Baby

Harlem Sterling Knox

SHOP TALK

The low hum of hair dryers and the buzz of clippers filled the air during the silence whenever there was a lull in the conversation.

The smell of chemicals, hair, and aftershave mingled, speaking of late nights on the prowl in the lounges, cigars, bourbon, and asses shaking at The Smoke Hour, stolen time in a hotel room, and girlfriends giggling over tropical drinks about a shared secret.

It was Friday night, the busiest night of the week in Knox’s Cutz I’ve been working here for a while.”

Everyone laughed. “What do you call a while, Monte?” Raquel “Raque” Shaw, my lead hairstylist, asked.

“I’ve been here eight months,” Monte replied.

“How long were you at the job before that?” Josiah Poach, another barber, asked.

“Three months, and the one before that, I was there two months, and the one before that, six months,” Monte explained.

“Damn, no wonder she broke up with your broke ass. If you can’t keep a job, your pockets are dusty. Ain’t nobody on that type of time,” Mia Shaw, Raquel’s baby sister, declared.

“Ain’t nobody asked you for your opinion. Ole bunion-toe-looking ass,” Monte remarked.

Everyone laughed again. “Seriously, though, Monte. If you want a girl to take you seriously, you gotta learn to take yourself seriously,” I proclaimed.

“You don’t think I do, boss man? I be out here in these streets handling my business,” he retorted.

“More like clowning. Boy, bye.” Alicia Strum, another stylist, declared.

I returned my attention back to the client in my chair as I finished his lineup and brushed the hair off him before I removed his cape.

“Seriously, when you find a good woman, you have to make her feel that you treasure her. It ain’t easy to keep a good woman these days,” JC Adams, my other barber who was positioned behind my chair, declared.

“Do y’all even know what a good woman looks like?” Raque asked.

“I know she don’t look nothing like you or any of y’all trifling females up in here,” Monte replied.

“Don’t speak on me, Monte. Matter-of-fact, don’t speak unless spoken to,” Mia declared, halting from the lemonade braids she was installing to mug the shit out of him.

Monte sneered and sucked his teeth. “I was talking about females, Mia. Ain’t nobody said nothing to or about your rodent ass.”

“Excuse me? Who the hell are you talking to, Chipmunk?” Mia retorted, using the name that she teasingly called him about his teeth.

“You with ya hoodrat ass.”

“Well, at least you know we come from the same family,” Mia replied, returning to her client.

Everyone laughed, and I replied, “A’ight, y’all. Mind ya manners and act like somebody with some decency up in here.”

I knew my crew, and I knew once the trash talking turned to name calling, shit could get heated in a minute.

If Mia’s big eyes welled with tears, Raque was gonna jump in and clown on the nigga talking shit.

If it went much further than that, both sisters would be ready to throw hands on any nigga in the vicinity, excluding yours truly.

“That’s hard, seeing as how there ain’t a decent-ass person up in this place,” Isaac replied jokingly to my comment, causing everyone to laugh again.

“You right about that,” Stephanie Strokes, my fourth and final stylist, stated, walking in the shop late.

“Where the hell your ass been? Strolling up in here all late as usual, looking like you just crawled from underneath somebody’s bed while they distracted their wife, and smelling like you been hanging with the cats in that alley across the way,” Monte declared.

Stephanie sucked her teeth and rolled her eyes. “Not that I owe your trifling ass an explanation, but my first client isn’t due for another hour, and I had to take my babies to the dentist today.”

She strolled to the back as she threw a hand up at Monte.

“Seriously, though. Nobody answered my question, and I’m just curious as to what you think a good woman is,” Raque repeated.

“As long as she can make me bust a nut and bust my gut, she’s a damn good woman,” Monte stated.

“That’s why ya ass lonely and broke. Every time you get a woman, you’re so lovestruck by her putting that thang on you and feeding you that you can’t see her robbing you blind at the same time,” Alicia retorted.

“It’s all good. Money flows through these hands like nobody’s business,” Monte replied.

“My wife is a damn good woman. The fact that she has to take care of all three of those kids, keep them involved in extracurricular activities, keep a clean, welcoming home, fix good, healthy meals, and she’s holding it down on her YouTube channel, bringing in income that surpasses mine, I ain’t got a complaint in the world,” Josiah stated.

