My hand was resting on my thigh, nervously caressing a little box tucked away neatly in a corner of my pant pocket. My date for the evening was sitting on the other end of the table and was animatedly talking on the phone.
Well, not my date exactly – Chloe and I have been seeing each other for more than 3 years now. But this was where we first met, right here, by the patio of this cozy little café - on a blind date set up by friends.
We had just returned from a movie, a whodunit mystery and Chloe was going over the story with her mother, completely ruining all the suspense for her. Every time she updates her online status about a visit to the cinemas, you can be rest assured her friends will make themselves scarce for the next few hours.
And she’s always been this way – spontaneous, impulsive, excitable, and yet kind, compassionate and earnest. She likes to acts on impulse, and worry about the consequences later.
Good or bad, she needs to get everything off her chest, which is in complete contrast to me. I on the other hand, am known for being reserved, restrained, shy, even stoic under pressure, and yet, always brooding underneath the surface, which can often - lean towards a state of pensiveness.
From a young age, I saw myself as generally unlucky in life. And this only conditioned me to be wary of having too many expectations.
So, when Chloe came into my life it was like a breath of fresh air. It was as if Lady Luck had finally decided to shower her blessings on me. And I began to grow as a person, strongly fuelled by a burning desire to be a better man for her.
As she sat engrossed on the phone, she suddenly became conscious when everyone at the café began to stare at her. And I saw her jaw drop when she turned around in her seat to see me down on one knee, holding a ring.
Her eyes quickly turned moist as she immediately cut the call. She cupped my face with her hands and said, “Yes. Yes. Yes! Took you long enough!”
As we kissed and hugged, the whole café erupted into a wave of applause. Her mom’s return call remained unanswered, as the two of us stood there locked in a tight embrace. The mother would have to wait now to get to the rest of the story.
Just then, an elderly lady came over to our table and offered to take a photo to record this moment for posterity, and we were only too happy to oblige.
A couple of clicks later, we requested one more and decided to stand right next to the café’s large nameboard on the wall, since this was where it all began.
The old lady holding Chole’s phone moved back a little, so that she could also accommodate “PROVIDENCE CAFE” into the frame - to feature alongside the newly engaged couple.
Just as she was about to take the picture, a young kid around 10-12 years of age, ran into the elderly woman causing her to stumble and fall. I quickly ran towards her to help, while the boy merely stood and watched.
To my surprise, there was not a hint of remorse in him. He even smirked as he scooped up the phone when it bounced off the floor. This was deliberate.
Chloe noticed this as well as and looked livid. She walked towards the boy and demanded that he apologize to the old woman. He just stared back at her, the smirk on his face now widening into a grin.
“Chloe don’t….. get back!” I yelled, but it was too late.
He attacked her, and she hit the pavement hard. Before I could make another move, he managed to kick her in the stomach and face. And then ran back 20 feet.
When I got to her, I saw blood streaming down her nose, her face swollen and gums bleeding. A volcano of anger erupted within me.
I felt an unbridled fury simmering in my head, as I watched the boy laughing from a distance dangling Chloe’s phone by his fingertips.
Chloe clutched tightly at my arms and said, “Honey, don’t. He’s just a kid. Let’s just …..”But I was already half way across in pursuit, running as fast as I could. The kid was quick on his feet and zig zagged his way through the bustling sidewalk, casually pushing unsuspecting pedestrians and toppling trash cans along the way - all in an effort to slow me down. But I managed to keep pace with him.
A couple of blocks later, he took a sharp left turn to enter an alleyway and looked back to check if I was following. He then slowed down to a saunter, mockingly gesturing me with his hands that he was waiting for me to catch up, before turning a blind corner and disappearing from view.
The alarm bells began to go off in my brain. I was standing in a deserted alley chasing a kid, who clearly was up to no good. Every instinct in me warned that that I was walking into a trap, but my legs defied reason as I continued to move forward. All I could see was Chloe’s face in shock, looking bloodied and vulnerable, and I couldn’t shake that image out of my head.
I wasn’t even sure what I would do, if I managed to get a hold of the boy, but I continued on anyway and turned the corner. It led to a dingy parking lot where close to 10 people lay in wait. The boy stood next to a man seated on the bonnet of a car, unmistakably the leader of the pack.
For a second, I contemplated turning tail and making a quick retreat. But three of his henchmen were ready and had their guns trained at me.
I felt like a little rat that had been lured to the edge of a cliff, only to realize at the last moment that there was no way back. I simply wanted to bang my head on a nearby wall for recklessly putting myself in harm’s way.
