The Glamorous Life 2: All That Glitters Isn't Gold Read online

  After Calliope had gotten off the phone with the girl who’d called her—one of her brother’s girlfriends—everything had been a blur. She didn’t even remember the route she’d driven to the hospital.

  She told Annie, “I need to know if my brother is okay.”

  Annie blew out a pocket of the bad breath, like she had better things to do. “Do your brother have a name?”

  Ignoring the attitude the heifer was throwing, Calliope said, “Compton, Compton Conley.”

  A pause before finger stabbing at the keyboard. Another pause … then more stabbing. “Says he’s undergoing surgery. Multiple gunshot wounds.”

  Didn’t know he’d been shot more than once. “Is he going to be okay?” she asked.

  Annie was on her fifteenth hour of an eighteen-hour shift. “I’m not a doctor,” she said. “Just a tired nurse.”

  If the bitch don’t check her, ’tude, she gon’ be a beat-down, tired nurse.

  “Calliope?” It was the voice from the telephone call she’d gotten earlier. “My name is Neka.”

  Neka was gorgeous. She had met her before but today seemed to be different when she saw her.

  “How’d you recognize me?” Calliope asked, momentarily taking her mind off the nurse.

  With a bright smile that her red eyes didn’t match, Neka said, “You look just like your brother—well, I mean, he looks like you. Is he going to be okay?”

  Calliope cut a murderous look at the derisive nurse. Then gave her attention back to Neka.

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “All I know is that he’s in surgery.”

  Neka’s face contorted as if someone had stabbed her in the heart with a rusty knife.

  At that very moment, an athletically built guy with curly blond hair sidled up.

  “I’m Doctor Thomas, are you here in regards to Compton Conley?”

  Doctor Thomas looked more like a surfer than surgeon, she thought.

  “I’m his sister.” And all of a sudden, she surely knew that the doctor had bad news.

  “You might want to have a seat,” Doctor Thomas suggested.

  That bad?

  25

  They got off the elevator on the eleventh floor, one floor above the ICU. They walked down the hall to a semi-private room. A stiff cream-colored curtain used to split the room in half was drawn open. At the moment only one of the two beds was occupied. An aroma of a cleaning agent hit them in the face. Neka’s eyes began to tear up once they were fully inside. Calliope wasn’t sure if the rudimentary waterworks were from the industrial-strength sanitizer or Compton’s unfortunate plight.

  Resting in the first bed next to the door, Compton lay hooked to a network of machines and IVs. His eyes were closed, yet the machine above his bed, the function of which was to monitor the contracting and dilating of his heart, peaked in a perfect rhythm. Though her heart had skipped a few beats, she had to thank God he was breathing on his own.

  He seemed so peaceful. The doctor had said his condition was touch and go from the beginning, but Compton was a trouper. It would be a while before he got back to normal activities, but the worst part had come and gone. Thank God.

  Calliope placed a hand on the sheet that rested above her brother’s chest. She felt it rise and lower with each breath he took. Why did he have to be so damn hardheaded? she thought. Then she smiled at the answer. We are who we are.

  Calliope started to blame herself. If only she had not left the club that night. If only if she had made him leave with her. What had she been thinking? She knew better. Had she been there, this would have never have happened. She had let her emotions override her intellect, and now these were the consequences. This was all her fault. She searched her mind, wanting to find someone else to blame, but there was no one. Maybe Big John for instilling in them that they had to be each other’s keepers, but then again, they had decided that long ago.

  “I’m here, me and Neka are both here.”

  Neka squeezed a tear from her eye and tried her best to sound uplifting. “Hey, baby. I’m right here,” she said. “If you need anything.” Neka took Compton’s hand into hers. It was difficult for Calliope to watch her brother lie motionless in a hospital bed, but she pulled it together and continued to chat with him as if it were all good. Trying to make him feel better, the way she’d always done. For a few seconds the only sound in the room was a soft humming that was coming from the machine. Compton busted the bubble of silence when he opened his eyes.

  “He’s awake,” Neka said excitedly.

