TEN

Curtis was glad he had gotten up and made it to his office before folks started arriving for the meeting. If he had not taken advantage of those few moments of peace and quiet, his day would have been shot. Because as soon as Curtis emerged from his office and walked down the hall to the Athletic Center’s conference room, it was on.

Some of his colleagues acted just like the bratty players who had been the doo-doo on their high school teams, and who had to be checked and put in their place for the good of the whole team when they got to college. And a few of the brothers who had done a stint in the NBA, warming those pro benches and watching all the action from the sidelines, were the worst. This cohort forgot that as good as they had been in college they were not Iverson, Kobe, Shaq, Magic, Dr. J, Kareem, Jordan, Rodman, Latrell, Ben, the Mailman, and the baby boy LeBron James. Sometimes, the most arrogant ones acted like they had been solely responsible for schooling Michael Jordan on how to be like Mike.

And if that Sonny Todd Kilpatrick wasn’t a pain in the butt, Curtis didn’t know who was. Sonny Todd was bold, brazen, and derisive toward his colleagues until Maurice whispered, “Does he have some kind of brain malfunction going on here and doesn’t realize that this is 2009 and not 1809? He’s like, say, two centuries off.”

Several other coaches shared this sentiment, and were still in disbelief that a man like this had a head coaching position at a SNAC school. But these coaches didn’t need to spend any time trying to figure out why Sonny Todd Kilpatrick was at the helm of one of those prized and uncommon black head coaching spots. All they had to do was think green—not environmental green, money green.

Money was the sole reason for hiring Sonny Todd. Money the president of Bouclair College didn’t want to pay for the jams he stayed in. Money the president didn’t want to pay his wife if she got angry enough to bail out and jump ship from what had to have been a bad marriage due to his trips to scuzzy places located off the nearest exit on I-95 South. Money—lots of money—to be earned by Sonny Todd’s highly questionable coaching strategies for the school. Money, money, money, money—money. This was about money, pure and simple.

Sonny Todd had just finished giving a brief status report on his program. The other coaches were glad he was done, and hoped he would hurry up and shut up and sit down. But if Sonny Todd was anything, he was shrewd, crazy, and bold beyond belief. That fool knew his colleagues were sick of him, and he didn’t care that they were. Instead of sitting down, he decided to talk some more and started speaking about what he considered to be his best qualities.

He said, “I know how to win a game. I know how to pick and coach my players to a win. And I know where every single stripper shack is, up and down every North and South Carolina highway there is to know. And I know that if I catch you in one, and you know you’re not supposed to be there, you’ll wake up wishing I didn’t know. Because know this—I go to them all.”

Then he frowned and scratched at his head a moment.

“No, I take that back. I don’t go to them all. I don’t make it a habit of going to Rumpshakers Gentlemen’s Club here in Durham. Because I don’t know what you brothers find so appealing about that club.”

Almost every coach in that room shook his head. What in the world were they going to do with this white boy? With the exception of a handful of the coaches, they had been looking forward to going to Rumpshakers as soon as this meeting was over. In fact, most of the coaches at this meeting had come for the sole purpose of having an excuse to go to that club. Rumpshakers was the best strip club in the entire Triangle, and maybe the best in the state.

“And they charge an arm and a leg for admission,” Sonny Todd was saying, as his voice broke through the reverie of the men seated at that conference table.

“The drinks cost too much, they serve too much Hennessy and Crown and not enough Budweiser; I can count the long and leggy blondes with one finger and they are not even white; and the dancers they do hire have behinds that have too much volume, wiggle, and bounce for my personal taste. Plus, those are some of the snootiest strippers I’ve ever come across. One actually turned up her nose at me and gave me my money back the last time I was there. Now how is that for service?”

Curtis stood up abruptly and said, “I think we’ve covered everything. Anybody have something they need to share before we dismiss?”

“Naw,” several coaches said, and got up, with the rest of their colleagues following suit.

