Numbers (10 page)

“The girl and guy with the highest cards have to give each other some tongue.” Numbers picked first: a deuce of hearts. Waketta plucked a 5 of spades, Jarvis pulled a 3 of diamonds, and Sharon got a 4 of spades.

“Jar, Ketta, Jar, Ketta, Jar, Ketta,” Numbers chanted, egging them on. They moved closer together and began slobbering each other down. Jarvis was really starting to get into it and sneaked some feels on her breast. Waketta wasn’t as enthusiastic. She pushed him off, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and took a long swig from one of the bottles of Cisco, blushing a little. Sharon looked on, smiling.

“Yeah, boy! That’s how you do it,” Numbers congratulated his friend. “Y’all ready for the next round? This time whichever guy and girl get the highest card kiss and the guy and girl with the lowest card kiss, too.” Without waiting for an answer, Numbers plucked his card. King. Jarvis drew a 7. Waketta turned up a jack, and Sharon’s card was a 9. Now Numbers and Waketta were paired up, and so were Jarvis and Sharon. Waketta slid across the bed toward Numbers. As they got closer, they both began to giggle at the thought of kissing each other. Jarvis and Sharon looked on, waiting for the other two to start it off. Jarvis wished he was kissing Waketta again. Waketta took Numbers’s hands and placed them on her young tender breasts, and Numbers’s penis got stiff instantly as she placed her lips on his. They tongued, slobbered, sucked, and slurped each other’s faces for five minutes. Jarvis and Sharon had become unlocked and were just watching the two of them go at it.

“Damn, y’all not coming up for air,” Jarvis interjected jealously.

“For real,” Sharon added with a giggle.

Numbers and Waketta started laughing in each other’s mouths. They would have kept going if the peanut gallery hadn’t said anything. Waketta wasn’t quite finished. She stood up and grabbed Numbers by the hand, then led him out of the room. Numbers looked back at his friend, who he could tell was pissed off, but Numbers believed Jarvis knew the rules of the game. Don’t hate the player, hate the game. Waketta had chosen him. There was nothing he could do about that.

Waketta led him to his mother’s room. That was the day they had sex, losing their virginity together. Even though Waketta knew Rosa-Marie was Numbers’s girl, she didn’t care. She wanted what she wanted.

Rosa, in only her panties, lay on the bed next to Numbers with her brownish tan body partly covered by the sheet. With her light brown flawless complexion and features, she resembled Dorothy Dandridge in
Carmen Jones.
But it was her hazel eyes that really took Numbers’s breath away. He had adored her since they were kids. He felt like he had waited the entire seventeen years of his life for this moment. He couldn’t believe it as he stared up at the ceiling.
They were about to do it.
They were in their senior year, and this would be the perfect graduation gift. They had fooled around and made out numerous times before, but Rosa-Marie was never ready to go all the way and Numbers never pressed her. He was nervous, like it was his first time. As far as Rosa-Marie would ever know, it would be.

“You okay?” Numbers asked, attempting to make small talk.

“Uh-huh. You?” Rosa-Marie replied softly. She paused for a long moment. “Do you have a condom?”

When Jenny found out her son had a sperm count she educated
him on the use of protection—and not just that one time. She felt if it was important enough to say once, it was important enough to say several times to make sure her point got across. She didn’t want Numbers to burden himself with children at a very young age like she had.

“Yes. You ready?”

“Are you?”

“Yes.” Numbers turned to her and gently cupped her soft, delicate breast. Rosa-Marie closed her eyes and enjoyed his tender caress. He kissed her lips slowly at first. Their breathing and movements grew hot and heavy. Numbers moved his hands off her breast down her abdomen to her small bush. He rubbed her there as their breathing quickened. He pushed his middle finger into her tight, wet vagina.

“Hmmmm,” she moaned, her mouth opened just enough to let her tongue glide across her perfect white teeth.

