by Sa'id Salaam
* * *
Wanda suggested they take separate cars since she intended to spend the night at Mike’s condo once the club closed for the night. Tiffany followed closely, consumed in her thoughts all the way up Moreland Avenue.
Club Chocolate was a small, nondescript, freestanding building across from a twenty-four-hour grocery store. Tiffany realized she must have driven by it a million times and not even noticed. At night, though, it stood out like a garish sore thumb, illuminated by a ton of tawdry neon lights.
It was far too early for the ballers who frequented the establishment to be out, so the parking lot was near deserted. Soon, though, the parking lot would hold millions of dollars’ worth of exotic vehicles. A small section of the lot next to a side entrance was reserved for dancers. It was well lit and monitored by security cameras.
Wanda scoped Mike’s new Porsche truck in front of the building. After parking, she and Tiffany walked around to meet him. As they approached, Mike was engaged in an animated conversation with the club bouncers. Tiffany blushed inwardly upon seeing Mike, remembering how she used his voice, his growls, to help her reach an orgasm the night before.
“Hey! There go my girls,” Mike announced cheerfully when they came into view. He lifted Wanda up and planted a kiss on her lips.
“Mmm. Hey, yourself,” Wanda purred, giddy from the affection.
“Hey, Mike,” Tiffany gushed girlishly.
Mike had a sisterly hug for her as well once he sat Wanda down. He put one girl under each arm and led them inside. Tiffany, who was becoming intoxicated by the smell of his cologne and feel of his touch, melted into him.
The first thing that struck Tiffany as she toured the establishment was the smell. Over the cigarette and weed smoke, through the battle of warring perfumes and clashing colognes, and even the chicken being fried in the club kitchen could not compete. The place smelled just like pussy—not stank funky pussy, just a faint whiff of vagina. No wonder, Tiffany told herself as her eyes adjusted to the light. The place was full of women in various states of undress, all glistening with baby oil. Her self-esteem plummeted as she saw beauty after beauty. Just an hour before, she was admiring herself in her mirror, but now she wanted to run and hide.
Tiffany was lost in her thoughts as she entered this fascinating new world. She missed most of the narrative Mike gave, and before she knew it, she was back at the front door. Mike was still talking, but she had no idea what he was saying. “Excuse me?” Tiffany said, stopping him mid sentence.
Wanda sucked her teeth sarcastically, but Mike was more sympathetic. He recognized the deer-in-the-headlights stare in Tiffany’s eyes, and he knew she was out of her element. “I said, this is where you’ll be working,” he repeated, pointing to the small booth where she would check ID and collect admission fees. “And sometimes my servers don’t show up, so you’ll have to help out there as well,” Mike added.
Before leaving her at her post, he introduced her to Big D, the club’s first line of defense. He protected against all adversaries, especially the dreaded broke niggers. They were the riffraff who sat in their cars getting as high as drunk as they could so they wouldn’t have to pay for drinks in the club. It wasn’t unheard of to catch one or more masturbating under the table. Big D would make sure to break an arm if he caught them.
“A’ight, lil mama. See ya later,” Mike said with a wink before leading Wanda back into the bowels of the establishment.
Not long after Tiffany got settled in the booth, the customers came in droves. She saw plenty of familiar faces from school, work, and even church. For some reason, anyone who even remotely knew her asked what she was doing there. Wearied by the question, she began getting snippy as her patience wore thin. “What am I doing here?” she repeated curtly. “What are you doing here, Deacon Jones?”
The junior pastor from her church mumbled incoherently and slinked inside.
Big D looked at her with a raised eyebrow as if to say, “What’s up?”
She caught herself, smiled at him brightly to indicate that she understood, and went back to being cordial. After all, she knew what was wrong. She needed a blast. It had been almost an hour since she’d smoked, and that monkey on her back was growing restless. As it began to fidget, so did she. “Um, Big D, I left my inhaler in my car. Can you hold me down for a sec?” she asked sweetly.
Big D fell for the helpless routine and quickly agreed. “I got you,” he said, assuming her duties.
