Skin Game

by Lawrence C. Ross

She dialed Donovan’s number, but there was no answer.

  “Donovan, this is Keisha. Give me a call as soon as you get this message, and don’t do anything stupid. I already know that you threatened Steven. Again, don’t do anything stupid.”

  “What did he say exactly that he was going to do?” she asked Ray.

  “I don’t know. He just said something about going after my boss.”

  “Did you tell Steven?”

  “Nah.”

  “Why the fuck not?” Keisha asked angrily. “You don’t know Donovan. He’s turned his life around, but he is definitely not a person to be fucked with. He can be dangerous if he wants, and it seems like he wants to be now.”

  “I told you. I’m out of the game now. That’s his problem. Plus, why the fuck do you care anyway? Just a few hours ago, he tried to fuck you up with that poster shit.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t want the muthafucka killed,” Keisha said. She grabbed her bag.

  “Where are you going?” Patra asked. She got up off the couch and put on her shoes.

  “I’m going to head over to Pimp. If he said that he was going to take care of his boss, then he’s probably going to confront Steven. I need to get over there to stop him.”

  “Then I’ll go with you,” Patra said.

  “Me too,” Ray said.

  “Throw me your phone,” Patra instructed Keisha. “I think we’re going to need some backup if things go down and neither one of you can do the job.” She started dialing the phone.

  “Hey, Blackie, it’s Patra. I need you to do me a favor. Meet me down at the Pimp headquarters. I’ll tell you what this is about when I get there. Don’t go in when you get there. I want to talk to you outside. All right, I’ll see you there in about thirty minutes.”

  Patra hung up and they all started to leave.

  “You know that Rosario fucked up Blackie awhile back,” Ray said. “It wasn’t pretty.”

  “I didn’t ask for Blackie for Rosario,” she said. “I’m hoping that he can stop Keisha’s boyfriend.”

  Donovan left Ray where he was because he knew he was just a soldier in Steven’s organization. To end all this, Donovan needed to go directly to Steven. He didn’t know where his organization was located, but he did know one person who probably did know.

  “Sean,” Donovan said, calling on his phone. “What up, nigga? This is Donovan.”

  “Hey, what’s up, nigga?” Sean said. “Where your ass been?”

  “Ah, man, I’ve got a job at a fucking construction crew. Things have been things.”

  “What the fuck are you doing on a construction crew?” Sean laughed. “Your ass is working nine to five building houses and shit?”

  “Something like that,” Donovan said. “Hey, man, got a question for you. Where is Pimp magazine located?”

  “Uh, Pimp magazine is located down on Manchester. Why?” Sean asked.

  “I want to talk to the cat who runs it.”

  “Steven Cox?”

  “Yeah, that cat.”

  “Why, you got some hoes you want to get into the magazine?”

  “Nah, nothing like that shit,” Donovan said. “But I’ve got some business to talk to him about. What’s his exact address?”

  “I don’t even know. I just know that it’s right down the street from Briarwood. I think it’s across the street, and it has his logo on the door. You shouldn’t be able to miss it.”

  “Cool,” Donovan said. “All right, man, stay up.”

  “We got to get together, man,” Sean said. “Get with me.”

  “Later.”

  Donovan hung up the phone and started driving toward Manchester. When he got there, he didn’t know what he was going to do. He just knew that he had to do something about Steven trying to exploit Keisha.

  I wanted to leave this shit behind, he thought as he sat in his car. But then muthafuckas keep bringing me back in.

  Donovan got out of the car and walked to the door of the Pimp headquarters. There was a security system in place, and Donovan had to buzz in to get through. He pressed the intercom buzzer and waited for a response.

  “Yes,” the voice said. “Who are you here for?”

  “I’m here for Steven,” Donovan said. “Sean at the Chi Chi Room sent me. He thought that I might be able to help him.”

  “Hold on.”

  Marty turned from the intercom and walked into Steven’s office. Steven was watching the television coverage of the whole Keisha affair.

