Nasty (6 page)

Later that day, Nicola leaned against the railing of her rooftop garden. The setting sun had toasted the Northern sky a reddishorange glow. It was chilly outside. Trembling, Nicola pulled a mohair shawl over her shoulders. It was spring, but like relatives who did not know when to leave, winter was still hanging around.

From this spot she could hear her next-door neighbor chant his Muslim prayers. His melodic almost haunting voice soothed her in a strange and exotic way. It reminded her of the time she and Harrison had spent in Tunisia.

That was three years ago. They were so happy then, or rather, she was happy. She doubted if he had ever really loved her. She
remembered how Harrison had always made mysterious disappearances on those trips. Always under the guise of, “Just taking care of business, lovey.” Some business?
BULLSHIT,
thought Nicola. He was more than likely slipping out for some gay rendezvous.

She felt so stupid. How could she have not known? How could she have been so blind? Now that she was divorced, she had time to deal with the issues of her childhood. Since that night when she had discovered Harrison and Sebastian together, she had found it impossible to decipher if the scenes from her past were real or imagined. They were so horrible. She had heard about false memories and had prayed that it was so with hers. She needed a way to pick out the truth of what had happened back then.

The private investigator,
thought Nicola
.
The one she had hired years earlier to find her birth mother. That’s who could help her. She decided to contact him. He would help link the dots of her memory. For the first time in months, Nicola smiled and mused,
soon the whole truth will emerge…then maybe I’ll get a chance to start my life all over again.

“Carlos…I’m gonna come, baby….I’m….OH YES…SWEET BABY JESUS!”

Carlos lay on his back as the two-hundred fifty-pound, light-skinned Amazon rode his dick like a jockey rides a stallion in the Kentucky Derby. Her pendulous tits flopped in all directions. Her nostrils widened large as the expression of her freckle-laden face changed into a pleasure-seeking alien, hell-bent on getting the best orgasm on the planet.

Beads of sweat shot out from every pore of her body. Carlos guided her butt up and down, repeatedly ramming his enormous twelve-inch pole through a maze of juicy flesh. Wanting to speed up her “race” to an ecstatic finish, he rubbed the ultra-sensitive tissues on her love knob back and forth. He could feel her insides spilling out juices in joyful response. She was ripe. She was ready. She was ’bout to come.

“CARLOS…It’s here, baby…YOU DOING IT…YOU DOING IT, BABY!!!”

Carlos almost had another orgasm from merely watching the performance. He loved watching women come. Especially the big ones. They put all their weight into it. And this one came hard.

“OOOOOOH, Carlos…Carlos…..OOOOOHH…BABY!!!” Almost tearful, she collapsed on his chest and held him like life depended on it. And then she went and spoiled everything for
Carlos. She whispered in his ear, “I love you, Carlos…baby…I love you so much…”

Later that morning, Carlos could see the ‘What the fuck?’ look on the young women’s chubby face when he pulled his jet-black Jaguar sports car away from the curb and, more importantly, away from her and her clinging ways.

She said she wanted breakfast. I dropped her off at McDonald’s. Why’s she upset?

Navigating midtown Manhattan traffic, Carlos knew that after a morning of hot, torrid lovemaking, women expected you to be so smitten…so grateful…so indebted…he was supposed to love and worship her dirty drawers, or at the very least take her out for a fine breakfast. But, if he did that, she’d think she was special. When women think they’re “special” their commitment genes activate. Pussy never feels the same after that.

Carlos wanted no parts of attachment with women. He was the pin-up boy for fuck ’em and dump ’em. The music business was his only passion. Building the new record company with his brother, Tarik, took all his focus and attention.

But that wasn’t the real reason.

In all his twenty-five years on the planet, Carlos had never had a crush or the slightest desire for what the poets or crazy R&B songs called romance. When puberty had set in and his loins had demanded something other than his hand for pleasure, he had felt betrayed. He knew he had to be with the opposite sex or he would explode in a million different pieces.