Tiffany fought the urge to run to her car, where half a blunt waited in the ashtray. Walking as briskly as she was, she caught Mike’s attention on the security monitor on his desk. She wasted no time once she entered her car. In a flash, she was taking furious drags on the cigar, holding the smoke for as long as she could. The monkey settled back down, and Tiffany outed the blunt again, making sure to save some for later.
Mike shook his head as he watched the whole episode on the monitor. He almost had second thoughts about turning her out until then. If she was smoking, selling some pussy was inevitable. May as well get that money instead of someone else, he reasoned.
He and Wanda had turned out hundreds of young women and girls. They had a stable of them working in clubs, private parties, escort services, and lately, even porno movies. The formula was simple: Wanda would get them using and then hand them over to Mike. Mike would put the dick on them and tell them he loved them. They would love him back and do whatever he asked of them to prove it.
Once the club was filled to capacity, Tiffany was asked to help serve drinks.
Ursula, the lone waitress for the night, showed her what to do. “Ima take the orders, and you just gotta brang dem they drinks,” Ursula said in her heavy Southern drawl.
“Okay,” Tiffany replied, staring wide-eyed in apprehension, nervous about actually going into the trenches.
“Ain’t nothin’ to it,” Ursula said reassuringly, seeing the fear. “And we gon’ split the tips.”
It went smoothly, and Tiffany began to enjoy the attention she received. All the customers flirted with her, even while in the midst of a rump-shaking table dance. “Here you go,” Tiffany said, handing over a tip for her and Ursula to split.
“A hunned dollars!?” Ursula exclaimed. “Dem cheap bastards neva gimme shit!”
“Guess cuz I’m new,” Tiffany said naively.
Ursula shot her a cold glance until she realized she was serious. Poor thing, she reflected to herself, knowing Tiffany was too green to life to know that the only reason a man does anything for a woman is because he wants to fuck her—that “Good morning” and “How are you?” all translates to “Can I have some pussy?” Ursula shook her head knowing what was in store for her.
It was only a few years earlier that she was caught in Mike and Wanda’s clutches herself. She’d met Wanda one day after moving to Atlanta from her family’s southern Georgia farm. A week later, she had coke in her nose and a stranger’s dick in her mouth. It took a year to shake off the yoke of drugs and get into school like she’d come for in the first place. Now, she only served drinks to make a living until she graduated.
She felt like telling Tiffany to run for her life, but she opted to mind her business. She gonna have to learn the hard way...just like I did.
CHAPTER 13
Marcus and Pony set up shop, armed with half a kilo of the best crack in town, bar none. While Pony weighed, cut, and bagged up the work, Marcus smoked it.
Pony wisely decided to sell it all in ten- and twenty-dollar increments to maximize profits. That entailed hella traffic and hella risk. Depending on how generous he felt, he could cut between $2,000 and $2,500 an ounce. He had eighteen ounces, which came to at least $36,000. If dis nigga don’t smoke it all first, Pony thought as Marcus smoked rock after rock without a care in the world. Nigga was ready to suck a dick. Pony frowned at the memory. You a junkie too, an inner voice whispered. You gon’ be just like him if you don’t stop. It was at that exact moment that Pony decided to drop both bad habits real soo
n. Both Marcus and the dope had to go. “Here. Take these and give them out,” Pony told Marcus, handing him the one-hit testers he’d bagged.
“Give?” Marcus asked, confused. “You mean for free?
“Yeah, give. Once the word get out that we got that glass, we straight,” Pony said, giving him a brief lesson in marketing.
“That’s what’s up,” Marcus agreed and set out on his task. He went room to room, smoking the testers with the other junkies.
The junkies were so used to the bullshit whipped cocaine that the renegades sold that they flipped once they got a hit of the butter. In fact, it set off a chain reaction that reverberated throughout the entire city. Those with cash came to cop, while those without cash went to get it. Shit got stolen, people got robbed, and dicks got sucked. The first customers came in a trickle, but that grew into an all-out flood. If there was a junkie dam somewhere, it had clearly broken.
