Chasing Bliss

by Sabrina A. Eubanks

  He did little shit to him while he was growing up, like throwing his toys in the garbage, punching him, bending his fingers back until he screamed, and berating him in front of his friends, calling him a pussy and worse. When Chase really got on his nerves—or sometimes when he didn’t—he’d jump on him and beat his ass bloody.

  When Corey was born, Cyrus had resented him, too, but not as much as he did Chase and not for the same reasons. Chase had always stood between Cyrus and Corey. He wouldn’t let Cyrus run over Corey the way he let him run over him. Chase had gotten a lot of bloody noses on Corey’s behalf. Cyrus was a bully and he knew it, but Chase never let him have Corey as a punching bag—at least not without a fight.

  He remembered nights when he threatened Corey with serious bodily harm; Chase would go to sleep with his arms locked around his little brother and their sharpest butcher knife under his pillow. Something sharp had always been Chase’s way to go, and he’d even sliced Cyrus once, leaving him with a permanent scar. He’d sliced Cyrus for fucking with Corey.

  Cyrus was nineteen when he started dealing. He got tired of always having to go without and having to share shit with those two assholes. He wanted to have his own shit, some nice shit. He started selling rocks for an O.G. named Big Ted. Ted had a partner named Maceo, and they owned shit in Bushwick. There were no other dealers back then, so they had it on lock.

  Cyrus was happy to sell his rock and drive his nice car, but his mother wasn’t stupid, and she knew what he was into. She promptly ordered his dealin’ ass out of the house and told him, “Don’t you come back up in here till you stop that stupid shit.”

  Of course, typical for Cyrus, he blew up at her and cussed her out. “You got a lotta nerve judging me after the life you been livin’,” he said. “You got three kids with three different daddies, and you can’t even take care of your babies. You a ho, and you ain’t shit.” And then he walked out of his mother’s house…for good. The only time he ever came around after that was to put a few dollars in her mailbox once in a blue moon, just so he wouldn’t be labeled a complete bastard, and sometimes he’d snatch his brothers up by their collars and slap the backs of their necks if they were around.

  When Cyrus was in his twenties, he and some of the other dealers who worked for Ted and Maceo—Khalid, Rome, and Herc—decided it was time for a coup. They knew there was no way Big Ted and Maceo would let them build an empire right alongside theirs, so the plan was to overthrow the government, to commit a mutiny and start a new regime. Cyrus and Khalid put their heads together and planned the battle, and Herc and Rome were their enforcers.

  Herc and Rome rolled up on Big Ted when he was a little higher than he should have been, leaving a house party on Hart Street. Rome blasted Elmore, Ted’s bodyguard, in the chest with a sawed-off, and Herc put his infamous .45 behind Ted’s left ear and pulled the trigger. Needless to say, it was a closed casket for Ted.

  Maceo’s revenge was swift and brutal. He wasn’t as smart as Ted, and he didn’t know who to trust. He had a whole slew of people gunned down at random, grasping at straws and hoping he got Big Ted’s killer through the process of elimination. For two weeks, Bushwick was a very bloody place to be. Then somebody put a bug in his ear about them, and Cyrus had yet to find out who that rat was.

  They told him Cyrus and Khalid were responsible for Big Ted, and Cyrus and Khalid had to go into hiding once they realized Maceo was gunning hard for them. Herc and Rome, along with a small crew of dedicated soldiers, held Maceo and his vengeful wrath at bay as long as they could. Eventually, though, Maceo got frustrated and started playing dirty: He figured if he couldn’t find Khalid and Cyrus, he would start killing the people they loved.

  Maceo had Khalid’s sister, who was eight months pregnant, gunned down when she was coming out of the supermarket. That was bad—really bad—and Cyrus grieved with him. But then his world changed.

  Cyrus’s mother and brothers were walking home. She’d just picked them up and had barely left the schoolyard when Maceo himself rolled up on her and shot her in the head. She collapsed to the pavement, and the two boys went hysterical. She took her last breath with her head in Chase’s lap; he was screaming, begging her not to go.

