Page 3 of 10,000 Hours With A Rich Menace

No friends.

Alone.

Stevie Raye

Five years later…

When the busdriver saw me running to the bus stop, tripping and falling on a crack in the sidewalk, I thought he would have some kind of heart to keep the bus parked and allow me to pick myself up from the floor, and continue to the bus.

So much for wishful thinking because his ass pulled away from the stop after seeing me laid out on Pitkin Avenue like a snow angel freshly fallen from the sky. Since he was pulling away anyway, I looked up at the sky while lying on the dirty sidewalk and silently asking my mother what was she trying to teach me.

It had been five years since I buried her, and nothing ever got easier. The more I tried, the harder everything seemed to be. Life was such a push and pull, and I couldn’t figure out the lesson in all of this.

Time didn’t make me more punctual or less messy. I was still the same Stevie, just a bit more lost than I had been before. I was always looking for a sign from my mother and could never find one. Anything from her that would tell me to keep pushing, and everything would work out the way that I needed it to.

Something that would make living without her easier.

Newsflash: It never got easier without her being here.

The last time I saw my father; he was in that church trying to be a father. I hadn’t spoken or seen my father since that day I left him in the church. It usually took me a while to cut people off. However, once I was done, the cord was cut. He was my father, and I would always love him because hewasmy father. However, I had no room in my heart for the selfishness. My mother put up with it until she couldn’t anymore, and I refused to carry that burden of trying to stay connected because I happened to come from his ball sack.

No thanks.

“Stevie, can you please get up off the ground… the next bus is coming,” Alex, my store uncle, peered over me, as I continued to stare up at the sky.

His brown skin, thick eyebrows, and headwrap stared back at me. Alex, though I’m sure that wasn’t his real name, had always been my mother’s favorite store owner. She would stop in for a coffee every morning before her commute into the city. He would give her conversation and then ‘forget’ to charge her for the coffee because he loved her conversation more than the three dollars for the cheap coffee.

Since my mother passed, Alex had stepped up as family. I loved Alex, but I knew I stressed him out daily. Not everyone could have the strength that my mother had when it came to dealing with me. Alex’s store was on my block, and his entire family took turns running the store. No one worked as hard as he did, though.

“What’s the point, Alex? I missed the bus, I’m late on my portion of the rent, and my phone should be going off in a few days.” I closed my eyes, becoming comfortable on a sidewalk that I’m sure a family of rats had scurried across the night before.

He held his hand out and I accepted his help on getting up. The back of my jean jacket was dirty because I decided to lay here instead of getting up and waiting for the next bus. Alex gave me a hug and then went into his pockets, and I shook my head and moved back, almost landing on my ass again.

Alex stabilized me before counting out money and forcing it into my hands. “You pay your phone bill.”

“You have a wife, children, and family to take care of… I cannot keep accepting money from you, Alex,” I protested.

He waved me off, something he always did whenever he didn’t want to hear my protest. “You are family, Stevie. We spend some holidays together and you babysit the kids when me and Rishi need the help. This is more for me than you…I need to keep an eye on you.” He smiled, while hugging me before giving me a quick push toward the bus stop, where the next bus was coming.

“Thanks, Alex. I will pay you back as soon as I get some money.”

“Nonsense… have a good day. Make lots of pretty nail art, huh?” He winked, and I smiled before paying my fare and taking a seat in the front.

Aside from my cousin Skyler, and her daughter, Estella, Alex had been the only family that I had since losing my mother. Well, my nanny too, but she didn’t count. Alex was at her funeral and had honored his promise to always look out for me. When my mother made him make that promise, of course I was a reckless teen, and she wanted all eyes on me when her eyes couldn’t be. Alex took it to heart and had been keeping an eye on me since she passed away, giving me that fatherly love that I often missed. When I moved out the neighborhood after my mother passed, he still kept in touch and made sure to see me twice a month.

I could count on him and his wife to swing by my apartment in the Bronx with food for me. They had welcomed me as their family, so they worried about me at times. Alex knew how my mother was, and how much she kept an eye on me, and he wanted to honor the promise he made to her. When my cousin’s boyfriend – that wasn’t her boyfriend – told her that he wanted to move her out of the Bronx and into a new apartment, I convinced Skyler to move to my old neighborhood.

Mario was gone before my mother’s coffin could become comfy in the ground. He said I had too much going on and he didn’t know how to help me through whatever I was going through. Guess I should be grateful that he was honest with me, and didn’t continue to string me along. I guess that was the sign I was looking for from mama all along.

I should have known the minute I rushed into work late that there was going to be some drama going on. There was always some kind of drama that brewed in Cindy’s shop. Despite all the drama, the shop was always packed out and always moving right along.

It had been a little over a year since I started renting a booth as a nail tech in Cindy’s shop. The booth rent was fairly cheap for this part of Brooklyn, and I enjoyed being around people. I’ve always taken clients in my apartment on the side.

After booking a client that clearly saw me with her man, I decided to stop giving my address out and rent a public space with lots of witnesses around. That was the last time I ever booked another client in my home, and the last time I ever spoke to that man.

How was I supposed to know he had a girlfriend who was pregnant? On our date he told me that he was single. With how big her stomach was, and how tightly balled her fists were, I could tell that she got down and would beat my ass. The baby would probably get a few licks in on me, too.

Cindy was sweet and she always looked out for me when I was late with my booth rent. She never made me feel like shit when I came late handing her money. She had to be in her early forties with a thick coke bottle shape, small waist, and a short pixie haircut.

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