A Dollar and A Dream

by Carl Weber, La Jill Hunt, Angel Hunter; Dwayne S. Joseph

  To my family: Mom, Dad, Teyana, Daren, Granny and Grandmother. I love you guys. Thank you for supporting my dream. I couldn’t have asked for a better family. Vaughn—welcome. To my in-laws: You guys are the bomb! Lourdes, Russell, Grace, Ivan, Prianna, Leila. I am blessed to call you my family. Ivan…think we’ll always have sugar in our tanks? To all of my friends: Chris, Lisa, Jessie and Jasmine, Tho, Micah and Tiffany, Gregg and Kristy, Carlos (mi hermano), Monte, Kenny, Lyda, Mariana, Terri, Seleina, Rob and little Robbie, Adena Walker, Lori King…I’m lucky to call you all my friends. To my cousins, uncles, aunts: thank you for the love and support.

  Martha, you know I can’t leave you out. Thank you for your belief and hard work. It is an honor to have gotten to know you!

  To the readers of my first novel, The Choices Men Make, thank you for the e-mails and kind words. I hope you enjoy! And my next book will be out soon! To the writers who’ve paved the way: Thank you for inspiring me. To Portia: Thank you for everything you’re doing, have done, and will continue to do for me.

  To the writers on this project (my friends). Carl, I’ve said it before: one of the realest brothers I know. A true talent and inspiration. Man I got your back!! Jill, my twin. Girl you’re about to blow uuuuuuuup!!! You are a gifted storyteller. That we’ve gotten to know each other is no accident! Angel, just like Jill, you’re about to blow uuuuup!! It’s been one hell of an adventure for us, hasn’t it!! You are a true talent! Let’s do this.

  Lastly, I have to give a special thank-you to the Bookends and Beginnings Book Club of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. You guys took a brother in and made him feel like he’d always been there! Thank you for that! I hope you enjoy!

  One last note. To the New York Giants: Let’s do it!

  Please feel free to e-mail me: Djoseph21044@yahoo.com or visit www.DwayneSJoseph.com.

  Dwayne S. Joseph

  1

  5…17…3…2…11…24.

  Oh shit!

  I just won the lottery. I just won the goddamn lottery worth one hundred and eighty million dollars! Hold on a minute. Let me pinch myself to make sure I’m not dreaming. Damn, that hurt. Shit, maybe my eyes are playing tricks on me. Let me double and triple-check the numbers.

  Oh shit! Oh shit! Oh shit!

  I am rich. Filthy. I can actually do all of the things I’ve daydreamed about over and over and over. Trips from here to wherever the hell I want to go. I can buy whatever I want. I can have and do anything I want. People will do whatever I say because I’m Mr. Moneybags now. Hell, I’m not even black anymore. I’m green. And my pockets are fat. Damn, let me stop jumping up and down before that nasty crab of a neighbor beneath me, Mrs. Gershwin, starts banging on her ceiling again. I can barely walk around without her ass complaining.

  Hold up a second. What the hell am I talking about? I’m Donald Trump up in this motherfucker. Fuck Mrs. Gershwin. Matter of fact, fuck anybody who had, has, or will have a problem with me. Money is power and I have both now. First things first: I’m never going back to my job again. No more sweeping, no more scraping. I’m not cleaning up a damn thing ever again. Next thing I’ll do is go and find me a house somewhere. Five or six bedrooms, an in-ground pool with a diving board, three-car garage; hell, maybe I’ll do like MC Hammer and put a waterfall up in there. After that I’ll get rid of my hooptie and buy myself a Lincoln Navigator, a Benz, and for the icing on the cake, my dream car—a Ferrari. I’ll have the finest women fighting to be at my side, because it’ll be all about my Benjamins.

  Ring…ring…ring…

  I’m not even going to answer that. My days of answering my own phone are over. I’ll get a butler to do that shit.

  Ring…ring…ring…ring…

  A butler and a chef. I’ll give up cooking, too.

  Beep.

  Good. My answering machine got it.

  “DeVante! Hey, this is Lisa. I’m here with Joe, Marcus, Nydia, and Sheila. DeVante? Are you there? Did you watch the news? Did we win? You did get the tickets, right? Call me as soon as you get this.”

