The Sneaker Kings

by Eric McLauren

  Brandon brainstormed as he paced the floor. He remained curious and skeptical. “Is it Jacky again?”

  Tired of the cat and mouse game, Leon finally became agitated. “Yeah, man. I gotta go now. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  Before Brandon could say another word, his friend hung up. Brandon sighed and doubted everything as he reached his building.

  “Yeah, I don’t know what he’s up to,” he mumbled to himself. “But he’s right. We only have one more week to go.”

  >>>

  Leon shook his head in a smoky loft apartment, where several male students passed around a dark-brown blunt of marijuana.

  “Yo, why you listen to him, man? He wouldn’t be able to get shit done without you,” an older Dominican student said. Eduardo Suarez should have been a junior in marketing, but he was only a sophomore with too many unexcused absences and mishaps on his exams. He sure thought he knew a lot about life though.

  He passed Leon the blunt. There were eight male students in the room, all smoking, talking and laughing. Half of them sat in the chairs and sofas—including Leon—while the other half stood.

  “Get some more of that in your system, man, and stop passing it,” Eduardo barked at Leon.

  Leon shook it off. “Nah, man, I’m good. It’s already in my system.” He then giggled to prove it. “But nah, my boy Brandon put the whole team together. He’s been my cool white boy for years. I wouldn’t even be doing this if it wasn’t for him. I wouldn’t even be in New York.”

  “Is he cool as Joseph?” Eduardo asked, singling out the only white student in the room.

  Joseph Minsky, a half-Jewish and Italian kid, had a tapered haircut and the clothing and personal style of urban hip-hop. With smooth olive skin and a cool lean against the wall, Joseph blended right in with the Latinos and African-Americans who filled the large open room.

  Leon looked at Joseph and sized him up. “My white boy is cooler than Joe,” he boasted.

  The guys started laughing and clowning. Joseph chuckled himself and didn’t speak up to deny it, which only made him seem cooler and above it all.

  “Even Joe saw Brandon’s girl up there tonight. She looks better than half the models do,” Leon said about Natasha. Some of the guys had been in the audience at the rehearsal earlier.

  “He’s like a Robin Thicke with a bad-ass mixed girl,” someone commented.

  “Sí, Paula Patton es muy guapa,” Eduardo said in Spanish. “I’d take her any day. And she got more body than Zoe Saldana.”

  “Man, I’d take Dania Ramirez over Zoe,” a Dominican freshman responded.

  “Rosario Dawson,” one of the African-American students argued.

  “Jacqueline Fernandez,” Leon offered with a nod. “She’s a star in the making.”

  “Yeah, how’d you get her, man?” someone asked.

  “He told her she had to give him some first to be a model,” another one of the guys joked.

  Everyone laughed but Eduardo and Joseph. They both eyed Leon carefully.

  “You didn’t tell her that, did you?” Eduardo asked.

  Leon shook it off. “Nah, I just told her I was curious. I told her I had been with Mexican girls in Arizona, but I knew nothing about Dominicans. So I asked if she thought there was a difference.”

  Leon had only known the guys in the room for a few weeks, but the high of the marijuana made him more open around them than usual.

  “So, she let you try it, and you fucked her good, huh?” Eduardo asked about Jacky.

  The younger guys started laughing again, but Eduardo seemed pretty serious about it.

  “Man, she ah … she’s a hell of a young woman.” Leon still couldn’t believe it himself. Jacky had fallen into his lap with the rest of New York. And Leon was enjoying it all.

  Eduardo nodded to him. “I’m glad you feel that way, Leon.” Then he paused. “You know Jacky’s my little cousin, right?”

  The room seemed to stop and start spinning in slow motion as the youthful laughing turned into dead silence.

  Oh, shit! Did he just say what I thought he said? Leon thought. Everyone stared, waiting for Eduardo’s next move.

  “Oh, yeah?” Leon mumbled nervously.

  Eduardo grinned. “Nah, I’m just messing with you, man. We’re not cousins.”

  The guys burst out laughing. They were all relieved. “Did you see his fucking face, man?” Eduardo asked Joseph. “You just turned into stone, Leon. You looked like you just saw Medusa.”

