Know Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy - Book One)

by Rachel Dunning

  He stomps out, and the door clangs shut. I actually jump off my seat a bit.

  “DJ Mad-Ass Hat.” Gavin sighs, folds his arms. “Lives up to his name. A has-been. Never played with enough heart. Besides, he got in too deep with Helen.”

  Gavin notices my confusion.

  “Big H? Smack?” Ahhh. Auntie Hazel. “That shit doesn’t mix well with DJs. I hope you’re not into that stuff.”

  I look over at a fidgety Xavier. You fucking asshole! I think.

  “Uh, no, I don’t do...H.” I almost said drugs, but I decide not to go there right now with the current crowd—dealer on my left; definite user, Randy, on my right, even if only casually.

  The meeting ends and Gavin stands up tall, bares his chest out, takes in a big breath. “OK, Blaze. Two weeks from now, Saturday.” He shakes my hand. It’s not cold like I expected, but his eyes are cold.

  Gavin stays behind, the rest of us walk out.

  I half expect Mad-Ass to be waiting for me in the main dance-floor section—the “non-underground” section next door—but he’s not.

  Outside, Randy looks down at me with his pudgy and friendly face. His ponytail flicks wildly in the wind. My own hair does the same. “Did you and Declan talk at all on Saturday?”

  I’m stunned for a second, until I recall Deck mentioning that he and Randy know each other. That they were a “mutual ear” for each other.

  “Uhm, yeah”—I cough—“we went to Tom’s for a bit, and I hung out with some of his friends.”

  “Trev and Skate?” Randy’s face lightens. Color actually returns to his caramel skin.

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh.” He smiles a little, and it’s so genuine that I start to feel a little embarrassed. I look down at my Skechers. “Well, no point in me hanging around. Good work, Blaze.” He shakes my hand. Then Xavier’s. “Xavier. Later.”

  After Randy’s gone, Xavier lights up a smoke. And I decide enough is enough: “So, what’s in it for you, Xavier?”

  “At the moment, nothing. But, you know, maybe later...”

  It seems everyone wants a piece of me “later.”

  “Client of yours? This Mad-Ass?”

  He looks away. “What’s it to you?”

  I clench my teeth. “You know, Xavier, if I hadn’t known you all my life I’d have turned you—” I stop, not wanting to go there.

  “What, turned me in? Is that what you were gonna say?”

  Take a breath, Blaze. Take a damn breath.

  “Whatever, X. Just...damn it...I wish you’d fucking— Urgh, just forget it.”

  He turns on me, puts a finger between my eyes. “Look here, Blaze. She did dat shit because you did it! I just became a means once she was already in it, comprende? So don’t fuckin come to me and tell me I’m da one who killed my baby sister!”

  You gave her the H, you fuckturd. That was all you. I never touched that shit!

  Hot magma courses through my veins. I wanna kill him now. I wanna take my hands and wrap them around his neck and just, fucking, squeeze!

  I breathe deeply, get myself under control.

  Because who’s fault was it really, at the end of the day?

  Xavier backs off a little. His eyes start quivering.

  “L—look, Xavier. Just...” I exhale. “Forgetting the past, living only ‘in the now,’ I appreciate it, OK? The gig, the opportunity, I appreciate it. And if you get some dough out of it higher up the line, whatever. I guess it’s the business.”

  The rage in his eyes chills. But he doesn’t apologize.

  He flicks his smoke across the street where it lands underneath a poster (“OCCUPY WALL STREET! JAN 27! WE ARE THE 99 PERCENT!”)

  Coolly, with swagger, he stalks off in his fancy loafers.

  Standing there, wind chilling my cheeks, I can’t help get the distinct feeling that I’ve just been gangbanged by two of the three guys I just met with.

  Oh, wait, there was also DJ Mad-Ass—so, gangbanged and shot.

  -6-

  At home, I call Mamah.

  “Błażej! Everything OK? Why you call now—on Monday?”

  The only two words I know in Polish are dziadzia (grandpa) and kochanie, which is what Mamah always calls me. So we always speak in English. “No, uhm, Mamah, I just wanted to let you know that I’m doing really well. Uhm, I made a lot of extra money this month.”

