Cake - Softcover

D.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1933354542 ISBN 13: 9781933354545

Verlag: ARMORY PUBL, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

“There’s a new player stepping into the street-lit spotlight, and he’s one to watch. . . . Urban libraries have to get Got.”—Library Journal, on D’s debut novel Got (starred review)

It’s less than six months after the events of D’s first novel, Got, and our nameless narrator has vanished off the Brooklyn grid, only to end up in Atlanta. Yet trouble is shadowing him, and he is forced to make a life-or-death decision.

Writing since the age of 8, D has never held a legitimate job in his life. His words, however, have appeared in VIBE and other urban publications. An Atlanta native, he currently lives in an ungentrified neighborhood near you.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Writing since the age of 8, D has never held a legitimate job in his life. His words, however, have appeared in VIBE and other urban publications. An Atlanta native, he currently lives in an ungentrified neighborhood near you. Kenji Jasper is the author of three novels, including Dark and Snow, one work of nonfiction, The House on Childress Street, and coeditor of Beats, Rhymes and Life, a collection of critical writings on hip hop culture. He has contributed articles and essays to National Public Radio, the Village Voice, VIBE, the Charlotte Observer, the Chicago Sun-Times, and Essence.

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Cake

A Novel

By Kenji Jasper

Akashic Books

Copyright © 2008 Kenji Jasper
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-933354-54-5

CHAPTER 1

"Watch this part right heah, nigga!"

You don't think Duronté has ever cleaned a real dish in his life. The whole place is full of napkins and plastic knives and forks, but he's got a .45 stripped into a thousand pieces on the coffee table, polishing every part as if it came out of his mama's womb.

He sucks on the roach in his left hand until it starts to burn his fingers. Then he tosses it into the ashtray on top of a pile of what looks like hundreds of others. There's a half-killed carton of shrimp fried rice on the edge of the coffee table. There's no way in hell he should be this skinny with as much as he eats. Those particular genes of his must come from the other side of the family.

The walls have wood paneling on them that probably got put in thirty years ago, back when it was stylistically the shit. There's a framed photograph of his mother, Mabel, a big woman with Duronté's name tattooed on her left breast. While most women get their tattoos in their teens and twenties, she got hers at thirty-six, right after he bought her a used car with money he'd put away after an extremely successful six months of selling 'dro to all the local wannabe high rollers, D-boys, and potheads who couldn't find a connect like his in all of the ATL. As it turned out, that connect was Duronté's old English teacher, who had been running a grow house out in Alpharetta for longer than either of you had been alive.

Your cousin, despite his success, makes a lot of mistakes. It's a three-man operation with no real muscle. His boy Meechie did three on an assault charge. That's his heavy hitter. If somebody put him to the test, that .45 on the table would be the best he'd have to offer up. And that ain't good. That really ain't good.

"C'mon, nigga," he barks again, his eyes still glued to the screen. "You gotta check this shit out."

You shouldn't be watching two guys fuck Ayana Angel on DVD, especially not with another man in the room. That's too many dicks in the same sitting for any straight dude. Him even asking you can be considered a violation of etiquette. But there's something about the way Ayana's tremendously round ass swings like a piece on a chain, the click of those suicidally high heels, that makes you say fuck it and plop down on the couch. You haven't had pussy since Brooklyn. You've been too scared, too worried that the life that 250 Gs built for you won't be enough.

"You know she live up in Buckhead, right?" he says, as if he's been plotting on finding the address. You can imagine him showing up at a porn star's front door in a wife beater, cornrows, and khakis, looking to get laid. Broads like her charge by the hour as a side business, a way to make up for the royalties she doesn't get paid from her bread-andbutter work.

You've been sleeping on this very couch for a week now. It's lumpy in the middle and reeks of old cigars and stale french fries. Your cousin's second mistake is that he deals right out of his own house. His crew takes the bulk of it to some satellite locations like the car wash he has a piece of on Old National and the ice cream truck that circles Piedmont Park in the summer. But if you want a brick, all you have to do is dial his traceable cell, make an appointment, and walk right up to the front door. It's a thief's wet dream. Luckily for you, this housing situation is only temporary.

There's a place on Palmetto, just a few blocks from here and your soon-to-be campus. Your name is on the deed. But the Hondurans won't be done with the renovations for another week or two. That's why you dug up your wild-ass third cousin after finding his mama's number in the file juvie services gave to you when you turned eighteen. You are their only living New York relative. But the real reason Duronté likes you is that you know how to act in the street, that you can point out the flaws in his operation, that you can help him to be more legit. You don't need to stay with him, but you want to. He is now the only familiar face in a world full of strangers. Some of the same blood runs through your veins. And for some reason that makes his couch more like home than almost any other bed you've slept on.

You told him about what you did for Star. You told him about the pile of bodies you left behind. From the look on his face you thought he was going to bust all over himself with excitement and admiration. And you used that to your advantage.

Truth be told, Duronté went to private school growing up. He just didn't have the grades to get into anywhere other than Georgia State. He takes, like, a class a semester so that Mabel will let him stay in the house rent free, the one she inherited from her mother while she was living it up in a marriage of convenience with some Polish guy in his fifties who couldn't get a visa because he had a criminal record back in the homeland. She's shopping at Saks Fifth Avenue while her baby boy sells sacks in the SWATS. That shit is kind of ironic when you think about it.

But you've been playing along with it all, keeping your mouth shut and saying please and thank you at every turn. If there's one thing Star taught you it was how to sell people dreams. Star had all kinds of muthafuckas walking in his door, some looking to do things for him, others looking for him to do things for them. The key was to make it seem like you needed them as much as they needed you. Use words like family and crew and patna and they'll do anything for you. You knew what it took to wear the crown. But you wouldn't have cared enough to do what it took to keep it.

When it came down to it, the shadows were a world where you didn't want to live. You had been a guest there way too long, and God had given you a free shot at going completely free. So you moved from there to here, from the capital of the North to the capital of the South on an eighteen- hour train trip that let you sleep better than you have since.

As the goal is to keep up appearances, you got yourself the lamest hooptie you could find, an economy-size '88 Honda CRX. You paid for four years of off-campus tuition in traveler's checks and made your down payment with a money order that turned heads when you bought it at that check cashing spot out in College Park. The rest is in a box at the bank down the street. You'll need a job soon to make your income look clean. Something quiet. Something that "normal" people would do. You're "normal" now, after all. You have to remember that.

Ms. Angel fills her throat with one dick and takes another deep into her pussy. You are both mesmerized. Maybe you will see her at the club or some grocery store, or even better, doing a feature dance run at Magic City or one of the other high-end strip joints in town. Sure, you can't afford her, and sure, there's something a little lame about going after what could literally be hundreds of men. But just there, in the grip of the fantasy, when you've got no girl and no friends and when you're in a town you know about as well as the back of a stranger's hand two towns over, she's a nice little diversion from the day-to-day bullshit. But dreams can only take you so far.

You stand up from the couch since your gracious host seems to be bracing himself for the cum shots due to arrive in a matter of moments. The door is calling you. You need to breathe.

Everyone around here still calls it Ashby Street, though the city has officially renamed it Joseph Lawry. They did the same thing...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: ARMORY PUBL
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2008
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1933354542
• ISBN 13: 9781933354545
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 139
• Herausgeber: Jasper Kenji
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar