by Noire
“Whaddup,” he said, eyeing her with a sexy grin.
Nooni blushed. The swagger on this dude was amazing. He stepped up on her and kissed her, snaking his tongue deep into her mouth.
Monique puffed on a blunt and watched as her young lover slobbed Nooni down. She crossed her legs and grinned at the sight of his tongue slithering all over the stupid chick’s eager lips.
Nooni’s knees damn near buckled just from his kiss. Truth had been laying that yellow dick down on her deep and hard, and Monique completely understood why the young girl was bent and strung out on that good shit.
“Yo,” Truth said breaking the kiss. A hot look was in his eyes as he bit his lower lip. “We gonna holla, Mo.” He took Nooni’s hand and they headed toward the fuck rooms. “I gotta take care of some bidnizz with my girl real quick.”
Monique was shivering with excitement as Truth led Nooni away, and she couldn’t stop herself from giggling when he winked over his shoulder and gave her a swagged-out grin.
“That low-down Puerto Rican bitch!” Bubbles muttered, crushing her cigarette out on the bar. “I was sucking Truth’s dick first!”
Monique turned to the pretty young girl and let out an evil laugh. “Shut up, chicken. You ain’t special. Every hoe up in here done sucked Truth’s dick. And that’s the truth!”
$$$$$
While Truth was busy soldiering hard for Nooni, Salida had made a true soldier out of Monique. Although Ace and Pluto had come up short during their trip to California, Salida had looked at the situation from a completely different angle and devised herself an alternate plan. She’d been off her medication for a minute now, and while she still had a few fucked up periods of hazy thinking, she was becoming more and more like her old self every day.
“The only way to get our hands on some quick money is to think and plan, you hear me?” she schooled Monique. “Think and plan!”
Monique agreed, but she kept quiet. Hell, she had already done her thinking and planning when she sent Ace and Pluto after Gino and Juicy. But she knew better than to tell Salida that. Shit, if Salida ever found out that Monique had sent the goonies to California to pop her only son, she would probably pull out a tool and shoot Monique right between the eyes. Salida was just that throwed off.
“If we play our cards the right way,” Salida continued intensely, “then Rita, Juicy, and the money will jump straight into our hands without us moving a muscle.”
“How the hell is all that gonna happen?” Monique wanted to know.
“Trust me,” Salida told her. “You’ll know my plan is working because you won’t have to approach Rita at all. That bitch will walk straight up to you and start talking.”
Monique had rubbed her hands together in anticipation of that big day.
And while Monique was anticipating, Salida was busy thinking about their future operations. She had already decided to use part of the money they were gonna pull in to get the G-Spot’s cut room back up to full operations. But not the way it used to be. After just a few weeks of watching television, surfing the internet, reading blogs, and hanging out in chat rooms, Salida had decided that the era of selling drugs G’s way had passed.
The color of Harlem was slowly changing, and so were its tastes. Crack would always be king to a certain group of addicts, but Salida planned to upgrade the G-Spot’s drug operations to include the kind of club drugs that were cheaper and easier to get than cocaine. She was interested in the kind of drugs that more and more young people were beginning to like.
Quaaludes, ecstasy, roofies, special k, and especially meth, were all the rage with the kids who were starting to hang around Harlem today. Salida wanted to include all that shit on the menu at the G-Spot, and she had even figured out how to cook up the meth herself.
Monique knew what she wanted to do with her share of the take too. She also knew what she was gonna do to Juicy once she got her razor blade against that bitch’s throat. And it wasn’t gonna be pretty, neither. Nah, it wouldn’t be pretty at all.
But they had to do all of the first things, first. Divide and conquer, is what Salida had instructed Monique to do with their two new protégés, and she set about getting Bubbles outta the picture in a hurry.
The tough little chicken didn’t appreciate getting cut from the squad, though. She nutted up and made Truth get physical when he tried to shake her off, and he ended up having to mush her face into a light pole so she could get the message.
With Bubbles mad as hell, but gone, Monique instructed Truth to concentrate all his efforts on making Nooni feel comfortable so she could let her guard down.
