For the Love of Money by Omar Tyree Read Free Book Online

poetry, or even acting out in Hollywood where the stars were, then I wantedto have that back up plan, to teach on the side. In hindsight, I guess I wasn’t as confident as I thought. I didn’t want to become a damn fool and end up broke and struggling out there for some dream. Maybe that’s what I was waiting for, a final push to give me the courage to go for it. We all need that extra push sometimes.
    As for stardom in New York, where my book was being republished, I never even thought of going up there. That place was like an oversized Philadelphia to me. I went there a few times and was not impressed. It wasn’t the kind of place where you could reinvent yourself at a higher level. I needed to go much farther away from home anyway, so that I could
feel
like I went somewhere. From Philadelphia, New York was only a hop and a skip.
    I had never been to Los Angeles, so I didn’t know what to expect. I just had to make sure that I stayed away from red or blue outfits, and that I didn’t talk too much about my East Coast home. That coastal thing, started up by rap music rivalries, was a damn trip. I wanted to make sure that I was better safe than sorry out there. I loved Tupac
and
Biggie; Death Row Records
and
Bad Boy, but they
all
needed to grow up and stop acting like... N-I–double G–As. They were too talented and popular for that.
    So I pulled out my phone book and dug up my girl’s parents’ phone number in Baltimore, and made the call to get in touch with her. She gave me her parents’ home number in Baltimore because she knew it would take her a while to get settled out in LA, and it was no sense in giving out numbers that could change.
    â€œHello,” her mother answered the phone in Baltimore. I
assumed
it was her mother, but just to make sure, I kept my introduction simple.
    â€œYes, this is Tracy Ellison. I went to Hampton with Kendra Dayton.”
    â€œOh, yeah, that’s my daughter.”
    Good,
I thought to myself. “Oh, well, how do you do?” I asked her.
    â€œI’m fine. So, what can I do for you?”
    â€œWell, I’m a middle school teacher in Philadelphia, and Kendra told me that she wanted to teach in the Los Angeles area, and that I could come and visit her whenever I felt up to traveling to the West Coast.”
    â€œYeah, she
is
a schoolteacher out there, and she
loves
it! You need me to give her your number?”
    â€œWould you please, and have her call me as soon as she gets a chance?”
    â€œOkay. Let me get out a pen and a piece of paper and I’ll call her tonight. You know she’s still at school out there right now with the three-hour time difference,” her mother said. “So I usually call her right before I go to bed.”
    I wasn’t even thinking about the time change. “Oh, yeah, thanks for reminding me.”
    I gave her my number, chatted her up a bit, and hung up the phone with an energy boost. I felt like someone had just poured a five-pound bag of sugar into my veins. I needed to go out jogging, play tennis, run up and down the stairway, have some good sex, or
something.
I was just burning up with energy!
    I couldn’t
wait
to plan my trip to California. My phone rang right in the middle of my new excitement.
    â€œHello.”
    â€œHey, girl. How was your school day?” It was Mike, a muscle-bound weight trainer that I was seeing. I kept real loose ties with him, because I didn’t need no macho shit holding me down. In fact, I only dealt with him because he could give a massage like an Egyptian god or something. He could eat a
mean
dish of stew (if you know what I mean) at that.
    I sighed and said, “;Don’t take me back to that place. I was just starting to recuperate.”
    He chuckled. “It was that bad, hunh?”
    â€œYeah, that bad,” I answered.
    I thought about asking him what he was doing and inviting him over for an afternoon sweat-out. He had