by Roy Glenn
“To us,” Wanda said, and we turned up our glasses.
Being true to our word, we spent the rest of the day celebrating both our birth month and our big payday. And I do mean we celebrated to the point where I was home in bed alone and passed out before midnight.
Chapter Ten
December 22
When I woke up the next morning, I looked at the clock and saw that it was only seven-thirty. Anya and Lo-Lo were hugged up asleep next to me. I got out of bed and headed for the bathroom wondering what I missed when they got home this morning.
On the way to the bathroom, I looked out the window and saw that it was snowing. That told me that I wasn’t going anywhere unless it was business. I stood at the window and watched for a while; it was coming down pretty hard. When I heard Vickie in my head singing White Christmas in her high pitch, off key voice, I tried to shake it off and went in the bathroom.
Instead of getting back in bed and waking up Lo-Lo and Anya, I went in the living room, I poured myself a drink, sat down in my chair and rolled one. While I was sitting there burning, my bedroom door opened and Lo-Lo came out. She sat on my lap, put her arms around my neck and kissed me. “Morning.”
“Morning.”
“What you out here thinkin’ about?” she asked, and I passed her the bob.
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit, you’re always thinkin’ about something. That’s who you are.” She laughed and passed back the bob. “You think, and that shit is so fuckin’ sexy.”
“Suppose I was thinking about fuckin’ you.”
“You ain’t even gotta think about that.”
Since we were both naked, and my dick started getting hard the second she came out the door, it didn’t take Lo-Lo long to swing her leg over, grab my now rock-hard dick and she guided it inside her.
While Lo-Lo slammed her body down on me and fed me her nipple to suck, I thought about her, Anya and this … whatever you call this that we’re doing. I’d never lived with a woman before, much less two and I never wanted to, not even with Carmen. I was always uncomfortable when she would just be here, in my space. And the few times that Michaela was here, she never stayed long. In fact, Vickie slept here more often than Michaela ever did.
I don’t know, maybe it’s because me, Anya and Lo-Lo really don’t spend a lot of time here doing anything but sleeping and fucking, but even when they are just here, in my space, I feel perfectly comfortable with them being around. Or maybe it was because they were fun to be with and I was digging them. But living together was new for all of us, so we’ll see how it goes.
Anyway, I met Lo-Lo and Anya shortly after we took over Roscoe’s. At the time, they had been dancing there for a couple of weeks and the word was that there was no point fuckin’ with them because they were deep into each other. Well, that was and still is a true statement. Anya loves the fuck outta Lo-Lo, and despite her wandering eyes, Lo-Lo loves Anya too.
Anyway, since we had so much going on at the time, it was over a week after Cynt killed Roscoe before me and Bobby made it back over there. Max Brown had been running the gambling for Roscoe for years, and I thought that with Roscoe dead, that Max would step up and take control. He didn’t, Cynt did, so it was pretty much her spot when we got there that night.
Once we got finished talking with Cynt that night, I saw Anya dancing on stage and she caught my attention right away. It was her eyes, her smile and that caramel skin that had me walking toward the stage … okay, so it was her big titties and that round ass that drew me to the stage, but she does have a beautiful smile and very pretty eyes. I stood and watched her dance until Bobby tapped me on the shoulder.
“Let’s go.”
I dug in my pocket, pulled out some money and peeled off a couple of hundreds and handed them to her before I left with Bobby. Next time I came there a couple of days later, Anya saw me when I came in and waved to me. She was dancing for somebody, but as soon as the song was over, and she got her money, she headed straight for me. I was standing at the bar talking to Bobby. That was the day that he started talking up the idea of building our own VIP room when she walked up.
“You want me to dance for you, Black,” Anya said.
“Sure, go ahead.”
“You wanna go to the VIP?”
“See that’s why we need our own room,” Bobby said.
“Na, you can dance right here.”
