Disrespectfully Yours

by Raynesha Pittman

  His pace slowed down more as he went deeper. He wanted to find that spot inside her he had heard niggas talking about. There was a spot women held deep within that was only reachable by the right man. Dick length or width didn’t matter; it could be found only by the right stroke. The man who found that spot would inherit a partner in love who was so loyal that nothing could separate them but death. If he could hit that one spot, Meagan would become his, with or without the paperwork that said it. He had to find, hit, and then kill that spot, because he was certain no other man had, or she wouldn’t have bent over in the sink, professing love for him, but it wasn’t enough. Love professed wasn’t enough, because it came from her thoughts to her mouth. If he was lucky, the words would travel from her heart to her brain and then out her mouth, which was slightly better. But if he maintained the perfect pace and found that one spot missing from the map of a woman’s body, love would come from her soul. It would bring loyalty, respect, submission, and faithfulness with it, and that was what Devin wanted. He wanted his wife.

  “I’m about to gush,” she screamed out, and he knew in that moment he had failed to reach that hidden spot in that sex position. Instead of missing the fireworks show Meagan was about to display, he fucked her faster, and they exploded together. He made sure to shoot some in her before he pulled out and spray-painted her ass with it as a throw off. Meagan was so lost in her eruption that his throw-off paint job wasn’t needed, because she didn’t feel him shoot inside her. When they were done, she got in the shower, and he stepped out of the bathroom to get the shower caddie she requested. On his return, he told her he had opened the rest of her gifts and they were waiting for her on the bed. Then he bathed his meat and balls in the sink.

  He had bought her a black Victoria’s Secret strapless bra and lace boy shorts set; a medium, formfitting black tube top that would reveal her belly button; a stonewashed, high-waisted, ankle-length jean skirt; and a pair of Jordans that matched his. She shook her head at the outfit as she applied lotion to her body, but then she put it on, anyway. After putting on the jewelry, she looked at herself in the mirror and had to admit he had done a good job of putting the outfit together.

  “How did you know my sizes?” she asked with a smile.

  “From handing you your clothes off the floor for the past eight months. But I also had help from the lady at the clothing store to get the look I wanted you to have.”

  She straightened her hair, brushed it into a diva-style ponytail, and made baby hair before they walked out the door. Devin sent the valet to get his rental car, which was a new-model all-black Benz.

  “This is what I’m buying for myself tomorrow,” he said when the valet drove up. He motioned to the valet to hold the door open for her.

  “I guess rappers do make a lot of money,” she mused.

  “Naw. This is just chump change compared to what I’ll be getting once I blow all the way up. If you act right, we will have his and her Benzs on my next payday.”

  She blushed and never once questioned where they were going until they had arrived. “This is the ghettoest strip club in Atlanta. You don’t really expect me to go in there, do you? I’m not trying to get shot,” she told him.

  Devin didn’t say anything. He parked and opened the car door for her.

  “Welcome to Wild Donkey’s. Ladies are free until midnight, and I need thirty dollars from you, pimp,” said the man guarding the door. When he looked up and saw Meagan, he switched his tune. “That’s you, playboy?” he asked, eyeing Meagan’s curves.

  “Yeah, that’s all me, boss.”

  “Shit, you can get in free too. Shorty’s bad,” the man said, stepping to the side to permit them entrance.

  “I appreciate that,” Devin said before escorting Meagan into the building. They bypassed the floor and went to a table where two people were already seated.

  “Damn, nigga. What took y’all so long?” J. Seed asked, with his arm around his baby mama.

  “You know I had to tighten her up before we came out,” Devin responded. He and J. Seed shook hands and went into formal introductions.

  “Meagan, you remember my big bruh J., and this is his wifey, Mimi.”

  Mimi extended her hand and gave Meagan a goofy-looking smile. “You’re wearing the fuck out of that skirt, girl. Yo’ ass on fat.” Mimi smiled, looking down at Meagan’s shoes. “I see we all team Jordan tonight,” she said, flashing her shoes.

  “I guess so,” Meagan said, providing her with a fake smile.

  The almost naked waitress came to the table and asked if they were ready to order.

