by Noire
Tossing her head back, Nooni dry-throated the drugs and then picked up Salida’s glass and swallowed down the bubbly until every drop was gone.
“Good girl!” Salida praised her, grabbing her cane and heading toward the door. “I bet your sick ass is feeling just fine right now!” she laughed.
At the door, Salida stopped and looked at a row of boxes that were stacked up against the wall. They contained thousands of tiny vials that were stamped with her unique street logo and the name of her new brand, Strawberry Snake. Her plans for widespread distribution were about to become a reality, and after the extensive testing she had done on Nooni, she couldn’t wait for her specially-blended product to invade Harlem’s streets and capture the hearts of its residents.
Anxious to leave, Nooni made a mistake and reached for the doorknob, but Salida slapped her hand down real hard.
“When are you gonna learn that it’s locked on this side, dummy?”
Nooni waited as Salida stretched out the neon-pink spiral bracelet that she always wore on her wrist. Two keys dangled from it, and Salida stuck the larger key in the lock and then pressed down on the handle and opened the door.
She spoke over her shoulder. “You’s a sweet lil thing, Nooni. Anytime you start feeling bad you just come find Mizz Salida and I promise I’ll make you feel better, you hear?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Nooni said and grinned. Her head was good and her mood was lifted. And the cell phone jammed up in her tight pussy was starting to feel just like a dick as she bounced her gorgeous young ass back down the stairs to get ready for her next customer.
CHAPTER 10
The homeless shelter didn’t look nothing like I had pictured it looking. From the outside you could have taken it to be a regular old New York brownstone, but when I got inside I was surprised at the way it was set up.
The Puerto Rican lady who came to get me from the hospital took me into an office to meet an intake counselor named Mrs. Singletary, and after she gave me an ice pack for the lumps on my face and asked me if my foot was feeling okay, she got out her little clipboard and started drilling me with a whole lot of questions about my past.
Most of what I told her was lies, and just like when I was in jail, I made up a lot of shit as I went along, but this was New York. I figured Mrs. Singletary had been around the block a few times and had probably heard all kinds of bullshit before.
She punched my bogus information into her computer, and then I half-listened as she ran down about a million New York City shelter rules.
“We have a ten-day stay limit and there are absolutely no visitors allowed. There is no smoking, drinking, and absolutely no drug use permitted during your stay. All cooking must be done in the kitchen, and all food must be consumed in the dining room.”
My mind wandered as she continued talking. I wanted to listen but I was busy trying to plan my next move and figure out how much of me and Gino’s cash I could get Sallie to wire me before the Feds got suspicious.
“We have a bed for you on the second floor,” the intake counselor said, eyeing the boot on my foot. “You think you can make it up there?”
I nodded real quick. Hell yeah, I could make it. I could make it up them stairs, and as soon as my money got wired to Western Union, I could make it back down them bad boys too.
Matter fact, the minute I got my cash I was gonna catch a cab to the airport and buy me a one way ticket to someplace far, and then check into the airport hotel and order room service and chill until it was time for my flight to leave.
“The second floor is no problem,” I assured the counselor as we walked through a little lounge area. She was one of those older ladies who still used a hot comb to straighten her salt and pepper hair. She turned around to lead the way and her pleated skirt twirled like a giant tent. Her hips were big and round, and her stockings made that soft squishing noise as her thighs rubbed together with every step she took.
I damn near fell in love with that sound and the way her ass moved. She reminded me of Grandmother and the ladies she used to hang out with in church when I was growing up. I longed to put my head down on her shoulder and confess my sins on the pulpit the way Grandmother had always urged me to do back in the day.
But times had changed, and all the good church ladies I knew were up in Harlem, which was the last place I was going. Instead, of putting my head on her shoulder, I glanced around the room.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Singletary. Is there a phone around here that I can use?” I asked.
She nodded and pointed at a desk up against the far wall. “You can use that one right there,” she told me. “Just dial nine to get an outside line.”