  “I looked good during this shit,” Steven told Marty. “You can’t buy this type of publicity.”

  “Well, you did that fine,” Marty said. “Hey, there’s a guy at the door who says Sean sent him.”

  “What’s his name?” Steven asked, not turning from the television.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Let him in and bring him up here,” Steven said. “If he knows Sean, then he should be cool.”

  “Right.”

  Marty left Steven’s office and went back to the intercom.

  “I’ll buzz you in,” he said through the intercom. “When you get in, go up to the second floor and I’ll meet you there.”

  Donovan pulled the door when he heard the buzz. He was in.

  Chapter 33

  To carry a grudge is like being stung to death by one bee.

  —William H. Walton

  Keisha, Patra, and Ray arrived at Pimp magazine before Blackie got there. They got out of the car, and Keisha got a bit panicky when she saw Donovan’s car, but not him in it.

  “Fuck,” she said, as they walked across the street toward the Pimp building. “He must already be in.”

  They got to the door, and Ray was about to pull out his passkey when Blackie showed up. Blackie didn’t know what was going on, but he knew that when people called, it usually meant trouble.

  “So what’s up, y’all?” Blackie asked. He was dressed in all black, looking even more intimidating than usual. “What’s up, Keisha?”

  “I don’t have time to explain, but I need you to have our back if something goes down,” Keisha said.

  “You got it. This is Steven’s place, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Cool. I’ve got a score to settle.”

  “You guys want to go in or do you want to fuck around out here?” Ray asked.

  “Let’s go in,” Keisha said.

  Ray passed his card over the infrared pad, and the door opened. They all walked through cautiously. The first floor was deserted, but they could hear a commotion upstairs.

  “They must be up there,” Ray said. He started sprinting up the stairs, with everyone else following him close behind.

  They quickly passed the general office, which was empty, and they heard voices coming from Steven’s office.

  Donovan stopped, crossed himself and muttered to himself, “Jesus forgive me. I’ll only do this one last time.”

  Donovan stormed into Steven’s office.

  “Muthafucka, I told you that you’re going to pay for fucking with my girlfriend,” Donovan said, holding his knife to Steven’s throat. “And now you’re going to learn what it feels like to get hurt.”

  “Donovan!” Keisha yelled. Donovan was ready to cut Steven, and standing helplessly were Marty and Rosario. Both of them looked like they’d been worked over good.

  “Do you know this muthafucka?” Steven asked. “He’s fucking crazy!”

  “Damn, Rosario,” Blackie said, “he fucked you up!”

  Rosario said nothing and looked like she was floating in and out of consciousness.

  “This fool came in here and started wilding,” Marty said excitedly. “He said that he wanted to teach us a lesson and then pulled out a knife.”

  Keisha slowly walked toward them. “Steven, I told you to not fuck with me, but you wouldn’t listen. You don’t fucking know who I know. Donovan is the fucking sane one of my group of friends, and I’ve seen him cut a man from head to toe. So you better listen to what he has to say.”r />
  “I spent five years in juvie for assault with a deadly weapon. The kid decided that he wanted to steal from me, and I had to make an example of him.”

  “Ask him how much the kid stole,” Keisha instructed Steven.

  “How much did he steal from you?” Steven asked, trying to stay away from the knife.

  “A dollar,” Donovan said. “He stole a dollar out of my backpack.”

  Steven’s eyes grew wide. “You spent five years in jail over one dollar?”

  “Do you think anybody fucked with me in there?” Donovan asked.

  “That’s some gangsta shit right there,” Ray said. “I warned you that you went too far, Steven, but you didn’t listen to me. Now you got a crazy muthafucka on your ass.”

  Donovan turned to Keisha. “Enough talk. Do you want me to cut him, Keisha? Just say the word and I’ll make this muthafucka bleed from now until Tuesday.”

  Keisha stopped for a second and looked deep into Steven’s eyes. “That depends.”