She told him to keep the girl as high as possible, and to fuck her little lights out so that when it came time to put the moves on her she would bend in whatever direction they wanted.
That same night, after he busted Bubbles in the grill and left her staggering near the corner of her block, Truth took Nooni back to the small apartment where his Uncle Pluto lived with Monique.
“Don’t you put that young heffah in my bed,” Monique had warned Truth earlier. “Y’all can eat anything you find in the house, and you can fuck her in whichever room you wanna fuck her in—except mine.”
Truth and Nooni made themselves at home in Monique’s living room on her sleeper sofa. They partied at the G-Spot most of the time, and stayed out of Pluto’s way whenever he came home to eat or sleep.
Nooni had never known a dude like Truth before. She had only fucked with a handful of guys in the past, but other than Maleek, none of them had been about the streets the way Truth was. For one thing, he was only two years older than she was, but he wasn’t no regular come up. He was certified. Already he had made a name for himself that was ringing bells on the streets, and he was down with one of the leading sets in Harlem.
Two days later, Nooni walked out of Mrs. Moreno’s apartment, never to return. She waited while Truth stuffed her small suitcase into his junky-ass trunk, then she climbed into the car beside him and sipped on his pineapple soda as he drove her back to Monique’s apartment where they had been chilling off and on for days.
“Yo, shawty, you said you wanna be wit’ a niggah, right?” Truth asked, squeezing her thigh as he drove.
Nooni nodded quickly. Damn right she did. Truth was nothing like that jealous, cheating-ass, Maleek. Her sister had been right. Maleek was too young and immature for her anyway! But this cat Truth was the bizz. He was so cold she wanted to be with him every single fuckin’ day and sleep with him all night too.
“Then lemme hear you say it,” he demanded. “Don’t be nodding your head like no baby, Nooni. I’m a man and you a woman. Tell me what the fuck you want.”
“I wanna be with you,” Nooni declared. “Yeah, I do. I wanna be with you.”
“Good,” Truth said. “Then you better act like it. If anybody asks you any questions, you tell ’em you got put outta that old lady’s crib and I helped you find someplace to stay, aiight? Act like you wanna be with ya niggah! Ya heard?”
Nooni was all for it.
Monique was in the kitchen frying chicken livers and stirring grits when they walked in. She fixed a plate for Pluto real quick, then turned off the pots and teetered into the living room on her six-inch stilettos and posted up in front of the young lovers who were sharing a set of headphones as they listened to some N.J.S. cuts by Reem Raw on Truth’s iPod.
“What’s good?” Monique asked, posing magnificently before them with her hands on her sexy hips.
Nooni’s eyes went back and forth between Monique and Truth, like what the fuck. Monique was damn near naked. She looked like a piece of Pepto-Bismol coated chocolate. All she had on was a hot pink push-up bra and a matching fishnet-and-lace thong, but she wasn’t the least bit pressed out about Truth’s eyeballs rolling all her delicious cocoa-puffed ass.
“Oh,” Monique laughed, busting Nooni’s look. “I’m a stripper, honey,” she waved her hand and grinned at the young girl. “I take my shit off for a living. I grind my pussy on a
pole every night, so Truth done already seen everything I got.” She didn’t tell Nooni that Truth had also tasted and fucked everything she had too.
“Yo, Mo,” Truth said, nodding at the suitcase he had dropped near the door. “Nooni ain’t got nowhere to go. Her sister went outta town and left her with some old lady. The old bat started trippin’ when I went to drop Nooni off, and then she told her to get all her shit and get the fuck out.”
Monique faked a look of concern.
“For real? She put you out? That’s messed up! So, where did your sister go? When is she coming back?”
Nooni bit the bait.
“She went to California or something. She said she had to go see about one of her sick friends.”
“And she left you back here with some old lady who put you out in the street knowing you ain’t got nowhere else to stay?”
Nooni looked up at Truth. He took a hit from the blunt he had just lit and then passed it to her.
