Bliss thought that maybe if she’d been standing, he would have checked her out, but…Bliss couldn’t believe herself! She was sitting there half-hoping he’d notice her. She pushed that thought back as he reached behind him and picked up her résumé; that was no easy feat, though, because she was checking him out. She couldn’t help it: Chase Brown was cute as hell.
He lifted the cover sheet and tried to make out what was on it, but it was impossible to read the blurry and smudged ink. He tossed it back on his desk and rubbed his hands on his jeans. “Oh well. I guess that’s not gonna work. I am sorry, by the way, Bliss. Is it okay to call you by your first name? You seem kind of, uh…formal.”
Bliss wanted to tell him, “You can call me whatever you want, as long as you call me later,” but she swallowed that corny line back. “Um, sure. Bliss is fine.”
Chase folded his arms across his chest. “All right, Bliss. You’re gonna have to sell me on hiring you since I can’t read your résumé. What’re your credentials?”
Bliss sat forward in her seat. “Well, I’ve got a BA in—”
“Uh-uh. I don’t wanna hear about that,” he said, standing up and rubbing the back of his neck. “Shit like that means nothin’ to me. Wait…not nothing. It’s something, but I know a lot of people with big-deal degrees that can’t do the job they went to school for. You know what I mean?”
Bliss raised her eyebrows in surprise. “So you don’t want to know what kind of degree I have? You don’t care where I went to school? That’s a first.”
“Nah, that crap’s irrelevant. I need to know if you can actually run a club. Where was the last place you worked?”
He was looking at her hard with his sparkling brown eyes. They really were almost the exact color of cognac, and his skin was a smooth, creamy brown, like rich coffee ice cream. He was boyishly handsome. His eyes, nose, and mouth were perfectly proportioned to his face—nothing too big and nothing too small. His eyebrows were dark and well defined. His hair was thick and dark with a natural curl to it. He wore it short and neat, like he’d just gotten out of the barber’s chair. The hair on his face wasn’t heavy: It looked soft and downy, and his moustache was separate from the hair on his chin.
As cute as he was, though, he wasn’t perfect. He had an old, thin, scar that extended a good two inches along his jaw line. If it had been a quarter-inch lower, it would have been unnoticeable. It didn’t take away from his looks. It just made him imperfect.
“Solstice, over on Fourteenth Street,” she answered. “It closed about a month ago.”
He smiled at her. “Yeah, I know. You have anything to do with that?”
Bliss was about to give him an indignant answer when Corey returned with their coffee and tea. He put the beverages on the desk and stuck his hand out to Chase. “That was like ten bucks, man. I went to Starbucks.”
Chase opened his coffee and handed Bliss her tea. He eyed Corey over his cup. “Put it on my tab, lil bro’.”
Corey studied his empty palm for a second before putting it back in his pocket. He looked at Bliss. “How’s it goin’? Okay?”
“Bye, Corey. See you later,” Chase hinted, pointing to the door.
Corey shrugged and left.
Chase looked at his interviewee with a sunny expression. “As you might have gathered, that’s my little brother. I think he likes you.”
“He was nice to me when I got here.”
“He better have been. Anyway, about Solstice, I was just joking. I know they had to shut it down because Danny found out what was on the other side, so to speak.”
Danny Grant, the former owner of Solstice and Bliss’s former boss, had two weaknesses: heroin and kinky homosexual sex. They’d found him in his bedroom, dead of an overdose, wearing a bondage bra and wrapped in bloody sheets.
Bliss recalled Danny fondly, for he was a good boss. “Danny was a nice guy. I liked him.”
Chase nodded. “Yeah, he was. Sorry to see him go. How long did you work for him?”
“Three years, going on four.”
He sipped more coffee, and Bliss drank her tea. “Where were you before that?”
“The Lounge on Fourth. That was the first job I had out of college.”
He nodded. “Nice gig. Why’d you leave that place?”
Bliss looked at her shoes. “I just…well, I never really liked it there.”
“Why not?”
She looked over at Chase. He was drinking his coffee, but there was an amused, knowing look in his eyes, like he already knew the answer. “My boss had a problem keeping his hands to himself.”
