Baby Brother's Blues

by Pearl Cleage

  “Come in.”

  His hopes for an intimate exchange growing fainter by the second, Bob stepped in, turned to her, and extended the extravagantly gift-boxed roses. She glanced down like he had just extended a fresh turd in her direction. Of course she made no move to touch it.

  “What the hell is that?”

  Bob took a deep breath. He knew how to get through this moment. They’d been here before. The angry woman and the semi-contrite man.

  “I’m sorry, Lee. I was an asshole on the phone the other night and I apologize.”

  “This is not a social call and I am not your girlfriend or your wife, so please don’t insult me with your ridiculously transparent moves. The only way you’ll be getting any sex here tonight is if you take it, and I don’t think you can.”

  “Not my style,” Bob said, preparing to let his mind wander while Lee got a chance to vent about men in general and him specifically.

  “Why’d you bring the flowers?”

  “When I’m wrong, I say I’m wrong. The flowers were just my way to say I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

  She looked at him and he thought he saw something soften in her eyes, but he might have been imagining it. He decided to shut up until he could gauge her mood a little better and determine how angry she really was.

  “Do you want a drink?” she said, still sounding pissed off, but a little less so, he thought.

  “Thanks,” he said, relieved at the unexpected invitation. Maybe the flowers were working after all. “Got any vodka?”

  She always kept a bottle for his visits, but tonight he made no assumptions. It was safer that way.

  “Come on in the kitchen,” she said, finally picking up the florist’s box. “Help yourself while I put these in water.”

  He went to the freezer and pulled out the frosted bottle of Grey Goose. Two ice cubes, a splash of tonic, and a twist of lime made him start to relax a little. He leaned against the kitchen sink and watched her lay out the flowers on the counter, cut the tips off the stems under cold-running water, and then arrange them in a cut-glass vase she had pulled from a top shelf on her tiptoes.

  She had changed from her usual conservative work suit and heels into a pair of gray drawstring pants and a snug-fitting gray sweater that showed off her lean midsection. He sipped his drink and waited for her to make the next move.

  “I like roses in the kitchen,” she said, almost as if she was talking to herself. “It’s a more private pleasure.”

  Bob sipped his drink and smiled.

  “Sit down,” she said, but she didn’t smile back.

  They almost never sat in the kitchen. Lee didn’t cook and domesticity was not their style. Bob felt a little awkward pulling out a chair at her tiny breakfast table. She sat down across from him, so close their knees bumped gently, although neither one acknowledged it.

  “When I called you this morning and told you to come over…”

  “Told” you, he thought. Not “invited” you.

  “…I was prepared to read you the riot act because of how you were talking to me the other night.”

  “It was unforgivable,” he said, breaking one of his own rules by jumping in before she finished.

  She waved her hand to silence him. “Yes, it was, but we brought it on ourselves.”

  “We did?” He took another sip of vodka, unsure of where the conversation was going. “How did we do that?”

  She leaned back in her chair and Bob concentrated on not looking at her breasts.

  “We started having sex.”

  “I’m not sure I’m following you. I was upset with the situation, not with you.”

  “Exactly, so why did I take it so personally? Because we’re having sex, so a part of my brain got confused about who we are and what we want from this arrangement.”

  “I want exactly what we’ve got,” he said. “We’re making a shitload of money on the coke. We’re making all the right moves politically and we’re having great sex with no strings attached.” He put down his glass and looked at her. “What do you want?”

  She didn’t hesitate. “I want out of the coke. I want to make my own moves politically and I don’t want to have sex with you anymore.”

  It was so cut-and-dried the way she said it, he winced. “Just like that?”

  She shrugged. “I know it will take a little time to get things settled on the street after the murder, but once things slow down, I’m out.”

  “How long?”

  “Three months, tops.”

  Bob frowned. “I’ve told you already, you can phase out in a year or so, after the mayor’s race, when—”

  Cutting him off abruptly, Lee’s voice was harsh. “You don’t tell me when it’s time to make a move. I joined up with you on my own because we had common interests. Now I’m leaving on my own because those interests have changed.”

  Bob repressed a strong desire to toss the rest of his drink in her face. Who the hell did she think she was? He had been calling Atlanta mayors by their first names since she was in kindergarten!

  “I see,” he said.

  “Good.”

  He could tell she was ready for him to leave, but his mind was racing. He couldn’t force her to do what he wanted, but he didn’t want to exit in a position of weakness. That wasn’t his style.

  “You might want to reconsider the politics,” he said. “I think I’ve still got some ideas that might be good for both of us.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Oh?”

  Bob drained his glass and stood up. “I made Kwame Hargrove an offer to join the firm today as my newest associate.”

  The words were hardly out of his mouth when Lee threw back her head and laughed out loud. He wasn’t sure what was so funny, but he didn’t like the sound of that laugh. It was mean and hard and cold.

  “What the hell is so funny about that?”

  “Nothing. You just surprise me sometimes. You never even mentioned him before.”

  “You’re not the only one with connections to Precious Hargrove,” Bob snapped.

  “I never said I was.” She glanced at her watch like he had now truly overstayed his welcome. “Don’t you have a plane to catch?”

