“My bad,” Endia said. “You laughed at me, though, E. I’m mad at you.”
Mad, but she hadn’t hung up. My hypothesis tested correct. Swagger was a magic potion, for sure.
“I didn’t mean to laugh, Endia. Nothing wrong with James Bond. Just wasn’t what I expected. Pretty Young Thang like you. I was expecting Cheetah Girls, for sure.”
“No.” I could sense a frown over the fiber optics. “I don’t know. James Bond is so…so…cool. Fleming’s British, and I don’t understand a lot of the language in the books, but…” She caught herself. “This is silly.”
“You picture yourself with a dude like Bond. Suave. Debonair. Tough. Intelligent.” I paused. “Cool.”
“Yeah,” she admitted.
I cleared my throat. “Today’s your lucky day, Endia. It just so happens I’m all of those things.”
“I know it,” she said, and a smile broke across my face that I can’t even describe.
“So what happened?”
Benny, my compadre.
“We talked,” I said.
“And?”
“She’s cool, Benny. I like her even more after talking to her. She’s smart. Funny.”
“Sociable?” Benny wanted to know. “Has a strong social network?”
“Yeah, I guess. She’s got over two hundred friends on MySpace.”
“And I surmise some of them are females?”
Surmise?
It was funny how the real Benny surfaced when he was on edge. He wanted to know if I got him the hookup with one of Endia’s girlfriends. Unfortunately for him, I was in a playful mood. I wasn’t about to give up the goods that early in the conversation. Wanted to see him sweat.
“Yeah, I guess you could surmise that,” I said. “In fact, I believe she has a lot of girlfriends. She sounds like a popular girl. She mentioned quite a few friends, in fact.”
“Anybody interesting?”
“Dude James sounded like a for-real brother. She’s known him since they were little. He wants to write plays. Their school did one of his productions last year. She said the response was great.”
“So he’s a homosexual?” Benny scoffed.
“Not at all,” I said. “Endia says he’s got game.”
“So his boyfriend’s the homosexual?”
I briefly moved the phone from my mouth and laughed. “Stereotyping. You of all people should know better, Benny.”
“Call it how I see it. What else? She mention any other friends?”
“Dude named Charles.”
“What he do? Hair and makeup for the cast in James’s play?”
I moved the phone away and laughed again. Benny was really on edge.
“Charles is quarterback on the football team.”
“You sure it ain’t field hockey?” Benny sighed in frustration. “This girl have any straight female friends, E?”
“Well, I told you she was with a bunch of girls when I saw her at the diner.”
“Yes. You did. So what’s up?”
His voice was sharp enough to cut glass. Thick glass.
I couldn’t help myself.
I laughed long and hard. And I didn’t move the phone away.
“Eric, Eric…yo, E.” Benny’s attempts to get my attention just made my fit of laughter worse.
But he held on until I calmed myself.
“I’m sorry, Benny,” I said. “I’m just messing with you.”
“Yeah, mess with Benny. Pick on Benny. Have fun at the white boy’s expense. Tease and humiliate good ole Benny—”
I cut into his rant. “Tanya.”
As dramatic as he was being, he stopped immediately. “That’s my shawty, E?”
“You came down off your woe-is-me platform awful quick.”
Benny snickered. “I was just feeding into your black guilt for the way your people have mistreated nerdish white boys down through the centuries.”
We’d come a long way. Not too long ago we couldn’t joke about race.
“Well, hopefully Tanya will make up for the mistreatment. Endia said she’s pretty.”
Benny whooped and hollered on his end, actually dropped the phone. Sounded like he kicked it around on the ground some, too.
I held on.
When he came back to the phone, he was out of breath. “Sorry about that, dawg. It’s all good.”
I hung up on him. He rang back before I blinked an eye.
Chapter 6
Lark
What was that smell?
