Heard It All Before Read online

  “Haaaar-lowe Lane,” I repeated.

  “Darling Gate?”

  “HARLOWE! H-A-R-L-O-W-E LANE!” Patience and I, we were never all that tight. I tried to strive for it, but even Job would’ve wanted to choke this guy.

  “I can tell ya how ta get there, sugar.” A real smarmy-looking dude was standing a little too close to me. He must’ve been in the bathroom ’cause he came out of nowhere and he smelled like a gas station bathroom—rank and foul. He was in ripped-up jeans, an oversized T-shirt, and a long jacket. It was a trifle warm for a coat. It was over eighty degrees! I started backing away ever so subtly. Jacket seemed more of a concealer than an article for warmth, and I wasn’t trying to find out what he was concealing. I had watched enough crime drama in my day to be wary of army-coated, white-T-shirt-wearing strangers.

  “Ah, no thanks. I’ll find it.” I smiled prettily and backed away a little quicker.

  “Harlowe by Colorado.” The man behind the glass volunteered. Shit, I knew that. I just couldn’t figure out how to get back to Colorado.

  “You sho, sweet pea? It can be real dangerous out here for a li’l girl like you. You ain’t from around here, huh?” Brain surgeon too. I was asking directions at the most decrepit gas station in town, and he thought I might not be from around there?

  “Thanks for your help.” I tried to smile wider and turned away.

  “That your car?” he asked, and inched closer to me. “That a real nice car. That one of those new Benzos?”

  Ah, shit, now I was petrified. I didn’t want to open it and get in—what if he tried to jump me once I got the door open? Then again, if I stood out there, he could just jump me, take the keys, and get the car anyway. I looked over at Ahmed. He’d gone back to Seinfeld and was going to be no help at all.

  What the hell, if he jumped me, I’m jumped. I strode back to the car as quickly as I could without running. Hit the button, climbed in, slammed the locks, started it, and peeled out with tires screeching. I was so freaked, I ran a stop sign and a red light. Where the hell were the cops when you needed one?

  Right about now, I was debating about just trying to find my way home and Roman be damned. But then again, I was so lost I couldn’t get home if I wanted to. Why, oh why did I not charge the phone last night? Wait a minute, was that what I thought it was? It was—Golden Arches dead ahead. Thank you, Jesus! Oh, and thank you, McDonald people, for having a restaurant on damn near every corner.

  I turned into the lot. Of course, this wasn’t the ritziest Mickey D’s I’d ever been to. Matter of fact, it looked worse than Ahmed’s station. But, at least there were people inside and a pay phone. Pay phones were a rarity these days; everyone ELSE had the sense to keep a charged cell phone at their disposal. Anyway, this should take me five minutes tops. I got out, clicked the alarm, and stepped inside.

  Looked left, looked right; the damn pay phone was right by the playground. There was a ragged-looking crew out on the playground. Kids, not children, but teens. With my imagination, I was immediately thinking gang. Of all the McDonald’s in the world, I stumbled into a gang hangout. I was not in the mood to tangle with today’s disenfranchised, disillusioned youth ruffnecks.

  I went straight to the phone, picked it up, and wiped it down the front of my jeans. Then I regretted doing it because now everyone’s going to think I was a snob. Okay, so I kinda was. I didn’t look at anyone, hoping that meant they wouldn’t look at me either. Renee always said you couldn’t be scared of your own people. However, you could be cautious, right?

  Not wanting to flash even a quarter, I dialed Roman using my calling card number.

  One ring. Come on, baby, pick up for Mama.

  Two rings.

  “Yo, you ’bout through with that phone?” Dammit, if it wasn’t for bad luck I wouldn’t have any at all. Three rings. I glanced over my shoulder. A big hip-hop hardhead was staring me down. Do-rag on his head, jeans hanging low. Big baggy plaid shirt (plenty of room to hide a gun, I was thinking), tattoo of a bullet on the side of his neck, and a little skull-and-crossbones earring dangling. Classy.

  “Yeah, I’ll just be a sec.” Four rings, where was he?

  Five ri—“Hello?”

  “Roman!” I almost sobbed with relief. Salvation was only a telephone wire away.

