LIKES

He had a fistful of my hair and a mouthful of my titties and the ring light was off, and that last part is the only reason y’all know my name.

That nigga ain’t undress me. He took his sweet-ass time. Stood me up against the window in a pink latex halter with six little gold clasps down the front and popped ’em one at a time, and every time he popped one, he stopped and looked at me. Not at my titties. At my face.

“Nigga, why you doing this so slow?”

“’Cause you ain’t never had to wait on shit in your life.” Pop. “I wanna see what you look like when you do.”

“You looking at me right now!”

“Nah.” Pop. “Not yet.”

“What the fuck you mean not yet? It’s four hundred million niggas who’d pay to be where you standing!”

“Then let ’em pay.” Pop. “I ain’t paying. I’m looking.”

By number four my hands was shaking so bad I had to put ’em behind me flat on the glass.

“Rashad, I swear to God…”

“Swear to Him then. He listening.”

“Coño, mira, tú eres un abusador, ¿me oíste? Apúrate, o te juro por Dios que te saco de mi casa a patadas, pendejo. A ti y a la madre que te parió.”

My abuela would’ve slapped the taste out my mouth.

“I don’t know what none of that meant,” he said. “But I know it was nasty.”

“It was nasty, and it was about your mama.”

“Leave my mama out of this, Candace. She a deaconess.” Pop.

I laughed so hard I bumped my head on the glass. He waited on me like he had all night. Then he popped the last one and my titties fell out that halter like they been waiting on him too.

“Hey, y’all,” he told ’em.

That’s when I knew I was in trouble. My pussy was already soaking through my drawers and this nigga ain’t even kissed me yet.

He took my hoops out himself. Click. Click. On the dresser. Then he yanked the clip out my hair and let it all fall down my back.

“Ooh, no! Put that back!”

“Why?”

“’Cause I don’t wear it down. Not on camera, not for nobody. Down hair don’t pay no bills.”

“Ain’t no camera.”

“It’s always a camera.”

He grabbed a handful of all that hair at the back of my neck and held me still. “Not tonight it ain’t. Say that Spanish shit again.”

“No.”

“Say it slow.”

I got right up on his ear. “Pen. De. Jo.”

“Mm. That one I know.”

“Keep playing with me and I’ma teach you a nastier one.”

“Like what?”

“Cómeme el toto.”

“What that mean?”

“Figure it out, professor.”

Then his mouth. My neck, right under my ear, and he stayed there till I made a sound I ain’t never made on camera. “Mmm… shit, Rashad.” Then my wrist. What nigga kisses a wrist? Then down. He sucked on my titties like he was starving, one then the other, tongue flat, then teeth, and talking shit into my skin the whole time.

“Been thinking ’bout this pussy since the elevator.”

“You lying.”

“Since the elevator, Candy. You had on them ugly-ass slides.”

“Them slides was four hundred dollars!”

“Ugly as hell.” He licked all the way around my nipple, slow. “Couldn’t stop looking at your face, though.”

How the fuck you gon’ talk that nasty and say something that sweet in the same breath?

“Get on your fuckin’ knees,” I told him. I was losing and I knew it.

“Nope.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

Six years. Six fuckin’ years and ain’t nobody told me no.

He picked me up by my ass and slammed me down on that dresser so hard my hip caught the corner. I had that bruise for two weeks and I looked at it every morning like it was a love letter. He pushed my knees open and put his face in my pussy like he already had the map. Didn’t go hunting. Didn’t need directions like these other niggas. I heard myself say his name like I was asking him a question.

“Rashad?”

“Cómeme el toto,” he said, with his mouth full of me and the worst accent in Fulton County. “That what it mean?”

“Sí! Ay, sí, papi, that’s exactly what the fuck it mean!”

And the whole time, in my head, one thing.

The light was off.

Raven killed it at the wall before she left. The whole apartment went dark orange. And I had a grown-ass man eating my pussy on my own dresser, and not one muthafucka on God’s green earth was watching.

First time since I was twenty-one.

I ain’t never came with nobody watching. Not once. I ain’t even know if my shit worked in private.

Everything after that is what it cost me.

It cost me my mama, who got a Feed nobody touched in forty years and wouldn’t let me put her in one single frame.

It cost me a girl I loved since I was nine.