  “Oh, Błażej, that is good. I am so proud of you!”

  “Yeah, so I’ll be sending a little extra over for you—”

  “No! Błażej. That money is yours. We are fine here.”

  “Mamah, as I said, I made quite a bit extra—”

  “Błażej, you are not doing illegal work, are you?”

  “No, no. I DJed at a big party on the weekend. Made two thousand dollars.”

  “TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS! My god, Błażej!” She hollers over in Polish to my gramps. I think I hear coughing. He says something. Then, some more hollering. “Dziadzia says he always knew you could do it! Wow! So, you make this every month now?”

  “Uhm, no. I mean, maybe. I have another gig set up for next Saturday. I’ll make eight hundred from that one. In addition to my usual gigs.”

  My usual gigs don’t pay me shit, but she doesn’t need to know that.

  “WOW!” She really extends the word. Her praise makes me feel better. I think that’s what moms are really for: To help you forget about the Skitz-Os and Mad-Ass-Hats of the world.

  “So, uhm, it’s no problem at all to send five hundred through this month.”

  “Oh, Błażej. No, we cannot—”

  “Mamah! Please. I don’t need it!” A small lie, no harm. And there is some truth in it.

  She’s silent. Then, “We will pay you back, Błażej. I promise—”

  “Mamah, why must we go over this every time? It’s no biggie for me. I’m doing well here.” I try my best to sound convincing. “Who knows, maybe one day you guys can even move back here?”

  Silence again, deafening this time, as it waits to be filled with an answer I know isn’t coming—an answer which never comes.

  Mamah’s voice is sad when she speaks again. The kind of sadness a parent must feel when unable to give her child what she wants. “Błażej, you know we cannot come back to America. We struggled too many years. Poland is different now, kochanie. Now that it is in EU, there is businesses opening, people are getting work.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” I croak.

  “Błażej, thank— We appreciate.” In other words, We really do need the dough.

  “OK, Mamah, I just wanted to give you the good news. Tell dziadzia I say hello.”

  She stays silent.

  “Mamah?”

  “Yes, yes, I do it.”

  “Mamah, everything OK?”

  “Y—yes, of course!” She’s fooling no one.

  “Mamah, don’t lie to me! I’m thousands of miles away. I need to know if something’s wrong or else I’ll be thinking about it all day and it’ll affect my work.” I emphasize that because I know she listens when I talk about “my work.”

  “Is just...sweetie...dziadzia is not feeling so good. The lung infection is back.”

  “Can’t he take antibiotics or something?”

  “Yes...yes...we give him that.”

  “O—OK, Mamah. I’m sure it’ll get better. I’m wiring the money right now.”

  “OK, Błażej. Congrat— Congratulations again. Mamah must go. Bye!”

  She puts the phone off. And I could swear that was a sob I heard just before she clicked off.

  I wire a grand instead.

  -7-

  You’ll note I never said shit to Mamah about being back in touch with Xavier again, the brother of my best friend who I took drugs with and who ODed a year ago?

  I’m sure you can figure out why that is.

  EIGHT

  HATERS GONNA HATE

  -1-

  Declan Cox

  “Motherhell!” Trev stares out at the city across the East River.
The luxury condo we’re in sports large windows, a high ceiling, plush rug. Not to mention the top-grade furniture we’ve been moving into the place all morning. As his eyes look around the apartment, it’s like he’s rolling. “Mother...fuck! Deck. This isn’t Brooklyn. I mean, you pulled a Marty McFly up on me in here, didn’t you?”

  “I wonder myself sometimes, bro. Now you gonna help with this couch, or what?”

  “I’m almost scared to touch it. Somehow I think the couch is worth more than my entire life savings.”

  “You have no life savings.”

  “Thanks. Rub it in.”

  We move the cream couch over against the wall so it’ll catch the sun from the large terrace doors. “I don’t know exactly where she wants it...so...just leave it here. That’s the last of it. You’ve successfully moved your first apartment. There’s always a job waiting for you here if you screw up your college education.”

  “Har har, funny.” Trev looks at the mammoth flatscreen. “Incredible. When we picked it up at the Lower East Side, I figured they were moving down in the world by coming here.”

  “Yip, they’re moving up now. Up to Brooklyn.”

