Dirty Old Men [And Other Stories] (Zane Presents) (38 page)

“Girl, you really know how to work it there,” he complimented his female friend. She remained stretched out and naked across his massive bed.

“You’re not bad yourself.”

“So, can I expect a couple of encores every now and then?”

“We’ll see,” she teased. “But like you said, you don’t have any rings on
your
finger, and I don’t have any rings on
mine.
”

“I heard that,” Derrick commented. “Well, any time you want me to break them walls in, let me know.”

His lady friend laughed. “Ah, yeah, I’ll be sure to remind my
‘walls’
every now and then that you
said
that.”

“Yeah, you do that,” Derrick told her. He walked into the master bathroom to discard his condom in the toilet and to wash up his private parts at the sink. Then he muttered to himself casually, while taking a piss, “Man, I
love
Seattle.”

A former professional basketball player for the Seattle SuperSonics before the organization moved to Oklahoma and renamed the club The Thunder, Derrick had gotten used to entertaining scores of women. However, the women he had gotten used to in Seattle were stress-free as compared to those in his home of New York or in Washington, D.C., and Atlanta—where he had played ball in college, and for the Wizards and Hawks, respectively. Derrick had an accidental son with a woman in his first professional season with the Washington Wizards. Then after he had become involved in a series of controlling, stressful relationships with women on the East Coast. Derrick settled into the Seattle area during his three-year career with the ’Sonics. He fell for the tranquil spirit of the women out west.

“They’re just so
cool
about everything out here,” he told anyone back east who would listen to him.

More than anything, the women out west allowed Derrick to be himself, unapologetically. And they seemed to be all inclusive; black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Canadian, and every mixture in between. So he dated them all equally, sleeping around as if it were still the free-love hippy era of the 1970s.

Derrick then invested in a coffee shop, inspired by the Magic Johnson example in Los Angeles with Starbucks. And when the SuperSonics franchise began its struggle over a new arena, ownership, fan support, and city
finance disputes, Derrick felt secure enough to retire from the game and settle into the Seattle area for good. He was no more than a support player by that time anyway. He found a lot more excitement in running his popular coffee shop near downtown Seattle.

Then out of the blue, his son’s mother called him from D.C. and decided that it was too much of a hassle to raise their fast-growing son on two separate coasts.

“Well, I’m not moving back to D.C. I like it out here in Seattle,” Derrick argued.

“Well, look, you may have to take him out there with you for a while then, because I have some things I need to focus on. I can’t do it with him stressing me about his father all the time, especially since you’re not traveling with the team anymore, where he can get a chance to see you at the games like we
used
to do.”

Derrick then realized that his son’s mother still wanted to run the streets, while their son demanded more attention from her. So he would ask to see his father instead. And at first, Derrick balked at the idea of taking on his son long-term. But then he figured he would have more peace of mind that way, without having to argue with the woman on update phone calls. He grudgingly agreed to take his son for a year to see how he’d like it. However, Derrick refused to change his lifestyle for his son, and that included heavy dating. Besides, Marcus was a boy, so he would have to learn that his daddy liked women; and plenty of them.

So there they were, father and son, in an elaborate condo with non-stop female company from the Seattle region. And Derrick didn’t apologize for any of it. Getting girls was how he lived.

The next morning at his coffee house, Derrick was at it again, flirting with one of his many female customers.

“So, how many espressos do you need to stay up at night?” he teased from the counter.

The young blonde tossed her hair out of her face and giggled. “Well, I
can’t really say. I guess it would all depend on my energy level that night.”

“And what would raise your energy level?”

“Mmmm, who knows? Maybe a tall cup of
dark
coffee,” she flirted back.

“With a little bit of cream and sugar in it?”

She grinned into Derrick’s medium-brown face. “Yeah, but just with a little bit of cream and sugar, not
too
much.”

“Yeah, you don’t want to lose all of the strong, dark
flavor,
right?”

“Exactly,” she agreed with a chuckle.

At his towering height, Derrick was hard to miss. And even though he couldn’t do every woman who entered his shop for coffee, beverages and pastries, the fantasy of a six-foot-seven-inch, black man’s dick, enticed many of them to continue to frequent his establishment. Derrick presumed as much and led their fantasy parade to the tune of very good business, as well as abundant pleasure after work hours.

Before he could get out another word in flirtations with his pretty customer, Derrick’s cell phone went off. He looked down at the foreign number and grimaced.

Who is this?
he asked himself of the number.

“Excuse me a minute,” he told the blonde. “I’ll be right back with you.” He then stepped inside the storage room for privacy.

“Hello,” he answered.

“Yes, can I speak to Mr. Derrick Gamble, please?”

The woman sounded very professional.

“This is Derrick Gamble. Who’s calling?”

“This is Elizabeth Hammond, the principal at Renton Elementary School, where your son Marcus attends. And we have a very serious issue on our hands at school that I need to talk to your son about.”

Derrick paused and wondered what Marcus had done.

“Well, what did he do?” he asked.

“We would much rather talk to you about it in person.”

Derrick looked down at his expensive wristwatch and read that it was just after eleven o’clock.