  Cyrus never wanted the responsibility of looking after his little brothers, but Khalid—whom Chase now despised—worked hard to convince Cyrus not to let the boys become wards of the state. Chase was traumatized, shut down, and sullen when they came to live with Cyrus. He was so sullen that Cyrus’s live-in love Sonia just gave up and moved out. Corey was a little different. He was traumatized, too, but he was looking for acceptance and love, something like a mistreated puppy. Cyrus could see it in his eyes. The boy didn’t want to be all alone, and at least for a time, it felt like Chase had deserted him. He was vulnerable because his fierce protector was gone.

  After their mother’s murder, Chase retreated into his own head. He didn’t talk to anybody for two months. Cyrus didn’t understand him and couldn’t reach him, and he finally got fed up with it. He even hit him to try to make him talk, but that only seemed to push Chase further away. He hit him so hard one day that his tooth went through his lip. Cyrus noticed later that night, after the boys had gone to bed, that the cleaver was missing from the knife rack. The next morning, he found it under Chase’s pillow.

  Cyrus left his crazy ass alone for a long time after that. Then one day, Chase got up and returned to his life, but there was a look in his eye that he didn’t lose for quite a while, as if it took a minute for his eyes to get some life back in them.

  Chase resumed his life, and he also resumed his role as Corey’s protector—to the point that he was knocking niggas out in the schoolyard every week—not fighting, but knocking niggas out! By the time he turned fourteen, though he was only average height and size, all the kids in the neighborhood were afraid of him.

  Cyrus felt a sudden pride for him, and he found that surprising. All that time, Chase only had one true friend, a kid named Jayson Taylor; Chase called him J.T. Cyrus thought maybe he was the only person Chase talked to during the two months when he wouldn’t open his mouth to anybody.

  Chase cut Cyrus when he was fifteen, and he caught him totally off guard because it was the last thing he would have expected. Chase would beat a nigga’s ass, but Corey would take somebody’s shit. Corey was quite an accomplished little pickpocket. Even now, Corey had the lightest fingers Cyrus had ever seen in his life. Back then, if Corey didn’t take something he wanted, it was only because you didn’t bring it with you.

  A man named Tyson ran numbers for some dude uptown. One evening, one of Corey’s little friends dared him to lift Tyson’s wallet. Of course Corey took the dare, and he did it quite professionally, but one of Corey’s so-called friends let Tyson know it was Corey who’d done the lifting. Tyson was a gentleman about the whole thing since Corey was just a kid. He simply came to Cyrus, told him what happened, and asked for his wallet back.

  When Cyrus got home, he’d jumped all over Corey. He twisted his arm up behind his back until he heard it snap, and then he stepped back in shock that he’d broken Corey’s arm. He honestly didn’t mean to do it.

  Chase picked that moment to walk in the door. His eyes took in the fact that Corey was screaming on the floor and Cyrus was standing over him. Chase never opened his mouth. He just reached into his pocket and flicked out a silver-handled straight razor. He lunged over the coffee table at Cyrus and knocked him down. He swiped the razor through Cyrus’s shirt and cut him right above the heart. “This is how easy it would be. Touch him again and I’ll kill you, Cyrus.”

  At that point, Cyrus abruptly stopped putting his hands on both of them.

  The following year, when Chase was sixteen, Cyrus found out just how deadly his younger brother could be. It was one of those times when all three of them were together at once. They both had been cutting up pretty badly at the time, and they were out of control. Chase couldn’t seem to stop fighting, and Corey couldn’t seem to keep his hands out
of other people’s pockets. Cyrus figured if he took them out and tried to spend a little time with them, maybe they’d calm down. If they didn’t, he was gonna throw them little ungrateful niggas out of his house.

  He took them to see some action flick he could no longer remember the name of. They were walking across the parking lot to Cyrus’s car. It was late, because he’d taken them to the last showing, and there weren’t many people out since it was a weeknight. That didn’t much matter, though, because those little niggas only went to school when they felt like it, and Cyrus wasn’t much of an overseer.

  Halfway to the car, Corey tapped Chase on the arm. “Look, Chase…it’s him! It’s fuckin’ Maceo!” he whispered fiercely.

  “Where?” Chase whispered back. Corey pointed, and Chase stepped away from them, walking fast and soundlessly across the parking lot in his black Uptowns. “Excuse me, sir?” Chase said when he reached him.

