by Roy Glenn
The moment the limo pulled up in front of the club, flashes of the last time we were there flooded my mind. “You thinking about the last time we were here, huh?” Bella asked reading my mind.
“Yeah, that shit was foul,” Diane added.
When our driver got out and opened the door for us, there was a small round of applauses from the few members of security that were standing outside. “Welcome back, Ms. West. The place hasn’t been the same without you ladies.” He walked up to Bella. “I really missed you, cutie.”
“Thank you,” Bella said to him and kissed him on the cheek.
Just as they always had, security escorted us to our spot. It did feel good to be back. Sherman, the clubs manager, sent over a complimentary bottle of bubbly and it seemed like old times.
It didn’t take long for the ballers to pour into Sensations that night. I noticed this chick walking around like she owned the place; I wasn’t mad at her though, she was working the hell out of this bad-ass white Gucci pants suit. She gave me a knowing look as she passed, hot on the tail of this up and coming actor.
Later in the ladies room, I noticed the chick in the white suit as I stood next to her at the sink. “This place is always such a mess,” she commented.
“I know. You would think that they would keep somebody in here to keep the place clean,” I told her.
“If these men only knew how nasty some of these women are, I don’t think they’d be in such a hurry to jump in bed with them.” Then she paused and thought about it. “What am I sayin’? They wouldn’t give a shit as long as they get what they want.”
“You ain’t told no lie there,” I said and looked around for something to dry my hands with.
She reached in her purse and handed me a few bar napkins. “I’m Chante,” she said extending her hand.
I dried my hands and then shook hers. “I’m Jada.”
Her eyebrows wrinkled. “Like the actress?” she asked.
I nodded my head.
“I’ve seen you here before,” she said as we walked out together.
“Yeah, I’ve been here a few times.”
“You and your friends always look so nice every time you’re here.”
“Thank you, Chante. I was telling my friend earlier that you’re wearin’ the hell out of that Gucci.”
“Thank you.”
As we made our way through the crowded club, a guy grabbed my arm with so much force, that I bumped onto Chante. “What the hell?” I screamed. I could tell he was drunk, but that didn’t stop him from trying to manhandle me. I struggled to pull free from him. Before I knew what was happening, Chante did a quick move and sent a blow to his neck.
“Goddamn! You see that shit?” I heard someone say as the drunk cowered over grabbing at his neck.
Chante turned to me. “Are you okay?”
I stood stunned to silence. I slowly nodded my head, but I was still in shock over the way she’d put him down.
She pulled me by the arm. “Come on; let’s get out of here before he gets up.”
“Why don’t you come back to my table and I’ll buy you a drink,” I offered.
She smiled. “I’d like that.”
Chante was cute, brown skinned, and had shoulder length hair that she wore bone straight with a part down the middle. I couldn’t pinpoint her age, but I immediately started wondering if she’d be interested in our line of work. Of course that’s not the kind of question you go asking complete strangers. When we got back to the table I introduced Chante to the ladies. After a round of drinks I asked, “So, tell me, Chante, what do you do?”
“Oh, nothing really,” she said. “What I mean is I used to be an executive assistant until my uncle died and left me a nice little stash. So I chucked the nine-to-five three years ago and just been havin’ a good time. But you know what they say about all good things-sooner or later, they come to an end. Lately my money is starting to look real funny,” she shrugged. “Guess I could’ve done some better planning; should’ve kept the job. But I’m hoping to find a generous donor.” She giggled.
“Well, when you find him, please let me know if he has a brother, uncle, or even a father. I’ve been looking for a member of that family for quite a while,” Simone said, sending us all into a laughing fit.
10
Over the next few weeks, Chante had hung out at the club with us a few times. I took her along a couple of times when I was going to private parties or CD release parties. She was cool to be around and the ladies liked her. I liked Chante because she was easy to talk to and she always kept it real. No pretense at all from Chante. She was straight up, no chaser, that’s what I liked about her. Whether she would make a good addition to our family was another matter. After my experience with the police over that shooting and seeing Mr. Investment Banker at the precinct, it had left me a little leery about new faces. But I still gotta eat, so I decided to invite Chante to meet me at my favorite restaurant. Besides, it would give me a chance to observe her in another atmosphere.
As I strolled into Jill’s for dinner, the place was packed and buzzing. I loved walking into a place and realizing heads were turning in my direction. I glanced around the bustling restaurant and still hadn’t seen Chante, so I figured I’d arrived early. I squeezed by two men who had been eyeing me up since I stepped onto the scene. “You looking for me?” one of them asked. I smirked at his tired- ass line and kept moving.
By the time I looked toward the back of the restaurant, I noticed none other than Chante, curled up with some sexy roughneck. “Ah-hem,” I cleared my throat.
Chante stuck her pretty little head around her friend’s and smiled up at me.
“Jada! I was just looking for you,” she said, looking like I had caught her with her hand in the cookie jar.
“Emp hmm, looking for me all up in his face, huh?” I teased.
“Girl!” she winked. The guy finally turned at the sound of my voice.
“This is, ah, what’s your name again, sweetie?” she cooed.
“Jordan,” he offered in a deep voice.
