Back in the police cruiser and cuffed and on my way to Long Island College Hospital, located in downtown Brooklyn close enough to all of the courts, I had overheard that much on their walkie-talkies. The attorney had said she would meet me there at the hospital intake. She’d already warned me to prepare to be cuffed to the hospital bed and locked in a guarded hospital room. “Not to worry,” she added. “I’m your attorney, and seeing as we don’t have any parent’s or guardian’s name and contact information from you, I’ll be the only one allowed in to see you, aside from selected hospital staff and of course the doctors.”
Before she stood up to leave me back at the courthouse, she had asked me nonchalantly, and all of a sudden, “Do you like that name, ‘John’? Are you okay with being known as ‘John Doe’?” But I could tell she’d already perceived my answer. “That’s what all your paperwork says, and of course eventually you’ll be assigned a number.” She waited, offering me a chance to react. I didn’t.
“Let’s come up with the truth. Or, a more suitable pseudonym,” she’d said right before walking out. The last word of her sentence, pseudonym, was a test, I knew.
Pseudonym. I had read books in the past written by authors who used pseudonyms. They were made-up names that replaced the actual birth name of the author. Back then when I thought about it, I was curious if those authors just didn’t approve of their real birth names, or if they felt they needed to hide their true identity because of what they had written in their books.
The ’hood was all about pseudonyms. Some cat would be born Mike Jones, but his mother would call him “Boo-Boo.” Next thing you know, his brothers, sisters, and cousins were all calling him Boo-Boo, and then his friends. Boo-Boo would get into his first fight on the block. If he used a small knife to cut his enemy, the streets would rename him “Slash,” or “Cutter.” Yes, that’s how it works. The narcotics detectives who investigated me also knew that’s how it works. They asked me for names of the hustlers but told me they would even settle for their nicknames. They were studying the hustlers from a distance. In every police precinct I’m sure they keep a picture book of every arrested boy and man in the ’hood. Underneath each photo, it says Mike Jones, a.k.a. Boo-Boo, a.k.a. Slash . . . and so on.
Names have a deep meaning to me. So deep that even exposing your name is something heavy and special and sometimes even sacred. Since I was seven, I never spoke my name again to anyone outside of my family. I always thought revealing it would expose more than I wanted to share with any person who wasn’t close enough to me to already know it. The ’hood gave me “Midnight,” and I ran with it. It sounded strong to me and it somehow had depth and feeling. The men respected it, and women reacted like they wanted to get close to it.
Even for me to say someone else’s name had meaning to me. Even if it’s a dude, I’m not calling no young or grown man “Boo-Boo,” even if everyone else does. I’m not calling the next man “Sugar,” or “God,” or any name that lets off some backward or wrong-meaning feeling. Nine times out of ten, I wouldn’t be talking with no niggas like that. If I had to, for some unknown reason, I would talk without ever mentioning the pseudonym that didn’t sit right with me or with my beliefs.
Both of my wives catch feelings, like a jolt of energy or a strong sensation, when I speak their names aloud. Even on an ordinary day, while doing ordinary things, or when I just came back into the house and called out for one of them, Akemi’s hypnotic eyes would light up. Chiasa is in love with my voice, and more in love with my voice saying her name. I can’t think about it the same way my wives do, but I know a man speaking a woman’s name out loud arouses her, if she has love for him.
* * *
“You got nothing but time,” the officer posted in the hospital waiting room with me said. He stood against the wall, close to me as I sat, hands and feet cuffed. The lawyer was very late arriving at the hospital. The place was packed with uncuffed patients, some obviously and extremely sick, some bloodied, some coughing, some leaned over, or lying down over three or four seats that were needed for others who were still arriving. No matter their conditions or aches and pains, they each took at least one glance at me cuffed and chained. It didn’t matter.
The officer must’ve thought he was a mind reader. Every half hour or so, he would make some smart remark like, “You think you’re the only client the lawyer has? She’s got nine knuckleheads just like you at the courthouse waiting. You’re all going to the same place. That’s where you all belong.”
None of that was on my mind. I was thinking about business. I was watching the sick people in this waiting area and their children and spouses, each getting up randomly and putting their coins and bills into the vending machines. Vending machines, that’s my line of work. Being surrounded by them in here had me thinking back.
10. NEW BUSINESS • A Reflection
A truck rolled up to my Queens home, catching me off guard ’cause I didn’t know when it would. Me, Ameer, and Chris were way out in the backyard building the wall.
“The owner got a delivery,” Ameer said, peering. “Wonder what it is?”
“We’ll see in a minute,” Chris said.
“Let’s stay focused,” I told both of them.
