by K Elliott
“Not really, none of my friends have been killed. Not to say that I don’t know people who’ve been killed, just none of my friends.” “Then consider it a blessing then.”
Dream walked over and put her arms around Jamal who was silent. “I will,” she finally said.
*** Jamal and Dream went to San Diego for Labor Day weekend. The California scenery was picturesque. The sky was Carolina blue with huge clouds, and a gentle breeze made the palm trees sway.
Horton Plaza was a huge conglomerate of shops, restaurants, and boutiques. It was like a mall without a roof. Dream and Jamal paraded through all levels of the plaza. After about an hour, Jamal had accumulated several bags, and Dream had turned down all his offers to buy clothing for her until they reached the Dolce & Gabbana store. She saw some hip-hugger jeans that she just had to have. The jeans led to a blouse and a pair of shoes. She came out of the dressing room wearing the whole ensemble. Jamal had the same look on his face that he had when they made love. “Girl, you look good enough to eat,” he said when she spun around.
“I’m gonna remember that tonight,” she replied. She loved looking sexy for him. She liked feeling desirable.
They left Horton Plaza and headed to Birch Aquarium, a popular tourist spot in San Diego. The aquarium had one of the most extravagant sea-life exhibitions in the country. It contained a huge kelp forest and live sharks.
“I didn’t know you were a nature freak,” Dream said.
“I’m just a freak,” Jamal said, laughing. “Besides, I am taking your advice, I’m trying different things.”
CHAPTER 10
I TWAS 6:00 A.M. when Dream woke up. Though she was on the west coast, her brain was on east coast time. She didn’t know where Jamal was. She could remember when he kissed her on her forehead before leaving.
She went to the kitchen and cooked some pancakes before turning on the television. The morning news was on. She turned the television set off and decided she would take a morning run when she finished her breakfast.
She slipped into a sports bra and a pair of sweatpants. After searching her bags she discovered that she’d forgotten to pack some sweat socks. She pulled Jamal’s suitcase from under the bed and looked through all of his clothes. There were no socks in sight. She discovered a small bag but it contained toiletries. She was about to give up when she noticed a leather bag pushed closer to the head of the bed. She unzipped the bag and money spilled from it. She had never seen so much money in her life. She poured it out, and it covered the entire bed. She knew it had to be at least $200,000.
Dream’s heart raced. She knew people who had worked their entire lives and still didn’t have this kind of money, but Jamal had it right at his fingertips. She put the money back in the bag as quickly as possible, trying to decide what to do next. She wanted to call Keisha. She wanted to call Jamal’s cell phone and ask him what in the hell was going on. She didn’t know what to think.
When Jamal got back to the condo, Dream was gone, and he was actually glad because he had business to take care of. Since she wasn’t there, she wouldn’t know he’d returned. He needed to recount his money, and he knew if she was in the room, he couldn’t possibly explain why he had $230,000 with him. Jamal quickly counted the money before leaving to meet with Angelo. They put the girls on the plane and when he came back Dream still hadn’t returned. When she finally did get back she looked at him strangely. “What’s up, baby?” he asked.
“Hey, honey,” she replied dryly.
“Walking the beach, huh?”
“I guess you can say that.” She sat on the sofa.
“I already said it. Didn’t you hear me?”
“Ha. You got jokes.”
“Who pissed in your cornflakes?” he asked.
She stood and walked over to the sliding doors and stared at the
cirrus clouds. “Nobody pissed in my cornflakes. I’m just not in the joking mood.” “Something is bothering you. You don’t have to tell me, but I know.”
She turned toward him. “Jamal, did you bring me out here on some kind of drug deal?”
He was surprised by her question. “Where did that come from?”
“Just answer the question.”
His thoughts ran rampant as he wondered what made her ask the question. Then he remembered the bag that he had left with the money in it. He figured she must have seen it.
“Kind of, but it’s not what you think.”
“What do you think I’m thinking?”
