Real Wifeys: Get Money

by Mink, Meesha

  “Yooo, exactly. Before I got caught I wouldn’t have had no doubts you would hold me down while I did this bid. But now? You think I don’t know you mad at me? You think I’m stupid or some shit, Luscious?”

  Did he know about Has? I gripped the lotion bottle so damn hard that the cap blew off and lotion squirted out like cum milked from a dick. “So . . . what are you saying?” I asked again. “You got caught fucking around but now I’m not be trusted? What the fuck kind of logic is that? Nigga, make sense!”

  “Calm down, Luscious. Damn!” Make$ snapped. “I can’t sit in here wondering if you paying me back and on top of it I’m footing all the bills. So I want you to move out the apartment until I get out.”

  “What?!!” I jumped to my feet and flung the bottle of lotion across the room to crash into the one of the wood-framed mirrors flanking the window. The mirror cracked like a spiderweb.

  “Yo, Luscious, like my mother said—”

  “Your mah-fer.” I mocked his mispronunciation, making a face as I paced so hard that my towel fell from my body. Oh, I was hot.

  “I’m just sayin—”

  “I’m just sayin’, you little mah-ferfucker,” I snapped sarcastically. “So because you fucked up with Goldie and now she got you deep in some bullshit, I’m being punished like a child for y’all shit. Get the fuck outta here.”

  Humph, that hood upbringing was coming all out of me.

  “I’m not breaking up with you, I’m just sayin’—”

  “Nigga, you ain’t saying shit,” I snapped, waving my hand like he was there for me to nudge him in the forehead. “No, no, my bad. You are saying something. You saying, ‘Fuck me.’”

  This nigga just cut me off because his side-chick sent his ass to prison. Because Goldie sent him to prison I was ass out? No ends? What the fuck?

  “What is this really about? Like wh-wh-what the fuck you really tryna say?” I asked, shoving my BlackBerry between my shoulder and ear to clap my hands together so hard that they stung. “I put up with your shit including you getting locked up for being involved in the rape of your ho . . . and you fucking dumping me because you’re scared I’ll fuck around while you locked up.”

  “No female is to be trusted but I’m not dumping you, I’m just cutting back on your funds until I get out.”

  I raised both my eyebrows, not giving a fuck anymore. “No, you lame-ass nigga. The female you trusted got your ass in lockup.”

  “Lame-ass?”

  And I paused. I took a moment to decide just which way to flow with this shit. Go all in? Let a nigga slide? Try to get him back on board with the program later?

  Shit flashed back to me like I was watching a picture slideshow.

  His neglect when he was on the road.

  Click.

  Wondering about random chicks hanging around the studio when I popped in.

  Click.

  Random gossip on the blogs.

  Click.

  Suffering through his family’s crazy drama.

  Click.

  The STD he gave me.

  Click.

  Catching him eating Goldie out in the bathroom at Club 973.

  Click.

  Still working and probably fucking with Goldie even after I caught them.

  Click.

  Locked up for what the fuck ever went down between him Goldie and his entourage on the road.

  Click.

  And now . . . now this Negro was cutting me off because he had to do a bid behind Goldie turning his ass in.

  Click.

  Now where they do that dumb shit at?

  I’VE. HAD. ENOUGH.

  “You damn right, you’s a lame-ass nigga,” I said. “Fuck you and that bitch for fucking up my life. You got just what your ass deserved for messing with that trick behind my back. The unjust don’t ever prosper, and if she did get raped, then fucking boo-hoo for her trifling ass too. I’m not shedding two tears in a bucket for neither one of y’all motherfuckers.

  “Fuck you, bitch. I’m looking at years in the motherfucker and that’s how you coming at me!” Make$ blasted into the phone.

  I could practically see the veins bulging in his tattooed neck, but I just shrugged. This nigger had fronted on me for the last time. It was time for shit to get realer than ever.

  “I wish I was there right now, I could choke the shit out of you.”

  I laughed. “Ain’t you got enough charges?” I joked.

  “And you got jokes, Luscious? You fucking joking with your raggedy stripper ass using me to come up.”

