No One in the World

by E. Lynn Harris; RM Johnson

  If she gave in, she knew he would one day ask her to move into his modest home, then one day, maybe even present her with a diamond engagement ring. If Austen were to accept, that’s when she believed her life would change, when she would give up ownership of her mind, her will, her freedom to do things without clearing it with him first.

  Austen was very familiar with men like Emmet. Her father was a man like Emmet, and as a child, Austen had watched him claim ownership of her mother.

  Since becoming an adult, Austen always looked out for the men who wanted to “take care” of her. She knew exactly what that meant, and she was not interested. No way, no how!

  Over the last month, Austen had distanced herself from Emmet, but she had not anticipated just how hard things were going to get for her. She actually had thought on a couple of occasions that maybe she shouldn’t have pushed Emmet away so quickly. That maybe now she could’ve benefited from a man like him, willing to take her in, pay for everything, while she worked to rebuild her company.

  She even thought of calling him back, maybe apologizing, and hoping he hadn’t found anyone to replace her just yet. But losing her house or not, Austen didn’t know if she was ready to give over control of her life.

  Then to her surprise, this morning her cell phone rang. She saw that it was Emmet calling and quickly picked up.

  Sitting across from him now, Austen watched him pick at his fries. He had something pressing on his mind, Austen could tell, and she was bracing herself for the moment when he finally found the courage to come out with it. She didn’t have to wait long.

  “I love you,” Emmet said.

  Austen stopped sipping from her glass of water. “Really.”

  “Over the last month, I realized that,” Emmet said. “And I asked you out today to tell you that we should be together. I think things might be kinda hard for you right now, and us getting together might make it easier.”

  He was putting on his cape, trying to be Captain Save-a-Ho. He was asking for permission to rescue her. If she could just put aside her beliefs that every man wanting marriage wanted to control her, she could use this opportunity to save herself from impending doom. But Austen wasn’t sure she could do that. “And when would you want us to get married?”

  “As soon as possible. I can take time off whenever,” Emmet said, starting to get excited. “You know I got my own business, so I make my own rules.”

  “I know that, Emmet.”

  “We can take two weeks and go anywhere you want to go.”

  “That’s nice, but I couldn’t be away from work that long.”

  “Work? You wouldn’t have to work no more if we got married.”

  “Yeah, but I would.”

  “But I wouldn’t want you to. I wanna have kids, and like I said, I got my own—”

  “I know you got your own business, Emmet. I’ve known it since the first day I met you,” Austen said, aggravated. “Remember, I hired you. But just so I get this straight, you’d want me to have kids.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Stop working.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And what would I do for money?”

  “I’d give you an allowance. A little something every week so you could buy yourself something nice. I wouldn’t have a problem with that.” Emmet smiled.

  “Is that how your parents did things? Daddy gave Mommy five dollars a week?”

  Emmet nodded. “But it was a little more than that.”

  “Well, that’s how my father did my mother, too. He treated her like a child. Worse, like his pet dog. He told her what she could do and when, and when she misbehaved, he beat her. Is that how you want things to be between us, Emmet?” Austen said, loud enough to draw the attention of the other diners.

  “Austen, look. I just wanna take care of you, because I know times gotta be hard and—”

  Austen laughed. “Oh, you don’t know the half. My car was repossessed, I sold all my furniture for cash, and my house has been foreclosed on. But I’ll find a way to make it without your weekly allowance,” Austen said, standing from her seat, grabbing her purse.

  “Good-bye, Emmet. And please, don’t contact me again.”

  21

  At Winslow Corporate headquarters, I took the elevator up to the twentieth floor, hardly able to contain myself. I had finally found my brother. I was so happy. But then again, I was also conflicted. Eric wasn’t what I expected. But that made little difference to me now. I had been reunited with someone from my true family, and that’s all I cared about. The other stuff, I’d concern myself with later.

  The elevator doors slid open. I walked out, and practically skipped down the hall toward Sissy’s office.

