by Ritz, David
“You’re a fuckin’ star,” said Sugar, who was able to work with his high-end clients less because I was working with them more. “You’re so good at this shit,” he added, “I’m giving you a raise.”
The raise was minimal, but I didn’t care. I knew it made Sugar feel secure to keep me on a short leash. I never hit his suppliers. Within an hour of getting paid by a customer, I’d have the money in Sugar’s hand. That’s how he wanted it. And I was happy to accommodate. I was happy to ignore the remark of the wife of one of our best clients when she saw me leaving their palatial Coral Gables estate.
“That crap he’s selling separates you from your soul!” she screamed to her husband, president of the local yacht club. “Keep sniffing it up your nose and you won’t remember what it’s like to have a soul.”
I ignored the remark at the time but remembered it the night Sugar told me he was buying a state-of-the-art greyhound racetrack complex that included a club with a bar, a dance floor, and a dozen poker rooms. He snorted up a line and began describing the place. “Man,” he said, “you’ve never seen anything like it. It’s all silk and steel. I mean, the place is laid out cold. You wanna see it?”
“Sure,” I said.
He laid out another line and, before offering me a hit, had it all up his nose. His old adage of “one line is enough” had flown out the window.
“Two lines means I ain’t driving,” he said, throwing me the keys to his Benz.
On the way over, I saw him opening up a small vial and doing even more coke. This time he asked me if I wanted some. I’m not sure why I said no—something told me it was a good idea to stay sober—and I politely turned him down. He didn’t think twice about it. “More for me,” he said, smiling and snorting up the vial.
When we got to the track, he was flying. The greyhounds were flying as well, and it was exciting to see the animals in action. They were graceful and beautiful to watch. He placed a bet. He lost. He went into the men’s room and came out even more loaded. Another bet, another loss.
“Doesn’t make a shit, Power,” he told me. “I’m buying this whole thing, lock, stock, and barrel.”
In the club, he introduced me to the manager, a man named Horatio, who took me and Sugar to a booth in the back of the dance floor. Several ladies came our way. Sugar felt compelled to tell every single one that he was buying the place—and doing it soon. We took a tour of the poker rooms. He sat down at one of the tables and within twenty minutes lost $30,000.
“What difference does it make?” he asked me as we walked outside so he could dip into another vial. “All that money’s coming back to me anyway.”
Back inside we bumped into a gorgeous young woman who had been signed to Sugar’s modeling agency before it fell apart. She asked me to dance. Speaking for me, Sugar said, “No, he doesn’t dance. Besides, you’re my date tonight. He’s my driver.”
The three of us left together. They got into the backseat while I drove. He demanded that she give him head. She was hesitant. He started forcing her. I started to say something. “Shut the fuck up!” he screamed. “Your fuckin’ job is to drive.”
After she did him, he said, “That’s the worst fuckin’ blow job I’ve ever had. Who taught you how to suck dick, your mother? Get the fuck outta my car.” In the rearview mirror, I saw him opening the door and trying to push her out. I stopped the car.
“Can’t do that, Sugar,” I said.
“Fuck you!” he screamed in my face.
We were on a busy street. The girl was scared. I got out of the car, reached in my pocket, and handed her a wad of twenties. “Take a cab home,” I told her. “He’s not himself tonight.”
By then Sugar was out of the car standing next to us. He went for the girl’s face with his fist. I blocked his arm before he reached her. He knew he was in no shape to fight me. He backed off. Back in the car, he reached in his pocket for another vial. The shit was up his nose before I pulled away. I was relieved when I saw the girl get into a cab.
All the way back to the Shack, Sugar didn’t say a word. When we arrived, I figured I’d leave him on his own. He didn’t want that though.
“Come on up,” he said. “I wanna show you how business is done in this town.”
Once in the penthouse he went to his safe, dialed the combination, opened the door, and pulled out a fresh quantity of coke. There was no stopping him now.
