Black Widow

by Nikki Turner

  “Yes, I’d like to see everything you have in white or black,” Isis stated.

  “Everything?” the saleslady asked.

  “Everything,” Isis answered without batting an eye.

  The saleslady was taken aback; it wasn’t every day that someone came in with a request like that. “Uh, no problem. I’m just going to need your sizes; then give me a few minutes to go in the back to pull out some of the hot things that may not have hit the floor yet.” Before she walked away she said, “Oh, my name is Sarah. Just call my name if you should need anything else.” The saleslady headed to the back of the store, past the chattering guys who were trying on shoes.

  Sarah whispered into the ear of one of the three salesmen who were in conversation with the male customers. The salesman immediately headed over toward Isis and started helping her pick out stuff from the racks and shelves. Sarah carried out some other items as well.

  Isis tried on a few pairs of shoes, looked at them from different angles, took a couple of steps in each pair, and fell in love with them. “I’ll take all three of these,” she said. “Do they come with matching belts or bags, Sarah?”

  “Yes.” Sarah turned to the new woman whom she was training. “Sue, will you go get the two belts that I showed you earlier…the ones that match these shoes?”

  Sue nodded and turned to do as she was asked.

  “Oh, and, Sarah, I need a white baseball hat and white sneakers—the ones you have on display, I’m not loving. Can you call Karen at the Forum Shops in the Vegas store and see if they have any different ones?”

  “I sure can,” Sarah said, impressed by Isis’s knowledge of their other stores and managers in different states.

  Isis gave orders, and everybody in the store knew that today was their lucky day because they were dealing with a lady who knew what she liked and wanted. All attention was on Isis when she pranced around the store in a pair of brown stiletto sandals and asked, “Do you have these in white, Sarah?”

  “I don’t think we do,” she said. “I know we have them in a reddish color.”

  “No. I need them in either white or black.”

  “What about blue?” the new girl jumped in. Sarah looked at her as if she was crazy. She would have to have a talk with her later.

  “Either black or white, and with these,” Isis looked at the shoe, “I would love to have them in white.”

  “I can try to make that happen,” Sarah said, “but I may need a couple of days.”

  “No problem. I’ll leave you my card.”

  One of the guys who had been trying on shoes was on his way to the register to finalize his purchase. He had been watching the attractive young lady buying everything in the two colors and was curious, so he stopped and asked, “What’s up with all the black and white?”

  Isis never looked up from Sarah, who was buckling up a pair of black sandals for her. “That’s all I wear,” she answered.

  “Is there a reason for that?” he asked.

  Isis looked up and noticed the guy’s features for the first time. He was six feet tall and wore a long diamond necklace with a seriously blinged-out diamond cross pendant that rested on his beer gut. He wore long, neat, skinny shoulder-length dreads that really brought out his reddish-brown complexion.

  “Yes.” She answered his question while standing up to see how the sandals felt on her feet.

  “Care to share?”

  She walked over to the mirror. “The world is either black or white. You do or you don’t. Will or you won’t. There really is no gray area.” She stared down at the mirror to see how the heel of her foot looked in the shoes. “So it doesn’t make much sense to me to have color in my wardrobe.”

  “Makes a lot of sense.” He nodded. “So your entire closet is in black and white.”

  “Every inch,” she confirmed.

  “Damn. You seem like a diva. So how do you manage with such limited choices?”

  “If you’ve got it in colors,” she said, “I’ve got it in white or black. If not, I can get it.”

  Sarah spoke up. “I think you’ve been through just about everything we have, and I’m going to check on the sneakers and the other pair of sandals for you. Will there be anything else I can do for you?”

  “That’s it for me, Sarah. I’m ready to get out of here,” Isis told her.

  Everything that Isis had chosen during the hour-and-a-half-long spree was taken to the front of the store and rang up by Sue. “That’ll be $7,462.53,” she announced. “Will that be cash or charge?”

