The Glamorous Life, page 9
He smiled and nodded. “They would go good with that brown thing we just bought for you, right?”
She nodded. Without any more hesitation, he peeled off the $2,600 for the boots.
Next they headed to the Wyndham Hotel. Smooth insisted that they drive one car, but she managed to convince him that both of them needed to drive.
“I have an early morning appointment, and after I’m done with you tonight I know you ain’t gonna feel like getting up,” she said, and ran a fingernail down his thigh.
He gave her the money and instructed her to get a room in her name. She did as she was told. She got the most expensive room they had to offer, pocketing the money left over. The desk clerk was so happy to sell the room, he didn’t even ask for her ID. As soon as Smooth entered the room, he began walking around inspecting it.
“This is nice,” he said, impressed with the surroundings.
She chuckled to herself. It’s funny how dudes sell more drugs than a little bit to be able to stack their money and live life to the fullest but in all actuality don’t do anything to live it up. Like look at this clown—he’s all impressed with this room. I mean it’s nice for a room in Richmond, but nothing to get all like he’s doing over the damn thing.
She remembered trips she had taken with Reggie and the world-class hotels they had been to in Vegas, LA, and Miami— not to mention the five-star Plaza she’d stayed at with her mother when she was younger.
He got all this money and still ain’t been nowhere but New York on business and thinks he’s really doing it big, bragging about bus trips to Atlantic City. Hey, go to Vegas, high roller, and then holler at me. But for real, the nigga is scared to fly yet he always bragging about how he living large. Please, please, please! Step up in your game and learn what it’s like to be a real player!
He fell backward onto the bed and motioned for her to come over. She did, and he took her in his arms, whispering in her ear, “I really missed you.” Then he put her hand on his manhood, so she could feel that it was hard.
“Look baby, I got something to tell you,” Bambi said, gently pulling away from him.
“I’m listening, and don’t come with no bullshit,” he said as if he was joking, but she knew by the cold look in his eyes he wasn’t playing.
“Oh, I’m not. You know I haven’t been with nobody in a while, right, not since my ex,” she said.
“Yeah, that’s what you say anyway.” He folded his hands behind his head and looked up at the ceiling.
“Look, I want this just as bad as a faggot wants a bag of dicks! Trust me, but I just have a complex about something.”
“What?” He turned to stare at her.
“I don’t know how to say it.”
His face grew serious. “Just say it.”
“Straight up, I really can suck the skin off a dick, but at the same time I will get turned off if it has the slightest odor.” Before he could say anything, she told him, “Let me finish. I know you don’t stink, but I know you been out all day sweating a little bit. I’m just going to need you to hop in the shower, and then I can get busy. This is really important to me. It’s serious! Because if I go down there and I smell anything, no matter what you do, my coochie will not even get wet.”
For a few seconds, he sat there stunned. He couldn’t believe what she was saying. He looked at her a minute and then said, “I feel you! I can’t do nothing but respect your wishes, because I know I want some of that bomb head of yours.”
“I’m glad you understand, because I really want to please you,” she purred.
“Go cut the water on for me and then come back and take my clothes off for me,” he told her.
She did as she was told. But as soon as he closed the door, she listened until she heard a different pattern in the water. She knew he was in, and it was on and popping right then and there. There was no turning back from this point on. This was the moment she had been waiting so patiently for.
Bambi grabbed the two trash bags from her pocketbook and started moving around the room quickly gathering his clothes, jewelry, and every stitch of linen off of the bed. To put the icing on the cake, the layout of the room could not have been any better for her plan because the towels were on the outside of the bathroom, which made it easy to get them, too. She grabbed her pocketbook and dragged the trash bags in the hall. Once she was on the elevator, she stopped one floor down and set a pillowcase on fire in one of the trash cans, pulled the fire alarm, and walked off calmly. The alarm went off, the sprinklers came on, and she got the hell out of Dodge.