One of the henchmen then walked towards me with his gun pointed at my face. He removed my wallet from the back pocket and quickly frisked me. He then caught the back of my shirt and pushed me forward to keep walking.
“Stand right there!” he said as I reached the middle of the parking lot, surrounded by gangsters dressed in oversized hoodies and baggy jeans.
“Yo, Jamal, what’s the move on this one?” he inquired, waving the piece in my direction.The leader of the pack got down from the bonnet and slowly stretched his limbs.He was a well-built man in his early thirties with heavily tattooed forearms. There were two people flanking him on either side. To his right, was the kid who lured me in, and still looking mighty pleased with himself.
The guy to his left, however, wore a worried look on his face and was about the same age as the gangster. He was dressed in a crisp white shirt, seamlessly tucked into sharply creased trousers, and paired with well-maintained Oxford shoes. He stood out in this milieu like a sore thumb.
“Jamal please …. don’t do this,” he urged, desperation evident in his voice.The gangster then casually threw his arm around the little kid and smiled at him. ”Rashad, what’s the matter with your brother?” he asked. “He seems all wound up. Is he always like this at home?”
The boy rolled his eyes and replied “Like, all the time! It’s annoying.”“Sunny, you catch that? Your kid bro ain’t givin’ you much credit huh? Someone’s really turnin’ a new chapter here,” Jamal quipped.
Sunny just dropped his head in silence. The weight of the moment hung heavily on his shoulders, and a sense of impending doom settled around the desolate parking lot.
Beads of sweat had already formed around his forehead, and he looked like he would rather be anywhere but here.
“Please Jamal” he begged, and that was all he could muster.
“What!” Jamal asked all fired up.
“You are one who came into my office today after all these years. You wanted me to go easy on your lil bro… let him break free from the gang…. right?”
“RIGHT?” he repeated.
Sunny bobbed his head a couple of times in silence.
“A’right, I hear you. I hear you!“ remarked Jamal fervently nodding in acknowledgment.“So here’s your shot. Take him out,” he said, pointing at me. “And then take your brother home. And that’s the end of that.”
I felt a bottomless pit in my stomach when I suddenly realized I had walked into a gang initiation, and that I was their lamb meant for the slaughter this evening. All this while, I had feared a robbery, accompanied maybe by a beating, but this was turning out to be so much worse than I had imagined.
“We ain’t got all night Sunny. You need to make a choice. So what’s it gonna be?”
“Rashad’s freedom for this man’s life. Ain’t gonna get simpler than that,“ Jamal declared.Sunny finally lifted his head and began to speak, the strain in his voice slowly fading away as he summoned the courage to voice his thoughts.
“Jamal that is not the way how things are going to pan out. And you know that, and you know that I do too. If I were to shoot this man, whom I have never met in my life before, it would anyway be recorded on a camera by one of your boys.”
“And it would be later used as leverage to get me to work for you, permanently. So how is this going to work?” he asked.
“Aright, you got me, I confess!” Jamal sarcastically threw his hands up in exasperation.“So, here’s what you can do. You can simply trade your freedom for your brothers by takin down that man. I don’t care either way. It’s the best deal you gonna get,” he said pointing his hand at me for a second time.
“Jamal, please listen..” Sunny began.
“Listen to what Sunny?” Jamal snapped back at him. ”You think I’m some kinda fool?”“This ain’t some whorehouse that you can come and go as you please. I got a rep to protect here. If you think my world is so damn bad, you should’ve schooled that kid better. And I ain’t gonna push him away if he lands at my doorstep on his own. This is on you, Sunny, for not holding it down as his brother.”
Jamal leaned against a car, casually bidding his time amidst the uneasy silence that followed. He was holding Chloe’s phone and kept turning it subconsciously with his hand while glaring at Sunny. The two clearly had a history that stretched back many years. I could also see that he was a calculative man, aiming to arrive at the best possible outcome in his favour.
“What can I do to make this right, Jamal?” Sunny asked finally.
“Come work for me. Be my numbers guy. I always knew you had the smarts.”“In fact, you was supposed to roll with me in the game, promote my product, and expand our operations. I invested in you, thinking you had the loyalty to rise with me and even sent you to a fancy school, all on my own dime. But nah, you had to suddenly catch a conscience outta nowhere, and look where it got you.”
“I paid you back in full for my education Jamal, and that too with interest” Sunny interjected.“This ain’t just about the money, you fool!” Sunny shot back.“I treated you like my own brother. You were my homie, and you turned your back on me and the crew.”
“All for what? For a piece of ass?”
“And where she at now? She’s dead and buried six feet under.”“Our man, the hot shot banker then walks away from the corporate scene only to hit up the same public school his girl used to grind at, now dealing with them tough kids from the street.”
