Pride (6 page)

Besides, I knew I had a nice chunk of ice hanging off my finger. Granite McKay had top-shelf tastes, and the only kind of diamond he would have slid on Gino’s moms was the best of the best.

Ignoring Pit as he kept up his little beef, I stepped calmly into DarQuese’s shop and closed the door behind me.

$$$$$

Walking into DarQuese’s beauty salon was like walking into Grandmother’s kitchen. It was so comfortable that I wanted grab a big black frying pan and make me a fried baloney sandwich on Wonder bread.

There was some old-school R&B music playing over the speakers, and the whole joint was decorated in a real fly combination of red, white, silver, and black.

“Hey, Teenie,” I greeted the cute young girl who worked at the front counter.

“What’s up, Juicy!” she smiled. “Today is Thursday. That means your big day is almost here, girl! You excited?”

I grinned and nodded. I was crazy excited! I really, really was! Where I came from chicks didn’t hardly think about getting married. Usually a girl just had a couple of baby daddies and then called it a day.

“Where’s the honeymoon going down at?” Teenie asked.

“Acapulco, Mexico,” I told her grinning. “And I can’t wait to hit the beach!”

A few minutes later I was leaning back in DarQuese’s sink getting my hair washed. I loved the way she scrubbed my scalp and pulled her strong fingers through my tangled curls.

“I tried on my Maid-of-Honor dress last night,” Quese said, giggling. “It’s fitting me like a mutha, girl. Especially in the back. You carrying that baby all in your ass, Juicy, but you ain’t gonna be the only big-booty star at the show, my sistah! I might find me a husband too.”

With my eyes closed, I smirked. “I sure hope you do,” I said, then muttered under my breath, “then maybe you can drop Pit’s stray ass off at the dog pound where you got him from.”

“Ow!” I yelped when she yanked my hair.

“I heard that shit, Juicy. I can’t help it if you don’t understand about me and Pit. We got us a nice thing going on.”

“Does Pit know that?”

She jerked my head again.

“What? You must want me to get with one of them little-dick white dudes your man be chilling with. Them shiesty-ass Italians.”

“They’re not shiesty, Quese. They’re businessmen. Just like you’re a businesswoman. That’s all.”

Her fingers almost scratched the skin off my scalp as she snorted, “Yeah, okay. That’s how much you know.”

“I do know,” I said, jerking my head to the side.

“No, Juicy,” DarQuese said dryly. She yanked my head back over the sink, and then mushed down on my forehead to keep it where she wanted it. “You don’t know shit. I peeped all their games when y’all had that cookout that time. Especially that white boy, Sallie. He was tryna eat my pussy that day, you know.”

I bust out laughing. “Quese, please. Sal is real regular. I don’t even think he likes sistahs that way.”

“He ain’t gotta like us to wanna fuck us, Juicy. For real, you better watch his ass ’cause he’s got a reputation on the track. Shit, ain’t none of them Italians clean! They be frontin’ like they some big-shot corporate executives when they’re really just a crew of con-artists living the high life off somebody else’s dime.”

I shrugged. DarQuese was just jealous because me and Renata Sanvenero had been hanging out a lot. I’d made a mistake and brought her to the shop with me one day when I was dropping off some dresses, and that shit had pissed Quese off. She had stunted real hard with Renata, towering over her and grilling her with the hood-face real mean-like, and I didn’t understand where all that heat was coming from. Renata might have been white, but she was definitely cool. She always went out of her way to look out for me since I was new to Cali and all. Quese really went nuts when she found out I had asked Renata to be one of my bridesmaids.

“Damn, Juicy! You ain’t gotta be asking no white girl to be in your wedding! I know you ain’t got no family out here or nothing, but if you need to fill up the church I can call some of my cousins and their friends to come eat up all your food.”

“But most of your cousins are already coming to the wedding, Quese. Plus, I didn’t ask Renata because I needed to fill up my bridal line,” I told her. “I asked her because she’s good people and I like her.”

That had pissed Quese right off.

“We gone see about all that shit,” she had muttered under her breath.

And now, I sat back with my head in the sink as she slathered a deep-conditioner in my hair. I was dying to bust Pit out and tell her how he had just now tried to push up on me again, but Quese was in a good mood today and I didn’t wanna ruin it. She was buttering up my hair for free, like she always did, and she had promised to shape my eyebrows with hot wax since I was too chicken to go for all that thread-cutting stuff.

Fuck Pit, I told myself as DarQuese wrapped a towel around my head and led me from the sink over to the hair dryer. I wasn’t about to let no dude come between me and my new friend. After all, if Quese was digging him so hard then he couldn’t be all that bad.

Nah. He couldn’t be.

CHAPTER 6

Meanwhile, Back in Harlem

It was late Saturday night and Money-Making Monique sat on a stool at the G-Spot Social Club sipping from a cold bottle of beer. The shitty tips she’d earned had put her in a funky mood and blown her high. She had smoked some chronic and slurped back two Incredible Hulks right before going onstage, but after snatching up just a few wrinkled twenty dollar bills from the filthy floor she was ready to curse all them stingy, meat-beating niggahs out.

She glanced around the club with her bottom lip poked out. Even after six months of bad luck and hard knocks, it was still hard for her mind to grasp what her eyes clearly saw: The G-Spot was a dump. It had fallen off. Way off.

