An Urban Drama (3 page)

Lorenzo put his arms around me and said, “The only woman I want is you. Believe that.”
  

I always felt warm and safe in his arms, like, I don’t know, like I could feel how much he loved me. Still, I couldn’t let him off the hook that easily. “I hear you sayin’ that, but what I see is something different.”

That first chick went away quietly. The next one wasn’t pretty.

We had gone to the club and had just hit the VIP room when Lorenzo stopped dead in his tracks. He whispered something to Chris and they tried to walk me and Teena up outta there quick, but they weren’t quick enough.

“Lo! Lo! You hear me callin’ you, muthafucka. Don’t try to walk away from me!” I heard a woman yelling over the music. Lorenzo stopped and faced her, but Chris was still trying to drag me and Teena out the club.

“Let me go, Chris,” I said, struggling to get back to them.

“No, Nina. That ain’t
nothing
for you to be concerned about,” Chris said.

I kicked him in the ankle. Not hard, but enough that he let go of my hand. As I got closer to them, I began to wonder when Lorenzo developed this thing for rail-thin women with bad weaves.

By the time I got back to them, she was all up in his face with, “Why you don’t return my calls?”

“I been busy,” Lorenzo said, as I stood next to him.

I could see the fire in her eyes when she saw me standing there. “Who the fuck is she? This who you been busy with, huh?”

Lorenzo looked over at me and smiled. “Yeah.
This my
baby, Nina. Nina, that’s
Karhonda
.”

“Well, bitch, you know I’m fuckin’ him too,”
Karhonda
said and took a step toward me.

“You mean you used to be the bitch he was fuckin’, ’cause I’m gonna make sure that your
triflin
’ ass never sees that again.”

By that time, Slim was surrounded by two other women.
Karhonda
caught me off guard and slapped the shit out of me, before Lorenzo stepped in between us. One of her girls stepped up and swung on me, but outta nowhere Teena clocked her with a shot to the jaw. “No you bitches didn’t think y’all was just gonna group up on my girl and me just stand here!” She looked at the other women. “What, bitch? You want some too?”

Teena was my girl, and if it came to it, she was always ready throw down.
 

“Everything all right here,
Lo
?” a security guard asked. He was a big, huge muthafucka backed up by two more just like him.

“Nah, them three there gotta go,” Lorenzo said as he pointed them out. “And they don’t need to come back up in here.”

“I’ll take care of it,” the guard said, and turned to the three women. “All right ladies, let’s start making our way to the door,” I heard him say as Lorenzo ushered me back into the VIP room.

There were a few others, but after awhile, I was the only woman Lorenzo was seeing. Or that was the way he made me feel. I was his woman, and it felt great. At the clubs, I was the one on his arm, chilling in the VIP room, hanging out with the stars. It didn’t matter where he was at night, Lorenzo would always come get me so I was the one he woke up next to every morning.

He bought me a white 2006 BMW. At first I was a little disappointed that it wasn’t a new BMW, until he explained to me that he couldn’t pay cash for a new car at any dealership without them reporting the transaction to the IRS. Even though he couldn’t do it, I still felt good knowing he had cash like that. It wasn’t shit for Lorenzo to hand me a thousand, sometimes two thousand dollars and say, “Why don’t you go buy yourself something nice?” or “You haven’t been to the spa lately. Why don’t you spend the day pampering yourself?” At first I thought it was just his way of getting rid of me for the day, and that used to bother me, but I came to grips with it. One, that was a lot of money to throw away just to get some stray pussy, and two, even if he was trying to get rid of me, did it matter?

Lorenzo took me to
Mexico
for my birthday. When I got back I called Teena so I could tell her all about it. She said she was tired of smoking the weed that Chris had and was on her way to find some. I told her that I would ride with her.
I sat patiently waiting for Teena to arrive, and two hours later when she finally did, she came with some fantastic story about what she and Chris were doing.

“So, how you doin’, girl?” Teena asked as I got in the car. “I like that suit. Where’d you get it?”

“I’m doing fine, and I got the suit off the rack at Neiman Marcus.”

“So, tell me. How was
Cancun
?” Teena asked.
 

“Girl, we had the best time, but I never wanna see another bottle of Jose
Cuervo
as long as I live. We stayed drunk the whole time we were there. We must have been on the alcoholics’ tour, ’cause it seemed like we woke up drinking. Everyplace we went they had shots of tequila. And then we had the nerve to go on a tequila cruise. So picture this: we’re already drunk, right, staggering onto the boat. I almost fell in the water twice.”

“No you didn’t!” Teena laughed.

“Yes, I did. We were dancing on deck when Lorenzo decides he wants to spin me around. I lost hold of his hand and went straight for the rail. Luckily, he caught me before I went over. So we’re standing there laughing about it, and me, like the drunken fool I am, spins around again. Bam! Right back to the rail. I sat my
drunk
ass down after that.”

“I just bet you did,” Teena commented.

