The Blackbirds (30 page)

With an explosion, splinters of wood took flight and the door flew open.

Hakeem bolted back into the living room in total shock.

Eddie and Nancy weren't in the living room getting Nancied and Eddied.

They were always in the front room. This was their unofficial Motel 6, where Hakeem always kept the light on for his homie. I stepped inside. I eased the door closed. Eddie wasn't in the living room. He wasn't in the kitchen. Then I heard Nancy freaking out in the bedroom.

I asked, “What's going on, Hakeem?”

We stood and looked at each other, both of us short of breath.

I said, “All of you are in the bedroom? You, Eddie, and Nancy are in the same bed? All of you are on the mattress I paid for?”

I pushed by Hakeem and went to see what the hell was going on, if he and Eddie were tag-teaming Nancy. Nancy made a sound of terror and her shadow hurried into the bathroom.

She was naked, panties and bra in her hand.

She dropped her sweatpants and hoodie along the way. The lock on the bedroom door didn't work, so she had fled to hide behind a door that she thought couldn't be opened.

Eddie wasn't there.

Food had been cooked, a meal for a king. Nancy was naked.

And Eddie wasn't here.

Tears in my eyes, jaw tight, breathing fire, I turned, scowled at Hakeem and snapped, “Wha de blood claat ah go on here?”

He barked, “I need you to leave, Destiny Jones.”

I hurried toward the bathroom and beat on the door.

“I saw you, Nancy. Okay, we can do it this way or that way, but it's going to be done. You can come out of the bathroom and I'll be cool. I will be cool. I won't trip. Or I can kick the bathroom door down and make this get real, real ugly real, real fast.”

The door opened one inch at a time on the face of the terrified nineteen-year-old.

She looked up and saw I had my phone in my hand, was recording this moment.

I announced, “I just walked in on Nancy having sex with Hakeem Mitchell.”

“Put the camera down. Stop saying my name. Please, don't say my name.”

“I walked in on Nancy having sex with Hakeem Mitchell. Nancy is Hakeem's best friend's bae. This
thot
is over here sleeping with her bae's boy. Look at this pathetic
thot.”

Behind me Hakeem shouted, “Please, please, don't do this. Not like this. Not like this.”

I aimed my phone at him. “This is Eddie's best friend. He's screwing his homie's bae.”

“Stop recording me.”

“This is for my own protection.”

“You, of all people, shouldn't want to record anyone.”

“I'm only recording as a safeguard.”

“Please, stop recording me.”

I turned back to Nancy and called her every disgusting name I could think of.

She yelled,
“Protect me, Hakeem. Protect me. Please protect me.”

Hakeem yanked on a hoodie, grabbed his keys, and marched out the front door.

He left and didn't say a word. He just walked the hell out on both of us.

It was just Nancy, alone, facing me, shocked that he had abandoned her.

She pulled on her pink sweats and hoodie, then tried to sprint toward the door.

I stepped in front of her, asked, “Where do you think you're going?”

She cowered. “Don't hurt me.”

“No one is hurting you. I have not
touched
you.”

“You're Destiny Jones.”

“I know who I am.”

“Please, stop recording me.”

“Eddie will love seeing this recording.”

“Please, don't tell Eddie I slept with Hakeem. Eddie would kill Hakeem if he found out.”

“I walked in on you sleeping with Hakeem.”

“You weren't supposed to come over tonight. Hakeem said you weren't coming over.”

“Thanks for the clear confession.”

“Hakeem is just a friend. I love Eddie. I love Eddie more than you will ever know.”

“But you had to have some Hakeem.”

“Hakeem has a job.
I can't afford Eddie
. I've maxed out all of my charge cards and I needed to talk to Hakeem and ask him what I should do. We talked about Eddie not having money, and about you being who you are, and Hakeem told me about all the other girls Eddie is sleeping with, and I cried, and we cooked and had dinner, and then we ended up having sex.”

I stopped recording the nineteen-year-old thot, then stormed to the kitchen and grabbed a butcher knife. She cowered again, set free a shriek of horror, like Jason and Freddy were after her.