Just as she expected, Egypt’s car was parked on the side of the building. Bambi had called her when she was on her way to the hotel. Bambi was out of breath when she hopped in Egypt’s car.
“Girl, what the hell you doing?” Egypt asked. “You got beads of sweat rolling down your face. Who you running from?”
Bambi said in between breaths, “Hold on and just watch the front door. Just watch carefully now.” Then she started beating on the dash and shouting, “Drumroll!”
“Girl, what are you talking ’bout?” Egypt asked with a confused look on her face. Bambi ignored her friend.
“Five!” she shouted at the top of her lungs. “Four, three, two, one and there you go, surprizzzzze, baby!” Bambi pointed to the door.
Smooth came running out of the hotel buck-bald naked with a towel wrapped around him, looking like he was a super-hero or something. They both could see the frustration, anger, and humiliation on his face. He had no keys, no ID, no clothes, no money, and most of all, no way back in the room because the room wasn’t in his name.
“Girl, how did you manage to pull that off?” Egypt asked, with her jaw about to hit the ground.
“I told you I was going to get him back, didn’t I? It took everything in me to just play the role, but I had to, to get him to trust me. Now look at his dumb ass.”
They both laughed, but not for long because they had to move before he saw them sitting there.
“Girl, let me get my car, and I’ll meet you at the club later,” Bambi said. “I hope you liked your surprise.”
The next morning while Bambi was out getting her cell phone number changed, the technician answered her phone when it rang. When the technician passed her the phone, Bambi heard Smooth’s voice. “That was fucked up what you did last night. I can’t believe you did that shit!”
“Why can’t you? It’s the same shit you do. Haven’t you ever heard of that saying ‘What goes around comes around’? Or ‘Every dog has his day’? Well, you are the dog, and yesterday was your day! Charge it to the game … motherfucker!”
She pushed the off button on her phone and handed it back to the technician. She would always remember the sight of that no-good chump, standing in front of the hotel, his face screwed up in anger as he clutched the little towel around his butt. “Payback’s a Bitch” was the song he sang.
CHAPTER 11
A Venomous Tongue
Tricia was listening to the “Clean up Woman” by Betty Wright and singing the song word for word as she moved around the kitchen dancing. She was preparing a gourmet meal for the new man in her life. He wasn’t as rich as some of the other men she had dated, but he was so good to her that she thought she might change her ways and settle with just one man for a while. After all, she wasn’t getting any younger. As she chopped fresh dill for the vegetables, she heard the doorbell ring.
Damn,she thought, he’s early and I haven’t even gotten this started yet.
“Ohhh, I thought I told you to call me before you came!” she screamed before she opened the door. But she was happy that he wanted to see her that badly. She opened the door without hesitation.
But it was not her new man standing on the colonial-style porch. Instead, it was the last person Tricia expected to see: Reggie. Putting her hand on her hip she exclaimed, “What in the hell are you doing here, Reggie? Or maybe I should call you Regina!”
He haltingly said, “Look Ms. Tricia, may I come in? I … I ummm …”
Tricia looked around. She didn’t want him to make a scene outside her door.
“Come in and make it quick. I’ve got company coming over, and by the way, it’s Ms. Ferguson to you. Only friends call me Tricia, and you damn sure aren’t any friend of mine.”
Reggie took a deep breath. “A’ight, Mrs. Ferguson, please, I just really need you to listen to me. I promise I won’t take but a minute of your time.”
“One minute is all I got for your half-of-a-man ass.” She returned to the kitchen, washed her hands, and began to cut some green peppers and put them in the pan. She wondered how he could have the nerve to stand here in her kitchen after what he did to her baby girl.
Reggie spoke slowly, as if he was trying to get his words right.
“Listen, Mrs. Ferguson,” he said.
“It’s Mizzz Ferguson,” she interrupted him while looking into the refrigerator to get some butter.
“Mizzz Ferguson,” he said to her, humbly watching as she put a thick sirloin in the pan, “I know I made a mistake, but the truth is I love your daughter.”
