by iiKane
He nodded, like a shy fifth grader.
“Come on.”
As they walked—everybody trying to keep pace with her strut—Guy remarked, “Skye, you didn’t have to fire her. It was a simple mistake. You can’t keep firing everybody baby.”
“Then hire better people, Guy. I despise incompetence, so don’t make excuses for it. If you can’t do the job, why the fuck should you have it?”
The shackles had Bob at a significant disadvantage. He couldn’t walk—he had to shuffle, shuffle, hop, shuffle, shuffle, hop.
Skye stopped and looked back, trying to keep her impatience tempered.
“Bobby, honey I know it’s difficult, but you really have to keep up, ‘kay?”
Shuffle, shuffle, hop, shuffle, shuffle, hop.
When Georgie saw her approach, the strobe light seemed to slow time, giving him time to savor the first impression: the leather-clad curves, the nasty walk, the whip in her hand, still dragging it like a tail. And then he saw Bob and he laughed.
“Shorty even got slaves,” he thought.
The flash of his smile caught her attention. She glanced at him, while still talking to Guy. The look wasn’t long, but the eye contact suggested her curiosity was piqued.
“Guy, how are you?!”
“Sid, you son of a bitch! C’mere!”
The two friends hugged and chuckled, while Georgie stared directly at Skye, a cocky smirk affixed, but Skye disdained returning the attention.
After a quick rib or two, Sid said, “Listen, this is a friend of mine I’d like you to meet, Skye.”
Georgie, feeling like he needed no introduction, preempted Sid, took Skye’s hand and said, “I’m Giorgio,” then tried to kiss her hand.
She quickly slid it away.
“I…no. Who even does that?” she spat, her cute little nose wrinkled with disgust.
Georgie chuckled to play it off, but his charms had never been so bluntly rebuffed. His ego got chinked.
Sid cleared his throat.
“Giorgio’s a stylist, one of the best.”
Skye looked him up and down dismissively.
“Never heard of him.”
“You will,” Georgie retorted, bravado bubbling.
Skye suppressed a smirk then finally blessed him with a direct gaze.
“You do hair? Hmmm… you don’t look like the fruity type.”
Georgie’s nostrils flared as he spat, “Yeah yo, I got yo’ fruit. A big fuckin’ banana,” then he grabbed his dick at her.
Skye’s mouth dropped, but she quickly shut it, narrowing her eyes to slits.
“You disrespectful bastard!”
“I’m disrespectful?! You just called me a fuckin’ fruit, and you don’t even fuckin’ know me!”
“I don’t want to know you!”
They were arguing from the moment that they met.
“Hey, hey! Why don’t we have a drink, huh? Come on, let’s have a drink,” Guy interjected, smoothly.
The five of them moved to a circular booth. Georgie and Skye glared at each other like two boxers going to neutral corners. Sid and Guy slid in first, followed by Georgie and Skye on opposite sides. Bob sat beside Skye. The waitress came and drinks were ordered and served. Skye helped Bob with his and lit another Newport.
“Well Giorgio, I have heard of you,” Guy remarked, and they were pretty good at first…now, not so much.”
Georgie finally took his glare from Skye.
“Things happen, everybody makes mistakes. But believe me, I’m the best.”
“Everybody doesn’t make mistakes; that’s just some lame ass shit people say to justify that they’ve fucked up,” Skye remarked, blowing smoke in Georgie general direction.
“Ay yo Skye, could you watch your smoke?”
Skye didn’t respond. She turned to Bob and helped him with his drink like it was a sippy cup and he was a toddler.
“How we doin’, Bob?”
“Okay. I just wish they’d bring the key.”
“Soon.”
“So where did you go to school, Giorgio?” Guy inquired.
Georgie hedged.
“Well, I’ve been doing hair since I was six. My mom has a shop back in Philly…”
“He asked you where you went to school, not where you discovered that you were different than all the other little boys in the sandbox,” Skye sneered.
