Sweet St. Louis Read online

  Sharron added, “Commitment, loyalty, trust … And when I think of more, I’ll be sure to let you know.”

  He laughed and said, “Yeah, I’m sure you will.”

  When Sharron crept back into her room that night, it was well after two in the morning. Celena had been waiting up for her.

  “So where did you go, and what did y’all do?” she appeared in the dark and asked.

  “SHIT, GIRL! WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?”

  Sharron had undressed and was in bed already. A surprising voice in the dark is not exactly the best homecoming after a late-night date.

  “I thought your behind was asleep,” Sharron snapped, composing herself.

  “Yeah, you wanted me to be asleep. So what happened?” Celena asked again.

  Sharron sighed. “Did I walk into your room and ask you what happened on your date?”

  “Well, if you must know …”

  “I don’t want to know,” Sharron snapped, cutting her off.

  Celena went ahead and told her anyway. “Ronald kept dropping hints about what he had an urge for, so I tested him to see if he was serious. And he was. Very serious!” she revealed with a spreading gesture of her thighs.

  Sharron shook her head. “Well, we had none of that going on on my date. We just had deep conversation and watched the airplanes goby.”

  Celena frowned. “You watched the airplanes go by?”

  “Yeah. We parked in a lot across from the airport where couples and families watch airplanes.”

  “Was that your idea or his?”

  “His.”

  “It fig—What?” Celena stopped herself in midsentence and asked, “It was his idea, to go out and watch airplanes?”

  Sharron laughed, tickled that Celena was unable to mark her new friend.

  “We talked more than we watched planes. But it was peaceful. And different. Very different.”

  Celena grunted, “Mmm-hmm. I think I better watch out for this guy. He might have some unusual scheme in mind for you. So Mr. Nameless is an airplane lover?”

  “I don’t think he loves airplanes all that much, he just wants to do different things, and he was willing to share that with me.”

  “Mmm-hmm. Because he wants you to share something with him later on,” Celena assumed. “Don’t get it confused, girl. He can take you to the airport if he wants to, but he’s still a damn player to me. I know it. I can feel the vibes on his ass.”

  “Yeah, whatever. It sounds to me like you’re jealous. I think you’re just mad that he didn’t bump into you at the skating rink,” Sharron countered with a grin.

  “Ha, ha,” Celena mocked, leaving the room.

  Could she be jealous? Sharron thought to herself. Why? Because Anthony is more her type, and I have him? I better watch out for that, she told herself. Close girlfriends or not, Celena has to respect my space. And respect my men. But she’s right about one thing. He is a player. A player with a heart. I just wonder if I can really get to him, and make him fall in love with me somehow. Hmmmm.

  And she fell asleep with a smile on her face.

  Ant found it hard to fall asleep on that night. He was falling all right, but not so much in love; he was falling more into confusion. Usually, he had to be mad about a girl for her to get to him. Mad about her physically more than anything else. And it wasn’t that Sharron was not an attractive woman, because she was. She simply was not jumping off of the scales the way he liked it. Dana Nicole Simpson scales. However, those hyperscales were exactly what he was trying to get away from. The insecurity of trying your best to handle a fast-paced woman was torturous to a man no matter who he was or what he had. Even the iciest pimps feared them. Because women who tipped the scales could break a man’s entire stable. They were just too damned dangerous to keep. Likewise, Ant was dangerous to Sharron. Yet, he was just what she needed. He kept her excited about life. And she was just what he needed, an intelligent, around-the-way girl to take his mind off of the everyday stress of human competition; competition that wore men into the ground.

  “Shit!” Ant yelled at his phone after hanging up the line. His boy Tone was nowhere to be found, and he needed someone to talk to. Desperately! About girl problems. Oh yeah! Guys talked about girl problems. Even the players. Women were just rarely allowed to participate in those conversations. But that did not mean they didn’t exist.