A million smells mingled as one. The No. 56 special, shrimp fried rice, from Sultan’s, the Chinese spot on the corner, stale urine and body stench from the homeless vacationers lounging in their cardboard condos behind the building, sweat and testosterone from the li’l gangbangers who cruised the block in cars with deep-tinted windows and earth-shattering sound systems. The scent of poverty, depression.
What was that sound?
Cars screaming out in pain, violated, their stereos ripped from their guts. Old school Mahalia Jackson hymns coming from Hope Eternal, the fire-and-brimstone church next to Sultan’s. Moans from the johns down in the alley spending money their wives weren’t aware of for a quick pleasure their wives would never know about, either. Gunshots, poverty, depression.
In apartment 309, the smell was buttered toast and Jimmy Dean sausage patties, cut peaches in a bowl, fresh orange juice. That sound was the television, turned up too loud, an episode of CSI, the third of ten shows in an all-day marathon.
“Don’t know why you always watching this mess. It’s a waste of time. All that big word mumbo jumbo you don’t even understand.”
“I do understand it,” Lark told her mother. “I’ve watched enough, and I’ve caught on. And sometimes, with big words, if you listen to the next thing they say, that’ll give you a clue what the big word meant. That’s known as learning through context.”
Lark’s mother stopped midstride, settled in that real estate in the center of the kitchen, hands on her ample hips, flowery housedress hanging off her thick and overworked frame, run-down slippers on her bad feet, her hair in curlers. “Right,” she said. “Thanks for that helpful tip. Learning through context. I have to remember that. Maybe it’ll help me with the laundry, or at the grocery store, or when I’m cleaning the bathroom.”
Lark hated her mother’s sarcasm. But she wasn’t in the mood for a fight. “I’m sorry, Mama. I wasn’t trying to insult you.”
“No need to apologize. It was a very helpful tip. I’d almost forgotten you were so intelligent.”
Still sarcastic, and she said intelligent as if it were four words, emphasizing each syllable. It was an indictment the way she said it. Lark was guilty of something. Lark dropped her head, looked down at her plate of food, avoided her mother’s gaze. Guilty.
As charged.
Lark’s mother’s name was Carmen Edwards, but everyone called her Honey.
’Cause she was beautiful and brown-skinned and her walk made men lick their lips…and fingers.
At least that’s how it was back in the day. Today she was burned-out. Used up.
Honey. Somehow the name endured.
“I’m turning this mess off,” Honey said. “Can’t stand another fingerprint analysis. Another DNA blueprint. One more forensic discovery and I’ma have a headache.”
Fingerprint analysis.
DNA blueprint.
Forensic discovery.
She said those words with the same disdain as she’d used for intelligence, a while before. With the same rough manner that she’d accosted Jin with for trying to sell her rotten peaches down at the Farmer’s Market. Honey was a rough woman, no question about it. Everything, or at the very least, most things, with her were handled roughly.
“Go ahead and turn it, Mama,” Lark said. “I’ve seen enough, too.”
Lark hadn’t really. She was curious about how it would all end. But whatever.
“I am turning it. Don’t need your permission. You my chile.”
/> Even when Lark surrendered quietly, which was often, it was still a fight. Her mother liked anarchy. Chaos. Her swollen lip was the latest evidence. Lark’s father didn’t like anarchy. Chaos. It made him mad. Made him loose with his fists.
“And I’m not putting on any of them judge shows, either,” Honey said. “I don’t give a shit who’s liable for what. What the plaintiff has got to say. Or what is a suitable resolution to any landlord/tenant dispute. I’m watching my soaps. You hear?”
“That’s fine, Mama.”
“It’s gonna have to be fine.”
“It sure is.”
“You sassing me, girl?”
“No, Mama. Not at all.”
“I brought you in this world. I’ll take you out of it, too.”
“Would you please?” Lark whispered.
But apparently not quietly enough.
Honey was on her in a split second. Shaking Lark. Slapping her, too. “Shake some sense into you, girl,” Honey muttered as she finished her onslaught.
