“Almost as good,” Tiger stressed again. “And that’s cause half of them only touched the gas you bought, not the gas you made.”
T.C. couldn’t even front. He grew the best weed he’d ever smoked. There was something hypnotic about picking out the seeds, testing the levels, trimming the leaves, drying the buds. But he couldn’t afford to grow enough to satisfy his base, so he supplemented, and some people got his creation, and some people got old regular bud.
“Once you back though,” Tiger was still talking, “and they get the real deal, it’s gon’ be like taking candy from a baby. Thing is,” he paused, “I don’t think you got enough. See Spud, he don’t even touch his own gas no mo. He fronts a lil’ bit to his middleman, then takes the profits off the sales, and gives that lil’ nigga a piece, and it’s not as dangerous that way, cause he not the one out in the streets.” He paused again. “If you did it that way, you’d have more time for your product, more time to be the creative genius you are.”
T.C. nodded the whole while, dipping his chicken strips in a pool of ketchup and tossing them back, thinking about Bon Bon’s titties.
“T.C.? Hello, T.C.?”
“Yeah?” He guessed Tiger had been trying to get his attention for some time.
“Did you hear what I was saying? When you get back tonight, maybe we could see about doubling up on them plants?”
T.C. nodded. “That’s cool,” he said, though the truth was Tiger’s plan was stupid. Adding middlemen would take the power out of T.C.’s hands. One of the reasons he’d gotten caught dealing only once was because he sold to old basketball friends, students at Dillard. On the other hand, it wasn’t sustainable. There was only so long you could sell before you got busted, and if he went in again for hustling, it was five years minimum. He didn’t have it in him to serve that kind of time, not with a kid on the way. If he didn’t have to worry about sales, he could grow more plants, put enough aside sooner to start his own business. He’d always thought he was going to be a basketball player, and it didn’t work out, but maybe he could coach other kids like him, see to it they didn’t make the same mistakes he did.
He wasn’t going to get into it with Tiger though, not right now. He still needed that ride Uptown. And maybe he would be a different man after that encounter. It was possible whatever was waiting between Bon Bon’s legs was going to be the magic he needed to go another way.
Tiger had always been a big eater, but today he put back two po’boys, not to mention the red beans and the French fries. He kept getting up to refill his Coke and after three trips he leaned his head back and let out a huge belch. Sure enough, when it had been time to pay, he hadn’t lifted a single finger for his wallet.
“Aww, thanks,” he had said, acting surprised when T.C. put the cash down. “I owe you. I’ll get you back tonight then.”
T.C. had nodded, though he didn’t know what tonight would bring.
It was hard making it out of Tiger’s car; even once they pulled up to the house, Tiger was still talking shit.
“Aww, man, this don’t even seem like the kind of girl you want to be involved with. She stay all the way Uptown, don’t have no car. At least Alicia had her own place. I mean she moved for the baby, but she always did for herself. She ’bout to get a nursing degree. This girl got a job, T.C.?”
He didn’t answer, he just lifted his plastic bag of belongings and strapped it to his shoulder. He would need to call Tiger for a ride in the morning, but he didn’t want to get into that now. The thing was, as far as Uptown was from New Orleans proper, T.C. enjoyed riding out here. The people in this neighborhood had been touched by Katrina too, but you wouldn’t know it by looking, not like his own block. Sometimes he’d wake up screaming, remembering the flood marks nine feet up his wall, the refrigerator tossed to his bedroom, his baby pictures unrecognizable, and that smell, that God-awful smell of rotten food and mold, as if a skunk had died somewhere in the house underneath all the trash and they didn’t know where to begin to look.
“I’ll holla at you a little bit later, my nigga,” T.C. called out over his shoulder, walking up to the front gate. He rang the bell, then looked down Freret Street while he waited. There were new kinds of restaurants opening up, pricey ones too, places where he had no business even reading the menus. And he wasn’t saying it wasn’t a good thing—he remembered the neighborhood before Katrina, the vacant storefronts, that his mama locked her car door when she drove through. It was just different, that was all, more to get accustomed to, but maybe one day he could take Bon Bon to one of these fancy spots, let her order whatever she liked without feeling his chest tense up.
He had expected Bon Bon to be at the door waiting for him, maybe dressed in something see-through, but no, her fat-ass mama opened the gate in a muumuu even though it was past eleven in the morning.
“Hey, how you doing? Good afternoon,” he said in his best upstanding-citizen voice. He tried not to deliver that goofy-ass smile, but like he said, it just came out sometimes.
“I’m here for Bon Bon, I mean Natalia. She told me I could stop by and see her.”
“Bay Bay,” the mother screamed out to the back of the house. While they waited for the girl, the mama just looked him up and down as though she could smell the prison yard on his dreads, the disgusting lockdown food on his breath. Finally, Bon Bon came to the door. She wasn’t wearing Victoria’s Secret, but good enough. Little-ass jeans and a belly shirt. He thought about Alicia again. Last time he saw her, she had been big as a house, her belly button sticking out like a thumb already. The thing was, it had been beautiful to him, her carrying his seed. Of course he’d wanted to be married with a job, but just because it didn’t go down like that didn’t mean he couldn’t find the joy.
The mama finally stepped out of the way, made room for her child. Bon Bon opened the door fully, and he pulled her into his arms. They stood like that, embracing for a while. She stepped back after a few minutes, but he didn’t want to stop touching her. He could feel himself filling like a balloon getting ready to pop.
He followed her down a short hallway, holding her hand, her head barely at his chest, trying to stay far enough behind her that she didn’t feel him pressing into her back.
Her room smelled like her, shampoo and Tide detergent. There wasn’t much in terms of furniture: a bed, a desk, a dresser, but she had a stereo, speakers strapped to the wall beneath her window, a big-screen TV, two iPads. There were posters of whack-ass Drake all over the wall, the last person T.C. wanted to be looking at when he was inside somebody as fine as Bon Bon, but it’d have to do. He collapsed on her bed; it had been so long since he’d been on a real mattress that actually sank with his weight and then lifted again. He looked up; she was standing on the other side of the room.