  “Use you? Nigga, you played me, and you was so busy playing out there in them streets, Mr. Platinum, that you didn’t even see that bitch revving up to run your ass over.” I hustled my butt-naked ass into the kitchen and grabbed the box of garbage bags from the pantry.

  “Man, shut up, Luscious. Think you so smart, college girl.”

  He said that shit like it was an insult.

  “College dropout, actually . . . and still smarter than you and Goldie combined.” I went to the guest room and started yanking all his shit out the closet with my free hand, shoving it into the garbage bags.

  “Since you so smart, then get your almost highly educated ass out my fucking apartment!”

  I snatched his fifty pairs or better of boxers from the top drawer of the dresser and then slam-dunked them in the bag. “The only thing getting the fuck out this apartment is your shit.”

  “Bitch, you crazy. I’ll call my attorney and have your ass thrown the fuck out.”

  Next went his dozen Gucci belts.

  “No, it’s your meth head–looking mama who’s a crazy bitch and your attorney who’s a dumb bitch if he don’t understand that your bad credit–having ass got the apartment in my name. Just like the car and the gun.”

  The line was quiet. I paused. For a second, I let it sink in that this was the man I loved with all my heart just a little over a month ago. And now? Now we were warring like enemies. I didn’t want to let it get to me, but it hit that this shit was sad as hell. “I hope that redbone pussy was worth all this shit.”

  “It was.”

  Pause.

  I hung up the phone. There wasn’t shit else to be said.

  Love had no guarantees, and when it came to a heart being broken there weren’t warranties, either.

  I pulled up in front of Peaches’ house and popped the trunk of the Jag. It took me every bit of three minutes to dump the six garbage bags from my trunk and backseat onto her porch. As soon as I was done, I hopped back into the driver’s seat and laid on the horn.

  Peaches’ front door opened and she fell her little ass over the bags and face-first onto the brick porch.

  “That’s all your son’s shit for you to keep and worship until his ass get out of jail,” I yelled out the window.

  I didn’t even give her ass a chance to get back to her feet before I pulled off. I didn’t have to deal with her anymore. And everything I was allowing Make$ to get from my apartment was in those bags. I checked my personal bank account. I had just enough money in it to pay the bills for two months and then I was on my own, or it was back in the roach motel with Michel or back to my family. Shit.

  I wondered if Make$ had any money stashed around the apartment . . . or in his safe-deposit box that I had a key to. It was worth a check.

  Bzzzzzz . . . Bzzzzzz . . . Bzzzzzz . . .

  I picked up my BlackBerry and risked opening the new text message as I shifted my eyes back and forth from the road to the cell. It was Has.

  Yo, where u at?

  The last thing on my mind was dick, and so I didn’t even bother to answer him. I pulled to a stop at a red light and I felt the tension across the back of my neck and my shoulders. I couldn’t believe that everything in my life had changed so drastically. From being in love and financially secure to being manless, jobless, and damn near homeless.

  Right there at the corner of a busy intersection, I felt the weight of all the betrayals and rejections pu
sh my shoulders down. It was almost like something inside me fucking snapped. I covered my face with my hands and cried like a baby. Car horns honked. People cussed me out through their open windows as they pulled from behind me and passed me by.

  I sat there and gave myself that one last cry of release to keep crazy from holding me close and not letting me go.

  As far as I was concerned, this was all Goldie’s fault. Everything in me was locked and loaded on that bitch. If it was the last thing I did, the bitch was going to pay.

  7

  One Year Later

  POW! POW! POW! POW!

  I steadied my hand as I squinted my eyes through the goggles and locked them on the stationary target twenty-five yards away against the far wall of the indoor shooting range. My new .357 felt good in my hands. I still had the nine-millimeter I brought for Make$ in my name, but this baby was my favorite. I couldn’t believe I used to be afraid of guns and now . . .

  I fired off two more rounds.

  POW! POW!

  I envisioned Goldie’s face on the paper target and damn near snapped my wrist in two firing at the center of her forehead.

