by Noire
Besides, Noble knew his aunt didn’t like to leave the house. It had to be a real special occasion to get her to go somewhere. If somebody had jimmied her lock and stolen something from her, then she would have had to been right there to see it.
“Tauntie,” he said gently, hoping to calm her down. “Nobody came in your place. You’re home all the time. Maybe you just misplaced the money. Could that be it?”
The old lady huffed into the phone.
“I know where I left that money, Peanut! I swear I do! Somebody is going around here stealing, and I think I know who it is!”
“Who?” Noble asked, and when his aunt answered it was the funniest shit he had ever heard.
“It’s Sissy!” she said like she really meant it. “That damned Sissy is a goddamn thief!”
Noble finally got his aunt calmed down and promised to pay her telephone bill online. As soon as he hung up from her he called Sissy to tell her what was up.
“Hey,” he said, trying hard how to figure out what to say. The last thing he wanted was for Sissy to get offended by his aunt’s crazy accusations and stop helping the needy people in her hood.
But Noble didn’t have to worry. When he told Sissy what his aunt had said, she bust out laughing like she was taking it all in stride.
“Noble,” she said, “why do you think I asked you to come visit your aunt? I wanted you to check her out, but what I really wanted was to see if she remembered you.”
“Is that right?”
“Yeah, it is. Your aunt has dementia,” Sissy explained. “Just like a lot of older folks in our community do. It comes with old age, but it also comes from a lack of brain stimulation. Our old people tend to sit at home day in and day out, just looking out the window. That’s what your aunt Cathy does. I noticed her forgetfulness over a year ago. It took me a while to get her to agree to see a doctor, but when she did, dementia was his diagnosis. That’s why I think it’s good that you’re back in her life. Maybe you can help keep her memories alive for as long as possible.”
Noble’s heart sank at the news of his aunt’s condition. His parents had been well into their forties when they had him, and his aunt was a year older than his mother. That would make her over seventy. Damn.
“Well, I’m glad you’re not mad about her accusing you of stealing,” he said. “I hope this won’t make you stop doing the things you do for her.”
“Nope,” Sissy said. “It won’t affect our relationship at all. I’m a nurse, Noble. I work with geriatric patients every day. Just last week an old white man at the hospital accused me of being his long-lost daughter who stole fifty-thousand dollars from under his mattress. Noble, that man was homeless before somebody brought him in off the street to get some medical care. He didn’t even have fifty cents. That’s just how it goes when folks get old and feeble minded. They don’t mean no harm. Your aunt probably put her money someplace and forgot about it. I’ll stop by there tonight and try to help her find it.”
Grateful wasn’t the word to describe what Noble was feeling for Sissy.
“Well, if you find it,” he said, “just put it up for her. I’ll pay the bill online, and that way she won’t have to worry about it.”
“No problem,” Sissy said.
And then before she could hang up Noble blurted out real quick, “Are you busy tonight? Can we get together? You do so much for everybody else, let me do something special for you. I wanna cook dinner for you, Sissy. My place, at seven-thirty. Can you be there?”
Noble was grinning like a mothafucka when she said yes. He couldn’t wait for seven-thirty to roll around. He couldn’t wait to get Sissy’s fine ass up in the bat cave. Yeah, he realized he only had a few days to propose to the woman who was gonna be his wife, but Noble wasn’t married yet. And as sweet as Sissy was, and as bricked up as she had his drawers, he was ready to get it on!
Sissy had taken a taxi over to his crib, and for the last ten minutes Noble had been standing back as she took a tour of his entire house, except his bedroom, and oohed and ahhed at all his stuff. When she had gotten her eyes full, he led her into the kitchen, where he’d set out a restaurant-style tablecloth and some fine crystal and china that somebody had pawned at Bam’s shop and never came back to get.
“I’ve never had a man cook dinner for me like this,” Sissy admitted shyly. She picked up one of the gold forks that was part of the table setting. “Especially with nothing as nice as this.” She giggled. “I almost don’t know how to act.”