He walked over to the kitchen sink and got a glass of water. “You probably think that we’re going to be traveling with drugs on the way back home.”
“That’s exactly what I think. I can’t believe you would put my life in danger.”
He put his glass down. “Hell no, baby. I wouldn’t do anything like that,” he said as he walked over and attempted to put his arm around her. She pushed his chest. “Get off me.” She slid through the double doors.
*** Dream strolled the beach aimlessly. She took the time to gather her thoughts. She had officially broken it off with DeVon for a man she thought had her best interests in mind. Had her vision become clouded? Had she let material things interfere with her judgment? She thought about her parents and what they would think if they knew Jamal had put her life in danger. “Drug dealers are lowlives,” her father would say. Never would she have believed Jamal would put her life in jeopardy. She wasn’t so naïve that she didn’t know if he were caught with drugs, she would go to jail as well.
When she got back to the condo Jamal was sitting on the sofa watching music videos. “Why, Jamal?” she asked.
“Why what?”
“Why did you put me at risk?”
“Ain’t no risk. All I did was bring my girl out here for a good time.”
“And a drug deal!” she yelled
He licked his dry lips. “You see, Ms. Dream, I didn’t come from a Cosby Show-ass household like you did. My friends didn’t go to college; they went to reform schools, penitentiaries, and halfway houses. I don’t even know where my parents are.”
“Oh, nigga, don’t go blaming nobody ’cause you chose to do what you do.”
He stepped to her and placed his hand underneath her chin. “Listen, baby, I don’t want to argue with you. I would never put your life in danger. Please believe me.” Jamal’s voice was sincere.
She put her head on his shoulder, and he pecked her jaw.
*** On the flight back to Charlotte, the mood was pleasant. Jamal and Dream joked, and though it still bothered Dream that he would bring her to California for a drug deal, she didn’t bring it up. Instead she told him how much she enjoyed the trip.
“The next time we go to San Diego, we’ll drive up to L.A. and go to Hollywood,” Jamal said.
“Only if you don’t take me shopping. You’re gonna turn me into a shopaholic like you.”
“I want to take you to the Mall of America in Minneapolis. It’s supposed to be the largest mall in the country.”
“Now, I got to take you up on that offer. I have heard so much about that place. I heard it has an amusement park and a wedding chapel in it,” she replied.
“I haven’t been there in about six years, but it’s definitely a landmark.”
*** After Jamal and Dream loaded their suitcases in his Expedition, he played an India Arie CD. He really wanted to listen to some hip-hop but figured he would put in something somewhat mellow. Dream was grooving to India’s sultry voice, and he was happy because the tension was absent. Then his cell phone rang. “Hello,” he answered.
“Hello, Jamal,” a female’s voice blurted out loudly. Dream turned the stereo down and turned her attention to Jamal’s conversation.
“Who is this?” Jamal asked.
“This is Candy. We met at Club Champagne.”
Jamal glanced at Dream who was looking him directly in the
eye. He knew she had heard the loud woman’s voice because her expression was no longer pleasant. They were approachin
g an intersection, and Jamal stopped at a green traffic light. Several cars blew their horns.
“Jamal, the light is green.” Dream said. “Listen, I’ll call you back. I gotta go now.” He terminated the call and stepped on the gas pedal.
“Who in the hell was that?” Dream asked.
“It’s not what you think.”
“Somehow I knew you were going to say that. Everything is not what I think. What are you, some kind of magician or something? Nothing is ever as it appears with you.”
He frowned. “You know what? I ain’t got to explain shit to you. In fact, I ain’t gonna explain shit to you.”
“That’s fine with me,” she said as she folded her arms across her chest.
They were silent the rest of the way to her house. When they arrived Jamal didn’t offer to help her with her bags, and Dream didn’t ask.
