Power & Beauty (11 page)

I could feel the effects of the coke fading. I wanted more. I wanted to go back up, not down, but I also knew that when it came to drugs Sugar knew what he was doing. I figured that Sugar’s Shack was built on drugs. He was the expert and I was the amateur. Drugs had never sat well with me before. I understood that just because his grass didn’t make me paranoid and his coke seemed to clear my mind didn’t mean that more of the same wouldn’t fuck up the works. I was better off chillin’. Slim had sent me to Irv, who, before he got sick and lost his mind, taught me not to trust no one. Slim was sending me to Sugar, another cat he admired, to learn whatever Sugar had to teach. Sugar was teaching me that one hit is enough.

“We going to VIP so you can see what this thing’s all about,” he said. “You ready?”

“Ready,” I said.

“You cool?”

“Cool,” I assured him.

“You like champagne?”

“I’ll have me a little sip.”

“My man! That’s what I like to hear. You getting the idea, Power. A little sip. All we need is a little sip.”

To get to VIP we followed the curvy lines of the club to a back door guarded by another one of Sugar’s super-tall female security guards. She was a sista with a short-cropped Afro and the longest arms I’d ever seen on a female. The minute she saw Sugar, she stepped aside. He stopped to kiss her on both cheeks. She looked at me approvingly. I was still wishing I had had another hit of that top-shelf blow.

VIP was one medium-sized room with a dance floor and lots of smaller rooms with couches and easy chairs and TVs. There were no doors on the smaller rooms, just sheer curtains made of a see-through fabric. Like everything else at Sugar’s Shack, the furniture was odd shaped, like it was designed by someone high on coke. The women dancing with each other—it was almost all females in there—were not odd shaped, just perfectly shaped. They all looked like models, tall, reed-thin, gorgeous in the face, edgy in their clothes—knee-high black boots and silver silk short shorts, flowing capes that flapped open to show their naked chests. I got the idea they had taken Ecstasy. They had that X look in their eyes. They were floating to a smooth groove—a Latin groove with a techno flava—and a couple of them were making a little show by touching and kissing each other while they danced.

It was like a United Nations of beautiful women. Lots of Hispanic ladies, but man, there were chicks from all over. German chicks, Swedish chicks, French chicks, Italian chicks, Russian chicks, here a chick, there a chick, everywhere a chick chick. My eyes were popping out of my head. I heard all these different languages being spoken at once. I was knocked out by all these different skin types, different eye colors, different dancing styles. As Sugar took me through the rooms, he stopped to introduce me: here’s Gretchen, here’s Smeralda, here’s Ingrid, here’s Brigitte, here’s Natasha, here’s Olga, here’s Liu, here’s Mi. Mi stopped me cold.

Mi was Japanese. She was tall, just about Beauty’s height—five ten or eleven, just a little shorter than me. Unlike Beauty, though, she had dyed her hair the color of red wine. Falling to her shoulders in a loose and breezy style, her hair had a purplish sheen. She had thin lips and a large sexy mouth. Her outfit looked like an art project—pleated pantsuit in stripes of purple and white made out of some kind of crinkly polyester.

“Mi just arrived from Tokyo,” said Sugar. “Holly Windsor wouldn’t sign her. According to Holly, she’s too far-out. According to me, Holly’s full of shit. And now that Holly’s out, Mi is in. Isn’t that right, Mi?”

Mi just smiled. She didn’t know English, so another Japanese model named Yuko, who’d been living in Miami for a while, came over to translate. Yuko, though, didn’t understand the word “far-out.” She asked Sugar to explain.

“ ‘Far-out’ means ‘different,’ ” he said. “ ‘Far-out’ means ‘not afraid to do her own thing.’ Far-out is good.”

Yuko was several inches shorter than Mi. Her wide face and big eyes gave her the look of a baby doll. Her skin almost looked plastic. Mi’s skin looked like silk.