Numbers stared at her features, mesmerized. Her beauty was undeniable. He played with her wet spot, making her chest heave as he fingered her clit. Their nervousness subsided. Numbers reached over to his pants on the floor next to his bed and removed a condom from his pocket. He anxiously rolled the latex down over his young hard muscle. Rosa-Marie waited patiently, watching him get ready for her. Numbers rolled over on top of her, and they kissed, grinding their bodies together. Although he’d had a couple of previous sexual encounters with Waketta, he was still inexperienced. He fumbled to insert his dick into her virgin slit. Rosa couldn’t wait for him to find it and reached down to guide him.

“Ooh, yes baby, I love you,” she cooed, speaking in Spanish, as she felt his dick move deeper inside her, breaking her hymen. They humped each other slowly and deliberately, until her pussy fully accepted him. Then they bumped and humped
like dogs in heat. Rosa wasn’t sure how her first time was supposed to be, but she was pleased. She knew there was a lot to learn, and she was looking forward to learning it with Numbers. And Numbers imagined that this was what it felt like to make love to an angel.

Numbers was endowed with a hustler’s spirit. Throughout high school, he indulged in various hustles. The first summer after freshman year, he and Jarvis worked at Pratt Institute as camp counselors, earning minimum wage. From eight in the morning till three in the afternoon, they were in charge of children ages five to eleven. They had boo-koo fun. The only setback was that they had to wait three weeks to get their first check. It seemed like the whole summer passed before they got it. As soon as their boss called them into the office to collect their earnings, they hightailed it to the check-cashing spot and then to lower Manhattan—Delancey Street—to buy some wears. Delancey Street was a nucleus for inexpensive fashions. Numbers’s
mom had been taking him there for as long as he could remember. After shopping, Numbers was damn near broke. But not for long: the summer youth program was his second hustle; gambling was his first.

Working the summer camp was a great experience, but the following summer Numbers opted not to sign up again—it was too time-consuming and didn’t pay enough. Instead he worked another money-making scheme Crispy Carl put him up on. It was a game called Chuck-A-Luck. With start-off capital as low as ten or twenty dollars, he could rake in five to ten times that amount in a few hours. All he needed to skin his vics was a board, three dice, and a cup. He numbered a flat board from 1 to 6. The gamblers would place their bets on their desired number. Numbers would then shake the dice in the cup and slam it down on the board, calling out, “Chuck-A-Luck, Chuck-A-Luck, put down a quarter, win a buck.” The bettor could win up to three times his wager. Numbers hustled hard during his sophomore summer with his Chuck-A-Luck board and rolling dice.

During the summer after his junior year, Numbers met a brother named Muhammad Saleem, a street peddler who hustled down on Fulton Street, selling sundresses, sandals, handbags, and other accessories. Numbers came across his setup on the corner of Fulton Street and Nostrand Avenue and stopped after seeing a very attractive dress he wanted to buy for his mother. While he was there, Numbers convinced a young lady that one of Saleem’s dresses would look fantastic on her. She purchased the sundress, a bag, and a silk scarf. Saleem was impressed by Numbers’s sales spirit and gave him a job.

Selling sundresses, hats, scarves, and other accessories would train Numbers for what lay ahead; he learned he could sell just about anything. Numbers was a natural, but his street-vendor career was cut short after 5-0 confiscated his product multiple times in one week.

Throughout the school year, Numbers made cash playing cards during his lunch period. He received satisfactory grades and was somewhat popular, known for being the fly-dressing hustler from Fort Greene with the prettiest girl in the school.

All was cool until his mother was called up to the school during his senior year because of his excessive gambling. Jenny hated to have to take a day off from work for nonsense. She forbade Numbers from hustling in the school. His gambling and other antics had been okay with her as long as they didn’t interfere with his schooling, but now they did. Numbers respected his mother’s wishes for the most part, so that was the end of that. He only gambled occasionally for the next year or so.

What now?
Numbers pondered. What would he do to keep getting cash? He decided during the middle of his senior year to try his hand at a regular gig. He got a part-time job at Mickey D’s. Other than the summer youth program, this was his first real employment.

