Dirty Old Men [And Other Stories] (Zane Presents) (6 page)

Clarence frowned. “Aw, to hell with them, man. You don’t see
me
complaining when
they
make a good buck or two out here.”

“Yeah, but they’re not out here jumping in front of us to get bags and shit either,” he argued. “I mean, you looked like a gotdamned fool out here today, man. You tryna take it back to slavery days?”

“Aw, come on now,” Clarence commented. “That’s waaay overboard.”

“Nah, man,
you
were overboard. I mean, you look like you were really Uncle Tomming it today, man. And you
know
I ain’t gon’ lie to ya’.”

Clarence shook it off and said, “Yeah, whatever.”

Maurice stopped at their cars and asked, “So you’re still not gonna tell me what’s going on?”

Clarence only stared at him in determined silence.

Maurice nodded. “Okay.” And he walked away to climb into his car.

After only two days of gathering hungry airport tips, Clarence gave Brenda another five hundred dollars and received a kiss on the cheek with his hug. And he made certain to tell her not to count the money out in the open this time. She had to trust that it was all there, like he had to trust that she would pay it all back somehow.

She agreed and said, “Okay. Now was it as bad as you
thought
it would be?”

Clarence grinned. “Actually, it made me work a lot harder. It felt good. If I worked like that all the time, I guess I would have plenty of extra change in my pockets.”

Brenda grinned and said, “You see that? I’m
good
for you. And you’re good for
me.
And good
to
me.”

“Yeah,
too
good,” he blurted. She still was getting the better part of the deal, and he wanted her to realize that.

She told him, “So, you would rather not have me here to inspire you?”

Clarence thought about it and said, “That’s a good question. But what do I inspire
you
to do?”

She looked at him and answered, “To work harder.” And while her RAV4 was still being repaired at a body shop, she was driving a Chevrolet rental car.

Clarence asked, “Working harder to do what?”

“To pay you back.”

He could never get much farther than that. He didn’t have the balls to come right out and say it. But he wanted
more
than promises. He wanted more than money, too. What he wanted now was her companionship.

So he asked her, “Well, how ’bout you go out to dinner with me sometime? You know, whenever you’re free.”

He asked her the question, but he left her answer too wide open. There was no timetable on it.

“Okay,” she commented with a nod. Then she ran back off to her hide-aways at school and at work.

And as the days and weeks passed, Clarence found himself giving Brenda more and more of his hard-earned money only to see her long enough to give it to her. And although it was never five or six hundred dollars again, the forties, eighties, and hundreds all added up, until Clarence had run out of rope to deal with her without seeking help. So he finally broke down and sat with Maurice inside of his car after work.

“So, you finally decided to tell me now, hunh?”

Maurice couldn’t stop himself from smiling and chuckling at the shit. Clarence had been a hard-headed man to his own detriment.

“Come on, man, I’m serious right now,” he complained.

“Yeah, and you
should
be,” Maurice told him. “So, how much money have you spent on this girl?”

Clarence added it, then he tried to subtract from the real amount. She shrugged and said, “About a thousand dollars.”

Maurice stared at him and didn’t budge. “Only a
thousand
dollars, Clarence? Are you sure?” He wanted Clarence to know up front that he needed to be bluntly honest with him. “Now, I can’t help you if you gon’ lie to me in here, Clarence. This is between me and you. And you know we’ve been around each other for too damn long to lie, man. Now how much you give her?”

Clarence looked away and exhaled. He grumbled, “A little over two, man.”

“More than two thousand?” Maurice asked him to make sure.

Clarence got upset with him and snapped, “Yeah, man, shit.”

“And you ain’t touched her yet?”

Clarence answered, “I’ve been hugging her a lot.”

Maurice stared at him like an angry demon. Clarence couldn’t take the glare, so he looked away again and laughed at himself.

“You
hugged
her a lot? For two thousand
dollars?
Nigga, is you
rich
or
crazy?
You been breaking your ass out here for
hugs?
” his experienced co-worker yelled at him inside the car.

“All right, man, now look, what do I need to do now? I’ve already given her the money. You know that now.”

Maurice began to shake his head with doom. “And that’s already your problem. You gave her the money without establishing shit. So she ain’t planning on giving you shit for it.”

“How do you know that?” Clarence asked him.

Maurice stared at him again. “How do I know every-damn-thing else? I
know
these broads, man, if I know
nothing
else. And you got one damn rule you need to learn in this game, Clarence. Now there’s a lot of damn rules to it, but this one I’ma tell ya’ is the
main
one.”

“And what rule is that?” Clarence asked him in haste. He realized that he had flown over to the other side of sanity by asking Maurice anything, especially concerning techniques to scores with a young woman. But that’s where he was now, and there was no sense in denying that he had his nose pulled wide open.

Maurice told him, “The most important rule you need to know is this; you don’t
choose
them, they choose
you.
You understand me? Now you can talk shit and proposition them all you want, but at the end of the day, if that woman don’t choose to get down, then she ain’t gon’
get
down. And there ain’t shit you can do to change her mind. So if she don’t choose you in the beginning, or when you come back to her, then you move your ass on.”

