Still Wifey Material (3 page)

“Club Reign.”

“How is business?”

“Business is very good. Our fifth-year anniversary is tomorrow, so that’s why we’re having the white party.”

“Oh, OK.”

“Have you decided if you and your cousin are coming?”

“Yeah, we’re coming.”

“Good. I’m glad, because you and your cousin are going to be my special guests. I’m going to make sure you two are treated like queens!”

“Aww, Bintu, that’s so nice! But I am not trying to get into any drama when your wife sees you catering to me and my cousin.”

“I already told you that I don’t have a wife.”

“Well, I know you’ve got to be seeing somebody.”

“No, I’m not seeing anyone right now,” he replied.

“Well, have you ever been married?”

“No.”

“When was the last time you were in a relationship?”

Bintu hesitated for a moment, then sighed heavily. “Well, let me see,” he began. “My last relationship was about six months ago, and we were together for about two years.”

“Why did y’all break up?”

“Because we figured out that we didn’t want the same things.”

“What kind of things are you talking about?”

“Well, for one, she didn’t want to have children, and I did. We used to always argue back and forth when that issue came up, and I got sick of it.”

“How many children do you want to have?”

“Three or four.”

“Well, don’t you want to get married first?”

“In my country, it is forbidden for a man and woman to have children out of wedlock, so I would definitely marry the woman first.”

“Well, have you ever thought about moving back to Nigeria?”

“Oh, yes, I have,” he responded with excitement. “I plan to go back home right after I make a couple million dollars, so I can build a small castle for me and my family.”

“Who? Your wife and kids?”

“Yes, of course, but I was also talking about my parents.”

Hearing this nigga tell me he was going to build a house so his parents could live with him gave me a really bad taste in my mouth. Was he fucking kidding me? Who did that bullshit? If I ever married a man and he told me he was building a house big enough so that his parents could live with us, I would ask him for the divorce papers because there wasn’t no way in the world that shit was going to work. Thank God I wasn’t trying to be with this cat for the long haul, because if I was, I would be up shit’s creek without a paddle!

I changed the subject. “Do you do anything else other than run the club?”

“I’ve got a few other investments, but they’re minor.” He changed the subject this time. “What about you?”

“What about me?” I replied.

“What do you do?”

“Well, I’m co-owner of a hair salon in the uptown district. Now, it may not gross a lot of revenue like your nightclub, but it damn sure pays the bills.”

“What’s the name of your salon?”

“It’s called Creative Images.”

“In what part of the district is it located?”

“It’s on Monroe Street, near the Greyhound bus station.”

“I know where that is. Do you do hair yourself?”

“Sometimes I’ll wash a couple of the stylists’ client’s hair or prep them for a relaxer or what have you, but normally I handle the receipts and the paperwork for the day-to-day operations.”

“What about your cousin? Does she do hair?”

“Yep, she sure does. As a matter-of-fact, she’s the other owner.”

“Is she married?”

Shocked by his question, I hesitated for a bit and then answered, “No. Why?”

“Because my brother Fatu is very fond of her. He talked about how beautiful she was all the way to the nightclub.”

“Well, I’ll make sure I tell her that after I get off the phone with you.” I had no intention whatsoever of telling Kira that she had been the main subject of the brothers’ conversation. I mean, why should I? All it was going to do was go to her head. Besides, I was tired of standing in her shadow! I was much prettier than she was, and if they couldn’t see that, then something was definitely wrong with their eyes. Not only that, I had my eyes on Fatu first, so why was he sweating Kira? She wouldn’t give him the time of day, which was another reason why I wouldn’t waste my time telling her. Fatu was not her type, so to hell with them both.

Our conversation lasted another ten minutes and then we called it a night. I did assure Bintu that Kira and I were still coming to his party, and that we would call him before we headed his way.

Kira was still sitting on the sofa, watching TV, when I walked back into the living room. I cracked a smile at her the moment she looked up at me. “I heard you in there, giggling,” she teased. “What, you in love?”

“Hell nah!”

“Well, something is going on, because you are smiling your ass off!”

“All I was doing was trying to get to know the cat.” I took a seat next to her.