Numbers had planned to go to college in the fall with Rosa-Marie, but he never followed up. Instead he worked at McDonald’s full-time.

Crispy Carl once told Numbers, “When you start taking what you do or what you have in your life for granted, you’re sure to lose it.” Now that Numbers was picking up his last paycheck from McDonald’s, he understood what that meant. After working at Mickey D’s for more than two years, he got fired. He had to admit, it was his own fault, and stupid! He knew he shouldn’t have been smoking blunts while he was still on the clock. That was some dumb-nigger shit, and he chastised himself repeatedly while walking across Fulton Street.

“FUCK!” he yelled out into the warm summer air, swinging his fist at no one. People looked at him like he was crazy, but he didn’t notice.

Numbers took his check out of his pocket and looked at it again, hoping the amount would have somehow miraculously changed into more. But $463.32 was all it was and all it would be. This was two weeks’ worth of pay, including overtime. He went to the check-cashing place downtown on Willoughby Street. They took five dollars and change for their fee.
At this rate I’ll be broke before I get home,
Numbers thought cynically. He bought a Pepsi and headed home. Fort Greene was one of the biggest project developments in BK. It consisted of the Raymond Ingersoll Houses and the Walt Whitman Houses, where Numbers lived. The people in the Ingersoll section called the Whitman section the far side. The people in the Whitman section called the Ingersoll section the third side. It was crazy how the sides had so much animosity toward each other even though they were, in essence, part of the same projects.

Numbers crossed the Flatbush Avenue Extension onto Myrtle Avenue and the third side. He continued on Myrtle until he crossed Navy Street, called the middle side, since it divided the two. Once he crossed St. Edwards, he was in the area they called the island. And that’s exactly what it was—an island between Whitman and Ingersoll. While each one of the other three sections had more than fifteen buildings, each either six, eleven, or thirteen stories high, the island only had eight buildings, each six stories. On the corner of North Portland and Myrtle were Sarjay’s candy store, Johnny’s grocery store, and the dry cleaners, as well as the rent office for the Walt Whitman Houses.

Numbers often walked through the island because it was a shortcut to his building. It was about four o’ clock in the afternoon on a clear Friday. A big dice game was going on in the middle of the attached buildings at 157 and 158 North Elliott Place. Numbers knew a few of the dudes who lived on the island but seldom hung out with them. The island boys usually ran in their own clique. There were about a dozen steps leading to the stoop landing
and about ten dudes in the cipher, but not all of them were gambling. There was one fine-ass chick named Suki, who was half black and half Asian. By the way the dude Coney kept looking to Suki for approval, it was evident that they were together. It was hard to believe that a specimen as fine as she could find solace in a nigger who looked like Grape Ape. But if it was true that money made a nigger look better to chicks, this nigger’s paper was long enough to make him look like Billy Dee Williams. Most of the guys there didn’t know that Suki was a ride-or-die bitch. She would bust her gun for her nigger Coney if directed to do so.

Numbers recognized a few of the locals from his side in the cipher. A couple were there betting grips of loot. One up-and-coming hustler, Crush, from the third side, had just lost a grip, and he was pissed. The bank was being controlled by Coney. Coney was loud and flashy and craved being the center of attention. He had everyone afraid to bet on his line, since he’d just rolled C-Lo then head crack five times in a row before that. When Numbers walked up on the game, Coney had just cut the bank to five hundred dollars. That was more than Numbers’s whole paycheck, which was all he had. Numbers hadn’t rolled dice in a minute, but he wasn’t planning on losing. He always found a way to step up when the pressure was on.

“Shoot four hundred fifty of the bank, player,” Numbers called out to Coney.

“Aiight, it’s a bet, little man, the bank is four-fifty, since nobody else is on the line,” Coney shot back before rolling the dice.

Ace!
Just like that, Numbers was up $450. It was now his bank, because he stopped the bank head up. Numbers made the whole $900 bank. Crispy Carl had schooled him long ago: scared money don’t make money.