“I’m calling my broker,” he said. “This scumbag owes me fuckin’ everything. He built his business on me. If I say, ‘Jump,’ he’s gonna say, ‘How high?’ ”
Sugar put his desk phone on speaker and punched out the number. A man answered. He had obviously been asleep.
“Is this Craig, my scumbag real estate broker?” asked Sugar.
“Hey, Sug, everything okay?” asked the man in a daze.
“You sleeping?”
“I was.”
“Well, get the fuck up. I want that deal for the dog track done by ten tomorrow morning.”
“Let me remember the details,” said the broker.
“It’s your fuckin’ job to know the details.”
“I’m thinking, Sugar, I’m thinking. I’m remembering now . . . you guys were some three million dollars apart.”
“Bridge the gap. Make it happen. I’ll up it by a mil.”
“That might not work.”
“I pay you to make it work, scumbag. Make the fuckin’ deal or I’ll find someone who will.”
Sugar slammed down the phone. “That’s how you deal with pricks like Craig. You put the fear of God in him. How ’bout a toot?”
“No, thanks,” I said. “I’m tired. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Where the fuck you going?”
“To sleep.”
“The hell you are. This party is just getting started. Get the bitches up here.”
“Which ones?”
“The crazy ones. The ones hanging in VIP. Just bring bitches, the wilder the better. You and me are gonna be the only swinging dicks up here.”
“Hey, man, I’m really exhausted . . .”
“I don’t give two shits if you’re about to fall out. Take a hit and get started, boy.”
Against my better judgment, I took a short hit. A wave of energy surged through me. I went down to the club and, a half hour later, came back up with a half-dozen ladies, wild and willing to get wilder.
I did a little bit more blow that night—just enough to stay awake. I just watched. The party was all about Sugar degrading these women. It wasn’t a turn-on for me. It was disgusting. At one point, I tried to stop it, but neither Sugar nor the women wanted to stop. They had consumed enormous amounts of cocaine. The cocaine had separated them from their souls. I wondered what the hell was happening to my soul. At that moment, I realized that I didn’t simply dislike the drug, I fuckin’ hated it. I wanted my brain to stop spinning. I wanted Sugar to stop howling with delight as the women violated themselves and each other with oversized sex toys.
Dawn arrived. Light began streaming into the penthouse. The girls had passed out while Sugar, more than half-crazed, was telling me how he was going to redo the greyhound complex. His eyes were beet red, and his talk was a nonstop stream of ego-inflated bullshit. I didn’t see how he could keep it up much longer, but he did. He called Craig, the broker, and by midmorning the deal seemed to be going down. Then it hit a snag. To secure the loan, the banker wanted more collateral than Sugar was willing to provide. That’s when Sugar lost it. On a conference call with the broker and banker, he called them both dick-sucking scumbags and threw the phone across the room. It struck one of the girls, asleep on the couch, in the forehead. She began bleeding profusely. I ran over to her. She was crying hysterically; the wound was deep. I got my phone and called 911.
“What the fuck you doing?” Sugar shouted.
“Getting help.”
“Let the bitch bleed!”
“I’ll carry her downstairs to my place.”
“I said let her bleed!�
��
“Are you crazy? She’ll die.”
“Who gives a shit?”
I ignored Sugar. I picked up the girl and began carrying her out. Sugar came after me. It didn’t take much to stop him, just a quick kick to his nuts. He went down.
Two days later I was back in Atlanta, sitting across from Slim at Junior’s Barbershop, where he got his weekly trim. Christmas was around the corner.
“And the girl?” Slim asked me when I told him about the incident.
“Wasn’t hurt as bad as I thought. She’s okay.”
“And you paid the hospital?”
“In cash,” I said.
“No police report. Nothing to trace it back to Sugar.”
“Nothing.”
“And the bitch is cool? She’s not going to the law?”
“I took care of her. Ten G’s.”
