The Man in 3B (7 page)

“Well, that’s a relief. For a second there I thought I was going to be hanging out with a damn prude.” Cain sat down on a chaise next to me. “Besides, my friend, you need to live a little, expand your horizons. I know I don’t have to tell you that you’re not getting any younger. Take it from me. There’s nothing like some twenty-something-year-old pussy to keep you young.” He flexed his arms to display his well-toned muscles.

At that point, I was more than willing to test out his theory, especially since I’d already made up my mind that if the opportunity presented itself I was going to fuck the hell outta Holly’s fine ass. But before I got myself all caught up in Cain’s little world, I needed some answers.

“Cain, what am I doing here? Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate your hospitality, but you said you had something you wanted to talk to me about face-to-face.” It’s not every day a man gets invited to a mansion where beautiful women are ready to screw him. Some things are just too good to be true, and this was feeling a little like one of those times. I mean, could this guy really be doing all this simply because he felt bad for me?

Cain leaned back in his chair and studied me for a minute. I couldn’t read his expression to know if I’d offended him. Finally, he said, “I do have something to talk to you about.” He sipped his
martini. “I only wanted to loosen you up and make sure your head was screwed on right first.”

I didn’t say anything. I needed to see where he was going with this.

“How you doing anyway, man? You all right?” he asked. He was saying the right things, and his face wore the appropriate look of concern, but I wasn’t a hundred percent convinced that it wasn’t an act. Of course, I barely knew the guy. This was the first time I’d ever met him face-to-face when I was sober. Even though he’d saved my life, I wasn’t about to let this virtual stranger become my shrink.

I chose to keep my answer short and to the point. “I’m doing better.”

“Okay, I’ll accept that for now,” he said, then tried to pry more out of me. “How’s work going?”

“Work sucks.” I shrugged. “But I can see a light at the end of the tunnel. It looks like I’m next in line to be promoted to store manager. With any luck, I’ll be making another twenty, thirty grand, and that will point me in the right direction.”

“Hope it works out for you.” He said it sarcastically, and I got the distinct feeling he didn’t believe things were going to work out in my favor. “How about your marriage? How’s that working out for you?”

This time I was more honest. “It isn’t. My wife’s not a bad woman, but I have nothing in common with her anymore. Heck, most nights I hate to go home after work.” I lowered my head. “She’s so big. I’m physically repulsed by the woman.” It was embarrassing having to admit this to a man who was surrounded by gorgeous women with
Playboy
-worthy figures.

He shook his head. “Wow, that’s not good… not good at all.”

“Tell me about it.”

“If it’s like that, why stay married? Why don’t you ask her for a divorce?”

“Where the hell am I gonna go?” I asked. “I can barely pay my share of the rent now.”

“Avery, you sound miserable. You haven’t been thinking about killing yourself lately, have you?”

“Nah. I’m good. I’m not that guy anymore.”

Cain actually laughed at me. “You can’t lie to me, Avery. Did you forget we’ve both been down the same road? I know what it’s like to want to end it all. That doesn’t just go away. Deep down, you still feel like your life isn’t worth shit. Like you have no real purpose, and if you died tomorrow, it would be more of a blessing than a curse.” He spoke with total confidence about thoughts I’d barely even admitted to myself. I felt like he was reading my mind.

“Tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about,” he challenged. “Tell me you woke up today looking forward to going to work.”

I couldn’t tell him anything because he already had the answer, and I hated it. “What are you, some type of priest or something?” I asked. “Is that why you asked me here? You planning on saving my soul?”

“No, I’m no priest. Far from it. But I do want to give you an opportunity to truly change your life, give you a reason to live.”

He stood up and started pacing beside the pool as he continued, “I wanna help you feel important again. Like the man I’m sure you used to be.”

“Nice speech, but I don’t see how you expect to do that, especially in this economy. Unless you’re a magician or something.”

“Avery, look around you. Look at this house. Look at these women. You think they do that for no reason?” he asked. Then he answered his own question. “No, they like hanging out with a rich and powerful motherfucker who drives a Mercedes, takes them out to fancy restaurants, buys ’em Birkin bags like he’s buying sodas, and takes them on exotic vacations.”