“Yeah,” the young girl said. She toked the chronic and nodded her head, remembering what Truth had told her to say. “Yeah,” she squinted as she slowly exhaled the heavy, acrid smoke. “That’s exactly what that old bitch did.”
$$$$$
Nooni had been born to hang out in the G-Spot. She loved the excitement and the vibe. The strippers and hoes were all real cool, and lounging around drinking and smoking everyday made her feel loose and free.
The only thing that made her nervous was being around the beautiful older woman Salida. Nooni straight stuttered and lost all her lil cool if Salida so much as looked at her. It was obvious that Salida was a boss bitch, and Nooni felt like the femme fatale was peering through her eyes and seeing straight into her brain, and it was intimidating and very confusing.
“Don’t pay her no attention,” Monique had whispered when Salida rolled up on them while they were watching skin flicks in the XXX cinema room. Salida had barked on all the hoes to get their asses back to work, and warned them that she would be collecting their liquor tabs out of their nightly pay.
“She’s a mean-ass bird, but she’s smart and she definitely got a mind for business,” Monique had confided as she sat cross-legged on a sofa and smoked yay from a bong.
Monique was playing a role for Nooni, but she really meant what she had said about Salida being smart. That bitch was psycho-smart. They had become partners of a sort, and it delighted Monique to see how crafty and conniving Salida was, and how little respect she had for Ace and Pluto.
“Both of them buffalo butts are dumb as hell,” Salida had declared a couple of days earlier. “You better decide whose team you’re on right here and now, Monique, because when the drama goes down it’s gonna go all the way down!”
Monique had wasted no time assuring Salida that she was on her team. Shit, loyalty to Pluto wasn’t even on her mind. If the right opportunity floated by that niggah would drop her on her head and step on her neck.
“Mizz Salida is pretty,” Nooni told Monique as they watched the elegantly dressed woman with the upswept hair saunter regally around the club. As low-down as the G-Spot had sunk, Salida carried herself like she was a high-society hostess catering to bankrolling clientele in a luxurious Las Vegas nightclub or something. “But she’s scary, though. Real scary.”
“No,” Monique said, playing from the script that Salida had made her rehearse earlier, “what’s scary is what’s gonna happen if we don’t get some big-time cash up in here real soon.”
“Oh yeah?”
“For real. The G-Spot is in serious trouble. We owe a lotta back taxes, and if we don’t pay them shits the government is gonna come put padlocks on the doors. Mizz Salida just don’t wanna see us get shut down, that’s all.”
“Damn,” Nooni exclaimed, looking around at what had practically become her new home. “I sure hope y’all don’t have to close up. It’s mad cool up in here. I like it.”
“Yeah, but do you like it enough to help us keep the doors open?” Monique asked, passing the young chick her bong.
Nooni shrugged, then smoked. “Yeah. But what can I do? I ain’t got no ends.”
Monique picked up her glass of gin and juice and swirled it around until the ice cubes clinked together.
“Oh, I know you don’t have no money, baby girl. You just a real sweet kid. But I bet you know somebody who has exactly the kind of heavy bank we need.”
“Oh yeah?” Nooni asked, looking puzzled. “Who’s that?”
“Don’t worry about who it is,” Monique said slyly. “Just worry about how you can help us get our hands on it. You think you can be down for that?”
Nooni nodded, and then she remembered what Truth had told her about speaking up like a grown woman.
“Yeah,” she said boldly. “I’m down.”
“That’s what I’m talking about!” Monique grinned with excitement. “You’s a real soldier, Nooni-baby. You the kind of hood chick who can make an old bitch real proud. Thanks to you, the G-Spot is gonna get saved and every last one of us is about to be paid. Now listen up, cutie-booty. This is what we need you to do…”
CHAPTER 16
Rita had been on the West Coast with Juicy for over two weeks and she had been worried about her sisters the entire time. She called Mrs. Moreno every couple of days to check on the girls, but she could only seem to reach Nooni by text message, and even that was sometimey.
Every single night after Juicy fell asleep Rita would get on the phone and talk to Dutchy for hours. She didn’t tell him none of Juicy’s personal business or nothing, but she did talk to him about how bad she felt for her friend, and about how worried she was about Nooni.
