Flip Side of the Game (11 page)

“Well, the next time you'll mind your business,” Taj said.

“You had no reason to be up in Quincy's face anyway. That's Shannon's man.”

“Shannon is my best friend.”

“Yeah, but Quincy is not your man. Your man is right here, and your man is telling you to stay out of that the next time. You see how the shit ended up.”

Before I could respond, the phone rang. “He's back!” Shannon was blaring in my ear as soon as I picked up the phone, not even waiting for me to say hello. “What should I do?”

Taj pointed toward the door to let me know he was going to the bathroom. “Who's back?” I asked Shannon.

“Quincy!” she shouted.

“Is he pissed off?”

“A little, but he's not angry. He's a workable pissed off.”

“Okay, what now?” I asked.

“I want him back,” she said.

“Okay, well, act sick.”

“What?”

“Yeah, act sick. Cough real loud, act like you have to hog spit phlegm all the time, like this, awwh, hack! Awwh, hack!”

“I'm not hog spittin' no damn phlegm. Are you crazy? I wanna screw his ass when this is all over with, not have him looking at me like I got STD of the mouth! Plus, I want this man. I'ma sit his ass down and tell him the truth. Lay it all on the line before I'm left alone for good.”

“There you go, being stupid. You have to think like a man. A cheatin' man don't tell yo' ass shit that you don't already know. Even when you catch him in the act, by the time he's done telling the story, it's something different. Don't you go admitting to anything. Just listen to what he has to say, and if he doesn't bring it up, then neither do you. Damn, Shannon, where yo' game at?”

“Game? Fuck that game. I love this man. To hell with you. I'ma marry his ass. All I need to know from you is what I have to do to get his sympathy. Make him feel sorry for me, so that I can play on him feeling bad and go in for the kill.”

“Well, don't go hog spitin' phlegm. That would fuck your whole situation up. Just lay in the bed and moan, and make sure your coochie is clean.”

“What, bitch?”

“Freshen it up and place some Victoria's Secret apple spray between your thighs.”

“Why?” she said, surprised.

“So when you get his ass where you want 'im, he can have breakfast on you. Always be prepared.”

She laughed. “You should get paid for your ho qualities. They really are outstanding.” She hung up.

Taj came back into the bedroom with a towel wrapped around his waist. “I have a twelve hour shift tonight. In between time, when I get a break, I'll stop over at the shop. Do you need anything, before I leave?” he said, removing his towel and then slipping on his boxers.

“Depends on what you're offering.”

He smiled. Then he bent over so he and I were face-to-face as I sat on the edge of the bed. He placed his forehead against mine and said, “While I'm out, don't play me. Behave.”

“What do you mean
behave
?” Before I could get him to answer, the phone rang.

“Yes, Shannon?” I said, answering the phone.

“It worked, girl! I'm on my way to the emergency room! Hollah!”

I fell out laughing, but Taj didn't seem amused. “What's your problem?” I asked him.

“You.”

“What did I do?”

“You're still playing games,” he insisted.

“What games?”

“You know what games. That guy Roger keeps calling here, and I peeped the new Movado watch you been rockin'.”

“I can't wear a new watch now?” I said, sucking my teeth.

“Movado, Vera?”

“So.”

“So? Understand this, check yourself and stop playing with me. I will leave your ass high and fuckin' dry. Believe dat. You're not slick, Vera.”

“Taj, I bought this watch.”

He chuckled. “Stop runnin' game. You're no good at it. Now, look, let me let you in on a secret. A chick with real game would have taken the watch that she got from Roger back to the store, received a store credit, came and got me, and then we would have picked out a watch together. I would have paid for the watch, then the next day, you would've taken my receipt back to the store, got the money back, purchased the watch with the store credit, and laughed all the way to the bank.”

Damn, this mu'fucker is good
, I thought to myself. Why didn't I think of that? Instead, the watch Roger sent, I took it back to the Movado store on Madison and exchanged it for the one with the princess cut diamonds completely filling the face.

