The Cook Up

by D. Watkins

  “Fuck you, Nick! I thank this nigga Jesus for crack sales, for my big dick, my bitches, in dezz automatic weapons a nigga-blessed wit, may I kill niggas who act dumb. Amen!” yelled Dog Boy, jumping from the kitchen to the living room and back.

  “Y’all bitches shut up, these girls are asleep!” I yelled downstairs. One of the young ladies rolled over and said, “Who you callin a bitch? Your mother a bitch, I ain’t no bitch.” Then she rotated back into her snore.

  “Naw, Dog Boy. Allah put you here. You gotta think, Yo, get on your din,” replied Nick, not loud enough to outyell Dog Boy.

  “Shut the FUCK UP!” I yelled, going back into my room, trying to return some of the phone calls. Dog Boy banged on my door and then went to the bathroom. Surprisingly, the sound didn’t wake the girls up. I sat back and thought about Hurk and why he was acting like he didn’t need us. Like we haven’t been like brothers since we were kids. Like I didn’t cut the money up evenly, like he ever saw this much money in his whole life. Hurk was important in keeping my operation going.

  But do I really want to keep this operation going?

  My mind had the happy faces from the jazz festival on repeat. They sang, smiled, danced, wore printed bow ties, and called each other brotha. We call each other muthafucker, dummy, bitch, and pussy as if they were our first names. No bow ties and funnel cake over here—just pain, Little Debbies, and automatic weapons.

  I picked up the Tech 9 lying next to the half-eaten oatmeal cream pie on my dresser. Resting the gun on my chest like a newborn blessed me with ease. I’ve never shot a person and I probably never will, but having this just made me feel good. My thoughts of making the transition to the other side were really scary—IRS-coming-to-audit-me scary.

  Those people who looked happy easily fit into my definition of broke. They couldn’t drive what we drove, go where we went, or fuck who we fucked—two nameless women in comas occupying my space. But what would I do, work at FedEx? I couldn’t wear a FedEx short set out here in these streets. Those women don’t fuck Comcast installation men or UPS workers—who would probably give them gifts and attention, unlike me, who only offered new ideas on pleasuring me. They were only here because of what I do in the street. I couldn’t differentiate between them or the ones that stayed over the previous night, and I liked it. I liked the money and, more important, I liked looking out for Dog Boy, Angie, Nick, and the rest of my people who couldn’t take care of themselves. They needed me.

  “Dog Boy, you still in the bathroom?” I said, opening the door.

  “Yeah, Yo, get the fuck out!” he yelled, sitting on the toilet Indian style—sucking his thumb like a toddler. The shit dripping out of his body smelled so bad that you could hear it. I muzzled the lower half of my face with my right hand and grabbed his bag of blue-dolphin-epills off the sink with the left.

  “Yo, no drugs and shit when we doing business,” I said, slamming the door.

  “What you mean business, Yo?”

  “Hurk really not rockin’ wit us no more so you gonna meet the connect.”

  His eyes lit up like Christmas Eve. “So I’m going? No problem, I ain’t pop yet,” replied Dog Boy. I kicked the girls out, giving them his pills as a parting gift, and called Rex to tell him that Dog Boy would be coming up for the first time. Rex lived in the city but stopped keeping his drugs in Baltimore. He kept the work with one of his Muslim brothers in the Eastern Shore of Maryland and we had to ride out there to get it—that’s like a three-hour ride from Baltimore. We stopped at the McDonald’s on Fayette Street, copped a fish for me and nuggets for Dog Boy, and hit the road. Dog Boy leaned his chair back, ate gray meat nuggets and shuffled through the pages of an outdated Don Diva magazine. He didn’t read the stories but loved to look at the images of the drug dealers who kind of looked like older incarcerated versions of us—the jewelry, the cars, the women, the weapons—the game.

  I didn’t even listen to soul music like that but Lauryn Hill’s Miseducation was on repeat—probably because her skin tone and hair style were like Soni’s. I normally listened to Raekwon’s purple tape before drug deals, but Hill’s voice gave me a tingle, took me to a special place. “Nothing Even Matters” sounded like the conversation I had with Soni the previous day. I wondered if she liked me too as we floated up the beltway.

  “Yo, get the fuck up!” I yelled to Dog Boy, beating his chair like a drum. Rex’s Eastern Shore spot was a storybook house, country as shit with a white gate and a detached mailbox. He greeted us in the front lawn.

