Whos Loving You (10 page)

Love. That one emotion had fucked up my head while crushing my heart. Lonely. Sad. Angry. Disappointed. Sick. Overjoyed. The lack of love as a child had made me suicidal. The lack of love as an adult made me angry. Love was the feeling that had made me the happiest and saddest person.

“Fuck love!” I yelled. “I hate you! Leave me the fuck alone! No, I can’t make Grant love me! Go fuck up somebody else’s life!” Stomping over to the wall, I snatched Grant’s picture, then threw it in the trash.

I’d definitely sat in the wrong seat on that plane. All the other window seats in first class had not been next to Grant.
Better to have loved at least for a little while,
I thought. Was that true? I kicked the trash can. “Hell no, that shit ain’t true!” Whosoever believed that must’ve been happily in love. No one in a fucked-up relationship would say such a thing.

Picking up my business phone, I dialed Grant’s number, the same as I’d done almost every day since Grant and I had broken up. Maybe this time Grant would answer, and I could curse his ass out, too, while I was on a roll. Get it off my chest. Fuck explaining that I wasn’t a bad person.

My cell phone interrupted my thoughts. A gentle voice resonated from the opposite end, interrupting my pity party. “Hello, Lace? This is Girl Six. I’m coming to live with you.”

“N
umber two-one-three-six-five-four,” the warden called out. For real, I had never been no fuckin’ number before. And no matter how long I was up in this bitch-ass correctional institution, I’d never get used to being no fuckin’ number. Correctional institution? More like a fuckin’ concentration camp if you’d asked me, ’cause a nigga could die or get killed or rise up outta this bitch-ass place being ten times worse off than when he stepped foot in this motherfucker. Especially if a nigga was entrapped, like me.

My mother named me Anthony Valentino James. That was what the fuck I repeated in my mind whenever I heard
213654
. Thanks to those bitches Lace and Sapphire, I was facing death row or life without the possibility of parole if I entered a plea for killing a bitch who had pulled the trigger her damn self. But how was I going to prove my fuckin’ innocence when I couldn’t afford my own goddamn attorney? I didn’t know where my money was, and I had no one on the outside to figure that shit out for me. But one thing was sho’. Whatever bitch stole my money was one dead motherfucker when I got out. Straight up, I was definitely getting outta here, even if I had to break outta this bitch.

Fuck!

Why had I relied on my damn cell phone to remember all of my phone numbers? I hadn’t made a single call since I’d been locked up. I couldn’t even call Benito’s ig’nant ass. I had no idea where Lace was, and that was ’bout the extent of my contacts on the outside, because my parents were deceased. I should’ve been more like that elephant memory–ass, don’t-forget-shit bitch, Lace.

Angrily, I answered, “What you want this time?”

I’d been locked up and locked down for ’bout a month now. The only time I heard my number called was when some bullshit had gone down overnight, like a nigga gettin’ fucked in his ass, or like the night I’d stabbed that nigga in his throat with my fingernails. Seventy-two hours in solitary confinement had been hell and well worth it. I wasn’t volunteering to be nobody’s fuckin’ girlfriend. I tried keeping to myself and wished these niggas would just let me be. I knew I had a big, beautiful dick, a nice ass, and naturally wavy hair, and my flawless caramel complexion was tempting to these gay-by-default niggas. “Listen up, motherfuckers!” I’d told them when I first got here. “Let no nigga try to run up on me or inside of me unless he wants to die on the motherfuckin’ spot. I ain’t no snitch, and I ain’t nobody’s bitch.”

The warden held up two envelopes, waving his hand back and forth. For a few seconds, all I could do was stare at him. Breaking my silence, I asked, “For me?” Then I turned to my cell mate, who was sprawled across his bed, clenching his Bible, his head resting on the mattress.

“It’s not for him. This time it’s for you. For the first time, you’ve got mail,” the warden said.

