Baby Brother's Blues (27 page)

50

B
aby Brother was on a mission. He had tossed those pissed-out jeans and used most of his check to buy some new clothes. Saturday he played cards with Davy and his idiot friends and picked up a hundred and fifty bucks cheating them at blackjack. On Sunday, he spent the day sleeping and watching whatever games were on TV. At ten o’clock, he walked up to the intersection of Abernathy and Ashby streets and caught a cab to Club Baltimore. When he got there, he went around to the back, paid the ten-dollar cover, and walked in like he did it every night of the week.

He stood at the bar, sipping a beer since he was off cognac for a while considering his disastrous last outing, and looked around. This was a high-end place, no doubt about that. Straight or gay or somewhere in between, the people who came to Club Baltimore were black and beautiful and unapologetic about the money they spent on cars and clothes and magnums of Cristal. There were only two groups of people allowed in places like this, he thought.
The ones with cash and the ones with beauty.

Baby Brother considered this a trial run, but he knew he had
the look.
Baby face and a
gangsta
style always attracted the
wannabe bad boys
who wouldn’t survive on the street for ten minutes without bodyguards. No way he couldn’t pick up a hundred bucks now and then in a place like this. Even in Iraq, there had been plenty of guys willing to pay to play. Sometimes when he needed cash, he’d let them. That didn’t mean he was gay. At those moments, all that went down was that he was on the receiving end of a blow job in a place where any sex was rarer than a day without anybody dying. Besides, once he closed his eyes and pictured Lil’ Kim kneeling in front of him, it didn’t matter that it wasn’t a woman at all, only a terrified young soldier with a secret.

At first, when guys started hinting around, he wondered why they kept assuming he would do it. He didn’t
look
gay. In civvies, his classic hip-hop style of baggy jeans, oversize T-shirt, and spotless tennis shoes screamed “straight” as loud as if he’d had it tattooed on his stomach like Tupac had
thug life.
He’d asked a couple of them to explain why they had approached him, but they would just mumble something about a certain feeling; a certain way he looked at them. After a while, he stopped worrying about it. The truth was, he didn’t give a damn what people thought about him. He was here tonight to make some money and if he had some fun in the process, that was all to the good.

The crowd was already picking up and he was glad he had found a place at the bar that gave him a view of the whole room. Everything sounded and looked and even smelled just like it had the other night when he’d been here with Zora. The only difference was that there weren’t any women. Not on the dance floor. Not at the tables. Not at the bar. Not even
behind
the bar. Tonight, Club Baltimore was all about
the brothers.

“You look like you could use another beer.”

That was almost as weak a pickup line as “do you come here often?” but the bottle of Heineken Baby Brother had been nursing was about to give up the ghost and the offer was right on time. He turned to look at whoever was making the offer. Good face, good body, expensive silk shirt, well-cut suit, and a big smile.

“Thanks,” Baby Brother said.

The man smiled and signaled the bartender. “I’m Kwame.”

“Wes,” Baby Brother said, thinking this guy looked more like a Kevin than a Kwame.

The bartender put down two more beers and grinned at the guy. “These are on the house. Welcome back, brother.”

“Thanks, J.P.,” Kwame said, tipping him twenty bucks for two beers that would have cost twelve.

“My pleasure,” the bartender said, heading back to his post. “Just let me know what you need. Denny’s downstairs tonight.”

Baby Brother took in everything about the exchange. Kwame turned back to him with the same big smile. “Well, I guess that pretty much ruins any chance I had of claiming to be a first-timer.”

“You some kind of big shot around here or something?”

Baby Brother knew what he was doing. The thug persona he was wearing tonight didn’t allow for much chitchat.

“Or something,” Kwame said, taking a swallow of beer. “I got to know some of the guys when I designed their renovation.”

“That makes you an architect?”

Kwame nodded. “Guilty as charged. How about you, Wes?”

Baby Brother looked at Kwame.
Punks flirt. Gangstas fuck.
“Why don’t you show me what’s up downstairs?”

