Good Rap, Good Weed and Good Company
22:45
As Kingson gave his brother dap before stepping out, Star was also stepping out behind on the same side.
"One for the road?" Branson asked Star, making eye contact with her in the rearview mirror. She paused on her way out of tye car, leaned over him, grabbed his dick and began kissing his ear. Then she whispered "No" in his ear before getting out of the luxury sedan.
"Yo, Star, it's a bit late, yo. Just come sleep over and leave first thing in the morning... or whenever, depends on you." Star had stopped and was half turned to Branson, the silhouette of her ass looking like half a basketball. "I don't feel right just dropping you off at the train after all what we just been through. Come on now, we can do better than that. I got a girl, you damn sure got a man - I won't try anything fishy." He crossed his fingers on the steering wheel. She walked back to the car with her bag of tattoo accoutrements.
"Don't try no stupid shit, Branson. I'm not in the mood to get pregnant." His phone rang: it was Naomi. "Again," Star added quietly, looking out her window, but Branson didn't quite catch that.
Fuck she say? Fuck is she talking about? Branson asked himself, his mind on Naomi. He half expected The Voice to pipe up but... nothing.
"Hey, ma, what's up?"
"Hey, Bran," Naomi replied softly, and sniffed severally.
"What happened?" Branson asked, his voice now a deeper and deadlier baritone. Star knew that tone. She glanced at him from the corner of her eyes.
"My dad is on life support, Bran. My mom asked me to come tomorrow or Sunday."
Shit! Branson had to work out tomorrow morning, after which he would head up to Mt. Vernon to take care of a few things. Well, they could leave in the early evening, at least, he thought, already leaping to several logical conclusions and calculating at light speed. He would then have to drive back to the City tomorrow afternoon to have dinner with Sis.
"We can leave tomorrow afternoon or in the early evening. My condolences, but let's pray he gets better. No giving up, aye!"
"Thanks, baby, I appreciate it. I'm spending the night at the hospital with Katrina. Get Right spends a bit of time keeping an eye on Imani upstairs." Neither of them wanted to dive into Imani's current state of being, for fear of jinxing whatever healing they wanted her to experience so badly. Everyone was just so on edge, and naturally so. "Oh yeah, let me tell you what happened earlier. So I was walking to the hospital, right?..." Naomi explained how the situation had been resolved and Branson's temper cooled.
"All things will get taken care of, I promise you."
Including your main chick? said The Voice in his head. He licked his lips as he felt it recede in fiery frustration, almost as if it were disappointed he had not gotten upset.
"I'ma come through after working out tomorrow morning with twin. Right now, lemme get to the crib. I'm on Airplane Mode."
"Okay, baby. Good night, and smooches!"
"Huh! Boomerang." They signed off and Branson put his phone on Airplane Mode, acutely conscious of Star's loudly inquisitive thoughts. They sat in his car in silence until they got to his neighborhood. He parked two blocks down, on 142nd, between Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Boulevard (simply called "Adam Clayton" in Harlem) and St. Nicholas Avenue (simply called "St. Nick"). She looked surprised but followed suit when he got out of the car. When they walked up to his crib, she then understood why he was parking down the street: the C-350 4MATIC Benz was parked out front of his crib.
Two cars would have been too much attention.
When they got upstairs, Star noticed that Branson's apartment was exactly the same, save for a new air fryer, waffle maker, shit like that. Branson went to the bathroom to take a shit and shower, after which Star did the same. Men acted like women did not shit during the day, if at all, and the old joke was that women held in their farts and shit during the daytime and spent hours releasing both at night when men were asleep.
What malarkey!
Women took shits! Anyone that had ever been in a serious relationship knew that.
Excretion was a purely biological, organic function and different organisms had different methods by which to rid themselves of waste matter. Simple as that. Branson threw the clothes he had been wearing now for two days into the hamper and went to his dresser, on top of which was still placed a rose gold Cuban link chain some round the way nigga had pawned to him earlier in the week. As a matter of fact, the nigga had been with Naomi that night but Branson had bagged her from the nigga. He had plans for that chain tomorrow. He put on some baggy shorts and a wife beater. He went to the toilet door.
"'Don't nobody go to the bathroom for about thirty-five to forty-five minutes,'" Branson said, mimicking Craig's dad from the first Friday movie. Star laughed behind the door.
"'You call that game?'" Star asked, mimicking Ice Cube as Craig, mocking his dad to his mom who, a minute earlier, before his dad came out the bathroom spraying air freshener, had told Craig his father had game. It was Branson's turn to laugh.
