The Last Street Novel (15 page)

He said, “Can I ask you a question?”

“Go ahead.”

“How long have you known?”

“About your wife?”

“Yeah.”

“Since before I met you. And when you never bought it up, I figured you do what you do a lot. Fucking. But your wife probably wants to make love.”

Shareef laughed. He said, “So, I see you got a nice pair of ears on you.”

“Yeah. Listening is the best thing I do.”

After the phone call, while waiting for her arrival, Cynthia’s last comment stuck in his mind,
Listening is the best thing I do.
His wife used to be that way. Jennifer used to listen to everything while they were still students together in Atlanta. But after marriage and kids the listening became more compartmentalized. Not now, but later. And not later while I’m on the phone or watching TV, but later when I’m ready to hear it. So Shareef shut down and stopped talking to her, and he allowed his pretty fans to listen. The sex went the same way, and where his pretty fans began to receive more of his energy, his wife got less.

Shareef nodded to himself while stretched out across the twin-sized bed near the window. “I guess she got reasons not to wanna fuck me,” he grumbled. “I was supposed to stick in there and ride it out.”

Only problem was, he had rarely rode anything out that had stalled on him. When he lost interest, from a lack of response or otherwise, Shareef would simply roll out and move on. That was his way of coping with the complicated book called life. He never got stuck on the pages with writer’s block, he just forced his pen to move forward to the next plot point.

“Fuck it, man, that’s on her. She shouldn’t have switched up on me.”

He would tell himself any and everything to take the burden of his failed marriage off his shoulders. Yet they were still married and holding on to something other than the kids, and stronger than the pressures of their extended family. They were holding on to the intimate dream of being there for each other. At one time, they really believed in it. Together forever. Where had that dream gone?

Cynthia arrived ten minutes later and broke Shareef out of his funk. He had to meet her down in the front lobby to let her in. The small hotel had nighttime security that made sure all guests had room keys or were accompanied by someone occupying a room. Those were the rules to keep the place closed to riffraff.

Cynthia climbed onto the elevator with him, holding a stuffed Fendi bag and grinned. She wore a mint green Baby Phat sweat suit.

“I guess this is a major step down from the Sheraton,” she commented.

Shareef smiled back at her.

“Yeah, I wanted to feel the true grittiness of Harlem again.”

She eyed him and said, “I see.”

He looked over to her large, brown Fendi bag. “And I see you brought more than a pocketbook with a makeup kit,” he told her.

“That’s what you told me to do, right?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t know you were gonna do it,” he admitted. “Especially after you brought up my wife. I thought that was your prerequisite to check my ego.”

She smiled and said, “It was.”

When they walked into the room, Shareef crashed right back on the twin bed near the window.

Cynthia sat her bag down on the floor and took a look around the room. She nodded and said, “Yeah, this is a big step down from the Sheraton. I mean, it’s not all that bad with the remodeling and everything, but still…”

Shareef asked her, “What, you’ve been in this place before it was renovated?”

“No.”

“So how come you know so much about the remodeling?”

She looked at him and asked, “What are you trying to get at, that I do this often? You better ask somebody. Then you’ll find out what select company you’re in. Because I don’t do this every day.”

Shareef didn’t want to know that much. Or maybe he did. He had only known the woman for a total of five to six hours and a couple of phone calls. She, on the other hand, knew a lot about him through his books, from internet searches, and through his reputation as a celebrated author.

Shareef finally shook his head and said, “I don’t want to fight with a pretty woman. So let’s just leave it alone. If you’re safe, and I’m safe, then that’s all we need to know for now.”

“Are you sure?” she teased him.

Shareef ignored her and, using the remote, clicked on the nineteen-inch, color television.

He said, “I don’t have to have it every night. I got some discipline. So I’ll just leave you alone tonight and rest up for the morning.”

Cynthia grinned and repeated, “Are you sure?”

Shareef paused before he mumbled, “Yeah.” Then he continued to watch cable television.

I
N THE MORNING
, Cynthia Washington was butt naked under the sheets and snuggled under Shareef’s left arm in the fetal position. He may have had enough discipline to do without sexing her for a night, but she had not exactly agreed to that. She was eager to find out if their last time together was only a fluke. Turned out it wasn’t. The writer of romantic fiction actually knew a thing or two about how to please a woman.

Shareef opened his eyes, thought about their second night together, and grinned. It was the biggest ego boost in the world for a man to turn a woman down, only for her to come on strongly to him. What passionate man would decline to write that real-life story?

Then he leaned forward and looked at the clock on the nightstand to his left. It was 6:27 Wednesday morning.

“Hey,” he addressed the sleeping beauty with a nudge of his arm.

“Hmm,” she responded meekly.

“You said we need to be out of here at seven-thirty, right?”

She took a minute to answer with her eyes still closed.

“Yeah. What time is it?”

“It’s six-thirty.”

“Mmmph,” she grumbled. “We got another hour left.”

Shareef thought about that extra time on his hands and grinned.

