by Mink, Meesha
“God please get me out of this. You know my heart. You see all. You know what all I been fighting. Please let me carry my black ass home and I swear I—”
“Jordan,” someone called out.
My eyes popped open. Shee-it, God don’t play.
I jumped to my feet. The black female detective from yesterday opened the cell. I couldn’t remember her name. “It’s time for my bail hearing?” I asked.
“No, you’re outta here. The charges were dropped.”
PAUSE.
“What?” I asked, rushing to follow behind her.
“You heard me,” she said.
I started to dougie in that bitch, but I stopped in the hall leading to another door. “Why? This not no setup because I told on your partner is it?” I asked.
Was they gone set me free and then wait and set me up to be shot or some shit like I was trying to escape? I watched enough TV not to trust a damn thing concerning a lot of cops. Especially a dirty pervert like Detective Dick.
She turned and eyed me like I was crazy. “You’re free. Just get the fuck outta here,” she snapped, holding the door open.
Did her and Detective Dick make the charges go away to keep me from getting him in trouble for the shit he did to me? Was she helping that fool?
I made my way past her, but I stopped and looked into her eyes. “He really did that to me, you know,” I told her, blinking away tears. “Just please believe that you need to be careful with somebody like that watching your back on these streets, mama. For real.”
She didn’t say nothing else to me and so I just made my way to the desk sergeant to pick up my property and get the fuck out of there just like she suggested.
I didn’t even bother to call Eve and Michel to come and pick me up from New York. I called a car service and waited outside the police station for it. I knew I looked a mess in my wrinkled dress and barely combed hair.
As soon as I powered my cell phone on it went to vibrating.
I started answering the calls and ending them quick. No need to lie; I was too ashamed for getting locked up. It was time for some damage control.
Eve.
“Oh shit, you out. Me and Michel were coming to meet the attorney to go to court with you.”
“The charges got dropped,” I said, actually feeling the urge to hit a blunt. Just a little something to take the edge off—or get me off the edge. What the fuck ever.
“What was the charges?”
Nosy ass. “They mistook me for somebody else. No biggie. I’m out and about to take a car service back to Jersey,” I told her.
“You should sue. I would sue they asses and sit back lovely as hell for making me sit up in jail all damn night,” Eve said, taking a deep breath when she got done.
“I’ll call you when I get back to Jersey. I got another call, a’ight?” I hung up because that breath she took meant she was getting ready to have a long conversation. Nothing.
Click.
Michel.
“Michel. I’m out. I’m straight. Mistaken identity. Call Eve. She got the details. I got another call. Cool?”
Click.
Missy.
“Hi Luscious. You good?” she asked.
I gave her the same speech I gave the other two and soon it was on to the next call.
Click.
My snitch.
“Girl, you not going to believe this shit,” she said.
My words died as I watched Detective Dick/Rossi walking up the street. He spotted me and I saw his hands clench and unclench at his sides.
A Lincoln Town Car pulled up and I rushed to the curb and waved it down. “This for Luscious Jordan?” I asked as soon as the bearded driver lowered the window.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said in a Caribbean accent.
I climbed in the back and slammed the door closed, not even looking in Detective Rossi’s direction as the car pulled off.
“Luscious, did you hear me?”
“What?” I asked, leaning back against the seat.
“I said I know you gone hate that like you owe Goldie a favor.”
I sat up straight. My heart stopped beating all together. “Why?” I snapped, drawing the eyes of the driver in the rearview mirror.
I forced myself to lean back against the seat and relax.
“Word around the whorehouse is Goldie pulled some connection from her list of clients and got the charges dropped against you,” she said.
“Yeah, right,” I said, squinting my eyes as my thoughts raced.
“That’s what I said,” she said. “Goldie got you off those drug charges and that video of you is a done dada.”
I ended the call and didn’t say goodbye. Shock has a way of snatching away fucking manners.
I frowned as my eyes shifted back and forth. Goldie? I shook my head. “What the fuck is she up to?” I asked myself, hating feeling like I was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I gave the driver his fee and a tip before he came around to open the rear door for me. “Thank you,” I said, looking at both my parents’ and Mr. Alvarez’s house sitting side by side. I just wanted to get my car and get the fuck away from both of them and everybody in them.
“Have a good one,” the driver said, before jogging around to climb into his car and drive away.
I walked over to my car and dug my hand in my pocketbook. It took me a minute to remember I gave the keys to my mother. “Damn,” I said, resting my elbow on the hood of the car. The heat of the metal burned and I lifted off it quick, still eyeing my parents’ house and hating that I had to get my keys.
Pulling the handles of my pocketbook up on my bare shoulder, I knuckled up to just get the shit over with. I’d rather have dragged my naked ass across dog shit, though. For real.
I rang the doorbell and fidgeted like a kid.
The door opened and my mother stood there. “Harriet,” she said, her face filling with surprise.
“I came to get my keys,” I said, ignoring her opening arms.
Her smile faded. “Harriet, don’t be that way,” she said.
I just shook my head and held out my hand. “I just want to go home. Can I have my keys?”
