The Rhythm of Blues (Love In Rhythm & Blues Book 1) Read online

  “Have I ever steered us wrong?” he barked from behind me. “Look how far we’ve come. Ain’t nobody dropping out the fuckin’ race over stupid ass gay rumors! Trey Songz had them; they still say that shit about Jaheim; look at that dude that came forward about Dale since this syphilis scandal; and shit, they still saying Teddy P like trannies! It’s like the fuckin’ scare of the illuminati; everybody’s secretly down, but it ain’t been proven!”

  I grabbed a glass and poured three thumbs of Mauve, gulping it down in two swigs. I leaned against the bar, appreciating the awakening of my esophagus. At not even quite noon, it made me feel something other than the numbing pressure of being puppeted. The strings were being yanked too damn hard for me. Words were being spoken too quickly and recklessly on my behalf.

  “Fuck that, man! I’m throwing you—us a lifesaver with this shit!” Mike kept going. “You know how much you get from movies versus putting out records. This shit for the legacy! You should be down for whatever, man. I keep telling you the pool is full of sharks, fuck cute ass tropical fish. Fuck you think?”

  I poured another glass, trying to think about how I’d pick up my day and keep moving after hearing this bullshit. The shit Frank Cramar hit me with felt like a knife in the back; I couldn’t front. This role had been promised to me for years, much of it built around my image.

  From my periphery, I saw Lil Bruh, my muscle, come into the living room and plop down on the sofa with a magazine. Tim and Will, Mike’s security, waited in the doorway on their phones. They were used to this. Used to Mike and his yapping down on niggas. But I knew they weren’t too at ease because it wasn’t often that Mike made me the victim of his verbal assaults.

  Mike Brown may have been a Brooklynite, but right now he was on some Harlem shit. His Dame Dash shit where he went into this zone of verbally annihilating someone who pissed him off. Mike’s mouthpiece game stayed on one hundred. He had the stamina to go toe-to-toe with anybody, cracking jokes, telling old Bed-Stuy stories of robberies and pistol whippings, and/or good ol’ decimating a man’s ego—all with one disparaging word at a time.

  The problem was, Mike forgot I wasn’t that dude. I was prey for no man.

  “You wanna make this shit all about you, huhn?” He kept with the bitching. “You always wanna think it is, Raj. You always wanna stay in ya weird ass lane, sing songs, hide behind characters in movies, hide out in Sparta like it’s the…fuckin’ Neverland Ranch, or some shit,” he scoffed, pacing back and forth. “You wanna sit or stand behind instruments, playing your way through mental trips, drink ya Mauve, go to church, and fuck random weird bitches you ‘on’t want nobody to know about.” His head swung like he was fucking exhausted.

  My fists curled and knuckles knotted.

  “Fuck!” he barked, flexing now. “You gone stand there and act like you don’t hear a grown ass man talking to you, bruh? Me of all people?” My second security, Danny G, appeared in the doorway. I could see from the corner of his eyes, he was worked up. Danny G came up through the New Brunswick school system with me. My pops trained him for years before he caught a robbery charge that got him sent up for twelve years. His only legit job was as my muscle. This shit was getting out of control. “I fuckin’ always put my shit on the line for you, man. Money with Ragee first, then my name, and then, mufucka, my freedom! Facts, my nigga!”

  The whole room froze at that. Everybody around steeled in place.

  A bag of air pushed from my lungs and my head dropped toward the bar top.

  “Yeah, nigga,” Mike neared me, leering with a taunting tone. “I fixed that domestic cluster fuck of a auntie situa—”

  My left fist knocked against his cheekbone in the precise place, speed, and impact to send him falling back, but I caught him with my right by the neck and squeezed. Terror flashed in his eyes and he tried to knee me, but I gripped his neck harder and lifted him higher as I scooted back. He threw a loose jab, but I blocked it and shot him again with my left in the same place. That dazed him.

  Behind me there was shouting, warnings being thrown to me and from my security to Will and Tim to put their guns away. I heard the cocking of a few semi’s, but I couldn’t choke the shit out of Mike long enough to give a shit! When he started squirming, my inner man shouted and I let up on his neck—just a little.

