An Urban Drama (10 page)

“Talk to me.”

“You ready to take this thing to a new level?”

“Yes! Nina, I been ready. I
just been
waitin’ on you.”

“Good. You still hold down that same stop?”

“Of course.”

“
What’s
gonna happen if you change suppliers?”

“Since we’re talkin’ business, let’s say you give me a reason to change suppliers.”

“I’m in a position to give you a much better price than what you’re paying now.”

“Then in that case, I’d be doin’ business with you. They’ll come around, make some noise, but my set is deep enough to make them think twice about takin’ it any further.”

So, now we had a place to sell and it all began from there. The way Kenyatta ran her program was tight: no hand-to-hand exchanges and little or no conversation. You say what you want, drop your money on the ground and go up the steps. On the ground at the top of the steps, you’d find what you paid for.

Kenyatta immediately bought into the concept of making money on volume. She didn’t put a lot of cut on it.
 
Once the word got around that they were rolling with quantity and very high quality, I couldn’t get the product to them fast enough. That would become my foundation, and I would build up from there. It wasn’t long before I was back in
Jacksonville
.

I made it a point to stay in
Florence
on the trip down. I called that trooper and went out with him. Not that I was feeling him all that much, but I was going to be driving though there on a regular basis. Any information I could get from him would be useful.

In less than a year, we were able to move four kilos a month. In that time, we had put together a team of nine players, male and female, who were buying weight on a regular basis. As a recruiter, Teena had found her special place in the world, hanging around with people—mostly men, mostly with money—feeling them out, seeing where their heads were at, and taking the ones that fit into our program. “Same shit I’ve been doing for years,” Teena boasted. “Sizing men up is what I do.”

On one of my trips to
Jacksonville
, I was with
Leon
, having one of our usual conversations, when the subject turned to sex. “To be honest with you,
Leon
, I haven’t been with anybody since Lorenzo.”

“Why? If you were with Lo, I know you like sex.”

I looked at
Leon
, unsure how I felt about him knowing that about me. “Yes, I do like sex, but I love Lorenzo.”

“Lo is never getting out.”

“I know that. And I know he told me to move on with my life.”

“So, what’s up?”

“What do you mean, what’s up?”

“I mean, are you planning on being celibate for the rest of your life, or are you gonna let somebody play with that vicious campaign you call a body?”
Leon
asked and showed me that look he had reserved for the tittie twins. “You’re a young, beautiful woman. You have your whole life ahead of you. You shouldn’t deny yourself that pleasure, especially if you enjoy it.”
 
I thought that
Leon
was about to try and talk up on some, but he got up and said good night. I watched
Leon
walk out of my bedroom and wondered if I would have said no.

When I got back from
Jacksonville
, Teena introduced me to a guy who went by the name of Smoke. She had been sizing him up for a little over a month because of the weight he was talking about. Smoke came through the door talking a kilo a week. That doubled my business right away.

Smoke became my best customer, but he was one freaky dude. One night, I was hanging out with Smoke and this white chick I knew named Gina. She was mad cool. Not mad cool for a white girl. Gina was just mad cool. Anyway, Smoke started telling us about all the freaky shit he’s done and would like to do. Then he tells us that he always wanted to have sex with two white women at same time—two blondes to be exact. “So what about it, Gina?” Smoke asked.

“What about what, Smoke?” Gina asked.

“What about you callin’ up one of your freaky, blonde girlfriends and y’all two come over to my place, and let’s do the damn thing.”

“Oh, please. I wouldn’t open my legs for you if you were the last swinging dick on the planet and I had to fuck you to stay alive.”

So, you could imagine my surprise when three months later, Smoke told me that him and Gina were getting married.

Which brings me to Cedric.

I had gone to the wedding with this guy I’d met named Omar. There was nothing going on between us, a fact that Omar hated, but he was such a lame that I couldn’t even point my mind in the direction of seeing him naked. However, since my talk with
Leon
, I’d been slowly coming around to the idea that I had moved on with every other part of my life, maybe I could move on with that part too. But not with Omar; we were just friends. Besides, he was good company sometimes, so I asked him to come to the wedding with me.

Anyway, I was watching Cedric watching me, and thought about how long it had been since I’d felt a man inside of me. Cedric was fine in a rugged sort of way, and I found myself fantasizing about having sex with him. Finally, he found somebody to walk him over to introduce me. Not wanting to disrespect Omar when they got to the table, Smoke introduced him to everybody sitting there. With eyes focused on me, Cedric politely spoke to everyone, taking his eyes off me only briefly. Finally Smoke got to me. “Omar, Nina, this is my former roommate, Cedric. Cedric, this is Omar Parker.”

“Nice to meet you,” Cedric said to Omar and held out his hand, but his eyes were still focused on me. Omar accepted the gesture without speaking. “Cedric, this is Nina Thomas,” Smoke said.

Our eyes locked. “It’s good to meet you, Ms. Thomas.”

