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her! You know what I’m sayin’? Shoot a nigga right between his eyes, yo!”
    Alarm Clock is a rapper who seems to like to remain on my client list. After Journey and Dame introduced us a few years ago, I’d arranged every detail for his first two marriages to a backup dancer and video model respectively, and now he was in my office for our first consultation to plan his third.
    I’d opened the meeting by asking the pair how they met. Donnica, a beautiful girl with a body that made me promise myself that I’d go to the gym as soon as I left the office, was a nail technician where Alarm’s last child’s mother (not a wife) was getting a pedicure in Miami. She’d volunteered to give Alarm a shoulder massage in a back room while he waited for his baby mama.
    My second question was why they’d fallen in love with each other.
    Alarm always seemed to equate love with murder. He knew he was in love with his first wife because he was going to kill her if she tried to leave him (he eventually left her), he knew he loved his second wife because he’d die trying to protect her from harm (he didn’t), he knew he loved Donnica because he’d kill someone for her.
    â€œKnow what I’m saying?” he asked me.
    â€œWell, no. I actually don’t know what you’re saying” I said, sitting on the opposite side of my desk in my midtown office with Alarm and Donnica. They were my third of four consults before lunch and I was getting tired of nodding along. Actually loving the couple whose wedding you’re planning is kind of like finding a really great book you know you’ll forever cherish and remember. When it happens, it makes the less likable and “well, I could’ve done something much better with all that time” books bearable and actually a great litmus test through which to determine how much you actually love what you love.
    I actually liked Alarm Clock. While he seemed infatuated with murder in both his music and conversation, he was like me. He wanted to find love and still believed it was possible. After four children and two failed marriages, he was still willing to say “I do.” It wasn’t the most gangster thing he could do with his time, but he was trying.
    â€œWhat about you, Ms. Grant—Donnica?” I turned to the bride with the two-million-dollar ring on her airbrushed French manicured fingernails. “Why did you fall in love with Zachariah?” (Rappers always have the funniest first names.)
    â€œHe real good to his sons. I ain’t got no kids, but grandmamma always told me that if you want to know how a man will treat you, watch how he treat his mama and his kids.”
    And although Donnica’s grandmother’s advice seemed to assume every man her granddaughter would meet would already have children, it was sound rhetoric that made me believe these two had a chance, so I said, “That’s great advice. Now tell me: how do you two envision your wedding day?” I already knew what Alarm envisioned, but I didn’t want to bring up the past—and then this happened:
    Donnica: “We got to have a chocolate fountain! Fruit at a chocolate fountain.”
    Forget the music, forget the women, forget the pants hanging down below their asses—the only problem I have with rappers is how they spend their money. Yes, you can get a Maybach if you have the money, but don’t get Burberry’s signature print spray-painted on the hood. Yes, you can move into an eastside estate, but your first order of business need not be to install inside and outside basketball courts and a pitbull kennel. Yes, you can get married at Musha Cay, the most luxurious and expensive private island in the southern Bahamas, but no, you won’t have a chocolate fountain—not if I’m planning it. Golden Corral has a chocolate fountain. My home church in Social Circle had a chocolate fountain at the Easter