“What was he talking about?” I gave her a recap of my conversation with Bintu. When I told her about his plans to build himself a big enough house so that his parents could live there as well, Kira burst into laughter. “So, when is the wedding?”

Shocked by Kira’s response, I laughed too. “Girl, please! That’ll never happen. But I don’t mind playing like we’re married until I can suck every dime he owns out of him.”

“All that sounds good, but you better be careful, because African men aren’t stupid. Whatever kind of scheme you got cooking up, know that you’ve got to go at it hard, or don’t go at it at all.”

“Trust me, I’ve got it under control.”

“I hope so, because cats like your friend Bintu are of a different breed. Believe me, he ain’t like them other cats we’ve dealt with. You know all those other niggas we fucked with wasn’t concerned about if we were with them for their dough, because they had their own agenda. But Bintu seems like the type of cat who’d go upside your head if he had the slightest clue that you only wanted him for his money.”

“Girl, please! I wish that nigga would put his hands on me.”

“Don’t think it won’t happen because he was smiling all up in your face tonight and saying all the right things. Give him a couple of months and watch how his true colors come out.”

“Come on, now, you know I know what time it is. That’s why I’m going to play my cards right.”

“Yeah, you better,” Kira warned. “Because you’ve got to remember that we’re way out here all by ourselves, and I ain’t gon’ be able to take on your man and his peoples all by myself. So give him a little bit of coochie, suck his dick a few times, and get whatcha can, but don’t be greedy.”

“I won’t,” I assured her, knowing I was going to get everything I could. On some low shit, I do listen and take some of Kira’s advice, but I have come to the realization that if I continue to do just that, I am going to always stay in her shadow and never be on her level and I am tired of that shit. So, from that day forward, I was going to do what the fuck I felt was best for me. And if I wanted to get a little bit of dough from Bintu’s ass and fuck him on a regular, then that’s what I would do. Contrary to popular belief, giving a cat some pussy for some monetary gain hasn’t ever hurt me; that’s why I fucked around with Sophie’s ugly-ass husband. He wasn’t really working with much because he had three wives to take care of, but he did his part when it came to me. I never told Kira how he took me on an overnight excursion to a nice hotel on the Westside and then took me shopping and spent about six hundred dollars on me. I mean, it wasn’t much, but hey, at least he didn’t make me feel like a cheap trick. And besides, it ain’t like I was trying to marry the cat anyway. All I wanted to do was get my nut off and see what I could get out of him. That was it. Now I was on some new shit. And since Bintu was next on my list, I was going to see what I could get out of his ass too. Whether it would be an ass whooping or a trunk filled with dough, I was going to test the waters.

T
he next day Nikki told me she was going to drive her own car to work because she had some errands she needed to run, so I went ahead and left without her. Once I got to the shop and opened the doors, all my stylists came falling in, one behind the other, and got right to work. Everything was running smoothly. It was peaceful, and I loved it. But whoever said that all good things came to an end was right, because it wasn’t long before Nikki came waltzing through the front door of the shop with a handful of shopping bags, bragging about how good she was going to look at the white party.

“Y’all ain’t gon’ believe all the hot shit I picked up at the mall this morning,” she crowed.

“Where did you go?” Carmen asked.

Carmen was the diva around here. She resembled the singer Ciara, but with a little more weight. Niggas loved her, and she’d tell you quick that she only fucked with the ones who had plenty of dough to spend on her. Just a couple of months ago, though, she decided to settle down with this well-known cat named Xavier. People in the streets called him X. From what I heard, he ran the entire Irvington Village projects down on Fulton Street, so he got a lot of paper, and with paper came respect. In a small way, X kind of reminded me of Ricky. He didn’t physically resemble him at all, but you could tell that X’s fat ass was very cocky and he was definitely a ladies’ man. Carmen could care less about the other women, though. She’d tell you quick that she was known as his main chick, and all the bitches in the streets knew it, so that was all that mattered. She was also known around Houston for nine-hundred-dollar lace-front wigs, so she kept a nice piece of change in her pockets, along with the latest eleven-hundred-dollar handbag thrown over her shoulder. I knew she had to have every designer handbag and shoe that Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue ever sold. She could tell if a chick was carrying a knock-off bag from a mile away.

