Azmir
It was three p.m, on a rainy morning. I was in my office at the rec center going through blueprint models for new homes that were going up in the Watts. After I was done, I decided to move on to the next item on my To Do list.
“Alex, where are the quarterly profit reports that I asked you for this morning?” I asked my interim assistant over the conference system.
“Mr. Jacobs, I requested that the managers have them all faxed over by ten a.m. however, the fax has been down since this morning,” Alex answered.
“What does the fax being down have to do with why those reports weren’t on my desk hours ago?”
“The truth is, Mr. Jacobs, Peggy told me the repair company would be in to look at the machine between eleven a.m. and four p.m. Last I checked, they hadn’t arrived,” he offered.
“Alex, the fact of the machine being down isn’t satisfactory enough of an excuse for not having those reports. You could have had them faxed to the rec’s main office downstairs…Hell–you could have had them faxed to the Kinko’s on 7th Street! You could have had them sent electronically in PDF format. Get me those reports now!” I demanded before slamming the button off.
Peggy knocked on my office door to inform me that I had a visitor. It was Petey. He rarely comes to the rec. I nodded for Peggy to close the door behind her. He walked in with a smile on his face, “Dog, I heard you all the way out in the hall. …fuck wrong wit’ you?” he asked as he reached out to give me dap.
“Man, I’m having a fucked up day. You don’t even wanna know,” I said feeling a little relief from his unexpected visit.
“What’s going on? Anything I need to handle?” he offered lightly but was serious as hell.
“Nah, man. It’s all on me,” I said as I rubbed my eyes.
“You do be looking stressed lately. I heard how you got at Wop and John-John last night, too, man. Is it one of the businesses…or Rayna?” he asked really wanting to know what ailed me.
“Look man, Im'ma tell you something really personal that stays between me and you,” I warned him.
“My word is my bond and my bond is my life,” he pledged.
“Tara told me a couple of months ago that she’s pregnant.” I didn’t get an immediate reaction out of him although I knew I’d had his undivided attention.
“She said it’s yours?” he asked knowing what time it was. Petey knew about her and the kid, Dwayne.
Dwayne was an around the way cat that hung out with a mutual friend. He was an aspiring rapper with a promising career. I let them rent out the club in Compton for a video and even borrow a couple of my cars for it. Tara all of a sudden wanted to hang out at The Joint. This was funny because Tara despised that type of environment including the patrons. She was elated when I opened up Cobalt. She said it was a better use of my resources and was for the civilized. Tara went bragging about it to all of her friends.