“Mi was a model for Issey Miyake,” said Yuko.

I hadn’t heard of Issey Miyake, but Sugar said he was one of the most famous designers in the world. “Everything he does,” said Sugar, “is far-out.”

I was feeling far-out myself. The high from the grass and coke had gradually faded. The little sips of champagne had me a little tipsy. I was feeling strange. I was feeling like I wanted to talk to Mi more. I was feeling like I wanted to take Mi to bed.

“You want her?” asked Sugar, reading me right.

“If you think it’s cool.”

“No, bro, I really don’t. Not right away anyway. See, she just got here and I don’t want to overwhelm her. Don’t want to confuse her. I’m guessing she’s about your age—eighteen or nineteen—and I’m not sure it’s good for her to start fucking the boss’s assistant right off the bat.”

The boss’s assistant?
So that’s how Sugar saw me. Well, why not? The only thing that bothered me, though, was his tone. It was almost like he was saying,
the boss’s water boy.

“No problem,” I said. “You’re calling the shots.”

“I’m calling someone who can show you to your apartment upstairs. Not the best in the building, but hell, at least you are in the building.”

A few minutes later—with me, Mi, and Yuko sitting on the couch and listening to Sugar talking about his modeling agency plans—the security sista who’d been guarding the VIP entrance arrived.

“Yolanda,” said Sugar, “take Power up to his apartment. Make sure he’s comfortable.”

“No problem,” said Yolanda.

We had to go back through the club, exit, and reenter through a door for the residential part of the building. As I followed Yolanda, I found myself ranking her high bubble booty among the top ten I had ever seen. My eyes were all over it.

But by the time we rode the elevator up to the ninth floor and walked down the slate-and-metal hallway and into the apartment where I would be staying, my eyes were half-closed. The apartment was tiny, barely big enough for a double bed and a dresser. There was no kitchen, not even a kitchenette. The apartment looked like it was really a closet. My suitcases had been placed on the bed. Yolanda asked me if she could unpack for me. I said yes, and as she opened the suitcases and started putting my clothes away, I stretched out on the bed. I forgot about her booty. I forgot about everything. I was so dead tired from the trip and the drugs and the sips of champagne that my eyes closed completely. I couldn’t open them. I fell deep into the sleep of the dead. And when I woke up the next day it was past noon and I was all alone.

The Renato Ruiz Agency

F
or you to understand what this dude has done,” Slim told me over the phone the first week I was in Miami, “you got to know a little about his history. His old man was a kingpin in Cuba kicked out by Castro. He comes to Miami, sets up shop to sell his wares, and the first week he’s in business the competition takes him out. Blows off the top of his head. Sugar, his sisters, and his mom have to scuffle ’cause they’re left with nothing. The mom gets sick and dies a year later—cancer or a stroke, I can’t remember. The sisters go back to Cuba to live with an aunt. But this Sugar, this young cat’s got balls the size of cannons. He works the streets. He learns the city. He learns the trade. By the time he’s your age he’s got his own setup. He comes to Atlanta looking for opportunities. I met him when he started looking for real estate opportunities in our neighborhood. A young Hispanic kid looking to buy real estate in the black ghetto. That impressed me. His cash impressed me. We went in on some stuff together and everything he touched turned gold. We made money. Like me, Power, this kid had an eye for prime pussy. He was a magnet for beautiful ladies. The ladies love green eyes on a brother. Doesn’t have to be a black brother. Long as he’s tan. Anyway, next thing I know he’s building his own building and buying up restaurants in South Beach. So after living that life with Irv in Chicago, I knew the last thing you needed was another old Jew. Sugar has something to teach you that even Irv doesn’t know.”

“What?” I asked.

“It ain’t for me to say, Power,” said Slim suavely. “It’s for you to find out.”

