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  “Well, no disrespect or nothing, Auntie, but it means Bad Motherfuckers.”

  I had to bite the insides of my cheeks to keep from laughing. Little Eric had barely whispered the second word.

  “Is that right?” I said, letting amusement fill my voice.

  “Yeah. We are the illest underground group around!”

  “I believe it,” I said. “So, when can I see this ill group perform?”

  “Serious? Yo, Auntie, you can come on down to Washington Square Park on Saturday around two. We going to be battling three other groups.”

  “Battling?” I said, sounding every one of my thirty-something years.

  “You know, facing off with each group to see who has the illest rhymes.”

  “Oh, I see. Yeah, I guess I will be there. You are my only godson, and you’re too cute for me to say no.”

  “Ah, Auntie.” I could sense Little Eric blushing through the phone. “Hey, you seen Uncle Noah? I left two messages on his service and nothing.”

  I sighed. I’d left a few messages of my own on Noah’s machine and hadn’t heard back either. “No, I think Noah is out of town on business.”

  “Oh.” Little Eric sounded disappointed.

  “Okay, boy, put your mama on the phone.”

  There was a rustling and then the sound of Geneva fussing about dishes in the sink. “Hey, girl,” Geneva said and then said something else to Little Eric. “That boy is going to drive me crazy.”

  “Yeah, one day, but not today,” I said, still counting the cracks on the ceiling.

  “Did you get in touch with Chevy?”

  “Nope, got her damn voice mail. I’ll catch her slick ass tomorrow.” I turned onto my stomach and scooted to the edge of the bed so that I could examine the Berber carpet. “What’s this Little Eric is telling me—he’s in a rap group now?” I asked.

  “Oh yeah, that’s this week. That boy changes careers like I change underwear. Last month it was basketball, the month before soccer.”

  “Hmm,” I said as I spotted something on my brand-new rug. It looked like powder but it was copper-colored.

  “Yeah and catch this,” Geneva started and then stopped. When she started speaking again her voice had dropped down to a whisper. “There’s three of them, right? Little Eric, that boy David from the third floor, who practically lives here, and a white boy.”

  Even I was taken aback. “A white boy?” I asked as I closed in on the copper speck.

  “Yeah, girl—like bright white! Blond hair and bright blue eyes. White!”

  “White people don’t rap,” I said.

  “Well, there is that Eminem boy,” Geneva said.

  “Em-who? How the hell do you know about these things?”

  “Girl, I live with a teenager.”

  “Umph. You know what, I gotta go—there is something on my carpet.”

  “The one you brought back from Morocco?”

  “The very same. Bye.”

  “Later, girl.”

  I hung up and jumped off the bed. That copper thing was bugging the hell out of me and I didn’t know why. I mean, it was one little speck; it could have been a piece of anything. But what?

  I got down on my knees and picked it up. It was hard. I rolled it around between my fingers; it felt more like chalk. What the hell was copper-colored chalk doing in my house?

  Four

  Hello, love.” Zhan’s voice came to me from across the Atlantic. It was five a.m.

  “Hey, baby,” my voice cracked back. “How’s the weather?” I asked as I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes.

  “Fabulous for London.” Zhan snickered. “Will you be sleeping with the Merriwether when you get here?”

  “What?” I said and sat straight up in the bed. What did he say? How did he know about Merriwether? Oh God, my secret is out, I panicked as I tried to get a lie together in my mind.

  “Well, you asked how the weather was and not me.” He laughed.

  My heart slowed a bit. Oh, weather, not Merriwether.

  I dropped back down to the bed. “How are you, honey?” “Anxious for you to get your fine black ass back over here.”

  “I’m anxious to get there too.”

  “What time is your flight?”

  “Eight o’clock this evening.”

  “Are you all packed?”

  “Almost.”

  “Well, okay. I’ll send a car to pick you up.”

  “Thanks, sweetie.”

  “Anything for my man.”

