Games Women Play

by Zaire Crown

  Tushie laughed. “Thurr you go!”

  After answering a few follow-up questions about De’Lano, Tushie turned the Lil Wayne back up and had it slapping hard enough to rattle the fillings in Tuesday’s teeth. Tushie loved his music and swore that she had actually met and fucked the rapper back in the day when she first started dancing in New Orleans. Tuesday didn’t doubt her because Tushie had never been on no fake shit; plus if Wayne had ever seen her clap that fifty-six-inch donk, he would’ve definitely wanted to hit it.

  Tushie had four twelve-inch woofers in the back, each running off separate amps so Tuesday barely heard the phone ringing from inside her big Fendi bag. When she checked it, her breath caught in her throat because it was not her personal phone. It was Tabitha’s, and only one person had that number.

  She looked over at Tushie, her eyes wide from shock. “Ooh, girl, it’s him!”

  Tushie lowered the volume, wondering why she looked so confused. “Answer it, bitch! Whutchoo waitin’ fo?”

  Tuesday didn’t understand herself why she was so shook. The fact that he called should’ve boosted her confidence, but instead she was more nervous. She was acting like she was new to this. Whether it was the amount of money at stake or just the small possibility of him actually being the real Caine, something had Tuesday rattled. Her breathing was short and fast. Her heart was thumping harder than Weezy’s bass line. The delicious lemon pepper wings they smashed at Hooter’s now felt sour in her stomach.

  A fifth ring. She finally made herself answer it before there was a sixth. “Whaddup?”

  His speech was very proper: “You probably don’t remember me, but we met about a week ago at the Dairy Queen.”

  Tuesday regained a portion of her cool. “You have to be more specific. The Dairy Queen is one of my favorite pickup joints.”

  “Out in Romulus when the homeless person tried to attack—”

  “I’m just playin’,” she cut him off. Tuesday couldn’t believe he missed the sarcasm. “I remember you. I’m just wondering why it took you so long to make a smart decision.”

  “Life is a series of serious choices,” he extolled philosophically. “You have to weigh your options carefully before you make your move. Fools rush in.”

  “But he who hesitates is lost,” Tuesday fired back.

  He countered by saying, “Ah, but haven’t you ever heard that patience is a virtue.”

  Tuesday looked at the phone and frowned. What kind of dope boy was he? The nigga actually sounded more like a preacher.

  “Well, if patience is a virtue you sure gave me a lot of it because I’ve been waiting for you to call.” Tuesday was purposely playing into the passive role because right then she wanted him to feel as if he were in control. She had to play the conversation just right because if he jumped off the hook he wouldn’t call back and there would be no way she could set up another encounter without looking like a stalker.

  Tushie also knew what was at stake. She was so into their exchange that she’d been neglecting to watch the road. Tuesday had to poke her with an elbow when she allowed the Hummer to drift out of their lane.

  “I just wanted to say thank you again for what you did.”

  She said, “You already did, but you never had to.”

  “I know you enjoy ice cream, but how do you feel about steak? You’re not a vegetarian, are you?”

  Tuesday smiled because she knew where this was headed. “I didn’t get this thick only eating salads.”

  He laughed. “Well, there’s a place out in Northville Township called Gaucho’s. Can you meet me there for lunch tomorrow?”

  The world ending was the only thing that would make her miss this date, but Tuesday still paused for a moment, fronting like she had to think about it. “Tomorrow? I could move some stuff around to free up my afternoon.”

  “I appreciate you squeezing me into your busy schedule.” From his tone of voice, Tuesday couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not. “How about I meet you at noon?”

  “That works,” she said, trying to sound nonchalant.

  “Until then.”

  He seemed to be ready to end the call when Tuesday suddenly broke in: “So are you ever gonna tell me your name or do you want me to just make up one for you? Personally, I always liked Jayshawn.”

  “Jayshawn?” he said as if considering it. “I could get used to it. All my partners could call me J-Smoove or J-Dawg?”

  “Or just Jay,” she chimed in. “For real, though, what do all your partners call you now?”

