The Tragic Flaw

by Che Parker

  Slow jams disseminate from the local radio station and filter through his high-tech stereo. Cicero wonders if his father had actually accomplished anything in life. He had made a name for himself on the streets, but would Antonio be content with that?

  Cicero nears his exit from Highway 71 and makes a gliding slant to the right. He makes a smooth right turn at the light and notices a family of four stranded. Steam billows from the hood of their station wagon as the father of the family tries to flag Cicero down. His assistance is much needed.

  Two small children sit huddled together in the backseat as Cicero ignores the father’s plea for help and continues on to the nightclub to meet Lucia. He doesn’t consider stopping for one second.

  The neighborhood is brimming with the aroma of marinated pork ribs as he passes one of the city’s oldest barbecue restaurant chains. He’s been drinking all night, and the smell has him considering stopping and ordering a slab with fries and a strawberry pop.

  Nonetheless, Cicero continues to head west riding steady and sure, surrounded by soft leather and beautiful wood grain. Twin turbochargers purr as he nears the club and begins searching for a parking spot.

  “Why am I here?” Cicero says to himself out loud. This is not his type of scene, not his crowd.

  He parks his Maybach a safe distance from the club and once at the door of the historic brick building pays the enormous amount of twenty dollars to get in.

  “Is Marvin Gaye singing here tonight?” Cicero sarcastically asks the bouncer at the door.

  “Nope. You got ID?” the bouncer asks after frisking Cicero. He presents his Missouri driver’s license, then steps into the club. He’s immediately struck by loud R&B tunes blasting from multiple speakers. The club is crowded with hard-working blue-collar guys, a few executives, and unemployed people who look like they just got off work, including Lucia.

  Guys in suits sip on beers while others in expensive sweaters pop bottles of Moët at little tables with signs on them that say RESERVED.

  The mood is festive. Lovely women with red skin tones in tight jeans and tight skirts giggle at silly jokes and make eye contact with potential suitors. Several stare at Cicero and smile, which he does in return to a couple who catch his eye.

  A waving hand then appears from out of the throng near the bar.

  “Cicero! Cicero! Over here, boy!” Lucia yells.

  Cicero sees her and makes his way over to the bar where his sister is standing with a girlfriend of hers. Dance floor lights bounce off his bald head.

  He cuts through a group of chubby women chatting, then suddenly feels extreme pressure on his right foot.

  “Fuck!”

  “Oh, my bad, player,” a drunk guy apologizes after stepping on Cicero’s loafers. His Cartier sunglasses are on the verge of falling off his face as he stumbles toward the dance floor.

  Cicero’s fingers curl inward and knuckles protrude. Cicero’s pissed off but he refrains from flashing on the guy.

  “It’s cool, dog,” Cicero replies. Jolting lyrics come across loud and clear in the romantically lit nightspot.

  “What took you so long, boy?” Lucia asks as Cicero finally makes his way to the bar.

  “How you doin’, honey?” Cicero says before hugging his sister.

  “C, this is Cheryl.” Lucia points to a large Amazon woman.

  “Hey, Cicero,” Cheryl says with a huge grin. Her bright red lipstick and makeup are caked on and nearly offensive.

  “How are you, Cheryl? Nice to meet you.”

  “Are you still single, wit’ yo’ fine ass?” Cheryl blurts in a raspy voice. She and Lucia have been drinking Long Island Iced Teas all night.

  Cicero laughs. “Yes, I am single, Cheryl.”

  “And no kids, girl!” Lucia weighs in, lovingly rubbing her brother’s arm.

  “None that I know of,” he quips, and the group laughs.

  Cicero orders a cognac from the bartender, then scans the room for familiar faces. Even though he rarely goes to nightclubs, he knows many of the guys and women in here. In his younger days Cicero was always in the mix, but as he began to make more money, he didn’t have time for parties, nor the anxiety associated with the city nightlife: carjackers, young hustlers trying to make a name for themselves, beggin’-ass females. Nevertheless, he is known around town for his gangster connections. Some consider it the ultimate feat.

  “Hey, what’s up, C?” a man dressed in an oversized black suit says. His hair lays flat on his head. Every tooth in his head is gold.

