Chapter 17 #2
I just knew we were finally gonna make it through a Sunday without her tears, but that was wishful thinking. She’s different now. She abandoned the old Arnez when Jamari left.
Somehow his absence makes her question me and Senior about life and death more than she used to. Now, she’s loved, lost, and started college, and her brain had morphed into something that scared the fuck out of Senior.
She rubs her forearm against her red eyes, looking away from me while I finally gulp in the air I’ve been chasing.
“Awe! Boyd didn’t even complete the route!” the sportscaster yells. “Caldwell’s pulling him to the side now—looks like they’re having a heated discussion.”
Our eyes dart to the phone at the same time.
She sniffles, swiping her nose. “I ran into Tamryn at the washateria this morning.”
“Okay?”
“She asked me how your friend was doing,” she mutters. “I asked her who she was talking about.”
I try to gulp in another gust of wind, but Slim ain’t having it. It’s like she snatches it away as soon as I open my mouth and replaces it with the taste of her sweet tongue.
“She said, ‘The girl that was crying after Pup stomped out creepy ass Wendell in my grandma’s backyard. The pretty girl that dresses real nice. My grandma said she’s Ms. Faye’s niece.’”
She points to her phone, sniffling again. “He’s number ten.”
Her finger follows number ten’s navy blue jersey across the field while I try to fight that nauseating feeling oozing from my stomach to my throat.
He’s real.
It’s not that I ain’t expect him to be. It’s just that after hearing Slim talk about the fucked-up things he did to her, he kind of felt like the invisible boogeyman Arnez swore lived under her bed when we were six.
I lean in closer to the phone, and right when he turns his head toward the camera, Arnez’s tiny hand smashes against the screen. She presses the side button, and the face goes black.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I grit out. “You lost your mind?”
“Have you? You know, I let Faye slide back in because I know you and Daddy always think y’all need her.… but her niece?” She cocks her head back, blinking.
“It ain’t like that.”
“If it ain’t then why’re you looking for her fiancé? You never make time to watch football on a Sunday.”
I try to gulp down that nausea and find Slim’s taste again.
“If it ain’t like that, then why the fuck you brought her with you to the place where Daddy lays his head? Huh? You’ve never brought a woman around Daddy.”
It wasn’t like that.
Even Slim knew it. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t have agreed again when I reminded her not to be silly and look for me anymore after I walked her to Kenny and Faye’s front door.
“I…I won’t,” she murmured, sticking her key in the front door and looking back at me.
Whatever we had was over. It ended right there on Kenny and Faye’s porch as soon as she walked into their house.
“Her fiancé was easy to find. Both of them were,” Arnez says.
“There was a whole spread in People magazine announcing her engagement to that soft-looking nigga with Drake braids and a manicure. She said he was her ‘Prince Charming’ and he called her his ‘number one girl’ or some corny shit like that.”
She snorts. “Her dream wedding is a ceremony in Nice, on the French Riviera. She wants to get married in a gown she designed herself.”
Her fingers curl around the phone like she sees that itch tickling my right hand.
My Slim was in a magazine with that fuck nigga?
I swipe a bead of sweat from the back of my neck. “How you know all that?”
“Faye’s Facebook…Google…Instagram.” She chuckles, shaking her head.
“Oh, that Instagram page of hers was the best part. She’s been all over the world with his money—Paris Fashion Week, Germany, Ibiza.
All these nice places your brain can’t even conceive.
And she has so much Chanel that Coco herself would be jealous. ”
But none of it was hers.
He owned it all.
I swallow her taste again.
“I know you like to live under a goddamn rock, but sometimes I need you to listen to me and exist in the twenty-first century. There’s other technologies outside of the banking apps you use to fund your hoes’ lifestyles. All you had to do was look her up.”
“You done yet?” I ask massaging my jaw.
“No.” She narrows her eyes at me. “I don’t know how or why Faye put her in your orbit, but you need to let her float right on out of it and back to that motherfucka who’s gonna marry her on the French Riviera and keep her locked away from niggas like you.
You can’t afford her or whatever problem she brought with her from New York.
She ain’t like us. If she finds out what happened… ”
Her voice drifts off, and she shakes her head. “End that shit.”
