Larceny

by Jason Poole

  At one time we were considered almost an item. We had the most fun together. Although I still saw her every now and then, I still couldn’t put her down with my move. It had been rumored that she was now dating an NBA star who played for the Washington Wizards. When I found that out, I just knew there was no way to fit her into my plans.

  There was also Keda, who I called my gangster bitch. She had the total package: a pretty face, pretty eyes, nice body, nice job, education, good pussy, bomb-ass head, and was down for whatever. There was one area Keda lacked: she had two little boys from a previous relationship—not to mention they were bad as hell—and kids were not a part of this move.

  Lastly, there was Peppa. Pep was cool. She fit all the criteria but only one thing: she was too much of a hood rat and loved the party life. Pep was the type of female who would walk into a business meeting with a Donna Karan Spandex suit and tennis shoes on. I definitely couldn’t use Pep.

  What I needed was a straight-up educated but down-for-whatever, no-children female. Face it; I needed a real live straight-up bitch like in Bonnie and Clyde.

  Ring, ring, ring. As I got up off the floor from doing my daily routine crunches to answer the phone, before I could even say “Who is it?” I heard a panicky voice.

  “Hello? Jovan? Jovan! Are you there?”

  “Yeah, I’m here. Who’s this?”

  “It’s me, Mark.”

  “Damn, Mark, I’m supposed to be off today, remember?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know, but right now I need you. It’s urgent.”

  Damn, usually I was the one telling a lawyer I needed him. “Okay, what’s up?” I asked.

  “Well, I need you to come down to the office and categorize a few cases for me and help format this motion for this evidentiary hearing we got coming up. I’ll be calling you from court, giving you certain cases in between the hearings, and you can fax them to me,” Mark said.

  “Damn, Mark, why’d you wait so late to file this motion?” I asked.

  “Because the court didn’t give the proper notice of service that one of my clients was just granted this evidentiary hearing on appeal.”

  “So you mean to tell me this is an appellate case?”

  “Yeah,” he said, “and I’ve got these fuckers by the balls.”

  I laughed. “That’s good then. Who’s the client you’re representing?”

  “His name is Bilal. Bilal Davis.”

  Sonya

  As Jovan and I entered the restaurant, we were greeted by a young, shapely white waitress.

  “Hello, and how are you? Welcome to Phillips waterfront restaurant. Today’s menu includes our lavish seafood buffet of grilled tuna, baked salmon, lobster bisque, filet trout, and the soup of the day is shark fin chowder. The patio will be open until three o’clock, and we have a smoking and non-smoking section inside,” the waitress said.

  I wondered if Jovan smoked, because that would be a complete turn-off. I looked at his lips to see if I could see any traces of purple that most smokers have. My cousin has the darkest lips ever from smoking, and every time we go out, it’s a must that she cover them up with bright red lipstick. Since I wasn’t able to detect any signs of smoking on Jovan, like the smell of his clothes, yellow-stained teeth, purple lips, and a need for a fresh pack of Newports, I assumed that he didn’t smoke.

  Jovan interrupted the young waitress as she continued to tell us about damn near everything the restaurant had.

  “Excuse me. We would like to be seated outside on the patio if you don’t mind,” he said.

  The young waitress looked at Jovan as if to say “Why in the hell did you cut me off like that?” I liked that in Jovan: a sense of aggressiveness.

  When we were seated, I thought I’d add a little humor to the situation. “Thanks. For a minute I thought she was gonna tell us how the place was built and give us a grand tour,” I said.

  We both laughed, and then Jovan said, “You better be quiet, ’cause here she comes with the menus.”

  “Shhh. I thought she already told us the whole damn menu.” We both laughed again.

  I liked that about Jovan: he carried himself very well. I could see that we were starting to connect and feel a little more comfortable with each other.

  Jovan

  Bilal Davis. All I could do was think back and reminisce about the last time I saw Bilal. It was the winter of 1985, and I had just turned 15 years old. He was from Northeast D.C., over there on Sixth and K, across the street from Wilson Elementary School, an area which would later be known as the Gold Mine that helped D.C.’s biggest drug dealer, Ray Edmonson, rise to multimillion-dollar status.