  “You are too good for me.”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  “Have a safe flight.”

  Click.

  Well, that was a wonderful way to start off my morning. After a shower and a strong cup of coffee, I donned a loose pair of water blue linen pants and a matching shirt.

  It was a glorious day. The birds were singing, young mothers were pushing baby strollers up and down the sidewalks, there was not a cloud in the sky, and all was well with the world until I stepped out and onto the stoop of my Brooklyn brownstone and looked down to see a woman looking back at me.

  “Noah?”

  I smiled. “Yes,” I said, trying to figure out where I knew this woman from. She looked vaguely familiar. I didn’t think for a moment that it was any of the women I’d had trysts with; I never ever brought them back to my place.

  “So this is where you live,” she said, leaning back on one leg, folding her arms across her chest, and looking me up and down.

  “I’m sorry, do I know you?”

  She rolled her eyes and did something strange with her lips. “You should know me, nigga—you fucked me a month ago, promised that you’d call, and never did. So now I’m going to have to kill you!”

  I let out a high-pitched bitch scream. Who knew my life would end like this?

  “Noah, are you okay?”

  The woman was up on the stoop now, her eyes swimming with concern. I took a step away from her and looked down at her hands to see if her fingers were curled around a sharp utensil.

  “Uh, what?”

  “Well, I told you that we met at the Donna Karan show during fashion week last year, and you just went gray.”

  I blinked at her.

  “Gosh, what kind of impression did I leave on you?” She sounded wounded.

  I looked wildly around and then back at her. Surely I was going crazy.

  “I’m—I’m sorry. I haven’t been feeling well lately,” I said and wiped at the perspiration on my forehead. “Yes, yes, what’s your name again?”

  “Swain Jenkins,” she said and cautiously presented her hand. I took it and shook it; it was a weak handshake, the kind I’ve received from the hoity-toity set, who didn’t want to shake your hand to begin with.

  “Yes, yes, Swain. Nice to see you again,” I said, still shaken.

  “Same here,” she said, looking at me strangely before she started back down the steps.

  Me, I just turned around and rushed back into the house.

  Five

  Thank you for calling Thomas Cook corporate travel, Mr. Matsumi, and have a nice day,” I said in my brightest voice as I ended the call and pressed the red release button on the telephone console.

  Mr. Matsumi’s PNR glared at me from my computer screen. The dollar amount it was costing him glowed bright green at the bottom of the PNR, and below that his platinum American Express credit card number mocked me.

  Mr. Matsumi, a managing director of one of the largest investment banking companies in the country, had just confirmed an African Safari trip for him and some of his business associates. They were flying first-class from New York to England on British Airways, staying two nights at the Ritz in London and then hopping a Kenyan Airways flight to Kenya, East Africa, where they would spend one night in Nairobi at the famed Nairobi Serena hotel before chartering a private plane to take them to Nanyuki, where they would spend ten glorious days at the Mt. Kenya Safari Club, which straddled the second h
ighest mountain in Africa.

  The entire trip was costing him sixty thousand dollars!

  All I could do was shake my head at the type of money some people had. Shake my head and try not to stare too long at or think too hard about what I could do with Mr. Matsumi’s American Express card number that was just sitting there, seemingly at my disposal.

  “Stop it, Chevy girl,” I whispered to myself and quickly hit the end button on my keyboard, sending Mr. Matsumi’s itinerary hurtling through cyberspace and out of my sight.

  Lucky for me, I could see the world for next to nothing. Being a senior travel expert had its perks even though the pay was crap.

  I yawned and looked around at my coworkers, who were busy at their computers. I peeked over my monitor and could see that my manager was engaged in an intense telephone conversation, so I hit the red “away” button on my telephone but made sure to keep nodding my head and uttering, “Yes, I understand,” into my headset as I typed gibberish into my computer.