I said, “Help me.”

“Help you?”

“Help me.”

We tussled and wrestled the mattress down the stairs. We got it to the ground floor and leaned it against the building. Then we went back for the box spring, which was easier to move because it was lighter. Nancy kept her distance. Brain on fire, anger unleashed, I used the knife and cut the mattress, I stabbed it over and over, killed it many times
over, then cut it open from top to bottom, sliced it until it was unusable, then did the same with the box spring.

I wiped sweat from my face. Then I realized that it would have been much easier if I had cut them up inside the apartment.

I faced Nancy. I glowered at Eddie's girl. She shivered like she wanted to know if I was going to do the same to her.

I gave her the butcher knife handle first.

Her voice trembled. “I'm sorry about what happened to you.”

I snapped, “How could you smile in my face, then be with Hakeem behind my back?”

“I didn't mean to sleep with him. I made him dinner and it just sort of happened.”

“You're communal pussy, Nancy.”

“That's a horrible thing to say.”

“Go, just go.”

“Are you going to tell Eddie? I promise, I will never do this again. It was a mistake.”

“
G
et out of my face
. Get away from me.”

Nancy ran to her car, but I think she realized she had left her keys in Hakeem's crib. She looked confused, then bolted toward the condo, ran crying, like she was trying to race back in time.

I headed toward my CBR. Saw my reflection in the window of a car.

Cotton was all over me. It was in my hair, stuck to my face, all over my clothes.

I was about to get on my motorcycle, but I saw Hakeem's Ram 3500 was still there. Wherever he went, he went on foot. The rebar I had dropped before was on the ground, feet away from me. I picked it up and hopped in the back of his ride, and then climbed on top of the cab. I raised the rebar up high, screamed out my frustration, stomped on the top of the ride like Michael Jackson did in that banned portion of his old-school “Black or White” video, beat the Ram 3500 like it had insulted my dignity. I beat the
F
out of his truck until I lost my footing and fell from the roof of the truck to the concrete. I fell fast and hard. I sat there a moment, shoulder aching. I waited for the pain to die down, breathing cold air through my mouth. I groaned and pulled
myself back to my feet. When I dusted myself off, I saw Hakeem racing toward me.

“Not my Big Wheel. I know you didn't touch my Big Wheel.”

He was back. With money in his hand. Wherever he had gone, he'd bolted there and collected the cash to pay his debt. He sprinted to where I was, saw the slaughtered mattress, cursed, ran toward his truck, damned that damage, pulled at his hair and cussed a hundred times. I faced him, expected him to be on his phone calling the police.

Seething, he said, “You messed up my Big Wheel?
Why would you go and do that?”

“You're a whore who has no compassion, and you're a pathetic user.”

He barked, “I pay my bills. I am not a pathetic loser.”

He extended his trembling hand, extended the fistful of money toward me. I didn't accept it. This was beyond financial reparations. I needed emotional reparations.

I said, “Sorry for giving you my pseudonym. Over the years people have said so many horrible things about me that I don't do social media. I don't read many posts. I keep it moving forward. You can drown trying to tread in a sea of negative opinions. I gave you the same name I give everyone when I am not with people who already know me. Even the people at my jobs call me Kismet. Don't flatter yourself. It wasn't a lie tailored for you. It was a name I used so I could fit in with the rest of the world. It's what I do . . . what I do to protect myself from any more pain.”

“What else did you lie about? Does your dad really have cancer, or was that for sympathy?”

“What did
you
tell lies about, Hakeem? Why don't you be open and honest with me? You seemed like a decent guy. You were such a geek and a gentleman. You became an instant asshole.”

My eyes watered, throat tightened, but I strengthened myself.

Hakeem took a deep breath. “Are you going to tell Eddie?”

“Nancy and you.”

“I need you to not contact Eddie.”

“Wow. I bet this has been going on a long time, if not the entire time.
You have the degree, the condo, so I bet you're more attractive to her in fiscal ways than Eddie.”

