Chapter 1

Call Me Crazy, but I’m getting really good at this, to the point that I can say I enjoy killing. It’s men who I get the most pleasure out of executing, stabbing and poisoning, among other things. But I’ve recently come to realize that killing a woman can be just as pleasurable. I guess that bitch, Officer Sissy Dickerson, would call this latest escapade a double homicide. But to me, it was just a simple case of some girl getting in the way; in the wrong place at the wrong time.

For this particular encounter, I picked up this producer named Barry Fuller at Nola’s, a swanky nightclub in midtown, on 52nd Street, close to Broadway. We didn’t actually meet at Nola’s, it was just a rendezvous that we agreed on the night before when I attended a music industry function at The Supper Club. Don’t ask me how I managed to be around all of those hotshot celebrities. Maybe it was dumb luck, if that’s what you wanna call it. But Barry slipped me a note that night while he made small talk.

“Don’t look at it now,” he told me. “It’s a surprise.”

So I didn’t. I forgot all about, it until I undressed later at home. In front of Barry, I had slipped the folded cocktail napkin into my bra, tryin’ to be all sexy about it. Huh. Was that really necessary, considering how easy men are to seduce these days? And why in the world was I trying to seduce him, anyway? Well, for one thing, I was horny, he was semi-attractive and, well . . . he was a producer after all. An accomplished one, too. He even won an award that night at the Supper Club. And isn’t it a girl’s dream to wind up with a rich, successful man?

Okay, so maybe it’s a far-fetched fantasy, seeing as how those so-called rich and successful men are so few in comparison to all of us single, horny women. Add to that, if you’re a black woman with issues, the odds against you are greater. Better have good looks to fall back on, or else . . . or else it would be a stroke of luck. A wait to exhale.

But me and Barry? It was just dumb luck. Like we stumbled on each other. I knew he was a pushover the moment I met him—half-stuttering, with a film of perspiration there on his brow. He even fumbled with the wad of money he held, or tried to hold, dropping it on the floor where we stood near the bar in the crowded club. He had a bit of a belly, he wore wire-framed glasses and his hair was cut close to the scalp. I liked his lips: full, but not so fleshy. Plus there was an instant when I imagined them on me. We had the same brown complexion too, so it didn’t take much to attract me to him.

This could turn out to be something big, I told myself. And I’m being honest when I say the run-in at Nola’s was, for me, mere foreplay. I had already made my decision the night before—I always do that when I see a man. Would we work out in the bedroom? Would he fit inside of me, or is it too big? Could we take this thing all the way to the altar? How would our children look? And then the “yes” or “no” decision would be made right there. No second thoughts. Sure, this was all hopeful thinking, but shit, I’m twenty-four years old these days. And my so-called biological clock is ticking. I can’t be a free agent all my life.