  I was exhausted. Last night I spent three hours at the very high-end Cirpriani bar. A cosmopolitan there cost twenty bucks a glass, so you can imagine the clientele: mostly white men and women with money.

  But to my surprise there was a black man sitting at the bar last night. After the color of his skin, I honed right in on the diamond-studded gold Rolex clamped around his left wrist. My eyes scurried up his hand and saw that there was no ring on his fourth finger. Not that that meant anything these days.

  He wasn’t good-looking at all, which was fine for me. I prefer a man who’s not going to spend as much time looking in the mirror as I do, and besides, a not-so-good-looking man always overcompensates when he has a gorgeous woman on his arm.

  You know what you generally do when you see a beautiful woman on the arm of a dog? You double look so quickly you give yourself whiplash, and then as you walk away rubbing your neck you wonder how it is a man like that was able to snag a woman like her.

  He didn’t—she snagged him!

  Think about it now . . .

  Anyway, this man was blue-black, with thick lips and a nose that spread east to west across his face. Bulging eyes, big pink lips, and a row of scars that looked like teardrops beneath his eyes.

  He caught me checking him out and smiled at me. I returned the smile and then turned my attention back to the drink menu, but before I could decide what it was I wanted to order, the bartender set a bubbling glass of champagne down in front of me. “From the gentleman,” he said and nodded in brother-man’s direction.

  I mouthed “Thank you,” lifted the flute, and began to sip daintily from it.

  No sooner than I could swallow, he was beside me.

  “Hello, my name is Abimbola,” he said in a thick Nigerian accent.

  “Chevy,” I said as I presented my hand.

  “A pleasure,” he said, and bent and kissed the back of my hand. “May I join you?”

  I checked out the suit, the shoes, and the platinum link chain around his neck. If he had the cash and good credit to back up the bling, I might be able to forget about how visually unappealing he was.

  “Of course, please do.”

  A bottle of champagne later and he was putting me into a taxi and shoving a hundred-dollar bill into my hand, along with his business card.

  “Call me,” he said after kissing my hand again.

  “Sure,” I said.

  I sat there staring at the money. My God, this was the easiest hundred I’d ever made. I grinned myself stupid for two blocks and then told the cab driver to pull over.

  I threw a crumpled five-dollar bill at him, got out, and caught the train home.

  Shoot, I had other plans for that “found” money!

  My personal line began to ring.

  I eyed the blinking red light. It could be a friend. But then again, it could be my manager checking to see if I was working. She was a sneaky little bitch.

  “Thomas Cook Travel, this is Chevy, how may I help you?” I answered with my most professional voice.

  “Hey, Chevy girl, this is Noah.”

  “Hey, Noah, what’s up.”

  “Well,” he started, but I had to cut him off.

  “If you’re calling about the money, I don’t have it yet.”

  “Do you ever?” He laughed. He knew me very well. “No, girl, I’m going to London for two weeks and need you to come by and feed my fish.”

  “Fish? When did you get fish?”

  “A month ago. I told you that, if you would listen to what I was saying and stop cutting me off when I’m trying to—”

  “Noah, I met this Nigerian last night, and—”

  “You see what I mean?”

  “What?”

  “It’s not always about you.”

  “Yes it is.” I laughed.

  “You still have the key and you know the security code, right?”

  “Is it still sixty-nine, sixty-nine?”

  “Yeah, my favorite sex position in overdrive!”

  “Uh-huh. Going back over there to see your man?”

  “You know it.”

  “How’s the weather?”

  I didn’t get an immediate response, and then he said, “Who?” and his voice sounded a little uneven.

  “Not a who, a what, Noah. The weather. How’s the weather?”

  “Oh, oh, I got some static going on on my end of the line.” He laughed nervously. “The weather is fine.”

  “You got it bad, boy. That man is plugging you so hard you don’t know whether you’re going or coming.”

  “He’s definitely got me coming!” Noah laughed, still not quite sounding like himself.

  “Well, better you than me.”

