Booty Call *69 (11 page)

Tyrone walks back over to Terry and continues to terrorize him. He pushes the barrel of the nine millimeter to his temple and threatens to shoot him if he doesn’t come up with his money soon. Terry begs for his life.

“I’m giving you till next week. I want my fuckin’ money, or I’m
gonna blow your fuckin’ brains out!” Tyrone shouts.

He then shoves Terry down onto the floor. I remain completely silent. Terry looks up at me. One of his eyes is badly bruised and closed. His nose looks like it’s broken, and blood covers his mouth, chin and neck. He’s a fuckin’ mess.

“C’mon, Shana!” Tyrone yells, grabbing me by the arm. I stand there, contemplating if I should get in the car with him. “C’mon, Shana, get in the fuckin’ car!” he calls again.

I’m so scared, and I can’t help but feel sorry for Terry. What has he gotten himself into—getting tormented and beat down by a street thug, a street thug that I’m fuckin’? Back in the day, Terry was on the varsity football team. He was voted
Most Likely To Succeed
. He was even on the debate team. Now his life is looking like shit.

Tyrone begins blowing his horn repeatedly. I can hear sirens in the distance. I want to comfort and help Terry, but my mind is telling me to get in the car with Tyrone. I look around nervously.

“Shana, if you don’t get your fuckin’ ass in this car, then I’m gone, bitch!” he shouts at the top of his lungs now. I need to leave the scene; I can’t afford to stay and hang around, not knowing what I may be getting myself into. The cops might arrest me, thinking that I’m somehow associated with what just happened to Terry. They might want to interrogate me.

I jump into the car. Tyrone doesn’t even give me a chance to shut the door all the way before speeding off down the street doing sixty. For the next ten minutes, he drives like a mad man, accelerating up to eighty miles per hour on side streets until we hit the parkway. He remains quiet, not even looking at me or trying to explain what just happened until we’re a few miles away. I want to say something, but I keep my mouth shut.

“You love me?” he suddenly blurts out.

My eyes get big. W
hat the fuck is he talking about? He’s not going to explain what just happened? He just nearly beat my ex-boyfriend to death in front of me…and what’s with the you-love-me question?
I remain silent. I can’t answer him. I’m too scared to.

He continues speeding, now going over seventy miles per hour on the Belt Parkway. I tightly place my hands between my legs. I want to say something, but I don’t.

“Look, I’m sorry about what happened back there, but that was just business. Don’t let it interfere with what we have. You cool?” he asks, actually sounding concerned. He rests his hand on my thigh and begins to massage it lightly.

“I’m cool,” I quietly reply.

He gives me a quick smile. I feel really uncomfortable right now. I don’t move his hand off my thigh, even though I want to. He starts to slide his hand between my legs, placing it over mine, but I stop him.

“C’mon Tyrone, you expect me to be feeling romantic after what just happened?”

“Shana, don’t worry about it. That’s
my
business.”

“I used to go out with him. Did you know that?”

He slows the car down. “You was fucking that asshole?”

“That was a long time ago, and where do you know Terry from anyway?” I ask. I can’t hold the questions any longer. I need to know something.

“Look, all you need to know is that we did business together, and he owes me a lot of money,” he meagerly explains.

Tyrone isn’t too big on giving out information or letting you know his business. He’s a very discreet niggah. As I recall from what Jakim told
me, Tyrone would disappear for days, maybe weeks at a time back in the day, and nobody would know a thing regarding his whereabouts. He would just suddenly turn up in the neighborhood again, with no explanation. Now, at only twenty-two, he has a decent-size bank account, his own crib and drives a fancy car. He is both feared and respected by everybody he comes in contact with.

I can’t turn myself away from him. Even after what went down tonight, I know I’m going to still be involved with him. Tyrone is like a drug, and he’s also my supplier. I know he can be violent at times; it’s just the way he is, and it comes with the job. But he never flips on me, and that’s the main thing. Even when I was with Jakim, when he came around, he always treated me kindly and with respect. To be honest, I wanted to get with Tyrone before I ever got involved with Jakim. But Jakim and I hooked up, and I let my little crush on Tyrone fade away—until now.

