Cake: A Novel

Cake: A Novel

by D
Cake: A Novel

Cake: A Novel

by D

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Overview

The author of Got returns with another suspenseful work of “gritty street noir” (Publishers Weekly).
 
“There’s a new player stepping into the street-lit spotlight, and he’s one to watch. . . . Urban libraries have to get Got.” —Library Journal, on D’s debut novel Got
 
It’s less than six months after the events of D’s first novel, Got, and our nameless narrator has vanished off the Brooklyn grid, only to end up in Atlanta.
 
He’s enrolled in college, trying to live a normal life and escape the memories of his past in New York. Yet trouble is shadowing him, and he is about to be forced to make a life-or-death decision . . .


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781617750861
Publisher: Akashic Books
Publication date: 08/01/2018
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 180
File size: 372 KB

About the Author

Writing since the age of eight, D has never held a legitimate job in his life. His words, however, have appeared in VIBE and other urban publications. An Atlanta native, he currently lives in an ungentrified neighborhood near you. Kenji Jasper is the author of three novels, including Dark and Snow, one work of nonfiction, The House on Childress Street, and coeditor of Beats, Rhymes and Life, a collection of critical writings on hip hop culture. He has contributed articles and essays to National Public Radio, the Village Voice, VIBE, the Charlotte Observer, the Chicago Sun-Times, and Essence.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

"Watch this part right heah, nigga!"

You don't think Duronté has ever cleaned a real dish in his life. The whole place is full of napkins and plastic knives and forks, but he's got a .45 stripped into a thousand pieces on the coffee table, polishing every part as if it came out of his mama's womb.

He sucks on the roach in his left hand until it starts to burn his fingers. Then he tosses it into the ashtray on top of a pile of what looks like hundreds of others. There's a half-killed carton of shrimp fried rice on the edge of the coffee table. There's no way in hell he should be this skinny with as much as he eats. Those particular genes of his must come from the other side of the family.

The walls have wood paneling on them that probably got put in thirty years ago, back when it was stylistically the shit. There's a framed photograph of his mother, Mabel, a big woman with Duronté's name tattooed on her left breast. While most women get their tattoos in their teens and twenties, she got hers at thirty-six, right after he bought her a used car with money he'd put away after an extremely successful six months of selling 'dro to all the local wannabe high rollers, D-boys, and potheads who couldn't find a connect like his in all of the ATL. As it turned out, that connect was Duronté's old English teacher, who had been running a grow house out in Alpharetta for longer than either of you had been alive.

Your cousin, despite his success, makes a lot of mistakes. It's a three-man operation with no real muscle. His boy Meechie did three on an assault charge. That's his heavy hitter. If somebody put him to the test, that .45 on the table would be the best he'd have to offer up. And that ain't good. That really ain't good.

"C'mon, nigga," he barks again, his eyes still glued to the screen. "You gotta check this shit out."

You shouldn't be watching two guys fuck Ayana Angel on DVD, especially not with another man in the room. That's too many dicks in the same sitting for any straight dude. Him even asking you can be considered a violation of etiquette. But there's something about the way Ayana's tremendously round ass swings like a piece on a chain, the click of those suicidally high heels, that makes you say fuck it and plop down on the couch. You haven't had pussy since Brooklyn. You've been too scared, too worried that the life that 250 Gs built for you won't be enough.

"You know she live up in Buckhead, right?" he says, as if he's been plotting on finding the address. You can imagine him showing up at a porn star's front door in a wife beater, cornrows, and khakis, looking to get laid. Broads like her charge by the hour as a side business, a way to make up for the royalties she doesn't get paid from her bread-andbutter work.

You've been sleeping on this very couch for a week now. It's lumpy in the middle and reeks of old cigars and stale french fries. Your cousin's second mistake is that he deals right out of his own house. His crew takes the bulk of it to some satellite locations like the car wash he has a piece of on Old National and the ice cream truck that circles Piedmont Park in the summer. But if you want a brick, all you have to do is dial his traceable cell, make an appointment, and walk right up to the front door. It's a thief's wet dream. Luckily for you, this housing situation is only temporary.