  “Yo, Raj, man!”

  “Put down ya shit,” I recognized as Danny G’s voice.

  “Hell, no!” was the reply. “Ragee, you want one in the head or back?”

  “Muthafucka, one shot to Raj: miss or hit, death or injury, and not only will all y’all bitches catch one to the head, but ya families holding double funerals! Fuck with me!” I heard.

  That was Danny G. Had to be. He only knew loyalty one way: to the grave or cell. He once told me if he wasn’t having so much fun traveling the world with me, he’d gladly go back to the pen where he thought he belonged.

  My chest pounded and lungs worked hard to keep the violence within. I wanted to shred Mike’s ass apart. I didn’t need a gun for it. I didn’t need any tools to get it done.

  “It’s all good. All good,” Mike sang, struggling to lift his palm in the air to calm his security. “It’s just me and my lil bruh. All brothers fight. Right, Raj?” I saw the tears rimming in his eyes, not from crying, but from pressure on his windpipe. The outline of his cheeks swelling and reddening before my eyes. Sadly, the sight of it all excited me. It satisfied the rage storming somewhere deep inside. “Raj, baby, please calm the fuck down,” poured out like a squeal.

  But that inner Man whispered, advising louder than the rage thundering inside. Without delay, I yanked back my arm, bringing him with me before releasing him. Mike swayed on his feet a few times before gaining them. I could hear the sighs behind me just before Mike started choking. A few guns decocked behind me, too. Mike struggled to catch his breath and stand straight, but he did eventually.

  Crouch over, he pumped his palm in the air. “Yo, give us a minute,” he told his guys.

  “You sure, man?” Will asked, unsure himself.

  “I said give me and my fuckin’ man a minute!” Mike tried to scream.

  I looked over my shoulder to Danny G and gave a reverse nod, dismissing him and Lil Bruh. When I turned back to Mike, he was backing to the wall for support to stay on his feet.

  “You hit me with your left.” He smirked, heaving.

  “Lucky for you.”

  “I know. That’s how I know you gotta good heart, man.” He chuckled, still out of breath. “That right would’ve sent me night-night and had this place riddled with bullets.” He dabbed his cheek, but I didn’t miss the soft threat in that.

  Maybe he was right. Maybe he’d told his security to shoot me if necessary. I wouldn’t know until the next time he took it too far.

  “Raj,” his lungs sloughed. “We gotta follow through with this. Frank ain’t gone forget what I said back there.”

  I yanked away, still furious about the position he put me in. “I can’t believe you said that shit!”

  “I couldn’t help it, man,” he pleaded. “Blame the Brooklyn in me. We act when our back’s up against the fuckin’ wall, man. We make shit happen! You know me, duke. Known me for years, man. Let me…fix this.” He could hardly speak in between coughing.

  “How?” My body spun to face him. “How do you make a fuckin’ fiancée happen?”

  “Easy. I can find somebody.”

  “Somebody?”

  Mike’s palms pumped in the air again.

  “Nah, man. Fuck that. You can’t be putting me in some illogical shit. Shit you only see in the movies. A fuckin’…manufactured relationship? That ain’t me, man!”

  “That’s where you wrong. It happens all the time, especially in Hollywood.”

  “That’s some ol’ white people shit. Black people don’t do fake relationships.”

  “StentRo did.”

  “Who?” I was so damn inflamed, I didn’t catch the reference.

  “Stenton Roger
s. From the 76ers,” he tried again, this time sitting up with his back against the wall as he spoke of earlier.

  “I know his wife, Brown. She ain’t even from the industry. You forget he goes to my damn church now?”

  Mike shook his head. “Not his wife, Erika Erceg. Memba when they fucked around?” I didn’t answer, but he knew he had my attention. “They peoples was tryna make that happen years before StentRo went with it. They ain’t marry, but nobody knew that was set up by the industry.”

