Chapter 5
Ayana lay in the dark in the hotel room for several minutes after she returned to the room. Every so often, she would look out of the room’s window, which faced the side parking lot. While she couldn’t see the back of the parking lot, she could see the road and the hotel’s parking lot entrance. When Ayana would lay on her right, she’d feel the need to roll over onto her left. When she felt like lying on her stomach, the urge came over her to lie on her back. No matter what she did, she wasn’t comfortable.
Just about every ten minutes, Ayana would grab her phone off of the nightstand and see if Tramar had messaged her yet. He hadn’t, of course, as she was sure that he probably wasn’t even to the grandmother’s house yet. Still, there was so much worry built up inside of Ayana that she gave up on falling asleep even the least bit. Rather, she leaned up on the bed and looked over at Quan, sleeping in the next bed. Seeing his young, innocent body in the bed made her recall when she was younger. Back then, the world seemed much simpler. If anyone were to have asked Ayana what she would be have been doing with her life twenty years from being four years old, she would’ve never thought she’d be helping a couple of bank robbers – in so deep that there would be no point in her going back.
For another hour or so, Ayana sat up in the bed, awake. After seeing that there was nothing good on television that would entertain her, she simply decided to let the darkness keep her company. As the different stresses of the situation overcame her, especially when she would look over at the door, she’d lose herself in thought. If she heard a noise or the thumping of feet out in the hotel’s hallway, fear would cover her like the hotel’s bed sheets and comforter. The anxiety would only remind her just how fragile life can be when you know you have done something wrong.
Ayana heard her phone vibrate on the nightstand. Immediately, she came to life and grabbed it, eager to see if it was Tramar calling from Jackson’s phone. To her surprise, it was her mother. At first, Ayana’s instinct was to set the phone back down. She never thought she’d feel this way, but she was slowly growing to hate her mother. The older Ayana got, the more she could see her mother’s ways—ways that made her want to simply keep her distance altogether.
After seeing that her mother was calling back a second time, Ayana huffed and went ahead and answered. “Hello?” she said, keeping her voice low in consideration of Quan.
“Ayana?” Neeci asked. “Enough of the games, girl. Where the fuck are you at?”
“Why, Mama?” Ayana snapped back. “Why you even care where I’m at? You ain’t care when I was there and stuff, or so you really said. Girl, what do you want? Why is you even callin’ me, Mama?”
“Shut the fuck up talkin’ to me like that!” Neeci exclaimed. “I’m callin’ to find out where you are and tell you that you need to be going to the police as soon as you can.”
Immediately, Ayana sat up, throwing her legs over the side of the bed, facing the wall. “The police?” she asked. “What you mean I need to be goin’ to the police? What are you talkin’ about, Mama?”
“I’m talkin’ about whatever Tramar and his nigga Jackson or whatever his name done did,” Neeci said. “The detectives just left here.”
“Detectives?” Ayana asked. “Left where?”
“Bitch, where the fuck you think?” Neeci snapped back. “I didn’t just up and move to Paris or Nigeria or somewhere. You know where — at the apartment. They said them niggas been robbin’ banks. Do you know anything about that, Ayana? Huh?”
Ayana could hear the suspicion in her mother’s voice. She also hated that she had to deal with this kind of conversation with her mother with no sort of warning. Neeci could hear her daughter’s long silence, prompting her to say her name. “Ayana?” she said. “You gon’ act like you don’t hear me right now?”
Ayana remained silent. She was literally at a loss for words. She could not think of anything she could say that would make any sense. Instead, she opted to throw another question into the equation. If nothing else, she would find out more about what her mother supposedly knows. “What they say, Mama?”
“What they say?” Neeci asked, clearly taken aback. “They said that they might be lookin’ at your ass as a possible getaway driver since you go with one of the suspects,” she explained. “And they said that Tramar is wanted on charges of murder for killing the security guard at one of the banks that they hit. Ayana, what do you know about this? Where are you? Why don’t you just go to the police and tell them that you ain’t have nothin’ to do with this so you can clear your name?”
