Texts from Bennett (26 page)

“Okay, okay. Never mind. Just thanks for the apology.”

“Yup. That’s what I’m here for.” She glared at something up the street, then over at me again. “By the way. You look good man. Real fit and healthy. You’ll find a new bad bitch, soon.”

And with that, she got into her car and sped off.

When Mercedes broke Tallulah’s nose, it was because whatever clever plan she originally laid out before going to her house had completely flown out the window. She probably had daydreamed something elaborate wherein she would give Tallulah a fake name, penetrate her cat rescue, and blindside her when she least expected it . . . and then forgot it because of the copious amounts of marijuana she smokes. Or equally plausibly, she never actually thought out a plan that went further than pretending her name was Sarah and then punching Tallulah by surprise.

The girl just ran on a different type of fuel than most human beings, incapable of sugarcoating her thoughts or mincing her words. She’s so blunt that she’s homicidal with honesty. So, when she pays you a flagrant compliment, you feel like it’s dipped in gold.

Driving a few blocks until I found a tiny neighborhood park, I parked my car, cracked the windows, and leaned my seat back. Warmed by Mercedes’s quasi-goodwill, I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep.

•

Hours later, it was blue outside even if the sun hadn’t quite showed its face yet. I awoke to a fog that packed tightly into every artery of the park, wrapping around the jungle gyms, slowly traveling through the wooden teepee kids could play in. An early-morning train rumbled and clanked over the iron tracks in the far distance. The whole scene was hypnotizing.

I started my car and smeared the frosty condensation across the windshield with the wipers. Autumn was coming.

I drove home, to no cars outside. The girls must’ve left. I walked in to find Lillian watching TV, of course.

“Good morning, Macky,” she said sleepily.

“Morning,” I replied, “Whatcha watching?”

“Home Shopping Network. Oh! I wish I could afford this. I want this so bad!” She pointed to the TV screen.

Which showed a $1500 taxidermied wolf.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I love wolves!”

“But what would you do with it?”

“I’d put it on top of the television.”

“You’d put it on top of my television?”

“It’s
our
television, Mac! Don’t be selfish. It could be a good way to add some life into the living room too.”

“You’d put a stuffed, dead wolf on ‘our’ television to add life to the living room?”

“Yes, and to help us all get in touch with our animal spirit.”

The guy on the television screen, in the studio selling this wolf, had yellow teeth with infinitesimal spaces in between them and a gravelly voice that was so rough it was almost visual.

“Imagine the happiness you’ll feel when this one-of-a-kind wolf is protecting your living room from evil spirits!”

He was acting like this fucking wolf was the end all be all to life or something.

“Go to sleep, Aunt Lillian. I love you.”

“I was asleep, but I woke up from a good dream because I heard them talking about this beautiful, one-of-a-kind, magnificent timberwolf.”

She was a puzzle I’d never solve.

Going into the basement, I found Bennett asleep on the couch and Leshaun sitting on the floor in front of him, trying to unscrew his house-arrest anklet with a butter knife.

“Is that a good idea?” I asked.

“I don’t give a fuck,” Leshaun said, without breaking concentration.

“What if they catch you?”

“They ain’t gonna catch me. I ain’t goin’ back home. Fuck this shit.”

“I don’t get it. Are you on house arrest?”

“Yeah. For four more months. Only time a nigga can leave the fuckin’ crib is when I need to get a haircut or when I go to work. And I ain’t got no fuckin’ job, so I never get to do shit.”

“Why are you out right now?”

“I just left. A nigga wanted some pussy, G.”

“Fair enough. Speaking of which. That girl, did you just meet her right then and there?”

“Yeah. I don’t know her. Her name was Angel or somethin’. She was a suuupa freak. I’m gonna try to get her to tattoo my name on her ass cheek.”

“Haha! What? So you had sex with her, right?”

“Yup.”

“Where—not in my bed, right?”

“Nah. Outside.”

“Outside? In her car?”

“Nah. On the back patio.”

“What the fuck? Dude, that’s my back patio! I don’t want sex residue all over it.”

Leshaun looked up at me like I was the lamest, dumbest old person ever. “Nigga, we was on the ground. There was a slug crawling a few feet away from us.”

“Oh . . . yeah . . . okay. Touché. I guess it’s outside and doesn’t matter.”

