Relapse: A Novel

by Nikki Turner

  “Fuck I look like to you? Sam-sausage-head? That’s one of the oldest tricks in the crackhead survival manual. Bitch, you need to get somebody to bring my paper over here.”

  Paris turned to Lucy. “Tell him I’m good for it.” Then back to Jon, “I just gotta go get it. My friend don’t know I get high. He ain’t gon give it to me unless I meet ’im.”

  Jon acted like he was thinking it over. “Nah, I ain’t feelin’ that shit. You gon stay right here till I get what’s mine.” He reached under his shirt and snatched a small handgun from his waistband. “I don’t care if you have to have it wired, but yo’ life is depending on it.”

  Jon was a small-time neighborhood hustler who dreamed of making it big in the drug trade. Like most young cats who fell prey to the streets, he wanted to look tougher than he really was—but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t dangerous.

  He passed Paris his phone.

  “You would kill me,” she asked in a frustrated voice, “over five hundred dollars? When it’s a known fact I ain’t no slouch! I make money and I will be one of your best customers to you as long as yo’ shit is good.”

  Jon’s eyes locked onto hers. “I’ll bust a nigga’s head for a piece of candy if the chump thought he was taking something for me, ya dig.”

  There were only two people Paris could possibly call to get that type of money.

  First she called Willabee, but before she could get the words out, Paris heard a lady’s voice calling out “B-12” in the background. “Baby, I’m at bingo. Call me back later,” Willabee said, then hung up before Paris could get a word in.

  There was only one other person to call.

  Beijing had just gotten out of the shower. Not only had she been robbed at gunpoint, but she hadn’t been able to reach Don when she called for a ride, so she’d had to hail down a cab to get back to the mansion. If her clothes, computer, and the rest of her belongings hadn’t been there, she would have gone to a hotel. The sun was rising and she was massaging lotion onto her legs when the phone rang.

  “Who in the hell is this?” she said out loud.

  Beijing had been up all night, shocked at what her first night in Atlanta had turned out to be. At this point she was just plain sick and tired of all the bullshit, from the cigar-smoking cab-driver, to Don’s inconsiderate ass, to the robbers—and her list was going on when the phone interrupted.

  “Beijing, Beijing, oh my God I am so glad you answered the phone.” She could hear a frantic Paris on the other end of the line. She had not spoken to her sister since the altercation at her mother’s house.

  “What? Paris!” she snapped, still mad at her from the other day. “I swear I can’t deal with none of your scheming right now. I’ve done had a fucked-up night. Call me back tomorrow, I might be in a better state of mind.”

  “Look, I know you still mad at me about the Chyna thing but I’m in deep fucking trouble. I’m going to keep it real wit you. No bullshit. I was down here in Columbia getting high and I owe this guy five hundred dollars and he won’t—”

  Beijing’s first thought was that it might have been one of her sister’s stunts. “Paris, come now, you can do better than that,” Beijing cut in. It would not have been the first time she’d lied to get what she wanted.

  Until Jon snatched the phone from her. “And you got four hours to Western Union me my motherfuckin’ five hundred or I swear to you on my grandma’s holey drawers I will kill this bitch.”

  “What? Who is this?”

  “The nigga she owe, that’s who.”

  “So you going to kill her over five hundred dollars?” she questioned, entertaining this silly guy on the other end of the phone.

  “If you want this bitch to get out of the house breathing, you need to be asking ’bout the info you need to send the paper.”

  Beijing was quiet for a second, thinking how she would really feel if her sister was killed, how it would affect her mother and Chyna. “Goddamn! Shit! What name you want me to put it in?” She sucked her teeth, knowing for sure this was some bullshit but not wanting to gamble—after the bittersweet night she’d had, the odds were not in her favor.

  “Lucy Roach.” He laughed. “Good to know that the bitch is worth the paper and don’t take all day either, ’cause I do feel a lil trigger-happy.”

  “Just put Paris back on the phone. You gon get your fucking money for Christ’s sake.”

  “Hello.”

