Authors: J. Gail
Boo took over before an all out brawl could ensue. He grabbed Rob by the collar with his huge hand and pushed Tony forward towards the entrance with all of his power. Tony fell forward like a rag doll when Boo pushed him to the point where his hands had hit the ground.
“Get the fuck out of here!” Boo barked as he finished dragging Tony and Rob out of the bar. He shut the door and looked out of the clear glass window, daring either one of them to try to come back in. Everybody in the bar was laughing hysterically. Tony and Rob had gotten embarrassed and played beyond belief.
Tony threw his hands down in disgust and anger. “Fuck them!”
Rob was straightenening himself out. “Man, come on Tony. You always gettin’ us in some shit.”
“And fuck you too nigga!” Tony spit. “What took you so long to get my back??”
“Nigga I know you ain’t trynna blame that shit on me!”
Tony started walking towards his car in a huff. He was hopping mad.
“Ay yo!” Hook came out of the bar and yelled behind them, holding a pair of women’s underwear up in his hand. “You forgot your panties!”
He let out an evil cackle and went back into the bar. There were only two women in the bar, and Tony had been with them. It had to have been one of their panties.
“I’m gonna kill that nigga!” Tony screamed at the top of his lungs and then headed back towards the bar. He was seeing red.
“Tony what the hell are you doing?” Rob asked incredulously.
“No matter fact,” Tony said as he turned back around and took quick long strides back in the direction of his car.
“Thank you,” Rob said, relieved, as he rubbed the back of his head and strolled behind Tony.
“I’m gonna shoot the shit out this muthafucka. Then we’ll see who’s laughing,” Tony yelled angrily in a way that told Rob that he was serious.
“Oh no,” Rob said in a low moan. Tony was tripping for real. “Tony come on, you gotta just let it go man.”
“Fuck that!” he screamed as he turned the corner.
Rob stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and looked up at the sky. He didn’t know what Tony was about to do.
When Rob finally turned the corner and reached Tony’s car, he reluctantly went to the passenger’s side and got in. Tony was on the driver’s side with the door open, rummaging through the car. He looked under the seats, and under the junk in the back seat of his car. Rob was hoping Tony was just going to eventually start up the car and leave all this mess behind. But he wasn’t so lucky.
Tony finally pulled out what he had been looking for. It was the gun he had used to stick up the Arab man’s grocery store. Quanisha’s gun. He looked at it for a moment and then played with it between his legs, opening the revolver to check if it had bullets. It did.
“Tony, you ain’t serious,” Rob said as he looked at his friend in amazement. He surely had lost his mind.
“As a heart attack,” Tony huffed. He closed his door for privacy as he maneuvered with the gun and got comfortable with it. His trigger finger was killing him after Hook bent it, but he didn’t care – he was going to use it.
Chapter 24
Quanisha had spent hours talking in private with Stephanie during her visit. She let it all out. She told Stephanie everything; from Tony giving her gonorrhea, his stay in the hospital and her problems with the nurse, to her innermost secret, which most of her family if not all knew about by now. That she was unable to have children because of the abortions she had when she was a teen.
She also told Stephanie about some secrets that she’d never told
anyone
, like when she went with Trina one night to a strip club to try out the job, and then felt so sick to the stomach that she left after one set.
Stephanie came clean too. She recalled a part of her life that she hated to bring up. Some of the stories she had to tell about her days in prostitution were so unbelievable that Quanisha was embarrassed to hear them. Like the time Stephanie had a train run on her by six men, and didn’t even know about it until she got there because her pimp had conveniently left that part of the job out. She had been so physically worn after that episode that she had had to go to the hospital. The hospital personnel were treating her as a rape victim. Quanisha couldn’t grasp that the woman before her was the same woman in those stories.
After their talk, Quanisha felt cleansed. Someone had finally let her talk without there being something in it for them. There was no accusing, judging or criticizing from Stephanie. She just listened. The only other person besides Stephanie that had truly just sat down and listened to her was Dr. Stephens, Tony’s doctor.
And the car. It looked like it was brand new, and ran as smooth as butter. She still couldn’t believe that Karl and Stephanie had taken it upon themselves to fix up her car and pay for it in full without asking her for a dime or favor in return. Again, nobody ever did anything for Quanisha without wanting something in return. A wonderful feeling came over Quanisha everytime she looked at her gleaming black car. It was something she hadn’t felt in a long time - happiness.
Quanisha sat up on the bed in one of the guest rooms in Stephanie’s house and looked through, not at, the television. She was thinking way too much to be interested in the episode of
Girlfriends
that was flashing across the screen. The room was dark except for the light from the television. Stephanie had to get up at 6am the next day with Michael, so Quanisha had to turn in early.
She wondered how Stephanie was able to make such a turn around in her life. Stephanie had been in an even worse situation than Quanisha, with a pimp and an incurable STD that she would never be rid of added to the mix. Now she had a great family and complete security in her life. Quanisha wondered if she could ever make the type of change in her life that was necessary to have a sprawling five bedroom home, a loving husband, a job she enjoyed and a beautiful life just like Stephanie.
