“I don’t have one. Don’t need one.”
JR wasn’t there that night, but she had a key to his office. We went in the office and Rain picked up the remote for the flat screen. “Pops is rarely here at night these days, so when he’s not here this is my spot.” She dropped the remote and headed for the bar. “Johnnie Black, right?”
“Right,” I said and looked at the flat screen. Porn star Lola Lane appeared on the screen, ridin’ some guy’s dick, talkin’ ’bout, ‘Yeah, Lola likes that. Fuck Lola’s pussy.’
I looked at Rain, she looked at me. “Ooops,” she said and pushed a button on the bar and the image on the screen changed. Now the screen displayed images from around the club. “Sorry about that.”
I sat down on whatever seat was closest to me without commenting on Lola or Rain’s apology. I looked around the office and my eyes stopped on a picture of a much younger JR and a very pretty woman.
Rain handed me my drink and sat down. “Is that your mother in that picture,” I said and pointed to it.
“Yup, that’s my mom, Barbara Robinson.”
“She’s very pretty,” I said and thought that Miles looked a lot like her.
“She was beautiful. She died when I was a baby, so I never really knew her.”
“For some reason I thought you were older than Miles.”
“Most people think that. But he’s older by eleven months.”
“You and him must be close.”
“We used to be.”
“What changed that?”
“Why you wanna know?”
I laughed. “Why you gettin’ defensive?”
“I’m not. We just ain’t close like we used to be.”
“That got anything to do with your sister-in-law?”
“You ask a lot of fuckin’ questions,” Rain said and finished her drink.
“I just noticed that you two didn’t really speak to each other.”
Rain got up and headed toward the bar. “I don’t like the bitch. Never have. I haven’t spoken to her since I was in the seventh grade. There. You happy now?”
“Why don’t you make me one too?” I said and finished my drink. “Why don’t you like her? She seems like a nice person.”
“Yeah, yeah, she’s real nice and whatever. I just don’t like her, and let’s leave it at that.” When Rain came back she had both bottles. Like she planned on us being there for a while. That was fine with me. I had a lot of questions for her; about her brother and their operation. Specifically; what else she had going on. If we do move on them, I wanted there to be as few surprises as possible.
She took my glass and poured me a drink. As soon as she poured herself a shot, I raised my glass.
“Didn’t mean to make you mad,” I said and drained my glass. Rain followed suit and drained hers.
I took the glass from her hand and poured her another and one for myself.
“I would rather drink to something else,” Rain said.
“What do you wanna drink to?”
Rain raised her glass. “Anything that don’t have nothin’ to do with Lakeda Johnson.” Rain turned up her glass. “Talk to me about something else.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know; anything.”
“I’d rather talk about you.”
“Why you wanna know about me?”
“You already know ’bout me. Only thing I know about you is that you’re twenty-two. I know you can handle a gun.”
Rain looked at me and smiled. I was starting to like the way she smiled. Rain had those pouty lips I seem to like so much. “My daddy taught me how to shoot.”
“You daddy’s little girl?”
“Yup. Everything I know that’s important I learned from him. He taught me a lot about dealin’ with people.”
“How to get them to do what you want them to do?”
“That too. But he taught me to look and listen. Said that’s why we got two eyes and two ears.”
“And only one mouth.”
“Exactly.” Rain poured herself another drink. “I remember once when I was in high school.”
“What school did you go to?”
“Immaculate Conception.”
“Catholic school girl.”
“And I ain’t even catholic. Pops sent me there after I got kicked out of public school.”
“What you get kicked out for?”
“Fightin’. Let this mouth get me into somethin’ I had to fight my way out of. That’s when he told me about lookin’ and listenin’ to mugs, see where they really coming from. But when I first got there these girls wanted to try me, you know, ’cause I’m new and shit. But I just got kicked out of school for fightin’, so I’m tryin’ to be cool. But these bitches won’t let up. So I tell Pops about it.”
“What he say?”
“He listened, and then he said, ‘I can’t tell you what to do. I could tell you what I would do if I was in your place.’ Then he said that I had to start makin’ my own decisions, and once I made those decisions that I had to be willing to stand up and be responsible for those decisions.”
“Good advice.”
“Yeah, I’ve lived by it since. But anyway, he said this is a matter of honor. You already know what the right thing to do is. The right thing is not to fight in school. So if it just a question of right and wrong, the choice was easy.”
“Don’t fight in school.”
“That was the right thing. He said what I have to decided is doin’ the right shit worth what I had to give up?”
“Your honor.”
“Pops told me once that all you really have at the end of the day is your honor. If you don’t have honor you don’t have shit. I know the right thing was to let them bitch-punk me everyday, tell a teacher or some shit. I tried all that, it didn’t work. I had to beat the bitch down, but it was a decision I had to make for myself.”
“What you do?”
“They would always come at me in the lunchroom. So, like, I’m in line, right, gettin’ my food and here they come.”
“How many?”
“Four. Soon as this bitch says something to me, I takes my tray and wheeled around on her ass. I caught her in the face with it and she starts cryin’ like a fuckin’ baby. After all that tough talk, this bitch is cryin’ like a baby. You believe that shit?”
“Sometimes bullies are all talk.”
“Yeah, no shit. I just kept hittin’ her with that tray until the teachers came and pulled me off her ass. The other kids was cheerin’ and shit, ‘get her, get her,’ ’cause this bitch used to fuck with everybody. Nobody liked her, but they was all afraid of her. I got a rush from beatin’ her ass. It was the best feelin’.”
“Did they kick you out?”
“Pops had paid for the year in advance and he spread some money around, so they just suspended me since everybody knew she had been fuckin’ with me since I got there.”
“I bet nobody fucked with you when you got back?”
“Nope. I was the queen fuckin’ bee after that.”
I raised my glass. “To the queen.”
Rain raised her glass and pointed at me. “Queen needs a king.”
For the next couple of hours I sat in the office drinking shots with Rain while she flirted with me and I asked her questions. The more Patron she drank, the easier it was to get answers. I needed to know about their gambling operations, and what exactly she was in to, but I worked it into conversation so it didn’t seem like I was interrogating her.
When Rain announced, “I’m fucked up in this bitch.” I finished my drink and stood up.
“Where you goin’?” Rain said and tried to get up, but couldn’t.
“I got something to do.”
“Why you gotta go?” she pouted. “Have another drink with me.”
“You don’t need no more to drink and besides, you haven’t even finished the one you got.”
“Oh yeah,” Rain said and looked at the glass in her hand. She put the glass down and tried again to get up. I held out my hand to help her up. “Thank you,” she said in a whisper. “You can’t go.”
“Yes, I can.”
Rain took a step closer. “So you think you can just come in here, get my ass drunk, ask me a bunch-of-fuckin’ questions, and then leave?”
“Yes, I do.”
“No, Nick. That’s not right. You can’t leave me like this.”
“This is your spot; you’ll be all right here.”