My cell mate sat up as I faced the tall, muscular man in uniform. I’d packed on a few solid pounds myself by pumping iron every day. There wasn’t much else to do. On the under, I’d started loving the way my new body was developing. I didn’t give a fuck if a lump of shit was inside one of those envelopes. Yes! I finally had outside contacts. Trying to conceal my excitement, I frowned. Me? Was he sure? “Give it to me,” I said, reaching into the rectangular slot in the bars, where they made us turn around, put our hands behind our backs, then put our hands through before handcuffing us. “Y’all need to rehab and upgrade this hellhole, man. Give us some of that Oz shit,” I told him. There was one blue, letter-sized envelope and one of those yellow five-by-sevens.

I peeked inside the already peeled-away edge of the blue letter first, then stuck my fingers in. “What is this? A fucking joke? Where is the damn letter? No fucking return address, either.” I ripped that shit in half, balled it up, then tossed it in the trash.

Fucking trick!

Squeezing the edges of the yellow envelope, I peeked inside, praying to see something. Were my eyes deceiving me? I pulled out a five-by-seven photo. I pressed my fingers deep into my sockets to force back the tears, but I couldn’t. I started crying like a li’l bitch.

“Man, what’s up? Cut out that fucking babyfide bullshit,” my cell mate said, leaning over his top bunk, staring down at me.

“I’m straight, man. This shit caught me off guard.”

“Yo, that’s your son and your girl?”

She wasn’t my woman, but I lied. “Yeah, man. I thought they’d forgotten about my ass.” Gasping for air, I couldn’t take my eyes off of Summer and what could only be my son. That li’l nigga looked dead-on like me when I was about his age, which I guessed was five or six.

Sitting on the edge of my bottom bunk, I removed the letter, then silently read.

Now I wasn’t sure if I should jump for joy or be pissed the fuck off at that bitch. Summer had set me up? She was the fuckin’ reason I was behind bars. That was a hard one to deal with. I cried on the inside, wondering what my life would’ve been like if Summer’s father hadn’t single-handedly taken away my parental rights. What in the fuck had made him think he had the right to tell Summer not to tell me she was pregnant with my fuckin’ kid? That wasn’t his fuckin’ right! That was my fuckin’ seed, not his!

My cell mate dug into the trash and pulled out the blue envelope. I ignored him.

Who knows, my entire life could’ve been different. I could’ve gotten out of the pimping game early. I’d only been less than two years in when I met Summer. She was a senior in high school, still a virgin, and naturally beautiful. I loved Summer for letting me be her first. Even a hard-core nigga like me, along with all the pimps and gangsters in the world, needed love. What was it about fuckin’ women that could soften the heart of the hardest motherfuckers? Even Frank Lucas loved his mother and his wife, and he was the smartest and hardest straight, hard-core, capital
G
gangster.

I needed Summer to deposit that ten-million-dollar check and hire the best attorneys in the fucking country so I could get up outta here. That was my fuckin’ money. I’d have more than enough money left over for me to settle down with Summer and my kids. I had to get out before she gave birth to…twins? But first I had to find those bitches Lace and Sapphire. Summer probably had their numbers. I prayed Lace hadn’t plotted this shit to get my money, because if she had, I might just end up right back in this bitch, because sure as my name was Anthony Valentino James the first, I was gonna put a bullet in her head, then her ass, in that order.

“Man, there’s something written inside here. You just ripped it,” my cell mate said, leaning against the wall.

“For real? Let me see,” I said, reaching for the wrinkled halves of the blue envelope.

Piecing the envelope together, I discovered a blue sticky inside with a number written on it but no name. “What the fuck am I supposed to do with this shit? Ain’t no fuckin’ name on it.”

“Blue, man, blue. Didn’t you say the cop that got your ass was—”

“Yo, I’m ready to make my phone call,” I yelled out to the warden. “Now!”

S
tepping between the ladies that were standing tall in sexy high heels and the men posing in their new tennis shoes, Onyx and I strutted across a thin gray Berber carpet sparsely covered with single dollar bills. There were two women abandoning a high table with two bar stools near the stage. Swiftly grabbing the stools, we sat, then crossed our bare legs underneath our baby doll–length dresses and began watching amateur strippers bounce their booties, some firm, others soft. I’d touched enough asses during my days of being a madam to distinguish between soggy, soft, or supple with just one look. Three mediocre girls were performing on stage at the same time. Humph. No wonder the patrons seemed more interested in entertaining one another with conversation than making it rain. None of those supposedly exotic dancers could have worked six seconds for me.

