When Kareem arrived to Toi’s house, her mother, Diane, was in the driveway about to pull out in her car. He blocked her in, got out his car, walked over to her window and asked how she was doing?
“I couldn’t be better.”
“I promise to have her home by ten o’ clock tonight.” “Kareem, that’s not a problem. Just be careful with my baby.”
“Always.”
Kareem gave her a coy grin and headed to his car to back out the driveway, so that he could let her out. She pulled out and they both honked their horns at each other, before he pulled back into the driveway. Kareem parked and then went into the trunk to get a gift that he bought Toi. When he closed the trunk he saw Toi peering through the double storm door, alerted that he was there by the car horns.
Toi greeted him with a passionate kiss, ignoring the gift in his hand. He dropped the wrapped gift and groped Toi, pulling her closer to him. She pressed her pelvis against his, and she felt the bulge in his pants pressed against her. That was what she wanted. Toi was a virgin and Kareem didn’t mind her keeping it that way until she was ready to give him that part of her. Kareem was being pleased in the bedroom elsewhere. Toi was more than a piece of ass to him. She was his future. His mind told him to pull away from her, but the scents from her Victoria’s Secret body lotion and Escada perfume kept him near. When she was satisfied that she had teased him enough, she let him know that they needed to leave.
He followed her to her bedroom so that she could finish getting dressed. He lay across her bed and envisioned the day that they made love in it. He suddenly ran downstairs to get the gift that he had left behind. When he returned, Toi opened the gift and found a poster-sized picture of Kareem at the 2002 MTV Video Music Awards in New York City.
“You can pin me up to the wall with all of your celebrity boyfriends.”
“Or I can post it to throw darts at you when I am mad at you!” she said and nudged his head.
***
When Kareem pulled onto the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, he disagreed with the low marks that Conde Nast Traveler Magazine had given Philadelphia for style and appearance, or the lack of them. Downtown Philadelphia was gentrifying. New shops and restaurants added color and life to the streets and drew trendier crowds from the Philadelphia suburbs. Conventioneers flowed in and out of the new hotels. And the city government had done its part: Mayor John Street had committed funds for landscaping, street improvements, promoting the city’s new image, and the “Parkway”—the city’s grand strip—glowed with the colorful flags of dozens of countries.
Kareem found parking on 20th Street in a lot labeled “For Museum Patrons Only.” He grabbed their coats from the back seat and noticed that Toi was as stunning as a celebrity. She was dashing in a multi-color Versace silk blouse with a matching skirt, that fell below her knees. Fendi shades, Prada Donna purse, and Manolo Blahnik pumps further accentuated her beauty. She resembled a work by Picasso. Kareem worked at Neiman’s and that paid off beautifully.
He grabbed her and they walked the half-city block to the Franklin Institute, Kareem having forgotten all about his younger sister. They entered the turnstile at the museum and were met by a giant Tyrannosaurus Rex. Kareem took their coats to the coat check and then they toured the wonderful world of the sciences.
***
The opening stretch of South Broad Street was “Baby Broadway,” but the city had named it the “Avenue of the Arts.” Along it laid the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, the Merriam Theater, the University of the Arts, and the Academy of Music. That day was the last showing of the season’s “The Nutcracker” at the Academy of Music. Kareem hoped to get two tickets.
At the ticket booth, he asked, “Are there any seats available for the six o’clock showing?”
“Yes, they’re $17 in the amphitheater.”
“That’s all?” Kareem knew that those seats needed binoculars. He could not have Toi up there.
“Well, we do have recently cancelled, fourth row in the front parquet, but they are $110 seats. I’m sure you’re not interested in those.”
Is this whore trying my pockets? “Let me get six!” He planned to donate the rest of the tickets to street persons, and then sue the theater, if they were denied admittance to the show.
***
After the show, at Twenty21, a hostess guided them to their reserved table. He left Kareem and Toi with two American continental cuisine menus. The menus had some of the most exquisite entrees on this side of the Pacific. The menu also contained an extensive assortment of expensive wines and spirits.
