Free Power & Beauty by David Ritz, Tip "t.i." Harris

miss. This designer just did a veggie restaurant in Greektown. It’s amazing. You want to ride over and take a look?”
    After our sex marathon, I just wanted to sleep.
    “I’m a little tired,” I said, my eyes half-closed.
    She kept talking as my eyes kept closing. The next thing I remembered was waking up and seeing her note.
    I walked around the apartment aimlessly. Staring out the big window at the lake and gray sky, I felt like I was still dreaming. I went to the refrigerator, but aside from a bottle of water, it was empty. After everything that had happened, I felt a little empty.
    After getting beat for class president, I had felt angry and down. My spirits lifted when Slim got even angrier than me and sent me to Chicago. I was leaving one world and entering another one. That was great. But what was this new world? Seeing Irv get shot by the crazy woman made me a little nuts. Reading all the stories about it in the paper the next day was exciting but confusing. I was the “unidentified man” who pushed down Evelyn’s arm. In one photograph you could see the back of my head. The articles were all about Wasserman’s shady past and the fact that, despite his notoriety, the mayor was honoring him. It talked about his half-dozen brushes with the law and, in every instance, how he managed to avoid conviction. It talked about his so-called underground empire. All this had me curious.
    Then when I met the man I didn’t know what to think. He didn’t talk like your average guy. He jumped from one subject to the other, and they didn’t always seem to connect. Then there was Judy, looking me over like I was a piece of meat. And then Irv pushing me in Judy’s business. And then Judy pushing me in her pussy. And here I was, the morning after, looking out over a lonely lake while I sipped on a plastic bottle of water. What was I supposed to think? Where was this Chicago thing going to take me? I could call Slim, but I already knew what he’d say. “Sit down. Be cool. Irv knows what he’s doing.” So I turned on the TV. The Cubs were playing the Braves. The Braves were killing them. I was glad.
    I guess I dozed off because the postgame show was on when my cell blew up.
    It was Judy. “You gotta get a car,” she said. “You can’t stay in Chicago without a car.”
    “I figured as much.”
    “Go to Hertz and get a car with a GPS. I’ll text you Daddy’s account number and the address of the salon. I’m at the salon now. Be here by four. Bye.”
    Judy didn’t waste no time. I didn’t either. By four, I was in a Chevy Impala, pulling up to a storefront on one of those streets on the south side of the city transforming from hood to hip. There was a coffee shop called Spilling the Beans, a shoe shop selling fresh sneakers from Japan, a clothing boutique named Past Future Passions, and, at the address Judy had given me, an empty store with a sign above it: HAIR IS WHERE IT’S AT . I looked inside. The lights were off and no one was there. I saw a White Castle a couple of blocks away. I walked over and ordered a cheeseburger and fries. I was famished. I wolfed down my food and went back to the store. Still no one. I stood there in front, just checking out the neighborhood, a strange mix of old and new. Some of the older black women looked like they had lived there forever. They carried shopping bags and watched their children to make sure they didn’t run into the street. There were also black businessmen and businesswomen in tailored suits hurrying to the subway station. Next to a bookstore specializing in African-American literature called Black Words was a run-down Laundromat.
    Finally, a Porsche pulled up. Judy got out the passenger side with a plastic glass of wine in her hand. Today she was dressed in white—tight white jeans, tight white top. A hulky white guy got out from behind the wheel. He was a little taller than me. He had blue eyes, wide shoulders, big biceps, and a crew cut. To me, it looked like