Ayana sniffled. She was trying her hardest to hold her emotions back, but they were just coming on too strong. When she felt a tear rolling down her right cheek, she quickly wiped it away. “Mama,” Ayana said, somberly. “I love you. I’ll call you when I can.”
“Ayana?” Neeci said. “Ayana!”
Neeci’s voice faded away as Ayana lowered her phone and tapped the END CALL on her screen. She shook her head, thinking about how much everything had changed. She then grabbed her chest, feeling her heart beat a million miles per hour. The nervous feeling she’d had before her mother’s call was now amplified. The giggling of little kids out in the hallway now caused Ayana to gasp for breath.
“We can’t just sit here anymore tonight,” Ayana said, jumping up. “If the detectives are at my mama’s house and shit, then they are onto us. They gon’ be checkin’ what hotels I check into and stuff.” She then thought about how they used her name to check into this hotel, asking her several questions. Even though she didn’t use a credit card, there were still ways to track people down when they were in stationary places.
Ayana walked around the front of the bed and up to Quan. She simply couldn’t take it anymore. Something was telling her that she needed to get out of that hotel room right away. Even if she was wrong, she already knew that she wanted to be safe and not sorry. She didn’t know where she was going to take Quan, but the detectives out and visiting peoples’ houses, asking questions on a Saturday night, could not be a good sign.
“Wake up, Quan,” Ayana said. “Wake up.”
Quan struggled to wake up out of his deep sleep. As he did, Ayana turned on the light, causing the little boy to cover his face with his hand. “What’s going on, Ayana?” he asked.
“We gotta go,” Ayana said, trying to sound positive. “We gotta go, Quan. Come on and get up.”
“Where we going, Ayana?” Quan asked.
Ayana grabbed the clothes that Quan had been wearing last night and tossed them his direction. She then got herself dressed as quickly as she could before grabbing Quan’s book bag and being a little more forceful with him.
“We don’t have time to talk, Quan,” Ayana said. “Just get dressed so we can get outta here. Ayana got a bad feeling. A real bad feeling.”
Quan slid out of the bed and did just as Ayana had told him. He then noticed that his father wasn’t around. “Where’s my daddy?” Quan asked. “Ayana?”
“Uh…” Ayana said hesitantly, not really knowing what to say. “He had to go do something real quick. Just get your clothes on so we can leave and stop asking questions.”
Ayana froze when she heard voices outside of the hotel room door. She was so sure that the voices belonged to some sort of authorities that she froze in her steps. With her eyes locked on the hotel door handle, she expected the door to swing open at any moment. She was not able to calm down until the voices moved on and further down the hallway.
When Ayana and Quan were ready, she slid him into his jacket and shuffled him out of the door as they carried their clothing and the money that Tramar had stored in the room. Ayana looked out into the hallway. Seeing that it was empty, she pushed Quan toward the elevators. She then stopped, as they got halfway down the hallway. The last thing she needed was for them to get onto the elevator just as a police officer or detective was getting on. She quickly grabbed Quan’s shoulder and pulled him back. She pointed at the other end of the hallway. “The sta
irs,” she said, pulling Quan in the other direction. “We gon’ go down the stairs, okay?”
“But why?” Quan asked, now sounding a little irritated. “Why are we going down the stairs, Ayana?”
Ayana took a deep breath and remembered that she couldn’t really be mad at the kid for asking these sorts of questions. She knew that if she were in Quan’s place, she would want some answers as to what was going on. Ayana simply decided to ignore Quan’s questions by telling him to go on and that they would be walking down the steps. Until they reached the doorway to the hotel staircase, Ayana would look back every so many steps. She couldn’t help but think that the elevator doors were going to open and men in suits, with guns, would come walking out and try to apprehend them.
