Natural Born Liar: The Misadventures of Mink LaRue

by Noire

  CHAPTER 11

  Kelvin Merchant was real easy to find on Facebook. Dude musta had his finger on the CONFIRM button because Bunni sent him a friend request and he approved it quick fast. We stalked his Facebook page and laughed like crazy as we read all his freaky info. He looked a good three hundred and fifty pounds in his pictures, and in the hobby section he had the nerve to put in “pain slut” and list a Web site called meninpain.com

  Bunni loved that shit!

  “Oooh, I’ma join that group and look for him,” she said and pulled the site up on the screen. We hollered when a picture came up of a white dude hanging upside down with his balls wrapped in chains. He was dangling by his feet with both his arms tied behind his back. A skinny blond chick wearing nipple pasties and a black garter belt was grinning wickedly over her shoulder as she yanked his hair and ass-muffed his nose.

  Sure enough, Mr. Pain Slut was already registered on the Web site.

  “Damn, Kelvin is a pain slut for real!” I said as Bunni clicked on the registration box and started filling it out. “You really gonna join that shit?”

  She smirked. “Hell fuckin’ yeah! I don’t mind beating a nigga’s ass when a nigga needs his ass beat!”

  “Freak!” I screamed. “You’s a nasty little freak!”

  “Look at this!” Bunni giggled as she read ol’ boy’s profile. “Mr. Pain Slut likes humiliation, inescapable bondage, boot worship, ass-lickin’, face-slappin’, butt-spanking, and dick torture !”

  “Stop lying!” I squinted at the screen and then bust out laughing. “You gonna have some fun whippin’ on that ass!”

  “Damn right,” Bunni said, and her eyes got big with excitement. “I’ma hafta order me some tools and stretch out real good before I go in hard on him, ’cause that’s a big ol’ dude and he’s got a whole lotta ass to whip!”

  Kelvin and Bunni had the instant messages flying back and forth and they were getting real thick up in the mix. He invited her into an S & M chat room and they started turning each other on with all kinds of kinky torture talk and dark fantasies. Bunni told Kelvin she liked to dominate men and treat them like dog shit, and he confessed that he was passive and submissive, and he loved being spanked and slapped, especially on his face, dick, and ass.

  He also told her that he walked around wearing a metal dick clamp up under his clothes, and he said one of his hottest fantasies involved having a woman torture him, then force him to eat her pussy out.

  I was known to be the freak of the week, but all that pain shit didn’t turn me on not one damn bit. But Bunni was all for it. She got dude to tell her his safe word, and when he asked her if they could meet in person she cursed him out and told him she made the damn rules and said he never knew when she was gonna pop up outta the bushes and fuck his sissy ass up.

  Peaches had all kinds of good ideas about what kinda whips and shit Bunni should take with her in her torture kit when we flew down to Texas.

  “Girl, you should get you some of them Tenga toys! They got cock studs, and deep throat cups, and all that!”

  “Handle ya bizz,” I told Bunni as I thought about my own plans. I had to make a stop or two before I dipped up outta New York. The first thing on my list was to get a ride to the nursing home where my mother had been living for the past seven years. “For real, I don’t care what you gotta do so your pain slut can get him a nut. Just make sure he takes damn good care of our asses when we get down there.”

  Mama was in one of them state-run nursing homes where all kinds of violations went down unchecked. I hated visiting her. Not because I didn’t love her and wanna see her, but because every time I went there I ended up wanting to kick somebody’s ass for not doing their job and taking care of her.

  “Mama,” I called her name and sat on the side of her bed. She smelled like she had been soaking in old pee, and only God knew when the last time her diaper had been changed. “It’s Mink, Mama. I came to see you.”

  Even with her face stiff and her hands twisted inward like claws, my mother was still beautiful. Every time I visited her I brought a comb and brush and some pretty headbands and clips for her hair. I did her makeup and polished her fingernails, and I ran my mouth talking to her a mile a minute.

  Going up there was bad enough, but leaving her was hard too, because she’d start reaching out for me and talking nonsense, and then all kinds of tears would roll down her face like it was breaking her heart to see me go.

