Kiss the Girl (19 page)

“You know what I’d really like?” she asked.

Daryl’s hand went for the leg hole of his boxers again.

“Um, no, not that.”  Nixie perched on the edge of the coffee table, carefully keeping her filth off Mrs. Johnson’s furniture and her distance from Daryl’s underwear.  “I’d really like to find my friend Mary Jane. 
Tyrese
sent a car for her last night, to the clinic.  I haven’t seen her since and I’m a little worried.”  She put wide-eyed concern all over her face and leaned forward just enough to keep Daryl interested.  “Do you know
Tyrese
?”

Daryl sucked down another lungful of smoke and leaned back.  The fly of his boxers gaped open.  Erik looked away.  He couldn’t take it.  “Yeah, baby, I know Ty.”  He exhaled into the paper towel tube.  Meadow fresh pot smoke poured into the room. 
“Mad smart, that boy
.
  Got all
kinda
diplomas and shit.
”

“Do you think he’ll see us?” Nixie asked.  “Can you take us to him?  I mean, if your girlfriend wouldn’t mind?”  She glanced around the room as if the woman were hiding under a sofa cushion, and Erik suppressed a snort.  Nixie’s face was all sincerity, but there was a wicked flash in those mossy eyes.  She still wanted to meet Daryl’s cowgirl. 
Yeehaw
. 

“
Ain’t
no bitch
gonna
tell me what to do,” Da
ryl said, giving Nixie a narrow
stare he’d probably seen on MTV.  Then he broke into a sunny smile and said, “She
gots
to roll
‘
fore Mama get home from church anyhow. 
Yo
!  Babe!”  He scooped up his stash, hiked up his boxers and ambled toward the back of the house.  “Time to jet, home girl!”

Nixie waited, her eyes trained on the doorway, an expectant look on her face.  Erik waited, too, for the inevitable discovery of a missing woman and a missing wallet.

“Hey, she done took off already.”  Daryl was back and clearly nonplussed.  “Forgot to leave her digits, too.  Shit.”

Nixie gave a soothing little cluck.  “Shy, maybe.”

Daryl brightened.  “Yeah.”  He scrubbed a hand over his head and shrugged.  Short attention span.  Erik figured it was a blessing.  Probably kept him from noticing anything amiss with his life, or dwelling on it when he did.  “You
wanna
get some chow?”

“We’d like to visit Ty,” Nixie told him gently.  “You were going to take us?”

“Right!”  Daryl snapped his fingers and nodded.  “Right.”  He stood there, a bit uncertain.  “Now?”

Nixie nodded slowly.  “Yes.”

Daryl lifted his shoulders.  “Okay.  Let’s roll.”

Nixie had seen far worse than the Wash as far as ghettos went.  Refugee camps, shack cities, whole communities living on garbage dumps.  Comparatively, the Wash was the lap of luxury.  But there was a feel here, an energy that Nixie recognized.  It was a toxic stew of poverty, hopelessness and fury, and it hung in the air, as real to Nixie as the stench of urine and old grease.

Daryl heaved himself up the last flight of stairs, then bent at the waist and sucked wind.  “Damn, I got to switch to Diet Coke.”

“I think it’s more the fries,” Erik told him.  He joined Nixie on the landing where she delivered a sharp hip check.  Erik gave her a
what?
face.

“Try not to antagonize the guy who’s taking us to Mary Jane, huh?” she whispered.

He shrugged.  “Kid’s on a collision course with angina.”

“So tell him
after
we get Mary Jane back.”

“Right.”

Daryl straightened and swiped a sleeve over his shiny forehead.  “Shit.  Okay, I’m good.  Let’s roll.”

He led them down a dim hallway that smelled of cigarettes and ammonia.  The occasional fluorescent bulb gave off a soft hum, and
TVs chattered
away in the apartments they passed.  Daryl stopped at the end of the hall, rapped on a door. 

“
Tyrese
? 
Yo
,
Tyrese
!  It’s me, Daryl Johnson. 
Yo
, homes, got some folks want to talk with you. It’s about that lady doctor down at the clinic.  You know, the one with the
onion butt
?”

Nixie leaned toward Erik.  “
Onion butt
?”

He didn’t look at her
, just shook his head.

Daryl knocked again.  “
Tyrese
?  Come on, man, open up.”

Nixie frowned at Erik.  “
Onion butt?  What the heck does that even
mean?”

He sighed and ignored her. 
Nixie poked Daryl.  “
Onion butt
?”

“B
ooty.  Big, round, scrumptious,
poppin
’-ass booty.  Kind
so good it can
make a
brotha
cry,
know what I’m saying?”  He gave her a quick inspection.  “You
ain’t
got one, sister girl.  Sorry.”

Nixie sighed
and Erik hid a grin in his collar
.  “You’re not the first one to mention that to me today.”