At six feet, he was considered tall, trim and terribly fine. With his clean-shaven head, an ever present diamond stud in his left ear, and designer suits that showed off his lean muscular build, women came easy to him; way too easy. He quickly figured out
early in the game that females would let him have his way with them. He was even upfront about his non-intentions and still they laid down, still thinking that wrapping his dick up in their tight little juicy vaults of desire would make him lose his mind.

But all it ever did was make him come hard and dump the woman as soon as he detected even the slightest inkling that she wanted more than he was ever going to give. And he always wrapped it up tight; real tight. He wasn’t bringing any baby Carlos’s in the world. One was enough.

And that’s why the cute plus-sized freak had gotten her walking papers that morning. Not only did she profess her love for him, she had wanted him to meet her mother.
What the hell for
? he thought. He had a mama; he didn’t need to know hers. What was he gonna say when he met her?
Hello, my name is Carlos. I only want to fuck your fat ass daughter’s brains out.

No, there was no reason to meet the family or keep the relationship in “active” status. It was easier to drop her off in front of McDonald’s and refuse to answer any of her calls. It was actually the humane thing to do, and Carlos was all about being the humane kind of brother.

He glanced at the clock.
Good
, he thought. There was plenty time to run some errands in Greenwich Village and pick up his brother, Jonathan, at JFK airport. His seven-foot sibling was returning from a trip to California, where he had visited the college he was attending in the fall. A star athlete while in high school, Jonathan had won an opportunity to participate in an elite NBA summer camp held in Harlem.

After Pops died, Carlos had made a special note to spend extra time with Jonathan. This summer was the time to do it. It would take some serious schedule juggling, but he had made a graveside promise to Pops to take care of him.
Pops and Mama Ophelia had adopted Carlos when his parents died. He was only seven when he moved from Florida to Brooklyn. From day one, they had treated him just like their natural son. They had made him feel right at home. The added bonus was that Carlos had always wanted brothers, and both Tarik and Jonathan fit the bill.

Carlos never looked back at his life with his parents in Florida. He loved his new family; his real family. He had no desire to start his own either. A confirmed childless bachelor, he laughed every time Mama Ophelia threatened that one day he’d meet someone who’d change his mind. There was no chance of that happening. As far as Carlos was concerned, there was no need to complicate things and upset what he knew was a damn near perfect life.

Carlos smiled. For once, the traffic and parking spot gods were shining on him. He made it downtown in record time and got a parking spot right in front of the café where he, Pops, and Tarik used to hang out at before they caught a jazz set at the Blue Note. He loved the Village; especially in the summer.

He entered a small shop at the corner of Fourth Street where Mrs. Doutrelle, a gifted tailor from Senegal, greeted him warmly. Close to seventy, she kissed him on both cheeks. She did wonderful things for his clothing. He always looked sharp. She handed him his new suit.

“How’s ze record business, Monsieur?”

“Oh, better every day. Better every day.”

And he wasn’t lying. All throughout his college days he had interned at the university radio station and at Mega Hits, an independent record company. By the time he graduated with a major in marketing and finance, he knew all the music industry’s VIPs on a personal level. The label had hired him and made
him their VP of Marketing. Two months after Pops died, the company went belly-up and Carlos, still grieving, now had another cross to bear.

It was a blessing, though. Not even in disguise. Instead of trying to get another job in the industry, he and Tarik had cashed in their sizeable inheritance from Pops and started their own record company, Infinity. Besides pushing Tarik’s act, they had a few other up-and-coming artists that looked real good. Omara, a rapper with a unique style. Everlasting, a teenaged boy group that had tight harmonies and looks guaranteed to charm the teenybopper crowd. Most recently signed to their label was Katrell, a male vocalist destined to fill the void left by Luther Vandross.

But for now, it was Tarik and his piano playing and Bob Marley-like persona that had their new company on the verge of a big distribution deal with one of the majors. In an industry where the technology was so cheap anybody and their mama could cut a CD and call themselves a record company, it was your distributor’s clout that separated little fish from the king whale.

