The Last Street Novel (8 page)

A
T SEVENTEEN MINUTES
after midnight, up on the twenty-second floor, inside the Author’s Suite at the Sheraton, Shareef showed the sexy young woman what he meant by fucking. He locked her legs back and over his arms and shoulders while he bulldozed into her sweet spot, enjoying her squeals.

“Uunnhhh! Uunnhhh! Oohh! Oohh! Oooohhh!”

She had no idea the man would give it to her that strongly. Her plan was to romance him, take him to bed, sex him good, get what she could get out of it, and make a strong pitch to him for a new book idea. But Shareef had flipped the script and showed her that he was much more than a mental specimen. He was physical. Extremely physical. And he wanted to prove it to her.

To lessen the impact, she tried in vain to steady his strokes with the force of her arms and hands against his chest. But with his ramrod posture and muscle mass, even her strongest push was like trying to move an elephant. Then she felt herself arriving at full climax and lost it. She tried to scratch his back to help him share in the pain and pleasure that he was giving her. Shareef, however, could not allow the scratches. So he grabbed her hands in his, aware that she was coming, and he allowed himself to settle into her spot until she had released the glory, torture, and toil of heaven, hell, and earth.

When she came, the nut was stronger than words could explain. Only images could explain the bliss she felt. There were flurries of inch-long snowflakes that fell from the hotel ceiling and landed on Cynthia’s face, sizzling into perspiration on contact, creating a sheet of soothing sweat that ran into the pillows under her head. And just when she thought it was over, Shareef amassed a second nut inside of her. And then a third.

What the fuck is he on?
she asked herself. This writer was turning her out like some new drug that was too addictive to sell to the public. It was for private use only, and at each woman’s personal risk. He had taken her to cloud nine and then tripled it to cloud twenty-seven. And the only space shuttle strong enough to bring the sex-induced woman back to planet earth was Shareef’s own nut.

He dropped her legs to the bed and pulled their bodies together to tighten their senses, like a human vise, while the burn built up inside of him and released itself through his holy extension. Then he let her know about it.

“Ooh, shit, this pussy, this pussy,”
he mumbled into her ear as his seed squirted and squeezed and jerked out of him.

Overwhelmingly pleased with his performance, Cynthia calmed herself and spoke back.

“Was it good, baby? Did you like it?”

In his response, Shareef chuckled, with his full naked body trembling against hers on the comfortable, king-sized bed.

“Did I like it?” he asked rhetorically. He pushed his lips into her right ear and said, “I loved it. I love fuckin’. You hear me. I said, I
love
fuckin’.”

Cynthia laughed in between her breaths. She had no idea how raw he would be. But she was pleased with him, very pleased, and she wouldn’t mind fucking him again. All he had to do was ask her for it.

Instead of lighting up and sharing a cigarette, which he never smoked, Shareef turned over on his back and freed his mind.

He said, “Women have no idea how strong pussy is to a man. Without pussy, I don’t know what else we would live for.”

Cynthia shook her head, her cheekbones sore from her continuous grinning. The man was just too much for her conscience.

She said, “Um, how many other women know how…I mean…” she couldn’t seem to get her words right.

Shareef cut her off and said, “Look, I am what I am. So if you’re asking me how many women can handle my candor, I’ll have to say just the ones who feel me like that. If they can’t handle it they move on.”

She continued to shake her head. She said, “I’m just thinking about your average fan.”

He caught her gist and said, “You have to keep those two worlds separate. And your key word is ‘average.’ You can’t invite the average fan into your world, only those who can take it. You feel me? Otherwise, you’ll fuck around and get yourself in trouble.”

She understood that much. A woman who read the wrong game could holler foul play and blow an embarrassing bullhorn on a man’s personal life. So a player had to choose correctly.

She looked into his serious mug and said, “You’re a lot more complicated then what I expected.”

He looked back at her. “What did you expect?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. I guess I thought you would be more of a tight ass. I mean…I just didn’t expect to have this much fun with you.”

He smiled and looked away. “Yeah, everybody expects me to be like that. And sometimes I am. It all depends on how you rub me. But if I’m just being me…” He looked into her face again and added, “Then it’s all good.”

Hearing that, Cynthia leaned up on her elbows and gave him her undivided attention. It was time to get back to business.

She said, “Now, I understand you wanted to give me a quick answer at the book signing when I asked you about writing something else, but now that we’re one-on-one and more intimate, I still want to know why you haven’t tried it. I mean, your way of seeing things is far deeper than just one genre. Why cheat yourself like that? Why waste your gifts on chick lit, because that’s all it is?”

She was asking the right question at the right time for the right answer.

Shareef stared up at the ceiling. He said, “Mos Def on his first solo album, he made the comment that the state of hip-hop depends on the state of the people. He said if the people are doing good, then the hip-hop will reflect it. But if the people are doing bad, then so is the hip-hop. And it’s the same thing with books. You can’t push something on the people that they don’t want and they don’t feel. They’re not gon’ buy it.”

She said, “Did you know they would buy Fifty Cent when he came out a few years ago?”

She sure knew a lot about hip-hop. She didn’t seem like the hip-hop type to him, or at least she didn’t dress the part. And Shareef wanted to ask her about that later. In the meantime, he went ahead and answered her question.

He said, “Eminem knew it. Dr. Dre knew it. Interscope Records knew it. It was all about the story. This guy got shot nine times and lived, and kept rhyming. And he was good at the shit, too. So they rolled the dice on him. And the shit came up seven, eleven.

