“Beautiful, I know, but thanks.”
I wish I had that kind of confidence. Wish I could say the things she says so effortlessly. Swagger. It’s refreshing. She has it in abundance. Fiasco has it, too. So many of the boys and girls at my school are blessed with it, Kenya among them. So it’s in my bloodlines. It’s just dormant. That’s it. Well, I’m going to pull it out.
I look at Mya, say, “I could see myself Windexing your pants.”
She frowns. “What nonsense are you talking?”
“I meant,” I say, “I’d like to put Windex down your pants.”
“I’m a second away from dropping you off on the side of the road somewhere,” she says, shakes her head and adds, “Fiasco and his crazy ideas.”
All the cylinders aren’t quite clicking. I heard the line once. Thought it was cute, that girls would adore it. Until now I haven’t found one to use it on. And now that I have, I can’t quite get it together. Windex. Windex. Windex. Think, Eric. Think. Think. Think.
Oh.
I say, “Did you wash your pants with Windex?”
Mya just looks at me. I’m not prepared for that.
“’C-c-cause,” I stutter, determined to see this through, “girl, I can see myself in them.”
She only says two words in response. “Don’t speak.”
I don’t for the rest of the ride.
Mya pulls the car off the main road, into a motel complex. The motel offers nightly and hourly rates, and my best guess is the hour-at-a-time customers far outnumber those staying for the entire night. Just off a main avenue, hidden behind a mini shopping plaza, its neighbors out front are a flower nursery, a sporting goods shop and a dry cleaner. All of the businesses are Korean-owned, except for the motel, according to Mya. “A gang of Patels run the place,” she says.
“What?”
“Patels,” she repeats. “Indians.”
“Oh.”
Floodlights spread throughout the courtyard cast an ominous orange glow. I should be home in my room, or at best, over at Benny’s house trying to figure out Halo 3. Large green bushes, cousins of some stubborn weed, dot the yard. Tan garden gravel crackles under our tires as Mya drives the Range Rover up to the building and parks it.
“Fiasco’s here?” I ask.
“You’ll have to wait and see.”
She doesn’t say any more than that.
I shouldn’t be here.
Mya cuts the engine, opens her door and steps out. I follow suit.
A lowrider late-model sports car idles in a spot by the office. Loud music rattles its windows. Not Fiasco, though. Tupac. The car’s windows are black with tint, but nowhere near as dark as the Range Rover’s. Its original paint is sanded away, leaving what looks like a terra-cotta pottery project, a clay-orange finish. Platinum rims are on its wheels; the wheels beneath the rims are painted in a rich bloodred.
I think: Gang.
Bloods.
“What are we going to do here?” I ask Mya.
“You’ll have to wait and see,” is all she says.
The driver’s-side door of the lowrider blows open as Mya and I approach the building. A young black male with his hair styled in cornrows, a silky-looking football jersey hanging from his lanky frame, hops out. His features are canine, sharp. Skin holds a medium-brown coloring, hair carries a serious sheen. His eyes are dead. He puts me in mind of a Doberman.
I don’t like dogs. They’ve been known to bite me, or, at the very least, growl at me hard.
Two more young black males move from the lowrider, as well. All of them are tall and in football jerseys, all with dead eyes. Deader even than Crash’s that day he nearly beat the life out of me. Not a care in the world; that’s the message delivered by their dead eyes. I understand immediately what that means. Trouble. Possibly lots of it.
I slow down, but Mya keeps moving with her not-a-care-in-the-world strut. It’s the strut of the beautiful girl walking through the club in any rapper’s video, or the girl who’s just stepped dripping wet from the pool and knows with a certainty how much lovelier all her curves look with water raining from them. I keep moving, too, but slowly, tentatively. I want to turn around, but I can’t do that, either.
Someone cuts the engine on the lowrider. Tupac vanishes into the ether.
Doberman says to Mya, “Dayum, girl. You fine as frog hair. Come holla at a player.”