Lark brushed her wrinkled clothes, clenched her jaws. Eyes wide, unblinking, daring any tears to form. It was a familiar scene, not nearly as surprising as the first time her mother had roughed her up. But whatever. It was what it was. She did what she had to in order to coexist with her parental units. Parental units. Kenya thought that just another of Lark’s creative ways of saying something differently than anyone else. Part of Lark’s uniqueness. But it was born out of necessity. Lark couldn’t bear to call them parents. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t.
Honey backed away, breathing heavily. A look in her eyes that screamed for a rabies shot.
“Feel better, now?” Lark ventured. “Purged?”
Sassing for real.
But so what?
What did she have to lose?
“That mouth of yours gonna get you in a world of hurt,” Honey said.
Lark calmed herself. Regardless of the situation, respect was due her mother. “I’m sorry, Mama. I was out of line.”
“Sorry’s right. Be glad when you get on up out of here.”
“Couple of weeks,” Lark said.
“Fall flat on your face,” Honey replied with a sneer. “College. Don’t know how you got it in your fool head you were built for somebody’s college.”
Lark couldn’t see herself walking down some dusty road in Baghdad.
She couldn’t see herself folding clothes, building displays at Macy’s.
She wasn’t looking to be some man’s slave…er, wife.
So college.
Worked damn hard. Skipped ahead two grades.
The quicker out of her house, the better.
“Paying all of this money for college,” said Honey.
Scholarships footed ninety percent of the bill. Lark was gonna work off the rest.
But she wasn’t about to point any of this out to her mother.
“And I appreciate it, Mama,” she said. “All of your sacrifice.”
Honey’s eyes tightened. “Keep it up, girl. That smart mouth. Keep it up.”
It was a hopeless situation.
Like Michael Jackson selling Thriller- type numbers again.
Lark smiled.
Kenya always said Lark was obsessed with the Jacksons. It was true, she had to admit.
“Wipe that smile off your face, girl. This ain’t Dave Chapelle. We’re talking about some serious issues.”
Were they?
Okay. Lark did as told. Wiped the smile off her face.
“I tell you, girl,” Honey said, “things sure is gonna change around here with you gone. I’m so looking forward to it.”
“I’m sure you and daddy will have to fight each other off,” Lark said. “Maybe I’ll get that little sister I always wanted.” She immediately bit into her Jimmy Dean sausage patty. Closed her eyes and savored the flavor. The little things.
“And your fast tail better not take up with some boy and have to come slinking home before the end of the first semester like I—” Honey stopped abruptly. As if she’d been hit cleanly by a stray from the gangbangers outside her window.
Lark wasn’t a fast tail. But she was fast. Mentally. Little escaped her.
“Wait a minute,” she said. “You were in college when you got pregnant with me, Mama?”
Honey waved her off. “I’m done talking about this nonsense.”
Lark let it go.
Honey took a rag and wiped down the counter.
Her swollen lip throbbed, head ached.
Rider University.
Class of ’96.
If only.
If only.
World’s most colorful fighter.
Cassius Clay, later Muhammad Ali, had those words painted on the side of his travel bus. Fiasco had read about it in David Remnick’s book King of the World, a piece set around Ali’s dramatic fights with Sonny Liston.
World’s most colorful MC.
Not rapper. MC. Master of Ceremonies.
World’s most colorful MC.
Fiasco had the words airbrushed on the side of his own travel bus.
He was traveling on the bus. Headed for a little club in North Carolina. He was reclined on a pull-down bed. Long, Jordan-sized shorts on, a wifebeater, white socks. Book in hand. Reading King of the World. Again. About the twentieth time. Sparked because Remnick, the author, also editor of The New Yorker, had been in the news. The New Yorker had run a cover with an editorial cartoon depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as Muslim terrorists. Cover got everyone riled up. It just gave Fiasco an impetus to read King of the World again.
After that, fiction, a new George Pelecanos novel.
Dude wrote some thrilling crime stories.
Also wrote for The Wire on HBO.
