“Oh, you definitely have to make it up to me now,” Jacqueline told him. “You’re talking about getting out of here at close to midnight. Most of the best restaurants are going to be closing.”
Shareef heard her loud and clear through the speakers of his Mercedes, and he shook his head. The last thing he wanted was to owe another damn woman. But that was his reality after his time had been squeezed. He was being pushed out of his cool mode and into an obvious rush again.
He mumbled, “Aw’ight, I’ll be there.” But he no longer looked forward to it. The hastiness of their evening would only add to the stress he was already feeling.
AT 1:19 AM, Shareef held on to a Corona beer, sitting at a table at Opium, in the heart of Miami’s South Beach party district. It was an elaborate place of flashy lights, balconies, waterfalls, artwork, men, women, money, alcohol, and an abundance of sex appeal. In this exotic nightclub, the beautiful women rarely waited for a guy to ask them to dance, they danced by themselves or with other girls who were as attractive as they were.
Shareef sat and watched a few of them, paying attention to those he wouldn’t mind having a fling with, or invite into a ménage à trois with himself and Jacqueline. And as he watched the women swaying to the exotic vibe of the music, his mistress was able to sneak in between his legs and stand there.
“Come on, baby, let’s dance,” she teased him in her yellow silk dress and matching heels.
Jacqueline Herrera, a Dominican and black hybrid, with deep, beautiful brown skin, dark eyes, a curvaceous body to kill for, and long, thick hair that flowed past her shoulders, was Shareef’s latest possession.
He liked his women exotic. Why settle for anything less if you could afford it? And he could afford it. So he told her what she wanted to hear.
“You take care of me, and I’ll take care of you.”
He had only two rules for his women. Rule number one: “You never hold out on me.” Rule number two: “If I hear about or even think that another man is touching you, then it’s over with, like that.” He snapped his fingers in her dark eyes to make sure she got the point. If she was to be his chosen mistress, then there was no room for a compromise. It was his pussy, and his alone.
Jacqueline responded accordingly, “Only my man can touch me. I’ve always been that way.”
So Shareef told her, “Well, from this moment on, until you can’t stand me, or until I can’t stand you, I’m your man.”
And that was it. The chick was in the bag.
However, at the club that night, Shareef wasn’t feeling much of anything.
Jacqueline asked him, “What’s wrong?”
He shook it off and took another sip of his Corona. He didn’t even answer her.
She said, “So, you don’t want to dance with me tonight?”
“Nah,” he told her.
“Well, I’m gonna dance.”
“Go ahead and dance then. That’s what you’re here to do.”
She looked down at his dead energy and said, “Well, what are you here to do?”
He looked up into her eyes and said, “I’m here to watch you.”
She paused and stared at him.
He added, “Then I’ma watch you dance again in front of the windows at the condo.”
She heard that and grinned.
“You’re a freak,” she told him before she moved toward the dance floor.
Shareef mumbled, “Yeah…so are you.”
He proceeded to watch his mistress as she teased him with her curves, her dance, her silk dress, her lips, her hair, her yellow heels, her eyes, her smooth shoulders, and her zest for life.
And while Shareef watched her and analyzed how her seductive moves worked in perfect tandem with the exotic music, he told himself, I remember when Jennifer used to be that fun. But his wife was now an older woman and a mother of two, where Jacqueline was twenty-three and single with no children. Was it that simple an assessment? And if it was, then no wonder so many passionate older men went crazy for young mistresses. They just wanted to continue to watch the dance, even if they rarely joined in.
AT 7:28 IN THE MORNING, the early waves of the Atlantic swept up on the beaches where joggers ran by themselves or with their dogs. Up on the twenty-seventh floor of his building, Shareef looked east, out into the vast ocean from behind the two-story glass window. He sat in a reclining hammock chair in only a pair of blue boxers. A tall glass of orange juice was set on the floor beside him.
Florida was lovely. And to have a high-rise condo overlooking the Atlantic Ocean was heaven on earth. Shareef had a good life indeed. But the good life was never enough for a hustler. And at the end of the day, Shareef was still a hustler. That’s why he was always up so early. He hustled through grade school with his quick wit and ideas. He hustled through high school with athletics and aspirations. He hustled through college with philosophy and the need for a lifelong mission. And now, as a grown man, he hustled his stories. But if the story hustle was no longer an inspiration, what hustle would replace it?
Jacqueline looked down on Shareef’s relaxed body from the second level of his condo. She wore only an extra long baseball shirt with the imprint of the cover jacket of Shareef’s novel Chocolate Lovers on the front. It was a clever marketing idea that had paid off with thousands of fans wearing his book cover jacket to bed at night.
Jacqueline quietly made her way down the spiral staircase and over to her passionate writer, where she stood behind him and massaged his tense shoulders. But Shareef didn’t want it, so he slid her hands away.
Reading his thoughtful mood, she looked away into the kitchen to her left, and took a deep breath.
“I hate it when you get like this,” she spoke into the silence.
Shareef ignored her. Fortunately, Jacqueline had been around him long enough to know his ways. So she was not offended by it.
Instead, she teased him while on her way to the kitchen for her own glass of orange juice.