Mya stops then. Moths dance against the motel building. With the coolness of the night air, the orange glow from the floodlights and these three thugs in our path, it’s starting to feel like a modern-day Western. I’m not John Wayne by any stretch of the imagination. I’m not even John Starks, the gunslinger who used to shoot basketballs for the New York Knicks when I was a little bitty boy. Back before my father left. I remember sitting on his lap watching games. Wonder how he’d feel if he saw me now. Wonder how I’d feel.
Oh, well.
Doberman says, “Yo. You heard me talking to you, girl?”
He moves from the cover of the lowrider’s door, positions himself on the sidewalk in front of the car. The two others follow suit, stand before me and Mya and block our path. A standoff is definitely taking place. I want to run for my life. But like I said, I can’t. I don’t know what is keeping me here.
I say, “We don’t want any trouble.”
Doberman says, “You better school homegirl here, then. Tell her to speak when spoken to.”
I tell Mya, “It is rude to ignore a person’s greeting.”
She turns and looks at me with disgust. Does that nose-wrinkle thing. “Are you serious?”
Then she turns back to the three of them. “Y’all need to stop playing thug and get out of our way.”
Doberman says, “You need to chill with talking greasy just because you got Steve Urkel here watching your back.” He laughs.
I say, “Why do I have to always be Steve Urkel?”
They all ignore me.
“And,” Doberman says, “we ain’t hardly playing thug.”
He lifts his jersey, a Detroit Lions throwback Barry Sanders. My gaze drifts to the waistband of his baggy pants. I can’t believe my eyes. What I see is something I’ve only witnessed in Bruce Willis or Will Smith action movies. This is way too much. “Sounds like thunder it goes off,” Doberman boasts. “My boys are holding, too.”
I home in on the other two. One is adorned in Art Monk’s Redskins jersey, the other in Lawrence Taylor’s Giants jersey. Numbers eighty-one and fifty-six respectively. This is way more serious than my confrontation with Crash outside school, but it places me in mind of that moment. I expect Benny to tap my shoulder at any moment, wake me up from this nightmare.
All I wanted was to be cool.
I can’t say that desire is worth all of this trouble, though.
Mya says, “Listen, Snoopy, why don’t you guys get back in your flowerpot and leave before this thing turns ugly.”
Doberman says, “You dissing my whip?”
“And you, Snoopy,” Mya adds.
Now, I’ve had so many moments where someone has said something demeaning and humiliating to me. My head always swims with quick comebacks and snappy responses I could say in retaliation. I never do, though. I almost always have kept my mouth shut. That’s the safe bet. I believe in safe bets.
I do admire Mya’s courage, though.
Just not tonight. And just not with these three.
Did she not see what was tucked so snug in the waistband of Doberman’s pants?
So I say, “She didn’t mean that,” to ease the tension.
“Yes I did, Eric,” she barks at me. “Every last word of it. And I have more.”
I say, “No, you didn’t mean it. And you certainly don’t have more.”
She says, “Yes I did. And I do. I was going to say something about his two boys being fleas.”
“Hey,” Doberman yells. “Y’all need to be concerned with me, not each other.”
I say, “You’re right, Doberman. We’re sorry.”
&
nbsp; He says, “What did you call me, Urkel?”
Mya laughs. “He called your dog-looking ass a Doberman.”
Did I?
Whoops. Didn’t realize I’d vocalized what was floating around in my head. Big mistake.
Doberman takes a step in my direction, says, “See now…”
Just then a song plays. Usher. Doberman looks down, frowns. He says, “Dayum,” and pulls his jersey up again, yanks a cell phone from his belt clip. Backs away. “Speak.”
Doberman’s two homies continue to block our path.
Mya says, “What you two got?”
Art Monk ice grills her. “What’s that, bird?”
She nods toward his belt line. “What you got as your cell phone ringtone? Ciara? Mariah Carey? Some ol’ hard gully stuff…Mary J. Blige?”
“I know you ain’t clownin’ nobody, bird.”
Mya continues, “John Legend. India. Arie.”
“Yo, bird…”
Mya is relentless. “Alicia Keys. Chris Brown. Ne-Yo.”
