Hittin' the Bricks: An Urban Erotic Tale (3 page)

“Oh,
that
guy?” Eva asked innocently as she switched her vicious hips past the bouncer and out the door. “Rappers ain't all they got going at
Shakez,
Alex. They have talent shows and dance contests too, remember? But yeah, I might check that guy out if ain't no other fine dudes up in there.”

“Beeetch!!!” Alex's happy self was all in her ear. “I
know
you, Evita! You wanted that guy. You was all up in his incense! Tryna spin his fuckin’ illegal CDs! Shit, I wanted his ass too. Dude was
hot!”

“Well cool ya red tail off. We gotta swing by the building and pick up India first, okay? That's if Saint's gonna let her hang out tonight.”

Alex's wide smile disappeared at the mention of Saint's name. He was a cold- blooded drug dealer who'd been wrecking shit all over Harlem for the past two years. He'd started out as a runner and a look- out, then worked his way up to handling trap as a corner boy. It wasn't long before he was running the local drug game. Alex's younger brother had gotten robbed and killed in a crack spot last summer, and word on the streets was that Saint and his crew had orchestrated that shit.

“I hate that Saint mothafucka,” Alex said as they jumped into a taxi and gave the driver directions to their crib. “I don't know why India don't just drop his homo thug ass and find a real baller.”

Eva nodded in agreement, but deep inside she knew exactly why India couldn't leave Saint. Eva had earned herself a street degree, and she knew some shit didn't change whether you rested in Brooklyn or Harlem or even in the Bronx. You didn't just bounce or walk away from a gangster like Saint just like that. You could end up shut the fuck down.

Their cab pulled up to a traffic light where a big crowd had gathered in an alley outside of an elite club called Bricks. There was a big record shop in front of the club that stayed crowded all the time, but Eva had heard it was really just a front for all kinds of illegal activity. All the real action was going on beyond that, where the hottest artists, ballers, and professional athletes in the nation hung out in a converted loft in the back.

Eva looked out the window with wide eyes. People were standing out there waiting to get in like it was a free liquor giveaway. It wasn't like Bricks was some chic or ultra modern uptown club or nothing. It was in a grimy area of Harlem where niggahs and bitches was hood as hell, but all kinds of people stood in line for hours tryna be seen up in there. And not just anybody could walk up to the door and get in, either.
A murderous- looking security crew kept things on lock outside, and if you didn't have a VIP pass from an insider, or your name wasn't on the guest list, it didn't matter if your ass was Tupac or Biggie Smalls. You wasn't getting past security and you wasn't getting in.

“Dayumm!” Alex
squealed as they eyed the crowd. “It's about to be banging up in that spot tonight! I wonder who's performing? Forget about
Shakez
and India's ass too! Tell Mister Cabbie to pull over. Let's jump out this bitch right now! I can text India and tell her to meet us inside Bricks!”

Eva shook her head. “Come on, Alex. We ain't dissin’ India like that. And besides, you said you wanted to sing at
Shakez
tonight. This could be your big chance to get in that contest and blow it up. Nah,” she said as the cab pulled off, “we ain't going to no club without India anyway. The way that girl shakes her ass?”

The Harlem walk- up they lived in wasn't much different than the tenement Eva had lived in with Rasheena and Jahden in Brooklyn, but at least it felt like a real home. Eva's aunt Milena was her papi's older sister, and even though Milena had taken a bad stumble with drugs herself, she was one of those addicts who had gotten back on her feet and tried to be somewhat of a mother to her child. Eva's papi had been two years younger than Milena, and they used to be real close when he was alive. Eva's grandparents were Dominican and had come to New York as teenagers to find work and a better life.

Eva's papi's name was Marco, and him and her aunt Milena had the same silky black hair and coffee- colored skin of their parents. When Eva's mother, Rasheena, was younger she had had the kind of body and good looks that could devastate a club full of gay men. Papi had been wide open on Rasheena from the day they met at a mutual friend's card party in the
Bed- Stuy neighborhood of Brooklyn. Eva had inherited the best from both of her parents. Her skin was dark cocoa and real smooth, just like Rasheena's. Once she stopped getting high and started eating regular meals it was clear that she had gotten Rasheena's stacked body too, maybe even a better version, but Eva's hair came mostly from her father. It was jet black and silky when she blow- dried it, but let that stuff get wet. She'd be walking around with a thick mass of puffy curls that hung halfway down her back. It was something that Eva both liked and didn't like. Black folks acted like she thought she was cute because of it, and Dominicans all over Harlem called her nappy- headed and screamed on her to get a damn perm!

“Your mami is a queen,” Eva's papi used to say all the time. There were stars in his eyes each time he looked at Rasheena. “My beautiful black queen.”

Papi had moved to Brooklyn to get next to Rasheena, and not too much later they had Eva. But destiny just wasn't on their side. Life seemed to shit all over Eva's family no matter which way they turned. Her grandparents were burned to death in a suspicious house fire. The police thought it mighta been a crackhead trying to stay warm in the basement of their building. After that, her aunt Milena got messed up behind some worthless baller who had hand problems and liked to beat on her. The guy had a big problem with Fiyah, so Papi used to go get his nephew from Harlem and bring him to their crib in Brooklyn all the time. Eva and Fiyah were only a year apart in age, so they hung out together and became close.

But life took a fucked up turn for both kids when Eva's father died. Papi used to work construction for this Italian family in Brooklyn. He didn't get like, trained in school or nothing, but he was a fast learner so they put him on and paid him decent doe under the table. It was a hot day in August and Papi
had been doing roof work out in the sun for ten hours straight. When it was time to get off work he went down to the portable showers his bosses kept on the site and started washing all that sweat and sticky tar off of him.

