The Glamorous Life 2: All That Glitters Isn't Gold

by Nikki Turner

  Three more bets, everything on the line with each wager, and his charm didn’t disappoint. His stake had swelled to $158 thousand. He’d attracted a few onlookers, encouraging him to push the envelope. Bet it all one more time. The innate urge to do it, risk it all, double or nothing, was tempting.

  However, for some reason Lynx thought of a scene from American Gangster. Where the Asian dude tried to tell Frank Lucas that it wasn’t the same as quitting when you stopped while ahead. Unlike Frank, Lynx heeded the sage advice.

  Chips in hand, it was time to formally meet the woman that’d fueled his change of fortune. His Dame of Fortune.

  But when he looked up, she wasn’t there.

  So now what? So … go find her, he thought.

  Good luck with that.

  Lynx strolled around the casino looking for his mystery woman. Where she had disappeared to, he didn’t have the foggiest idea. Right when he was about to chalk it up as a loss, there was she was sitting at the bar. He headed over to the bar and when he got closer it seemed that she had a blank, empty look on her face. Before fully approaching her, he noticed that she was preoccupied, with all her attention focused on something or someone. Who? He couldn’t pinpoint it right away.

  “You mind?” he asked, taking a seat anyway on the empty bar stool beside her.

  “You might mind,” she said, never looking up from her drink.

  “How could I mind sitting beside such a beautiful woman such as yourself?”

  “Look, it’s just this simple,” she said. “I’m not the one you need to be sitting near, and damn sure not talking to you. And no, I don’t want your drink.”

  “Damn, you don’t want my drink?”

  “Nope, or your conversation. So spare me the pleasantries.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “Busy.”

  “Exactly what got you so busy that you won’t have a drink with such a handsome guy.”

  “Look, didn’t I tell you that I’m not the lady you wanna be seen with, playboy?” Calliope said to him.

  “Whoa,” Lynx said, followed by a jolly laugh. “Far from being a playboy.” Then he instructed the bartender to get another drink.

  “So you all say that,” she commented. Then she looked up for the first time at him, and his eyes met hers. He noticed that she looked as though she had been crying, and her eyes were the window to her soul. It was apparent that she had something heavy that she was carrying.

  “Now look, it’s like this. Now maybe if we were in a different place in a different time, I might give you some conversation. In fact, I’m usually good at carrying on a conversation. But I got something real heavy on my plate that I gotta deal with. And thanks for the drink, but shit is about to get real funky in a few minutes, so if you not trying to get caught in the middle of some shit you have nothing to do with, then please keep it moving.”

  Lynx couldn’t help himself, he had to know. “What in the world could make such a beautiful woman want to do something so ugly?” He put his hand on her cheekbone. “Nothing is worth you losing your freedom for.”

  “Listen playboy, you don’t know my plight, or my story, so I’d appreciate it if you keep your preconceptions to yourself.” She had tears in her eyes still.

  “You are right, I don’t know your story but I got time. I got all night to listen.” He pulled his chair a little closer.

  “What? Some guy broke your heart?”

  “Yup. In more words than I could ever share and the pain … unspeakable.” Which he saw in her eyes.

  Lynx was silent for a minute. “The hurt you feel, baby. Trust me, the next man will come along and mend. After all, time heals all wounds.”

  “No man could ever heal the pain of my little brother, who I raised as my very own son. We were left to fend for ourselves, and we were all each other had … all I had.” The thoughts of Compton, and her admitting aloud that he was gone, made the tears come.

  Lynx handed her a napkin and he made her comfortable enough to share her story and her plans for what she was going to do to Jiggilo in the middle of the casino. Lynx was not only a great listener, but he took it all in and began to assess the situation for her.

  “Listen baby, my heart goes out to you and that motherfucker what you thinking about plus more and he’s going to get it. But straight up … right now. It’s the wrong place, wrong time. You don’t want to spend the rest of your life in prison because of one bad decision. Do you?”