  Her secretary, Trina, a young woman with big eyes and blue mascara, stood when she saw me. “Good evening, Mr. Winslow, is Ms. Winslow expecting—”

  “No,” I said, happily blowing past Trina.

  Sissy was standing behind her desk, wearing a tweed skirt suit, the jacket of which was hung over the back of her leather desk chair. She wore very stylish eyeglass frames; the microphone of a telephone headset was positioned an inch from her full lips. When she saw me, she held up a single finger, gesturing for me to wait.

  “No, that’s not good enough,” Sissy said. “If they can’t get the shipment there on time, then find another distributor. Good-bye.” Sissy pulled the headset off and tossed it to the desk.

  “Hey, Sis,” I said, walking over to give her a kiss on the cheek.

  “To what do I owe this pleasant surprise?”

  Smiling, I said, “Sissy, we have an addition to our family.”

  “Don’t tell me. My gay brother has knocked up some hoochie, and she’s suing for child support.”

  “Yeah, you wish.”

  “Then what?”

  “The best news you could ever imagine. You ready?”

  Her arms crossed, Sissy said sarcastically, “I’m tingling.”

  “I found him! I found our brother. Can you believe it?”

  “Really,” Sissy said, sounding sincerely excited. “Where?”

  “It was kind of right under my nose, but I never thought to look there. This morning, I was up at the prison, and—”

  “Cobi, no,” Sissy said, taking a concerned step toward me. “Tell me he works there. Please, tell me he works there. He’s the warden, right?”

  “I was at Joliet this morning,” I said, ignoring Sissy, “and this guy bumped into me, and when I looked up—”

  “He’s a corrections officer? He can be the damn janitor, but—”

  “—when I looked up—”

  “Enough with the freaking narrative, Cobi,” Sissy demanded. “Is the guy a convict or not?”

  I paused a moment. “Yes. He’s an inmate there, Sissy.”

  “Okay,” Sissy said, going into strategy mode. She paced a line before me. “So you found—what’s his name?”

  “Eric,” I said.

  “You found Eric. You’re going to visit him in prison for the next ten years, and no one ever has to hear about it. I understand. That’s admirable. And as long as word doesn’t get out, the family business will be fine.”

  “No, Sissy. Eric’s getting out in two days, and I invited him to move in with me.”

  Sissy started choking. I ran to her and patted her on the back till she stopped.

  “Invited him to live in the mansion to do what—rob you of everything? Cobi, that’s not happening.”

  “The other three houses are yours, the mansion is mine. I’ll have whomever I like.”

  “Cobi, please. Understand, nothing good can come from this. At the very least, he won’t be the man you think he is. And if this leaks and the public gets a hold of it, then—”

  “Then what, Sissy?” I said, raising my voice. “Does this make our products any less valuable than they are? Accepting my brother—our brother—”

  “That ain’t no brother of mine.”

  “Will accepting our brother into my home c
hange the people we are, what we and Winslow Products stand for?”

  “No, Cobi.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “Perception is everything. Public opinion is everything. People get off on this elite family crap. Think Kennedys, think Clintons, and the Obamas now. Remember Roger Clinton? Wasn’t a good look. What if little Sasha Obama was a pyromaniac? Or Malia, a juvenile alcoholic? How do you think that would play? If we welcome a convicted felon into our home, into our family, we no longer maintain that elite status. Our public perception will suffer, our sales may suffer, and in a time like this, we cannot afford to lose the sale of a single can of Winslow Pomade. Do you hear what I’m saying to you?”

  I stood there, angrily absorbing everything my sister said. There were things I wanted to say back to her, but I held my tongue, fearing I’d regret those words. Instead, I waited another couple of seconds till I calmed down and said, “I know, the circumstances aren’t perfect. He’s not who I expected him to be either. We’ll deal with that. But I came here to share this wonderful news, not to ask for your permission. Everything will be fine. And if all goes well, Eric, our brother, will be moving into my house in two days.” I forced a smile. “Come by and say hello. I’m sure he’d like to meet you.”