The hotel staircase was just about what Ayana would expect. It was concrete, hollow, and every little noise echoed. She quickly got in front of Quan and made her way down the stairs with him behind her. All the while, she reminded the confused kid to be as quiet as he could. Just as Ayana and Quan had come to the bottom of the staircase, they heard voices in the hotel lobby. As the door to the stairwell had a window, Ayana could look out. The hotel lobby had two police officers following behind a white guy and a black guy in dark-colored suits. Ayana could have nearly had a stroke from how high her blood pressure was. Her heart thumped so loudly that the sound nearly drowned out her breathing.
As the cluster of law enforcement officers moved toward the doorway to the elevator, Ayana knew that she and Quan needed to get out of sight. It would only be expected that they would send some officers up the staircase, just like what Ayana had seen in numerous movies and television shows.
“Come here,” Ayana told Quan, grabbing his shoulder. “Be as quiet as possible, okay? Be quiet!”
Ayana pulled Quan over to the area under the staircase. Just as the stairwell doorway was being pushed open by a police officer, they quickly ducked under the staircase. There they stood, in the shadows beneath the hotel staircase, as they listened to the police officer climb the stairs. Ayana held one hand over her own mouth while another was over Quan’s. They were not going to move until they’d heard the man go through the door on their floor.
Once Ayana heard the officer exit the stairwell, she pulled Quan over to the stairwell doorway. Quickly, she looked out into the hotel lobby. Seeing that all of the officers were out of sight, she found it safe enough to step out and into the hallway. Just as she pulled Quan and they turned to the left, headed toward the hotel’s back entrance, she could see a police officer standing behind Tramar’s red Dodge Charger in the back parking lot. Suddenly, she felt trapped. She knew that she couldn’t go out of the back without being caught. And there was no telling what would be waiting at the front of the hotel. However, Ayana did remember that there were some side doors in the swimming pool room. She led Quan down the small hallway that led to the gym and swimming pool facilities. Using the keycard to let them in, they quickly rushed into the swimming pool facility.
Ayana felt at least a little lucky when seeing that the 24-hour swimming facility was empty. Her eyes barreled down on the side door. She and Quan quickly walked around the edges of the pool, with Ayana promising him that she would explain what was going on later, once they’d arrived somewhere safe. When they’d gotten to the other side of the pool, Ayana gently pushed the side door open. She looked out, barely poking her head out, before she pulled Quan and the two of them rushed out into the late, fall Saturday night. Airplanes flew low, about to land, as she and Quan rushed across the parking lot, zigzagging between cars.
After pushing through some bushes that acted as a border for the hotel property, the two of them came to a row of parking lots that sat out front of a strip mall. As there were still cars parked in the lot, from the employees who worked the overnight hours stocking and whatnot, Ayana was allowed to use those as a sort of cover in the darkness. She led Quan across the parking lot until they came to a McDonald’s, which, luckily for them, had a lobby that was open 24 hours. They slipped into the McDonald’s, ordered a couple of Number Two meals, and sat down in a far corner. When Ayana got up to go get some napkins, she looked over at the hotel parking lot. The two men she’d seen in suits came walking out of the front entrance. They stood there and talked.
Ayana quickly rushed back to the table and pulled out her phone. As if things could not get any worse, her eyes were drawn to how she only had ten percent battery left. “Fuck,” Ayana said, the anger resonating in her voice.
“When are you going to tell me what’s going on, Ayana?” Quan asked. “Where is my daddy? Where did he go? And why are we running? Why are the police at the hotel?” The little boy lifted his head up to look over Ayana’s shoulder.
Once Ayana finished sending Jackson’s phone a text message, she set it back down. She prayed to God that her battery would last long enough for Tramar and Jackson to have seen the text message and respond. She now looked to the poor, confused Quan. She shook her head, hating that she was about to feed his young mind such a bold face lie.
