[ON HOLD] LOVE ME LIKE ART

14

— IMANI "BAMBI"L. CRAWFORD 🫦

I HEAR HER WRETCHED PLEA first and it adds a strong fragrance to the corridor. It sounds like danger might be afoot as I stand gallant outside my own apartment. I'm about ready to throw hands, if the call is coming from inside my flat. It isn't a piercing scream, a wail notched up in volume that might suggest she's the subject of the hunt but it is close.

It's a desperate lament, a whisper of breathy air.

A blustering roar that can rupture even the strongest foundations.

With a practiced hand, I turn the key to open the door and find Symone calling on something ethereal, something divine to save her. Save her not from demons and principalities that weave through the air. Her eyes are snatched to the ceiling, begging for respite from 205 Tone's stroke because it's too big and too strong and will bullet the rest of her into tiny shreds.

This is a sonnet of vindication. I knew her I'll meet you there later would be nothing but a busted rocket, crippled on takeoff. I knew she would be so wrapped in 205 Tone's schtick to meet me. I'm not mad at her for bailing. I'd no doubt do the same—shut out the world, if such an offer was slammed in my palm but not for 205 Tone.

Chris Brown's Under the Influence gushes out of my sound system and is cranked up to its loudest setting. Yet, it isn't loud enough to drown out her desirous squall.

It would be insincere of me to pretend that I'm both dismayed and disgusted by their public act of intimacy, like most people would be if they were stood in my stilettos. But, I'm not. This is what Symone and I do. We hook.

This is work.

Since her apartment in Olsen Street is dealing with a collapsed roof, she is working out of my living room.

"Fuck, Tone." She curses as she arches her back with what little room 205 Tone is giving her. "Give it to me, shit." Her eyes begin to roll back, lost in the wonderland like Alice, that is his cock. She is screaming his name, in surrender, and it sounds like it emanates from the pits of her stomach.

He has a hand in her inches and tugs at it aggressively whilst the other hand squeezes hard against her neck. She pleads like a sinner asking for mercy but she isn't appealing that he stops but for more. More of that damage, more of that destruction. I weep for her unit. It is worth a king's ransom to replace, no matter what 205 Tone might pay after all this.

"This my pussy, bitch." 205 Tone, in his sweaty galore, demands.

My mind threads back to Zach on that empty street. It's like an unforgiving memory that my brain won't shut down. It's like a reel of film, a baton of evidence reminding me of my impassioned crime. I gave him my number. I gave it out to him, without as much as a thought to the consequences or what this could even mean. I betrayed my own guard because I was bleeding with curiosity.

Abstinent. I've never met a man that assumed that vow. I've never met a man that won't eat off that plate. And so, I thought if we couldn't have electric, back-breaking sex... we could at least be friends rather than return to our lives as mere strangers.

"No nigga ain't ever given you this type of stroke, huh, Capri?" 205 Tone's lips grunt against Symone's perspiring form to collapse and draws me out my thoughts.

"No, n-fuck, no. Nobody's got me like you, Tone." Symone's lips tremble, like she has a motor mouth that hums at every little convenience. He thrashes at her wet slit that is being invaded by 205 Tone and his colonising trick dick. She is a little too deep, too occupied in his aura to notice that I've slipped in.