"Yo, I'm about to roll up some piff. Hurry up."
"Okay, I'm coming."
Branson went to the living room and started rolling a blunt of Purple Haze and another of Alaska White. Sitting in his main armchair he turned on the news to see videos and pictures of Kingson at court and elsewhere, smiling. The story went that "a police shooting of a suspect thought to have been involved in a crime last night went horribly wrong this morning. An irate police officer in plainclothes was earlier said to have shot at a suspect of yesterday's execution style murder on 113th Street and 2nd Avenue. It is believed that the shooting was in retaliation for the murder although no confirmation has been forthcoming. The shooting occurred directly in front of the 28th Precinct in Harlem and, allegedly, the plainclothes police officer was from another precinct in another borough, no less." Pictures and videos of a cordoned off 28th Precinct earlier in the day flashed across the screen. "The man seen onscreen, a lawyer by the name of Kingson Jackson, saved the day when he managed to disarm the disgruntled police gunman. Incidentally, Mr. Jackson represents one of the suspected killers of last night's murder inside a bodega and opposite the Johnson Houses, where the victim lived with his mother and little sisters. How the suspect managed to be released from the 28th Precinct appears to be the fault of the 28th Precinct itself. According to internal sources, members of an unnamed police task force earlier today raided the home of the suspect, Mr. Jeffrey Deaver on a -get this- faulty warrant."
At this point, Branson laughed and laughed and laughed. Whatever else the anchorwoman was saying was cut off as he switched channels a few times before settling on one playing classic rap and hip-hop:
(And yo, I still wanna battle)
Now here I go again so check the flow again try not to bite I fake a nigga wit' my left 'n then I sting 'im wit' my right
I'm outta sight look how I do it, you blew it if you dissed the, niggas on the microphone cuz I could bone ya sister
Word is born I'm on some new shit, true shit like this, grab the pistol, steal it shoot to give like, Kris
Kringle bust my jingle don't it make ya shiver, give a nigga what he need so he could bleed when I deliver
(What, nigga!)
A microphone check, what the heck?
I threw that in because I used to catch rec, wit' it, that's the time I hock, tuk, spit it
For Christ's sakes I made ya hit the breaks n' ya skidded, ya shitted, my style ya bit it, but y'all can keep that, cuz now I'm on some other type o' flow 'n best believe dat
Yeah 'n all dat, small cap, my format, da brains, honey, I'm back to wreck things but some things will never change, punk...
Kickin' da style I be da man tick tock, I jam like RZA, my crew is spindependence sendin' rappers to da pits, I could...
Kid, I swing it gon bust it like Bonecrusher Smith, bust up ya lip 'n yo puff up a spliff
So yo, who be like dat, wanna do me phat just to get boobytrapped, Jack, cuz my crew be strapped phat like dat
Bakeneffek, how's dat!
DAS EFX had been one of the best hip hop and rap groups when they came out, a couple of years before he was born, but thank God Branson and Kingson had loved old school as much as some of their friends growing up. Hip-hop and rap was so multifaceted and infused with so much talent - it seemed like the genre was going back to good lyrics but one could never tell. Branson loved being Black and would not have changed it for the world. He lighted one of the blunts as Star came into the living room, wearing the recently washed and ironed shirt Naomi had worn the other night that had fit her like a short dress; but on Star, panties were visible with the slightest move she made because she was busting out of the shirt: titties, thighs, hips and ass everywhere.
"You got something to eat, Bran? I'm starvin' like Marvin."
"Damn, my bad. Make yourself at home. You know where everything at." Her hair was still in an Afro-tail, combed to a huge blowout behind.
"You want something?" Star asked from the kitchen.
"Nah, I'm good," he yelled back, taking another pull of the blunts, while inspecting the other blunt. Suddenly Star came from nowhere and took the lit blunt out of his hand, took some mighty drags and went back to the kitchen, smoke trailing behind her and Branson's eye prints on her booty.