  “I’m sending the money. Call me once he lets you go.”

  “I will, and … Beijing?”

  “Yes. What is it?”

  “Thanks, Sis.”

  Pleased with the way things were going, Jon lit up a blunt. “Now,” he said, lusting at Paris. “Strip, bitch.”

  “Strip?”

  “Ain’t no echo in here.” He put the gun to her head. “I’m ready for some of that good ho pussy of yours.”

  With the pistol cocked back, Paris had no choice. She stepped out of her skirt, standing there in a thong and the top that she had stolen.

  “Ev’rything. Don’t make me say it again.”

  She peeled off the thong and pulled the shirt over her head.

  Stroking his dick, “Damn you a phat-ass crackhead bitch,” Jon huffed. “Bend over the chair so you can put this here monster I got for you. I might even give you a few mo’ crumbs when I’m done.”

  “Why are you doing this? My sister’s going to give you the money.”

  “This is what they call an inconvenience fee,” he said pulling out his three-inch fully erect penis.

  “Can you at least use a condom?” Paris pleaded.

  “Fuck a condom.” He rammed it straight into her butt hole with no lubrication. Paris hardly knew he had entered her.

  He pushed back and forth about five or six times before he came.

  “Now suck it,” he said, breathing heavy.

  She did what she was told. For a split second she thought about biting it, but she thought twice when she felt the cold steel against her head. Out of the corner of her eye, Paris caught Lucy laughing as she watched Paris suck the little-dick-thug off. This jealous-hearted bitch set me up, she thought.

  It was less than an hour until Beijing called Jon back. The money was at Western Union.

  Once Beijing sent the money, Lucy and Jon threw Paris out of the house, tossing at her a T-shirt and some flip-flops that Lucy’s dog had chewed up.

  She had no cash and had to beg someone to use their cell phone to call Beijing to pick her up. All Beijing heard was her sister crying on the other end of the phone, asking for a bus ticket. It touched her heart, because in all of Paris’s years of going back and forth to prison, on and off drugs, and to and from rehab programs, she had never heard or seen her sister cry. Instead of getting the ticket, she drove in Don’s car to Columbia to pick up her sister.

  When Beijing pulled up in the powder-blue Aston Martin, she saw her sister sitting and shivering by the side of a convenience store. Someone had been nice enough to give Paris a raggedy blanket to wrap around herself. She looked so pitiful that despite everything they had been through, at that very moment Beijing’s heart went out to her sister.

  She got out the car and hugged Paris. They embraced for what felt like a lifetime, until they both lost their grip but were still crying. Paris sobbed in Beijing’s arms. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. That’s the shit I get for leaving you dem years ago and stealing from Chyna, it’s like you said, payback’s a motherfucker!”

  “No, that ain’t got nothing to do with that. Look at me, Paris.” She removed her arms from around her sister. “That doesn’t have anything to do with nothing. The guy still should not have done what he did. That was foul.”

  A few people started looking their way so they got into the car.

  Inside, Paris said, “That dirty dick sucker kept my stuff, my jacket, my boots, and all those other lil things.”

  “Fuck him, I brought you a sweat suit.” She reached into the back and handed her sister the outf
it and a toiletry bag so she could clean up a bit.

  “I need to take a shower, and go to the doctor. I hope dat nigga ain’t have shit, running up in me raw,” she said before flip-flopping to the bathroom on the side of the store.

  Beijing was getting madder by the minute after hearing what had happened and glad that she had come to her sister’s rescue. Paris poked her head out of the bathroom. “And they had the nerve to take yo’ money and my clothes and … my pussy,” she informed her sister again.

  “I can’t believe that,” Beijing said from the other side of the door. “I am plain sick of motherfucking men taking advantage of us women. Just sick of them!”

  “But I think the bitch whose house I was in had something to do with it.”

  “Hurry up and get yourself together the best you can.” Beijing walked away from the door over to the car.

  Beijing was at the back of the Aston Martin slamming the trunk down when Paris finally came out of the restroom and got in. Before Beijing got behind the wheel, she reached down and tied her Prada sneakers.