“It hasn't. Just tonight. This wasn't planned. She called me and told me she had figured out who you really were, thought you were Destiny Jones, but wasn't sure. Funny thing is, I called your phone one Friday and an older woman answered it. I asked to speak to you and she said there was no one named Kismet Kellogg at the pool party, said she knew all of her daughter's friends at the party. She told me I had dialed Destiny's phone number, and then she hung up on me. I was confused, but didn't think much about it, assumed that somehow I had been connected to the wrong number. When Nancy told me, it all came together. You're a liar.”

“You're trifling.”

“Are you going to tell Eddie that—”

“Hell yeah.”

“Then I'll call One Time.”

“No crime has been committed here, not by me.”

“Really? I'll show them what you did to my door. That's breaking and entering. Look at this mattress and my damn Big Wheel. Destruction of property.”

“The mattress belongs to me, just like your condo still belongs to the bank until you make the last payment. Just like your Big Wheel still belongs to the bank until you hand over the last payment. The mattress is
mine
. I destroyed what belongs to
me
, and that's the way it is.”

“You kicked open my door.”

“You think you have me in check?”

“I have you in checkmate.”

“Really? You gave me a key. You gave me permission to enter. As far as they know, the chain was on, you didn't answer, and when I heard that moaning and calling out for Jesus, I assumed you had fallen and couldn't get up and in my mind there was a medical emergency and I broke the door open to save your life, only to find you in communal pussy. Checkmate, bitch.”

“My Big Wheel?”

“You
Eddied
Nancy. That was for Eddying Nancy. I'm sure Eddie will do worse. He's gonna Eddie you up real good.”

“Are you going to snitch? I don't want to have to call the police and bring up who you are, then see it posted on social media. Didn't have social media back then, not like now. You might trend on Twitter. Everyone will start looking online for that old video of Destiny Jones.”

“Well, that was lacking in subtlety.”

“I'm being straight up. I'm sure people still have that DVD in their collection.”

“One night we're on the new mattress and you're telling me I'm the woman of your dreams, you're asking me to move in, saying you want to be married, not to mention you're asking to fuck my ass and come down my throat, and the next, this is where we are. You say you have no idea who I am. Well, obviously that goes both ways. No, I don't claim to be a damn saint, not tonight, but you want the world to once again laugh and share a video of an underage girl being molested to save your own ass, when you know you're the one the deepest in the wrong on this night. No matter how cool, no matter what kind of condo you have in whatever zip code, no matter how educated you are, how you treat people tells who you are in your heart. You have no integrity, no dignity, no self-esteem. You treat me like this, and you betray Eddie by getting with his girl. You're despicable. What kind of monster are you?”

“I call the cops and the
LA Times
, and when they come and make you Miss Rodney King before they drag you away to Bauchet Street and throw you in the Twin Towers Correctional Facility, this will be the talk of the town, Destiny Jones.”

“This sure has changed. I thought that if I showed up, pled my case, was honest, you would see the good inside of me. I've been good to you since I met you the night Badu was on wax. I've been loyal to you. Take away what happened to me, take away what you saw on that damn DVD, and I am Kismet. The good parts of me, Kismet Kellogg, she still wanted to work this out. I will take the blame for this one, for being too afraid to be honest about all of my past.”

“Are you a snitch? Should I make a call so you can end up at the world's largest jail?”

“Eddie terrifies you. He could rip your head from your neck. You Eddied Eddie's girl.”

“We've been boys since we were children. He's my brother by another mother. Eddie loves Nancy, Kismet Kellogg . . . Destiny Jones . . . whoever you are. He loves her to death.”

“No. I'm not a tattletale. Where I was incarcerated, it wasn't cool to be a snitch.”

“Where does that leave us?”

Nancy hurried back out of the building, her pink overnight bag in her hands.

She had her pink overnight bag. This night wasn't random. This night with Nancy was planned. No matter what he said, I doubted that this was their first time. She was surprised to see I was still there. She was shocked to see Hakeem was standing near me and not freaking out.