  “Salaam. Is this the kid Dog Boy you told me about?”

  “Yeah, this is my little bro. He’s the youngest dude on the street east putting in real work,” I replied. Dog Boy’s eyes expanded when they shook hands. His meeting Rex was equivalent to a teenage ball player meeting Michael Jordan. Rex was a drug connect, “The Plug,” what every kid who plays this game where we come from wants to be. Rex’s spot was super clean to be a stash house. It had some Pier 1 looking furniture offset by designer appliances. He had prepared dinner for us—fried plantains, some type of fish, and rice. We laughed when Dog Boy said, “Wat dey is fried bananas, Yo.”

  The three of us exchanged ideas on sports, the dope game, and life after hustling over the meal—a conversation that Dog Boy could never fully comprehend but he still remained cool. He didn’t brag or even talk that much, called Rex sir, and even made us laugh. I was proud of him.

  “You guys are welcome to stay, it’s getting late,” Rex said as we finished up.

  “We got customers waitin’, man, gotta roll, but thanks!” I said, loading the bricks into the passenger door of the car. The side panel snapped off and they fit perfectly, right around the speakers. Dog Boy dozed before we hit the beltway so I cut the music down and let the little soldier rest in peace. I flipped my phone open to check my missed calls—Fat Tay (3), Nick (2), some random blocked calls, and Soni (1). I dialed her number…

  “Hello.”

  “Hey, Soni, wassup?” I said, trying to sound laid-back and cool even though my heart pumped out of my tank top.

  “This isn’t Soni, she’s brushing her teeth.”

  Who brushes their teeth at nine thirty p.m., and why is this person answering her phone, I thought. “Can you tell her to give me a ring please?” The anonymous girl who turned out to be her friend Meka agreed, and we hung up.

  I didn’t want to throw money at Soni, but Bip used to always say that “everybody had a price,” or that “everything cost everything all of the time,” so if I couldn’t hook her with my words, I’ll find a way to pay to play.

  Dog Boy was a vegetable; a car wreck couldn’t wake him. I reached over and buckled his safety belt.

  Ring ring ring…

  “Yo,” I said.

  She laughed and replied, “This isn’t Yo, it’s Soni.”

  We dived right into a conversation that I tried to control. She knew about hood movies and hip-hop but could also speak about their negative and positive influences on different levels. Soni got all of my jokes and ended up being greater than I already thought she was. Her pops used to hustle but ended up as a junkie. His bad decisions shaped her into a politically conscious woman who really wanted to help others.

  “We should hang out tomorrow,” I said.

  “Why? You think I like you?”

  “Well, normally every woman likes me, unless they’re gay. Are you a lesbian?”

  She laughed again and said, “I don’t know” before agreeing to let me take her out the next day. Dog Boy woke up around the time we were driving through downtown. I was just hanging up with Soni.

  “Luva boy, we clubbin’ tonight? I got a bitch that’ll put hickeys on ya dick too. She bad,” said Dog Boy as he made his body into a capital T shape and yawned.

  “Naw, li’l bro. You a boss now, we gotta go bust this down.”

  “Right, we got business, I ain’t dumb for real. Bitches can wait,” he replied, curling back up into a lowercase o in the passenger seat, resuming his hib
ernation. Dog Boy slept the rest of the way, until I pulled up in front of the crib. Troy was out front waiting.

  “Yo, I gotta paly that’s gonna make us a lot of money! Man, what’s up!” Troy said running up on my car as I parked. I rolled the window down. “Yo, come in the crib.”

  Nick was on the couch asleep and I didn’t want to wake him—but I’m sure the smell of the cooked crack would.

  “Dog Boy, you wanna whip your shit up?”

  “Yez zir!” he replied.

  I laid my supplies neatly across the countertop and quickly fried up seven ounces of butter. People had really cheapened the Rockafella name by trying to imitate us, so I decided to call this new stuff “Church.”

  “I’m proud of you, Dog Boy, but you gotta know that this shit is temporary. I’ve been thinking a li’l bit,” I said as I razor-bladed a new box of vials open and Dog Boy carried the new crack rocks over to the kitchen table.

  “Yo, you always talk like I’m post to do wat you do. Dee, I ont go to school. I ain’t no book nigga. I’m doin’ wat I’m post to be doin’,” he replied while struggling to get a hard rock into the thin cylinder.