His manhood responded to the idea of an early-morning quickie before a shower.

Cynthia could feel him pressing up against her leg under the sheets. She began to smile.

“I must admit, you have way above average stamina,” she told him.

He said, “It’s a gift. But some people can’t just take all that shit.”

“I can imagine.”

“So…what am I supposed to do with it?” he asked her. “I mean, sometimes I got discipline, but other times…I just don’t.”

Cynthia didn’t answer him. Instead, she slid under the covers and took his manhood into her mouth.

O
N THE LENGTHY TRAIN
and bus ride “up north,” as New Yorkers called it, Cynthia and Shareef headed toward the state correctional facility to meet the man who had summoned him. And the woman who had set up the date for him had a sudden confession to make.

Cynthia looked down at the floor from where she sat next to Shareef on the bus and said, “You know what?”

She waited for him to answer her. Her confession would be more dramatic that way.

He looked at her and said, “What?”

He pondered if he needed to be alarmed or not. He really didn’t know anything about this woman, and there he was taking this trip to a prison with her to meet a man he had only known by name and reputation. Shareef had never personally known Michael Springfield. He had only seen him on the Harlem streets, while living the hustler’s life of fast cars, pampered friends, and hot girls, back in Shareef’s high school days in the late eighties.

It was one thing to be brave, it was another thing to be stupid. Shareef actually began to question his sanity that morning as he waited for a response from this mysterious woman. He had never even visited his own friends or relatives in prison.

“What?” he asked her again. She was taking too long to answer. He wanted to rush the suspense and get to the surprise.

She glanced into his face and said, “I didn’t, um…I didn’t expect to like you like this.”

That froze the writer for a minute. All of that build up for a basic crush. Women were funny that way. Or maybe men were too much on guard. So he chuckled at it and loosened up.

“You think that’s funny?” she asked him.

He shook it off. “Nah, I was just, ah, thinking something else, that’s all.”

She studied his face and felt slighted. Was he playing her emotions cheaply or what? He had to understand that she didn’t actually like a lot of guys. Most men failed to meet her criteria. The young, searching girl in Cynthia loved the deep soul of a man. She craved to learn more about life from her men. And a man inside prison walls had been hardened by the truth.

But Shareef was a pleasant surprise who could still teach her something outside the gates of confinement and failure. Intelligent men of the free world had souls, too.

He said, “So, how did you expect me to be?”

She grinned and lightened up again.

“I don’t know, I just thought you’d be more…
studious
or something.”

A Cuban-American woman who sat a few seats away overheard her and grinned. Studious guys rarely scored with women who visited correctional facilities. Shareef was in an odd place considering his academic credentials. He even admitted as much.

He said, “I am studious. I’ve been an A student my entire life.”

“Yeah, but you’re cool with it,” she told him.

Shareef leaned back in his seat and grinned in sarcasm. “Oh, okay, so a smart guy can’t be cool, hunh? I’m supposed to be a geek ma-fucka. Pin the tail on the donkey, right? Nah, fuck that,” he told her defiantly.

Cynthia laughed and shook her head at the conflicted reality of urban stereotypes.

She said, “That’s sad, ain’t it?”

“It’s sad that you believe that shit, yeah,” he expressed to her. “So the only respected knowledge is street knowledge, hunh? That’s why you got me traveling up here in the first place.”

“No, that’s not the truth,” she argued.

He said, “Yes it is. And I bet I’m not supposed to be able to lay it down right, either? That’s why you’re so damned surprised now.”

The Cuban-American woman overheard that and chuckled. He looked good enough to lay herself. She liked intelligent men. Smart men were her type. If only her boyfriend had not tried to outsmart the law, he could have done something legal with his life.

Cynthia spotted the woman eavesdropping on their conversation and fell silent. But she had to respond to that. So she elbowed him in the ribs without words.

Shareef frowned and said, “What’s that for?”

She stared into his face and grumbled, “Your smart-ass mouth.”

He said, “You shouldn’t have brought it up then.”

W
HEN THE BUS PULLED UP
to their destination, twenty-one passengers—family, friends, and significant others of the inmates—filed off into the bright sun to enter the barbed-wire gates and hard concrete of a New York State correctional facility.

Shareef looked at Cynthia and asked her, “So, this is it, hunh?”

She nodded. “This is it.”

He looked up at the tall towers surrounding the prison, where armed guards were posted with sniper rifles. A mile-long triple fence of tangled, barbed-wire circles at the top of the gates said one would have to be insane to even think about escaping. Digging under the gates looked to be the only way out. But how long would that take before the sharpshooters popped you, or sent out a goon squad to beat you senseless and drag you back to a cell?

Shareef took a breath as he surveyed things up close. For the first time in his life he could witness a prison facility not from a television or movie screen.

He told himself,
Damn! I’d never wanna be in this place. This is crazy!

Cynthia snapped him out of his daydream by grabbing his arm.

“Come on. You’re not having second thoughts, are you?” she teased him.

