by Teri Woods
“Awwww, my baby is mad,” Gena said in a pouting tone. “Come and give sister a hug. Come on over here, Tracey. We gonna give Kita a group hug.”
Tracey rose from the table and joined Gena on the floor. She opened her arms toward a pouting Markita.
“Fuck y’all, you know that?” Markita told them, as she walked to where they were and fell into their arms. “I hate y’all bitches.”
Gena, Markita, and Tracey hugged, and then broke into laughter. Markita rubbed Gena’s stomach.
“So, what did Jay say when you told him about the baby?” she asked.
Gena shook her head. “I haven’t told him yet.”
“What?” Tracey shouted. “Why haven’t you told him?”
“I’m waiting for the right moment,” Gena said.
“The right moment?” Markita repeated. “Bitch, when is that, during delivery?”
Tracey and Markita laughed.
“Are you afraid to tell him, or something?” Tracey asked.
Gena shook her head. “Of course not. Girl, it’s just that once I actually tell him, the shit will become real.”
“Girl, the shit is already real!” Tracey told her. “What are you talking about?”
Gena shrugged. “I don’t know. It just seems like it would become a lot more real, once I tell him. I don’t know. I guess I figure that once I tell him, all of the bullshit would start.”
“Is he a sorry-ass nigga?” Tracey asked.
Gena shook her head.
“Is he a deadbeat muthafucka?” Markita asked.
“No, he’s not like that at all,” Gena told them.
“Then, girl, why are you tripping?” Tracey asked. “You say he’s not like that.”
“I know, but I don’t want him to become like that,” Gena told them. “Babies have a way of complicating things. Besides, we’ve never talked about babies, or family, or any of those things.”
“Gena, what are you thinking?” Tracey asked. “Are you thinking that you can just go nine months without telling him, and then pop up with a baby one day?”
“Your stomach is gon’ get big, you do know that?” Markita told her.
Gena nodded and pulled her legs close. She wrapped her arms around her legs and rested her chin on her knees. “I just don’t want things to change between us.”
“Girl, you’re going to have a baby,” Markita told her. “Sorry to burst your bubble, but everything’s gonna change.”
Gena nodded and peered off into space. They’re right, my life is going to change.
The heavy steel door slowly opened and Rik walked through it with his big bundle of paperwork. He had motion after motion and brief after brief tucked beneath his arm. His attorney had definitely been busy. He had to remember that for future reference. It was rare to find a drug attorney who actually did some work for his clients. He would definitely use this guy again, if it ever came to it.
Rik waited at the elevator door for the guard to arrive and take him downstairs to process out to freedom. He had prayed every single night to be delivered from the clutches of the powers that be, and someone upstairs had definitely heard his prayers.
His lawyer said that the case had been dismissed for lack of evidence. How that could be was beyond him. When they were first arrested, the lawyers said that the DEA had tapes on top of tapes of recorded conversations from phone taps, wired informants, and pager intercepts. They had enough shit on him to make the transcriptions of his recordings thicker than a New York phone book. And now, apparently, it was all gone.
Poof. Rik smiled, as he stepped onto the elevator. Just like that; from a mountain of evidence, to none at all. He wasn’t quite sure what had happened, and neither was his attorney, but apparently there had been a problem with the tapes. Beautiful! Fucking beautiful. He really didn’t care what had happened to those tapes, just so long as something had happened to them. He wasn’t down for spending the rest of his life in some underground fucking federal prison in Colorado, or some fucking U.S. pen in bubble-fuck-god-knows-where with the KKK pretending to be a fucking correctional officer.
“What the fuck are you smiling about, asshole?” the deputy working the elevator asked him.
“America,” Rik told him. “America the land of the free. I love this country!”
