Power & Beauty

by Ritz, David

  “I quit after my junior year.”

  “How come?”

  “I want to learn business, Mr. Wasserman. I want to learn about the real world.”

  “You hear that, Judy?” said Wasserman. “He ain’t in school, but he’s got plans. He knows what the fuck he wants. Do you know what you want?”

  “You said when I graduated high school I could decide what I wanted. Well, I graduated, didn’t I?”

  “Barely,” said Irv.

  “And I want to open a beauty salon.”

  “With whose money?” asked the father.

  “It would only be a loan,” said the daughter.

  “Parents don’t loan money to their kids. They give them money.”

  “Okay, then give me the money.”

  “And what do I get back?”

  “You’ll own the beauty salon.”

  “And what makes you think you know shit about running a beauty shop?”

  “I got people to help me. Older women I know.”

  “Do I know them?” asked Irv.

  “I don’t think so. I can introduce you.”

  “I don’t like the idea of my daughter introducing women to me.”

  “It’s a business thing, Dad.”

  “Your mother wouldn’t like that.”

  “You divorced her five years ago.”

  “That’s beside the point. We’ll ask the kid what he thinks.” Wasserman turned to me and said, “Do I give my daughter money to open some fancy-shmancy beauty shop?”

  “I wouldn’t know, Mr. Wasserman. I couldn’t say . . .”

  “Why not? You scared of your own opinion? You scared of saying something I don’t want to hear? You one of these kids with a confidence problem?”

  “Well, if you put it that way, I’d say, if you can afford it—”

  “Shit,” Wasserman interrupted, “you know goddamn well I can afford it.”

  “Then I would say if you open up in the right location, it might be a good idea. Women are always worrying about their hair.”

  “My daughter, Judy, she wants to open in a black neighborhood. What do you think of that?”

  “Black women pay a lot of attention to their hair,” I said.

  “My Judy is like me. She likes the blacks. Her mother doesn’t. Her mother always said, ‘Stay away from the blacks. You can’t trust them.’ I trust them. I always have. Take your uncle. I trust him with my life. And then he sends you to me, and then you save my goddamn life. What do you make of that, kid?”

  “I really can’t say, Mr. Wasserman . . .”

  “What if I say I want you to help me with my Judy? What if I say I want you to help her with her beauty shop?”

  “I’d say, well, I want to help you in any way I can. But I gotta be honest, I don’t know much about—”

  “You don’t gotta know much, kid, you just gotta watch the money. You know how to watch money, don’t you?”

  “I can watch money,” I said.

  “Like a hawk—that’s how you watch money. You don’t need a college education to watch money. My brother, Louis. The great Louis Samuel Wasserman. My parents gave him a middle name—that’s how sure they were he’d make good. Me, I got no middle name. By the time Louis was born, fifteen years after me, they’d given up on me. I was in the streets and out of school. But Louis Samuel Wasserman, he was going to school. He was going to college. Then he was going to law school. He was setting the world on fire. Not any college, but Yale University. Not any law school, but Harvard Law School. You ever hear of Louis Samuel Wasserman, kid?”

  “Afraid not.”

  “If you go back a few years and read the papers you’ll read all about him. You see, after law school he didn’t want to be no lawyer. He wanted to be bigger than that. He wanted to make big money. And naturally he wanted nothing to do with me so he moves to New York City and gets in with some famous financiers, the so-called legit moneymen who buy and sell bonds and commodities and raid corporations for cheap and then sell ’em for high. He wants to play in the major leagues, and he thinks I’m bush-league. That’s what Louis Samuel Wasserman thinks.

  “That’s your uncle, Judy. The uncle you never even met ’cause he never wanted nothing to do with me or my family. That’s your uncle who went to jail and died there. His famous financiers were crooked as an old bitch’s back. His famous financiers were frauds. And Louis Samuel Wasserman, with all his education and all his degrees, couldn’t see it coming. He didn’t know chicken salad from chicken shit. He got taken for the ride of his life. When he said he didn’t know about the behind-the-scenes schemes I half believed him because he was too stupid to see it.