  “Depends on what?” Steven asked, panic set deep in those eyes. “What the fuck does it depend on?” His voice rose to the point of being a shriek. He was laid bare now, and it was an unusal position for him.

  “These are my demands,” Keisha said. “I want you to recall every DVD of Inside Keisha! that’s in the stores and destroy them. Understand?”

  “You must be shitting me,” Steven said. “Destroy Inside Keisha! Hell, no.”

  Donovan raised his knife and nicked Steven’s ear.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Steven said, holding his ear. A little trickle of blood began running down his fingers, and soon his hand was completely red. “Jesus Christ!”

  “Surprised by how much blood there is?” Donovan said. “There are about thirty points on the body that make just as much blood, and I know where twenty-eight of them are. You want me to search for the two others?”

  Steven looked at Donovan, then back at Keisha, and then back at Donovan. “All right, I’ll get the DVDs back. Then what?”

  “Ooh, I like this situation,” Keisha said, walking almost next to Steven. “You once told me that there are people who get fucked and there are people who do the fucking. I think I believe that now, Steven. So here’s what I’ll do. I’ll tell Donovan here not to cut you into pieces, and you’ll never bring my name across your lips ever. If someone asks you if I ever did a film, you tell them you’ve never heard my name. You’d better sweat every time someone says a name beginning with the letter K. Got it?”

  Steven smirked, but he didn’t have a choice. “Yeah, I got it.”

  Donovan slowly lowered his knife and flicked it so that the blade was withdrawn. He put it in his pocket and then patted Steven on his head. “You made a good decision,” he said. “You really must be a smart businessman, because if you don’t do what she said, I’ll be back. And you won’t have Keisha’s kind heart to save you next time. I’ll just do the business. Understand?”

  “Yeah, I understand.”

  Keisha turned back to Patra and Ray. “Guys, I think our work here is done.” She then turned back toward Steven.

  “Doesn’t feel good to get fucked, does it, Steven?” Keisha asked. Everyone began walking out. Steven grabbed a towel and put it to his ear. He walked to the edge of the doorway, watching them leave.

  “So that’s it, Ray?” he shouted. “You’re on their side? Then don’t ever show your fucking face to me again.”

  Ray never turned around, and he walked out of Pimp with everyone else.

  “Turns out that you didn’t need me at all,” Blackie said, smiling.

  “That’s what insurance is all about,” Patra said. “You have it around just in case.”

  “Donovan,” Blackie said, “you are one crazy muthafucka. I’ll stay on your good side.”

  “You came through for my girl,” he said, “so you’re cool by me.”

  They gave each other a handshake and Blackie rolled to his car. “Thanks, Blackie!” Keisha shouted after him.

  Keisha turned to Donovan and began pounding him on his chest.

  “Do you know what trouble you could have gotten in?” she cried. “You were about to throw everything away.”

  “I said I’d changed, but sometimes you have to go for your inner Negro and get medieval on a muthafucka.”

  She kissed him. “Thanks, but don’t do that shit again. Let’s get out of here.”

  Everyone piled into their cars and headed for Patra’s apartment. Patra started making drinks and they all started getting a little buzz on.

  “So what are you gonna do, Ray?” Keisha asked. “Steven looked pretty damn pissed.”

  “Yeah, I know,” he said. “You actually inspired me. I think I might try to go back to school. I can get a job anywhere and then get my degree.”

  “Cool,” Patra said. “That sounds like a plan.”

  Donovan poured another drink and looked at Keisha. “Through all of this, I forgot to tell you that I’m now in the union.”

  “What does that mean?” Patra asked.

  “Health benefits and a damn big raise in pay is what it means,” Donovan said, laughing.

  “Congratulations!” Keisha said. “You deserve it. You never were late for work, and hell, that should get you in the union at the least.”

  “So, Keisha, how does it feel to get a fresh start?” Patra asked.

  “It feels good,” she said. “Damn good.”

  Keisha had finally moved into her dorm room and found herself missing Patra. It seemed like she was much older than the other students in the dorms, as though she’d lived life and they were naive to the realities of life.