Hm, six. Girl Six.
I was happy she was finally on her way to Atlanta. Then we’d all be family again. I couldn’t change what I’d done to her, but I was going to do my best to take special care of Girl Six. She deserved that much from me and had it coming.

I stretched my neck, then stood up in hopes of locating another stage.
This can’t be what all the hype is about,
I thought. I wasn’t remotely impressed. Any one of my eleven girls could take over that stage and put these out-of-shape dancers, who were probably college students by day, on the unemployment line before the end of the first song.

Whosoever owned this placed needed an ass whipping. “Onyx, you know what?” I said.

“What’s that?” Onyx asked. “You ready to get up?”

“No, not yet. Velvet’s mom asked us to come check out her daughter, but I got one better.”

“And?” Onyx said. “You’re not thinking about having us work this spot, I hope, ’cause—”

“Hell, no. I’m going shut down this strip club. I bet half the men in here have babies and baby mamas they don’t give a damn about, and they’re up in here, waving money at these strippers, hoping to get their dicks sucked.”

Glancing around the room, Onyx asked, “How you plan to do that?”

“You know me. I’ll come up with something, and I’ll tell you later,” I said, watching the women on stage.

The crowd was comprised mainly of men dressed in denims and long T-shirts and resembled the gathering you’d see at a hip-hop concert featuring Chris Brown. A few of them wore striped, button-down, collared shirts. Butch women sucking on cigars and dressed like the majority of the men were sitting in corners, with naked strippers giving them either a lap or private dance.

Sitting back on my stool, I overheard one of the two young men standing behind us say, “Man, I’ll be glad when Darius Jones does his thing and opens up his FL strip clubs for men only. D is clever, man, naming all of his clubs FL for ‘Flawless diamonds,’ then putting the cut on the end, like Princess, Radiant, Emerald, Marquise. And that FL HeartBreakers location opening downtown is gonna be the shit!” The guy started grinding the air behind me to the beat of, “Come, girl, let me get your pussy wet. Work that, let me see you drip sweat.”

None of those tired girls were working hard enough to break a sweat. They need to play “Peep Show” by Joe, “Taking you from the bed, to the walls, to the floor. Sexing you, sexing me, freaky freak, behind closed doors. Nobody else can know…” because these girls were seriously barely moving their asses. I was sure no one would have RSVP’d if they’d known what they’d be getting in advance.

“That’s what’s up. Me, too, man. Can’t wait,” the other guy replied. “I heard gymnast-type dancers that are top-notch models, like women we ain’t never seen before, gon’ be in D’s club. These honeys are going to be imported and shit, flown in from Brazil, Trinidad, England, Africa, and Spain. I’ma spend my whole paycheck up in his joint, ’cause I swear, man, I’m tired of competing with these lesbians for a ten-minute lap dance from a stripper who acts like she hates her job. Red Velvet is the hottest dancer up in here, and they say she quit giving lap dances after she had that abortion. What I really hate is these lesbians and bisexual chicks are making it rain up in here harder than us.”

“Yeah, but I heard DJ gon’ make us put on Steve Harvey suits and Sean John button-ups and slacks and shit, and no tennis shoes are allowed up in his spot,” the first guy commented.

“That’s what up. You can’t get no fine-ass woman dressed like this here,” the other guy said, smoothing out his T-shirt. “Check out them two honeys in front of us. Long, sexy, shiny legs. Pretty, soft hair. Nice skin. Especially that black one, man. We can’t get no women like them dressed like this. We gotta step it up.”

Well, I’d overheard enough about Darius Jones to add him to my list of club owners not to shut down but to partner with. He sounded like my type of man. I wasn’t into basketball, but I was definitely going to a game or two before the season was over.

Returning my attention to the stage, I realized the upbeat music was great, so I ordered a bottle of champagne while we waited for this round of dancers to clear the stage. My stiletto touched Onyx’s as I nodded, indicating she should look over her shoulder.

A stripper with fiery red hair stopped beside Onyx and shook her breasts, hoping to get a reaction. Onyx turned to face her, checked her feet, and then scanned up to her face. Then Onyx said, “You got it. Do your thing, girl.”