  “And you know what this did to Judy’s grandfather and grandmother? It killed them. A week after the story broke, my father—may he rest in peace—died of a heart attack. A month later his wife of fifty-five years, Muriel Wasserman, had a terrible stroke. Six months later, we buried my mother. Two funerals in six months, and do you think my brother looked me in the eye? Do you think the great Louis Samuel Wasserman said a single word to his only living sibling in the whole world? Not a word, not a single fuckin’ word. Then his first month in the pen he runs into some crazy man who cuts his throat with a butcher knife.”

  “Don’t get yourself excited, Daddy,” said Judy. “You’re in the hospital.”

  “That’s the best place to get excited. If I have a heart attack here, I press a button and they come running.”

  “You’re not having a heart attack,” Judy told him.

  “I will if that goddamn beauty shop of yours tanks and costs me a fortune.”

  “So I can do it?” asked Judy, bouncing off the chair, going over to her dad, and kissing him on the cheek. When she bent over to kiss him, I saw that her booty was screaming as loud as her titties. Her body was incredible.

  “Now you take this kid outta here,” Irv told his daughter. “What’s your name—Peter? Paul? But they call you something else, don’t they?”

  “My real name is Paul, but they call me Power.”

  “Where does the Power come from?”

  I told them how I liked the Power Rangers when I was a little boy.

  “Cute story. Okay, Judy, take the Power Ranger over to that old building we own by the lake, the one we turned into lofts. All the young people, they like living in lofts. Don’t ask me why. There’s a little loft over there that’s empty. Show him where it is. You can drive him over there. I’m taking a nap. This leg is killing me. Where’s that goddamn nurse when I need her?”

  Hair Is Where It’s At

  Judy Wasserman knew what she wanted and how to get it. The “how” was her daddy. She wanted the okay to skip college, and her daddy gave her that. She wanted her own beauty shop, and Daddy provided the money. And when she wanted a nice-looking brotha, her father introduced her to me. Remembering how Irv said that Judy’s mother had a thing against blacks, I wondered if I was his way to shaft his former wife. I wondered a lot of things about Irv Wasserman.

  When Judy drove me over to the loft and showed me around, I was impressed. The room was large and clean. A huge floor-to-ceiling window overlooked Lake Michigan. The furniture was black leather. The walls were painted mint green and the island kitchen had marble countertops colored cobalt blue.

  Judy had brought a bottle of tequila and right away started doing shots. I wasn’t in the mood. She also had grass and a little coke. I told her that I wasn’t into drugs. “Great,” she said, “that means more for me.”

  Within thirty or forty minutes, she got blasted and made a move on me. I was hesitant. “Hold on, girl,” I said. “I can’t afford to get crossways with your daddy. I want to work for the man.”

  “Daddy wants us all working together, Power. Can’t you see that he loves you for what you did for him? I’m the reward. I’m here to say thank you. I’m here with his full approval. You saw that with your own eyes. Now there’s something else I want you to see with your own eyes.”

  With that, s
he brought that tight black top over her head, unhooked her brassiere, and slightly—very slightly—arched her back. I was gone.

  When I woke up in the morning, Judy was gone. There was a note on the kitchen counter that said, “Call me when you’re ready . . .” She wrote down her cell number and that was it. I stretched and yawned and remembered how long it had taken me to cum. Judy had loved that; she said she’d never seen anyone go so long, but what she didn’t know is that I was fighting my imagination. I didn’t want to imagine Beauty. For everything that was amazing about Judy’s body—and believe me, amazing is an understatement—I still couldn’t bust a nut with my eyes open, no matter how hard I tried. Finally, though, when she started digging her nails into my back and screaming that it was time, I shut my eyes, saw my sister, and exploded.