Curtis tried not to sigh with relief but couldn’t help it. One more moment of listening to Sonny Todd and he would have hauled off and pimp-slapped that joker in front of all of the other SNAC coaches.

Maurice and Dave Whitmore went and shook hands with the rest of the visiting coaches, acting as if they didn’t see Sonny Todd, and left to join Reverend Quincey and Reverend Flowers for lunch at the Chop House Restaurant in Cary. The last thing they wanted was to be around a bunch of loud-talking, drunk and tipsy athletes at a boob-and-booty bar.

Maurice and Dave made eye contact—they were going to lift Curtis up in prayer on the way to lunch. He didn’t have any business going to Rumpshakers. Some places, no matter how enticing and popular, were not places folk needed to go to. It reeked of the world. And as much as someone would want Rumpshakers to be good, clean fun with just a taste of naughty thrown in—it was anything but that.

The other coaches followed Curtis out to the parking lot.

Curtis found it curious, when he peeled out of the parking lot in his prized silver Escalade EXT truck, that Sonny Todd was hot on his heels. He checked the rearview mirror and saw Sonny Todd hopping into his white Lexus sedan, starting that car up, and burning some very expensive tire rubber as he broke the campus speed limit to make sure he didn’t get separated from the rest of the coaches.

Curtis turned on the radio and hiked up the volume when an old school joint, “Low,” blasted out on 97.5. His favorite hip-hop station DJ, Brian Dawson, was on the air. When in a mellow, old school mood, Curtis favored Cy Young of Foxy 107. And when in need of some good gospel on The Light, who could resist the big voice of Melissa Wade, or her colleague Michael Reese, who made sure that every listener in the Triangle heard “I love you” at least once a day?

That “Apple bottom jeans, boots with the fur” was sounding good as Curtis steered his car through the traffic on Highway 55, heading east. Rumpshakers, and the over-thirty black nightclub, The Place to Be, were both off 55. Whereas you could see The Place to Be from the street, Rumpshakers was nestled in an inconspicuous and very woodsy spot down in the cut, off of a side street that intersected with another street off 55. Rumpshakers was near to impossible to find if you did not have specific directions. Map-Quest couldn’t help you find this place, either. Folks often joked and said that the only way a negro could roll up on Rumpshakers was with Blackquest.

Curtis turned onto the narrow gravel road, and drove a fifth of a mile to reach the Rumpshakers building. He hated having to drive on gravel for that length of time but understood why Charles Robinson left this section of the road unpaved. It was a deterrent to folks who didn’t need to be there. Black folk in Durham (or most folk period, for that matter) were not prone to wandering down a dirt and gravel road out in what appeared to be the middle of nowhere. A lot of folk never made it to Rumpshakers because they got tired of looking for it. And for a few, they found the road but just couldn’t believe that a black establishment was situated in this location.

One brother, who found the club out of sheer stubborn determination, said, “Man, the first time I rolled up on Rumpshakers, I got to wondering if I’d taken the wrong turn to the Deliverance movie people’s house. I kept hearing that banjo music playing ‘do-do-do-dooo-do-do-do, do-do-do-do-dooooo-do’ in my head. Then I kept looking around making sure that a bro wasn’t about to get axed or shot, or shot or axed.”

The one group the dirt and gravel road and obscure location held absolutely no deterring factors for was the wives, fiancées, and girlfriends of some of the patrons. An angry sister, whose man had been lying to and mistreating her, was more dangerous to a brother than CSI could ever be to a criminal. They could find information that an unsuspecting brother just knew was hidden and protected.

Charles didn’t know how they did it, but those women would find out that the man was lying and cheating, and then go and find that man at Rumpshakers. About the only thing they hadn’t found to date was how to get past the ultra-tight security system. And those praying sisters were the most dangerous because they had some serious backup from above. Charles always told folk that he didn’t mess with those women. When they showed up, he went and got their man, escorted him out to the parking lot, and left him to her, her mama, her auntie, her sisters, her missionary group, her choir members, and on occasion her first lady and pastor.