Dilemma: if I ran to the front of the house to accept and sign for the delivery, then my friends would find out that I am the real owner of this house and that they were here building a wall, working for me. The job and the pay is legit. However, them finding out that I no longer lived in Brooklyn, and where I do actually live, was not part of my thought-out security plan. I did not want any men watching, mixing with, or lingering around my women. Even before I had taken two wives, I didn’t invite Chris or Ameer to our Brooklyn apartment plain and simple because my mother and sister lived there. When I am outdoors with my women and they are each covered, no problem.
Naja, Akemi, and Umma were all at the Ghazzahlis. Only Chiasa was home. On the one hand, I knew she would see the truck out front because she tends to see everything. On the other hand, I knew she would also be in a dilemma because my wives and I all agreed that they would not reveal themselves while “workmen” were anywhere on our property.
“What the fuck?” Ameer said, breaking our rhythm of laying the cement blocks. We each were now watching one guy carefully steering a gigantic nine-foot-by-six-foot box on a dolly. Then his man came out with a second huge box. Now I was surprised as well. I was only expecting one delivery.
“You think the owner’s home?” Chris asked.
“I doubt it. He never comes outside while we’re here and we never catch him coming or going,” Ameer observed.
“It’s a woman,” Chris said. “Nice . . . ,” he added.
Chiasa had emerged from the front door of our house wearing her Fila summer sweats and a thick wool hat that covered her hair, but her thick hair in the spring humidity made the hat lift and swell. She stood at the back of the truck, speaking briefly to the delivery man, signed the clipboard to acknowledge receipt, and then pointed to the backyard without turning around to face me or Ameer or Chris. She jogged back in the house.
“Is she the owner’s wife, or his daughter?” Chris asked, looking like he was under a spell after a glimpse of only her profile.
“What?” I said calmly, but feeling tight while still working the wall as a way to get both of them back to work.
“I think I’mma try and talk to her,” Chris said. “Word up. She looks good from a distance.” He laughed. “Now, all I need is a close-up. I’m ’bout to ring the bell and ask for a glass of water.”
“Use the water cooler right there. You know what’s up,” I told Chris calmly.
“Don’t cock-block. The married men should let the single guys roam,” Chris said, walking away from the wall where we were working and towards my house.
“I got dibs!” Ameer called out to Chris. “She’d pick me anyway,” he said confidently. “She probably been watching me through her bedroom window the whole time we been back here wor
king, even if she is married!” Ameer then tackled Chris before he could get too close to the house. Now the two martial arts guys were wrestling in the grass. Ameer is a fierce fighter no matter what style of fight he’s using. But Chris is strong and underestimated, and I could see him using that strength to dominate over the underestimation.
The deliverymen were standing in the front of the backyard now. The presence of the strangers and the huge boxes being rolled in was the only thing that broke up Chris and Ameer’s play fight.
“Where do you want them?” the buffed-up Italian dude asked us.
“Wherever she told you to leave it,” I said. They wheeled both boxes to the side of the deck and skillfully removed their dollies. Both of them side glanced at the wall we were building before they turned and left.
“What would you have done if you went up and rang the house bell, and the owner answered the door with his shotgun?” I asked Chris as I was buttering a cement block.
“You know that she’s his wife then?” Chris asked me.
“The shotgun if it’s his wife, or the pistol if it’s his daughter. Either way . . .” I said.
“You always gotta go extreme, man,” Ameer said, leaping up from the ground.
“Word to mother,” Chris agreed, then we all laughed at ourselves.
* * *
“How come there are two boxes here?” I asked Chiasa. This was after I’d wrapped up work and walked off the property with Chris and Ameer to the subway station and came back home. “I ordered one vending machine,” I reminded her. She smiled.
“Let’s make a mudarabah,” Chiasa said. I smiled.
“How do you know that word?”
“I read it in a book,” she said, smiling even more widely, her left eyebrow raised. I knew then that she was plotting something.
“Mudarabah meaning contract in Arabic, am I right?” she asked me.
“No,” I said calmly. “Agid. Remember we wrote our wedding contract? It’s called an agid, because in Arabic that is the word for contract.”
“Oh, I see,” she said, still smiling. “And mudarabah means . . . ?”
“Business partnership,” I told her. She jumped up like she sometimes suddenly does.
“I ordered two!” she said excitedly, finally answering my first question about the two boxes. “So let’s you and I make a mudarabah together, with your new vending machine and with my new vending machine.” She was talking business and flirting with me through her eyes. I let the feeling move in me but stayed solemn on the outside, as though she was any businessman trying to make a deal with me.
“Let’s check out what you ordered.” We each drew our knives to slice the box open. When she saw mine, she put hers away. I sliced the first box, a nice clean cut straight down the line so I could close it back up properly. The box I cut led to a huge wooden box that looked like a portable closet. It had a combination lock built into it.
“Open the envelope,” Chiasa pointed out. I did. Inside the envelope was a thick catalogue that was sealed in a thick plastic. I sliced it open with the tip of my blade to avoid damaging the pages. In the inside cover was the combination. I dialed it and the door swung open, like an actual precisely fitted door in a home would do.