  I turned away, shaking my head. I wasn’t the type to do anything because someone else did it. I prided myself on being my own man. I was of a peculiar people. I embraced that part of it. But I knew if Mike said he could do something, there was a good chance he’d pull it off. Faking a fiancée for a few months was bearable if it meant getting out of this new damn quandary with Frank and finally getting the role owed to me.

  Am I really considering this shit?

  “Man, you forget I’m in the middle of kicking off a fucking major tour? How am I gonna announce a damn fiancée with all this promotional shit going on? All the money behind me right now?”

  Mike finally pushed off the wall and waddled to the sofa. “That’s the perfect time to do it. The media ain’t gone be paying much attention to ya personal life when ya name and face is all up on billboards, buses, and shit. They gone just take it as, ‘Oh, this dude on his reclusive shit again. He done got a whole fucking love life while making music happen.’ You know the attention span of these fucks is the same time as a good nut in the best pussy last.”

  “So, I get engaged and that’s it?”

  Mike’s eyes were elsewhere as he thought about that. I shook my head, knowing he had lots of thinking to do if he thought I would fly with something as wild as this. Engaged? A wife? A woman next to me?

  I closed my eyes at the possibility of that, not able to conceive it.

  “It would have to be a wife.” His muttering had my neck whip to face him. Mike nodded, believing his conjured theory more by the second. “Yeah. She would have to be introduced as ya fiancée because she gone be ya wife right after that.” He’s fuckin serious… “It’s gone have to be on some, we’re making the announcement of her because the wedding’s going down ASAP. Maybe whispers of the engagement then BAM wedding pix floating around the innanet. Facts!”

  Mike stood too fast. He swayed a bit as he went for his phone. I looked at him like he was crazy. Because he was. I’d been partners with him too long not to recognize his excitement for execution.

  “I gotta flight to catch soon. Gotta be at the club tonight. I’m scouting some kid they’re dubbing the next Chris Brown.” He stopped abruptly and turned to me. “Raj, man. What I did earlier was fucked up. One hun’ned; it was foul of me—all of it. But this us, baby. We make shit happen. How many platinum records later, how many movie deals later, how many millions later? It’s what we do to set ourselves the fuck apart, my G. Just let me pull some shit together for you. Please?”

  Mike Brown never begged. That wasn’t Brooklyn. Every once in a while he’d go non-Brooklyn on me, behaving in a manner his people from home would never go for. But it was because I was his cash cow. Not only did I not back down from anybody, but Mike Brown had been eating well for years off my talent. He knew when it was lights out for that Brooklyn bullshit.

  I shook my head, remembering I had a meeting with my set director for the upcoming tour in a few. Right now, I had to get my head ready for that and get Mike out of my space.

  “Do you,” was all I could say to dismiss him.

  I was desperate for relief from his energy. That was all he needed, too.

  “Facts, my dude. We gone get outta this shit, then go get what they holding from us like reparations, my G.”

  I couldn’t even respond to that as I watched him leave the room.

  It was well after seven by the time I turned the key into my apartment door. My stomach roared its emptiness. My feet throbbed and so did my head. It took hours of failed negotiations on my supervisor’s part and me packing all of my things—years’ worth of files and personal effects to sift through. My car was filled with the boxes I left the job with. I was too tired to carry them inside.

  The apartment was nearly dark but for the kitchen light on across the room, from what I could perceive from my vantage point. My place was small. Too small for two women and a child. I sauntered beyond the partition we purchased from Ikea years ago when I added a mother and child duo to my living conditions.

  Stepping beyond the divider, I saw into the kitchen where a little chocolate seven year old with the softest dark curls sitting atop her head sat at the table. I tossed my bag and jacket on the small nightstand near my bed then moved into the kitchen. There was a loud motor coming from her nebulizer; she looked her age with the mask on, receiving the medicated oxygen shooting from the plastic tube.

  While washing my hands, I noted over my shoulder, “The coughing didn’t stop, I see.”