  22

  It’d been half an hour since lights out, and Blac lay in his bunk, his arms crossed under his head, staring upward. He was so excited he could not sleep. He might actually survive after his prison release. Up until his last conversation with Eric, Blac didn’t know if that would be the case.

  Blac was finishing a four-year prison sentence for drug possession with intent to distribute. Off his last prison bid, he had been out only four months, but he couldn’t find any kind of work that would give him decent money. The woman he lived with, Theresa, was giving him all kinds of static about contributing financially, so Blac had to make some money. If that meant risking going back to prison, so be it. Since Blac could remember, jail had always been a possibility. It ran in the family.

  Blac’s grandfather was sentenced to life in prison for murdering a white man. When Blac was ten, his father tried to rob a guy on the street. The guy happened to be an off-duty police officer. He drew quicker than Blac’s father and shot his dad dead. That left Blac with his mother, who was just getting into heroin. The reality of her husband’s death only got her into it faster. By the time Blac was twelve, his mother had spent more time on the floors of abandoned drug houses, and performing sexual acts for drugs in alleys, than she did at home.

  Blac practically raised himself from that point on, and did a poor job of it. By the time he was sixteen, he had been in and out of juvie so frequently they should’ve given him a key.

  He did time at eighteen for aggravated assault, at twenty-three for breaking and entering, at twenty-six for armed robbery and possession of a controlled substance, and now in four days, he would be released from his last violation, the possession and distribution rap. It was a good thing nobody ever found out it was him that shot that white man on the North Side ten years ago, or he probably would’ve been in jail for life.

  Since he could remember, Blac’s life had been one big fucked-up ball of hate, anger, hopelessness, and disappointment. But before he was thrown in prison the last time, he thought things would change. As always, he needed money. He had managed to get hooked up with an up-and-coming drug dealer named Cutty.

  Cutty was short, five foot six on tippy toes. He had short, buzzed black hair, chocolate-milk-colored skin, and a lazy eye that made him always look like he was speaking to someone he wasn’t. He was in his midthirties, but with not a strand of hair on his face, he looked like he hadn’t even gone through puberty.

  Cutty was mean. It was rumored that he had been the one who killed Booky Bear, the dealer in control of the territory Cutty now ran.

  Rumor had it that Cutty walked up to Booky in an alley while he was screwing a prostitute in the backseat of his car and stuck the 9mm to the back of Booky’s head, firing two shots into his skull.

  Blood painted the screaming woman’s face. Cutty told her to shut her mouth once, and when she wouldn’t, he emptied the rest of the magazine in her. At least that’s how rumor had it.

  Back then, Cutty was trying to make a name for himself, and those were the worst kind of criminals—the ones with something to prove. At the same time he was looking for people to distribute his product deeper into the community.

  Blac was down. He would start his own little operation, taking a cut of the drugs he sold for Cutty, but Blac had no startup cash.

  “I don’t normally do consignment,” Cutty said one day, puffing on a burned-down nub of a cigar. “But considering you ain’t got no cash, it’s the only way you can get product. You down for that?”

  “Hell, yeah,” Blac said, overly excited.

  “Consignment ain’t no punk, just so you know,” Cutty said. “You don’t get my money, plus my profit back to me in ten days, somebody gonna end up dead, and it won’t be me.” Cutty was smiling. The three men standing around him were not.

  “Okay,” Blac said.

  “No. I really need for you to understand this shit. Bones,” Cutty said, snapping his fingers at one of the men.

  The man who stepped forward was tall, thin, and muscular. He walked over to Blac, pulled a Glock from the front of his jeans, and pressed the tip of the barrel flush to Blac’s temple. Blac immediately started to tremble.

  “Bones here is a killer, like all my men. If I gave the word, he’d put a bullet in your head and wouldn’t blink when your blood hit his face. You hear me?”