Anya stripped on the spot and started dancing and that’s when Lo-Lo walked up. Anya stopped dancing long enough to tongue Lo-Lo down before she went back to dancing for me. Lo-Lo looked at me and then at Anya. She nodded her head, Lo-Lo smiled and then smiled at me, stripped and she started dancing with Anya.
That shit was fuckin’ hot.
Me and Bobby stood there watching them, and yeah, we were in awe. I say again, that shit was fuckin’ hot, you hear me.
Anya put her body on mine and her arms around my neck. “You still don’t want to have us alone in the VIP room?” she asked as Lo-Lo moved in behind Anya and put her arms around her.
“That’s why we need our own room,” Bobby said.
I may have laughed, but at that point, I agreed with him. “No, but the idea of having the two of you alone does appeal to me.”
Anya let me go and went back to dancing, but Lo-Lo stepped up. “Anytime, big boy. Anyplace you say. You can have us any way you want us.”
Since those were the old Mike Black days, my response was simple. “Y’all get dressed,” I told them, and they rushed off and came back ready to go. We went to a hotel and didn’t come out of that suite for three days. And it’s been on with the three of us ever since.
The following week me and Bobby had our VIP room built so we’d have a place to hang out when we were there, and I could watch my girls do what they do so well.
“Yes, yes, shit!” Lo-Lo screamed. “Fuck!” she shouted and jumped off my lap. She grabbed me by the hand and literally dragged me into the bedroom. Since Lo-Lo screaming could wake the dead, Anya was awake when we came in and was more than happy to join us.
It was some time after noon when I opened my eyes again and notice that I was alone. I got out of bed and once I took care of the necessary business, I went out in search of my girls. I found them in the kitchen, standing naked in front of the near empty refrigerator.
“What y’all doin’?” I asked.
“We’re hungry,” Lo-Lo said.
“And there’s no food in the house,” Anya said. “Nothing but leftover takeout that should have been thrown out.”
“There’s never any food in the house, because nobody cooks.”
I can cook and I’m actually a pretty good cook too, but I just don’t have the time or the desire to be hanging out in the kitchen standing over some pots.
“We need to get something to eat, Black,” Anya said.
“You know it’s snowing pretty hard, right?”
“Yeah, but we still need to eat,” Lo-Lo said and started for the bedroom and Anya was right on her heels.
“Where you going?” Anya asked as Lo-Lo began getting dressed.
“I’m gonna walk to the store. I gotta eat something,” she said, and Anya began getting dressed too.
“You gonna walk with us?” Lo-Lo asked and Anya laughed at her.
“You know he don’t like to be out in the snow,” Anya said, and she is right. But I wasn’t going to sit up here in the warmth while the two of them braved the cold and snow to feed us, so I started getting dressed too.
The closest store was just three blocks away, but the wind and snow made it seem farther. Once we got what we needed, we headed back to the apartment with me carrying the bags, as a gentleman should. It wasn’t as windy as it was earlier, so the trip back was easier than the trip there. On the way, Anya stopped to make a snowball and she threw it at Lo-Lo, so now they were having a snowball fight as we walked back to the building both using me for cover. They had mercy on me until we got to the building, but then the two concentrated their snowball attack on me
.
“You two are gonna pay for this,” I said, and they pummeled me with snowballs and their laughter.
“I got it right here, big boy,” Lo-Lo said and hit me with another snowball just as I walked in the building.
Since neither Lo-Lo or Anya could do anything in the kitchen other than use a microwave, I told them I would cook hamburgers and mac and cheese for us.
“You gonna wear a cute little apron while you cook?” Lo-Lo asked and laughed.
“Yeah, he should wear an apron and nothing else,” Anya added.
“That would be something,” Lo-Lo said.
“Something that ain’t happening.”
I had to give it to them, they were fun to be with.
After we ate, we got back in bed, did what we do and went back to sleep. It was dark outside when I woke up again. My pattern was the same, bathroom and then to the living room to burn one. I sat in my chair thinking that Lo-Lo was right, I am always thinking, I just needed to make better decisions. I thought about where we are now, and how we got here.