He knew that would be where the kind of action he was looking for took place. The faster they got down there, the faster some money would change hands. The way the guy responded to Baby Brother’s directness would indicate whether or not he was serious or just fooling around.

“Is that what you want?” Kwame said.

Bingo!
Baby Brother drained the beer and put down the bottle. “No, motherfucker, that’s what
you
want.”

Kwame wasn’t smiling anymore. He had that look these guys always got when they knew it was really going to happen. If Baby Brother had looked more closely, he would have seen a combination of desire and despair that might have triggered some compassion in him, but it was too late for that. Or too early.

“It’s nothing much,” Kwame said, his voice already thickening with anticipation. “Sometimes a man needs a little privacy.”

This was almost too easy, Baby Brother thought. “So you gonna show it to me or what?”

Kwame looked at Baby Brother while he seemed to be making up his mind, then he raised a hand at J.P., who was handing two cosmopolitans to a couple of guys who looked like they should have been out to dinner with their wives or their bosses.

“What can I get for you?” he said, coming over as the men touched their glasses in a toast.

“Ask Denny to bring me the usual,” Kwame said. “Tell him to leave it outside.”

“You got it,” J.P. said with a professional smile.

Baby Brother followed Kwame through a door at the end of the bar and down a narrow stairway that opened into a dimly lit hallway. The very last door required two keys. Kwame had both. The room was small with a big white leather sofa, a wet bar, a huge TV, and not much else. Kwame closed the door behind them, picked up the remote, and pointed it at the screen. Rapper 50 Cent, the quintessential video thug, swaggered into view doing the same song they had been playing upstairs. Baby Brother wondered what 50 would think watching a bunch of brothers dancing to “In Da Club.”

“Got any porno?”

Kwame clicked the remote and two well-built white men in cowboy hats appeared on the screen, enthusiastically engaged in anal sex.

“Not that fag shit,” Baby Brother snarled. “
Real
porno.”

Kwame complied by switching to a channel featuring a woman with no visible gag reflex giving oral sex to a man whose nickname was probably “Jumbo.” If the
fag-shit
comment bothered him, Kwame didn’t show it. He knew what came next just like Baby Brother did. All they were doing now was making themselves comfortable. A soft tap on the door let them know Denny had left
the usual
outside as he had been instructed.

Sometimes Kwame went to the VIP room upstairs if that was required to get everybody in the right mood, but he was always afraid he’d be recognized up there. Always afraid someone would come up and ask him if he wasn’t Precious Hargrove’s son. He preferred the privacy of this space, which he had included in his design in response to the owner’s request for a personal playroom. A happily heterosexual man, the owner never came in on DL night. He said being around that many
faggots
made him nervous, although, as J.P. pointed out, that didn’t stop him from taking their money.

Kwame opened the door and brought in a bottle of expensive champagne in a silver bucket while Baby Brother got comfortable on the sofa. He had already tossed his jacket aside and was rubbing his stomach under the big white T-shirt while he watched the woman performing fellatio on Jumbo with a bored expression on her face as if her mind was a thousand miles away. Kwame poured them each a glass of champagne and went to sit beside Baby Brother. This was the moment Kwame hated most.
The moment when the power changed hands.
The moment when he wanted something bad enough to risk everything to get it. He reached over and unbuckled Baby Brother’s belt, hoping they wanted the same thing.

“Are you as good as she is?” Baby Brother said, pointing to the woman on the screen.

Kwame grinned and slid over a little closer. “I’m better.”

When the two men exited the club together an hour later, neither one saw the woman in the dark gray sedan snap their picture before they drove away in Kwame’s car. Lee noted the time in her notebook and headed out behind them.

