him.
“Don’t know what time you goin’, but I’m goin’ at ten,” Wiz replied, sliding in the driver’s seat and closing the door.
Lil Mike leaned in the open window. “Come on, homeboy, let us roll wit’ you. These feens can wait a few hours.”
“See, that’s the attitude that keep nigguhs broke. You think they gonna not get high? Hell no, they gonna go spend they money
on Bergen. We ain’t in business to miss money, nigguhs,” Wiz schooled him, then started the engine.
“Shit, you ain’t stayin’,” Pills remarked.
Wiz smirked. “ ’Cause, lil’ nigguh, I got you to handle all that, huh. Beep me.” He turned up the system to let them know…
The pussy is freeee, but the crack cost moneeey!
TWO
W iz! Wiz! Boy, you hear that damn phone! You know it’s for you!”
Wiz heard his mother yell, bringing him out of a well-deserved sleep. Twenty-four/seven he stayed on the grind, so when he
crashed, he crashed. He truly hadn’t heard the phone because the ringer was off. Wiz reached over and picked up the receiver.
“What!”
“What? Oh, it’s what now? I been beepin’ you all day. You can’t call nobody?” the female voice belonging to Michelle hissed
through the receiver.
Wiz rubbed his eyes, then checked his black Movado: eight-thirty p.m.
“Yo, I been busy. I ain’t got the luxury of waitin’ on a nigguh all day, aiight,” he replied sharply.
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
He sighed, because the conversation was irrelevant. “You call to argue or you got something to say?”
Michelle sucked her teeth and rolled her eyes with the tone of her voice. “Anyway, is we still going to the LL concert?”
Wiz sat up like,
we
? “Why everybody think I’m a fuckin’ taxi? Look, I told you I might take you.
Might.
But right now, I really don’t feel like being bothered wit’ you, so—”
Michelle cut him off. “Bothered! Oh, so it ain’t no bother when you come to my house two in the mornin’ to lay up with me!
It ain’t no bother when I’m suckin’—”
Click!
Wiz cut her tirade off in mid-stride and immediately turned his thoughts to what he would wear. He heard the phone ring up
front, but he didn’t bother to answer until he heard, “Wiz! Wizard, get in here, boy!” He sighed deeply, then made his way
down their apartment corridor to the kitchen. His mother was sitting in the kitchen, still wearing her nursing outfit, smoking
a cigarette. “Boy, what did you do to that chile?” she questioned.
“Nothin’.”
“Nothin’? Well, why is she callin’ my house screamin’ ‘I hate you’ like she done lost her damn mind?”
Wiz leaned against the door frame. “Man, I don’t know, ask her.”
“I’m askin’ you. I done told you about these females and emotions. If you don’t want to deal with them, don’t. But don’t keep
treatin’ them like shit, because what goes around comes around, you hear me?”
“Yeah, Ma,” he answered, like he’d heard it all before. “I gotta get dressed.”
“Dressed? For what?” she asked, putting out her cigarette.
“Just out, man,” he whined in annoyance, because he could see where she was going. She did it all the time.
“Well, before you go out, I need you to let me get a little somethin’. Shit, Momma wanna party too.” She smiled, trying to
take the sting out of her request.
Wiz sucked his teeth. “Ma. I just gave you some yesterday. What you do with that?” She got up from the table to take her meal
out of the microwave.
“What the hell you think I did wit’ it? What I ’posed to do wit’ it?” she quipped, snatching her hand back from the burning
edge of the Tupperware bowl.
“I wish you would just leave that stuff alone,” Wiz mumbled under his breath.
“And I wish you would too,” she shot back.
“Why? I ain’t smokin’ it,” he fired back.
“No, you just sell it to people who do. Somebody’s daddy, somebody’s son and somebody’s momma. So
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