“A mistake? How about a biiiig mistake? And did you say you love my daughter? Seems to me you claiming you love my daughter is the only mistake you made,” she said as she sprinkled seasonings over the steak.
“Please, Ms. Ferguson, I am asking you to talk to her….”
“Talk to her! For what?” she interrupted him.
“To let her know I love her and let her know I am sorry,” he pleaded.
“Are you out of your mind? You made a fool of her and of me in front of God and everyone. The best thing you can do is get out of her life and never darken my doorway again. Sorry? You damn right, you’re sorry. Now, go on and get out of my house. I got so much better things to do than listen to this.”
She turned away from him. Damn, she’d left the oil going, and now it was too hot.
“You bitch,” Reggie said. “This is your fault. You turned her against me.”
Tricia didn’t like the tone of his voice. She turned to face him, but when she did, he reached over to the stove and grabbed the pan of oil.
“What?” she cried out, but it was too late. Reggie had slung the pan directly at her. Drops of boiling oil splashed her face, her neck, her arms. It was like being cooked alive. She screamed out in pain.
Reggie lowered the pan.
“I only asked you to help me, you bitch,” he cried.
But Tricia just kept screaming, the searing pain on her skin like the worst nightmare. Then she felt the pan crash against her skull, and the pain slowly dimmed as everything went black.
When Tricia woke up in the hospital room, she felt the pain all over again. She groaned.
“Momma, don’t move,” she heard Bambi say. “You’ve got third-degree burns all over your body.”
As the tears leaked out her eyes, she felt the salty water trickle over the burned spots on her face. Oh, God, her face. He had destroyed her. He might as well have killed her, she thought, before she slipped off to sleep again.
Weeks later when Tricia finally was able to look in a mirror, she wanted to scream. She wished she were dead rather than have lost her beauty. She thought of suicide but couldn’t follow through. Her pretty face was her only asset, and now she couldn’t find a reason to go on. She had no idea how she was going to survive. She was sent to Charter Westbrook mental hospital for a few weeks to try to cope with her injuries and to find some meaning to keep on living. She wouldn’t accept hardly any visitors, so wrapped up was she in the loss of her looks. Only Bambi and Egypt were allowed to visit, and even their visits were limited as Tricia sank deeper into a depression. Reggie had been arrested for attempted murder and was in jail waiting to stand trial, but that didn’t seem to make any difference to her.
Bambi looked at her mother’s pill bottle.
“Mommy, stop taking so many pills,” she said.
“The pills are the only thing that makes me forget.”
Tears formed in Bambi’s eyes as she thought, Damn this is all my fault. I guess maybe I should have at least heard Reggie out a little bit, and now my mother had to pay. I wish it was me instead of her.
“Ma, I swear to God on everything I love, this dude gonna get his.”
“Don’t you go out here and get yourself in any trouble. Let the law deal with him,” Tricia said as she took another pill.
“The law?” She raised her voice a little bit and immediately realized that she didn’t want to upset her mother.
Days later Bambi stopped by her mother’s house to check on her, a daily routine that she had adopted since Tricia had been released from the hospital a few weeks earlier. That day she was dropping off groceries and got the shock of her life. As she entered the house, she called out, “Mommmeeeee.” She listened, but there was no answer.
She approached the den and stood shocked when she saw her mother sprawled on the couch with her legs wide open. One leg was hung off the sofa, and there was an empty bottle of Belvedere on the coffee table. As she got closer, she could smell the liquor reeking from Tricia’s body. Bambi was devastated. She knew her mother had been drinking a lot lately, but she’d always thought her mother would stop as she got better. She’d had no idea at all that the bottle was her mother’s new best friend.
Every night Tricia went to the local bars for happy hour and to get pissy drunk. Sometimes she would get so drunk she couldn’t remember how she’d gotten home. Since Bambi had begun doing events, she had become acquainted with most of the local bartenders. In turn, the bartenders tried to watch out for her mother as best they could. So it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary for Bambi to get a call saying, “Bambi, I think you need to send someone to come and get your mother, because she’s really out of it.”
