“I’ve got a place,” Isaiah said.
“A place? What place?” Dodson said.
“A place to stay. A room to rent.”
“You got an apartment?”
“Yeah.”
“Who else is living there?”
“Nobody.”
“You got your own apartment? You ain’t no older than me.”
“You need a place or don’t you?”
“You fuckin’ with me you’ll be one sorry nigga.”
“Forget it,” Isaiah said. He was too tired for this. He started walking away.
“Where you going, nigga?” Dodson said. “Wait a goddamn minute.” Isaiah stopped but didn’t turn around. “How much is the rent?” Dodson said.
Isaiah thought a moment. When Dodson was on the phone he said he sold drugs. His gold chain looked real and he was wearing new Pumas. “Two-fifty,” Isaiah said.
“Two-fifty? Kinda steep, ain’t it? You smoke weed? Let’s make a little trade. I got some Sour Diesel that’ll make you forget who your mama is-where you going, nigga?”
Isaiah could hardly stand it, watching Dodson snoop around like a health inspector, turning up his nose at the kitchen, pinching the drapes like they were a suit he was about to buy, touching things he didn’t know the value of, things Marcus had touched. Dodson looked in the bathroom and said uh-huh, like he expected the worst and wasn’t disappointed. Isaiah was exhausted but he’d be damned before he’d let Dodson take advantage of him. Marcus said when somebody’s trying to screw you on a deal don’t argue, just hold the line.
“How’d you get this place?” Dodson said.
“None of your business,” Isaiah said.
“Your TV ain’t but twenty-seven inches.”
“Buy your own TV.”
“You got air-conditioning?”
“Do you see an air conditioner?”
“What’s all this?” Dodson said, looking at Isaiah’s awards displayed on their own wall. Honor Roll, AP scholar, Academic Mathematics Award, Honorable Mention in the Lipton Science Essay Competition, Academic Decathlon District Champion, a letter from the McClarin Park Community Center thanking him for teaching seniors how to use computers.
“Don’t worry about it,” Isaiah said.
“Is that the bedroom?” Dodson said, nodding at the door.
“You’re sleeping on the sofa, turns into a bed.”
“I thought you said you had a room.”
“This is a room. You got the kitchen and the bathroom too.”
“That’s bullshit. I ain’t payin’ that kinda dough for sleeping on no sofa.”
“Then don’t.”
“Let me explain something to you, son. I can’t have nobody peepin’ up on me. I’m a businessman. I need my privacy.”
“I don’t care about your business and if you need that much privacy stay someplace else.”
“Who you talking to, nigga?” Dodson said, getting chesty. “Disrespect me and I’ll fuck your shit up right now.”
“Your call,” Isaiah said. He bristled at the threat but knew Dodson was bluffing. If they had a fight he’d have no place to stay. Dodson pivoted.
“For two-fifty I should get the bedroom,” he said.
The idea of Dodson sleeping in Marcus’s room was sacrilege. “Not gonna happen,” Isaiah said. “Don’t even think about it.”
Dodson was a member in good standing of the H-Town Deuce Trey Crip Violators. He was jumped in at the age of fifteen. A dozen or so of his future colleagues beat the shit out of him in the parking lot behind Vons. Afterward, as they were peeling him off the asphalt, it was nothing but love. You one of us, nigga. You in for life, nigga. It’s real now, son, you rolling with the VIPs. You in the uppa level, dog, you bangin’ with the big ballas now. Yeah, uh-huh, and now that he was homeless all the VIP big ballas had a damn excuse and he was sleeping in Keenya’s ten-year-old Ford Escort with the Saran wrap windows and cat hair embedded in the dusty seats. He did his washing up in the men’s room at the Econo gas station and ate microwave burritos from 7-Eleven and Value Meals at Mickey D’s. He’d seen Isaiah around, hanging with some unaffiliated kids, the kind that wore backpacks and had carrot sticks in their lunch bags. At first, he thought Isaiah was running some kind of game; all hunched over like his Auntie May, his eyes red, lint in his hair, clothes like he’d just rolled out of bed. No way in the world a fucked-up seventeen-year-old kid could have a place that wasn’t fucked up too. Except it wasn’t. The apartment reminded Dodson of his parents’ house. Everything clean, put away, and done up nice like somebody cared. He absolutely wanted to stay here but he’d never paid full retail in his life.
“You short on the rent or I wouldn’t be here,” Dodson said. “Without me you out on the street.”
“Without you I’ll go find somebody else and you can go back to living in that plastic shed.”
“Straight up? I need some slack here, brutha.”
“Don’t call me brother.”
“Two-fifty’s out my tax bracket. How ’bout we make it one-fifty?”
“How about we make it three hundred?”
“How ’bout one seventy-five?”
“How about five hundred?”
“You a hardheaded li’l nigga, ain’t you?”
“You in or you out? Make up your mind.”
Dodson knew he had to give in, at least for now. He needed to take a shower, put on some clean clothes. He’d find a way to recoup later on. “I’m in, aight? I’m in.”
“Where is it?” Isaiah said.
“Where’s what?”
“The money.”
“I’m a little short this week. How ’bout I give you a hundred now and the rest next week?”
“How about you come back when you got the two-fifty?”
Dodson felt a wave of humiliation, bested by this chump. He stood there looking at the ground, head slightly tilted, one fist clenched. He wanted to pop the boy a few times, let him know who he was messing with. Instead, he sneezed. Fucking cat hair. Dodson turned and walked away, thinking, This ain’t but the first round, muthafucka.
CHAPTER THREE Where’s My Samitch, Bitch?
July 2013
Dodson was sitting in a metal folding chair on the auditorium stage at Carver Middle School. He vaguely remembered being a student here, although calling him a student was a stretch. His attendance was so bad his history teacher said he should wear a visitor’s badge. Homework was like a strange ritual they did in some foreign country where everybody was blond and wore wooden shoes.
Dodson was sharing the dais with a firefighter in a big canvas coat, a Filipina nurse in green scrubs, a bulky-looking woman in a gray uniform who worked as a prison guard, and an old man in oil-stained coveralls and an STP cap who owned a wrecking yard. Above them hung a banner in blue and green tempera that said: CAREER DAY. Dodson saw Isaiah slip into the back of the auditorium and he smiled to himself. This could only mean one thing. Isaiah needed money and he needed it bad.
The old man was up first. He started his presentation with a joke. “All right,” he said, “so this black man walks into a bar, you see, and he’s got a parrot on his shoulder. Big beautiful bird, all kinds of colors in it and everything, and the bartender says, man, that thing is beautiful. Where’d y’all get it? And the parrot says, Africa.”
It was all downhill from there. The nurse had an accent and that was the end of her and the firefighter put everybody to sleep talking about good grades and character. The woman prison guard said her job was tough but it was union and they couldn’t fire you unless you smuggled in dope or had sex with an inmate.