Midnight and the Meaning of Love Read online

  Chapter 14

  HUSTLER’S LEAGUE

  The Junior Division

  “I need you young motherfuckers to pay attention! I know it’s springtime and the days is getting more longer, and the girlies is getting more naked. But I need y’all to forget all that. I need y’all to forget about your mommas and your worthless-ass poppas, and your bills and books and bullshit. I only want one word branded onto your mind, just one word. Who knows what that word is?,” Coach Vega asked us.

  My teammate, known as Machete, lifted his head. “But Coach, why we gotta be ‘motherfuckers’ though?”

  “Don’t answer a question with a question,” Vega overruled.

  “How we s’pose to guess what word you got in your mind, Coach?” Braz asked.

  “That’s another question! Think before you talk!” Coach said, growing impatient.

  “At least tell us the first letter of the word,” Jaguar said smoothly.

  “Okay, I’ll give you the first letter. It won’t help, ’cause half of you can’t spell.” Vega laughed.

  “What’s the letter, Coach Vega?” Panama pushed.

  “U, the first letter of the word is U,” Vega challenged, his arms folded across his chest and his face filled with doubt about our thinking capabilities.

  “That’s easy,” Big Mike, our starting center, said. “The word is unity.”

  “Wrong,” Vega cut him down. Seated on the court, all the players fell silent.

  “Undefeated,” I said breaking the silence.

  “You got it, papi!” Vega shouted excited. “Undefeated, we are undefeated! That’s the only thing that should be on your mind at tomorrow night’s game. We don’t just want to win the league. We want to sweep these cockroaches from Fort Greene to the Hook. We don’t want to give them one chance to breathe. Now run me twenty-five suicides with zero complaints. I would’ve sent y’all outdoors to do laps around the hood, but I can’t be sure that one or two of y’all might not make it back.” The whole team let out a muffled laugh as we moved to carry out Vega’s orders.

  As the practice got more and more intense, and Vega’s push and demands grew more serious, I assembled the words in my mind to tell Coach that after Friday night’s game, I would be gone from a week’s worth of practices. Also, that the possibility existed that I might miss next Saturday’s game against the red team.

  I knew if I kept my energy high and my performance strong at the two remaining practices, and played my part in the upcoming Friday night game, Coach would be less vexed about my next week’s absence. But at the same time, I knew the better I played, the more dependent Coach would become on me showing up for him and the team.

  I told myself, Relax, it don’t matter. Even though winning the league could earn the top five players on the winning team ten thousand dollars each, and the league’s most valuable player a twenty-five-thousand-dollar purse, my wife was worth way more. Vega and the team would just have to step up and adjust, the same way an NBA team had subs for even the greatest players when they got sidelined with an unexpected injury or fouled out.

  Practice ended with Vega wiping his forehead down with a terry-cloth hand towel as though he had actually worked out alongside the rest of us. Then he laid his hand towel sideways over the top of his head and pulled out what seemed like a liquor flask.

  “What’s the word?” he shouted, rowdying up the team.

  “Undefeated!” everybody shouted back.

  “Alright, make me look good!” Vega said, tilting the bottle, which was filled with Spanish cologne, not cognac. He patted his face and neck with the cologne and ended the three-hour practice. “Alright, break out! See you tomorrow at four p.m. right here!”

  I hung back to get his ear. “Coach, I’m good for practice tomorrow and Friday night’s game, of course, but I’m not gonna be around next week. I gotta take care of something serious.”

  “Court date, trial?” he asked.

  “Nah,” I responded.

  “Work, you gotta new job?” he questioned.

  “Nah,” I answered.

  “Abortion, birth, or funeral?” he tried guessing.

  “Nah, none of that,” I said.

  He grew tight. “Then what?”

  “Just something I gotta take care of. Then I’ll be back.” I showed him a stern, straight, and serious face and a hard stare. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his money clip stacked with clean and folded fifty-dollar bills. I noticed easily. I never liked fifty-dollar bills. I preferred hundreds. I estimated he was holding much more in his stack than any intramural, community-type coach would ever earn.

