Her father went on to introduce them all. “Natasha, Adrienne, this is Simba, Leon and Brandon. And this is Paul Weiller.”
“Hi,” everyone greeted.
Natasha grinned and spilled the beans. “We saw them at the concert last night with a gang of people around them.”
“Yeah, that’s what they do,” Michael commented. “I was just talking to them about doing an internship with us this summer.”
Natasha nodded to him and looked at the guys. “Oh, okay. Did you agree to it?”
She had a raspy morning voice that sounded hoarse with age and authority, as if she were much older than them, but she wasn’t. Nevertheless, she seemed very mature for her age.
Michael answered, “No, we were just having an opening conversation about it.”
“Yeah, the guys wanted to see some of the sneaker styles at Adidas that they would be working with,” Paul interjected.
“Well, don’t judge these shoes we’re wearing—we just like them,” Natasha joked. “Everyone doesn’t have to have Jordans.”
“I know, right,” Adrienne agreed with her.
Leon said, “Of course you’re gonna say that. You’re down with Adidas.”
Instead of arguing with him, Natasha shrugged and smiled. “Okay.”
It was no big deal to her; sneakers were sneakers.
Brandon looked up into her light-brown eyes with his darker browns and was hypnotized. Natasha was so adorable, he felt like standing up to hug her.
“Adidas has a whole line of new designs that no one has seen yet,” Adrienne said.
“Well, we’ll need to see them then,” Leon insisted.
“Yeah, we have to see something,” Simba agreed.
“And you will,” Michael reiterated.
Suddenly, Brandon had nothing to say. Natasha had him tongue-tied. Even Paul noticed it. “What about you? What do you think?” Natasha asked Brandon directly.
Brandon dropped his head into the Waffle House menu and mumbled, “He said he’ll give us time to think about it.”
Natasha read his body language and figured he didn’t want to be pushed into anything. She also realized that Brandon was the ringleader. Her father had already told her. But sneakers were only sneakers to her. So she smiled, shrugged and blew it off again.
“Okay. Well, Daddy, we’re gonna sit down and eat over here, because there’s obviously not enough room for us.”
No one said anything, but they were all listening to her—Brandon especially. He loved the sound of her raspy voice.
“All right. Just tell the waitress to bring the bill over here,” her father said.
“Oh, of course.”
Brandon recorded it all in his head like a CD download. And once Natasha left them all sitting there, he could feel the abrupt emptiness at their table.
Knowing his friend Brandon like a brother, Leon joked, “Are you all right, man?”
He and Simba started giggling uncontrollably. They couldn’t wait to do it, even with her father still sitting there at the table with them. Natasha Avery had snatched Brandon’s breath away. Paul finally realized it too as he grinned sheepishly.
Brandon tried his best to play it off. “Yeah, I’m all right. What are you talking about? I’m just trying to get my order together.”
That only made his friends laugh harder. Even Michael Avery was in on the joke. He realized what was going on. Natasha had been a beautiful daughter for nineteen years, and Michael was quite aware of people’s reactions to her, particularly young males.
“They’re two gorgeous young ladies, aren’t they?” he commented with a smile.
“Yes, sir,” Simba agreed.
“If you don’t mind me asking, your daughter is mixed, like me and the president?” Leon asked. He was liable to say or ask anything. It was the Michigan candor that he had picked up from his parents.
Michael nodded. “Yes, she is. I headed over to Seoul, Korea, for the Summer Olympic Games in nineteen eighty-eight. I was fresh out of college and working with the USA track team and Puma at the time. Well, I ended up at this bar in the Olympic Village, where all of the athletes hung out, and I’m staring at this Russian sprinter, Nicola Patromov.
“So, she notices me and walks over. She says, ‘Why are you staring at me?’ And she knew English, you know, with the accent and everything. So, I told her, ‘Because you look good.’ And she smiled and never left my side that night. I came to find out later that she liked me because I didn’t have the big egos of the athletes, but I still worked in sports. So we did the long distance dating thing for a few years and met up at different track events around the world until she finally moved to America, and we got married.”
