I knew I had to be going full speed ahead, but the floor and even the air around me seemed to be in negative warp speed. Blinking felt like I was taking these erotic micro-naps where even though I was pissed the fuck off, my angry pulse felt good. Every time my eyes closed my heart would send a thump that shimmied down my entire body. I had to lean up against a wall for a moment to get my bearings. My ears picked up the sounds of low gasps and whispering.
Peeking around the corner I could see Sadira and Angelo on a couch. Maybe I should let her have him and then I can get more of whatever the hell these pills are. No, I’d just have to remind myself to ask who her supplier was after I whooped that ass. It took everything in me because gravity was working against me, but I grabbed a metal bar leaning against the wall and charged.
That’s how it happened in my head anyway. What really happened is I was too woozy and uncoordinated to actually charge or attack anything. I tripped over my own feet and ferociously spilled out onto the floor in a slow-motion tumble of big hair and bright red.
“What the fuc—” Sadira shrieked.
“Cut. Cut. Did I say improvise? I didn’t tell anyone to improvise. Why is she improvising? Is this how she Glemmies? Someone tell her to turn her fucking Glemmy off and stick to the script before I come out there and knock it out of her. Ruining my fucking money shots.” The director’s voice boomed through an overhead intercom.
I looked up as the room swayed and Kai climbed off the couch from where he was lying to help me up to my feet. Not about to be upstaged, Sadira rushed over and started making a big deal out of having her scene interrupted. They were on a closed-off portion of the set that had cameras in the ceilings, so the director could watch off screen. It was perfect for love scenes or really emotional moments. Mmm, and Kai had a mole on the left side of his neck. The lighting made his pulse flicker under his skin, and he had these teeny tiny sun brightened hairs all over his body. He seemed to be quietly studying me just as closely as I was studying him.
“We’re all hanging out in my suite later. You should come by when we wrap.” My eyes floated toward that fine mouth of his and I nodded. What I wouldn’t give just to be that nigga’s teeth. I’d get to spend all mothafuckin’ day in between his lips and his tongue; you couldn’t convince me that wasn’t heaven.
I was about to unleash my so-called exorcised inner demon named Honey all over his fine ass. “Only if you let me climb that—”
“Um, Desi, come here, boo.” Sir’Tavius snatched me up, putting his arm around my waist, quickly twirling me in the direction of my dressing room.
“I thought you said she was with my man.” I glared at him out the corner of my eye.
“Okay, um if you don’t know how to get in character or read scripts that’s your own fault. He’s your man in this movie, heffa; she tries to steal him.”
“Mmm, Sir’Tavius, I don’t know how or when, but I’m gonna get his ass,” I shouted, suddenly amped about my new mission. Go, team, get that ass.
“Is that so? And who might this be?”
Sir’Tavius and I had the same exact look on our face at the same damn time, when we heard Angelo’s voice. He’d been MIA all this time, and of course he’d show up now.
“She jus’ going over some lines, Angelo; don’t pay us no mind.” Sir’Tavius to the damn rescue.
Angelo looked between the two of us with an eyebrow raised before chuckling and wandering toward the catering area.
“Tavius, I need you to help me get that ass. I’m gettin’ that ass. Look at me. I grabbed him by his shoulders and stared past the swooping silver tipped lashes he was wearing. “Look in my eyes, you see this? This is my serious face, I need that ass. I need some ass, or I’m gonna take it from someone.” I gave him a good up and down glance for emphasis. “Your legs lookin’ a little muscular in them jeans, Tay. You been workin’ out?” I teased him.
“Ho, no. We gonna make sure you have your purse and all the fixings from now on, because them pills got you somewhere else.”
“You see what I’m stuck with, though?” I pouted.
We turned and examined Angelo’s departing frame, both of our heads tilting to the side.
“Ugh, him just so skinty. Do he even have a booty girl, what do you grab? Ain’t no meat on the chicken. I’d break that all to pieces. Wouldn’t be no more good.”
“Tay, he’s already been broken.” I giggled, pointing myself out as the guilty, skinnny boy breaker.