  “Talk to me.” He stepped in too close to my face, something Latino dudes did sometimes, not because they were a funny type of men. They just had a different idea of space. Some of them used the tactic to threaten and intimidate. Others used it to relay secrets or console. I took one step back and reset my stance.

  “I know you’re good for it,” he said, nodding his head once and holding the money hand up, gesturing that I could take a loan from him.

  “Good looking out,” I told him sincerely, but refused his money lending. “It’s just something I gotta take care of. Then I’ll be right back here for the team and the game and for you, Coach.” It took Vega some seconds before my facial expression influenced him to yield. He put his money away.

  “Let me know if you need some backup,” he offered, as though he was a lieutenant in some vast army. Now his face switched completely, as though he never was a coach, but more like an assassin.

  “Sometime you gotta let a sideline nigga pull the trigger. Ya know what I mean?” He stepped in close and grimaced after spitting his suspicious one-line rhyme. “You know you are the heart of this team. We can lose a couple of toes and maybe a finger, but we can’t win without our heart.” He clenched his fist and placed it on the left side of his chest where his heart rested. I felt the pressure but I had no plans to acknowledge it.

  “Yeah, I’ll keep that in mind,” I said evenly, giving him a pound and walking off. He shut down the gym lights, whistled for the school janitor, and walked out behind me in silence. It was 9:00 p.m. and the sun was still streaking the blackening sky with strips of light. I had close to three hours to kill before picking Umma up from her job. It wasn’t that I didn’t have plenty of shit to do. It was just lining it up right in my head and knocking it out in the perfect order.

  Marty Bookbinder’s bookstore was in this same area, so I decided to shoot over there and pick up a couple of books and a map for my upcoming trip.

  Chapter 15

  BANGS

  Just as I reached the corner, I heard the roar of the wheels on the gravel. Then she sped past me from behind and did a one-eighty in the middle of the street on her old-fashioned red roller skates. Lucky for her the light had just turned green or she could’ve got hit and tossed by an oncoming Toyota Celica. She saw some shock in my expression and bent over laughing and came right back up. Her head moved swiftly from right to left, calculating the remaining time to cross the street safely. But she couldn’t possibly hear the cars and trucks, because she had her headphones on and her Walkman tucked at her waist. She spun on her wheels again and crossed swiftly. Now she was on one side of the street and I was still on the other, watching her with the red traffic light glaring strong. She put her hands on her waist and flagged me over. I let a few cars flash by, then dashed across still on the red. She was smiling and beaming with happiness like she didn’t have one worry in this world with her long, thick red laces and short, tight denim shorts that hugged her small waist. I could see her belly button and about four inches of her naked flat belly before her tight red tee clenched onto her breasts. Her bare shoulders were covered with a sheen of perspiration, and a small wet spot leaking through revealed that she was still breast-feeding her baby. It was Bangs.

  “Hey, Supastar! Do you know how to roller-skate?” she called out to me as I approached where she was steady rocking.

  Vega
was just easing into his car parked on the same side where Bangs was standing waiting for me. Soon as I peeped him, I got tight. I didn’t want Coach to think I had some bullshit excuse why I was gonna miss practice next week, like I was out here just fucking with these girls and doing what they wanted me to do instead of what I was responsible for. Second, I didn’t like Bangs showing off her banging body to any man who wanted to look. I already knew that every man would look, especially if it was Bangs. They had to. Of course I noticed Vega’s eyes were riding in and out of her curves.

  “Oh, yeah, that’s right, you don’t do nothing fun,” Bangs joked, removing her headphones and wearing them now like a necklace and smiling still. Vega pulled off slowly. When I reached where she was standing and rocking back and forth on her wheels, I walked past her. She sucked her teeth and followed me.