Daryl knocked on the door again.  “Hey, man, you in there?  I got a doc out here, if you need sewing up or some shit like that.  You being all shot up and whatnot.”

There was the sudden rattle of locks being worked
--
several locks, if Nixie heard correctly
--
and the door swung open.  Standing there in the doorway was the most beautiful creature Nixie had ever seen.  His skin was the color of really high-quality baking chocolate
--
dark and sweet and pure
--
and it was stretched over a lean, elegant set of bones that made even the white bandages at his shoulder look haute.  Nixie blinked at him, a little stunned.  His mouth, even set as it was in irritation, was full and lush, the cheekbones high and sharp under deep brown eyes. 

“Keep it down, huh, Daryl?”
Tyrese
said.  He was shirtless in deference to the shoulder wound, and while his chest was certainly beautiful to look at, it wasn’t his physique that hit Nixie.  It was the energy.  This man was born to command.  Nixie had felt this same power vibrating off heads of state, CEOs of multinational corporations, and warlords of all stripes.  It was the same energy that hung in the air around Erik, and had surrounded her parents like a familiar perfume.

Daryl seemed oblivious.  He just grinned at
Tyrese
like an overgrown toddler.  “’Sup, Ty?”

“’Sup, Daryl.” 
Tyrese
returned the greeting wearily.  “Who’re your friends?”

“They’re from the clinic down the street.”

“I’m Dr. Erik Larsen, an
d this is our receptionist
.”  Erik stepped forward, offered his hand to
Tyrese
. 
Tyrese
took it.  Somehow, both men made it clear that it wasn’t a friendly greeting.  Nixie had no idea how men did such things. 

“Come in,” he said, and stepped back from the door.  He put a hand on Daryl’s chest.  “Not you, Daryl.”

The kid’s face fell.  “Aw, man.”

“Go home and open some windows.  You smell like the Laundromat started selling pot.  Your mama’s going to have your ass.”

“Later,
dawg
.”

“Later.”

Tyrese
closed the door and
turned to
them, his face a blank.  Erik stood next to one of the overflowing bookshelves, glaring at
Tyrese
, but Nixie took in the tiny apartment with interest.  It looked like somebody with an addiction to both books and computers was squatting there.  No photos on the walls, no posters or pictures, no stash of grocery bags, no clutter.  Not even a piece of mail or a newspaper or a take-out carton.  Just a breathtakingly vast collection of books and a laptop humming on every flat surface. 

“Have you lived here long?” Nixie asked.

“A few years, Ms. Leighton-Brace.”

“You recognized me?”  She patted at her filthy hair.  “Erik assured me I was incognito like this.” 

Tyrese
smiled, and it made him look seriously angelic.  “I’ll admit, Mary Jane tipped me off.”

“Where is she?”  Erik put himself between Nixie and
Tyrese
.  If possible, he looked bigger, squarer, than usual.  Nixie sighed.  Again with the
nonverbals
.  

Tyrese
gave Erik an assessing look.  “Is she late for work or something?”

“She’s off today,” Nixie said, putting herself between the two men.  It was like stepping between a couple of growling dogs.  “Erik’s just worried about her.”

“Why?” 
Tyrese
didn’t look at Nixie.  Neither did Erik.  They just glared at each other over her head.  “She something special to you?”

“Yeah.”  Erik’s hands were fists, and Nixie wanted to seize them in her own hands and gentle them.  “She is.”

Tyrese’s
dark eyes went hot, then utterly cool.  “Does she know that?” he asked, an edge of mockery in his melted butter voice.  “Because she didn’t mention you last night.” 

“My relationship with Mary Jane is none of y
our business,” Erik said
.  “The only thing you need to know is that she’s under my protection.”

“Oh?  Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

“Listen,
Tyrese
.
I
don’t give a shit who you are, what you
think you need or who’s dying
.  Mary Jane isn’t
yours to snatch off the street whenever you feel like it.  That happens again, I’ll make sure you’re sorry.  You understand?”

Tyrese
was silent long enough to be insulting.  Nixie sighed.  Please
God
let us get out of here without anybody taking a swing, she thought.  Because as ripped as
Tyrese
was, Erik was taller, more muscled and probably had a fist like a wrecking ball.  If these two were going to tangle, Nixie didn’t want to see it.

“Mary Jane didn’t get snatched,
cuz
,”
Tyrese
drawled.  “I asked her to come, she came.  Sim
ple as that.”  He smiled at Erik
, and it was full of malice.  “You
ain’t
been getting so lucky with her, huh?”

Nixie could see the white of Erik’s knuckles through his skin.  Any minute now he was going to try to put them through
Tyrese’s
perfect white teeth and then she’d have to break up the War of the Alpha Dogs. 
God
help her.