  “Dog Boy, hold it sideways and slice these small rocks into thirds, they’ll fall right into place. Yo, I’m not trying to son you but I hope you know that this shit don’t last.”

  I realized that I couldn’t sit around and tell Dog Boy that he shouldn’t hustle while feeding him money and drugs—I had to show him. Being a criminal is part of our makeup and someone had to break the cycle. I wasn’t really sure how, but I was thinking about it.

  “I agree with Dee,” Troy said. “I’m not a street guy by far, but I want to do one move with Dee, and then I’ll never touch a drug again. We need to start a company.”

  “Exactly, you not street nigga, Troy, so why you in the convo? Shut the fuck up, I won’t listen to niggas in nurse pants,” said Dog Boy.

  I laughed.

  “Chill, man, he my family like you, that’s why!” I said. I had to get up and carefully show Dog Boy how to put together the work. There’s no way he should want a career in this while only being able to cap up ten vials to my hundred.

  “Yo Dee, lemme holler at you outside real quick.”

  I followed Troy to his car. He popped the trunk. A pile of scrubs that stunk of formaldehyde stared back at us. Troy looked at me and nodded with a slick grin. He pushed the scrubs to the side and showed me half a brick of heroin.

  “Oh shit!” I covered the brick and slammed the trunk. “Where the fuck you get this! Boy, you can’t just be riding around with all this.”

  The old head he had told me about fronted him the half and only wanted thirty thousand dollars back. He wanted me to help him knock it off.

  “Dee, you’ll love my old head man. I keep tellin’ him how great you are. Please come by my job and meet him!”

  He fronted my homie so I had to meet him. I agreed and we set the date for later that week.

  DOG STORE

  Li’l Dick! Big Dick out! Get that Dick Get that Dick!” a slumped-back fiend would yell in front of Kim’s Convenience Store on Madison Street. Dog Boy and Long Tooth had copped that corner store so we started calling it the Dog Store. They didn’t own it, but they paid rent to the owners—a Korean family who had been there for a year or two. Korean storeowners are temporary in the hood like us because they pop up, run their shop, and then switch the ownership over to their relatives. I think foreigners get special tax breaks or something. So they keep flipping owners when that tax bill comes.

  Dog Boy kept anywhere from three hundred to five hundred pills for re-up in the store behind the chip rack on the floor. A Mac 10 was behind the poker machine and other weapons strategically lined the rest of the store. Long Tooth handled the bread and oversaw the smaller ground stash outside. Dog Boy liked to use different junkies as hitters day in and day out, preferably heroin addicts because he didn’t have to worry about them stealing rocks.

  “Yo, give dem hoes a blast in the mornin’ and anova at night and they work hard as shit all day, twenty or thirty dollars’ worth of dope and they work all day!”

  I liked to watch those young boys work. They ran a tight ship and even though Dog Boy said he didn’t want to be like me, his strip told a different story. Fuck, his clothes told a different story. Ravens fitted hat cocked to the side like mine, unlaced Air Jordans like mine, Evisu jeans like mine, spitting balls of gum five feet away into the trash can like me, standing like me, bouncing a tennis ball like me, walking with a limp like me, and his little ass didn’t even limp—his legs were straight as shit!

  His spot was doing well like mine too, and even though the Kims only let two grade school students in at a time, they allowed packs of crackheads to jam the store so a line wouldn’t form out front and make the strip too hot. During a rush when his spot was flooded with fiends or when the cops hopped out on them, Dog Boy or Long Tooth would give large amounts of cash to the Kims. They’d hide it in the store with their own belongings because the cops never really fucked with them. The Kims weren’t a special couple and it wasn’t a race or ethnic thing. Drug shops were run out plenty of stores by owners with roots stretching from West Africa to East Asia and back. A lot of these businesses would fold without guys like us—to think we paid from four hundred to a thousand dollars a week just to operate and they really had no choice but to get paid because we were going to do it anyway. The other major benefit of the store was that wintertime flow. Baltimore winters are colder than Hitler’s heart dipped in ice. Being stuck outside on the block meant chapped lips, ashy bleeding knuckles attached to numb hands, and aching-ass joints—the real grind. That’s the part that rappers leave out of songs, that extra shit that’s not mentioned in the job description.

  DATE ANXIETY

  Soni, we on tonight or what?” I asked. She paused. The phone was on speaker. Dog Boy covered his mouth, suffocating a laugh.