  Finally, Joseph spoke up through the laughing. “We like you guys, man. We want to see you have a good event next week. So, we’ll make sure nobody bothers you, takes your sneakers, messes with your money, or any of that.”

  Eduardo nodded. “You see that? That’s what my white boy can do. He has Italian and Jewish connections, which are both good to have. One enforces the rules, and the other supplies the money. So, if you guys need any extra money or protection, you just say the word.”

  Then he grabbed a Sneaker Kings flier from a table and held it up high.

  “I like these. You guys call yourselves The Sneaker Kings of New York? That’s fucking bold, man. You guys have some balls to do that. But I know some real Kings of New York. So we have like minds to calls ourselves Kings. And we’re gonna make sure these fliers get out to all the right people. You guys hear that?” he told the others in the room.

  Eduardo pointed to Leon. “He’s a King. I now anoint him. And you guys are his peasants. So anything that the King wants, you give it to him. You do that, and we’ll take care of all you guys.”

  Leon sat there in a lone chair and felt insane with all eyes in the room on him. What the hell is he talking about? he mused over Eduardo’s anointment. I didn’t ask him to do that.

  Leon attempted to laugh it off. “Yo, man, that’s cool. But I don’t need all that.”

  Eduardo stared at him. “Yes, you do. You don’t know New York, but they do.” He pointed again to the other guys in the room as he continued. “You want ASAP Rocky? They can get you ASAP Rocky. You want French Montana? They can get you French Montana. You wanna make your event hot? We can make your event hot. That’s what I’m telling you. You wanna call yourself a King, then be a King. We’re here to help you do that.”

  “Yeah, but at what price?” Leon spoke up.

  Eduardo shrugged. “We can negotiate that.”

  Leon shook his head boldly. “It’s only so much money we can make off this. We can’t pay everybody. We already put enough money on the table as it is. We gotta get some money back.”

  “So, we help you out with the next one,” Joseph explained calmly. He was impressed with Leon’s boldness. He asked, “You got some Italian in you from Michigan, right?”

  Leon had been talking about his Michigan roots to some of the other guys in the room. Obviously, Joseph had heard about it.

  “Yeah, my mom’s Italian and Polish,” Leon answered.

  Joseph grinned. “Yeah, I can see that. It’s coming all out now. I’m Italian and Jewish, so I deal with everybody—blacks, Jews, Italians, Latinos, Asians. That’s the world that we live in now. If you wanna get serious money, you deal with everyone who has ideas. And you guys have ideas, so we wanna deal with you.”

  “All right, here’s what we’re gonna do,” Eduardo said. “Leon, you’re still a King to us, so we’re gonna help you anyway. We just want to make sure you’re successful. Like Joseph said, we like you guys. Obviously, the girls like you too—even my little cousin, Jacky,” he joked again. “So, treat her right, man, and I’ll let you keep her for a while.”

  Leon sat there and chuckled, but he wasn’t high enough to misunderstand them. He understood exactly what was going on. These guys are talking that King shit because they see money.

  BEFORE THE STORM

  ON THURSDAY AFTERNOON, Tarun helped Brandon carry three large boxes up to their room. Brandon had already received five smaller boxes earlier that week, all for the big event on Saturday.

  “Ma
n, what’s in these boxes?” Tarun complained, surprised by the weight.

  “They’re the posters I showed you. We’re selling them for only five dollars, and you can get them signed in permanent gold ink.”

  “So, how many things are you gonna have for sale this weekend?”

  Brandon thought about it as they heaved the heavy box from the elevator. “Posters, sneakers, hats, T-shirts, wristbands, headbands, water bottles, socks, lanyards … and I think that’s it. So, you’ll have a lot of potential clients there to design for.”

  Tarun smiled. “Thanks. I notice a lot of athletes and hip-hop artists like to create their own signature brands now. Even the guys you represent might want that for themselves.”

  Brandon had shown him the poster images of Jay Stewart, David Terry and Danielle Lyles on his phone. But none of them had thought of designing their own brands or logos yet.

  Brandon smiled and reflected on the dispute he and his guys had had that summer with Adidas. “Tarun, we kind of want them to help promote our brand first. What do you think all of this stuff is for?”

