by Glenn, Roy
Seven
Now that the decision had been made, it was time to put it into action. I had twenty-four hundred dollars. That was enough money to cover expenses and get a couple of ounces—maybe two and a half. That would be enough to get us started.
My partners didn’t have much money to invest in our new business venture. Shay had no money, which I understood; she got kids to take care of. Teena came up with four hundred, but I was cool with that for the time being. I figured that I should start with a couple of people who did business with Lorenzo and build up from there. My thinking was that if everything went the way it should, I would recoup my investment in no time.
Before the deputies took Lorenzo away, he told me that if I ever needed anything, I should call his cousin, Leon, in Jacksonville. Lorenzo would go down there all the time. And I went with him on a few of his trips. Lorenzo never said and I never asked him, but I always thought that Leon was his supplier.
I was a little nervous about talking to Leon. We got along okay and he treated me with respect, but I always felt that he really didn’t like me. It was nothing he said; it was just the way he looked at me sometimes: like I wasn’t good enough for his baby cousin.
“Hello.”
“Hello, can I speak to Leon?”
“This is Leon. Who is this?”
“This is Nina. I’m Lorenzo’s girlfriend.”
“What’s up, Nina? How you holdin’ up?”
“I’m okay.”
“How come it took you so long to call me? We’re family now, girl. Remember that.”
“I will. And thank you, that means a lot to me.”
“So, what’s up?”
“I need to talk to you about something, but I don’t wanna talk over the phone.”
“Come down here. Spend some time with me. Call me when you get here.”
“I’ll call the airport now and call you back with my flight info.”
“No, I think you should drive. It ain’t safe to fly. Terrorists and shit, you know. Much safer if you drive.”
“I understand. I’ll call you when I’m in Jacksonville,” I said and hung up the phone. I looked at Teena and Shay.
“Well?” Shay asked. “You in there or what?”
“He said I was family now and should drive down there and spend some time with him.”
“Either you in there or he wants some pussy,” Teena said.
“Yeah maybe, but I don’t think that’s it.”
“What’s he like?” Teena asked.
“He’s in his thirties. Tall, good lookin’ and dark-skinned like Lorenzo, but he’s a big guy. Not fat, but a big guy. Anytime we went there, he always had a different woman with him. Big house, always got mad cash to spend, you know what I mean.”
“Sounds like somebody I should know,” Teena said.
“Maybe next trip, Teena. Besides, he wants me to drive to Jacksonville, and you hate long trips. Only problem with that is a car. I don’t have one.”
“You could rent one,” Teena suggested.
“No credit card.”
“You can use mine,” Shay volunteered. “It’s not fancy, but Gary keeps it in good condition.”
“He should. He’s a mechanic,” Teena said.
“Are you sure, Shay? I’m just sayin’, what you gonna drive?”
“I’ll be all right for a few days without it. If I need to go somewhere, Gary will take me,” Shay said.
I was set. The next morning I hit the road for Jacksonville in Shay’s old Escort station wagon. She left the baby’s seat in the back along with all of her kids’ junk. Shay said it was too much trouble to take out the car seat, and she was just too lazy to clean the car. I didn’t care. I just got in, said good-bye to my girls, and headed south. Shay was right about one thing: the car, junky or not, ran like a champ. All it had, though, was a radio—no CD, not even a tape player. “This is gonna be a long ride.”
I rode down I-95 South, changing stations on the radio. I found that listening to music that you don’t like keeps you awake. A lot of the time I spent with the radio off, just letting my mind flow. Naturally, I spent a lot of time thinking about what I was driving to Jacksonville for. The same question kept rolling around in my mind: Was I ready to sell drugs? And at this point, did it matter? I was going to do it. In my mind, there was no turning around now.
I thought about Lorenzo a lot too. I wanted so badly to talk to him to tell him just how much I loved him, how much I missed him. I wanted to tell him about all the things I had been through since he’d been gone.
