Up at the College (20 page)

“Okay, if that is what you are now calling the other woman these days,” Bay said.

“Huh?” Charles said.

“Coworker, Boss,” Pierre said. “You asked if Rico was talking to a coworker.”

“Yeah, coworker,” was all Charles said.

“I can help you with this Rico thing, Boss,” Bay said. “But first, let me help you with this mess brewing around Coach. Nothing
about it is right. But let me tell you something, it is gone get right if I have anything to do with it. ”

Bay was good with security systems and investigating folks who were not right. He was working on his bachelor’s degree at
Eva T. in its Crime Scene Investigation Program. Bay could find out anything about anybody, hack into any computer system,
and put together anything about anybody who wasn’t right.

“Rico ain’t right, Mr. Robinson. He plays a good game but he ain’t about nothing.”

“I hear you, man,” Charles said, heart heavy. It wasn’t fair that good folk had to suffer at the hands of people like Kordell
Bivens and Rico Sneed. Curtis Parker was one of the best coaches Eva T. had had in close to ten years, and Sam Redmond and
Gilead Jackson were ready to sell him up the river for thirty pieces of silver. And Rico. That was working up to something
very ugly.

T
hey’re getting antsy in the reception room, and ready to get down to business,” Pierre said, watching Rico on the monitor
covering that area. Rico was wolfing down stuffed baby portobello mushrooms and sipping on Crown Royal. Pierre heard him say,
“Pierre is slipping on his job. I’m going to have to talk to Charles about that. Don’t know why he lets an employee get away
with slacking up on the job like that.”

Pierre frowned and said, “As if that clown qualifies for employee of the month. I mean, where does
he
work?”

“Chapel Hill,” Bay answered. “Rico works for a consultant firm that designs computer programs for the administrative offices
at UNC. I doubt seriously if they know he’s taken the afternoon off to spank that thang on Sweet Red.”

“Point well taken” was all Pierre said. He stared at the monitor a few more seconds and then asked, “So what do you want me
to do to him?”

“Send Fatima in to dance for Rico.”

Bay started laughing. “You are so wrong, Mr. Robinson.”

Pierre was laughing so hard he had tears in his eyes. Miss Hattie Lee Booth, Rumpshakers’ resident gourmet cook, aka Fatima,
was on the secret list of dancers hired to run folks away. She used to be one of the top exotic dancers in Durham County—that
is, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Just about every brother in the state made a beeline to the old Lucky Lady Club in
the Bottom to watch Fatima dance in one of those old school cages. According to lore, Fatima would turn it out to the point
where the bouncers had to stop the patrons from climbing up into one of those cages with her.

But now, Hattie Lee Booth was the proud mother of thirteen children, with twenty-two grandchildren and six great-grands. She
was still a voluptuous size ten, and gave new meaning to the term “senior” when she put on her Fatima outfit and started dancing.

Miss Hattie Lee didn’t dance like an old lady, either. She knew all of the new dances and could drop it like it’s hot with
the best of them. Bay and Pierre figured that she had to have been the baddest thing around in stiletto heels when she was
young—’cause old girl could dance.

Miss Hattie Lee was what folks in the hood referred to as a
red bone
. She was very pretty, limber, and toned due to decades of dancing. As good as Sweet Red was, she really couldn’t hold a candle
to what folks said her grandmother was like back in the day. But while Fatima danced when she was needed, Miss Hattie Lee’s
love was cooking. And her real position at Rumpshakers was as the head cook.

One of the best-kept secrets in Durham County was the quality of the food served at Charles Robinson’s establishment. A lot
of men, once they sampled the fare and had the pleasure of enjoying Miss Hattie Lee Booth’s charming company, couldn’t wait
to get to that elaborately designed kitchen to eat. Oh, they threw some Benjamins at a few of their favorite dancers, and
paid for some good liquor. But then they found their way to that kitchen, pulled out a deck of cards, started a good bid whist
game, and made sure they got platefuls of Miss Hattie Lee’s exquisite cooking.

Charles and Miss Hattie Lee had an agreement about the dancing. Fatima had two sets of clients. The first were men in their
seventies and eighties who came to the club
only
to see Fatima. These men didn’t like watching what one man described as “them lil’ gals who need to eat a Happy Meal and
get some meat on their bones.”

