Dirty Old Men [And Other Stories] (Zane Presents) (37 page)

I mean, imagine the
nerve
of that loud-mouth bitch saying that? But I understood it. She wanted some attention, too. So I dropped the issue with S and squeezed up on her.

“My bad, lil’ momma. Let’s get these orders on. And I’ll take me some barbecue spare ribs over here.” I was teasing her in front of the waitress, and making her feel good.

Catherine smiled and said, “I’m ready to order my food.” Then her ass went right ahead and ordered
steak.
Well, I wasn’t gonna let her order more than me on
my
bill, so I ordered the same steak
and
a salad.

S looked like he was still confused on his side of the table. In the meantime, Carol looked over at me as if she was jealous that I was holding her girlfriend. And Sean basically didn’t know what the hell to do with her. She was too
fast
for his slow ass.

So when they finally decided on what they wanted to eat, I started teasing them both to spark shit up at the table again. I mean, my boy
needed
it, man. His conversation was bone
dry.

“So, y’all want
fish
and chicken
breasts,
hunh?” I fucked with them.

Then Carol gave me this evil-ass eye and said, “Well, I don’t have no
fish
over here, baby.” She was obviously defending the scent of her pussy.

And I can’t even lie, man, that shit got me going. That girl had more spunk in her than what I thought. So I kept fucking with her.

“There’s a
breast
over there though.”

She came right back at me. “And there’s a
dick
over
there, too,
and in more ways than
one.
”

Shit! Fuck
Catherine!
That girl
Carol
had my dick hard. She had these cat eyes that just
did
something to you when she
stared.
So I looked at S to see if he was reading the shit right. He had a damn
tigress
sitting over there next to him, and I don’t think he was ready to handle her.

So I said, “Well, as long as you know I
got
one over here. And it’s on
this
side of the table.”

Finally, Sean woke his dead ass up. “What are you trying to say, man?”

I was just making sure he knew what
time
it was. That damn girl had the
heat
up in there! I was ready to fuck her across the table myself, skinny or not. But she wasn’t
that
thin, just wasn’t as thick as her girl.

I told S, “I already
said
what I’m saying.” That nigga needed to
recognize
what he had over there, before I took her ass from him. And Catherine didn’t really have shit to say anyway. It was all about Carol now, for
both
of us.

Sean said, “Well, I’m holding mine over here,
too.
And you know what they say, the ones who talk more feel like they
need
to. But I’m packing strong over here
without
all the extra noise.”

I actually liked that damn line. So I smiled and nodded at him. Carol looked all satisfied and shit across the table herself. And Catherine finally had something to say about it.

“Well,
excuse me,
big boy,” she told Sean.

He was winning some cool points back. So then I got loose with the shit. I took a sip of my drink and asked, “So, how do we all like our sex, from the front or from the back? Because I hear that from the
back
gets you in a lot
deeper.
”

I was sending my messages straight to Carol to let her know that I had a
lonnnng dick
over that table. And she smiled and chuckled at the shit. But I was fucking up the chemistry with Catherine with all that.

I peeped her looking across the table at Carol with one of them “bitch, cut it out looks.” But Carol ignored her ass and kept smiling.

“Shit, can I at least eat my
food
before y’all start talking all this
extra
shit?” Catherine complained. She was mad because no one was fucking with
her.

It was too late to lie at that point. I wasn’t interested in Catherine. I wanted to fuck her girl Carol something
fierce.
Then S started talking about how many drinks I had, as if I was drunk, but I wasn’t. I knew
exactly
what I was doing.

I watched Carol sip her down drink across the table, and I asked her how many drinks
she
planned to have that night.

“As many as I
want.
I’m not driving,
Catherine
is.” Then she licked around her straw with her pink tongue.

Got’ dammit!
I looked back over at S, and this slow-game nigga didn’t have a
clue!
That’s when Catherine shoved me and said that she had to use the bathroom.

I at least tried to give the girl a hug to let her know that she was still a good-looking woman, and sexy and all that. But she broke from my arms in a silent tantrum. So I raised up my hands in surrender and let her go to the bathroom.

When I was all alone with my man and this tigress I had tried to hook him up with, I realized that I was getting in the way. We couldn’t
both
fuck her. Or
could
we?

So I asked them both, “Are you two liking each other over there yet?”

I wasn’t sure if Sean even liked the girl, since he was so damn quiet. Did she scare his ass off or what?

He said, “Hey, man, she’s a nice catch. I give her a two thumbs up and a high-five.”

Now you talk about sounding
corny.
That’s the shit that came out my boy’s
mouth.
At that point, I
knew
he wasn’t gonna get any pussy from
her.
His game was mad
weak.
I even started to say something about it. But I changed my damn mind. I could still at least
hope
for my nigga, you know. So I nodded to them and left the table to get another drink from the bar,
and to clear my head and listen to the music for a minute. You can’t have every woman. But I was hoping that my man could somehow figure out that Carol was
hot,
and take advantage of that shit.

Nevertheless, when I returned to our table when the food arrived, it seemed like S had a falling-out with the girl. He didn’t even want to look at her.

Catherine was back to talking shit about how late the food was, and how come we didn’t receive our steaks first after ordering before them, and a bunch of other shit that nobody wanted to hear. She was all out the loop, and Sean and Carol got busy eating their food without another word.

