Thong on Fire (18 page)

Since we were staying in for dinner I went ahead and put on a pair of black linen pants and a black and white Girls Rule T-shirt. I left my hair down to dry, but I did jazz myself up a little by putting on the earrings Free had surprised me with ’cause I wanted to show my appreciation for his first gift.

I wasn’t really hungry but I was game to cook with him since that’s what he wanted. But when I walked into the kitchen he hadn’t even gotten started yet.

“I thought you were doing the shrimp? Where they at?”

His eyes got big and he looked all crazy.

“Oh, shit. I must’a left them in the car. I had put everything in the trunk, but they must’a rolled under something. Can you run out there and get ’em for me?”

I stared at him like he had bad breath. He had on a black tee, some nice Evisu jeans and some brand-new Air Force Aces.

“Oh, what? You done got you some and now you feeling yourself, right? Why can’t you run out there and get ’em yourself? What I look like, huh?”

He grinned and pulled me up against him.

“You look like a keeper, girl, that’s what. But for real, though. I gotta use the bathroom real bad.” He pulled some keys outta his pocket. “Run on out there and get the shrimp, Soy Saucy. I promise I’ma cook ’em up so good you won’t regret it.”

I had my lip poked out, but I surprised the hell outta myself ’cause my hand was out there too. “Gimme the keys,” I mumbled.

He put them in my hand then slapped me on the ass.

“That’s a good girl. Thanks, baby. This means a lot to me.”

I gave him a look, then walked through the living room and opened the front door. But when I stepped outside my mind got knocked outta balance for a minute because his Honda wasn’t parked in the driveway no more. Sitting in its spot was the biggest, spankingest damn stretch Hummer limo that I’d ever seen.

It was money green and an older black man in chauffeur’s gear was standing beside it, holding the door open with a smile.

“Looking for some shrimp, ma’am? Step right this way.”

I didn’t know how the hell to act!

I turned back toward the house and saw Free was closing the door behind us and offering me one of his sweaters.

“Boy!” I shrieked, happy as hell. “What are you doing?”

He pulled me over to the whip and guided me inside. “I’m taking you to get some shrimp scampi and a salad, baby.”

“B-b-but I’m not even dressed! I don’t even have my wallet or my purse!”

Free slid up next to me on the seat and put his big, strong arm around my shoulder.

“You ain’t gotta have no wallet, Soy Saucy. Or nothing else neither. When you rolling with Freedom, you can best believe you’ve got everything you need.”

“Where are we going?” I asked when the driver got off Route 4 and headed toward the George Washington Bridge. The sparkling lights of New York City were ahead in the distance, glowing in the sky.

“Sssh…” Free put his fingers to my lips. “Don’t ask a whole lotta questions and I won’t have to tell you not one single lie.”

I sat back and relaxed and we listened to some tracks as we sped toward the city. I wanted to smoke some green, but all my stash was in my purse and Free said he wasn’t in the mood to get high anyway. There was champagne in the cooler, though, and Free popped the cork and poured me some in a crystal glass, and by the time we got where we were going I had drained two more glasses.

“Okay,” I said when the limo stopped outside of an Italian restaurant in East Harlem’s barrio. It was on East 114th Street, and it looked closed. There was a pizza shop down the street, but there were no lights on in the front of this restaurant and nobody was going in or coming out. “Did you bring me all the way here to get a slice of Paul’s pizza?”

“Faith,” Free said getting out the whip. “Have some faith in me girl. I got you covered real tight.”

He held my hand as we walked up to the closed restaurant. I saw the name of it was Rao’s, and when we were about five steps from the door the outside lights came on and a young white waiter opened the door wide.

“Good evening, Mister Moore,” he said, stepping back as we walked inside.

“Sup’ Danilo,” Free said, dapping him. “What’s poppin’, son?”