The dancer was a woman of average height, with striking features—perfectly lined almond-shaped eyes, high cheeks on her face. and damn!, an incredible ass. She had long, luscious lashes and flawless make-up. Dressed in a leopard bustier, black boy shorts, and thigh-high stiletto boots, she made her way to the stage as the other girls picked up the last of their few dollars, then exited the platform.

The lights dimmed. The men and women gathered around the stage as the announcer said, “Ladies and gentlemen, every damn body up in this motherfucker, get the fuck up out of your seats, get on your feet, and make some noiseeeee! Welcome Red Velvet up in this bitch! Aw, it’s about to sizzle up in this joint.”

Red searchlights bouncing off of a huge disco ball centered above the stage beamed across the room, then froze on Red Velvet. The crowd went wild as Red Velvet dropped to the floor. Her legs were spread east and west as her pussy rolled north and south. The red lights vanished, and the crowd was engulfed in darkness. When the lights flashed on, Red Velvet was hanging upside down from the top of the pole. She was so far up that it looked like she was hanging from the ceiling. Gracefully, she slid down, clenching a banana peel between her teeth.

Where was the rest of the banana?

That was the woman’s daughter. Damn. I needed to call Alphonso and make his ass pay a hundred and fifty thousand. I could easily see how Alphonso had lost his damn mind, but how could he ignore his fatherly obligations to a woman that beautiful?

Crawling on the stage, Red Velvet perched in front of a man standing in front of the stage. Slowly, the skin of that damn banana came out of her mouth, like a lily blossoming, and the longest banana I’d ever seen eased out of the banana skin and fell right between another stripper’s titties. Dollar bills rained like a thunderstorm had hit, flooding the entire stage. Looking at the money, all I saw were ones.
These cheap assholes.
I was stunned.

Amid the dollars in the middle of the stage was a sixteen-ounce water bottle. Red Velvet took her time sqatting on the bottle. She inserted the top, picked up the bottle, then put it back down. Each time she squatted, she inserted the bottle a little more. The crowd lost all composure.

“Excuse me. Excuse me,” one woman said, forcing her way through the applauding crowd, trying to see the performance.

I guessed she was a fan.

Red Velvet squatted down on the bottle again, and this time it disappeared inside of her pussy. She climbed up the pole, then slid down, and repeated this several times. Standing tall, with her legs spread wide, she squatted on the floor, bounced her ass, then rolled her pussy while spreading her thighs like a butterfly. Suddenly, she stood, then dropped her ass to the floor. I swear, I was kneeling on top of my table, next to Onyx, trying to figure out what had happened to that water bottle.

The red, swirling lights zigzagged around the stage. I frowned as I caught a glimpse of the side profile of the woman who’d made her way to the front. Her behavior was different. Her body was twisted. Above the cheers and clapping, I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but she definitely wasn’t cheering. Seemed like she was yelling at Red Velvet.

“Aw, shit,” I said and nudged Onyx. “Cover me.”

Hell, I was missing the act by trying to keep an eye on the deranged woman, but I felt some shit was about to go down harder than it was raining. Briefly turning to watch Red Velvet end her performance, I saw the water bottle hit the stage. She picked it up, then tossed it in the air to Onyx. Onyx caught the bottle, which probably smelled as sweet as honey. The cap was on, and Onyx yelled, “It’s empty, y’all!”

Well, her last name was definitely appropriate. Shaking my head, trying to comprehend how Red Velvet had done that shit, I caught a glimpse of the deranged women. I stared at her lips, reading each word. “I warned you, bitch!” she muttered as her eyes, nose, and mouth shriveled.

I saw her hand ball into a fist, gripping a sharp object. Leaping from my stool, I parted the crowd. When Red Velvet turned her back to exit the stage, the deranged woman raised her arm above the still-cheering crowd. Standing directly behind the woman, I grabbed her wrist when she lowered what was clearly a knife toward Red Velvet’s back. I made her drop the knife, then proceeded to choke the shit out of her from behind so she couldn’t grab me.