*** Jamal had made seventy thousand dollars in two weeks. He had traded his Ford Expedition in for a new, white E-Class Mercedes Benz, and had put twenty-inch chrome rims on it. He bought himself a platinum Rolex and some custom suits with matching alligator shoes. He felt it was time for him to start acting like a rich man.
He hadn’t spoken with Dream in a couple of weeks and he missed her. He loved going over to her place, watching movies and giving her massages. He wanted to apologize to her, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. He turned to shopping and alcohol to compensate for his loneliness. He started buying liquor— Hennessy with Coke was his favorite—and he hung out at the strip clubs. He had become a regular at Club Champagne. He often paid to have sex with Candy, and most of the girls in the club knew his name. One day he and Dawg were together and Jamal suggested going to the club.
“You done turned into a booty-club bandit,” Dawg said. “What do you mean?” Jamal asked.
“Hell, you in the strip clubs at least five nights out of the week,
man. You need to call your girl back and apologize.”
“Apologize for what?”
“For dissing her for one of them trifling hoes from the strip
club.” Jamal realized Dawg was right. He had a real woman for the first time in his life, and he didn’t appreciate her. All she wanted was some respect. He wanted to apologize, he just didn’t know how.
*** Mert’s Heart and Soul restaurant was located downtown on College Street. It specialized in soul food dishes, with recipes from the low country, a region in the southern part of South Carolina around Charleston. Mert’s was an African American-owned restaurant, yet most of the patrons where white. Keisha and Dream decided to get together for dinner since they hadn’t seen each other much since school had started. The two women greeted each other with a hug.
The waiter appeared and Dream ordered the blackened pork chops while Keisha had baked chicken with rice. They both requested lemonade.
After the food came they chatted about men—their favorite subject. Keisha told Dream about a partner in her accounting firm who had been pursuing her relentlessly; she said he had sent her roses every day for two weeks and had taken her to lunch for the past couple of days.
“How does he look?” Dream asked.
“Fine as hell.”
“Well, what’s the problem? Why won’t you give the guy a
chance?”
“He’s married.”
“That’s too bad,” Dream said, shoveling a forkful of pork chop
into her mouth.
“Yeah, can you imagine me trusting this man after he shows me
that he runs around on his wife?” Keisha asked.
“I know, right?”
Keisha took a quick sip from her glass before speaking. “So,
what’s been up with you and Jamal?”
“Jamal has some serious issues, and I don’t know if I’m going to
be able to deal with them.”
Keisha sat her glass down. “What kind of issues are you talking
about? I mean, I know he hustles, but what else?”
“For one thing, Jamal hasn’t seen his mother in years. I haven’t
talked to him about it, but I can tell it’s bothering him. Besides
that, he’s seeing someone else.”
“How do you know this?” Keisha asked curiously.
“When we returned from California, his cell phone rang. When
he answered, I heard a woman’s voice on the other end saying that
she’d met him at Club Champagne. I think she’s a stripper.” “Did you ask him about about it?”
“Yeah, and he gave me the typical cheating-nigga answer, it’s not
what you think, but I know it’s exactly what I think because a few
months ago, I found a gold anklet at his apartment.” “How did he explain that?”
“Dawg claims to have borrowed the apartment. He went on to
say that one of his hoochies left the anklet.”
“That actually sounds like something Dawg would do, though.
But tell me, why hasn’t Jamal seen his mother?”
“I don’t know. Jamal is so secretive about his personal life, I
didn’t bother asking him.”
“Well, if you decide you’re gonna see him again, I can probably
get a private investigator that I know to track his mom down.” “I’ll pass the information along if I ever see him again.”
*** When Dream got home that night she lit several candles in the bathroom and took a long, hot bubble bath. The candles were therapeutic. She sat in the water thinking about Jamal and her past relationships. It seemed as though she always got the ones with the major issues. She didn’t regret any of the thugs she had dated in the past. She had a lot of fun with them. But with the fun came the baggage. The babies’ mamas, the failure to pay child support, and more recently with DeVon, the prison term. Was all the drama worth it? she asked herself. The water had gotten cold and she added more hot water.
