Bad Blood

by Mary Monroe

  The salesman cleared his throat again and adjusted his tie. I didn’t have to be a mind reader to know what he was thinking. All this man cared about was making a sale. “One thing I’d like to point out is that this is a quality car. I’ve had my Bimmer for fifteen years and have had nary a problem with it. With all the maintenance, an economy car would set you back, and you’d end up paying for it several times over in the long run and replacing it in five or six years. A BMW makes a statement! And it’s a good investment.”

  A good investment? I couldn’t argue with that. I honestly thought that my helping Seth out so much was a good investment, too. I was not trying to buy his love; I was just trying to make things easier for him so that he could get his life together. Because when he was happy, I was happy.

  “Can we go home and think about it?” Seth asked the salesman.

  “You can do anything you have a mind to. But this sale price ends today, at close of business.”

  Seth turned to me with a puppy dog look on his face. “It would be nice to have a dependable car for fifteen years,” he said slowly. Then in one breath he gave me a tentative look and said, “Go ahead and cosign for me, baby.”

  I looked at the floor first for a few seconds, and then I looked up at Seth. I guessed what Tina Turner sang about being “a fool in love” was true. I was a fool in love, so my common sense flew out the window. I didn’t want to cosign, but I agreed to do it, anyway. I had already done a lot of things for Seth that I probably shouldn’t have done. What was one more? “Well, if this is the car you really want . . .” I paused and squeezed his knee, and then I gave the salesman a stern look. “Sir, my credit score is over eight hundred. I’ll cosign.” A wall-to-wall smile suddenly appeared on the salesman’s face.

  After we signed all the paperwork, the salesman gave Seth the keys, and his face lit up like a lamp. So did the salesman’s face. Seth looked at those keys like he wanted to kiss them. “I’ll meet you back at the pad,” he told me.

  “I’m going to meet Paulette at Dino’s for lunch,” I reminded.

  “Oh, yeah! That’s right. Thanks for doing me this favor, baby!” After he gave me a sloppy but quick kiss, he rushed out the door and jumped into that BMW and shot off like a bat out of hell.

  “What’s up with you and Seth?” Paulette asked me when I arrived at Dino’s. She occupied a booth near the back. There was a bottle of wine on the table, and half of it was already gone. Knowing she was a little tipsy, I was prepared to be careful about what I said to her. I had not told her, or anybody else, that I’d agreed to pay two months’ child support for Seth. I certainly was not about to tell her I’d just cosigned on a BMW for him. Paulette was the kind of woman who would not even be that generous to the man she had been married to for over ten years. She’d purchased his last birthday gift, a pair of house slippers, from a flea market.

  “Oh, nothing much,” I said, flopping down across from her. I was glad she had requested a wineglass for me. I needed a drink immediately.

  “Did your honey get his new car?”

  “Uh-huh.” It was difficult for me to look Paulette in the eye.

  “Well, I hope he’s happy now. It was time for him to replace that piece of shit he’s been dragging around town for all these years. You told me he was going to buy an Altima, right? Hmmm. That’s a dependable car. And it’s reasonably priced. I love mine.”

  “He got a BMW,” I said quickly.

  Paulette’s jaw dropped, and her eyes got as big as shot glasses. “A BMW? Well, la-di-da. I don’t know anybody who owns a luxury car like that. Well, excuse me! He bought a used one, I hope. Even if he did, a car like that costs a pretty penny, and those monthly notes have teeth as sharp as a razor, especially if he misses a payment.”

  I sighed. “He got one that’s a year old. But the monthly payments are almost as much as the rent on our apartment.”

  Paulette turned her head to the side and gave me a strange look. “Why would he go into debt like that? He goes from a rusty old Ford Mustang to a BMW. Don’t you think that’s a bit extreme for a man who was recently so broke, he almost qualified for food stamps?”

  “He got the car he wanted,” I said with a shrug. “And if he’s going to be courting clients for the business he’s about to start, I guess he’ll make a better impression by rolling up in a BMW rather than an Altima.”

