Nasty

by Dr. Xyz

  After Pops died, Carlos had made a special note to spend extra time with Jonathan. This summer was the time to do it. It would take some serious schedule juggling, but he had made a graveside promise to Pops to take care of him. Pops and Mama Ophelia had adopted Carlos when his parents died. He was only seven when he moved from Florida to Brooklyn. From day one, they had treated him just like their natural son. They had made him feel right at home. The added bonus was that Carlos had always wanted brothers, and both Tarik and Jonathan fit the bill.

  Carlos never looked back at his life with his parents in Florida. He loved his new family; his real family. He had no desire to start his own either. A confirmed childless bachelor, he laughed every time Mama Ophelia threatened that one day he’d meet someone who’d change his mind. There was no chance of that happening. As far as Carlos was concerned, there was no need to complicate things and upset what he knew was a damn near perfect life.

  Carlos smiled. For once, the traffic and parking spot gods were shining on him. He made it downtown in record time and got a parking spot right in front of the café where he, Pops, and Tarik used to hang out at before they caught a jazz set at the Blue Note. He loved the Village; especially in the summer.

  He entered a small shop at the corner of Fourth Street where Mrs. Doutrelle, a gifted tailor from Senegal, greeted him warmly. Close to seventy, she kissed him on both cheeks. She did wonderful things for his clothing. He always looked sharp. She handed him his new suit.

  “How’s ze record business, Monsieur?”

  “Oh, better every day. Better every day.”

  And he wasn’t lying. All throughout his college days he had interned at the university radio station and at Mega Hits, an independent record company. By the time he graduated with a major in marketing and finance, he knew all the music industry’s VIPs on a personal level. The label had hired him and made him their VP of Marketing. Two months after Pops died, the company went belly-up and Carlos, still grieving, now had another cross to bear.

  It was a blessing, though. Not even in disguise. Instead of trying to get another job in the industry, he and Tarik had cashed in their sizeable inheritance from Pops and started their own record company, Infinity. Besides pushing Tarik’s act, they had a few other up-and-coming artists that looked real good. Omara, a rapper with a unique style. Everlasting, a teenaged boy group that had tight harmonies and looks guaranteed to charm the teenybopper crowd. Most recently signed to their label was Katrell, a male vocalist destined to fill the void left by Luther Vandross.

  But for now, it was Tarik and his piano playing and Bob Marley-like persona that had their new company on the verge of a big distribution deal with one of the majors. In an industry where the technology was so cheap anybody and their mama could cut a CD and call themselves a record company, it was your distributor’s clout that separated little fish from the king whale.

  As far as Carlos and Tarik were concerned, their record company, Infinity, was going all the way up the food chain next to Diddy, Jay-Z and his hero, the big granddaddy of them all, Berry Gordy of Motown.

  Carlos put the new suit in the back of his car next to a box of fliers advertising Tarik’s big show in Prospect Park. He looked at his watch and decided to give out a few at Washington Square Park.

  He had made a good decision. It was lunchtime and the park was packed with folks. He noticed an older, distinguished, somewhat frail-looking man sitting on the bench feeding pigeons. Knowing that he probably wouldn’t be interested in the show, Carlos handed the man his last flier anyway and then quickly walked out the park.

  Something made Carlos turn around to look back at the man. He was clapping, laughing, talking to himself, and dancing a less than vigorous jig. He looked nuts. Carlos decided he probably was. He shook his head, got into his car, and headed for the airport.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Exhausted from jumping up and down and acting like a complete fool, Eli collapsed back onto the park bench. He was ecstatic. It had been three months since his release from prison. He had spent most of the time hospitalized at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan for treatment of AID-Srelated complications. He could not believe that he was now holding in his hands a flier that revealed the whereabouts of his son, Tarik. In three weeks he was scheduled to perform at Prospect Park in Brooklyn.

  Even the bad news doctors at Bellevue had given him earlier that day about the failure of an experimental drug regimen he had initiated during his last hospitalization could not deflate his balloon. No, that couldn’t drag him down from the high he was feeling. He would turn down the best dope in the known world just for the information he now had.

