Smoke and Mirrors

by Tiana Laveen

  She was his first love, his only love. From time to time he’d think about her, wondering what she was up to and how she was doing. He hated himself for how he’d done her at the end, but he was hurting so badly when his old man died, he didn’t know how to handle it. He could have had her V-Card, that’s how much she loved him. She’d offered it to him when he called the shit off, crying, holding on to his shirt with her little white fingers, pulling, trying to keep him close. The girl had been scared to give in, to be penetrated for those entire months prior, and he’d waited, sometimes begged, but she never gave in. He stuck by her because he loved her too much, yet, when he’d said goodbye, she tossed the pussy his way, using it as payment, collateral for him to stay in her life. He knew then, at that precise moment, that hurt women perceive pain as pleasure and lust as love. They’d give themselves away to a man who wasn’t worthy to even be in their presence, just like his mother had, and now Cheryl, too.

  For a split second, he contemplated laying her ass down on her narrow twin bed with the thin pink sheets, and taking what he’d wanted and pleaded for…but he just couldn’t for a little piece of his innocence lingered inside him, scratching his subconscious just below the surface, and it warned him to not be her first. She deserved a good man, a square, one that would be gentle with her soul. That man wasn’t him because he was morphing, changing, growing into something beyond his control. This new persona was being nurtured by cruelty; its water was complacency and its soil a cold, impenetrable heart with no sun or moon, only a blizzard like atmosphere that was certain to keep it emotionally stunted, sentimentally decapitated and mentally deranged. And now, here he was contemplating and doing shit completely out of character. Or was it?

  “…I’ve lost my fucking mind.” Smoke whispered as he rubbed his forehead, leaning forward at the waist as if he had to hurl. “…Another woman, another damn Cheryl…I thought I’d grown out of this shit…How could I even entertain something like that again?”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Come off of it! What’s on your mind, boy?” Frank demanded. “And you can’t shit a shitter! I know this bastard you are talking about is you!” He cackled. “What the fuck have you gone and done, Smoke?”

  A sense of silliness infused with a dash of panic seized Smoke’s gut as he immediately rose from the couch and stormed out the house, his cellphone gripped in his palm. He stood out in the front yard, away from earshot from his entire stable.

  “Frank, if you tell anyone this, I’ll kill you, man.” Smoke said seriously. “Look,” he huffed, then looked over his shoulder ensuring the coast was still clear, “You know a Madam lives across the street from me, right?”

  “Of course I do,” he laughed leisurely, “They’ve been talking about it.”

  Smoke tossed his cigarette on the walkway, and smashed it to the death with the tip of his shoe. A tendril of smoke escaped from the side of his mouth as he slid his free hand into his pocket, and began to pace back and forth along the sidewalk.

  “I’ve been checking out her place, watching it.”

  He’d already confessed to Paris he’d been watching her for a damn month. The truth—it had been more like six weeks, and he’d even lied to himself about the duration, loath to creep his own self out.

  “I needed to study my competition.”

  “…I bet you did.” Frank stated, with an obvious air of disbelief.

  “I’m serious, it became a job, Frank. Look, I’d get up in the morning, lift weights, and then take a shower. Check in on the stable, and fix some coffee and a little breakfast or pick something up on the way over. Then, I drive over here, to the apartment building before their shifts begin, pull up a chair in front of a window, preferably in the parlor, and watch the johns start to roll in the establishment across the street…

  “I know her schedule down to a tee. It feels like I’ve known her a long ass time, actually…and she’s fucking beautiful.” he felt his whole face getting hot, flush with warmth as he stood under the blazing sun.

  “And what?”

  “I don’t believe this shit is one sided, Frank. I think she wants me, matter of fact, I know she does.”

  “What makes you think this?”

  “She called me with her number blocked…didn’t leave a voicemail.”

  Frank burst out laughing. “So a woman that doesn’t want you to have her number, is a sure sign that she is thirsting for your cock?! Come on, Smoke!” The man was now drowning in a whirlpool of guffaws.