It cost a good nigga his good name.

It cost me and my baby brother something that ain’t never grew back.

It cost me my own face, which by the end belonged to some machine in a warehouse off I-85 that ain’t even need me in the room.

Forty fucking million people watched me find out I could.

Right now I’m sitting in a dark room with a phone in my hand that says eleven. I had four hundred million Likes the night this started and eleven the night it ended, and I’d do every bit of it again. Except the part where I let Raven hold the light.

Back up an hour.

He asked first.

That never made it into none of them forty million replays. He came in with rain still on his shoulders and stood in my foyer, which is bigger than the whole apartment I grew up in, and looked at the ring light on the stand, and the phone on the tripod, and my face already framed up pretty on the little monitor.

“That light on?”

“Baby, that light is always on.”

“Then I’m gone.”

I laughed at that nigga. Like you laugh at somebody who say he don’t eat pork at a cookout. Then I saw he’d already turned around.

“Rashad!”

He stopped with his hand on my door.

“You for real right now?”

“Dead serious.”

“Nigga, ninety percent of this house got paid for by that light!”

“I know what that light bought.” He ain’t even turn around. “I ain’t being in no room with it.”

“You scared?”

“Of what?”

“Of being seen with me. Say it! You scared somebody at your little job gon’ see you up in Candy Peralta’s house.”

“I got a notice in my coat for the nigga downstairs from you.” He patted his pocket. “I got a badge. I got a job that say I don’t get caught in no room with an account I might have to sign one day. That ain’t scared. That’s rent.”

“So go then.”

“I’m going.”

“Go, then, nigga!”

He ain’t move. I ain’t move. A nigga was standing in my doorway with his hand on my knob, and he would rather walk out than be looked at with me. Every nigga that wanted me, that truly wanted me, found their way up here, and every last one of ’em wanted to be in the frame. Niggas done asked me, breathing all hard, could I tilt the camera. One fool stopped to fix his chain before he touched me.

So I hollered for Raven.

She was over by the wall wrapping a cable, acting like she wasn’t all in my business.

“Rave. Kill that muthafuckin’ light.”

She looked up like I told her to kill a dog. “Kill it kill it?”

“Kill it kill it.”

“On a Friday? Bitch, Manila just waking up!”

“Raven.”

“Aight! Damn!” She went to the wall and hit it and threw me a thumbs up. “Killed. Dead at the wall.”

“All the way.”

“Bitch, it’s dead. You want me to hold a funeral?”

The room went orange. She grabbed her bag and stood there with it on her shoulder, and she held my eyes a second too long.

“You sure?”

“Go home, Raven.”

“I’m just asking.”

“I know what you asking.”

“Mm-hm.” She looked past me at Rashad in the foyer, up and down, like she was pricing him at the car lot. “He fine. He broke, but he fine. Drink some water, bitch.”

“Night, Raven.”

“Night, Candy.”

There was a little red light still on down at the bottom of the ring. Size of a grain of rice. I saw it.

Ain’t no version of that night where I didn’t see that red. I saw it. I thought, charger. Then I put my mouth on a man and forgot all about it.

Charger. Six years under that ring and I could’ve named you every bulb in it.

He got me down off that dresser and onto the rug with the whole city behind us and the blinds wide open.

“Blinds.”

“What about ’em?”

“Anybody in Two Peachtree with a halfway decent phone can see straight up in here.”

“So let ’em look.”

“Nigga, you just made me turn my own light off!”

“That ain’t the same thing and you know it ain’t.”

“Well explain it then, professor.”

And this nigga stopped. Propped himself up on one arm, butt naked on my floor, and actually thought about it.

“A nigga across the street looking at us is a nigga,” he said. “He might be lonely. He might be nasty. He might be happy for us. That light ain’t none of that. That light ain’t looking at you. That light is counting.”

“That’s deep, Rashad. You read that in your little paperback?”

“Nope. Made it up just now. You want this dick or not?”

“Nigga, I been wanting it since the first clasp. Give it here.”

He threw my legs up on his shoulders and slid it in slow, all the way, one push, and just held it there.

“Move.”

“In a minute.”

“Rashad!”

“Minute, Candy.”

“I will put you out my house.”

“No you won’t.” He looked down between us. “She ain’t done deciding ’bout me yet. Let her decide.”