  Her father had requested that he be cremated, and since her mother hadn’t taken care of anything—she was still mad about not getting access to his belongings—Keisha had taken care of all the arrangements. It had been a pretty antiseptic deal, with just a series of papers to sign, and then she was done.

  But now it was time to finally open her father’s briefcase and the envelope he’d given her. She sat with them in front of her, worried about what she’d find. But she knew she had to open them. First she opened the envelope. What she saw blew her away.

  What the hell? she thought as she started pulling things out of the envelope. She turned the envelope over and a seemingly endless supply of one hundred-dollar bills began spilling out, one after the other.

  There has to be over ten thousand dollars here, she thought as she stacked the bills into a neat pile. As the final bill fell out of the envelope, there was a note.

  My dear Keisha,

  Please take this money as a way to give yourself the life you’ve always wanted. Always know that I never stopped thinking about you and never stopped loving you. And although I may not have much, I can at least give you all I have. Remember always that your daddy loved you.

  Papi

  Keisha hadn’t cried at any time since she’d seen her dad, but now the tears silently flowed down her face. Suddenly she felt a sense of loss, a sense that she’d been cheated out of a love that hadn’t been fulfilled.

  Now it was time to open the briefcase. She lifted the two latches and opened the case. Inside were various papers that detailed his property and bank accounts. She also found a will.

  I’ve got to sit down with Andre and go over this, she thought.

  As she was about to close the case, she noticed something she hadn’t seen before. It was a reminder of a happier time. It was a picture of her mother, her father, her brother, and her as a baby smiling at the Santa Monica pier.

  Keisha turned over the picture and read the inscription. “Life only has so many good moments. This is one of them.”

  Keisha took the picture and put it on her nightstand.

  I’m going to make sure that I have many good moments, Daddy, she said to herself.

  Enjoy the following excerpt from

  FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS

  by Lawrence Ross

  Available now wherever books
are sold!

  Chapter 1

  At first it had been cool, but now it was beginning to piss Jason off. Not because of what it was, but because of what it represented. Every Friday night, no matter how late he got home from the law office, he knew a warm dish of beef Stroganoff was waiting for him. It didn’t come from his mother or from a girlfriend. It was a weekly bowl of sympathy made by Mrs. Olga Petroff, an older Russian woman who lived in his apartment building.

  “Every man should have a woman cook for him at least one meal a week,” Mrs. Petroff had exclaimed two years ago. “That is an old Russian proverb. What woman cooks for you, Jason?” Even after thirty years in this country, her English was still lightly accented with Russian.

  This was not a discussion Jason had anticipated having with Mrs. Petroff. In fact, he’d only talked to her that day because he’d run out of milk and he didn’t feel like going to the store. He knew she was always home, so he’d knocked on her door in order to save time. But there he was, standing in front of an old woman trying to explain that he was going through a dry spell on the dating scene.

  “I don’t have a girlfriend right now, in fact I haven’t had one for a while, but I’m hoping that changes soon. I’m just sort of, well, waiting for the right woman. So I guess I don’t have that woman in my life that cooks for me,” he answered.

  “Oh, yes you do! Me!” she exclaimed eagerly.

  She grabbed Jason by the arm, pulled him into her apartment, and suddenly he was sitting in an impeccably outfitted kitchen. Shiny brass pots hung from the ceiling, fine china was displayed in the cabinets and a fresh cherry pie was cooling on the counter. This was the kitchen of someone who took cooking seriously. Mrs. Petroff bent down and pulled out a green-and-white cookbook that looked like it had been passed directly from Russian czars to her. It had little slips of paper stuffed throughout, as though she’d created addendums to the original recipe. She had.

  “In this country, I don’t understand. Men and women work, work, work, and don’t take care of each other. When you find a woman who will cook for you, you should keep her,” she commented, flipping through the cookbook. “Until then, I will cook for you. What is your favorite meal?”