by Noire
Ten minutes later I was riding in the Range Rover with the window down when I spotted Frankie coming out of a late-night corner store. “Later baby!” I screamed out the window, then me and Rita bust out laughing as he held his hands in the air like Yo, what the fuck is up?
G and Jimmy were due in the next afternoon, but I’d had a good last night out. We went to Rita’s aunt’s house and stayed up talking and listening to music most of the night. I wet Rita’s hair and put it in some flat twists, and she put one big French braid down the back of my head, then we each took a pair of clean panties and tied them around our heads like scarves.
I laid down for the night with a smile on my face. Even though I had silk sheets and a ten-thousand-dollar bed waiting for me on Central Park West, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been so happy, and I got the best sleep of my life laying right there next to Rita on a pallet on her aunt’s living room floor in one of the worst neighborhoods in Brooklyn.
Chapter Twelve
We got up the next morning hungry as hell and cooking up a storm. I made a pot of cheese grits that could have put Grandmother’s to shame, and Rita fried beef bacon and made scrambled eggs and salmon cakes. We took our time eating and then cleaned her aunt’s kitchen until it looked better than it had when we started. G, Jimmy, and Gino were due to fly in at 3:30, so I knew Pacho would be swinging by to pick me up at about 2:00 P.M.
It wasn’t even 1:30 when we pulled up outside of the apartment building on Central Park West, but already Pacho was parked in the valet area and sitting in the limo. All I had to say was that we’d gone out for lunch, I told myself. Nobody told him to bring his ass over all early anyway. I waved at Pacho then turned away as Rita handed the valet boy her keys.
“You sure it’s okay for me to come up?” she asked.
“Girl, please,” I said striding toward the doorway. “You need to. Ain’t nobody up in that big-ass apartment no way. Don’t nobody never come up there except the maids. All that expensive shit and don’t nobody ever get to see it.”
We rode the elevator upstairs and Rita was tripping about the carpet, fresh flowers, and gold mirrors and crystal chandeliers that lined the hallway. True, it was a long way from the projects we’d just come from, but it wasn’t nearly as much fun.
We stopped outside the door and I slung my purse over one shoulder and my Coach overnight bag over the other as I stuck the key in the lock. I knew what was up the moment I turned the knob and the door only opened half a foot, but at that point there wasn’t a thing I could do.
“Where you been?”
G sounded like a pit bull as he slid the chain lock off the door and opened it all the way. He must not have seen Rita standing behind me the way he snatched me inside the apartment and flung me up against the wall.
My lie came pouring straight out. “G, this my friend Rita. She came by and picked me up earlier and we went out to breakfast. I had a taste for French toast and wasn’t no bread in the house and you know I don’t have no money.”
He just looked at me for a minute, then he shook his head. “You’re a big liar, Juicy. We came in on an early flight and ain’t none of the doormen seen you come in or go out since the day I left. So where you been?”
G wasn’t yelling but he might as well have been for all the rage that was in his eyes. I looked around and saw Jimmy sitting at the table with the finest man I’d ever seen. Jimmy looked disgusted and the other guy looked amazed. He had to be Gino, but since he wasn’t a cop with a gun who could save my ass, I truly didn’t give a fuck.
“For real, G!” I turned to Rita. “Right, Rita? Didn’t you come get me and take me out for breakfast?”
I knew I looked pitiful, begging my girl to back up my lie, but I didn’t care. My ass was on the line cause G didn’t play. Rita nodded quickly. “Yeah that’s right. I picked her up and we went to get something to eat. Dagg. We wasn’t even gone that long.”
G never even looked her way. Instead he snatched my Coach bag and turned it upside down, shaking everything out. All my dirty shit hit the floor. Thongs, belly shirts, push-up bras, cutoff shorts, even my toothbrush, deodorant, hairbrush, and the panties I’d used to tie down my hair the night before. There was nothing left to say, and even if there was, G wasn’t trying to hear it.
“Why you lie so much, Juicy?” He grabbed the front of my shirt and tried to put me through the wall again.
“Hold up, goddamn it,” Rita said, trying to squeeze between us. “Hold the motherfuckin phone. You ain’t gotta be putting your damn hands all over her.”