  POW!

  I pretended that her blood and brains splattered out the back of the hole in her head to soak the wall. The thought of that made me smile as I pressed the button to electronically move the target up the lane to my booth. I removed my goggles, earplugs, and earmuffs just as it stopped in front of me.

  Every single bullet fired was in one of three areas: the head, the heart, or the crotch.

  “Shit, who pissed you off?”

  I looked over my shoulder to find two white dudes in tight jeans and foil-covered T-shirts watching me. Lots of white dudes love them some dark meat, and with the short shorts I had on, all of my thick thighs were on display. Back when I was stripping I got more money and attention from them than from most black men. Still, I wasn’t into fulfilling any slave fantasies or giving them a chance to get pissed and call me a nigger.

  I just curved my glossy lips into a smile and turned and gave them my back as I removed the magazine from the handgun and placed both pieces in its case before closing it securely.

  “Y’all have a good day,” I said to the men still standing there watching my ass. I started to do one of my ass tricks, but my days of performing were done—especially for free.

  “Have a good day, Dirty Harry,” Sal, the owner of the shooting range called behind me as I strolled toward the glass door of the building.

  I’d been going to the range ever since Make$ got locked up last year, and I even had a club membership. Everyone there knew me by my legal first name, Harriet, and shortened it to Dirty Harry because I was a damn good shot. Fuck with it.

  “You too, Sal,” I called over my shoulder as I took my shades from the back pocket of my jean shorts and slid them on my face to block the summer sun.

  After securing the gun case in the trunk of my Jag, where I kept it, I climbed behind the wheel and soon I was zooming out of the parking lot, ready to hop on Route 1/9 to leave Jersey City behind and head back to Newark.

  I let the windows down and enjoyed the feel of the warm air blowing against my face as I shifted my whip like I was a race car driver. I turned up the volume on the radio to hear the last hour of The Breakfast Club morning show on Power 105.1 with crazy-ass Angela Yee, Charlamagne Tha God, and DJ Envy. The sounds of my jam from last summer filled the speaker.

  “Baby, I can be your motivation—”

  I turned the volume all the way down. I couldn’t forget that song was playing when I caught Make$ and Goldie in the bathroom at Club 973. Now I hated that song just as much as I hated that bitch.

  Fucking slut. I pressed my foot down on the gas pedal, zooming forward as I picked up my cell phone and hit number two on my speed dial.

  “Whassup, Luscious?”

  My hand tightened on the cell phone. “What’s up with your boss Goldie?” I asked.

  “Nothing new to report.”

  I eased off 1/9 and made the turn onto Market Street. “Well, I pay you good money for information, and it’s been a minute since you brought me something different. Get me something. Anything. Everything.”

  “Got it.”

  I ended the call and tossed the phone onto the passenger seat.

  Let’s be clear.

  This year had done abso-fucking-lutely nothing about dimming my plans to take Goldie’s ass out. Instead, it had fed my hate like a baby. Now my plans for revenge against that bitch had stronger legs. Everybody know revenge is best served up cold. She would never see me coming. And I wanted to be there right at the height of her downfall to remind her of the knife she stabbed into my back.

  I turned the volume back upon the radio and 50 Cent’s “I Get Money” was playing. It felt like my anthem, because getting money was number two on my mind, behind finishing Goldie’s ass.

  I was just veering onto Springfield Avenue when I pulled my Jag over and I turned that shit all the way up, hopping out the car to party right there on the street like I was in the club. Fuck it. I felt like it. And I was into that shit. Eyes closed. Fingers snapping. Hips gyrating. Weave swaying. All of it.

  People blew they horns or hollered out their car windows at me.

  I didn’t give a fuck.

  “Yo, Luscious, you in a good mood, baby!”

  I looked over my shoulder at a convertible Bentley double-parked by my Jag. I laughed at one of the biggest dope boys I knew, Killer Cain, sitting there posted up in his shit watching me. I walked over to the car.

  “I stay in a good mood, Cain. What’s up?” I asked, bending down to lean on his doorframe.

