Wild Cherry (2 page)

It felt like all the sound was sucked out of the room. Seeing the fire burning in Jackie's eyes made me take a step back. I'd seen that stare enough times to know what came with it. Bilal had touched on a very sore subject, and he knew it. If you wanted to pluck Jackie's nerve, comment about how he ran his house or his woman. Jackie was one of the smartest men I had ever met, but he had a very Neanderthal way of thinking when it came to his possessions, including me.

Jackie leaned forward on his elbows and stared up at Bilal. “What, nigga?”

“Be easy, Jack, you know the nigga ain't mean it how he sounded, did you, Lal?” José tried to downplay it. He was a burly Puerto Rican whom Jackie had been friends with since high school. He now worked as head of security at Jackie's club, Paradise. José outweighed him by easily a hundred pounds, but even he didn't want to have to deal with Jackie if he was in one of his moods.

“Nah, I was just playing with you, Jackie, I didn't mean no disrespect,” Bilal said in a less-than-sincere tone.

I knew it was a lie, and so did everyone else. It seemed like every time Jackie and Bilal got together and added alcohol to the mix, it became a dick-measuring contest. Bilal always went the extra mile trying to see how far he could push Jackie before he snapped. The young man didn't realize that he was threatening to open Pandora's box with his antics.

“Yo, pass the blunt.” Moe spoke up, turning everyone's attention to him and away from the argument. He was a medium-built yellow cat who wore his head shaved. He definitely had his moments of ignorance right along with the rest of them, but overall, he had to be the most level-headed of the four.

“Do y'all want me to make some sandwiches or something?” I asked, trying to do my part in keeping the peace. When I saw Jackie's angry gaze turn on me, I knew I'd fucked up.

“Hell nah, these niggaz don't want no sandwiches!” Jackie half snarled at me. “This ain't Subway, if a nigga hungry, then he should've ate before he brought his ass over here.” Jackie let his eyes sweep his crew, but in a flash they were back on me. Jackie frowned, before leaning in to sniff me. “Gina, you been drinking? And what the hell do you have on? Button that damn shirt!” he snapped.

When I had put the top on, I thought it was sexy, but the look of disgust on his face said I was wrong. As if the wet feet weren't bad enough, I really felt like a hot mess now. I could feel every eye in the room on me, and I suddenly knew what the whore of Babylon felt like. I tried to slink off to hide my shame, but Jackie grabbed me by the arm.

“Where the hell do you think you're going?” he asked.

“Upstairs to lie down.” I tried to free my arm, but he held firm. Though nobody could see what he was doing, Jackie was digging his thumbnail into my forearm. He had that look in his eyes that I hated. The look that told me he'd had too much.

“Well, before you run upstairs to hop on the phone and talk our business to one of your hoodrat-ass friends or your faggot brother, go make a beer run.”

“And some more blunts, ma,” José added.

Jackie was trying to show his friends that he was the boss in the relationship—and the way I felt, I was in no mood to dispute it. The sooner I went and got the beer, the sooner I'd be away from them and Jackie. “A'ight, Jackie. Just let me go throw some sweats on, and I'll take care of that for you.”

Jackie cast his bloodshot eyes back to me.

“Nah, ain't nobody got time to wait for you to primp and all that, Gina. You felt comfortable enough in ya little getup to flaunt it in front of my niggaz, so you'll be a'ight. If a nigga try to snatch ya ass, hit me on the speed dial.” He looked me up and down as if I had just crawled in off the street.

I just looked back at him from under hooded eyes. I go and spend four hours in the salon and a thousand dollars on Fifth Avenue, and he all but calls me a whore for it? Excuse the hell out of me for going the extra mile to make my man seem like he has good taste. A bum bitch would've greeted Jackie's company in hoochie shorts, no bra, with a scarf on her head, but I catch the short end because I want to keep my marriage spicy.… Are you fucking kidding me?

A man can be good for holding you down or knocking the lining out of your pussy sideways, but they tend to be on the dull side when it came to dealing with things that they should've already figured out by a certain age. The comparison someone once made about men being so akin to animals because of their base natures was right on the money. They moved off instinct rather than rational thoughts. You show me a man who has 100 percent control over that little bell that goes off when a chick with a nice ass walks by, and I'll show you a closet homosexual.

