The Business of Lovers

by Eric Jerome Dickey

  I nodded, decided this date had gotten too expensive, then said, “I have to go meet somebody.”

  “I reported her. I had to call the police to do a wellness check on Frenchie.”

  “Wait, Dwayne, reported her for what?”

  He pulled his lips in like he always did when something was going on in his life and it was hard to say the issue out loud. “My son texted me and said there was no water in the house. No gas. No electricity. No food.”

  “You shitting me?”

  He took a breath, then showed me a thread of messages from my nephew. He wasn’t lying.

  He said, “It was a hard choice, but since I didn’t have eyes on the situation, I called it in.”

  “You’re paying your note?”

  “My accountant pays her before I get a dime to buy myself a sandwich.”

  “Where is the money going? Frenchie on something?”

  He huffed. “Brick, I need you to come by there with me. Just knock on the door for me. I’ll stay in the car.”

  “You called the cops. You’re persona non grata with Frenchie.”

  “I was touring with the fucking play. I had no choice. I needed eyes on the situation. If my son was with me, and he had sent her the same messages, said he hadn’t eaten in two or three days, said he couldn’t flush a toilet and had to shit at the local library, she would have had eight squad cars at my door and three helicopters over my spot.”

  I sighed. “You’re right. I would have done the same.”

  Dwayne said, “Look, we need to check on my son.”

  “Why didn’t you say something before now?”

  “Brick. Nigga Daddy taught us that black men handled their own problems. He put that ideology in my head like it was his own religion. Hard to undo all of the brainwashing, even as an adult, even when I know better.”

  “I know.”

  “Hard to ask for help. For certain kinds of help.”

  “I know.”

  “When I do, when I have to, it makes me feel like a failure. Was trying to see how I could fix this. I can’t.”

  I understood. “You can’t go by there. It could get ugly and compromise your standing in court. Text me Frenchie’s address and I’ll check it out if I can. No promises, though. Uncles become hashtags too.”

  He sighed like ten thousand pounds had been lifted from his soul.

  I said, “Change that script to white people and pay some bills.”

  “Not selling out.”

  I motioned outside at one of the few black middle-class areas from sea to shining sea, motioned at an area that was shifting, one real estate transaction at a time. “You see half the businesses are closed in the area?”

  “I noticed.”

  “The train is coming down Crenshaw. Area is changing. Gentrification is coming. White flight has flipped and now it’s the second wave of the European American arrival; they are buying up everything.”

  My big brother smiled. “Problem around here is our people are leasing. All of these black businesses have white landlords. We have to sell out or get out when the rent gets too high. When you own your shit, your real estate or your intellectual property, you don’t have to sell out, not when you have something of value. You have to own something. That’s the rule for the winners. I own my work. I own this script. If nothing else, this Stanislavski shit is mine. Court can’t take it away. I don’t have to fight for visitation. No one’s name is on this labor of love but mine. You have to own something to be somebody in this city, Brick. You have to own. Bro, I don’t even feel like I own the kid I made. But this, I own this. I might lose in family court, but I can win at this. Not selling out. Not this time.”

  We made eye contact and I saw a man struggling with his sense of self-worth, in need of validation. Maybe the script was more important because it was the only thing in his life that he felt like he could control.

  I let two seconds pass, then softly said, “Checkmate.”

  He nodded. “Might stop by your place later.”

  “Got two girls staying at my spot.”

  “What, you’re an Airbnb now?”

  “They lost their place, need a spot to crash for a few.”

  “I was going to crash over there.”

  “Shit, my place is packed.”

  “I have an audition in a couple hours. Geico commercial. Will check in to see if you’ve been by Frenchie’s.”

  He went back into the café, back to his table. A half block later I felt bad, went back, was going to tell him let’s go do a drive-by. I looked in the window. He’d been recognized. Women grinned at famous people a certain way. Sisters rocking Afro puffs, Bantu knots, and braids in Mohawk realized who Dwayne was and suddenly had perky breasts and wide smiles. Dwayne had a new audience, went to them, positive smile. Spotlight was on him.

