Dirty Old Men [And Other Stories] (Zane Presents) Page 4

  He said, “Now you really wanna get this same car fixed that bad? It seems to me that this car is gonna cause too much of a steady problem for you. You may be better off having somebody drive you to and from work every day and pay them a couple dollars each way. I mean, Tallahassee ain’t but so big,” he advised her.

  Brenda stopped talking for awhile. She let the dead silence sink in on him. Then she said, “So you can’t do that for me at all?” She remained persistent.

  Clarence was even impressed with by it. She really knew how to put pressure on a man. But he also realized that he was letting her get away with it because she was young and didn’t know any better. It was the spoiled and desperate recklessness of her youth talking.

  So Clarence leveled with her. “You know, a young woman could really find herself in a bond with a man if you keep going like this. Because if you talk to the wrong kind of guys about helping you out with money—”

  Brenda cut him off, “But that’s why I’m asking you, because I know you wouldn’t do me like that. I mean, do you know how many guys talk about helping me out. I’m not dumb; I mean, I know what they want. And I’m not going out like that, simply because I need money. But somebody has to be on your side. You know what I mean? I’m only asking you to be on my side and look out for me like that. I need some help.”

  Got’ dammit! Clarence panicked. What would Maurice say to this shit? he wondered. The game had quickly climbed out of his reach. He found that he couldn’t handle this young woman with his simple logic. She would eat him up alive.

  He took a deep breath and thought it over. You a damned fool, Clarence, he told himself before he even responded to her. “I’ll ah…see what I can do. But I won’t make you any—”

  “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” she exclaimed, cutting him off again. “Oh my God, I promise you will never regret helping me. I mean, I will make you feel so proud of me.”

  “Make me feel proud, how?” he asked her.

  “When I become successful,” she answered. “And it will be all because of your help. I mean, I can be like, your little project.”

  Clarence was stunned into silence. What the hell could he say to that? The girl sounded borderline crazy. And all he could do was smile about it. He actually liked the shit. She was a real character, and she made him feel needed. He was the only one on earth who could help her.

  Clarence went back to work that next morning and found himself dodging, ducking, weaving, jumping, dipping, stretching, contorting and grabbing luggage like O.J. Simpson in an old Hertz Rental Car commercial before he went crazy for a white girl out in California.

  The younger skycaps looked around at each other as if the old man had lost his damn mind.

  “Hey, man, what the hell is wrong with Clarence this morning?” one of the younger guys commented to Maurice.

  Maurice started giggling to himself and couldn’t help it. “Don’t worry about him. The boy in love and won’t admit it to nobody.”

  “Well, you better tell his ass not to jump out in front of me again, man. And I don’t give a fuck who he in love with. That motherfucker’s fucking with my money now.”

  Maurice laughed it off. “Now calm down and watch your mouth out here, young’un. We got passengers to take care of.”

  “Yeah, and that motherfucker tryna take ’em all.”

  The young coworker continued pouting.

  “Come on now, you know he can’t take all of ’em. He’s on a roll today, that’s all,” Maurice explained. He found it all humorous. Clarence looked as if he had drunk five cans of Red Bull on the way to work that morning. And he had a quota to make.

  By quitting time, Clarence had broken his three-hundred-dollar goal. In fact, he was closer to four hundred. But no one was happy about it but him.

  On the way back to their cars in the parking lot, Maurice made sure to have a few words with him.

  “Ah, Clarence… you sure you don’t have anything to talk to me about? Is your daughter doing okay with money in school? You need to bail your son out of jail or something? What’s going on, man? You need me to help you out?” He was being halfway sarcastic.

  Clarence looked at him and chuckled. He didn’t even care anymore. He had done what he needed to do that day. And he was more than halfway there to five hundred.

  So he answered, “I’m trying to make a living, man.”

  “Nah, you tryna do more than that,” Maurice countered. “Last week, you was standing around daydreaming all day. Now you come back to work and turn into Superman.”

