by Glenn, Roy
By the time Leon got back with Diamond, me and Pearl were fucked up—I mean giggling all over ourselves fucked up. Leon just shook his head and made himself a drink. Diamond, on the other hand, seemed just a bit jealous, but Pearl didn’t seem to care.
The next morning when I got ready to leave, I got my money together and tried to give it to Leon. “What’s that for?”
“For the product I’m gettin’ from you.”
“Yeah, well, put your money away. Go buy yourself a better looking, cheap car than the one you’re drivin’ now,” Leon said and laughed. “I’m just fuckin’ with you, Nina. But when you do get a car, make sure it’s nothing fancy, just something to get you around.”
“You told me that a hundred times, Leon.”
“And you ain’t gettin’ no two ounces. I’m givin’ you a kilo.” My mouth dropped open. “That one is on me. Make your money, and when you come back to see me, we’ll talk about a price for the next one.”
“Thank you, Leon.”
“You don’t have to thank me. You’re family now. I ain’t ever gonna see Lo again unless we run up on each other in jail, and you know I’m never going to jail. You’re my cousin now. Whatever you need to make it, all you gotta do is ask me.”
“I will,” I said and gave him a hug.
“Don’t you worry about a thing, you’re gonna be fine. Lo always said you were the brains of the outfit.”
“What?” I asked, looking at Leon like he was stupid.
“He said that you gave him the best advice whenever he asked you what to do, and how he should handle situations.”
“You’re kidding.” Damn. I never thought he paid any attention to what I was saying. All I ever told him was what I thought would bring in the most money. Who knew the shit was working for him?
“That’s what he told me.” Leon turned around and started walking toward the house.
“Leon,” I called to him. “I don’t mean to ask stupid questions, but where is it?”
Leon stopped and looked at me. “Strapped under the driver’s seat. You’ll need to take the seat out to get to it. If you get stopped, it won’t be easy to find without dogs. And be careful in South Carolina. The state patrol is hot there.”
“Good-bye, Leon.”
“See ya, cuz.”
So, I was on my way home with a kilo under my ass, feeling like I had the world by the tail. Although I was nervous about what I was carrying, I was bubbling over with excitement and anticipation about the future. Having a free kilo to go into business with was a whole lot sweeter than a couple of ounces. My mind began to open up to the possibilities that I was sitting on. There was no longer any thought in my mind of me, Teena, and Shay hustling to flip a couple of ounces so we could re-up. Now we would be able to sit back and wait on the money to come to us.
Now, all the things that Leon had said we could do on price would come into play. He said since I was entering a very competitive market, it would always be to my advantage to have a high-quality product and to be very competitive on price. That was how I would get new customers. They would be loyal as long as I treated them right. He told me to remember that anybody I dealt with was liable to snitch me out the first time I fucked them over, but if I gave them a good price, they would come back to buy more. The more they bought, the more I could buy. My costs would go down, but my selling price would remain the same, so my profits would go up. It was damn good advice.
I got on I-95 and headed north, staying with the flow of traffic for the most part. I got into South Carolina and remembering Leon’s warning, I made sure to do the speed limit. That was cool until I got behind this old woman coming out of Florence who was driving really slow. I took it as long as I could, then I pulled out to get in front of her. I passed her without a problem and was cruising along nicely, when I realized I was doing eighty. I took my foot off the gas to let it slow down and blew right by a state trooper. I kept going, watching the rearview mirror, hoping that he wouldn’t come after me.
“Shit. Here he comes.”
As soon as I saw the blue lights come on, I pulled over. As quickly as I could, I put on some lipstick, unbuttoned the top two buttons on my blouse, and emptied my purse out on the seat next to me. He pulled over behind me and got out of the car. Thank God he’s black, I thought. When he knocked on my window, I went into my act. I looked up at him, rolled down the window and started crying. Not no big, boo-hoo cry, but I forced a few tears down my cheeks.
“Can I see your license, ma’am?”
“Here it is,” I said tearfully.