  “Yeah,” J. Seed said, speaking up. “Let us get a twenty-piece half and half. Make our ten lemon pepper. What flavor do y’all want, Young Diablo?”

  “Let us have the Hennessy wings and—”

  The waitress squinted at Devin as she interrupted him. “Hold up. You’re the real Young Diablo? The nigga on the ‘Thug Lovin” track with Ice Man?”

  Devin laughed. “Yeah that’s me.”

  The waitress took off running through a door that read EMPLOYEES ONLY . When she walked back through the door, she had two suited men with her, and one was holding a camera.

  “Welcome to Wild Donkey’s, Young Diablo. I’m Mike, the owner of the club. Is it okay if we move y’all over to VIP and send you a bottle of whatever it is y’all are drinking on?”

  “Hell yeah,” J. Seed said, answering for his boy.

  “Y’all don’t mind if I get a picture with y’all, do you?” Mike asked, definitely starstruck.

  “Naw, go ahead,” Devin said, bringing Meagan to her feet. All six of them, including the waitress, smiled for the camera, and then they were moved to the VIP section.

  They walked past the bar, and William ducked his head so his wife wouldn’t see him drowning his sorrows in his drink. At first, he wasn’t sure if it was Meagan or not, but when he got a whiff of the Versace perfume that he had bought her as she walked past, he was sure it was her. He wanted to snatch her up and cause a scene, but he decided to play it cool and keep a watchful eye.

  Once they were settled in the VIP booth, their table was rushed by stripper after stripper, all of them wanting a private dance with Devin, which he declined. He was in at least twenty usies with the dancers, and his fame was leaving Meagan no choice but to up his value. As he wrapped his arms around one pretty girl after the next, she realized that she needed to lock him down. If he was going to be tied to anyone, it would be her.

  The food arrived, delivered personally by the owner, and he cleared his employees away to allow the guests to eat in peace.

  “Before we all throw down, Meagan has something she needs to say to you, big bruh.” Meagan, looking shocked, didn’t have a clue what Devin was talking about, and he didn’t have a problem with putting her on the spot to remind her. “She wrongly accused you of something earlier, and now that it’s official that she’s my woman, she needs to make it right by you before I take our shit to the next level, right, baby?”

  “Right,” she replied quickly. “I apologize for falsely accusing you of—”

  “Cut that shit short, Ma,” J. Seed interrupted. “We good. As long as you’re doing right by my little brother, I don’t give a fuck about how you feel about me. Now let’s eat, before our food gets cold.”

  William’s eyes weren’t the only ones locked on the VIP booth. Word of Young Diablo being in the building had spread to Tesha, and she couldn’t believe he would disrespect her by bringing his new bitch to where he knew she worked. She wanted to beat down the bitch he had with him and worry if she still had a job later.

  The table ate, and everyone enjoyed their wings and fries over laughter and random white Hennessy shots, until Tesha saw Devin and his new bitch tongue tied. William stood to his feet, ready for a confrontation, but Tesha beat him there.

  “What’s up, Devin? Who is this bitch?” Tesha asked loudly over the music.

  “Go on somewhere, Tesha. My nigga don’t fuck with you anymo
re. Skedaddle, ho. Kick rocks,” J. Seed barked, dismissing her.

  “Fuck you, J. Let the boy be a man and say it out of his own mouth, or let his bitch tell me,” Tesha snapped.

  Meagan’s eyes were on Devin as Tesha stepped up and clocked her with her closed fist. She tried to reach for Meagan’s ponytail, but Devin and J. Seed were already pulling her away from Meagan.

  “Yeah, bitch, he’s mine. Now run up!” Tesha said, kicking off her heels.

  Meagan had never been in a fight in her forty years on Earth, besides the one time she had tried to fight William back. The feeling of fear was new to her, but her adrenaline sent her to her feet, and she slapped fire to Tesha’s face. Tesha tried to break free from Devin’s hold, but management saw the altercation and the bouncer took over restraining her. Mike shouted apology after apology as the bouncer carried Tesha back into the dressing room. He asked Devin to follow him to his office to find out what exactly had happened, and Mimi took Meagan to the restroom to fix her face.