  “Compton? I’m right here, baby…”

  Compton’s eyes scanning the room smiled when they landed on his sister and girlfriend. It seemed as if the room brightened. Seeing his face light up was better than winning the lottery for Calliope. Then suddenly his hand twitched.

  “You okay, Comp?”

  More twitching. The twitching turned into jerking.

  Neka in the beginning stages of panic, turned to Calliope. “What’s wrong with him?”

  Calliope had no idea. The twitching had changed into violent spasms; his arms were flailing wildly. His body seemed as if it wanted to hop off the bed.

  “Help! Help! Help!” Calliope screamed for assistance. “Nurse! Doctor! Someone get in here!” Frantically she pushed the emergency button, over and over.… When help didn’t arrive quickly enough, Neka flew out of the room to see what was taking so long. “You are going to be fine,” Calliope said to Compton. She hoped and prayed it was true. Compton continued to shake and spasm as if he were having a seizure.

  Whatever was wrong with him—it was getting worse.

  Finally, a doctor stormed into the room, followed by a team of nurses. “Get back,” the doctor said to her as he took charge of the situation. Next, the doctor started barking orders at the nurses. One nurse filled a syringe with a clear liquid while another put some kind of cream on the paddles of a defibrillator. The doctor tore the gown away from Compton’s chest, allowing the space for the defibrillator to connect with the skin.

  The nurse shouted, “Clear!” And then they jolted him with an electrical shock. Compton’s body jumped from the bed before falling back in place. The spasms had ceased but there was only faint activity from the reader monitoring his heart.

  “Again!” The doctor ordered.

  They repeated the process in tandem. The other jammed the needle into Compton’s arm, while her colleague greased the defibrillator paddle for a third run.

  The doctor, noticing for the first time that Calliope was still in the room, shouted, “Get her outta here!”

  A nurse tried to escort Calliope out of the room. “Get your hands off of me,” Calliope shouted at the nurse. “I’m staying.” She was firm and the nurse knew it. The nurse glanced at the doctor, the doctor continued to work frantically, trying to save Compton’s life.

  “Clear!”

  Zap! Nothing.

  Nothing the doctor did worked. Nothing made the flat line on the machine pulsate again. Then the doctor dropped his shoulders and turned to Calliope. “I’m sorry.…”

  Nooooo! She screamed at the top of her lungs. This wasn’t happening. She broke down crying, and the tears would not stop. At that moment, she felt like she had lost everything. What did she possibly have left to lose or to live for?

  26

  Jean paid for the funeral; and no expense was too great for his heavy pockets. In fact, Jean thrived off the recklessly extravagant purchases he made in order to put Compton away like a top-tier baller.

  All of the guests were encouraged to wear white, and the custom-built casket was designed from a cocaine-white Lexus that was identical to the one that Calliope pushed, except hers was convertible.

  When Calliope had asked, why a Lexus, of all the models of whips he could’ve used, Jean said, “That decision was easy.” He looked directly into her eyes. “Compton always talked about how you rolled for him. So in his final resting place, I wanted him to feel like he was riding eternally with you.”


  The lavishness didn’t stop with the casket. The rented out Club Ice, another renowned strip club, and placed Compton on the center stage.

  Distraught beyond incomprehension, Calliope sat in the front row and watched baller after baller pay their respects to her little brother. Many of the men she had never seen before, besides a few from the club, but after viewing her brother’s body, all of them gifted her with envelopes stuffed with various amounts of money. Calliope was nobody’s fool and certainly not naive. She knew that it was really Jean that they were showing homage to, but the garish display of love and wealth, however feigned, was touching.

  A plethora of white orchards and white roses hung from every perch in the club. Most of the men drank Cognac, some from bejeweled pimp cups, while women sipped premium champagne from crystal flutes. Everything about this gathering was boss.

  A live performance by Scarface made heads nod, and evoked more than a few tears but nothing could have prepared Calliope for what took place midway through the proceeding. Dressed in a tight black dress, a late arrival sidled down the aisle to the front row, seemingly distressed. The woman sat next to Calliope and made a show of dabbing her eyes with a silk handkerchief. Unfucking believable.