“You’re a long way from home, Ms. Thomas,” the trooper said as he leaned on top of the car to get a better view of the cleavage I had put on display for him. “What’s your hurry?”
“I’m visiting my family in Florence. I didn’t mean to be speedin’, but I was diggin’ around in this junky purse for my cigarettes, but I don’t see them, so I guess I must’ve left them at Aunt Steph’s house, and I guess I got a little heavy-footed,” I lied. I don’t even smoke, but the plan was working. The cleavage had his ass frozen. I knew then that he wasn’t gonna search the car. Now it was time to get out of getting a ticket.
“Well, Ms. Thomas, I clocked you doing seventy-eight in a sixty-five-mile-per-hour zone,” the trooper said.
You’re losin’ him, Nina. I knew then it was time to close the show. I began to cry a little harder and made my breasts bounce. I looked at his face: his eyes bucked wide, mouth open. He shook his head. “Don’t cry, Ms. Thomas. I’m gonna let you go with a warning this time,” he said and handed me back my license, “but just try to keep it at the speed limit. And maybe you should quit smoking. A pretty lady like you doesn’t need to smoke anyway.”
“I know. It’s a nasty habit.”
He reached in his shirt pocket, pulled out a card and handed it to me. “If you wanna get together some time, give me a call,” the trooper said. He was kinda cute for a cop, so I thought I just might. As he walked back to his car, I buttoned up my blouse and put my stuff back in the purse. I pulled out slowly into traffic and drove on, knowing that I had dodged a bullet big-time. But the fact remained that I had dodged it, and was on my way to do this thing.
Eight
Now that I had it, it was time to make it work. Me and Teena posted up at a table in the back of Jimmy’s, the same hole in the wall bar where Lorenzo and Chris first took us. I remembered what Leon had told me. “The ones that are still on the street are the ones who gave the cops something to stay out.” And here they all were.
I’d been low-profile since Lorenzo went to jail. First I was depressed, then I tried to be a dancer, so this was the first time I’d seen a lot of these people in a while. One by one, each one of them came up to me to show their respect. Their women asked me where I’d been and filled me in on all the latest gossip. Some wanted to see if I was doing okay on my own. Some of the fellas who hadn’t seen me in a good while told me how sorry they were that things went down the way they did. Some of that was sincere, some was bullshit, some of these muthafuckas were glad Lorenzo was locked up.
Some offered their help, others offered themselves. Imagine what I must have represented to them; what a prize I would be. One of them had taken my man’s position, now they wanted me.
“Look at these muthafuckas, Nina. All of them tryin’ to get with you,” Teena said.
“All of them sold out Lorenzo to stay on the street.”
“You sure you don’t wanna recruit none of these muthafuckas?”
“Yup.”
“Not even the cute ones?”
“Especially not them. I thought about it, believe me. This is where I thought I was gonna start: with these mugs. But now, looking at them, seeing how they’re trying to play me, we don’t need none of these sellout muthafuckas to do this work for us. No, Teena, we gotta build our own team.”
“We?”
“Yeah, we. Or were you just talkin’ that together-to-the-bloody-end shit?”
; “No, I wasn’t just talkin’. You know that. But I was just thinking that since things had changed, you know, with you getting a whole lot more than you thought, and with you handin’ me back five hundred of the four hundred dollars I gave you, I thought maybe shit had changed.”
I looked at Teena; it hurt me a little to hear her ask me that. It was like she was questioning the strength of our friendship. “No, Teena, we’re in this together. We gotta build this team.”
“Well, maybe you should tell me exactly what we means.”
“It means we’re partners. Me, you and Shay are partners in this. I’m distribution, you’re recruitment, and you know Shay . . .”
“Yeah, she’ll get done anything that needs to be done.”
“So, the first person we gonna go see is Kenyatta,” I said to Teena and motioned for the waitress.
“You just said you wasn’t fuckin’ with none of Lo’s people.”
“I know what I said, but Kenyatta is different. That’s my girl. I was the one who brought Kenyatta to Lorenzo.” I laughed. “She’s been tellin’ me since the day Lorenzo got locked down that I needed to do this.”