“Yeah, this is my new friend Jordan,” Chante said. “See, I told you I was waiting on someone,” she said to him.
Jordan’s beady little eyes ran up every inch of my body then back down, before he pulled away and glanced back to Chante.
“Well, my girl’s here, so I’d better spend some time with her,” she told Jordan who hadn’t really taken his eyes off me. “You know how it is, gotta spread the love around.”
He looked at her then back at me. “What’s up? She don’t like to party?” he asked.
Chante and I looked at each other then started cracking up. “Come on, Jordan, my girl and I need to catch up. We’ll get together later, I promise. But right now, we’ve got some private business to discuss,” she said like she was talking to a three-year-old.
Jordan took her hand to his lips and planted a kiss there. I rolled my eyes, but waited while he worked his jelly. “I’ll be at the bar waiting on you,” he promised. You’d think the two knew each other for years.
We admired the view as he walked away, then started looking over the menu.
“It is so packed in here,” I said.
“That’s why I grabbed this table. I figured if I had waited any longer, we might be eating outside on the sidewalk,” she said.
Dinner went pretty well. We talked about clothes, music and the latest black celebrity gossip. I marveled at how easygoing Chante was, and how we interacted like old friends. By the time we had wrapped up dinner, Jordan had passed by our table at least three times. Each time he did, he and Chante exchanged “fuck me” looks. I thought it was funny. I thought about telling girlfriend she shouldn’t be giving up the goods for free, but that would have led us down a conversational path I wasn’t ready to go down, so I kept it to myself. “Well, so what’s up for tonight?” I asked as I rose from the table with my doggie bag in hand.
“I’m gonna see what Jordan is talking about, then I’m gonna hook
up with you guys. Where are y’all partying tonight?” she asked.
“We'll be at Sensations tonight. Or at least I will. Simone has an appoint-I mean a date tonight, and I’m not sure about Diane.”
“Even if it’s just you, me and Bella, I’m sure we’ll have a good time,” Chante said.
“Why don’t you meet us at my place and ride with us?”
“Sounds good.”
“You sure lover boy is gonna cut you loose?” I asked.
“Please,” she said as stood up. “After I work him over for a few hours, he’ll be begging me to get out.” I gave her a hug and turned to leave.
Hours later, when we walked up into the place the way we do, Chante fit right in. We watched from our table as other half-naked women jockeyed for attention. Some tables were stacked with drinks. To the left of our table, a few ladies were having a divorce party, with the guest of honor wobbling in and out of her seat. A couple of her friends were doing seductive lap dances in their chairs as her friends cheered on, while another one held a camcorder.
“You having a nice time?” Chante asked.
I nodded, and then took a sip from my drink. I was having a blast. The dance floor was packed and the music was thumping. I sipped my drink again and enjoyed the atmosphere. Waiters walked around like busy mice, quickly running through the maze of a club from table to table.
It was about one-thirty in the morning when Simone and Diane walked into the place. “Hey, ladies. How’d it go tonight?” I asked as we each exchanged hugs.
“Great, Jada,” Diane said quickly. “It don’t even take me long to do what I gotta do.”
“Must not have been all that. Who comes to the club after a great date?” Chante asked.
Bella quickly looked away like she didn’t know us. Simone and Diane looked at her and then to me, with that handle-your-girl look on their faces.
“What?” Chante smiled and hunched her shoulders. “Did I say something wrong?”
“No, Chante. You didn’t say anything wrong,” I said, searching for something to tell her. “A great date doesn’t mean you got to give up the goods.” Then I flipped it back on her. “I see you here after your date with Jordan.”
“That’s ’cause I checked out his package early in the evening,” Chante came back quickly.
“What you talkin’ ’bout, Chante?” Diane asked.
“When we were leaving Jill’s, I bumped into him and felt for his dick; I couldn’t find it.” Chante grabbed her head. “I started getting a headache right then.”
The bass in the music was thumping and some blinged-out baller grabbed Diane’s hand. She looked at me. I looked him over and motioned with my eyes that it was cool. Watching Diane on the floor, feeling the music, had me feeling like I needed to go find me something to rub up against-you know, let Miss Kitty out of the bag. I quickly decided against it. I hadn’t danced with anybody since we started going there and I wasn’t about to start now. I was there for business. But a few minutes later I was rocking to the music in my seat. I wondered if Chante had noticed that I collected business cards anytime we were out, and if she did, did she wonder why.
This well dressed guy came and stood over Simone. They didn’t look like they were strangers and she didn’t bother to introduce him to us. Without a word, he extended his hand to her and she accepted. Eyebrows raised and a few smirks popped up when Simone and her mystery man walked away from our table. “I guess she was bored with our company,” Chante joked.
I shook my head and got up from the table. “I’ll be back,” I said and headed toward the ladies’ room. A waitress arrived just as I walked away, and I told her to bring me another drink. I glanced over my shoulder and considered whether it was wise to leave Bella alone with Chante. I figured it couldn’t hurt, so I was on my way.
On my way back, I couldn’t hear what they were talking about, but the look on Bella’s face told me she wasn’t feeling the conversation.
“Hey. Everything okay?” I asked as I took my seat.