  “Let me finish!” He barked. “Look, I knew what she was doing, it is hard to understand, but she wanted me to call her. And I did. Now, we talk all the time. Sometimes I call just to say good morning, but she likes it…and I think she waits for my ass to call her now, too.” He smiled. Oh yes, he smiled big as he glared across the street at her spot.

  Smoke had stepped up his game, became what she needed, what she wanted, but most importantly, it was within him all along to be all that she could ever imagine and then some…

  “Okay, okay, okay,” The man simmered down. “All jokes aside. So you like this madam right? But like what are your intentions, Smoke? You’re not a settle down kinda guy.”

  “I don’t know about that anymore, Frank.” He kept glaring across the street as he spoke lowly. “We’re strongly attracted to one another. I’ll admit to you, I never thought I’d be in a predicament like this. In those mornings and afternoons of watching her, and all of our conversations, I’ve come to a new realization.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “I like her more and more each day…”

  Frank cleared his throat, breaking a short silence. “What do you like about her?” he asked.

  Smoke smiled, he couldn’t help but feel warm inside as he thought about her now.

  “The little things the most, the stuff a lot of people wouldn’t notice. For example, I like the way she fumbles with the wires of her mp3 player; they always twist up, causing her to frown in frustration as she leaves her apartment building to start her daily run. I like how she throws her head back when she laughs… One day she and her girls were out in the heat planting flowers. Something so simple turned into something so beautiful, man.” He kept staring at that house, feeling as if he were falling into a daydream. “She picked one blood red tulip from the ground and tucked it behind her ear. I wished I could have touched her at that moment…”

  “Oh, Smoke…you got it bad, man.” This time, Frank offered no laughs, no jokes.

  The man knew he meant every word, and there wasn’t a damn thing humorous about it. It was happening; the beginning of the end had already come and gone.

  Smoke took a deep breath and swallowed. He trusted Frank with his eyes closed. The man kept his business matters to his damn self, never squealed him out, and he was true blue.

  “Frank, I wanna tell you something.”

  “Sure, Smoke. I laughed at cha, but…I understand now. I won’t repeat any of this. You have my word.”

  “Yeah, well, I haven’t been happy for a while, man…” Smoke looked down at the grass, becoming temporarily mesmerized with how the blades moved about in the slight breeze.

  “What’s the problem?” Frank asked seriously.

  “It’s kinda hard to explain, but, it’s just a feeling, you know? I don’t know.” He licked his lips and shook his head. “Frank, I’m about to tell you something that I’ve not told anyone else. Not too long ago I had a nervous breakdown, and attempted something I never imagined I’d do. Up until this point, I somewhat regretted I didn’t go through with it, but…in a way, she gave me another reason to be thankful I didn’t, to remember that things could get only better, that maybe,”—he swallowed then looked up at the bright sky—“Maybe, a tiny golden flash of a newfound promise was possible. But you had to wait and see, you had to stick it out a little longer to find out.”

  “Okay, Smoke, I’m not following you, man. What are you talking about? What happened?” Fran
k asked.

  “I tried to kill myself, Frank.”

  So Smoke declared it, placed it out there, set it before the man’s feet. He was met with silence—the response he expected.

  “Why in hell would you do something like that?!” Frank roared then, coming alive, full of fury.

  “For a lot of fucking reasons, Frank! Reasons you wouldn’t understand, because your life was different than mine! You’re from New Jersey. You had good parents. Your dad’s job got moved to California and this is where you’ve been ever since. But like so many of us, you were attracted to the streets, and despite your good upbringing, you answered the call, became one of us. The difference is, you weren’t born into bullshit, Frank! You had a damn choice. You knew my dad the pimp, not Brent the father. They were two totally different people!”

  Both men were quiet again for a spell.