  “What’s up, man, how you been?” Cicero says.

  “Just chillin’, man. I heard you got a new Maybach.”

  “Oh yea? Damn. Where did you hear that?”

  “Shit, you know Kansas City is small. Man, I heard those run like four-hundred thousand dollars.”

  Cicero laughs.

  “Naw, man. It’s nothing major.”

  “Damn, I heard that. Do ya thang.”

  Cicero smiles, then nods, as does the talkative man.

  “Hey, this round’s on me. What you drinkin’?” the guy questions, yelling over the loud music.

  “Oh, just a little XO,” Cicero says, then smiles.

  “Cool. Hey,” the guy yells to the bartender. “Let me get an XO!”

  The busy bartender reaches up to the top shelf of the glass and mirror case behind him and pours the minimum requirement for a shot.

  “That’s twenty-five dollars.”

  “Damn! Cicero, you tryin’ to get all my pocket money,” the guy complains as he ruffles through his wallet. He reluctantly pays the bartender, leaving him with five dollars in his wallet. Cicero sees the five and chuckles under his breath. The club’s loud music muffles it.

  “Damn, C. You an expensive-ass date! I guess I’ll be getting one Bud Ice and calling it a night.”

  Cicero laughs.

  “Thanks, Kev, next round on me,” Cicero says loudly over the throbbing rap music.

  “Cool. I need it, too,” Kevin replies. He’s one of Cicero’s occasional customers. They used to play sandlot football and three-on-three basketball together in his mom’s neighborhood. These days, they sometimes meet, maybe once or twice a year, in secluded locations and exchange C-notes for nose candy. C is Kev’s back-up connection. Kev normally fucks with the Mexicans on the west side.

  As the night goes on, more and more people step inside the club, and more and more guys buy Cicero a drink: customers, other hustlers, and old friends from school.

  “Oh shit, is that my boy?” a now drunk Cicero inquires out loud, looking across the room. His words reverberate off the nightclub’s exposed burgundy brick walls.

  The short pudgy guy in the white, long-sleeved shirt turns around and his cheeks go ear to ear, making his goatee curve.

  “What’s up, Cicero?” the short guy yells from about ten yards away. He drunkenly makes his way toward Cicero, bumping into people and spilling his beer.

  “Where the fuck have you been, Fry?” Cicero asks his buddy as they hug.

  “What’s up, boy?! Man, I haven’t seen you, in like, three years,” Fry replies, still hugging his friend.

  They both take a step back and look at each other. They spent some broke, bored nights together in college. But they also started hustling together in college.

  “Man, I’ve just been layin’ low, tryin’ to handle my business. You feel me?” Cicero slurs, now holding a half-empty beer bottle.

  “Yea, man. I’ve been in Houston, Las Vegas. You know I’m trying to start my own clothing line?” the stocky Fry says.

  “Yea, I heard about that. How’s that goin?”

  “It’s goin’ cool,” Fry says, putting on his serious face. “Right now I’m working on my marketing plan. The clothes are straight, it’s just getting my shit in stores, you know?”

  “Yea, I feel you. Keep at it, man. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

  “No doubt, dude. No doubt. That’s real talk,” Fry states. He then glances
around their nearby vicinity and inches closer toward Cicero’s ear. The music is clamorous.

  “Hey, dude, I might have beef up in here,” Fry tells him.

  Cicero’s face goes from smiling to expressionless. He loves beef more than a Texas cattle rancher does.

  “It’s whatever. Just say the word,” Cicero says before taking a small swig of his beer. “What’s crackin’?”

  “Nothin’ for real, just this buster. It’s over some old dumb shit,” Fry calmly explains. “But I saw him when I walked in, and he was muggin’ and shit.”

  A look is all it takes. The slightest glance can say a thousand words. Countless people in the city would fight, even kill, for their respect. Yes, over a look.

  “Man, I got your back, you know that. It’s whatever,” Cicero says, then smiles. He and Fry shake hands.

  The liquor has Cicero on edge, just like the hundred other men in the club. The wild west still exists.

  “All right, dude,” Fry says.

  He then walks off to mingle and Cicero stumbles back over to the bar to have a seat. He orders a drink of water to dilute all the alcohol he has consumed tonight.