51

W
hen Brandi opened the door to find General standing there with his arms full of black garment bags, she clapped her hands like a kid on Christmas morning who’d just discovered that new bike under the tree tied up with a big red bow. Her delight was exactly what he’d been hoping for when he put himself in the hands of the smiling young man at Stephan’s Vintage Clothing who said his name was Terrance and who had no trouble translating General’s vision of a Rat Pack–era Vegas wardrobe into a dazzling array of outfits, all carefully selected in Brandi’s size five. He had asked them to leave the clothes on the hangers to avoid wrinkling and tipped Terrance like he was an Atlantic City blackjack dealer.

Brandi’s spontaneous applause was the perfect response. She flung herself against his body and kissed him passionately, wrapping her arms around his neck and pressing her warm body against him, even though he couldn’t return her embrace without dropping his purchases to the floor. He laughed and stumbled backward slightly.

“Hold on, girl! You ain’t gotta knock me down just because you’re glad to see me!”

She laughed, too, locking the door behind him. She was wearing a transparent minidress, a silver thong, and five-inch patent-leather heels. To General, she looked good enough to eat.

“What you expect me to do?” she said, prancing along beside him, her dark eyes shining in anticipation. “You come in here loaded down like Santa Claus or some shit. I lost my head for a minute, baby, that’s all!”

“What makes you think any of this is for you?” he teased her, walking in the bedroom and spreading the bags across her bed. With his help, she had moved out of the extended-stay motel and into her own apartment, but she had kept the animal-print bedspread at his request. He liked it.

She grinned at him, pulled her tiny dress over her head, and tossed it to the floor. “What makes you think any of
this
is for you?”

He came to her and wrapped one big arm around her waist, loving the feel of her skin, the slightly musty smell of her sex. She glued her mouth to his and teased his tongue in a kiss.

“I’m just kiddin’ you, baby,” she said. “You know this ain’t for nobody but you.”

It was a mark of how deeply attached to her he had become that he almost believed her.
Almost.

“Well, you keep it that way,” he said. “Now come on and try these clothes on before I take them back to the store.”

“You ain’t got to tell me twice, baby,” she said, carefully unzipping the first garment bag. It stuck halfway down and she tugged at it. “You bought all this stuff for Vegas?”

“Any law against that?”

“Hell, no!”
she said, her fingers working the zipper excitedly. “You just so good to me, baby, sometimes I don’t know what to do.”

The zipper finally surrendered and she reached in eagerly to pull out a classic sixties sheath dress in navy blue with white trim. It was accompanied by a small bolero jacket, also trimmed in white. Brandi froze, her face suddenly filled with confusion and disappointment.

The look was not lost on General, sitting on the edge of the bed. “What’s wrong? Did I get the wrong size?”

Ignoring his question, Brandi rapidly unzipped the next bag, revealing a bright yellow day dress with a full skirt, accompanied by a white cardigan sweater. The next bag held a black cocktail dress with a high neck and a deep V in the back, not quite low enough to show the birthmark, but close enough to excite him. He waited for her to squeal like she had before, but she was quiet.
Too quiet.
Something wasn’t right. Brandi’s silence grew with every new outfit she uncovered until she turned to him after unzipping the last one with eyes full of questions he probably couldn’t answer, even for himself.

“Well, aren’t you going to try them on for me?” he said, trying to recover the celebratory spirit that had swirled around them when he’d first walked in.

She looked uncomfortable as she reached for the first outfit and held it up in front of her body, careful not to actually touch the fabric to her skin. He had asked the clerk to remove all sales tags so the dress looked like she had just taken it out of the closet, but it wasn’t Brandi’s closet he had recreated.
It was Juanita’s.
Next to Brandi’s contemporary urban fashions, these clothes, which had looked so right in the store surrounded by padded shoulders from the forties and poodle skirts from the fifties, now looked just plain
wrong.

General wondered suddenly what he had been thinking when he bought all this stuff, but he really knew. He had been shopping for Juanita. Brandi wasn’t even in it. The problem was, how was he going to explain all that to a girl who hadn’t even been born last time these clothes were in style?

“Go ahead and put it on,” he said with a big smile, trying to dissipate the strange mood that had settled over them.