She’d had more fun with Jamal, in such a short time, than with any other boyfriend. She had never met anyone quite as confident as Jamal. He knew how to live, and he made her very happy. Now he was giving someone else back massages and watching movies at someone else’s house. She couldn’t stand the thought of that.
When she got out of the bathtub, her skin was wrinkled and pale. Dream quickly dried off and applied lotion to her body. Within minutes she was in the bed and under the covers naked. She liked feeling free. She liked the way the covers felt against her skin. She wished Jamal was there lying next to her. She became sad thinking about him, and she felt a tear trickle down her cheek before she decided to dial his cell phone. She blocked her number so he couldn’t see it on the Caller ID.
He picked up on the first ring. “Hello.”
She didn’t say anything; she just wanted to hear his voice. “Hello. Hello. Hello. Who the hell is playing games?” he said
before hanging up.
Her body had begun to shiver. God she missed him. She slowly replaced the receiver and cried herself to sleep.
*** “The kingdom of heaven is like a pearl merchant on the lookout for choice pearls. When the merchant discovered a pearl of great value, he sold everything to buy the pearl,” Pastor Tommy Stevenson said to his congregation.
Mark sat in the back of the sanctuary looking straight ahead and focusing on the sermon. He had always enjoyed sermons about the kingdom of heaven ever since he was a boy.
Mt. Prospect was a small non-denominational church with a mixed congregation. The church wasn’t anything like his father’s back in Dallas. Where his father’s church body was predominately African-American, Mt. Prospect was about twenty percent AfricanAmerican; Caucasians, Asians, Hispanics, and West Indians also attended. His father’s church collected about a $100,000 in tithes and offerings a week. Mt. Prospect collected about that much in a year.
Mark always enjoyed the sermons. Pastor Stevenson was a short white man in his early forties, with a receding hairline and a pure heart, and he worked dil
igently for the Lord. After service he would always stand at the exit and shake hands with everyone in the sanctuary.
“The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure that a man discovered hidden in a field. In his excitement, he hid it again and then everything he owned and bought it,” Pastor Stevenson said as he paced in front of the pulpit. “How many of you in here are willing to sell everything you own to get to heaven? Turn to your neighbor and say that you’ll give up everything you own to go to heaven.”
A short, round-faced white woman grabbed Mark by the arm and repeated the pastor’s words verbatim.
“The kingdom of heaven is like a fishing net that is thrown into the water to gather fish of every kind. When the net is full, fishermen drag it onto the shore, sit down, sort the good fish into crates, and throw the bad ones away.” Pastor Stevenson screamed and paced. His face was beet-red when he finished.
When the service was over, Pastor Stevenson gave Mark a firm handshake. “Pray always,” he whispered to Mark.
When Mark got home he took off his church clothes and put on a Nike sweat suit and a pair of running shoes. He reflected on what the pastor had said about the good fish being separated from the bad ones. Mark sometimes felt guilty about having people arrested, especially after working undercover. He would often get close to some of the people he was trying to bring down. He would constantly tell himself he was doing the right thing. He was a good fish and the bad ones had to be separated.
*** Later that evening, Mark was watching the Atlanta Falcons play against the San Francisco 49ers when his cell phone rang. “What’s up?” Mark said.
“The ship has arrived,” Dawg said excitedly.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, man. What are you looking to get this time?” “Nothing right now. I have a little bit left from the last time,”
Mark lied. The truth was he hadn’t gotten any funds from the agency to buy more product. “A’ight, playboy, I was just checking on you,” Dawg said before hanging up.
Mark had made several purchases from Dawg, and it was just a matter of time before he had him arrested. He wanted to make another purchase to make his grand jury presentation more impressive, but he knew his agency wouldn’t allow him to use but so much funds to make drug buys. He decided he would call Dawg the next day and record his conversation for more evidence.