The guard frowned. He knew about the big kickout, and like all of the other pigs, he wasn’t exactly happy about it. They would have to give back all of the shit that had been seized as well. He probably had his fucking eye on one of his partners’ Rolexes or something, and was mad ’cause he couldn’t steal it at police auction for a hundred bucks now. Fuck him. He chose his profession, like everyone else chose theirs. If he wanted to wear chuck jewelry and roll in a Range, a Benz, or a BMW, then he should have chosen a different profession. He was a hater, like all of the rest. Mad because he had to get up early in the morning, put on a tight uniform, and fight traffic. They couldn’t pay me enough to watch dicks all fucking day, Rik thought. And that brought him to his second line of thought.
In order to get his shit back, he would have to prove that he had had the income to purchase it. He would have to show receipts, tax returns, check stubs, and all of that other bullshit. He had none of those things. And he damn sure couldn’t claim the millions of dollars that those fucking pigs seized from his stash house, which meant that all of his hard-earned savings were wiped out. The DEA would certainly be on their asses again, waiting for them to so much as jaywalk. He wouldn’t be able to spit on a sidewalk without the Feds swooping down on him, especially in Philly. He had to take his show on the road and find a new city to live in. And he had to do it quietly, so that the Feds wouldn’t know where he relocated to.
The problem with finding a new spot for Rik was that he was worried about not knowing the town, the players, or how the niggas got down. Not to mention the way guys were snitching on each other these days; it wasn’t good. But Rik needed bread, like yesterday. He had overhead, not to mention he needed some new wheels and another crib. He needed to come up and he needed to come up fast. He needed a jack move; he needed to play stickup kid one last time, to get some score fair. The problem with that was that most of the niggas that he knew had got caught up in the bust and everybody was sort of in the same predicament he was, waiting for the next couple months to get back the shit that had been seized. Hell, they were probably all thinking the same thing that he was thinking at this very moment. Who the fuck can I rob out here to hold me over until I get my shit back from the government, if I ever do?
Rik laughed at the thought of that. A bunch of broke-ass ballers, sticking each other up for peanuts. I rob this nigga one night, and another nigga comes through the window and gets me the following night. Naw, he needed to get away from them fools, and to catch a come up that nobody else knew about. He needed a mark that he could keep to himself, and hit all by himself. Only one target like that came to mind.
Clair opened her door to find a box sitting on her front porch. She peered around, wondering who had rung her doorbell at this time of the night, but could see only the red taillights of a big black sedan driving away. It looked like a BMW or a Mercedes, or some other type of expensive car. Why is people ringing my bell and then just driving off like that? Crazy asses, she thought. But then, this had been a crazy week for her. It was as if the entire world had gone mad.
The only reason that she had even opened up her door was that she thought it was probably some old friends of her son’s, wanting to pay their respects. Rasun had had many friends, and many of them had come by already. More and more were showing up with each passing day, now that their cases had been dropped and they were filtering out of the jails. But none of them could offer her the help that she so desperately needed, because they were all dealing with their own issues at this time. It was something that she understood.
She didn’t have any insurance on Rasun. She hadn’t had any since he was a small child. She and her husband hadn’t been able to afford it. Times had
been tough while he was growing up, and even tougher in recent years. She knew that he was out there hustling, and she knew the consequences that that lifestyle held, but life insurance was something that she simply could not afford, not unless she wanted to skip something called eating. So she found herself in her present dilemma, not having enough money to bury her child.
She set the large black box on top of her kitchen table and pulled the ribbon off it, so that she could open it. Once this was done, she carefully lifted the large lid and peered inside. To her astonishment, she found wads of money and a note. Clair grabbed the note, placed her hand on her chest, and reseated herself. In a shocked, monotonous clip, she read the note aloud.
“Dear Clair: Please accept this money as a token of my love for your son, and as a sign of our friendship. There is enough money inside of the box to pay the cost of his burial, and to help you with all of your bills. I’ll do what I can from time to time.”
Clair crumpled the note in her hand and broke down into tears, happy, sad, and confused as to who would give her all this money.
ON AND POPPIN’
I love you so much!” Gena said as she opened her legs wider, allowing him full access to her most private of possessions.