“But if you notice, we’re talking more about hip-hop than literature,” he stated. “Music has always been the drug that crosses over to the masses. All they gotta do is listen. But books…” He stopped and shook his head. “That’s too much work for ’em. And if they do read, they only want to read shit they can swallow. Soul food. The same old collard greens, candied yams, fried chicken, and slices of watermelon on the side and shit. So that’s what I give ’em.”

Cynthia started chuckling and couldn’t help herself.

Shareef continued: “When I went to Morehouse, we used to be up all night long talking shit about everything. But every time I mentioned a book, niggas couldn’t follow me. And I’m talking about
college
niggas. But we could talk about music till the fuckin’
cows
come home. So it became obvious to me that the literature of our music had taken over. Only problem is, with an album, you can skip all the songs that actually mean anything. So instead of a girl listening to revolutionary shit, this bitch would rather skip to the club song. And excuse me for calling her a bitch, but that’s what she ends up being if she only pays attention to the ignorant club shit. So instead of spending so much time with that booty-shaking, Ying Yang shit, she should listen to songs and albums that mean something. Or read a book…that means something. But you know why they don’t. Because this shit is all entertainment to them. And if they’re not being entertained, then they don’t want to fuck with it.”

Cynthia had finally caught him on something.

She said, “Well, that’s contradictory, because you’re doing the same thing that the rappers are doing. You’re not giving them anything revolutionary to read. You’re giving them entertaining books. Booty-shaking books. It’s all the same thing. Look how you had them hootin’ and hollerin’ when you were reading your book tonight.”

Shareef laughed out loud. He said, “It’s all contradictory. But yo, I wrote a poem a few years after college, when I first started writing novels. And it just seemed like the only people willing to listen to that revolutionary shit was broke niggas or people still in college.”

She said, “Well, let me hear your poem and I’ll tell you want I think about it.”

“Aw’ight, it’s about the only one I still remember,” he told her. He said, “‘I was born into this world / with the mind and spirit / of a revolutionary / unfortunately / in the time of my short existence / there was no longer / a revolution / so I walked the earth / for forty days / and forty nights / angry / apparently / at nothing.’ ‘Wasted,’ by Shareef Crawford.”

She sat silent for a minute to remember it all in her mind, and to sum it up. Then she nodded to him, convinced of her assessment.

“So, you already know your potential,” she responded. “You know all the arguments. And you know what you’re supposed to do. But you’ve given up.”

He nodded back to her and said, “Yup. Now I’m doing what all the revolutionaries do when they give up. I’m chasing skirts. Go do the research.”

She smiled again, shaking her head one last time.

She said, “I got a story for you that they’ll read.”

Shareef heard her and grinned. He said, “Come on, girl, we in New York. It’s eight million stories in this city. And that was twenty years ago. How many stories we got in New York now?”

She ignored him and asked, “You ever hear of Michael Springfield?”

He looked at her and raised his brow. “Michael Springfield? The Harlem drug dealer?”

She nodded. “Yeah.”

He said, “Everybody’s heard about him if you lived in Harlem during the eighties. He serving life without parole now, ain’t he?”

“And he wants you to write his story,” she told him.

Shareef studied her face and asked her, “How you know?”

She said, “I know him.”

He paused for a minute. Did she run with drug dealers, or was she related to him?

He said, “You know him? How?”

“Writing letters. Visiting. I just know him.”

Shareef started to feel uneasy about it. He had to ask her the questions that popped into his head. All of a sudden the conversation became dead serious.

“So…did he tell you to ask me that? What does he know about me? Is he just trying to find any writer to write his book, or did you bring me up to him, or what?”

He was asking her questions as if he was conducting his own interview.

Cynthia shook her head and said, “No, he brought you up to me. I didn’t know he even read your books. But he said
Chocolate Lovers
touched him. And he started thinking about his first girlfriend before he got into hustling. You made him think about the innocence of young black people in love. Then he read the rest of your books. And once the word spread that you had a new one coming out, and that you always did book signings in Harlem, he told me to ask you if you would consider it.”

Shareef said, “But why me? It’s plenty of people writing them street books now. I don’t even write that shit.”

“But you’re from Harlem, and he likes you,” she answered. “He said the same thing that I said about you. Your books are deeper than theirs. So he respects you more. He said you can tell when people are writing books just for the hell of it. But you don’t. Even though it’s romance, you actually care about what you’re writing.”

“But you just told me a minute ago that I was contradictory.”

“Yeah, but you don’t need to be. I mean, some people can’t help what they do. But you know better. And you know you can write other stuff. You
know
it,” she insisted.

He said, “Yeah, and I know better than to write a book about a drug dealer, too. That ain’t no damn novel. That sounds like bodyguards and security again.”

She snapped, “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you just chased pussy, I didn’t know you
were
a pussy.”

When she said that, it became obvious where her loyalties were. So she got up and started getting dressed.

Shareef told her, “Yo, I ain’t no fucking pussy! But I do feel kind of stupid right now to think that you went through all this just to get me to write some motherfucker’s book from jail.

“Was that all this shit was about?” he asked her as he sat up in bed.

Cynthia ignored him and finished getting dressed.

He said, “Oh, so now I get the fuckin’ silent treatment. Is that it?”

She pulled all of her clothes on and grabbed her bags before she responded to him.

“I’ll tell him that you said you’ll think about it.”

Shareef sat up in bed and stared at her. This chick was crazy like a fox, as cool as a cucumber, and she had played him that night like a piano. She was all the age-old clichés wrapped up into one.

Then she added, “By the way, if I didn’t want to fuck you, I wouldn’t have taken the job. So you have nothing to be ashamed about. You worked it. So give me a call about that, all right? You got the number.” And she walked out of his room.