I thought about my parents and how much the choices I’d made had disappointed them. I could almost hear my father’s voice telling me that he didn’t raise me to take the easy way. It was hard work and making the hard choices that was going to carry me in the long run. But there I was, living and making short-term choices. My thoughts were fuckin’ with me, so I turned the radio back on to drown them out.
When I got to Jacksonville, I called Leon and he came to meet me. After he laughed at the car, I followed him back to his house, where there were two women lounging by the pool. They were both pretty women, in their late twenties, I guessed. One had no top on, and both of them had big, fake-ass titties. I could tell ’cause they were too round at the top.
He introduced one as Diamond and the other as Pearl. I practically had to bite my lip to keep from laughing in their faces. He introduced me as Lorenzo’s woman. Both of them acted like they knew exactly who Lorenzo was, which led me to believe that Lorenzo had fucked one, if not both of them, when he came here without me. I started to cop an attitude with them, but then I caught myself. Lorenzo was in jail for life; no point in getting all twisted about it now.
“Are you hungry, Nina?” Leon asked.
“Starvin’,” was my one-word answer.
Leon turned to his other two guests. “Y’all get us something to eat,” he said to them, then turned around and went back in the house. I stood there looking at them until Leon said, “You coming, Nina?”
“It was nice meeting y’all,” I said to them.
“I hope you like seafood,” one of the women said to me as I walked away, “’cause I’m goin’ to Red Lobster.”
I followed Leon back in the house and he took my bag upstairs to one of the bedrooms. He opened the door and held it for me as I walked in. Once I was in the room, he closed the door and locked it. I guess Teena was right. This man really does want some pussy.
I guess he could tell by the look on my face that I was apprehensive about him locking us in. “Don’t worry, Nina. I only locked the door so we won’t be disturbed. We don’t need nobody walkin’ in on us while we’re talkin’.”
“Oh.”
“Now, make yourself comfortable. You consider this your home, you hear me? Like I said, you’re family. You need anything while you’re here you just have to say so. Understand?”
“I understand, and thank you.”
“Now, talk to me, Nina,” Leon said as he sat down in the chair across from the bed. “Tell me what’s been goin’ on with you.”
I sat on the edge of the bed and told Leon everything I had gone through since Lorenzo went to jail, eventually, working up to my decision to get into the game. I even told him that I had been dancing, and how I felt about the whole experience.
“You don’t have to feel ashamed about that, Nina. A lot of women go down that road and find that it’s not what they thought it was.”
“Don’t get it twisted. I’m not ashamed of what I did. I was just doin’ what I had to do.”
“It’s called survival, baby girl,” Leon said and stood up. He walked over to the window.
“But sometimes, Leon, I feel like I’m just out here spiraling out of control.” I was surprising myself with how open I was being with Leon. He was just so easy to talk to. He was a good listener. Talking to him now, I no longer felt like I wasn’t ‘good enough’ for his baby cousin. That’s when I realized that he was the same person, treating me with the same respe
ct that he had each time I was a guest in his house. It was my attitude that had changed.
“I have an idea, but I hate misunderstandings. So, what was it that you wanted to talk to me about, Nina?” Leon asked and returned to his chair.
“Lorenzo said if I ever needed anything to call you. Well, I saved up some money and I’m ready for whatever.”
Leon sat quietly and listened while I talked. I explained that I had some money and I wanted to get as much product as I could for what I had. He laughed a little when I said I had two thousand dollars, but he tried to play it off as a cough.
“How did you know to come see me about that?”
“I didn’t.”
“Well, I can help you, but first I gotta ask are you sure this is what you wanna do?”
“I’m sure.”
“I can help you with that. In fact, I’ve been expecting you, but I was expecting you three months ago. Lorenzo said that you’d be coming,” Leon said and stood up. “You get settled in and relax. I’ll call you when they get back with the food.”