  So Ant called his cousin Michael “Rico” Poole, who still lived in an apartment complex in Jennings. Rico, with Puerto Rican blood from his mother, was seductively reddish brown, with thick, black, wavy hair, and had enough loose marbles in his head to send women absolutely crazy for him. Even scale-tipping women found him hard to resist, including three who bore him children: two boys and one girl.

  Ant would not let any of his women near Rico with a twenty-foot pole. He despised even talking to his older cousin about women, because Rico had absolutely no loyalties. Women to him were like chips in a petty card game. They were completely disposable. So calling his cousin up for advice was another torturous task. Nevertheless, Rico was sure to have some answers. A master player.

  “You know what fuckin’ time it is?” he answered the phone. His youngest son’s mother was stretched across his chest, which was nicked up from too many street battles, the scars of passion run wild and other close calls of fatality.

  “Yeah, I know what time it is. Why, did I disturb something?” Ant asked him.

  “Naw, that would have been a couple of hours ago.” Then his cousin smiled and added, “And a couple hours after this.”

  “You got time to throw down with me for a minute then?” Ant asked him.

  Rico tensed up. “Somebody got squabbles with you?”

  “Naw, man, I’m talkin’ ’bout game and women.”

  Rico eased up and laughed. “Some girl got you whipped?”

  “Naw, man, I ain’t even hit it yet.”

  “Oohhh. She mind fuckin’ you then.”

  Ant hated to admit that. “I can’t really say—”

  “Yes you can,” his cousin cut him off. “If you callin’ me up at”—he gave a look over to his illuminated clock—“two thirty-six in the morning, then this girl is definitely mind-fuckin’ you.” Then he laughed at the idea.

  Damn! I shouldn’t have called his ass! Ant told himself. It was too late for that.

  “What you do, right, is go out and get yourself a piece to get your mind off of it,” Rico explained to him. “You know that shit already, man. You ain’t no damn rookie. Why you even callin’ me up with this?”

  Yeah, why am I calling him?

  “You right, man. I’ll catch you later then,” Ant responded, rushing to end his call.

  “Anthony?” Rico piped before he hung up. “Are you ready to be a daddy yet, man?”

  What?! Ant was shocked that his cousin was even asking him such a thing.

  “Oh, naw. Not me,” he answered.

  “Well, when you do knock this girl off, you make sure you keep your head covered. Both of ’em. Because once you have a kid with a woman—” he stopped and looked down at his youngest son’s sexy mother, amazed that she could sleep so damn hard, “shit can get real complicated.”

  Ant smiled and knew exactly what Rico was referring to. His children’s mothers were driving him as crazy as he had driven them. Some of those scars on his reddish brown chest were there to prove it. I guess Rico was no master player after all.

  Nevertheless, Ant hung up the phone with the full intention of taking up his big cousin’s advice. He needed to entertain himself with other flesh and bone, and as soon as possible to clear his mind from thoughts of Sharron.

  “What did you do last night? I called you twice,” Shawntè asked, relaxing against the same comfortable interior of Ant’s car that Sharron had leaned against the night before.

  “You didn’t leave me no messages,” he told her.

  “Because I don’t like answering machines. It makes you seem pressed.”

  Ant looked at
her and frowned. “Shit, if that’s the case, then why even call? All you had to do was give me a number where you were. I could have called you back and hooked up with you,” he told her, using her information to his advantage. It’s a pity. Some women have no idea when the cards are already stacked against them.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” she responded with a smile. She fixed her makeup in the vanity mirror, far too into herself for her own good.

  “How many times you gon’ look at yourself in the mirror?” Ant joked with her. “That makeup ain’t changed since you sat in the car.”

  “I’m just trying to make sure that I look right, that’s all.”

  She did look right. In fact, she was just a touch from glamorous in a blue, form-fitting tank dress with spaghetti straps to hold it up. Yet, she was too damned eager to be there, which made her pressed anyway. And a bit insecure. She was a vain rabbit up against a hungry rattiesnake. Too bad she couldn’t hear the ratde of his tail while sweating herself.

