The Glamorous Life (2 page)

Reggie just shook his head. “Man, what the fuck I’m gonna do wit forty-eight quarters jingling round in my pockets?” He smacked his lips. Bambi could tell he didn’t want to let that money get away from him. “Damn man, I got y’all. Just park and gon’ head in da store and get me some dollars for all the gotdamn change.”

Just as he said that, a little boy who didn’t look old enough to be out of elementary school, apparently working as a spotter up the block, put both of his hands around his mouth and called out, “Yo, Regg, five-oh coming through the cut!”

Reggie looked Bambi in her eyes. “Look, give me yo digits. I’m going to remember it, cuz the police coming and I am dirty as a fat baby’s shitty ass.”

She called out her number to him as she pulled off.

“A’ight baby, I am going to hit you up in a li’l while,” he yelled, and then took off running into someone’s house.

A
s Bambi continued her mother’s errands, she couldn’t help thinking about Reggie. Most girls who had lived such a sheltered life with an overprotective mother would have been scared off, would have run as far as they could get from the whole scenario of the ’hood—the crack heads, dope fiends, the scary-looking whores out tricking, willing to sell their body, their temple, their prized possession for a rock (they would suck the devil’s dick for a quick escape from the pain and misery), not to mention the police running through the cut—but not Bambi. She wasn’t the average suburban girl from the Valley. This life excited her and got her blood pumping, her heart beating, and her adrenaline rushing. Her own life had always been so safe. She liked the feeling of desperation that the streets offered, but
her mother had done everything in her power to keep her away from that lifestyle. Bambi saw Reggie as a conduit to feed her desire to know and to experience life firsthand.

Bambi was naïve, but she was far from stupid. No matter how much her mother sheltered her and kept her tight under lock and key, Bambi had a thirst for excitement, drama, and living on the edge. She could tell exactly what kind of hustler Reggie was from his gold chain down to his brand-spanking-new Air Jordans. She had read enough and heard enough to know that the real drug lords lived in Colombia or were vacationing on a yacht somewhere or held a powerful position in the government, and no matter how much the police raided the projects, it would never stop the real problem with drugs.

Bambi figured that Reggie was a small-time hustler. He hustled for tennis shoes, hotel money, and rims for his hooptiedout Cadillac. His pockets were bulging because he probably carried every penny he owned around in his pocket in a wad of cash. She was intrigued with the way people tracked him down for his product. Just from that brief meeting, there was one thing of which Bambi was certain: This dude was hungry and determined, and from what little she could see or feel in her gut, he had the potential to go from being a nickel-and-dime hustling shorty to becoming “the Man” one day! By the way he dictated authority over his surroundings she felt that his domain should be larger than just a few measly street blocks.

He was also fine as all outdoors, the kind of man who could make any chick want to get up the nerve to smack her mother. Reggie stood six feet tall. He was light skinned with three gold teeth on the bottom and three on the top of his mouth. He was thin, and his oversized Levi jeans hung off his butt. She could tell by his sideburns that they were not artificial waves under his black do-rag. When she looked down at his shoes, he was
definitely in. He wore the new Air Jordans that came out that day.

The phone rang as Bambi returned home. She hurried across the foyer to the hall and picked it up.

“Hey, how you doing? This is Reggie.”

Bambi looked around for her mother. Thankfully, she was nowhere to be seen. Bambi tried to sound relaxed: “Oh, hey, Reggie. How you doing?”

“I’m cool, but look you’re going to kill me.”

“Why?”

“Because I never caught your name.”

“It’s Bambi, and don’t even ask me how my momma came up with it.”

Reggie laughed. “How did she come up with it?”

“A deer hit my dad’s car when he was on the way to the hospital. So, my mom thought it would be cute to name me Bambi.” Of course, that was the only time her sorry excuse for her father had gone out of his way to see her.

Reggie laughed, then cut to the chase. “Look, come and scoop me up so we can go eat.”

“I don’t have a car right now; the car I was driving was my mother’s. Don’t you have a car?” Bambi asked.

“I got a Cadi. You might have seen it parked on the corner. Da police is round here deep, and I ain’t got no license so I can’t go nowhere.”

It was funny how in every single ’hood in Richmond, every hustler’s first car is a Cadi. Bambi learned later that it makes no difference to the young, up-and-coming drug dealers what year or style. It could be ten years old, and they would invest in rims and a stereo system that cost more than the whole car. Seventy-five percent of the time the first car that they hustle
for is a Cadi. They are so proud of that car, taking it to the car wash damn near every day. It was once said that a Cadi made a brother feel like he had status in the drug or pimp world. Some move on to Benzes, BMWs and Lexuses but most never lose their love affairs with the Cadi and always have one around.

“How you got a nice-ass Cadi, suited all up with rims and everything and no license?”

“Baby, that’s just ‘the Life.’ Rich girls like you wouldn’t know nothing about it,” Reggie said.

“Yeah, whatever,” Bambi said with a little chuckle.

“Look, we could talk all night, but how about you give me your address so I can have my driver pick you up.”

His driver?
Bambi liked the way that sounded. She gave him her address, and within ten minutes he called her back and said, “My cab driver will be there in forty-five minutes. Oh, before I forget, write down this number. This is my pager number.”

She jotted down the number and then asked, “What’s my code?”

“What do you want it to be? One, oh-oh-one, three ones, what?”

