and Trina first met, they hit it off
right away. Now Trina wondered how two
people who were so different could have been friends at all.
“I hear everything up in here,” Jazz went
on. “And what I’ve been hearing has
concerned me.”
“Really?”
“Big time,” Jazz said. “I mean you wouldn’t believe some of the
stuff these girls be saying.”
When Trina didn’t take the bait by asking for
details, Jazz gave them anyway. “Some of
the girls know people who work at the PaLargio, and they declare Reno’s been
straying.”
Still, Trina said nothing. Jazz continued. “They say he’s got his eye on some tall
blonde who works over at Caesar’s Palace, and she ain’t the only one he’s been
eyeing, either.”
“He’s been eyeing her,” Trina felt a need to
explain, “ because he’s been looking to bump her up to
general manager at the PaLargio. He’s
going to bump Lee Jones up to CEO.”
“Yeah, well, I’m just telling you what I
heard. I heard he’s been bumping her all
right.”
Trina felt defensive, and she hated feeling
that way. Because defensiveness often
meant insecurity, and Trina was never that girl. And never planned to allow
anybody, not even Reno, to turn her into that girl.
“Anyway,” she said, changing the subject. “I just wanted to say goodbye.”
Jazz knew Trina would never believe anything
negative about that asshole Reno, so she went along with the change. “So it’s official then? You’re leaving Vegas for good?”
“I don’t know about for good,” Trina
responded. “We’re leaving for now.”
Jazz looked at her. “But why leave at all if y’all coming back?”
“Because Reno feels, after all that’s happened, that we need a slower pace for a change. At least for now, anyway.”
“So where y’all going?”
“Georgia, girl. A
small town called Crane.”
“You guys chose Georgia and it’s not
Atlanta? I ain’t mad at ‘cha.”
Trina smiled. “Actually, it kind of chose us. Reno has this nice restaurant he inherited from his father, and it’s
located in Crane. So he figure why not. He’ll
at least be running a restaurant, which is right up his alley, and we’ll be out
of the limelight. And besides that, I’ll
be much closer to my folks. Reno bought
them a retirement home in Miami. So we
saw it as a win-win all around.”
“Good for y’all,” Jazz said as if Trina was
bragging.
Trina considered her old friend. “I’m sorry it didn’t work out for you at the
PaLargio, Jazz. Truly I am.”
“Yeah, I am too. But it’s not your fault. You gave me a chance. Two chances, if truth be told, and I blew them both. My ass was the one
who kept sleeping with the guests and messing up. Reno was right to fire me.”
Trina continued to stare at Jazz. “But that wasn’t the part that hurt?”
“After I was fired you could have recommended
me for employment at one of these other casinos around here. But you wouldn’t even do that. That’s what hurt.” She looked Trina dead in the eye. “That’s what really hurt.”
Trina knew her friend harbored resentment
about it, and she understood the resentment on some level. But what did she expect her to do? The PaLargio could have been sued behind some
of Jazz’s foolishness. She wasn’t about to
pretend she was a great worker so that she could bring down somebody else’s
business.
Jazz, in truth, became one of the most
unreliable workers Trina had ever known. She tried to give her a chance and get her out of Boyzie’s. She tried to show her another way of life. But Jazz just couldn’t handle it. She still wanted to lie and cheat and do all
of that slick, immoral stuff responsible people just didn’t do. And she would often use the fact that she was
Trina’s friend to do some of her dirt. Those antics might work with a clueless guy like Boyzie,