Dodson went to 7-Eleven and bought grapefruit juice to get the crack taste out of his mouth. He dreaded going back to work but he was the sole breadwinner at the apartment now and it pissed him off. He should have been rolling in dough. In the two weeks since the Ruby’s job, they’d hit the Sunglass Emporium, Tight Lines Fly Fishing, and Luogo Di Lusso, a shoe store in Studio City. The take was crazy. Three hundred pairs of Oakleys, Ray-Bans, Maui Jims, and Michael Kors, none of them under a hundred dollars, most of them closer to two. Dodson was skeptical about Tight Lines until he found out a Sage four-piece carbon-fiber trout rod weighed an ounce and a half and sold for five hundred and ninety-five dollars. Dodson said for five hundred and ninety-five dollars he could eat at the Red Lobster every day for a month and never get his feet wet. They took twenty-nine rods. The shoe store was a diamond mine. Jimmy Choos, Pradas, Valentinos, and a bunch of other designer brands at five-six-seven hundred dollars a pair. Dodson wasn’t getting paid because of eBay.
“EBay?” Dodson said. “The fuck you talking about eBay?”
“Marcus had a seller’s account,” Isaiah said. “PayPal too, for buying his tools. I got the passwords.”
“Fuck the passwords. That shit takes forever.”
“You have to be patient.”
“Yeah, well, come on down to the House and tell me about patience, in there all day with a bunch of messed-up niggas ought to be wearing that Frontline and where the fuck are you? Sittin’ in here playing with your laptop. Let me call my boy Pook. He’ll scoop up the sunglasses and pay us cash today.”
“No middleman.”
“Why the fuck not? EBay’s a middleman.”
“EBay can’t roll over on us. The only ones who can do that are you and me.”
Dodson stood idly by while Isaiah jumped headfirst into the eBay world, writing detailed item descriptions, checking the comps, setting the prices, keeping track of sales on a spreadsheet. He tripped out on the photography. Dodson watched him fuck around with a fly rod, standing it upright, laying it sideways, shooting close-ups.
“How many pictures you gonna take of a stick?” Dodson said.
Despite the excellent photography sales were slow. People bought things one at a time. The shoes, the sunglasses, the fly rods. Isaiah thought the dog supplies would sell fast but there was a lot of competition and the prices were really low. Made you think everybody was ripping off pet stores.
“Let me help you with the eBay stuff,” Dodson said. “Make the shit go faster.”
“I got it,” Isaiah said.
“I know you got it, just show me what to do.”
“I said I got it.”
Dodson was tempted to knock Isaiah off his high side, put a knot on his head, put the boy in his place. The only reason he hadn’t done it already was because Isaiah seemed breakable, like a steering wheel lock sprayed with Freon. Hit him and he’d shatter into pieces and Dodson would never see real money. Another irritation, Isaiah kept adding tweaks. Defogging pads for the sunglasses, flashlights with wider beams, and fishing clothes he’d picked up at Tight Lines. Pants and shirts in pastel colors, the kind rich guys wore bonefishing in the Bahamas. Dodson tried them on with the ski mask and sunglasses. “I ain’t wearing this shit,” he said. “I look like some kinda homo terrorist.”
“They’re lightweight, breathable, and they dry fast,” Isaiah said. “You can wear your own clothes if you want to.”
“I can? That’s big of you.”
Isaiah was reluctant to show Dodson the storage locker but he had no choice. They had to keep their growing inventory somewhere. The first time Dodson saw the locker he said: “Damn. What’d your brother do, run a hardware store?”
Marcus kept his tool collection in here. The drills, saws, grinders, impact wrenches, sanders, and nail guns were displayed on a peg board like a gun collection. Likewise for the dozens of hand tools. A table saw and a miter were on the long workbench. Storage bins on shelves held nails, nuts, screws, washers, and such. The floor-standing tools were in their own area.
“You’ve got to have the right tool,” Marcus said, trying to make the collecting sound practical. “You don’t have the right tool you’ll do half the job in twice-why’re you laughing, Isaiah? Something might come up when I need this.”
“Need it for what?” Isaiah said. “Fixing the space shuttle?”
Isaiah saw something in Marcus’s eyes when he held a new tool in his hand. Turning it over, inspecting it like there were clues on it, seeing if the heft felt right. Then he’d smile like this was the one he was looking for, the one that would complete the set and fill the empty space in his toolbox. It took a week for the tool to become just another tool and another week for Marcus to be online searching for something else.
The locker’s roll-down door was halfway up, the space divided into sunlight and dark. Isaiah was on the dark side, sitting at the workbench looking at sales figures on his laptop. He liked the busywork. It kept Marcus out of his head and Marcus was close by, waiting to sneak up behind him and walk on his heels and ask him why his little brother whom God had blessed with a gift had turned into a common thief.
Dodson ducked under the door looking fed up and pissed off. He tossed a roll of cash on the workbench.
“What’s this?” Isaiah said.
“Your cut for the hair extensions,” Dodson said. “I sold ’em to some beauty shops. Lady said we ever get more to bring ’em on down.”
“I said no middleman.”
“I know what you said but who the fuck are you?”
“What if the hairdressers get busted?”
“What are they gonna say if they do? A nigga we don’t know walked in, sold us some extensions, and walked on out again? I ain’t no new jack at this. I was criminalizing while you was in Miss Petrie’s class raising your hand every two seconds.”
Isaiah was picking up in the living room, throwing Dodson’s laundry into a pile, wiping off the coffee table, and taking dirty dishes back to the kitchen. Dodson had been scrupulous about keeping the place clean but lately he’d been slacking off. “Do you think you could clean up after yourself?” Isaiah said.
“I will, nigga, damn,” Dodson said, coming out of the bathroom. “I just got home a minute ago.” Dodson was wearing a new Clippers jersey, new Diesels, and a pair of patent leather MJs that looked like spats. “Oooh shit I’m looking good,” he said. “Bitches gonna be all over me.”
“You shouldn’t buy all that stuff,” Isaiah said. “It attracts attention.”
“I’m trying to attract attention.”
“What are you gonna say if somebody asks you where the money’s coming from?”
“You need to step back on yourself, Isaiah. Stop stressin’, take a day off, smoke a joint, go get some pussy ’fore you forget what it looks like. Enjoy the fruits of your labor.”