Drive Me Crazy

Table of Contents

 

 

 

“Hot enough to scorch fingers. Dickey is a master at writing about women and what they want and how they want it. There are three kinds of physical love in these pages: hot, red hot, and nuclear.”

—
Publishers Weekly

 

“A very funny and engrossing novel ... laugh-out-loud humor.”

—
Booklist

 

 

 

 

“Dickey taps the intimate emotions of a woman.”

—
Entertainment
Weekly

 

“A fast-paced tale.”—
Essence

 

“[A] sharp-edged, sizzling novel.”—
Publishers Weekly

 

“The prediction here is that
The Other Woman
will show up on beaches all over the country this summer.”

—
Fort Worth Star-Telegram

 

“Good and gritty storytelling.”—
Kirkus Reviews

 

 

“Smartly paced ... heart-pumping ... electrifying ... compelling.”

—
Publishers Weekly

 

“Passionate, sensual, rhythmic. If Eric’s previous novels are food for the soul,
Thieves’ Paradise
is the nectar and ambrosia of life.”

—
The Chicago Defender

Between Lovers

 

 

“A witty, sexy romp.”—
The Sunday Denver Post

 

“A hip, funny, and realistically bittersweet love story of our times.”

—
Washington Sun

 

“Provocative and complex.”—
Ebony

 

 

 

“Steamy romance, betrayal, and redemption. Dickey at his best.”

 

“Fast-paced ... sexy, sassy ... a high-spirited roller-coaster ride of a novel.”—
Florida Star
(Jacksonville)

 

“Skillful ... scandalous ... a rich gumbo of narrative twists.”

-Minneapolis Star Tribune

 

 

 

“A deftly crafted tale about the games people play and the lies they tell on their search for love.”—
Ebony

 

“Wonderfully written ... smooth, unique, and genuine.”

—
The Washington Post Book World

 

“Hot, sexy, and funny.”—
Library Journal

 

 

“Crackles with wit and all the rhythm of an intoxicatingly funky rap. A fun read.”—
The Cincinnati Enquirer

 

“Fluid as a rap song. Dickey can stand alone among modern novelists in capturing the flavor, rhythm, and pace of African-American speak.”—
South Florida Sun-Sentinel

 

“Dickey uses humor, poignancy, and a fresh, creative writing style.”

 

“A colorful, sexy tale.”—
Marie Claire

 

 

“Rich
Coffee
steams away clichés of interracial romance ... a true-to-life, complex story of relationships.”—
USA Today

 

“Heartwarming and hilarious.”—
The Cincinnati Enquirer

 

“Dickey scores with characters who come to feel like old friends.”

—
Essence

 

 

 

 

“Genuine emotional depth.”
-The Boston Globe

 

“Vibrant ... marks the debut of a true talent.”

—
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

 

“Bold and sassy ... brims with humor, outrageousness, and the generosity of affection.”—
Publishers Weekly

 

 

ANTHOLOGIES

 

 

Cappuccino
(Movie)—
Original Story

New American Library
Published by New American Library, a division of
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Previously published in a Dutton edition.

First New American Library Printing, May 2005

Copyright @ Eric Jerome Dickey, 2004 Excerpt from
Genevieve
copyright © Eric Jerome Dickey, 2005

All rights reserved

Dickey, Eric Jerome.
Drive me crazy / by Eric Jerome Dickey.
p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-14242-4

1. Triangles (Interpersonal relations)—Fiction. 2. Married women—Fiction.
3. Ex-convicts—Fiction. 4. Secrecy—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3554.I319D75 2004
813’.54—dc22
2004009926

 

 

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PUBLISHER’S NOTE

 

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

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For Dominique

PROVERBS 5:3-5

 

³
For the lips of an immoral woman drip honey, and her mouth is smoother than oil:

⁴
But in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.

⁵
Her feet go down to death; her steps lay hold of hell.

People called me Driver. It was my sobriquet, not my birth name.

Driver.

I’d been working for the same limousine service since I made it back on this side of The Wall. Not since the day I got out, I’d hustled here and there, but it was my first real job. After two years of living on lockdown, I found that as hard as it was living in a cage it was even rougher when you finally had freedom’s sunshine on your face. I’d paid my debt, but a man with a record, no matter how legit he tries to be, will still get a hard time from the assholes holding the jobs.

Part of it was my look. I’d inherited a John Henry, railroad-worker build like my maternal granddaddy. When you were six-two and dark as an open road, you grew up knowing that America wasn’t as kumbaya as it claimed to be. In some countries a man who looked like me would be a king. Where I lived I just passed for a suspect. I learned how to soften that look. I shaved my head bald and wore glasses when I could. Glasses intellectualized my appearance. Actually I needed them for reading. My world was getting blurry. When a man turns forty his body starts to change. But, to be honest, I couldn’t hide what I owned. A few times I’d walked into a room and men pulled their women closer. Maybe because when some women saw me, there was a subtle shift, like somebody had struck a match down below.

Women hadn’t been shit but trouble in my world.

My relationship with women was the same as my love-hate relationship with L.A. The city was expensive and pretty, decorated in palm trees and beaches, and even with smog, earthquakes, road rage, and endless traffic, a woman that beautiful was hard to leave. She heated you up in the middle of the day and with a gentle breeze she cooled you off at night.