“I love you too, baby,” Jerrell lied. He went into her deeply, feeling her viselike clamp around him. It was torture, almost. Torture because it felt so good, and torture that he had to waste some of the best pussy that had ever been put on the planet. But for now, he was going to make the most of it.
Gena wrapped her arms around his back and kissed her man passionately. Tonight, she wanted him to have all of her. She was going to throw it back at him, and take all of the pain that she knew was coming. She wanted to fully become his, to mold herself to his body. She was going to share with him the news of the life that they had created together. She was going to share with him her plans for their future.
Jerrell kissed her passionately. He had never felt her like this before. He was inside her, working her, trying to savor her tight canal. It felt as if she were gripping at his manhood with a tight fist. She was working him nearly as much as he was working her. He swallowed hard, trying not to cry out. It felt good to him. It felt like something that he had never felt before, like a level of lovemaking that he didn’t know existed.
“Oh, my god!” Gena cried out. She bit down on his shoulder. She could feel him really getting into it now. It seemed as if he had grown even bigger inside her. “Oh, Jay!”
“Gena!” Jerrell grunted. Never before had a woman made him call out her name. Whatever secret she had inside her, he wished that he could bottle it up and keep it.
“Oh, Jay!” Gena cried out even louder. “It . . . it . . . it . . .”
It had begun to hurt. Jerrell was touching her in places where no one and nothing else had ever touched before. He was reaching deep inside her, stretching her out, hammering at things that clearly were not meant to be hammered. She came once, and then immediately again. She thought about how she must feel to him, being deep inside her, gutting her, stretching out her interior walls. The thought of his pleasure made her come again. She could feel water flowing inside her as if she had turned on some secret faucet.
“Gena . . .” he cried out again. Jerrell could feel himself tightening up. He wanted to explode inside her. Never before in his life had he not been able to control his orgasms. Never before in his life had he been reduced to being a fifteen-minute man. No, he had hour power at least. He had the ability to make passionate love for hours on end, and sometimes even into the wee hours of the morning. But this, this was something completely different, something completely new to him. How could she do this to him?
Jerrell exploded inside her, shooting his fluids even deeper into her body. His deep explosion caused her to arch her back and cry out. She gasped for air and held on to him tightly. She could feel his entire body shaking. She had never felt him come like that before.
“You okay, baby?” Gena asked, rubbing his sweating back. “You’re still shaking.”
Embarrassed, Jerrell rolled off her and lay next to her in bed. He was tired. He had been up all the previous night, planning tonight’s events. He had been on his feet all that day, wrapping up all of the loose ends, and now, he was feeling it.
Gena placed her arm beneath his head and caressed his sweating chest with her index finger. “There’s something that I want to talk to you about.”
“What?” he asked softly.
“It’s nothing really,” she told him. “It’s just a little surprise that I wanted to share with you.”
Jerrell yawned, closed his eyes, and quickly dozed off. Gena stared at the snoring body before her, not believing that when she finally had the courage to tell him, he fell asleep on her. She slid her arm from beneath his head and carefully slid out of the bed. She could still feel the pressure on her stomach, and it felt as though she had to use the restroom. She hoped that the room had toilet paper in it. It would be a real bitch to have to get dressed and walk all the way to the office just for some toilet paper.
Why Jay had chosen to take her to a motel room tonight puzzled her deeply. He had an apartment, and she had told him that she now had her own apartment too. They could have gone back to either of their places after dinner, so why he chose a motel so far on the outskirts of town was beyond her. The thought that he had another woman at home or nearby crossed her mind.
Gena made her way across the motel room to the bathroom. She opened the door and walked inside to find buckets, chains, and bags of cement. She also found handcuffs and rope.
“What the fuck?” she said softly. Gena closed the bathroom door and turned the lock on the knob. She didn’t want to wake him, and she didn’t want him walking in on her while she snooped around. She opened the shower curtain and peered in at the bathtub. There was a bucket labeled acid sitting inside it. The hairs on the back of her neck quickly stood at attention.