  “Oh, my bad.”

  “Yeah, we went through the same thing ourselves with Adidas this summer,” Brandon told him. “We were trying to push our brand while promoting theirs.”

  When they reached the door to their room, Brandon’s phone rang. He looked down and saw Raymond House’s number. “Yup, I gotta call my agent back.”

  Tarun grinned with envy. “I can’t believe you guys have an agent already.”

  Brandon shrugged and opened the door with his key. “Most people in sports or entertainment have agents. That’s just the nature of the business.”

  “You think he could represent me if I become a professional designer?”

  Brandon paused. He didn’t want to sell his roommate a pipedream. “You can ask him yourself on Saturday.”

  They got into the room and sat the heavy box in the corner with the rest. Brandon then returned the call to Raymond. “Hey, Ray, you got any news for us?”

  “Kemba Walker and Kyrie Irving are both confirmed special guests to arrive after six.”

  “All right!” Brandon cheered.

  “It’s too late to print it up on fliers. But it’s just in time for you guys to blast it out on your social media networks,” Raymond said. “And they’ll both have sales reps from Nike and Under Armour there to present their new shoes.”

  “Yeah, we can have the models do it,” Brandon suggested. “And if Kyrie or Kemba want to walk up onstage with them, we can do that too.”

  “I can’t wait to see this.”

  “I can’t wait either,” Brandon said. “What about Carmelo and his wife, La La?”

  “I haven’t heard anything back yet, but that doesn’t mean they can’t pop up on you, especially with all the noise being made. No word from the hip-hop artists yet either.”

  “That’s all right, we can’t have them all. But I love what we have so far.”

  “So, we’ll see you guys tomorrow night for the big dinner with Amar’e.”

  When Brandon hung up, Tarun was all over him. “Did you say Kemba Walker and Kyrie Irving are coming?” Brandon had told his roommate about their celebrity wish list weeks ago.

  “Yeah, isn’t that crazy? Now we have to get the word out immediately.”

  “Man, are you nervous?”

  Brandon took a deep breath. “Yeah, but in a good way. At first, I was nervous in a bad way. But now that it’s coming together, it’s amazing!” He smacked himself in the face with both hands to make sure it was real. “Yeah, I’m still awake,” he joked.

  >>>

  Friday night created a bit of a dilemma for the guys. With everyone arriving in town for Saturday’s big event, they had several requests for dinner, including the Stewart family, the Lyles family and Marcus Graham.

  Brandon dealt with Marcus first. “Look, dude, I still can’t believe you flew all the way out here for this. But you’ll have to catch us early tomorrow morning when we’re setting up. Okay? But we have far too much to discuss with our agent and sponsors tonight.”

  “All right, so I can still help you guys to set up then, carrying boxes or anything. Just put me to work, man,” Marcus pleaded.

  Brandon looked again at the boxes piled up in his room and exhaled. “Fine. Just make sure you call me before nine o’clock in the morning.”

  “Cool. I’ll be there.”

  Brandon then called the Lyles family. “Hey, Mr. Lyles. I’m glad you guys made it back up safely. But we have a bunch of business meetings tonight with some of our important sponsors. So we can’t make that dinner with you. Maybe we could try something for tomorrow after the event.”

  “Just tell us where to go and what time, and we’ll be there,” Mr. Lyles responded.

  Brandon then called the Stewart family and repeated himself. “Maybe we can all do a big breakfast on Sunday. You guys don’t fly out too early on Sunday, do you?”

  “No, our return flight is at three in the afternoon. So, that’ll be perfect,” Jay’s mom responded.

  “Great. We’ll try and make that happen then.” Then he called Simba to find a place to make their big Sunday breakfast happen.

  “Okay, but I’m getting dressed right now, man,” Simba complained.

  Brandon snapped. “Look, just do it, man. You’ve had the lightest week of any of us. No one is calling you every minute. They’re calling me. So find a place big enough where we can all sit down together.”

  Brandon then called to check in on David Terry and his family, who were making it up the road from North Carolina.

  “Yeah, we’re near Philadelphia now,” David told him.