  A moment later, they were all seated around the piano, and Dwayne was performing ballads for them. I headed toward home, looking down and reading the names in the sidewalk as I strolled. African American stars, singers, politicians, writers, and poets had been given their own version of Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. Restless, I looked south toward Vernon, searched east and west. I hoped to see the good-looking woman who happened to chill in an Uber for one. Dr. Allison Émilie Chappelle. With each step, I listened for a barking dog. Heard nothing.

  CHAPTER 15

  DWAYNE

  AFTER MY AUDITION, I needed to eat up some more day until I figured out where I could sleep tonight, so I followed the scent and trail of the displaced, went to Venice Beach. I was tired, but at least I could pace around in better air. The area was so crowded it was like Times Square by the sea. Took forty minutes to find a free spot. I parked near the roundabout by the post office and headed toward the main drag. To add insult to injury, I heard someone playing Frenchie’s old pop song, “Everybody Knows.” The tail end of the song played in the distance. Then her angelic voice was gone, lost in pandemonium, overpowered by all the other noises coming from every cardinal direction. Venice was a madhouse. Happily contaminated and a haven for alazons. Henna, weed shops, smoke shops, incense in the air, street comedians, palm readings, religion pushers, religion haters, atheists, pro-black-literature pushers, anti-white-literature pushers, Buddhists, hemp products, gluten-free Twinkies, dancers, singers, chainsaw jugglers, weight lifters, tattoo shops, T-shirt vendors, people pushing tickets to watch TV shows or movie screenings, psychics, and people carrying Amazon-size snakes—everything considered good and bad could be found along the one-mile strip.

  I sent Frenchie a text. I want to see my son.

  No reply.

  I texted her again. One word. One that came from the heart. Please.

  Still no reply.

  Two girls, one dyed blond and the other a natural brunette, bumped by people like they owned the world and everyone else’s lease was up. They were barely over four foot ten inches tall, resemblance so strong they could be twin sisters, both wearing delicate iridescent T-shirts so thin they revealed the outlines of their gym-perfected bikini bodies. I didn’t get out of their way. The blonde bumped into me, then gave me eye contact with no grin as we went in opposite directions in the foot traffic. The rude blonde looked back at me again, then said something harsh to the brunette.

  That was how hashtags were made. I picked up the pace, disappeared in the crowd.

  My attention was arrested again when I heard “Everybody Knows” playing a hundred yards away.

  I fought my way upstream, then passed by the dyed blonde and the natural brunette again, the four-foot-ten-inches-tall women who could pass for twin sisters. This time they both looked at me, stared hard.

  I grabbed a hot dog and smoothie, sat in the bleachers on the court where they filmed White Men Can’t Jump, watched a full-courter in progress. Nine brothers and one white guy. Same ratio as the NBA.


  While I watched the game, my phone buzzed.

  It was a message from Frenchie. Please refrain from sending me text messages. Please have your attorney communicate with mine or directly with the courts regarding all custody matters.

  I called her every name I could think of. A million dollars, and this bullshit.

  I texted her, How’s Fela? Just let me know how my son is doing.

  No reply. Then those bubbles that said she was typing. Then a message, screaming at me in all caps.

  DON’T FUCKING TEXT ME ANYMORE. YOU HAVE NO FUCKING REASON TO TEXT ME. EVER. PAY YOUR GODDAMN CHILD SUPPORT ON TIME AND KEEP IT MOVING. ONE MORE TEXT AND I WILL FILE AN ORDER OF PROTECTION.

  As I fought the urge to send the nastiest text ever written, I saw the rude girls who had bumped into me a moment ago. The rude blonde and the ruder brunette. Again they bumped through the stream of pedestrians. I thought they were passing by, heading toward the part with the hard-bodied weight lifters, but they saw me and came toward me, hurried like they were coming to tell me off for bumping into them. The rude blonde gave me hard eye contact again.