  Paris had gotten it together. “Then she had the nerve to be laughing.”

  “Who’s the lady you think set you up?”

  “A no-teeth bitch name Lucy!”

  “Show me where that bitch Lucy live.”

  “How come?”

  “’Cause I asked.” Beijing shot a look at her sister that meant business.

  “What if Jon is still there, Beijing?” Paris looked over at her. “He got a gun.”

  “All I want to do is give Lucy a firm message before we go, that’s all. I plan on busting in on the backstabbing bitch and kicking a mud hole in her dingy ass.”

  “Yeah and you know I’d be game, but we can’t take a knife to a gunfight—and hell, we don’t even have a knife.”

  “We don’t need one; just show me where she lives.”

  “Turn right at this light.”

  Beijing jumped from the far left lane over to the next one, and then cut off a Corvette. He honked and she gave him the finger.

  “Bitch! Who taught you to drive? Hell, do you even have a driver’s license?” Paris clutched on to the hook on the ceiling. “Damn, I know Sterling is gangsta but he shouldn’t have taught you how to drive no getaway car.”

  “You crazy. A girl gotta do what she gotta do.”

  “Turn right and it’s the third house on the left.”

  Beijing bent the corner and stopped in front of a shack. “Is this it?” Beijing frowned up at the house.

  Paris assured her that it was.

  Beijing popped the trunk, slid out of the car, grabbed a brick from the trunk that she had taken at the store’s parking lot, and hurled it through the front window, shattering the glass.

  The stone took a fortuitous route, cracking Lucy upside the dome while she was sitting in the chair by the window smoking coke that Jon had given her for looking out.

  The note attached to the brick read:

  Where there’s smoke … there’s fire!

  This ain’t over, Bitch!

  The girls decided to stop at a diner right off the highway before hitting the road to head back to Atlanta. They sat in the diner and laughed at the incident, replaying it over and over again for a while until Paris said to her sister, “I’m done for real. I want out of this shit. Wanna be clean.”

  “That’s good, Paris! It’s about time! And I’m proud of ya!” She smiled. “I will help you along the way.”

  “I know you think I’m bullshitting you.”

  “I didn’t say that, did I?”

  “See, I’ve been to programs in the past,” Paris confided, “because the judge or my PO sent me but never because I wanted help. I don’t want to be like that bitch Lucy. That can’t be me in ten years. Just can’t. Not happening. I’m tired of that life and now I am ready.”

  “I believe you, Sis.” Beijing’s eyes watered. “And I got your back, as long as you are serious. I got your back.”

  “Thank you. I won’t disappoint you,” Paris assured her sister. “Anyways what’s up with you and your boyfriend?”

  “What boyfriend?”

  “Dude from Texas.”

  “Lootchee? Girl, too much to fill you in.”

  “Talk to your big sister, maybe I can help. You know I’ve always had my way with men.”

  “Nothing really to talk about. I’m not feeling him like that anymore.” Beijing tried to convince herself.

  “Well, if you ever want to talk about it, you know I’m here.” Paris continued, “I’m going to keep saying it: I can’t believe that you showed your ass for me.”

  “You are my sister. What’d you expect?”

  As soon as Beijing said that, she heard gunshots behind her, and they dove for cover under the table. When everything was clear, they got up and realized that the Aston Martin had been shot up and saw Jon pulling off in a Delta 88. “Shit,” Beijing said, “what am I supposed to tell Don?”

  $ $ $

  When they arrived back in Atlanta, Beijing got Paris a room at a hotel near the bus station so she could take a shower and get herself some rest. The next day they went to breakfast and then Beijing put her sister on the bus. Paris was going to stay with Willabee until they could find her a rehab program.

  Then she decided that she’d had enough of Atlanta. She’d cut her stay short after she met with Lamont in two days, but in the meantime she would work on the plan for her concierge business.