When I went to see Kenyatta the following day, it was like she was waiting for me. She swung open the door to her apartment before I could knock. “I hope your grand appearance at Jimmy’s last night means you’re ready to take this thing to a new level.”
“Hello, Kenyatta,” I said and walked by her. “How are you today?”
“Just answer my question, ho. What were you doin’ at Jimmy’s last night?”
“That’s what I came to see you about.”
“Talk to me.”
“You ready to take this thing to a new level?”
“Yes! Nina, I been ready. I just been waitin’ on you.”
“Good. You still hold down that same stop?”
“Of course.”
“What’s gonna happen if you change suppliers?”
“Since we’re talkin’ business, let’s say you give me a reason to change suppliers.”
“I’m in a position to give you a much better price than what you’re paying now.”
“Then in that case, I’d be doin’ business with you. They’ll come around, make some noise, but my set is deep enough to make them think twice about takin’ it any further.”
So, now we had a place to sell and it all began from there. The way Kenyatta ran her program was tight: no hand-to-hand exchanges and little or no conversation. You say what you want, drop your money on the ground and go up the steps. On the ground at the top of the steps, you’d find what you paid for.
Kenyatta immediately bought into the concept of making money on volume. She didn’t put a lot of cut on it. Once the word got around that they were rolling with quantity and very high quality, I couldn’t get the product to them fast enough. That would become my foundation, and I would build up from there. It wasn’t long before I was back in Jacksonville.
I made it a point to stay in Florence on the trip down. I called that trooper and went out with him. Not that I was feeling him all that much, but I was going to be driving though there on a regular basis. Any information I could get from him would be useful.
In less than a year, we were able to move four kilos a month. In that time, we had put together a team of nine players, male and female, who were buying weight on a regular basis. As a recruiter, Teena had found her special place in the world, hanging around with people—mostly men, mostly with money—feeling them out, seeing where their heads were at, and taking the ones that fit into our program. “Same shit I’ve been doing for years,” Teena boasted. “Sizing men up is what I do.”
On one of my trips to Jacksonville, I was with Leon, having one of our usual conversations, when the subject turned to sex. “To be honest with you, Leon, I haven’t been with anybody since Lorenzo.”
“Why? If you were with Lo, I know you like sex.”
I looked at Leon, unsure how I felt about him knowing that about me. “Yes, I do like sex, but I love Lorenzo.”
“Lo is never getting out.”
“I know that. And I know he told me to move on with my life.”
“So, what’s up?”
“What do you mean, what’s up?”
“I mean, are you planning on being celibate for the rest of your life, or are you gonna let somebody play with that vicious campaign you call a body?” Leon asked and showed me that look he had reserved for the tittie twins. “You’re a young, beautiful woman. You have your whole life ahead of you. You shouldn’t deny yourself that pleasure, especially if you enjoy it.” I thought that Leon was about to try and talk up on some, but he got up and said good night. I watched Leon walk out of my bedroom and wondered if I would have said no.
When I got back from Jacksonville, Teena introduced me to a guy who went by the name of Smoke. She had been sizing him up for a little over a month because of the weight he was talking about. Smoke came through the door talking a kilo a week. That doubled my business right away.
Smoke became my best customer, but he was one freaky dude. One night, I was hanging out with Smoke and this white chick I knew named Gina. She was mad cool. Not mad cool for a white girl. Gina was just mad cool. Anyway, Smoke started telling us about all the freaky shit he’s done and would like to do. Then he tells us that he always wanted to have sex with two white women at same time—two blondes to be exact. “So what about it, Gina?” Smoke asked.
“What about what, Smoke?” Gina asked.
“What about you callin’ up one of your freaky, blonde girlfriends and y’all two come over to my place, and let’s do the damn thing.”
“Oh, please. I wouldn’t open my legs for you if you were the last swinging dick on the planet and I had to fuck you to stay alive.”