In the first days I didn’t find out much except that my willpower to resist willing women was next to nothing. Sugar lived in a world of willing women. In his club, willing women were all over him, and when he announced that I was his boy—“his assistant”—they were all over me. I was tested. Sometimes I was tested twice in the same night. I proudly passed the tests with flying colors. When it came to sex, I was flying higher than I had ever flown. Yet even in these sky-high flights, even with world-class models whose bodies were most men’s wet dreams, even if she happened to be a fair-skinned Norwegian or a Greek glamour girl with an olive complexion, when it came time to bust my nut, I’d have to give her Beauty’s face.

This was something, of course, that no one knew. I wanted to unburden myself, but who was I going to tell? Slim? Hell no. Wanda. Of course not. Sugar? I was just getting to know the guy. I could see that he liked me and wanted to be my friend. He wanted to get me laid and was doing a great job of giving me the cream of the crop. He’d also seen that I had my eye on Mi. My idea was that of all the beautiful women passing through Sugar’s Shack, Mi was the one who could break Beauty’s spell. Mi did something to me that the others, no matter how gorgeous, did not.

All this was on my mind when, on a Monday morning following a crazy weekend devoted to an insatiable lady from Milan who was six feet four and once on the cover of Italian
Vogue,
I rode up on the elevator to the penthouse of Sugar’s Shack. Once he had taken over ownership of the Holly Windsor Agency, he had shut down her office and moved it to his building. He had also renamed it the Renato Ruiz Agency. Renato was his real name. “Sugar is a good name for the club and the building,” he said, “but the agency needs a Tiffany-type brand. Sugar’s Agency doesn’t sound right, bro. Renato Ruiz Agency reeks of class, doesn’t it?”

I agreed, and I also agreed to work there every day and try to learn the business from a white woman named Pat Vine, the lady who had run the day-to-day operation for Holly Windsor and agreed to stay on and work with Sugar. Mrs. Vine was in her fifties. She was overweight, she wasn’t pretty, but she was smart with computers and knew the game. She was no-nonsense. She was the one who told me that after the transition of ownership, most of the models signed by Holly Windsor were happy to stay on with Sugar. Holly was seen as pushy and bossy. Apparently she had a bad temper. The models liked the idea of working for a rich, green-eyed, playboy Miami Beach rock-star-style businessman.

“We have a good roster of models,” Mrs. Vine told me, “but rosters are always being raided by the competitors. The key is not only to keep the girls we have but to be on the lookout for fresh talent. That means going to the fashion shows and seeing what models the designers are using. The idea is that Mr. Ruiz will be flying off to New York, Paris, and Milan, and that you and I are in the office making sure that the business is run like a business, not a hobby. Are you good with computers?”

“Pretty good,” I said. “My mom was a bookkeeper and into them early on. She had me and my sister fooling with computers since we were real small. I’m comfortable with all the basic programs.”

“Great. Then you’ll be a quick learner. I’ll show you how we inventory the models, the magazines, the art directors, the casting directors for videos—the whole gamut of buyers.”

“Great.”

“But I must warn you—the women can be a problem.”

“I can imagine,” I said.

“Here’s our first problem coming through the door right now.”

It was Mi. She came on a day that Sugar was away in New York. She was dressed in another one of those pleated pantsuits, this one with a pattern of purple sunbursts that matched the purple tint of her hair. She was stunning. With the exception of Beauty, she was the most fashionable woman I had ever seen. Her vibe seemed sad. I felt something was wrong. Her friend Yuko hurried into the office a few seconds later. She was holding two Starbucks coffees, one for herself and one for Mi. The two women faced Mrs. Vine and myself. There was a wall of windows behind us. Outside the sky was cloudy and across the street the Atlantic Ocean looked gray and angry. The waves were rough.

“I think that Mi . . .” said Yuko in faltering English. “I think she wants home.”

“You mean she wants to go home?” asked Mrs. Vine.

“She not happy here,” said Yuko.

Mi caught me staring at her. She smiled and looked away.