  Click.

  Shit. In my excitement I completely forgot that we all chipped in ten bucks for sixty tickets. I have to share the jackpot.

  Damn.

  But wait a minute. I did all the hard work. No one came with me and stood for over an hour in line to get those tickets. I have the winning tickets and no proof that they contributed anything, so it’s my word against theirs. One hundred and eighty million dollars. Split six ways, that’s thirty million apiece. Split one way, that’s a hell of a lot more to spend.

  2

  He’s still not answering the phone,” Lisa said with a frustrated exhale. That wasn’t like DeVante at all.

  “Are you sure he bought those tickets and didn’t just pocket our money?” Marcus asked.

  Joe nodded his head. “He bought ’em. He told me he did. He’s my boy. He wouldn’t lie.” Joe looked at everyone in the room but had doubts about what he’d said. DeVante was an alcoholic, and sixty dollars would be just enough to have a nice solo party.

  Nydia shook her head vigorously. “Come on, Joe. Everyone knows he has a problem with the bottle. He could put the sixty dollars to good use.”

  “Not everyone!” Sheila declared. She glared at Nydia and Joe. “I did not know he was an alcoholic! If you knew about his problem, why the hell didn’t someone go with him?”

  Joe answered. “Look, we were all busy with our classes. DeVante was the only one who had the time to make the run.”

  “But he has a drinking problem!” Sheila countered. She couldn’t believe they let her give her hard-earned money to an alcoholic.

  “Sheila,” Joe said, trying to keep his voice down, which was hard because he was starting to wonder about his friend of six years. “DeVante wouldn’t spend our money like that. He has a slight problem, yes, but he’s an up-front guy. Besides, he wouldn’t betray the friendship I have with him.”

  “Then where the hell is he?” Nydia asked. “I swear, if he’s drunk somewhere and didn’t buy those tickets…”

  “Hold on a second,” Marcus interjected, cutting Nydia off. “While we’re busy worrying about him drinking our money away, has anyone thought of the possibility of him having the winning ticket? Did it ever occur to any of you that we could all be millionaires and he’s trying to keep the money for himself?”

  There was silence around the room as everyone pondered the possibility. Finally, Lisa said quietly, “DeVante wouldn’t do that.”

  “Why, Lisa?” Marcus asked. “Because you sleep with him from time to time? Oh, don’t be so shocked that we know. There aren’t many secrets you can hide in a school filled with nosy, talkative teenagers.”

  Lisa shook her head, amazed that everyone knew of her relationship with DeVante. But that was her personal business. She wasn’t about to discuss it, especially not with Marcus.

  “Look, Marcus,” Joe said, coming to her rescue. “All Lisa’s saying is that even with DeVante’s problem, he is a stand-up guy. I know him. He wouldn’t roll out like that.”

  “Well, you know what, Joe, I don’t know him like that. And Nydia and Sheila aren’t fucking him.”

  Lisa slammed her hand down on the coffee table. Marcus’s last comment irked her nerves. “Before you make another ignorant-ass comment and make your boss even more angry, Marcus, why don’t we just go to DeVante’s place? No more jumping to conclusions. No more talking out of our mouths. Or asses, in some cases.”

  “Good idea,” Sheila said. She was the only non-minority of the group, and she didn’t want any confrontation.

  “Yeah, let’s go,” Nydia agreed, rising with Sheila. Marcus, Joe, and Lisa stood. Lisa grabbed her car key and headed to the door.

  “I’ll drive.” As she led the pack out of the door, she thought about all of the things she would do if they’d won the money. She said a silent prayer and hoped that she would be able to follow through on those plans if DeVante did possess the winning ticket.

  Trailing behind th
e pack, Joe thought about his own dreams. He, too, said a couple of silent prayers. One prayer for the winning numbers, and the other praying that if it came down to it, he wouldn’t have to kill his best friend. Because if they’d indeed won, he wouldn’t be denied his share of the prize.

