Eviction Notice, page 15
“Damn, Gucci, you’re better than a championship coach!”
“Because all my team does is win.” Gucci popped her collar. “A’ight, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s get into some grown shit. What you got to drink in this piece?”
Tionna looked at her watch. “Damn, lush life, ain’t it kinda early to be sipping?”
“Girl, with the way my day has been going I should’ve started drinking hours ago.”
“Oh Lord, I gotta hear this one.” Tionna disappeared into the kitchen. She resurfaced a few seconds later, holding a half-empty bottle of Moscato and two glasses.
“What, no yak?” Gucci teased her.
“Bitch, knock it off, you know I can get on my grown shit when I want to.” Tionna set the glasses on the coffee table and began rummaging through her purse. “While you’re busy running your mouth, why don’t you roll this up.” She tossed Gucci a bag of weed, followed by a Dutch Master.
Gucci sniffed the bag and frowned. “Smells like you dipped this in diarrhea.”
“You know mama smokes nothing but the best.” Tionna winked.
Gucci proceeded to roll the weed while Tionna filled their glasses. As soon as Gucci put flame to the L she could smell tart buds burning. It didn’t take long before both girls’ eyes were hooded, and the stress they’d carried in them suddenly seemed to ease up, as it always did when they were together. Tionna and Gucci had been best friends since grade school and the bond had only gotten stronger with time. From schoolyard fights to Internet sex scandals to happy endings, Tionna and Gucci had been through it all together.
“Damn, I just realized what’s wrong with this picture.” Gucci looked around the room.
“And what’s that?”
“Noise! Where are your big-headed-ass kids?” Gucci was referring to Tionna’s sons Duhan and Duran.
“Oh, they’re with their grandma. She keeps them for me a few nights per week if I gotta study or work late.”
Gucci smiled at the news. For quite a few years Tionna and her mother had had a strained relationship. Throughout most of their childhood Tionna’s mother had been on and off drugs, which had contributed to Tionna’s spending so much time caught up in the streets. Over the last few years her mother had started to put the pieces of her life back together and rid herself of her addictions so that she could be a better grandmother to her grandsons than the mother she had been to Tionna. Gucci and Ronnie had tried to coax Tionna into reestablishing a relationship with her mother, but Tionna wasn’t so quick to buy into Yvette’s recovery. The wounds of her childhood were deep and slow to heal, but Gucci was glad to see that they were finally making progress.
“On the real, T, I’m glad y’all are finally making peace. You know Yvette has worked really hard to stay clean for y’all,” Gucci said.
“I know, Gucci. It’s just that I was so afraid that I was gonna let her back into our lives and she was gonna pull a dope-fiend move that it made me act kinda like a bitch.”
“Kinda?” Gucci raised an eyebrow.
“Okay, okay, I was a superbitch!” Tionna admitted. “But it feels good to have my mom back in my life.”
“Aw, so you guys can do mommy-daughter dates?”
Tionna twisted her lips. “Damn a mommy-daughter date, I’m talking about free babysitting!”
“Tionna, your ass is so trifling.” Gucci laughed. “But what good is free babysitting if all your ass does is sit in the crib?”
“I do not just sit in the crib.”
“So when is the last time you went out?” Gucci quizzed her.
Tionna thought on it for a second. “I went out last Friday to see the new Tyler Perry movie with Zeda.”
Gucci sucked her teeth. “Bitch, please; going to some dry-ass church movie with the dizzy bitches you’ve taken to hanging with down here doesn’t count. I mean go out, like how we do.”
“I haven’t partied like a rock star in a hot minute. But then again, who the fuck am I gonna party with when my BFF is in hiding?” Tionna eyed Gucci.
“Tionna, ain’t nobody hiding. I live back in New York now, remember? So I’m always around.”
“Gucci, just because you live in New York don’t mean you stay in New York. You talk about me not getting out, but you’ve been harder to catch than a cold. You’re either traveling somewhere doing God knows what or holed up in that damn apartment like an old-ass widow.”
“See, now you’re about to go there,” Gucci said as if she was about to catch an attitude, but Tionna didn’t care.