“So you did good. You protected your man.”
“I don’t ever want to see that asshole again.”
“I understand.”
“I’m not sure what you had in mind when you sent me over there,” I said.
“Are you kidding, boy? You learned a lot.”
“I learned what not to do.”
“Son,” said Slim, “that’s more important than learning what to do. You see what happens when you start dipping into your own stuff. The fools get fucked up on the primo goods. They can’t keep their hands off it. The smart ones, like me, stay straight as an arrow. You learn that lesson, Power, and you good for life.”
“I ain’t going near no blow,” I said. “That shit is evil.”
“Does my heart good to hear you talking that way. Makes me feel like I’m raising you right.”
By hooking me up with a guy like Sugar? By leaving me in Miami for over a year? These were silent thoughts. But I didn’t say anything about that. Instead I told him about the high school equivalency program that I had completed through the mail.
“And here I thought you were getting nearly as much pussy as me,” said Slim, “and meanwhile you got your head stuck in books.”
“It kept me sane,” I said. “All that partying was turning my brain into scrambled eggs.”
I spoke the truth. I had never completely turned away from everything that Sugar offered, but those last months were getting to me. The night at the dog track was the last straw. Before that I’d been studying during the days and actually enjoying reading books on history and psychology. I was always good at math. The truth was that this correspondence school was almost too easy. It made me want to go to college. I wanted to study business and economics. I had the urge to hang out with people who were interested in something other than sex. Wasn’t that I didn’t like sex or even getting a little high now and then. But, man, for someone still not twenty-one, I’d had more than my fair share.
Slim was obsessed with this idea of being a champion athlete in bed. I wasn’t. I had proven myself. More than likely, he hadn’t. I didn’t need to keep talking about it. He did. I was bored with the discussion. When he asked for details about the hottest women in South Beach, I told him that they blurred together in my mind. What I couldn’t tell him, though, was that I wanted a woman like Beauty—a woman with brains and class, charm and wit.
I steered the conversation to education. When I mentioned college, though, Slim wasn’t happy.
“What the hell you gonna learn there?” he asked.
“Business. Economics.”
“Street business is different than straight business. Street economics is different than Wall Street economics. You need to stay in the streets.”
“I’ve been in the streets now for years. I think it’s time I got some serious book learning. I’m ready for that.”
“Well,” he said, jangling his matching diamond wristbands, “it’s hard to fault a cat who says he wants college. I know you a deep thinker, Power, even if I do continue to whip your pathetic ass at chess. Yes, sir, only a fool would bad-mouth a college education, and I ain’t no fool. So I’ll give you a choice. You go on to college. You stay here and pick any college in Atlanta you want. You hit those books, boy. You study up and work that brain. And I’ll get someone else to fill that slot in New York.”
“New York?” I asked. “You were sending me to New York?”
“Yeah, I was. New York was going to be the last course in my educational plan for you. But it’s another street hustle, and now I know you prefer college.”
I didn’t say anything for a few seconds. I didn’t have to. He knew he had me. The last thing I had heard from Wanda about Beauty was that she was still living in New York. Slim leaned back in the big barber chair and smiled the smile of a winner.
The man was still full of surprises. He still knew how to get to me.
The Holly Windsor Agency
Before I left for New York, Andre Gee said he wanted to take me to dinner. He also said that it’d be better if Slim didn’t know. I loved Dre and assured him that it would be strictly between us. I was curious to hear what he had to say—and why in secret?
Because he did a lot of Slim’s dirty work, Dre stuck to himself. Because of his stutter, he didn’t say more than he had to. So he wasn’t all that social. But he was a sweet cat who always had my best interests at heart. And he was also a cat who took such abuse from Slim that you couldn’t help but feel for him.
We met at a Buckhead steakhouse called Bones. We went to a private room and sat at a table in the back.
“H-h-h-h-h-have whatever you l-l-l-l-l-like,” he said.
