Twenty-Eight

When Jasmine entered BJ’s hospital room, she was surprised to see Simone in the hospital room with BJ’s homeboy Ish.

“Hey, BJ.” Jasmine’s smile was mixed with genuine compassion as she walked up to the head of BJ’s hospital bed carrying ten get-well-soon helium balloons and a box of chocolate candy. She bent over and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

“Jasmine, what’s good, baby girl?” BJ replied with a smile.

BJ was slowly getting his strength back with each passing day, but he still wasn’t able to eat on his own and had to be fed through IV. She noticed he had lost a lot of weight, but she didn’t comment on it.

“I know you all hard and stuff,” Jasmine said, “but you better take these balloons and candy.”

BJ chuckled and told her it was all good. He thanked her for the balloons and candy and told her where to put them.

“What’s up, Ish? And, Simone, what the hell you doing here?” Jasmine gave both of them a kiss on the cheek.

“I’m with my baby.”

Jasmine laughed and shook her head. “BJ, I introduced these two at the strip club and, I swear, they been attached at the hip ever since. Every time I call this heifer, she talking about, she’ll call me back, because she’s with Ish.”

“That’s how us Ghetto Mafia muthafuckas do,” BJ replied. “He put it on her the same way Nico put it on you.”

Ish laughed as he walked over to BJ to give him a pound.

“Here we go. See, you ain’t even hurt. Get your ass up and get dressed. We taking you home right now,” Jasmine said.

BJ asked Jasmine, “What’s that shit on your neck?”

“It’s my new tattoo. You like it? And look at the one I got on my hand.”

BJ looked at it and responded in the same manner as everyone else whenever they saw it, repeating what the tattoo said. “Love is cursed.”

“Yup. That shit is hot, right?”

BJ nodded, but it was easy to tell he was reluctant. He asked Simone and Ish to give him a few minutes alone with Jasmine.

Ish and Simone told him they were going to step out and go to Wendy’s on Jamaica Avenue and then come back.

As soon as Ish and Simone were out of the room and out of earshot, Jasmine looked over at BJ like she wanted to cry.

“Oh, BJ, I didn’t want to say nothing, but you sure you okay, boo?”

BJ could see the tears beginning to form in Jasmine’s eyes. “Yo, cut that shit out. There ain’t gonna be no fuckin’ tears up in here.”

“I know, but I don’t like seeing you up in here like this.”

“Jasmine, I’m gonna be all right.”

Jasmine bit down on the inner part of her lip to prevent herself from crying. She really cared about BJ on a human level and loved him like a brother, so her feelings of sadness and concern were genuine. Flashbacks of when she’d almost died added to her sadness.

“So what the hell happened? I mean, I been hearing all kind of shit from the street, but you know how that goes.”

“I don’t wanna talk in here. I’ll be home next week, though. When I get out of here, we’ll talk.”

Jasmine nodded, but at the same time she was hoping that BJ would start talking because she had her recorder going from before she walked into his hospital room.

“Okay, no problem. So you are coming home next week? That’s good.”

“Yeah, but I been fighting with these doctors. They been telling me that it’s a fifty-fifty chance that I’m going to need a colostomy bag for the rest of my life.”

“No way.” Jasmine covered her mouth with her right hand. “BJ, don’t say that.” She couldn’t stop the tears from streaming down her face.

“They had to remove part of my large intestines.”

“But they did say it’s a fifty-fifty chance, so that means that maybe you won’t have to.” Jasmine wiped some tears from her cheek, trying to maintain emotionally for BJ.

“That’s what I’m hoping. I told them niggas I would pay whatever, just as long as they fix my shit up right. Word is bond, they might as well kill my ass if I have to walk around with a fuckin’ bag attached to me.”

Jasmine shook her head and she wiped more tears from her eyes. “They probably was just giving you the worst case scenario to cover themselves. But, believe me, from what I learned in nursing school, as long as you can pay, they’ll fix you up right. But let your ass be poor or up in here with a damn Medicaid card, and you would be ass out.”

Jasmine wasn’t trying to be funny, but her words made BJ laugh.

“It’s true,” she added with emphasis.

“Yeah, I know. Money talks.”

Jasmine walked over to a chair underneath the TV in the corner of the room and sat down.

“I’m gonna be all right, though. Niggas is gonna die behind this shit. You better believe that.”

Jasmine looked at him and nodded.

“So what’s up with you? Nico, told me to make sure you was straight.”