Most of the time, Bambi would drop what she was doing to go pick her mother up, and once she arrived, there would be no doubt Tricia was out of it. Bambi would graciously thank and tip the caller. Whenever Bambi saw her mother drunk, it shattered her heart. But she held her head up like a champ and dared anyone to make a negative comment. Bambi was always patient with her mother, never losing her cool. She sympathized with her mother’s plight and vowed that she’d never look down on her or turn her back on her. After all, she felt partially responsible. On the few instances that she couldn’t pick up her mother, she would send Ruby.
Her business continued to thrive, and she had just scored a big event—a bachelor party for one of Richmond’s native NFL players. She was working on the plans when she got the familiar call. “Come get her, Bambi. She’s gonna get herself in trouble.” She hopped in her car and drove to Peenuckles, a low-rent kind of dive—the kind of place her mother would not have been caught dead in before her run-in with Reggie. She saw her mother slumped over the bar, her wig crooked and her makeup smeared.
“Mommy, come on now,” Bambi said gently.
“I don’t know why they had to call you and disrupt your business to come get the wrinkled-up old woman.” Tricia’s burns had healed, but an ugly scar was left on the left side of her face, and the burns on both of her hands were puffy and ugly as lobster claws.
“Because they know I love you, Mommy,” Bambi said as she gathered her mother’s keys and cell phone.
“Nope, ’cause them African booty sniffers is snitches! That’s why. They know you gon’ pay them for calling,” Trish said, and nearly fell off the bar stool.
“Mommy, that’s not why.”
“Why you looking at my daughter? You like her little black ass, don’t you? Well, she doesn’t want you because she doesn’t want a drunk,” Trish shouted at some guy who was trying to mind his own business. “Her momma is a drunk, and she don’t need two drunks in her life.”
“Mommy, come on. Be nice.”
“Only because you said so! I love you, girl, even though you black as tar.”
Bambi always ignored the comments her mother would make about her dark complexion. She took her mother home and led her to the big king-sized bed with the floral comforter on top and helped her undress.
“I can’t pay my electric bill, Bambi,” Tricia slurred. “What am I gonna do?”
“I got it all taken care of, Mommy. I already paid that bill last week.”
She heard the doorbell and went to let Egypt in.
“I got your message, girl. How can I help?” Egypt asked.
Bambi hugged her friend and thanked her for coming.
“Just stay with her for a while. I’ve got to go to handle my business. Oh, and here’s some money for her in case she needs anything.” She handed her friend a hundred dollars.
“She’s just gonna use it to buy drinks, Bambi.”
“I don’t care. She’s my mother, and I’d rather her have her own money than to get caught out dealing with a nigga and he have the nerve to think she owe him for some ten-dollar drink.”
“I feel you.”
The roles had reversed. Bambi now became the provider just as her mother had provided for her for so many years. Bambi busted her butt to make sure her mother never needed or wanted for a thing. She was the only thing that kept Tricia going, and she took care of her as if Tricia were the child and not her mother, and never complained. When Tricia was sober long enough to let everything sink in that Bambi had done for her, she hugged Bambi and said, “Thank you so much, baby.”
“Ma, don’t thank me. You’re all I got, and I would rather die than to have you go without,” Bambi said, and put her head against her mother’s shoulder.
CHAPTER 12
In da Club
Lynx, one of the most well-known and biggest ballers in all of Richmond, sat at a table in Disco’s club in Richmond and ordered another bottle of Dom Perignon. He had returned to town after having been gone for most of the past year, making deals and connections on the West Coast. Now he was back home, and things on his end were all good. Cook’em-up and three other members of his crew all sat at the table with him, catching him up on what had been happening since he was gone—who was doing time, who had rolled over, who was knee-deep in the money, who was broke, and who had gotten the most pussy.