Kareem reviewed the menu while Toi was enthralled by the ambiance of the candle lit, cozy restaurant. She was further transfixed by the courtyard fountain view their table afforded them.
“This place is for the wealthy,” Toi finally said.
“Well, tonight we are Vegas whalers, baby.”
A flamboyant waiter, whose name tag read “Nay-Nay” approached their table, and asked, “How may I serve you tonight?”
Toi made the ordering process very difficult, asking how much things cost. Kareem and the waiter wanted to scream. If you had to ask the price, you had no business buying it.
“She’ll have the shrimp scaloppini, and I’ll have the Porterhouse, well done, with the Twenty21 sauce and potato fries.”
“And your drinks?”
“Sure. Two daiquiris.”
“Both virgins?” Nay-Nay asked. Everyone chuckled, as Nay-Nay butter-flied away to the waiter’s area to input their orders.
“I can order my own food,” Toi said when Nay-Nay was out of hearing range.
She’s mad, so I guess she’ll be throwing darts tonight, Kareem thought. “Listen,” he began angrily, before she cut him off.
“I am not mad at you, Kareem. I actually liked that you ordered for me.”
Kareem smiled as his cell phone rang, and interrupted his reply. He looked at the caller ID and excused himself from the table, relishing how he had the eighteen-year-old Latoya Eala eating out of the palms of his tiny hands, that were made for forgery, not labor of any kind.
When he reached the bathroom door, he flipped his cell phone open and heard, “Yes...Telecheck...My name is Donald Graham and my personal check has just declined...Oh, the check amount is $3,849.22...The numbers at the bottom of the check are as follows, the bank routing number is 021549864, account number 65454, and the check number is 8459...My state ID is issued from Pennsylvania and the ID number is 75254698—”
“Put the idiot on the phone,” Kareem told his best friend and partner in crime, Marquis.
Marquis replied, “You want someone from the store...Hold a sec.”
The clerk said hello into the receiver, and Kareem transformed into a Telecheck representative. “Madam, can I have your store merchant number?”
“Uh, yes, it’s 987565254,” the store clerk replied, following the normal procedure and giving Kareem the vital information.
“Would you read me the numbers at the bottom of the customers check from left to right?” After she read the numbers that Marquis had just rattled off, Kareem asked if the address on the check matched the address on the ID. She confirmed that they did, and he told her, “That was a code-1 decline. We just needed more information for the large amount of the check. Your approval number is 9745.”
By the time Kareem sat back at the table, his cell phone rang again. He answered it and Marquis had told him that he had bought a sixty-inch plasma TV with HD. Kareem asked why the TV was so cheap. Marquis had put the balance on a stolen credit card. What mind boggled Kareem, albeit it wasn’t a problem, was that store registers accepted any numbers as the approval-code. The numbers were not linked to the company giving the authorization. What a shame?
“Listen, I’m at Twenty21 with Toi. She said hi, but I’ll holla at you later.”
“Twenty21 and she’s still a virgin,” Marquis said, and then added, “You’re whipped.”
***
During their ride home, Toi and Kareem reviewed their dreams, goals and aspirations. They often brainstormed what their future together had in store. Pure puppy love. He wanted to be a designer and she wanted to be a fashion writer. “We’ll be like Tom Ford dating Anna Wintour,” Toi said confidently, comparing them to the head designer for Gucci and the American Vogue editor, as she hopped out the car and jogged into her home.
Kareem backed out Toi’s driveway and had his Nextel operator connect him to Hermés in Hawaii. When the Hermés salesman replied, he told the rep that he wanted the tracking number of his package, which she gave him. He then called Fed-Ex. Posing as a Hermes salesman, he changed the shipping address of his three pair of sneakers to 1652 Martin Luther King Boulevard, apartment 6, Bronx, New York 12158. Marquis was a theater major at New York University, and he would pick the package up from the Mailbox Etc. store when it arrived the next day.
First place, Kareem Bezel!