The Last Street Novel (22 page)

Polo said, “That’s why I don’t fuck with them young girls, man. If they not already up on your shit before you talk to ’em, you ain’t gettin’ ’em. Not the fine ones like that.”

He said, “Them fine young girls are like bumble bees in the springtime, man, buzzin’ around to every nigga that’s got a fistful of money in his hand. I can’t keep up with that shit, nor do I want to. So, what you should have done is sent me or Spoonie over there to prep her for you first. We would have told her who you are, and had that girl fantasizin’ before you ever said a word to her. That’s how you get ’em.”

Shareef asked him, “Well, how come you didn’t say that then?”

Polo grinned and said, “To be honest with you, man, I just wanted to see if my theory was right,” and he started laughing harder.

B
ABY
G
SAT UPSTAIRS
in the main ballroom in a plush lounge chair like a young prince, with twenty soldiers surrounding him. He had the audacity to wear a huge, platinum crown medallion on his link chain, too, with a matching platinum belt buckle. And he smoked a well-rolled blunt in plain view as thunderous, Harlem rap music blasted through the giant speakers, forcing the bodacious, young crowd to move to it.

“I was born and raised in Harlem / had my birthdays in Harlem / walked with a sway in Harlem / got my first lay in Harlem / the place where I stay is Harlem…

“I was born and raised in Harlem / learned how they play in Harlem / stacked major pay in Harlem / smoked my first jay in Harlem / what can I say, man, it’s Harlem…”

The rest of the world didn’t exist to the people in that room. It was all about Harlem, and the crowd was losing their young minds.

“Ay, Baby, them girls wanna see you, man,” one of his soldiers told him.

The young general didn’t want to hear it, not while he was nodding to his favorite song.

He said, “Yo, make ’em wait till this song over wit’.”

And that was it. His soldier went back to bring the word.

“Yo, y’all gotta wait till this song ends.”

The ringleader frowned at him and snapped, “What? Wait till this song ends?”

“That’s what he said. What you want me to do? Y’all ain’t gettin’ over there till he let you.”

The girlfriend looked at the thick crowd of soldiers standing and sitting in a full circle around the prince named Baby G. No one could get anywhere near him from any angle without being touched first.

The girlfriend sucked her teeth and said, “Come on, Tiffany, we don’t have to wait for this shit. Who he think he is?”

The soldier looked at the girl named Tiffany and lightly grabbed her arm.

He said, “He would want to see you. But if you leave…he not gon’ wait for you. If you slow, you blow.”

The girlfriend overheard him and said, “Oh, he won’t wait for you, but he want you to wait for him. Fuck that.”

The soldier let the girl’s arm go and said, “Whatever then. I’ll tell him y’all changed ya mind.”

Tiffany looked through the crowd at this prince of a young man, with all these dedicated guys crowding around him like a fortress, and she figured he was worth waiting for. She didn’t move to Harlem to turn down opportunities to meet the biggest fish in the pond. That’s what she was there to do. So she told his soldier, “I can wait.”

Her girlfriend went ballistic. “What? Girl, don’t go out like that. That’s the wrong way to do it. I’m tellin’ you.”

The soldier said, “If he like you, you VIP for the rest of the night.”

“Don’t go for that shit, girl,” the girlfriend warned her.

“Look, stop fuckin’ hatin’ and run along somewhere,” the soldier beefed at her. He was tired of the cock blocking already. Tiffany had made up her mind, so he held her hand to make sure she waited.

“Aw’ight ’den, be a dummy,” the girlfriend snapped and ran along.

When the song was over, the soldier returned to Baby G without the girl. He wanted to make sure he had the okay first.

“You want me to bring her now?”

Baby G looked up at him from his position on the lounge chair and asked, “What she look like? Is she hot like a video model?”

His soldier nodded to him. He said, “Exactly.”

The young general studied his face and slowly nodded. “Aw’ight, bring her over here then. And don’t bring her ugly-ass girlfriend, either.”

“Oh, she left already.”

Baby G took another toke of his blunt and uttered, “Good.”

When the soldier brought the California girl over, all eyes were on her. She camouflaged her nervousness with an air of confidence and a swagger she didn’t really possess.

Baby G read it from her bold stance and knew he could go as hard as he wanted to with her. If she had something to prove, then he would give her the opportunity to prove it.

He held his blunt away from lips and told her, “I only got one open seat over here, and that’s my lap. You sit down first and then I can talk to you. If you don’t, then you can walk back by yourself and I’ll see you in the after world.”

His soldier stood there and thought,
Shit! Baby gangsta as motherfucker!
right before the general dismissed him.

“Aw’ight, son, you can go now. She here. Good work.”

Tiffany moved right in between his legs to take a seat below his platinum crown belt buckle.

“Right here?” she teased him.

He didn’t expect that from her. He liked her boldness immediately, but that didn’t mean he would go soft on her.

He held up his blunt and asked her, “You ever smoked this before?”

She answered, “Yeah.”

“Where at?”

“Out in California.”

“California? What part of California? L.A.?”

“San Francisco?”

“Was it strong?”

She paused and shrugged her shoulders. How strong was strong?

“I mean, I guess so.”

“You guess so? Did you get high? Shit, you ain’t smoke this if you ain’t get high.”

She said, “Yeah, I got high.”

“Aw’ight, so if you gangsta like that, let me see you hit this shit,” and he passed her the blunt.