I rolled my eyes and said, “Taj, please.” Then I paused and hit him with the weakest line in the book: “I don't have anything to hide. If I had something to hide, then I would have played you like that.”

“Bullshit,” he said, playfully mushing me on the side of my head. “You just didn't think of it. But I'm warning you, play me if you want to, and your ass will be in tears.”

Psst, this nigga really don't know me. The last time I cried over a man, Old D.B. had dropped out of rehab. Ever since then I'd been straight. I just looked at Taj as if to say, “please,” because the real deal was that Roger tried to apologize his way back into my life.

He called begging me to please reconsider our relationship.

“Relationship!” I said to him, nasty and full of venom. “You are such a joke!”

“I understand,” Roger said, pleading, but with an edge of coldness. “I get it.”

After that I got the watch in the mail with a note that read:
Your time will come
.

As I was going to explain the situation to Taj, I figured fuck him! It seemed that he always thought I was playing a game, so let him think that.

Taj's breath was cool hitting my lips as he spoke. “I told you to tell him once before to stop calling, and he hasn't.”

“Taj, please spare me.” Then I jumped off the bed, with an attitude and walked toward the bathroom. I felt him watching my ass as I was leaving the room.

“Why did you leave me in the trash dump?” I practiced saying to myself in the bathroom mirror. “Why did you leave me in the trash dump?” Nobody answered.

I cracked the door open and looked into my bedroom to see if Taj had gone. He was already dressed in his mint green scrubs and was hanging his stethoscope around his neck. He dabbed some Dolce &Gabbana behind each ear, ran his tongue over his teeth, and headed toward the bathroom. He didn't bother to knock. He stuck his head into the open crack, where I was standing with no bra and a pair of green silk panties on.

“My father always said to never leave the person you love upset, so I'll just say this, I love you, but don't fuck it up.”

I ignored him. Ten minutes later, I came out of the bathroom and noticed that it was only seventy-thirty, but I didn't have plans on going into the shop until nine. I slipped on Taj's favorite Victoria's Secret green apple pushup bra, a pair of beaded Manolo thongs, and a sleeveless DKNY black denim dress, and headed out the door. I jumped in my X5 and slowly drove toward Lincoln Street.

When I called Aunt Cookie to tell her what I wanted to do, she refused to go with me. Instead she said, “Don't get down there and show yo' ass, Vera! Have them talkin' 'bout what Cookie did, what Cookie didn't do. I hate to wreck shop on Lincoln Street! Tell 'em I said don't fuck wit' ya, 'cause Aunt Cookie will beat a mu'fucker down!”

As I slowly rode down Lincoln Street, I saw Rowanda dressed in a pair of jeans, a white T-shirt, and her hair hanging in a long ponytail. She was smacking on a piece of chewing gum and she had her purse draped across her breast. I pulled over to the side of the street and said, “Rowanda! Where you going?”

She walked slowly across the street. I couldn't tell if she actually didn't know it was me, or if she couldn't believe that I had actually come to look for her.

“Vee?” she said, standing at the passenger side of the window.

“Yeah.”

“What you doin' here, Vee? You know niggas is gettin' jacked around here, 'specially this early in the morning, and I don't feel like fightin' no mu'fucker for messin' wit' my baby.”

“Rowanda, I came to see you.”

“Me?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I tell you what,” she snapped. “If you think I'ma stand here while you cussin' me and tellin' me how I'm a fiend, you dead wrong!”

“I didn't come for that. I came to talk to you.”

“About what?” she said, leaning against the door.

“Tell me about my father,” I said, surprised at myself. I had no intentions on asking her this.

“Larry Turner?” She frowned.

“He was my father, wasn't he?”

“Yeah, if that's what you wanna call him. Larry wasn't shit. Cookie can tell you that. He ain't give a fuck about nobody but himself.”

“Not even me? You had a baby with a man that didn't even give a fuck about me?”

“Vera, I was fifteen years old,” she said defensively.

“And that's all you have to say for yourself? So fuckin' what? I was still a child.”