  See, what Calliope didn’t know was that Lynx was a certified street nigga and knew the ins and outs of the streets.

  “So, I’m just suppose to let this motherfucker get away with hurting my family, my own family at that? He’s having fun, laughing, balling with not a second thought of my brother. As philosophical as you sound, you know that shit doesn’t even sound right to you.”

  “I didn’t say that now, did I?” He flashed her a charismatic smile, took a sip of his drink, and instructed her to do the same. And when she did, he let out a sinister snicker, which piqued her interest. He was a few years older than Jean, which was already six years older than she was. She liked his swagger and his sarcasm, and he was cute. She couldn’t wait to hear what he had to say.

  “But what you need to understand is that’s not the type of thing that you do on somebody else’s time. Trust me when I tell you baby. I got the hot buried pistol to prove it.”

  She sat there mesmerized by his knowledge and his whole being. With his words he finally was able to get a slight smile out of her.

  “So listen, so I’m going to tell you what.… I’m going to show you the best way to handle your situation.”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  He put up a finger, “but in return, I want you to allow me to repay my debt to you.”

  She looked confused, and inquired, “What debt?”

  “I was way down on my luck until I laid eyes on you. The minute I made eye contact with you, was the second that my luck changed and I’d like to take you shopping and buy you something nice, and have dinner with you. Can we do that?”

  Her whole attitude and demeanor was in a different mode. “Sure.”

  * * *

  The vibe they shared for the night was magnetic unlike anything that either of them had shared. Was it because when they first laid eyes on each other, the chips were down for them both?

  After dinner and the shopping spree, they landed for a drink in Lynx’s suite. The nightcap led her to encounter her second sex partner but first one-night stand, which turned into the ultimate sexcapade. Her pent-up anger turned to deep-rooted passion that she never knew existed, which resulted in them making a baby.

  28

  Three Years Later

  The rowdy crowds began to congregate at the first wink of sunrise. Black-and-white squad cars cruised the streets of downtown in an effort to control the elevated enthusiasm, at least to a manageable degree, while keeping a vigilant eye out for “unusual” criminal activity.

  Unusual criminal activity …

  Baltimore is, and always has been, not only known for its delicious crab cakes and its working-class people, but also for its high-crime rates and rampant drug trade. For as long as its dwellers care to even remember, the number of mortalities caused by heroin overdoses has taken a backseat to nothing other than flat-out murder, a corpse at the wrong end of a smoking gun, which, when all said and done, was more often than not drug related as well.

  For most people, however, their hardships were suppressed, at least for a few hours, when their beloved Ravens suited up for battle on Sundays on their home turf of the M&T Bank Stadium. The fans come out and show love to the home team whether they are dressed in the team’s mascot costume or player’s jerseys, are face-painted, or are draped in purple and black pearls. They come in costume to represent their home team.

  “I got it taken care of,” Lynx shouted into the phone. “Yeah—no problem.” He had to cover his other ear to hear the caller over the raucous noise inside the st
adium. “Yeah, I know. Things are looking up.” His attempt to block out a lot of the noise was futile. He still couldn’t hear so he wrapped up the call. “Gotta go.” Honestly he needed to get back to the game.

  Lynx was relieved to have gotten his hands on a pair of decent seats on the fifty-yard line, midway up. High enough to view all the action without the aid of binoculars but low enough to avoid the nosebleeds. He was able to kill two birds with one stone, see the game, and spend a little quality time with his baby girl, Nya, his seven-year-old daughter. He had been so caught up ripping and running and juggling he hadn’t been spending as much time as he’d liked to with his little princess. So, today was their day.

  Nya tugged on her father’s arm, trying to get his attention. Her long purple-ribboned pigtails rested almost past the middle of her back. Her little face was painted Raven purple and black with a little glitter mixed in, and she was wearing a #52 Ray Lewis jersey with rhinestones around the number, looking like an official, die-hard mini-fan.

  “I’m hungry, Daddy.”

  The second quarter was nearly over.

