“Yes, ma’am.”
“Is that all?” said Almeda.
He hadn’t told her everything. He didn’t want to worry her over James.
“There’s nothing else,” said Raymond Monroe, cutting his eyes away.
Deon Brown was in the living room of his mother’s house, alternately sitting in a chair and pacing the floor. Since the night before, he and Cody had managed to off most of the weed they had bought from Dominique. Their day was spent talking on their disposable cells, setting up meets, making deliveries in parking lots, garages, houses, and apartments, and collecting money. The balance of the ounces they had not physically unloaded had been committed. The transactions had been quick and successful, and they had each pocketed over a thousand in cash in less than twenty-four hours. Deon should have been happy, but he was not. He was tired of hanging with Cody, whose mouth did not stop, even when he was high. Cody had just about gotten on Deon’s last nerve.
He had come to his mother’s to find some peace, maybe have dinner with her, watch television together, talk. But to Deon’s annoyance, Charles Baker had been in the house when he’d arrived. Deon had heard Baker upstairs, raising his voice at his mother, and her sharp objections and replies. And then Baker’s voice, louder still and frightening, ending the argument with intimidation and aural force. Silence after that for a couple of minutes, followed by a rhythmic squeaking sound, which was the mattress springs being worked on his mother’s bed. Deon wanted to leave out the house, but he could not. He wasn’t about to abandon his mother to low trash like Charles Baker. Baker was on top of his mother, thrusting, the mattress squeaking and the legs of the bed lifting and hitting the hardwood floor. Deon rubbed at his temples and paced, but he did not leave.
The house grew quiet. Deon heard his mother’s door close up on the second floor, and soon Baker came downstairs. He stood at the foot of the stairs, tucking his shirt into his slacks, and nodded at Deon, now seated again in a cushioned armchair.
“How long you been here?” said Baker.
“A while.”
“You heard us arguin, then.”
“Sounded like you were doing most of it.”
“Your mother’s emotional. Women be like that.”
“Is she coming down for supper?”
“She needs to rest now,” said Baker with a vile grin.
“You’re not stayin the night, then,” said Deon. It wasn’t a question.
Baker held his smile and kept his eyes fixed on the boy. He didn’t like to be talked to this way, but he would allow it to pass. I’m done with that dry hole, anyway, he thought. Why would I want to stay?
“I’ll be sleepin at my group home tonight,” said Baker. “But I need to get over to Thirteenth and Fairmont, to see a friend. Can you drop me?”
“I was just leaving myself,” said Deon, happy to get this man out of his mother’s house.
Deon drove the Marauder east, Charles Baker beside him. Night had fallen, and the glow of the instrument lights colored their faces. Baker looked at Deon, filling up his space under the wheel though the seat had been pushed far back.
“You got some size on you,” said Baker. “What you go, two fifty?”
“Round that.”
“You ever play football?”
“Never.”
“You runnin to fat now. All them Macs and that slope food you be consumin. You need to watch yourself,’cause, lookit, you starting to get some titties on you like a woman.”
Deon kept his eyes ahead, braking and coming to a full stop at one of the many four-ways now on 13th.
“The way you built,” said Baker, “wouldn’t take long in a weight room to get you swole. When I was liftin, I was a beast.”
When you were in prison, thought Deon.
“Anyway,” said Baker. “You and your boy just don’t do enough physical shit. That’s all I’m sayin. Young boys be like that today, though. Your Tubes and Your Space, the chitchat rooms and all that bullshit-y’all just don’t use your muscles anymore. Me, I use my muscles. The ones in my head and in my back.”
Deon accelerated as he hit a gradual incline, the Flowmasters growling beneath the Mercury.
“Course, with all that money you got, I guess you don’t feel the need to be getting physical. I’m talkin about real work, going out there, scrumpin and humpin.’Cause you and Cody, y’all are flush. Am I right?”
“We’re doing fine,” said Deon.
“What, you two made a couple thousand, more than that, in the last day alone?”
“Something like it.”
“And me emptyin bedpans and scrubbing the shit stains off of porcelain, for what? Couple hundred dollars a week? How you think that makes me feel?”
“What’s your point?”
“What’s my point. You funny, you know it? My point is, I been in your mother’s world for a little while now, and I been good to her. You’d think that her son would want to return the favor and do something for the man who done right by his moms. Give Mr. Charles a little taste of that good thing you and your boy got.”
“We’re set,” said Deon.
“But I’m not.”
“What I’m trying to say is, we had our thing going before you came along, and we’re not lookin to grow it. I’m happy where we at.”
“You don’t look too happy. I mean, I ain’t seen you smiling all that much. You on them mood pills and shit, but you don’t seem all that joyful to me.”
“I’m straight.”
“What about the white boy? He happy, too?”
“You’d have to ask him.”
“Yeah, I’m gonna do that.’Cause Cody, he seem like the ambitious type. More than you.”
“Where you wanna be dropped?”
“I said Fairmont. We got a few more blocks yet.” Baker drummed his fingers on the shelf of the dash. “I guess you just can’t see it. You don’t have that vision thing.”
Deon did not ask Baker about what he could not see.
“I don’t even want to be around no marijuana,” said Baker. “I’m not lookin to get violated on some drug charge. And if I did try to get involved in the, uh, mechanical part of the business, I would just fuck it up.’Cause I am no good at that detail work. Truth is, I don’t know a thing about movin weed. But I do know human nature.”
“What you gettin at?”
“First time I got a look at your friend Dominique, I saw a straight bitch. I got some experience in identifying those motherfuckers real quick.”
No doubt, thought Deon.
“I’m sayin, you put me in a room with little Dominique? I’m gonna negotiate a better deal for y’all real quick. Get those profit margins up. That’s the role I’d play for y’all. I’m not boastin about it, either. I can do it.”
“Dominique got people,” said Deon.
“What kinda people?”
“He got a brother who’s fierce.”
“Shit. They got the same blood runnin through their veins, don’t they? I ain’t sweatin.”
“We’re good the way we are,” said Deon.
“You’re gonna be stubborn, huh,” said Baker jovially. “Okay. Fuck it, young man, I don’t need nothin from you, anyway. My ship’s about to come in real soon. You gonna be askin me for loans.”
“We’re here,” said Deon.
“Pull over.”
Just before Fairmont, Deon cut the Mercury to the curb and let it idle. Two blocks up ahead, at Clifton Street, young white people in business clothes were walking over the crest of the big hill running along Cardozo High School, coming up from the Metro station toward their condos and houses.