  “I had a good day today, that’s all,” Clarence explained nonchalantly.

  “Yeah, I can see that. But I don’t want you to hurt yourself out here on account of whatever’s going on with you, man. You know what I mean? And you damn sure didn’t make any of the younger guys happy about it.”

  Clarence frowned. “Aw, to hell with them, man. You don’t see me complaining when they make a good buck or two out here.”

  “Yeah, but they’re not out here jumping in front of us to get bags and shit either,” he argued. “I mean, you looked like a gotdamned fool out here today, man. You tryna take it back to slavery days?”

  “Aw, come on now,” Clarence commented. “That’s waaay overboard.”

  “Nah, man, you were overboard. I mean, you look like you were really Uncle Tomming it today, man. And you know I ain’t gon’ lie to ya’.”

  Clarence shook it off and said, “Yeah, whatever.”

  Maurice stopped at their cars and asked, “So you’re still not gonna tell me what’s going on?”

  Clarence only stared at him in determined silence.

  Maurice nodded. “Okay.” And he walked away to climb into his car.

  After only two days of gathering hungry airport tips, Clarence gave Brenda another five hundred dollars and received a kiss on the cheek with his hug. And he made certain to tell her not to count the money out in the open this time. She had to trust that it was all there, like he had to trust that she would pay it all back somehow.

  She agreed and said, “Okay. Now was it as bad as you thought it would be?”

  Clarence grinned. “Actually, it made me work a lot harder. It felt good. If I worked like that all the time, I guess I would have plenty of extra change in my pockets.”

  Brenda grinned and said, “You see that? I’m good for you. And you’re good for me. And good to me.”

  “Yeah, too good,” he blurted. She still was getting the better part of the deal, and he wanted her to realize that.

  She told him, “So, you would rather not have me here to inspire you?”

  Clarence thought about it and said, “That’s a good question. But what do I inspire you to do?”

  She looked at him and answered, “To work harder.” And while her RAV4 was still being repaired at a body shop, she was driving a Chevrolet rental car.

  Clarence asked, “Working harder to do what?”

  “To pay you back.”

  He could never get much farther than that. He didn’t have the balls to come right out and say it. But he wanted more than promises. He wanted more than money, too. What he wanted now was her companionship.

  So he asked her, “Well, how ’bout you go out to dinner with me sometime? You know, whenever you’re free.”

  He asked her the question, but he left her answer too wide open. There was no timetable on it.

  “Okay,” she commented with a nod. Then she ran back off to her hide-aways at school and at work.

  And as the days and weeks passed, Clarence found himself giving Brenda more and more of his hard-earned money only to see her long enough to give it to her. And although it was never five or six hundred dollars again, the forties, eighties, and hundreds all added up, until Clarence had run out of rope to deal with her without seeking help. So he finally broke down and sat with Maurice inside of his car after work.

  “So, you finally decided to tell me now, hunh?”

  Maurice couldn’t stop himself f
rom smiling and chuckling at the shit. Clarence had been a hard-headed man to his own detriment.

  “Come on, man, I’m serious right now,” he complained.

  “Yeah, and you should be,” Maurice told him. “So, how much money have you spent on this girl?”

  Clarence added it, then he tried to subtract from the real amount. She shrugged and said, “About a thousand dollars.”

  Maurice stared at him and didn’t budge. “Only a thousand dollars, Clarence? Are you sure?” He wanted Clarence to know up front that he needed to be bluntly honest with him. “Now, I can’t help you if you gon’ lie to me in here, Clarence. This is between me and you. And you know we’ve been around each other for too damn long to lie, man. Now how much you give her?”

  Clarence looked away and exhaled. He grumbled, “A little over two, man.”

  “More than two thousand?” Maurice asked him to make sure.

  Clarence got upset with him and snapped, “Yeah, man, shit.”

  “And you ain’t touched her yet?”

  Clarence answered, “I’ve been hugging her a lot.”