Art Monk looks over at Lawrence Taylor as Mya keeps naming R & B crooners. She will not shut up. Art Monk and Lawrence Taylor have no idea how to handle her. I don’t know how to handle her, either. You have to treat her like a storm, let her run her course and hope and pray that she doesn’t inflict too much damage.
“J. Holiday. Trey Songz. Brian McKnight…” she continues.
Doberman reappears, a bounce in his step. “We out,” he says to Monk and LT.
“What?” they say in unison. Confusion is thick in their tones; so is disappointment.
“Got something else to do,” Doberman says. “That takes precedence over this nonsense.”
Mya says, “Precedence. Now I know you ain’t a thug. You’re probably matriculated at Princeton.”
Doberman says, “I don’t go to no Princeton.”
Mya smiles. “Didn’t even ask what matriculated means. See that?”
Doberman opens his mouth. Whatever thought was there doesn’t come out. He waves her off and moves away. Monk and LT follow. They get back in the lowrider. The engine rumbles to life. Tupac’s gravelly voice awakens. Doberman pulls off, spewing tan garden gravel as he peels out of the motel complex.
Mya says, “Wannabes.” Then she looks at me and smiles. “Doberman, huh? I liked that, baby boy. You’re tougher than I thought. For a minute there I thought you were gonna be a punk.”
I’ve been elevated in her mind. “Baby boy,” she called me. I love that, so I don’t bother letting her know the Doberman comment was a slip of the tongue. I say, “I go for mines, girl.”
Something I’ve heard Crash say.
Mya pinches my cheek. “If you were three years older…oomph.”
I guess the Windex flub is forgiven. I feel rejuvenated, refreshed.
I say, “In three years I will be.”
She laughs. “Come on, Fiasco’s waiting.”
“Thought you said he wasn’t here.”
She smiles. “Never said that. Told you you’d have to wait and see. You’ll see what I mean soon enough.”
He’s holed up in one of the rooms.
Mya knocks at the door. Two quick knocks, pause, three quick knocks. I take it to be some kind of code. The door cracks open. Then the chain lock is removed. Mya walks in. I follow.
Fiasco’s dressed down in a terry-cloth robe and house slippers. He smiles and nods when he sees me. “What’s good, son?”
Mya says, “We had a little trouble outside. Wannabe thugs. Eric handled it.”
“Eric did?”
“Yep.”
Fiasco comes over, gives me dap. “That’s what I’m talking about.”
I say, “You know how I do.”
Something I’ve heard Crash say.
I look around the room. It’s the opposite of elegant. Wallpaper is peeling; an intense odor of roach spray is in the air, which doesn’t seem to deter the roach I notice scurrying up the wall. A desk in one corner of the room has a scented candle burning on it; a thick phone book keeps it from toppling over. The chair by the desk has a ripped cushion; foam bleeds out of the rip. The curtains are a nice pink. Nothing else in the room is pink. Or goes with pink, for that matter.
I say, “Nice place.”
Fiasco says, “It’s garbage. But I have to get in this element to do what I’m going to do.”
I don’t like the sound of that. “What are you going to do?”
Mya says, “This is the part I was referring to, Eric.”
Fiasco frowns, nods toward the desk. I move over there. There’s a notepad on the surface, several pens, words scribbled all over the notepad. “I write rhymes, Eric. I’m working on a new album. But it isn’t going to be a Fiasco album.”
I laugh away my anxiety and look at the notepad. Notice a couple lines:
I let off rounds
No MC’s better
My skin’s made of platinum
I don’t sweat or stick to leather
A murder MC
Squeeze off till da Glock is empty
Mya says, “I’m taking a shower,” and walks off. She stops at the bathroom door. “You did well, baby boy.” Then she’s gone.
I say, “She’s a sweet lady.”
Fiasco says, “Had her in every single one of my videos. Mya changes looks for each one, so people don’t even realize it’s the same girl. We’re like Spike Lee and Denzel…we get together and magic just seems to happen. And Mya isn’t your typical video girl. She’s more ambitious and motivated than anyone I know. She puts Karrine Steffans to shame.”
I say, “Superhead.”
Fiasco looks at me, frowns. “What you know about that?”
