A PAIR LIKE NO OTHA’

Good girl gets involved with jailbird.

Darnell has plenty of time to listen to Shemone and to thrill her, too, with stories of his old days of running wild—that is, if the other inmates would let a brotha use the phone in peace. Darnell is about to get out after three years on a drug rap, and Shemone is the one he wants to see first. They were friends in high school until the lure of easy money ensnared him, while hard-working Shemone landed her dream job as a writer for Sister Soul magazine. When he’s out at last, Darnell shows up at a restaurant where Shemone is dining with a boring, Princeton-educated buppie—and her heart flip-flops. She goes with Darnell that very night, much to his surprise (as he says to Pop, his best buddy, “I’m a thug and she’s bourgeois”). Even though she’s has been celibate by choice for a few years, preferring not to waste her time on meaningless affairs, Shemone gives in to Darnell’s “magnetically juicy lips” in about three hot seconds. Next day, Darnell pays a call on his Bible-toting mama, who raised her fatherless kids in the projects with no help from nobody. She sure hopes that Darnell will stick to the straight and narrow: she’s got enough worries with a few other members of her brood making trouble. Shemone’s mother, a bastion of respectability, is appalled to learn that her daughter is dating an ex-con and won’t even speak to her. Meanwhile, Darnell finds that his record does little for his resume, though he lands a job refinishing furniture for chump change. He’s willing to swallow his pride, since Shemone has apparently made him into a new man—until Pop is shot and Darnell goes after the bad guys, with a gun.

A tacked-on happy ending is no more convincing than the rest of this well-meaning but improbable tale from the self-published author of Shoe’s On the Otha’ Foot (not reviewed).