  “You are so aggressive! Gosh, I have anxiety now!” Soni said. I heard her friends giggle in the background. “Yes, Dee, pick me up at eight, none of that two-hour late stuff!” We exchanged good-byes and clicked off.

  “What the fuck is anxiety, like a rash?” asked Dog Boy. Long Tooth walked in yelling that Jay Z: “One million! Two million, three million, four! In eighteen months, eighty million more.” Waving our cash, we joined in, like, “You now looking at one smart black boy!”

  The idea of making it as big as Jay made us smile. He was our Bill Gates and his albums were literally the blueprint. Long Tooth—who started going by Young LT—was starting to get women and it showed. The grimy jeans and boots that used to be his armor had been replaced with new Polo shirts and bright Nikes. He kept a cut and baptized himself in Ralph Lauren Blue ten times a day.

  “Yo, anxiety is what people get when they don’t smoke weed, now roll up, LT!” I said.

  “Got one rolled, here, hit this. You wanna pill too?”

  I said yes to the weed and no to the pill. I didn’t want to be too gone on our first date. “Maybe I’ll grab one for later,” I replied, taking the blunt from Long Tooth. Long Tooth’s blunts were seamless—they looked like they’ve never been gutted and dumped. Shorty was the best at rolling, better than a Cuban kid in a cigar factory—he could even roll them perfectly while gloveless in a blizzard and posted on the block in fifty-below weather. Blueberry, the weed we had been smoking, had canceled my anxiety and I was ready to see Soni. We had talked on the phone a few times and each conversation was better and better. Effortlessly, she’d sucked up my attention and three hours flew by—to the point where the Nextel left burn marks on my ear and face.

  I’m used to women saying buy me a new weave, let’s pop a bottle, I need a Loui bag, do my ass look fat, why bitches hate, cut the Hot Boyz on, you got some money, I hate my child father, I hate you, I miss you, I love you, don’t fuck my friend, we getting money, I’ll beat that bitch ass, I only wear 7 jeans, buy me a Gucci bag, buy me a dozen crabs, where the party at, where the party
at, where the party at!

  Soni was all natural hair, fresh oils, the New Deal didn’t do much for African Americans, seven gallons of water a day keeps my skin clear so it could work for you too, yoga, you do know the effects of chattel slavery still plague us, healthy eating is healthy living, the Trail of Tears was so sad, nature makes me happy, make sure you eat some vegetables, I’m a feeler because I always know how people feel, I love togetherness, you ever heard of Mumia, the Great Society, and on and on—she was like a walking encyclopedia without any physical flaws. Well, half of a walking encyclopedia because she never finished a lesson. Soni used to start off telling me about science or something in history and stop halfway through, like, “My memory is so bad, Dee, I’m taking gingko root extract so it’s getting better!” I would always Google the rest, and I didn’t care, I just loved hearing her voice and the way my name came out of her mouth, Deeeeeee. I learned so much in the short time we were talking, more than I learned in college. She was the first woman I craved in a nonphysical sense, which made me crave her in a physical sense even more.

  I wanted our date to be right so I threw some new clothes on. I had bags of designer shit stacked to the ceiling that I had yet to touch. I decided to tone it down on the jewelry too because she thought I OD’d on platinum the last time I saw her. I kept it gangsta with a black tee, one thin Cuban with a Jesus piece, my stainless steel Submariner Rolex, some black Evisu jeans, and retro Charles Barkleys with the straps undone. Everything felt new, even me.

  I looked at the mirror and Bip stared back, his features creeping in. I tied on a do rag—it was tight enough to make my waves pop, but loose enough to keep one of those dumbass lines from forming in the middle of my forehead. I planned on wearing it until I reached her block because dudes that wear do rags as a part of their outfits were corny. I sprayed six shots of Burberry cologne into the air and let it rain on me before padding my pocket with about $2,500. I knew I didn’t need that much but I had to have it on me just in case; she needed to know that if she wanted something, I could get it. I looked at myself in the mirror one more time, plucked the boogies out of my nose and hit the window. “Kruger Man, get the wheels good, man! I be out in a minute.” Kruger Man, the MVP of drug relapse, was cleaning my car. His face was long enough to fit a guy with a seven-foot-two frame, but he was five-foot-six so his chin reached past his chest. His body was riddled with pus-dripping cuts that never healed; it looked like his head was stuffed with cream cheese or custard. On Halloween we’d give him free drugs, a black hat, and clawed glove so he could scare the shit out of kids.