“You think too much.”
She pulled out a tall glass from a cabinet, opened the stainless-steel refrigerator, pulled out the Tropicana OJ, and poured herself a drink before Shareef bothered to respond to her.
“How you think I’m able to afford all this?” he asked her without budging from the window. He said, “All geniuses think too much. That’s what we do. Some of us do it fast, some of us do it slow, but we’re always doing it.”
His mistress smiled from behind the kitchen counter and returned the orange juice box to the refrigerator. She said, “You’re always doing something else, too.”
Shareef caught her flirtation and grinned. Like he said, he had a lot of energy for the extracurricular, so she rarely got a chance to sleep much around him. But that was okay, because he gave her body needed release, after she came several times from his hungry strokes.
He chuckled at it and said, “Yeah, that, too.”
Then she became curious as she sipped her orange juice.
“So…what are you thinking about this morning? Am I allowed to ask?”
He nodded and continued to stare out the window.
“Harlem,” he told her. Somebody wanted him to come back home and write a story. And he was still thinking about it.
“Harlem? What about it? I’ve never been there.”
When Jacqueline told him that, eighteen straight years of growing up in Harlem, New York, flashed through Shareef’s mind. He saw the buildings, the streets, the cars, the parks, the people, the graffiti, the billboards, the vendors, and the Apollo Theater. He heard the music, the jazz, the rhymers, the DJs, the preachers, the choir, the Nation, the players, the hustlers, the Five Percenters, and the crazy homeless people. He smelled the chicken, the greens, the brown stew, the bean pies, Chinese food, Indian dishes, doughnuts, trash, coffee, bacon and eggs, and the dead cats and dead dogs in the alleyways.
Shit, he could taste Harlem, and the first time he had blood in his mouth from a fistfight—it was outside his building on the East Side, at
121st Street and 2nd Avenue. He could feel Harlem, and the first time he bust a nut—at age thirteen with a fifteen-year-old Puerto Rican girl who thought it would be cute to turn out a wet-behind-the-ears black boy with her hot and ready pussy inside the projects of Spanish Harlem, while her overprotective mother went shopping at the grocery store. How could he put the sights, scenes, history, and emotions of Harlem into words without running outside the lines of the page, punching his pencil through the paper or running out of ink with his pen?
How many real-life stories could he tell about Harlem? Cynthia Washington had it right. Harlem had countless stories. Not just love stories, but everything. Because Harlem was the truth. Harlem was love. Harlem was sweat and tears. Harlem was broken dreams. Harlem was dreaming again. Harlem was never stop dreaming. Harlem was never stop living. Harlem was never stop hustling. Harlem was never stop believing. Harlem was never stop achieving. Harlem was…shit!…It was just…Harlem!
Got’ damn, this girl never been to Harlem? Shareef asked himself frantically. He was still speechless. He couldn’t even move. Harlem had him in a trance. He had fucked around and zoned out while thinking about Harlem. And he had to stand up from his chair to think about it some more.
Jacqueline had asked him the question five minutes ago, and she was still waiting for an answer. When he abruptly stood up from his chair—a mad scientist in thought—she stared at him from the kitchen as if he had gone crazy.
She asked him, “Are you all right?”
He paused, then looked out the window and into the Atlantic Ocean with an idea.
“Come here for a minute,” he told her.
Jacqueline was hesitant. Shareef had a delirious look in his eyes.
He repeated “Come here,” with urgency.
She put down her glass and walked over to him, but she was still apprehensive. That’s just how insane he looked.
When she reached him, he stretched out his hands and pulled her body in front of his at the window.
“Stop,” she chirped like a scared teenager. What were his intentions?
Shareef pulled her in front of him anyway. He told her, “You see that big ocean out there?”
The Atlantic Ocean was right in front of them.
She said, “Yeah.” What was his point? He was scaring her.
He said, “I want you to imagine buildings coming up out of the water. Red buildings, brown buildings, gray buildings. And lots of them, covering up everything you can see.” He started turning her body in different directions with his. “Over there, over there, over there. And they’re all different sizes, too. Some of these buildings have twenty-something stories, and others only have ten. So they go up and down like this…”
He grabbed her right hand and moved it up and down and from side to side like a conductor at an opera.
Jacqueline started laughing. He was really getting into it.
He said, “And then, once the whole ocean is filled up with these buildings, right. I want you to imagine looking down at the streets, running inside all the buildings. Left, right, straight, back, and all over the place.” He showed her with his hands.
“And then you got cars and people on all of these streets, and inside all of these buildings. Blacks. Puerto Ricans. Dominicans. Jamaicans. Haitians. Africans. East Indians. A few lost white people running around. Asians running in and out of the corner stores. And right in the middle of all that, right. Right in the middle.” He showed her with a slice of his hand through the middle of the ocean.
He said, “You got a Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street. And on that motherfucker, it’s ten blocks of shops, stores, restaurants, and street vendors all trying to sell you shit while you walk by.”
Then he pushed her away from him. “All right, now you walk toward me.”
Jacqueline looked at him and shook her head, embarrassed by his enthusiasm.