  Maurice stared at him like an angry demon. Clarence couldn’t take the glare, so he looked away again and laughed at himself.

  “You hugged her a lot? For two thousand dollars? Nigga, is you rich or crazy? You been breaking your ass out here for hugs?” his experienced co-worker yelled at him inside the car.

  “All right, man, now look, what do I need to do now? I’ve already given her the money. You know that now.”

  Maurice began to shake his head with doom. “And that’s already your problem. You gave her the money without establishing shit. So she ain’t planning on giving you shit for it.”

  “How do you know that?” Clarence asked him.

  Maurice stared at him again. “How do I know every-damn-thing else? I know these broads, man, if I know nothing else. And you got one damn rule you need to learn in this game, Clarence. Now there’s a lot of damn rules to it, but this one I’ma tell ya’ is the main one.”

  “And what rule is that?” Clarence asked him in haste. He realized that he had flown over to the other side of sanity by asking Maurice anything, especially concerning techniques to scores with a young woman. But that’s where he was now, and there was no sense in denying that he had his nose pulled wide open.

  Maurice told him, “The most important rule you need to know is this; you don’t choose them, they choose you. You understand me? Now you can talk shit and proposition them all you want, but at the end of the day, if that woman don’t choose to get down, then she ain’t gon’ get down. And there ain’t shit you can do to change her mind. So if she don’t choose you in the beginning, or when you come back to her, then you move your ass on.”

  “She did choose me. If not, then she would have gotten the money from somebody else.”

  Maurice started laughing again. “Clarence, understand me now…that girl did not choose you; you chose her by going for that dumb shit. And when you put that money in her hands, she won the game right there. And then you walked away with a damn hug and hard dick, nigga. And don’t you ever get it confused out here.

  “But the thing for honest guys like you, is that you scared to ask for the pussy,” Maurice continued. “You feeling all guilty and shit ’cause she young. But if you ain’t gon’ ask her for the pussy, then she ain’t tryna give you none. But on the flipside, she don’t have no problem at all asking you for some money. You catch my drift? So if she can ask you for the money, then why can’t you ask her for the pussy?”

  Clarence didn’t like his tone or his choice of words, but the facts were facts. And so far, Maurice was on point. Clarence was afraid to ask for what he wanted. He definitely felt guilty. And Brenda was surely not shy about asking for she wanted.

  Maurice continued, “Look, now we too old for that innocent shit, man. These young women know what they getting into when they deal with us. And it ain’t fucking walks in the park, like they might do with their college boyfriends. When they get with us, it’s all about them asking, ‘What am I fin’ to get out of this shit?’ And that’s the honest damn truth, Clarence. You can’t change that. And they don’t give a fuck about how nice you are either. They know you as old as their damn daddy. So they gon’ treat you like one unless you let them know up front that your game don’t work that way. And they do know the difference.”

  He said, “So, I’m gon’ give you a live sample of what I mean, when I tell you to let them choose you. And you don’t give them nothing until they make that choice. So they can cry their little asses out all they want. Fuck ’em! The world ain’t about charity unless you rich. And we ain’t rich. So keep quiet and pay strict attention in here.”

  Maurice took his cell phone from his belt, dialed a number, put the phone on speaker, and set it down between them on the front seat.

  “Hello?” a soft, young voice answered.

  “Hey, it’s Maurice. I was thinking about you coming from work. I got both my hands full with counting this tip money before I drive off, so excuse me for the speakerphone.”

  “Oh, okay,” she uttered. “So, you made that much money today, hunh?”

  “Yee-uup,” he answered. “And I remembered that you needed something. But you ain’t called me lately, so I figured that you must have gotten it on your own.”

  Clarence sat deadly silent and awaited the young woman’s response.

  “No, I still need it,” she commented.

  “Unh hunh, me too,” Maurice answered with a chuckle. “So ah, we need to talk about it over at my place…or you pass?”

