King of Her Desire

5

They sent this real tall Black dude after me. He looked like he was walking on stilts, this guy.

And he was dressed like a 70s pimp. I'm not kidding. Stacy Adams shirt and gators, kinda high waisted slacks. In the heat. On a beach.

And two gold incisors glinted in the sun when he grinned, saluted and said, "Young blood!"

I said, "Yo!" and waved back.

And he put a foot up on the steps to the deck and said, "Mama wants you."

"Big party, huh?" I said. Because you could hear the music for miles, probably. The laughter, too, coming from Elliott's house.

"Been partyin' since I was your age, pretty boy."

"You work with her?"

"Before her time, really. But we did a few gigs. Paid her dues in all the clubs and thangs once she got serious. Moe Bettah's my name."

When I gave him this little snarky laugh, he laughed and said, "You too young to know what that means."

I said, "I saw the movie." But I'd been teased about whether I knew how to "make it "mo' bettah" before I saw the movie.

"Well, I had that name befo' Spike Lee made that movie," he said. "And you know more'n' you tellin', too. But come on down here now. I don't want her gettin' mad at me."

I told him I'd be on down after I showered all that nasty shit off me. I'd just stretched out on the deck after work, too tired to move for a bit. Wasn't anywhere near ready for my close up.

But boy, those people got me so high I couldn't focus within, like, a half hour, once I got there. It was in the food, right? All these amazing dishes from some chef whose specialty was cooking with weed and shrooms—plants with "properties," you feel me?

Elliott got kind of mad at them for not showing me the "normal" dishes—I'll get into that in a minute. It was no big deal to me, of course. I just sat there staring and listening.

Cause they were all these famous musicians that even I knew. Hair band dudes. Less hair now, in some cases, like I said.

But some of them looked almost exactly the same as they did on their album covers. I felt like maybe living that life so many other people only dream of, even with all the sex and drugs, had kept them young in a way. That ain't workin', like the song says.

And there were a couple of film people I didn't know because they were the ones who put up money for movies, not the people in front of or even behind the cameras.

Rich people, in other words. There was one actress, but she'd dropped out of acting years ago after she married one of the rich guys.

Moe was this blues musician—guitar and piano. Legendary, to people who were really into that kind of music. And he'd played with everybody from the Rolling Stones to John Mayer.

Almost 80-years-old, he was. And came by the pimp clothes honestly since he'd been one. Knew Iceberg Slim and all those dudes. Amazing life, he'd had.

I just sat there between Gerri and Elliott too baked to do anything else. But sometimes I could not believe what I was hearing.

Like when this Ben dude goes, "Wasn't it that...Prince's Trust thing? Prince Charles' thing—the charity concert? We played the day before you, right?"