“No, you’re going to talk to me. I am your mother and I deserve your respect at all times, Harriet Lee Jordan.”
Lord knows it had been a long-ass night between meeting Detective Dick in the motel and getting released from jail this morning. I had touched on every possible emotion a person could deal with. A bitch was tired and on the edge. Not a good combo for peacemaking.
Then again, maybe it was time to do like Martin and pull out my little notebook with the list of people I needed to check and get to getting with my parents.
“You know what I deserved, Ma? I deserved parents who had my back. Who looked out for me. Who protected me,” I told her, stabbing a finger at my chest with each point made. I knew my eyes blazed with anger because I felt it burning in my stomach.
“Don’t you dare judge us because we chose not to follow you to jail when you know damn well we raised you better than do anything to get yourself arrested,” my mother fired back. “Just like we raised you not to drop out of college, not to become a stripper, not to shack up with some man who eventually goes to jail for his role in a rape. Don’t judge us, Harriet. Don’t you do it!”
I looked at her like she was mad crazy and I didn’t give a fuck how it looked. “Don’t judge!!!! I spent my whole life being judged by you two. You had a child and not a lump of clay that you could mold into whatever you wanted and then toss outside when I didn’t turn out to be what you thought was nice and pretty and presentable.”
“Calm down, Harriet.” I looked up at my father suddenly standing there.
“Calm down. Calm down,” I repeated. “You two have no clue what I been through and I really don’t think you care.”
“Anything that you have been through that is too much for you to bear was of your own doing,” my father said.
My fight left me ju
st like that. Like somebody untied a balloon and released the air until it deflated. My soul was deflated.
“I got arrested because that detective was a dirty cop blackmailing me into having sex with him and I put a stop to it. The charges were dropped this morning,” I told him, meeting his hard stare. “See, you didn’t do a damn thing to protect me last night. I told you I was afraid that he was going to hurt me and not even take me to jail. I begged you . . . I begged you to be there for me. And you let me down.”
My mother reached for me and I brushed her hands away. “Why didn’t you tell us?” she asked.
“What did you do that he was blackmailing you?” my father asked.
I just held out my hand and didn’t even look at them. I ain’t had shit else to say. Any thoughts I had about sharing my memories of being molested disappeared with a quickness. I was sure my father would find a way to blame it all on me.
“Give her the keys,” my father said before turning to walk back into the house.
Boy, that shit right there fucked me up and good. I was relieved when my mother finally pulled my keys from her pocket and pressed them into my hand before she kissed my cheek. I just wanted to get away from there, go home, wash my ass, and climb under the covers for the rest of the day. Fuck it.
I turned and walked down the steps just as Sophie parked her gold Volvo in front of Mr. Alvarez’s house. I saw him sitting in the passenger seat. Well, he ain’t dead. I thought, moving toward my Jag and watching as he used a cane to get out the car.
I was about to climb into my whip but I turned. “Hi Sophie,” I said, with a little wave.
She gave me a stiff smile back. Bitch.
“Are you okay, Mr. Alvarez?” I called out to him, sounding sweet and fake as hell.
He stopped in his tracks and turned to look over his shoulder at me. “Just an accident while I was cleaning some fish last night,” he lied.
“Oh,” I said, sounding like I didn’t give a fuck and meaning it as I turned and climbed into my car.
Hmm. He didn’t tell that I tortured his no-good ass. The same way he knew I had yet to tell the secret of his molestation all them years ago. I knew the secrets Mr. Alvarez and I shared were still just between us.
For now. I was far from done with his ass.
It’s amazing how every so often you get tested to just how much shit your plate can hold. And just when I thought mine was already full of enough shit, I walked into the air-conditioned lobby of the Twelve50 and saw Goldie at the concierge’s desk.
For one, that bitch was looking like new money in a formfitting stretch denim dress that I recognized from Neiman Marcus. I’d even tried it on and decided against it just last month.
Me? I looked just like I ran for my life, confronted my molester, got arrested, and slept in my clothes all night. Not the way I wanted to confront my enemy that I ain’t seen in over a year. I started to back out the door and regroup, but she turned and saw me.
In the moment, I had to decide how this was going to go down. Was I going to cuss her out, beat her ass, reveal my hate and need to make her pay? Fake it? What should I do? Because I knew this one moment would define everything I been gunning for over the last year. Everything I did was with the thought in the back of my mind that this person now walking up to me had to pay. Did I let that shit go now? Did I trust her now? Did I say, “Thank you for helping me”? Or did I say, “You know what, you owe me that and more”?
What the fuck should I do?
Goldie was a bold bitch to walk up and stand before me like it was nothing, when the last we saw each other we were fighting like cats and dogs. A heated and violent moment after I caught my man eating her out. After I saw my friend and my man stabbing me in the back when I was in the building.
“I thought we needed to talk,” she said, removing these badass graduated shades. “But I know the first thing I need say—”
I held up my hand, because I had to remind myself that she didn’t know that I know she got the charges against me dropped. I had no need to be grateful and gracious to her ass in that moment. I needed to get on her level. Not be caught off guard and smelling like yesterday. No haps. “If you want to talk, we can. I just want to change and I’ll be back down,” I said.