Brandon listened to every word of it … and was hooked.
NATASHA
WHEN THE GUYS left the Waffle House breakfast meeting, they all had one thing on their minds: the eye-popping Natasha.
“Dude, she’s like, neck and neck with Cynthia Wallace,” Leon commented first. “I thought I would never say that. But her light hair and eyes are crazy. She was glowing in the sunlight. Did you see that?”
“Yeah, I saw it. And I definitely like her personality better than Cynthia’s,” Simba chimed in.
“I bet Brandon’s thinking hard about doing that internship with Adidas now,” Leon teased.
Paul laughed. “Yeah, his daughter showed up at the table, and Brandon got all tongue-tied. I’ve never seen that happen before. I’ll tell ya what though, she sure gives you good reason to be excited. He’s gonna have his hands full with her. But she seems to have her head screwed on straight.”
“Yeah, she was cool. She didn’t even argue with me,” Leon added. “That’s hard for most girls to do. I usually try to make them argue.”
Simba shook his head. “You’re sick, man. I don’t know how you get away with that stuff.”
Brandon quietly schemed out a plan and their teasing didn’t bother him at all. “She goes to Seton Hall University,” he said. “That’s gonna be right near us in New York.”
“Don’t even think about it, B. She’s probably dating college guys already,” Leon assumed. “You got no chance, dude.”
“Yeah, but she’ll be right near us though. So it won’t be long distance anymore,” Brandon reasoned. “And if we’re working with her father already—”
“Ahhh, here we go. You hear that, Simba?” Leon howled and cut Brandon off. “He’s gonna do the internship just for a girl. Then he’s gonna find out she has a boyfriend in the first week and end up heartbroken.
“I mean, why do you do it to yourself, man? Why?” Leon asked rhetorically.
Paul continued to laugh from behind the wheel. “Yeah, that’s a bit much, Brandon. I wouldn’t do all of that, based on assumptions. I mean, you barely even said a word to her back there. So, if you decide to take this internship, it should be for business reasons alone.”
“Business reasons?” Brandon repeated. “We’re not even gonna be paid for this. But I just have a feeling about her.”
Leon laughed even louder. “Oh, he has a feeling now. Man, you’re like a lovesick puppy, B. She’s gonna put you in a doghouse out in the yard and feed you Purina. I can’t let you do that to yourself, man. Stop it!”
“Look, all jokes aside, if you guys were paying any attention back there, Michael Avery said he started off working with Puma then went to Nike for a few years,” Paul interjected. “He worked with Allen Iverson at Reebok in the late nineties and early two thousands. Now he’s in a great position with Adidas. So what he’s telling you is right. Once you’re in the system, you’re in the system. It’s just like being a professional athlete. Once you’re on a professional team, the other teams know your value. Well, it’s the same way with these sneaker companies.”
“Yeah, and he’s giving us an opportunity to get in,” Simba concluded. “I know my dad would want me to take it. He would say that all of this shoe stuff is finally paying off with a real job. And whether we take advantag
e of that later on is up to us.”
Simba had a point. Even Leon took the opportunity seriously.
“We could still mess around and design some of our own shoes this summer. They are gonna ask us what we think about their designs, right?”
Paul frowned and shook his head. “Don’t get too far ahead of yourselves, guys. An internship was the only way he could get you in to work with you. But he likes you guys.”
“Yeah, he can’t give us full-time jobs right out of high school,” Simba reasoned. “Internships are normal.”
“Well, if we’re able to help them sell anything, we should get something,” Brandon argued.
“A couple hundred dollars a week at least,” Leon agreed.
Paul shook his head again. “You guys are unappeasable. You really are a generation of entitlement. This guy goes out of his way to offer you a major company internship—without you even applying for it—and you’re all in here complaining about money.”
