“Oh, man.”
“What about J.J.?” I asked, dropping the name of our teammate who had just won two Super Bowls. “He’s got more money than God or George Lucas. You try and call him? He’d float you a favor.”
“J.J. and I ain’t that tight no more.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“I owe him $80,000.”
“Jesus.”
“Don’t you go blasphemin’ in this car.”
“Why?” I asked. “You pay to have it baptized?”
We stopped at the corner of Claiborne, where on a mammoth billboard two hands were held together in prayer. Someone had spray-painted the words WHY ME? over the address of the church. Across the wide commercial street, I saw another billboard of Britney Spears. She was selling Pepsi. Britney hadn’t been touched.
“You’re deep in debt and can’t get a loan from anyone else,” I said. “Who is this Cash guy? Just kiss and make up.”
He didn’t even look over at me as he accelerated toward the Calliope housing projects. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Crack a joke. See, Cash is a real humane individual.” Teddy licked his lips and wiped his face for the thousandth time. “Heard he once stuck a set of jumper cables in a man’s ass for spillin’ wine on his Italian leather coat. Up his ass, man. That’s fucked up.”
“Did the man turn over?”
Teddy shook his head. “Listen, I came to Cash ’bout two months back so we could get the money for ALIAS’s CD. Had to get some promotional dollars.”
“For what?”
“Advertisin’. This video we shootin’ tonight.”
“Call it off.”
“Too late,” he said. “Everyone’s been paid. See, we were all in some trouble and then Cash and me was tryin’ to put together this movie? I had this idea about New Orleans bein’ underwater and only the folks in the ghetto survived. You know like we were livin’ in this underwater world with boats made out of Bentleys and shit…”
“So he loaned you $700,000?”
“Half a mil,” he said. “He added another two for interest and his hard-earned time.”
Teddy shook his head as he drove, hot wind blowing through the car. The asphalt more cracked on this side of Uptown. We passed a Popeye’s fried chicken, a McDonald’s, some bulletproof gas stations. Barbershops. Bail bonds.
“Tell me about Cash,” I said. “Maybe I can reason with him.”
“You got a better chance of gettin’ a gorilla to sing you ‘Happy Birthday,’” Teddy said. “This ape raised in Calliope like my man ALIAS. But he don’t have no heart like the kid. He’s an animal. Bald head. Got all his teeth capped in platinum and diamonds. Stole everythin’ he have. Even his beats. Got his sound from this badass DJ ’bout five years back. Now Cash eatin’ steaks and lobster, screwin’ Penthouse pets and that boy coachin’ damn high-school football.”
“How’d he steal his sound?”
“The bounce, man,” Teddy said. He turned up the music. That constant driving rhythm I’d heard played all over New Orleans shook the car. The drums keeping the rap elevated as if the music was made of rubber- reflecting words.
“Why don’t you just run?” I asked. “Get out of town till you can raise the money?”
“I got family here,” Teddy said. “Besides, a Paris don’t ever run. You know that.”
“That’s bullshit,” I said. “Quit your posturing before you do get killed.”
“Ain’t no bullshit,” he said. “I leave and then he fuck with a member of my family? Man, I couldn’t live with myself.”
“Can’t you just sign over something to him? Just give him your house. You can stay with me.”
“I appreciate it, brother,” he said. “I really do. But there is only one thing this mad nigga want and he ain’t getting it.”
I looked at Teddy – out of breath, sweating like hell – as he turned into the housing projects. Two men on the corner with hard eyes and wearing heavy army coats watched us turn. Teddy lowered the stereo. The heat whooshed through the car, just making the silence between us more intense.
Teddy gritted his teeth as he passed the men. “ALIAS my boy and I ain’t neva losin’ that boy. Not again.”
I watched him. “I want y’all to meet,” he said.
4
“You gonna valet this thing in Calliope?” I asked. “Or are you trying to collect insurance?”
“You don’t know who I am,” Teddy said. “Respect everything around here.”
“Even for a Ninth Warder?”
“For Teddy Paris.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
He kissed a ruby pinkie ring on his fattened little finger and gave me a wink. “You’ll see.”
Calliope soon swallowed us into endless rows of four-story colorless brick buildings seeming to sag with exhaustion. Fire escapes lined each building in V patterns; some hung loose like broken limbs. In a commons that reminded me of a prison yard, Dumpsters spilled trash onto the wide dirt ground. Along the walls of project houses, signs read NO DOG FIGHTING.
We slowed and rolled into the commons.
As Teddy shut off his engine and coasted to a stop, dozens of black children wrapped their arms around the car. I could hear them laughing and breathing and giggling. Making faces with their eyes pressed against the glass. Teddy got out and ripped out a massive roll of ten-dollar bills, palming them off to more than a dozen kids.
Stay in school; get yo’ mamma right; no way, you been back twice.
I smiled as the kids formed a tight circle around the car, the chirp of Teddy’s alarm locking them out.
We walked along a buckled path and by a brick wall where someone had painted the huge face of a rapper named Diabolical. I’d read he’d been killed in some gang shit last year and now he’d taken on some kind of martyr status in the projects. The slanted warped image of his face in bright colors surrounded by painted candles reminded me of a Russian icon.
Teddy nodded to his face, “That’s the one I lost.”
We found ALIAS among a loose group of teen boys and two girls tossing quarters along a concrete staircase stained with rust. Teddy pointed out the kid, and as he saw Teddy’s wobbling figure coming toward him, he picked up the collection of cash and sat back down.
He didn’t look up. Teddy took off his coat and sweat stains spread under his arms and across his back in a big X. ALIAS muttered something and the kids broke away.
He was a tall kid. Lanky and slow-moving in red basketball shorts that slipped past his knees. He wore a white FUBU baseball jersey with his sleeves rolled up and sneakers made of black fabric and gel. He sported an awkward mustache that only a fifteen-year-old could appreciate.
He still didn’t look at us, counting the money.
“How you feelin’?” Teddy asked.
“Sore,” ALIAS said, pulling up his shirt and showing a white and red puckered scar on his side. “Still don’t know who jumped me.”
The kid shook his head and pocketed the money, watching the uneven open earth and the slabs of projects that stacked farther north like dirty caves. He leaned forward, a piece of platinum jewelry slipping from his shirt. The Superman symbol inscribed in diamonds.
