The Last Street Novel (20 page)

Spoonie complained, “Now you dun’ wrinkled my shirt all the fuck up, try’na make me look like you. Sloppy nigga.”

Polo froze and said, “What? Hold up now, I know you ain’t riffin’ on my gear. Why you think they call me Polo?”

Spoonie looked him up and down, from his velvet hat to his shoes, and said, “’Cause you a big, roly-poly-lookin’ nigga. That’s why. It ain’t got shit to do wit’ ya’ gear.”

Polo said, “Aw, B, you always been hatin’ on my style. But I see what it is now. You’d like to have some of my fly clothes, wouldn’t you? You’d like to have some of the fly women I got, and do the things I do.”

Spoonie said, “Aw, nigga, stop the fuckin’ cameras. You ain’t
The Mack,
you’s a regular burger, with no lettuce, no tomatoes, no special sauce. You straight off the fuckin’ family picnic grill with grease and ketchup runnin’ out the side, fuckin’ up your fingers and shit. You sloppy-ass nigga. Cancel that fuckin’ order and let’s go up in here and get something else to drink.”

He said, “And Shareef, you payin’ for the shit, nigga, ’cause you got money. Now let’s go.”

Spoonie walked forward and slipped into the restaurant without another word. Polo and Shareef were still standing outside.

Polo asked his boy in confusion, “Who the fuck this nigga think he is, B?”

Shareef shook his head and smiled, taking it all in stride.

He said, “He’s a Harlem nigga. That’s what makes Harlem,” and he slipped inside the restaurant behind him.

Polo was the last one in. He told himself, “That nigga’s crazy, that’s what that is. Straight up and down.”

The Harlem Grill was a more ritzy establishment, with wooden panels, reddish brown earth tones, and small private booths that were situated low to the ground. It gave customers a more intimate feeling. They even had dark curtains inside for added privacy.

Spoonie was stopped at the reception booth up front. As soon as he saw Shareef walk in, he said, “Yeah, I got my man, a
New York Times
bestselling author right here. He’s writing a new book on Harlem now. You ever heard of Shareef Crawford? He’s out of Harlem.”

The older male receptionist, dressed in a button-down shirt and a nice sports jacket, the uniform Shareef generally wore, nodded to him and extended his hand.

He said, “My wife and daughter read your books.”

Shareef shook his hand and nodded back to him.

“That’s good.”

Spoonie said, “So, yeah, he just wanted to see the place. I mean, we know we don’t have reservations, but we just wanted to walk through.”

By the time Polo made it inside, a curvy waitress noticed Shareef standing at the front as well.

“Shareef Crawford,” she called out like she knew him. “I love your stuff.”

Polo eyed the woman from the back as she breezed on by with drink orders in hand.

He mumbled, “Damn, I love your stuff,
too.
”

The receptionist smiled at him and asked, “How many are in your group?”

Shareef said, “It’s just us three. We just wanna look around and give you some more bar money, that’s all.”

The brother leaned his head forward and said, “Come on in. But we don’t have any tables available.”

Spoonie said, “That’s cool. We’ll just stand with our drinks.”

“And nice meeting you, brother,” the receptionist told Shareef as they walked in.

“Ay, no problem, man. And thanks.”

As they walked through the restaurant and past the low tables toward a larger area to the back right, Spoonie grinned and said, “Shit, I can use you like a black card, Shareef. You need to move back up to Harlem.”

Polo told him, “Stop leechin’, nigga. Hold ya’ own weight.”

“What, like you hold yours?” Spoonie responded to him.

Shareef finally asked them, “Y’all gon’ riff all night long? Cut that shit out and let me enjoy this for a minute.”

Spoonie looked at Polo and stated, “The money has spoken. Time to shut the fuck up.”

Shareef cracked another smile and shook his head.

When they walked into the larger room to the back right. It was more wide open, well lit, with more furniture, no curtains, a giant, projection screen TV toward the front, and a raised platform where at least ten, flashy-dressed men played a game of cards. They all looked important: fresh haircuts, attention-getting clothes, jewelry, expensive caps, and plenty of swagger. They played their game of cards as if no one else in the room existed. A steady stream of food and drinks were rushed to their table.

Shareef looked them over. He told himself,
Now this is what I’m talking about, the insider’s club.

He asked Spoonie, “You recognize any of ’em?” Harlem always had new people. The place was a magnet for opportunists from all over New York and beyond.

Spoonie nodded and said, “Yeah, but they ain’t talkin’, I can tell you that.”

Just then Spoonie nodded to a few of them who were facing him. But it was only a nod of recognition. It wasn’t as if they wanted to talk to him. Spoonie knew the rules. When they wanted to talk, they would call you over to their table.

“What about you, Polo? Who you know over there?”

Polo said, “Man, I don’t be hanging out like that no more. I go to work and go home. I stay up in Washington Heights more now anyway.”

Shareef was thinking,
What good are they? How can they still live in Harlem and not know anyone well enough to speak?

But it was only his ego talking. Harlem had always had a strict class system. If you were not a part of a certain class, you could see a person every day of your life and never be invited to really know them. That’s just how the place was. There were too many people there, representing far too many cliques, for many of them to invite you in.

Millionaires socializing with beggars was dangerous. It only caused more envy. So unless you could keep up and keep it moving, Harlem would turn its head and leave you behind in a heartbeat. Life was less complicated that way. So Harlemites had learned to stick with their own and stay with their own for their safety, and for their emotional well-being. Because if you couldn’t keep up with your group of friends, family members, or neighbors, you could easily get your feelings hurt and slip into a social depression that was ripe for addictions to drugs, alcohol, sex, and general crime.