“Don't trip, Jack. I'll go with her,” José volunteered.

Now, of all Jackie's people, he trusted José the most. For as long as I had known him, he and I had always had a brother-and-sister relationship. Jackie knew all of this and was generally cool about it, but tonight it was about stripes.

“What, you trying to fuck, too?” Jackie asked venomously, cutting his eyes at Bilal before going back to José.

“Jackie, I don't give a fuck how much you had to drink or smoke, but don't come at me like that on some stunting shit, dawg. You know how me and Gina get down, homey,” José told him. His tone wasn't hostile, but the words carried far more weight than when he normally spoke.

The two friends glared stone-faced at each other, neither moving, only glaring. A situation was fast on the horizon, and as usual I was in the center of it.

My rational brain told me to just go get my car keys and skate, but the devil got the best of me. “Look, nobody has to go to the store with me, I'm a big girl. Jackie, you'll get your beers, but I'm taking these damn shoes off first.” I made sure I flung my hair extra hard when I turned to sashay toward the stairs. About eight and a half seconds later, the world exploded into brilliant white stars.

TWO

Princess

Yo, I've never been a dick rider—well, at least not in the metaphoric sense, but I loved Harlem. Don't get me wrong, I was born and raised in Brooklyn, so my heart is always gonna be on Nostrand Ave., but I very much enjoyed my trips Uptown. Be it hopping off the A train, or out of some lame nigga's whip, I always felt a tinge of excitement when I touched these Harlem streets. In my mind, it was like the spirits that had passed through here were reaching out to the rejected and abused child within me, telling me that it got greater later. I've always held on to that belief, though I have yet to see it.

If the world were a perfect place, I'd be walking back and forth across 125th, spending money on things I wanted but didn't need, but this world was far from perfect. In fact, I had started to see it as cruel. I was sweating like a runaway slave, though there was a comfortable chill to the air. My deodorant had melted away twenty minutes prior, and the damn duct tape pulled across my thigh felt like it was coming loose. My life had to get better than this.

As I crossed the different avenues, I could feel their eyes on me, the hungry eyes of men. Some were bold enough to say something—lame, of course—but most of them just watched in silence, wondering at what temperature did my pussy overheat. “You'll never find out, cocksuckers,” I mumbled more to myself than to anyone else.

I couldn't be mad at them, though, because I was looking especially delicious that day. Mercedes had given my hair a thorough washing before sitting me under the dryer and eventually wrapping my hair. She didn't speak a lot of English, but that little Dominican chick knew hair like a gynecologist knows pussy. When I get my weaves, the Indonesian shit, I let her cut and style it. By the time I was ready to step out, my hair was falling just right, not even a pin mark.

I had on a gray wool skirt that I'd picked up at Marshalls. It wasn't tight, but it hugged my hips in a way that made me feel pretty. I loved that skirt because it showcased my figure without making me look like a slut. But when you have a thirty-one-inch waist and a thirty-nine-inch ass, lust will stir in the purest hearts. When I walked, I had a bad bitch's stride and the curves to match, which over the years I had learned to wear like a badge of honor. Niggaz went crazy over this, and for as silly as it may sound, it made me feel more like a woman.

I walked across the few avenues to Lenox, got a five-dollar pack of Newports, and slipped inside Starbucks. As usual, it was popping with people. I can't think of one time since they've been here that I'd seen the place empty. They had successfully made coffee a good business. It wasn't necessarily that they had the best product, but their presentation sold them. It was a relaxed little spot I could see myself sitting up in, poring over a good book, sipping something with way more sugar than I needed to have, but I wasn't there to daydream: I had to handle business.

Most of the people were young, hipsters, with laptops and paperback books, sipping drinks and making small talk amongst themselves. At the counter, I peeped a nice-looking chick drinking a latte and thumbing through a magazine. The red dress she wore hugged her so snug that I wondered if she'd bust the seams if she made a sudden movement.

The man I had come to meet with was sitting at one of the far booths, eyeing me over the newspaper he was pretending to read. I ordered an espresso from the pimple-faced young kid and made my way over to the table.