  Isis pulled out her credit card to pay for her purchase, and there was Mr. Beer Belly again. “I’m sure you’re probably charging this shopping spree to your husband’s account today, but when you’re ready to shop with the real king of Texas, make sho’ you call me, ya heard?” He handed her a piece of paper with his number on it. “Some call me the emperor of the South.”

  “Okay, emperor, I hear you.” She took his number. “And I will call you. I’m sure we can discuss some business somewhere down the line. I design jewelry.” Isis felt as if she might have landed a potential big-spending new client, judging by the looks of his chain. “I’m going to lock your number in my phone.”

  “You do that.” He smirked.

  Sarah cut in. “Did you use valet parking, ma’am?”

  “No. I’m staying at the Westin.”

  “Then would you like for me to have your packages sent over?”

  “That would be good,” Isis agreed.

  “Can I ask you a question?” Sarah asked.

  Isis stopped in her tracks and looked at her. “What is it?”

  “When you decided that you were not going to wear any colors, what did you do with all your colorful clothes that you did have?”

  “Well, I took them to the battered women’s shelter and dropped them off for the ladies in need. Brand-new stuff, some of it, because not too long before, I had just got an entirely new wardrobe. But it didn’t matter. Someone blessed me with a lot of nice things, and I wanted to pay it forward.”

  “That’s sweet. Well, have a nice day, and please come back and see us.”

  “I will.”

  She had left the Gucci store and was passing the ice-skating rink inside the mall when she saw the light on her phone indicating that she had messages. Her phone service wasn’t working in certain parts of the mall, so some of her calls had gone straight to voice mail.

  There were three missed calls and one of them was from her sister. “Hi, sister. I got the message that you had came by. I’m so mad at you because I wish you would have told me. Randy and I went to Seattle to meet with one of his endorsement sponsors, so I am not in Texas and I won’t be back for another four days. However, you can hang around if you wish, or we can just see each other another time. Love ya. Call me!”

  That was what she got for coming all this way unannounced. She tried dialing her sister back, but the call went to the voice mail. Shit! Sly was one of the other people who’d called, so she hit her back. She probably had a message from Logic.

  “Hey, Sly, what’s up girl?” While she was talking, she watched as the king of Texas made his way through the mall with his boys in tow carrying his bags. Emperor?

  “Good. What about you?” Sly asked.

  “Girl, can you believe my sister ain’t even in the state?”

  “What?!” Sly exclaimed in disbelief. “Where is she?”

  “In Seattle. I went to her house, and the housekeeper wouldn’t even let me in,” she said. “Anyway, why did you call?”

  “When I called, I had Logic on the phone. He tried calling you himself, but your phone went to voice mail. But you need to get back here quick.”

  “What did he say?” Isis became alarmed. “Is he okay?”

  “He’s cool. He’s just worried about you. Cursed me out for letting you go OT by yourself. From now on, you can’t travel alone anymore.”

  Isis brushed Sly off. “I hear you.”

  “Plus, that dude
Tony called me and said he’d tried to reach you too. You know, when I went up there to meet him, I called him from my phone, and I guess he saved the number.”

  “Did he say what he wanted?”

  “Yeah, he said that he needed you to have Breeze’s jewelry straight by Friday because that’s when he’s having the press conference.”

  “Friday?” Isis said in shock. She’d figured that the last thing that would be on Breeze’s mind was some jewelry. Guess she’d thought wrong.

  “Yeah, Friday!”

  “Sly, today is Tuesday.” Isis thought fast. She could e-mail the idea she had come up with for Breeze to Ricco, one of her jewelers in New York. He could have the piece made in two days and overnight it back to her in Miami by Friday. She didn’t have any room for error, and it would be pushing it close, but it was doable.

  “Well, all I can say is that you need to be on the first thing smoking back to Miami or wherever you got to go to get that shit right.” Sly switched gears. “Also, Logic said he’s going to try to call back tonight, so make sure you pick up.”