Something wasn’t adding up about Cain’s story. I asked, “How did you get all this? I thought you told me you were turned down for a partnership last year.” How could a man with all of this have stood on the same bridge I did, ready to jump, only a year ago?

The look on his face told me he understood my skepticism, but he didn’t seem offended. “I did lose my job. But when I stepped off that ledge, I decided that instead of ending my life, I was going to change it. So I put away the negative and made a plan to achieve all the things I wanted out of life. I think it’s time you did the same.”

I wanted details. If what he was saying was true and I could be living large like this in a year, then I definitely wanted in. “So what exactly did this plan of yours entail?” I probed.

Cain sipped the last drop from his drink and gazed down into his glass like a tea leaf reader looking into the future. “First, I told my boss he could kiss my ass.”

“I’ll say this much about you—you have some balls.” I felt energized by the idea of saying, “Fuck you,” to the powers that be. Plenty of days I wished I had the guts to do that at Cheap Sam’s. “What about your cheating wife?”

“Oh, that bitch. I got rid of her two-timing behind as fast as I could. I gave her everything: the house, the car, my best friend, and the fucking dog. I didn’t want anything other than closure. Luckily my kids were grown, so I could just walk away.” He sat back on the chaise, looking like a man who was totally at peace with his life. “I got rid of the job, I got rid of the wife, and I got rid of the cancer. See, they all fed on each other.”

“What do you mean?”

“When you have negative people in your life, they become like a cancer. In fact, I’m in remission now that I’ve kicked all this craziness outta my life and started living for me.”

The more I heard, the more I was intrigued. It was like watching one of those late-night infomercials, the kind where they show Average Joe and his wife, who bought a DVD and learned the secret to success. The kind where a motivational speaker makes you believe Joe and his wife went from living in a trailer to living in a beachfront mansion. Shoot, if it could happen to them, why couldn’t it happen for me? That’s how Cain was making me feel.

“What’s the secret formula?” I asked. If this was one of those infomercials, I’d already be dialing the 1-800 number.

Cain leaned forward dramatically. “You wanna know what it is?”

“I do.” I was on the edge of my seat. “What?”

“You’ve got to live like you’re dying. That’s the only way you’re going to enjoy life. Act as if you only have one day to live.”

He leaned back again and let that thought sink in for a minute. Then he asked, “What choices would you make?”

I couldn’t answer right away. I’d heard the cliché before, “live like you were dying,” but I’d never really thought about what that would mean in my own life.

“I gave you two pieces of advice the other day: stop worrying about everyone else and what they think, and start living for what makes you happy.” Cain looked around his spectacular yard as if to send the subliminal message,
All this could be yours.

“Now,” he said, “let me give you some more advice. They say that money is the root of all evil. Well, call me the devil because I’m here to offer you plenty of money.”

“Doing what?”

Cain laughed off my question and said, “Come on in the house. I want you to taste the good life. Then, after you go home and sleep on it, you’ll give me a call—when you’re ready to start living again.”

I watched in amazement from my bedroom window as Ms. Nancy gently kissed her husband before he made his way past the other ladies sitting around the stoop and into the truck that carted him off to work. That lady sure deserved an Oscar for the performance she’d just given, acting like the dutiful, loving wife. She knew good and well that by the time he hit the Belt Parkway, she would be knocking on our door, and by the time he got to work, she would be in Pop’s bed, having her head knocked up against the headboard. This was their routine whenever Pop shifted from the day shift to the night shift.

Like clockwork, there was a knock on the door. I stuck my head in my father’s bedroom. He was sprawled out across his queen-sized bed with a sheet covering half his body. “Pop, I’m pretty sure that’s Ms. Nancy at the door. Want me to let her in?”

He lifted his head and glanced at the clock radio, then immediately shut his eyes again. He had barely been home from work two hours, and he obviously needed more sleep. He wasn’t going to pass up this opportunity, though.

“Might as well,” he said. “It’s been over a week, and she ain’t gonna let me rest until she gets some.”

“Didn’t you have Ms. Pam up here yesterday?”

He lifted his head and opened one eye to look at me. “What, are you keeping score for me or something?”