  He laughs. “Send em over to my place after this, then they’ll get a taste of what it’s really like to live in Brooklyn.”

  I fall on the couch, my arms burning from all the lifting we’ve been doing. “Dunno, bro. You’ve seen what Williamsburg looks like now. It’s like freaking yuppieville in there now. Bushwick’s not far behind. Who’s to say East New York won’t be next?”

  He snorts an incredulous laugh. “Because East New York’s predominantly black, Deck.”

  “And?”

  “Black neighborhoods never get gentrified. They need a place to put us.”

  “Har har back to you, dumbass. Anyway, it’s the artists that bring the market value up. Then the big condo men come in and kick em all out like roaches. East New York doesn’t have no graphic artists there for shit. Plenty of musicians, rappers, but not enough pre-yuppie clout.”

  “And plenty of gangs.” He turns to me. “Hey, do you always chill on the client’s furniture when you’re done lifting it?”

  I lift a tired head. “Just a little wiped today.”

  He smirks.

  “It’s not like that! Well...sort of.”

  “She was hot, homes.”

  “Mrs. Watkins?”

  He laughs again. “Her, too. The Yuppie blonde for the Yuppie condo.”

  “And don’t forget the Yuppie husband.”

  Trev’s bent over himself laughing, and I’m doing the same, when we hear the cough. We look up. Mrs. Yuppie Watkins is leaning against the doorjamb in her cream pencil dress (which has betrayed—more than once today—that she likes to go at it commando, both top and bottom.) She’s sipping a drink from a straw, umbrella and everything. If she wasn’t smirking, I’d be panicking. You don’t talk about clients like that. No matter what you think of them. But, well, having Trev around has brought out the worst in me today. We’ve commented on everything from her ass-length straight blonde hair to her athletic legs to, finally—and absolutely guaranteed to happen when you put two guys together—whether her C-cup is truly au naturel or a masterpiece of man-made engineering (“Deck, if it wasn’t natural, it would be a D-Cup. Why pay for it if you don’t take it all the way?”) We’ve ogled her legs, discussed the sexual performance of her lawyer husband (or, in our typical male imaginations, his lack thereof), pondered whether or not she’d be willing to cheat on him...

  Yeah, uhm, OK, we’re guys, and I think you get the point. Let’s move on...

  I decide it’s time to grovel: “Er, Mrs. Watkins, I’m sorr—”

  Her smile goes wider, and she sucks her drink down more loudly, making sure to openly flex her lips outward. Still looking at the straw, mouth barely away from it, she says, “Mr. Cocks...is it?” She bounces off the doorjamb, catwalks over to me.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She giggles. “Please, call me Tatiana.”

  I catch her—very obviously—eyeing my pumped-up biceps, especially the colorful one on my right.

  “You boys don’t need to worry about me. This yuppie woman is very happy with your”—she sucks the straw again, even though the drink is nearly empty—“services. Now, what do I owe you?”

  “Fift—fifteen hundred, ma’am.” So I changed the price after I saw their Mercedes. Sue me. She never asked me for a quote beforehand, just said she’d read “great things” about my services on Yelp. And have you seen their TV?

  She does the equivalent of a female swagger on her way over to a cupboard, then bends over...slowly...and lingers at a bottom drawer. I look away, because I’m not gonna screw things up with Blaze in any way. I know I just met her, but I’m gonna give it the full chance it deserves.

  Trev, on the other hand, has broken out in a sweat. And his eyes ain’t goin nowhere!

  From the corner of my eye, I see her walk back over to me. The way her tight pencil dress hugs her curves is not helping my resolve. She holds out a wad of cash, “Here’s seventeen hundred. Consider it a tip.” I almost tell her that I overcharged her already as it is, but I swallow my tongue. Business is Business.

  “Thanks, ma’am.”

  With a glint in her eyes, she says, “May I show you the terrace? Or”—she flicks a lascivious glance over at Trev—“do you boys have somewhere else to go?”

  I can almost hear Trev begging me to stay, if only for the view. And I ain’t talkin’ about Manhattan. “Er, sure, ma’am. But, we have another two moves to do today, so it’ll have to be fast.”