“They said they were goin’ to Red Lobster.”
“I know they had to go somewhere. Neither of them can boil water.” Leon laughed and closed the door behind him.
Over the next four days, me and Leon became inseparable. We didn’t sleep together or anything like that. Leon was always a perfect gentleman. At the end of the day, Leon would say good night and go to his room, where the tittie twins were waiting for him.
We would talk all day about the game—what to do, what not to do; who to fuck with and who to leave alone; how to deal with the cops. We talked about seeing the bigger picture and not getting caught up on bullshit, and we talked a lot about trust. It was like going to school. “Damn, you mean there’s more to this than just collecting money?” I joked early on, but Leon was not amused.
“This shit ain’t no joke, Nina. You get to fuckin’ around in them streets, thinkin’ this shit is funny, and you’ll get yourself killed or locked up like your man,” Leon advised.
Some things I knew from being with Lorenzo, some things were just common sense, but most of what he was telling me I had no clue about.
“Do you like football, Nina?”
“I love football.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Then you understand the game?” he questioned. “You’re not one of these women who love football because it’s men in tight pants?”
“No, Leon, I really understand the game.”
“Good. I would have been disappointed in you if it was just the pants.”
“Why would that disappoint you?”
“’Cause it’s so much deeper than that.”
“How so?”
“Football is like life, Nina. Each time you step on the field, your objective is to score a touchdown, right?”
“Right.”
“So the natural temptation is to go for the big play every time. The fans go wild, and it’s great for your ego. However”—Leon said, taking a timely pause and raising his finger to emphasize his point—“the defense is there to prevent this from happening. But the objective remains.”
“To score a touchdown,” I added.
“Exactly. This poses a problem, so you got to study the defense. You have to understand its strengths and learn how to exploit its weaknesses. Now you can take advantage of what the defense gives you. You run the draw up the middle, you run the short passing routes, but you’re moving the ball downfield and moving closer to your objective. You’ve got to play your hardest on every play until you’ve put yourself in a position to complete your objective.”
“To score a touchdown.”
“Just like life,” Leon said.
“That was kind of deep, Leon,” I said as I stretched and yawned. Leon stood up. “Hey, Leon, how come I never met you before? I mean, back when me and Lorenzo were in high school. I thought I’d met his whole family.”
“You met his Uncle Wayne, right?”
“Yeah, we used to go and visit him in jail sometimes.”
“Wayne is my daddy.”
“I didn’t know that. I guess drug dealing does run in y’all’s family.”
“It’s the family business,” Leon said.
“So, you used to live in the Bronx?”
Leon nodded his head in response.
“Why’d you leave? What’s the matter, you don’t love New York?”
“Let’s just say that I left New York for business reasons, and leave it at that, Nina,” Leon said, and as he did every night, went off to slay the tittie twins.
The following day, I came downstairs and found Leon sitting at the kitchen table, while the twins tried to cook breakfast. “Good morning. I’m ready for another day of Drug Dealer 101.”
The twins started laughing until Leon cut his eyes at them. They stopped laughing quickly and resumed their discussion on the best way to fry an egg.
“Good morning, Nina,” Leon said. “Sit down and pay them no mind.”
“I thought you said they couldn’t cook,” I whispered.
“They can’t,” he whispered back, “and I damn sure ain’t eatin’ anything they cook. It’s my fault. I said a home-cooked meal sure would be nice once in a while. What I wanna say that for? Look at them. Between the two of them you’d think they could fry an egg. Anyway, they mean well.”
“I’m sure they have other talents.”
“You just don’t know, Nina. You couldn’t imagine the talents those two have,” Leon said as he looked over at the twins. Diamond glanced over at Leon while he was looking at her. She ran her tongue over her lips and went back to doing what she was doing. Leon smiled more of a smile than I’d ever seen on him. It still wasn’t much, but I could see what the twins saw in him: Leon was sexy.