  I glanced to see her shake her head. After drying my hands on a towel hanging from the cabinet door, I turned for the fridge where I begged for there to be milk left—unspoiled milk. I sighed my relief after sniffing the open bottle. Before sitting at the table, I grabbed a bowl and spoon. Then I went for the box of Wheaties with an image of a black football player on the front.

  I poured a generous portion to cure my hunger pangs. Little Asia watched from the other side of the table. Silence wasn’t a feature of her personality, so I decided to enjoy the last few minutes of it. As I began to feed my face, my eyes randomly wandered over to the cereal box where the powerfully built and posed man was pictured. That struck me and I studied the front matter closer. The football player was in a throwing pose. Trent Bailey. I’d heard a lot of him lately. I wasn’t into sports, but knew the name and his particular sport. He was a fellow New Jerseyan, and apparently my age. I loosely followed his story a few years ago when he was arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to federal prison. Dumb move on his part, but lucky for him, the American football community favored talent over sins, because he was back at the top. Making the Wheaties box wasn’t an easy feat.

  “You look mad,” her little voice broke my inner thoughts.

  When did the nebulizer go off?

  I dug back into the bowl scooping another serving. “I’m not mad.”

  “Tired?” she tried again, standing to grab a piece of paper towel for her wet nose.

  “Kinda,” I garbled. Asia sat back at the table, engaging me. She was expectant. I knew this of the witty seven year old. “I quit,” I mumbled then looked down into the bowl as I dug for more.

  “Blue!” She slapped her forehead and her little eyes rolled to the back of her head. “You said—”

  “I know what I said.” I made very clear. “I said I’d G up and wait it out.”

  “Then why would you quit?”

  I shrugged, face in the bowl I was prepared to refill. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try me,” dared the kid with a black Cinderella gown on.

  “When you worked hard through school, getting two degrees all to be not only under-appreciated by your boss, but preyed on by your clients, you burn out easily.”

  “But you said you was gonna look for another job, get paid more money, and we was gonna get a place with three bedrooms so—”

  “So you can have your own room, I’ll have mine, and your friends can sleepover in the living room”—I tossed my chin into the living room, two feet away—“instead of avoiding them because your big cousin’s bedroom is in the living room. I know.” I swallowed my cereal.

  “Now what we gone do?” Her little forehead wrinkled.

  I shrugged again. This was what my life was reduced to. Asia, my little cousin, was my confidant. Right now, I was so vulnerable, she was playing my counselor. It happened like this lately.

  “I’m going to figure it out.” There was finality in my tone, because that was all I cared to share with her.

&
nbsp; I was still raw. Still shaken by my “big” decision to leave my job. I had a few dollars saved. Living with your aunt, who was nineteen years older than you had its financial benefits, though not much.

  “He’s in there,” Asia shared with her head cradled into her little hand.

  “Your Dad?”

  She nodded. That’s when I heard the soft rhythm of the springs on a mattress being manipulated.

  Oh…

  I tried resuming my cereal so little Miss Asia wouldn’t pick up on the sex taking place in the not so distant distance.

  “We’re moving back up there,” she whispered.

  “Wanda say that?” I stuffed my face with another spoonful.

  She nodded. “Yesterday, she did. My daddy did, too, when he came today.”

  The place was mine, lease in my name. It was my first apartment and I’d been in it for years before my aunt Wanda broke up with her daughter’s father, who was from Pittsburgh, and needed a place to stay. Asia was so small at that time, and I couldn’t imagine having them in the living room. It was only me and I didn’t have a lot, so I opted for the living room, giving them the only bedroom. Turned out, not too long after they moved in, my salary got cut and Wanda began paying more of the rent than me, making the decision to give up my bedroom indefinite.

  Now, with me jobless, and my rent-relief moving on, going back to an estranged and rocky relationship, I had lots of shit to figure out. I needed a minute, though. An escape from this madness sounded better and better the more I thought about it. A drink. That would have been great. Getting shit-faced wasted would have been even better. Problem was, I didn’t want to do it on my dime, considering I’d just quit my job. I didn’t want to call any of my girlfriends, because that would mean me sharing more of my hasty decision while still feeling raw about it.