“Nah, it just hit me for a minute.”

She nodded and said, “Yeah. That’s how I felt the first couple of times. But then you get used to it.” She said, “But the key is not to think about the gates, the guards, or the concrete buildings. You have to think about the people who are locked inside. I mean, these guys are all human in here. Everybody makes their share of mistakes, they’ve just made bigger mistakes than the rest of us.”

Sounded like she had her rationalization all mapped out. How else could she continue to visit a man in prison? You had to believe they were still men who just happened to be locked away for the time being, and not view them as prisoners who were no longer allowed to be men. So Shareef understood her optimism. It was the right way to think, humane and respectable.

They stepped up to the visitors’ entrance together and walked through a metal detector similar to airport security. Any and all dangerous objects would be confiscated, along with a rejection of such a visitor and an imminent arrest. All the warning signs reinforced the rules. However, men and women were sometimes desperate. So every once in a blue moon a visitor would put his or her own freedom on the line by attempting to aid an imprisoned loved one.

Shareef walked through the metal detector behind Cynthia and took a deep breath. The metal detector made him feel guilty about any-and everything he may have gotten away with over the years. Then he stood as still as a statue on the other side of the machine to make sure it was cool.

“You’re good,” the security guard told him.

Shareef nodded and walked forward.

Cynthia smiled at him. “Are you sure you’re all right with this? They’re gonna let you back out,” she assured him.

He laughed it off. He said, “I know, right? I’m feeling like I’m going into this motherfucker for real.”

“Like I said, you gotta get used to it.”

“Yeah, well, that’s easy for you to say, you’ve been here before.”

She started laughing as they made their way to the visiting area.

When they made it all the way inside, visitors and prisoners were everywhere: black, white, Asian, Italian, Latino, Russian, Aryan—you name it. They could even walk out to the prison yard together. Shareef couldn’t believe that part. He was expecting glass windows and phones, or monitored tables like he had seen in various television shows and movies. So he watched the prisoners and their visitors walking out in the yard together and became confused for a minute.

He turned to Cynthia and said, “Yo, we can walk out in the yard with them?”

She grinned and answered, “Yup.”

The next minute she was embracing a well-built, walnut brown man in a perfectly clean, white T-shirt, green pants, and state-issued boots. Shareef didn’t even see him approach them. Then he backed away and kissed Cynthia on the cheek.

“So, you actually brought him here,” the brother stated to her. He was still surprised by it.

“And he was brave enough to come,” she responded.

The man faced Shareef with his hand extended.

“Michael Springfield, man.”

Shareef took his hand in his and remembered him being taller during his high school days. Maybe that was because of his youth back then, and his adoration for the man as a popular street hustler. But in prison, Michael Springfield was brought down to size, with no jewelry, no fly clothes, no expensive rides, and only one lady. He also had low-cut hair that was even all the way around, no fade.

“Good to meet you, man. Shareef Crawford.”

Michael smiled, with good teeth and genuine friendliness.

“I know who you are, playboy. You made a whole lot of lonely nights bearable for a nigga in here. I gotta tell you.”

Cynthia overheard him and laughed. She already knew the story.

Shareef chuckled and said, “Well, it’s always good to know a black man’s reading my work. I don’t get a lot of that. It’s mostly women giving me love.”

Michael said, “Shit, playboy, that’s the right kind of love to get. Every nigga in here wish he had that kind of love now.”

He looked at Cynthia. She grinned at him and said nothing.

Then he turned back to Shareef. “Let’s walk and talk on the yard.”

Shareef was still hesitant about walking the yard, but what could he do? He couldn’t turn the man down and go out like a scared-straight punk, so he strolled out on the yard following Michael’s lead. Cynthia followed them, but not too closely, so that the two men could have a little privacy in their conversation.

As soon as they walked out in front of her, Michael asked his guest, “So, you like her or what?”

Shareef frowned and played the dummy role for a second.

“Who?”

Michael looked him dead in the face. “Come on, playboy, you know who I’m talking about. Me and her cool like that. We talk about everything.”

Shareef nodded and said, “I see.” Then he paused. He answered, “Okay, well, yeah, she’s a nice girl.”

Michael nodded back to him. He said, “Did you fuck her brains out?” His tone was so nonchalant that Shareef had to make sure he heard the man right.

“Ask me that again?”

Michael laughed, amused at his own candor.

He said, “She told me you like to speak from the heart, so go ahead and be you, man. I can’t hurt you in here. Them days are long gone for me anyway. That’s why I like wearing pure white tees now. I surrendered from all the bullshit. Jealousy. Envy. Hatred. Pride. Anger. All that shit’ll end up gettin’ you right back in here.”

He said, “I know better now. But once you got them years on your back, they gon’ make you do at least half of ’em. And I got a whole lot of years left on me for the shit I did out there, playboy. Believe me.”

Michael still didn’t appear that old. Maybe it was the haircut that made him look so young. He had been in prison for at least ten years already.