  “I need that phone for my bi’ness; you tyin’ up my line.” The hardhead was getting louder.

  I turned around. “Really, I’ll only be a minute. I’m sorry.” I tried a smile, but out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that the youngsters were all standing in the doorway looking at me. I looked around and one of them was making his way to the Lexus. Wouldn’t you know, the damn car was like a gangster magnet. He started circling it. I think casing was the correct verbiage.

  “What you lookin’ at?” Some little fly girl asked me. I hadn’t even gotten around to checking out her bandana, combat-boot-wearing ass yet.

  “Baby, where are you?” Roman asked me. “Baby?”

  I looked down, ignored them, and talked quickly. “Rome, I’m lost. I’m at a McDonald’s somewhere near Colorado and Sylvan, I think.” I tried to sneak a look toward my car, but the little mobsters were blocking my view. Absently, I wondered how long it took to strip custom hubcaps off a Lexus.

  He groaned. “Okay, listen. Take a left out of McDonald’s and keep straight through four lights and you’ll be back at I-30. Take Thirty west back to Sylvan and turn right, and then follow the directions I gave you. You turned the wrong way on Sylvan last time, okay? Jewel?”

  “You gonna give up that phone or I got to make you?” the leader of the pack spoke.

  “I still don’t like the way she looked at me with her siddity ass,” the bandana chick piped in.

  I was so scared, I didn’t realize that I had nodded and Roman couldn’t hear that. “Yeah, one second.” I lowered my voice and turned back around. “I got it. But, Roman?” My voice was cracking. The little hoodlums weren’t moving.

  “Yeah, baby. You okay?”

  “No, how do I get out of here?” I didn’t know proper ghetto etiquette. What did one do when you’ve tied up a ruffneck’s telephone line? Give him a quarter? Apologize? Run like hell?

  “Calm down, baby. Just don’t say anything and walk fast. Hang up the phone and walk to your car. Wait till you have your hand on the handle before you open it, all right?”

  “Okay.” My voice sounded small and pathetic, and he sounded so safe. Lord, I hated being out of my element. Made me feel really weak, silly, and dependent—three ways I tried never to feel.

  “You want me to come get you, honey? You want to wait there for me?”

  “No!” I almost screamed before lowering my voice again. “I don’t wanna sit in here by myself. I’ll make it.” Besides, how wimpy was that? Was I some sort of delicate Northside belle who had to wait on her big strong man to come rescue her? Couldn’t go out like that ... even if I really, really wanted to.

  “Okay, baby, I’m waiting for you. If you’re not here in ten minutes, I’m coming for you, okay?”

  “I’m there.” I hung up, straightened up, and turned around. I raised my head and without looking left or right, I started for the door.

  “Where you going?” The head O.G. stepped in front of me.

  Damn. What to do now? What would Renee do? Bluff! “I’m leaving already, all right?”

  “You was tyin’ up my line. I coulda lost bi’ness ’causa you!”

  “Sorry.” I started forward again. He stopped me again.

  “Uh-huh, now, my girl didn’t like the way you was lookin’ at her.”

  I didn’t look over at her. “What girl?”

  “You didn’t see my girl?”

  “That bitch saw me, even with her high-yella nose in the air; she seen me.”

  “Didn’t see her. Gotta go.” I stepped around him and took off. Two of his homeys were blocking the door.

  “That your car?” another fly girl asked me.

  “Leave her alone,” a ma
n behind the counter called out. “I done told y’all I don’t want no mess up in here. Let the lady go.”

  They obviously respected the man, because they parted like the Red Sea. Feeling in control now, I wanted to stop and take a moment to tell them that if they focused their energy toward school and education instead of all this bullshit, maybe they could buy a Lexus of their own someday with legally obtained funds. I thought better of it, doubting they wanted to hear my public service announcement. Would probably gain a bullet in my “high yella” ass for my trouble. It was time to be out. “Thanks!” I said in general, and in record time was in the car and out the lot.

  Six minutes later, I pulled up to a tall, Victorian-style house. Roman was pacing up and down a long redbrick walkway. I barely had time to swing open my door when he grabbed and hugged me as if I were going to disappear. Far from protesting, I held on for all it was worth.