  Beijing pulled in front of Don’s beautiful mansion. On her way she thought of a couple different explanations that she would give him about the car—but when she got inside she saw two other girls walking out of the kitchen, one in cheap lingerie and the other in a too-small bra and thong. Before she went into her room to regroup from all the events that had occurred in the past twenty-four hours, she stepped into the great room. Don was lying back on the oversized leather couch with his feet on the table, smoking a cigar in a robe that had been stolen from the Tabby Hotel. Beijing tossed him the keys to his Aston Martin. “Now we’re really even on the car situation.”

  CHAPTER 26

  A Mishap

  The month of February was taking no prisoners this year in Charlotte. The month’s average temperature was twenty-one degrees. Today was no exception.

  Beijing was in her office working, making phone calls and trying to keep her clients happy. She couldn’t wait for seven o’clock to roll around.

  “Hello, this is Beijing.”

  “Seth Soberman. I’m glad I caught you, Beijing.”

  Seth was Natalia’s super-rich boyfriend. He allowed her to do whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted. Nothing was too extravagant for her.

  “I hate to bother you with little things like this,” he said, “but one of my accountants gave me a call concerning a forty-seven-hundred-dollar charge on Natalia’s invoice under miscellaneous.”

  “Yes.” Beijing lowered her voice. “That was for a little mishap that took place.”

  “Mishap?” Seth asked, curious. “Would it be too much to ask for a few details concerning this mishap?”

  “No problem at all,” Beijing said. “Natalia was in a little fender-bender. No one was hurt. She just wanted it to disappear.”

  “What do you mean by disappear?”

  “We didn’t want to leave any kind of paper trail that the missus could somehow see, so I knew someone who would make it disappear.”

  “You mean like there is no record of it ever happening?”

  “Yes, I had it taken care of,” she said casually, like it was no big deal. “This type of thing happens all the time. But it does incur a fee.”

  Seth was quiet for a moment. “Let me get this right: Natalia was involved in a hit-and-run and you made it go away? As if it never happened?”

  “That’s correct, sir.”

  “Impressive,” he commended her. “You’re definitely the right person for the job.” Beijing smiled at the compliment. “Now I know why Natalia speaks so high
ly of you.”

  “Thank you, sir. If you have any more questions or if there is anything at all I may be able to do for you, please do not hesitate to give me a call.”

  She exhaled after ending the call.

  “B,” April said, interrupting her thoughts, “can you hold us down while I go take a smoke?” She already had her coat folded across her arm.

  There wasn’t much traffic at the desk. Beijing looked around the lobby; the only person there was an elderly lady reading a romance novel by the fireplace, drinking a cup of coffee.

  Beijing agreed to handle the check-in desk.

  “You don’t know,” Beijing exaggerated, “it’s ten below out there. You gon have icicles hanging from your ass before you get done. I hope it’s worth it.”

  “Ain’t no ice sticking to this.” April slapped her butt with her palm. “My shit be smoking hot, ya hear.”

  Beijing couldn’t help but laugh at her conceited colleague as she slid into her winter coat, then sashayed through the lobby to the exit.

  Beijing was hanging up the phone when she heard a familiar-sounding voice. If she hadn’t known any better, she would’ve thought it was her cousin Seville. It was another month before Seville and her boyfriend, Jack, were due back in the States, but Jack’s job ended a month early.

  Looking up from the phone, Beijing thought she was seeing a ghost—or Seville’s identical twin sister that she didn’t have—standing in front of her, holding two cups of hot chocolate.

  “Oh my God,” she screamed, forgetting that she was at work. “When did you get back and why didn’t you tell me you were coming?” Beijing was all smiles.

  “Jack and I got back today and I wanted to surprise you.” Seville passed her one of the cups of cocoa. “Surprise!”

  Beijing was stunned. “Damn right I’m surprised, girl! I get off in another hour,” she said. “We can go to dinner and catch up. Have you eaten?”

  “I wish I could. Jack and I have to take care of a few things. We haven’t even been home yet,” she added. “He’s in the truck waiting for me. By the way, he said to tell you hey. I just had to come and see you first.”