Changed Man

Bobby shook his head. “Dumbass.” Then he shot her.

I stood up. “Hoe shit!” I shouted. “Something kept telling me that this was gonna turn out to be nothing but some bitch ass hoe shit!”

“Nothing but,” Bobby said.

“Hoe shit!”

“This might have been some hoe shit, but that ain’t all there is to it.”

“I know. Somebody hired them niggas to kill Whitey.”

“Fuck that, Mike. Somebody is trying to kill you!”

“I know!” I looked at Bobby and knew that he was just as mad about this shit as I was. I thought about the ocean and inhaled deeply. “I know that, Bobby,” I said calmly.

He laughed a little. “Let’s get outta here,” Bobby said and started for the door.

I looked at Lisa and Marquez, and then I followed Bobby out the door. “How you know they ain’t trying to kill you?” I asked, but I was thinking that they didn’t need to die over this shit. Then I thought about killing Jemisha for setting it in motion.

“Because this is your shit. Only reason I’m getting shot at is because I’m the nigga ridin’ with you.”

I got in the car with Bobby knowing that he was right and that I had nobody to blame for Lisa and Marquez being dead but myself.

“I should have known better, Bobby.”

“We did, remember. We both agreed that it was nothing but some hoe shit, but—”

“But it wouldn’t hurt to ride by there. Yeah, yeah, I remember us saying that shit, but look how it turned out.”

It ended up doing more than hurt Lisa and Marquez, they were dead because I made a bad decision.

“So, the question still stands,” Bobby said.

“It does. But nobody’s shot at us tonight. At least not yet.”

“True, but that don’t mean it’s over,” Bobby reminded.

“So, what do you wanna do now?” I asked, and he just looked at me like I should have known better.

“What’s the point of owning a tittie bar with a private room just for us, and our choice of dancers and we ain’t regulars,” Bobby said, and I couldn’t argue with his logic.

It wasn’t long before we were walking in Cynt’s and Lo-Lo was handing me a drink. Anya was dancing for somebody, but the second she saw me, she stopped dancing. Me and Lo-Lo watched as Anya picked up her clothes and headed straight for our private room without bothering to get paid for the dance.

While my girls danced for me, I thought about where I was, how I got here and more importantly, how I could have avoided it.

That was simple.

When King told me that Vance and them were shooters for hire, I should have concentrated all my attention on finding out who hired them.

And I definitely should have let King tell Jemisha that Whitey was dead. If I had, Lisa Benson and Marquez Hernandez would probably still be alive. Going there first and letting her play me made us waste two days on nothing.

“On hoe shit!” I said aloud and Lo-Lo leaned forward and put her hands on my shoulders.

“You say something, Black?”

“Just thinking.”

Lo-Lo eased her hand behind my head and eased her nipple in my mouth. She fed me one nipple and then the other before she went back to dancing and I went back to thinking about how Jemisha played me.