  “You’re pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you?”

  “I had a good teacher.”

  “You think you’ve learned everything I can teach you?”

  Lee gave him a small smile. “I think I’ve learned everything you’re willing to teach me.”

  “What does that mean?”

  She didn’t answer and her silence infuriated him. They walked to the door, and when he turned to say good-bye, she gave him another flicker of a smile and extended her hand. He didn’t know which irritated him more, the smirk or the handshake.

  “I’m assuming,” he said, trying to regain some semblance of the upper hand, “there will be no repercussions from the unfortunate mutilation incident.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “As my last official act of our partnership, I will make sure all of that goes away. I’m on top of it.”

  He wished she was on top of him, but those days seemed to be over. At least for now.

  “Travel safe,” she said. “And good luck with your newest associate.”

  “I don’t need luck. I always land on my feet, remember?”

  Nothing about this meeting had gone the way he’d hoped it would, and now, as he stood waiting for the elevator to take him back down to the building lobby, Bob could have sworn that behind her closed door, he could hear Lee laughing. Listening to the sound, he realized she had forgotten the first thing he’d taught her. She could laugh at everything and everybody, but not at him. Never at him.

  39

  Baby Brother had been standing in the shower for a long time. Eyes closed, head back, he was enjoying the feel of the hot water on his skin. It had been a long week and he was anxious to wash off the stink of all those tomatoes and collard greens and yellow squash. Hamilton had stuck him with a job deliv
ering produce to West End restaurants from Soul Vegetarian to the twenty-four-hour Beautiful Restaurant, an offshoot of the self-described Perfect Church. That meant he had to get up at four in the morning to start deliveries at five since a lot of these places opened for breakfast at six.

  His partner was a big country boy from Alabama who was just glad to be working and living indoors. He identified himself as Maurice Crockett, but everybody called him Davy, for obvious reasons. As the one with the experience and the seniority, Davy was the boss of their two-man crew, and as such, he got to decide what radio station they listened to in the truck. To Baby Brother’s supreme annoyance, that meant right-wing talk radio. From Rush Limbaugh to G. Gordon Liddy to Don Imus and Atlanta’s reigning Neanderthal, Neal Bortz, Davy listened to them all. From sunrise when they picked up at the Growers’ Association warehouse down on White Street to the moment he dropped Baby Brother off at his apartment at the end of Peeples Street at just after one, the voices of America’s angry white males filled the cab of the truck as it moved through a community where there weren’t any white men for miles.

  Sometimes Baby Brother wanted to just change the station to one of the city’s hip-hop choices, but Davy was a big man. He had been a well-known prison boxer during the time he was serving for involuntary manslaughter because of a bar fight that got out of hand. Any physical confrontation he had with Baby Brother would be distinctly one-sided.

  “Why do you listen to this shit?” Baby Brother had demanded on their second day together when he thought there was a chance for negotiating a change.

  Davy tapped his temple with a thick finger. “That’s how I find out how these crackers are thinkin’. Get inside their heads and shit. They can’t get nothin’ past me.” After a week of such investigations, Baby Brother decided his first purchase when he got paid whatever piece of chump change they were going to throw his way would be an MP3 player. He’d stick that bad boy in the pocket of the beyond ugly uniform he had to wear and tune it all out with some Lil’ John or the Ying Yang Twins.

  But for tonight, the voices of angry white males were the last thing on his mind. He had accepted an invitation from Zora to go out to one of the Buckhead clubs he’d heard about, but if that didn’t work out, he was prepared to pay for sex. Davy said the strip joint right across the West End line had five-dollar lap dances and sometimes for twenty, the girls would come out to your car for a quick blow job. That would be great, he thought, except he had to get rid of his car. He knew his sister’s husband would have put out an APB, so he sold it for two hundred dollars to a guy who didn’t ask about title and registration. Baby Brother pocketed the money and the guy slapped a “lost tag” sign in the back window and drove off a happy man.

  He knew he couldn’t bring anybody back to the apartment since Mr. Mason had told him that first day that no female company was allowed. When Baby Brother asked why, Mason said, “If you got money enough to be entertaining women, you got money enough to pay for your own place.” Of course, if Zora was ready to put out, she had an apartment of her own, so he was home free. At the thought of seeing Zora naked, a wave of lust swept through his body. Damn, she was fine! But she didn’t seem to be in any hurry to jump into bed with him, so he’d have to hope one of the dancers Davy was talking about would take him home for a blow job, which was unlikely. Not for twenty dollars. He hoped he’d get lucky with Zora. She was definitely his first choice.

  He was saving money from the sale of his sister’s car to put down on his own place, but he spent half of his first week’s paycheck on an outfit for tonight to maximize his chances of getting lucky with Zora. He got a haircut, too, and bought some new sneakers that didn’t look like a Christmas gift from somebody’s grandmother. He slipped on his baggy new Sean John jeans, another oversize white T-shirt, and looked in the mirror. He had bought a small gold hoop from a street vendor and been delighted to discover his pierced left ear had not closed up during the months he’d been in Iraq. What he saw satisfied him. However the evening went, he knew there was a woman roaming around out there right now who would think he was worth at least a second look.