So, you could imagine my surprise when three months later, Smoke told me that him and Gina were getting married.
Which brings me to Cedric.
I had gone to the wedding with this guy I’d met named Omar. There was nothing going on between us, a fact that Omar hated, but he was such a lame that I couldn’t even point my mind in the direction of seeing him naked. However, since my talk with Leon, I’d been slowly coming around to the idea that I had moved on with every other part of my life, maybe I could move on with that part too. But not with Omar; we were just friends. Besides, he was good company sometimes, so I asked him to come to the wedding with me.
Anyway, I was watching Cedric watching me, and thought about how long it had been since I’d felt a man inside of me. Cedric was fine in a rugged sort of way, and I found myself fantasizing about having sex with him. Finally, he found somebody to walk him over to introduce me. Not wanting to disrespect Omar when they got to the table, Smoke introduced him to everybody sitting there. With eyes focused on me, Cedric politely spoke to everyone, taking his eyes off me only briefly. Finally Smoke got to me. “Omar, Nina, this is my former roommate, Cedric. Cedric, this is Omar Parker.”
“Nice to meet you,” Cedric said to Omar and held out his hand, but his eyes were still focused on me. Omar accepted the gesture without speaking. “Cedric, this is Nina Thomas,” Smoke said.
Our eyes locked. “It’s good to meet you, Ms. Thomas.”
“Please, call me Nina. And it’s good to met you, too, Cedric.”
“Maybe you’ll dance with me, Nina.”
The deejay started playing “Diary” by Alicia Keys, and I was really feeling him, so I said, “Sure.”
While we were dancing, Cedric asked, “So, what’s up with you and busta there?”
“Who, Omar? Nothing. We’ve been out a few times. He nice, but he’s . . . I don’t know.”
“Well, who would know? Should I ask him?”
“No, he’s probably already jealous of you.”
“Why?”
“Maybe you should ask him.” Cedric said, and started to pull away from me. “Come back here. I’m not through with you yet,” I said. “You were going to ask him, weren’t you?”
“Yeah. I need to know these things.”
“Why?”
“I’m just an informational kind of guy. I make a livin’ on information.” The song ended and I started to pull away from him. “Come back here. I’m not through with you yet.”
“Stay in My Corner” came on, and he drew me back to his chest. I liked the way it felt there in his arms. Cedric was tall; six three, maybe four. I looked into his eyes. He held me tighter. “I hate to be the one to break this on you, but that thing with you and that busta . . .”—Cedric frowned and shook his head—“It ain’t gonna last.”
“Oh really? What makes you say that, Cedric?”
“I don’t mean to sound overconfident, but I intend to take you from him. And I am prepared to spend all my time, all my energy, and all my resources to do it. Let’s get out of here now. We can find a nice, quiet place where we can talk. Get to know each other.”
“No, Cedric.”
“Tell me what you want to do and that’s what we’ll do. I just wanna talk to you, Nina. I wanna know everything you want me to know,” Cedric said with a confident smirk. “I wanna know what makes you cry, and what I can do to make you smile.”
“I don’t smile much these days,” I said, leaning back.
“Tell me why you don’t smile,” Cedric said and drew me back to his chest.
“Maybe I don’t have anything to smile about,” I flirted.
Cedric laughed out loud. “That’s why you need to be with me. Come on, let’s go.”
“No, Cedric.”
“Then meet me in an hour at The Shark Club.”
“No, Cedric,” I said, and wondered if he could tell that I wanted to go with him. I could feel how hard he was from dancing with me. “You don’t waste any time, do you?”
“When you don’t have a lotta time, you can’t waste it. So, what about tomorrow?”
“No, Cedric.” I looked at Omar. “Not tomorrow. Thursday seven o’clock.”
I hooked up with Cedric a few times, and the more I talked to him, the more I began to realize what an asshole he was. How could somebody that fine be such an asshole? In spite of that, he was kind of cool to hang out with. But even more, I was horny. It had been almost two years since Lorenzo went to jail and I was ready, but not in a rush. You know what I’m saying?
