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“Yes. After my father got really sick and he had to stop working—his last contract was with your firm—he asked me if I wanted to do something crazy,” Malik said. “I was fresh out of college, bored, and angry. I said yes.”
“What did he do?”
“He sold everything we owned on eBay and we started putting the plans together for the Freedom Project,” he said. “At first it was supposed to be a place where brothers could come and find work. But then some sister said they wanted to get help too. Then Baba turned up one day. Then I started teaching a history class. Then my father died.”
Tamia and Malik would never make it to the live food bar and they would never discuss a thing about his case that day. While days of interviews and information gathering the next week would provide Tamia with more than enough information she’d need to handle any surprises at Malik’s hearing, where she was still trying to convince him to plead not guilty, on that unseasonably hot Harlem afternoon, the attorney and the client decided to stay in the coolness underground and just ride the subway all day. They were talking, building, vibing, and just stealing glimpses at each other as the world seemed to stand still for a second.
“Yo, let’s get off here,” Malik insisted, holding the train door open at one of the stops. “My man Badu sells incense down here. I could get some stacks for the store.”
Following behind Malik as he searched the station for his friend, Tamia chuckled at the idea of Malik’s knowing someone named Badu who sold incense. Tasha was a mess, but the woman was dead-on about this one.
“Brother Badu! What up, fam?” Malik hugged a man wearing a long white robe. He was carrying a crate of every kind of incense Tamia had ever seen. All colors and sizes and lengths.
“Blessings from Jah,” Badu said, bowing to Malik.
“Ashay. Ashay,” Malik said, bowing in return. “Brother Badu, this is Tamia.”
“Greetings, sister,” Badu said, bowing again, but this time his eyes were focused on something behind Malik and Tamia.
“Greetings.”
Tamia turned to see an overweight Asian woman with pigtails, dancing with a hula hoop. No music, no crowd, no reason. Dressed in a blue and white sundress that made her look like Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, she was dancing and hopping in and out of the hula hoop.
Tamia smiled at the odd scene, half listening to Malik and Badu talk about a conscious-living Web site.
“Who is she?” Tamia asked without turning around.
“They call her Ms. Lolly,” Badu explained, his energy turning to agitation.
“She’s funny,” Tamia said.
“Yeah, and she’s ruining my action,” Badu said. “I just wish she’d move somewhere else. Find another station.”
“She looks harmless.”
The woman removed the hula hoop from her waist and started jumping through it like a jumprope. The pigtail wig she was wearing almost fell off. It was New York culture at its most real and Tamia could not look away.
“She rakes up on the weekend,” Badu complained. “She doesn’t even have music. What’s the point? Man, people in New York will look at anything.”
Tamia nodded. He was right.
?
While Tamia was wrapping her mind around an ancient rite, Tasha was trying to wrap her body in an ancient girdle. The rumors were all true: Dr. Miller had the hands of perfection. And just two weeks after her surgery, Tasha could see little swelling. In fact she was already two sizes smaller than she’d been when she’d gotten on that table. Her stomach was almost caved in and she could actually see through the middle of her legs when she looked in the mirror. It was a pure miracle and she was still achy in some places and bruised in others. Tasha’s only regret was that she hadn’t gotten her ankles and cheeks done.
The downside of the deal was that to keep the swelling to a minimum, she had to wear a special full-body girdle Dr. Miller ordered from Brazil. The stretched-out rubber band was like a Slinky around her body; it formed her shape into the perfect hourglass, but there was a lot of heavy lifting involved and each time Tasha struggled to get in and out of the thing, she considered leaving it on for the rest of her life.
Wrestling to get the girdle back up over her newly flat belly in the bathroom stall in the lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel, she resigned that she would have to cut a hole in the crotch when she got home. Then she could use the bathroom and not have to take the thing off. Next, she’d figure out how to take a shower.
&nbs
p; “Everything okay in there?” Lynn asked when Tasha finally walked out of the bathroom, scratching at the tips of the girdle.
“Of course,” Tasha answered. “I just needed to fix my eye concealer.”
“Eye concealer?” Lynn looked amazed. “What would you need any of that for? You’re beautiful. Your eyes are so sexy.” She winked at Tasha playfully.
“Thank you,” Tasha said, nearly purring at the string of kind words. She’d heard so many compliments from Lynn over the weeks they’d been drinking and eating and shopping in the city, she was really growing to like the girl. And not just in a casual gassociates27 way. Tasha thought maybe she was really making a new friend.
