CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
2000- Slipping Part II
So, here we were- less than a month into the 21st Century and I already had a laundry list of red flags and obstacles:
Mundo was gone. He had not called me once. That phone he gave me-apparently, that was so Cabrón could keep tabs on me. What was that about? And why had he disconnected his phone?
Biz and Luciano had moved into my apartment and taken over my living room as command central of what I quickly figured out was a fairly sophisticated (for these two knuckleheads, at least) social security and EBT card scam. They tried to explain it to me once, but I couldn’t understand any of it. All I knew is it gave me an extra $500 a week, and that they were always in my house.
Cabrón was still playing the background, but he’d call to check up on me and every week or so he’d show up to take me along on one of his increasingly elaborate “errands.” And he’d always hit me off with three crisp hundred dollar bills and a half ounce of the PanStar good shit. It was weird as fuck, but I honestly kind of enjoyed our time together. I wondered if word was getting back to Mundo. I’m sure it was. But I was also pretty sure Mundo either wanted it to be this way or didn’t care at all what ‘Brón and I did together. I had to squash that thought way, way down into the darkest corner of my brain, because the truth hurt too much.
But when you put the positives down on paper it all sounded pretty fuckin’ fantastic:
I had enough guaranteed money to pay rent and utilities.
I was given free drugs.
I had money for food.
Biz and Lucci and the thousand and one idiots they had running in and out of my crib offered built in companionship and a distraction from the dark thoughts threatening to sink me. Cabrón offered excitement and I really wanted to fuck the shit out of him, even though I could tell he did not want to fuck me. But we could work on that.
I was slowly building my side hustle back up- it was a very grassroots dominatrix outcall service. I’d charge between $150 and $200 an hour (cash only) to show up at some guy’s house/apartment/office and do x/y/z. I generally got at least one client a week, but in its current state, my business was not a hugely profitable enterprise. But it was something I built myself, and no one could dictate how I ran it. And I made sure that those guys had no clue about it.
I was 22 years old living in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn.
In theory, I should have been chilling. Instead, I was illing.