  My grandmother lived a few blocks over on Ninth and G, right across the street from Golden Elementary and Sherwood Recreational playground. This is where all the major players and future NBA stars played basketball—people like Sherman Douglas, who played for the Boston Celtics, Curt and Charles Smith, Lawrence Morton, and Michael Gram. On weekends, some of the players from the Georgetown Hoyas would play against local drug dealers in exchange for certain gifts.

  My favorite was to see Big Fat dunk on any and everybody that got in his way. Sometimes my big cousin Poochie and Uncle Bobby would go over to play, and I’d watch them, along with almost every pretty female from around the way. The playground was always packed with pretty females, but as usual, they were all too old for me, and besides, pussy wasn’t the first thing on my agenda back then.

  It was a cold day in November of ’85, and I was at my grandmother’s house, bored as hell. No one else was there but grandma and me. My father was a smooth nigga, and he wasn’t around that much. He was mostly outta town on some type of business—at least that’s what I thought. As I got older, I came to find out that he was on the run for some bank robberies he did back in the late ’70s. This is why, when he came by grandma’s to see me, he wouldn’t stay long, but he’d give me a few dollars, throw a couple of jabs at me to make sure I knew how to fight, drop me a few jewels, and step off.

  The one jewel that stayed with me the most was when he’d say, “Trust no one, master your condition, and keep all suckers in the bounds of moderation.” Of course, I wouldn’t understand any of this shit until later on in life when it became reality.

  Sonya

  Jovan ordered baked salmon filet with sun-dried tomatoes and a side order of creamed spinach, along with a glass of freshly squeezed grapefruit juice. I could see from his order that Jovan was very alert toward his health, which was something that we both had in common. I wondered if he drank occasionally, like myself. That would be a plus.

  When it was my turn to order, I got a seafood salad with blue cheese dressing and a side order of steamed shrimp, along with a glass of lemon ice tea.

  “Got a big appetite, huh?” Jovan asked me.

  “Yeah, I was in a rush this morning and wasn’t able to eat a thing.”

  A slight grin came on his face. “So that’s why you took my invitation to lunch. You wasn’t even thinking about getting to know me better, huh?”

  Before I answered, I blushed a little. “Look, Mr. Smarty Pants, if I didn’t want to get to know you, I would have made the first right on Pennsylvania Avenue, headed home, fixed myself my own seafood salad, and watched the daytime soaps. And for the record, I must find you somewhat interesting, because I don’t miss my soaps for nobody.”

  “Well, excuse me.”

  We both laughed while looking each other in the eyes. I wondered if he was thinking what I was thinking, did he feel like I felt, and did he want what I wanted.

  “Well, Sonya, where are you from?”

  “I grew up in the northeast over in Trinidad, all the way up until I got in the ninth grade, and then we moved uptown to Webster Street Northwest.”

  “Is that where you went to school?”

  “Yeah, I went to Roosevelt High, and I stayed there until I graduated. I had a rough time in school mostly because my mother stayed in the hospital a lot. She had cancer and died when I was
in my last year of school.”

  “Damn, boo, I’m so sorry to hear that.”

  “It’s cool. I’ve learned to deal with it. I can’t let that hold me back from achieving higher things in life. In fact, I use it as motivation,” I told Jovan.

  “That’s good. Do you have any brothers and sisters?”

  “My brother is—hold up. I just met you. I shouldn’t be telling you all my personal business like this.”

  “Sonya, your business only becomes personal when you hold it in; and when you hold it in too long, sometimes it may hinder you from getting what you really want in life.”

  At that moment, whatever he said sounded good, and I thought about it for a second, especially when he said it may hinder me from getting what I really wanted in life. Right at that moment what I really wanted was to get to know Jovan better, so I continued with his little interview and anticipated the wait for my turn to ask the questions.

  “Okay, I have a younger brother. His name is Anthony, but we call him Li’l Tony. He’s locked up down in Lorton, Virginia, behind the wall. He’s been in prison since he was sixteen and he’s twenty-four now. He got thirty years to life for killing a guy who tried to rape me.”