  Turned out that Judy, like her dad, was a talker. After we fucked, she started telling me how she hated the private school her mother had made her attend. Her mother had remarried a guy named Harvey, who owned a car dealership. Harvey never said a bad word about Judy’s father, but Judy’s mother did. Six years ago she discovered that Irv was keeping a former Miss Venezuela in an apartment on Chicago’s Gold Coast. When Judy told me the story, she laughed. She sounded glad that her dad was cheating on her mom. She had wanted to live with her dad, but her mother wouldn’t hear of it. That got Judy even angrier. But, as far as I could tell, Judy liked being angry. The angrier she became, the more she talked.

  She told me that the only blacks in her private school were two gay guys and three girls. The girls were her best friends. According to Judy, they were the smartest girls in school. One of the girls had a father who manufactured hair products for black women. That’s how Judy got the idea of opening a hair salon in a South Side Chicago neighborhood recently gone upscale.

  “Black people treat hair like art,” she said.

  I rubbed my head, just to remind myself I did nothing with my hair except keep it short.

  “Not you,” said Judy. “The women. Black women have the coolest sense of hair style. Haven’t you noticed?”

  “I guess I have,” I said.

  “They just don’t do what everyone else does,” she said. “They invent. They’re not afraid of stepping out there. They’re daring. I’ve been going around hiring stylists. It’s like I’m forming a band, only it’s a band of hairstylists. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Sure.”

  “And with these stylists and location and this interior designer I found to trick out the space, I can’t miss. This designer just did a veggie restaurant in Greektown. It’s amazing. You want to ride over and take a look?”

  After our sex marathon, I just wanted to sleep.

  “I’m a little tired,” I said, my eyes half-closed.

  She kept talking as my eyes kept closing. The next thing I remembered was waking up and seeing her note.

  I walked around the apartment aimlessly. Staring out the big window at the lake and gray sky, I felt like I was still dreaming. I went to the refrigerator, but aside from a bottle of water, it was empty. After everything that had happened, I felt a little empty.

  After getting beat for class president, I had felt angry and down. My spirits lifted when Slim got even angrier than me and sent me to Chicago. I was leaving one world and entering another one. That was great. But what was this new world? Seeing Irv get shot by the crazy woman made me a little nuts. Reading all the stories about it in the paper the next day was exciting but confusing. I was the “unidentified man” who pushed down Evelyn’s arm. In one photograph you could see the back of my head. The articles were all about Wasserman’s shady past and the fact that, despite his notoriety, the mayor was honoring him. It talked about his half-dozen brushes with the law and, in every instance, how he managed to avoid conviction. It talked about his so-called underground empire. All this had me curious.

  Then when I met the man I didn’t know what to think. He didn’t talk like your average guy. He jumped from one subject to the other, and they didn’t always seem to connect. Then there was Judy, looking me over like I was a piece of meat. And then Irv pushing me in Judy’s business. And then Judy pushing me in her pussy. And here I was, the morning after, looking out over a lonely lake while I sipped on a plastic bottle of water. What was I supposed to think? Where was this Chicago thing going to take me? I could call Slim, but I already knew what he’d say. “Sit down. Be cool. Irv knows what he’s doing.” So I turned on the TV. The Cubs were playing the Braves. The Braves were killing them. I was glad.

  I guess I dozed off because the postgame show was on when my cell blew up.

  It was Judy. “You gotta get a car,” she said. “You can’t stay in Chicago without a car.”

  “I figured as much.”

  “Go to Hertz and get a car with a GPS. I’ll text you Daddy’s account number and the address of the salon. I’m at the salon now. Be here by four. Bye.”

  Judy didn’t waste no time. I didn’t either. By four, I was in a Chevy Impala, pulling up to a storefront on one of those streets on the south side of the city transforming from hood to hip. There was a coffee shop called Spilling the Beans, a shoe shop selling fresh sneakers from Japan, a clothing boutique named Past Future Passions, and, at the address Judy had given me, an empty store with a sign above it: HAIR IS WHERE IT’S AT. I looked inside. The lights were off and no one was there. I saw a White Castle a couple of blocks away. I walked over and ordered a cheeseburger and fries. I was famished. I wolfed down my food and went back to the store. Still no one. I stood there in front, just checking out the neighborhood, a strange mix of old and new. Some of the older black women looked like they had lived there forever. They carried shopping bags and watched their children to make sure they didn’t run into the street. There were also black businessmen and businesswomen in tailored suits hurrying to the subway station. Next to a bookstore specializing in African-American literature called Black Words was a run-down Laundromat.