Rumpshakers was always a surprise for first-time patrons. The SNAC coaches filing out of those fancy, university-leased cars were no exception. Most first-timers held the expectation that the club would be housed in some kind of 1920s-styled Southern mansion with roses, azalea bushes, and dogwood trees abounding everywhere. Or they thought it would be a restored warehouse with steel beams in the ceilings, old-fashioned plank-style wooden floors, and a few large industrial windows that had been allowed to accumulate dust and soot for privacy and effect.

It was quite natural for folks to presume that a business like Rumpshakers would be housed in a dwelling of that nature. Just about every TV and book brothel and strip club worth its salt was set in such an environment. But Charles wasn’t having any of that nostalgic nonsense creating the ambience for his club. Rumpshakers catered to a sophisticated twenty-first-century clientele. Charles Robinson was way too cosmopolitan and crunked to try and run a hip-hop gentlemen’s club in a setting that was so outdated and cliché.

Rumpshakers was a three-million-dollar, expansive pale yellow brick ranch that was set in the middle of nine acres of scenic, woodsy land. There was not one rose in sight—especially in the midst of the beautiful sunflowers and colorful daisies and foliage. This was the kind of playah’s house that could easily qualify for a spot on an episode of MTV Cribs.

It was late afternoon when they arrived, affording all the newest clients a full view of the house, the pond off to the left, and the landscaping that would have surely been in House and Garden magazine had the house not been in reality a strip joint. Curtis noticed Sonny Todd standing in front of the magnificent house with his mouth hanging open, almost drooling, before one of his assistant coaches poked him and told him to quit holding everyone up and go on inside.

Less than an hour ago, Sonny Todd had complained about his time at Rumpshakers. But judging from his reaction, Curtis suspected that he had lied. There is no way that boy could have been to Rumpshakers on another occasion and carry on like that.

The other SNAC coaches discerned what Curtis had figured out. It was clear to all of them that this joker had never seen a business of this type that was so classy and beautiful. He didn’t even look like the type of man—black or white—who would have ever come to a place like this. Plus, he kept taking pictures with his phone and saying, “I wouldn’t have expected this,” clearly not remembering what he had told them earlier.

They walked into the gigantic foyer of that fabulous, sprawling ranch and waited, while standing on the cream, ruby, and black marble floor with gold veins running through it. Pierre Smith, Charles’s manager, and the one responsible for making all of the arrangements for large parties, came into the foyer followed by five fine waitresses holding an assortment of trays weighed down with shrimp cocktail, caviar, homemade gourmet crackers, and Long Island iced teas.

The men couldn’t take their eyes off the waitresses, who were toned and beautiful enough to be dancers. And their uniforms could rival anything anybody had ever seen on any TV show, movie, or documentary about Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Club.

Sonny Todd clutched his hand to his heart and inhaled and exhaled over and over again while viewing the delectable scenery. His wife kept telling him that refined white sugar was bad for his health. Maybe she was right. Because this display of brown sugar was making him feel like a dose of that stuff would do wonders for his constitution.

The waitresses wore black silk stockings with red roses embroidered in them, black silk thongs, black silk bustiers with red silk ribbon woven through the rich material, and red lace garters on their left legs. Each woman had a perky ponytail held up by a red-and-black silk ribbon. Their makeup was refined and tasteful, and they walked with so much grace and class the worst ho in the SNAC group had to put some restraints on and try and act like a gentleman.

All of the women were at least five-nine, full-busted, with long legs and generous curves. They were toned and of a healthy weight. And they ranged in color from the palest shade of gold to the deepest hue of ebony brown. It was like being in a candy store, and a few of the men felt as if they were about to get a sugar rush.

Pierre made quick eye contact with one of the waitresses, who in turn gave a signal for the women to start serving the men. Charles had given him a rundown on the twenty-six coaches who were on the guest list. It didn’t take him long to find Kordell Bivens and Castilleo Palmer.