Quanisha remembered when Stephanie said that she could stay there as long as she needed to get herself together. Maybe if she stuck around these people long enough, the positivity and happiness would rub off. It was worth a try. She could go to school down there in Virginia, like Stephanie had done in Chicago, and look into a new career.
Stephanie had even gone so far as to give Quanisha a key to her house. That was unheard of among Quanisha’s family and friends. Quanisha barely had a key to her own
mother’s
house! And after only a little over a week of staying with the family, Stephanie had entrusted her with the keys to her home. What Stephanie didn’t yet realize was that in return, Quanisha had given her the key to her heart. Quanisha had been converted, in less than a week, into Stephanie’s biggest fan. Stephanie was her new role model, and she would do just about anything that Stephanie told her to do.
Quanisha pulled the covers back and started to get into the bed. At 9 o’clock in the evening, this was officially the earliest she had ever gone to bed.
But before she laid down, something, better yet some
one
crossed her mind. She thought about the flowers and money at her door, and she saw Tony’s face in her mind’s eye. It was him. He was the only person she knew who folded his money in fours, lengthwise and then widthwise. The money had been indented in that way when she found it. She just didn’t understand why he hadn’t knocked on her door.
She grabbed her cellphone out of her purse on the nightstand and climbed into bed. She scratched an itch in her braids and looked for Tony’s new number. She knew he probably wouldn’t answer, as usual, but it was worth a try.
* * *
Tony sat in his car across the street from the bar and looked down at the gun in his lap. He still felt humiliated and unreasonably irate. When he thought about the way everybody laughed at him when Hook accused him and Rob of being gay lovers, he knew that he was going to do this thing. Now he knew exactly what had set Scoop off when Rock had basically called him a faggot in the bar that day. He was going to make Hook pay for the little bit of fun he had had with Tony. Hook would die in that bar.
But then he thought again about what happened to Scoop. He had gone into the bar, just like Tony, thinking he was just going to get a couple of drinks and chill. And he had ended up dead.
Did Tony want to risk that?
Hell yea. Especially after the way Hook had punched him into the wall. Tony didn’t even get a chance to return the favor. He had just gotten chased out of a bar with all those people, including the women, laughing at him. The thought was unbearable.
When he grasped the gun again in his hand, Rob tried a last ditch plea to make Tony just let the whole thing go and drive home.
“Tony man, you don’t wanna do this. That nigga ain’t nobody. Don’t none of those muthafuckas matter. Come on, let’s just go home man.”
Tony didn’t answer him, he just kept looking down at the gun.
“Tone, this is crazy, you can’t be goin’ up in there like that,” Rob reasoned.
“They came at me first! I gotta finish this. If you don’t like it, get the fuck out my car!” Tony roared into Rob’s ear.
“Fine, fuck this. You can go ahead and go to jail, get killed if you want,” Rob said opening the door and getting out. “Cuz you know all them niggas is probably holding heat.”
Tony watched as Rob started walking down the block, trying to figure out how he was going to get home. But Tony couldn’t be concerned with Rob right now, he had business to handle.
He pulled out a cigarette and pushed in his car lighter. He needed a cigarette badly to calm his nerves before he went up in there. There weren’t any cops around that area usually, and it was fairly quiet during that time of the night. He would just run up in there with his gun low and his hat down over his eyes, find Hook and shoot once close range to be sure he got him. Then he would jump in his car and speed out. He never had to come up to Germantown again; at least not in a long while.
The lighter popped out and he snatched at it too quickly. He fumbled it in his hands and the red coils burned his finger. He winced in pain.
“Ouch!” he said, dropping the lighter and his cigarette on the floor of the car.
Something about that lighter burning his finger set off a chain of events in his mind. He remembered how he disrespected and bragged about that girl Tonya on 69
th
street and then got clipped by a speeding car as he crossed the street. He clearly recalled getting burnt with gonorrhea after having Keisha over at Quanisha’s house while Quanisha was at work. The attack on his grandmother came the
same exact night
that he, Rob, and Scoop had attacked Gucci in the club! They had stolen all of Gucci’s stuff, and in return, Tony had gotten all of his prized possessions stolen from his grandmother’s house, as well as from his car. After robbing the convenience store, he was robbed and beaten almost beyond recognition by a brother who was nearly a foot shorter than him. He had messed over Jenny, and now she was stalking him and making his and his grandmother’s life miserable. When did it end?
It was like there was some kind of force that was causing him to get Karma quickly and cruelly. It was like clockwork; he screwed someone and then he got screwed back almost instantly. Based on what had happened to him just over the last few months, what would happen if he went into this bar and started shooting people? He also thought about what the doctor had told him before he even came to this bar, about not falling victim to the negativity in life.
His cellphone started ringing and it caused him to jump. He picked out another cigarette nervously and put it on his lip before flipping open the phone.
“Yo.”
“Hey,” Quanisha’s voice came clearly over the phone. “I didn’t think you was gonna answer.”
“Nish? Baby?” The sound of Quanisha’s voice helped to put his soul at ease, even for just a few moments. He let go of the tension in his forehead.