  Printed on the flier, for all to see, was a picture of his son, Tarik Singleton. He laughed out loud when he realized that the system’s inability to place him in a Manhattan shelter was to his benefit. His new residence in Brooklyn was not far from Prospect Park. On a good day…that is if he had any more good days, Eli could walk there. That’s what the social worker had told him the day he was given his placement.

  He thought about his latest lab results. So what if his CD-4 count was low or his viral load was off the charts. Nothing could interfere with his joy. Three weeks couldn’t come soon enough for him; especially since doctors advised him that the end of the road in terms of his disease was just around the bend. They continued to give him medicine, but no faith, hope, or promise that things would improve. They said he needed a miracle.

  Well, making the cabbie stop at Washington Square Park to check out his old stomping grounds and running into that nice-looking young man who had given him the flier constituted a miracle in Eli’s book.

  All those years in prison, volunteering for clinical drug trials, hoping it would slow down the progression of AIDS or shave off years from his sentence. Anything to get him out and maybe get a glimpse at his son…or even his ex-wife, Ophelia, before the disease claimed his body and soul. And now, at the end of life’s road…his dream would soon be realized.

  Attica had not really been that bad for him. It was there that he had kicked heroin. He didn’t even need methadone any-more. When his health cooperated, he ran both a GED and an arts program for his fellow inmates. The young guys even used him as a life counselor.

  Eli shook his head. Imagine him, a total loser, giving out advice. But they sought him out. Asked him questions. He shared the truth he knew best. It seemed to give the young men hope in an otherwise hopeless situation. During his prison stay, he had behaved and done all the things he should have done on the outside but was too pig-headed or too weak of a person to try.

  Looking at the picture of Tarik playing at the piano, Eli beamed with pride. He could not help but notice how much they resembled each other. He prayed that physical appearance was the only thing his son had inherited from him. It didn’t bother him that he didn’t carry his last name. He had signed over his parental rights years ago to Ophelia and her new husband, Richard “Pops” Singleton.

  After five years in prison, he hoped that they had taken good care of his son. He had never really doubted that they would. Ophelia was an excellent mother. She wouldn’t let anything happen to him. Hell, after all, she was the one who had the good sense to get him out of his own son’s life.

  In three weeks, Lord-willing, Eli would see his son perform in concert, and maybe get a peek at his ex-wife. He prayed he was alive and strong enough to attend.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “I knew it! When you ran outta this office five years ago, I knew one day you’d want the whole story, and I knew there’d be more to the story.”

  Nicola rolled her eyes as the private investigator rattled on about her case and rummaged through cold, gray, dusty cabinets.

  She looked around Max Whitlow’s disorganized, claustrophobic office and sent up silent prayers that he’d soon find her information and that this would be the last time his services were needed. Waiting for the big reveal in his hot office added unnecessary drama. Beads of sweat slid down the curves of Nic
ola’s back. She could not wait to get out of there and put an end to the mystery of her childhood.

  After a half-hour of searching through file cabinets and boxes, God answered her prayers.

  “Oh yeah, here it is.” Max pulled out a thick manila file and handed it to his client.

  Eager to leave, Nicola grabbed the file out of his hands and stashed it into her purple leather satchel.

  “Aren’t you gonna read it now? You might have some questions; it’s heavy stuff, Mrs. James.” Max knew she would need help. It had taken him almost three months to put all the pieces together and the story was not pretty.

  “If I have any questions, Max, I’ll call.” She wrote out a check paying him a handsome sum, thanked him for a job well done, and left the office.

  It was two days before she got up the nerve to read the file. She left it in the third floor library on top of Harrison’s antique mahogany desk.

  She could not find the courage to face up to her past. But today was different. Armed with a fifth of Courvoisier, she entered the office knowing that she was leaving it a different person. The bits and pieces of her childhood that haunted her since the evening she busted Harrison were about to be clarified. She took a big sip out of the bottle. The liquid warmed her insides and inspired her to face the truth.