So I asked S, “What are you thinking about over there, man?”

He turned and asked Carol to answer my question for him, and I realized that I was right. He had fucked something up as soon as I had left him alone at the table. But the truth was, he couldn’t handle the damn girl. He was not in her league.

So she shook her and said, “Guys’ egos are so damn
fragile.
I can’t
stand
that. I mean, be a fucking
man
about it! If a girl don’t
like you,
she don’t
like you.
”

God damn!
I thought to myself. She was a much bigger and badder tigress than I even
imagined.
I felt sorry for my boy. But what could I do but laugh it off?

“Well, what happened after I left the table?” I joked.

“He got his little
feelings
hurt,” Carol answered again. She was pouring
salt
in my man’s
wounds.
That gave S no choice but to go hard on the girl. And that wasn’t even his style.

He told her, “You know what, you’re the kind a woman who really makes a man want to fuck you
hard.
And I
mean
that.”

“Don’t you
wish,
” she teased him.

He said, “You wish I’d bend your ass over
backwards
across this table.”

I started laughing my ass off. We were
all
laughing in there.

“Yo, slow down, man. We just met these girls,” I joked again.

“She asked for me it, man.”

And he was
right.
She
was
asking him for it. He just didn’t know how to give it to her. But
I
did. Only I was being paired up with her damn
girlfriend.

So we all killed the noise and started eating our food. Then out of the
blue, Catherine opened her dumb-ass mouth and said to S, “Damn, you’re tearing up that
fish.
”

I started laughing again, not because of her tease, but because I knew how Sean thought. And if I know my man, he was already thinking about getting the hell out of there, wishing he had never come. Neither one of them girls were his type.

“I feel you, man,” I told him. It was an inside joke. S was ready to eat and run and make it back to Felicia. That’s what he always did when things didn’t go his way. That girl was like his damn security blanket.

The next thing I knew, Catherine asked me, “You feel him
how?
”

I mean, nobody had been paying any damn mind to her. She didn’t have much of a personality. Even S had more of a personality than
she
did. At least he knew who he
was
and what he wanted to do. But Catherine was confused, man, and dying to be held by somebody who could understand her rude ass.

I told her, “I feel what he’s talking about. He’s my
boy.
I know what’s on his mind right now.”

Catherine looked across the table at Carol again. She had been wanting to get at her all night. It was only a matter of time. And Carol was still smiling, having a good-ass time with the shit.

Finally, Catherine snapped at her. “Bitch, what’s so damn
funny?
”

“Whatever the hell I
think
is funny.”

“Unh-hunh, you out here trying to be
cute
again.”

“Oh, I don’t have to
try
to be
cute.
I
know
what the hell
I
look like. It’s
your
bitch ass who needs some
attention.
Just look how you
dress.
”

I was sitting there, thinking,
Wow!
The beef was on, for real. Then Catherine tried to reach across the table and grab Carol by her fucking hair. I moved on reflex to stop her. Sean moved to stop her, too.

And that was the end of our damn night, dog. Them bitches started cussing each other out across the table and making a big-ass scene in there. And I had to admit that I was partially at fault. But what the hell could I do? Shit goes like that sometimes. I didn’t know them chicks had
beef
with each other like that. S and I just wanted the same damn girl.

So after the night was ruined, S probably held true to form and called
Felicia back up for his usual as soon as he climbed in his ride, and I walked to my own car, up the street and around the corner.

I told myself, “Shit, if I ever bump back into that girl, Carol, it’s
on
!” I was planning to lock that motherfucker
down!
She’s
my
kind of
woman.
And I wasn’t concerned about that boyfriend shit she started talking. She was only saying that for
Sean’s
ass.

But I mean, it was a fun night. That’s what going out is all about. Sometimes you don’t
know
what the hell is gonna happen. And you’re not
supposed
to. You just learn to go with the flow.

“Oh, yess! Oh,
yesss!
Come on with it!
Come on!
”

“It’s coming, girl! It’s
coming!
Hold on tight!
Hold on!
”

“Oh, yeah! Oh,
yeeaah…
”

Nine-year-old Marcus Gamble sat outside his father’s locked bedroom door at their condo in the Skyway section of Seattle, Washington, at close to midnight, listening to his father and his female companion make nasty noises from inside.

Marcus had first noticed the noises a few months ago, when he had moved in with his father; the loud moans and squeals had unnerved him at night. He thought his father was killing someone. But once he had gotten used to the desperate cries of adult pleasure, he learned to believe that his father was giving women what they wanted. So whenever a new female companion would drop by the house past his bedtime, Marcus knew there was only a matter of time before his father would have his company moaning and groaning from inside of his locked bedroom.

The boy then became interested in comparing how loud each woman could get. He ranked the present woman a six out of ten, with a ten ranking as the loudest. And whenever the bedroom noise would settle back down after reaching a high point, Marcus would sneak back to his own bedroom and close the door, as if he hadn’t heard a thing. But he had heard it all, and he had heard it clearly enough to memorize it.

Inside the master bedroom, Derrick Gamble climbed out of his extra-long, king-sized bed, and stood six feet tall and seven inches. He had a slim, wiry basketball-player frame with square shoulders.