“Yeah, it’s cool,” Chante answered, a little too quickly for my taste.
“You guys seen Diane?” I asked.
“Not since she left the table with that baller,” Bella answered.
Before I could take another sip of my drink, I looked up to see Diane walking toward us. “Jada, lemme holla at you for a sec,” she said.
I got up again and walked a few feet away.
“I’ve got a live one here, so I’m about to bounce,” Diane said and motioned toward a delicious looking thug who was waiting for her near the bar.
I usually didn’t allow that type of thing, but I recognized him. He was already a client, so I made sure he saw me.
“How much longer y’all gonna be here?” Diane asked.
“Not much longer. Maybe another hour. I don’t see many new prospects.”
“Well, I’ll catch up with y’all later then,” Diane said then sashayed over to her client. Again, when I came back to the table, I felt like I was interrupting something between Chante and Bella, but I wasn’t about to start trippin’. I made a mental note to get the 4-1-1 from Bella later.
Just then, Simone came back to our table. I could tell by looking at her that she’d been crying. I jumped up from my chair and rushed to her. “Simone! What’s the matter?”
“That guy was my ex-boyfriend,” she said, fighting back the tears. “He heard what-” she started, and then cut her eyes at Chante.
I quickly grabbed her hand, “Come on, Simone. Let’s go someplace quiet. Excuse us, ladies,” I said to Chante and Bella, and led her to the VIP room. Once we were inside I said, “Now, tell me what’s going on?”
“That guy who I left with, he’s my ex-boyfriend. He heard from some of his boys what I’ve been doin’,” she said and began to cry again.
“How would any of his boys know about what you’re doing?”
“He told me that his boy is a client.”
“Oh.” What else could I say?
“He came to make me stop.”
“What did you say?”
“At first I said that I didn’t know what he was talking about, but he just kept pushin’ it. Callin’ me a ho and a slut and this and that; tellin’ me I was better than this, and that he was taking me away from this life of sin ’cause I was a ho and needed to find God or whatever.” Suddenly the tears stopped and I saw the fire return to her eyes. “Then I just lost it, Jada, and started goin’ off on him. Then he grabbed me by the arm and tried to drag me out the club. Well, you know security wasn’t havin’ that. They grabbed him and dragged him out the club. When they got him outside they started kickin’ his ass. I tried to stop them and tell them that it wasn’t that serious, and he just needed to go and not come back. But once they let him go, this fool spit in big Kevin’s face.”
“Wrong move,” I said, having seen how security here deals with problems.
“Kevin hit him in the face so hard that blood was everywhere, and then the police came to take him to jail, but he was trying to fight them too. He kept callin’ my name, callin’ me a ho and sayin’ that this was my fault. I swear, Jada, I didn’t want him to get hurt, and I damn sure didn’t want him to go to jail.”
“It’s not your fault, Simone. He shouldn’t have tried to manhandle you like that.” I reached in my purse and gave her the card of a bail bondsman. “But if you’re feeling that badly about him going to jail, here is the number for a bail bondsman. Let me know how much his bail is.” That was the very least I could do for her.
The next afternoon I made it a point to talk to Bella about the conversation she and Chante had the night before at the club. It must have been on her mind as well, because as soon as I sat down, Bella came to me with her concerns. “Chante doesn’t know what we do?” she asked that afternoon.
“No, what’s up?”
“Just curious, ’cause last night, she just seemed to be all up in my grill. I mean she was fishing for information; I didn’t say nothin’, thoug
h,” Bella had reported proudly.
“What exactly was she questioning you about?”
“Well, she wanted to know how we made money, what we did for a living, how we were able to buy such nice clothes and things like that.”
“And what did you say when she asked?” I had to handle Bella gently. I didn’t want her to think she’d done anything wrong.
She shrugged. “I just told her she needed to talk to you.”
“What did she say after that?”
Bella thought for a moment, smirked, then said, “You know, I don’t think she really said anything about it. But she wasn’t like salty or nothing like that. I just remember saying it to her; then I think you walked back up on us, so she dropped it.”
“I see,” I had said.
“Did I do good, Jada?” Bella asked, waiting for my approval.
“Yeah, Bella, you did just fine. You tell Chante, or anybody else with questions about our family, to come to me and I’ll handle them from there.”
Bella actually breathed a sigh of relief. The fact that she went at Bella was a bit troubling. I mean, Chante and I had spent a lot of time together and she had plenty of chances to ask whatever she wanted to ask. In fact, I’d been waiting for her to come at me with questions. I knew for sure I needed to check Chante out a little closer.
11
Chante
I woke up early that morning and got ready to go. When I started up my car, I sat there for what seemed like an eternity, thinking about what I was doing. “It’s just another job,” I told myself. “No different from any other. Then why am I making it so complicated?" I knew the answer and I was afraid of what I’d discovered about myself.
I know what they’re doing. They’re high-priced hookers, even though they are all so discreet about it. They were breaking the law and I had violated the rules and gotten personally involved.
The truth was I liked Jada; she was mad cool. Over the last few weeks I’d really gotten to like her and “the ladies,” as Jada called them. We were friends.