“Nigga, you should have started with the fact that she has to put up with your ass. For that reason alone, she’s a damn good woman,” JC replied.

“I treat my wife really well,” Josiah retorted.

“Well, I’ve had plenty of women, and not a single one of them were worth shit,” JC replied.

“That’s because yo’ ass ain’t worth shit, trifling-ass nigga,” I declared, speaking up for the first time in a while.

Everyone laughed.

“Man, I feel hit by that. I thought we were brothers,” JC stated.

“We are. I’m just saying that you don’t treat women right, so I don’t know how you expect to get anyone that treats you right.”

“What’s your definition of a good woman, Harlem?” Mia asked.

“I don’t think there’s a particular definition.

Every woman is good in her own way and her own time, and there’s a perfect woman for every man.

It’s just up to him and her to decide if they’re the right match and how they’ll work it out.

For me, that woman would be someone who allows me to pamper her, take the world off her shoulders, lets me protect her from the world, and can hold it down in the streets when needed.

“She’ll understand that my silence in times of difficulty isn’t me blocking her out, but it’s my way of strategizing how we overcome and conquer whatever is in front of us.

She will help me make my home that safe space that I can return to at the day’s end.

She’s someone who trusts me with her heart, and I can safely trust her with mine.

She’ll have poured enough into me that if I see a crazy situation arise, I know that my baby has an explanation for it, and that it’s nothing she should be caught up in.

“She keeps my secrets close, and she knows how to strengthen me when I’m starting to feel weak.

She will never hold me back from pursuing my dreams, and she’s okay with me having the freedom to pursue them without me having to hold her hand and reassure her every second of the day.

This woman would be independent, not because she has to be, but because she wants to be; a woman on top of her game, handling her business and her money.

She’s confident in her role in my life because I’ve made her secure, and she appreciates all that I’ve done for her. ”

“Damn, that’s deep, brother. You single, you say?” a girl named Xhania who was sitting in Raque’s chair asked.

Everyone laughed.

“Now that’s a good woman right there,” Isaac stated, pointing out the window with the comb in his hand. He was doing a retwist on a client.

I looked out the window to where he was pointing, and I saw a gorgeous little shorty grabbing some bags from the trunk of a silver Audi Q7.

Although she was at a distance, I could tell that she was roughly a foot shorter than me, with flawless chestnut-brown skin.

She was what I called slim-thick with that curvy, hourglass figure.

The white jeans she wore looked to have been painted on, especially when she stepped up onto the curb. Those ass cheeks moved one at a time like they had minds of their own.

“Damn, she looks like she’s in a marching band,” Monte declared, moving to the window.

“Nigga, what?” Josiah asked.

“Them ass cheeks lifting high as hell like a drum major’s knees.”

Everyone turned and stared at him crazy-like.

“She’s fine as fuck.” JC joined Monte at the window.

“Who is she?” I asked.

“The new bakery owner,” Josiah, Mia, Raque, and Alicia replied at the same time.

“Baby Got Buns,” Isaac, Monte, and JC all muttered simultaneously as they tilted their head to watch her walk inside of her shop.

“I hadn’t seen her before,” I declared.

“That’s because you’re seldom at the shop anymore. I’m not sure if you’re a realtor or a barber,” Raque declared. She smiled and winked at me.

I chuckled. “Gotta make that money, lady.”

“Yeah, well, she’s been coming and going for the last few months, and this is the reaction that she gets every time she comes and goes,” Raque explained before she pointed at the three amigos standing at the window with their faces glued to it.

I shook my head at all three of them. “Niggas, none of you can handle that. Get ya asses back to work,” I demanded.

“I need to cut out early and go check on my future baby mama,” Monte stated.

“Shiiid. If I don’t get to her first,” JC countered.

“Y’all have had more than enough time to step to her, but you didn’t. Now that Harlem has seen her, y’all wanna put on ya big boy draws. She ain’t checking for y’all because she knows like I know, them draws full of shit,” Mia declared.

Our clientele snickered, and Raque spoke up. “Y’all broke asses can’t handle a woman like her. She’s an independent businesswoman who doesn’t need a bunch of broke, ratchet-ass niggas stepping to her with nothing to offer.”