Pony wisely rented two more rooms and switched at random, a plan devised to keep the jackers and police off balance.
A few customers complained about only being able to buy dimes or dubs, but Pony was in it to win it. As a concession, he let them get three for twenty-five or five for forty. Either way, he was winning. Before he knew it, the four ounces he’d bagged were gone. Pony initially thought he messed up somehow or Marcus cuffed some. Then he counted and re-counted the $7,500 stuffed in his pockets.
Marcus returned with a fine little smoker in tow. She was young and had to be a new convert since she still possessed all of her teeth, and she was thick where it counted. Marcus grabbed a handful of the dimes Pony was bagging and handed a couple to the young girl. They both wasted no time in loading their pipes and lighting them. After a few hits a piece, they climbed on the bed and stripped naked. Marcus and the girl went at it as if they had the room to themselves, even as Pony served the customers that came and went.
Pony tried to ignore the copulating couple, but her moans were getting the better of him. “Say, what that hit like?” he finally asked.
“Come see for yaself,” the young pro said. She changed positions so Marcus could hit her from the back while she accommodated Pony in her mouth. It only took the young pro a few minutes to get both men where they were trying to go.
* * *
By the next morning, the men had just over $13,000. It could have been more if not for Marcus’s smoking and tricking. They still had eight more ounces stashed in the basement of Pony’s grandmother’s house. The plan was to flip that, then move up to a whole bird.
That was, of course, until Marcus saw all the money and had a change of plans. “Break me off,” he demanded once the cash was counted.
“Be easy, shawty. We gon’ flip it one more time before we pull anything out,” Pony reasoned.
“Flip hell! Break me off!” Marcus insisted. “We got, what, thirteen stacks? That’s at least four g’s a piece,” he said, flaunting his mathematical prowess. “I’m tryina ball, nigga!” He laughed.
Reluctantly, Pony forked over $6,200. He couldn’t beat his old friend, but he did deduct a fee for what Marcus smoke, stole, and tricked with. In the end, he figured he was better off that Marcus wasn’t interested in the goldmine they came across. He intended to flip his money to infinity. Niggers would die to get their hands on the quality of cocaine they had. He knew firsthand that at least one had died for them to get it.
A fool and his money, Pony mused inwardly as Marcus went store to store, trying his best to spend every dime. Pony realized he’d neglected himself in recent months and did a little shopping himself. He copped the newest Jordans, and Marcus bought three pair. Pony picked up a One Ummah jeans set, and Marcus got four. By the time they left the mall, Marcus had spent over $3,000 while Pony had only left a few hundred behind.
Pony did splurge a little, having his aunt rent a Cadillac truck for the weekend. He justified the expenditure by saying it was good for business, reasoning that if he had that much work, he needed to look the part. Truth be told, he wanted to floss a little bit too.
After a fresh cut and a hot shower, Pony felt like his old self and admired his new clothes.
Marcus still looked rough, despite the $1,000 outfit he wore. He stuffed $2,000 in his pockets to spend at the club, having every intention to make it rain!
Pony brought along $200 in cash and 100 one-hit testers. He was gonna make it rain, too, but in his direction.
* * *
Tiffany greeted the two men as if they were anybody off the street. “Welcome to Chocolate.” She smiled genially at Pony, totally ignoring Marcus. A casual observer wouldn’t have guessed that she ever knew Marcus, let alone that he’d been her first love.
“What the fuck you doing here?” Marcus demanded to know, ignoring the obvious.
Big D caught the outburst and took a step in their direction, until Tiffany waved him off. He did back off, but he continued to watch closely to see how she handled the situation.
“Tell your little friend that I work here,” she said to Pony, still refusing to look at Marcus. Knowing how self-conscious Marcus was about his height, she went there again. “And tell your little friend the cover is twenty dollars per person,” she said with a slight chuckle.
Pony tried his best not to laugh, but a small giggle escaped as he offered to pay.
“I got it!” Marcus shouted, pulling out his bankroll. “That ain’t shit to a baller,” he announced, tossing a C-note at Tiffany. “Keep da change, ho.”