  Calliope hadn’t laid eyes on the woman who had given birth to her for more than seven years until now. “What’re you doing here?” Calliope asked the question like a pile of shit would’ve been more welcomed.

  Another live performance took the stage, this time it was Plies.

  As if everything between them were tickety-boo, Shelly said, “Why would you ask me such a question?” Peering at the Lexus that held Compton’s remains, she said, “That’s my baby. Almost fifteen hours of labor.”

  This bitch is crazy, Calliope thought. Shelly had given up the rights to being a mother a long time ago. Out of curiosity, Calliope asked, “Where have you been?”

  Shelly perked up, already forgetting that she was supposed to be in mourning. “At first, I moved to Orlando. Then back to New Orleans, needed to get my shit together.”

  That was probably where Shelly was still chasing these men folks around. Calliope knew the answer; still, she asked, “Did you find ’em?”

  The question blindsided Shelly. “Find who? I damn sure ain’t find God, if that’s what you are talking about.” Calliope almost laughed in Shelly’s face and contemplated spitting in it.

  “Let’s cut the bull, Shelly. We both know you left me and Compton behind, so you could run behind some nigga you hoped would take care of you. We saw you. When those child protective people had us in the backseat of the car, we saw you standing in the crowd with the neighbors, looking at us being hauled away.”

  Shelly was speechless for a second. “What was I supposed to do?”

  “My question is, did you find him worth it? Was living the life of a trifling bitch worth abandoning your seed?”

  A moment passed. The tension was so thick that a Revlon relaxer couldn’t straighten them out. Jean, sitting on the other side of Calliope next to Moo-Moo, asked, “Are you okay, baby?”

  Calliope told him that she was fine.

  Finally, Shelly said, “Don’t act that way.” And then she tried to give some lame excuse on why she would have stayed in Miami.

  It fell on deaf ears. “I don’t want to hear that shit, really I don’t, Shelly. This ain’t the time or the place.”

  “You will never understand.”

  “Fuck you!”

  “I’m telling the truth, begging to be forgiven. If it wasn’t for that I would’ve never left.”

  Someone passed Shelly a drink. She emptied the flute in one tilt and then she took another flute and repeated that, and then asked for another one. The champagne went to her head and loosened her up so much, she had the gall to ask Calliope to introduce her to a baller.

  “Do your mother a solid.”

  The bitch had some nerve but keeping it real Calliope felt kind of sorry for Shelly. The woman was still in search of something that she’d never have: love. “I’m going to keep it twenty-four carat with you, Shelly.” And her mother was all ears. The catch in this place looked like they were worth a mint. If Shelly couldn’t find love, the dollars would do as a fine substitute.

  Calliope gazed into her mother’s avaricious eyes and said, “I would introduce you to all the shit you could eat. Just go somewhere and die.”

  A rejected and dejected Shelly dropped her head, with the dollar signs in her head falling to the floor.

  27

  Sixty seconds …

  Every time the skinny hand of his Rolex swept around its diamond-encrusted face, he figured, at least a hundred Gs exchanged hands in this spot.

  The problem.

  The exchange wasn’t rocking out in his favor today. He’d already dropped forty stacks, and (another glance at his Presidential Roley and a forty from his wife) it was 6:32.

  Damn.

  He’d placed his first bet less than twenty minutes ago and hadn’t a thing moved but the money. The good thing … Well, it was hard to find anything positive out of dumping car money in what seemed like a bottomless pit in the time it took to take a shower, but at least the evening was still young and in the blink of an eye things could change … for the better.

  All he needed to do was to not run out of money before he ran out of bad luck. Luck … yeah, right, seemed to not to be able to find him in this setting.

  Over the hum of slot machines, dice tripping over one another, moans of sorrow (from losing bettors), and woops of excitement (from winners), a melodic voice, which was owned by a long-legged waitress, offered him a drink, a watered-down vodka and cranberry. “Thanks.”