  The ruder brunette asked, “Like, aren’t you . . . Dwayne? I mean, the Dwayne of all the Dwaynes.”

  “Yeah, I am.”

  The blonde set free a ginormous smile. “Oh my God. Like, I knew that was you.”

  The brunette became overexcited. “Like, oh my God. I’m a big fan. I am your number one fan.”

  The blonde came closer. “Like, I’m a huge fan too. There is no huger fan than I am.”

  Frenchie’s voice, the woman who once loved me more than anyone ever created and now hated me more than anyone on this planet, her voice was in the distance, corrupting the air while I made two new friends. The blonde and brunette were both ambiguous so far as race. We talked about my old show, laughed about this and that, walked together and stood on the dirty brown sand at the ocean. After I’d felt like shit for days on end, they gave me adulation and genuine smiles. Was amazing how it was easier to get that from strangers than from the people you loved. It made me feel good.

  CHAPTER 16

  BRICK

  WHEN I MADE it back home, I grabbed wine to be sold, then sent a text to Christiana. She sashayed out to my car wearing a golden dress and nude patent leather heels, hair whipped. She was as elegant as Grace Kelly.

  I gave her two thumbs up. “Your client is going to fall in love over lunch.”

  “He is a movie star. He falls in love with no one, no matter how beautiful.”

  “He will see you and realize you’re the woman of his dreams.”

  “Do you fall in love, Brick?”

  “I do fall in love. Wife. Kids. Grandkids. A dog. A cat. I imagine those things. Okay, no cat.”

  “You don’t seem the type. But to me, right now, knowing what I know, no man seems like the type.”

  I took her to the Beverly Hills Hotel to entertain one man of many living in a pity of husbands.

  She said, “Just drop me off. He will bring me back to Penny’s apartment in a limousine. He likes to make love in the limousine while we are being driven around Los Angeles, Hollywood, and Malibu. Or we cruise down Pacific Coast Highway, tinted windows hiding his marital sins committed at sixty miles per hour.”

  “Must be nice.”

  “It is. It is very nice. And when you are ready, I can arrange the same for you.”

  As she walked inside, every rich man looked her way in awe as she passed by. For a moment I fantasized about being paid to be a part of someone else’s reality. I wondered what that would be like, to be in a stretch limo, being chauffeured, sipping champagne and eating peeled grapes while I had a good time with an A-list movie star.

  * * *

  —

  AFTER I DROPPED off the wine, I doubled back to my apartment long enough to pick up Penny, then drove south to Inglewood. I was going to check on Dwayne’s problems. His problems were our family problems. I had called André, wanted him to roll with me, but my call went to his messages, and I didn’t leave one. The middle brother had to play the role of the big brother while the younger brother was out doing whatever younger brothers did.

  When we crept up to the planned community of Pine Court, the college student had my music bumping the latest by the Internet. The colony of houses was in a sector where single-family homes sold for between seven and eight hundred thousand. Houses that sold for less than a hundred grand back in ’79 sold for more than four hundred grand in ’13 and now cost almost eight hundred grand. A real estate agent could pull twenty grand off one sale. I knew that much because when someone gave you their address and you dropped the info in Google, the Internet regurgitated all of their business.

  Penny paused from texting someone regarding a date long enough to look up, take in the hidden area, and say, “Had no idea this neighborhood was built behind Faithful Central. Thought it was all industrial back here.”

  “They have a real nice tract of homes. Gets very little traffic after the businesses close.”