This time when Big D stepped forward to intervene, Tiffany was unable to wave him off. It was his job to prevent domestic squabbles like that one. Since so many dudes wanted to date strippers but couldn’t handle it, he had his work cut out for him. The dudes would often post up at the bar mean mugging whoever “their girl” danced for. Whenever a situation got out of hand, they had to go, but there were two options—leave with or without getting their ass whipped first.
“It’s cool, D. They alright,” Tiffany said sternly, looking at Marcus for the first time.
“They better be,” the bouncer growled. There was no mistaking the danger in his voice.
“Yeah, we cool,” Pony said, dragging Marcus into the club before he could say anything else.
They found a couple of stools at the bar and mounted them.
Marcus made a big show of counting his money when he paid for the first round of drinks. “Say, shawty, let’s get a table in the VIP,” he announced loudly.
Pony glanced over at the VIP section and knew instantly that they were out of their league. The diamonds and platinum could be seen from across the room. “There go a table back there,” Pony said, pointing toward the back. Marcus protested about wanting to be seen, but Pony knew better. The back of the club better suited his needs anyway.
Marcus gave Ursula a hard time when she delivered a bottle of champagne, but he tipped her well. She spread the word that there was a loudmouth showoff in the back, and the dancers made a beeline to break him. Marcus had three girls dancing for him at the same time, at twenty bucks a song each.
Pony made sure to slip each one a tester and his number. Once the girls realized what he’d handed them, they slipped off to sample it. The ones who didn’t smoke kept them to trick with the girls who did smoke.
“Y’all got any more of dem thangs?” a dancer whispered in Pony’s ear.
His first thought was to decline, as he intended to spread out the samples far and wide. That was until he looked up and got an eyeful of Jasmine.
Jasmine was a solid dime by anyone’s standard. She was tall, red bone with rock-hard abs. Her breast stood out firmly, topped by pretty brown nipples.
Pony looked at her legs and wondered if she could dunk. When he saw her pretty lips twitching from the dope, he got hard instantly. “I’m getting low,” he said, trying to keep his composure.
“Come on,” Jasmine ordered, pulling him up by the hand. She led him upstairs to the private VIP rooms. “Gimme five minutes,” she told a bouncer as she led Pony insi
de.
Once inside the room, Pony was inside her mouth before both cheeks touched the sofa he sat on. “This is the life!” Pony exclaimed, looking out the room window to the club below.
“Mmmhmm,” Jasmine agreed at the same time fishing the testers from his pockets as she blew him.
His enjoyment was threatened as he watched disaster unfold before his eyes. From his elevated vantage point, he saw Marcus stalking Tiffany with his eyes. She was delivering a tray of drinks to a table near his. He said something, she replied, and he jumped up, dumping the dancer off his lap. The girl screamed as she plummeted to the floor, alerting security of a problem. Then Marcus grabbed Tiffany by the arm and began yelling at her.
“Get the fu—” was all she got out before Marcus literally slapped the taste out of her mouth.
“This silly nigga,” Pony fumed, watching the drama.
“What’s wrong?” Jasmine paused to ask.
“Nothing,” he replied, guiding her head back down.
Big D had been keeping an eye on Marcus and was the first to respond. When Marcus reared back to slap her again, his hand was caught by Big D’s massive paw. He was joined by two other bouncers who dragged Marcus, kicking and screaming, to the rear exit. Mike had seen the incident from his office and went to investigate as well. Once outside, the bouncers literally tried to stomp a mud hole in his ass.
“A little to the left,” Mike said, supervising the beat-down. “A’ight, that’s enough,” he commanded after Marcus was beaten thoroughly.
“Ima kill you,” Marcus slurred, spitting saliva and blood on Mike’s linen pants.
“Me?” Mike asked in disbelief after having just saved him from further abuse.
“Yeah, you,” Marcus repeated, trying to rise to his feet.
“Well, take that with you,” Mike said before kicking him in the mouth. The blow knocked out five of his front teeth. “Put this trash where it belongs,” Mike said as he turned to leave.