“Please, call me Nina. And it’s good to met you, too, Cedric.”

“Maybe you’ll dance with me, Nina.”

The deejay started playing “Diary” by Alicia Keys, and I was really feeling him, so I said,
        
“Sure.”

While we were dancing, Cedric asked, “So, what’s up with you and
busta
there?”

“Who, Omar? Nothing. We’ve been out a few times. He nice, but he’s . . . I don’t know.”

“Well, who would know? Should I ask him?”

“No, he’s probably already jealous of you.”

“Why?”

“Maybe you should ask him.” Cedric said, and started to pull away from me. “Come back here. I’m not through with you yet,” I said. “You were going to ask him, weren’t you?”

“Yeah. I need to know these things.”

“Why?”

“I’m just an informational kind of guy. I make a livin’ on information.” The song ended and I started to pull away from him. “Come back here. I’m not through with you yet.”

“Stay in My Corner” came on, and he drew me back to his chest. I liked the way it felt there in his arms. Cedric was tall; six three, maybe four. I looked into his eyes. He held me tighter. “I hate to be the one to break this on you, but that thing with you and that
busta
. . .”—Cedric frowned and shook his head—“It ain’t gonna last.”

“Oh really? What makes you say that, Cedric?”

“I don’t mean to sound overconfident, but I intend to take you from him. And I am prepared to spend all my time, all my energy, and all my resources to do it. Let’s get out of here now. We can find a nice, quiet place where we can talk. Get to know each other.”

“No, Cedric.”

“Tell me what you want to do and that’s what we’ll do. I just wanna talk to you, Nina. I wanna know everything you want me to know,” Cedric said with a confident smirk. “I wanna know what makes you cry, and what I can do to make you smile.”

“I don’t smile much these days,” I said, leaning back.

“Tell me why you don’t smile,” Cedric said and drew me back to his chest.

“Maybe I don’t have anything to smile about,” I flirted.

Cedric laughed out loud. “That’s why you need to be with me. Come on, let’s go.”

“No, Cedric.”

“Then meet me in an hour at The Shark Club.”
 

“No, Cedric,” I said, and wondered if he could tell that I wanted to go with
him. I could feel how hard he was from dancing with me.
“You don’t waste any time, do you?”

“When you don’t have a lotta time, you can’t waste it. So, what about tomorrow?”

“No, Cedric.” I looked at Omar. “Not tomorrow. Thursday seven o’clock.”

I hooked up with Cedric a few times,
and the more I talked to him, the more I began to realize what an asshole he was. How could somebody that fine be such an asshole? In spite of that, he was kind of cool to hang out with.
But even more, I was horny. It had been almost two years since Lorenzo went to jail and I was ready, but not in a rush. You know what I’m saying?

Cedric told me that he made his money robbing. You know, anyplace he could find cash on hand—hotels, restaurants; he said he even robbed a couple of post offices.

One night Cedric called and woke me up around 3 o’clock in the morning. “First of all, do you know what time it is?” I said, still half asleep, but mad as hell.

“Yeah, I know what time it is. It’s two fifty-eight. You ain’t got
no
other nigga over there, do you? ’Cause I’ll kill that muthafucka.”

I rolled my eyes. “What do you want, Cedric?”

“I wanna see you.”

“Have you lost your mind? Hell no, you ain’t comin’ over here at three o’clock in the morning.”

“I ain’t talkin’ about now. I mean when I get back.”

“Back? Back from where?”

“
Ohio
. I’m on my way back from
Ohio
.”

“What you doin’ in
Ohio
?” I don’t know why I asked. I really didn’t care. I just really wanted to go back to sleep.

“Me and my boy,
Tilly
, took a little road trip there to handle some business. I’m still in
Ohio
, just outside of
Cleveland
. But when I get back, I’ma
come
by there. I got something to show you.”

“Cedric, don’t come over here at the crack of dawn.”

“Relax. We got a long way to go.
Pennsylvania
’s a long state to ride through.”

“Try callin’ before you come this time. You seem to have this bad habit of just showing up places, unannounced and uninvited,” I said and hung up the phone.

That next afternoon, Cedric was ringing my bell. No call—he just showed up. “I remember asking you to call before you came over here.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Cedric said and pushed his way past me. He walked into the dining room and poured twenty grand on the table.

“What’s that?”

“What does it look like, Nina? It’s money.”

“I know that. I was askin’ how much money and where did it come from?”

“It’s twenty grand, and it’s my share of the job I just did.”

I guess he was thinking that I was supposed to be impressed at the sight of twenty grand on the table. I’d seen Lorenzo with a lot more money than twenty grand. Shit, I was making much more than that in profit. But I knew a lot of women would be impressed. Impressed to the point of fucking him. In fact, I was sure when he left and did that same thing, that some woman’s clothes would fall off. But I know how fragile the male ego is, so I tried my best to act like that was more money than I had ever seen in my life. “That’s
a lotta
money, Cedric. What’d you have to do for it?”