Even though we had made a chunk of money running that job for Sherman, if we hadn’t been out a hundred thousand we may have looked at it and passed because we didn’t have time to plan. That was just too much money to write off, so we were not only down to do the job, but anxious. And that anxiousness is what led to me making mistakes. Fortunately, this time my mistakes didn’t get anybody killed and yes, I am talking about Wanda.
Had I not been fucked up, maybe, just maybe I would have realized that things would have gone a lot easier if we had another man, two or three would have been better. Like Nick, Freeze and Jamaica. Had I thought the whole thing through, then there would have been no reason for Wanda to be anywhere near there. And that’s another thing. Once I realized that we needed another man and it was too late to get anybody, I should have called it off and let that money go. It was stupid, and I had to stop doing stupid shit.
“Oh yeah, you already promised yourself that.”
I remember promising that I was gonna be like the ocean. The perfect blend of strength, power and calm, but be destructive as fuck when the situation called for it. That was gonna be the new Mike Black.
Well I got the destructive as fuck part down to a science, but the rest of that shit, I was still a work in progress and that can’t happen. It just can’t. If I was supposed to be the source of the fuckin’ wisdom, I should have stepped to LaKela the second I saw her in The Late Night, someplace where she didn’t belong, with O’s bitch-ass, somebody she had no business being with. My excuse was that was when the shit jumped off with Gun, but that’s bullshit.
I chose.
I saw LaKela with O and then I saw Bobby and Gun get into it. I chose to see about Bobby, who can take care of himself and forgot all about LaKela until Wanda called and said she’d been raped.
The cause of the chaos.
And then there’s Wanda. The list of bad decisions I’ve made when it came to protecting her was long. When I went to see what was goin’ on with Bobby, naturally Wanda was right behind me. What I should have done was send her at LaKela and then she wouldn’t have been there to pull my gun from my pocket when the shit got tense.
And once me and Barrett settled that shit down, I should have gone to Barrett and then me, him, Bobby and Gun go to the office and settle that shit in private where it’s easier for men to back down. Instead I let Gun walk up outta there feeling disrespected and needing to kill Bobby to regain his respect. And I’m not even gonna get into the list of dumb-ass moves I made when I decided going to Kendra’s apartment was a good idea.
The cause of the chaos.
I needed to take my time, step back and see the entire picture. Start thinking about action and reaction, cause and effect. What was my adversaries’ reaction going to be to what I do, what will it cause them to do in response and what are the effects of their actions going to be? And then repeat the thought process in my mind all the time. Thinking about moves and counter moves, just like chess. Yeah, that’s it, I needed to be able to think five moves ahead and be able to anticipate their response.
It made me think about Kirk. He was studying me, trying to get inside my head to know how I think so he can put me in jail. And if I kept doing stupid shit, he was gonna do it because I was making it easy for him. Here again, if I was going to be the source of the wisdom, not to mention keep everybody out of jail, I needed to out think him, so I need to consider Kirk in everything I did from this point forward.
Think first, not shoot first.
It needed to be a rule.
I got up from my chair intending to get back in bed with Anya and Lo-Lo. On my way to the room, I looked and saw that it had stopped snowing and the streets had already been cleared.
When I went in the room, Anya and Lo-Lo were watching TV, so I got in bed in between them. They had noticed that it wasn’t snowing anymore and were trying to decide if they felt like going to work.
“You know I just noticed that the phone hasn’t rang all day,” I mentioned and Anya and Lo-Lo looked at each other. “What?”
They looked at each other for a second or two before Lo-Lo said, “When we came home this morning, you were asleep. We tried to wake you up, but you were knocked out.”
“Believe me, we really tried to wake you up,” Anya said and they both laughed. “I said that you needed to rest, so we left you alone.”
“And I said if we gotta leave you alone, so you can rest, then Bobby, and Wanda and Andre and everybody else needs to leave you alone too,” Lo-Lo said. “And that’s when I unplugged the phone.”