“We have a photo shoot set for her tomorrow,” Mrs. Vine explained. “It’s a cover shoot for
Luxury Living
. It’s an important magazine.”

“Yes, we know,” said Yuko as Mi gazed out the window. She seemed to be studying the mysterious sea. “But this is not her . . . not her comfortable.”

“You mean she’s not comfortable in Miami Beach?” asked Mrs. Vine.

“Not comfortable here, no. She wants home,” Yuko repeated.

“But we paid her fare from Tokyo. The fare wasn’t cheap. And we have a contract.”

“Contract no good in Japan,” Yuko explained. “America no good for Mi.”

“She’s only been here a few days,” said Mrs. Vine. “She needs to give it a chance. We have a considerable investment in her. And
Luxury Living
’s art director has already chosen her. Besides that, we have three other shoots set up. She can’t go home.”

Yuko quickly translated Mrs. Vine’s words for Mi, who sat there and said nothing. For an uncomfortably long time we all sat there in silence. Then tears started streaming down Mi’s face. Mrs. Vine handed her a tissue. I surprised myself by speaking up.

“Maybe we should give her a little time,” I said to Yuko. “I know she’s scared. Miami Beach is kind of a scary place. But maybe today isn’t a good day for making a decision. Maybe tomorrow will be better.”

Yuko translated my words while Mi looked at me with curiosity. Why was I saying those things? Why should I care? Then she said something to Yuko, who in turn said to me, “She is thanking you for your niceness. She is saying that she likes the ocean. The ocean is comfortable.”

“Does she want to take a walk along the ocean?” I asked.

Yuko asked Mi, who nodded yes.

“Make yourself useful,” said Mrs. Vine to me. “Take her for a walk and convince her to meet her obligations.”

“I have appointment too soon,” said Yuko. “I cannot go for walk.”

“Let these two go for a walk,” Mrs. Vine said. “Let this gentleman from Georgia introduce her to the healing properties of the Atlantic Ocean.”

Mi and I left together. We walked out in silence and remained in silence. It was strange. I’d never been with a woman who didn’t know my language. At first it was awkward and then it became something else. I’m not sure what to call it, but we were speaking without words, communicating without sound. It made me wonder—what the hell were we doing? I found myself remembering the connection between two characters in one of my favorite Sister Souljah books. When I had read the scene, I thought,
This is bullshit; no two people could bond so tight without a common language.
Yet that very thing was happening with me and this woman.

Mi led the way across the street to the ocean. She rolled up the bottom of her crinkly pants. I rolled up the bottom of my jeans. We took off our shoes and socks, left them on a bench, and stepped out on the cool sand. It felt great. It felt sexy. I looked down her at toes and saw that her toenails were polished the same purple tint of her hair and pantsuit. She saw me noticing and smiled. I followed her across the sand to the water’s edge. The wash of the waves came up under our feet. She giggled and leaped a little in the air. Her mood was completely different from before; now she seemed actually carefree. She started skipping along the beach like a little girl. I skipped along with her. I felt silly, but I also felt good. She began running and I ran beside her. We ran at a slow, easy pace. We ran at the same rhythm. The cool breeze in my face and the fresh smell of the salty ocean kept my energy high. After the run, we walked far up the beach. We walked for miles, still not saying a word. How could we? She couldn’t understand me and I couldn’t understand her and yet we did understand. We knew what was going on.

We turned around and walked back as a few small rays of sun were busting through the clouds. The weather was warming. I wanted to reach over and hold her hand, but I didn’t. I figured it’d be better for her to reach over first. She didn’t. She just kept on walking, but every once in a while she looked in my direction with a beautiful smile covering her face. I couldn’t say she was prettier than Beauty—to me Beauty was the perfect combination of black and Asian—but Mi was definitely gorgeous, and while she had me thinking of Beauty, I could see her in her own light.