  The drink pusher only smiled and gracefully skated away in a pair of four-inch heels, and what seemed like a skater’s gold-sequined miniskirt. Her job was to get the gamblers intoxicated, so they peel paper to the dealers, tables, and slots—not to socialize.

  The name of the casino was Magic City. Lynx wondered if the waitress moonlighted at the strip club that bore the same name. He’d been there once. Then he thought: Magic City was a fucked up name for a casino. Tragic City was more befitting. He was beating himself up for not trying his luck at the Hard Rock Casino when the dealer, a short, balding dude with tiny hands, asked if he wanted a hit.

  He glanced at his card in his hand and shook his head. What he needed was for Lady Luck to drop her hot, charming ass “like it was hot” and give him a lap dance until he got his paper back up. But until then, he was on his own. It was just him and the cards.

  “Hit?” Either the dealer thought that he was hard of hearing or just moving too slow, because he repeated himself.

  Lynx responded by tapping the felt table, twice, near his hand.

  Fingering the shoe, the dealer removed the next card. Not the bent-over, brown loafers he wore, but the contraption to his left that the casinos used to hold and dispense the playing cards. In the time it took for the dealer to put in play the card he’d plucked from the box, barely a second, Lynx’s heart accelerated a half beat.

  Ten of diamonds.

  The dealer started to ask whether Lynx wanted another hit, but the amalgamation of frustration and melancholy telegraphed upon Lynx’s face preempted the query. In one smooth, practiced maneuver, the box man relieved him of his discarded hand and the two thousand-dollar black chips he’d wagered on it.

  A distant voice, from somewhere off in the casino, called, “Jack Pot!” while Lynx manipulated one of his last remaining eight chips, end-over-end, between the knuckles of his left hand. When he was losing, the exercise of dexterity helped him to relax.

  The chip: seemingly floating from the top of his fist, to the bottom, back to the top …

  Lynx had to admit, if even just to himself and no one else, eight grand was a lot of bread. Maybe he should quit, for now. Try his luck again at another time. Another day. Another casino … But tucking his tail wasn’t what he’d come to Miami to do. Contrary to the white lie he’d told his wife, Bam
bi—“This is strictly a business trip, baby”—before leaving her and their toddler daughter in Virginia, he’d flown to Miami for one reason … and one reason only: to gamble.

  He reminded himself: scared money don’t win money.

  Besides …

  His present thoughts eluded him and for the first time that night, his eyes left the cards.

  The distraction came in the form of a young lady posted up across the casino floor, about fifteen or so yards away. Painted-on jeans, fitted, jade, silk button-down blouse, short hair (Halle Berry short not Grace Jones short). Her skin tone was the color of baked cinnamon. But it was her eyes that quickly captured Lynx’s attention.

  They seemed to be homed in on a … target. Lynx tried but couldn’t make out the object of her rapt attention. Then, as if she felt his stare, she turned her head toward him. The look lingered, although not for long, but long enough to deliver a faint smile and leave an impression.

  An invitation?

  Most gamblers, if not all of them, are at least a little bit superstitious, and Lynx wasn’t of the exception. Luck—good or bad—can be contrived from any thing, place, or person.

  “Hit? Hit? Hit?” When the dealer offered him a respectful shit-or-get-off-the-pot glare, the floating chip froze between Lynx’s pinky and ring finger. He added it to the other seven, and then bet a stack.

  Like it had been scripted, an ace of clubs slid from the shoe, followed by the queen of spades.

  Blackjack.

  “Yes,” he said to himself, and the adrenaline started to flow through his bloodstream.

  Lady Luck may not have given him the lap dance he’d wished for, not yet, but as Lynx banked that she’d smile on him, she did.

  He bet the sixteen Gs all on the next hand.

  And won again, and again.

  He zeroed in on the spot where his good luck charm had been standing—good, she was still there. Blackjack after blackjack, winning hand after winning hand, he looked up again and tried to focus on the target before she escaped Lynx’s line of vision. This time, to his dismay, she didn’t invite him into her eyes. But Lynx sensed that she felt his presence all the same.