“What kind of trick are you?” I yelled. “If you hate Red Velvet so much, why didn’t you confront her face-to-face like a real woman would?”

I tried to strangle the life out of that bitch. I didn’t want to kill her, but she needed to think about what the fuck she was trying to do. Then I felt a strong arm choking me from behind. “Bitch, let go of my wife!” a man snarled. A few seconds later, he yelled, “Uhhh!” Then he released me.

The music stopped; the crowd parted as Onyx pulled her spiked heel out of the man’s neck. I refused to let go of whoever this bitch was.

Red Velvet left her money on the stage, walked over to us, and looked at the woman. “You’re a day late, aren’t you?” she said. “You seriously tried to stab me in my back over a dick, and now your husband is the one bleeding to death, and you’re going to jail. You’re one dumb bitch to be that possessed by something you can never control. When are you going to get it? Tolliver does not love you, you stupid bitch. I don’t even feel sorry for your ass.”

After sticking her middle finger inside her pussy, Red Velvet smeared her juices all over the woman’s face, and then
bam!
Red Velvet kicked the woman in her clit, returned to the stage, gathered her money into a large clear-plastic bag, and made her way back over to me. “Thanks for saving my life. Here,” she said, handing me the bag.

For a moment I thought about what Red Velvet had said to the woman, who I was still holding around the neck. Velvet was right. Any man who knew his woman was mentally capable of killing another woman over him, and voluntarily stood by and watched his wife stab a woman, didn’t love his wife. Maybe he was hoping he’d get rid of his wife, that her dumb ass would end up behind bars. That would allow him to fuck whomever he wanted whenever he wanted. A part of me felt sorry for the woman, so I let her go when the police arrived, because now she was going to jail for attempted murder, smelling like Red Velvet’s pussy.

I couldn’t believe that that woman, whoever she was, loved her man so deeply that she’d willingly take another woman’s life. What was that dumb bitch going to do? Go around killing or stabbing every woman her man fucked? If only she could’ve dealt with her emotions in a positive way and left her husband before she’d gotten to this point.

I stared at her as the police placed her hands behind her back, then snapped the handcuffs around her wrists. Her husband was nowhere in sight, but my guess was Tolliver was on his way to the nearest hospital. Exhaling, I looked at the overstuffed bag of money Red Velvet had given me. If Sapphire was serious about getting her money back from me, I might need Red Velvet’s cash. Pushing the bag back to Red Velvet, I handed her a business card. Before I left home I’d already written a note on the back:
Meet me at my office tomorrow at six p.m. You need to get out of this business.
That was her mother’s request.

“Let’s get out of here,” I told Onyx as we headed toward the door.

A tall, charming gentleman dressed in an expensive suit blocked our path. “Excuse me, ladies. Let me give you my card,” he said. “I’m Trevor Williams, the owner. Thanks for protecting Red. She’s a good young lady. Hard worker. Don’t know what I would’ve done if anything had happened to her. Next time you come, please call me first. I want you to be my personal guests.” He paused. “Better yet,” he said to me, “I’d like to take you out. Call me.”

Firmly shaking his hand, I looked deep into Trevor’s eyes and said, “You’ll definitely see us again.” Then we left his club. I shoved his card in my purse, thinking if I got tired of fucking myself, he was doable, but I’d have to beat his ass into submission first.

Onyx and I got in my car and headed toward Buckhead. “You know what I despise about Mr. Williams?” I said.

“No. What?” Onyx asked, wiping her heel with a towelette. “This was one helluva night. That trick Tolliver made me fuck up my brand-new slides. Oh, he’s definitely buying me a new pair of Jimmy Choo shoes for sho’.”

“That’s why I really want to shut Trevor’s strip club down now…for exploiting women. I could fuck him, then fuck him over the same way he’s doing to those young girls. Trevor doesn’t care as much about Red Velvet as he does his income stream. He didn’t even bring his punk ass over to see what was going on until the police arrived. If Red Velvet wasn’t working for him, that club would be empty every night. And there’s no way Red Velvet should’ve had a stage covered with one-dollar bills. I bet she barely made two hundred. As talented as she is, she should’ve had all one-hundred-dollar bills on that stage.”