  “Ah, babe.” His voice was deep and ragged. “I been freaking out. I imagined all kinds o’ shit.”

  “Yeah, well.” I tried to make light of it now that it was behind me. I kicked the door shut with my foot and hit the remote button. “Show me the house.”

  He pulled back and shot me a look. “Damn the house; we got some talking to do.” He dragged me up the walk, across a lovely enclosed patio, through the front door, down a hallway, and down some stairs to a big living area. He shoved me down onto an overstuffed brown leather sofa, stepped back, and began to pace back and forth in front of me.

  “Where was your cell phone, BlackBerry, GPS—something useful?” He spoke slowly with enough emphasis to let me know he was not happy.

  “What? I hate BlackBerries, I forgot to charge the cell, and somehow I don’t have a car charge. GPS is a waste of money—I’m from Dallas,” I protested. GPS, indeed. Even though I’d longingly wished for one not twenty minutes ago, when it was his idea, it suddenly seemed a waste of money when you were just getting around the city you’d lived in all your life.

  He stopped pacing and frowned down at me. “You know better than to roll out of the house without a charged cell phone. Why don’t you have a car charger? And, yes, you may be from Dallas, but it’s clear you had not a clue in hell of where you were driving. With a GPS, you would not have had to stop and get out of your car—your expensive luxury car, I might add. You hear me?” His voice rose with every syllable.

  I laughed at him. “Rom—”

  He cut me off. “No, Jewel. Listen. That McDonald’s where you were is a major gang hangout. They deal drugs and guns through there; it gets raided all the time! Do you understand me? It was on a nationwide report as one of the few McDonald’s in the nation that actually loses money. NO one goes in there for a Big Mac and fries. Are you feeling me?”

  I jumped up. “I knew it! See, this is why I hate coming over here. A simple McDonald’s and you have to be scared for your life!” I whirled on him. “Damn this equal-time shit. You wanna see me, bring your ass to North Dallas.” As soon as it was out, it seemed like the wrong thing to say, but shit, I’d been traumatized this evening—couldn’t always be reasonable, right, and politically correct. It was my ass standing smack in the middle of gangland this evening.

  “You think you’re safe over there in Yuppieville? Gangsters live round there too; you just don’t see it on the news. Shit, Jewel, crime is everywhere. Whatcha gonna do? Live in a fortress and never come out? Your neighbors commit crime, too, you know.” He was mad. I don’t think I had seen him mad before. “I can’t stand a narrow-minded stereotyping hypocrite.”

  My eyebrows shot up. “I beg your pardon?” Hypocrite, me?

  “Beg what you want. That’s exactly what you sounded like. Besides, that’s not the point. The point is, if you had your cell charger or a GPS unit, you wouldn’t have had to stop at that McDonald’s at all. You can afford it, Jewel, and it’s just good sense.”

  I tried to defend myself. “If the guy at the gas station spoke English, I would have gotten directions from him.” Okay, it was a weak argument, but I’m not one to admit wrongness easily.

  He looked like he was going to be sick. “Not that dilapidated Exxon up the street from the McDonald’s?”

  I suddenly felt a little queasy. Ah, shit, what now? “Well, yeah.”

  He fell backward onto the sofa and put a hand over his eyes. “Ah Christ, Jewel, that place is mostly a crack house. Do you watch the news at all, Jewellen Rose? Dallas SWAT, Dateline, truTV, anything to give you a clue of the criminal element present in the city you live in?” He made me feel very stupid and very small.

  Well, now I was getting mad. Was it my fault I didn’t know the hood hot spots? “Yes, I watch the damn news! I just don’t happen to chart the latest vice squad investigation zones or watch truTV! What the hell is truTV anyway?” Now I was pacing. When I thought about how many things I had done the absolute wrong way, I sat down next to him.

  He turned to me. “Let’s chill for a sec, chill, chill. I’m going off ’cause I didn’t realize how naive you are ’bout shit like this. And you are just starting to realize how close you came to being a stat on the ten o’clock crime watch. Okay? Let’s ease up.” He took a deep breath. “First off, you gotta get a charger and a GPS. I’m not playing, Jewel.” He tilted my chin up and stared me down. That look with those eyes meant no argument.

