She love too hard. Her heart is way too big and she’s too generous. To put it another way: she’s a fool. Ain’t nothing worse than a smart fool. And she’s smart all right. Got her own catering company. Well, it’s more to it than just cooking and dropping the stuff off in those silver trays with little flames underneath. No sirree. This ain’t no rinky-dink kind of operation. First of all, you need some real money if you want to eat Paris’s food, ’cause she’s expensive as hell. Say you having a big party—not just your regular weekend type of bash, I mean the kind you see in movies: like The Godfather Part I, for example, when the food don’t look real, or too good to eat, and you too scared to touch it. Give her a theme: she’ll cook around it. Give her a country: she’ll transform your house. Make it look like you in Africa or Brazil or Spain or, hell, Compton. All you gotta do is tell her. She make all the arrangements: from the forks and tablecloths, to the palm trees, hedges, and flowers, to the jazz band or DJ. One of her assistants, and she’s got a few of ’em, will even make hotel arrangements for the guests and have folks picked up in limousines at the airport.

Anyway, she got class, and she got it from my side of the family. She been in the San Francisco newspaper, and I think the L.A. Times, too. Been on a few of them morning talk shows, where she pretended to cook something in a minute that she really made the night before. One of the local TV stations asked her about doing her own cooking show, but like a fool she said no, because she said she had enough on her plate. Like what?

Food must run in our family. Me and her daddy opened our first barbecue joint, which we named the Shack, fifteen years ago. But Vegas ain’t the same no more. With all the violence and gangs and drugs and kids not caring one way or the other that you the same color as them while they robbing you at gunpoint and can’t look you in the eye ’cause you probably favor somebody they know, we had to close two down and ain’t got but one left. It’s been a struggle trying to make ends meet. Paris stopped cooking like us years ago. She think our kinda food kill folks. She right, but it’s hard for black people to live without barbecue and potato salad and collard greens with a touch of salt pork, a slice of cornbread soaked in the juice, a spoonful of candied yams, and every now and then a plateful of chitterlings. Her food is so pretty that half the time you don’t never know what you eating until you put it in your mouth, and even then you gotta ask.

In spite of all the money she make and that big house her and my favorite grandson, Dingus, live in—yes, I said favorite—she ain’t happy. What Paris need ain’t in no cookbook, no house, or no garage. She need a man quick and in a hurry, and Dingus need a daddy he can touch. Another baby wouldn’t be a bad idea. She ain’t but thirty-eight but swears up and down she’s too old to be thinking about a baby. I said bullshit. “As long as you still bleed, you able.” She rolled her eyes up inside her head. “And just where am I supposed to find a father?” Sometimes she make things harder than they really are. “Pick one!” I said.