The Company We Keep Read Online Free PDF

or me? That’s easy for you to say. But if I were you, I wouldn’t let them hear that,” Nicole replied, looking around the spacious living room, trying to price the expensive furnishings. On one wall there was a large cheesy painting of a man who looked like James Brown but was supposed to be an illustration of a black Jesus in dreadlocks and silver earrings. Nicole had a cheaper and much smaller version of the same picture on her living room wall that she had picked up at a flea market in San Jose when she visited her aunt Bertha last year. Who needed three couches in the same room? And they were the loudest colors in the spectrum: one red, one orange with green leaves jumping out, and one yellow. Each had clawlike feet and arms wide enough to hold a large baby. Had she not already known that this all belonged to a black man, she would have guessed it anyway. She had learned a long time ago that when black folks got their hands on some money, they made sure everybody in the world knew about it. Then they spent it as if it grew on vines in a backyard garden, buying ten or twelve of everything they didn’t need or appreciate. She gasped at an antique vase sitting in the middle of a brass leg glass-top coffee table. What did an ignoramus like Young Rahim know about antique vases? Other than his music, what did he know about anything else?
    Young Rahim moved about the party room, strutting and looking more like a peacock than a rapper in his red suit jacket, yellow silk pants, and white Panama hat. He was not a bad-looking brother by anybody’s standards. As a matter of fact, except for the shoulder-length dreadlocks, he looked like a younger version of Denzel Washington. He had nice white teeth, capped no doubt.But at least there wasn’t a gold one among them. That pleased Teri and Nicole. In their business, they saw enough gold teeth to replenish Fort Knox. If nothing else, Teri found these glorified dog-and-pony shows entertaining, to say the least. She was glad she had come.

CHAPTER 6
    A rmed security guards with walkie-talkies patrolled the area inside and outside of the rapper’s house. Dressed in somber dark suits, dark hats, and dark glasses, they looked like an advertisement for that old John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd movie, The Blues Brothers .
    Marcus Boggs was Rahim’s head of security and looked the part. He was built like an ox, had a face like an angry gargoyle, and a neck that looked like the trunk of a large oak tree. He towered over Young Rahim and most of the other guests.
    The guests were a smorgasbord of ethnic diversity. White people were gadding about with their hair in dreadlocks, braids, and even afros. Some even had the nerve to wear African attire. Black folks, male and female, were prancing around with platinum blond hair. There were others present whose ethnicity, and gender in several cases, could not be determined.
    Other guests included popular DJ Harrison Starr. He looked out of place in his dapper three-piece suit, but he was as cool and smooth as he looked. He was tall and solidly built, and he had the look of a man who liked to be pampered. His handsome coconut brown face was as smooth as the faces of some of the women present. He owed that to good genes, a balanced diet, and plain old luck. His slanted black eyes scanned the room and had beendoing so from the minute he’d arrived—a few minutes before Teri and Nicole.
    He was surprised but glad to see Teri in the mix. That’s when he stopped looking around the room, because he’d found what he’d been looking for. As far as he was concerned, they had some unfinished business to address. From the way he was smiling at her, and trying to steer her by the arm to a more private spot, it was obvious to some of the guests close by that he had a “thing” for her.
    “I’d like to talk to you before you leave tonight,” Teri told him. They did have some unfinished business, and she had a thing for him, too. He was the last man