“I can’t believe you’re gonna let them pimp you like that,” Angie says between bites of her panini.
“It’s not really pimping. I’m just writing a column. Plus, I get to keep my business in front of potential customers without coming out of pocket,” I respond.
“Call it what you want, but you’re being sent out there like a prostitute on the strip to go on dates with women that you don’t know.” She laughs. “And you’re getting paid to do it.”
“Come on! They’re giving me a per diem, not a paycheck.”
“Next thing you know, the people over at Soul Sista will be telling you to walk between the raindrops to get them their stories.” She holds her head back so that she doesn’t spray food in my face from her laughter.
I shake my head. I don’t know what I expected Angie to tell me. She has always been my sounding board, and being that she’s my cousin, I can talk to her without complication. I look at her, and she lowers her head, eyeing me as if to say, “You know I’m right.”
“But what if, hypothetically speaking, I meet a woman who winds up being the one? Would you still think I’m being pimped?”
“You have about as much of a chance of finding the one as I have of going back to dick,” she says, cackling again.
“That’s fucked up, you know,” I say, trying to conceal my smile.
I pick at my salad, mixing the romaine and spinach into patterns of dark and light greens.
“Don’t look so sad, Cool. I’m just messing with you. Who knows? This might be what you need to shake things up in your life,” she offers in the way of sarcastic consolation.
To change the subject, I offer, “The website relaunched. We have more t-shirts and other merchandise. And of course music.”
“I’m gonna have to head Uptown to check you guys out. It’s just been so busy with Tracy and the baby. I’m still trying to match my sleep patterns with Aaron’s, ‘cause if I don’t, I won’t get any sleep at all.”
“How is my little cousin doing?” I ask.
“If I can get him to stop pissing in my face every time I change his diapers, I’d be doing something major.”
“Well, maybe you should’ve been the one to have the baby then,” I say.
“Hell, no,” she responds, slapping the table and laughing. “Tracy handles pain a lot better than me. I don’t mind a little piss in the face anyway. I hear that shit clears up the skin.”
I raise my hands up and down imitating a scale. “Piss in the face versus being pimped,” I say. “We must be the pride and joy of our family.”
“Hey, it is what it is, right?” she says, pushing her braids away from her round face.
I nod.
Her smile disappears, and for the first time since we sat down to eat, she looks serious. “Cool, I know I don’t say this too often, but I’m glad you came to New York.” She puts what’s left of her sandwich back onto her plate. “I just feel so out of touch with everyone in the family, you know. It’s good seeing a face that looks like mine.”
I reach for her hand and hold it. “I got you, cuz.”
I don’t ask her when was the last time that she went home to Alabama. I don’t even ask her when was the last time she talked to Aunt Jonetta. Some things are just best left alone.
As we leave the restaurant, I give her a big hug, then turn to walk back to the subway station. Her voice calls out loudly from behind me.
“Cool?”
“Yeah,” I respond, turning my head.
“Everything will work out.”
I don’t know what she’s referring to specifically, but the advice seems to hit nearly everything in my life all at once.
I nod.
“Love you, cuz,” I say, waving goodbye.
She smiles. “Love you, too, Chauncey.”
My face twists up at hearing my name, but my cousin is already laughing as she walks back across the street to work.
When I make it back Uptown to the store, the first thing I do is break out my laptop and check Soul Sista’s website. I am curious to see if they have already started the voting process. Sure enough, on the homepage of the website on the right sidebar is a small photograph of me with the words “Soul Sista’s Own Bachelor.” I know it is a reference to the television show, but the words by themselves remind me of Angie’s words: they are pimping you. There I am smiling like a happy little ho. Beneath my picture is the name “Cool Brown” and no mention of “C&J’s Rare Grooves, Harlem” anywhere. My heart sinks, and I find myself reaching blindly for the phone.
“Cool Brown calling for Denise Mallory, please,” I say, before I am put on hold.