  “Hold tight. We’ll get a couple of hot dogs at halftime. Okay, princess?”

  Hot dogs and chicken nuggets were her favorite food and her mother never let her have those things, so a big smile covered her face, knowing that her father was going to let her indulge. “Okay, Daddy.” But after sitting, she sat still for about three more minutes, then asked, “How long before halftime get here?”

  Lynx explained that there were only a few more seconds in the second quarter. “Four,” he said, “to be exact,” motioning her to look at the clock.

  A boisterous white guy sitting on the other side of Lynx, smelling as if he’d just finished swimming in a pool of Jack Daniels, naked from the waist up, pat him on the back and said, “Helluva game, huh?” Before Lynx could utter, “It sure is,” the inebriated exhibitionist let out an earsplitting, “Wheeeew!”

  Nya got impatient tapping on Lynx’s arm. She said, “Four seconds is up, Daddy.”

  Sometimes the girl was too smart for her own good, Lynx thought. “There’s four seconds left on the clock,” he explained, “but right now there’s a time-out, baby girl.”

  “How long for the time-out?” she asked with a look on her face Lynx thought meant that she was trying to process whether or not he was telling the truth. Like her mother, Nya wasn’t easy to BS.

  Just when he was about to explain that time-outs lasted anywhere from thirty seconds to three minutes, the two teams took the field, saving him the trouble of his daughter’s cross-examination. “This is the last play before halftime,” he said instead.

  “I want cheese on my hot dog.”

  “Okay, baby.” He nodded.

  “And chili fries too, Daddy,” she huffed, since it was that easy the first time to get him to agree.

  “Mommy doesn’t let you have cheese,” Lynx reminded her, never taking his eyes off the field for a second.

  Before she could rebut, the referee blew the whistle, ending the play and the half.

  “No worries, princess, it’s whatever you want. You know Daddy always gives you all the desires of your heart,” Lynx said as they got up from their seats en route to the nearest food concession. “Let’s go.” Lynx was in a good mood. The fifty Gs he’d bet on the Ravens to win straight up was a sure thing. Baltimore hadn’t given up a game at home in two years, a perfect 15-0 during that time. The streak went back to December 2010.

  A sure thing …

  After the third quarter, two cheese hot dogs—one with jalapeños—and a Styrofoam tray topped with chili and cheese fries, both teams had paid a visit to the end zone a grand total of once, which meant the Ravens still held on a seven-point lead. The half-naked drunk to Lynx’s right shouted obscenities at the Steelers’ players every time they made a decent play, his voice drowned out by more than fifty thousand other screaming fans.

  Fifteen more minutes, Lynx mumbled to himself. “I just need for you to hold the fort down another fifteen minutes.”

  “Who you talking to, Daddy?” Nya’s eyes beamed to him. “Mama say when you talk to yourself, people may mistake you for crazy or stupid, if you keep talking to yourself and I don’t want people to think you are, Daddy.”

  Lynx snatched a quick glance at his daughter before turning back to the game. “Don’t worry, people aren’t going to think your daddy is stupid—I’m just superstitious. There’s a perfect explanation for all this, my dear, sweet princess,” he said, rubbing her face. “I was talking to the football gods, not to myself.”

  Nya was quiet for a moment. “I thought there was only one God? And I don’t think he plays football,” she reasoned. “Besides, Daddy, I don’t think there are TVs in heaven, so he can’t watch either.”

  “Best believe,” Lynx admonished, “he watches. This—I’m sure of.”

  Not willing to debate with her father, Nya just sat in her seat trying to put it all together for herself. Satisfied that she was right, she got her phone out and started playing a game.

  In the fourth, the Ravens’ offense was god-awful.

  “Yo, Joe Flacco, stop playing like a high school kid,” Lynx said out loud as if the quarterback could really hear him. Luckily, the Steelers weren’t playing much better, scoring only a field goal themselves. The Ravens were up by four with less than six minutes to go.

