Resurrection (12 page)
Authors: Treasure Hernandez
“Shit you can't afford on the salary you making.”
Anton pulled out a roll of hundreds. “My pockets is fine.”
“Pennies, nigga. You ain't getting it like Mack. Ain't that right?” Cakes smiled and looked at me.
“I'm not even in this. Y'all two always going at it. Shit, if I didn't know y'all wasn't stupid, I'd think you two was fucking.”
“Yeah, me too,” Cocaine said, stepping down the last stair and into the end of the conversation. “But I know that ain't the case, right, y'all? Because there's a rule about fucking the help.” He snatched Cakes' bags off the floor and threw them on the couch.
“Hi, daddy. I missed you.” Cakes kissed his lips.
Cocaine turned his head and pushed her away. “You must be out of your mind, girl. What, you planning on going out on a date somewhere? What the fuck is all this bullshit, Cakes?” Then he started tossing shit out the bags onto the floor.
“I told you I was going shopping earlier. I can't be wearing repeat outfits when the work come in. I'm not like them other raggedy bitches you got munching and punching the clock, daddy. You know my styleâGots to look good for the customers.”
As Cakes bent over to collect the fallen luxury items, Cocaine kicked her square in the ass. I could've sworn I saw a pound of that lotion on her shiny legs jump off her skin. She fell onto the pile of clothing in front of her and quickly turned over. Cocaine never liked anyone talking slick, especially no high-priced, hooker-ass ho. Especially when he was feeding and clothing them.
A tear rushed down her eye. “What the hell is you doing?”
“Get this damn shit off my living room floor, Cakes. You spent all of your allowance money on this bullshit. Get the fuck up to your room. NOW!”
Cakes quickly scrambled to her feet and stuffed all the clothing back into the bags. Then she slowly walked up the stairs, rubbing her ass.
Anton and me looked at each other then looked at him.
“What?” Cocaine asked in a tone similar to Raphael Saadiq. “When the day comes I let one of my hoes talk to me like that, it'll be a rainy day in Southern California, you hear that? You give âem one inch and they'll have you living in your own yard under the fucking gas meter.” He sipped his drink. “Y'all muthafuckas know what I'm saying to you? Mack, you the next nigga up. I hope you paying attention. I'm trying to train your ass. You got potential, boy. Don't go letting me down.”
Cocaine poured two shots of tequila, one for Anton, one for me. “Y'all niggas, have a drink with me.” He held up his glass.
Anton told him, “You hard on these hoes, man.”
“What, nigga? You need to be following in this man's footsteps.” Cocaine pointed to me. “This fool is a pussy magnet. He bring the bitches into work.”
Anton was upset. “And I don't?”
“You couldn't bring in the New Year without tripping over last month.” Cocaine laughed. “You used to be on point. You slipping.”
“What you mean, man? How much money and bitches I brought in last year?”
“That's not the point. It's all about chutes and ladders, baby.”
Every now and again, when Cocaine had a little drink in his system, he'd just start making up some mind-boggling-ass phrase then build on it. Sometimes it'd make perfect sense; other times it sounded just as crazy as Gnarls Barkley singing the movie soundtrack for One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Anton asked, “What you mean, chutes and ladders?”
“Chutes and ladders, nigga.” Cocaine coughed after inhaling deeply. “Rewards and consequences. You always start out on a good path, collecting points, respect, street cred and shit like thatâThat be the ladders that help you climb to the top of this game. Then you got them chutesâbitch-ass niggas, snitches, and informants, haters. Shit of that nature is the chutes that'll land your ass in a world of consequences. The chutes is the shit that'll make you fall, and it won't have shit to do with autumn. The whole idea of this pimp shit is to keep climbing the ladder until all the muthafuckas under you look like ants. This pimp shit be about the constant climb. The trick is to never look down, especially if you afraid of heights, muthafucka, because it's just not about pimping these hoes, it's about pimping the system. You ever lose focus of that, and you'll just be part of some bitch's photographic memory.” He released a cloud of London fog.
“So what you saying, man?”
“I'm saying I see your true colors shining through, Ton.”
“Yo, y'all is bugging,” I said. “I got shit to do, Coke. You straight with that paper.” I stood up.
Lately Cocaine had been stressing Anton about his inability to make things happen as he used to. He'd been that way ever since Anton had popped these two auxiliary police officers in Flushing Meadows, Queens a couple of months back. I felt in my gut that Cocaine wanted Ton dead, because his mouth would leak if he ever was caught by the pigs for that murder.
“Yeah, youngblood. We be done. Y'all seen my brother around? I ain't heard from him in a couple of days.”
“Naw, man, not me,” I said. “I just got out.”
He said to Ton, “You, nigga?”
“I ain't seen him in a couple of days.”
“All right, whatever. Hit my phone later, Mack,” Cocaine said as we walked out the door. “We need to talk.”
Urban Books
1199 Straight Path
West Babylon, NY 11704
1199 Straight Path
West Babylon, NY 11704
Flint; Book 4: Resurrection copyright © 2008 Urban Books
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
ISBN: 978-1-5998-3142-8
This is a work of fiction. Any references or similarities to actual events, real people, living, or dead, or to real locales are intended to give the novel a sense of reality. Any similarity in other names, characters, places, and incidents is entirely coincidental.
Distributed by Kensington Publishing Corp.
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Submit Wholesale Orders to:
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Attention: Order Processing
405 Murray Hill Parkway
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Phone: 1-800-526-0275
Fax: 1-800-227-9604
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