Chapter 8
Red Box
Sir’Tavius promised to take me home once we finished shooting for the day and Angelo reluctantly left. We were actually done by four, and it gave me more than enough time to relax before meeting Don Cerzulo later. I borrowed a form fitting green cowl-neck dress from wardrobe to change into since I didn’t have time to go home.
“Tavius, I just want you to know that I’m like five feet two-ish and my knees are in the dashboard. I still love you and your mini, golf-cart car.”
“It’s a Fiat, bitch. Recline the seat. I can’t help that I’m always hauling Queen Etheria’s wardrobe across the damn state.”
We laughed and joked all the way to the hotel. By the time we got there, the crowd that had gathered out front was an apparent sign most of the cast was already inside. Sir’Tavius got me as close to the main lobby doors as possible. The last thing I needed was for Angelo to see my picture popping up all over tabloids.
“You’re here, your boy Tavius hit me and said you were outside.” Kai walked over, smiling. I immediately decided whatever trouble I was getting into was going to be so worth it.
He led me to a reserved elevator with double-wide golden doors. It needed a key card just to get them to open. It was strictly for access to the wing with the suites and penthouses. We went up to the one just beneath the top floor and the elevator opened up to the devil’s playground.
The shades were all drawn so that even during the day it looked like it could have been midnight. In the center of his suite was a large glass room. It glowed in a dull red. That red room wasn’t as fascinating as the people inside it.
“They can’t see us. It’s a sauna. Inside there’s music and they’re watching themselves in mirrored glass,” Kai informed me in a soft whisper.
He grabbed my hand and led me toward it. My heels sank into the carpet and I passed ivory furnishings with violet lighting underneath. Whoever designed this room needed to design some strip clubs, fertility clinics, and marriage counseling offices, because from the second the elevator opened I’d been on ten.
I stood less than four inches from Sadira, the world’s number one actress. Her face was pressed down into the marble bench. Some big-ass football playing-looking nigga with shoulder muscles on top of his shoulder muscles had her pinned down by the back of her neck. My eyebrow shot up when I thought about how bad I wanted that to be me. Kai had walked over to the counter, and it was like watching a calendar model twenty-four-seven.
He walked in sexy confident steps, stopped, and that sexy unruly man ponytail of his swayed as he winked and smiled at me. His thick pink lips wrapped around a neon green pipe and he exhaled, ab muscles flexing as he took off his shirt. Rewind. The nigga was behind the counter, hitting something out of a pipe. It definitely wasn’t marijuana. I’d never smelled anything like that before. Not crack, or that fake weed salvia shit. I had no idea what he was smoking.
I glanced back into the red room, and almost walked myself right up in there. Shit, they wouldn’t notice. There were like four different couples going at it, and at the moment, I didn’t know if Sadira even knew she was eatin’ a nigga’s ass and not pussy. No, no, she definitely looked up at him. Smiled and stroked him with one and sucked her finger to get it nice, wet, and wow.
“Kai, come here, boy. What the hell you in there doing?”
He jogged his ass over to me. “DMT, baby. I had to get ready for you. You should try it.”
I ain’t have time to be playin’ with his uber-high ass. I was on a
schedule. I wrapped my fingers in all that damn hair and pulled him down. Mmmm, damn. He felt good, and I backed him up against the glass so I could watch everyone else at the same time. I licked a salty layer of sweat off his skin and he groaned. I did the same thing to the opposite side of his neck and he slammed his fist back hard against the glass.
“Shut the fuck up. I can’t focus,” Kai yelled, and I jumped my ass the hell back.
What the hell was this fool on? Real talk, you could practically hear grass growing out here; that booth was damn near soundproof.
He looked at me apologetically, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. “Not you, it’s not you. They wanna show me God, Honey. He knows everything. Sees everything.”
“What did you call me?” I stared at him, frozen, confused and paranoid. This had to be a joke or a set-up. Did Angelo put him up to this?
“I’ll get one for you.”