Pierre had not made his final selection of the girls who would dance for this group. But after seeing the coaches, he knew just whom to pick. He’d pull from the A list for the group dance, and would go to the D list for that white boy taking pictures with his cell phone as if he’d never been around black people before. He’d also have to pull from the C list for the private dances ordered by Kordell Bivens and that negro standing next to him with the fancy, overdone name. And as for the rest of the coaches, the B list would serve just fine.

The B list dancers were very pretty and good. They just weren’t as interested in striving to become professional dancers as the A-listers. The A-listers had dancing coursing through their veins. They trained and worked hard to be the best dancers possible. And when they left Rumpshakers, they usually went on to some kind of professional dance job—the dancers for concerts, the theater, music videos, movies, and the like.

The B-listers were most often students, or looking for a better job. So this was just a job. It paid the bills. And Pierre knew that most of his B-listers would be up and out of there as soon as they either finished school or could find a decent-paying job.

As for the C, D, and the E list dancers, they didn’t want to do anything else, they liked the money, they liked the benefits, but most of all they liked stripping. Pierre had a soft spot for the A and B list dancers, and always lent them a helping hand. He kept an eye on the C-listers because some of them were actually A- and B-listers who had gotten lost in the shuffle of women coming in and out of the establishment. And as to the D- and E-listers, he just made sure they were treated fairly, took care of themselves, and were discreet with the behind-the-scenes arrangements they made with some of the customers. He also made sure that they didn’t get hooked up with some of the dangerous men who came to the club from time to time. Those women may have been some bona fide skeezers and hoochies, and some of them were a bit on the ugly side, but they deserved protection and to be treated right.

Pierre could tell that a few of these men were on the cheap side and would not want to give up a decent tip. Two in particular—Kordell Bivens and that negro with the fancy name—were real cheap. He knew just by looking at them that they still drank cheap liquor because they were too stingy to spend money on something decent. Rumpshakers served only the best liquor. But Pierre sure did wish he had enough time to run down to the nearest ABC store and get something befitting the two of them. Rosie O’Grady, Mad Dog 20/20, and that scotch mess in a plastic bottle his wife bought to make her barbecue sauce with would have been perfect.

He had to remember that this group was made up solely of basketball coaches. They were all former basketball players. A few had done a short stint in the NBA, and most of them felt that they were owed favors and goodies whenever they stepped in an establishment like Rumpshakers. He didn’t know why, though.

Rumpshakers entertained some serious high rollers (some of them pro athletes), who felt it a privilege just to come in here and spend their money. It was extremely rare that one of the high rollers didn’t drop down some good tip money for good service. It was the broke negroes trying to be more than they were who were cheap with the dancers. And they always wanted somebody who was on the A list or high on the B list.

Pierre led the group down the marbled hallway. He could tell the first-timers. All first-timers lagged behind the rest of their party to take a few minutes to check out the digs. But he understood because he did the exact same thing the first time he set foot in Rumpshakers. It was a beautiful place and Pierre had walked around for half an hour admiring the scenery—he didn’t even remember seeing one woman, just the beautiful decor of the establishment.

Rumpshakers had been built with the highest-quality materials. There were marble floors in the entry area, top-of-the-line and ebony wood floors in the main dance rooms, handmade area rugs Charles had found and shipped from Morocco and oil paintings that had been purchased at fancy art auctions around the world were placed throughout the house.

The entire house was done in crimson and cream with black and gold accents to highlight the main color scheme. The interior was painted a muted creamy yellow, with ivory trim on the molding. There were high ceilings and picture windows in the main areas. The dance hall and private rooms had smaller windows and allowed for the kind of privacy needed for their patrons to have a good time.

Black velvet, black suede, and black leather chairs, love seats, stools, and sofas were all over the house. The chrome-and-glass tables were the perfect choice to help keep a masculine edge on the decorating style for the interior. It was a fabulous setup that made most of the patrons feel so welcome they were inspired to dig deep into their pockets for the dancers.