  The man turned around, and sure enough, it was Maceo. “What do you want, kid?” he asked, gruffly but not impolitely.

  Cyrus could see Chase’s teeth glint in the darkness, and he saw his razor appear in his right hand like magic. Cyrus’s own hands went over his mouth like a bitch when he saw Chase flick the blade out. Everything went down in about twenty seconds.

  Chase moved with a terrifying grace, moving behind Maceo and placing his left foot between his legs. He put his hand on Maceo’s forehead and pulled his head back. The look in his eyes was dreadful as he brought his blade up. “You owe me a life for killin’ my mother, you sack of shit, so I’ll take yours.” Chase let his razor come down, and it went into Maceo’s sideburn. Chase dragged the razor across his throat, severing his carotid artery. Chase grunted with the force of dragging the razor through flesh, but it was lightning quick. Blood was literally jumping out of Maceo’s neck. It was still so hot in the chilly night air that it looked like smoke was coming off of it. That was the reason Cyrus called Chase Smoke—not because he’d most definitely smoke a nigga, though that was true too.

  Chase pushed Maceo away from him, and he hit the pavement hard, face first—so hard that Cyrus saw several teeth pop out of his dying mouth. Chase walked away from him and back to his brothers.

  Cyrus became aware that Corey was almost chanting, “Oh shit! Oh shit! Oh shit!” His eyes were huge and staring and he was in shock.

  When Chase got to them, he didn’t have a drop of blood on him. “Stop now, Corey. Everything’s gonna be just fine.” He paused and looked down. “You pissed yourself, Corey. Come on.” He put his arm around his brother and walked him to the car.

  Cyrus followed, walking slow, because his asshole was pretty tight. For once in his life, he was horrified…and very afraid.

  Cyrus thought about all that shit now, riding shotgun in Khalid’s car, with Khalid demanding he force Chase to get rid of Wolf. The fact of the matter was that he wasn’t exactly sure he could force Chase to do anything. Chase had been volatile and unpredictable all his life, and Cyrus blamed himself for that, at least to some degree. But then again, maybe a lot of it was just the way Chase was. Chase lived by his own rules. He decided for himself what was right and wrong. Cyrus also knew there would come a day when he couldn’t use Corey as a pawn; maybe that day had come. He had to find more than one way to get to Chase. He had to, because time was tight, and sooner or later, Wolf would put a hit out on him and Khalid. They had to strike first. “I’ll talk to him,” he said to Khalid.

  Khalid glanced at him. “Well, hurry the fuck up. If we have to deal with Wolf ourselves, things are gonna get a lot worse before they get better.”

  Cyrus nodded in agreement. After all, they were just drug dealers. Chase was the killer.

  Chapter 13

  Bliss’s curiosity was getting the better of her. She followed Chase into the Waverly Inn, wondering what it was all about. He’d called a meeting with Corey, J.T., and Dee, telling them all he had something important to talk about. When Bliss and Chase arrived at the round table, everyone was already there, enjoying a bottle of wine.

  Chase let go of her hand and held her chair out for her. “Damn! Y’all couldn’t wait for us? Bunch of drunks,” he chided as he smiled and sat down.

  J.T. leaned over and poured wine for him and Bliss, and then he shook the bottle to let him know it was empty. “There were only five drinks in this damn bottle. That ain’t enough to get me drunk…” He glanced sideways at Corey and Dee. “Or these lushes either.”

  Dee waved her hand at him. “Be quiet, J.T. Chase knows how we do.” She smiled at Bliss. “It’s nice to see you again, honey. How are things down at the club? They workin’ out okay?”

  Bliss nodded. “It’s going okay. Everything’s on schedule for the opening next Saturday.”

  Dee picked up her wine and sat back in her seat. “Damn, that’s quick, honey.” She sipped her wine and turned her eyes to Chase. “Don’t you think so? You didn’t just throw the shit together, did you?”

  Chase gave her a biting little look. “No, I didn’t just throw the shit together, Dee,” he said sarcastically.

  “Don’t get your drawers in a twist with me. It was just a question.”

  “Everything’s cool, Dee. It’s been inspected, it’s up to code, and we got the liquor license straightened out. It’s all good,” J.T. interrupted to avoid an argument.

