The Last Street Novel (11 page)

Shareef caught her flirtation and grinned. Like he said, he had a lot of energy for the extracurricular, so she rarely got a chance to sleep much around him. But that was okay, because he gave her body needed release, after she came several times from his hungry strokes.

He chuckled at it and said, “Yeah, that, too.”

Then she became curious as she sipped her orange juice.

“So…what are you thinking about this morning? Am I allowed to ask?”

He nodded and continued to stare out the window.

“Harlem,” he told her. Somebody wanted him to come back home and write a story. And he was still thinking about it.

“Harlem? What about it? I’ve never been there.”

When Jacqueline told him that, eighteen straight years of growing up in Harlem, New York, flashed through Shareef’s mind. He saw the buildings, the streets, the cars, the parks, the people, the graffiti, the billboards, the vendors, and the Apollo Theater. He heard the music, the jazz, the rhymers, the DJs, the preachers, the choir, the Nation, the players, the hustlers, the Five Percenters, and the crazy homeless people. He smelled the chicken, the greens, the brown stew, the bean pies, Chinese food, Indian dishes, doughnuts, trash, coffee, bacon and eggs, and the dead cats and dead dogs in the alleyways.

Shit, he could taste Harlem, and the first time he had blood in his mouth from a fistfight—it was outside his building on the East Side, at 121st Street and 2nd Avenue. He could feel Harlem, and the first time he bust a nut—at age thirteen with a fifteen-year-old Puerto Rican girl who thought it would be cute to turn out a wet-behind-the-ears black boy with her hot and ready pussy inside the projects of Spanish Harlem, while her overprotective mother went shopping at the grocery store. How could he put the sights, scenes, history, and emotions of Harlem into words without running outside the lines of the page, punching his pencil through the paper or running out of ink with his pen?

How many real-life stories could he tell about Harlem? Cynthia Washington had it right. Harlem had countless stories. Not just love stories, but everything. Because Harlem was the
truth.
Harlem was love. Harlem was sweat and tears. Harlem was broken dreams. Harlem was dreaming again. Harlem was never stop dreaming. Harlem was never stop living. Harlem was never stop hustling. Harlem was never stop
believing
. Harlem was never stop
achieving
. Harlem was…
shit!
…It was just…Harlem!

Got’ damn, this girl never been to Harlem?
Shareef asked himself frantically. He was still speechless. He couldn’t even move. Harlem had him in a trance. He had fucked around and zoned out while thinking about Harlem. And he had to stand up from his chair to think about it some more.

Jacqueline had asked him the question five minutes ago, and she was still waiting for an answer. When he abruptly stood up from his chair—a mad scientist in thought—she stared at him from the kitchen as if he had gone crazy.

She asked him, “Are you all right?”

He paused, then looked out the window and into the Atlantic Ocean with an idea.

“Come here for a minute,” he told her.

Jacqueline was hesitant. Shareef had a delirious look in his eyes.

He repeated “Come here,” with urgency.

She put down her glass and walked over to him, but she was still apprehensive. That’s just how insane he looked.

When she reached him, he stretched out his hands and pulled her body in front of his at the window.

“Stop,” she chirped like a scared teenager. What were his intentions?

Shareef pulled her in front of him anyway. He told her, “You see that big ocean out there?”

The Atlantic Ocean was right in front of them.

She said, “Yeah.” What was his point? He was scaring her.

He said, “I want you to imagine buildings coming up out of the water. Red buildings, brown buildings, gray buildings. And lots of them, covering up everything you can see.” He started turning her body in different directions with his. “Over there, over there, over there. And they’re all different sizes, too. Some of these buildings have twenty-something stories, and others only have ten. So they go up and down like this…”

He grabbed her right hand and moved it up and down and from side to side like a conductor at an opera.

Jacqueline started laughing. He was really getting into it.

He said, “And then, once the whole ocean is filled up with these buildings, right. I want you to imagine looking down at the streets, running inside all the buildings. Left, right, straight, back, and all over the place.” He showed her with his hands.

“And then you got cars and people on all of these streets, and inside all of these buildings. Blacks. Puerto Ricans. Dominicans. Jamaicans. Haitians. Africans. East Indians. A few lost white people running around. Asians running in and out of the corner stores. And right in the middle of all that, right. Right in the middle.” He showed her with a slice of his hand through the middle of the ocean.

He said, “You got a Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street. And on that motherfucker, it’s ten blocks of shops, stores, restaurants, and street vendors all trying to sell you shit while you walk by.”

Then he pushed her away from him. “All right, now you walk toward me.”

Jacqueline looked at him and shook her head, embarrassed by his enthusiasm.

He said, “Come on, walk toward me.”

He was so hyper and assertive that she had to walk toward him before he exploded, and blew up the room. And as soon as she began to walk, he grabbed at her like make-believe salespeople.