“I’m not,” Simba spoke up.
“Yeah, you’re the only one who’s thinking sensibly,” Paul told him. “Do you guys even understand what an internship is worth these days? Grown men often don’t get opportunities like these, but you guys turn around and waste it. Unbelievable!”
Paul was so incensed that he drove without a word for the next five minutes.
Simba finally broke the silence. “I don’t know about you guys, but I wanna do it. I think it would be a fun summer.”
Leon looked up front toward Brandon, awaiting his next move. “How ’bout you, Brandon? You just wanna do it for the girl, Natasha? She’s worth it, man, I admit it.”
Brandon sneered. “Don’t patronize me, Leon. I know what you’re doing. If you wanna do it, then say so. You don’t have to try and trick me into it.”
“But that’s what you said, right? You said you had a feeling about her,” Leon reminded him.
“Yeah, and you said I didn’t stand a chance because she’s out of my league. She’s gonna break my heart in the first week, right?”
“Come on, I was only playing with you, man. But deep down inside, she probably likes you,” Leon countered.
Everyone laughed again, including Paul. Leon was full of it.
Brandon smiled and looked out the front window. “I know what you’re trying to do, Leon, and it’s not working. You’re not gonna make me change my mind … It’s too late.
After a dramatic pause, Brandon continued, “I knew I was gonna take this internship as soon as I saw his daughter standing at the table. And nothing is gonna change my mind about that.”
Leon and Simba broke out laughing. And they were glad that their boy was on board.
Paul grinned. “That’s pretty messed up, Brandon. So, if Natasha was only an average-looking girl, or if she had never shown up for breakfast, you wouldn’t have agreed to this?”
“I’m not saying all that. I still would have thought about it. But she just made it easier.”
He already had butterflies in his stomach just thinking about seeing Natasha again.
“But we’ll wait for three or four days before we call him,” he said. “I want Natasha to ask her father about me first.”
Leon laughed hard again. “Man, you’re crazy. But that just might work. She will ask about us, but not tonight or tomorrow.”
However, Simba was not as amused by the waiting game. “As long as you call him back before he changes his mind,” he said.
A few minutes later, they pulled into the parking lot of another North Carolina mall to hunt for more sneakers at a DTLR store—including new Adidas.
HOME BASE
BACK IN GLENDALE, Arizona, the guys discussed the Adidas summer internship with their parents, who were all excited. Even Brandon’s hard-to-please mother, Gloria, was impressed.
“You mean, all of those crazy shoes you buy got you a summer job?” she asked her son at the dining room table.
“It’s not a summer job, Mom; it’s an internship. So we don’t get paid for it.”
Gloria winced. “You don’t get paid for it? Well, what’s the use in that?”
“Mom, we’re still in high school. Adidas is not gonna give us a regular job. We have to learn the real ropes of the sneaker business first.”
“Well, you graduate from high school next week,” she reminded him.
Brandon decided to ignore her. His mother would argue her point about everything. Her continuous debates were a major reason why he had become so determined. But he had not lived with his mother at her cluttered condo apartment in Phoenix since middle school. And he only visited her occasionally, while living with his uncle in Glendale.
Gloria had a tendency of choosing the most unstable men to go out with, which didn’t mix too well with her peace-loving son. Brandon was also a neat freak and a creature of habit who loved comfort and silence. But his comfort had been disturbed by the lewd arguing and instability of his mother’s emotional relationships, including the one with Brandon’s father in Minneapolis during her aborted community college years.
Gloria had been a Minnesota drama queen, forcing her younger brother, Paul, to move her and his nephew out to Arizona. They even bypassed Brandon’s child support payments to keep Gloria from dealing with the monthly ire of a man who felt that he was duped into an unwanted pregnancy—which Gloria never denied. But their relocation to Phoenix never changed Gloria’s taste in volatile men. And every city had them.