  While I was telling Jovan about Li’l Tony, my eyes started to get watery, even though it had been a long time since that day when Li’l Tony heard me screaming in the alley on Sixteenth Street. He came to my rescue, only to see that the man he thought was his father was holding my throat and choking the life outta me while pulling down my pants and trying to take my virginity.

  Jovan

  Bilal stopped over at my grandmother’s house to see if I was coming outside. He had his little brother, Jamal, with him. Jamal was eight years old, and Bilal had nicknamed him Mal-Mal. He was the only true love Bilal had. Everything Bilal did, he did it for Mal-Mal. Their father was killed in a bank robbery shootout with the feds, which left Ms. Cookie, their mother, a nervous wreck. She didn’t know how to take care of her two boys because she had always been dependent on Bilal’s pops. To make matters worse, they were both dependent on heroin, so when he was killed, that left Ms. Cookie, the worst addict that northeast D.C. ever had, to take care of her two boys alone.

  Ms. Cookie never had any food in the house, so Bilal was the one who had to take care of Mal-Mal. He would go to the Safeway Grocery Market on Seventh and H Street Northeast and steal whatever kind of food they could eat without cooking because they didn’t even have gas on in the house.

  When Bilal and I used to go down to McBride’s Department Store to steal, we would see Ms. Cookie on the corner of Eighth and H Street, nodding and scratching. Once when he went up to tell her about Mal-Mal being sick, she lifted her head up real fast as if she was concerned and then said, “Baby, you got ten dollars so I can get my fix?”

  Bilal began to hate Ms. Cookie. He used to say, “Jovan, one day I’m gonna be rich and I’m gonna take Mal-Mal to Disneyland, Sea World, and all them other places parents take their children. I’ma get a real big house for Mal-Mal and me, and that bitch Cookie better not ask me for shit!”

  Although we both knew that Bilal was dreaming and it would never happen, I still had to add to it to keep his mind off of Ms. Cookie.

  “What about me?” I asked. “Whatcha gonna do for your boy?”

  “Oh, I’ma get you a white Nissan Maxima, about fifty pair of New Balances, and a fat gold rope like Run DMC.,” he told me. “Yeah, nigga, it just gonna be Mal-Mal, you, and me.”

  Sonya

  Jovan held my hand tight while I sat in silence for a moment, and then he said, “Sonya, if you don’t want to continue, we could move onto another subject. I understand how it is, believe me, and when it comes my turn to talk, you will hear things similar to your story.”

  For some reason, I kept feeling a sense of security with Jovan, as though his words were sincere and his heart was pure. He was the perfect gentleman. It was all too good to be true. I couldn’t wait until it was my turn to ask him questions.

  “Okay now, Sonya, is it all right if I ask how old you are?”

  I gave a slight smile and said, “How old do you think I am?”

  “Well, you definitely don’t look old. In fact, for a minute I was kinda skeptical about asking you to lunch because you look so young,” Jovan said.

  I laughed. “Yeah, right.”

  “No, but seriously, you are a very gorgeous woman and also in tremendous shape. I wouldn’t care if you were sixty years old. I’d still ask you to lunch.”

  I laughed again. “Now you’re pushing your luck.”

  “Well, you know all I can do is try.”

  “Don’t worry. You’re doing a good job; and, baby, for the record, I’m twenty-seven and my birthday is April third.”

  Oh, no. Did I call him baby? I hope he doesn’t take that as a sign of weakness. I barely know this man and I’m calling him baby already. What in the hell has come over me?

  “So you just turned twenty-seven?” he asked me.

  “Yeah, but sometimes I feel like I’m eighty-seven.”

  “Damn, sweetheart, you going through that much drama?” We both laughed.

  No, he didn’t just call me sweetheart. This little lunch date is going well.

  “No, I ain’t going through that much drama, but I do have a very difficult job,” I said.

  “Oh, so you do work.”

  “Yes, I do. Why’d you say that?”