  As much as Lynx hated to even think it, he could feel the momentum of the game changing in the Steelers’ favor. Baltimore hadn’t yet imposed their will. And in not doing so, the Steelers, even playing with their third-string quarterback, believed they could pull off a win. And Lynx was no longer sure that they couldn’t. His “sure thing” was beginning to look really suspect.

  A couple of minutes later the inevitable happened: a forty-two-yard touchdown grab by Shaun Suisham. The play sucked the air, and life, slam out of the entire stadium, including Lynx. He was too outdone and wanted to kick himself in the ass.

  The score put the Steelers up 24-20. Everyone looked at the person beside them, incredulously with an I-can’t-fucking-believe-this expression etched onto elongated and stunned faces.

  Believe it.

  When the clock hit zero, Lynx sat and looked at it for a minute as if somehow more time was going to miraculously appear on the clock. But it didn’t work that way. The game was over, and, like clockwork, the fans rushed the exits as if they were trying to escape a bad dream. Tailgaters mourned the loss in the parking lot. Anyone crazy enough to think that football was “just another game” didn’t get it. From New York to California and Minnesota to Texas, fans ate, slept, and defecated for their respective teams. Marriages were ruined over the game of football, and if his wife found out about the fifty grand he’d just lost, not to mention the other paper, his may be ruined. Or she may just kill him.

  Lynx was slowly shaking his head in utter bewilderment when his phone rang. He didn’t need to look at the caller ID to know who was calling. It was the people he’d just lost another fifty Gs to, the same people that he was now into for $165,000.

  He released the grip on Nya’s hand to face the music on the end of the phone.

  Nya stood by her father, rubbing her stomach. “Daddy, my stomach hurt.”

  “Mine too, baby girl, mine too,” he repeated to his daughter as he put the phone up to his ear. “Hello?”

  “Daddy … I … think, I might have ate too much.” Nya stood beside her father rubbing her stomach.

  “… Yeah, I know what the numbers are.… You’re gonna get your paper”— with a lump in his throat, he reiterated— “all of it.”

  “Daddy, I…” Since he was still talking on the phone she swallowed her words. She knew her manners and she exercised them by trying to politely wait for him to finish his call.

  From behind her someone bumped her. When Nya turned to see who’d pushed her an ocean of bodies washed past. An old white lady, trying to push past her, and said, “Excuse me, darling,” then kept on shoving her way
through the crowd and pushed her even farther away from her daddy.

  No longer able to see him, Nya tried calling out to him. “Daddy!” She was bumped again. “Daddy!”

  She couldn’t see him anymore, and boy was she scared. The poor child was too short to see over the crowd; the crowd was too thick to see through.

  Again, she screamed: “Daddy!”

  He grabbed her hand. “I gotcha,” a man said.

  That wasn’t her daddy’s voice. Nya looked up at the face of the man holding her hand. It was painted purple, like hers. “Who’re you?” She tried to snatch her hand away, but he was holding on to it too tight.

  “I’m going to help you find your daddy,” he said, leading her away from the crowd. She tried to lock her knees together, then her legs and feet fell to the concrete, hoping she’d be super-glued to the concrete so she couldn’t move, but the man was too strong for her.

  Bambi, Nya’s mother, had told her never to go anywhere with someone she didn’t know, and not to talk to them either.

  “I don’t know you,” Nya said, trying to wrench her hand away from his grip. “Let go of me.”

  He tried to convince her that he was a friend of the family, but Nya didn’t believe him. Strangers told lies.

  “I’m going to fall out on the ground and scream if you don’t let me go.” She’d learned that at school and she was about to follow up on her promise when the stranger said he wanted to show her something that he’d gotten from her mother. The mention of her mother got Nya’s attention.

  “You don’t know my mother,” she accused. “Stranger danger,” she screamed, but nobody paid attention, so she yelled at the top of her lungs, “Stranger danger!”

  “Sure I do. She told me to give you this.”

  It was a silk scarf, a red one.