The next moment was a blur. It was almost like G hit Rita with me. He snatched me by the neck and slammed me dead into her, banging our heads together, trying to crack them like eggs. We collided so hard we both went down to the ground. I heard him cursing and beefing above us but my left ear was ringing and I was too dizzy to move.
“I don’t know who the fuck you be, little mama,” he warned, pointing down at Rita, “but if I ever set eyes on your ass again I guarantee your people’ll be reading about you in the newspaper.”
We stayed on the floor until G walked away, both of us too scared to move. Rita got up first, then helped pull me to my feet. Her eye was red and a bruise was rising on the side of her face. “You can come home with me,” she whispered as I pushed her toward the door. It was all I could do to shake my head. Rita might not know any better, but I did. There was no betraying Granite McKay. And there was no escaping him either.
I found out why they’d come back early. On the spur of the moment G had decided to take his son to Hawaii as a graduation gift. Jimmy had wanted to leave straight from the West Coast, but G had insisted they come back to New York to get me. I felt like shit and Jimmy wasn’t making me feel any better the way he was ragging on me.
“Why you always gotta mess everything up?” he asked, scowling at me like I was his damn child. I pressed an ice pack to the side of my head and tried to stop the room from spinning as Jimmy stormed around the kitchen opening and closing cabinets and drawers without taking anything out of them.
“I wasn’t trying to mess nothing up.” I sucked my teeth. “All I was trying to do was have some damn fun. Just like any other nineteen-year-old. Just like you do whenever you get ready to roll. I don’t wanna go to nobody’s Hawaii anyway.”
“Well, you going. And you knew G’s rules. You knew you was supposed to have your ass home while we was gone. How you think G felt when we got off that plane and didn’t nobody know where you was? He was so mad he told Pacho to leave Moonie in Queens and let him find his own way home!”
“What Moonie got to do with me?”
“G left him in charge. He was supposed to have his people watching you, that’s what. He failed G, so he had to pay for it. Shit, G should have left me running things. I’da made sure you kept your ass right here where you belonged.”
Jimmy’s words cut through my pain. Not only didn’t I like the yang he was talking, he needed to get certain shit out of his head. Fast. “G didn’t leave you in charge of nothing,” I told him, “because you ain’t getting involved in nothing. I already told you. You have to graduate next June, then come September you need to have your ass up in a college just like Gino had his ass up in one.”
Jimmy leaned over me and spoke in a way I’d never heard before. In fact, a whole lot about him seemed to have changed after only five days alone with G. “Juicy-Mo. Get it right. I’m not going to college, and that’s word. I’m down with G now. He made me a lieutenant and I got a job to do.”
This wasn’t the time to argue with Jimmy. When shit settled down I would talk to G. If he loved Jimmy so much then he should want the same thing for him that he’d wanted for Gino. An education. I pushed past my brother, elbowing him roughly as I left the kitchen.
“Get outta my damn face, Jimmy, before I fuck you up. I might not be able to beat G, but I can damn sure beat you.”
G said we were leaving in two days and would stay gone for ten. I’d been real quiet all day caus
e my head was still banging like a drum. Jimmy had introduced me to Gino, then spent almost an hour talking him up like he was some kind of saint. It was Gino said this and Gino did that. It wasn’t long before I was sick of Gino-Gino-Bo-Bino and I didn’t even know him.
But Gino was G’s son, that much was for sure. Except for the curly hair, which Gino must have gotten from his Puerto Rican mother, they looked just alike. The same tall build, solid shoulders, dark skin, and pretty teeth. But even as tight as G kept his body Gino’s youth outshined his father, and of course he dressed hipper than G although his clothes were just as expensive.
For some reason G had put Gino in the guest room that was connected to our bedroom, and I couldn’t understand why. The other room down the hall was much bigger and had nicer stuff in it. A plasma screen television, a sitting area, it was laid. The room he put Gino in was the smallest in the apartment, and while it was still nice and had a good mattress on the bed, it wasn’t where I would have put my son if he came to stay with me.