I been rich six years. A nigga once sent me a million Likes in one tap on a Tuesday and then sat by his phone like a puppy the rest of the week hoping I’d say his name on stream. Ain’t nothing nobody ever handed me cost what that one minute cost. He made me pay for it in Spanish, four words he learned off my own streams like everybody else, and he said one of ’em wrong on purpose right in my ear.

“Mírame. Tú eres mi grapadora.”

“Papi, you just called me a stapler.”

“Did I?”

I fell out laughing. He was still all the way inside me while I laughed, and I felt that shit everywhere.

Then he moved.

Wasn’t no show. Wasn’t nobody calling angles. Wasn’t no music under it, so I heard every nasty wet sound our real bodies made, and it was so much louder and so much dumber and so much better than anything I ever sold.

“It’s too much…”

“Good.” He ain’t stop. “Say it again.”

“Ay, Dios mío… es demasiado. That’s too much dick, Rashad, gah-damn!”

“There she go.”

He got his arm under my back and pulled me up on top of him, and my hair fell down around the both of us like a little room inside the room. My mouth on his shoulder. Rain still on him somewhere. My perfume, his sweat, and the weed the neighbors run through the vent at midnight.

“Ride it, then,” he said. “Slow. Show me what you do when ain’t nobody paying.”

And I rode that nigga slow, and I ain’t charge him a dime.

“Look at me.”

“I am.”

“Nah. Look at me.”

I looked at him. Hardest thing anybody asked me to do in ten years, and niggas done asked me for some things.

And right then, with his mouth on the side of my throat, he said it.

“I’ve seen you.”

I took it how you take anything a nigga say with his dick in you. I took it as sweet.

“I’m finna come, Rashad. Don’t you move. Don’t you fuckin’ move!”

“Ain’t going nowhere.”

I came with my nails dug in his back and no light on me and not a soul watching, and I cried a little bit, and I ain’t tell him that neither.

Three words. I done had whole stadiums screaming my name. I had a hashtag in four countries. A nigga said three words with his mouth on my neck and I been trying to get back to that rug for a year.

After, he got us some water. Nobody gets me water. Ain’t nobody in my life ever got up in the dark and walked in my own kitchen and came back and put a glass in my hand. He sat on the end of the bed in his drawers with a glass in each hand. The audit notice was on the floor where I kicked it. His badge was on the rug next to it, face down.

“Why you turn it off?”

“’Cause it was late.”

He drank his water and let that sit there till I heard how stupid it sounded.

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I ain’t lying.”

“Candace.” Calm. The way you say somebody’s whole name when you mean the whole person. “Don’t lie to me.”

Nine years since anybody told me not to lie to ’em. Everybody I know want the lie. They pay for the lie. It’s itemized.

“’Cause I wanted to see if anybody was in here when it’s off.”

He set the glass down.

“And?”

“Ask me again in a minute.”

“Or I could ask you something else.” He leaned in right behind my ear and held still. “What you want, Candace?”

“Your mouth back on my pussy. Then that dick. Then more water.”

“In that order?”

“Nigga, in that exact order.”

That’s how round two started, and round two was slower than round one. He found out if you hold still right behind my ear I’ll tell you anything you want to know. He was still using that on me six weeks later in a motel off I-20 with both our faces on every screen in Georgia.

My phone went off at four minutes after eleven.

Not a buzz. My phone make this sound when a wave hit it, like rain starting, and the whole dresser lit up blue and stayed that way.

“You gon’ get that?”

“It’s the noon post. Some clip doing numbers in Manila.” I reached for it anyway. I got a stupid-ass habit. I look at the number before I look at the time.

Then I saw the thumbnail.

It was this room. It was my rug. It was my hair all down my back and a nigga’s hands on my hips and the city behind us through the glass. And up in the corner, in red, it said LIVE.

It ain’t fear first. Nobody believe me on that. It’s recognition. It’s like hearing your own voice played back, times forty million, and underneath all that, way down where I don’t like to look, a little voice going, there you go, girl.

“Rashad…”

I ain’t never heard my voice make that sound.

He came off the bed and looked at the phone in my hand. He got it about half a second before I did, and that half a second I’ma be paying for the rest of my life. He ain’t look at me. He bent down, picked his badge up off the carpet, and turned it face up.