“And homie’s been busy ever since, forever living under his dead girl’s shadow.”“And what do you have to show for it huh?”
“Your own brother’s knocking on my door, hungry for a slice.” Jamal’s gaze bore into Sunny, the weight of his words hanging thick in the air.
“We could’ve ruled the streets Sunny. Lived like kings. But nah, you had to throw it all away.” Jamal said shaking his head.
“Anyways, that’s enough chat for the night. Give the man his piece. Let’s get the ball rolling.”One of his henchmen then removed a sidearm from the small of his back and forced it into Sunny’s hand.
“I can’t go through with this Jamal,” Sunny said, finally locking eyes with his one-time friend.
“You don’t have to. You’re free to leave. But your brother? He’s staying. Got some big moves planned for him,” Jamal responded.
“Yo, young blood. You down to hustle and earn your spot?” Jamal queried out loud to Rashad. The boy fervently nodded back.
“You really need to leave my brother alone. Your beef is with me, and I’m here. You can take it out on me. Let him go. He needs no part in this.” said Sunny.“Stop wasting my time. What need to be said has been said. Now either get to it or leave” Jamal retorted, flicking his fingers to signal one of his boys.
A man went and stood next to Sunny, his gun now aimed just a couple of metres away from Sunny’s head.
“How am I supposed to shoot him? I don’t even know him.” Sunny protested looking in my direction.
“Oh, like you would have otherwise jumped into action if it was a rival? You’ve always been squeamish when it comes to confrontations. So, I told Rashad to pick a noob from the street, just for you. Thought it would help ease the friction between you two. You know, foster a bonding moment between siblings,” Jamal remarked with a smirk.
“But hey, you really wanna know about him? I got this right here.” he said holding up Chloe’s phone, and started scrolling through it.
“Well, well, well…. what do we have here ….Look!” he said turning the phone towards us, showing a picture of me and Chloe beaming, with her pointing towards the new rock on her finger.
“Our man just got engaged. Timestamps say Chloe and Marty here.”“Congratulations Marty!”“Cute couple!”
Sunny’s shoulders sunk further as he stood gripping a gun in one hand, his eyes shut in contemplation, while the other hand pressed hard against his temple as he massaged it. Things just got even more awkward for my only well-wisher in this isolated parking lot.“Enough with this shit”
Jamal said putting the phone away. “KENNY, START THE COUNTDOWN.”
“TEN!!” Kenny yelled from the side-lines.
“NINE!!”
“EIGHT!!”
Sunny slowly turned around to face Jamal.
“So this is how it’s going to go down. After all that we have been through, after everything my family has done for you, this is how you repay my mother? She took you in when you had nowhere to go. She clothed you and fed you when you were abandoned by your own folks and this is the gratitude you show to her, to her family?” Sunny’s voice was calm, yet ice cold.
“I DON’T OWE YOU OR YOUR FAMILY SHIT!!” roared Jamal suddenly standing upright. The sarcasm and the half smiles were gone, replaced instead by an intense anger that travelled deep. He walked towards Sunny and grabbed his shirt.
“When you wanted to call it quits, I let you go didn’t I. I never bothered you thereafter. Even when you lost everything and wound up a loser, I let you be and your family be. And what you expect for gratitude huh? You want me to roll over on the floor cos your mommy fed me sandwiches and lemonade for a few weeks?” Jamal asked, finally letting go off him.
“Nobody gets to leave my crew once you’re in. But I made an exception for your sorry ass. Nah, I don’t owe you or your family nothin no more. But you did me dirty with this cheap talk and I am pissed now.” Jamal said walking to and fro, his frustration manifesting with each step.
“SEVEN!!”
“SIX!!”
“SHUT YOUR MOUTH KENNY!!”
The parking lot suddenly became deathly quiet while Jamal took a moment to compose himself. He then walked over to his old friend and began speaking again.“Tell you what, terms have changed. Now you and your brother both gonna work for me. There’s no escape. And you still have to take that man down. If you don’t, you and Rashad both will catch a bullet to the head.”
“So what’s it gonna be Sunny?”“One for the price of two, or two for the price of one?”“I’ll let you decide.” Jamal finished, the street’s cold logic echoing in his ultimatum.
He then instructed one of his henchmen, Kenny, to go stand behind the boy.“But boss, he’s just a kid…” Kenny said expressing concern.“Do as you’re told!” Jamal barked at him.
Rashad looked bewildered and confused when he saw Kenny approach him with a gun aimed at him. He looked like he wanted to protest but decided to keep quiet for the moment.Two more henchmen joined the fray, their guns trained at Sunny, while another walked over to my position, aiming his weapon at me. One more took out his phone to film the event that was going to unfold.