“Naw, baby, two-two-oh!”

“Why two-two-oh?”

“Because I am second to none!”

Reggie chuckled a little. “No doubt, baby. When I see two-two-oh behind any number, I am calling right back!”

R
eggie paid the cab driver as he pulled to a stop in the projects and helped Bambi out of the backseat. He handed her the keys to his Cadi, and they took off for Western Sizzler.

As she drove he looked her over. She looked even better than she had that afternoon.

“You pretty as a ma’fucka. I never saw anyone so black and pretty as you are.”

“Thank you.” She blushed.

“Boo, you could be first cousins with someone from the Motherland. You are as dark as those Ethiopians they show on TV,” Reggie said with admiration. Bambi knew she didn’t have the “beauty queen” looks of some girls, but she was proud of her midnight complexion, her high cheekbones, and her exotic eyes.

As they ate their meal, Bambi laughed to herself, imagining what her mother would say if she knew that her daughter was being wined and dined at Western Sizzler. For sure it was a few steps down from what she was used to. She didn’t hold it against him. She knew it was probably the best that he could do or the best he knew of, anyway.

Reggie was easier to talk to than Bambi might have imagined. He was the kind of guy who would say anything just to get her to smile. He was funny, too. One minute acting all tough, and then the next he was so kind and gentle.

After dinner, he tried to impress her when the check came by peeling off a few bills from his thick wad of twenties, fifties, and hundreds. Bambi acted as if she wasn’t looking as he peeled off the money like it was nothing to him, but indeed she was. There was no doubt that she had seen money, but the money that her mother and her mother’s rich boyfriends peeled off was different—checks and credit cards. Reggie didn’t have to go to nobody’s bank or ATM; his stack of money was the best kind—cash, always accessible, right in his pockets.

As they got up from the table, she asked, “Did you leave the waitress a tip?” She had caught him off guard.

“Yeah, I left her a tip a’ight,” he said, and burst into laughter. “Look both ways when she crossed the street.”

Bambi stopped in her tracks. “Look, you ran her around in circles, worrying her to damn death to get you some ketchup, steak sauce, napkins, a refill, and on and on. So you better leave her a tip.”

Reggie was not embarrassed at all. He went into his pocket, pulled out some change, threw it on the table, and walked off. Bambi didn’t say anything else. Instead she reached into her mother’s Chanel bag (which Tricia had no idea she had borrowed) pulled out a five-dollar bill, placed it on the table and walked away.

Reggie saw her place the money on the table. Far from being mad, he seemed to realize that she wasn’t like the other chicks from the ’hood, scheming on his “riches.” He was quiet as they got back in his car, and for a moment he just sat there. Before she put the car in reverse to back out of the parking space, he wanted to say something to her.

“Hold on,” he said as he looked deep into her eyes. “Look, I know you think I’m some ol’ little poo-putt dude, beings that you met me out in the jungle. But, baby, this shit here, nickel and diming, is only temporary for me. I ain’t gonna be a corner hustler forever! I just came home from jail, not even two months ago, and had to start over from scratch. My momma gave me a hundred dollars to go get me sneakers. I took that and flipped it, and I ain’t never looked back. I got my Cadi, and I’m gonna get me a business soon, real soon.”

After he’d said his piece, Bambi couldn’t help but be impressed. “I know you will, baby, and I’ll have your back every step of the way.” She wondered for a minute if she sounded too hard-up after one date, but she didn’t care because these were her feelings.

Just like that Bambi found something in Reggie that she’d never seen in any of the boys at her school. He made her feel wanted and gave her something to believe in, and she was as intrigued with him as he was with her. Without a doubt, this was love at first sight in her eyes.

CHAPTER 2

The Come Up

R
eggie hadn’t lied to her, Bambi thought to herself as she drove across town to the engagement party. Within a year, he was large—not Tony Montana large but surely large in a Nino Brown kind of way, and definitely a major player by the standards of Richmond, and big enough to hold it down with a lot of those I-95 cats in DC, B-more, and Philly, too. Some cats who had spent many years hustling in the street never saw half the bank he saw in only one short year.

The cornerstone of his growing fortune was a lucrative car-detailing business. He ran his business during the day, and in the evenings and in between detailing jobs, he would make his moves, working off his pager selling weight in heroin to a select few.

They were living the glamorous life. Bambi had a closet full of designer clothes purchased at the finest boutiques across the country. Many of the shops were the very same ones where her mother shopped. Reggie was even more flamboyant and showy.
He traded in his thugged-out street gear for pimped-out full-length Gucci furs with hats to match. His twelve-year-old Cadi had been upgraded to a Cadi straight off the showroom floor, and Reggie had outfitted Bambi in her very own black-on-black convertible Allante Cadillac. Just one week before the party, she somehow persuaded Reggie that since she was his doll baby, she needed a Corvette just like the real Barbie dolls. Without hesitation Reggie traded in the Allante and got her a candy apple red Corvette. Not only did they have an array of vehicles, but they had a driveway to keep them in at a brick, three-bedroom starter home they rented in a quiet section of the 7-4-6. Most of all, Reggie seemed to enjoy the getaways—the extravagant trips to Belize or the Bahamas, weekends in Las Vegas and New York City. These were a welcome break from the mayhem, chaos, and confusion that surrounded his high-risk life.