More smoke. Georgie flexed his jaws and looked dead at her. “I just asked you…nicely, not to do that. I’m not gonna ask you again.”
Skye returned volley.
“Umm, excuse you. This is my table, so if you don’t like my smoke, you can…” her smile said kiss my ass, but she concluded with a simple, “leave.”
Georgie looked like a volcano about to erupt, and Skye a ballerina pirouetting on its rumbling edge.
Feeling as if her point had been made, she turned to Guy, but twisted her lips so that the smoke went directly at Georgie. Without hesitation, Georgie picked up his drink and splashed it in her face, dousing her cigarette at the same time.
“Bitch, I told you!”
With even less hesitation, Skye lunged across the table at Georgie, her hip inadvertently knocking Bob to the floor.
“I’ma kill you!” she shrieked, clawing at his face.
“Get off me,” Georgie barked.
“Help!” Bob yelled, almost getting kicked by Skye’s pointed heels.
He rolled himself under the table.
“Please, someone! Anyone!” Bob screamed.
But no one could hear him from under the table or over the music as the noises emanated from Georgie and Skye. Sid and Guy tried to pry them apart. Georgie had his hands around Skye’s neck and Skye had her hands around Georgie’s neck. Guy finally pulled Skye away.
“Get off me! Get off me! I’ma kill him!” Skye yelled.
“Let her go, please. Let her go!” Georgie seethed.
“Fuck you!” she screamed as Guy drug her off.
“Fuck you!”
“Motherfuck you!”
“Eat a dick!”
“Grow one, you fruit!”
They were still shouting obscenities when neither could hear the other as they went their separate ways. The only one left at the table—under the table—was Bob.
“Somebody…please,” he mumbled, his upper lip quivering, then he laid his head on the carpet and sobbed.
The next morning, Georgie’s phone rang.
“Hello,” he answered, voice sandpapered with sleep.
“Are you asleep?”
“Yeah. Who is this?”
“Good.”
The crispness of satisfaction in her voice told him exactly who it was.
“How did you get my number?”
“Does it matter?” Skye sassed.
No response.
“Sid.”
Georgie nodded, remembering that he gave his card to Sid the night before.
He rolled over on his back.
“What you want?”
“I don’t want anything.” she spat. “I’m doing this as a favor to Guy, who’s doing a favor for Sid. Do you know where Risqué Salon is?”
“I can find it,” he yawned.
“Well, find it. Be here in twenty minutes and don’t waste my time; I hate for people to waste my time. Are we clear?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.”
Click! She hung up.
Georgie rolled over and went back to sleep.
Twenty minutes later his phone rang again. He answered.
“Yeah.”
“Where are you?” she seethed.
Georgie yawned, scratched his nose.
“In the bed.”
“I told you…”
Her bossy tone roused him fully from his sleep.
“Check this out, Ma. Don’t nobody tell me a goddamn thing! I don’t do favors and I don’t need handouts! I’ll shrivel up and starve in this bitch before I march to another muhfucka’s drumbeat! So fuck you and fuck
a favor. Call me back when you want to do business!”
Click! He hung up.
He started to get up and go piss, but the phone rang again. He smiled to himself—his armor of ego, chinkless. He let it ring five times before he answered, but he didn’t say anything.
Dead air.
“I want to do business,” Skye admitted, tone slightly softened.
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
When Georgie arrived at the salon, Skye was sitting in one of the chairs, signing an autograph for a fan. There—in broad daylight—he was hit with the full force of her beauty. She was dressed in a clingy, black wool turtleneck, black stretch pants and black leather boots that came up to her knee. When she glanced at him, her eyes danced for a second before she looked away, a demur grin playing across her lips.
When he approached, she glanced at her watch.
“You’re early.”
“I’m all business when it comes to my money,” he replied, trying to be firm. But his grin betrayed him.
“This salon belongs to a friend of mine. He said to make yourself at home,” Skye informed him.