There's a place on Palmetto, just a few blocks from here and your soon-to-be campus. Your name is on the deed. But the Hondurans won't be done with the renovations for another week or two. That's why you dug up your wild-ass third cousin after finding his mama's number in the file juvie services gave to you when you turned eighteen. You are their only living New York relative. But the real reason Duronté likes you is that you know how to act in the street, that you can point out the flaws in his operation, that you can help him to be more legit. You don't need to stay with him, but you want to. He is now the only familiar face in a world full of strangers. Some of the same blood runs through your veins. And for some reason that makes his couch more like home than almost any other bed you've slept on.

You told him about what you did for Star. You told him about the pile of bodies you left behind. From the look on his face you thought he was going to bust all over himself with excitement and admiration. And you used that to your advantage.

Truth be told, Duronté went to private school growing up. He just didn't have the grades to get into anywhere other than Georgia State. He takes, like, a class a semester so that Mabel will let him stay in the house rent free, the one she inherited from her mother while she was living it up in a marriage of convenience with some Polish guy in his fifties who couldn't get a visa because he had a criminal record back in the homeland. She's shopping at Saks Fifth Avenue while her baby boy sells sacks in the SWATS. That shit is kind of ironic when you think about it.

But you've been playing along with it all, keeping your mouth shut and saying please and thank you at every turn. If there's one thing Star taught you it was how to sell people dreams. Star had all kinds of muthafuckas walking in his door, some looking to do things for him, others looking for him to do things for them. The key was to make it seem like you needed them as much as they needed you. Use words like family and crew and patna and they'll do anything for you. You knew what it took to wear the crown. But you wouldn't have cared enough to do what it took to keep it.

When it came down to it, the shadows were a world where you didn't want to live. You had been a guest there way too long, and God had given you a free shot at going completely free. So you moved from there to here, from the capital of the North to the capital of the South on an eighteen- hour train trip that let you sleep better than you have since.

As the goal is to keep up appearances, you got yourself the lamest hooptie you could find, an economy-size '88 Honda CRX. You paid for four years of off-campus tuition in traveler's checks and made your down payment with a money order that turned heads when you bought it at that check cashing spot out in College Park. The rest is in a box at the bank down the street. You'll need a job soon to make your income look clean. Something quiet. Something that "normal" people would do. You're "normal" now, after all. You have to remember that.

Ms. Angel fills her throat with one dick and takes another deep into her pussy. You are both mesmerized. Maybe you will see her at the club or some grocery store, or even better, doing a feature dance run at Magic City or one of the other high-end strip joints in town. Sure, you can't afford her, and sure, there's something a little lame about going after what could literally be hundreds of men. But just there, in the grip of the fantasy, when you've got no girl and no friends and when you're in a town you know about as well as the back of a stranger's hand two towns over, she's a nice little diversion from the day-to-day bullshit. But dreams can only take you so far.

You stand up from the couch since your gracious host seems to be bracing himself for the cum shots due to arrive in a matter of moments. The door is calling you. You need to breathe.

Everyone around here still calls it Ashby Street, though the city has officially renamed it Joseph Lawry. They did the same thing with Stewart Avenue a bunch of years back, naming it International Parkway to try to make the world forget that the hoes used to work it and that Club Nikki's used to be right there. A lot of phat asses in this town. Too bad you can't have 'em all.

The drive-thru to Ms. Winner's, the chicken joint, is packed like sardines. They give you a gallon of sweet tea with ten pieces of chicken. Nothin' better than that shit when you've got the munchies and don't want to go too far.

There isn't a cloud in the sky as you walk up the hill, passing the college gym on the left. If Brooklyn College had a sports team you didn't know about it. Here they've got football and basketball and tennis courts and more black broads than all of Brooklyn combined. They took almost all of your credits too, which means that you can still graduate in four. Like the old saying goes: The Lord moves in mysterious ways.