Tyrone wants to drop the subject and just forget about it—what’s done is done; so like his bitch, I remain quiet and drop it. He doesn’t give a fuck about me and Terry dating at one time. We leave it at that. My fear turns into lust; he can definitely hold it down. He’s a true, die-hard, roughneck thug.

We park in front of my crib for a few minutes. Tyrone tongue kisses me goodnight and I step out of his car. After getting inside, I take a quick shower and go straight to bed.

It’s been three days since Tyrone beat Terry down in that all-night burger joint. I keep the incident to myself, telling no one about it. Yesterday, Tyrone surprised me with a gift. He bought me a diamond bracelet from Tiffany’s
in Manhattan. I nearly cried when he clamped it around my wrist. He refused to tell me the price of the bracelet.

I flaunt the expensive bracelet in front of Naja and Latish. We’re over Naja’s crib now, chilling and playing cards. Naja lives with her man, Bosco. He’s one of Tyrone’s business associates. Naja likes the bracelet so much that she says she’s going to press Bosco into buying her one; he makes enough cash to afford it.

“So what’s up with you and Jakim now?” Latish asks, all up in a bitch’s business.

“What do you mean what’s up with me and him? We’re still cool,” I reply.

“But I thought you said you was planning on getting back together with him?” Naja chimes in.

“Please, girl, I got it good on both sides. And Jakim can wait it out a little longer…it’s my decision,” I say.

“Why you messin’ with that boy’s head, Shana? You know he loves you too much, and you’re out fucking his man. That’s some cold shit,” Latish says.

“First of all, Latish, he fucked up with me, and I’ll give my pussy to whoever I wish. Jakim don’t own this,” I say pointing down at my shit, “This is my treasure…I just lent it to him for a little while.”

“Now you know you’re frontin’,” Naja loudly says. “Jakim had you in love. It was always Jakim this, Jakim that. I love me some Jakim. Y’all relationship is like an emotional rollercoaster.”

“Please, ain’t like y’all never cried over no dick,” I say.

“Yeah, I be crying,” Latish says, “when the dick be hitting my spot just right.” Naja and I laugh, and we slap each other five. “Yo, I got with this
niggah named Bent,” Latish adds. They call him that because when he gets hard, his shit bends three inches to the side, looks like he got a hook at the end of his shit. But anyway, he can work some muthafuckin’ pussy, g-i-r-r-l. That niggah be hooking on to my shit, and be dragging me all across the room with his hook dick.”

“You are so stupid,” Naja says.

“So, Shana, let me ask you a personal question: who got a bigger dick—Jakim or Tyrone?” Latish says. I hesitate answering her.

“Yeah, for real, whose is bigger?” Now Naja wants to know.

“Why y’all wanna be all up in a girl’s business?” I say. “They’re both big.”

“Tyrone!” they shout in unison.

“What makes you think it’s Tyrone?” I curiously ask.

“Because I can see it in your eyes, plus you ain’t gotta answer; the way you’ve been carrying on about Tyrone, I’m surprised you just don’t marry the man and have his babies,” Naja says.

“And leave a fine man like Jakim out in the cold? Girl, you must be crazy. You gonna fuck around and have some other ho pick up your leftovers, Shana,” Latish cautions.

I could never trust Latish around any of my men; she’d fuck them in a heartbeat. I wonder how I’ve managed to befriend and stay cool with her for so long. And I still have my doubts about her and Jakim being together. Sometimes the way she looks at me makes me feel so uncomfortable, like she knows something I don’t.

“Shana, what’s the deal with you and Sasha? Y’all been friends for so long—ever since the eighth grade,” Latish suddenly brings up.

“Fuck her!” I flatly say.

“I heard she tried to cut you,” Naja says.

“Yeah, on Jamaica Av a few weeks back. Can you believe that shit? She’s gonna get hers one day,” I say.