The whole damn restaurant looked empty. I mean shut the hell down. I opened my mouth to say something but Free gave me the sssh thang again so I fell back and followed behind him. He walked behind a counter and down a hall past some bathrooms, then turned around and said, “We can grab us a little plate to go, or, if you ain’t too good to eat in the kitchen we can do this right here.”

At this point I couldn’t figure out how this nigga flowed or how I should act neither. I shrugged. “Hey, I’m down for whatever. I can eat in the kitchen. I just can’t cook in that bitch.”

He laughed and put his hand on a door. “That’s okay, baby. I got you your own personal cook for the night.”

Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw when Free pushed that door open. It was a kitchen, yeah, but it was much more than that. That sucker was laid out. Free’s soft cut “In My Lifetime” was playing in the background.

There was a long table with a white cloth covering it and red rose petals sprinkled from one end to the other. Five candle clusters burned in their holders, and two places were set right next to each other. Right in front of the table was a cooking station where two Asian guys were standing at an open flame and a tray of shrimp and vegetables sat waiting to go into a hot wok.

“Soy Saucy,” Free said and pulled out a carved chair that looked like it was a queen’s throne. It had a thick satin cushion, and when I sat down on it I sank down into perfect softness. The chair next to me was the bomb too, but a bigger version of mine. It was fit for a king and when Free sat down in it he completed the whole picture.

Those cooks stood there just waiting for us to sit down. As soon as we did, they showed they asses for real.

They hacked into those poor vegetables like they’d stolen something. Shrimp and broccoli and carrots and red peppers was being sliced and diced and tossed in the air like crazy. They sautéed the vegetables in the wok, but cooked the shrimp right there on the grill in front of us.

I watched them chop garlic and whip butter and make the scampi sauce, then the guy who had let us in brought our salads from the refrigerator and our food was ready. After all that I was eager to eat, and when one of the cooks came out with a bottle of champagne, I was ready for some more of that too.

I’d been out to nice restaurants with plenty of nice niggas, so it wasn’t like Free was schooling me on the finer life or nothing. But I was digging this special dinner because of who had set it up. He’d gone through all this just for me, and I knew that dick-sucking I’d put on him didn’t have nothing to do with it.

“This is hot,” I said, biting into a garlic shrimp. I coulda said more, but that’s about as far as I was willing to go. Shit, no matter what some nigga did to impress me I wasn’t gonna act but so damn grateful. I knew how to keep ’em trying. Keep ’em stretching and going in their pockets tryna figure out how to hook you. Show any man too much gratitude and a nigga would expect you to be forever grateful. “Yeah,” I repeated, just so he knew that I knew. “Real hot.”

Y
OU AIIGHT
?”

I nodded and let him pull me into his big strong arms. We had just had our private dinner at the restaurant and I was trying to figure out my next move. I was feeling Free. I mean, I really fuckin’ was. He wasn’t no game. And he wasn’t broke neither! He had chips! He had a big, pretty black dick and could fuck like a bull. And that tongue? Damn. He had slurped the syrup from me, licked the sugar offa me, sucked the honey outta me. He was the shit for real. But still…I was playing it cool on the outside, while on the inside I was having a big-ass fight with myself. C’mon, y’all. This cat was a paid CEO! A nigga was recognized and respected on the streets! He had groupies hanging off all his ball hairs, but I bet none of them tricks didn’t know he was living in a cramped-up shack like he was grindin’ for Wal-Mart! Yeah, I would suck the hell outta his dick in private and he could give me all the cash and gifts he wanted to under the table, but if Free was tryna keep a dime like me on his dick in public like that, he was gonna have to step up his game. I had an image to maintain. “I’m kinda tired,” he said, squeezing my thigh. “All I wanna do is get back to the house and watch a little TV with you, baby.”

I didn’t wanna go back to that tight-ass house! It was Saturday night and I wanted to get up in somebody’s party. I needed me some sticky and a bottle of St. Ides. Or maybe some Patrón Silver. Or some Grey Goose. Whatever. I needed me a buzz.