“Hey, I got some new shoes for you. What size you wear?”

Then he grabbed her from the other side.

“Do you wear hats? Girl, I got the prettiest hats in the world for you.”

He jumped to the other side again and told her, “Keep on walking. You can’t stop for these people. You don’t have no money. You just checking out the block.”

Jacqueline did what he told her and was tickled as hell. It wasn’t even eight o’clock in the morning yet, and his ass was wide awake on a natural high over Harlem.

“Hey, you, you, you, I have pretty dress for you,” he told her.

Then he jumped to the other side of her.

“Hey, baby girl, you need your hair done. I can hook you up good.”

Back and forth he went like a maniac.

“Hey, try this new apple pie in here. This is an original recipe, just try it.”

“Hey, sis, I got some dope incense for you. Lighters. Dictionaries. Condoms. Tampons. I got everything you need.”

Jacqueline stopped again and couldn’t stop laughing.

Shareef said, “I told you, don’t stop. Because if you stop, they gon’ get your money. I mean, it’s like walking through a gauntlet in Harlem.”

“Wait a minute, I thought you said I didn’t have any money?” Jacqueline reminded him.

“Yeah, that’s what you tell them. But if you stop, and you really have some money on you, they gon’ find it,” he told her. “They’ll have you digging in your socks and your panties pulling out money.”

She laughed and asked him, “What, are they just robbing you in broad daylight?”

“Nah, they’re hustling you. And Harlem is the capital of hustle. Hands down. I mean, Harlem is like…” He ran out of words to explain and walked closer to the window. He stretched his arms and hands up to the ceiling as if he were holding up the world.

“Yo, B, it’s Harlem
world
up in here, baby! This is
Harlem World
!” he shouted and beat his chest like King Kong.

Jacqueline grinned and shook her head again. Shareef was off his rocker—and she liked it.

After he had used up all his energy trying to explain to her what Harlem was like, he had to sit back in his chair. He wasn’t as young as he used to be, and even young guys were forced to rest after taxing themselves.

Shareef took a long swallow of his orange juice and said, “Come here. Come sit on my lap,” and he smacked his right leg.

She did what he told her. And when she sat in his lap, he was still smiling like an overjoyed kid. But that kid turned into a passionate man again when he started to kiss her lips, fondle her breasts, suck on her neck, and run his hands through her thick, long hair.

Jacqueline got into it for a minute, but then she stopped and looked him in the face.

“What? What’s wrong?” he asked her.

She told him, “I think I’m a little bit jealous.”

He frowned. “Jealous? Jealous of what?”

She asked him, “You feel that strongly about Harlem?”

Shareef relaxed and grinned at her. He said, “I’ll put it to you this way. You know how people talk about Johannesburg and Rio de Janeiro, Paris, Hong Kong and Tokyo. You know how they talk about that? Cairo and Amsterdam and shit? Tel Aviv?”

She nodded her head in silence.

He said, “Well, in America, it’s Harlem. You go to New York, and you go to Times Square downtown, and Harlem uptown. And there ain’t no uptown in the world like Harlem. That’s just all there is to it. It’s culture there.”

Jacqueline continued to stare at him.

“Are you gonna take me there?” she asked, seduction in her dark eyes.

Shareef nodded and said, “I’ma take you there.” He pulled up her long baseball shirt, and added, “I’ma take you there right now.” He tugged off his boxers and made her straddle him in the chair. Jacqueline smiled and kissed his lips, and Harlem felt so good, twenty-seven stories up above the Atlantic Ocean in Hollywood, Florida. Harlem felt wonderful; up and down and in and out of her body.

A
T
10:26
AM
Shareef typed the word “Harlem” into his Macintosh G5 computer, which sat on a desk on the top level of his split condo in front of the bed. His computer faced the Atlantic Ocean for inspiration. He looked at the word excitedly before he increased the point size to 72. Then he saved it in a new file titled “Harlem World.”

Jacqueline crept up behind him as soon as he had finished.

“What are you doing, writing your book about Harlem already?”

She was butt naked and beautiful from head to toe.

Shareef turned to face her in his rotating chair and grabbed her naked body into his face to kiss and suck on her flat stomach.

“Not yet,” he told her in between his kisses. “I’m just saving the idea on file. Then I’ll come back to it. That’s my process.”

She rubbed his head and the back of his neck while he continued to kiss and suck her belly. She moaned, “Mmm, let’s go take a shower together.”

That’s what older men loved about young and sexy women. They were always open to more play.

Shareef smiled and told her, “How ’bout you run the warm water in the Jacuzzi instead. Then light them candles up in there and turn off the lights. And after I make some phone calls, I’ll sneak up in there with you like a butt-naked stalker. Aw’ight? Go do that for me.”