  There was a slight pause. Then she asked him, “So…you’re talking about…us having sex for it?”

  “Well, you know, if you don’t need it, you don’t need it. But I figured I haven’t seen you in awhile. You got a boyfriend now?”

  “No, none of that.”

  “Okay, so…I thought about you, thought about what you needed, and figured I’d call you up to see how you made out with it. But you ah, call me back if you feel like it. Okay?”

  She said, “Well…I mean, when you wanna see me?”

  Maurice looked at Clarence inside the car and nodded to him. He answered, “I don’t know. When you free again?”

  “Umm…I can come see you tomorrow. But I’m busy tonight.”

  “Okay, well, don’t have too much fun. You make a lonely man nervous,” he suggested to her.

  “Aw, naw, it’s nothing like that. Me and my girlfriends are, umm, going to this comedy show, that’s all.”

  “Well, wouldn’t it be funny if you could come see me after the show. Then again, I gotta be back up before sunlight tomorrow, and comedy shows generally run late.”

  “Yeah, and then you won’t let me stay over at your place to rest up before I go back to work.”

  “Aw, naw, a man gotta keep his castle sacred. But ah, so you call me up for tomorrow then, and we’ll talk about that. Okay?”

  “All right, then, I’ll call you tomar’.”

  Maurice hung up and said, “You see how that works, Clarence? You see she didn’t hang up the phone until she took the bait? That’s how you make them choose. She know what she gotta do to get this money.”

  Clarence shook his head and said, “That sounds like prostitution to me, man. And that ain’t something I wanna get involved in. I just like this girl, that’s all.”

  “Yeah, and she likes you, too, Clarence. She likes your money. And she’ll never like anything else.”

  “How can you assume that?” Clarence insisted.

  Maurice took another deep breath and exhaled as he prepared himself to leave the car. “You’re about to find out, Clarence. And if you really want that girl like you think you do, you would have to offer her five thousand dollars to fuck her now. Because she already got two thousand for free.”

  Clarence shook off his vile comments, while his devious coworker climbed out of his car to return to his own.

  “Remember the main rule,
Clarence, or get out the damn game before you end up in the poor house with a stroke and heartache from working too hard and getting kicked to the curb. HA HA HAH!” Maurice laughed like a sinister villain.

  Nevertheless, his comments stuck on Clarence’s mind. How could they not? He had asked him for them.

  Clarence wished that he had never asked Maurice for his honest opinion. But it was too late. The man had now corrupted his mind.

  “Five thousand dollars,” Clarence repeated to himself at home. He continued to shake his head at the thought. Would she actually go for something like that?

  He was itching to call her up and fiddle around to see how much truth was in it. “Nah, she would think I had lost my mind,” he assumed. Maurice was right. Since Clarence had established a platonic relationship, there would be no changing of parameters.

  But what if I asked once she needed something big from me again? he questioned. I could at least try it.

  It only took another week before something big came up. They were nearing the Thanksgiving holiday break, with Christmas right around the corner.

  “I was wondering if you believed in Santa Claus,” Brenda joked with him over the line.

  “Yeah, and I was wondering if you believed in having a friendly dinner.”

  “Sure I do,” she responded.

  “Well, how come we still haven’t had one?”

  “Because our schedules keep clashing.”

  “No, your schedule keeps clashing.”

  “Well, okay, I promise to go out with you as soon as I get back from the Thanksgiving break, and before Christmas.”

  “But you need something for when you go back to Baltimore, right?”

  “Oh, definitely. It’s almost shopping season. And I’ll be sure to come back with at least a few pieces from D.C. that you’ll love.”

  Clarence flipped the script on her and said, “All right, well, we can talk about that over dinner before you leave.”

  “I told you, after I get back. I got too much to do this week.”

  She was indeed the boss of their awkward relationship. So Clarence got bold enough to state, “I might be too busy myself to meet up with you this time. But I know I gotta eat. You gotta eat, too. So let’s both eat together and talk about things.”