  Zora rang the doorbell right on time and Baby Brother grinned at his reflection. When he opened the door, his grin got even wider. Zora looked sexy as hell. She was wearing a black Gypsy skirt that was slung low on her hips and a silky white blouse that kept slipping off her shoulder. If she was wearing a bra, he couldn’t see it. A pair of silver heels with what he guessed to be four-inch heels were gracing her pretty little feet.

  “Hey,” she said with a big pretty smile. “You ready?”

  “Damn, girl,” he said. “You didn’t tell me to dress up. Am I okay for this place?”

  “You’re fine,” she said. “I’m not really dressed up. It’s just the skirt.”

  “Well, whatever it is, you look good enough to eat.”

  Zora laughed as they started down the walk. “My girlfriends love this place. That’s the only reason I’m letting them horn in since we’d probably run into them anyway. Plus, Mickey has her brother’s car.”

  Mickey, at the wheel of the red Lexus, was almost as fine as Zora. Beside her, the woman riding shotgun flashed him a dazzling smile as he climbed into the backseat with Zora.

  “Hey, I’m Janice. Let me pull up a little bit to give you some legroom.” She pressed a button and her seat eased forward with a gentle electric hum. “That better?”

  “Thanks,” he said, trying to calculate the odds that two of these girls could be talked into a threesome. It didn’t even matter which two. They were all fine. “I’m Wes.”

  “We know,” the other one chirped. “I’m Michelle.”

  Beside him, Zora sat close enough that their thighs were touching lightly. Maybe, he thought, he’d actually died in Iraq and was just now getting to heaven. Mickey pulled onto the freeway and headed north. It was ten thirty and Atlanta’s Saturday-night traffic was already thick, but Mickey was a good driver—fast but careful. Baby Brother let his leg touch Zora’s a little harder as they rounded the curve onto I-75.

  “You girls ready for a good time?” he said, looking forward to a cold beer in the company of his new friends. He might even take one to the dance floor if he was feeling loose. He hoped he still had the moves.

  “Oh yeah,” Janice said, turning around in her seat and winking at Zora. “Are you?”

  “Ladies,” Baby Brother said, “I am the good-time man!”

  40

  It had seemed like a good idea at the time. General had stopped in at Justin’s to do some business over drinks. After his associates departed, he decided to stay and have dinner. He was seeing Brandi at her place around midnight, but it was only ten o’clock and he was suddenly hungry. He checked in with Blue to let him know the meeting had gone as planned and asked the manager for a table. The place was filling up, but the tuxedo-clad brother showed General to a table in one of the restaurant’s prime spots, accepted the fifty-dollar bill General pressed into his palm, and left him in the capable hands of the smooth-faced young server who identified himself as Randy. General half listened as Randy described the specials, took the drink order, and glided off with a promise to be right back.

  One of several restaurants owned by entertainment and fashion magnate Sean Combs, Justin’s had managed to maintain the high-quality service, creative cuisine, and eclectic brew of beautiful people, stars (real and imagined), tourists, and trendsetters that had first put it on the map when it opened six years before. Although there’d been a few isolated incidents, more often than not involving a visit from pop-singer-turned-reality-TV-star Bobby Brown, most of the time the hip-hop crowd mixed and mingled with a maximum of style and a minimum of confusion.

  As General waited for his scotch on the rocks, a musical luminary he recognized, but couldn’t have named, created the kind of stir that always swirls around stars. The manager embraced the young man. The model-thin hostess with the razor-sharp cheekbones and the sexy black dress turned up the wattage on her
twinkle and the eyes of every woman in the place turned in his direction, staring unabashedly as he and his date, a cocoa-colored lovely in a sleek white suit with a bored expression, made their way to a table not far from General.

  The young superstar held his companion’s chair like a perfect gentleman before sitting down and earned an appreciative sigh from his captive female audience, who turned back to their dinners and drinks, wishing such behavior was the rule rather than the exception. From where he sat, General could see the light bouncing off of the large diamond studs in the young man’s earlobes. He smiled to himself. There were so many people for whom such proximity might be the highlight of a day, or of a lifetime. For General, it was just another of Atlanta’s young millionaires, out on the town.

  Randy presented the scotch and took the order with equal aplomb, then left again as General felt his phone vibrating in his breast pocket. There were only two people who had this number, Blue and Brandi. He glanced at the caller ID and smiled.

  “Hello?” he said quietly.

  “Hey, baby.” Brandi’s voice was a sexy purr. “Is this a bad time?”

  “Never a bad time. I thought you had to work. Where are you?”

  They sounded more like lovers than two people who traded sex for money and called it even.

  “Niggas started fightin’ all up in the place. Somebody called the cops and they sent us all home, told us to come back tomorrow. Johnny was too pissed, but it wadn’t nothin’ he could do.”

  “You okay?”

  “You know I know how to get out of a situation, baby!” She laughed. “I been around niggas fightin’ all my life. If they ain’t fightin’ me, they ain’t my problem.”

  She played so tough, he thought, and she wasn’t big as a minute. “Where you at now?”