Leon always had this serious look on his face. It was like he was always thinking. Thinking about what was next, thinking about that bigger picture that he was always talking about. Sure, Leon was teaching me how to play the game, but what was more important to me was when he told me, “Nina, what you have to do is stay focused on the objective instead of the game. How to work from a position of strength, making allies out of enemies to accomplish your objectives. And one other thing: always be right, and when you’re wrong, make sure you have a backup plan. It’s a poor rat that only has one hole,” Leon told me. I nodded my head like I understood exactly what he was talking about, even though I was clueless.
“Now, you go and get dressed and we’ll go to Waffle House,” he told me. “By the time you’re dressed, I’ll have put a stop to this.”
The more I thought about what he was trying to get me to see, the more it made perfect sense. To put it simply, don’t get caught up on bullshit, ’cause it will only take time and energy away from what you’re doing.
“I could cook breakfast,” I volunteered.
“I know. I was thinkin’ about the last time you were here with Lorenzo and you cooked us that big-ass breakfast, but I don’t want you to show them up. Let them go on believin’ that all women are just as useless in the kitchen as they are.”
That day, Leon and I sat out by the pool and talked. He was still on trust. “I know what you’re thinkin’, Nina, but don’t do it. I’m tellin’ you. Don’t fuck with anybody that Lorenzo used to do business with.”
“Why not?”
“’Cause you don’t know if you can trust them. You don’t know which ones the cops got their hooks in. Cops had Lorenzo under surveillance; they know who he was doing business with. You see, some of them went to jail behind his shit. The ones that are still on the street are the ones who gave the cops something to stay out.”
“I never thought about that.”
“Build your own team”—Leon said and pointed at me—“People who’ll be loyal to you.”
“I understand. I need a loyal team to achieve my objectives.”
“You have been listening.”
“More than that, I’ve been
paying attention. So, I’ll stay away from the guys he used to do business with.”
“Good. They won’t respect you anyway.”
“Why not?”
“’Cause they will always see you as Lorenzo’s ho.” I didn’t particularly like being called a ho, but that’s probably how they all saw me. “Gimme the keys to your car.” Once I handed him the keys he said that he would be back in a couple of hours. “You’ll be ready to leave in the morning, so relax for the rest of the day.” He got up. “Diamond, come follow me,” he yelled to one of the tittie twins, and she left with him.
Once Leon was gone, Pearl came and sat with me by the pool. “You smoke weed?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” Pearl said, and pulled out a blunt from her cleavage. “It’s a little damp, but we’ll fix that,” she said and put a lighter to it. “You wanna drink too?”
“Sure, why not?”
“Don’t worry, Nina, I make drinks better than I cook. Come inside with me,” she said, and I followed her. “I used to be a bartender until I found out I could make more money dancin’ than pouring drinks. Now I’m gettin’ too old for that shit too. Anyway, I’ll make us a couple of Blue Muthafuckas,” Pearl said.
“What’s a Blue Muthafucka?”
“It’s a Long Island Iced Tea with this blue stuff mixed with it,” she said, holding up a bottle of Blue Curaçao. “Now, how does that sound?”
“Great.” I smiled at Pearl. Even though I had been there for a few days, this was the first time I had been alone with either of the twins. There was something I’d been dying to ask. “You mind if I ask you a question, Pearl?”
Pearl stopped making our drinks. “Go ahead.” She gave me this what-you-wanna-know, bitch look.
“Is your name really Pearl?”
She started laughing, so I laughed a little with her, but I still wanted to know. “Yes, Nina, my mother and father named me Pearl. You know, people been callin’ us that for years, and nobody’s ever asked me that,” she said, still falling all over herself with laughter. “But you asked the right one. Diamond’s my girl, but she is a little sensitive about her name.”
“So, what’s her name?”
Pearl stopped laughing, got this real serious look on her face, and waited until I stopped laughing. “Alice Fae.” She busted up laughing again.