  “Oh, because earlier you said something about watching the soaps.”

  “No, baby.” Oops, there I go again. “I watch the soaps whenever I’m off, and sometimes when I’m at work, I tape them so I can watch them when I come home from work.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  “I’ve been doing that for years.”

  “So, what type of work do you do?”

  “I work at BET Studios. I’m the assistant to the producer.”

  “Damn, so you call the shots, huh?”

  “No, not really. What I do is run around like a mad woman for the man who calls the shots. Remember I’m an assistant.”

  Again we both laughed. Damn, it felt good to be in a man’s presence—a fine-ass man at that. Little did Jovan know that if he kept up the good work, then maybe this little lunch date would turn into a dinner date.

  Jovan

  When Bilal and Mal-Mal came into my grandma’s house, you could tell that Mal-Mal hadn’t eaten. He was quiet and he looked cold. I went upstairs, got him one of my old sweatshirts and a coat I had back when I was young. Grandma always kept those types of things. She didn’t believe in throwing nothing away. I then fixed us some Oodles of Noodles and Steak-umms that Grandma kept in her freezer for me to cook when she was gone. I made Mal-Mal and Bilal two sandwiches apiece and a bowl of Oodles of Noodles. Mal-Mal ate all of his food but Bilal didn’t. He wrapped his sandwiches up just in case he wasn’t able to find Mal-Mal anything to eat later. Bilal was taking on a big responsibility, because no matter what was going on, he always made sure Mal-Mal was all right.

  While Bilal and I went downstairs to play video games, Mal-Mal stayed upstairs and ate cookies and watched cartoons. I was killing Bilal on Ms. Pac-Man. We played a couple more games and then we started to talk.

  “Hey, let’s go down to Hechinger Mall and steal some cologne and leather belts,” Bilal said.

  “What the fuck are we gonna do with cologne and belts?”

  Bilal laughed and said, “We gonna sell ’em, stupid!”

  “To who?” I asked him.

  “To the fucking hustlers on Ninth and I, and the ones on Orleans Place. They love that type of shit.”

  “How you know?”

  Bilal dropped his head to his chest before he said, “’Cause my mother’s a fuckin’ junkie and she do it all the time. That’s how I know.”

  So we all walked down to Hechinger Mall and went into the Safeway Foods first. We stole enough food to feed Mal-Mal for about a week. So far our shoplifting spree was going good. No police were in sight,
and no one would ever suspect two teenagers with an eight-year-old would be stealing like it’s going outta style.

  When we went into the Cavalier Men’s Shop, we used Mal-Mal’s innocent looks to get what we wanted. The salesperson was a fat, pudgy lady who looked like she was in her thirties. She was the only salesperson on the floor at the time. Bilal must have done this before, because he knew right where the belts and cologne were.

  “Go ’head, Mal-Mal. Do your thang,” Bilal told him.

  Mal-Mal went over to the lady to distract her and said, “Excuse me, pretty lady.”

  “Why, hello, young handsome fella. How can I help you?” the saleslady asked Mal-Mal.

  “My daddy’s birthday is tomorrow. Can you help me pick out a hat?” Mal-Mal said.

  “Why, I sure can, little man. Come on over here with me.”

  The fat lady took Mal-Mal over to the hat rack, while Bilal and I opened our coats. Each of us wrapped five Pierre Cardin leather belts around our bodies. Then we stuffed our inside and outside coat pockets with bottles of Ralph Lauren, Geoffrey Beene, Stetson, and English Leather colognes.

  When it was time for us to leave, Bilal went over to Mal-Mal and said, “Hey, you brought Daddy a hat last year. Why don’t you get him something else?”

  “Okay, I’ll be back. Hey, pretty lady, when I come back, can you help me pick out a pair of gloves?” Mal-Mal said with his innocent look and whiney voice.

  “Why, I sure can, little man. You just promise to come on back, you hear.”

  Damn, Mal-Mal did that shit too perfect, but I already knew where he got it from. Ms. Cookie used to make him do that whenever she was “ill” and trying to get her fix.