At the height of its magnificence, back when Granite McKay was still alive and running things with a concrete fist, the G-Spot had been one of the premiere gentlemen’s clubs on the East Coast. Pimps, ballers, kingpins, Hollywood stars, and professional athletes had eagerly dropped a grand just for the privilege of stepping through the door.

G had run his shit so tight the club operated like a well-oiled cash machine, and everybody on his payroll ate until they were full. He’d had a loyal crew of hardbody soldiers who had been down with him from his roots, and every last one of his strippers worked like hell to get customers to buy out the bar and keep the sheets stank and hot too.

Pairing up with a luscious stripper named Honey Dew, Monique had been G’s top money-maker. Honey Dew had mad control over her pussy muscles and could grip a soda bottle with her twat, but Monique was the headliner who had the kind of phatty package that kept the heat-meter spiked on high every single night. With a thick blooming onion, and her trademark fishnet stockings, shot-callers used to drop prime dollars just to watch her bend over and step outta her panties.

And along with her make-a-niggah-cum moves and multiple ill na-na striptease routines, Monique had been blessed with something that none of the other dancers in the G-Spot could even come close to competing with.

Three titties.

Her two normal breasts were plump and round like cantaloupes, and sat in the regular position on her chest. But that third titty, the one that was the size of a twelve-year-olds and drove all the freaky niggahs wild, was right in the middle. Some called it a birth defect, but Monique called it a blessing. It was ultra-sensitive and sat up much higher than the other two, and when the clients were respecting her game and tossing their tips right, she would fuck their heads up by gripping her two big titties with both hands, as she stretched her tongue downward and slurped the hell outta that little one.

But the days of cash-bomb dropping ballers in the G-Spot were over. Without G around to drive the train, what remained of his crew had lost their focus and fallen off the tracks. Monique looked at the stage in disgust. The marble floors that used to be clean enough to eat off were now straight filthy. The Spot had gone from being Harlem’s only celebrity-exclusive establishment with a cover charge of a grand at the door and another grand to purchase chips, to being a grimy hole in the wall where any old regular niggah could slide in for a C-note as long as he bought at least two drinks before the end of the night.

Monique flicked some nasty, booger-looking thing off the edge of the bar and frowned. One of the first things to go had been Greco’s cleaning crew, and unless a miracle happened and they struck some kinda gold, the security team was about to be out the door too.

It was like the entire ecosystem in Harlem had collapsed the moment G died. And even though Ace and Pluto, G’s two main henchmen, were all fucked up behind the G-Spot’s downfall, Monique was devastated way beyond repair. She had been straight hysterical over G’s death because her life had been thoroughly ruined. Every last one of her big, brilliant dreams had been deaded, and all because of one stupid little bitch who didn’t know the rules of the game or the value of her pussy.

Juicy Stanfield.

Just thinking about that little Harlem rat got Monique so depressed she felt like going back to the tiny roach-trap she shared with Pluto and sticking her head in the fuckin’ oven.

But instead, she snapped her fingers above the bar and signaled to Bizzie to bring her another round. She’d already been onstage six times since the doors opened earlier that afternoon, and she needed to get her head buzzed if she was gonna make it through her last few sets of the night.

“Bitch I see you!” Bizzie based as Monique snapped for him twice, then twice again. He took his time coming down to her end of the bar. “A’ight. This is five so far tonight,” Bizzie warned, sliding her another beer. “You know Pluto’s new rule. Strippers and hoes got a two-drink limit.”

“Fuck Pluto!” Monique snarled. She couldn’t believe this shit. Back when Cooter’s stuttering ass was bartending she had gotten free drinks all night long, no questions asked. Shit, a hoe got thirsty when she was out there mashing hard. Besides, the bar used to rake in so much doe from the customers that they didn’t sweat the little bit extra the bitches drank up.

She looked at Bizzie and rolled her eyes. He was short and skinny, and had a damn curly kit in his ashy hair. Even Cooter, with his slow-talking self, had been a better bartender than this sweet-ass was. Out of all the jobless niggahs in Harlem, she didn’t know why Pluto had put Bizzie on. Pluto wasn’t no G, that was for sure. And neither was his sidekick, Ace. Both of them small-time niggahs balled up together coulda fit inside the toe of one of G’s alligator shoes.

Because no matter how coldblooded he had been, no matter how cruel or how merciless his heart was, G had always been about his bizzness. He was the perfect combination of guns and gloss. Of danger and dapper. He was a ruthless OG, but he was a suave, charismatic gentleman too. G had lived by a code that gutter niggs like Ace and Pluto couldn’t even conceive of. That’s why his clientele had felt like it was a privilege to walk into his joint and empty their wallets at the door. Some of the richest and most powerful boss-men in the country had wilted like hot bitches at G’s feet. He’d had ’em all sprung. G had been more than just a kingpin or a boss. He had been a living legend, and he’d elevated the hustler’s game to a level that had never before been seen in Harlem and would probably never be seen again. But all that was over now.

Thanks to that dumb bitch Juicy and her slow-ass brother Jimmy, G was toast and so was everything Monique had ever worked for. Over the past few months she had watched the Spot’s main crew break for the doors like roaches scattering under a light. And she couldn’t blame them neither. All the shine and the status of the place was gone. They’d plummeted down from a multi-million dollar operation to some real low-level ma-and-pa shit, and no matter how loyal and dedicated a soldier was, couldn’t nobody afford to work for free.