth. His body cast a shadow about him, darkening the area as the others followed closely behind. They marched out toward
the front door into the sweetly scented breeze of the night air. Trouble was uh comin’; the bad boys were in town...
~***~
Raphael stood to the side on the well-lit street and watched the three men whispering amongst themselves in the night. The palm trees softly swayed in tune to some imaginary beat while the trio undoubtedly was up to no damn good. He didn’t know what they were planning, and though a part of him wanted to give Saint some dap with a customary, “Peace Out,” as his outro, his curiosity wouldn’t allow it. Something told him, whatever was going on, he needed to see this shit for himself. The night was growing cold yet the afternoon had been sweltering. It felt like desert weather, but the three before him appeared unaware of anything unusual in the air...
And then, he realized, it was them.
Their coming together and plotting had made the surrounding wind rustle up and do strange things. The wind sung a song, a warning of sorts. He suspected Saint’s energy was manipulating the current while Lawrence was keeping it from turning into an all-out windstorm. The birds were flying in all directions, leaving the comfort of the branches. Jagger simply stood there in the middle, with both men on either side. Raphael glared at him. He knew the big asshole had started the whole sordid mess.
Raphael couldn’t peg Jagger, couldn’t figure out if he liked the man or not. He sensed a part of the man was blanketed in clandestine energy—dare he say, underhandedness. The man wanted to know everything about everyone, but shared little of himself. Raphael could tell he was cunning, never revealing his full plan. Lawrence on the other hand was someone you could trust. The man was like the good angel looming over one’s left shoulder. Jagger, while not exactly an imp, sure had some devilish qualities, similar to Saint, but he was swathed in secrecy. Saint was an open book but this man right here? Raphael just didn’t quite know...
He crossed his arms, wondering why they had him such a great distance away.
“Are you all done yet?” he hollered out, letting his discomfort come through loud and clear.
Saint's Sacrament - Sins of the Father Page 7
