by RM Johnson
She grabbed a handful of Carlos’s curly black hair, peeled his face from in between her legs, and asked, “You want some of this?”
“You know I do,” he said, his mouth and cheeks covered with shiny fluid.
Inside her bedroom, Ally peeled off her T-shirt and panties, then walked over to the bed, climbed on the edge of it, and lay on her belly, her knees tucked under her, her ass hiked up in the air.
She looked over her shoulder, saw Carlos undressing so quickly that he almost tripped and fell over as he tried to step out of his slacks.
“Come over here, and show me what you got,” she teased.
They fucked for something like twenty minutes, but Ally didn’t know. She wasn’t paying any attention, because there was nothing that was making her. She rode him hard, screwed him so hard he was crying like a baby, like a punk. He was saying how much he loved it while she was on top of him, and when he was on top of her, he was saying shit like, “Whose pussy is this? This my pussy!” Ally didn’t even answer him, trying her hardest not to laugh in his face, because she was being tickled to death with that feather dick of his.
When they were done, Ally walked Carlos to the door, and opened it for him. He stepped out, then turned toward her.
“That was wonderful. When can we do it again?” he asked, still looking slightly out of breath, his hair disheveled.
Ally could no longer hold her laughter in and started to giggle.
“What?” Carlos said, smiling uncomfortably.
“You sorry-ass, limp-dick motherfucker. I don’t know why my mother was so sprung over you. She mustve just felt sorry for your ass, because I know I was closer to fallin’ asleep than having an orgasm.”
“But—”
“But nothin’. From now on, you gonna stay away from my mother. She’s far too good a woman, and she deserves so much more than your sorry ass. So don’t come back around here. And if you do, I’ll go to the police and scream rape,” Ally said, seriously. “’Cause, you know I’m still a minor.”
“But—”
“Goodbye, motherfucker! Ally slammed the door in Carlos’s face, hoping that that would be the end of him.
THIRTY-TWO
RAFE, awakened by the telephone, rolled over in bed, slung an arm toward his nightstand, and fumbled blindly for the phone. He brought it to his face, pressed Talk, and then said, “Hello,” in a groggy voice.
“Wake up, sleeping prince,” Rafe heard Smoke say on the other end,
Rafe groaned sadly.
“Wake up, wake up, and turn on channel 5. There’s something you gotta see.”
Rafe didn’t move, and Smoke must’ve sensed that for he yelled loudly into the phone, “Get up, nigga, and turn on the tube. Now!’
Rafe rolled out of bed, clicked on the TV, and settled back onto the edge of the bed. When the TV came on, Rafe saw a blonde female news anchor talking, the picture of a black man in a police officer’s uniform behind her, the word MISSING in capital red letters printed under him.
“He’s an ugly somethin’, isn’t he? Or should I say was?’ Smoke, chuckled on the other end of the phone.
“They … they find him?” Rafe asked, his voice unsteady, feeling a fearful tremor race though his body, thinking that the police could’ve been on their way to lock him up that very minute.
“They ain’t find him, and they ain’t gonna, because when I tell Trunk to get rid of somebody, he really gets rid of them. But you need to get your ass in here. You know you still have a job you have to come to, and if you don’t want to take my word for it, I’m sure Dotson will tell you the same thing.”
And there it was. Rafe knew that Smoke had a direct line to Dotson, but he just didn’t know how taut that line was.
“So did you go to him? Tell him what happened?” Smoke asked.
“I ain’t tell no one.”
“Really? You sure about that? Because you know just because there ain’t no body doesn’t mean the cops can’t get a tip on where to find the gun that killed one of their fellow pigs. So you certain you ain’t tell nobody a thing.”
“You’d already know, since you and Dotson so tight.”
“That’s right. I would. And it’s a good thing you know that. Now you had a long enough vacation. Think it’s time you come back to work.” And before Rafe could say a single word, Smoke had hung up the phone.