  “Oh well.” Paulette sniffed and took a long drink. Then she looked at me and blinked a few times. “The thing is, Seth is a Garrett, and that family likes to show and tell. The way things look is very important to them. If you and him ever have kids, you’d better hope they don’t come here looking like gremlins or gnomes. If they do, Old Lady Garrett will treat them like shit, like you told me she treated Darnell while he was up here.” Paulette ended her statement with a modified neck roll.

  “I know how high maintenance and vain Seth’s family is. You don’t have to remind me. This BMW will keep him happy for a lot of years, I hope.”

  “A fucking B . . . M . . . W. Honey, you’d better do more than hope it keeps him happy. If it doesn’t, he’ll be whining to you like a sick puppy. I’m surprised he didn’t need a cosigner. You just better hang on to him if you want to go along for the ride.”

  “I intend to do just that,” I said with confidence. And I did. I loved Seth, and whether he became a big success and put us on easy street or not, I was going along with him for the ride. Since his new car was technically part mine, I’d be riding in style.

  Chapter 39

  Seth

  I COULDN’T BELIEVE HOW WELL THINGS WERE GOING! THANKS TO another loan from Rachel, one from Josh, and the money I had saved, I was able to quit that backbreaking, bitch-ass job at the cannery and start my ad agency a month after I got my BMW. I beamed when I looked at the business cards for Garrett-Grundy Advertising.

  My boy Howard Grundy, one of my closest friends since high school, had agreed to work with me. I let him think he was my business partner. But since this was my baby, I was going to be the main person in charge. I would call most of the shots and make all the critical decisions. However, I would treat Howard as much as I could as an “equal” partner.

  Everything was going just the way I wanted it, especially my personal life. My relationship with Rachel got better and better with each new day. I had finally paid off all my credit cards. My vision to run my own ad agency, one that focused on women-and minority-owned businesses, was in place, and it was time for me to get the ball rolling.

  “I’m real proud of you,” Josh told me when I took him to see the office space near downtown for which I had signed a one-year lease. It was located on the ground floor of an old but well-kept building in the middle of a block near a busy strip mall. All my space consisted of was a couple of small offices and a reception area. We shared a lunchroom and restroom facilities with the other two businesses on the same floor, an insurance company and a deli.

  “Thank you,” I replied, bursting with pride.

  “Uh, this place is all right for a start, I guess.” My brother snorted and looked around with an expression on his face that was a cross between a frown and a look of concern. Howard and I had picked up used furniture here and there. Most of it was tacky and didn’t match, but I was still proud of what we had. “I always thought this place was just some kind of warehouse.”

  “This is nowhere near as posh as the office you work in, bro, but I didn’t expect to start off at the top,” I said, still beaming with pride.

  “Good luck, little brother. I’m sure you’re going to do well.” Josh gave me a big smile and a big hug. “Let me know if you need any more help.”

  “I will.”

  I was determined to make the right decisions and keep things in perspective, no matter how difficult it was.

  To make sure Howard didn’t feel like my flunky, I was going to do as much grunt work as he did to ensure our success. I didn’t have a problem being a foot soldier.

  I wasn’t going to waste my t
ime trying to compete with the big boys by going after some of their clients, such as the national chains and the huge department stores and restaurants. I wanted to focus on the “small” businesspeople. What I planned to do to drum up business was something unique. On a regular basis I would scope out targeted minority- and women-owned companies. With a notepad in my hand and a lot of patience and determination, I would spend hours at a time in their vicinity to monitor their foot traffic. After I had completed my “research,” I would then approach the business owners and offer them my services for a reasonable fee, of course, to help them promote their business. I felt that no matter how successful a small establishment already was, they would be interested in even more success. Who wouldn’t?

  The big companies had started out small, and they would have remained small had they not done whatever they had done to enhance their image and increase their revenue. The story of how Kentucky Fried Chicken got started was my inspiration. A few years ago I had read an article about how Colonel Sanders had roamed around with a portable pressure cooker and a secret recipe for “finger lickin’ good” fried chicken. Eventually, he allowed restaurants across the country to prepare chicken using packets of his secret recipe. He made a nickel for each piece he sold. Nobody could deny that KFC was the number one place to buy fried chicken in the country and possibly the world.