“Damn right I’m about to go there, because I can.” Tionna snaked her neck. “Gucci, for the last two years I’ve watched you deal with your grief by running from it.”
“I’m gonna tell you like I keep telling everybody else: I’m not grieving.” Gucci folded her arms.
Tionna gave her a disbelieving look. “Gucci, I know you better than anyone except probably your mother, so save that tough shit because I ain’t buying it. I know you’re hurting over what happened to Animal, and there’s no shame in that.”
“I keep telling you, I’m good. The past is the past and I’ve moved on with my life,” Gucci told her.
“That’s what your mouth says, but your eyes say something else.” Tionna reached out and placed her hands over Gucci’s. “Gucci, I know you’re strong, but even the mightiest shoulders get tired after carrying a load for so long, and there ain’t no shame in that. I loved Animal, maybe not as deeply as you, but we gotta be real about this, he’s gone and he ain’t coming back.” Gucci opened her mouth to say something, but Tionna raised her hand for silence. “Ma, I’m not telling you it’s wrong to miss him, but it’s wrong to hold on to him so tight that you begin to fade away with his memory. For you to truly begin to heal, you have to let him go.”
Gucci looked up at Tionna and there were tears dancing in the corners of her eyes. “I just miss him so much, T,” she whispered before breaking down in tears. She had suffered in silence for so long that a well of pent-up emotions began to pour from her as she opened up to Tionna. “I got so used to having Animal around that I don’t know how to function without him.”
“Then you learn.” Tionna used her thumbs to wipe the tears from Gucci’s cheeks. “It’s okay, Gucci. I ain’t gonna sit here and front like I know what you’re going through, but I ain’t gonna let you go through it alone.”
“Thank you, Tionna.” Gucci hugged her tight.
“You ain’t gotta thank me, baby. You’re my sister and you know how family does for family.” She rubbed Gucci’s back affectionately. “Now get off me before you get makeup all on my blouse.” Tionna pushed her playfully.
“Damn, you could fuck up a wet dream.” Gucci mustered a smile.
“As if you’d know about a wet anything when you ain’t smelled a dick in years.”
“Must your mouth be so vulgar?” Gucci faked embarrassment.
“Bitch, please, like you ain’t grow up right across the avenue from me. And you know I ain’t said nothing but the truth about you being backed up.”
“And how would you know what my sex life is like?”
“Because that cheap-ass foundation can’t hide them pimples popping up on your big-ass forehead.” Tionna mushed her playfully.
“Don’t hate because I ain’t loose like you, Tionna.”
“I ain’t loose, I just know how to have a good time, which is what you need.”
“I’m cool.” Gucci waved her off.
“The hell you are. Look, my mother is gonna have the kids until Sunday so I say that me and you hit the town and turn it up like we used to do.” Tionna snapped her fingers.
“Tionna, I’m too old to be running around to ghetto-ass clubs with your ass. That was so five years ago.”
Tionna side-eyed her. “Bitch, knock it off. One of my homegirls from the job invited me to a birthday party she’s going to uptown tomorrow night and I just thought it’d be a good idea if we rolled. It’s supposed to be really nice.”
Gucci looked at her suspiciously. “Ain’t nothing nice going on uptown, especially if one of your hood-rat-ass friends are involved.”
Tionna rolled her eyes. “Marlene is one of the partners at the law firm I work for and she’s an older chick so she ain’t no hood rat.”
“Okay, an old-ass educated hood rat,” Gucci teased. “Where is this party and what’s the lick?”
“It’s at the Amsterdam Lounge,” Tionna told her.
Gucci twisted her lips. “Oh hell no, ain’t that where ol’ boy got shot a few years ago?”
“No, it was called something else back then, but some yuppies bought it and cleaned it up. It’s a really nice spot now. Anyhow, it’s a surprise party for a client of Marlene’s fiancé and she invited a few of us from the job to roll out. It’ll be a good look for me to get up under some of these lawyers and a good look for you to have some fun, because your sour ass ain’t had none in a while. Gucci, come on, for old time’s sake.”