ONCE HE got to work, Rafe put on his uniform and went straight to the cars, not stopping at Smoke’s office. It would be best to avoid the man. Near lunchtime, there came a tap on Rafe’s shoulder, and as he pulled himself from under the hood of a 3 series Beemer, he saw that it wasn’t Smoke himself but one of Rafe’s coworkers.
“The man wants to see you,” he said. Then he turned and left.
Rafe wiped his hands on a rag and headed for Smoke’s office. Once he got there, he knocked on the door.
“Entrez,” he heard Smoke say from behind the door.
Rafe opened the door and took one step into the office.
“Damn,” Smoke said, out the side of his mouth, a cigar stuck in the other side. “You look angrier than a mug.”
He picked a set of keys off the desk and pitched them to Rafe. “Black convertible Jag out back. Take it for a spin, make sure it’s running perfect. Wash it, shine it up real nice, then let me know when you’re done.” After giving his instructions, Smoke spun around in his executive chair, turning his back to Rafe. A moment passed. Not hearing the door close, Smoke swiveled back around to find Rafe still in the doorway, the same angry glare on his face.
Smoke pulled the cigar from his lips. “I don’t have to say pretty please, ‘cause it ain’t no request. Now make this easy on both of us, and wash the car, man.”
WHEN RAFE came back two and a half hours later, Smoke grabbed the keys from him and led him outside.
They stepped out, and Rafe stood aside as Smoke took a walk around the car. “You shined this bad boy up good. Drives okay?” Smoke asked. “Everything’s cool wit’ it?”
“Yeah, did a diagnostic on it. Everything checks out,” Rafe confirmed, all the words in a monotone.
“Cool,” Smoke said, throwing the keys in Rafe’s direction. They hit him in the stomach and fell to the ground.
“We out. You driving.”
They ended up at a nice Italian restaurant on the West Side, very near the dealership. There was no one there but the staff and the owner, who greeted Smoke personally at the door. They didn’t open until hours later, but he let Smoke in and made sure he was treated like close family.
Smoke was deep into his spaghetti and meatballs a moment after it arrived, while Rafe sat there, his place clear before him, staring past Smoke.
“Sure you ain’t want nothing to eat?” Smoke said, twirling a thick band of spaghetti noodles around his fork.
Rafe didn’t say a word.
Smoke stuck the food in his mouth, then pushed the plate aside, pulled the napkin from his lap, and wiped his mouth. “You got to excuse me, but I was hungry as hell.” He tossed the cloth napkin aside and leaned over the table some. “That shit had to happen, Rafe.”
Rafe turned his stare on Smoke, anger smoldering in his eyes.
“I killed him! That ain’t have to happen,” Rafe said in a hushed voice, looking side to side, making sure he couldn’t be overheard. “Did you fucking have to make me kill him?”
“Rafe, you ain’t kill nobody. Trunk did. You ain’t pull the trigger, and if that black bastard was alive today and not in little pieces floating in the water somewhere, he’d say the same thing. You ain’t wanna do it, and you ain’t done it. I just needed to make it seem as though you did. That’s all,” Smoke said.
“But why?”
Smoke rolled his eyes, blew out a long, exasperated sigh as if Rafe should’ve known everything he was about to disclose to him. “You know how much money this car business generates alone? And we ain’t even factoring in the money I make on … well, you know. My other business. Something happens to me, w
hat happens to it all? The businesses, the loot. What? Let the goverment take it? I don’t think so,” Smoke said, gesturing with a toothpick he pulled from his lips. “Everything you did for me, everything we been through, all the times when we were shorties and talked about how we weren’t forever gonna be poor, that’s why I did what I did. That’s why I’m forcing your ass to stay around, because one of these days, I’m hopin’ that it’s gonna come to your dumb ass, and you gonna realize just how good you got it, brother.”
“That won’t ever happen. Just let me out now.”
“Can’t do that, man.”
“You keep saying how tight we used to be, how we brothers. All that shit from the other week, takin’ me back around the crib, bringing up all that shit from the past, all of that. Just bullshit, right?”
“Rafe, c’mon, man. You know better than that.”
“Then let me out.”