Gena sat down on the toilet and peed. It flowed out of her rapidly, as her pregnancy, combined with her nervousness, had worked havoc on her bladder. She quickly located a roll of toilet paper, wiped herself, and then began to snoop around some more. She found a large duffel bag beneath the bathroom counter.
Gena opened the large, green, Army-issue duffel bag and to her surprise found herself staring at millions of dollars in cash. Her mind quickly began to race. Why the bag full of money? Why the acid, the cement, the buckets, the handcuffs, the chains? He was definitely going to get rid of a body and get out of town. And being that she was the only body around, it was pretty clear what Jay had in mind. But why?
Gena sat back down on the toilet and began to think. What the fuck is he doing with acid and all this money and why the fuck does he got me in this hotel room when I could be home in my own bed? This shit ain’t right. I think I better get the hell outta here. Her mind formulated questions faster than she could even begin to process them. But there was one thing that she did know for sure. She was getting the hell out of that room. Thank God she hadn’t told him where her new apartment was.
Gena rose and opened the door. Jerrell was standing in the doorway.
Gena screamed and tried to close the bathroom door. Jerrell bum-rushed his way inside.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Gena screamed. “What the fuck is all this shit?”
Jerrell punched Gena in her face, grabbed her by her hair, and dragged her into the bedroom.
“You nosy bitch!” Jerrell shouted.
Gena reached up and dug her nails into Jerrell’s face, scratching him deeply. “Let me go! Let me go!”
“Aaaaarrgh!” Jerrell shouted. He knocked her hands away and then slapped her with the back of his hand. Gena flew onto the bed.
“Let me out of here!” Gena leaped up off the bed and jumped at Jerrell, trying to claw his eyes out. He was going to kill her, but she wasn’t going out like no crying docile bitch! This nigga was going to have to fight for his kill.
Jerrell protecte
d his face, pushed Gena back, and then kicked her in her stomach. Gena dropped to the floor. Jerrell kicked her in her face, causing blood to shoot across the room. Gena raced to the nightstand, grabbed the lamp from it, and swung it at him. The lamp struck Jerrell on the side of his head, and blood ran down into his eye, temporarily blinding him. Gena raced for the door.
“Come here, bitch!” Jerrell shouted. He grabbed Gena just as she was opening the motel-room door.
Gena kicked and screamed. She bit down on Jerrell’s forearm, causing him to drop her. Again she raced for the door. Jerrell threw a fierce punch at her before she could open the door all of the way. The punch caught her in the back of her head, causing her to go dizzy. She fell backward, still clutching the doorknob. The door to the motel room swung open as she hit the floor. She could barely make out the shadow standing in the doorway.
“What the fuck?” Jerrell asked. “Nigga, mind your own mutha-fuckin’ business! Don’t try to be no Captain Save a Ho!”
“This is my business,” he told Jerrell.
“Oh, really?” Jerrell asked. Jerrell started for the bed, where he had his gun beneath the pillow. He heard the click of another weapon.
“Go for it,” the shadowy figure told him.
“Who the fuck are you?” Jerrell shouted.
The shadow stepped into the light of the motel room. Jerrell’s eyes grew wider than grapefruits.
“You! This is bullshit! This can’t be!” Jerrell dove for his gun. “You’re supposed to be dead, nigga!”
Gunfire lit up the motel room as bullets struck Jerrell in his neck, his chest, his side, his arm, his back, and his thigh. Blood and smoke poured from his body as he lay on top of the motel-room bed.
Gena felt herself being lifted up off the floor. She felt herself in familiar arms, smelling a familiar smell. She was dizzy; her eyes had been beaten almost shut. But she was still able to barely make out the face of the man who was carrying her across the parking lot to the black BMW that had been stalking her every move. She was tired, bruised, bleeding, and growing weaker by the moment. She stared into his face and smiled. “Quadir.”