“How many?”

“Forty.” My mouth was dry as hell. “Forty million, Rashad.”

“Fuck.” He said it quiet. Then he said it again. “Fuck!”

An Integrity auditor can’t be in a room with an account he audits. Not for coffee. Not for one minute. Forty million people just watched that nigga stand in one with his dick out.

“Who got keys to this building?”

“What?”

“Candace.” His shirt was already halfway over his head. “Who got keys? Name ’em!”

“My mama. Tee. Raven. The building. I don’t know, baby, I don’t fuckin’ know!”

My phone would not stop. And down in the comments, flying by too fast to read, was one line from an account with no picture, no posts, and one letter for a name. I ain’t see it that night. I done watched that recording enough times since to find it.

The account was called N.

Beautiful, baby. Just like the fridge.

Wasn’t nobody alive who knew about that fridge but my mama.

The house phone rang, the one on the kitchen wall the building uses. Mr. Ledbetter been on that door eleven years. Tips his hat. Calls me Miss Peralta and ain’t never once asked me for a picture. His voice was wrong.

“Miss Peralta.”

“How many down there?”

“Lobby full, ma’am. Folks pressed up on the glass with they phones.” He was breathing like he came up off that stool fast. “And four men came up the service side ’bout a minute ago. They ain’t sign in. They ain’t even look at me.”

“Mr. Ledbetter.”

“Ma’am.”

“Don’t you go up there after ’em.”

“No, ma’am. I ain’t crazy.” Then a pause. “You get on out of there, baby.”

He hung up. Eleven years on my door and that was the first time he ever called me anything but Miss Peralta. I stood there half a second in a robe with my heart going, thinking, he know me.

Rashad had my robe in his hand before I even hung up. That nigga is fast. Nobody told me that about him yet.

“Stairs.”

“I ain’t dressed!”

“You got ten seconds to get dressed.”

I jumped in some leggings and sneakers and threw the robe on over the halter with four of the six clasps done. His shirt went on inside out and I ain’t tell him. We hit the service door at the end of my hall right when the elevator dinged behind us. I heard niggas in my foyer. One of ’em laughed at something.

Twenty-two floors.

You can’t run down twenty-two floors. You can run about six. After that your legs belong to somebody else and the rail doing all the work, and you going round and round in a concrete corkscrew with a light on every landing and your own breath slapping back off the walls at you. Rashad took the turns one-handed on the rail and swung. I came behind him with my hair in my mouth.

“Slow down!”

“Can’t.”

“My legs, Rashad!”

“Your legs gon’ be fine. Your face gon’ be on the news either way. Keep going!”

Somewhere above us a door banged open and boots started coming down.

“They on us!”

“They on me.” He ain’t slow up. “Not you. Ain’t nobody up there want you. They want the auditor in the room.”

And God help me, in a stairwell with my lungs on fire, some little part of me heard ain’t nobody want you and flinched.

At the fourth floor the stairwell dumps you out in the parking deck. That time of night it’s a hundred empty spots, four cars, and a whole lotta orange light. My Maybach was up on level two with the bow still in the trunk from the dealership.

“Car right there!”

“Leave it.”

“That’s a Maybach, nigga!”

“That’s a tracker with seats. Leave it, Candy.”

He cut left to the pedestrian gate. I went with him. My legs was shaking so bad I bit my own tongue.

Out on Peachtree it was already folks. Not a mob. A dozen, maybe. A valet. A girl in Grady scrubs probably coming off my mama’s old shift. Every last one of ’em had a phone up before we cleared the gate.

“Candy! Candy! Look over here! Look, look, look!”

“Is that him? That’s him! That’s the auditor nigga!”

“Bitch, you went LIVE live!”

I threw my hand up over my face.

Then I put it down.

A hand over your face is a bad clip. Barefoot in a robe with four niggas coming down a stairwell behind me, and some part of me was still directing.

We ran across Peachtree against the light and a MARTA bus laid all on the horn. There’s footage of that from six angles. One of ’em is from inside the bus.

His car was a gray Volvo with a paperback on the passenger seat. I sat on it.

“You drive a Volvo?”

“Get in the car, Candace.”

“I’m in the car! I’m just saying. A Volvo, nigga.”