  Cain was big and black as hell but cute in the face like Cedric the Entertainer. Even when I was with Make$ he would throw out subliminals that he wanted me. I had no doubt that this nigga probably had more dick than Make$ but I never fucked with it. Loyal Luscious had been deep in love. Deep and dumb.

  “What’s up with you?” he asked, leaning over to eye my thighs and hips in the jean shorts I wore with a striped racer-back tee. I was on my casual steez because I had mad errands to run and no time for heels and total flyness.

  I turned and reached down in my car for a glossy club flyer to hand him. “You coming to the comedy show tonight?” I asked, handing him the flyer between my fingers. “You can bring whoever you planned on fucking tonight.”

  Cain took the flyer with a laugh. “I would love to be fucking you every night, baby,” he said.

  I reached over and stroked his bearded cheek as I shook my head. “I’d rather have you as my friend, baby,” I told him honestly.

  He turned his head and licked my palm playfully as he winked at me.

  I patted his cheek. “Don’t be out here licking every pussy offered up to you. Everything that look good ain’t good. Right?”

  Cain leaned back in his seat, still eyeing me. “I’d risk it.”

  I turned and opened my car door. “You coming tonight?” I asked again as I climbed behind the wheel.

  “Yup-yup,” he said, blowing his horn before he pulled off.

  I headed straight to Club Marquee on Clinton Avenue. Before I pulled into the gated parking lot, I looked up at the small marquee over the club and smiled:

  CLUB MARQUEE AND YUMMY ENTERTAINMENT

  PRESENT

  ALL-STAR COMEDY SHOW

  I blew the horn as I turned the Jag and pulled through the open gate to park next to Eve’s red convertible Miata. Yummy Entertainment was made up of me, Eve, and Michel. And we were running this party-promoting shit. We did it all: parties, fashion shows, hair shows, comedy shows, car shows, boat rides, and holiday balls. Once every other month or better there was a Yummy Entertainment event going on in Newark or one of the surrounding cities.

  In the last six or seven months word had hit the street that our events were on point. We worked hard to build our reputation and our plan was to kick things up, pool our money, and get into bringing more big-name talent to the city.
We wanted to leave these small venues behind and compete with the promoters packing Symphony Hall–type shit. Hell, NJPAC-type shit. Fuck it. Shoot big. Go hard or go the fuck home. Shit or get off the pot.

  I walked into the club with a fuchsia patent leather tote in my hand. I paused to hug the owner, Maria, before I continued in to find Eve and Michel setting up the room. “Morning, y’all,” I said, holding up my finger as my cell phone vibrated in my hand.

  “Hello.”

  “Hi, Harriet, this your mother . . . in case you forgot.”

  I smiled and shook my head. “Hi, Mama, I couldn’t ever forget you,” I said, reaching in my bag for the envelope I’d slipped inside of it as soon as I left the bank.

  “We’re having a dinner here for Aunt Mack this Sunday. Your daddy and I want to see you there. Are you coming?” she asked, crossing every t and dotting every i in the way she talked.

  “I sent over a couple of tickets to the comedy show tonight,” I said lightly, taking the stack of money from the bank envelope. “Are y’all coming?”

  “No, I told you we have a church board meeting tonight.”

  I swallowed my disappointment as I split the nearly five grand in cash into three piles. The weekend-long car show we had last week had did us well. Even after paying for the talent, the venue fee, the cost of advertising, and sticking to our agreement to bank twenty-five percent of our profits, we still had a little over a grand apiece. Good money and a good time. Who could ask for anything more?

  I handed Eve and Michel their money and a folded copy of the bank statement. Everything was aboveboard. There wasn’t shit one of us knew that the other two didn’t know.

  “I’ll see what can I do, Ma,” I said, folding my money and sliding it into my back pocket.

  “See you Sunday, Harriet . . . and don’t you bring Eve,” she stressed before she hung up the phone.

  I sat the cell phone onto the table as Michel and Eve shared a long look. I cut my eyes at them as I pulled out my iPad. “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” they both said, turning to finish arranging the chairs and tables.