Nick needed a few weeks to cool off. The extra money he started making when I left Madeira Street made him forget about my presence in general—we even lost touch completely for a few days until he told me that he bumped into Tyler, the cool white boy I played ball with in college, at a gas station and gave him my number. Tyler buzzed my phone like crazy so I told him to meet me over Bethel Court, right at the tip of Douglass Housing Projects—pretty close to the basketball court where my cousin Damon was murdered back in the day. I posted up in the courtyard with Troy and Dog Boy while I waited. My .40-cal kept making my jeans sag so I grabbed a bigger jacket out of the car, the Burberry parka with the inside pocket.
About a half hour later, Tyler rolled up on us with Brad Pitt swag—he had on ripped-up jeans and a fitted leather.
“’Sup, fellas?” he said, taking a long drag of his Camel and plucking the butt as we all dapped him up.
“Why white people smoke Camels and black people smoke Newports, dug?” asked Dog Boy.
“It’s racism, I tell you, racism!” I answered, looking at a chuckling Dog Boy. All fifty-six of his teeth showed every time he laughed. Tyler lit another. “Take a ride with me, white boy,” I said, attempting to fix a stale blunt, trying to mend its cracked edges with saliva, nursing it back to health. My spit turned it into a noodle. I stuffed it behind my ear and I figured I could smoke it once it dried a little.
We pulled off in my car.
“So are you ever coming back to school? It’s been like two fuckin’ years!” he asked.
“Naw, man, fuck that school. Wanna grab a drink?”
“Always.”
We weren’t twenty-one; our bright eyes, tight skin, and naked faces gave us that preteen look. Our scraggly nonconnecting beards made it worse but my homie Fat Ivan from around the way was a bouncer a little strip club on Baltimore Street so I drove there. A forty-dollar tip with a pound to Ivan, and Tyler and I slid through the front door to a mob of smoke, old heads, young dudes, and ass. Ass was everywhere. Big ass, tight ass, round asses with stretch marks or markless or muscle butts and those annoying triangle-shaped assess. They had flavors too, like high yellow, light skinned, brown skinned, dark skinned, and extra dark skinned, making up a rainbow coalition of equal-opportunity ass.
I spotted a chair at the end of the bar. “Can I smoke in here?” Tyler asked.
“Everybody else is, man! But look, you want to date a black girl? I can get you a date tonight! You ever been with a black girl?” I said, waving at the barmaid, Tonya. She looked at me and rolled her eyes.
“Not tonight, man, I wanted to talk to you about something else.”
“Okay, Mr. Serious. Ah, gimme a Belvedere double with a li’l ice, what you want, Tyler?”
“I’ll take a Corona.” He chuckled. “Don’t clown me, man!”
“Sixteen dollars, Mr. Too-Young-to-Drink, anything else?” said Tonya.
“Yeah, Mrs. Mind-Ya-Fuckin’-Business, get my man a Corona.”
She laughed and rolled her eyes again.
Tonya used to live in my old building—drove niggas nuts back in the day. She’s pudgy but you can still tell that she used to be built like one of those video chicks—all perfectly perky with a slim waist and a bubble butt. Now she has a three-baby-daddies gut, her edges are gone, and her face is all puffy from alcohol and stress. She was still kind of cute, though.
“Running to the rest room, bro!” said Tyler.
I nodded at him as I knocked my first drink back. Some other dudes from different parts of east Baltimore approached me as Tyler faded into the crowd like, “Who the fuck the white boy is? Fuck is up with you?”
I removed the blunt from my ear, lit it, and then hit it. Then I turned around, tilted my head, raised my eyebrow, and blew smoke at them before spinning back around on my barstool. My life, my family, and my street credentials were too intact for me to explain myself about anything to anyone ever. I been in the dope game and hailed from vets who never made statements and kept enough murderers around me for them to know not to ask me some stupid shit.
My second shot didn’t stand a chance.
“Tonya, baby, gimmie another but make it a single!”
The bar was pitch dark and you couldn’t really make out faces unless they were in kissing range. The girls were always different, well, the strippers at least, because Tonya was in there every time I was in there. Shit, she might’ve lived there. It also had upstairs that I never saw anyone use and cheesy Roman columns all over the place. About 90 percent of the women who worked there were down to fuck. Blowjobs were sixty-five dollars, protected sex was a hundred, and raw was one fifty.
Tyler came back. “Dee, so I came to talk to you about business, man. I want in. I can move that shit on campus,” said Tyler.
I laughed. “One more and close me out!”
I wasn’t laughing at Tyler’s abilities and I’m sure that he was more than capable, but why? Why the fuck would he want to play this game?
“Dee, I’m telling you, I can make you a ton of fucking money!”
“This ain’t the place. We’ll rap.”