  An hour later, exhausted from reading, Nicola’s brain whirled with details of her childhood. All the disjointed scenes from her childhood were now connecting and finally making some kind of crazy sense as she now remembered how life had been with her adopted parents.

  The fiasco with Harrison was not the first tragic event in her life. From Nicola’s perspective, on the scale of life’s catastrophes, it only scored a three out of a possible ten. No, the big ten belonged to her childhood. Her fucked-up childhood.

  The Martins weren’t exactly Claire and Cliff Huxtable of The Cosby Show. The only decent thing they had done was rename their baby girl in honor of the Nicola building, where officials discovered her at birth. It had all gone downhill from there.

  From their rustic secluded cabin in Albany Pond, New York, Hezekiah and Ida Martin had run an ultra successful video business. Their top earner quickly became “Scenes with baby Nicola” series. These were not the cutesy, first steps taken, first words spoken type of home family movies. Her parents were proud, card-carrying sex perverts.

  They adopted beautiful Nicola for the singular purpose of casting her in child pornography scenes. From day one, Nicola was the star in their sick videos. The couple filmed Nicola as they and other paying adults performed lewd and indecent sexual acts with her.

  Nicola did not have a childhood. Her first memory, at age three, was of her daddy, Hezekiah, ejaculating all over her face. Mommy was directing her from behind the camera to laugh aloud and act happy. This scene was repeated so often, little Nicola grew up thinking it was normal.

  When she turned five, the couple made more serious, painful demands of her body. Customers paid more for videos that included both sex and violence. The Martins thought nothing of tying her up and slapping her around. They would thrust objects into her mouth, anus, or vagina. All the time her “parents” would ignore her screams as she pleaded for them to stop. The pain at times was unbearable. The more she screamed, the torture would intensify. All the while, the camera rolled.

  Successfully isolating her from the world, they home-schooled Nicola. She quickly learned how to read and, at age seven, she could understand the newspaper. By age eight she’d connected all the dots and knew that this “loving couple,” the only parents she knew, who had tortured her without mercy, were the devil and his wife. She was desperate to escape.

  On her eighth birthday, she ran away. Unfortunately, they caught her in the woods near their cottage. For punishment, her father had chopped off her pet ferret’s (that everyone called Little Nicola) head. Her mother forced her to witness the spectacle. As the ferret’s headless body jerked in what seemed to be endless spasms, blood squirted everywhere, some splashing on Nicola.

  Hezekiah promised if she ran away or called the authorities, she and the animal would share more than just the same name. The next day, he brought home another pet ferret and renamed it Little Nicola. She cared for it as if her life depended on it. They were inseparable.

  Nicola needed to find a way out of her hell. The filming sessions had become a loathsome part of her day. She felt nasty and dirty after performing in the scenes. She hated her life as a “child star.” Ironically, a video saved her. At age ten, she watched a movie about a pyromaniac. It gave graphic details about how they had burnt down a house, killing everyone in it.

  Over the next few years, Nicola was convinced that the only way she would survive was if the Martins died. The thought obsessed her as she made meticulous plans for their “departure.” A few months shy of her thirteenth birthday, at the Martins’ annual “for perverts only” Fourth of July celebration, alcohol flowed freely throughout the crowd. Wearing a provocative French maid outfit, with her hair stylishly pinned up, it was Nicola’s job to serve drinks.

  She spiked the Martins’ drinks with the same valium they forced her to take to make her more cooperative during filming. She knew from reading through the Martins’ medical encyclopedia that alcohol and valium could induce a dangerous coma.

  Nicola smiled as she watched her adoptive parents pour the cocktails she’d created for them down their evil throats. By party’s end, when the last guest departed, the Martins both collapsed at the kitchen table. Hezekiah still had a half-full glass of Scotch in his hand. When Nicola’s potion took full effect, they were both in a deep sleep.