“She’s been texting you from her own phone, right?” Dutchy asked.
“Yeah,” Rita said. “But that’s not the same as speaking to her. Every time I call her it goes straight to her voicemail. Then she’ll text me hours later and say her battery died, or she wasn’t near her phone, or some bullshit like that.”
Dutchy said, “I’ve been by there a few times myself, but I can never catch up with her either. But you know how teenagers can be, Rita. They don’t like to talk on the phone, but they’ll text them little fingers down to nubs.”
Rita knew Dutchy was joking so she could stop worrying so much. But it wasn’t working. Rita had been a parent to her sisters for so long that she’d developed a mother’s instinct. And it was only two days later that she got the phone call that she had been dreading.
It was six o’clock in the morning L.A. time when Rita rolled over in Juicy’s guest bedroom and reached for her cell phone. Mrs. Moreno was babbling on the line, and she was crying so hard that Rita almost didn’t understand what the old lady was trying to say.
“What do you mean Nooni went away?” she asked sleepily.
“She gone! She been gone for days!” the old Hispanic woman fretted. “Nubia, she no listen to nobody, Marguerita! That girl, she just no listen! I tell her to stay inside, and poof! she disappear! And just now on the tellyvision it say the police find a dead girl in the trunk of a car! I afraid, Marguerita. I afraid for you sister! I have young children here. I cannot look for her. I don’t know what else to do.”
“Okay, okay, calm down,” Rita said. Her heart banged in her chest and she was scared as hell too. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Moreno.” Rita found herself breathing fast and her mouth was bone dry. “I’m on my way home. I’ll be back in New York before the end of the day.”
Rita felt bad for leaving Juicy so suddenly, but she had to go. Juicy offered to fly back to New York with her and help her look for Nooni, but Rita told her that would be like going on a suicide mission.
“I feel really bad about leaving you here all by yourself, Juicy. I swear I do. Promise me you’ll try to think positive and relax, okay?” Rita pleaded. “I’ll be in touch. And as soon as I find Nooni and put my foot up her little ass, I’ll come back and see you again.”
“Don’t hurt her,” Juicy said with a small smile. “You know I love me some Nooni. She ain’
t a bad kid, Rita. She’s just like I was when I was her age. Dumb in the head and hot in the tail.”
“That girl is wild,” Rita said, exasperated. “Crazy wild.”
Juicy offered to drive her to the airport, but Rita had already put her bags near the front door and called a cab. “Nooni is trying to grow up way too fast. I’m sure she’s just hanging out at one of her friend’s houses, but I gotta go home and see what’s really going on. As soon as I get Nooni straight and I’ll come back and stay with you for a few more weeks, okay?”
Juicy was trying real hard not to cry when the taxi pulled up outside, but Rita saw her tears anyway.
“Thanks for always being there for me,” Juicy whispered, hugging her tightly. “You’re my best friend in the world, Rita. The only person I know that I can truly trust. I love you, girl.”
Rita tried to sniff back her own tears, but it didn’t work. “I love you too, Juicy. And I swear I’ll be back. I promise. As soon as I get everything straight with my sister, I’m coming back to California to see you.”
Rita rushed out to the cab, wiping her eyes. She’d meant every word she’d said to Juicy, but little did she know the promise she had just made was straight empty. It would never come true. Rita would never return to California to see Juicy again.
$$$$$
Back in Harlem, Rita went on a manhunt. She’d wigged out up at the precinct when she went to report Nooni missing, and Dutchy had to smooth shit down so his boys wouldn’t put the cuffs on her. The problem was, Nooni had been in trouble so many times that the cops were treating her disappearance like a typical runaway case, and they refused to list her as a missing or endangered minor. There was so much criminal shit going on in Harlem they weren’t about to put no whole lotta energy into looking for some fast-ass teenager who probably didn’t wanna be found anyway.
But Rita knew different. Nooni had her troubles, but she wouldn’t just run off to parts unknown while Rita was all the way across the country. No, something was wrong. Something was very wrong. Rita could feel it deep down in her bones.