The second set were the men Charles didn’t want at his establishment and knew that assigning Fatima would be sure to keep
them away. These were the ones who couldn’t be discouraged with the D and E list dancers because there was always a chance
for some undercover activity with one of them. So being given a sixty-nine-year-old great-grandmother to drop it like it’s
hot was just too much to digest for the men who were out in the parking lot scheming, conniving, and plotting harm to decent
folk.

Charles had never seen Miss Hattie Lee dance, out of respect for her. But he had been told that Fatima could work it. One
of the older patrons told him that he, Pierre, and Bay didn’t know what they were missing. He said, “Boy, Fatima does what
me and my partners call the
floor jam
.”

Charles closed his eyes, hoping that the old man would not elaborate on this dance. The last image he wanted in his head before
he fell asleep was Miss Hattie Lee doing something this old dawg was calling the floor jam. But that hope was in vain. That
old man couldn’t wait to tell Charles about the floor jam. And neither could his boy, who was next to him, sitting in one
of those motor scooters with an oxygen tank and mask attached to the back of it.

“Looka heah,” the old man began, “Fatima started doing this twisty move.”

He pantomimed what Charles surmised was a gyrating hip roll, only it looked as if he were trying to get some very painful
kinks out of his back. His boy in the scooter hit the steering handles and said, “Tell him, tell him, tell him about the part
when Fatima dropped down on the floor and started doing this scooching-her-butt-on-the-floor thingy to the music.”

“Oh … oh … he’s right, son. That’s the move.”

“The move,” Charles said evenly, hoping they would stop. But they only got more excited and more determined to tell him what
Miss Hattie Lee had done to get them so riled up.

“She was all down on the floor dancing and twangling her hips …”

“Twangling?” Charles asked. “What in the world is twangling?”

“He young, man. He don’t know nothing ’bout no twangling,” said the man in the scooter. “But if he did, he sho’ wouldn’t be
standing there with his eyebrows raised and his mouth hanging open like that. ’Cause, whew … eee … whew! When Fatima
got to twangling, I just about …”

“Calm down, man,” the friend said as he whipped out the mask and flipped on the oxygen machine. “Here, breathe in this.”

The friend took the mask and wrapped the elastic part around his head. He took in several deep breaths and then calmed down
enough to let the oxygen get him straightened out.

When the friend’s breathing stabilized, the man signaled for them to leave. He clasped Charles on the shoulder and said, “I
guess you just too young to really appreciate what we trying to tell you.”

“Yeah,” the friend mumbled through the oxygen mask, “he still got formula on his breath. You give him something hot and spicy
like twangling, it ain’t gone do nothing but go right through him.”

Charles loved himself some Miss Hattie Lee Booth. And it was clear from testimonials such as these that Miss Hattie Lee’s
services were sorely needed for the pimp-daddy seniors who rolled up to the club’s front door riding a medical scooter. As
much as Charles loved Miss Hattie Lee, however, he wished that those old men had not shared all of the information about her
routine. He was glad they loved her dancing as much as they did. But the mere thought of “twangling” was sure to give poor
Charles nightmares.

Charles went back to Curtis and led him to his plush office. He closed the door, and then poured some Patrón into two heavy
crystal shot glasses. Curtis, who was relieved to be rescued from that other room, sank down into a luxurious crimson suede
chair. He took the glass of liquor out of Charles’s hand and leaned back in the chair.

Charles put on a Kem CD and went and sat behind his massive ebony wood desk. He leaned back in an expensive black leather
orthopedic chair and sipped on his drink. The view outside of the picture window behind his desk was awesome—a rose garden
that was hidden from view of those driving up to the main section of the club, a vegetable garden, and that pond with deer
drinking out of it.

Curtis sat up and took a big sip of his own drink.

“Man,” he said as he surveyed the rest of the office, with its ebony-colored plank floors, crimson suede chairs, crimson leather
love seat, crimson, cream, and charcoal area rug, cream textured walls, and crimson-framed artwork. There were plants everywhere,
and a huge crystal vase filled with red roses sitting on the sleek, custom-designed glass table resting on stainless steel
legs. “This is sweet.”

Curtis sipped some more Patrón and then smiled. “But don’t you think you were a bit heavy-handed with all of this crimson
and cream?”

