Pride (5 page)

I exited the freeway, turned the corner, and zoomed toward my girlfriend’s beauty parlor. A young corner boy who was leaning against a light pole stood up straight as I drove past. He whistled at the Green Gotcha in envy and admiration.

I smiled at him. I guess me and Gino did have a lot to be proud of. My ride was sweet and there was no denying it. Green on the outside and cream on the inside. It was hard to knock that.

CHAPTER 4

The first time I laid eyes on DarQuese Middleton I almost freaked straight out. I had walked through the doors of the Hella Hot House of Hair and asked to speak to the owner. The girl at the front counter had smiled and pointed me toward a giant stylist who was wet-wrapping a customer’s hair in the last chair.

“Hi,” I’d said, faking confidence as I strode over to her station. She was tall as hell. Probably six-four. Her back was to me, and she was working magic with her sweet-smelling wrap lotion.

“My name is Juicy Stanfield. I just moved here from New York. I was wondering if I could speak to you about some business for a minute.”

She stood up straight and turned toward me, and I got so shook I almost ran back out the door.

The entire right side of her face looked like some burnt cheese that had slid off a pizza. Her eye was almost melted shut, and her cheek drooped low with folds of excess skin that cascaded down to her jaw.

I had to force myself to stand there without cringing, but when she turned and faced me with a smile, to my surprise the left side of her face was totally beautiful. The skin was smooth and tight. The features were soft and feminine. She was gorgeous. But she was horrible-looking too. I didn’t know this chick, or know a damn thing about her story, but the conflict between the two sides of her face just about blew my mind.

“Hell yeah, you can push your dresses outta here,” DarQuese quickly agreed when I told her about my JuicyOriginal line of trend-setting urban wear. Just looking at her I could tell she was into fashion and was probably one of those high-maintenance chicks who spent at least three hours getting dressed every morning. She had long legs, pert titties, and a high, muscular ass. Her shoulder-length permed hair was some of the silkiest I had ever seen. Her shit was tight all the way around.

I had followed her into a back room that she used as an office, and I tried to focus on the good side of her face as I quickly ran down my profit-sharing business proposition.

She waved her hand to shut me up before I was halfway through. “Alright, alright. I’ll give you a shot. But quit with all that bullshit about splitting your profits and shit. How you gonna stay in business talkin’ silly nonsense like that? You designed all them clothes, didn’t you? You bought the fly material. You sewed everything together. Give me one good reason why I should be trying to eat off your back?”

I had shrugged, surprised. “Ummm…because it’s your shop? And they’re your customers?”

DarQuese smirked. “My customers come in here because I have low prices and my stylists are the shit. I might do my business in the hood, but I’m a professional, baby. I don’t double and triple book appointments, and I damn sure don’t start working on somebody’s head first thing in the morning and make them sit around all day waiting for me to finish it. My customers are loyal, but they’re also smart. So, if your gear is as hot as you say it is, and if this is the only shop in Compton where ladies can buy it, then that just gives them one more good reason to keep coming through my door.”

I liked this girl already! All the other beauty shops I’d gone in had been full of hostile sistahs who had looked at me like I was begging for the stray hairs they swept up off the floor. I knew my fashion sense was hot. I knew I could sew, and I knew I made the kind of gear that sexy young chicks with big breasts and banging booties looked good in. But the owners and their stylists had stared me down the minute I started talking about us doing business together, and I knew they were checking out my big booty and talking shit about me before I could get back out the door. But not DarQuese. She seemed friendly and real generous.

I nodded at her. “Oh, my collection is hot,” I said with assurance. “You can believe that. It’s flamin’ hot.”

DarQuese nodded back. “Okay, cool. We’ll see. If you’re a real hustler then you’re probably used to selling shit all up outta your trunk. Why don’t you bring a few pieces inside? Let’s see if these Compton sistahs got a taste for some of your East Coast flava.”

$$$$$

You woulda thought I was giving away free creamy crack the way them Compton girls crowded around trying to get at my JuicyOriginals.

I had ’em lined up.

I sold out of everything in my car in less than fifteen minutes. Chicks were snatching my hot little dresses and sizing them up, and some even asked DarQuese if they could go in her backroom and try on a few pieces. I knew I had them open when they started whipping out cell phones and calling their homegirls. They were asking what size they wore, and taking pictures with their phones and text messaging them all across town.

DarQuese had laughed and brushed me off when I offered to split my profits with her again. She was real cool, and she put me in the mind of my old friend, Dicey.

Like Dicey, she was street smart and had a lot on the cap. And just like Dicey, she became somebody I could really talk to. But unlike Dicey, DarQuese wasn’t gonna get her throat slit and her tongue cut out just for schooling me and being my friend.

Hanging out in DarQuese’s shop became one of my favorite things to do, but it also made me kinda homesick for Harlem too. She had five stylists working her chairs, and like the Dominican shop where I used to wash hair back in Harlem, there was always plenty of good food, good gossip, crazy chicks, and banging music up in there too.

Meeting DarQuese ended up being one of the best things to happen to me in Cali. She had lived in Philly and Brooklyn too, so she could be really loud and ghetto and sometimes she used her height to back females down, but as Quese had proven on the first day I met her, she was also one of the realest people I could ever know.