“You ready?”
“Whenever you are.”
Georgie turned the chair to face the mirror and began to play in her hair. She had long, naturally curly hair, but it was frizzy and had no rhyme or reason to it.
“Who does your hair?” he asked disparagingly.
“The wind,” she deadpanned.
He grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled it from her face with subtle force.
“That hurts,” she said.
“Good,” he retorted.
A grin curled her lips then it spread to his as they stared at each other through the mirror. He held her hair in an upsweep, then in two halves, playing with different looks.
“So what you want me to do with it?”
“You said you’re the best, right? Do your best,” she replied, giving him an innocent look that only the guilty can master.
He turned the chair to face him.
“I have to ask you a few questions.”
“Okay.”
“Why you always wear black?”
“It’s a part of my image.”
Georgie chuckled.
“Your name is Skye. How is that your image?”
“The sky is black…at night,” she answered, subtle flirtation in her tone.
“Naw…the night is when the sky hides, like the night is a mask…you know? What’s behind your mask?” he charmed, leaning his hands on the arm of the chair and looking into her eyes.
Skye closed her eyes tightly, like a little girl playing hide and go seek. Georgie laughed.
“Oh word, it’s like that?”
“Yes. You tryin’ to see into my house,” Skye smirked.
“Okay. Knock, knock?”
She didn’t respond.
“Maybe you didn’t hear me; I said ‘Knock. Knock,’” he repeated, softly, knocking gently on her forehead.
“Who’s there?” she asked.
Silence…seconds ticked by. Her eyelids jumped, twitched. Finally, she opened them. George dimpled her.
“Patience. That’ll always get you in.”
He mused and she sat; they did the chit and the chat, talking about this and that, simply taking a stroll through conversation. Neither was trying to acknowledge the elephant in the room: the simmering chemistry between them, until he began to wash her hair. The combination of the warm water and his big, strong hands massaging her scalp made Skye remark in an unguarded moment, “I like the way your hands feel.”
“Around your neck?”
Her eyes popped open and she looked at him, as if he had walked in and caught her naked.
Exposed.
Georgie’s smile said that he remembered the look in her eyes the night before, when they fought and he gripped her by the throat. She tried to mask the look behind rage, but her eyes lolled like they wanted to roll up in her head. The moment was electric and he still had the nail marks in his neck to prove it.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Skye replied, her mask being a perfect poker face.
When he finished and turned her to the mirror, her face broke up like a cloudy day transitioning into a sunny smile.
“I hate to admit, this…I like,” she smiled, turning her head to view it from different angles.
He had given her naturally curly hair extra kinks and framed her face with a wet, exotic look that made Skye think about blue lagoons, Caribbean breezes and ankle bracelets made of tigers’ teeth.
Georgie leaned down and whispered in her ear, “It goes with black, but it is better with purple, deep…dark purple, like the twilight, right before the night puts on its mask.
The baritone of the raspy tone in his voice would have made the average woman’s icing melt all over her cake, but Skye was a big girl and big girls don’t…
“I don’t do purple.”
“You will.”
A beat.
“Are you finished? May I go?”
Georgie smiled into her ear, and she knew because she heard it. He stood up, full height and removed the smock.
“Sure.”
Skye stood up, rounded the chair then stepped right to him, wrapping her arms around his neck and her leg around his calf, then pushed her tongue into his mouth with the force of a home invasion, but he embraced it at the door. Their tongues swirled like yin and yang—a little of each in the other—infinitely in the moment, and when their lips parted, a thin line of saliva ran from hers to his, as if their juices weren’t ready to let go.
She stepped back.
“I still want my money,” Georgie chuckled.
“You just got it; you got to kiss a real woman for once,” she retorted, then turned and left with a walk so nasty that a lesser man would have had to knee-walk because his legs would have gave out.
Instead, Georgie threw his head back with laughter and spun the chair so hard it twirled like a top, but his head was whirling much faster.