He pulled out on Fourteenth with the whole car glowing blue off both our phones. At the ramp to the Connector a black Escalade came down off the deck exit and got in behind us and stayed there a long, long time.

“Rashad. That truck.”

“I see it.”

“What we gon’ do?”

“Nothing. Sit still. Don’t look back at it.”

He ain’t drive like no movie. He drove like a nigga who been followed before, and I ain’t even think about that till way later. Middle lane. Let two cars merge. Took the Freedom Parkway exit at the last second, no signal, came back down the other ramp, and slid up under the downtown overpass where the columns at and the lights out and there’s five ways out.

We sat under there in the dark with the engine off a long time.

My phone would not stop. His was worse. His said MEDIA, and it said OFFICE OF THE INSPECTOR, and one of ’em just said DAD.

“You gon’ answer your daddy?”

“No.”

He put both hands on top of the wheel and laid his head down on ’em.

“I’m sorry.”

“It wasn’t you.”

“Somebody in my house put that camera there.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know it’s mine,” he said into the wheel. “It was in your house, so it’s mine. That’s how my job work. That’s how your life work. You just ain’t never had to know it.”

I sat there with that parking-brake smell and his paperback under my thigh and my hair full of stairwell.

And I looked at the number.

Worst thing I did that night, and I did it in the dark where nobody could see me. That man had his head down on a steering wheel two feet from me with his whole life falling apart in his hands, and I flipped my phone over to see what I was worth.

It ain’t never been higher. Not once in six years.

The best night of my life and the worst hour of his was the same hour, in the same car, and I checked.

He ain’t lift his head. “What it say?”

“What?”

“The number. You looked. What it say?”

I ain’t answer him. He ain’t ask again. That was worse.

So how the fuck I get here?

Not the Glass. Not no nigga. A refrigerator.

I was eleven the year money stopped being money. My mama worked nights at Grady. Don’t nobody Like a night nurse. Ain’t nobody awake at four in the morning to look at a night nurse. I used to sit up on the counter with her phone in both hands while she slept off a double and watch her balance go down. And down. Like a candle. You can’t see it moving, and then you look up and it’s gone.

The Rate takes its cut every night, seen or not. Being good don’t slow it down. I learned that off a screen at eleven years old, and it’s the only real school I ever went to.

The lights went first. Then the heat. Then the fridge. Don’t nobody tell a child a refrigerator can get cut off. Ours went quiet in November and my mama put a cooler on the back steps.

“We camping,” she told me and Tee. He was four. He thought it was the best thing that ever happened.

“Camping in the kitchen, Mama?”

“Candace, don’t start with me. It’s camping ’cause I said it’s camping.”

The winter I was fifteen I opened that door at one in the morning and stood in the light. A jar of pickles in the door. A box of baking soda on the shelf. A whole lotta light.

I took a picture. Me and the empty. My wrist laid across that bare glass shelf so you could tell it was a girl in the room, and that she was skinny.

Three thousand people looked at a picture of an empty shelf.

Three thousand Likes fed us nine days. Eggs. Bus fare. Mama’s pressure pills. A whole chicken.

She came home off her shift and saw the groceries on the counter and stood there in her scrubs with her bag still on her shoulder.

“Where this come from?”

“I posted.”

“Posted what?”

I showed her. She looked at that picture a long time. She ain’t yell. That’s how I knew it was bad. My mama yells when it’s small.

“Take it down, Candace.”

“Mama, it fed us!”

“I know what it did.” She put her bag down real slow. “Take it down anyway.”

I ain’t take it down. I cooked the chicken. She ate it. Neither one of us said shit else about it for twelve years.

That’s the day I found out what I was. I’m a thing people look at, and that’s all I got. Not a smart thing. Not a good thing. A thing that gets looked at, and when they look, we eat. And standing there at fifteen, I decided I’d rather be that than be my mama. In the dark. Being good.

So don’t nobody come to me with the word vanity.

Vanity is for bitches who done ate.

Twelve years later I had more Likes than anybody in this country, and a penthouse the city calls the Glass, and a mama in my second bedroom who wouldn’t be filmed, and a baby brother with a dance nobody watched, and a best friend who held my light.

And exactly one nigga in all of Atlanta who never once pressed the button on me.

I met him three weeks before that night. In an elevator. Going down.