“Look, Vee,” she said, cutting me off. “I'm sorry, but I don't have no ‘white picket fence, Jack and Jill fell in love on the hill, met, married, and then fucked the nigga' story to tell you. I had a hard life, so don't expect no love story. Your Uncle Boy is all the daddy that you need to know.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Is Larry Turner the reason you put me in the trash dump?”

“Vee,” she said, holding her head down, leaning away from the car and looking at her feet, “I lay in that bed and quivered in pain all night long. I lay there and I was shaken, I was shittin', and I was screaming and hollering
why
! I ain't know what I had done to be born a dog in this life. So, when my back cracked open and you dropped out my pussy like a ball of fire, I wrapped you in a white sheet and figured that you had a better chance in a trash dump than a life in hell with me, and that ain't have nothin' to do wit' Larry Turner.”

I couldn't stand to hear any more, so I took off.

The late summer sun was slow about creeping its way into the sky, and seeing that it was covered mostly by gray, I was sure that today would be in slow motion when I arrived at the shop.

DeAndre, my assistant, sat at his station with a cup of Dunkin' Donuts coffee in his hand, mad as hell because he couldn't control the rain. “The weatherman fuckin' with my commission!” he announced as I walked in the door. “Humph, I can't tell Rent-A-Center that their fifty-seven dollars is outside in the rain.”

“Rent-A-Center?” I asked.

“That's right! Rent-A-Center is the ghetto's Ethan Allen. You feel me? Their shit is badder than King's Furniture.”

“You could always move,” the Dominican shampoo girl, Rosa, insisted. “Papi, Rent-A-Center be too high.”

“You gonna have to break that down for me,” DeAndre said.

“Check this, papi. If you call 'em de day before you move and have dem deliver de stuff, you just jet de next day.”

“Mm-hmm, and be picked up that afternoon. Humph, let me try that and I'll have Spiderman on my ass, shootin' webs and blindin' folks, throwin' kryptonite and shit. Naw, I'll pass. That's too ghetto-fab for me!”

“Y'all ever have anything on layaway?” I asked.

“Heck yeah,” DeAndre responded. “My mother would layaway a damn man if she could! What about you?”

“Anything I ever had on layaway never came off,” I said, flopping down in my station chair. “When my grandma was alive, she would say, “I got y'all something for Christmas, but it's on layaway.”

“Damn, for Christmas?” Rosa asked.

“Hell, yeah, for Christmas. The only thing we could ever count on being there for Christmas was the Charlie Brown special and the Macy's parade. Santa always got jacked before he hit my part of the projects.”

“Yeah, you about right,” DeAndre said. “One Christmas Eve, when I was ten, my brother came in the house half-drunk with blood on his shirt. When my mother asked him what happened, he told her that he had just shot Rudolph. That shit fucked me up. I thought he was talking about the reindeer, not the kid down the hall. 'Til this day, I still need therapy behind that.”

We all fell out laughing.

“When did y'all discover that you actually lived in the ghetto?” DeAndre asked.

“When the heifer went to college!” Shannon said, coming in snacking on a pretzel with three hickeys on her neck.

“How are you just going to get in our conversation?” I said to her as she walked over and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “Anyway,” I said, “she's right. And to answer your question, I realized it when mu'fuckas actually paid their gas and electric bill after October fifteenth. That was the first hint!”

They all laughed.

“What about y'all?” I asked.

“Well me,” DeAndre said, “I realized that I lived in the ghetto when I started going to college in Long Island and my roommate let this kid talk about his mama and he ain't drop his ass! That's when I knew that somehow shit was different!”

“Hold up,” DeAndre said, concentrating on the song that just came on the radio. “Wait a minute now. Rosa,” he said, “turn that up, mami!”

The radio sang A Taste of Honey's “Boogie Oogie Oogie.” As the band's bass guitar dipped into the beat and the rhythm made its way through the shop, DeAndre set it off with doing a dance called the Slide, and Rosa came up behind him and started breaking it down with a dance called the Bus Stop.