  3

  Ring…ring…ring…

  They just wouldn’t stop calling me. I thought about picking it up this time, but what would I say? I’d already told Joe I’d bought the tickets, and he knows I wouldn’t lie to him. We met at the drug and alcohol treatment center a little over six years ago. He was hooked on heroin. My poison was coke. We came from different sides of the track, Joe from the ghetto, me from the ’burbs. Traveled different roads to end up in the same location. Joe never told me what life he was living or what brought him to that place. That’s a secret he won’t share with anyone. Me, I have no secrets. I was on the streets hustling and using when I got busted for drug possession. It was my second offense. I got lucky because the judge who passed down the sentence knew me from when I was a kid. In her chambers, with no one else around, she gave me an option—jail or rehab. I chose the lesser of two evils.

  In the center Joe and I became fast friends because of what we had in common. Drugs had taken away everything we’d had: our possessions, our friends, and more importantly, our dignity. Together we got cleaned up and started over from the bottom. Lived in a beat-up apartment in the ghetto, and got jobs as janitors in one of the city’s high schools. Six years have now gone by, and I’m still a janitor, while Joe is now the gym teacher. Getting cleaned up really opened his mind to the realization that he was meant for bigger and better things. All getting cleaned up did for me was make me realize how much I’d wasted my life and that I had no clue as to what I wanted to do.

  Damn, I need a drink.

  That’s my new poison. I started drinking to help get rid of the urge to go back to the coke. Every time I would feel the white angel’s fingertips at my neck, I’d reach for a glass and a bottle. I know I need help, but I figure it’s better my liver than my brain. So I just say no with a shot of vodka, rum, gin, and juice, sometimes a little Hennessey on the rocks.

  I downed two shots of Captain Black and exhaled and tried to get my thoughts right. It still wasn’t too late. I could call Lisa back and let everyone know we’ll never have money problems again. We’re all working, so I know everyone needs the money. Sheila’s white and doesn’t seem to have any financial issues, but I’m sure she isn’t making much as the social studies teacher. I can say the same about Nydia, although because she’s a Latina, I’m sure she’s making slightly less than Sheila. Marcus is copping a decent salary as the guidance counselor, but he’s got four baby mamas with five mouths to feed and he’s obligated to pay child support for each and every one of them. Joe’s got a new family to support and one other child with an ex-girlfriend he used to get high with. Once she found out about his rise from janitor to teacher, she got cleaned up, got a job, and filed for child support.

  As an underpaid assistant principal, Lisa has a baby on the way that she says is mine. No one knows about that yet. She’s only two months and not showing. Lisa and I hooked up two years after I started working at the school. We’re nothing official. We just satisfy an urge and keep each other from being lonely. I like Lisa. She’s a beautiful and intelligent sister. She’d make a lucky man a good wife one day. Sometimes I imagine myself as that good man. But I’m just a janitor, and Lisa’s too smart to be with me on the real like that. So we keep our arrangement simple. No ties. No obligations. I have no idea if this baby is really mine or if she’s planning on keeping it. At thirty-five, with no education, no work experience, and no direct plan for the future, a kid is the last thing I need, but it’s not my decision to make.

  My phone hasn’t rung in the last twenty minutes, which isn’t a good sign. It can only mean one thing, which means I have about fifteen minutes to decide what I am going to do before they show up. I know they’re coming because that’s what I would do. Thirty million apiece is worth the visit.

  4

  Joe was the last to get out of Lisa’s Nissan. He looked up towards DeVante’s window. It had always bothered him that DeVante still lived in the apartment they’d shared. That, and the environment around it was a black hole. If you allowed it to suck you in, you would be lost for good. That’s why Joe had been so determined to escape its grasp after his struggle with heroin. And because he and DeVante both knew about the difficult war against drugs, he’d wanted his best friend to rise above it all, too. But they were both men and they had to make their own decisions.

  “His lights are on,” Lisa said, standing beside him.

  “Yeah.”

  “You think he’s up there drunk?”

  “No. The lights wouldn’t be on if he were.”

  “You sure he bought the tickets?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  Lisa touched Joe’s arm. “Would he try to keep the money if we won?”

  Joe looked at her and then looked back at his friend’s apartment. He didn’t answer as he moved away towards the door.

  “What’s his apartment number?” Marcus asked, scanning the building’s directory.

  “3G,” Lisa said.