And then I moved around her and continued on to the elevator lobby. I didn’t look back at her to see if she waited. I got on the elevator and rode up to my floor.
The choice was hers. If she wanted to talk so badly, then thirty minutes sitting her ass in the lobby—because she wasn’t being invited into my house—wasn’t going to kill her.
I focused on getting dressed. Getting ready. I didn’t think about her or what she wanted or what she expected from me. I got just as fly as she was, seeking her level. Letting her know, this wasn’t the same old Luscious she “saved” from my days stripping during the early afternoons at Club Naughty. That Luscious—lost and looking up to her like she was Oprah or some shit—was gone. Long fucking gone.
By the time I pulled the handle on the front door and made my way back downstairs, forty-five minutes had passed. Maybe she waited. Maybe she didn’t. Whatever. I didn’t know. But what I did know was I looked hella good.
I flatironed my hair until it was bone straight and shiny, falling to the middle of my back like black silk. Smoky eyes, contoured cheeks, glossy lips (completely overboard for daytime, but who cared?). Diamond studs, bracelets, dome rings, and cross (all gifts from Make$ that I hadn’t even thought twice about giving back). My body was just as tight and banging as hers, and the soft peach strapless dress I wore clung to every curve and pushed my breasts high (plus the color looked good on my dark complexion). I finished it off with a pair of sky-high gold Louboutins and plenty of my favorite perfume.
“Damn,” one of my male neighbors said when I stepped off the elevator in the lobby.
I smiled at him over my shoulder, and his blonde head was poking out the elevator and checking my walk-away. “Good?” I asked.
“Hell yeah,” he said.
I gave him a wink and continued strutting through the elevator lobby like I owned Twelve50. I saw the top of Goldie’s blond-streaked head buried behind a copy of Essence magazine as she sat in the lobby. Wow, the bitch waited.
She looked up and eyed me from head to toe real quick before I slid into the leather club chair across from her and crossed my gleaming chocolate legs. “Okay, here I am. Talk.”
Goldie smiled (or smirked a little) as she closed the magazine and tucked it back into her python Gucci bag. “You know my time is valuable, and I waited an hour for you, because this is convo we really need to have.”
I didn’t say shit. I just looked at her.
“Messing with Make$ behind your back was fucked up,” Goldie started, using her shades to push her hair back off her face. “And I’m woman enough to apologize for that shit. It wasn’t worth it.”
My lips stayed pressed.
“After the shit that happened to me. . . .” She paused and looked down at her shoes as she pulled her hair from behind her back to over her shoulder.
I saw her shoulders rise with the deep breath she took. “After the rape, I ain’t had no choice but to sit the fuck back and see what I did to other people,” she admitted, finally looking back up at me.
Tears were in her eyes but she didn’t let them fall.
“I don’t know if you know, but I used some connections I have to get your charges dropped,” Goldie said, twisting the diamond watch on her wrist.
Damn, I should’ve wore my watch, I thought, even though I kept my face blank.
“I did that because I felt like I owed you that,” she said.
I still didn’t know what to do with this new twist. My eyes squinted. I wished I knew what the fuck her angle was.
Goldie sat back in her chair and licked her lips, looking at me. Waiting on a reaction. Waiting on a thank-you?
For a year I’d been watching this bitch’s every move. I knew a lot about her, maybe even e
verything about her. Never once did I show my hand. Never once did I reveal that I was gunning for her. The very fact that she sat in the lobby of my apartment building, apologizing and sharing her sadness about her rape, let me know that I was successful in being that covert.
She had no clue I was gunning for her.
I couldn’t reveal that now. I couldn’t throw away the last year. I couldn’t forgive and forget.
“Thank you for getting the charges dropped,” I said, feeling the words damn near choke me.
Goldie smiled. “I just want you to know that it’s just between me and you. I’m not looking for shit in return. I just felt like it was the least I could do,” she said, rising to her feet and pulling her shades down to cover her eyes.
I nodded and forced myself to smile.
“’Bye, Luscious,” she said, moving around the chair.
My eyes squinted as I watched her.
Goldie turned suddenly and I quickly made my face blank again. “I know we’ll never be friends, but I hope we can get past the bullshit,” she said, before she turned back and walked across the lobby and out the door to get back to her Bentley, her Upper East Side penthouse apartment, and her fabulous fucking life.
13
Two Weeks Later
It took me every last second of the last two weeks to come to grips with all the shit that had happened to me. Two weeks of me waiting for Detective Dick to call and say that he still could get me locked up and to meet him to fuck it all away. Two weeks of not being altogether straight about Mr. Alvarez not calling the police on me for holding him hostage in his house, branding his sick ass, and then plunging a knife into his thigh. Two weeks to finally answer my mother’s calls.
And two weeks to finally figure out just what I wanted to do about Goldie.
I had just left the shooting range and was zooming toward home on the 1/9 when I picked up my phone and dialed my snitch. Her phone was off. Since the day before, I’d tried calling her and she didn’t answer. Now the phone was disconnected. I fought the urge to throw my phone out the car in frustration. “Damn.”