“Negro, please,” Charles told him. “I’d bet some good money that your office has more than its fair share of purple and gold.”

Curtis laughed. He had a huge purple leather chair behind a gold-tinted, pecan wood desk. The walls were a dark cream and
the area rug was purple, lavender, cream, gold, and cocoa brown. Every time James Green, and Theresa Hopson’s brother, Bug
or Calvin Hopson, came by his office, they looked around and started barking and cutting the fool.

“Crimson and cream or not, this is a sweet setup, Charles.”

Charles put the drink down and lit up a cigar. He puffed on it a few times and then flashed his famous smile. Rumor had it
that Charles had gotten more than his fair share of thongs and string bikinis with that smile.

“Well, you know how it is, Curtis, man,” Charles said and went and pinned a pair of sheer gold lace thongs that were lying
on his desk on the bulletin board.

It’s true
, Curtis thought. At first he was impressed. Then his grandmother’s teaching took over.

“They’re clean, man,” Charles said, laughing. “I like getting the panties but a honey has to send a new, clean pair to qualify
for the famous Panty Board.”

Curtis laughed and asked, “Has anybody ever sent a pair that didn’t meet the requirements?”

“Hell yeah, man. I run a strip club. You know somebody has gone there thinking that it’ll get them some points. I’m far from
being a saint, Curtis, but there are things that just don’t cut the mustard with me. And that kind of triflin’ mess is one
of those things.

“And you know something, man. You would be surprised at the ones who send the dirty draws. Just as stuck-up as they come.
Walk around barely speaking to folks they think aren’t as good as they are, and
voilà
they ain’t nothing but some skanks in some six-hundred-dollar designer shoes and seventy-five-dollar unwashed draws.”

Curtis lit up a cigar. He said, “Maybe you need to turn over a new leaf.”

“And do what?”

“Go to church?”

Charles started laughing.

“Come on, dawg. You are starting to sound like Aunt Margarita and Marquita. Every other day they are asking, ‘You been to
church, Charles? Are you going to church? You know you need to go to church.’”

“Well, you do need to go to church,” Curtis said matter-of- factly.

“I know and I do. You saw me at New Jerusalem.”

Curtis raised an eyebrow and said, “And you and Pierre got more entertainment at New Jerusalem that night than anybody ever
got right here at Rumpshakers.”

Charles tilted his head to the side and grinned. He said, “So what you are telling me is that you were bored stupid up in
that pulpit watching the headliner floor show.”

Curtis chuckled. “So I was entertained. Who wouldn’t be watching
Chutch Gurls Gone Wild
? But that still doesn’t change the fact that you need to go to church, and not for the entertainment, either.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Charles told him. “But you, Coach, need to be in church more than I do. You got a mess on your hands over
at Eva T. Plus, you were fidgeting and squirming more than I was when Denzelle ran down to the altar. Don’t think I wasn’t
watching you, Curtis. I had to focus on something to keep from going down there myself. Nothing more emotional than watching
a hardcore and effective playah turning in his card to Jesus—especially when it’s one of your frat brothers.”

“I guess Heaven needs to be filled to the brim with the men of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity, huh?” Curtis asked drily.

“You want it full of Omegas?”

“Why not?” Curtis asked him with a crooked grin spreading across his face. “’Cause, I mean, we all know that the streets are
definitely paved with gold.”

“Negro, please,” Charles said. “But, uh … on a more positive note,
dawg,
you might want to rethink that Kappas-in-Heaven thang. ’Cause you know Yvonne’s daddy will bleed crimson and cream if you
cut him.”

“Oooo,” Curtis said and gulped down some more of his liquor. He’d forgotten that Marvin Fountain was one of those fifty-some-odd-year
Kappas. He drained his glass and looked around for something to set it on.

Charles handed him a crimson leather coaster with Kappa Alpha Psi stamped on it in very pale gold. He said, “Thought you could
use this.”

“Negro, shut up” was all Curtis said.

“But I’ll tell you this much, Curtis, there are some fine women sitting up in Denzelle’s church. I kinda felt sorry for the
brother after he went down to that altar, ’cause … whew … he was giving up a lot! That is definitely a church I need
to spend more time at.”