  “Perfect. And if you guys stay around for Sunday, we’re having a big breakfast for everyone,” Brandon told him.

  “For real? Well, I don’t know about that. I’ll have to ask my uncle. But we would have to drive back from our hotel in New Jersey,” David reminded him.

  “Oh, yeah, that’s right,” Brandon mumbled. “Well, we’ll see. I just wanted to offer it to you guys. But I’m glad you’re on your way up though.”

  “Yeah, and I’ve been reading all the tweets and updates. So you got Kyrie Irving and Kemba coming now. I can’t wait, man.”

  “Yeah, me either,” Brandon admitted. “I haven’t met those guys yet.”

  >>>

  When Brandon, Simba and Leon were ready to catch a taxi to Times Square for their important dinner that Friday, they all met up in front of Washington Square Park only to find that Simba had invited Jintana along.

  Brandon frowned and pulled his friend aside. “What are you doing, man? You know this is a meeting just for us, right? This is business,” he barked in a tense whisper.

  “Yeah, but she helps me out with everything now. She even found a place for breakfast on Sunday,” Simba explained.

  “Okay, but I told you to do that,” Brandon argued. “So, that’s your deal with her, not with us. I didn’t ask Natasha to come along, and she helps us out with things too—lots of things.”

  Simba sighed and shrugged as if he could do nothing about it. “She’s not gonna be in the way,” he pleaded.

  “Dude, if you’re not gonna tell her, I’m gonna tell her. She can’t come. This is for the original Beast Team members only. You got that? That means us.”

  Simba turned and looked back toward his girlfriend. Jintana wore a radiant dress with fancy heels. She smelled great too.

  “Whatever perfume you’re wearing, I need to get some of that for my girl,” Leon told her with a smile.

  Jintana eyed him sternly. “Oh, you have a girlfriend now?” she asked. She hadn’t forgiven him for his fallout with Fei Yen. “Well, if I had one,” Leon quipped.

  Simba looked back to her from his huddle with Brandon and couldn’t bring himself to deliver the bad news. So Brandon was forced to do it. He walked straight over. “Jinni, I’m sorry, but this is a very important business dinner with our agent and sponsors, and they’re not
expecting us to bring dates.”

  Jintana looked at Simba before she responded. “Are you sure?” she asked Brandon.

  He nodded to her. “Yeah, I’m very sure.”

  Jintana looked at Simba again, who stood there speechless. “Well, that sucks. I got all dressed up for nothing.”

  “We can still go out later on,” Simba suggested.

  “No, that’s all right. I’ll just go out with my girls. Well, have fun.” She stormed off.

  Brandon watched her walk away and shook his head. “I don’t like that, Simba. Natasha would never act like that. She already knows how close we are.”

  “That’s because she’s been around us longer,” Simba reasoned.

  “Nah, Natasha respects our friendship, and your girl doesn’t,” Leon argued. “She knows good and well this was our meeting. And if you don’t get that girl to respect you, you’re not gonna have her long.”

  Simba turned and snapped at him. “Who made you an expert on girls? You think just because you sleep with a couple of fast models that you know it all?”

  Leon kept his poise. “If you don’t check that girl at the door with the coats, she’ll be pulling you all around campus by your nose. I can see that already. And she’s not giving you any.”

  “Whatever. Let’s just go, man. Get us a taxi,” Simba huffed.

  >>>

  The guys arrived at B. Smith’s restaurant on 46th Street. Amar’e had chosen it. He said he liked the low-key location and their soul food dishes. “People don’t bother me for autographs here either,” he added.

  J.R. Smith, Raymond House and Brandon’s uncle had helped to pull a couple of tables together in the middle of the restaurant. Amar’e was first to speak after ordering.

  “So, tomorrow’s the big day. Are you guys ready for it?” he asked them.

  “Once we set up tomorrow, we’re ready,” Leon answered with a smile. “We did everything else.”

  Simba nodded. “Yeah, basically. We’re ready to go.”

  Brandon was preoccupied with his uncle, who showed up unshaved and disheveled. Brandon figured it had to do with him not being picked up by a professional team overseas yet, but he could have at least shown up with a fresh haircut and a shave to support Brandon and his guys at their big event.