  “Okay,” Isis said. She then turned to walk the other way to head toward the Westin. “I’m on my way back to my hotel; I’ll call you back with my travel plans.”

  After hanging up the phone, Isis realized that she was lost. Finally making it to the Westin’s entrance, she noticed a nice car, which was nothing unusual for Texas, especially at this hotel. She thought it was a Bentley Azure but couldn’t be sure. Then he got into it, Mr. King of Texas himself. She watched from a distance knowing that one day she’d be driving one of those, and it would not be a present from a man. It would be from the success of Black Widow Jewels.

  Chapter 23

  The Black Angel

  The following day, Isis caught the first flight bound for the sunshine state. Sly picked her up from the airport with all of Isis’s dry cleaning in the car. She also had a list of questions that she wanted to ask to make Isis’s life as easy as possible so that she could meet the deadline for Smooth Breeze.

  As Sly was running off the questions, she suddenly stopped. “Why are you smiling?” Sly asked. “Did I say something funny?”

  “No,” Isis said. It’s just that you remind me of my sister.” Then the thought of Phoebe possibly being in trouble upset her.

  “I can’t wait to meet her. She sounds like a real cool girl.”

  “She is,” Isis said, wondering what was really going on with Phoebe. Why was she shutting her out?

  “Ice, you okay?”

  “Yeah, just thinking about my sister, that’s all.”

  Sly took Isis home to change clothes and get ready to go visit Logic. When Logic walked out and sat in the chair behind the glass, Isis lit up. His muscular body was even more toned than before he’d gone in, and he looked genuinely happy to see her. He picked up the telephone that was used to talk through the glass. She picked up hers.

  “So how are you?” he asked.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Things are moving along pretty much like you said they would.”

  “Have you spoken to Breeze since they hit him with the charges?” he asked her.

  “He didn’t do it, Logic.”

  “How do you know he didn’t?”

  Isis told him about how she had met the girl who was pressing the charges—in Breeze’s dressing room the night she’d gone to talk business with him at the arena. “They were in there talking about how they planned to suck and fuck the man all the way to the altar,” she went on to say. “I got the whole conversation on my digital recorder.”

  “Digital recorder?” he asked. “When you started playing PI?”

  “After meeting your friend Fonz, actually.” Isis then told him about how she had had to knee the man for acting like a complete asshole and how she was afraid that he wouldn’t believe her version of what happened, so she’d made the decision to record everyone she spoke to from then on. “I sent the recording to Smooth Breeze’s people, so he should be all right. He’s supposed to have a press conference on Friday, and he wants to wear one of my pieces.”

  “That’s what’s up, Princess,” Logic said, congratulating her. “The other thing was my fault. I should’ve warned you about Fonz…he can be a piece of work. I thought he would know better than to try that shit on someone I sent, but maybe I forgot to mention that you were my wife. Don’t worry, though; I’ll get someone to handle that.” He changed the subject. “What about my car? Is it somewhere safe?”

  “I had it transported to Richmond like you asked, and my Aunt Samantha is going to put it in storage and send me all the paperwork.”

  Logic smiled. “Nothing rattles you, huh?”

  Isis thought about the first day Logic had called her when she had just found out that Bam had taken everything that she owned aside from the clothes on her back, the suitcase she took with her to Las Vegas, and the twenty thousand dollars that was left over from the trip. She had thought it was the end of the world. “Yes, I rattle,” she said. “But I try not to let it shake me apart.”

  They talked about a few other things before one of the guards walked up behind Logic and said, “Time’s up.” The hour had flown by, and it was time for Isis to leave.

  It was 10:52 Friday morning, the day of Smooth Breeze’s press conference. Isis had been on the phone and e-mailing back and forth with Ricco the previous night to get the piece of jewelry ready for her client. She wished that she would’ve had a little more time to do the thing herself, but that was not the case. Her heart was beating pretty fast as she knocked on Smooth Breeze’s hotel room door.