He spun her around and smacked her on her naked ass to go.

She cracked a baby girl’s smile and headed toward the bathroom.

“Don’t have me in here waiting too long, either. I don’t want to turn into a prune before you get to me.”

“Well, put some oils and bubble bath and shit in there with you.”

She shook her head and kept on walking.

Shareef turned back to his desk and picked up the cordless phone that sat next to the computer screen.

F
ICTION EDITOR
W
ILLIAM
S
ORENSKI
, a tall, waifish, dark-haired book enthusiast in a button-down shirt, Dockside slacks, and casual leather shoes, sat in his corner office on the eighteenth floor of the Worldwide Publishing Group building in the middle of Times Square. He could see everything right out of his office window; one of the best views in the building, which proved how much the company liked him. Bill had made some great buys for WPG, including signing Shareef Crawford, who had become one of their strongest stars in African-American books.

Bill was leaning back in his extra high, black leather office chair reading through a soft-back copy of a self-published book entitled
The Street Life.
He read a few pages in silence before he grunted and closed the book. He picked up another self-published street book, this one titled
A Game of Hustling
. He seemed to have a dozen of them spread out across his desk that morning.

When his office phone rang, he ignored it and continued with his reading. He read a few more pages of
A Game of Hustling
before he shook his head and closed that book as well. A moment later, his secretary paged him.

“Bill, Shareef Crawford’s on line two. You want me to tell him you’ll call him back?”

Bill sat up in his chair and said, “Oh, no, I’ll take it,” and tossed the street book on his desk.

He jumped on the line with his celebrated author and said, “Shareef, how’s it goin’, buddy? The new book is doing great. We climbed up to number seven this week. Four more spots and you’ll break your old record.”

“That’s good, that’s good,” Shareef told him. “Let’s keep counting them peanuts.”

“Ah, they’re a little more than peanuts,” Bill told him with a smile. “They’re more like walnuts.”

Shareef laughed and said, “Yeah, as long as they keep adding up. But anyway, man, I got something new I wanna run past you.”

“Oh yeah, what’s that?”

When you’re a star writer, everything is doable. So Bill was open for anything from Shareef.

“Yo, I’m thinking about writing a book about a Harlem gangster.”

Bill heard Shareef and paused. How ironic? He wanted to get into the street-fiction game himself, but with his celebrated author of romance titles? He wasn’t so sure.

First he asked him, “You can write that stuff?”

Shareef sounded offended. “Come on, man, I’m from Harlem. I know the streets. What, you forgot who you’re talking to? This is me.”

“Yeah, but I mean, you haven’t written anything like that.”

“But you’ve already said I have the strongest male characters, right? So what do you think street fiction is about? More male characters.”

Bill paused again to try and figure out how best to break the publishing industry taboo to one of his favorite authors.

He took a breath and said, “Shareef, book readers are extremely loyal to reading the same thing. So if you start off as a romance writer, that’s what they expect from you.”

Shareef cut him off and said, “Bill, I know this industry as well as you do. And that’s the first thing I said when someone mentioned this idea to me. Keep doing what you do. But at the same time, man, a good book is a good book. And
nobody
can outwrite me about Harlem.”

He said, “People mail me these street books every day of the week. And that shit never goes deeper than the surface. Not to mention how terrible half of that shit is written. They’re just on their hustle, man. I understand it. But now when the
master
decides to put his pen down on Harlem, it’s a
wrap
!”

Bill believed him. He really did. The words and the passion behind them were more than braggadocio with Shareef, he was a skilled professional, and was indeed a standout.

So he said, “I don’t doubt that you can outwrite these guys. But as I read through some of this stuff, I really doubt that the audience pays that much attention to how well it’s written. I mean, I think most of this material is pure, ah, sensationalism. And it doesn’t paint the best picture of the African-American community. So to throw yourself in the middle of that is going to be a more, ah, of an arduous challenge than you believe right now.”

Bill was trying to be as logical as possible, picking his words with tact.

Shareef responded, “But if I pulled it off, everybody would be talking about it, right?” He awaited an answer in the affirmative. Instead, Bill took another pause, a deep breath, and came up with a perfect parallel.

He said, “Sure, everyone may talk about it, but it may not mean that they’ll give you their support and blessings. I’m quite sure some of them, if not a lot of them really, would view your writing street fiction similar to an R and B singer putting out a gangsta rap album. And I don’t think that’s the kind of comparison you’d want.”

Shareef heard his analogy and broke out laughing.

“Oh, shit! It’s that bad, hunh?”

“Well, it’s not as if you’re some unknown writer who can just up and change directions without anyone knowing about it. You have quite a fan base now. I mean, what will your million women fans think?” Bill asked him.

Shareef fell silent for a spell with no immediate response. His editor didn’t like the sound of that. Shareef always had something to say. So Bill gave him a way out.