Noble grinned. “Just act like you know, Sissy. I’m not no strange dude. We been knowing each other damn near all our lives. Be comfortable, and act like you know.”
The teenaged boy in him couldn’t believe that he was alone in a crib with the infamous Sissy Tarver. He almost wanted to jump up and down and call Pap and Yard over to brag on this shit, but the man in Noble knew better. He was grown enough to know the difference between a misguided teenager and a fully mature woman. All those young-head sixteen-year-old fantasies he used to have about her, he pushed them to the back of his mind and concentrated on serving her dinner.
He had stopped at a meat market and picked up a couple of quality steaks. He’d marinated them for two hours, and now they were in the oven broiling. Noble took the salad he had freshly tossed out the fridge and set it on the counter. Then he sliced a long loaf of Italian bread in half, and spread garlic butter on both sides and put that in the broiler too.
When dinner was ready he served Sissy with gold utensils. He spread a gold-trimmed white napkin across her knees and helped her push her chair closer to the table. They laughed and reminisced as they ate, and Sissy swore she had never tasted steak so tender. She made Noble write down his cooking directions so she could make it the same way at home.
“Yo, can I get you a little bit of dessert?” Noble asked when they were through eating. He had swung by Junior’s and picked up a fresh-baked cheesecake. It was chilling with a bottle of wine, on a sterling silver serving cart in the sitting area of his bedroom.
Sissy shrugged. “I guess so. I’m kinda full, but if you already have something sweet I’ll eat it.”
“Oh, I got something sweet,” Noble said softly. “But I’m serving it in my bedroom.”
Sissy shook her head quickly and laughed. “Nah, that’s okay. I’m old school. I’m used to eating in the kitchen.”
Noble laughed too. “Cool, I respect that. But I really do have a cheesecake sitting upstairs in my room. For real. You ain’t gotta go in my bedroom, Sissy. But you do have to help me eat that damn cake.”
Noble kicked himself as he ran upstairs to get the cake and wine. He had to remember what he was working with. Sissy was prolly the beer and chips type. Cheesecake and wine on a five-thousand-dollar bed was prolly too much for her.
Noble told himself that he wasn’t tryna push up on Sissy. He was just trying to show her some consideration for taking care of his aunt. But still ... in the back of his mind that sixteen-year-old kid with the rock-hard dick just wouldn’t shut up. It kinda hurt that after all the pussy Sissy had given out in high school, she still didn’t wanna give him none.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Sissy said when he came back to the kitchen. She was wiping off the table, and had already scraped their plates into the garbage and rinsed them off in the sink. “You still looking at me as the Sissy you thought you knew back in high school, Noble. But I already told you, I’m not that chick no more. Almost everything about me has changed. I don’t give blow jobs on the staircase no more, and hand jobs under the table are out of the question. I’m not a ho no more, Noble. I can’t even tell you the last time I fucked with a man like that.”
“Sissy!” Noble protested like he was indignant, although he clearly remembered one of his classmates telling him that Sissy had poured half a bottle of lotion in her palm and jacked his shit halfway to heaven. “I didn’t say you was a ho! I never thought you was one neither!”
She just shrugged. She looked like she had be
en through this type of shit so much that it didn’t even press her out no more. “It don’t matter, Noble. I don’t care what nobody thinks. I told you, I found out who I really was when I went to prison, and I’m good with that.”
Noble had wanted to drive her home, but Sissy had insisted on taking a cab. She had put her arms around him at the door, and even kissed him on the cheek. Noble had been too ashamed to even put his arms around her, but she’d pressed up against him and given him a brief feel of what he’d been craving all these years.
“I know you, Noble. But I don’t know you, know you. I ain’t been with a dude in a good minute. Since you’re back in your aunt’s life we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other now. Let’s take it slow and see what happens. Cool?”
Noble nodded. He was glad Sissy wasn’t still giving up the booty outta both her panty legs. He was feeling her even more now that she’d turned him down. He could dig where she was coming from about taking your time to let a relationship develop too, but Noble didn’t have as much time as Sissy did. He was about to pop the big question in just a few days, and Noble could only hope and pray he wasn’t about to make a big mistake.