I sat down at the desk and dialed nine, and then I punched in the rest of the numbers as I remembered them.
The phone rang four times, then a recording came on that said, ”The number you have dialed is not in service. Please check your number and dial your call again.”
My ass dialed real slow and careful on the next try. I took my time and deliberately pressed every number real hard, pausing between each one to make sure I got it right. And I did. This time the phone was picked up on the second ring.
“Hello?”
The background noise was so loud that I could barely make out his voice. It sounded like he was in a wind tunnel or shouting into a fan the way me and Jimmy used to do when we was kids.
“Sallie!” I shouted and stuck one finger in my ear. “Sallie are you there?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s Juicy,” I said. “It’s Juicy!”
“Yeah? What’s up, Juicy?”
“Look. I know it’s been a minute, but remember that favor we talked about?” I let out a big sigh. “I’m gonna need you to do it and do it real fast.”
“I can’t hear you, Juicy. Lemme roll up the window.”
All I heard was the wind in my ear as he paused for a few seconds. And then he spoke again.
“A’ight. Now what favor?”
“You know,” I reminded him, still yelling even though the noise in the background had died down. “The favor,” I lowered my voice and glanced around and tried to whisper. “The favor I told you I might need you to do with that money Gino left with you!”
“Gino who?” Sallie said. He sounded like he wanted to make sure his words came through real loud and real damn clear.
I half-chuckled even though my situation was far from funny. “Look, I’m dead serious,” I told him. “If you knew what kind of shit I’ve been going through you wouldn’t even be playing.”
“Who’s playing?” He sounded dead serious too.
“Oh, so it’s like that? All right then. I’ll just call your aunt and uncle and tell ’em you’re trying to fuck over me, Sallie.”
“Call ’em,” he said calmly. “Yeah, go ’head and do that. Since the Feds are on your ass, why don’t you lead them straight to Renata and get her and Big Frank thrown in jail too.”
“What?” I damn near screamed. “The Feds? What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You fucked up, Juicy. They know you stole all that drug money, and they know you blew up your own car and skipped town too.”
“I didn’t blow up no damn car!” I shrieked.
“Whatever. Tell it to the Feds. All I know is that you left The Organization in a bag, sweetie. I tried to tell Frank you weren’t shit from the very beginning, but I’m not Italian so he wouldn’t listen to me.
“And now look at what’s happened. You brought trouble to their door and our entire family is about to go down because of you. Some kind of friend you turned out to be. Yeah, call Uncle Frankie and call Renata too. I’m sure she’ll be happy to hear from you while they’re throwing her ass in jail.”
I felt like a train had just run over me. What in the hell was going on? My mouth went dry with fear. Gino had stressed out hard over the Feds tracking us down. Did I leave a trail for them to sniff me out? Was I gonna go back to jail?
My head was spinning. I couldn’t bel
ieve what I was hearing. I refused to believe that shit!
“Yo, Sallie!” I barked. Mrs. Singletary was looking at me like I was crazy but I didn’t care. “Sallie…” I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself down. “I don’t know nothing about no Feds, but I’m telling you, mothafucka! I’m gonna need you to send me some of my goddamn money, outta my fuckin’ safe!”
“What fuckin’ money?” Slick Sallie’s voice was colder and slicker than shit as he hung up in my face. “What fuckin’ safe?”
$$$$$
At first I felt so ass-out that I just wanted to kill myself. Of course I clicked over to a dial tone and punched in Renata’s number right away, but as soon as it started ringing I hung up again. I knew Sallie was gonna try to keep all my money, but what if he was right about the Feds? What if they had Renata’s phone tapped and they were just waiting for me to call, waiting to draw a solid line between me and her so they could take her down too? I couldn’t risk doing that to her. As fucked up as my situation was and as much as I needed some help, I just couldn’t do it.