“Tionna…”
“Please.” Tionna batted her eyes.
Gucci tried to hold her ground, but looking at Tionna and the silly-ass face she was making reminded her of all the fun they’d had growing up and how much she missed it. “A’ight, T. I’ll roll with you.”
“Aw, thank you, Gucci.” Tionna hugged her.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Gucci slapped her hands away. “But I’m telling you now: if this is some ol’ hood shit, I’m out!”
“Don’t worry about it, Gucci, we’re gonna have a grand old time, just like we used to.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Gucci mumbled. “And by the way, whose birthday party is it anyway?”
Tionna shrugged. “Some nigga named King James.”
CHAPTER 21
After hours of bullshit and paperwork, the police finally released King James. They were trying to stick an assault charge on him but his lawyer had laughed them out of it. Lamar was a notorious piece of shit who was always terrorizing people in the neighborhood, so the lawyer argued that King had only been defending himself against Lamar and his goons. When it was all said and done, King was released with a desk-appearance ticket for disorderly conduct, which he was sure his attorney would have thrown out at his next court date.
King was glad they hadn’t tried to remand him, because he had a million things to do that night. He wanted to go home and wash the jail stink off him and jump into his clothes so that they could push out to Jersey and holla at Shai Clark. Unfortunately, his plans were further delayed when Lakim met him outside the precinct house and informed him of Sahara’s getting locked up too. Grudgingly, he got his lawyer to go back inside to see about springing the girl and her friend.
“Fucking chicks,” King cursed. He and Lakim were perched on stools at the Jumbo Burgers joint, waiting for the call from the lawyer about the girls. “It’s bad enough that I gotta pay this blood-sucking Jew to spring me on a bullshit charge, but I gotta turn around and pay him again to get these bitches out.”
Lakim took a bite of his turkey burger and shrugged. “You could’ve left her in there.”
“I started to, but shorty is still useful to me. Sahara is a bonehead but she’s a down-ass chick that’ll do just about anything I ask her to. How do you think we were able to get rid of that fucking rocket launcher stupid-ass Latif brought to the spot.”
Lakim laughed as he recalled the day the little fella had walked into the stash house with the rocket launcher wrapped in a blanket. “Sun was illing for that shit. That joint was mean, but if the police ever ran up and caught us with that, they’d give us like a thousand years in jail, word to mine!”
“That’s why I got it up outta there and convinced Sahara to hide it in her crib. That’s one of the benefits of fucking with a chick who don’t live with her moms,” King confessed.
“My dude, you mean to tell me that bitch was stupid enough to let you put that on her?” Lakim shook his head. “If her crib ever get rushed, it’s curtains!”
“Better her than us,” King said coldly. “But yo, we still good for tonight?”
“Yeah, my peeps said that the owner has already been putting it out to the girls that there’s gonna be some heavyweights in the house. Shai and his crew are gonna be there.”
“Good. I think it’s long overdue for me and Poppa’s youngest boy to have a chitchat.”
“True indeed. I got the whole squad on deck for this too. We rolling out like three cars on some real heavy shit,” Lakim informed him.
King thought about it. “Nah, clip that number by more than half. I don’t wanna give Shai the impression that we’re coming at him on some beef shit and create an unnecessary problem.”
“I don’t know if we should roll shorthanded like that. I know Shai is gonna have his whole crew in there, plus it’ll be other niggaz in the spot with their teams. We’ll be outnumbered if it goes down, God.”
“Numbers don’t mean shit when you’re rolling with niggaz who got heart. We’ll go six deep. Me and you will roll in with two of our strongest and have the other two floating around so our backs are covered if it does pop off. I’m on some peace shit, but I ain’t stupid either, feel me?”
Lakim nodded. “A’ight, so we’ll have Big Dump with us and Zo.”
King gave him curious look. “Zo-Pound coming out? I thought that nigga worked like twenty-three hours a day.”
“Yeah, Zo is serious about this life-of-a-square shit, but I convinced him to come out with us tonight and blow some steam off with one of these bitches. I’m proud of my baby bro for sticking with this work shit, but I miss hanging out with the li’l nigga.”