“Nope, just worried about you. You keep messing with all these women and you might end up dead from a heart attack—or worse,
one of their husbands. Besides, you ain’t no spring chicken no more,” I joked.

“What!” He threw a pillow at me, fully awake now. “I’ll have you know, if they’d let me, I could handle both those broads at the same time.”

“Okay, player-player. Look, I’ll see you sometime tonight. I’m gonna head up to Fordham. See if I can get a couple of my classes changed before the semester starts next week.”

“A’ight, son. I’ll see you tonight. You good on cash?”

“Yeah, I’m good.”

I left his bedroom and went to let in Ms. Nancy. She was standing there in the doorway, fidgeting like a crackhead looking for a fix.

“Hey there, Ms. Nancy.”

“Hey, Benny. Your daddy home?” she asked with a smile.

I nodded politely, though I wanted to laugh. That woman knew darn well that he was home. Shoot, she knew everything happening on our block and in our building at all times. When it came to Pop, she knew his schedule better than he did.

“He’s down in his room.” I stepped out of the way and she sashayed down the hall. I had to give it to her; I could see what Pop saw in her. She had a nice figure for a woman in her forties.

By the time I got downstairs to the stoop, all the old hens had taken their horny tails back inside their apartments. They’d been spending more time outside than usual these past few days. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that they were hoping to catch a glimpse of Daryl from 3B. Without Ms. Nancy to keep them all riled up, though, I guess they’d decided to take a break.

I headed out of the apartment building in hopes of getting to the Bronx without incident. I’d made it down the steps and was just about to break toward the bus stop when I heard the sound of screeching tires.

“Yo, college boy! Let me holla at you a second.”

“Shit,” I mumbled.

I knew who it was without even turning toward the car. His name was Leroy Johnson, and he and his boys were some local thugs I’d
gone to high school with. Recently they’d become my worst fucking nightmare come true. Now, I wasn’t no punk, but I also wasn’t a fool. Leroy and his bunch of hoodlums weren’t something to play with.

Leroy had been trying to jump me into his gang ever since I graduated high school two years ago. He’d been coming at me a lot harder lately because, as he told me, they had “some things in the works that required a brainy brother.” I’d been ducking him the better part of the summer, purposely laying low with hopes that they wouldn’t spot me. With any luck, they’d get arrested or wind up dead before I had to tell them no. Unfortunately, my luck had just run out.

“Ay, yo, Benny, did you hear my man talking to you?” That was one of Leroy’s boys, probably the one they called Muscles. He’d gotten the nickname for the reason you’d expect; he was the most muscular son of a bitch I’d ever met.

The thought of running back in the building came to mind, but that was dead when I heard the car doors slam. If I tried to run, they’d be able to cut me off in a flash. So I turned toward the voices. It was Leroy and Muscles all right.

“Benny, where you been?” Leroy asked.

“I been around,” I said, shrugging meekly.

“Yeah, well, we ain’t seen you,” Muscles said.

I turned my attention to Muscles and flinched when I saw the black teardrop tattoo underneath his right eye. I wasn’t anybody’s gangbanger or thug, but I knew the legend behind those teardrop tattoos. I sure didn’t want to be the reason for him getting another one tattooed underneath the existing one.

“I been around, y’all. Ask anyone.” I was trying to keep it together, but my voice cracked.

Leroy smirked, patting my shoulder condescendingly. “You know what, Benny? Don’t worry about it. The fact that you’re here now is all that counts. Where you headed?”

“Oh, I’m, uh, just headed up the block to the bus stop,” I stammered, praying that they were going to let me go. “I gotta go up to my college and do a few things.”

“Then it looks like I’m right on time,” Leroy said. “What do you
say I give you a ride and we can, you know, talk about
that thing
? Did you get a chance to look it over?”

“Oh, yeah, well, about that…”
Damn, damn, damn!
If only I’d left a minute earlier, I might have dodged this bullet. The last thing I wanted to talk about was “that thing.”

I was in a spot, but I tried to stay calm and think my way through it before I said the wrong thing.
Okay, Benny, you gotta think like Pop. How would he handle this?