He did it so fast she didn’t have time to catch herself and slow things down. And everybody was still staring at her. What would they think if she ran scared? And what would they think if she smoked it?

But fuck it, she was in Harlem, thousands of miles away from home, with some exotic nigga who was calling her bluff. And she was not willing to give him the benefit of punking her. So she held that blunt up to her lips and inhaled it deeply.

“Oh, shit,” the young general expressed to her. “You high now.”

Tiffany tried to laugh and choked on the weed smoke. That only made it worse. Choking got the weed in her system faster. Then the room started moving.

“You want some more?” she heard the young prince of a man ask her.

She nodded and took another puff, holding the smoke in her lungs better the second time. And when exhaled, the room started floating real slowly.

“Yeah, you a gangsta bitch all right,” Baby G told her and laughed. “And I mean that in a good way. I trust you know,” he told her. “But if you ain’t smoke it…I wouldn’t have trusted you. You could have been a detective’s daughter or something.”

He said, “You ain’t no rich girl like on
ATL
are you?” Before she could answer him, he added, “I would’a worked that situation if I was Rashad. I would’a had that rich girl giving me some money.”

It seemed like he was talking forever, an expert conversationalist. Then he squeezed her gently in his arms. And she felt protected within his circle.

“You want something to drink?” she heard him ask her.

She nodded and didn’t know if she said anything.

“Yo, man, somebody get her some orange juice or something. Not alcohol, just orange juice. You do drink orange juice, don’t you?” Baby G asked her.

“Yeah,” she spoke up.

He said, “So, what’s your name?”

Tiffany thought about that in her altered state of mind and started laughing.

She said, “You didn’t even ask me my name yet?”

“I mean, how important is a person’s name, if you really think about it?” he asked her. “A name is just what they call you. But do you like a motherfucker because of what his name is, or what his game is? You tell me.”

She nodded to him. He made perfect sense. She said, “His game is more important.”

“That’s what I’m talking about. I got
game,
shorty. That’s why everybody in here surrounding me. And now you sittin’ right in the middle of it. You know what that mean?”

She looked at him and grinned, floating on his lap. “I got game, too,” she answered.

Baby G laughed loudly at her response. He took another toke of the blunt, which was getting smaller, and muttered, “You see that? You smart. Now me and you, we gon’ have a good time together. Is that all right with you?”

She nodded and was pleased to be with him. He was a perfect gangsta gentleman, just what a girl had always hoped for.

She answered, “Yeah…I’m glad I waited for you.”

S
HAREEF HAD A CALL
on his cell phone back on the bottom level of the club. He looked down and read the Fort Lauderdale number of his wife.

How ironic,
he thought. He figured she was calling back from earlier, and she was doing so a bit late at that. It was nearly one o’clock in the morning.

“Damn, time flew tonight,” he mumbled to himself, while heading toward the restrooms to hear better.

Polo asked him, “Where you goin’?”

“To the bathroom to take this phone call.”

Shareef followed the restroom arrows down to a basement area where he answered his wife’s late call.

“Hello.”

“Where are you?” she asked him. There was still background noise from the club, even in the downstairs bathrooms. But at least he didn’t have to strain to speak or to hear. Jennifer simply had a great pair of ears.

She hears, smells, and thinks everything,
he assessed.
But she can’t see that she needs to love her husband unconditionally.
Then he thought deeper about his assessment.
Then again, do I love her unconditionally? Not without sex I don’t.

He answered, “I’m at a club in Harlem called Zip Code,” but he wasn’t obligated to answer her. As far as he was concerned, he was out of the house and out of her hair, and therefore, he no longer had to answer to her.

“Zip Code? Why?” she asked him.

“I’m doing research.”

“At a nightclub, Shareef?”

“What, there’s no nightclubs in books?”

“Well, you didn’t tell me what kind of book you were working on.”

He said, “At one o’clock in the morning, I’m not. I’ll just let you know that it’s about Harlem.”

Amazingly, Shareef had rarely touched on his hometown of Harlem in his previous seven novels. He was struck by revealing love stories in the southern regions—Georgia, North and South Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, and Virginia. Or exotic locales, like Jamaica, or the new book set in Bermuda.

His wife even alluded to it. “Oh, so now you finally want to write about Harlem.” She had wondered about a Harlem story from him years ago after visiting several times and loving his grandparents new home in Morningside Heights.

He answered, “Yeah, I’m finally gonna write a book about Harlem,” and was a little short with her.

Jennifer noticed it and decided to get to the point of her phone call before he would ask her.

“Well, anyway, you told Kimberly that you were going to stay over?”

“You know that already.”

“Well, when are you supposed to do that?”

Shareef grimaced as if the answer pained him. It was all irritating small talk that was taking him away from his research. She could find out that information from him during the daytime, especially since she didn’t work anymore.

He said, “I told her already, when I get back home, early next week.”

“You didn’t consult with me about it.”

That was a bigger argument waiting to happen. After all, Shareef still paid all the bills at the house.

He said, “I don’t have to consult with you to sleep over with my daughter. Don’t even go there. I’m not gonna be in your bed. Or am I?” he wondered out loud.

Was calling him at nearly one o’clock in the morning to discuss an issue she could take care of at noon the next day her way of showing that she still wanted to be involved in his life? Shareef waited for her answer.

Finally, she told him, “No.” With that as her thousandth rejection of him, Shareef was more than ready to move on.

“Aw’ight, well, I got shit to do. And like I said, I’ll be back early next week to see my kids as usual.”

“All right,” she told him with a pause.