“She needs a nigga like Harlem,” Alicia spoke up.

“Mm-hmm.” Mia agreed.

“Let that man choose who he does and doesn’t want or need. Y’all heard him say what type of woman he needs,” Josiah stated.

“Yep, an independent woman who’s got her own,” Raque stated and started singing the lyrics to Jamie Foxx’s song.

“Y’all chill. I’m not on the hunt for a woman right now.”

“Damn, why you say that like we’re animals or something. Like you’re a predator, my nigga?” Mia asked.

I chuckled, but before I could answer her, Stephanie, who had just returned from the break room, spoke up. “Because we are. Truthfully, we love that shit. A man stalking us like we’re his prey, and he’s about to demolish us. Whew! Almost made me cum in my panties.”

“Eww. Ratchet ass. Don’t take much to do that. Don’t nobody wanna hear about your ratchet, cum-infested drawers,” Monte proclaimed with a scrunched face.

The ladies laughed. “She ain’t lying,” Alicia stated, pointing a comb in Stephanie’s direction and nodding.

“That shit can be sexy as hell with the right man,” Raque declared.

“Not to me,” Mia countered, wrinkling her nose.

“All I’m saying is that I’m on chill right now,” I explained.

“Does that mean you’re running around here like your mutt-ass friend Monte?” Mia asked.

Monte barked, making everyone laugh.

“What it means is that I’m sitting back chilling and handling my business right now.

My focus is on this shop and my other business ventures.

When I’m after a woman, I have to pour my all into her, and right now, I don’t have the time to do that.

I’m not about compromising when it comes to my woman; I’m all about sacrificing,” I explained.

“You damn sure sacrificed a lot behind that one woman, or so I heard,” Monte stated.

The other staff stopped talking, and everyone almost froze. The tension in the air was thick, and what was unspoken hung heavier in the air than what was spoken. The woman he spoke of wasn’t my woman at all. In fact, I wasn’t even trying to have anything to do with her.

Unfortunately, I found myself in a Joseph situation, the biblical Joseph.

I couldn’t blame anyone but myself, because I hadn’t been handling my business.

I had become full of myself after becoming the most sought-after barber in the state.

That shit went to my head, and I started slacking off.

The money I earned was spent on partying, strip clubs, random women, vacations, liquor, and weed.

That was all I gave a damn about until shit changed.

I was fired from the place that I had come to think of as home, the place that allowed me to build my reputation. I had worked at Chuck’s Premier Cuts for five years, when Chuck’s girlfriend, Aniya Roberson, made a pass at me.

It was a no-brainer for me to turn her down, but that didn’t stop her efforts.

No matter how much I turned her down, she persisted, until one day she finally got the picture.

My ass should have known something was up when she chilled out.

Her younger brother, Ayden, had started working at the shop, and the little nigga had sticky fingers.

Chuck operated on an honesty system, and he kept all the cash in the bottom drawer of his desk in his back office.

Everyone had always known that, but we were all trustworthy-ass niggas.

When shit came up missing, Ayden was the first suspect on everyone’s list, but Aniya covered for her brother and lied to Chuck.

She claimed that she caught me stealing, and she also claimed that I had tried to kiss her to convince her not to tell Chuck what I had done.

I had been the one working late on each of those nights that money came up missing, but so had Ayden.

It was my word against his and Aniya’s. It wasn’t weird science that Chuck would choose the woman he was planning to marry over his protégée who had been moving funny anyway.

Because he’d had several discussions with me about my behavior leading up to that time, it was easier for him to break ties with me.

The firing didn’t just come with me losing my place at the shop, but it also came with my reputation being sullied.

I became known as a sticky-fingered nigga, who couldn’t keep his hands to himself when it came to niggas’ money or women.

Pair that along with being an arrogant, weed-addicted, drunk asshole, nobody would fuck with me.

The crazy part was that they claimed I was drug addicted like I was on meth or crack or some shit. Meanwhile, all those same niggas were smoking weed, same as I was.

“Monte, trust me, nigga, when I say everything designed for my downfall was the best shit that ever happened to me. I have no regrets, but keep ya li’l mouth shut, unless you’re speaking on some shit you know about. Are we good?”

He did a mock salute, turned his lips down, and nodded. “Good, boss man.”