The conversation, like any other conversation between me and Teena, was intense and all over the place. We jumped around from topic to topic while we rode around trying to find some weed. Finally the subject turned to men in general, and Chris in particular. “And when we got back, there was Chris waiting at the airport to take us home. Which reminds me . . .” I turned to her with a questioning gaze.

“What?” she asked.

“Teena.”
 

“What?”

“Teena,” I repeated with more intensity.

“What!”

“What did you do to Chris?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I’m talking about, Teena. Don’t sit there looking innocent like you don’t know who Chris is.”

“I ain’t doin’ nothing to that nigga. You know me, girl. Chris is just another nigga with money to me.”

“You must have done something to him, ’cause you were all he wanted to talk about on the way from the airport. I know at first he really wasn’t feelin’ you, but now all he talks about is Teena. ‘Teena says this’ and ‘Teena likes that.’ I got so tired of hearing about you last night I had to throw Chris out.’’

“Tired of hearing about me, huh? I’ll try not to take that personal.”

I threw up my middle finger. “Anyway.”

“What did he want to know about me?”

“Whether you were crazy.”

“I know you told him I was.”

“Well, you are out there, Teena.”

“Out there? Bitch, please
,” Teena said as her cell rang. It was another friend of ours named Shay. The three of us had known each other since junior high school. She got married and they had two kids, which was the only reason she didn’t hang with us all the time. “What’s up, Shay?”

While Teena talked to Shay, I stared out the window and thought about how I was letting all the things I had planned after college get further and further away from me. I had planned to work for a year and then go back for my masters. “Yeah, right,” I said out loud, and Teena looked at me like I was stupid. I had been out of school for almost a year by that time, and I hadn’t looked for a job or filled out an application to grad school. I was getting so caught up in Lorenzo and what he was doing that I was losing myself to it, but I loved Lorenzo, and was happy to be anywhere he was, doing anything he was doing.

When Teena got off the phone she said that Shay was bored and wanted to know what we were doing. “I told her we were rollin’ around trying to find something to smoke. She said she knows where the fire is, so come and get her. I told her hell no, I ain’t ridin’ nowhere with her and them bad-ass kids.”

“That’s fucked up, but they are bad.”

“I was being nice when I said that ’cause
them
little fuckas is off the chain, but she said they’re at her momma’s house for the night. She said that her and Gary were supposed to be doin’ something, but now he says he gotta work late tonight.”

We rolled by and picked up Shay, and she told Teena where to go to find the weed. While Teena drove to the stop, the three of us were talking.

Shay busted out with, “You two are livin’ the life and me, I got two little bad-ass kids and a cheatin’ husband.”

“I tried to tell you before you married his ass. He was
a ho
when you met him. Did you really think he was gonna change?” Teena asked.

“Yes. We’re married now.”

“Hold up now,
Shay
. Let’s be honest; that don’t mean shit. You gonna tell me that you ain’t never creep on your man?” Teena asked.

“No, Teena. Never. I have more respect for myself than to do something like that.”

“What does self-respect have to do with it?” Teena asked.

“If a woman respects herself, especially a married woman, she doesn’t feel the need to sleep around.”

“Well, let me ask you a question then,” I said.

“Go ahead.”

“Did you fuck
Gary
before y’all got married?” I asked.

“Yes, but that was different. We were in—”

“Y’all were in love. Yes, yes I know. Did you fuck any other men before you met
Gary
?”

“I . . . ah, ah . . .”
Shay
dropped her head.

“Ah, ah, ah, my big ass, girl. Did you or didn’t you fuck any other men before you met
Gary
?”

“Yes,”
Shay
answered reluctantly.

“I know that’s right, ’cause you were one scandalous-ass ho,” Teena said.

“I was not!” Shay protested.

“Bitch, please,” Teena said and rolled her eyes. “She must be
frontin
’ ’cause you here, Nina. You must have forgot about the time that you called me trippin’ ’cause you had fucked five different niggas in three days. Where was your self-respect then?”

“That was different. I wasn’t married then.”

“So, as long as you ain’t married it’s all right to fuck around and have no respect for yourself, but when you get married is when it’s different, ’cause you’re in love.”

“What you say to that,
Shay
?” I asked.

“Fuck you, bitch. That’s what I gotta say to that.” Shay smiled at me.

“Let me tell y’all about my aunt,” Teena said. “She carries it like this respectable church-goin’ woman. She’s been married for twelve years. Good job and shit, two kids in private school,
and s
he’s cheatin’ her ass off.”

“No,” I said in mock horror.

“She’s cheatin’ with a guy that goes to church with her. Thursday is their night to creep, but Thursday is supposed to be her shopping night. So what this respectable, church-goin’ woman does, since her husband expects her to be out late anyway, is she does her shopping on Wednesday and takes all the food and stuff over her girlfriend’s and leaves it there. Then, after Mr. Church-goin’ Man fucks her on Thursday, she goes and picks up her stuff and goes home. Respectable woman. And get this—when she gets there, her husband helps her in with the groceries.”