  As a teenager I knew my mother had done something real twisted and wrong when she drove her car into that river, but by the time I was grown I had come to understand more about that kinda thing. And even though in my heart I had forgiven her for what she did, I had never been able to say those words out loud to her.

  “I gotta go outta town for a little while,” I told Mama as I brushed her soft, pretty hair and dabbed lipstick on her mouth. “Guess where I’m going? Down to Texas! You never been to Texas, huh? Well, I’m gonna be doing some acting work down there,” I lied. “I’ma be gone for a couple of weeks but I’ll be back to see you right after my birthday okay?”

  A strange look came into my mama’s eyes. Like she was real scared of something. She started drooling a little bit and moving her lips around like she was tryna tell me something real important. Her twisted hands reached out to touch me and I grabbed them and kissed them.

  “You gonna be all right,” I shushed her as loud moans came from her throat. I pressed her stiff hands to my chest and rocked her back and forth. “The doctors have my number, Mama. They’ll call me if you need me and I’ll come right back, okay?”

  I always hated to leave my mama, but I couldn’t wait to get outta that damn nursing home. Peaches was waiting outside for me in his boyfriend’s car, and when I got in beside him his eyes was full of understanding. Peaches was good to me, and he was the only person in the whole world who really understood my soul. The woman laying in there in that bed mighta gave birth to me, but Peaches had been my mother when it really counted.

  “You good, Madame Mink?” he asked softly.

  I felt like shit inside, but a gwap was on the line so I wiped my tears and put on my game face and nodded.

  Peaches touched my hair and smiled, and then we headed on back to Harlem.

  CHAPTER 12

  It was time to go! Me and Bunni were ready to blow New York and put a hella hurtin’ on the city of Dallas. The Fourth of July was falling on a Thursday, so we decided to fly to Texas that Friday morning, just in time for the Dominions’ annual barbeque. I knew the DNA lab was gonna be closed for the whole weekend, but I figured we could just play dumb and talk our way into the Dominion mansion and put our feet up for the weekend.

  Borne had charged both of us a one-way ticket on his little credit card, and after I put some hot booty whammy on him he tore me off a couple of hundred dollars in cash for my pockets too.

  Of course Mink Minaj was itchin’ to floss real gully down in Texas, and Peaches and his crew went on a boosting spree for me and Bunni, and he even came through with some extra ends that helped us out a lot.

  “I got two hundred dollars,” Peaches told me. He looked real dainty as he took a little white hankie outta his bra, and when he opened it there were two yards inside folded up in small squares. “This is my last little bit of play, you hear? So y’all betta get down south and work!”

  The flight was only a few hours long, but me and Bunni were runway-dressed from our shades to our shoes and loaded down with Yves St. Laurent luggage full of boosted gear.

  “Don’t forget,” I warned Bunni for about the tenth time before we left. My girl wasn’t adaptable like me. I had practiced playing so many roles over the years that I could call one up just like that. But Bunni was always the same chick, no matter what. She looked the part of an uptown diva, but when she opened her mouth all kinds of ghettoisms were prone to jump out.

  “Them Dominions are rich and Selah sounded bougie as hell. So keep in mind what I told you,” I cautioned her. “Whate
ver you do, don’t let ’em peep your real game, you dig? You just keep smiling and looking good, that’s all you really gotta do. If they ask you a bunch of questions just nod a little bit and play ’em off. We ain’t gonna steal shit while we’re down there, and we definitely ain’t tryna get locked up in Texas where they deep-fry niggas and drizzle gravy over them for lunch, okay? We’re just gonna dip in, work ’em over until we get ’em nice and soft, then wait for my birthday to roll around so we can cash that fat check. You got it?”

  Bunni nodded.

  “Good!” I squealed. “Leggo!”

  It was blazing hot in Dallas when we landed at the airport. We’d gone on a mini shopping spree in an airport store, and I had twenty-two dollars left to my name and Bunni had forty. We got our brand-new designer bags off the merry-go-round thingie, then jumped in a yellow cab and gave the driver the address to Selah Dominion’s mansion.