Still silent, Brandi slipped the dress over her head and winced as it slid over her hips to end just above her knees. She glanced down at it and then looked at him again with the same confused expression.

“Come on over here, girl, and let me zip it up.”

She backed away a few steps, plucking at the dress like somebody had smeared spaghetti sauce on it. “Look, no offense, baby, but this is some old-time shit you got here.”

General was stung. He looked at her and his eyes narrowed. “I didn’t ask you to critique it. I asked you to try it on. Can you do that?”

“I’m tryin’ it on, baby,” she said, her voice taking on an unpleasant wheedling tone. “But it just ain’t me.”

He knew he had gone too far with the fantasy. Trying to turn Brandi into Juanita was a fool’s errand.
And an old fool at that.
But maybe he could still rescue the moment. Maybe she would cheer up if he reminded her that they were getting ready to take their relationship to a whole new level. Maybe she just needed to hear how fine she was, all wrapped up in a grown man’s fantasy of a dead woman’s style.

“Come here,” General said.

She went and stood in front of him slowly, the new/old dress hanging from her shoulders like a broken promise.

“Listen, baby,” General said, stroking her arm gently. “Vegas is the big time. You’re going to meet some of my associates. These are high-class people and their women are high-class women. I don’t want you to look like somebody’s country cousin from Atlanta.”

She just stood there.

“Turn around now and let me zip you up so you can see how it looks and don’t worry. You’re going to be the finest woman these niggas ever saw.”

He zipped up the dress while she gazed disapprovingly at her reflection in the mirror.

“Where you get this stuff anyway?” she whined.

General was staring at Brandi with his own critical eye. When Juanita had worn a dress almost exactly like this one, she had looked like
pure class.
They had gone down to New Orleans for the weekend while Blue was in Canada on his second honeymoon in five years, and everywhere they went, General remembered the envy in other men’s eyes. She was a queen and she looked every inch the part. Brandi, on the other hand, somehow managed to make the outfit look like secondhand news.

“What do you care where I got it?” he snapped at her. “All you got to worry about is how to wear it.”

“It just don’t look like me is all I’m sayin’, baby. That’s all.”

She reached behind her, unzipped the dress awkwardly, and stepped out of it. That annoyed him even more. What had made him think he could make her into anything other than what she was? A small-time stripper with no style and no future.

“Hey!” she said suddenly. “Are these clothes
used
?”

She was looking at the side seams of the dress with the practiced eye of a veteran mall shopper. Her tone accused him.

“They’re
vintage,
” he said, sounding defensive to his own ears.

She knew what that meant and she didn’t appreciate it one bit. “You bought some
used
clothes up in here?”

Without another word, he stood up and began to gather the bags, stuffing the clothes inside roughly. “Fuck this. You ain’t ever got to go to Vegas with me. I ain’t the one who’s never been there.”

Brandi watched him with alarm. She didn’t want to lose him, but what was the deal with these frumpy old clothes?
Had they belonged to somebody else he knew?
The thought made her feel creepy.
Maybe they belonged to that bitch whose name he always called out when he came,
she thought.
Juanita. Were these her clothes? Was this like one of those old horror movies where the guy kills his wife and then tries to make somebody else look like her by wearing the dead bitch’s clothes?

General was stuffing the clothes back in their bags angrily and Brandi grabbed his arm in desperation.

“Wait, baby!” she said, grabbing his arm, seeing her trip to Vegas disappearing before her eyes. “I just—”

“Shut up,” he said, shaking her off. “You ain’t got nothin’ else to say to me.”

Suddenly her desperation felt more like anger. She hadn’t done anything wrong and now he was walking out the door.
It wasn’t fair!

“How come I ain’t got nuthin’ to say?” she shouted as he walked out of the room with the bags over his arm. “Because I won’t wear Juanita’s old clothes?”