  “Smoke, you’re right…you’re right, okay. Please promise me you’ll never try any shit like that again without calling me first! I love you like a son, you can come talk to me. I am totally shocked by this…you just don’t know.” Frank sounded choked up, defeated—hurt.

  “I can’t make any promises like that…”

  “I need you to tell me what happened, Smoke.”

  Smoke took a deep breath and leaned against a tree.

  “One night many months ago, I had isolated myself. I took no calls unless they were emergencies; luckily none came as I prepared a bath,” he said. Frank was the only man he’d ever confess such a thing to.

  He had a flash in the memory web he was drawing from—he’d had his favorite band, Arctic Monkeys, playing in heavy rotation at the time. He never took baths, it was always showers, but for some reason, he’d drawn the water, deciding to give his whirlpool luxury spa basin a try. Besides, Felicia said baths were good for the back, and his felt sore after an overly vigorous workout.

  “It had been a messed up day, Frank. It was like some strange haunting. Flashes of my old self peeked in like the boogeyman behind a closet or something. It unnerved me. Some messed up shit happened to me over the years, Frank.” He blinked a few times as the sun’s rays beat a bit harder, forced him into heated submission.

  “What sparked all of this on that particular day, Smoke?”

  “I saw a photo of myself earlier in the day as a little boy, a dog-eared, worn and faded image of who I used to be. I discovered the damn thing while going through some old folders in storage, and it triggered shit inside of me that I’d tucked away, deep in my mind…I don’t wanna get into what that was, I can’t.” He laughed mirthlessly. “But I will tell you this. It was the first time I thought about committing suicide. And you know what, Frank?”

  “What?”

  “I remember that night so clearly. How things looked, smelled, everything. I even remember the song that was playing at the moment I found that picture: “I Wanna Be Yours” by the Arctic Monkeys.

  “Yeah, you love the Arctic Monkeys…”

  Smoke disappeared in his thoughts, replaying the scene in his mind.

  “Pills?” Frank asked suddenly, his voice blue, deep and dark.

  “Nah…a razor… I had a double-edged razorblade.”

  Smoke saw his dull reflection in the damn thing as he turned it from left to right, to and fro, studying it like a rare diamond under a microscope. He ran a steady hand through his hair, ensuring none of the longer strands blocked his view, then, he placed his arm over the side of the tub and prepared to cut once he spotted a vein in his wrist that was to his liking. His hand shook now and again, for the pimp in him wanted to live for an eternity. The pimp in him wanted to kill Brent, and have Smoke live on in infamy. The only problem was—killing one meant killing both.

  At that second in time, he didn’t care. It would simply be a double homicide, or suicide, however one wished to view it. He pressed the blade into his wrist, watched the flesh split open and a vibrant, crimson trail of blood flow from it. After he’d gotten that first slice in, he slid it a bit further in an effort to complete the task…but then, something happened.

  “What stopped you, Smoke?” the man questioned, slicing through his thoughts.

  “The damn phone rang, stopped me dead in my tracks. And it rang loudly, over and over. Whoever it was wouldn’t stop calling, man. I couldn’t concentrate…”

  Sweat beads ran down his face, couldn’t block the shit out. Again, he rose from the water, blood droplets running down his hand. The sloshing seemed louder than crashing ocean waves. He kept the bloody blade in the palm of his hand as he ventured into his bedroom to answer the phone. But when he did, no one replied, then the line went dead. He snapped out of the odd daze. He didn’t recognize the number. Matter of fact, the caller-ID displayed only a series of zeroes. He’d never seen such a thing before. It was as if someone had intervened, trying to stop the inevitable. His feelings were overwhelmed with a foreboding sense of loss of self, and he called into question whether he was truly going crazy. He didn’t believe in God anymore, so how could this be? He felt as if he’d awoken out of dream, and now, second-guessed his course of action.