Like me, Dre wasn’t much of a drinker. We ordered a couple of Cokes and two big steaks.
“T-t-t-t-tell me about M-M-M-Miami, Power. How w-w-w-was it?”
To get the words out, Dre squinted his eyes or hit the table with a fist. I’d known other people with stutters. Most of them had managed to get around their blocks, but Dre was different. His stutter stopped him at practically every other word. But his stutter made me like him more; it made him more lovable. His eyes were filled with sincerity. The brotha had soul.
I thought of Irv’s advice—and even mentioned it to Dre. I said it was hard to trust anyone. Dre nodded in agreement.
“You d-d-d-d-don’t g-g-g-g-gotta say n-n-n-n-n-nothing,” he struggled to say.
But I spoke anyway. Dre could be trusted. So I told him the long story about my adventures in South Beach. When I was through, he gave out a long sigh. By then the steaks had arrived. We ate in silence.
After dinner Dre said, “And n-n-n-n-n-now it’s New York.”
“Leaving next week,” I said.
“B-b-b-b-b-b-beautiful, baby. That’s a g-g-g-g-g-good thing.”
“We’ll see. At this stage in my life, man, I’m not really sure of anything, Dre.”
“I kn-kn-kn-kn-kn-know what you mean, b-b-b-b-bro. But I am sure of one th-th-th-th-thing. R-r-r-r-r-real fuckin’ su-su-su-su-sure.”
“What’s that?”
“D-d-d-d-d-don’t c-c-c-c-come b-b-b-b-b-back.”
“You’re kidding, aren’t you?”
“I’m d-d-d-d-d-dead s-s-s-s-s-s-serious. D-d-d-d-d-don’t c-c-c-c-c-c-come b-b-b-b-b-back.”
I could see how hard it was for Dre to say the words. But I could also see how deeply he meant them.
“Why are you saying all this?” I asked.
He wouldn’t say. He just looked at me with pleading eyes.
“Is that why you asked me to dinner?” I asked. “To tell me this one thing?”
He just nodded.
“And I don’t get to know why?” I asked. “I don’t get to hear any of your reasons?”
He shook his head no, paid the check, and left.
I left for New York with enthusiasm. That was because of Beauty. I saw fate bringing us closer together. I realized that the chances of bumping into her in a city of eight million wouldn’t be great, but I also knew that just walking the streets that she walked would give me hope and maybe even keep me happy. I was happy that I was able to get into a communit
y college not far from the apartment I found on lower Broadway in Soho. The apartment and college were all within walking distance of the offices of the Holly Windsor Agency.
Holly was the one who had lost her modeling agency to Sugar, when rather than bail her out, Slim had let her sink. I presumed that was the end of the story—but it wasn’t. When Sugar started slipping in Miami, Holly started rising in New York. Somehow Slim got back in her good graces, taking credit for saving her from a disastrous situation in Miami real estate and encouraging her to start a new business in New York. According to Slim, that business also involved the fashion world. Again, I got excited because I knew that was a world that Beauty had already entered. When I asked for details, Slim couldn’t give me any—only that Holly Windsor was one of the smartest women he’d ever met, and he was absolutely sure she had lessons I needed to learn.
I arrived in the city in January. Moms had been gone four and a half years. It felt like twenty. Between Chicago and Miami, I’d walked through heaven and hell. Despite my ties to Slim, I felt adrift. I had proven to myself that I could adapt and survive. I’d negotiated my way through a number of situations. I had learned to kick back and observe. I had learned that most often things are not what they seem. I had learned to trust no one, and I had learned not to sample whatever merchandise I was selling. I had seen that business was cruel, people were cruel, and, more often than not, people were out for themselves. I had concluded that if I talked less and listened more, people presumed I liked them. Everyone wants to tell his story. Everyone thinks his story is the most important in the world. And everyone, because I try to be patient, assumes I think his story is the most interesting one I’ve ever heard.