  “You should have beat that bitch’s ass when she first walked up, talking shit,” Mimi said, making a cold compress out of tissues and the ice from Meagan’s drink, which was still in her hand.

  “Who was she?” Meagan asked, looking in the mirror at the knot that was forming on her forehead.

  “Tesha, the bitch he was fucking with before you. She’s just mad that he left her for you and told that ho she needed to step her game up, that’s all.”

  Devin’s past relationships had never been a thought of hers, and he had never mentioned being in anything serious when they met, but Mimi was pouring the tea, and Meagan had her glass ready to drink it up.

  Mimi went on. “Yeah, girl, they were each other’s first, and that bitch don’t know when to let go. They had been together since they were fourteen, I think. Anyway, he dumped her ass like a pile of trash when he met you, and ole girl is still in her feelings about it. Now that Devin is on the radio and shit, of course she wants his ass back. He’s not broke anymore.” She laughed and then continued. “The bitch came by my house last week, asking a million and one questions about him, but I didn’t tell her bourgeois ass shit.”

  “How can she be bourgeois stripping?”

  “Because she’s stripping only to get through college. I think she’s trying to be a social worker or something. She’s from College Park too, but her mama and daddy kept that ass in the house, because they thought they were better than everybody in our neighborhood. They had jobs where they clocked in and shit, while everybody from around our way had a street hustle.”

  “Did Devin know that she worked here?”

  “He sure did. That’s why he wanted us to come here tonight, so he could show you off and piss her off. You know, since he upgraded and all.” Mimi kept talking, but Meagan’s anger was back. She felt like he had purposely put her in the way of danger, and that, she wouldn’t allow. She stormed out the bathroom, leaving Mimi alone at her tea party, and headed to the owner’s office.

  “I’m ready to go now,” she said, interrupting the conversation J. Seed and Devin were having over a blunt with Mike.

  “Okay, baby, we’ll leave as soon as the blunt is gone,” Devin told her. “You want to hit it?”

  She was sure Devin had lost all the common sense he had left. “Fuck it. I’ll jump in a cab.” She turned back in the direction she had come from, and Devin went to follow her.

  “Let her go, bruh,” J. Seed said, stopping Devin’s pursuit. “Give her time to cool off. That shit was fucked up, and she has a might not on her head.”

  “A might not?” Mike questioned, not understanding what he meant.

  “Yeah, that knot on her head might go away, but then again, it might not.”

  Both J. Seed and Mike laughed, but Devin didn’t find it funny. He felt partly at fault for bringing Meagan here.

  “Man, I’m going to the restroom. I’ll be back,” he announced.

  He walked down the hallway back to the club’s packed floor, and William stood to his feet to follow him. Once they were both in the restroom, he joined Devin in a piss at the urinals.

  “You good, man? I saw the ruckus out there,” William said.

  “Yeah, I’m good. Just a bitch that doesn’t understand that’s ‘It’s over’ means ‘I’m done.’”

  Devin was too caught in his feelings to realize the man next to him was the same man he had watched fuck Meagan in the kitchen and the same man whose pictures covered the walls in Meagan’s house.

  “What about the other one? She seemed pissed too.”

  “She is, but that’s wifey right there. I’m going to give her some time to cool off, and then I’ll make things back right with her.”

  “Yeah, I saw all the girls flocking around y’all’s table. She’s fine, but it has to be hard on her for women to constantly throw tail at you like that.”

  “Nah, man, it’s not like that with her,” Devin said, shaking his meat and putting it away. “She has her own fame, with the big-ass house and all. Them hoes out there don’t bother her.”

  “Oh, I thought you said she was your wife? Y’all don’t live together?” William knew he was cutting it close with the questions he was asking, but they had never seen each other before. He was just another nosy nigga in somebody else’s business.

  “No, not yet. She’s in this fucked-up situation she’s trying to handle right now, but that shit is coming to an end soon too,” Devin said, looking at the man for the first time. “You have a good one.”

  “You too, young nigga.”