16
It was two days before Noble’s birthday, and him and Pap were going to their boy Yard’s bachelor party. Just a few hours earlier Yard had called Noble and told him his store had been robbed again the night before.
“What’s this?” Noble asked. “Five, six times?”
“Yeah, them grimy niggahs hit me again, man,” Yard complained. “But I’ma get they asses this time. They about to get exposed!”
“You know who did it?” Noble asked. “Do I need to call one of my boys at the precinct and have ’em go pick somebody up?”
“Nah,” Yard said. “Not yet. I put one of those hidden video cameras up in my joint a couple of weeks ago. It was rolling good and everything, but now I can’t get the fuckin’ tape out. I got my boy down at Best Buy working on it for me, and as soon as he gets that tape rolling I’ma smash whatever thieving niggah’s face is on it!”
Noble knew Yard was serious about that shit, and in a way he missed being the kind of cop that bagged bad guys every day. Directing traffic was decent, but it wasn’t what Noble wanted to do for the rest of his life. He was actually thinking about retiring and starting his own business. He had plenty of cream stashed in plenty of places, and if he never worked again, him—and whoever he decided to marry—would still be set.
Just thinking of the girl he was gonna marry put a grin on Noble’s face. Yep, he had made his decision. The lucky honey had been chosen. He had picked door number ... It had been hard as hell for him to cross all those lovely, beautiful women off his list and settle on just one, but Noble had done it. He was going to propose to his number-one honey in less than forty-eight hours, and he was more than sure that he’d be doing the right thing by taking her for his wife.
Yard’s bachelor party was being held at an exclusive gentleman’s club downtown. His boys had rented a private room, and had the liquor and the broads on stock in ample supply. They’d chosen to have it on a Sunday because the rates were half price, and even though everybody had to go to work the next day, Yard was set to have a big turnout.
Noble thought about the bachelor party he was gonna have one day soon. He planned to take a lot of notes at Yard’s party so he could get some ideas on how he wanted his done.
He drove downtown in his ’Vette, feeling real sure about himself. He’d swung by to see Bam earlier in the day and he had been happy to see his father on his feet and feeling good. There was nothing he could do for his pops medically or financially that wasn’t already being done. Bam had some of the best doctors in the city, and thanks to his knowledge of the market and their early investing habits, the old man had enough money to keep him comfortable in his final days.
All Bam was missing now was a grandchild. Noble knew he wasn’t gonna get his new wife knocked up on their wedding night, but he hoped she wouldn’t mind having his baby sooner rather than later.
It was close to ten when Noble arrived at the party. Pap opened the door for him and handed him a glass of yak.
“Whut up, niggah!” his boy said, slurring his words. “It’s about time you got here!” A half-naked chick with butterscotch skin and gigantic titties was hanging off his arm. Pap twisted one of her two-inch nipples and bust out laughing.
Noble took the drink and dapped Pap out. His dude was already well lit, and so were most of the other guys who were chilling up in the suite. Pap nodded toward a large room to Noble’s left and told him he could find Yard in there.
As he entered the room, Noble grinned and shook his head. Mad food had been catered, and sexy-ass go-go dancers and waitresses wearing heels and thongs were everywhere.
He looked for his boy and spotted Yard sitting on a king’s chair with a freak perched on each knee. The two hot-body chicks were giving him a double-trouble lap dance, and his boy was so open on them strippers he had sweat dripping from his chin.
The girls were beauties, but Noble could tell they were professionals performing strictly for cash. Yard looked ready to throw both chicks on the floor and fuck the dog shit outta them, but it was hard for Noble to get turned on by a chick who shook her ass for a living. It was like being with a prostitute. You could never tell if she was feeling you for real, or just doing her damned job.
A cute little Hispanic chick had just walked by and squeezed Noble’s nuts when Pap yelled for everybody to shut the fuck up because they were about to roll Yard’s bachelor cake into the room.