“Brotha Rafe—”
“Let me out, Smoke. If I mean all that to you, then let me the fuck out.”
Smoke gave Rafe a long look, shaking his head sadly, as though he was about to say something he’d regret. “All right, look. Roll wit’ me, just for a little while. A month. See if you feelin’ the game again, like I know you gonna. But if you don’t, the door is open. You can just walk on out.”
It wasn’t exactly what Rafe wanted to hear, but it was better than nothing.
“I ain’t killin’ nobody, ain’t roughin’ nobody up, ain’t doing nothing illegal.”
“Naw, man. Just hang out wit’ me. Help me spend some of this money that I got. Shit, have a good time. You been locked up for the past three years. You should be jumpin’ at the chance. You fuckin’ earned it.”
Smoke dug in his pocket, flipped off a couple of fifties from his roll, and threw them on the table. He grabbed a breadstick, popped it in his mouth, then said, “Let’s roll. Got somethin’ for ya’.”
THAT SOMETHING that Smoke had for Rafe was the Jag they were whipping around in.
“I ain’t takin’ this, Smoke,” Rafe had told him.
“You’d be crazy not to. It’s clean, Rafe. I wouldn’t give you no shit that’s been chopped on. It’s straight from the Jag dealer on Fulton, not even my store. Bought it outright.” Smoke went into the glove box and pulled out an envelope. “Here’s the sticker, the receipt, and registration. Had it made out to you, title should be here in a couple of weeks, in your name. Cops can stop you all they want. You more legit than they are in this car, Rafe. Just take the motherfucker.”
“I said I ain’t. You can keep me working for you, but you can’t make me take no car, so keep it.”
LATER THAT night, when Rafe knocked on Henny’s door, he kinda wished he had taken the car, because he was half an hour late. The buses never seemed to come on time. He should’ve taken a cab. He could’ve afforded one, because before Rafe left for the day, Smoke had handed him four fifty-dollar bills.
“Take it. I know you ain’t got a lot of loot. Think of it as an advance on your next check,” Smoke said.
Rafe wanted to turn it down, but Smoke was right. He had little to nothing, and this money would allow him to take Henny somewhere other than Wendy’s for dinner.
After work, Rafe had walked around downtown, peering in the windows of restaurants he thought looked nice. He stepped in one, a place called Ten, and asked if they had a reservation open for eight o’clock. They did. He booked it.
When Henny’s door finally opened, Rafe said. “Sorry, I’m late, the bus—”
“It’s okay.” She looked him over. “You look very sharp,” she said, but Rafe figured she was saying that just to be nice. He had on the best clothes that hung in his closet: tan khaki pants and a cheap rayon shirt. He probably looked presentable if he was lucky, but definitely not sharp.
“Are you ready to go?” she said, pulling back from the hug she had just given him.
“Yeah. I’m good.”
“Hold it,” Rafe heard a voice saying from inside the apartment. “I want to meet this man you been spending all your time with, Henny.”
“Mama, we ain’t got time. We’re late already,” Henny called over her shoulder while grabbing Rafe’s hand, as if she was running from something.
“I’m sure he has time to meet your mother.”
Rafe leaned in past the doorway to see Livvy and nodded his head, saying, “Yeah, I do.” He looked at Henny with mild concern, wondering why she was trying to whisk him out of there so quickly.
Henny’s mother was fine for an older woman, Rafe thought as he walked through the living room, toward the dining room table where she was sitting.
She was smiling at first, but he noticed that as he walked closer to her, the smile started to fade. She looked at his braided hair, his cool swagger, which he had to admit had been practiced to make him look hard when he was a youngster, but now had just become a part of him. She noticed the Timberland boots and rested her stare on his outstretched arm, on the tattoos spilling out from under his sleeve, down his arm.
“Good to meet you, Miss Rodgers.”
Livvy stood and took his hand, allowing hers to be shaken.
“So Henny hasn’t told me anything about you.”
Rafe shot a quick eye at Henny. She looked uncomfortable, as if she was holding her breath, counting the moments ’til she could breathe again.
“Where you from?” Livvy asked.