  Marcus hit the button twice. Two minutes passed before he pressed it again, harder this time.

  “I swear he better be up there,” Nydia whispered. No one knew it, but she was extremely desperate for the money. Before her husband passed away, he’d amassed a large amount of debt, healthy enough to force them to sell their house. Her husband had owned a body shop that the Gianacotti family convinced him would be good for their business. The Gianacottis were the largest mafia family on the east side of town. And if your business was good for their business, then there was no saying no to them. They turned her husband’s legitimate body shop into the city’s largest chop shop, bringing in thousands of dollars a week. One night, one of her husband’s coworkers accidentally caused a fire in the shop, which damaged all of the cars stored inside. It just so happened that the night before, the Gianacottis had stored a Bentley with five pounds of pure cocaine in the trunk. And when they found out about the fire, they immediately blamed Nydia’s husband, claiming he set the fire as a way to “void” their contract.

  Already living with a weak heart, her husband died of massive heart failure after the Gianacottis informed him that he owed them ten million dollars by beating on him. His death hadn’t even been a week old before the Gianacottis approached Nydia and told her that she had a month to get them the money. Up until that point, Nydia assumed that her husband had been robbed. A debt with the Gianacottis was a debt to be paid, no matter who you were or what you knew. “He has to be up there,” Nydia whispered.

  Joe moved his way past Marcus. Five minutes had passed and DeVante still hadn’t answered. “I know another way in.”

  “How?” Sheila asked.

  “Like this.” Joe kicked the bottom of the door twice, forcing the door to open. If there was one thing he could count on, it was the lack of quality of the doors in the ghetto. “Let’s go,” Joe said.

  Everyone followed behind him, each wondering what the outcome would be when they reached the third floor.

  5

  My buzzer went off sooner than I expected, which meant that they had been calling from a cell phone. I still hadn’t made up my mind. I wanted to be fair, but I kept weighing the difference between one hundred and eighty million and thirty million. The realization of what I’d heard people say finally hit me: money was a hellified drug. I was certainly feeling its effect right then and there. I knew that if Joe was with them, they’d get in without my permission. One hundred and eighty or thirty—which would it be?

  The knock on my door came.

  Heavy.

  Insistent.

  Determined.

  I looked down at my feet. I had my sneakers on. Laced tightly. My coat was lying beside me. I stood up, careful not to make a sound, and went to the window in the li
ving room, the one with the fire escape. I opened my right hand. The winning ticket was still there. I stared at it, felt it tingling in my hand. I looked at my reflection in the window’s glass. It was smudged, faded, distorted. I stuffed the ticket into my wallet and shoved the wallet back into my pocket. There was more banging on the door. My hand went to the window and opened it. I guess I’d made my decision.

  6

  Joe and Marcus threw their shoulders into the door just as DeVante stepped onto his fire escape. They rushed into the apartment and looked quickly from left to right while the women waited behind them.

  “He’s not here,” Joe said.

  “How do you know?” Marcus asked. “We haven’t even checked around yet. He could be hiding somewhere.”

  “Ain’t no place to hide in here, man.”

  Lisa walked into the one-bedroom apartment. She’d never been inside of DeVante’s place because he’d never let her come up. She knew that his apartment wasn’t going to be pretty, but she didn’t expect to see what was before her. The walls were bare and painted cream white with cracks running vertically from the floor to the water-stained ceiling. The carpeting was a worn, rust-colored mess, decorated with stains. There was little in the way of furniture. A futon, a crate with a thirteen-inch color television, a small wooden table with half-filled cartons of Chinese food. Several empty bottles of vodka, Hennessey, and rum lay scattered. Lisa cut her tour short; she didn’t want or need to see any more.

  “I’m still checking around,” Marcus said. He moved away from them and went towards the bedroom. Joe didn’t try to stop him. He just continued to stare down at the ground. Lisa followed his eyes. She saw the discarded pile of lottery tickets. She had no doubt that one would be missing. She sighed. Despite the arrangement they’d agreed upon, she had developed feelings for DeVante, and she’d thought he had feelings for her, too. She looked at Joe. It was obvious from the sullen expression on his face that DeVante’s betrayal hurt him, too.