Fiasco had appeared in an episode. Not a speaking part. Cut a drug boy with a busted Heineken bottle, then exit stage left. It wasn’t a stretch. Fiasco had done that and more when he was out there. Running the streets. Seemed like a million years ago.
MCing was all he cared about these days.
Rocking a crowd, writing that perfect lyric, getting his voice, his lyrics and his flow to come together and form the perfect song.
“Baby, when we gonna turn down these lights? I’m feeling some kind of way.”
Toya.
Fiasco didn’t even know her last name. And he didn’t really care to find out, either.
He’d seen Toya for the first time at a club in Washington, D.C., first stop on the current tour. Then again in Baltimore. He got the hint in Norfolk, let her on the bus. He’d ride out with her until the tour was completed. Why not? She was the best-looking thing he’d seen in three cities. Best-looking thing he’d seen in some time. If he’d cared to delve, which he didn’t, he’d have found out those curves had origins in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. Pops was Dominican, Moms was a Puerto Rock.
And Toya was built like a brickhouse.
Fiasco went with that description, even though he’d never do to a brickhouse what he’d already done to Toya several times. Go to jail if he got caught doing that. Lewd and lascivious behavior. But whatever. Brickhouse Toya.
“You hear me, baby? I’m feeling some kind of way.”
He wanted someone he could talk to about the general election.
The Sean Bell case.
The implosion of Sonny Liston’s life, and the ascent of Ali’s.
Fiasco couldn’t help feeling pangs of disappointment, for not meeting Toya at the bank when he went to check on his mutual funds, for meeting her in those dark, smoky clubs instead. But it was what it was. Play on, player. Play on.
Toya’s arms were around his neck. He looked up from his book. She was bare from top to waist. Had the most beautiful chest he’d ever seen. Couldn’t deny that. He went ahead and closed the book. Killed the lights with a clap of his hands.
“Drunk ass!” Toya fumed. “The devil is alive. And you need Jesus.”
Toya brought God into it, though the last time she’d been to church Moses was pr
obably on the deacon’s board. She was aggravated because an inebriated sister stepped out of the club, on wobbly legs, and proceeded to bump into her. Fiasco paid it no mind. He hadn’t even seen the episode, was too busy gearing up for his performance. Could’ve been Toya’s fault for all he knew. She’d had three Grey Goose and cranberry drinks on the bus herself. She certainly wasn’t a nun.
No. None of that mattered. It was about his show.
Perform. Spit a gang of “hot sixteens” from his best-known songs, rock a couple of the new joints and keep it moving. Off to the next spot.
Touring was tough. Fiasco hated it.
That’s why he’d gotten the bus. At least he’d get to rest his head in the same familiar spot every night. The road was lonely, though. Hence, Toya. But even with her, he couldn’t deny the loneliness that clung to him like spiderwebs. Couldn’t deny all that was missing.
Mya.
Her mostly.
And Eric. E.P. The li’l guy had gotten to him.
Fiasco didn’t have many friends. None, really. Bunch of hangers-on, sycophants, yes-men. When the money dried up, so would their fake friendships.
That was okay, though.
It was what it was.
Fiasco considered himself lucky to know the drill.
“Can someone say ‘hole in the wall’?” Toya gripped Fiasco’s arm, pulled him close. He let her. “Your manager ain’t jack,” she barked. “He couldn’t get you anything better than this? This is not no place for a star.”
Not no.
Double negative.
Which meant the words cancelled each other, and in fact, Toya was saying this hole in the wall was just the place for a star. Fiasco frowned, accepted it. He didn’t feel much like a star to begin with. Something dangerous was ticking in his blood. He recognized it, too, but was powerless to stop it.
Confidence. Swagger.
The things he counseled Eric on.
Must-haves.
Fiasco was losing them by the day.
Why? He couldn’t put his finger on it. He blamed it on the rigors of traveling from state to state, day after day.
Whatever the cause, he didn’t like what was happening to him.
He was on edge. Dangerous, he thought.
“I mean…” Toya let her voice trail off.
Dirty South Page 8