One of the best rap songs ever made by Jadakiss came on t.v., but he had never made a video for it so throughout the song was just a picture of him wearing the Infinity Gauntlet. Branson increased the volume when he heard the intro to the song:
Now if I catch you on the bed with the nine and put ya brains on the clock, then you'll really be ahead o' ya time
And a lotta niggas play flagrant, go to jail, tell, come home and you can't kill 'em cuz they agents
I done seen niggas change when they touch cheddar, you da movie, I'm da book: still much better
Now let's be real, everybody in the industry: either they gay or on E pills
Niggas better have da gun out cuz my album is like Suge Knight, y'all gon be scared when it come out
That's why I keep da heat 'n keep a Dutch 'n talk shit cuz my motha didn't beat me much
And there's a lotta niggas hatin' on me, but I'm just like coke dryin': there's a lotta niggas waitin' on me
Swallow ya pride or swallow da chrome and y'all pop bottles, we pop collar bones, nigga
...(Kiss Kiss Kiss)
Jadakiss - top 5, dead or alive. Branson finished the first blunt and began rolling the second. He was rapping along with the song while rolling the el. He had emptied the insides of the Dutch Master into the ashtray on the table after unrolling the cover wrap leaf and cracking the inside of the main body of the cigar down the line at which it was sealed. He precisely tore down the thin piece of overlap and then tore away the thin overlap itself after the cigar was open for surgery. Then he again licked the put aside cover wrap leaf to keep it moist. He also licked the inner cracked open empty body of the cigar and gently emptied the seedless Sour Diesel therein.
Branson then plucked the moist weed apart into smaller and more manageable pieces and, placing his forefingers tip to top in the blunt, on top of the weed, he expertly rolled up the body of the cigar into a perfect cylinder. He took no time rewrapping the put aside outer leaf over the inner skin of the cigar (the outer leaf made the cigar and the blunt burn slow, of course). The trick was to not wrap either the inner cigar body or the outer leaf too tight. Smoking a blunt that was wrapped too tight was the worst! Maybe Superhead could suck a cherry through a straw but not the average person. The second verse came on:
If you talkin' 'bout the best, and I ain't at the top o' da list, you ought to get shot in da throat
And if you talkin' 'bout ice, if we was on a cruise and I threw my chain overboard it's stoppin' da boat
There's a number 1 slot, well pardon me, Ach, but I'm hungry so don't make me get at you, Holmes
And I ain't never lost a step, still in the get, and I'ma Loc(k) so I know how to get in ya home
I'm treatin' rap like jail: I'm runnin' da house, so see me when y'all niggas wanna get on da phone
No, I don't wanna hear ya man spit, I been makin' records since niggas was rockin' Stan Smiths
Ya whole life is an if, my whole life is whatever I want I get
Give him 10 'n him 6, beat him down then fuck it - give him da whole clip
...(Kiss Kiss Kiss)
The nigga Kiss was extremely gifted with his lyrics, that was unquestionable. The smell of warm bean pies wafted into the parlor. He lighted the Purple Haze blunt first and tasted the quality of it - it was damn good! Star left the bean pies in the microwave and came to sit on a sofa near him. After several more pulls, Branson passed Star the blunt and the cipher continued until the blunt was finished.
"You know," said Branson slyly. "Maybe I could go for one of those bean pies after all."
She looked at him and sneered mockingly. "'Maybe I could go for one of those bean pies,'" Star repeated his words in a ridiculing manner. "I already put yours on the side, with a baby Sprite."
"Make it a 1 liter." She was surprised. Branson never drank much of anything this late. He saw her look and shrugged guiltily.
They ate and watched t.v. some. Then they smoked the Sour Diesel blunt, relaxed some more and started making goofy jokes about what was on t.v. It was 01:00 when Star decided to go to bed because she was thinking about leaving early. She got a spare new toothbrush, brushed her teeth and jumped into Branson's king-sized bed. They weren't exactly prayers Star said but more like affirmations. At the end of each day, she recited a list of want and needs, have nots that she called to come to her soon. Star knew that there was a Higher Being, the Highest Being, rather, but there were also intermediary Higher Beings hither and yon, acting like spirit guides or spiritual provisioners through life that provisioned you with blessings, knowing just where and when to deliver these blessings.
The mind in its greatness was able to metaphysically manifest healing on the body, so why too could it not call metaphysical favors in other aspects onto the person? After all, had she not been called to perform these tasks? Out of all the tattoo artists in New York, who would have done the job at a cheaper rate, why had Branson chosen to contact her? Well, treating people good also had much to do with it. Regardless of which type of relationship one is in, if you treated someone well, they would remember you well, and when certain opportunities arose that entailed your specific skills, those people whom you had treated well would also (if there was a shred of compassion, decency and gratefulness in them) - remember you.
Star then spent the next five minutes wrapping up her hair before falling asleep. Branson watched t.v. another hour, then went and brushed his teeth. His toothbrush he kept in a toothbrush case inside the smallish bathroom mirror cabinet. But maybe Star had seen Naomi's own toothbrush on the wall holder and figured it to be his.
Whatever! Branson brushed his teeth and got in bed.