  Howard was as enthusiastic as I was about our partnership. He was more than an asset; he was a necessity. He worked part-time—at night and on weekends—in the reprographics department of one of the largest engineering companies in Frisco. One of his job responsibilities was to maintain and order office supplies. He was alone most of the time, so he didn’t have somebody micromanaging him. With nobody looking over his shoulder, he ordered enough office supplies for our business, as well. Yes, it was sneaky and dishonest, but from what Howard had told me, a lot of the supplies he ordered went to waste, anyway. Besides, what was an extra few thousand dollars a month for supplies to that world-famous, behemoth company? They were probably cheating and overcharging their clients, anyway. Not only that, Howard’s supervisor and most of his coworkers asked him to order school supplies for their kids and other things for their personal use.

  With all that in mind, I didn’t see anything wrong with us taking advantage of the situation, too. Each day that Howard came to our office, he had a backpack and a briefcase full of copy paper, ink for the two used computer printers we had picked up at a flea market, pens and pencils, and everything else we needed, except a high-volume copy machine. Because my plan was to make several hundred photocopies of flyers and whatnot on a daily basis, a copy machine was one of the most important items we needed. Howard had that cornered, too. At his other job, there were numerous state-of-the-art copiers at his disposal. He took care of all our copying, as well. I did find a small, cheap copier, which we used for small jobs.

  My office and Howard’s were about the same size, but I took the one with the better view across the street from the busy flower shop between the pizza joint and the shoe repair shop. All Howard could see from his office window was the side of the building next door. Howard didn’t trip, and he knew not to. I was giving him the opportunity of a lifetime. Like me, he had had some problems in the past. He had married his high school sweetheart. When she ran off with another man two years ago, he’d turned to drugs and alcohol to ease his pain. Because of that, he had lost his job as the office manager at a firm in Oakland and had ended up back at home with his mama. Therefore, I could relate. But Howard was smart, and he had always been there for me, so when I’d offered to make him my “partner,” he’d jumped at the chance.

  “Seth, you won’t regret offering me this wonderful opportunity. I promise I won’t let you down.” My boy had once been almost as handsome as me, but the excessive drinking and the drugs had wreaked havoc on his looks. He was at least twenty pounds underweight. His once bright brown eyes were now cloudy and droopy, with noticeable bags and lines around them. He had to coat his lips with ChapStick several times a day to keep them from cracking. It was no wonder he had a hard time getting girlfriends now.

  “I hope not, bro. This is my last shot at doing something that’ll please my folks,” I’d told him. He’d stood by the side of my desk that morning, a couple of weeks after we’d started working together.

  “And that’s another thing. I want to prove to my family that I can make something out of my life, as well. I did it once, and I can do it again.”

  Howard had given up drugs and drank only in moderation now, so I was glad to help keep him on the straight and narrow. I believed in “giving back,” so to speak. My brother Josh and Rachel had helped me a lot, so I felt it was my duty to help someone else in need. Howard needed help more than anybody I knew.

  “If we’re going to succeed, we need to be more creative in a way that sets us apart from the big agencies,” Howard said. “I know we’ve already agreed on most of the ideas that we’ve come up with, but let’s firm up a few of those things.”

  “Not only that, let’s always try to come up with additional ideas, bro.” I turned to my secretary, who happened to be Beulah Peterson, one of Mother’s oldest and dearest friends, and a grumpy old lady, if ever there was one. “Let’s get some brainstorming ideas on paper. Take thorough notes, please,” I told her in a gentle voice. She was a churchwoman and demanded respect from everybody, including Howard and me. Everybody I knew referred to her as Sister Beulah at all times.