  “What if them rich fools don’t wanna let us stay with them?” Bunni asked. Neither one of us had ever been so far away from New York before and she sounded kinda shaky.

  “Oh, they gonna let us stay!” I said. “If they wanna get their daughter back they better let us stay.”

  On the real, between me and Bunni we barely had enough money to pay the damn cab driver, and we could forget about tryna get a hotel room over a holiday weekend. But one way or another our asses was getting up in that house!

  As we drove away from the airport I checked out the sights. From what I could see Dallas was nothing like New York. Instead of skyscrapers and congested highways and people scattering around like roaches everywhere, the landscape was flat, the traffic was pretty light, and it was too damn hot for anybody to be walking around any damn where.

  I sat back and tried to look at every little thing we passed.

  “What kinda crazy shit is this?” Bunni laughed as we rode down the highway and passed some big houses that were on huge patches of farmland. She started rapping. “Horses in da front yard, llamas in the back! Cowboys on da porch drinkin’ gin like that!”

  I was actually digging all the differences between here and home. I had always been a dreamer, and when I was little I had fantasized about visiting all kinds of places from London to Liberia. I used to steal luxury real estate magazines from vendors and cut out pictures of the super-mansions I wanted to live in one day and all the luxury cars I wanted to drive, then tape them on the wall next to my bed.

  I had done that kinda stuff for years, and I knew rich when I saw it, but I hadn’t seen a damn thing to get me ready for the sprawling estate the cabbie drove onto or the mega-mansion that sat at the end of the long, circular driveway.

  “What the fuck!” Bunni was wide open on that shit. Two Bentleys and a flashy Rolls Royce sat in the wide driveway under a huge brick awning, and a black Mercedes Benz, a slammin’ Lamborghini race car, and a bone-white 2012 Maybach were parked right in front of the house.

  I elbowed her real hard. “Get it together, Bunni! I done told you! Don’t get up in there cursing all loud or smacking your damn food, and whatever you do, please don’t get to twisting them nasty pieces of toilet tissue up your nose the way you do when you get sleepy. Pull yourself together and let’s act like we’re about something, okay? There’s money to get up in this bitch so let’s go get it!”

  But Bunni wasn’t the only one wide open. I had never in my life seen black people living like this before. We had picked the right day to bust up on them too, because the estate was sho nuff jumping as they prepped for their big Fourth of July cookout. Waiters and workmen were everywhere. An old black man was bent over shining the rims on the Maybach, and another old dude was polishing up the brass fixtures on the front door.

  We tossed the cab driver forty bucks even though the meter said we owed him forty-two, and me and Bunni were barely outta the taxi when a tall, killer-looking security guard in a hot black suit came at us real hard.

  “Wrong address,” he told the cab driver as he tried to shoo our asses back inside. “This is private property. Go back out and take a left on the main road. You should be able to find your way from there.”

  “Um, no,” I said with a bold smile. I had on a pale yellow mermaid skirt, a sheer white belly tee, and a curly mint-green wig with pale yellow streaks. Bunni was wearing a pair of gold coochie-cutter shorts and a matching halter. I switched my ass and baby-stepped toward him like my ankles was tied together in my mint-green shoes, as Bunni posted up and struck a perfect pussy-print pose. “Nah, I think we’re in the right place, boo. This is the Dominion Estate, isn’t it?”

  Dude hesitated like, wtf. He stared at me and then at Bunni, and then back to me. He was young and wit’ it and I busted his groove. He was a high-priced security guard and he mighta been all strapped up in his monkey suit, but he wasn’t immune to all that New York sex appeal that me and Bunni were throwing down on him.

  “My name is Mink LaRue. Mrs. Dominion is expecting me.”

  Ol’ boy left our bags sitting in the driveway and we followed him to the front door of the mansion. We stepped into a huge foyer that was cool and smelled like flowers, and I wanted to slap the shit outta Bunni when outta nowhere she started stomping her feet and squealing like a damn idiot.

  “This shit is nice as hell!” Bunni was loud as a mutha as she hugged all on my neck and started jumping up and down. “We ’bout to get it yo! We ’bout to get it!”