For the next two days straight all I did was cry and blow up Sallie’s cell over and over again. He never even answered that shit. His phone just kept rolling straight to voicemail, and by the fourth day it was full and wouldn’t even take no more messages.
My soul felt stripped and bare. No matter how I looked at things in my head, I was fucked. And not only was I fucked, I was also broke, hunted, and living in a homeless shelter way in Brooklyn with nowhere else to turn.
Mrs. Singletary had put me in a room with some other homeless chick, but I didn’t talk to her and she didn’t talk to me neither. Matter fact, she barely even looked at me, and I figured she probably thought I was laying there crying over some niggah who had beat my ass and kicked me out on the streets, but of course she was dead wrong.
The shelter was full of people coming and going, but I kept to myself and stayed mostly in my bed for those first few days. I felt so beaten down and depressed that I just didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t go back to California, and I couldn’t go back to Harlem neither. I didn’t have a phone, and I damn sure didn’t have a plan.
It took me a minute, but I finally broke down and called Rita. I ran down all the shit that Flex had done to me and told her where I was staying, and she cursed me out for not calling her right away so she could come get me.
“You can stay with me, Juicy. Nooni’s bedroom is empty, chica, and it’s all yours. Every damn thing I have is yours if you need it.”
“No, Rita, no,” I begged her. Even with Nooni gone she still had her little sister Chub to worry about. “I’m not coming back to Harlem. I’m way too scared. Plus, I wouldn’t feel right putting you in no bag.”
She started crying.
“I’m just so fuckin’ sorry, Juicy,” she apologized through her sobs. “I’m the one who put you in this situation in the first place! All of this shit is my fault. I shoulda never let you come back here. If you wanna go back to California I’ll come up with the money and buy you a plane ticket back, okay?”
Both of us knew that wasn’t gonna work. Hell, I could have called Renata and asked her to get me a plane ticket back to the West coast, but what the hell was I gonna do when I got there? Where was I gonna hide? The Feds were after me and somebody had blown up my fuckin’ car! My ass wasn’t no safer out there than I was right here.
Grandmother popped into my mind. I felt her presence within me so deep that it made my bones ache. I could see every line on her wise old face. Every crease in her overworked hands. She was in my bones, but she was also in my ear too. I could hear her telling me to just be still. To trust God and to be still.
And what choice did I really have? I couldn’t have moved if I wanted to. So I decided to give myself a couple of days until my ankle healed and I could walk without limping. I would just hide out in the shelter and chill for a minute and try to catch my breath. For once in my life I’d be obedient to my grandmother. I’d think and pray and try to see where I was being led, and wherever God’s grace took me, then that’s where I would go.
CHAPTER 11
Sal had covered about fifteen hundred miles and he was itching to get his ass to New York City. He pulled over for gas and food, and slept during the day at cheap motels so he could do most of his driving at night.
Tonight he was sitting in a booth at a truck stop diner as he feasted on a T-bone steak and a large order of French fries. He had pulled off the road to get some gas, and the smell of greasy burgers and fried onions had lured him inside the joint.
The food was good, he had to admit as he cut into his medium-rare steak and watched the juices run onto the plate, but that wasn’t what was keeping him there. The diner was full of truckers and travelers, and four pretty blonde waitresses scuttled around serving every man in the house with bright eyes and big, phony smiles.
Sal noted the beauty of the waitresses, who looked so much alike that they had to be sisters, but not one of the four had caught his eye.
Nah, Sallie was staring at somebody who looked totally different, and the more he sat and watched her, the hungrier he got.
She was eating by herself at the counter, and her ass looked like it was molesting her stool. She was slim up top with long, straight hair, but her hips looked nice and wide, and he could tell she had a plump booty packed into her tight jeans. Her frame put him in the mind of Juicy, who was one moolie bitch he’d fucked without ever taking his dick outta his pants.
Sallie watched the girl at the counter as she lowered her full lips onto the straw that stuck out of her glass of lemonade. He caught a glimpse of her pink tongue as she inserted the straw deep into her mouth, and instantly his pants rocked up with a strong desire for her.