  “Oh.” She sucks the straw again. The drink is most definitely emptier than empty now. She puts it down on the glass table and, while still looking at it, bent over just enough for the double meaning to be clearly there, she says, “I can do fast. No problem.” She straightens up. I swear it looks like she actually pumped her tits out an inch while doing it. Then, casually, easily, her hand makes it over to my tatted bi!

  I won’t BS you here. I’d love to say, Oh, yeah, I’m such a grand guy that I gingerly take her hand off my arm and politely tell her that my damsel is waiting for me to place a coat on the puddle she’s about to walk over. I’d love to say that shit. But of prime importance in a tale is honesty. So this is what really happens:

  When her hand caresses my tatted bi, I feel some primordial part of me jump her right here on her Wundaweve Carpeting. Where would we be without imagination? I actually even feel myself inch toward her, like my cock’s taken over all the blood from my brain and stuck me in a momentary stupor. Oh, wait, that’s precisely what’s happened.

  But, dazed as my mind is, it hasn’t completely shut down. So, instead, I shift a little left, and break contact smoothly with the hand.

  She looks at me “innocently” in the eyes, cocks her head just slightly to the left. “Mr. Cocks, please, it’s Tatiana. Not ma’am.”

  Yes, ma’am.

  She sashays past Trev—who I’m pretty sure will faint soon due to a similar lack of cerebral blood-flow; only worse, because he doesn’t have a gorgeous babe waiting for him at home like I do. Tatiana opens up the glass-pane doors to her terrace. Trev’s quick on her tail, hypnotized.

  Before joining them, I pull out my Motorola and DM Blaze on Twitter, just to remind myself of her. And to remind myself of how I felt last night with her. My hand on her moist center. Her gentle quake under my body as she climaxed.

  And holding her after...

  Yeah, no contest here, I think. There’s something...sparkly...about that girl. And this one—this Mrs. Watkins—well, she is what she is...

  DM DJHeavenLeigh: Hey, sexy, thinking of you. Got a crazy client this morning. Hope all’s good.

  DM DeclanCoxDWAT: Thinking of u 2. All’s good. Sure. Had a crazy meeting. Pack o’ wolves.

  That worries me...

  Outside, on Mrs. Pencil Skirt’s wrap-around terrace, I find her leaning against the wall, head tilted back while she laughs
at Trevor’s no-doubt extremely pinpointed jokes and stories. As she waves her hand and displays more than necessary neck, her fingers graze lightly over his shoulder.

  Trev’s a big boy. I mean...big. The dude’s a monster in the muscle department. And her interest in him is not even remotely disguised.

  “Can I get you boys a drink?”

  Before I can decline, Trev says, “Sure. What you got?”

  “Well, the apartment block offers room service”—what!?—“so, whatever you want.”

  I clear my throat. “Uhm, soda for me. I’m driving.”

  She scowls, then, looking at Trev, says: “Surely you’re not gonna get a virgin drink like that. Are you?”

  Trev ponders it a second. He looks over at me and I know he can read my mind. He says, “Actually, Mizz Watkins, we really do need to get going.”

  Wind rushes past my ears. Her eyes flick to the view of Manhattan, her own hair a mad howl straight out of a romantic Hollywood scene. “Well, fine. Mr. Cox—”

  “Declan, ma’am—uhm, Tatiana.”

  “Declan, thanks again for the great service. I’ll certainly be giving your name to all my girlfriends.” She grabs Trev’s wrist, leans in a little. “And yours, honey. I’ll be sure to be watching that cup or bowl or whatever it is you call it.”

  “If we make it there this year,” he says.

  “Well, maybe I’ll see if we have it on DVR. My husband’s not much of a sports fan, but he’s got a few things recorded on there. And if you say the last game you won was in December I doubt it would have been recorded over. It’s really a pity you guys can’t stay for a drink. Maybe next time...”

  On our way out, she grabs my wrist just after Trev’s out the door. I turn, and before I know it her chest’s touching mine! What the fuck!?

  She smiles, and waits, not making any further move, as if she can blame it all on me if something happens...

  I almost fall backwards over myself as I hightail it outta there.

  -2-

  “My GOD! Are all white women like this in this part of town?”

  “It’s the new Upper East Side, bro. Did you see that view?”