Eva was only eleven when it happened, but even at that age she could tell that the people Papi worked for were shiesty One of Papi's co- workers had called Rasheena and told her that something real bad had happened. Papi had gone in one of the stalls to take a shower, and as soon as he turned the water on they heard a loud thud. Immediately his friend said they started smelling a real nasty burning odor.

It was Papi's hair.

They had to break the door down to get to him. Papi was burned all over his body, but not from hot water like you might have expected. Eva's papi had been electrocuted. Fried. Somebody on the site had messed up and didn't ground the water heater the right way, and the water that sprayed down on her papi was charged with high- voltage electricity.

The co- worker who called Rasheena from the hospital had been the first one to reach Papi. He had tried to drag Papi out of the stall and had gotten some real serious burns himself. Rasheena was crying on the phone as the man told her that Papi was still alive when he got to him. He hadn't died right away. Eva's papi had suffered some horrible- ass agony first, and even though his heart was still beating when the ambulance got there, the condition of his body was enough to know that he wasn't gonna make it.

Ghetto- lawyers were hanging all out the project windows telling Rasheena how she should sue those damn Italians for every dime they had. They had her counting all that phantom money in her head for days before she got the news that Papi's death wasn't gonna bring her and Eva nothing but grief.

For one thing, them Italians were slick. They had real lawyers on their side. Not the kind that had picked up some law lingo while doing time in jail, but the kind who had actually gone to law school and studied that shit. Those big- time attorneys- at- law sent Rasheena a letter saying there were no personnel records on file of a Marco Perez working for their firm. They said as far as they knew, Papi had been sneaking onto their property trying to steal copper wires, and it was tragic and unfortunate that he stumbled into an area where he didn't belong and got himself killed.

“But what about Papi's friend?” Eva had asked Rasheena. “He knows Papi worked there! He tried to save Papi and almost got killed too!”

By the time those bosses got through with him, Papi's friend was deaf and dumb. He couldn't remember ever working with a smooth Dominican cat named Marco, and besides, he said he couldn't have witnessed nothing because he wasn't even there. He had been on a whole nother construction site way across town when he accidentally burned himself while trying to ground a water heater.

That was it for Eva and Rasheena. They were left out there in the cold with no Papi and no money. It wasn't long after that when Rasheena let that slimy- ass Jahden move in with them, and that was the moment when stark fear crept into Eva's life and all her nightmares began.

E
va ran into the building with Alex and held her breath as they dodged piss puddles and jetted up the steps. They sped past the second floor, pinching their noses as they got close to the stanky incinerator room. The chute had been sealed closed for years and the room was always full of bags of putrid, rotting garbage. Alex and Eva both lived on the second floor. Alex lived with her parents and her cross- dressing brother Georgie who shook his ass in the club, and Eva stayed with Aunt Milena and Fiyah. They ran up two more flights to the fourth floor where India rested. India had been living upstairs from them for the past three years. She was the type of sistah who looked just like her name. Tall, tan- brown with exotic features,
and just beautiful from every angle. India had a vicious body on her too, and dudes chased after her like mad. She liked to dress nice and her long straight hair stayed buttered up. While Eva would be walking around with her natural bush in a halo of thick curls, India's hair looked like she relaxed that shit every other day, and even through some of her roughest times Eva had never seen her girl with one hair on her head looking raggedy.

But while Eva and Alex dreamed ghetto dreams of singing and modeling urban gear in sexy magazines, and dancing on stage with artists like Diddy and Jay- Z, India was finer than both of them. Plus, she had bigger dreams. India wanted to use her brain and go to college and become a surgeon one day. A pediatric surgeon who healed sick kids.

But dreams were just dreams in their hood, and reality was a real bitch. India shared a one- bedroom apartment with her little sister, Rosa, and her disabled father, and she had already fallen a year behind in high school because she was always busy trying to taking care of all three of them.

“Who is it?!?” India barked when Eva knocked on the door.

“It's me,” Eva said, wondering what was up with all that hostility in her girl's tone.

“Me
who?”

“Me,
me!
It's Eva, stupid.”

There was a pause, then India asked suspiciously, “Who's out there with you? You by yourself?”

Eva turned and gave Alex a what- the- fuck look.

“It's me and Alex, Indy Why you trippin ? Open the damn door!”

She opened the door, but only a crack. She left the chain on and peeked through the slit.

“What's up?” Eva asked, puzzled.

“Anybody behind you?”

Eva shrugged over her shoulder. “Just Alex.”

Alex started wilding as she eyed India through the crack in the door.

“See there, Eva! This chick ain't even ready! I told you we shoulda dipped into Bricks and then texted her ass later!”

Eva ignored Alex, but when India opened the door and yanked them inside, she knew something was wrong. India's father was sitting right there in the living room with his head slumped over in his wheelchair. Eva could feel the tension in the air. What she had taken for a shitty attitude in India was really fear. Her girl was scared. Shook down to her low- rider shorts that were cut damn near down to her pussy.

India closed the door behind them and locked both locks. Then she put the chain back on the door and stuck a kitchen chair up under the knob.

For the first time ever, India looked a busted mess. Her hair was wild and her T- shirt was mad dirty and looked like she had dribbled red Kool- Aid all over it.

Alex gasped. “India! Your shit is fucked up!”

“What's wrong?” Eva cried. Her girl was
un-the-fuck-done!

Tears rushed to India's eyes. “It's that niggah Saint. He's gunning for me, y'all! He gave me a package to take to Jersey this morning and I fucked up. I got the drop address wrong and lost three of his bricks. He sent me a text when I came back without the money that said, ‘You stupid black bitch, kiss ya whole family good- bye ‘cause you gone be bodied before the sun comes up.’ “