  “Supastar! Word up. I’ma start to think you straight crazy if you can’t even speak to me. It’s either you really are crazy or you just in love with me too and can’t face up to it.” She was talking to the back of my head. On the curb I turned to face her.

  “Bangs, go home and—”

  “Uh-uh,” she interrupted. “You can’t send me home tonight. It’s only nine and you know I got till eleven to get home. So let me just hang out with you for a little while, okay?” She was flashing her deep dimples and still smiling while posting her attitude.

  “Go back and put on some clothes. Then I’ll talk to you,” I told her.

  “Walk me over?” she asked.

  “Nah, Bangs. It ain’t gonna be me and you up in your house. You should already know that,” I told her. “I’ll be at the bookstore. Put on some clothes and you can meet me over there.” I started stepping.

  “What bookstore?” she asked, riding over and pulling up to me from behind. Her hands were grabbing each side of my waist as though she needed to balance herself.

  “You know, the one over there, by the pharmacy, where you buy your grandmother’s medicine,” I reminded her.

  “There’s a bookstore over there?” she asked.

  “Later” was all I said. I left. I heard her wheels take off. All I could think was How could she have a bookstore in her own hood and never step inside of it once? Worse, it was as though she never even noticed that it was there. No wonder Marty Bookbinder’s store was always empty. Every time I went there, I had full range of the place. I knew I could chill in there comfortably until closing at 11:00 p.m. If I was bored, I could pick up a good game of chess, although over the years I had learned to outmaneuver Marty on his own chessboard the majority of the time.

  “My good friend, my main man!” Marty said. It was his version of cool. “Let me pull out the board.” He was excited to have me in his empty store packed with plenty of books and magazines.

  “Let me look around first,” I told him after returning his greetings, and that slowed him down some.

  “Look around? You know everything that’s in here already!”

  I maneuvered around the geography section until I found a book on Japan. I sat in the comfortable La-Z-Boy chair in the mystery section, where I normally purchased most of my books. I cracked the book open and flipped the pages until I found the map of Japan. I began examining it, looking for Kyoto, Akemi’s home spot and the place where her high school was located. I was also looking for a place called Ginza. I remembered that when I wrote to her father concerning my desire to marry his daughter, Akemi, I did not address the letter to Kyoto. I wondered if it was Akemi’s father’s business address or if they had moved from Kyoto or if they actually had more than one or two homes. I had gotten the address from Akemi but never bothered to find out why she did not give me a Kyoto address. I could see from the map that Ginza and Roppongi were “prefectures” of Tokyo. It was like how the Bronx and Queens are boroughs of New York. When I measured the distance, I could see that Ginza was in Tokyo, and Kyoto was three hours away from Tokyo by train or six hours by car moving at sixty miles per hour. My mind drifted deep into the map as I studied every detail.

  I burnt up almost an hour reviewing the atlas before I began flipping and reading through two books that I had pulled. Later as I stuck the two books back on the shelf, I saw an old lady wearing a wide hat through the small empty space where the books went. Marty finally got a customer while I was in his store, I thought to myself. As I stepped out into the aisle, her hat with the pile of tissue paper flowers pinned on top prevented anyone from seeing her face. She had a long flowered dress that was obviously too big for her and that dragged on the floor, like she was a homeless person wearing oversized secondhand clothing. The big white plastic pearls that were draped around her neck was the killa part of her outfit. But when my eyes dropped down to her feet, her red Reeboks didn’t match nothing.

  I paused for a second and looked at the red Reeboks again. The old lady purposely stepped in my way and looked right into my face, snatching away her hat and dropping her blond wig to the floor. She clapped her hands together and started cracking up. It was crazy-ass Bangs.

  I was mad, but I had to laugh. I was tight, but she was funny.

  “I borrowed one of my grandmother’s dresses. It don’t fit but I figured you would like this a lot.” She began smoothing the tent-sized dress out with her hands and demonstrating to me that her arms and legs and even her body were all covered. I had already noticed that without her pointing it out or exaggerating it. She smiled brightly. She was being swallowed and eaten by the dress.