“Well, I saw her the other day in the mall with some guy. She told me you actually started the whole thing,” Latish says.

“You gonna believe that bitch’s lies? She set me up with the ugliest person y’all could think of and expected to me to be on my best behavior with the muthafucka. That bitch knows my standards. Then she had the nerve to beef about it in front of my crib the next day and shit, so I had to slap her!”

“Y’all just need to kiss and make up,” says Naja.

“I just wanna beat her ass again! Can we just drop the conversation about that dumb bitch? Damn, stop stressing it. Just fuck that bitch and let it be!” I shout.

The room is quiet now, and Latish and Naja just stare at me. They’re upset over my outburst.

“Look, I’m sorry about that. But y’all know y’all are still my girls, right?” I say apologetically. They begin to relax, and we get back to our friendly game of cards and girl talk.

The next morning, I get a call from Jakim. He wants me to accompany him to the studio in Flatbush, Brooklyn. He practically begs me to come. It’s going on eleven, and he says he’ll be here around one to pick me up. I’m not even upset with him anymore.

I hear a knock at my bedroom door. My Aunt Tina peeps her head into my room. “Wake up, sleepy head,” she says.

“What you want?” I ask.

“What you doing tonight?”

“Why you wanna know?”

“Because I got tickets to the Baller’s Jam at the Manhattan Center.”

“Say, word?!” I holler, jumping out of bed and running up to her. “That shit’s been sold out for weeks! How the fuck did you get tickets?”

“I got my ways, girl.”
She definitely does
.

Every major playa in the city is going to be there tonight. My girls and I have been trying to get tickets for weeks without any success. Artists from Def Jam, Arista, Bad Boy and Roc-A-Fella will be attending this party, so you know I have to be up in there somehow. I want to kiss my aunt.

“So, you rolling tonight or what?”

Like she had to ask
. I never gave it a second thought. “Of course I am,” I reply. My aunt can get just about anything. She doesn’t care who she has to suck or fuck. She knows that what she has between her legs is precious and she uses it to her advantage, making men buy, beg, borrow and steal to give her the world. I wonder why she’s still living with my moms and me, when all she has to do is fuck the right man and have him buy her a house.

I remember her Italian boyfriend, Eddie, who owned a car dealership. He owned ten different lots in eight major cities across the country. He bought her a brand new car one day—a white BMW 740IL—a fifty-three-thousand-dollar car. She wrecked it in three weeks, totaling it. She ran a stop sign and crashed into a city bus. She suffered a fractured hip, sprained ankle and a few cuts and bruises. Her friend, Ebony, who was in the car, too, walked away with minor injuries. Eddie wanted to kill her. Needless to say, they broke up and he ended up paying for all the damages. The car, the insurance, everything was in his name.

My aunt fucked up big time with that one, but she recovered and moved on to the next luxury dick. During the three weeks she had that car, we had a ball driving around. She even let
me
drive it a few of times.

“Be ready by eight. Kendell is coming to pick us up at nine,” she says.

“How many people are going?”

“Just you and me.”

Damn, I wish I could bring Naja and Latish with me
. I quickly get over that thought. I need something to wear; nothing in my closet is going to cut it tonight. I want something special—an eye catcher that’s sexy as hell. I want all the males at the party to crave me. I need to get my hair done, too. I know Sandra will hook me up and fit me into her busy schedule. She’s my homegirl. She’ll definitely look out. She works at a hair salon on Merrick Boulevard.

It’s now eleven-thirty, and there are lots of things that I have to rush to get done before going to this party. I call Sandra up and explain my situation to her. She tells me to come in around five. She won’t be too busy around that time. I need to go shopping. I only have two-hundred dollars. I saw this phat dress in Macy’s at Green Acres Mall the other day. The price tag said three-fifty, and I have to give Sandra sixty-five to do my hair—not to mention spending-money for tonight. Although I can always con some guy into buying me drinks, I think it’s always good to have my own little cash stashed away in case of an emergency.