So Paul finally decided that it was best for his nephew to move in with him in nearby Glendale, where Brandon could avoid the chaos of Gloria’s off-and-on-again boyfriends.
“Everything’s not about money, Mom,” Brandon mumbled across the table.
His mother eyed him and pulled out her pack of cigarettes. “You could have fooled me. Haven’t you been making money off those sneakers for years now? The last time I checked, you were very serious about those shoes.”
Gloria grinned, reflecting on the violent argument that broke the camel’s back with her son choosing to move out years ago. It was all over one of her boyfriends who nearly twisted his ankle, tripping over Brandon’s sneakers in the living room. That led the man to ransack Brandon’s closet full of shoe boxes and threaten to burn them all, igniting a tantrum that Gloria had never seen from her son before. And when he attacked her boyfriend with a baseball bat and nearly got himself killed, she finally allowed her sneaker-loving son to move in with Paul.
Gloria reached for a cigarette and lighter.
“Could you not do that until I leave, please?”
Brandon hated when she smoked. He felt it made her look less attractive, with darkened eyes and lips. Her smoky clothes and breath didn’t smell so great when she talked to him either. Gloria knew that, and she obliged with a deep sigh.
Brandon changed the subject to lighten the mood. “I met a new girl that I like—a lot.”
Gloria’s eyes widened. “You mean you found someone to like other than Cynthia Wallace?” Even his mother knew about his long-standing crush.
Brandon smiled. “Yeah, I guess so. And it’s perfect timing too, with our graduation coming up. Cynthia and I will both be moving on. I won’t see her every day anymore. I need to get over her anyway.”
“I’ll say. So, what does this new girl look like?”
Brandon grinned. “Get this—she’s black and Russian.”
His mother paused, confused. “Okay, so what does that mean? She’s a black girl from Russia or what?”
“No, her father’s black and her mom is Russian. Her father’s the guy at Adidas who gave us the internship.”
“Oh, so she’s biracial, like Cynthia. And does this man know that you like his daughter?”
“Mom, everyone likes his daughter.”
“Okay, but does he know that you like her?”
“Not really.”
“Well, does she know?” Gloria was well aware that her son was the type to have crushes on girls without appearing to acknowledge it with them.
Gloria nodded doubtfully. “I see. Brandon, you’re eighteen years old now and headed to college. Don’t you think it’s time you show some confidence in going after the girls you like?”
Brandon frowned, offended by her assumptions. “Mom, I have done that. I’ve had girlfriends before. What are you talking about?”
“Well, at least you’re not caught up in their color or race. I’m proud that you’re that way.”
“Mom, nobody cares about that anymore; or at least not the guys I hang out with.”
“Well, people used to care. But now I see you guys dating black girls, biracial girls, Hispanics, Asians. It’s nice to see that. I guess I’ll have some colored grandkids one day.”
Brandon shook his head, embarrassed. “They’re all Americans, Mom. You’ve dated black guys and Spanish guys before,” he reminded her. “And those guys were nicer.”
Gloria nodded, anxious to smoke her cigarette. “Is that all you had to tell me?”
Brandon could see that she was rushing him again. “Will you even miss me when I go away to school in New York?” he asked her.
“Of course, Brandon. What kind of question is that? You’d still come back to visit me during your breaks, right?”
“How about you visiting me in New York,” he suggested.
Gloria paused again. “That’s a long way to travel. But if I had to, of course I would. I would just need to scrape up the money to pay for it.”
“I would pay for it. I just wanted to know that you would come.”
“Yeah, I would.”
Brandon sensed that his mother remained anxious to smoke, so he decided to put her out of her misery.
“All right, I’ll go. But you need to think about not smoking so much. They do breast cancer awareness month for football every year in October. Everyone wears pink.”
“Yeah, I know that, Brandon.” His mother had a cigarette out in her hand, anticipating him leaving.
The Sneaker Kings Page 6