They Call Me...Montey Greene

Chapter Two

GONG-GONG-GONG!

Montey was awakened by the bells of the Duomo Cathedral chiming outside his window in the distance, and the muted sound of his cell phone beeping fiercely. He had fallen asleep on the couch the night before in his clothes—that woman from the boutique on his mind.

It's said that time goes by when you're having fun.

So if hanging out at a boutique in a foreign country talking to a beautiful woman for what seemed like several minutes is one's interpretation of fun, then Montey spent yesterday in the funhouse at Disneyworld.

When he entered the boutique yesterday it was a little before noon. By the time he left you could see the shadows starting to shift outside in the corridor that was Via Della Spiga as the street lamps came on.

He'd fallen into the deep end of the pool, a saying he and his homeboys back in the States would tease each other with whenever one would meet a woman that reduced them into acting like juveniles who were just discovering the opposite sex for the first time. It wasn't the falling in that ever bothered them, it was the drowning. But Montey knew how to swim and his friends didn't, so the depth of the water in the deep end of the pool didn't bother him.

The old-timers in his neighborhood; the ones who ran the illegal number spots and rode heavy in pimped out Eldorado Cadillacs and Oldsmobile-98s; the ones who packed .22 Berettas and snub-nose .38s in their man purses; those inner-city characters called it—going dumb.

They would always preach to Montey and his friends that if you looked at every great empire known to man that eventually crumbled, if you search hard enough, you will find at the root of all the turmoil would be a man who had gone dumb over some female. In simple street vernacular—pussy whipped.

Now, Montey didn't know if that was true or not, but at this instance he heard their collective voices ringing in his head saying just that.

The man from the Brownsville section of Brooklyn sat up on the couch, the semi-muted beeping sounds of his cellphone begging to be answered. It took him several minutes to get his bearings before realizing the cellphone had slipped from his pants pocket during the night and was now lodged between the seat cushion and backrest of the sofa. He dug down between the cushions of the couch. Retrieved his cellphone. Unlocked it to see a text message from his soon to be ex-wife Patricia—

We miss you daddy – bring us back a treat

—and a photo attachment of his two children, Jaylen age 7 and Darius age 4 dressed in their PJ's, with birthday hats perched on their heads and ice cream covering their mouths.

A smile creased Montey's lips as it was one of the photos he'd taken the night of his birthday. The same birthday he had been celebrating for the past couple of weeks that eventually led to the very couch he was laying on in a flat over 4,000 thousand miles away from where his children resided.

Then another text message popped up from his friend Annette Cooper—

Hey, stuck in Prague longer than expected, in-laws you know. Take a car to the flat. Maria will pay for it

—She was one half of the couple Montey called the Coopers.

'What the fuck?' Money uttered to under his breath, 'Why is this just coming through now?' He tossed the phone aside, peeled himself off the couch, made his way to the bathroom.

Montey Greene stood ass naked with his manhood dangling over the open mouth of the toilet relieving himself. When his pissing marathon trickled down he stepped into the small but accommodating enclosed shower stall. Turned the golden handle with the letters C and H engraved in it.

The warm water that erupted from the showerhead pelted down on him with a rhythmic soothing effect which helped relieve some of the tension he was feeling from his recent string of bad luck in love and life.

Separated from a wife of seven years. Not hearing little voices of joy waking you up at all hours of the morning. A depleted bank account and currently residing in a matchbox masquerading as an apartment above your friends grocery store could make for a bad hand. But if the matchbox is free and you have friends that front you a vacation to another country just to allow you some head space, then a pair of clubs can look like a full house.

It was two of those friends, Daniel and Annette Cooper, that Montey was expecting to greet him at the airport two days ago. But when his plane touched down at Milano Malpensa International things hit a snag when he couldn't clear customs. A customs agent named Sofia confiscated his carry-on bag and led him to a small windowless room with white stone tiled walls and bright florescent light bulbs running across the ceiling. A silver aluminum table with matching chairs on either side of it sat in the middle of the floor.

Then Sofia exited the room taking Montey's bag with her.

After his transatlantic flight the last thing Montey wanted to do was sit down. But when Sofia didn't return after a few moments he was compelled to take a seat in one of those silver aluminum chairs. That was when he noticed the clock on the wall, or more aptly put, that's when he first heard that tick-tick-tick sound that drew his attention to the clock on the wall.

Tick-tick-tick went the red second hand as it made its revolution around the white face of the clock. The longer Montey stared at it the slower the time seemed to pass.

How many times would that red hand circle the clock? Montey had wondered before that customs agent with the name tag inscribed with—SOFIA B—returned.

When she finally did return after what seemed like hours, he was questioned over and over again about the nature of his visit and what his name was.

Only when the soft spoken customs agent with the thin frame, push up bra boobs, mascara assisted eyelashes, hazel nut colored eyes, and full red painted lips was satisfied did Montey Greene find himself breathing the airport terminal air again.