Kid’s bouncy pupils leave me and make their way over to Petey.
“Yeah,” he pushes out with trepidation.
“Kid, this dude ain’t gansta. He’s a college grad with a double major, from a two parent home, with a cat, a dog, and a fucking white picket fence. He still has an active Orange County Public Library card! How the fuck can he still be under the fuckin’ radar?” I ask once again as I rise from behind the desk at Petey’s Drop It club in the Watts. “He just had a baby. He’s fuckin’ traceable!”
The office is stale with papers mounting the desk in no particular organization. The walls are cold, leaving the room temperature chilled to match my mood. It’s the end of January, been two months since the fire in Pasadena, and I still don’t have my hooks in D-Struct’s punk ass.
“I know, but, D, man,” Kid argues respectably. “He got some type of money behind him.”
“Could be Big D’s,” Petey offers.
“It would have to be,” I concur. “But Big D’s money ain’t longer than mine, and right now his incarcerated arms ain’t stronger than mine. You feel me?”
It’s well after the New Year, and though my reign is over, my mission of retribution to this whimpery fuck has not been resolved.
“Perhaps I should pay one of those teens around the fuckin’ block to trap his ass. Would get done faster I bet. You getting old and slow on me, Kid?” I taunt.
“Hell muthfuckin’ no!” Kid grits out. “Ain’t nobody round this way grimier than Ace Kid! Man, I put that on my last stack. Believe that!” he challenges.
As Petey watches perched on a stool from afar, I issue him a more challenging stare. I need to channel my sentiment precisely. I know in the past, Kid’s sneaky ass could snatch anybody off the streets. He’s reputed for catching dudes and chicks with their panties down—literally. But I have too much to lose. This has to be dealt with and right away.
“Kid, man,” I speak soundly. “My girl is sour as a muthafucka for having muscle with her at all times, not to mention what it’s costing me for the type that I have assigned to her. I really don’t give a fuck about the cost.” My gaze intensifies. “And I can give a fuck less about his life. You want my crown? You want the rights to my throne? Get. His. Ass,” I order before walking out.
That’s the first challenge I issue that day. The second is more like a pledge.
~~~~~~~~~~
“Let’s do it,” I murmur then peer over to Rayna who’s sitting next to me.
Her eyebrows narrow before she asks, “Do what?”
Pastor Edmondson’s head rises from his notes; his facial expression isn’t much different from Rayna’s. First Lady Twanece’s expression is much different. She understands somehow exactly what I’m getting at.
After my meeting with the goons, I headed straight for one of the last of Rayna and my committed premarital counseling sessions. In fact, I don’t know how I’d agreed to them, not that she twisted my arm into it. I just want to do whatever I sense will make Rayna happy and ease her into the concept of being mine forever.
Over the course of the past few months since being engaged, we’ve been attending these sessions, sometimes weekly. Never in a million years would you have been able to tell me that I’d agree to being counseled for anything, much less in a church by a reverend and his wife, but you also wouldn’t have convinced me that I’d meet a woman who made me do things I’d never consider doing. It’s helped that I’d been able to get to know Pastor Edmonson outside of these high moral walls. We’ve met several times over lunch, even once in Cobalt on the floor.
He’s been very easy to talk to. Never once have I gotten the impression he was attempting to sell me up the river with ideas of a magical being, up in the clouds, neighboring Jack and his Bean Stalk. We’ve talked about life, principles of being a leader on a domestic level. We’ve talk about sports, politics, and then Christian-dome, as he’s put it. I can’t lie, initially it was weird chopping it up with a white dude about the afterlife when we’d touch on that topic, over coffee. Then I told myself, it’s no different than chopping it up with Richard over brews about quality strippers after a nineteen-hour day of negotiations with potential business holders. It’s just that my chats with Pastor Edmonson have more substance and underneath it all, relates to Rayna.