“Okay, I can be there in a good…
twenty
minutes.”

“Thank you. We’ll see you then.”

Derrick hung up the phone and felt apprehensive.

Was he in a fight or something?
he pondered.
Couldn’t she have told me that over the phone? Did he beat a kid down that bad?

He walked back out into his coffee shop and let his staff members know he had a run to make.

“I’ll be back in an hour or two.” He then eyed the blonde as he headed toward the door. “We’ll finish that coffee discussion the next time I see you here. Okay?”

“All right,” she agreed and smiled.

When Derrick arrived at his son’s school in the hills of Renton, southeast of downtown Seattle, he was still confused about what the principal wanted to discuss with him. He hoped and prayed that it wouldn’t be anything too major.

He parked his white Cadillac Escalade in the visitors parking lot and walked toward the school entrance feeling nervous and anxious with every step.

When he arrived at the main office, Marcus saw his extra-tall father walk in. His eyes immediately hit the floor with shame from the chair where he sat.

Derrick looked at him and relaxed. At least his son looked normal. He wasn’t battered and bruised, he hadn’t been crying, and he appeared worry-free. However, he didn’t want to make eye contact with his father, and that was understandable, considering the situation. His father hadn’t been called to the school for a picnic.

“I’m Derrick Gamble and this is my son, Marcus,” he announced to the office staff of mostly white women.

“Oh, yeah, let me get Elizabeth for you,” the secretary responded. She hustled off to the back office while the rest of the staff looked up to the tall man with intrigue.

“You used to play for the SuperSonics?” the lone black woman asked.

Derrick nodded. “Yeah.”

“And you own that popular coffee shop downtown now.”

“It has my name on it,” he stated with a grin.

“Yeah, but a lot of celebrities and athletes allow their names to be used,” one of the other women spoke up, overhearing the conversation.

“Well, not this one. I even retired from basketball to help run my own place every day now,” he added.

“So you retired from basketball to run a coffee shop?”

Derrick had gotten used to that question. “Basically, the ’Sonics weren’t going anywhere but to a new city. We couldn’t make the playoffs regularly, and we didn’t have enough fire power in the West to stay in the hunt when we did. And my career had already seen its better days. So instead of riding the broken-down car until the wheels fell off in Oklahoma, I decided to jump ship and stay here to run my business.”

It all made perfect sense to Derrick, and if it didn’t make sense to others, then that was
their
problem. He was even looking into franchising his shop after a few more years of studying the coffee market in other areas.

“Ah, Marcus, and Mr. Gamble,” the principal called from her back office.

Marcus stood to his feet and began to walk forward. Derrick followed behind him.

When they stepped inside the principal’s private office, she closed the door behind them and moved to shake Derrick’s hand.

“I’m sorry to disturb you in the middle of your day like this, Mr. Gamble, but we really do need to have this conversation.”

She took a seat behind her desk, while Marcus and Derrick took seats in the chairs in front of her. She was a regal, hard-faced woman with graying hair, but she remained energized and youthful in spirit.

Derrick asked her, “So, what seems to be the problem?”

“Well, his fourth-grade teacher, Ms. Pavel, has been monitoring the situation for over a week now. But it seems that Marcus here has continued to use inappropriate language when addressing the girls inside of his classroom, and even
more
so while out at recess,” the principal informed him.

Derrick heard that and grimaced. What exact language was she referring to?

The principal continued before he could ask her. “So I gathered a list of them here to discuss with you.” She looked down at a printout of sentences and began to read them:

“‘
Come here, girl, you know you want it.’ ‘I got just what the doctor ordered for
you.’ ‘Take your medicine like a big girl.’ ‘Hey girl, do you think you can handle this?’ ‘Get up in line for this, baby.’ ‘I’m all night long with mine.’ ‘Call me whenever you need me, baby.’”

The principal stopped and looked into Derrick’s face. “I mean, this is all
blatant
material. And these are just some of the more
disturbing
comments that he’s used. But Marcus has constantly referred to the girls in his classroom as ‘babe’ or ‘honey’ or
‘girl,’
and I mean not like a normal ‘girl,’ but like a guy would say to a woman in a pick-up line. You know what I mean?”

Derrick was ready to explode in laughter. He had done a great job of listening to the older white woman run off a list of familiar statements to him, and with a very studious diction at that. But he maintained his straight face instead of breaking into a smile. It was no time for smiles. His son had somehow picked up his language to women, and it was now an embarrassing situation for him to have to deal with.

“Now if this inappropriate behavior continues, then I’m going to have to suspend him for three days,” the principal warned. “And if it continues after that, then I’ll have no choice but to ask you to transfer him to another school. Now some of his comments have already begun to make it back to the girls’ parents at home. But others think that it’s funny, which I’m sure has caused Marcus to continue to want to do it.

“So I called you here today to allow you to take Marcus with you for the rest of the afternoon to have a real father-to-son talk with him about inappropriate language. Then he can come back to school tomorrow and start over. But I’m really concerned about this,” she concluded.

She then paused to hear any comments from Derrick. She had done all of the talking and was ready to listen to him now.