The coaches finished their first round of drinks, put their glasses on a tray and followed Pierre to the main dance room. The area was decorated in the same colors as the rest of the house, had a large conference-type table that was perfect for the customary table dance, and eight chrome and black leather chairs placed around it.

Some of the most comfortable chairs Curtis had ever sat in were posted all over this room. Those chairs were so comfortable that the last time he was here, he fell asleep right in the middle of what he was told had been the best part of the dance. He avoided that big black suede chair and went and sat by the door in one of the less inviting velvet Queen Anne chairs.

The waitresses went around the room and pulled at the clusters of coaches to find a seat. Sonny Todd didn’t want to be in the mix with the other coaches. So he went to the far side of the room and tried to make himself comfortable in one of the window seats. He wanted to ask if there were any white or at least Latina dancers. He nixed that notion when the music came over the sound system, and one of the songs his players used to listen to started playing. He didn’t know what was so fabulous about the song “Walk It Out.” But it obviously held appeal to the majority of folks affiliated with SNAC.

What Sonny Todd didn’t know (and really didn’t care to know) was that before Rumpshakers, there had been nothing like this for the brothers in Durham. Oh, there were several strip clubs catering to a predominantly black clientele. But there had never been anything on this order. Rumpshakers was elegant, comfortable, tasteful (at least as far as the decor was concerned), and had the finest women working in this industry in the Triangle on the payroll.

Any man who had paid a visit to Rumpshakers could tell you that the women employed by the club were fine. And those fine women loved working for Charles Robinson, who they all said was as fine and sexy as any brother could be. A bona fide light-skinned man, Charles Robinson didn’t have a problem finding all of those good-looking sisters.

There were women in Durham County who couldn’t dance a lick but wished they had the kind of skills that qualified them to swing around a pole for him. That long, slender, and muscular body, wavy brown hair with a sprinkling of silver running through it, and hazel eyes, made women drool over the brother and slip their panties in his breast pocket. Charles Robinson was fine, single, rich, smart, educated, and sexy. He was the kind of brother every gold-diggin’ and stuck-up skoochie would do anything to make her man.

The only group of women not chasing Charles Robinson was what he referred to as the “Kingdom Women”—sisters who were genuine, humble, sweet, fine, smart, saved, Word-filled, and obedient to the Lord. This group, even the ones who found him attractive, could care less about chasing a man like Charles Robinson. As Veronica Washington had once put it, “Why would I want a man who was so comfortable with the world? What could I possibly say or do that would be of interest to him?”

When Denzelle Flowers told Charles what that fine Veronica had said about him, all he did was laugh. What he wanted to tell Miss Veronica was that even though there wasn’t anything she could say to his worldly self, he’d be more than happy to tell her what all she could do for him.

And as worldly as Charles knew he was, the one thing he wouldn’t have done was leave a brand-new custom-built, 3,800-square-foot home in Durham’s Carillon Forest for a 976.5-square-foot “bachelor’s pad” with the brand new linoleum in the kitchen at Bismarck Ridge, as Veronica’s ex-husband Robert had done. Who in his right mind would want to leave a fine woman like that, move out of a beautiful neighborhood like Carillon Forest, and go and live in Bismarck Ridge of all places? Bismarck Ridge was a decent neighborhood. And it was a good choice for many folk. But for a negro with an ego bigger than the Triangle? That was tantamount to trading in your Lexus to go and buy a Ford Focus because you were desperate to beef up your image as mack daddy.

He knew that the man’s leaving a woman like that wasn’t about anything but some tail. And it couldn’t have been tail worth anything. Because Charles had learned about that a long time ago, the hard way, when he let go of a good woman he could have spent the rest of his life with over some cheap and worthless tail. He’d been just like Robert Washington, and he knew that when you throw away a beautiful treasure, the Lord may not ever let you have another one.