And he was dead on it about one thing. Watch a “little” TV was right. Good thing it was dark in the whip or Free woulda seen my lip sticking out. Damn straight I was catching a stank attitude. Who the hell looked at little four-inch televisions these days? As large as he was in the game, hadn’t he ever heard of a damn plasma TV? Or a real shower? Or a crib that was bigger than a damn storage closet?

I made up my mind that I was gonna straight dip. I’d give Free some more bomb-ass head when we got back to Jersey, and then I was outtie. There were a bunch of parties popping off in the city tonight, and as soon as I put some of that knock-out neck action on Free I was gonna catch me one of them. There wasn’t a damn thing happening on Free’s little block, in his neighborhood, or in that whole sleepy-ass Jersey town, that turned me on in the least.

Besides, Free’s motor mighta been wearing down, but mine was just getting revved up. I was a night hawk. I slept most of the day and ran the streets getting my socialize on all night. In New York that was everybody’s flow. A whole culture came alive after midnight in the city. Cars would be swishing up and down the streets rushing to someplace hot, restaurants were open for business, people walked the avenues, laughing and clowning like crazy. I can’t tell you about the parties that would be jumping off.

Sheeit. The boring-ass block Free lived on was so quiet that if your neighbor farted in the middle of the night you’d swear somebody was outside poppin’ niggas off. Yeah, let this cat sleep, I told myself, formulating my plan. First I’d sneak some doe outta his tissue holder, then I’d have his driver bring me back to the city as fast as he could push this whip. I’d tell Free that Tai called and needed me in the middle of the night, and that’s why I bounced.

We was driving for a good minute when I realized we were headed in the wrong direction. Well, I was looking for a party so it was the right direction for me. The wrong one for Free.

“What’s wrong?” I asked him, lifting my head off his shoulder.

“Nah, everything’s cool, baby. But I do gotta make a quick stop before we head in. Niggas be playin’ sometimes and I gotta set some shit straight.”

I sat all the way up then, looking out the window.

“We staying in Manhattan? You gone go bite some nigga and you taking me with you?”

He shrugged. “You said you was down for whatever. I thought you was the type a’ chick to ride hard witcha nigga?”

“I am,” I said, sitting back again. “But you think you got some wins with just you and me? Where your dawgs at? Don’t your real niggas ride with you on missions like this?”

Free laughed. “Oh, you about to learn some shit about me, Soy Saucy. I’m a lone ranger, baby. It don’t take a whole tribe of Indians galloping behind me for me to ride my own horse. I’ma Clyde nigga. And he didn’t need nobody but Bonnie.”

I had to bite my damn lip! I wanted to tell him, “Drop my ass off in Harlem, then go ’head and handle ya damn business!”

But he pulled me closer to him and all I could do was go along on the ride as we sped down the highway alongside the Hudson River. I was surprised when we turned into a phat neighborhood on the Upper West Side, not too far from my old crib, and when the whip stopped outside of a high-rise building that was phatter than the one I’d lived in with Uncle Swag, I just looked at Free.

“You shook?” he asked. His driver opened the door for us, and Free got out first, then turned around and looked at me.

“Check it out, Saucy. You ain’t gotta come inside with me if you pressed. You can chill right here until I get back, but this is something I gotta do. Now if you think this might be too big for you, cool. I understand. I’m all man, baby. I can get gorilla all by myself if I have to.”

I shook my head, but deep inside I wasn’t down for this shit at all! He was going up in this phat-ass building to settle some beef? Didn’t he know this was a tax-paying zone? The po-po would rush to a call from here quicker than shit.

I got out the car and he grabbed my hand.

“You trust me?” he asked.

Like a damn fool, I nodded.

“Good,” he said and led me toward the building.

The doorman let us in and we took the elevator up to the eighteenth floor. The ride was silent, but Free squeezed my hand and smiled as I reassured myself. I had lived in a building like this for years. They had a security guard who checked on the building all through the night. I knew if shit got too hot to handle, I could always slide into the stairwell and hoof it down the stairs.