  “Let me get my notepad off my desk, sugar pie,” Sister Beulah said, wobbling up out of the chair facing my desk, with the tail of her floor-length, flowered dress flapping like a flag during a high wind. Since we were so informal for now, I didn’t bother to ask Sister Beulah not to refer to me or Howard as “sugar pie” or any other cute names. She was a feisty old woman with a pit-bull demeanor, which she didn’t hesitate to show when provoked. I didn’t want to upset her and have her go off on me and quit and leave us in the lurch.

  Sister Beulah was a retired schoolteacher and a widow with four grown children who lived in various states. For some reason, her kids rarely visited or even called her, so she was always looking for ways to keep herself busy. Mother had practically begged me to hire Sister Beulah. Since she was so eager to help us out, and since her late husband had left her well provided for, I’d gone for it. The biggest perk was that she was willing to work for minimum wage and no benefits. She was just that anxious to get out of the house every day. I would have been a fool not to hire her. Howard and I agreed that having a secretary like Sister Beulah was a smart move. I wanted my business to be a success, so I needed to be serious at all times, and I wanted to be taken seriously. An older, plain-looking secretary who was at least a hundred pounds overweight would be less of a distraction than a cute young thing swishing around the office, like the ones I had seen in other businesses.

  I liked Sister Beulah. She had always been like a second mother to my brothers and me. She had a few quirks associated with old ladies that I didn’t really care for, though. One was the way she would walk up to Howard and me and brush lint off our clothes, straighten our ties, and run her thick fingers through our hair if she didn’t like the way it looked. Another thing about her that annoyed me was the way she scolded us for eating too much fast food for lunch. But when she started bringing us home-cooked meals in fancy Tupperware containers for lunch, we didn’t complain. I looked at that as another way for us to save money. Besides that, we preferred Sister Beulah’s smoked turkey necks and black-eyed peas and other scrumptious meals over the burgers and fries that we used to pick up.

  Sister Beulah returned with her steno pad, but before she sat back down to take notes, she waddled over to me and straightened my tie and brushed off my sleeves. When she finally sat down, she crossed her thick legs and then honked into a handkerchief that she seemed to produce out of thin air. Then we both looked at Howard. He stood by the side of my wobbly-legged office desk with his hands on his hips.

  “
We want to keep things plain and simple,” Howard began. “I’m pretty good at doing artwork, so I’ll create and print up catchy flyers and pass them out to let the local businesses know there are some new kids on the block. Then I’ll personally go to every major parking lot within a specified radius and place a flyer on each car. We’re talking about hundreds of cars per lot, several lots just in Berkeley. I’ll do the same thing in Oakland, Frisco, and other Bay Area cities.”

  “Hmmm. That sounds like a lot of footwork for one man. You could wear yourself out in no time, sweetie,” Sister Beulah said, not even looking up from the notepad she was furiously scribbling on. “You’re not a teenager anymore, and after that little problem you had with drugs and drink, your body can’t be in the best of shape. . . .”

  Howard looked at me and rolled his eyes. “That’s true, but I’ve got that covered, too. My man, remember some of those young boys you used to mentor at church?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “I run into some of them from time to time at the basketball court across from the building I just moved into. I’ve already hooked up a few who are willing to work for peanuts on an as-needed basis. I will do a lot of the running around, the boys will do some, and I hope you will be willing to do some, too. Seth, I know it’s grunt work and you are the head man in this venture, but that’s my vision. We all have to get our hands dirty if we want to succeed.”

  “Sounds good to me,” I said, giving Howard a nod. “Like I already told you, I’ll do as much grunt work as you.”

  “Yep, you sure did! I just wanted to make sure we were still on the same page. Anyway, that’s how we’ll advertise our service. With our hands-on approach, I’m sure a lot of folks will come check us out because they are curious. Once we hook up a few work orders, then I’ll print up even more flyers, and eventually postcards and posters. Things like that can drum up a lot of business, if they are strategically placed. Not only will I continue to place flyers on car windshields, but I will also place cards and whatnot featuring ads in every club I know—and you know this former barfly knows them all. I will walk the street and pass out promotional items all day if I have to.”