  “No psych! I just wanted to see you laugh, Supastar. You be way too serious,” she said, dropping the huge dress to the floor. Underneath she wore jeans and a short-sleeved blouse. She looked more decent than she had in her hot pants and roller skates, less naked. She bent over and picked up the dress that lay deflated on the floor like an old hot-air balloon. She folded it and held it in her left hand.

  “What is going on?” Marty Bookbinder appeared in the back where we were standing.

  “Don’t ask,” I told him calmly.

  “Is she one of your friends?” he questioned.

  “I’m Tiffany,” Bangs introduced herself. Marty reached in to shake her hand. I intercepted him before he touched her and he drew it back.

  “Here, Marty. I’m gonna buy this,” I said, handing him the geography book while at the same time using the book to separate him from Bangs. Marty was always smart. He picked up on my sentiments, took one last concentrated stare at Bangs, and then turned to head toward the cash register.

  “Let me talk to you over there,” I said to Bangs. She sat down on the chair opposite the La-Z-Boy. So I took that comfortable chair for myself.

  “What’s up, Bangs? Why you always chasing me?” I asked her. She just sat there staring at me with eyes brighter than searchlights, not saying anything.

  “You said you wanted to talk, now talk,” I pushed.

  Suddenly she stopped smiling and kicking her feet even while she was sitting. Her face turned serious and she said, “I love you, Supastar.”

  I felt my heart melt a bit. I sat back some in my chair. I kept my face blank. I didn’t want to encourage her. Yet her admiration for me, and the tone of her talk, and the sudden seriousness of her pretty face moved me some. I was searching for the words to decline her affections without being mean. The truth was I didn’t hate her. I didn’t even find her annoying. I thought she was real attractive and full of life and energy and jokes. But I wasn’t the type to just move on impulse. I had already thought it through thoroughly. I had interacted with her some, watched her closely. I had discovered that her infant child was the result of molestation by her own blood-related uncle, and it seemed that she still had ongoing dealings with him, which turned me off and away completely. Bangs claimed she hated him. But there were signs that she allowed him to continue to violate her even after she knew it was wrong. I couldn’t be sure. But for me, that was the point. When it came to my women, I had to be sure.

  I wasn’t interested in taking advantage of Bangs, although I knew
it would be easy. I wouldn’t take her as a wife because I knew she did not know one thing about or understand or even have an interest in my Muslim faith and lifestyle. I knew she would not be acceptable to my Umma, and Umma is my standard.

  As a Muslim man, I knew I could have more than one wife. But this was not a game to me. My father is a great man, so he has three wives. He is a true believer, wealthy, accomplished, and proven. He deserves all that he has and chose wisely and treats his wives lovingly and fairly, from what I could see as a young man. He provides. Each wife has a separate home of her own, all on our estate, which my father built and financed and owns.

  I was not foolish enough to believe that I deserved a second wife, or that I was fully prepared to protect and provide for her. Even my first wife was not part of my teenaged plan. Akemi was a great love, very much mutual, that took me by storm. I had to step up and in. I wanted to. She was a virgin. I was a virgin. She worked hard. I worked hard. She was talented. I was dedicated. We were connected solidly in every way, without a common language between us.

  “You don’t love me. You just think that you do. You don’t really know me, Bangs. If you did, you wouldn’t even want to be bothered with my way of life. You would have to change up everything that you’re doing now, just to be considered by me. So you see, it’s too much trouble for you,” I said earnestly but also trying not to blame her or hurt her feelings.

  “What am I doing that is so wrong?” she asked sincerely.

  “It’s not just one thing … Actually, it would take too long to explain.”

  “C’mon, tell me something. Run it by me. I want to know what you’re talking about,” she urged, flinging one of her legs across the other and easing her body forward to listen intently. After a thoughtful pause I answered her in a way that I thought she might understand, a way that might make her take a look at herself instead of only looking at me.