When we got off the elevator my feet sank into the plush carpet. We walked down a short hall that had pretty wallpaper, framed paintings, and large mirrors hanging on the wall. Free stopped in front of a door that said 18G. I could hear rap music playing inside. He took a deep breath and squared his shoulders, then rang the bell.

We waited. And waited. He rang the bell again. And again, and again. The music was playing but wasn’t nobody coming to the door.

“Punk ass,” Free finally said when nobody answered. “C’mon, baby. I’ll come back and catch this cat another time. He can’t hide forever, yo.”

I almost ran back to that damn elevator. I sure as hell know I got there before he did. I pounded the call button about twenty times, and when the elevator came I couldn’t get in fast enough.

But Free checked me.

“Hold up, Mami,” he said, holding the elevator door open with one hand. “This ain’t right. I can’t just let no nigga slide on me like that.”

“Well what the hell are you gonna do?” I shrieked. I was ready to smash him up in the elevator door or leave his ass standing out there by himself.

“Somebody is up in that joint. That’s truth, girl. I can feel it. I’ma try one more time. You coming?”

My feet didn’t even wanna move. I practically had to drag myself outta that elevator and back down the hall. But when we got outside the door this time, instead of ringing the bell Free leaned over and kissed me, his tongue parting my lips and caressing the inside of my mouth.

“Thank you,” he said as he took some keys from his pocket. “Wit’ ya shook self.”

I stood there looking crazy as he stuck a key in the door and unlocked it.

With the door standing open I could see straight down a hallway, and what I saw made my eyes stretch wide open.

“Come on in, Soy Saucy,” Free said, pulling on my fingers. “This is my other joint, baby. Get comfortable. Make yourself at home.”

The joint was phat. My mouth tried to fall open as I followed him inside. Now that’s what the fuck I’m talking about! I thought, my eyeballs everywhere at once. The boy did know how to live big! It looked like some shit outta MTV
Cribs
. There was a huge projection screen covering one wall, and sculptures of black people in all different poses on stands. Crazy art was on the wall. Leather furniture, a phat fish tank…

I was open like 7-Eleven.

I walked around admiring his bar, the pool table, and even the baby grand piano. There were three bedrooms and each of them had their own bathroom. The biggest one was his, and he had a huge bed in there that was low to the ground. The extra-large comforter had the word
FREE
embroidered in it, with a picture of two big black shackled hands breaking free of the linked chain that had bound them together.

He had a nice stereo system in there and the best carpet I had ever felt under my feet. There was a pretty big guest room, and the smallest room had been set up like a studio. I saw his mixing board and all that other electronic equipment, and I laughed my head off when I saw that he’d stuck a mic in the bathroom like it was a booth. That shit sat up in a holder that was attached to the wall right by the mirror, and had a cord hanging from the end of it.

“Wanna step outside?” he asked, pushing a button on a remote. His living room curtains slid back and there was a deep view of New York City from an angle I’d never seen before.

We went outside on the terrace and I leaned on the rail while Free stood behind me holding me tight.

“You ain’t slick,” I told him, kissing his arm.

“I’m not?”

“Nope. I knew what was up the whole time, boy.”

He laughed. “Yeah. That’s why your eyes was so big. You was scared, girl. Tell the truth. Shook to the bone.”

I denied that shit. “No I wasn’t. I knew you was testing me. I just didn’t wanna blow your little plan up by passing with flying colors. It woulda looked too easy.”

“Umm. Yeah. I just wanted to see what you was about on the real. Plenty of jawns try to lock a nigga’s coordinates when he’s got credentials. I been through shit like that before. I just wanted to make sure you was legit, ya know? That you was digging this action for what it is, not for what you might get outta it.”

“Them kinda girls be birds, though,” I said, leaning against him and making sure he got a good feel from my ass. “I’m not that type.”

“I know that now, Saucy,” Free said. His soft lips were on my ear and his dick was rising behind me. “Now I know.”