“Confessions of a Video Vixen. I read the book.”
He shakes his head. “They really need to put parental advisory stickers on books, too.”
I joke, “You’re not Papa, are you?”
Papa is an infamous person from the book. The only celebrity Karrine Steffans didn’t mention by real name. Google Papa and Superhead and you’ll get close to a million hits.
Fiasco says, “Nah, son. I’m not Papa.”
I nod at the notepad. “What did you mean before? About this not being a Fiasco album.”
“I’ve catered to the women ’cause they buy the records,” he says. “My stuff has an edge, but not enough. I don’t have street credibility right now. So I’m gullying myself up a bit…putting out a record under my alter ego’s name.”
“Which is?”
“Murdaa. But spelled with two A’s at the end instead of E-R.”
I say, “Catchy.”
He nods. “Yeah.”
I say, “So why the reinvention?”
“It’s getting harder and harder to move units. I needed to try something different.”
I say, “Murdaa…with two A’s at the end instead of E-R?”
“Exactly.”
“You’re gonna be talking guns and killing?”
“I’m gonna spit my reality.”
“You’re rich,” I remind him. “You probably live in a gated community. Guns and killing is hardly your reality.”
“I’m comfortable,” he replies. “But I came from the gutter. I was born in Camden, son. Moms got us up out of the murder capital of Jersey as quick as she could. We ended up moving up north. East Orange, Newark, Irvington. Lot of bouncing around. The only constant was we’d be in a hood. I lost three friends before I graduated high school. All of ’em shot dead.”
I say, “So with all that negative experience you want to pump tales of guns and killing into the community?”
“I want to entertain and educate, Reverend Al.” He smiles at the Reverend Al Sharpton comment. I’m far from Sharpton. Just concerned about the music. It’s all guns and violence from all the rappers. Very few are able to buck the trend, are comfortable enough to go against the grain. Fiasco happening to be one of them.
I say, “I take it you won’t be having a song with Kelly Rowland on this album?”
He frowns. “That was a top-ten hit. I stacked a lot of paper off the ringtone alone. But I lost millions in respect. I have to get that back by any means necessary. So, to answer your question, no, Kelly Rowland won’t be on this album. I won’t be doing anything resembling that anytime soon.”
I say, “Why not? Those pop songs have worked for everyone from LL Cool J to Nelly.”
“No disrespect to either of them, but the streets ain’t checking for them.”
“The streets don’t make rappers go platinum,” I remind him.
He nods. “True enough. But…I want my street cred. It’s important to me. I will still do the Fiasco stuff. Matter fact, I’m just about finished with a new Fiasco album. Ready to shoot the video, which you’ll be in, if everything is everything. But this project is near and dear to my heart. This is just a little creative departure.”
“How do you bounce from Fiasco to Murdaa and not have folks question which one is the real you? Seems like that’ll cause confusion. The street cats aren’t going to respect you as hard.”
He stops me with an upraised hand. “You’re making my head spin. Enough of this talk. I’ve got something I want to give you.”
He steps away from me and heads for the desk. Opens the drawer. Pauses with his back to me, as if contemplating something. Then he turns back to me. In his hands I notice the Dirty Jersey medallion and chain he’s famous for wearing. He moves over to me, medallion and chain still in his hands. “I appreciate you playing devil’s advocate. You’re good for me, E.P. You’ll keep me honest. Having you around is good.”
Then he says one word. It’s the best word I’ve ever heard.
One I’ve always sought, seldom found.
“Welcome.”
I look at the building. It’s a one-story structure, concrete painted white, with concertina wire around the entire perimeter. It looks and feels like a place where you would come to purchase a John Deere riding lawn mower. It isn’t, though. It’s ominous in the same way the motel complex was. My gut tells me to end this now, stop chasing the elusive dream of being popular, and somehow find my way back home.
I feel for my neck. Run my fingers over the thick chain and medallion Fiasco placed over my head not even an hour ago. He’d told me then that I’d get the Dirty Jersey tattoo, as well, if I wanted it, and that a select few have the chain, and even fewer can boast of the chain and the tattoo. I’m special, that means.
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