“Well, if you’re that serious about trying to write some of this stuff, then maybe we could come up with a pseudonym or something, I don’t know. We could call you The King.”

Shareef listened and started laughing again. He said, “You’re a funny guy, man. The King, hunh?”

Bill chuckled at it himself. “Yeah,” he said, “you know, short for The King of the Streets. Then you can have the best of both worlds. You’ll keep your walnuts with the female fan base and get some of the guys with the street lit. You’d be like ah, R. Kelly and Jay Z rolled into one.”

Shareef laughed even harder.

“R. Kelly and Jay Z? What do you know about R. Kelly and Jay Z?”

“Hey, man, I’m up on things. I read,” Bill answered. “So, what do you think about that idea?”

Shareef paused again. “I mean, I don’t know yet, man. I was actually thinking about writing something as a nonfiction, to tell you the truth.”

Bill raised his brow. “You mean about a real person?”

“Yeah, that’s how the idea came up.”

“Well, is this guy still alive or dead?”

“He’s in jail. I’ll have to go in and visit him.”

That changed everything for Bill.

“Well, that may come under the Son of Sam law,” he responded.

“Even if he doesn’t accept payment for it?”

“What, this guy would give you his story for free?”

Bill seriously doubted that. In America everything was a deal.

Shareef said, “Or, he could donate the proceeds to someone else, couldn’t he?”

“I’ll have to check on that,” Bill told him.

“In the meantime, I’ll do a little research trip up in Harlem next week to see what kind of material I’ll be dealing with.”

Bill heard him and became a little concerned.

“Hey, ah, you be careful hanging out up in Harlem.”

Shareef laughed again. “What do you think, these guys who are writing these streets books are any safer than I am? It’s just regular research, asking the right people the right questions, like any other book.”

“Yeah, but a lot of these guys are still on the streets. I mean, the last time I checked, Shareef, you were living quite comfy down in Florida.”

Bill was opening Shareef up like only a professional editor could. To get the right material, you had to push your way into the truth.

Shareef made note of that himself. He said, “That’s why I like you, man. You’re always honest with me.”

“Hey, if an editor can’t be honest, then he’s not doing his job.”

“Aw’ight, well, I’ll try my best to stay safe up in Harlem for you,” Shareef humored him.

Bill joked back and asked, “You know of any, ah, bodyguard services or anything for while you’re up there?”

He had Shareef laughing more than usual that morning. “Bodyguard services? That’s the last thing you want to do in research. That only brings more attention to you. And this is my old neighborhood we’re talking about. People still know me there.”

“Yeah, I was only joking with you,” Bill responded. “Unless you really want to use one.”

Shareef told him, “Look, man, I will not be walking around Harlem with bodyguards. Okay?” And that was that.

When Bill hung up the phone, he thought to himself for a second.

“I bet Shareef could pull this off,” he said out loud. He took another moment to convince himself. Shareef had all the research and writing skills, and like he kept saying, he was from Harlem.

In the meantime, Bill had his own research to do on whether any of the street writers were worth signing. He picked up the next self-published street book from his desk—this one titled
A Hard Way to Die
—and started reading.

B
ACK DOWN IN
F
LORIDA
, Shareef hung up the phone and immediately went searching through his cabinets for the business card on which Cynthia Washington had written her number. He was not concerned at all about being safe in Harlem. That was ridiculous. Harlem was his people. So he thought no more about it.

He found Cynthia’s card and dialed her number on his office phone. Her card said she was a legal secretary for a law firm, Taylor and Scott. Shareef wondered if that’s how she met Michael Springfield. She answered his call on the second ring.

“Hello.”

“Long time no hear, no speak, no see,” he answered.

“Who is this?”

“Shareef Crawford.”

“Oh, hey stranger. What a coincidence? I just thought about you today,” she told him.

“About writing your jail story?” he teased her.

“Among other things, yeah. So you called me back, hunh?”

“You didn’t expect me to?”

“Actually, I was going to give you until August before I started calling you. I figured you would still be on tour until then.”

“Yeah, I just finished touring. So outside of your jail story, what else were you thinking about me?” he quizzed her.

“Umm…how strong your stroke was. And your strong conversation, of course.”

Shareef chuckled and spun his chair around. He didn’t want to have Jacqueline walk out and catch him on the phone with another woman talking about his stroke. A mistress was more than a one-night stand. He had to protect his security with her.

“Oh yeah, in what order?” he asked Cynthia, while eyeing the bathroom door.

“The conversation came first.”

“But that’s not what you said first.”

“Well, that’s what I meant to say.”

Shareef chuckled and said, “Anyway, I’ve been thinking about this Harlem crime story you asked me about.” He figured he could flirt with her anytime, and in person, where he could do more about it. But he was calling her about business.