When she answers, I try to maintain my professionalism, but I’m simmering beneath the surface. After our customary greetings, I immediately cut to the chase. “I thought we agreed that my business would be listed under my name.”
“It’s not on there?” she asks. “I sent the information over to our webmaster.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. At least it doesn’t appear to be deliberate. “I just checked the site, and it’s not there.”
“I tell you what. Let me check on that right quick, and I’ll give you a call back in a minute.”
As I hang up the phone, I try to relax to the sounds of Anthony David playing in the background. I can hear J in the back room typing away on his laptop, working on our marketing plan. Ray-Ray has already left for the day, and only a handful of people are standing around, combing through our music racks.
“If you need any help or recommendations, just holler,” I offer.
The brother with the dredlocks turns my way and nods. “Respect,” he says, turning back to the CDs. “Hey, mon, this Electric Conversation nice?”
“Definitely,” I respond. “Lyrics in English and French. Dilla influence. Definitely good stuff.”
He and his lady friend approach the register with the CD.
“Mon, dis no good, me comes back,” he says, laughing.
“You’ll like it. Trust me,” I say smiling.
“Hey, you’re that guy from Soul Sista,” his lady friend says, her accent sounding like she could have grown up somewhere down South, near me.
I nod while ringing up the CD.
“See, I told you that was him,” she says, nudging the guy.
I put the CD in a bag along with the receipt.
“Mon, dey come for you now,” the guy says.
“Who?”
“De sharks,” he says, laughing. “De women, dey smell blood in da water.”
“Dexter, leave that man alone,” the woman says. Then she turns to me. “But if you’re looking, I have a girlfriend who’s about five-seven. She’s cute, too. Great smile.”
Dexter gently tugs her arm and leads her toward the door. “He have his hands full,” he says, tickled.
When they leave, I hear J rise from his laptop and stretch his tall, lanky frame. He runs his fingers through his low haircut and walks into the main room, copping a squat next to me. “Did I hear you say that Soul Sista is tripping about putting our name on the website?”
“It was just a mistake. Denise is checking on everything right now and is supposed to call me back in a few minutes.”
“Okay. Don’t get my heart rate up, Cool. I thought I was going have to hop in a cab and go down there to see what’s up,” J says, his eyes still a little glazed over from typing on his laptop for the past hour.
“So how is the new and improved marketing plan coming?” I ask.
“I’m thinking we should have an open-mic poetry event here once a month.”
I look around the room and imagine people standing all over the store. I try to visualize where our stage area would be. No matter how I turn the idea around in my head, the room just feels too small to cram a bunch of people in here. People would have to stand, if this thing actually caught on.
“Can we even fit enough people in here to make it worth our while?” I ask.
“That’s the beauty of it. We market it so that people know that everything will be going down in a small, intimate space.”
“What are you gonna call it? Poetry in the Closet?”
J shakes his head, his expression serious. “I actually thought about that, but I didn’t want to offend any gay people.”
“What?”
“In the closet.”
It takes me a moment to realize what he’s talking about. “Jesus, dude! Well, what about Poetry Out of the Closet?” I say, laughing. “Okay, you just tell me what else you came up with.”
“The Poetry Vault,” J says, but he doesn’t seem confident.
“Sounds kind of confining. Like we’re all trapped in a bank vault or something. People might start to feel claustrophobic in here,” I say.
“Well, shit. Do you at least think the idea for the open mic would work?”
“I’m definitely willing to give it a shot,” I respond. “Hey, what about ‘C&J’s Rare Poetry’?”
J pauses as he considers this. “It beats the names I came up with, but I still want to do some more brainstorming.”
Just as J finishes his statement, the phone rings.
“I hope this is Denise,” I say, picking up the phone. “C&J’s Rare Grooves,” I answer.
“May I speak to Cool Brown?”
“This is he.”
“Cool, this is Denise. I just finished meeting with our editor-in-chief, and I think we have a slight problem.”
I swallow hard.
“They left the name of your business off the website on purpose.”