When we finally arrived at the point where we’d started this long walk, we went to the bench to get our shoes. They were gone. Someone had stolen them. I was pissed but Mi just laughed and pointed to a shoe shop across the street called Flying Feet. They mainly sold sneakers, but I found a pair of sandals and Mi bought a pair of funky flip-flops in a purplish pink.

“Are you hungry?” I asked in slowed-down English. I pointed to my stomach.

“Yes, yes,” she said.

We went to Prime One Twelve, a hip restaurant on Ocean Drive just down the street from Sugar’s Shack. Sade was playing over the speakers. Mi looked at the menu and shrugged. I ordered a salmon salad for her and a sirloin steak sandwich for me. Sitting there, waiting for the food, I started asking her real simple questions, like “Do you have sisters and brothers?” and “Have you lived in Tokyo your whole life?” but I wasn’t getting across. When she asked me questions in her slowed-down Japanese, I didn’t do any better. We wound up just laughing at each other.

She liked her salad as well as the mango sherbet I ordered for dessert. I paid the check and she thanked me in English. We got up to leave, but where were we going? She just started walking and I followed. We walked to a park and then over to Washington Avenue, where we saw a bunch of interesting old-time architecture from way back in the day. There was a yellow building called the Jewish Museum of Florida that caught my eye. It had colored windows and fancy doors. For a second I was startled: An old man walking up the stairs looked like Irv Wasserman. I could have sworn it was Irv, but by the time I got closer for a better look he’d gone inside. I thought about going in there to see if it was really him but changed my mind. A lot of old guys in Miami Beach looked like Irv. Besides, why would Irv be in Florida going to some museum? I stuck by Mi’s side. We kept walking; we walked for hours, stopping to look in the windows of the trendy boutiques, going into Starbucks for a coffee—Mi had green tea—pausing at a newsstand, where she bought a Japanese magazine.

By five o’clock, I was exhausted. Mi had to be tired as well. We’d been on the move for hours. She had canvassed South Beach from top to bottom. We must have walked fifteen miles. Where to now?

We found ourselves back at Sugar’s Shack.

“Is this where you are staying?” I asked her, knowing she couldn’t understand me. I presumed she was. Sugar kept rooms for many of the out-of-town models.

Mi smiled and attempted her first words to me in English. “You . . . you nice man.”

“You,” I said, “are a beautiful woman. A very beautiful woman.”

I wanted to go to her room. I wanted her. I’d been wanting her since I first saw her. She was the one woman who could chase Beauty from my mind—or maybe bring Beauty to my mind. It didn’t matter. I just wanted her.

She pushed the button for the elevator. We waited for it to arrive. It took a while. We got on. She pressed the button for the eighth floor. My room was on the ninth. I didn’t press 9. When the doors opened, she stepped off the elevator, turned to me, and said, “
Domo arigato
. Thanks to you.”

By the way she quickly separated herself from me, I got the message. I was about to say, “Can I call you later?” or “Can we have dinner tonight?” But there was no time. The door closed. Mi was gone.

I went to my room feeling frustrated. My room was tiny and the only window overlooked the back alley. I wanted to see the ocean, I wanted to walk along the ocean with Mi. Mi was only a floor below me. I could go down there and knock on the door, but I knew that would make her uncomfortable. If she wanted me in her room, she wouldn’t have stepped off the elevator so suddenly. She liked me—I knew she liked me—but she wasn’t ready. All these other chicks floating around Sugar’s Shack had shown me they were ready. Some of them were ready before I was. But Mi, the one I wanted, wanted to wait. Maybe that’s why I wanted her; maybe it wasn’t just because she reminded me of Beauty, maybe it was because she had this special thing about her. She wasn’t easy. Wasn’t eager. She was soft and mysterious, and oh, man, the thought of what she looked like as she slipped off her clothes, as she stepped out of the shower, as she stretched in bed . . . those thoughts were driving me up the wall when my cell phone blew up. It was Mrs. Vine.