G acted like he’d forgotten about the scene with Rita. Forgotten about how he’d tried to bust our heads open like watermelons. Since it was Sunday, all areas in the G-Spot except the cut room were shut down. I usually cooked a big Sunday dinner for the three of us, but tonight G had decided to order in Chinese food and even rented a bunch of movies for us to watch. It seemed like he was trying to be nice to me around his son, who hadn’t said more than a handful of words the whole day and spent most of his time talking on his cell phone or playing video games with Jimmy.
When I climbed out of the bathtub later on that night G was waiting for me. On any other Sunday night he’d jet over to the Spot before midnight so he could check on his powder, but tonight he was sitting up in the bed naked, the lamp shining from his nightstand, the white silk sheets tangled around his legs. I saw the way he was looking at me but I ignored him and did like I usually do. I rubbed myself all over with some scented lotion, then slipped into a pair of silk panties and a black lace teddy. I didn’t bother to do anything to my hair because I knew G would insist I get it blown out and stiff curled first thing in the morning.
I got in the bed and closed my eyes and heard a click when G turned off his lamp. I cursed inside when he reached for me and turned me over on my back. This was gonna be one dry fuck, and the only comfort was that I knew it wouldn’t last long. It never did.
Pinch, pinch on the right titty. Squeeze, poke on the left. Sex with G was so stale and predictable I wished I could just put the pillow over my head and go to sleep while he did his thing.
I kept my eyes closed as he moved on top of me.
“Moan, Juicy.”
For a second I was so stunned I couldn’t speak. I just knew I heard him wrong.
“Moan,” he said. “Make some damn noise up in here.”
Moan? I didn’t even know I was allowed to roll my hips during sex with G. A moan was likely to get my ass kicked. But I moaned. Moaned like a mother. I felt stupid as I did it, but considering the fact that he’d caught me hanging out for five days and all I got was clunked in the head with Rita, I moaned my ass off.
“Oh, yeah. Uh-uh-uh. Oooooh, baby.”
“Louder,” he said right in my ear as he rammed his dick up in my dry insides. “Much fuckin louder.”
G had a wild hair up his ass and I didn’t know how to take it. But I knew better than to disobey him in bed. I loved my asshole too much for that.
“OH GODDAMN, DADDY! EEEHH!! YOU MAKING ME FEEL SO GOOD!”
“Keep going, Juicy. Louder.”
If G wanted me to wake up the dead then they asses better be prepared to get up.
“OHSHITDADDY!! YOUTEARINGTHISSTUFFUPRIGHT! OHHHYESSSGIVEITTOMEBABYKEEPONGIVINGITTOMEGOOD!!!!!!!”
Didn’t no porn star have nothing on me, cause I performed like a pro for the whole two minutes G was fucking me. I don’t know when I realized that my fake moaning had become real. That G’s long dick was stroking me so nice I started purring like a cat, because for the last thirty seconds G had been giving it to me good. He slammed his dick up in me so hard and deep he touched my backbone and my whole body tried to go into shock. Damn! Negro should have been handling me like this all along! Now he was gonna have to bring it like this every single time! But thirty seconds still only lasted for thirty seconds. On his tenth stroke G almost cracked his spine getting his nut, and the moment he came he clamped his hand down over my mouth and smushed my face into the pillow. “Shut up, girl,” he muttered, and pulled his limp wet dick out of me. “Just shut the fuck up.”
So I did.
Chapter Thirteen
I got on that airplane mad as hell. Steam was rolling off me and I had enough fuel running through my blood to fly that bad boy all the way to Hawaii and back.
G had pulled some low-down shit.
I should have known he was scheming like a demon. He’d been too damn nice. Had let me off the hook too easily for staying out while he was gone. Now I knew why. I had just finished packing last night when I called Jimmy in my room to sit on my suitcase so I could zip it up.
“Your gear ready?” I asked him. “You got enough medication for the whole trip?”
He couldn’t even look me in my face. “I ain’t going.”
“What?” I got up off my knees. “What you mean you ain’t going?
Jimmy mumbled something under his breath and shrugged. “I ain’t going.”
I broke. “Uh-uh, Jimmy. Hell fuckin no. Ain’t no way in hell I’m leaving you here for no ten days while I go way across the world to some damn island. How the fuck you sound, you ain’t going?”