“We were gonna plug it back in when you woke up.” Anya looked at Lo-Lo.
“But we forgot,” she said and they both kissed me on the cheek. “You ain’t mad at us?” Lo-Lo asked as Anya plugged in the phone.
“Nope, I ain’t mad at all. You were right, I needed to rest. And I needed some time to think.”
“And I told you how fuckin’ sexy that shit is,” Lo-Lo said and inched closer to me as the phone rang. She sat up and folded her arms across her chest. “See, that’s why I unplugged it.”
Lo-Lo is so fuckin’ sexy when she gets all pouty like that. Anya laughed, and she answered the phone.
“Hello,” she said and quickly handed me the phone. “It’s Wanda.”
“Hey, Wanda.”
“Where have you been? I’ve been calling you all day.”
“Right here. Anya and Lo-Lo decided that I needed to rest, so they unplugged the phone.”
“You know, they might actually be good for you,” Wanda said, and it shocked me. She had come a long way from, Two of them, Mike? At the same time? I just don’t understand why you need two of them.
“They just might be. What’s up?”
“Jap called me about Jürgen Schmidt, Simon Parrish’s bodyguard.”
“What about him?”
“Jap said he was assigned to another client. I called him, and he said that he believed that Parrish is back in the city and he has a new bodyguard.”
I sat up and heard Lo-Lo whisper to Anya, so much for him taking a whole day and resting. “He have any idea where he is?”
“If he did, he wouldn’t tell me. But I’ve been doing some checking and I had Jap check out a few places that he might live.”
“And?” I asked as I got out of bed.
“A couple are worth checking out.”
“Where’s Bobby?”
“He’s out looking for you.”
“Why didn’t he come here?”
“He said he did, but you weren’t there.”
“I guess he didn’t look in the bedroom. Or Maybe he came when we walked to the store,” I said on my way to the bathroom.
“I’ll call Bobby and tell him that you’re all right.”
“And tell him to come get me. Then call Nick, Freeze, Kenny and Jamaica and all of you meet us at The Late Night.”
When Bobby got to my apartment, he gave me a hard time about not bein
g able to find me and why I needed to carry a cell phone. After that, he was ready to go hunt for Simon Parrish. He had gotten the list from Wanda earlier in the day and he was waiting to find me before he checked them out.
“No. Ride by The Late Night. Wanda, Nick, Freeze, Kenny and Jamaica are meeting us there.”
“What’s up?”
“I’m taking your advice and not thinking that I can or have to handle everything personally. How many places are on the list you got from Wanda?”
“Five.”
“No way we can check all that out in one night. We take our time, start using our people to find this mutha fucka and have a plan for what we’re gonna do with him when we find him.” I paused. “And we will find him.”
Once everybody made it to The Late Night, Wanda went over the list of places she obtained, and I assigned Nick and Freeze to check out some, while Jamaica and Kenny checked out the others. I sent them out with the understanding that if they found Parrish, they were not to take any action or even approach this mutha fucka. Their job was to find him and call me on Bobby’s phone.
“What do you want me to do?” Wanda asked as our people went to carry out the task they were assigned.
“Yeah, what are we gonna do?” Bobby asked.
“Close the door.” Bobby got up and closed the door to the office. “We’re not gonna do anything.”
“What?” Bobby asked.
“I already told you, Bob, I’m taking your advice.” I looked at Wanda. “And yours too.”
“What’s that?” Wanda asked.
“By not thinking that I can or have to handle everything personally.”
“I’m glad you see that,” Wanda said looking pleased by my decision, and Bobby nodded in agreement.
“But, I do need to be on top of everything all the time … we all do. So, when one of us is not on top of something, we all know that the other two are on it. The three of us have a different responsibility now.” I looked at Wanda. “It’s like you said, we are The Family — you, me and Bobby.”
“We command this family, right or wrong,” Wanda said in her Michael Corleone voice and she laughed. It was a twist on her favorite line from Godfather three.