Jamal then yelled “Kenny!” and the countdown started once again.“TEN!!”I knew my time was up, and there was no way out of this mess now. I looked at the man standing just a few feet away from me.“Sunny” I called out to him.“It’s okay” I said, nodding my head to reassure him. He looked me in the eye for a moment and asked me only one question,“Do you love her?”“Yes.” I said, and he silently nodded his head in acknowledgement.“EIGHT!!”“Please close your eyes, Marty,” he said holding his gun up at me. I could see his hand mildly tremble as he aimed the weapon at my chest.I clenched my fists into a ball by my sides and closed my eyes, waiting for the moment to pass. Each second felt like forever while the heart in my chest pounded like a drum.
“FIVE!!”
“Bro! What you doin? Pull the trigger!” Rashad exclaimed in exasperation.“What you waitin for? Hes’s got a gun to my head. Your own flesh and blood. And you are debating whether to pick me over a stranger!”
“FOUR!!”
“THREE and THREE QUARTERS!!”
“THREE and a HALF!!””
“KENNNNYY!!!
“THREE!!
“Dad always knew you was weak. He said you don’t have what it took to survive in the streets. I feel him now. Pull the godammn trigger Sunny. For once in your life, like dad always used to say be a man!!” Rashad was practically screaming now at the top of his lungs.“MAN UP SUNNYY!!!”
“TWO!!”
I head a metallic object suddenly drop to the concrete floor in front of me.
BANG!!
BANG!!
As I opened my eyes, I ran my hands over my chest to check if I had been shot, and saw Rashad’s body on the floor with a bullet to his head.
“What the fuck Kenny ….what did you do!” screamed Jamal rushing over.Kenny looked around with a confused expression on his face. “I don’t know boss…I was sure I heard a gunshot from behind me or somewhere.” he said still looking around.
“No you dumb ass, look” said Jamal clutching Kenny’s chin and pointing upwards.There was a sudden burst of fireworks in the sky. It probably startled Kenny, causing him to accidently open fire.
“How was I to know that boss …. It all happened so suddenly” protested Kenny looking equally upset.Jamal let out a deep sigh and turned around to see his old friend seated on the floor clutching at the lifeless body of his brother.
He sat with his head arched back, his eyes wide open and submerged under an ocean of sorrow. Everything around him had come to a standstill, as he gasped for air to come to terms with his grief.The gun he dropped to the floor by refusing to engage, still lay in front of him just a few feet away.
I continued to watch helplessly, even as I felt sick to my stomach, overwhelmed by an outpouring of guilt within me.And then just like how the high tide eventually give rise to the low, Sunny began to come to terms with the reality around him. In a split second, a madness for vengeance ignited in his eyes, and he swiftly reached for the gun.
But Jamal was ready and fired three shots in quick succession. The sound of gunfire this time being drowned out by the continuous explosion of fireworks that had by now become a constant presence across the night sky.
Jamal’s broad shoulders drooped as he stood by the lifeless bodies of his one time friend. He then quickly turned around and walked towards me with gun in hand.He caught be by my hair and yanked my head back, shoving the barrel of his gun into my mouth. As he continued to stare at me, I saw a tear trickle down the corner of his eye.
“What am I to do with you Marty?” Jamal asked me. “On any given day, I would’ve just taken you out when shit went sideways, but you’re knee deep in this mess now. A payment has been made to keep you breathin. A new bond has been forged with the dead and the living.”
I remained motionless not knowing how to react. One of his henchmen then urged him to deal with my situation quickly, cautioning the cops could arrive at any minute.
“Are you planning on becoming a problem, Marty?” he asked me softly. I slowly shook my head from side-to-side signalling no.“You walkin a tight rope Marty, I don’t wanna see you slip.” he warned me, and I slowly nodded in understanding.
Jamal removed the gun from my mouth, and put it back in his jacket. He got his guys to return Chloe’s phone and my wallet back to me.
“Well then, one for the price of two it is!” he said, before turning around to walk back to his car.As he moved away, my eyes darted towards Sunny and I felt my stomach twist into knots. I knew I had a huge moral dilemma on my hands that would leave me sleepless for many nights.
Should I walk away without looking back? Or should I try and fight to get justice for the man who’s the reason I am alive right now, which would also mean endangering the lives of all those who are dear to me.
‘What are you going to do, Marty?’ I asked myself.
As I contemplated my future, Jamal reversed his car and slowed down to speak to me one last time.
“HAPPY NEW YEAR!” he said, before driving off into the darkness.