Chase looked like he wanted to say something, but he stopped himself. Instead, he sat behind his desk and started writing on a yellow legal pad. “Bliss Riley,” he said aloud. Chase ripped the top page off and handed her the legal pad. “I need all your information. You can fill out your tax stuff on Monday. If I change my mind, I’ll give you a call, so I need a number.”
Bliss stared at him carefully. “You mean…wait, are you telling me I’ve got the job?”
He grinned at her. “Unless you don’t want it.”
“Oh, I definitely want it, Mr. Brown. I promise I won’t disappoint you.”
He leaned back in his chair and laughed. “I don’t think you will. I got great instincts, Bliss, and I think you’re the right person to run my brother’s club.”
She frowned, having assumed she’d be working for him. “This is Corey’s club? I thought it was yours.”
“Nah. This is my Brother Cyrus’s club.”
Bliss blew her bangs out of her eyes and tried not to look disheartened. “Oh.”
Chase came back around to her side of the desk. “What’s up? You look disappointed.”
She looked up at him, not wanting to mess up her new opportunity. “Nothing. I just thought I’d be working for you.”
His right eyebrow lifted a little, and he tilted his head. “I’ll be around—at least until Cyrus is up and running. Probably a couple of months, and then I gotta concentrate on my own stuff. I got my own clubs to run.”
“Yeah? Which ones?”
“Shelter, down in Chelsea and Delight, up in Harlem. Delight is more of a supper club, though. And I also own Cream.”
Bliss’s eyes went wide. He has to be kidding! Those are three of the hottest spots in New York City. She was duly impressed. “Not doing too bad for yourself, are you, Mr. Brown?”
He grinned his charmingly boyish grin. “Not bad at all…and you can call me Chase. I ain’t your boss. Call Cyrus Mr. Brown. He loves that shit.”
Chase was still smiling, but Bliss picked up a note of distaste from him when he made his quip about Cyrus. She didn’t comment, but she caught it.
He put his jacket back on and picked up his helmet.
“Are you leaving?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I’m out, but I’ll wait for you. Take your time.”
Bliss finished writing and stood, too, handing him the legal pad. “Here you go. That was the fastest interview I’ve ever been on that ended well.”
Chase took his cell phone out and put her number in his phone. “Well, I don’t believe in wastin’ a lot of time. Life’s too short.”
Bliss’s cell phone rang, and she started searching for it.
“That’s just me. Now you can get in touch with me when Cyrus makes you want to scream…and he will.”
She looked at him with a wrinkled brow.
“Don’t look at me like that. You’ll see. He makes me want to scream all the time.”
Bliss smiled cautiously. “You’re kidding, right?”
He shook his head. “Not a bit. He might take it easy on you, though, ‘cause you’re really pretty.” He paused and let his eyes drift over her. “Very pretty. Maybe you can bat your eyelashes at him or something to smooth him out when he starts curlin’ up around the edges.”
“Is he that bad?”
“Not all the time, but I promise he can get on anyone’s damn nerves.”
&nb
sp; Chase gestured toward the door, and Bliss started walking. She turned abruptly to say something, and Chase’s eyes bounced back up to her face. Bliss couldn’t keep the smirk off her face if she tried.
Chase smiled. “Sorry about your skirt, Bliss. Send me the bill, and I’ll take care of it.” He looked her in the eye like he wanted her to know he’d just had a less-than-pure thought about her. “It’s a really nice skirt.”
Bliss bit her bottom lip. Oh shit, he’s feeling me. “I might just take you up on that.”
He moved a little closer to her. “Do it. I want you to.”
There was nothing bold about what he said. It was the way he said it and the fact that Bliss liked it. That was what struck the match. They stared at each other a second longer than they should have, and then Chase held the door open.
When they walked out, Chase was a little closer than he should have been. He stopped her in the alcove by the kitchen. “Bliss?”
“Yes?”
“What are you doing later? You free?”
She nodded, feeling her heart beat a little faster. Is he about to ask me out? “I’m free. Yeah.”
“Why don’t you meet me at Delight around eight thirty?”