He said, “Come on, walk toward me.”
He was so hyper and assertive that she had to walk toward him before he exploded, and blew up the room. And as soon as she began to walk, he grabbed at her like make-believe salespeople.
“Hey, I got some new shoes for you. What size you wear?”
Then he grabbed her from the other side.
“Do you wear hats? Girl, I got the prettiest hats in the world for you.”
He jumped to the other side again and told her, “Keep on walking. You can’t stop for these people. You don’t have no money. You just checking out the block.”
Jacqueline did what he told her and was tickled as hell. It wasn’t even eight o’clock in the morning yet, and his ass was wide awake on a natural high over Harlem.
“Hey, you, you, you, I have pretty dress for you,” he told her.
Then he jumped to the other side of her.
“Hey, baby girl, you need your hair done. I can hook you up good.”
Back and forth he went like a maniac.
“Hey, try this new apple pie in here. This is an original recipe, just try it.”
“Hey, sis, I got some dope incense for you. Lighters. Dictionaries. Condoms. Tampons. I got everything you need.”
Jacqueline stopped again and couldn’t stop laughing.
Shareef said, “I told you, don’t stop. Because if you stop, they gon’ get your money. I mean, it’s like walking through a gauntlet in Harlem.”
“Wait a minute, I thought you said I didn’t have any money?” Jacqueline reminded him.
“Yeah, that’s what you tell them. But if you stop, and you really have some money on you, they gon’ find it,” he told her. “They’ll have you digging in your socks and your panties pulling out money.”
She laughed and asked him, “What, are they just robbing you in broad daylight?”
“Nah, they’re hustling you. And Harlem is the capital of hustle. Hands down. I mean, Harlem is like…” He ran out of words to explain and walked closer to the window. He stretched his arms and hands up to the ceiling as if he were holding up the world.
“Yo, B, it’s Harlem world up in here, baby! This is Harlem World!” he shouted and beat his chest like King Kong.
Jacqueline grinned and shook her head again. Shareef was off his rocker—and she liked it.
After he had used up all his energy trying to explain to her what Harlem was like, he had to sit back in his chair. He wasn’t as young as he used to be, and even young guys were forced to rest after taxing themselves.
Shareef took a long swallow of his orange juice and said, “Come here. Come sit on my lap,” and he smacked his right leg.
She did what he told her. And when she sat in his lap, he was still smiling like an overjoyed kid. But that kid turned into a passionate man again when he started to kiss her lips, fondle her breasts, suck on her neck, and run his hands through her thick, long hair.
Jacqueline got into it for a minute, but then she stopped and looked him in the face.
“What? What’s wrong?” he asked her.
She told him, “I think I’m a little bit jealous.”
He frowned. “Jealous? Jealous of what?”
She asked him, “You feel that strongly about Harlem?”
Shareef relaxed and grinned at her. He said, “I’ll put it to you this way. You know how people talk about Johannesburg and Rio de Janeiro, Paris, Hong Kong and Tokyo. You know how they talk about that? Cairo and Amsterdam and shit? Tel Aviv?”
She nodded her head in silence.
He said, “Well, in America, it’s Harlem. You go to New York, and you go to Times Square downtown, and Harlem uptown. And there ain’t no uptown in the world like Harlem. That’s just all there is to it. It’s culture there.”
Jacqueline continued to stare at him.
“Are you gonna take me there?” she asked, seduction in her dark eyes.
Shareef nodded and said, “I’ma take you there.” He pulled up her long baseball shirt, and added, “I’ma take you there right now.” He tugged off his boxers and made her straddle him in the chair. Jacqueline smiled
and kissed his lips, and Harlem felt so good, twenty-seven stories up above the Atlantic Ocean in Hollywood, Florida. Harlem felt wonderful; up and down and in and out of her body.
Mortality
AT 10:26 AM Shareef typed the word “Harlem” into his Macintosh G5 computer, which sat on a desk on the top level of his split condo in front of the bed. His computer faced the Atlantic Ocean for inspiration. He looked at the word excitedly before he increased the point size to 72. Then he saved it in a new file titled “Harlem World.”
Jacqueline crept up behind him as soon as he had finished.
“What are you doing, writing your book about Harlem already?”
She was butt naked and beautiful from head to toe.
Shareef turned to face her in his rotating chair and grabbed her naked body into his face to kiss and suck on her flat stomach.
“Not yet,” he told her in between his kisses. “I’m just saving the idea on file. Then I’ll come back to it. That’s my process.”
She rubbed his head and the back of his neck while he continued to kiss and suck her belly. She moaned, “Mmm, let’s go take a shower together.”
That’s what older men loved about young and sexy women. They were always open to more play.
Shareef smiled and told her, “How ’bout you run the warm water in the Jacuzzi instead. Then light them candles up in there and turn off the lights. And after I make some phone calls, I’ll sneak up in there with you like a butt-naked stalker. Aw’ight? Go do that for me.”
He spun her around and smacked her on her naked ass to go.
She cracked a baby girl’s smile and headed toward the bathroom.
“Don’t have me in here waiting too long, either. I don’t want to turn into a prune before you get to me.”