“Yeah, plus I been on lockdown for a minute. I had to get some kitty kat, baby. I needed that.”

“So you didn’t know that girl? At all?” I clarified.

“Nope. But check this out, G. Dat bitch tried to stop fuckin’ ’cause she seen a rollie pollie walkin’ by on the ground. I was like, ‘Chill, if you see rollie pollies walking during sex, it makes orgasms better’—and bitch believed me,
haha!
”

“God damn it. I’m fuckin’ thirty years old and can’t even do shit like that.”

“Shit like what?”

“You just took her and made her fall in love with you at the snap of a finger. I know it’s confidence and stuff, but I’m crushed inside. I don’t have the gas in my tank right now.”

“You just gotta have that swagger, bro. Your ex made you turn soft. Did you grow some boobs, nigga? Where’s your swagger?”

“I have a mortgage and a retirement fund. I don’t have swagger.”

“Exactly though! You own a house. You got money in the bank. How you gonna let a broke-ass nigga like me pull a bitch before you?”

“Yeah, but, like, how do I tell a girl I own a house without sounding like a dick?”

“Uhhh? Just be like, ‘’Sup, bitches? I own a house. Come over with a friend; let’s get in the hot tub.’ ”

“I don’t own a hot tub.”

“Right. So when they get here be like, ‘Please accept my apology, bitches. But the hot tub is temporarily out of service. Looks like we gotta take a bath.’ Truss me, nigga, it’ll work! Bitches love lyin’-ass niggas. They hate the truth.”

“Okay. That’s not going to happen. I could never say that to a woman.”

“Nah? Well, fuck. Can’t you just be like, ‘I’m a famous rapper, gimme some booty’?”

“Well, no. Of course not. Besides . . . I’m not famous
enough.
I have a complex with the girls who like my music. I’d rather just let them be fans. I can’t just take advantage of them!”

Leshaun stopped picking at the anklet with the knife and looked up at me. “Man, fuck all that. If I was you I’d fuck every single girl who liked my shit. I’d make music strictly for gettin’ bitches. I’d be the first nigga rappin’ bout saving dolphins, and weaving baskets, and sugar-free fudge recipes for chubby bitches, and how it’s okay to cry and shit.”

“See, that’s the stuff Bennett says I need to
stop
doing with my music, and you seem to think the opposite.”

“Obviously. Hang on though, it’s a meth’ology—I’d be super in touch with their feelings. They would think I was a sensitive nigga, but I’d turn around and lay pipe on ’em like a grown man!”

“Dude, you’re only seventeen!”

“Eighteen.”

“Okay. You’re only eighteen.”

“Yep. So now if I bone a teacher, she won’t get locked up.
Haha!
”

I threw my arms out. “Man. I don’t know. Lately when I’m around women, my confidence is super low. Every time I’ve ever had a breakup, I’ve ended up spending the next nine to ten months directly after it being a pussy around chicks.”

“Wait though. I thought you hit Sabrina last night?”

“No. I bailed out and slept in my car. She
really
grossed me out.”

“So you had a girl who openly wanted to fuck you, but still say no girls wanna fuck you?”

“Well . . . that’s different. And besides, it helps if I find a girl actually
attractive
.
You
told me she was hot. Dickhead.”

“Haha. I just wanted you to let us have hos over, cuz. Ha!”

“Well it worked. But, like, remind me: How do I get a
cute
girl the way you did? How do you have that confidence?”

“What confidence, playa?”

“Where you just grab a stranger’s hand and guide her to sit next to you.”

Leshaun took a thoughtful pause and stared into space, gathering his thoughts. “I dunno. I mean, for real? Honestly? I think it come down to the fact that I ain’t no bitch.”

How profound.

“I think it’s a little more elaborate than you not being a quote-unquote bitch, Leshaun.”

“Nah this is kinda somethin’ Bennett put me up on. Okay, like, you ever rode a skateboard? Or stole somethin’ from QuikTrip?”

“Uh. Yeah.”

“That feelin’ you get before you do dat shit. It kinda scary and shit and most niggas punk out. Dats what happens with you and bitches. You get scurred and bitch out. Me? I just go for it.”