Your cousin explained that there used to be a bunch of projects next to the I-20 underpass but that the school bought them and made them into affordable housing. The only sounds you can hear are passing cars and the little yells of small girls playing double dutch in a parking lot, their skinny legs moving at the speed of light. Soon they won't have time for these kinds of games as they'll learn to go after whichever man can buy them the most.

You and Chief had made a science out of dropping water balloons on double dutch girls from the open window on the fourth-floor stairwell back in the gardens. You liked to make them scream and curse even though they never saw who did it. It's crazy — just a few years after that, you were both fucking those same chicks and trying to cover them in something other than water.

You come up a steep hill past the broke-down supermarket and the community center with the park on the other side. You see drugstores and banks. A homeless man dances on a corner, hoping to score change in his Dunkin' Donuts cup. He almost seems happy to be there. Everybody seems happy to be here, like they just made it through a plane crash the night before or something.

If you were to head straight you'd find yourself in the no-man's-land called East Point, a place where you've heard it's good to have friends, where you shouldn't roll on the solo. So you don't. When in Rome you do whatever it takes to keep you and yours from getting your ass kicked.

You turn left onto Cascade. There's a man in a full suit and hat in ninety-degree weather speaking into a microphone about how the Lord is the only one who can save us from damnation. You wonder why those people think that yelling on the street is going to convince anybody. The only people you follow are those who live by example.

A half a block later you're entering what they call the West End Mall, a series of half-assed stores and shops that wouldn't pose a threat to any mall in Brooklyn. There's a wig shop and an athletic store, a 99-cent spot and a record shop. Plus there's a pizza place and a couple of stalls that have shit like incense and hair grease.

You wonder how in the hell this place has been standing for so long. You wonder what it's like to grow up in a country-ass city like this one. But you have to admit it's been good to see this many smiles, this many people asking how you are on general principle. It melts that cold feeling that's been with you ever since that last night in Brooklyn. It helps you to feel normal, even though you know in your heart that you'll never be normal again.

You're sitting on the kind of cake that could have you living it up at some club with some round chocolate booty grinding you. You could be driving up 85, the summer giving you a whole new layer of caramel. Instead, you park yourself on a bench and just watch the people go by.

There are shapely sets of legs and potbellies, perfect asses pushing out from stretch pants and poom-poom shorts, baby carriages with squeaky wheels and cooing kids. A mall security guard the size of two Biggies makes his rounds, securing shit that in your mind no one would ever try to steal. This is your new life, kid. You better get used to it.

"Somebody sittin' here?" she asks.

You look up to see a pair of eyes of the lightest brown, with a weave to match. B-cup titties are pushed together to make them look like a C. You can't see the ass but the hips are perfect, the toes French-manicured and painted a glittery gold. She's definitely from in-town. But that's not altogether a bad thing.

"Nah," you say.

She plops down, holding a small bag from the greeting card shop in the mall.

"So why you sittin' heah lookin' all sad?" she asks. Her voice is honey-coated with that real strong Atlanta twang. The vowels are extra long, the consonants extra short.

"I'm just takin' a minute," you say. "Lookin' at the people."

"Ain't no people worth lookin' at heah." She grins.

"Then why you sittin' down next to me?"

"You ain't from heah, is you?"

You shake your head.

"New York supposed to have a tidal wave or sumthin'?"

"What you mean?" you ask, surprised that she picked up on your accent so quickly.

"Seem like it's more a you down heah than us."

"A decent house might cost you close to a million in Brooklyn."

"Do it come with a pool?"

You laugh, not knowing whether or not she's serious. But from the looks of her, you're pretty sure she's never been above the Mason-Dixon. She may have never even been out of this neighborhood. But she still seems pretty smart, all things considered.

