The Company We Keep. Mary Monroe

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СКАЧАТЬ for the cameras and stop drooling. You’ve been to these things before,” Teri reminded Nicole, something she’d done on dozens of similar occasions.

      “Yeah, but each time seems like the first time. I just saw two of the world’s biggest stars going inside!” Nicole stopped talking long enough to whip out her compact to check her makeup. “I don’t know if I will ever get used to all this,” she admitted.

      “Well, you’d better. It is part of your job,” Teri warned Nicole in a low voice as they walked up onto the front porch of Young Rahim’s eighteen-room white mansion. It was as outlandish as it could be. A large Greek-looking statue of a naked woman holding a bowl of fruit stood on one side of the double doors. On the other side was a life-size ceramic lion with his mouth opened in a menacing yawn. The white draperies covering the front windows displayed large, green dollar signs. “People who can afford to live like this are no better than you or me,” Teri added.

      A scowling, portly man dressed like a penguin opened the door and waved them in without a word. He ignored the invitation Teri held out to him. Shaking her head, she slid it back into her purse, wondering why Young Rahim’s assistant had advised to bring it in the first place.

      “No better than you or me? That’s easy for you to say. But if I were you, I wouldn’t let them hear that,” Nicole replied, looking around the spacious living room, trying to price the expensive furnishings. On one wall there was a large cheesy painting of a man who looked like James Brown but was supposed to be an illustration of a black Jesus in dreadlocks and silver earrings. Nicole had a cheaper and much smaller version of the same picture on her living room wall that she had picked up at a flea market in San Jose when she visited her aunt Bertha last year. Who needed three couches in the same room? And they were the loudest colors in the spectrum: one red, one orange with green leaves jumping out, and one yellow. Each had clawlike feet and arms wide enough to hold a large baby. Had she not already known that this all belonged to a black man, she would have guessed it anyway. She had learned a long time ago that when black folks got their hands on some money, they made sure everybody in the world knew about it. Then they spent it as if it grew on vines in a backyard garden, buying ten or twelve of everything they didn’t need or appreciate. She gasped at an antique vase sitting in the middle of a brass leg glass-top coffee table. What did an ignoramus like Young Rahim know about antique vases? Other than his music, what did he know about anything else?

      Young Rahim moved about the party room, strutting and looking more like a peacock than a rapper in his red suit jacket, yellow silk pants, and white Panama hat. He was not a bad-looking brother by anybody’s standards. As a matter of fact, except for the shoulder-length dreadlocks, he looked like a younger version of Denzel Washington. He had nice white teeth, capped no doubt. But at least there wasn’t a gold one among them. That pleased Teri and Nicole. In their business, they saw enough gold teeth to replenish Fort Knox. If nothing else, Teri found these glorified dog-and-pony shows entertaining, to say the least. She was glad she had come.

      CHAPTER 6

      Armed security guards with walkie-talkies patrolled the area inside and outside of the rapper’s house. Dressed in somber dark suits, dark hats, and dark glasses, they looked like an advertisement for that old John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd movie, The Blues Brothers.

      Marcus Boggs was Rahim’s head of security and looked the part. He was built like an ox, had a face like an angry gargoyle, and a neck that looked like the trunk of a large oak tree. He towered over Young Rahim and most of the other guests.

      The guests were a smorgasbord of ethnic diversity. White people were gadding about with their hair in dreadlocks, braids, and even afros. Some even had the nerve to wear African attire. Black folks, male and female, were prancing around with platinum blond hair. There were others present whose ethnicity, and gender in several cases, could not be determined.

      Other guests included popular DJ Harrison Starr. He looked out of place in his dapper three-piece suit, but he was as cool and smooth as he looked. He was tall and solidly built, and he had the look of a man who liked to be pampered. His handsome coconut brown face was as smooth as the faces of some of the women present. He owed that to good genes, a balanced diet, and plain old luck. His slanted black eyes scanned the room and had been doing so from the minute he’d arrived—a few minutes before Teri and Nicole.

      He was surprised but glad to see Teri in the mix. That’s when he stopped looking around the room, because he’d found what he’d been looking for. As far as he was concerned, they had some unfinished business to address. From the way he was smiling at her, and trying to steer her by the arm to a more private spot, it was obvious to some of the guests close by that he had a “thing” for her.

      “I’d like to talk to you before you leave tonight,” Teri told him. They did have some unfinished business, and she had a thing for him, too. He was the last man she’d been with. Their relationship had ended before it even got off the ground. It had started with a chance meeting at a charity function, a few dinner dates followed by nights of passion she had not experienced before (or since), and then it was over. Sometimes it seemed like it had never happened.

      Their hectic lives were complicated by work and many other interests. And even though they were both still fairly young, they were settled in their ways and unwilling to bend too far in another person’s direction. Harrison had wanted her to spend more time with him, stroke his ego, be his trophy, and be the woman behind him.

      She had scoffed at the notion of being behind him, or any other man. “If I can’t be beside you, I won’t be with you,” she had told him, laughing as she said it. But he had taken it the wrong way. Harrison had sulked for days and ignored her repeated telephone messages. And by the time he’d come to his senses, it was too late. His telephone messages to her went unanswered, and twice when he was bold enough to ring the buzzer at her residence, she’d ignored him. He finally gave up when he attempted to visit her at her workplace and was brusquely turned away by the pit bull security guard, per Ms. Teri Stewart’s instructions.

      “We can talk now,” Harrison told her with a nod, still holding on to her arm. They hadn’t encountered each other since their breakup.

      Teri nodded. “I heard about you going around speaking to the kids at some of the inner-city schools. I admire you for doing that,” she told him, meaning every word.

      “Did you also hear that I got robbed and beaten at the last school I spoke at?”

      Teri gasped and shook her head. “I’m sorry to hear that. I hope that doesn’t discourage you from going back. Those kids need people like us, now more than ever. I visited the girls in juvenile hall last month. I didn’t think they’d want to hear anything I had to say about my work.”

      “Did they?”

      “They were more interested in who did my hair and what famous people I hung out with.” Teri laughed. “But I’m going back in a couple of months anyway.”

      “So am I. And to one of the most violent schools in Crenshaw. As a matter of fact, the boys that jumped me turned themselves in and apologized. I got all of my shit back, too. They said it was my talk that had made them think about what they’d done once the excitement of robbing my ass wore off.”

      “See? That just goes to show you that anybody can change,” Teri said hopefully.

      “This is not what I want to talk about, Teri,” Harrison said, grinding his teeth. “What I meant was, I wanted to talk to you about me. It’s now or never.” His lips tightened and he gave her a defiant look, staring at her with his eyes narrowed into slits.

      She СКАЧАТЬ