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A thin and uncomfortable white leather couch sitt
ing atop a red shag carpet was the only piece of recognizable living room furniture in Tasha’s old bachelorette pad in Tribeca. The chairs were elongated shoes Tasha had styled in honor of her favo MoBos16 and the tables, glass and close to the floor, looked like frosted ice cubes. White koi fish, as thick as bass, played in a pool beneath the table in front of the couch.
“I just can’t believe you kept this place for this long,” Tamia shouted to Tasha as Toni banged at the fish through the tabletop. She left Tiara at home rapping with Lionel.
“Every girl needs a quick exit,” Tasha answered from the only bedroom in the tiny fifth-floor apartment.
Tamia looked at Troy, who was sitting beside her on the couch, and frowned.
“From your husband?” Troy asked.
Tasha came out of the room wearing a pair of MoBos she hadn’t seen in the eight years since Lionel had refused to let her leave his SoHo loft and proposed marriage as the new friends lay naked in bed eating Froot Loops and watching reruns of Law & Order.
“Pack light and always have a Plan B,” Tasha said after explaining that marrying a ballplayer was risky and while she knew Lionel loved her, sometimes love isn’t enough to keep a millionaire connected to one woman for a lifetime.
“So you come here to water the plants?” Troy said, snatching a leaf Toni pulled from a little bonsai tree on the table.
“Of course not. I hire people to do that. Someone comes to water the plants, clean the linen, feed the fish, and adjust the temperature.”
“I have to be the one to bring some reason to this madness,” Tamia started. “I can’t believe you’ve been paying rent for this apartment for the last eight years—and you didn’t tell anyone. Not even us.” She looked at an Andy Warhol–style series of rainbow fauves of Tasha in her twenties and a bottle of Dom on the table beside the kitchenette. “This place is like an homage to our twenties. A museum.”
“I know,” Tasha said. “It’s cool.”
“No, I didn’t mean that in a good way. It’s wrong. You can’t move your family here.”
Toni looked at her mother.
“Well, we’re not gonna live here. Not for long.” Tasha pulled a hot pink chinchilla jacket she’d worn to a Foxy Brown party from the closet. “Just until we find another place.”
“All four of you?” Troy asked.
“It’s not that small, ladies. Not for Tribeca. Look, you have to trust me. When I was in the bathroom with Tamia I realized that this is just what we need as a family to keep it interesting. Jersey is boring. Jersey is country. Jersey is like…like a pasture where rich people go to die. New York keeps you young. It keeps you hot. It keeps you sexy.” Tasha had the coat on now and she danced around to Foxy Brown music in her head.
“I don’t think babies are supposed to be sexy,” Troy said, trying unsuccessfully to hand Toni over to Tasha. “Did you go to the bathroom on yourself?” She looked at the little girl as she patted her soggy diaper. Toni smiled.
“Oh, God.” Tasha grimaced. “Someone change her.”
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An hour later, after Troy left to meet with the Virtuous Women uptown, Tamia, Tasha, and Toni went down to Chinatown for a steamer of pork dumplings at Joe’s Ginger. Though Tamia wanted to continue to debate Tasha about her ridiculous move back into the city, she knew better than to push her friend. She and Troy had seen their prying in Tasha’s life blow up in their innocent faces so many times that they’d learned to simply ask Tasha the important questions and move on. Tasha was born stubborn and made self-centered, and no amount of meddling was going to change that. Besides, this was the one time when Tamia actually thought her wild friend had a point. While there were lots of positives to leaving the city, what was left behind turned to negatives she knew made her friend lonely and bored. With her friends far away and her man, at times, farther away, the big house and babies were bound to drive Tasha crazy after a while. Now, here was crazy in front of her, trying to teach a two-year-old to use chopsticks.
“Do you know about the Afrocentric community?” Tamia asked, grabbing a chopstick from Toni before she jabbed her mother in the eye.
“The what? Is that one of those new neighborhoods in downtown Brooklyn? You know I’m not moving my babies there.”
“No, crazy.” Tamia laughed and imagined what kind of tirade Malik would go on had he heard her friend’s response. He’d probably send her a whole box of books. “I said ‘Afrocentric,’ as in African-centered culture and tradition, history…”
Tasha looked at Tamia blankly.
“You know…the stuff we learned in school…in our history class. I know you know…because we took that class together.”
Tasha was still looking.
“Oh yeah,” she finally said, but her eyes were still blank. “I remember.”
“No, you don’t. You’re lying.” Flabbergasted, Tamia laughed again.