CHAPTER 5

It was after ten a.m. when I turned onto DarQuese’s street. It was a busy block with a whole lot of small stores and specialty shops, and the upbeat energy and flava in the air put me in the mind of 125th Street in Harlem. I pulled into a parking spot a few doors down from the shop, put my top up, and made sure to lock my car door when I got out.

I was heading toward the beauty shop when a guy standing across the street shouted my name. I didn’t even have to look to know who it was. His voice was so deep and hard you couldn’t mistake him for nobody else.

Dude’s name was Pit, and he was a real buff, real mean little midget. Pit stood about four-and-a-half feet tall, and every inch of him was muscled-up gangsta. He owned an urban clothing store across the street from DarQuese’s shop, and he was forever trying to get me to buy a pair of the stylish, custom-designed sneakers that he sold.

“What it do, Juicy?” he hollered, lifting his chin at me. I lifted mine back and kept it moving. Sneakers and hoodies weren’t the only things Pit traded for cash. He was deep in the local drug game, and the two or three urban clothing stores he owned in Compton were just money-washing fronts for the real product of value that he moved on the streets.

I frowned when I saw him running over to cut me off. He stood in front of me rocking on his heels and grinning like a little boy who was about to beg for a piece of candy.

He lifted his chin again. “Yo, when you gonna let me holla at you, shawty? You and me can do some real nasty thangs together, ma.”

I rolled my eyes at his tired ass. Pit had been trying to get at me since the first day I met him.

“You fresh around here, right?” he had asked me one day as I was going into Quese’s shop. “What’s ya name, baby?”

“Juicy,” I had answered.

Pit had chuckled and peered around me so he could see my ass. “Juicy, huh?” He chuckled again. “I bet the fuck you is.”

I had gone inside the shop and asked DarQuese who in the hell the nasty little short dude was.

“Oh, that’s Pit,” Quese had told me. “My homeboy. That’s his urban clothing joint across the street.”

I’d laughed. “Pit, like in armpit?”

DarQuese had rolled her eyes. “You stupid, Juicy.”

“No, for real. I’m just trying to figure him out. Pit, like in pit-i-ful?”

She smirked. “That shit ain’t funny, Juicy. It’s Pit, as in Pit-bull. And don’t be forming no ignorant-ass opinions about him because he’s little, neither. He’s a boss on the streets and he’s a real man. He keeps order around here. If it wasn’t for Pit them crazy thugs out there slanging rock on the corner would be shaking me down for my cash bag every night. Pit makes sure them niggahs fall back when they see me coming.”

It didn’t take me long to figure out that Pit and DarQuese had some shit going. And it was a whole lot more than just business like she tried to pretend.

“He don’t judge me!” she had screamed on me one day when I pushed her into admitting they were fuck buddies. “He’s a fuckin’ man and I’m a woman! He don’t look at my flaws, and I don’t look at his neither!”

I had swallowed real hard because I had basically forgotten that she was disfigured. She had confided in me that her ex-boyfriend had thrown gasoline on her when she was sleeping and lit a match, but I hardly ever focused on the scarred side of DarQuese’s face anymore. I just didn’t notice it. She had become beautiful all the way around to me. Yeah, I knew most people would be real pressed about being all burnt up like that, but DarQuese always seemed so confident about herself, like her scars weren’t even there.

But for real, I couldn’t even imagine her tree-tall ass getting banged up by some funny-looking troll Pit’s size, but she assured me that the only thing short on Pit was his legs. Quese said she’d been with countless men who were way shorter than her, and she swore everybody was exactly the same height when they were mashing it up in the sheets.

Looking down at Pit now, I still couldn’t see it.

“So, me and you gonna holla a lil bit or what?” Pit repeated, still blocking my path.

Ignoring that noise, I stepped around him and he reached out and grabbed my left hand.

“What’s this little shit, five carats?” He crushed my fingers together as he eyed my engagement ring.

“No,” I said coldly and snatched my hand away. “It’s ten.”

“Only ten fuckin’ carats?” Quick as hell, he grabbed my hand again. “Yo,” he laughed, “that niggah you got is straight slippin’ Juicy. You worth at least twice that, ma. Tell him to come work for me so he can upgrade this lil knuckleduster shit. Your back action alone is worth ten carats. We ain’t even factoring in them big titties, that hair, and your gorgeous face, baby doll.”

I snatched away from him again and walked toward the shop. Pit was just mad because I wouldn’t give him no play.

“Oh, so it’s like that?” he yelled as I strutted down the block with my nose in the air. “You just gonna play me like that?”

I couldn’t help thinking about how G would have slumped him just for letting his eyeballs roll over me. Let alone talking to me like that. I knew better than to tell Gino that Pit had dissed my ring, though. He would’ve taken it as a diss to me, a diss to his moms, and in a crazy way, a diss to G too.

Because as good a man as Gino was, he was still a McKay, and in some ways it was like father, like son. Gino had a lot of G’s protective instincts when it came down to me. L.A. might not be his hood, but Gino was the type of gorilla who traveled with his own zoo. It just wasn’t worth it, risking Gino’s job and his status at The Organization by bringing him all the way to Compton to beat some ignorant midget’s ass.