“How the fuck I said it, Juicy? I ain’t going. You got any beef, see G.”
And that’s exactly what I did, too.
“G!” I bust into the bathroom while he was sitting on the toilet. “What’s Jimmy talking about he ain’t coming with us in the morning?”
That nigger pissed me off. He looked at me for a long moment, then spun the toilet tissue on the holder and bunched a wad of it up in his hand. I was tapping my foot and smelling his shit as I waited for him to answer. He took his time wiping his black ass, inspecting the tissue, then tossing it behind him into the bowl.
“Look,” he said finally. “I’m taking my son on vacation. He graduated from college and he deserves it. But Jimmy gotta stay here. I got some work I need him to do.”
Now my hand was on my hip. “G. You know Jimmy ain’t right. He can’t stay here for ten days all alone. That’s my brother, and somebody has to watch him so I guess I’ll be staying home, too.”
“Kill all that noise, Juicy. You making my ass hurt. I’m putting Jimmy down on a little job. He’ll be all right here. Pacho’s gonna sleep up here at night and Moonie can watch him while we gone.”
I just couldn’t resist it. “Yeah, just like he watched me, huh?”
A vein jumped on the side of G’s head. “You getting brand-new, Juicy. Brand-new. Don’t push your luck, baby girl, cause my patience is getting thin.”
I opened my mouth to talk some more shit, then closed it back. Damn. Motherfucker. This wasn’t fair. I didn’t feel good about going all the way to some damn Hawaii without Jimmy. This was some foul shit, and I made sure the look on my face told G just what I was thinking. Yeah, he could force me to go with him, but he couldn’t make me have a good time. I wasn’t gonna talk to his ass for ten whole days. Or to his stupid-ass son, neither. Dumb-ass niggah got a college degree just to come slanging and slumming up in Harlem. Fuck both of them.
I was so mad I slept mad. Our flight was leaving at eight A.M., and Pacho came to the door to take our bags down at five. I went into Jimmy’s room and sat down on the bed next to him. “Jimmy.” I shook his shoulder. “Wake up and tell me bye, Jimmy.”
He rolled over on his back. “Bye, Juicy. Go have fun. Bring me back an island girl with some big titties, okay?”
I punched him on the arm. “Boy, you just too stupid. All them big titty bitches in the Spot and you need me
to bring one way from Hawaii?” He had me laughing and I felt a little bit better about leaving him. “For real though. You gonna be straight while I’m gone?”
“Damn, girl. You act like I’m a baby or something. It ain’t but ten days.”
I nodded. “I know. But that’s a long time.” I stared into his eyes to see could I catch him in a lie. “What kinda job G gonna have you doing while we gone?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged and looked toward the open door. “But I think I’ma be supervising some of the workers, or keeping books or something.”
Yeah. I knew it was more than that, but without any proof there was only so much I could bitch. “Aiight, then. Be careful, Jimmy. There’s some slimy motherfuckers out there.”
He laughed. “I ain’t worrying about nobody, Juicy. I’m down with G, and ain’t a nigger out there stupid enough to violate that.”
I kissed my brother on his cheek, then threw my arms around his neck. “Still. Be careful, Jimmy.”
He hugged me back. “You too.”
We were in the back of the limo about to pull off when Moonie rolled up.
“Hold up,” G told Pacho. “Lemme handle something.”
He pushed the button to roll up the car window, then got out and slammed the door. I was sitting across from Gino, and even though I felt bad about leaving Jimmy, I couldn’t help notice how good Gino looked. He was listening to a CD through his Walkman, and the look on his face told it all. He didn’t want none of this shit either. He felt me studying him and looked over at me like I was a booger on somebody’s fucking nose. “You got a problem?” I said.
“Yeah. You got one?”
I just crossed my legs and rolled my eyes. G finished handling his business and got back in the car. I looked out the window as we pulled away and locked eyes with Moonie. His face looked hard as hell, and before I could break my eyes away from him he nodded and turned away. I knew he was mad about me bringing G down on him and I prayed he wouldn’t take it out on Jimmy.