  Ant, dressed in olive green, with a black belt and black shoes, was taking her over the bridge to East St. Louis of all places, just to show her off, get her drunk, gas her head up, and take her back to his place for the late-night deserts.

  “Which club are we going to over here?” she asked him.

  “Do you have a preference for one?”

  She shook her head of short-cut hair. “Not really. I was just asking.”

  He smiled, reeling her in. “I’m thinking ’bout going to whichever spot has the least amount of people in it. That way we can do our thing without bumping elbows and shit.”

  She chuckled. “Yeah, because last time I didn’t even get to dance with you. You was acting like you lost your best friend or something. I felt sorry for you.”

  That surprised him. He looked her in the face to make sure he heard her right. “You felt sorry for me?”

  “Yeah. I mean, you were acting really miserable that night, like you had just come from a funeral that day.”

  “Naw,” he told her with a frown. “Is that why you gave me your number, to make me feel better?”

  She stopped herself in full knowledge of his ego. He had already revealed his nasty bite to her the night they met. She surely didn’t want to go that route again. So she thought before she answered. Intimidated.

  “I gave you my number because I liked you,” she said with a smile.

  Good answer. But it was also the naked truth with no clothing left to strip free before intimacy. Like Ant had told Sharron on their night at the skating rink, you don’t want to give too much too fast, because it’s liable to be taken for granted.

  So he smiled at Shawntè, already predicting her fate for the end of the night. Then he went with his killer instincts, grabbing on to her knee and squeezing it just right to let her know what it would feel like to be caressed by him. Caressed all over. Then penetrated and brought to a powerful climax. All through one squeeze.

  The right touch could say a thousand words. And Anthony Poole had spoken. Loudly! So by the time he had chosen a low-key club, lightly speckled with a thirty- and forty-something crowd instead of their own twenties crowd, Shawntè walked in with him hand in hand and was all his before the first drink, the first dance, and the first kiss.

  “I guess we’ll grab a quick drink first so we can get loose on the dance floor and show these old heads how to move,” he told her.

  Shawntè looked around at the boogeying dance floor of grownups in dresses and slacks, sweating the night away, and begged to differ.

  “I don’t think we can show them anything. They already got it all down in here,” she responded with a chuckle.

  Ant looked around and agreed, but only halfway.

  “That’s just because they like this old song they’re playing,” he countered.

  “Who is this?” she asked. “Didn’t Biz Markie do a song off of this beat a few years ago?”

  “Yeah. It’s McFadden and Whitehead. ‘Ain’t No Stopping Us Now’ My uncles used to love this song!”

  “Are they gonna play oldies in here all night?” Shawntè was concerned. She wanted to get her dance on and not with a bunch of old songs that she wasn’t particularly familiar with.

  “Why, you don’t like the seventies jams?” Ant asked, snapping his fingers and swinging as if he was forty himself.

  She looked at him and broke up laughing. “Stop it. Okay? Otherwise, I’ma have to talk about you,” she warned him. “What made you choose this place anyway?”

  “I told you, I’m not trying to be bumping into people tonight. Old heads know how to give each other space.”

  Shawntè still disliked the idea, and was ready to pout. “Are we staying here, for real?”

  Ant read her displeasure and decided to use his age and experience on her.

  He said, “I thought that when a woman really likes a man, she can go anywhere with him and just enjoy herself because she got what she wants. Then again, if you don’t like me like that, then maybe I need to hook you up with one of these old players in here, and tell ’em that you like his feathered hat and polyester jacket.”

  Shawntè broke up laughing again and confirmed her interest in him. “Don’t even go there,” she said. “You know I like you. I wouldn’t even have walked into this place if I didn’t.”

  “But you think I’m corny now. I can tell. You don’t really wanna be with me. You wanna be with some younger guy.” He said, “You want to run around with some guy talking about shooting people and getting high every night.

  “But me? I told you, I like to have elbowroom and fresh air,” he continued, pouring it on thicker than southern gravy. “I just like to chill and go one-on-one with whoever I’m with and school ’em like Michael Jordan.”