Bliss tucked her portfolio under her arm and gave him a look. “Are you sure you should be meeting me at your club like that? Your new hire? After hours?”
Chase laughed, put his helmet on, and flipped the visor up. “I didn’t hire you for me. I hired you for Cyrus. You ain’t my employee. If you don’t want to, just say so. I’m a big boy. I can handle it,” he said in an offhanded way, like it wouldn’t faze him at all if she turned him down, but he took a step closer to her.
Bliss looked up at him. She wanted to touch his arm or something, but she didn’t. He was so close she could smell his cologne and the leather from his jacket. There was no way she wasn’t meeting him. “You know…Chase…I didn’t say I didn’t want to.”
He pulled his gloves on, and she noticed he had another scar. It looked old. It was long and thin and ran across the back of his first three fingers, between the first and second joints. She wondered what had happened to him, but she was sure she’d eventually find out. She couldn’t see his mouth, but his eyes were smiling.
“Good. Then I’ll see you later.” He flipped his visor down and walked away from her.
Bliss took a deep breath and let it out. She would have bet money that her day would have ended the same frustrating way it had begun, but things had taken a dramatic upswing. She smiled to herself as she walked out of the building, not surprised to find the sun peeking through the clouds.
Chapter 4
Cyrus sat at Khalid’s dining room table with him, counting money and drinking Hennessey.
“Damn, Cy. Them kids had more money than I woulda guessed hidin’ up in that building. Let’s take a break. My thumbs hurt.”
Cyrus agreed. He pushed his chair back and sipped his drink. He looked at his old pal Khalid and then back down to the many tall towers of money stacks on the table. “You ain’t lyin’. There’s gotta be almost $200,000 here. That’s some sweet shit for a half-hour of work.”
Khalid nodded and took a small silver box out of a drawer in the highboy. “Yeah, but I kinda regret losin’ Carter. He was a fuckin’ soulja, do or die.” He took a joint out of the box and blazed it up.
Cyrus picked up the Hennessey. “Well, shit! If you feel that bad about it, let’s pour a little liquor out for his ass.”
Khalid blew smoke out and laughed. “Nigga, if you pour that shit on my carpet, I will personally fuck your ass up.”
They laughed, and Cyrus freshened their drinks. All in all, it had been a good day.
A long time ago, a kid named Warren Jenkins—who everybody knew as Wolf, even though Cyrus had long ago forgotten why—had started selling rocks on Howard Avenue. Khalid and Cyrus had already been selling for years by then, and they weren’t really concerned about the young upstart. Time went by, and they all did what they had to do in the limits of their own space. They wouldn’t have been bothered by him anyway, because at the time, Wolf was only selling rock and herb. About six months ago, though, Wolf started selling a ton of heroin and ecstasy, resulting in a constant drift of white folks wandering through the ‘hood—so many it looked like they were trying to gentrify it. Cyrus had mentioned it to Chase a couple of times, but all that nigga did was shrug his shoulders.
Cyrus smiled to himself at that. Chase didn’t feel like he needed to know what was going down on the home front no more. He’d even moved himself up to Harlem to put distance between them. Cyrus wondered when it was, exactly, that Chase had started feeling himself so hard. Fuck him and his shitty attitude.Chase was so busy trying to elevate himself above what he actually was, that he often forgot the facts. He didn’t realize that he no matter how hard he tried, he’d never be shit, ‘cause he didn’t come from shit. No matter how hard he worked at washing it off, he’d still reek of where he came from.. Cyrus was a bit more than willing to keep his little brother humble.
Cyrus’s thoughts wandered back to the events of the day. Cops got suspicious when there were a lot of white folks hanging around the ‘hood because they had to have a reason to go there. Cyrus and Khalid leaned on Wolf to move his shit over to another location, a place in Brooklyn where it wasn’t abnormal to see a bunch of white people roaming around. Wolf told them to kiss his ass, so Cyrus and Khalid planned a takeover. They swore they’d empty him out and shut him down, and that was exactly what happened. They took all his money and most of his drugs, a fairly easy mission since they waited until Wolf was out of town. While he was in Aruba fucking his girl on a white, sandy beach, Cyrus and Khalid’s boys were robbing his ass blind. That’ll teach that nigga to thumb his nose at us, Cyrus thought.
