A Private Affair

“You got my attention. Tell me more.” He wanted to tell her about his own writings and his sister’s dreams for him. He didn’t.

The music moved from body-locking to hand-clapping, so Quinn guided Nikita back to their table.

“I’m listenin’.” He held her chair while she sat down.

Niki looked up at him for a moment, the small, uncalculated gesture reaching her. So she talked. And he did listen. In small doses, she explained about her abrupt exodus from Cornell and the tension-filled four months at home.

“So, you gotta save enough loot to get your own crib?”

“Loot?”

He grinned. “You know, Dinero, cash, money—loot.”

“Oh.” She smiled in embarrassment. “Yes, I do. And soon.”

Quinn nodded. “How long you been takin’ classes at NYU?”

“I just started this semester.”

He lounged back in his seat, splay-legged. “So now what—you’re gonna be a writer—what happens to all your doctorin’ skills?”

Nikita’s soft brown eyes slowly traversed the room as though searching for the answer, or for the words that would bring her emotions to the forefront. She looked for understanding. “It just wasn’t me,” she finally said. “I tried to make it work—”

“Because your people wanted you to,” he said, finishing her thought, “so you hung in there until you couldn’t hang no more.”

She nodded.

“Sometimes you just gotta do your own thing, ya know? Everybody ain’t gonna always understand or accept that. But you just gotta keep it real and go for yours.”

Nikita looked at him. Even through the crudeness of his words she knew he understood. When had any man she’d ever been with ever grasped what she thought and felt, or even cared enough to voice an opinion that reached beneath the surface? Her male associates had always been too concerned with their own success to show any interest in her needs or feelings. Quinn was in total contrast to what she’d imagined he would be. With a little polish he could really shine.

“What about you? What makes it real for you?”

“Maybe I’ll rap with you about it sometime.” He stood. “But I gotta be pushin’ on.”

Nikita hid her disappointment behind the glass she lifted to her lips.

His eyes crinkled as he touched her cheek with the tip of his finger. “Take it easy, Nikita Harrell.”

“You, too.”

He turned, smooth as a velvet-toned Nat King Cole album spinning on a crystal turntable platter, and, like vaporous wisps of cigarette smoke, was gone.

She didn’t know whether to be angry or insulted. He hadn’t asked to see her again, or asked for her phone number. Even though he wasn’t her type, anyway, he could have at least asked for her number, whether he called or not. Wasn’t she interesting enough? Pretty enough? What kind of woman attracted a man like Quinn—Quinn? She didn’t even know his last name.

“So, Miss Thing, what in the world was going on with you and Mr. Dark and Lethal?” Parris asked, breaking into Nikita’s meandering thoughts. She took a seat.

“Nothing.” She shrugged her right shoulder and frowned. “We were just talking. That’s all.”

“Really? Then what’s with the look?”

“What look?”

“Like you just got your little ego stepped on.”

“Not hardly.”

Parris put on her best lecturing-her-girlfriend voice, targeted and launched. “He’s not your type, Niki. Anybody can see that from a mile away. He has bad boy written all over him.” She waited a beat, then broke into a grin. “And that’s the turn on. Isn’t it?” With Freudian accuracy she continued, “The other side of life that you only get to fantasize about. The whole good-girlsdon’t syndrome is tickling your imagination, like a bird feather flicking against your nose. Only thing is, sneezing is not what you have on…your…mind…to…do.”

Nikita bit back a grin. Parris knew her as well as she knew the riffs and downbeats of her songs. Knew how to manipulate her as easily as she worked those notes up and down the scale. Parris McKay was a royal pain, and she loved her. “As usual, you’re reading way too much into this. We were just talking.”

“When you believe it, so will I.” She pushed her chair away from the table and stood. “Don’t look so lost, sister girl. Come back next week and you’ll see him right behind that piano,” she teased.

“Very funny.”

Parris moved toward the stage, a raised platform in the center of the room, when the MC announced her name.

“See you in a bit.”

“Parris,” Nikita hissed between her teeth.

She turned, raised her brows in question.

“What’s his last time?” Nikita asked, trying and failing to sound unconcerned.

Parris smiled. “Parker, hon. Quinten Parker.”

Chapter 5

Wishin’

Chilling on his nightly run with T.C., who’d become his regular partner, Quinn let his thoughts surf to Nikita. She was all that. A fine sistah. No doubt. Had a lot going on, and she was a writer. The first female, the first anybody, he’d ever met who actually wrote for a living. And she gave up being a doctor to try her hand at what she really wanted to do. That took heart. He dug that. Dug it a lot. Smothering a grin, he thought that maybe she wasn’t all high-toned and uppity, after all, even though he didn’t go for her type.

He’d been a sentence away from telling her about his own writing and of Lacy’s dreams for him. Somehow, he knew that she would understand, like Lacy had. But truth be told, he hadn’t picked up a pen to write a single word since her death. He couldn’t seem to bring himself to do it. Everything related to his other life was tied to his twin sister. To write again would only reinfect the wound of her loss, as would his playing at the club. And that’s why he wasn’t going to do it.

“Whatsup wit you, man?” T.C. probed, peeping Quinn’s silence. Generally Quinn pumped him for information about how he was doing in school, listened to stories about his sisters and brothers, and offered the kind of older male advice that he couldn’t find at home. T.C. had come to look forward to the evenings that he spent in Quinn’s company. Come to expect the feeling of brotherhood that they shared. Even though Quinn had to be at least ten to twelve years older, he never talked down to him, or tried to make him feel stupid when he shared his thoughts. More often than not, Quinn told him he needed to get out of this life and lifestyle while he still could, before the money got too good and it was too late. Yeah, money was part of the reason he continued to make the runs, but the real reason was that he’d come to look at Quinn as the older brother, a missing father, that he needed. He didn’t want to lose that.

“It’s all good. You playin’ Jeopardy, kid?” Quinn slid from behind the wheel and out into the flypaper night. It was the kind of evening when everything stuck to you—the air, your clothes, bugs. Even the dank smells of the street rose, wafted and clung to your skin. He cut his eyes over the hood of the car and pinned T.C. with his gaze, waiting for a response.

“Naw, man,” T.C. said, catching his breath after stepping out into the clawing night, from the cool comfort of Quinn’s ride. “My name ain’t Alex. You just seem quiet.”

The corner of Quinn’s mouth tilted in a half smile. “It’s all good, like a said.”

Quinn’s dark eyes scanned the length of 115th Street. Cars double-parked. Everything from run-down, rust-coated Chevys to this morning’s off-the-lot Lexuses. Music blasting from everything that could send out a tune. Pushed upward to their limit in the hope of catching a whiff of something, the gaping holes of wide-open windows, set against the run-down buildings, resembled the missing teeth of the pushcart pedestrians in constant search of a stray anything. People in every size, shape, color and design seemed to have been stirred up in a big mixing pot, then dumped out on the street, any which way. They were everywhere. Fish frying in week-old grease seeped out of Shug’s Fish Shack and hung around the mouths of the regular Friday-nighters gobbling down what looked to be their last supper. Gold twinkled around necks, in ears, on wrists and in mouths, as sure as the diamonds hidden in the mines of Africa.

This was his world.

He checked his left side and pulled his lightweight jacket securely over the bulge tucked neatly beneath his left arm. It was a calculated move. But necessary. Though he’d never had reason to use it in the past, everyone must know that he would and could in a heartbeat.