  “I don’t have any. That’s kinda sad, ain’t it?”

  “What’s sad is how you tryin’ so hard to dodge a simple-ass question. What’s your name?”

  He was quiet for so long that Tuesday actually started to think that he had hung up on her. Finally he said, “Marcus. My name is Marcus.”

  Tuesday gave no clue that she knew he was lying. “Well, Marcus, now I know who to tell the waiter to give the check to when lunch is over.”

  “I thought we were going Dutch!” he said, joking. “I’ll call you around eleven thirty just to confirm.”

  They clicked off after parting words and she tucked the phone back into her bag and looked over to see Tushie waiting as eager as a dog at feeding time. “Wuz up wit’ ’em?” she pressed. “Sound like y’all hooked up somethin’ fo tomorrow.”

  “Lunch,” she answered with a nod. “Oh yeah, and he’s calling himself Marcus now.”

  Tushie laughed. “Da mark’s name is Marcus. Marcus what?”

  She shrugged. “He didn’t say. Just Marcus.”

  “Well, tha hard part done now. You got his ass on da hook, ya jus gotta reel ’em in.”

  Tuesday heard her girl’s words but as they rode, the feeling in her gut told her that Tushie was wrong. Things were moving forward, but outside of his boring lifestyle, there was something else about this guy that just didn’t quite fit and Tuesday couldn’t put her finger on it. Plus, the hardest part was still to come because this mission was going to be filled with challenges that she and the team had never faced before.

  The same nagging feeling also told Tuesday that this was going to end up a lot more bloody than she planned. She had a dark premonition that not all the girls would be walking away from this one.

  Tuesday didn’t dare tell Tushie this out of fear she might somehow jinx her best friend.

  This new development forced the girls to turn around and head right back to the mall, where they spent another two hours at Neiman’s picking out the perfect outfit for tomorrow, then they headed back to The Bounce, where they got the rest of the crew together and told them the news. Jaye and Baby Doll were excited that he finally called, but Brianna sat there quietly, looking like a hater. Despite that this could possibly mean a six-figure cut for her, it seemed as if she would’ve preferred it all fail just so she could hold it over Tuesday’s head.

  They smoked, they talked a little bit more about the money and Tushie’s new man, but mostly they discussed strategies on how to come at boy.

  “I ain’t really got a tight read on this nigga yet,” Tuesday confessed from behind her desk. “He come off kinda square but I know it’s more to him than he letting on. I’m gonna have to freestyle through lunch until I know more about his personality. Then I’ll know what role to play with him.”

  Doll asked, “So what’s wit all this Marcus shit he tryin’ to pull?”

  Tuesday shrugged. “Maybe he thinks he’s hiding. When his name started getting too hot in the city, maybe he slid out to Romulus and changed his shit up. It ain’t like it’s hard to take on another identity—shit, we do it all the time.”

  Jaye was sitting in a chair right before her desk. “I’m still not a hundred percent sure that this is even him. In all the days I’ve been watching him this dude ain’t so much as threw a piece of trash in the street. What if we going through all this just to find out he only some lame-ass nigga who work at Best Buy?”

  “Dat would make mo sense
if we eva seen tha nigga go to work,” Tushie added from the chair next to Jaye’s. “All da nigga do is take tha girl back and forth ta school and go to da gym. It’s like he ain’t got no life.”

  Tuesday leaned forward. “And that’s the thing that fucks me up the most about him. If he don’t have a job, then how does he get his money? And if he’s so squeaky clean, why are the feds lookin at him in the first place?”

  The girls all stared at one another as if waiting for somebody to come up with good answers to those questions.

  “Well, did yo connect tell you when tha feds was movin’ on ’em?” asked Tushie. She didn’t throw out a name even though she knew Tuesday was talking about Dresden. “It’ll be a lot betta if we knew how much time we had ta work wit.”

  The others made agreeable comments. It would be more convenient to plot their moves if they knew what type of window they were working with. Things could then be set according to a timetable.