When you’re eighteen, eighteen-year-olds look like grown men to you. When you’re thirty, eighteen-year-olds look like babies. Leshaun’s skull wasn’t fully grown yet. He looked young, albeit weathered. I studied his barely grown mustache and boyish characteristics. They were hidden among the scars and darkness of his skin, but they were there. Another wave of anxiety breezed through me as I realized I was receiving dating tips from an eighteen-year-old.

“Man, how you ain’t know this shit bein’ this dude’s cousin?” Leshaun said, pointing at Bennett.

Looking over at my cousin, sleeping with his mouth not just open but absolutely
agape,
and him not just drooling but full-on waterlogging his pillow, all I could think to ask Leshaun was, “Why the fuck do you keep saying that to me?”

“Bennett is like . . . the master of gettin’ girls, cuz! If he could pull his dick outta Mercedes for a few minutes, he’d have twenty-five girlfriends, man.”

“No way. Bennett is a knucklehead. Not a chance.”

Leshaun silently contemplated his next words. He looked down at the anklet and moved the butter knife to the other bolt he hadn’t tried yet.

“Homie, Bennett is a lot of real dumb shit. He think he can fight but can’t. He dress bummy as fuck. He can’t roll blunts. He always broke. He lies like a scandalous bitch do. He think he a rapper and always disses yo music, but he listens to it and worships you.”

“Wait, wait, wait . . .”

“Ha. Homie. Bennett wishes he was you. He has got drunk and fessed up to me. His dream is to have you make music wit him and take him on tour.”

“It’s hard to believe, because he always talks shit on my music.”

“Yeah. He a bitch. He just won’t admit it. But, nigga, anyways,
listen. Bennett figured some like . . . scientific way of pullin’ hos. That nigga got a whole list. Like these, eleven commandments to gettin’ bitches. I swear.”

“This keeps coming up. It sounds like a joke you all are playing on me.”

“No. They’re real. Real as fuck. They’s the only thing Bennett has ever accomplished in his life.”

“It’s real? Like a full-on, written-out, thought-out piece of literature?”

“One hundred percent real. Dis nigga Bennett was in detention almost every day after school last year. And he couldn’t skip because skipping detention gets you out-of-school suspended, which woulda been a violation to his probation.”

“Yeah.”

“So basically, he would sit there bored as fuck, thinkin’ up ways to talk to bitches. He got sick of gettin’ dissed by chicks, so he decided to start runnin’ game on ’em. At first it didn’t work, and he almost got his ass whooped by some hatin’-ass boyfriends.”

“Lemme guess, you’re the reason he never did?”

“As long as I’m around, nigga—and I’m
always
around, lurkin’ in da shadows—y’all will be safe. They call me Nigga Ninja, nigga. Creepin’, plottin’, watchin’ my boy’s back.”

“You’re a good friend.”

“Mac, shut up, homie. So Bennett kept experimentin’ and shit. And he finally started figurin’ it out.”

“Yeah? Started getting cute chicks at school?”

“Homie, when news broke around school that Eva Fazio sucked Bennett’s dick under da bleachers during a school football game, the whole game changed. Eva was one of da finest hos at school.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. But shit didn’t get real till he dated Eva Fazio
and
Mercedes at the same time. Mercedes was never popular, but every nigga at school wanted to fuck her. He dated the two baddest chicks at school at one time.”

“What ended up happening to Eva?”

“Mercedes Frisbeed a pre-algebra textbook at her face and knocked one of her teeth loose.”

“I’m shocked she isn’t in prison.”

“Someone must be prayin’ for dat bitch, cuz she would’a got da death penalty by now.”

“Speaking of praying . . . what are these commandments? And why do they work?”

“The main idea and shit, homie, is you gotta just be . . . just full of
thug
charisma. It’s all in how you talk to girls and how you let ’em talk to you. I got ’em wrote down myself. But they at my grandma Onion’s crib. Ask him, nigga.”

“Eh. I might.”

“Nigga, don’t be a hardhead. Let him show you his tricks. He showed me, and I’m black.”

“Err . . . Okay. What’s that mean?”

“Girls like black dudes. Some white girls date black dudes just to make their dad wanna kill hisself. But girls of
all
races like Bennett better than black dudes. Truth be told, nigga, if Bennett
was
a black dude he’d have 248 baby mamas, nigga!
On Crip,
nigga!”