The joint got real quiet as some funky-slow stripper music came outta the speakers, and two dudes pushed a huge round box decorated like a white wedding cake into the room. The box was sitting up on a dolly, and streams of silky white material was draped around each layer of the cake.
Pap held up his drink and was in the middle of making a dead playa’s toast to Yard, when the top of the cake popped open and a stunning white chick rose up outta that bad boy like a genie coming out of a bottle.
Noble’s eyes bucked open wide as she slithered and strutted and paraded her firm frame around the room for all the men to see, winding her creamy body like ten miles of smooth, delicious road.
“Take it off ! Take it off ! Take it off!” yelled the guy standing next to Noble as he waved some ho’s garter belt high in the air.
Pap nudged him and screamed something in his ear, but Noble was frozen where he stood as he watched every niggah in the room get a hard-on from the solid hunk of good ass that was being shaken by the stripper. She was working her body so scrumptiously, bucking and rolling her pelvis like she was getting a damn good fucking, that it was no surprise that niggahs was starting to close in on her as she danced with her eyes closed and a smile of pure delight on her wicked, pretty face.
It wasn’t until she starting inching off her diamond-studded thong and a thick mass of dudes rushed to surround her that Noble was able to move. And move he did.
Straight out the mothafuckin’ door!
17
The next day Noble stood on his grid square chewing the fuck outta his whistle. It had been a long, crazy night, and he’d spent a lot of time fuming over how he had let himself get straight played.
Seeing Kiki bust outta that cake topless and wearing the diamond-studded thong he’d bought her had almost fucked him up. He’d wanted to fight his boy Pap when he’d hollered, “Yo, No! Man, ain’t that one of the broads you tryna wife?”
Now he knew where her sleazy ass had picked up all them cold nasty tricks! Kiki was a graduate of Stripper’s University, and Noble was gonna lay a charge on her scandalous ass the moment her bus pulled up at the stop.
Just the thought that he’d been considering her as a potential life mate, and as the mother of his unborn tykes, had Noble fuming. He wasn’t the type of cat to get mad and fly off the handle on the regular, but fuckin’ around with a shameless bitch like Kiki could make even the most peaceful brother get throwed of
f.
There’d been so many horny niggahs in the room last night that Noble knew Kiki hadn’t seen him, and since tomorrow was his birthday, she was probably rolling around the city thinking she was still in the runnings. For all Kiki knew, she was about to get plastered with a fat engagement ring, but Noble knew better. Her ass had already been straight crossed off his list. He felt for her kids, but she was gonna have to find another sucker-niggah’s pole to climb.
Noble was feeling like the biggest sucker on the block when his phone vibrated on his hip. He waited until the light turned red, then stepped outta the grid and crossed the street to the sidewalk.
He had a text from his boy Yard, and Noble narrowed his eyes as he read what it said: Got the tape out. U ain’t gonna believe who’s on it. Holla.
Noble’s fingers fumbled to open up his contacts and press Yard’s name, and when his dude answered the phone, Noble could tell by the tone of his voice that shit was not gonna be good.
“S’up?” he asked. “Who’s on the tape?”
“Man, I didn’t believe that shit when I seen it. I ain’t wanna believe it, yo. It’s fucked up, that’s what’s real, though. Ya girl been fucking me up.”
Noble frowned. “Yo, what the fuck you talkin’ about? My girl? Who? Who been fuckin’ you up?”
Noble was in no way prepared for the name that Yard dropped on him.
It exploded on his head like a bomb.
“Sissy, niggah!” Yard spit. “Sissy’s on the tape digging her fingers all in my pie! She’s the one been stealing from the old folks in the building too. Her and that dyke bitch, Shannie! Man, don’t you trust that girl, I’m telling you, No. That trifling bitch is a lesbo and a thief!”
Sissy was walking to work swinging her arms and looking all innocent when Noble spotted her. If there was one thing Noble didn’t respect, it was larceny. As a kid there had been plenty of junkies and criminal-minded nigs who figured they could pull an easy kick door on Bam and make off with his money and his hocked shit, but Noble’s father had always been ready for them. Bam had taught Noble that the only thing worse than a liar was a thief.