  Tuesday shook her head. “He just said they would be comin’ soon. Fucking with the government, that could be days or it could be months. But I still think we should play it like we on short time.”

  Brianna made sure to interject some negativity. “Well, even shorter now since you took a week to get next to him and another one to get him to call.”

  Tuesday shot her a look but didn’t feed into the bullshit.

  Jaye said, “Well, you gone have to put that pussy down somethin’ scandalous to make him fall this fast.”

  “I don’t think he’s gonna be lookin to jump in bed with me off rip. He’s too disciplined for that. I know this guy’s type, he moves slow—which makes time another problem. You see he set up a date for lunch and not dinner.”

  Jaye nodded thoughtfully.

  She continued. “Plus in all the days we been on him, he ain’t never went over a bitch’s house or had one come through his. He ain’t even sneak a peek at my ass when I flexed on him at the Dairy Queen.”

  Doll said: “Maybe that nigga gay?”

  Tuesday shook her head. “No, I’m not pickin’ up no gay vibe from him. That nigga like pussy, he just not reckless with his dick.

  “I don’t know what it’s gone take to get him yet, but I know it’s gotta be more than sex. If he is who they say he is, he got the type of money to trick with the baddest chicks in the world if it was just about busting a nut, but he needs more than that. Smart men respect intelligence and I’m going to have to be a challenge for him upstairs if I stand a chance.”

  Brianna sat on the couch next to Doll adjusting her tits in a tiny camisole top. “And while y’all waste time playing all these mind games with each other, the feds swoop in and take everything! Why not do this the quick way by just putting a gun in his face and making him to take us to the shit?”

  Tuesday gave her a look that said stupid bitch. “Is this yo first day? We can’t do it for the same reason we ain’t never did it in the past. In all these years you ain’t learned that our whole MO is knowing where the shit is before we come and get it?

  “What if he say ‘Suck my dick, bitches, I ain’t tellin’ y’all shit!’ Now we got the heat on us for catching a body and without gettin’ no money.”

  Tushie said, “I guess it’s true: tha bigga da boobs, tha smalla tha brain.”

  Brianna frowned. “Well, what about the little girl? Put it to her head and I bet he tell us where it’s at!”

  “No!” Tuesday said forcefully. “We ain’t goin’ that route!”

  “I’m not sayin’ we hurt her,” Brianna explained. “I’m just figuring if it come to it, we could use her to make him cooperate. If he thinks we might hurt her, then—”

  Tuesday was adamant. “No!! We ain’t never did things that way and we ain’t gone start now.”

  Doll took up the argument for her girl. “She just sayin’ it could be a plan B. It’s too much money on the line not to do whatever we gotta do! You said yo’self that we killin’ this nigga anyway, so what difference it make?”

  Jaye agreed with her. “She make a good point and I think it’s worth considering.”

  “Is y’all bitches deaf, I said NO!!” Tuesday roared in a furious tone the girls had never heard her use. They looked at each other surprised that she’d snapped so hard about that.

  Tuesday looked over them. “Some of y’all might think I’m old, some of y’all might think you can do this shit better than me. Well, you gone get yo chance to prove it cause no matter how this end, I’m out!” She pointed to Brianna. “And y’all can let this little bitch run the show if y’all want. I wouldn’t give a damn what y’all do then, but as for now, I’m still the HBIC in this muthafucka and we gone do shit my way!”

  “Okay well, fuck it then,” said Baby Doll. “What is your way? ’Cause so far all you told us is how hard this gone be but ain’t said shit ’bout how we gone do it!”

  Tuesday calmed herself a bit. “I’m gonna do it the same way I always do; I just gotta do it better and faster this time. Ain’t enough time to make him fall in love, I just gotta get him to trust me. After that I’ll be able to peep what he doing.”

  “And what if you can’t ever get him to trust you?” Brianna shot at her.

  “I can and I will!”

  “And whut about when it’s ova?” Tushie asked, staring at her best friend steely-eyed. “After being around them and spendin’ time together, iz you gone be able to take dat little gurl daddy away from her if it mean gettin’ away wit dis money?”