“She
did
choose me. If not, then she would have gotten the money from somebody else.”

Maurice started laughing again. “Clarence, understand me now…that girl did not
choose
you;
you chose her
by
going
for that dumb shit. And when you put that money in her hands, she won the game right there. And then you walked away with a damn
hug
and hard
dick,
nigga. And don’t you
ever
get it confused out here.

“But the thing for honest guys like
you,
is that you scared to ask for the pussy,” Maurice continued. “You feeling all guilty and shit ’cause she young. But if you ain’t gon’
ask
her for the pussy, then she ain’t tryna give you none. But on the
flipside,
she don’t have no problem at
all
asking
you
for some money. You catch my drift? So if she can ask
you
for the money, then why can’t you ask
her
for the pussy?”

Clarence didn’t like his tone or his choice of words, but the facts were facts. And so far, Maurice was on point. Clarence
was
afraid to ask for what he wanted. He definitely felt guilty. And Brenda was surely not shy about asking for
she
wanted.

Maurice continued, “Look, now we too old for that innocent shit, man. These young women know what they getting into when they deal with us. And it ain’t fucking walks in the park, like they might do with their college boyfriends. When they get with us, it’s all about them asking, ‘What am I fin’ to get out of this shit?’ And that’s the honest damn truth, Clarence. You can’t change that. And they don’t give a fuck about how
nice
you are either. They know you as old as their damn daddy. So they gon’
treat
you like one unless you let them know up front that your game don’t work that way. And they
do
know the difference.”

He said, “So, I’m gon’ give you a live sample of what I mean, when I tell you to let them choose
you
. And you don’t give them
nothing
until they make that choice. So they can cry their little asses out all they want. Fuck ’em! The world ain’t about charity unless you rich. And we ain’t rich. So keep quiet and pay strict attention in here.”

Maurice took his cell phone from his belt, dialed a number, put the phone on speaker, and set it down between them on the front seat.

“Hello?” a soft, young voice answered.

“Hey, it’s Maurice. I was thinking about you coming from work. I got both my hands full with counting this tip money before I drive off, so excuse me for the speakerphone.”

“Oh, okay,” she uttered. “So, you made that much money today, hunh?”

“Yee-uup,” he answered. “And I remembered that you needed something. But you ain’t called me lately, so I figured that you must have gotten it on your own.”

Clarence sat deadly silent and awaited the young woman’s response.

“No, I still need it,” she commented.

“Unh hunh, me too,” Maurice answered with a chuckle. “So ah, we need to talk about it over at my place…or you pass?”

There was a slight pause. Then she asked him, “So…you’re talking about…us having sex for it?”

“Well, you know, if you don’t need it, you don’t need it. But I figured I haven’t seen you in awhile. You got a boyfriend now?”

“No, none of that.”

“Okay, so…I thought about you, thought about what you needed, and figured I’d call you up to see how you made out with it. But you ah, call me back if you feel like it. Okay?”

She said, “Well…I mean, when you wanna see me?”

Maurice looked at Clarence inside the car and nodded to him. He answered, “I don’t know. When you free again?”

“Umm…I can come see you tomorrow. But I’m busy tonight.”

“Okay, well, don’t have
too
much fun. You make a lonely man nervous,” he suggested to her.

“Aw, naw, it’s nothing like that. Me and my girlfriends are, umm, going to this comedy show, that’s all.”

“Well, wouldn’t it be funny if you could come see me after the show. Then again, I gotta be back up before sunlight tomorrow, and comedy shows generally run late.”

“Yeah, and then you won’t let me stay over at your place to rest up before I go back to work.”

“Aw, naw, a man gotta keep his castle sacred. But ah, so you call me up for tomorrow then, and we’ll talk about that. Okay?”

“All right, then, I’ll call you tomar’.”

Maurice hung up and said, “You see how that works, Clarence? You see she didn’t hang up the phone until she took the bait? That’s how you make them
choose.
She know what she gotta do to get this money.”

Clarence shook his head and said, “That sounds like prostitution to me, man. And that ain’t something I wanna get involved in. I just like this girl, that’s all.”

“Yeah, and she likes you, too, Clarence. She likes your
money.
And she’ll never like anything else.”

“How can you
assume
that?” Clarence insisted.

Maurice took another deep breath and exhaled as he prepared himself to leave the car. “You’re about to find out, Clarence. And if you really want that girl like you
think
you do, you would have to offer her
five
thousand dollars to fuck her now. Because she already got
two
thousand for
free.
”

Clarence shook off his vile comments, while his devious coworker climbed out of his car to return to his own.

“Remember the main rule, Clarence, or get out the damn game before you end up in the poor house with a stroke and heartache from working too hard and getting kicked to the curb. HA HA HAH!” Maurice laughed like a sinister villain.

Nevertheless, his comments stuck on Clarence’s mind. How could they not? He had asked him for them.

Clarence wished that he had never asked Maurice for his honest opinion. But it was too late. The man had now corrupted his mind.

“Five thousand dollars,” Clarence repeated to himself at home. He continued to shake his head at the thought.
Would she actually go for something like that?