  Finally, a Porsche pulled up. Judy got out the passenger side with a plastic glass of wine in her hand. Today she was dressed in white—tight white jeans, tight white top. A hulky white guy got out from behind the wheel. He was a little taller than me. He had blue eyes, wide shoulders, big biceps, and a crew cut. To me, it looked like his blond hair was dyed. He wore a gold chain around his neck and an oversized watch on his right hand. I couldn’t tell whether it was a real Rolex or a fake.

  “Power,” said Judy, “meet my boyfriend, Dwayne.”

  I tried not to show surprise. I offered Dwayne my hand. When he shook it, I nearly winced in pain.

  “Dwayne owns a gym just a couple of blocks away,” she said. “Dwayne’s the one who told me about this neighborhood.”

  “Any time you wanna work out,” said Dwayne, who sounded a little like Rocky, “the first workout’s on me.”

  He handed me a card that read, “Mad Muscles, Dwayne ‘Ace’ Foster, Owner and Chairman of the Board. Mr. Muscle Himself.”

  “Actually,” said Dwayne, “I ain’t the real owner. Judy’s dad is the real owner. You know Mr. Wasserman?”

  “I’ve met him.”

  Judy turned to Dwayne and said, “Daddy hired Power as the security guy for the salon. Until we open he’s helping the crew put up drywall and stuff like that. He’s from Atlanta.”

  “I never been to Alabama,” said Dwayne.

  I started to correct him but didn’t see the point. I kept quiet as Judy unlocked the door. The space was unfinished, a complete mess.

  “The crew’s off on another job,” she said. “They come back tomorrow. They usually get here at seven in the morning. Be here then. Me and Dwayne got a party to go to. We gotta run. Bye.”

  The first day was hell—absolute fuckin’ hell. I had never done that kind of work before and hated it from the first minute. The contractor looked at me like I was dirt. All day long I was breathing in crap. Putting up drywall is a disgusting job, and I was no good at it. When the contractor saw that, he ha
d me hammering. When I was through hammering, he had me sweeping, then mopping, then running to McDonald’s to get the crew’s lunch. In the afternoon, I was carrying in lumber that weighed a ton. By the end of the day, I was dead tired and irritable. I didn’t like the contractor, I didn’t like the crew; I hated everything about the job and wasn’t going back. I didn’t care if Judy Wasserman did have an incredible body and threw the best fuck in Chicago. Judy Wasserman was a complete bitch.

  When I got back to the loft, I barely had the strength to get into the shower. I was drying myself off when the phone rang. It was Slim.

  “I was just getting ready to call you,” I said.

  “I talked to Irv. He couldn’t be happier with you. Says he’s putting you in a key position.”

  “Irv’s a fuckin’ liar and his daughter is a fuckin’ nymphomaniac.”

  “Slow down, boy,” said Slim. “Slow the hell down.”

  “I’m not going back.”

  “Going back where?”

  I explained what had happened—how Irv had turned me over to Judy, how Judy had screwed my brains out and then got me mopping floors.

  Slim laughed.

  “How can you be laughing?”

  “ ’Cause it’s funny, motherfucker.”

  “Laugh all you want, but I’m coming home.”

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know. That’s for you to figure out, Slim.”

  “I already done figured it. That’s why you’re in Chicago.”

  “To do shit work?”

  “To do whatever Irv tells you to do.”

  “Irv’s a space cadet. He talks shit for hours. He goes in one direction, then he’s off in another. I don’t think he’s playing with a full deck.”

  “You don’t need to think, boy. You just need to go along with the program.”

  “What program? Fucking his daughter behind her boyfriend’s back? Breaking my back hauling wood? I don’t think so.”

  “Believe me, after you saved Irv’s ass like that, he’s not letting you out of his sight. He’s gonna take care of you.”

  “When?”