“I’m from here,” Rafe answered.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-six. Just turned it not long ago.”
“Well, you know Henny’s only seventeen,” Livvy said, gauging Rafe’s reaction.
“But I’ll be eighteen in two weeks, Mama.”
Livvy cut her eyes at Henny, then focused back on Rafe. “You been to college?”
“No,” Rafe said, feeling ashamed, but refusing to lower his head.
“Henny’s about to go off to medical school.”
“It’s pre-med, Mama,” Henny corrected.
“Her ex-boyfriend is down there. He’s in med school now.”
“That’s nice,” Rafe said, trying his best to smile at the woman, not knowing if that intention was making its way to his face.
“So if you didn’t go to school, what do you do?”
“Mama, we really got to go,” Henny said, pulling Rafe by the hand toward the door. But as she was spinning him around, Rafe caught sight of someone stepping into the room. It was Henny’s sister, Alizé, and before Rafe was pulled all the way out of the apartment, he noticed the long, jealous stare she gave him.
Rafe walked with Henny, hand in hand, toward the bus stop, trying to put behind him the interrogation Henny’s mother had just put him through. When they got there, he saw a taxi rolling toward them, threw up his arm, and flagged it down.
“What are you doing?” Henny said. “Aren’t we taking the bus?”
“Naw. We’re gonna be late for our reservation.”
When the cab stopped in front of the restaurant and the driver turned to look over the seat to tell them how much the fare was, Henny dug into her purse.
“How much do you need?”
Rafe took mild offense to her attempting to pay and went into his pocket to retrieve his wallet.
“I told you I was taking you out. Okay?”
They got out of the cab and walked through the doors of the restaurant. Rafe heard Henny gasp behind him at how beautiful the place was. Long white curtains hung from the towering ceiling all the way to the floor. White tableclothes covered all the tables, single candles sitting atop them. Men in suits and women in dresses talked, ate, and laughed, as the hostess showed Henny and Rafe to their table.
“Enjoy your dinner,” the smiling hostess said after she had seated them and given them their menus.
“Thank you,” Rafe said. He looked across the table at Henny and caught the look of mild shock on her face as she looked around the huge, elegantly decorated room.
“You like it?” He was hoping she was
impressed.
“It’s beautiful,” Henny said, turning to him, almost breathless.
“Go ahead, open your menu. Order anything you want,” Rafe said, certain that the $175 left in his pocket would cover it.
Henny lifted her menu, and Rafe did the same. He was carefully looking over the selections, narrowing down his choices, when he heard Henny speak.
“Rafe,” she whispered loudly, peeking over her menu, as if they were a fraud, on the verge of being found out. “What are we doing here? You can’t afford this.”
This was the wrong thing to have said to Rafe at that moment, for he had been trying to hold in all his anger at what her mother had said to him, how she had looked him over as if he wasn’t good enough for her daughter. And now, for Henny to tell him what he could and couldn’t afford, like she actually knew … he could no longer contain himself.
“How you know what I can afford?” he spat over his menu.
Henny leaned back, slightly shocked at his outburst. “No offense, but you’re an auto mechanic, and you just started at that.”
“Oh, I see. So is that why you yanked me out of your apartment when your mother asked what I did for a living?”
“No. It was because we were late, and it was none of her business.”
“I see,” Rafe said. “And why didn’t you tell me about your medical school ex-boyfriend?”
“Because, quite frankly, Raphiel, that was none of your business.”
Now Rafe jerked back.
“That man means nothing to me,” she went on. “He’s down there, but I don’t know where. I haven’t spoken to him since he left a year ago. And besides, I didn’t care about him the way I care about you. That’s why I want to know how you can afford this on the money you make and why you would even think you had to take me someplace like this.”
Rafe leaned in a little across the table: “Because you’re a fancy-ass woman, and you expect it.”
“That’s not true. You don’t have to take me to places like this. I care about you. Not where we eat.”
“Yeah,” Rafe said, not believing a word she said. “But if I had money to afford this kind of stuff when you first met me, would you be complaining that you ended up here?”