  Devin left the restroom and walked up to the table where J. Seed and his baby’s mama were and handed her the keys to his rental car. “Go ahead and take the rental home, Mimi. Me and my brother got some shit we need to handle real quick.”

  She looked at J. Seed for the okay, and once he gave it to her, she bounced without asking any questions.

  “Let’s go,” Devin said a few minutes later.

  J. Seed followed Devin out of the club, and they got into his car.

  “Go park behind the building,” Devin instructed after J. Seed started the car. “Meagan’s husband just rolled up on me in the restroom. We’re going to follow him.”

  “For what? Let’s go back in there and beat his ass. Did the nigga say something to you?”

  “Nah. He didn’t know that I knew who he was,” Devin said, popping the glove compartment open to retrieve the gun he was sure J. Seed had in it. “But I’m ending this shit with him tonight. That’s my bitch, J.”

  “Then let’s go make that shit official. It’s time to dead that nigga.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Angelo Sr. walked into the hospital to pick up his wife and take her home. He never expected to find Clara checked in under critical care. Normally, she waited for him in the waiting room of the hospital, but today she couldn’t be found. After questioning everyone he passed in the hospital corridors, he got the answers he needed.

  “We found her unconscious, Mr. Hurley . . ,” a nurse practitioner informed him at the nurses’ station.

  “Bishop Hurley. My son is Mr. Hurley,” he corrected.

  “My apologies, Bishop Hurley. She was trying to use the restroom and must have fallen while getting out of her chair. She pulled her oxygen port out, and she’s been unconscious for hours. Another patient found her on the floor, locked in the stall. We have her on life support, but she’s not doing too well. She flatlines every time we take her off.”

  “Then take her off. She’s DNR.”

  The nurse practitioner found it strange that he would come in and instantly request his wife be taken off the machines that were helping to keep her alive. She had lost oxygen to her brain, but the doctors still agreed that there was hope for her.

  “Do you have any documentation stating that she’s DNR? We can’t just take your word for it.”

  “She’s a patient here. You should have it somewhere in her charts.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but this is becoming c
onfusing. She isn’t a patient here. We’ve checked multiple times.”

  “Yes, she is. I bring her to the cancer center here every week. She has stage four lung and throat cancer.”

  The nurse practitioner quickly jotted down the information he provided, and invited him to wait in his wife’s room while she went to look it up. He did as she had asked.

  After checking to make sure his wife was still out of it, he dug a small piece of paper out of his pocket and used her bedside phone to place a call. “I want my money back, with interest, Patrice,” he said into the phone.

  “Why, big dog? I did the job. Call the hospital. Her body should be chilling in the morgue by now.”

  “Well, it’s not. Somebody found her and saved her. I’m looking at her now.”

  “I’m not paying you back,” the woman said into the phone. “I told you to let me put a bullet in her or slice her ass up into pieces, Bishop. You wanted the shit to look like she died from natural causes.”

  He had devoted hours to brainwashing her, and it was failing him right before his eyes. He had worked hard to get Irene, the daughter of a member of his church, sent to a locked-down mental facility for the criminally insane for murdering her husband and children, instead of spending life in a prison cell. He had worked even harder to sneak her the instruments that she needed to break out of it too.

  After listening to her talk for hours about how she had enjoyed torturing her family and how she longed to kill others, he had felt like a padded room would suit her better than four cement walls. Once she’d moved to the institution, he’d begun having follow-up visits with her to try to help her make right with God, but as of late, his frustrations with his wife and son had made him understand how the woman could kill those closest to her.

  Clara was back to her old tricks of lying and keeping secrets. One Monday after dropping her off in Savannah, his pickup truck wouldn’t turn over. His alternator had gone out, and instead of paying the high cost to have the pickup towed, he walked five miles to the nearest auto-parts store to get the parts and tools to fix it himself. As he took the alternator off, a flashy Cadillac Escalade limo pulled up to the hospital entrance. It was the same limo he had spent hours praying to God for to replace the ones he had at his mortuary. Angelo Sr. headed over to the limo to see if the driver would allow him to take a peek inside and was stopped in his tracks by a familiar face getting out of the backseat.