In true gentleman style, he stood as I approached. His hands slid down my sides and rested on my hips as he pulled me into a lover's embrace. I didn't pull away when he kissed me. The coarseness of his lips in contrast to the softness of mine brought back memories of eating dry toast in the mornings before school. It turned my stomach to kiss this man, but it was a delicate situation, and appearances were important. It wasn't until he tried to put his tongue in my mouth that I roughly slammed my hip into his groin, giving him the signal to back off. Smirking, he slid back into the booth and I slid in next to him.

“Damn, I missed you, ma,” he said, draping his arm around me. He could've used another swab of deodorant, but I wasn't there to enlighten him on hygiene. “So what you been up to?”

“Nothing special, just trying to make it happen, ya know?” When I felt his hand under the table making its way up my leg, I reflexively shuddered. He lingered around my knee before continuing up to my thigh. For appearances, I traced the line of his jaw with my finger while gazing into his eyes like I was really interested in what he was saying. The duct tape stung when he pulled it off, but I'd take a few yanked-out hairs to pass that problem to someone else. I promised myself this would be the last time I let Slim talk me into toting his drugs.

I looked up when I heard the door open. A wiry young man slithered into the coffee shop wearing an Atlanta Braves cap pulled tightly on his head. His bloodshot eyes swept the joint, lingering a half second too long on me and my date. A frog jumped in my throat when he reached into his pocket, but to my surprise and embarrassment he pulled out his wallet and walked to the counter.

My date didn't seem to notice him, too preoccupied with his cell phone. I could tell he was ready to skate, and I can't say that I blame him, since he now had the ten years I'd been carrying. Truth be told, I wanted him and that package the fuck away from me as soon as humanly possible, but the business wasn't done.

The chick in the red dress had just noticed the kid in the Braves cap and had a chickenhead moment, squealing like a schoolgirl and draping her arms around him and putting her nasty painted lips on his. I watched them without watching them as they chatted it up for a few minutes before exchanging numbers and saying their good-byes. The slut in the tight dress was the first to boogie, big ass swinging as she went. A few ticks after that, the man in the Braves cap took the muffin and coffee he had ordered and left, too.

The minutes felt like hours as I waited the agreed-upon ten minutes before I was to leave. My date walked me out to the curb and waited around until I got into a taxi. He was a better person than me, because I sure as hell wouldn't have stood around with that weight on me. It wasn't until I was off 125th Street that I released the breath I hadn't realized I was holding. My days in the game were
so
over.

I had the taxi let me out at 135th and Fifth, in front of the bank. I walked into a store to get another pack of cigarettes, because I had lost the five-dollar pack in my rush to get out of Starbucks. My hand shook like Pookie in
New Jack City
, but I'd finally managed to get my cigarette lit when my green Honda Accord pulled up to the fire hydrant. Flicking my ash, I climbed in to the passenger seat and faced the sharp brown eyes staring out at me from under the Braves cap.

*   *   *

“You did good, baby,” Slim leaned over and kissed me. There was no passion in the gesture, only approval. On his breath, I could taste the lingering sweetness of red Alizé, the only kind of liquor Slim drank. “That lil move paid off nicely.” He tossed the envelope the slut had passed him onto my lap and merged with the light Fifth Avenue traffic.

Just thumbing through the cheese, I figured it to be somewhere around five thousand, maybe a little more, but not much. I flipped through the bread once more before shoving it into my knockoff Bourke bag. It was a good little move, and we could damn sure use the paper, but I couldn't help but keep thinking that I could've gotten a year for every dollar in this damn envelope had something gone wrong. This was far from the life my mother wanted for me. I kept my game face and turned to my man.

“Yeah, it was a nice lick, but I ain't fucking around no more,” I told him, trying to keep my voice from giving away my uncertainty. Slim was my lover, my friend, and my father, so going against something that he believed in felt funny. For damn near as long as I've known him, I've never been able to tell him no. Even when I put the pieces together, I still found myself loving him. Of course, the first thing he does is trace his finger from the back of my ear, down my neck, and across my collarbone. Bastard is using my spot against me, but I gotta stay strong.