Jasmine sucked her teeth and blew air out of her lungs.

“What’s that about?”

“BJ, it’s like I don’t even know Nico anymore. I don’t see him, I don’t speak to him. It’s like—”

“Jasmine, just hold the nigga down. You know how shit go sometime.”

“I mean, I am holding him down. It’s just I don’t know what we got anymore.”

“Whatchu mean by that?”

“I mean, am I still wifey or what?”

BJ chuckled. “Jasmine, that nigga love you. Trust me when I tell you. And you know Nico’s like a brother to me, so I know what’s up.”

Jasmine smiled. “I know he loves me, but he don’t trust me like he used to.”

“It ain’t you, Jasmine.”

“Well, then what is it?”

“You see where I’m at right now? Laid up in a fuckin’ hospital with half of my intestines missing and shit. And you seen on the news how the feds just nabbed Black Justice and caught forty bricks in the process. That’s what it is—he’s trying to stay one step ahead of death and jail. You feel me?”

Jasmine thought about just how smart Nico really was to have been avoiding her; otherwise he would have likely been facing the same fate as Black Justice. “I feel you, but I still need to—”

“You still need Nico to make you feel like a woman and all that lovey-dovey shit, right?”

Jasmine smiled. “No, it’s not that.”

“Yes, it is. You wanna feel like wifey, like you just said a minute ago.”

“What I mean is, I don’t want to come across all needy and shit like that. I know how to play my position. I know what I signed up for. I just need Nico to trust me and be straight up with me. That’s all.”

“If Nico caught a charge and had to do time, would you do the time with him?”

“Of course, I would.”

“You full of shit.”

“No, BJ, really I would, because if he was in jail, then I would know where I stand, and I would know what’s up.”

“Well, listen. Between me and you, I told Nico to stay outta New York for a while. And if anybody wants that nigga in New York right now, it’s me. I want Nico here going to war for me, but I know the game, and I know the streets. This shit is like playing chess. And right now, you got the feds coming at us, you got NYPD coming at us, we got snitches in Ghetto Mafia looking to snake us, we got other crews coming for our throat, and we got confidential informants helping the feds build a case on us. So it’s coming at us from all sides right now. I know that, and Nico knows that. So for right now and for the time being, it just makes sense for us to get this bread outta town. And we getting it right now in Miami. And when the time is right, Nico will be around, and you’ll be feeling like wifey again and all that. But for right now you just got to hold the nigga down just like if he was doing a bid or something.”

“I understand.”

“You ain’t hurting for nothing, right?”

“No, I’m good.” Jasmine made sure not to say anything about her new SoHo apartment.

“You keeping your shit tight for Nico, right?”

Jasmine gave BJ a look that told him not to even go there.

“I gotta ask.”

“No, you don’t. You already know the answer to that question.”

BJ chuckled. “Nico will be around when he’s around. But we trying to stay off them phones, and we staying off the radar until the time is right. When all these dumb-ass niggas out here go to prison, we gonna be the only smart ones still getting it. You feel me?”

“You leaving town too?”

“Me and Ish gonna be right here keeping an eye on your slick ass.”

“What you mean by that?”

Jasmine was already feeling self-conscious about the comment that BJ had made earlier about confidential informants.

BJ chuckled. “I’m just fuckin’ wit’chu. I gotta deal with these surgeries that I got coming up, so I’m here.”

“I’m sorry about what had happened to Lo.”

“This is our life. You know how it goes.”

Jasmine didn’t immediately reply to his words, but she definitely understood where he was coming from.

“This is our life, baby girl,” BJ repeated. “Just hold your tongue.”

Jasmine immediately looked BJ square in the eyes but didn’t say anything, and neither did he. She moved closer to him and kissed him on the forehead before telling him that she had to go.

The streets were definitely Nico’s, BJ’s, and Ghetto Mafia’s life, and it was also now Jasmine’s life. It was a life that came with riches and fame, but it also came with violence, death, prison, and all kinds of worries. Jasmine was super worried. She was wondering if BJ and Nico were on to her role as a confidential informant. She knew that to really survive and make it in the life they lived required a certain level of smarts and skills like a chess player, and a certain level of acting, like an Oscar winner.

Jasmine knew that she was acting and playing the role as a confidential informant. But she just hoped that BJ and Nico weren’t better actors than she was. If they were, there was going to be a murder scene in which she would be playing the victim. She wondered if she should heed BJ’s advice to hold her tongue.