Charles had more women than he knew what to do with but he didn’t have any that were remotely close to being a treasure—not the kind of treasure the Bible talked about, or like the one he let get away. Charles shook off that thought by remembering what one of the movers, who also did his landscaping, had told him about Robert moving out of Veronica’s house.

He’d said, “Boss, that lady packed that man right up. She put his suits and shirts in wardrobe boxes, and then”—the man started laughing—“and then she went and stuffed all of old boy’s funky draws down in that box with all of his good clothes.”

“Mookie, how did you know his draws were in the wardrobe boxes?”

Mookie just looked at Charles like he was crazy, and then said, “Dawg, dawg. You know what your draws smell like when you take ’em off and drop ’em in the hamper, right?”

Charles didn’t say anything. It wasn’t exactly something that you had a whole lot to say about, even if that crazy boy was right. The longer Charles remained silent, the more certain Mookie became that his boss knew exactly what his draws smelled like when they were real funky and lying in the clothes hamper just drawing in even more funk.

“Uh-huh. You know, don’t you, Mr. Robinson? It’s the kind of funk that comes when you wear your draws way too long and they practically walk to the hamper on their own accord.”

Charles couldn’t do anything but laugh. That is the very reason he kept a decent supply of clean draws in his office. He hated that feeling—funky draws he’d been wearing way too long.

“Well, that box was ‘wearing your draws too long’ funky. I was glad I was helping with the other stuff because I didn’t want to handle that particular box. Know what I’m sayin’, playah?”

“Yeah, I know exactly what you are sayin’, Mookie, man,” Charles told him.

“But it gets better, Mr. Robinson. While old boy was out in the driveway, sitting in his car looking stupid, Miss Thang started playing Beyoncé’s you must not know ’bout me song over and over again. Every time that negro thought the song had ended, Beyoncé started singing, ‘To the left, to the left … everything you own is in a box to the left,’ all over again. I know it liked to drove that man crazy— especially whenever he came up to the front door, trying to get in the house, and his wife started dancing and singing, ‘You must not know ’bout me, you must not know ’bout me.’”

Charles loved that story about what had to be the stupidest negro in all of Durham County, North Carolina. He was a true player, and would have never been ignorant enough to let Veronica go free. That’s how he knew how to hook up Rumpshakers—he was a playah and a very good one at that.

He had designed the club to be the black man’s boob-and-booty paradise. Only thing, Charles, unlike many of his patrons, didn’t even need his own paradise to get what he wanted. Brothers on the prowl in the Triangle complained about Charles Robinson and all of the women who had taken it upon themselves to pledge their loyalty to him. They maintained that he had all of the free booty on lockdown, and was rather selfish and unwilling to share the goods.

Charles Robinson could have cared less about what the brothers in Durham County thought he should do. Maybe those negroes just needed to bone up on their skills and leave him the heck alone. That was one of the main reasons he was so reluctant to get saved and make Jesus Lord of his life—having too much fun with the fleeting pleasures of sin, and obviously oblivious to the fact that the wages of sin was death.

He reasoned that God had blessed him with his first cousin, Marquita, and her mother, his Aunt Margarita, who were super-saved as far as he was concerned. And between the two there had to be enough Holy Ghost going around to cover a multitude of his transgressions through intercessory prayer.

But as smooth and worldly as Charles Robinson was, he was honest about who he was and what a woman could expect from him. Charles didn’t cheat on anybody because he didn’t believe in cheating. He didn’t believe in monogamy, either. But he didn’t cheat. He was honest, straightforward, and fair. While his women grumbled about his candid, stubborn honesty, his employees adored him for it. Charles Robinson was straightforward. It was this virtue that helped to keep him in bondage to sin. On the one hand, Charles could pride himself on treating the folks who worked for him right. Then on the other hand, he was extending an invitation to employees and patrons alike to travel down the wide and easy highway that carried his folks right up to the gates of Hell.