  Ready to execute her plan, Nicola, nervous and afraid they’d awaken before the deed was done, closed all the windows. She placed candles, hoarded for months, all around the kitchen, placing them strategically around the sleeping couple. The Martins often used them in the video scenes to create a relaxed mood.

  When she ignited the candles, she looked at the evil duo, both sleeping and snoring peacefully, unaware of their fate. She smiled and had to agree, candlelight did have the effect of chasing away the fear and anxiety that gripped her inside. In its place was a keen sense of justice.

  Nicola turned all the knobs of the old-fashioned stove on full blast. Escaping from the top of the stove and the oven, gas rapidly diffused throughout the house. Satisfied, she lifted her pet ferret out of its pen. Carrying the animal with her, stroking its black fur, she walked out the house and slammed the door behind her, forever shutting out the life she had led there.

  She found a spot not far from the house where she could view the event and fell asleep. A loud explosion awakened her. As the only home she knew disappeared in the belly of the redhot inferno, Nicola felt true peace. Her hellish nightmare was over. For the rest of her life, the sight of flames would always calm her.

  Investigation of the fire revealed that the deceased were the leaders of a sophisticated child porno ring. They confiscated videos starring Nicola. Evidence helped to successfully prosecute several members. Luckily, a fire inspector’s report listed the official cause of the fire as a gas leak. The insurance company placed a quarter of a million dollars in a trust fund for Nicola.

  Immediately after the fire, she was admitted to a regional hospital for observation. Nicola remembered how doctors examined her and tried to coax memories about her time with the Martins; none would surface. After a short stay in the hospital, authorities placed her in a group home in the Bronx. At eighteen, she was considered an adult and discharged from social services.

  Nicola used the insurance money from the fire to purchase a tiny studio in Harlem and to support herself through college. Now that she understood the complete story, knowing that she was indeed the arsonist responsible for the Martins’ death, Nicola felt no remorse.

  She realized now, the experiences in her childhood had damaged her emotionally. All through high school and her first years at the university, she had never even had a close friend. Never responded to a
single boy or man who approached her. Even the decent ones. She had never dated. That is, until she had met Harrison.

  Ain’t that a bitch, thought Nicola. All that fucked-up life, and the first man that I turn to wasn’t a man at all!

  The pain and hurt were too much to bear. Nicola threw her head back and emptied the bottle. Totally out of it now, she and the empty bottle wandered down the hall. Somehow, she made it down the stairs into her bedroom. Forgetting to turn the light on, she walked smack into the pole she had used to entertain her ex-husband.

  Rubbing her head, she yelled out as if the house was full of people, “OH SHIT! WHO THE FUCK PUT THAT THERE? OH, THAT’S RIGHT! I DID! I DID IT TO ENTERTAIN THAT FUCKIN’ FAGGOT! WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT ALL ABOUT? WILL SOMEBODY, SOMEWHERE, TELL ME, PLEASE! WHAT WAS IT ALL ABOUT?”

  Frustrated, Nicola felt her way to the nightstand and turned on the light. She looked up over in the sitting area and spotted the huge framed photograph hanging over the fireplace. It was the one picture of Harrison she didn’t have the heart to pull down. It was a photo of them snuggled together on the yacht, Nicola’s Beauty, enjoying their honeymoon in the Indian Ocean near the Seychelles Islands. She looked at it from where she stood and threw the bottle at it, smashing both the picture and the memories into a million pieces.

  “Next…” Nicola pointed toward the pole, as if she was giving instructions out to her rehab crew, “we’re getting rid of YOU!” Nicola found her way to the bed and passed out.

  The next morning, everything about Nicola hurt; throat, muscles, brain, and bones. She vomited her insides out till all she could do was dry-heave. A high fever kept her body in sweats and chills. Frighteningly ill, her housekeeper called the ambulance. When they arrived, Nicola refused to go to the hospital. Instead, she popped Tylenol and drank the soups and teas that the kind Jamaican woman had prepared for her. On the seventh day of her illness, she awoke without pain or a fever.