Read Online Power & Beauty by David Ritz, Tip "t.i." Harris - Free Book Online

weird. Finally, a door opened and a man came out. It was the other bodyguard I’d seen at the hotel. He pointed at me, indicating I should follow him into the room.
    It wasn’t a room. It was a suite. I didn’t know hospitals had suites. I walked into a living room that had polished dark wood floors and fancy overstuffed chairs and a long couch. Irv Wasserman sat in one of the chairs, his long right leg propped up on a small table. The leg was in a cast. In the other chair was a red-haired girl maybe a year or two older than me. She was wearing a black turtleneck top that hugged her chest tight. Her breasts were super-sized and pointing right at me. She had on black slacks but because she was sitting I couldn’t tell anything about her backside. In a rough kind of way, she was pretty in the face. She wore a lot of makeup, especially around her eyes. She had Irv’s eyes. She had to be his daughter.
    Irv sat in the other chair. He was in a gold silk robe. I saw his initials, IW, sewn in white over the breast pocket. He wasn’t smiling. He was just looking at me. He was scrutinizing me. I could hear him thinking.
    “This here is my Judy,” he finally said. “She doesn’t want to go to college. She says she doesn’t like school. You been to college, kid?”
    “No, sir.”
    “What about high school?”
    “I quit after my junior year.”
    “How come?”
    “I want to learn business, Mr. Wasserman. I want to learn about the real world.”
    “You hear that, Judy?” said Wasserman. “He ain’t in school, but he’s got plans. He knows what the fuck he wants. Do you know what you want?”
    “You said when I graduated high school I could decide what I wanted. Well, I graduated, didn’t I?”
    “Barely,” said Irv.
    “And I want to open a beauty salon.”
    “With whose money?” asked the father.
    “It would only be a loan,” said the daughter.
    “Parents don’t loan money to their kids. They give them money.”
    “Okay, then give me the money.”
    “And what do I get back?”
    “You’ll own the beauty salon.”
    “And what makes you think you know shit about running a beauty shop?”
    “I got people to help me. Older women I know.”
    “Do I know them?” asked Irv.
    “I don’t think so. I can introduce you.”
    “I don’t like the idea of my daughter introducing women to me.”
    “It’s a business thing, Dad.”
    “Your mother wouldn’t like that.”
    “You divorced her five years ago.”
    “That’s beside the point. We’ll ask the kid what he thinks.” Wasserman turned to me and said, “Do I give my daughter money to open some fancy-shmancy beauty shop?”
    “I wouldn’t know, Mr. Wasserman. I couldn’t say . . .”
    “Why not? You scared of your own opinion? You scared of saying something I don’t want to hear? You one of these kids with a confidence problem?”
    “Well, if you put it that way, I’d say, if you can afford it—”
    “Shit,” Wasserman interrupted, “you know goddamn well I can afford it.”
    “Then I would say if you open up in the right location, it might be a good idea. Women are always worrying about their hair.”
    “My daughter, Judy, she wants to open in a black neighborhood. What do you think of that?”
    “Black women pay a lot of attention to their hair,” I said.
    “My Judy is like me. She likes the blacks. Her mother doesn’t. Her mother always said, ‘Stay away from the blacks. You can’t trust them.’ I trust them. I always have. Take your uncle. I trust him with my life. And then he sends you to me, and then you save my goddamn life. What do you make of that, kid?”
    “I really can’t say, Mr. Wasserman . . .”
    “What if I say I want you to help me with my Judy? What if I say I want you to help her with her beauty shop?”
    “I’d say, well, I want to help you in any way I can. But I gotta be honest, I don’t know much about—”
    “You don’t gotta know much, kid, you just gotta watch the money. You know how to watch