Kai walked back toward the counter and I just stood there staring at the red box in front of me. They looked like one of those paintings from Dante’s Inferno, minus the demons. They didn’t need demons to torture them. Sadira, Kai, me, we tortured ourselves. I squinted when the lights came on and waited for Kai to explain whatever he’d found to show me. The panicked screams made my feet move before my brain could process what the fuck was happening.
“Look, look up there. Who is that? She pushed Kai,” people were screaming.
I quickly ducked back into the room, trying to blot the image of Kai’s body sprawled across the pavement from my mind. I didn’t push him. I wasn’t anywhere near him. There was no way in hell I’d go down for a murder I didn’t commit when I’d been getting away with real fucking murder. Panicked beyond reason, I called the only person I knew could help me.
Don Cerzulo was reclining in the back of a luxury car with limo-black windows. He gave me a warm smile as I climbed in.
“Desi, stuff like this happens all the time. DMT is some hard shit, makes you hallucinate and all kinds of stuff. Everything will be fine. I’ve handled it. Forget about it, okay? It’s done. We have bigger things to deal with, not even going to ask why you were at one of Kai’s hotel orgies.”
My eyes almost bulged out of my head. As if it wasn’t bad enough that I had to call my fiancé’s father to help me, the dude I was with was known for throwing shit like that.
“I had no idea that’s what it was. The cast was going and I went too, Don. That was it.” I shrugged, and helped myself to a glass of champagne. Twirling the stem between my nervous fingers, I stared off into space, thinking about everything and nothing at once.
“It’s a sad thing,” Don said quietly.
I looked away from the palm trees and whirring lights of the city flying by my window. “What’s a sad thing?”
“That you can be anyone, go anywhere, and do anything. People do anything to get it and just as much to protect it. But, after a while, it all gets boring.”
He looked out his window and I gulped down the rest of my champagne. It sounds to me like someone has way too much money and too much damn free time on their hands.
“Let’s make this game interesting.” Don Cerzulo sat up with a clap, rubbing his hands together. “It’s time that face of yours earns its keep.”
I waited as the car slowed to a stop. We were somewhere near downtown Miami, but I couldn’t figure out where. I had an eerie feeling that this was going to be a little more than an acting class.
“The best actors are method actors, Desivita. They get into their roles; they live them.”
The driver opened Don Cerzulo’s door before I could ask him to explain, and I was speechless after that. We walked along carpet that was such a bright shade of red I was surprised a flock of jealous cardinals didn’t swoop down and attack. It led us up stark white steps into an Italian-style villa that had to be the set of one of Don Cerzulo’s latest movies. This romantic storybook palace had majestic arched ceilings with glistening antique chandeliers and ornate tapestries. I was in awe, and Paris would have loved it; any girl would. My ass was in love with it. All I needed was a princess dress and I’d be in business. There were a few men wandering here and there in expensive suits, looking at the art in different areas.
“All of this was done by hand. It took one man two years to duplicate the paintings from the Sistine Chapel,” Don Cerzulo remarked.
I hadn’t even noticed that the walls were painted and not wallpapered. Every inch was covered with an angel, cherub, or a cloud. Marble staircases with intricate gold and black leaf carvings on the railings divided the massive foyer in half.
“What in the God’s name is going on in here?”
A wizened little gray-haired man came rushing in, looking around frantically. He took one glance at us, stopped cold in his tracks, and tried to turn and leave. All the men who seemed to have been so preoccupied earlier were immediately occupied with dragging him over toward me and Don Cerzulo.
“You’re supposed to offer me a drink. Ask how I’m doin’. But no, thanks, and I’m doing a lot better than you’re lookin’ right now.” Don Cerzulo chuckled.
“Business is business, Campelli. You don’t break into a man’s house over what goes on in the meeting room. I—”
“You, my friend, are going to make the news tomorrow. Producer-slash-movie-director Raul Scanetti commits suicide in Miami home. They’re gonna find you upstairs in your little dick-complex, California king-sized bed. Pea-sized brain matter splattered all over the ceiling. Your movie is now my movie. I am the next bidder who can actually afford to produce it. By the way, this is the new star. Say hi to the man, sweetheart.”