General dropped the bags he was holding to the floor, closed the small space between them in one swift motion, grabbed her arm, and lifted her off the floor like a rag doll. She was too terrified to scream. His face, only a few inches from her own, was a hard mask of rage. She saw him draw back his hand and closed her eyes against the blow. She hoped he wouldn’t beat her up too bad. She couldn’t work all beat-up.

Then, to her surprise, he released her arm and half dropped her to the floor. She staggered and then steadied herself before she opened her eyes and saw him standing with his back to her, obviously struggling to regain control of his emotions. Brandi remained motionless, hardly breathing.

“How do you know Juanita?” General’s voice was an ominous rumble of pain and confusion.

“You say her name,” Brandi whispered, trembling in her G-string.

He turned to face her, his face a terrible thundercloud, his eyes like lasers boring into her soul. Brandi swallowed hard and said a little prayer. At this moment, the question wasn’t whether or not to lie, but whether or not the truth would save her or seal her fate at General’s hands.

“I say her name
when
?”

“When we… when you
come.
”

The frown on General’s face relaxed almost imperceptibly, but it emboldened her just enough for her to continue.

“You been doin’ it the whole time we been seein’ each other, baby.”

The energy seemed to leave his body in a rush and he sat down on the edge of the bed like an old man. Brandi slowly, very slowly, sat beside him. She kept her knees slightly apart so he could smell her sweetness, but it was obvious that sex was the last thing on General’s mind right now. He sat with his head in his big hands as if she wasn’t even there.

“You ain’t got to tell me nuthin’,” she said softly, as if speaking any louder might set off a response that would endanger her. “I’m just… I’m just not down for no spooky shit, okay?”

He didn’t move. She could see his big shoulders rising and falling with his breathing, but his sudden stillness was beginning to frighten her more than his anger. Shouting matches were familiar territory. Silence was an unknown danger, which is why it frightened her even more.

“You feelin’ okay, baby?”

In response to her question, he spoke so softly at first, she wasn’t sure if it was only a sigh. “I’m sorry.”

She leaned closer. “What you say, baby?”

“I’m so sorry.”

He repeated his apology as he raised his ravaged face. The pain she saw there frightened her, not for herself, but for his ability to bear it.

“What you got to apologize for? Good as you been to me, you can call me any name you want to call me.”

General looked at her sweet face and she could see that he was searching for the words to make her understand. She waited for him to explain what was going on, touching his thigh gently.

“You can tell me, baby,” she said. “You can tell me anything.”

He sat quiet and rigid and she began to stroke his leg slowly with no hint of sexual promise, only comfort.

“Tell me.”

General took a deep breath. “Juanita was the only woman I ever loved. She died ten years ago.”

“I’m so sorry, baby.”

“Before she went, she told me she would…”

Brandi’s hand on his leg never stopped stroking. He took another deep breath.

“She told me she would send me a sign.”

The hair stood up on the back of Brandi’s neck. “What kind of sign?”

He shrugged his massive shoulders. “She didn’t say exactly what. She just said it would be something only I would recognize.”

“And did you?”

He nodded slowly, never taking his eyes from her. “Yes. When I saw
you.
”

“Me?”

He nodded again. “She had a birthmark just like yours. Same shape. Same place on her body. That first time I saw you at Montre’s, I didn’t know what to think, but there it was.”

“So you think I’m like her
reincarnated
or something?”

He smiled. “Nothing like that. Just that… seeing you… seeing that mark on you…” His voice trailed off.

“You still love her?” Brandi wasn’t scared anymore, but she was intrigued. She thought this kind of stuff happened only in the movies.

“I’ll always love her.” General whispered.

Suddenly she felt bad for him. The lie that had seemed routine when she told it came back like a bad dream.
He thinks he got a signal from his true love,
she thought with a pang of guilt,
and that mark on my ass isn’t even a real birthmark.
This was getting way too complicated. Brandi stood up and looked down at General.

“Want a drink, baby?”

“Yeah.”

He stood up and followed her into the kitchen. She poured them each a shot of scotch.

“I didn’t mean to call you by her name.”