  “Wait right here,” the security dude told us. He gave Bunni a hungry look, and as soon as he walked away a skinny white dude rushed over and tried to show our asses right back to the door.

  “Good afternoon, ladies,” he said, gripping our elbows and turning us around at the same time. “I apologize, but Mrs. Dominion isn’t available right now. As you can see we’re preparing for a family event. She asks that you come back on Monday, after you’ve taken care of all the necessary business you were instructed to attend to.”

  I put on my brakes and smiled dead in his face. He was talking about me hitting the lab to take that DNA test, but he wasn’t getting my ass back out that door!

  “Oh, there’s a family event taking place?” I said, leaning into him and swinging him and Bunni both around in a wide U-turn. “Well I’m family!”

  He smiled stiffly. “That’s wonderful, Miss ... er ...”

  “LaRue. Mink LaRue. I’m so sorry.” I pressed my hand to my chest in a real dainty move. “I must have misunderstood my instructions.” I smiled again and blinked innocently, turning on the charm. “We arrived in Dallas this morning and went directly to the address Mrs. Dominion gave me. For some reason the lab was closed, so we decided to come here instead.”

  “It’s a holiday weekend,” the assistant explained. “Most businesses were closed yesterday and today. But they’ll reopen on Monday, and you should head back to the lab again at that time.”

  “Oh for real, I will,” I agreed as I stood my ground. “But see, I’m only gonna be down here for one day. I don’t have a problem going back to the lab on Monday, but like you said, it’s a holiday weekend, and there’s no way we can get a room around here today. Every joint within a hundred miles is already sold out.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. I really don’t know what to tell you. Perhaps you could call around and try to find some last-minute accommodations, or you might want to return home and come back next week, but you really can’t—”

  “Thank you, Albert,” a feminine but firm voice interrupted him. A tall, slim lady walked into the parlor wearing a rose-colored skirt and a sleeveless silk shift. I recognized the outfit as Chanel and the woman wearing it as Selah Dominion. My stomach quivered in awe. It was like Michelle Obama had stepped up in the joint, or maybe even Patti LaBelle. I figured Bunni’s ass was finally struck speechless too because I didn’t hear so much as a squeak outta her.

  “Hello.” The woman extended her hand. “I’m Selah Dominion.”

  All I could do was stare at her. She was even flyer in person than she’d looked in the videos. She had pe
rfect features and her whipped hair hung down below her shoulders. She rocked delicate shine from her neck and ears that had obviously cost big bank, but at the same time her style was tasteful and real classy.

  “I’m Mink LaRue, and this is my best friend Bunita Baines.”

  Selah barely glanced at Bunni. She was too busy staring at me, and it was hard for me to handle the emotions on her face.

  “Your eyes,” she said, peering at me closely. “They’re hazel. My daughter Sable’s eyes were gray when she was a baby, but by the time she was four months old they’d turned hazel. Just like yours.”

  I gave Selah both of my dimples and all thirty-two of my perfect pearly whites. There was something about my smile that had always made people trust me, and Selah was no exception. Hell yeah, she was rich as shit, and that made her kinda wary, but I could tell how bad this chick really wanted me to be her long-lost daughter, which damn sure woulda been right up my alley too!

  “Come on inside,” Selah invited us with a smile. She took us through the parlor and down a real long hall. My beady little eyes were everywhere as I tried to take it all in. The walls were done up in some real fancy gold wallpaper, and a bunch of large-framed family photos were hung everywhere.

  I felt a sharp sting on the back of my upper arm and I almost hollered “ouch” as I whirled around.

  Bunni had pinched the shit outta me. She was back there grinning her ass off as she pointed and checked out all the fancy sculptures and shit that was part of the décor.

  We gone get paid! she mouthed as she wiggled her hips down the wide hall. We gone get paid!

  I swung at her and missed as we both hurried to keep up with Selah.

  She led us into a super-large living room that looked out on a huge yard. A sliding glass door stretched from one wall to the other, and there were a bunch of colorful leather couches arranged in front of the biggest flat-screen televisions that I had ever seen.