  “Shake somethin’, dance a little bit. Shake somethin’, dance hoe, you ain’t doin’ shit,” the music blares. Gone are the days of Chubby Checker’s “Twist and Shout.”

  Cicero sits at the bar with squinty eyes, saying hello to old flames and associates, when he eyes a woman with an Olympic body whose services he often employed when it was called for.

  The beautiful twenty-seven-year-old waves and Cicero nods in acknowledgment. They choose not to speak to each other in public, but Cicero grins as he recalls first having sex with the young woman a few years ago, when he realized her vagina had to be the biggest he had ever been in.

  Even the act of making love couldn’t keep Cicero from thinking about business, which is why one week later the young lady had half a kilo of snow in her love box traveling from LAX to KCI.

  Still sitting at the bar with a major buzz, Cicero notices Lucia across the crowded room arguing with her ex-boyfriend. It doesn’t mean much to Cicero, however, because Lucia is always arguing with somebody.

  But at that moment, her tall ex-man waves his fingers in her face, then walks away. Cicero can see his mouth clearly say, “Fuck you, bitch!”

  Cicero has a gut reaction. His stomach tenses, as he watches Lucia storm through the crowded club toward him. Her friend Cheryl is nowhere to be seen.

  Lucia, in a high-priced cream chiffon Chanel suit, reaches Cicero with a frightened look on her face.

  “This mothafucka John just threatened me,” she pants, nearly out of breath.

  Cicero is thrown for a loss.

  “What? Are you serious?” he asks with his deep voice.

  “Yes! He said he heard I was talking shit about him to some other girls or something. And he said he was going to fuck me up. Cicero, will you go talk to him?” Lucia pleads. She’s afraid.

  Whether or not his sister was talking about this guy, to Cicero, it doesn’t matter. He could deal with Lucia later. As for now, this situation had to be handled.

  “Yea, I’ma talk to him right now,” C replies.

  He drops a fifty-dollar tip for the bartender, then stands with his suds-filled beer bottle and walks through the dancing and talking clubgoers. His pin-striped cobalt suit fits him well as the look on Cicero’s face commands respect from everyone in the nightclub.

  Lucia’s ex-boyfriend is tall and dark as night, so it’s easy to see his chocolate bald head ambling through the nightspot. Hours of drinking forces John to the bustling bathroom, as Cicero follows close behind him. Unfortunately for John, he’s from out of town, and he has no idea who he’s just threatened. Having only lived in the area for a year, John knows little of Lucia’s younger brother, nor does he know he’s in the club, and following him.

  Hours of drinking have also intensified Cicero’s self-diagnosed paranoid personality disorder, forcing him to retaliate against John quickly, without any thoughts of forgiveness clouding his rage.

  John steps into the tiny, overcrowded bathroom and Cicero pushes in behind him.

  “Hey! Hey, there’s no room in here,” a guy yells from one of the two urinals. The restroom is probably about ten feet long and five feet wide, but there are six grown men in it, waiting in line.

  “You’re all right, just hurry up,” Cicero yells to the guy up front. Despite the frantic pace in and out of the restroom all night, the white tile floor is spotless and bright.

  One by one, the guys piss and leave. By the time John makes it to the urinal, only he and Cicero are in the restroom.

  Cicero thinks about his beautiful sister, and how this large dude threatened her. Cicero thinks about the look of fear on Lucia’s face, and without a word, he puts all the force he can muster into swinging his chestnut-brown beer bottle into the back of John’s bald head.

  Crash! Glass shards scatter as blood immediately flows from John’s dark head.

  “Aarrgh! What the fuck?” John screams as he grabs his head, turning toward Cicero to face him. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  Enraged, Cicero yells at the taller, bleeding John.

  “Don’t ever threaten my sister again, mothafucka!” Cicero proclaims before firing rights and lefts to John’s face, connecting with each blow.

  The fists flying at him stun the former college football player, but he’s in phenomenal condition, which is why he’s able to rush Cicero and completely lift him off his feet in a powerful bear hug.

  “Fuck,” Cicero yells as his back is forcefully thrust against a paper towel dispenser. Cicero continues to punch John right where the bottle struck him, deepening the gouge in his head and driving chunks of glass into his skull.