  “Yeah, well, make sure you water the plants and pick up the mail.”

  “Pick up the mail? Doesn’t the postman put the mail through the slot in the front door?”

  “Yes.”

  “So what do you mean by pick up the mail?”

  “Just that. Pick it up off the floor, Chevy.”

  “And put it where?”

  “On the glass console in the foyer. Damn, you having a dumb-blonde day or something?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “You kiss your mama with that mouth?”

  I hung the phone right up on his smart-aleck, faggot ass.

  Six

  I stood staring at the large white paper that screamed NOTICE OF EVICTION for a long moment before I finally snatched it off the door and pushed my key into the lock.

  Well, it really couldn’t have come at a better time. Noah would be gone for a whole two weeks, so I could crash there and I was sure that after he got back he’d let me stay until I got back on my feet again.

  That shouldn’t be too long, I thought as my mind skipped back to the Nigerian. He could probably be good for at least a couple grand.

  The three men that I had been stringing along for the past six months were slowly but surely starting to catch on to my scheme, and each one was either pulling back or stepping off altogether.

  Arthur Friedman, early sixties, a stony-faced, balding, blue-eyed Jewish corporate attorney originally from Riverhead, Long Island. We met last year on an American Airlines flight from Puerto Rico.

  We were about twenty minutes into the flight, and I was sitting in coach and not happy at all about that. The flesh of the woman next to me was spilling over the armrest, slowly taking over my space, and to top it off she smelled like mangoes and rum, a sickly combination.

  I hit my flight attendant call button and an attractive young brother began his quick approach. He was all smiles, not like the old hens they usually have working those short Caribbean flights.

  You’ve seen them, the flight attendants who look as if they’ve been flying just as long as there’s been flight. They have so much time on the books that they only have to do one flight a week and that flight is usually three hours or less. They don’t smile anymore, don’t even try, but still insist on wearing that pink lipstick that was ma
de popular by Maybelline back in 1960.

  They don’t ask you what you’d like to drink, they tell you, and God forbid if you ask for a pillow or a blanket; that’s when you get chastised for not wearing the proper “flight attire.”

  So the brother approaching was a breath of fresh air, and I felt my own face break into a smile.

  “Yes, ma’am?” he asked in a cavernous voice that was laced with an unmistakable southern drawl. I felt the hairs on my arms stand at attention. I wasn’t sure, but I thought the brother was straight. Not one of the usual flying fairies the airlines employed in droves.

  I quickly crossed my legs and tugged my skirt up so as to expose as much of my tan toasted thigh as I could.

  “Um,” I whispered, and beckoned him closer with my index finger. He was more than happy to get closer to my exposed thigh and my Miracle Bra–cradled breasts, which were busting out of my close-fitting knit top. “I was wondering if there was any room in first class?” I whispered and then looked at his name tag and purred, “Derek.”

  Derek’s smile broadened, and I think he was about to laugh out loud when I opened my purse and slipped my IATA (International Association of Travel Agents) card out of the inside pocket and presented it to him.

  Derek’s eyes swung from the card to me and then back to the card.

  “I know you’ve got at least one little ole seat up there for me,” I said and seductively licked my lips and dragged my free hand up my thigh.

  Derek—he couldn’t have been older than twenty-two—broke out in a sweat, and I swear I saw some movement in the crotch of his little uniform pants.

  “Give me a minute,” he croaked and rushed off.

  I waited, confident that I would get my way. That’s how you have to think—positive!

  The mango/rum-smelling orca shifted, and three more inches of her flesh spilled onto me.

  Derek came back, composed now and smiling confidently.

  Looks like good news, I thought and readied myself to retrieve my Versace knockoff travel case from the overhead.

  “Miss Cambridge,” he said.

  “Yes?” I said hopefully.

  “Please gather your belongings and follow me.”

  BINGO!

  Derek placed me in the only available seat in first class, which happened to be a window seat right next to a snoring, balding man.