  “Okay, okay.” When a man like this looked at you like that, you’d pretty much agree to anything.

  “Second, I want you to start spending more time around here.”

  “No way in hell.” Okay, so I wouldn’t agree to anything; I had my limits.

  “Yes. During the day at first, driving around, getting familiar with the streets around my house. We’ll work up to nights, branching out so you’ll at least know what’s safe and what’s not.”

  “No,” I repeated stubbornly. I could be pretty darn stubborn. I just flat out wanted nothing to do with it. Shit, we didn’t have safe/not safe spots on the Northside. At least, none that I bothered to know about.

  “Equal time, Jewel. Your turf, my turf. Or nothing at all. I ain’t playing.” So, he was stubborn too. Great, two hardheads determined to have their own way.

  “I don’t want to. My turf doesn’t have danger zones.”

  “Oh, yeah? Not two months ago, a guy in a complex four blocks from your house got raided. He was selling all kinds of shit to you uptown folk. Your precious Willow Bend Mall has recorded more crime in the last six months than any other area of town.”

  How did he know this kind of shit? “Oh yeah, well, those were rare cases.”

  “Why? Because you didn’t know anything about it?”

  I decided not to answer. He was right. For all I knew, there could be a meth house down the block from me.

  He continued. “You know what else you get out in the burbs?” He didn’t wait for me to respond. “You get the crazies: the serial killers, the axe murderers, the psycho rapists, the kids who kill their parents, and the wives who run over their husbands. Over here, the crime is out in the street where you can see it; over there, you never know where it’s lurking ’til it becomes a Sunday night movie of the week. Over here, we can roll down the street and at least I’ve got a good idea of which house ya best not trick or treat at. Now, which do you prefer?”

  He got all intelligent at the damnedest times. Every word he said was true enough; every point he had was valid enough. But I was struggling with this embrace-the-hood thing.

  “Why do you have to live over here anyway?” I tried not to whine ... but I wanted to. I was out of my comfort zone, and I didn’t like it. Never considered myself set in my ways or closed-minded, but damn, I was having growing pains with this shit.

  “It’s where I was brought up. It’s where I’m comfortable. I like to live among my people.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Roman, even though you rushed me along, I got a decent look at this house, this block. This is that renovated area of Oak Cliff, isn’t it? This house is huge, three stories, you said? You can�
��t tell me that the homeys are all living this large up and down the block.”

  “Actually, some of these houses are owned by whites and rented out to blacks. But you’re right—there is a lot of diversity around this section of the Cliff. This isn’t really the hood. It’s in the midst, though. I go to the grocery store and see black faces. The bank up the street is black owned; the shopping center around the corner is black owned and operated. We’re working on getting another black country club off in the old Redbird area, and you know how prosperous that predominantly black area is. I like being here with black folk, Jewel.”

  I sighed. He made it sound so pleasant, like a community working together for the good of the race. I just sent checks to NAACP and the United Negro College Fund twice a year and figured I was doing my part. Plus, I tried to hire the sisters and brothers to work through the agency. Of course, I never tried to get clients out here on this side of town. Matter of fact, I had very few black clients. I sighed again. Just when you thought you’re doing something, you found out there’s more you should do. Damn, sister starting to feel a little shallow for a minute. His arms slid around me while I sat there thinking it over.

  I leaned into him, knowing I was about to give in. The long and short of it was, if I wanted to keep this boy around, I had to give in on this, because it was obvious he was not going to. Granted, I wasn’t sure yet if he was worth all of this changing, but at this point, I had a lot more to lose than gain by being stubborn. I would concede this point—not graciously, but I would concede.

  “So, are we on? Equal time?” he whispered in my ear.

  No fair for one man to be this likable, this sexy, this ... everything. I had a sudden vision of Jaquenetta snuggled up here on the couch with Roman, and I didn’t like it, not one bit. “Jaquenetta ever live here?”

  He frowned at my change of subject. “Naw, she barely been beyond the front door. Maybe as far as Chase’s room. I told ya, I don’t cotton to having her difficult ass round much. Why?”