She was just what he was looking for. Her small hand gripped the frosted glass, and her earrings dangled seductively from her earlobes. She had smooth, mocha skin, and when she spoke to the cashier at the counter Sallie melted as he saw a deep dimple flash in her left cheek.
The girl must have felt him staring at her because every now and then she glanced in his direction with a shy look in her eyes, and then looked away.
She’s flirting with me, Sallie thought. She was reading him and he was reading her too. The next time she snuck a peek at him Sallie nodded at her and winked. Her face seemed innocent and beautiful when she broke out in a bashful smile, and Sallie shot her his sexiest grin in return.
She was no local girl, Sallie could tell, and she wasn’t the kind of cheap hooker he usually snatched up off the track either. His curiosity was quenched when she slid down from her stool and jangled a large set of keys in her hand. Waving goodbye to the cashier, she took one last look at him and then her hips swayed like a melody as she walked out of the diner and headed toward one of the large trucks that was parked right outside.
Sallie couldn’t believe it. A chick like her was pushing a rig. He dug into his pocket and peeled off a fifty-dollar bill, and tossed it onto the table as he rushed outside behind her.
The trucker’s name was Meesha and her and Sal were in the back of her cab smoking a little reefer and having a real good time. Sal told her he worked as an aide to a big-time Los Angeles politician, and that he was driving to New York for a vacation. Meesha broke out a bottle of gin and told him she was from Oklahoma and that she got off on a creating a little adventure during her long, lonely road trips.
The moment she slammed the truck’s doors Sallie was all over her black ass. He knew her type very well. She was one of those black chicks who just loved to ride white cock. Well, Sallie had plenty of cock for her, but it didn’t matter how white she tried to talk he saw straight through her. She was still a nigger.
It had been a minute since Sallie had gotten a taste of some good black tail, and he started out by asking Meesha if she wanted to play a little game.
“You’re gonna love it,” he promised as he watched her strip out of her jeans and shirt and then wriggle out of her underwear. Her body w
as fuckin’ stunning. Her stomach was sweet and flat, and her hips looked like an artist had sketched them to perfection.
Sallie urged her to turn around, and he was damn-near slobbering by the time he saw her naked ass. It gave him a jolt. It was high and firm, perfectly round, and her thighs were tight and slender.
“Bend over and grab your ankles,” he instructed her as he swept his hand over her thick black booty. Meesha giggled and did what she was told, and Sallie used two tie-down cords that were on the floor to secure her wrists to her ankles.
When he had her tied up tightly he stood up behind her and took off his pants. His white penis stood out from his body at an angle, and Sallie rubbed it all over her ass before reaching under her and cupping and squeezing her firm brown nipples.
“You’re gonna love this,” he whispered as he bent over her and planted kisses down the curve of her naked back. She shivered beneath him as his lips trailed along her sweet chocolate spine and he approached the crack of her ass with sheer heat coming out of his mouth.
Gripping her fine hips, Sallie slid his tongue between her ass-cheeks and stuck it deeply inside her tight hole. She moaned and squirmed as he withdrew from her back door so he could continue licking lower. Sighing, Sallie sniffed her gorgeous pussy and plunged his face in, rubbing her clit with his nose. He backed out and parted her lips with his thumbs, and peered into the pinkness that was surrounded by the kind of chocolate he wanted to eat every single day.
Sallie got down on his knees so he could have better access, and then he went to work eating that dripping pussy like it was the last meal he would ever have. He gulped and slurped and licked and moaned into her yummy as Meesha screamed and bucked her hips at him, cumming over and over as Sallie fucked her deliciously with his tongue.
The air was thick with the smell of hot sex in the cab and Sallie’s dick throbbed with his need to burst. He fumbled for his pants and dug in his pocket and got a condom, then slipped it over his erection and rolled it down until his dick was all wrapped up.