"Nah," you answer. "But these days you can usually sell it for more than you paid. Problem is, most people ain't got a million dollars."

"I know that's right," she says.

You glance down at her purse and see that she smokes Parliaments. Anything above Newports says you've got class. As she adjusts the heel on one of her shoes, you can see they're from Nine West. Nothing to write home about. But at least her wedges didn't come off some discount rack.

"What's your name?" you ask her.

"Jennifer."

"Jenifa oh Jenny," you say, remembering that De La Soul song Will used to play all the time.

"What?"

"It's a song my boy used to play."

"Oh, you mean the De La Soul one?"

You nod.

"My sista played that shit to death back in the day. I think she used to sing it to me when I was little."

"How old are you?" Anything above seventeen keeps you away from a case.

"Twun-ee," she says. "So what you 'bout to do?'

"Head back to my cousin's."

"And where he stay at?"

Something inside of you flips on the caution switch.

"Not far. What about you?"

She thinks on it for a moment. "Not far," she grins.

"Then we should get up sometime."

"We should."

She writes her number on the back of a store receipt. Her cursive is pretty. Or prettier than yours at least.

"What time you gonna be home?" you ask.

"If you call I'll answer, no matter where I'm at."

You tell her your name and you shake hands like it was some kind of a business meeting. She gets up before you, probably just to show you the ass you've been trying to peek at. It's like a globe, the kind of thing that would give Will a heart attack, even if he can't fuck her anymore.

For a moment you daydream about a strip of thong resting between her ass cheeks, about what it would be like to grip them while she's on top of you. You want to know how she sounds when she comes. You want to feel those glittery nails grinding into your back.

Then you think of Her and try to push those thoughts away. The same shit can't happen twice — but that doesn't mean you're not paranoid that it still might.

CHAPTER 2

"And we made it, muthafucka!" Duronté screams, a little too excited for winning a single hand of Spades when he's still down 200 in a 500 game.

Meechie is a 5'10" dude with a crazy Afro and a slight limp from when he got hit by a car when he was eight. He's the color of peanut butter and doesn't talk much.

Alonzo is putting himself through grad school by working in the street. So when he's not making runs for Duronté, he's writing papers and hitting the books. You get along with him best for obvious reasons.

Jamar is only seventeen, about to start his last year of high school. He's the driver. He never carries any product, or a pistol, or anything else. He's strictly transportation. He's also your partner in the game, and a damn good one at that.

"Don't tell me you needed your New York cousin to come down South and spank yo' ass," you joke.

There are bottles of Icehouse on the table and a nice-sized blunt is going around. The Falcons are playing Detroit in the preseason but no one is paying the game any mind.

"Fuck you 'dun sun' ass, nigga!" your cousin yells back, his words starting to slur.

"Hey, hey, y'all family," Alonzo interrupts, trying to sound like Tré from Boyz N the Hood.

Everybody laughs. Then Duronté's phone rings.

You can tell it's business because playtime goes out the window. Either he's got a buyer on the line or it's Keyshia Cole saying that she ain't got no panties on. Either way he's pacing.

"I don't know if I can get it that fast," he says into the receiver. The fingers on his other hand fidget. "I'll call you back in a hour, all right? Out."

"Fuck is up?" Alonzo asks.

"You know Reggie over in Candlewood?"

Everyone in the room nods but you.

"Nigga says he's on short, something about his boy gettin' pulled over for a DUI with a good five pounds in the trunk."

This story is the kind of stupidity that makes your skin crawl. But this ain't your operation. So you only speak when spoken to as far as the business is concerned.

"Fuck that got to do with you?" Jamar asks.

"He wants to buy five off me."

"Shit, do you have five?" Alonzo asks.

"It's all we got," Meechie says.

That spider sense of yours gets your head a tingling. The way you look at it, this is all a little too convenient.

(Continues…)


Excerpted from "Cake"
by .
Copyright © 2008 Kenji Jasper.
Excerpted by permission of Akashic Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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