  “It was a weird situation, Frank…more weird than me, my dad, our blue eyes,” he said with a light chuckle. “More strange than a pimp liking a woman in a way that a man is supposed to like a woman…”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get that…”

  He went to the bathroom vanity and gingerly placed the bloodied razor blade on the countertop, his fingers setting it just so, as if it were made of fine China. He looked at himself in the mirror, then back down at the razor. His muted reflection in the sharp, bloodied razor remained cloudy. His image in the mirror came through clear and glowed, like he’d been hatched right out of a golden egg. He stood there staring at himself, taking his complete image in. He wished he could see his soul in that mirror, too, for inside it he saw things he had not realized until that pivotal moment…

  “I just…hated everything!” Smoke blurted. “I had dark circles around my eyes. My face was sunken in due to constant lack of sleep, Frank. I’m always on alert. I have to keep one eye open and both ears to the wall. I saw myself differently after that, too. I remember opening the bathroom cabinet to get a bandage. I wrapped it tight around my cut arm after applying a bit of pressure to stop the bleeding.”

  “Jesus Christ, Smoke! I asked you about that!” the man said over the phone, anger bleeding through his tone. “You told me you accidentally sliced it open messin’ around in your garage.”

  “Yup, that’s what I said. I wasn’t willing to talk about it then, Frank.”

  “But you are now?”

  “Yeah…”

  “Why?”

  Smoke cradled the phone in the crook of his neck and glanced across the street, a half smile on his face. “Because, no matter what happens with her and I, for the first time in a long time, I feel alive. She makes me feel different, like, things can change, be better. She makes me want to breath. I felt already dead that night, Frank. Wouldn’t have made no damn difference!”

  He’d tasted his life slowly slipping away that evening, but something made him want to pause and try one more time…make the shit work. Once he set his mind to something that needed repair, fixing, changing and improvement, he followed it through, no matter how difficult the task. Everything he’d decided upon represented nothing more than a damn bandage over a festering, infected sore of a soul, just like the one he’d wrapped around his wrist.

  Still, what could he do about it?

  There was no need to use a razorblade; he was already cut to ribbons, oozing blood in a million and one places. He suffered from internal seepage and hemorrhaging, his very essence in a state of shock. Never mind ‘tall, dark and handsome’; in his mind, he was ‘short-sighted, black hearted and spiritually grotesque.’ In his world, there was no such thing as low self-esteem because low self-esteem stood sky high, compared to where he dwelled. No, he found himself in the basement of self-hatred, toiling away. The razor blade of his mind had grown
dull due to the repeated, self-imposed slashes across his heart.

  “Smoke, what is your greatest fear?” Frank’s voice sounded suddenly weathered with age. Time, concern and anxiety had melted in his tone. The man loved him, wanted nothing but the best for him, but he, too, suffered from similar illness of the heart.

  “Hmmm, not much. I don’t fear much, Frank. But, everyone has something, you know? One fear I had was that I’d never be important, never matter to any damn body. I’d never be more than a man that sells pussy like my father, manipulates like my mama, and is afraid, like my first love.”

  What Frank and so many others couldn’t understand was that this had to do with his own fear of reaching his maximum potential. Suicide gave him the easy way out, and there was far too much that hadn’t been completed, goals unreached, things unsaid, and tasks not done. But there was something else he craved so badly, yet it scared the shit out of him at the same time…

  “And love. I’m terrified of love, Frank. Not because of what it is, but what it could do.”

  If he tried something in the area of love and failed, he’d die yet another internal death, and he was no cat. Even if he were, the axiomatic nine lives had come and gone countless sleepless nights ago. But for many, pimping was something they forced, something they did to appear cool, or to support a drug habit. For men like him, it was one thing they’ve known since the time they lay in their mother’s wombs. They didn’t know what to call it, what to do with it, but they had a way with women, didn’t think like other children, and would either be admired or alienated because of these issues.

  “Let me tell you something, Smoke. You are one of the few men on this planet that I believe was born to pimp. For one, you’re not lazy—you work your ass off, not just the girls. Highly successful pimps such as yourself are interested in more than just the flash. You aren’t a man of leisure.”