Technically speaking, Harlem, New York, was the most significant microcosm of American economics, culture, and social status, and it all sat right there in front of you, in a square radius of less than five miles.

Shareef knew all that himself. Or maybe he had forgotten. But while he stood there with no table or chair inside the cozy restaurant, he was surely reminded of Harlem’s community status. At the same time, that out-of-reach status was what made Harlem so alluring in the first place. Everyone wanted to get in, be in, and stay in, and they were all that close to it, like having a lottery ticket with one more number to go for a big hit.

Shit!
Shareef stood there and cursed himself.
I’ll look like a straight-up asshole if I just walk over there and introduce myself. And I bet none of them guys read much, especially not my kind of books. So what do I have to say to them?

“Can I get you something to drink, Mr. Crawford?” a second waitress asked him. Obviously, they had shared information on who he was.

Shareef wasn’t that interested in drinks at the moment. But once he thought about it, he figured, if the waitresses were ready to serve him on a name basis, then maybe he could use that to make himself feel more valuable in the room. After all, he was a somebody himself now, and deserved respect.

So he said loud enough for seated customers to overhear him, “Yeah, take my friends’ orders, and I’ll just order last. This a nice place y’all got up in here,” he added with swagger of his own.

He was making it known to everyone that he was important enough to be served while still standing. Sure enough, a few of the guys at the card game gave him notice.
Who is this guy?

After Spoonie and Polo had ordered, Shareef said, “Give me an extra large Amaretto sour.”

The waitress smiled and said, “Okay.”

“You read any of my work?” he asked her before she left.

She continued to smile and said, “Of course.”

He said, “That’s good, that’s a good thing. If I get to know you a little better, I’ll put you up in the next one.”

She stopped and asked, “For real?”

She wasn’t originally from Harlem. The young woman had only moved there a year ago from Ohio, and she was still looking to break into something special, like a thousand others who moved there. But she wasn’t exotic enough for Shareef’s usual taste. She was only a seven. He was just testing his status in the room with her, while using her as a pawn in the game of social chess.

He said, “You give me your number before I leave, and you know, we’ll talk about it.”

She nodded and said, “Okay.”

Polo and Spoonie giggled their asses off as soon as she left them.

“Yo, you gon’ have that girl wet up her panties in here, son. She gon’ have to change her underwear in the back,” Polo joked.

Spoonie said, “If she wearing any.”

Shareef only smiled at it. He knew what he was doing. The waitress was not his focal point. He continued to notice the reactions to his power move.

A woman to his left looked on from her table, where she sat with her date, and asked, “Excuse me, but are you, ah, who I think you are?”

Shareef nodded and asked her, “Do you read books?”

She immediately smiled, snapped her fingers and said, “Shareef Crawford.”

“In the flesh,” he told her smoothly.

She said, “Aw, I wish I had my book on me. I was just reading that new one today?”

“The Full Moon?”

“Yeah. That book is good.”

“Thanks.”

He was thanking her for plenty of reasons actually. She was really causing a storm of interest in there. Half of the room began to eye Shareef, and mostly the women. That only made the guys look harder.

He told himself,
Now this feels a little better,
as the drinks arrived. He took his off the tray, took a sip of it, and the waitress slid him her number on a business card all out in plain view.

“Don’t take it if you’re not gonna call me.”

She smiled, and went to the next customer.

Polo grinned with his own drink in hand. He said, “Shit, you better call her up, son.”

“And get your dick sucked,” Spoonie whispered. “You see them perfect lips on her?”

Shareef chuckled at it. He was working the room just like a novel. Everything was falling right into place. All he needed now was an available table.

“Hey, look what the cat brought in,” someone stated right beside him.

Shareef looked and locked in on Jurrell Garland, his old neighborhood nemesis again. Jurrell looked jazzy in a wide-collar oxford shirt. It was cream with thick vertical stripes of orange and brown. He wore dark blue jeans, sharp brown leather shoes, and smelled good, too, with a great choice of cologne.

He held his right hand out for a shake, while his left hand embraced the light-brown fingers of a lady friend.

Shareef was stunned and speechless.

“You gon’ leave me hangin’ over here, Shareef?” Jurrell asked him about the handshake. He smiled, good-heartedly.

Shareef finally snapped out of his daze and shook his hand after switching his drink to the left.

“My bad, you caught me off guard.”

Jurrell said, “That’s twice in one day now. That must mean something.” He added, “Oh, Meesha, this is Shareef Crawford, a bestselling author. We went to grade school together in East Harlem.”

Meesha nodded with a slight grin. She said, “My girlfriend has all of your books. Wait till I tell her I met you here tonight.”

She had an easy way about her and was a sure nine. She actually reminded him of Jurrell’s mother at about the same age. Shareef had always had a boyish crush on his nemesis’s mother. And with Jurrell getting into trouble at school as much as he had, all of the kids had seen plenty of her.

Jurrell asked him, “You got a table in here?”

“Ah, nah, we were just ah, you know, passing through.”

Jurrell looked at Spoonie and Polo and spoke to them.

“What’s up, fellas?”

“Yeah, what’s up?” they both mumbled.

Jurrell then eyed the drink in Shareef’s left hand and said, “You gon’ drink that standing up in the middle of the floor? I’ll let you share my table.”

“What table?” Shareef asked him. There were no tables available.

The next thing he knew, a group of four walked past, and a waitress gave Jurrell the signal to move forward, while she quickly wiped off a small table that was up front near the large-screen projection TV.

“This table right here,” Jurrell answered slyly.