“I went up to Post Oak Boulevard and ran into Galleria Mall and had myself a ball,” Nikki replied as she tossed her bags on top of her station.

“What did you get?” Carmen asked.

“Yeah, what kind of hot shit you supposedly just bought?” I added while I worked a perm into my client’s hair.

Nikki picked up a Neiman Marcus bag and pulled out a seven-hundred-dollar sleeveless white MaxMara asymmetrical strap blouse and a four-hundred-twenty-dollar white fitted pencil skirt by Christian Dior. “What y’all think?” she asked as she held both pieces of clothing next to her body.

“I like it,” I commented.

“Yeah, that shit is hot!” Carmen interjected.

I continued to stare at the outfit. “What kind of shoes are you wearing?”

Nikki replaced her top and skirt back into the bag and removed a shoebox from another Neiman Marcus bag. “I’m going to wear these.” She removed the lid and pulled out a pair of three-inch, silver, Christian Dior T-strap sandals.

“Damn! Those sandals are vicious as hell! How much did you pay for them?” Carmen practically drooled over the shoes.

“Yeah, how much were they?” I wanted to know.

“Six hundred,” Nikki replied proudly.

Not knowing how to respond, I just stood there with a look of uncertainty on my face. Nikki said, “Why are you looking like that?” Her tone was defensive.

“I’m just trying to figure out why you went out and spent all that money for some stuff you’re only going to wear one time?”

“Simply because I wanted to, so I did it,” Nikki snapped.

I tried to remain calm in the face of Nikki’s stupidity. “OK, and that’s fine. But don’t you think you probably went just a little overboard?” I tried to get her to see it my way, because that couple hundred grand she snatched up before we left VA was bound to be gone any day if she kept throwing it away on shit like that.

Nikki immediately took offense and abruptly stuffed her shoes back into their box. “Do I say that to you when you go into Saks and drop twenty-two hundred on a Chloe bag, or fifteen hundred on a Marc Jacobs dress?”

“No, you don’t. And that’s only because you know I can afford to do that.”

“So, you’re saying I can’t?” Nikki was visibly upset. The other stylists and clients in the salon were silent as they watched our argument with avid interest.

“No, I’m not saying that.” I tried to answer in a way that would prevent an argument from starting, but it didn’t work.

“So, what are you saying then?” Nikki threw the shoebox back into the shopping bag. “Because it sounds to me like you can’t stand to see me have anything.”

I felt my headache start to return. “Come on, now, Nikki! You are really blowing this out of proportion. And right now is not the time for it, especially around the customers. Can we drop it, please?” I returned my attention back to my client’s hair.

“Yeah, you would want to drop it right after you get the last word.” Nikki snatched her bags from her station and took them back into the office.

I ignored her childish behavior and let her carry her ass so I could continue servicing my client. I was definitely going to have a talk with her later about her behavior. I mean, how dare she attempt to suggest that I didn’t want to see her with anything, like I was hating on her or something! Was she kidding me? I could clearly dance circles around her with the money and the wardrobe I had. I was the original trendsetter. Nikki didn’t know a thing about wearing Gucci handbags with the shoes to match, nor had she ever worn a ten-thousand-dollar mink coat until she borrowed mine. She’d better get her act together before I pulled her coat and brought her ass back down to reality.

Several hours passed and Nikki limited her conversation with me as much as possible. The only time she said something to me was when I had a phone call on the salon phone, or if she needed to make change for my clients, and I was fine with that. She had a lot of conversation for Carmen and Rachael, my other stylist, though.

Rachael was the youngest of us all, and she sure knew how to run her mouth. She was married, and was a fair-looking girl in her early twenties who loved to wear her hair in microbraids. She kind of favored the R&B singer Brandy, but if you told her to sing something, she wouldn’t be able to carry a note to the front door. If you ever wanted to know about anybody’s business, nine times out of ten, Rachael had the scoop. That was why when she asked me questions about my personal life back in VA, I shut down her nosey ass. I simply told her that the life I lived back in Virginia wasn’t any of her business. “Oh, my bad! I apologize,” she said. But I told her that there was no need for an apology, because now she knew where I stood when it came to my personal life, so we shouldn’t have that problem again. So far we hadn’t.