Scanetti sputtered unintelligible, gut-churning, “about to die” pity moans, and I was a nice brewing medley of “shock and what the fuck” stew. Don Cerzulo glared at me, nudging my arm, urging me to actually speak when I honestly ain’t have a clue what to say. I managed to squeak out a weak “Hey,” without making eye contact.
“We can fifty-fifty, seventy-thirty? Anything, it’s yours,” Scanetti pleaded.
Don Cerzulo nodded to one of the men, who pulled out a pistol with a suppressor on it and a set of gloves.
“Desivita, take the man upstairs. One bullet in the temple, arm fully extended or you’ll get blood splatter on you. Don’t touch anything on the way up or down. You will earn your keep in this family. Now go.” He nodded toward the stairs.
“No, wait, please no. I’ve got kids and my wi . . . wife, what about her? Desivita, don’t do this; you don’t have to do this. I can help you.” Scarletti fell to his knees, pleading with me and crying.
I looked at Don Cerzulo and shook my head no. I couldn’t do this kind of shit. There wasn’t any reason for me to kill this man. If it had been Rah or . . .
Don Cerzulo’s face twisted into an angry snarl as he leered down at me.
“What do you thinks gonna happen to you if I don’t have a use for you? Either you work for me, or you die here with him and be all over the news tomorrow as a junkie actress turnin’ tricks for work.”
Don Cerzulo’s voice made my blood run cold, and I could feel the winds whirring of some dark, malevolent storm in my chest. It’s a wonder my teeth didn’t break from grinding them as hard as I was. Two men pulled Scanetti to his feet in front of me. He stood with his shoulders shaking, tears and snot hanging from his quivering chapped lips. The stench of coffee-tinged urine hit my nose full on as he pissed himself right there. I slapped on the black latex gloves while Don and his men in black snickered and laughed at him.
What I wouldn’t give to be regular ass, catching a-ride-to-the-Hot-Spot Honey right about now.
Chapter 9
There’s No Place Like Home
“Mommy, whose house is this?” Trey wandered aimlessly around the small, modestly furnished front porch, touching everything. Two wicker chairs sat on either side of a tiny wooden table. An old-fashioned flower can filled with dirt sat on top of it. He had that look that all little boys get when they’re seriou
sly searchin’ for something to unintentionally fuck up or break. He’d settled on poking a rotting cantaloupe with a stick.
“Trey, get over here and be still. And don’t you touch nothin’ when we get inside or I’m wearin’ that behind out. You understand me?”
He nodded, trudging over to stand beside me just as the front door opened.
I smiled my brightest smile. “Hey, Momma.”
“Da hell are you? Another one of them Jehovah’s Witnesses? ’Cause I told the last ones not to come back ’less they was bringin’ red wine and tata chips. Look like you ain’t get the message.”
“Momma, it’s me, Michelle. Rasheed’s, um, ex-fiancée. Um, you remember our son, Trey? Your grandson?”
“Oh, Lawd, hey, baby. I’m so sorry. Time’s been hard on this ol’ mind. You heard what happened to my boy? Them county folk came through here askin’ all kinds of questions. Couldn’t even have an open casket.” She sulked while looking at me through cataract-clouded eyes.
I almost broke down, apologized, and begged forgiveness for everything I’d done. It never crossed my mind how Rasheed’s momma would suffer without him. I didn’t kill him, but I may as well have for getting him locked up. Her nightgown was stained and frayed around the edges and her hair was haloed around her head in a short salt-and-pepper afro. Momma had always kept at least three fancy wigs with a special one for church. Without Rah paying for her medications and her bills, and left to live off the system, she looked the worse for wear. My ass should have been sending her something, even if it was anonymously.
Unfortunately, this was the only game plan I could come up with. It was a long shot. A pitch-black, blindfolded, “with no wind to guide me” type of shot but I was taking it. Virginia wasn’t even on my list of relocation options, but that meant it would also be the last place anyone would ever think to look for us. If anyone did come looking, Rasheed’s Momma wasn’t one of the first people they’d question, and I highly doubted Honey would even risk the trip. She was, after all, a wanted woman.
Baby Momma Saga, Part 2 Page 7