As far as Carlos and Tarik were concerned, their record company, Infinity, was going all the way up the food chain next to Diddy, Jay-Z and his hero, the big granddaddy of them all, Berry Gordy of Motown.

Carlos put the new suit in the back of his car next to a box of fliers advertising Tarik’s big show in Prospect Park. He looked at his watch and decided to give out a few at Washington Square Park.

He had made a good decision. It was lunchtime and the park was packed with folks. He noticed an older, distinguished, somewhat frail-looking man sitting on the bench feeding pigeons.
Knowing that he probably wouldn’t be interested in the show, Carlos handed the man his last flier anyway and then quickly walked out the park.

Something made Carlos turn around to look back at the man. He was clapping, laughing, talking to himself, and dancing a less than vigorous jig. He looked nuts. Carlos decided he probably was. He shook his head, got into his car, and headed for the airport.

E
xhausted from jumping up and down and acting like a complete fool, Eli collapsed back onto the park bench. He was ecstatic. It had been three months since his release from prison. He had spent most of the time hospitalized at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan for treatment of AID-Srelated complications. He could not believe that he was now holding in his hands a flier that revealed the whereabouts of his son, Tarik. In three weeks he was scheduled to perform at Prospect Park in Brooklyn.

Even the bad news doctors at Bellevue had given him earlier that day about the failure of an experimental drug regimen he had initiated during his last hospitalization could not deflate his balloon. No, that couldn’t drag him down from the high he was feeling. He would turn down the best dope in the known world just for the information he now had.

Printed on the flier, for all to see, was a picture of his son, Tarik Singleton. He laughed out loud when he realized that the system’s inability to place him in a Manhattan shelter was to his benefit. His new residence in Brooklyn was not far from Prospect Park. On a good day…that is if he had any more good days, Eli could walk there. That’s what the social worker had told him the day he was given his placement.

He thought about his latest lab results. So what if his CD-4 count was low or his viral load was off the charts. Nothing could interfere with his joy. Three weeks couldn’t come soon enough for him; especially since doctors advised him that the end of the road in terms of his disease was just around the bend. They continued to give him medicine, but no faith, hope, or promise that things would improve. They said he needed a miracle.

Well, making the cabbie stop at Washington Square Park to check out his old stomping grounds and running into that nice-looking young man who had given him the flier constituted a miracle in Eli’s book.

All those years in prison, volunteering for clinical drug trials, hoping it would slow down the progression of AIDS or shave off years from his sentence. Anything to get him out and maybe get a glimpse at his son…or even his ex-wife, Ophelia, before the disease claimed his body and soul. And now, at the end of life’s road…his dream would soon be realized.

Attica had not really been that bad for him. It was there that he had kicked heroin. He didn’t even need methadone any-more. When his health cooperated, he ran both a GED and an arts program for his fellow inmates. The young guys even used him as a life counselor.

Eli shook his head. Imagine him, a total loser, giving out advice. But they sought him out. Asked him questions. He shared the truth he knew best. It seemed to give the young men hope in an otherwise hopeless situation. During his prison stay, he had behaved and done all the things he should have done on the outside but was too pig-headed or too weak of a person to try.

Looking at the picture of Tarik playing at the piano, Eli beamed with pride. He could not help but notice how much
they resembled each other. He prayed that physical appearance was the only thing his son had inherited from him. It didn’t bother him that he didn’t carry his last name. He had signed over his parental rights years ago to Ophelia and her new husband, Richard “Pops” Singleton.

After five years in prison, he hoped that they had taken good care of his son. He had never really doubted that they would. Ophelia was an excellent mother. She wouldn’t let anything happen to him. Hell, after all, she was the one who had the good sense to get him out of his own son’s life.

In three weeks, Lord-willing, Eli would see his son perform in concert, and maybe get a peek at his ex-wife. He prayed he was alive and strong enough to attend.

“
I
knew it! When you ran outta this office five years ago, I knew one day you’d want the whole story, and I knew there’d be more to the story.”