“Give me two days.”

“I’ll have everything ready for you.”

“Cool. Oh, and don’t try that shit you pulled on that last gig. I want seventy-five percent of my paper before I start.”

“Now, you know how we do. Half now, the rest later.”

“No,” I stated flatly. “That’s how we used to do up until you tried to stunt me.”

“Come on, ma. Why you tryna bust a nigga’s balls?”

“’Cause a nigga can’t be trusted,” I replied. “And, besides, I like it when I got a handful of balls in my hands, squeezin’ the nut outta it. Now, like I said, I want seventy-five percent now and the rest when I touch down.” My mental calculator started churnin’ in my head. That meant a hundred-and-fifty thousand for the price of two bodies upfront. I smiled.

“I got you,” he said, soundin’ real tight. I didn’t give a fuck. Play me, get played, sucka! He musta read my mind because he said, “You know I’d never game you.”

“Yeah, that’s what your mouth says,” I said, hangin’ up.

Later on that evenin’, I was in my kitchen heatin’ up some leftovers from the Cheesecake Factory, smokin’ a blunt, with the stereo blarin’ Nas’s Hip Hop Is Dead CD throughout the house. And I had the flat-screen TV on with the volume down. I wasn’t big on watchin’ TV ’n shit, but every now and then a bitch liked to peep the news to stay up on the comin’s and goin’s of the crazy-ass niggas and silly bitches in this fucked-up world. So while the six o’clock CBS news was on, I was just standin’ in the middle of my kitchen waitin’ for the microwave to stop, listenin’ to Nas spit his lyrics and gazin’ at the TV when a special news report flashed across the screen. I ain’t gonna front, a bitch got real curious when this Asian-lookin’ reporter chick was standin’ in front of the Delano Hotel in South Beach. The same fuckin’ spot I was a few weeks ago. And when the face of the nigga I bodied appeared, I almost fainted. I ran across the kitchen to grab the stereo remote to turn that shit down. I caught what the chick was sayin’ in mid-sentence.