***
Juan and Knight felt like the luckiest guys in the world that night. When Juan had said he’d call some girls over, he really didn’t think it’d be that easy. He called a girl who he’d been sort of talking to for a while. And, as luck would have it, she had a friend who was eager to come and chill for a while. The two women, Antonia and Lexi, were not necessary the definition of a bad chick. However, they were attractive girls who were stacked in all the right places. Antonia, who had the big chest, went to Knight while Lexi, who had an ass like the sun, gravitated toward Juan. The two couples smoked and drank for much of the night; Knight and Juan were happy that they’d taken the time to clean the couches in the front room. They also agreed that their little playtime with these girls would be their little secret. Even though it was all going down in Byron’s grandmother’s house, they would still keep it to themselves.
Knight, who was ready to take his pants off and give it to Antonia’s sexy self, paused. Juan, who was on the opposite couch, playfully spanking Lexi’s big ass, noticed. He stopped as well.
“What?” Juan said, noticing Knight’s reaction.
“I just thought that I heard something,” Knight said, looking at the front window. “Nigga, you sure that nigga ain’t gon be comin’ back?”
Juan shook his head. “Naw, nigga,” he said. “That nigga is over there busy and shit. Trust me, he ain’t gon’ come all the way down into the hood on a Saturday night just to check on shit. I know him, nigga. That nigga will be over here tomorrow afternoon or some shit. But what you think that you heard?”
“I think I heard something, but I don’t know what yet,” Knight said. He looked to the honey on his lap. “Excuse me,” he said, standing up. He walked over to the window and parted the curtains slightly. He was relieved to see that the noise had been a couple of dudes walking into a house up the street. It was very clear that they were aggressively ushering a young lady inside with them, each smiling and laughing as they held their sagging pants up to keep them from falling.
“Shit, nigga,” Knight said, returning to the couch. “Just these niggas goin’ in to the house down the street is all. I’m trippin’ and shit. Now, back to you.” He looked at Antonia’s bare, bouncy chest. He pulled her closer to him and rubbed his face between her breasts, smiling like a kid in a candy shop.
Juan eventually couldn’t take anymore. His dick was begging to be let free. He stood up and bent Lexi over on the couch, her head now hanging off of the back with her back arched. “Goddamn, you got a big ass,” Juan said, slapping her. He then pulled his pants down to his ankles and positioned himself. Gently, he pushed his way inside of Lexi. He liked the way she moaned at feeling his girth stretch her a bit.
Knight too had come to the point where he couldn’t take it anymore. After sucking on Antonia’s breasts for a couple minutes more, he gently pushed her to the side and pulled his pants and underwear down. Once his short and stubby erection had
popped out, Antonia held back a giggle. For whatever reason, she found Knight and his aggressiveness to be so sexy, and even more so now that she saw what he was packing, or a lack thereof. She also bent over on the couch and Knight entered her, his eyes rolling back in his head as his shaft was consumed with the warmness that was Antonia’s insides.
***
Tramar and Jackson sat in the car, outside of the house that Damon had pointed out to them as Byron’s grandmother’s former house. They looked at the house for several minutes, noticing the way the front room curtain’s had parted ever so slightly. Somebody looked out, but neither of them could see who exactly it had been. They figured whoever it was had peeked out to see what the noise was when a car pulled into the driveway up the block.
Jackson looked across at Tramar and asked, “Man, you sure they in there?”
Tramar shrugged. “As sure as I’mma ever be,” he answered. “Look at that place. That just look like a old lady house, and it just look like it would have some of that ugly ass, old furniture that we saw in the picture and shit that nigga posted online. I bet you that he is keepin’ them there.”
“But what is this other car parked out front of the house?” Jackson asked, being observant.
“Nigga, you ain’t flakin’ out on me, is you?” Tramar asked, noticing the skepticism in Jackson’s voice.
Jackson shook his head. “Naw, nigga,” he said. “I’m just lookin’ out for you, nigga. I been helpin’ you rob banks and shit to get the money. You really think I’m bout to flake out on you when we bout to run up in some two-bedroom, three tops, house?”
When It All Falls Down 3 - Somebody is Gonna Die: A Chicago Hood Drama (A Hustler's Lady) Page 7