  Tony answered the door with a smile and a big hug, then he invited her inside. “Thank you, Ms. Ice, for everything.”

  Isis checked out her surroundings. Smooth Breeze and his crew were staying in a three-room suite that contained two bedrooms and a large conference room. The ever-present weed smoke was thick in the air, and the same guy who’d been doing the rolling the night she’d met them at the arena was still taking care of his business. She wondered if he ever stopped rolling blunts, or was it a never-ending job?

  It was apparent that they had been staying there for a while because tags from new clothes, liquor bottles, and food containers were all over the place—the floor, the coffee tables, and all points in between. The maid would definitely have her work cut out for her—if they ever let the poor lady in to do her job.

  “I thank y’all for allowing me to show the world my talent,” she said. “You are welcome. I don’t know if I told you or not, but my business’s name is Black Widow Jewels. Smooth Breeze will be the first to wear a piece from the Black Widow collection.”

  Smooth Breeze walked in from the main bedroom, and his face took on a humongous grin. “Is this my favorite jewelry designer or my lead defense attorney? I’m going to have to write you two checks.”

  “It’s me,” she said, “the Black Widow, in the flesh.”

  “Well, I just want to tell you thanks again and to suggest that maybe you should change your name from the Black Widow to the Black Angel.” Breeze talked more freely to her today than he had the first couple of times they had met. “I don’t think you fully understand how you went on some Janice Cochran shit and saved the goddamn day.”

  “For real, I’m just glad I had what you needed to clear your name. Hos like that give real women a bad name,” she admitted. “Then people want to know why you make a record calling a bitch a bitch. It’s self-evident.”

  “You know what’s crazy, though?” Breeze asked.

  Isis was almost afraid to ask. “What?”

  “I don’t normally even fuck with them groupie chicks like that.” Isis gave him a “Nigga, please!” look, so Breeze looked toward Tony, and Tony shook his head, acknowledging that he was telling the truth. Breeze continued, “I break my rule and give it to this chick like she wants it. Excuse my lack of modesty, but it is what it is, and this is what I get in return. And you want to know why she told Tony she was gon’ send my red ass
to prison?” He looked toward Tony. “Tell her, T.”

  Tony looked Isis directly in the eye. “She said that she almost choked sucking and drinking all the cum from that skinny red nigga’s big-ass dick, and he didn’t even ask for her phone number when she was done.”

  “Yeah, she came at me like a ho, so I treated her like one,” Breeze confirmed. “Then the bitch tried to Tupac me. And you see how fast the media jumped on it: like an alcoholic to a fifth of Seagram’s Gin. Innocent until proven guilty, my ass. Before the ink was even dry on the allegations, the whities started pulling the plug on my endorsements.” He poured himself a drink. “It was only one thing that bitch said that wasn’t a lie.”

  Isis was curious. “What was that?”

  Smooth Breeze smiled. “She said that she was going to give me the best mother fucking brains I ever had in my life.”

  “If you wouldn’t have come forth with that tape, he would’ve been fucked up in the game for sure,” Tony added.

  “I am glad I could be of help. Just do me one favor?” Isis said.

  “Anything,” Tony said.

  “Don’t let it leak that you got the evidence from me. People might not want to talk to me if they think they might be recorded.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Well, let’s lighten the conversation some,” she said. “Let me show you what I have for you.” She pulled out a medallion laced with black and yellow diamonds. It had the word Bitches with a slanted bar going through it. The word was spelled out in yellow diamonds, and the bar that ran across it was in black diamonds. The necklace itself was constructed of the same color diamonds. And of course there was a twenty-two-carat diamond ring to match.

  No one spoke as Tony and Breeze looked over the pieces. Isis was afraid that they didn’t like them. Then Breeze broke the silence. “Daaamn! You ain’t playing with this shit, are you?”