  “Yeah, Dee. Why would Chase want to put a rush on Cyrus’s club? They got enough shit goin’ on between them already,” Corey said, looking at Dee like she was trying to start trouble.

  Dee smiled at him and patted his cheek. “Poor Corey. You’re so sweet. I know you want Chase and Cyrus to get along, but you know as well as anybody at this table that it will probably never happen. A snowball’s got a better chance in Hell. You also know as well as I do that Chase would do a rush job just to fuck Cyrus without really fucking him.” She paused and looked at Chase. “Don’t look at me like that. You know I ain’t lying. Now, anybody else want a real drink? To Hell with this goddamned snooty-ass wine.” She signaled for the waiter.

  Bliss looked at Chase, who was looking at Dee like he was holding back a frown. Dee was looking back at him with subtle defiance. A glance at J.T. and Corey told Bliss they were watching the whole thing like a tennis match. She frowned herself. Maybe it’s time I really get to the bottom of this situation with Cyrus and Chase.

  The waiter arrived and took their drink orders. Chase had his Rémy, Dee had a double Grey Goose, and J.T. and Corey selected Hennessey. Fuck it, Bliss thought. Since they’re all drinking like men—Dee included—I’ll have a shot of Patrón. Maybe the conversation is gonna call for it anyway.

  Chase was sitting with his arms folded across his chest, not quite staring daggers at Dee. He leaned forward suddenly. “Can I get a minute, Dee?” He stood up, and Dee looked surprised—amused, but surprised.

  “Uh-oh. I think I pissed off the boss, y’all. He wants to see me outside.”

  Bliss looked up at him, and Dee was right: Chase was tight, staring a hole through her. “Right now, Delia. I’m not playin’ with you.”

  Some of the amusement left her face when she realized how serious he was. Her mouth formed into a perfect circle, which she hid with her hand, in a flustered little feminine gesture. Then she did the absurd and started to search around under the table with her feet.

  Chase looked at her like she was crazy. “Two minutes, Delia.” He ran his hand over Bliss’s shoulder and walked out of the restaurant. Bliss saw him reappear by the entrance and look at his watch.

  “Shit, J.T. Kick my shoe over here. He’s not fucking around,” Dee said, slipping her feet into her Prada pumps and looking at Bliss apologetically. “Guess this wasn’t a good day to run my mouth, honey. Be right back.” She stood up, straightened her dress, and wiggled out of the room, turning several appreciative heads.

  Bliss crossed her legs and shrugged out of the jacket that matched her dress. Corey and J.T. tried not to let approval register in their faces, but they failed. Bliss smile
d at them and picked up her Patrón. She tossed it back and grimaced a little but then gestured to the waiter for another one. “You may want to keep them coming,” she said to his retreating back, and then she looked at Corey. “All right, Corey, so what’s the deal with Chase and Cyrus? Please fill me in.”

  Corey lifted his glass and drank half his Hennessey. He shrugged and smiled sadly. “Some people just can’t get along, Bliss. Cyrus and Chase never have.”

  Bliss looked at J.T. for a better answer.

  “Talk to Chase, sweetheart, not to us. Trust me,” J.T. said and sipped his drink.

  Bliss looked out the window. Chase had his back to her and had placed his body so the only thing she could see of Dee were her gesturing hands. Bliss looked at them and spoke in a low voice. “What’s the big deal? I know what he’s doing. He’s out there telling Dee that she better keep her mouth shut about him and Cyrus, right? I’m not stupid. I know what Cyrus does. Chase told me that himself. He also told me he does stuff for Cyrus. So what’s up? Is Chase a drug dealer too? He better not be.”

  Corey knocked off the rest of his drink. “Naw, Chase ain’t into that, Bliss.”

  She looked from him to J.T. “Then what the hell does he do for him?”

  J.T. shrugged. “You know…stuff, like helpin’ him open his club and shit like that.”

  Bliss sucked her teeth. “He didn’t need that horrible-ass Charger to help him open the club.”

  J.T. raised his hands. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, pretty lady.” He dropped his hands and picked up his glass. “Perhaps you should holler at Chase about that.”