“A’ight, but as I’m thinking about it, let’s bring one more head to stay with the whip in case we gotta make a speedy exit.”
“I got the perfect man for the job, li’l Ashanti,” Lakim told him.
“You bugging the fuck out, sun. Ashanti is a baby.”
“A baby with a serious appetite for blood. All he do is play the block and plot chaos.”
“But he’s still just a kid, Lakim,” King pointed out.
“I hear you, but we were getting into shit when we were younger than him. King, by the time you were Ashanti’s age you was already upstate doing time on a body.”
“And it ain’t something I’m proud of, La. Sometimes shit happens when you’re living the fast life and I ended up getting my lumps and bumps early, but if I had it to do all over again I would’ve tried to finish school or something instead of getting caught up in this bullshit.”
“Me too, but that ain’t the hand fate dealt us, my G.”
“I hear you talking, La, but what if we try to put him down and he can’t handle it. This is grown folk’s business, God.”
“King, trust me on this one. You know how them li’l dudes was giving it up, running around with Animal and Tech, so I know the li’l nigga is ’bout it. King, I be watching this li’l nigga move and he’s seriously about his business. If he’s gonna do dirt anyway, why not snatch him up and try to school him instead of letting him fall to the wayside?”
For as much as King hated to admit it, Lakim made a lot of sense. He had been watching Ashanti for years and he just seemed to keep getting worse, especially since his crew had left him on his own. Ashanti was like a rabid dog preying on anything and everything moving, and at the rate he was going, it wouldn’t be long before somebody put a bullet in his ass or locked him away in someone’s prison until he was an old man. Ashanti definitely needed a guiding hand but King wasn’t sure if it was his.
King’s cell phone suddenly vibrated on the countertop. He flipped it open, listened for a minute, and hung up. “Let’s bounce,” he said to Lakim and dropped two twenties on the counter for their food and drinks. “Goldberg is about to pull outside with Sahara and her peoples. Let’s get them situated and go handle our business.”
“What about Ashanti?” Lakim asked.
King hesitated. “Fuck it, snatch the li’l nigga up, but make sure he understands that he’s just a spectator. Him riding out with us to Jersey will give me a chance to pick his brain and see where his head is really at. If he’s on some bozo shit, I’m kicking his li’l ass out on the turnpike.”
“Say no more.” Lakim smiled.
* * *
By the time King stepped out of Jumbo Burgers, Goldberg’s black Lincoln was pulling up to the curb. Sahara stepped out of the car first, looking a hot fucking mess. Her hair was sticking up on the sides and there were dried tears on her cheeks. She was followed by a thick chick that King recognized as her friend Frankie. He and Frankie had never met in more than passing so this was the first time he had really gotten a good look at her, and he nodded his head in approval.
“Oh, baby, thank you so much.” Sahara jumped into King’s arms.
“Don’t thank me, I should bust you in ya fucking head for getting locked up,” King scolded her.
“It wasn’t my fault. We were just…”
“Save that shit, because I really don’t wanna hear it right now.” He waved her off and walked over to the car to speak with his lawyer. “Yo, I really appreciate you getting my shorty out, Goldberg.”
“No thanks needed, I’m only doing what you pay me to do. Oh, and you’ll be getting my invoice in a few days.” The lawyer smiled.
“So what was the deal with them anyhow?” King asked.
“Apparently they stormed into a high-rise building and beat up one of the tenants. The girl wanted to press charges, but apparently she had an open bench warrant that I offered to make disappear if she didn’t go through with it. I’ll most likely get it busted down to trespassing and the girls will probably have to pay a fine or do some community service.”
“Good looking out.” King stuck his arm through the car window and shook Goldberg’s hand.
“No problem, but let’s not make this a habit, James. I make my bones off the big cases and it really makes me look like I’m hurting when my colleagues see me handling project cat fights. The next time one of your little jump-offs gets into something less than a murder or drug case, call the Legal Aid Society because I don’t have time for this shit.” Goldberg threw the car in gear and sped off.