  “Don’t ever talk to my sister like that, you bitch-ass mothafucka!” Cicero yells in John’s ear, steady striking him in the back of his head with his right hand.

  A crowd gathers outside the bathroom door and several men and women peer in.

  “Oh shit!” one woman screams after seeing blood everywhere. In fact, there’s so much blood flowing from John’s head that he slips in it, and he and Cicero fall to the floor.

  Cicero then wraps his left arm around John’s neck, placing him in a headlock.

  “You bitch-ass mothafucka,” Cicero says while pounding John’s face with his right hand. It sounds like a meat tenderizer striking a slab of beef. John’s nose is repeatedly hit as he regains his grip around Cicero’s waist and once again lifts him off the ground, slamming his back into the sink.

  The club’s old security guard finally makes his way to the commotion in the restroom.

  “Ya’ll stop all that fighting now,” he says with a Southern drawl before pulling the door open. “Holy shit!”

  He sees blood all over the walls, floor, sink, and urinals.

  The astonished security guard slowly backs up and closes the door and walks away, while Cicero continues to punch John in his face. John once again drops Cicero and they both fall to the floor. This time, John just lies there, holding his head. He’s lost too much blood and he’s feeling weak. Realizing John could die right here, right now, Cicero hops up and dashes out the bathroom, covered in blood.

  “That’s him! Somebody stop him!” a waitress yells out. Somebody goes to grab Cicero, but his loving sister is able to grab the person, and all three of them fall to the dance floor.

  Then like an angel, Fry, in his white shirt, reaches down and frees Cicero.

  “Get the fuck up, dude,” Fry tells his friend as he pulls him to his feet. “Cecil is outside in his car. Come on!”

  Fry leads a blood-covered Cicero through the crowd to the chilly nighttime air.

  “Man, I was the one supposed to be fighting tonight,” Fry jokes.

  Once outside, Cicero sees his friend Cecil from college in his spotless Lincoln Town Car.

  “Get in, dude!” Cecil yells from the driver’s seat. Fry opens the back door and Cicero
hops in as tires screech and the two are in the wind like tumbleweeds.

  Back inside the club, one of John’s lady friends grabs a towel and holds it to the back of his head.

  “Somebody call an ambulance!” she screams. The bathroom resembles a brutal murder scene, which it could have been.

  Lucia, seeing John is still alive, coolly makes her way to the back of the club and slips out a back door. She runs down an alley to her car, and calls Cicero on his cell phone.

  “Yea.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m cool.”

  “Where you headed?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Okay, well, what should I do?”

  Cicero thinks for a minute.

  “Just go home. I don’t think he’ll be bothering you anymore.”

  “Okay. Call me when you get somewhere.”

  “All right.”

  “Bye, baby brother.”

  “Okay, bye.”

  And he hangs up.

  “Man, I was just about to park,” Cecil yells to the backseat. “There was tight bitches in there.”

  Cicero laughs. “My bad.”

  “It’s all good, fuck it,” Cecil states. “I guess I just have to fuck my baby’s mother again.”

  The two laugh as they run red lights on their way back to the hood. Cicero, full of adrenaline and liquor, glances down and realizes he only has on one shoe.

  “Fuck. Ain’t that a bitch.”

  “What?”

  “Man, I lost my shoe in the club.”

  Cecil laughs.

  “Fuck it. At least you ain’t a blood donor right now like ya boy.”

  “Yea, you got that right.”

  At that moment Cicero’s text message communicator vibrates on his hip. Somehow it wasn’t destroyed in the altercation, so he opens the silver box and checks the message. It’s from Olivia.

  “HEY, WUT’S GOIN ON??? I HEARD BOUT WUT HPND. U OK??”

  News travels fast and Cicero smiles. He loves how the people he shits on care so much about him.

  “I’m okay. Will hit u back later. Stay safe,” he replies to her.

  “U 2. Lata,” she texts him.

  Cecil’s Lincoln cuts corners and Cicero closes his communicator as his thoughts turn to Brad, hoping he’s on top of their drug venture. They pass by a rundown factory and Cicero asks Cecil to pull around back. The car enters the pitch-black alleyway and Cicero eyes a forest-green dumpster.