“When Wolf gets back, his ass is gonna be screamin’ mad, Cy. We need to get ready to take care of that nigga. I think you should holler at Smoke and let him know what’s up.”
Cyrus remained silent and took a sip of his Hennessey. He felt Khalid on that one. Unless they wanted a flat-out war—which they clearly didn’t—they needed to cut the head off the monster. Wolf needed to be dispatched as soon as possible, and Chase was the man for the job. When Khalid passed him the joint, Cyrus took it and inhaled deeply. He knew Chase wouldn’t want to do it, but he would play the game, just like he always did. Cyrus would find a way to make him. Fuck all that high and mighty shit. That nigga’s heart’s just as black as mine—maybe even blacker—it’s gotta be to do the shit as fucking well as he does. Chase trying to remove himself from Cyrus and his dealings was laughable. Nobody left Cyrus unless he wanted them gone. I won’t be done with his arrogant ass until I’ve used him up.He took another toke and passed the joint back to Khalid.
Khalid inhaled and blew the smoke out. He looked at Cyrus thoughtfully. “Let me ask you something, Cyrus. When you gonna tell Chase that me and you are doing business again?”
Cyrus laughed. “Shit, Khalid, we never stopped. Chase doesn’t need to know everything. My brother is a lot of things, but stupid ain’t never been one of them.”
Khalid hit the joint again and put it out. “Maybe you’re right…we done a lot of shit together, Cyrus,” he picked up his drink and sipped it, still looking thoughtfully at Cyrus as he put his glass down. “You know what, Cy?”
Cyrus raised an eyebrow and reached for a stack of money. “What?”
“We’re two dirty, dark-hearted motherfuckers,” he said, looking at him seriously. “We goin’ to hell when we die.”
They looked at each other for a moment and then burst out laughing.
“The devil doesn’t want us, Khalid. We’d put his fuckin’ fire out!”
They laughed hard until it slowly petered away, and then they lit another joint and prepared to start counting money again.
“How do you manage to keep Corey’s mouth shut?” Khalid asked.
Cyrus was quick to answer. “Simple. He doesn’t want us fightin’, so he don’t say
nothing to start shit between me and Chase.”
They lapsed into silence as they resumed counting the money.
After a while, Khalid picked the thread of conversation back up. “What’s goin’ on with that club you tryin’ to open?”
Cyrus looked at him in open irritation. “I ain’t tryin’. I got Chase runnin’ the show, and it’s gonna happen.”
Khalid shook his head slowly. “I don’t know why you want the hassle of that type of shit, Cyrus. When you gonna find the time to run it?”
Cyrus shrugged. “I probably won’t. It’ll give Corey something to do—keep him from nippin’ at my heels all the time. Maybe Chase will run it himself, if I’m lucky. In any case, it will be a real good place to make some of this money look clean.”
Khalid looked at him sideways. “Okay, great, but whatever you do, make sure you holler at that nigga and let him know we need him to take care of Wolf. Today, Cyrus. Okay?”
Cyrus nodded as his mind replayed Chase hitting him in the chest with the butter knife and making his little speech. Of course he’d make his plea, but he knew that stubborn-ass nigga might need more than a little convincing. It’s all good, though. He’ll do it like he always does and he’ll be earnin’ his spot in Hell right along with me and Khalid.
Chapter 5
When Bliss got to her apartment, she was playing another game of beat-the-clock. She spent the rest of the morning getting her hair done. Now her long brown hair hung sleek, straight—and hopefully rain proof—with fresh highlights. Then she spent the next two hours getting her nails done, and of course that meant all twenty of them. You can’t get a mani without a pedi.
She spent more time that she didn’t have at the perfume counter at Macy’s, and then she went upstairs and spent money she shouldn’t have on a cute little lilac dress and a pair of strappy sandals in the same color. Bliss felt guilty dipping into her savings to doll herself up, but thanks to Chase, help was on the way. She refused to meet him looking like a ‘hood rat.
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