“Yo, I don’t give a fuck what you say! Ain’t nobody gettin’ backstage without a pass, Money!” the buff, bald headed bouncer barked.
Georgie stood there, holding a bouquet of roses, getting more irked by the second by this human wall of rejection.
“Yo, I told you, I’m Skye’s hair stylist.”
“Fuck out my face!”
“You! Guy! Guy! It’s me, Georgie! Guy!”
The irritating repetition of his name made Guy look up with a scowl. When he saw that it was Georgie, the scowl remained, but he came over.
“Yo, tell ‘em I’m wit’ y’all, man,” Georgie urged, holding up the roses.
Guy clapped the bouncer on the shoulder.
“It’s okay, Boomer; let him in.”
The bouncer kept ice-grilling Georgie, but he stepped aside to let him pass. Georgie bopped by with taunt in his swag.
“Hey, Guy, I appreciate that.”
“No problem. Skye looks great. I can tell she likes it because she keeps touching it,” Guy told him.
“Cool. I brought her these to say thanks for the opportunity,” Georgie replied, in a light tone that hid his malicious intent.
Guy chuckled.
“Hey, a little brown nosing never hurt anyone, eh?”
The shared a laugh.
“No doubt,” Georgie joked.
“I’ll take you to her dressing room.”
“No…no, I know you’re busy; just point it out.”
“Third door on the right.”
“Thanks.”
They went their separate ways.
Georgie counted three doors, but knocked just to be sure.
“Come in!” she called out from within.
He opened the door, walked in and closed it behind him. She was alone. The first thing he noticed was what she was wearing.
Purple. Deep, dark purple.
It was a tight cat suit, something like what Apollonia would have worn in
Purple Rain, with Skye’s trademark thigh boots, which were purple too.
“Cherry, where is my…” she started to say, as she turned around, saw Georgie and froze.
“…money,” he growled, finishing her statement in his own way and tossing the decoy bouquet to the side, contemptuously.
“Fuck you,” she hissed.
Her words were like a match to the abrasive surface of his raw emotions that ignited, and the room exploded. He went straight to her ass and she went straight to his. Skye leapt at him like a cat with claws bared, but he caught her and sat her back hard, on the makeup table, knocking all kinds of things over. Her back slammed against the mirror, knocking it loose from its molding. It dropped, cracked and rolled over to the other side of a small love seat beside the makeup table.
“Muhfucka, that’s all you got?” she bassed, trying to kick him, slap him, something, while he struggled to control her.
“You got a lot of goddamn mouth,” he seethed.
“Then shut…” was all Skye got out before his hand locked like a vise grip around her throat and his tongue exploded in her mouth.
She bit it. He hollered into her mouth. He pinched her naked nipple through the lace. She hollered and let his tongue go, but he didn’t let her nipple go. Georgie dug his fingers into the flimsy fabric, until it ripped then he proceeded to rip it further, exposing her B-cup sized breasts and erect nipples.
“You son of a bitch,” she gasped, wrapping both her legs around his waist.
Georgie responded by enlarging the tear all the way to her thong, the sight of her naked flesh driving him into a frenzy. He lifted her up and pushed away at the same time to untangle himself from her legs. He dumped her on the small love seat and bent her over the arm.
“Wa – wait!”
“Shut the fuck up!” he barked back, as his jeans hit the floor and his rock hard dick hit against her ass.
He snatched her throng aside then thrust all nine inches inside of her.
“Ohhh fuck!” she creamed, his thrusts gyrating her whole body.
“Naw bitch, don’t you holla now. Goddamn. Holla now,” he gritted, alternating between long, powerful thrusts and stirring her coffee. Skye dropped her head, burying her face in the love seat to stifle her moans. Georgie grabbed her by the hair and forced her head up to look into the cracked mirror facing them.
“I want you to see who’s doing this to you, so when you’re sore in the morning, you’ll know who did it,” Georgie growled.