I want to, but instead of plotting on how I plan to keep us apart all I can focus on is the fact that AJ Boyd couldn’t keep his grimy football catching hands to himself so Slim could spend his money and get her perfect wedding on the French Riviera—wherever the fuck that was.
“When Mayor Julian approached me about this place a couple years ago, my business partner told me it was a waste of my time and money. An unsanctioned fighting ring full of niggas who were bred and born with no real purpose but to fight for my neighborhood’s entertainment and, most importantly, to keep its economy afloat.
” Melo Barnes paces back and forth in the middle of the pit, dressed in grey slacks and draped in diamonds like a ghetto ass peacock.
He’s probably the only man who’s ever worn a pair of loafers in here.
Leftover motor oil coats their red bottoms as he turns on his heel and stops.
The loud, impatient murmurs from the crowd sneak through the gap underneath the rusted back door that keeps them outside.
Lucky leans against it, staring at the wall behind us with his lips folded under his teeth while Melo’s entourage lingers beside him just in case he tries to interrupt Melo’s cockamamie rambling.
Rasheeda holds Melo’s phone close to her chest, and his Chief of Staff, Chubbie, keeps his hooded eyes on all forty-five of us fighters.
Melo chuckles under his breath. “Most of y’all don’t know shit else but fighting and being day laborers.”
He kicks a lone rock that had found its way into his path. It rolls toward me, landing at my feet, and his sunken eyes brush my fat lip for a second before he looks away.
“My partner said, ‘It’s a shit-hole, Mel. Let the city shut it down for good this time. Let them ship the bastards off to the county jail.’ He says this place is messy—even messier than my ranching business, and it’s not worth saving.
Shit, he said I was stupid for even moving back into the neighborhood.
” He snorts. “But what did I expect a white kid from Scottsdale to know about what we like to do in the Bottoms? It’s some folks who have lived in Bayou Crest their whole lives who don’t know shit about what goes on down here. ”
“Mhmm,” Elroy hums in agreement beside me.
We ain’t supposed to respond to anything Melo says, but motherfuckas like Elroy are still star-struck no matter how many ways Melo shows us we’re like the old shit stains sitting at the bottom of his boxers.
“Mayor Julian and Chief Hernandez said, ‘Five hundred thousand, and it’s yours…’” Melo looks back over his shoulder at me. “All of it is yours. The building, Lucky, his folks, and even the fighters. They said I could own it all under one condition.”
He tosses his finger up, spinning around in a slow twirl before stopping in front of me. “They said I had to keep you fuckin monkeys in line and keep this place quiet because it was getting loud again, and Mayor Julian said he had bigger fish to fry around the city.”
I stare into his pale-green eyes.
“District C’s got a homicide rate out the ass, and District H has a whole goddamn red-light district they’ve been trying to contain for the past thirty years.
Mayor Julian put in his bid for re-election and if I could just take this one lil’ shitty problem off of his hands, he could focus on the big stuff and I could prove to him I deserve that seat in District D next month. ”
Growing up, folks said if you were ever blessed to meet Melo Barnes in the flesh, you weren’t supposed to look him in his eyes. The problem is that I ain’t know how to look anywhere else but in a man’s eyes because Senior says it’s how you measure the size of a man’s nuts.
“I know most of you Neanderthals don’t understand what any of this means, so let me break it down to you in a way you Bottoms niggas can understand.
It means ain’t none of you motherfuckas bigger than the program!
And what is the program, you might ask? It’s me.
I am the Alpha and Omega. The beginning and end.
I control this lovely ship that is Bayou Crest, and I want my ship to be the biggest and brightest in this city.
That means I sit my black ass on my ship’s bridge where I watch and control everything that happens on it and around it.
I want homicide and crime rates down by ten percent.
I want surveillance cameras from 45 all the way to Crestwood Bayou. I want more tourist money being spent…”
He rattles off the rest of the bullshit I hear him yelling about in his election commercials I catch playing on TV sometimes, then takes a step toward me. “But I’ve got a problem on my hands.”
His green pupils dilate as he curls his lip. “And my Big Mama used to say, ‘If you ever wanna get rid of a problem, you got to cut it at the root where it’s rotten to keep it from spreading.’”
Elroy lets out a ragged breath from beside me like he’s the one getting his temperature checked.
Melo narrows his eyes at my fat lip, then waves his hand out. “Y’all get the fuck out! I need to debrief with my staff.”