  Blac nodded, trying not to mess himself, he was so nervous.

  Cutty waved a hand, and Bones shoved the gun back into his jeans and backed off.

  That afternoon, Blac drove away in Theresa’s car with $150,000 worth of crack cocaine in his trunk. Blac hadn’t known that Theresa’s brake lights weren’t working. The cops who had been following behind him for four blocks finally flashed their lights, hit the siren, and pulled Blac over.

  Because he was nervous as hell, acting more like he had a dead body stashed in the trunk instead of $150K worth of crack, the cops asked Blac to step out and they searched his vehicle.

  Before being sentenced, Blac could’ve struck a deal—told the cops where the drugs came from—and they would’ve reduced his sentence considerably. But Blac wasn’t a snitch.

  A week into his incarceration, Blac was doing laundry with a few other guys. After pulling his clothes out of the dryer, he looked up to find himself suddenly alone. A moment later, three hulking, tattooed men with evil expressions walked into the room and stood around him.

  Yes, Blac thought. This was when he’d die for losing Cutty’s drugs.

  He set his laundry basket down and tried to accept his fate. “Cutty sent ya’ll, huh.”

  “Yup,” one of the men said. He had a diagonal line of scar tissue dissecting his face.

  “Okay. Let’s get this shit over wit’,” Blac said.

  “Cutty sent us to thank you for not rattin’ him out. He suspended your deadline while you locked up,” the man said. “And while you in, you ain’t got nothing to worry about from these fools in here. Cutty got your back, ’cause you work for him now.”

  “Really?” Blac said, grateful. “Okay, right.”

  “But like I said, Cutty suspending your deadline. He ain’t wiping that shit away. You lost one hundred fifty thousand dollars’ worth of his product. Snitch or not, you still owe him. So you get out, that ten-day clock gonna start ticking again, and you gonna need to get him back his money, or same outcome applies,” the man said, holding his hand as though he were pointing a gun. “You gonna end up dead.”

  As Blac lay in the dark on the bunk above Eric’s, he was thankful for the man sleeping beneath him. Eric said this newfound brother of his, Cobi, was filthy loaded. Blac didn’t know how he would capitalize on that situation, but he was a criminal, a swindler, a manipulating thief. His fat
her was before him, his grandfather before that, and the line could’ve continued even as far back as slave days. Blac knew Eric and his rich brother Cobi were just about his best and last hope of staying alive.

  23

  Austen stood by the door of her condo, her arms folded across her chest, as a couple of burly men in brown uniforms moved out the last two dining room chairs.

  She had posted pictures of the antique table and chairs for sale at $3,000 on Craigslist.

  Ten minutes later, the phone calls started pouring in.

  The first to arrive was a young couple, a tall, thin, boyish-faced doctor and his pregnant wife. The two walked in and their faces lit up when they saw the table and chairs.

  “It’s beautiful,” Austen heard the woman say to her husband as she lovingly rubbed her round belly.

  “Yeah, it is,” he said, then turned to Austen. “Three thousand, right?”

  “Yes. And the price is firm,” Austen said.

  Austen shut the door, then pulled the thin wad of thirty crisp one-hundred-dollar bills from her jeans pocket and fingered them as she walked through the living room and dining room. She stopped all of a sudden in the empty space, feeling a chill. She looked up from the money in her hands to see that the room was as completely bare as the day she bought the place.

  All she had now was her bedroom furniture and the small flat-screen that sat on the chest of drawers. How long before she would have to sell that? Where would she sleep after that? On the floor? Would she even have a floor underneath her to consider, or would the bank have taken her place by then?

  Austen felt a single tear crawl down her face. She swatted at it angrily with the back of the hand holding the money, feeling as if allowing herself to cry would be admitting that she was defeated. She was up to her neck in it this time, but there had to be a way out.

  Austen took a step toward the bedroom when a knock came at her door.

  She opened the door, expecting the young couple to tell her they had forgotten something.