  Tuesday matched the intensity of her stare with the green totally bleached from her eyes. They were hard and gray as dirty ice. “If it mean getting away with this money,” she said in a voice that equaled their temperature, “I’ll put two in the back of his head right in front of her.”

  That harsh statement dropped the room into an eerie silence that lasted for a while. It wasn’t so much that Tuesday admitted she could execute a man with his child looking on; knowing that she meant it was what had them all so shook.

  Chapter Ten

  That night Tuesday had trouble getting to sleep. She flopped from her back to her side then over to her stomach and back to her side, but couldn’t find a position that was comfortable. The problem had nothing to do with her bed, her mind was too active; it leaped to and from a thousand different random thoughts. Tiny little hobgoblins were tampering with the machinery of her brain forcing her to think over every single thing that was wrong with her life.

  She was thirty-seven years old, unmarried, and the only man she’d ever loved was going to spend the rest of his life in prison. She had no family, no children, and only one real friend. She owned a struggling business that covered little more than her condo and car payments. She had a mental disorder that made her think the cans were moving themselves after the cupboards were closed. She had no education and no real talents other than manipulation and robbery. She had a psycho dirty cop on her case who used her like a fuck doll, and the really sad part was that she was so pressed for dick that she probably wouldn’t mind it except that the racist bastard couldn’t fuck. Not to mention her team was falling apart right when they were about to hit their biggest lick ever.

  That twisted comment about killing Marcus right in front of his daughter had the desired effect. Men weren’t the only people Tuesday could manipulate. Brianna’s bullshit had already poisoned Doll and she couldn’t let it spread to the others. Refusing to let them go after the girl could’ve been viewed by some as a sign of weakness. As their leader she must never permit them to challenge her authority or doubt the gangsta in her. They had to believe that she could be straight-up ruthless, even if she wasn’t so sure of it herself.

  Too many thoughts were swirling like snowflakes in a blizzard. Her bedroom was dark and still.

  She looked in the corner and saw that Nicholas was sleeping peacefully on his tiny cat bed. Curled into a furry white ball with his tail cradling his body, he was dreaming of catching pigeons, fine tuna, or whatever the hell cats dreamed about. Tuesday was so jealo
us that she thought about waking him up and forcing him to keep her company.

  She thought about Tushie having a new friend, and despite what she had said in the car, she was a tiny bit jealous of her too. She imagined herself going to the supermarket and literally running into her dream guy. Tushie the Tease was notorious for keeping a mark waiting forever, but Tuesday wondered how long she could hold out on a nigga she was really into. When the alarm clock next to her bed revealed that it was after two a.m., she thought that Tushie could be somewhere with De’Lano right then getting her action on.

  Picturing her girl somewhere having her humongous ass pounded by a ripped-up stud was enough to get Tuesday going again. She slipped her hand inside her panties and fingered her clit for a while before she went into the drawer where she kept her toys—none of which were made by Hasbro. She chose a vibrating massager with three speed settings. She climbed back into bed then got herself together.

  She finally got her rocks off at around three and apparently that did the trick, because she now felt relaxed enough to sleep. She was drowsy and ready to doze off even before she put her toy away. When she got back into bed she was out two minutes after her head hit the pillow.

  Her plan was to wake up at around nine thirty, hopefully feeling rested and ready. The most important date of her life was in nine hours and she couldn’t show up looking like shit.

  The actual name of the restaurant was Gaucho’s Brazilian Steakhouse and it was a freestanding building located on 7 Mile and Haggerty roads in Northville Township. With its architecture and cuisine the owners—who were actually Brazilian—had succeeded in bringing a little slice of Rio to this otherwise bland and milquetoast suburb.

  Tuesday had made it a point not just to be punctual but fifteen minutes early. However, when she showed up at 11:45, she saw that his Audi was already parked there.

  Inside, the rooms gleamed with Brazilian cherry wood and the white gaucho shirts worn by the staff. Beyond a long buffet offering cheeses, beans, and salads, he was seated at a rear table waiting patiently.