  Ego revealed, Shawntè sighed with a grin and decided to excuse herself from the bullshit.

  “I have to go to the bathroom now,” she told him.

  Yeah, I got her, Ant told himself as he watched her slip away to the ladies’ room. It felt damned good to be a young man on top of his game. Damned good!

  “Hey, young blood? How’s it goin’?” an older man asked him. “Look like you stole my outfit for the night,” he added with a chuckle. He stood over six feet and was dressed in the same olive green as Ant.

  “Good thing I’m leaving. We don’t want to look like no twins in here,” he commented, smelling of too many drinks.

  “Yeah,” Ant admitted to him. Something like that could screw up his night. It would have given Shawntè something to laugh and talk loud about with her friends. He would rather she went home and whispered about the strong loving he planned to lay on her after midnight. “Girrrl, let me tell you this …”

  Luckily, the old-timer made his way out the exit door with his lady friend before Shawntè returned from the restroom and spotted him wearing a similar, olive-colored outfit.

  And since the proof had left the premises, Ant decided to share it with her anyway. It wasn’t as if she would believe it without the proof. Innocent until proven guilty, right?

  “You’d never guess what just happened,” he told her, wide-eyed.

  “Some old man had your same outfit on,” she responded effortlessly.

  “How’d you know that?”

  “I saw him when we first walked in.”

  “You did?”

  She nodded. “He was sittin’ right at the bar. But since you were so busy getting your groove on, you didn’t even look in his direction.”

  “Damn! You sharp,” he told her.

  “You thought I wasn’t?”

  Uh-oh. This girl may be harder than I thought, he mused.

  “You wanna get a drink now, or you wanna tell the DJ to play one of those old, slow songs?” he asked her.

  “It doesn’t matter to me.”

  “Oh yeah? Well, let’s get them drinks then. Sloe gin fizz?”

  She smiled. “Unt-unh. Sex on the beach.”

  He chuckled, caught off guard by it. “The drink, or the act?”


  Her smiled disappeared. “You tell me,” she countered and walked away.

  It was apparent at that point the male game plan was all bullshit indeed. Because if Shawntè had her own plans and they included sex on the beach or wherever, then Ant could have just as well have been playing right into her game. He was curious to find out if that was the case.

  “What time do you need to be home tonight? You go to work in the morning?” he asked her.

  It was a Sunday. Ant had to be to work early himself. Fortunately, knocking over new women provided a strange energy boost, mainly with women whom he couldn’t refuse. New women like Shawntè and Sharron. And goddesses like Dana Nicole Simpson of course. But he would rarely lose sleep over old women. He’d send them right home and tell them they’d hook up again when more time allowed.

  “I’m not working right now,” Shawntè answered him.

  Curiosity made him ask, “Why not?” Ant didn’t particularly like broke women. They were the quickest way in the west to a headache. They were too damned needy and greedy for comfort.

  “I’m just in between jobs right now.”

  “For how long?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Three months.”

  “Three months?” Where the hell do you get your money from then? he thought of asking. He figured his tone of voice was quizzical enough to spark an explanation without asking her.

  “It takes time for some people to figure out what they really want to do,” she answered. “And I don’t want to work just to be working. I want to enjoy what I do.”

  He nodded. There was no sense in getting into her economic life. He just wanted her physically.

  “Like having good sex,” he hinted to her. “You don’t want to just do it, you want to enjoy doing it.”

  She choked on her drink. “Where did that come from?”

  “From my mouth,” he told her.

  “Preconceived notions, hunh?” she asked with a twinkle in her eyes.

  “You don’t have any?”

  She smiled even wider with soft pink lips on her straw and nodded. “I do.”

  “On what?”

  She chuckled, teasingly, but wouldn’t answer. That all but made Ant want to pack it up for the night and head west, back over the bridge for St. Louis and Nebraska Avenue to his cozy, second-floor apartment.