Apparently it was the machine she ordered.
“It’s a horsey ride.” She smiled. “For children,” she added. “It might inspire them to—” I cut her off.
“It might inspire them to give you fifty cents a spin,” I said after swiftly sizing up the mechanics and finances of her machine.
“No, really—well yes, I would like the fifty cents per spin, but it might pique their interest in becoming equestrians,” she said.
“Equestrians—what language is that?”
“It’s English! Take me seriously! Don’t play around!” She laughed. “It means ‘horseback riders,’ or anything having to do with the world of horses,” she explained.
“Okay.” I folded my arms across my chest to make her feel like I was going to be difficult. I pointed to the iron lock box beneath her machine where the coins would drop down. “Your machine takes coins. The machine I ordered takes dollars. What would make me form a partnership with you, when my earnings are higher than yours? That doesn’t sound like a reason to go fifty-fifty, does it?”
“True, your machine cost more than mine, and will probably earn more than mine, but that’s not the point, is it?”
“That’s my point,” I said, still being serious just to fuck with her. Her face changed like now she was thinking much harder than during her light playful mood, and like this talk was much more difficult than she had anticipated. She walked up close on me, placing her ballerina fingers on my shoulder with one hand and the other hand behind my neck.
“You can’t use your body as part of your business proposal,” I told her.
“Yes I can.” She smiled sweetly. “As long as it is only with my husband.” And, she was right. She pressed herself against me, both of us standing in the yard. I was about to go for it but resisted her manipulations.
“I gotta go pick up my wife,” I said to her.
“I am your wife,” she said to me.
“My first wife,” I said.
“Kiss me first,” she said softly, like a whisper. Fuck it. I did. But the heat between me and her is too high. She often wanted to kiss and she could be content and delighted with just that. The momentum in me didn’t work that way. For me, one touch led to another and then spread like wildfire. It was too strong. But Akemi and my Umma were waiting for me to come at the agreed time, so I would.
As I closed the wooden door and spun the lock, then taped up the box with the “horsey ride,” in it, Chiasa came up behind me and wrapped her arms around me. My hands were way up high taping the top. She got on her tiptoes and was trying to reach up as high as my hands reach, which is impossible for her to do. Meanwhile, she was pressing against my back. Now she was trying to pull my hands down, massaging my chest and moving to tickle me. I was holding back my laughter and not showing her my smile ’cause I knew that’s what she wanted. Feeling ignored, she squeezed herself in between me and the box.
“This is why I can’t do business with you,” I told Chiasa.
“We started off as business partners when we first met! How can you say that you can’t do business with me now!?” she asked in her playful, flirty way.
“Because,” I said.
“Because what?” she asked in a sexy voice.
“Because the situation is different now.”
“Different how?” she asked. I paused.
“Because now, I’ve been in you. Every time we’re close, I want to go in you. Every time I look in your eyes, I dream about how good it feels to be in you. That’s why.”
* * *
We were half an hour late, sitting side by side on the train quietly, our feelings thickening in the air. We got off in the Bronx and were walking together.
“The reason you should form a partnership with me,” she said after seconds of us walking in silence, “is because my vending machine will make more money more swiftly, and it holds more money than yours because the lock box is at the bottom. It holds a thousand dollars in coins. And your machine is a merchandise machine and mine is not,” she added confidently. “My machine is less trouble. You won’t have to collect the revenue as often. The quarters will make the base of the machine so heavy it will be difficult for anyone to steal it. You won’t have to stock it with any sodas, waters, chips, candies, products, or merchandise, which means that you won’t have to restock it, either! The moms just put the coins in for their children and each child wants to ride over and over, or each mom has more than one child and voilà! I’m rich! You should take that into consideration and make a mudarabah with me.” She had come up with all of her angles within minutes. Or maybe she already had all of her angles sealed beforehand and just slowly seduced me?
I had ordered the vending machine while I was in Asia. The Japanese company exported
their machines to America and even had the U.S. dollar conversions factored into their mechanics and displays. Of course, the Japanese always make the most efficient, high-quality smart machinery. They always make it expensive yet easy to purchase and easy to utilize. They think long range instead of selling cheap shit and jerking their customers. They make a customer out of a buyer, for life! That’s why I wanted to begin my business buying from them. I would test it out with my first machine just to be certain that it was a bankable option. Then if all was good, I planned to not only collect revenue from my one machine, but to reinvest and have many machines in ideal locations. Furthermore, I planned to sell the machines themselves. I paid $999 for one. On my next order I would buy in bulk and then resell the machines, placing a nice fee for my company on top of the actual cost. This was a business that would earn for me quietly, hardly ever required my presence, and didn’t lock me into a mandatory schedule or location. Lastly, it was a business where only the owner—that’s me—knows the count on my earnings. I liked that.