  I parked in front of Frenchie’s crib. A postal carrier passed by about the same time we got out of Miss Mini. I pulled my suit coat back on. I had changed and was dressed like a hip professional, the way I wished I had dressed this morning at the coffee shop. Penny was dressed in worn-out USC swag. Hair pulled back. Eyeglasses. People would still call po-po on a black man in a suit, but in this town, no one would call the police on a nerdy girl from USC, not unless they were hardcore UCLA fans. I regarded the rest of the cul-de-sac, steeled myself to deal with a woman who had no love for my oldest brother; then we marched across a patch of grass to get on a narrow walkway that led to the front door. The lawn needed a lot of love. It looked like it hadn’t been kissed by a lawn mower in at least a month. Grass was high enough to make me think no one lived here. Penny went to the front door while I stayed a step behind. The windows were open, but the blinds were closed. Penny pushed the doorbell twice, back to back.

  Penny asked, “Did the doorbell ring?”

  “Dwayne said the power might be off over here.”

  “In a house this nice?”

  I knocked a dozen times. Somebody moved around inside. One row of the plantation shutters moved a bit.

  I called out, “Frenchie? You home?”

  “My mom’s not home. Who is it?”

  “It’s your favorite uncle, the one you never call, not even on his birthday.”

  “Uncle André?”

  “Fela, you are breaking a black man’s broken heart. Try again.”

  “Uncle Brick?”

  He peeped out the plantation shutters next to the door. “Who’s that lady? Is that social services?”

  “You don’t have to be scared, Nephew. Open the door. Just checking on you and Frenchie.”

  “Mom told me not to open the door for anybody. Especially my daddy or the police.”

  “Open. The. Door. Nephew. I’m not coming in. Let me see you. Then I’m gone.”

  The locks came undone. The door opened.

  Nephew was sixteen and six feet tall. He was a slim, dimpled, mixed-race boy with a light-brown Mohawk that needed to be shaped and edged. Nephew was the handsome boy all the girls would chase, black, white, or Mexican. He had on worn red joggers and a wrinkled yellow T-shirt. He looked as scared as he looked hungry.

  I asked, “What’s up, player? What you doing at home?”

  “No school today.”

  I waited a beat, then got to the point, asked, “Your power and water off?”

  He hesitated, afraid to say. “Been that way a couple of months. Maybe three.”

  His eyes watered. He was humiliated. I was shocked, and my expression gave me away.

  Penny looked beyond him inside the home. She clearly didn’t like the mess she saw.

  I softened my disposition, and in a concerned tone I asked, “Wh
at’s going on, Nephew?”

  “Dad sent the police over here to check on me.” He shrugged. “Police said everything was okay. I had hoped they would tell Mom I had to go live with my dad awhile, but they just looked around and left.”

  “I mean, why are the lights and water off? Did something happen over here?”

  “Mom says she ain’t got no money.” Nephew almost looked excited. “Dad back in town?”

  “He’s really worried about you. That’s why I stopped by.”

  “Are they going to court again? I heard Mom on the phone arguing with her lawyer about a court date.”

  I bit my tongue and nodded. “Where is your mom?”

  “I don’t know.” He shifted. “She left early this morning.”

  “She working?”

  “You have to ask her.”

  It hurt, but I stated the obvious. “You look hungry.”

  “I am. A little bit.”

  I took a breath. “Last time you ate?”

  Nephew hesitated; then tears of shame fell from his eyes. “Three days ago.”

  “What you eat?”

  “Just some snacks from the dollar store.”

  Nephew looked like a young man who had no idea where his next meal would come from. His lips were pale and looked dry. I mentioned food, and in a Pavlovian response, his stomach perked up and growled.

  “Your mom working?”

  “You already asked me that. You have to ask her.”

  “So, she’s living off your money.”

  Penny said, “Brick.”

  I reeled it back in. I was getting upset, had to dial it back.

  Nephew said, “Dad showed me how much he’s paid. He wanted me to know that he’s never missed a payment. Makes me feel bad. I feel bad for him and my momma. I’m the reason she’s not famous and I’m the reason he has to spend so much money. I feel like this is my fault for being born.”

  “It’s not your fault. Never think this is your fault.”