Candy Licker (28 page)

Jadeah called Quadir in the security office and told him to go get the whip and take me back out to Long Island.

“Go home and rest, Candy. Fuck writing. Fuck rehearsing. Ju's gonna be gone for four whole days. While he's out there taking care of his business and getting his props, you go home and take care of yourself.”

I hugged Jadeah and waited for Quadir to bring the Jag around front so I could take her advice. I had four days to myself and I was gonna use them too. The first thing I planned to do was get my sore ass in that big old bed and stay in it for two days straight, and when I got back to the mansion that's exactly what I did.

F
ive days later we were stepping out to an awards dinner sponsored by Urban Artists on the Rise. Hurricane had rented a stretch Hummer, and if I wasn't still so bruised and sore from his ass-kicking the energy would have been live. Scandalous! had been chosen to receive one of the top awards. Me, Dominica, and Vonzelle were being presented with a plaque for our musical success and we were amped and excited.

The stretch limo was stuffed with bodies. Most of them were flunkies, members of Hurricane's entourage that he kept around to make himself look big on nights like this. Me, I was still
swollen. Swollen and sore. Hurricane had called for Jadeah to hook up my makeup, but hiding my big fat lip and twice-dotted eye was way beyond her skills.

“Here.” He tossed me a pair of sunglasses before we left the House. “Put these motherfuckers on and make sure you don't take 'em off.”

Joog was riding in the front seat of the limo, and I was sitting between Dom and Vonnie in the next row. Hurricane, Long Jon, and Peaches were sitting across from us, and the backseats were packed deep with rap artists and hoods from the block. Caramel was right back there with them too. Sitting her ass in some niggah's lap.

Blunts were getting smoked, lines were being snorted, and the whip was filled up with beer and liquor. Hurricane was throwing a party on wheels, and everybody except me was up and happy as we drove through the city.

I sat there cursing the driver out under my breath. Every pothole or bump he hit sent pain screaming through my bruised body. Vonnie was sitting on my left. As usual, she was getting stupid high, hitting line after white line. Powder was dusted all over her nose.

“She 'bout had enough,” I muttered to Dominica.

Dom laughed, but it was one of them mad laughs. “Vonzelle ain't nothing but a vacuum cleaner.” Then she crossed her arms and nodded at me. “And you ain't nothing but a punching bag. A banged-up piece of red meat.”

“Dom, please,” I said, waving my hand even though doing that shit hurt. “I ain't nobody's meat.”

She reached over and snatched off my glasses. I tried to hide
my black eye real quick, but she grabbed my hands. “What the fuck you call this then, Candy, huh? You a piece of meat when your niggah
treats
you like a piece of fuckin’ meat!”

“Ooooh, girl!” Peaches hollered, looking at my eye. “He fucked you
up!”

Suddenly it got real quiet in the car, and I knew that shit was dangerous.

But Dom didn't care. She turned to Peaches and talked big shit. “Holla girl! What kinda real man gotta put his foot up his girl's ass to control her?”

“Dom, stop,” I whispered.

“No, no, no. I ain't stopping shit, Candy. A man is supposed to give up the
dick
, not the foot. This shit needs to be said, and somebody gotta have enough heart to say it.”

Peaches's coo-coo ass laughed. “Not me!”

“Dom, it's cool,” I said. “C'mon, chill. It's cool.”

“See, that's your biggest problem, Candy. You and Vonnie are willing to do
anything
and accept
anything
just to be down with all this shit. You out here cutting records and getting your ass cut at the same time! I don't give a fuck how much money some three-hump chump got. If he beats his wifey then he ain't no real man.”

Then she fucked around and threw salt on it.

“In the goddamn bedroom or out.”

Hurricane didn't say a word. First he turned and gave me a killer look like I had betrayed him. A look that said I musta been running my mouth and talking shit about his little-ass dick. Then he leaned back and signaled to Long Jon, and the next thing I knew the limo was pulling over to the curb and niggahs was dragging Dominica out. They was throwing manblows
at her too. My girl was screaming and reaching for Von-nie and me. I was screaming too, crying and trying to hold on to her. Vonnie was fighting both of us off, trying to stay her ass up in the whip.

Dominica hit the concrete and dragged me with her. I landed halfway on top of her and skinned both my knees on the pavement. My dress had ripped halfway down the back and my coat was still in the car. Joog slammed the door closed and the limo sped off, leaving me and Dom laying in the middle of the cold street.

Dom got up first, then helped me.

We were somewhere on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, near the projects where Dom used to live when she was in foster care. She made me take off my jewelry and let her put it in her pocket. We walked around the corner in the cold to the train station, arguing all the way.

“Fuck that, Candy,” she just kept saying as she wiped blood off her busted lip. “Don't go back to his ass. Ain't no contract or no career worth all this. Get Caramel away from that maniac and come to my place. Ya'll can both stay in Brooklyn with me.”

Then she got mad because I wouldn't agree. “Just watch, Candy. That motherfucker is gonna
kill you.”

I turned on her. “Dom, I can't just up and leave like that! It's not just about the contract neither. Hurricane got my life in his hands. Remember, I lost my mother behind this shit. I gotta make it work. Plus, I got Caramel to think about too. When the time is right for me to leave, believe me, I'll know it.”

I was cold and my teeth was chattering. Dom still had on her coat. She helped me hobble my aching bones down the
stairs to the train station, fussing me out in English and in Spanish. We looked real stupid sneaking on the train in designer dresses and heels, but we did it. I went under the turnstile first, and Dom was right behind me. Dom screamed when I bent over, and I whirled around to face her.

“WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO YOUR BACK?!”

I couldn't even speak. I just didn't know how to explain.

The guy in the token booth looked up at us and went right back to reading his newspaper.

“It's a long story,” I said finally.

Dom put her finger under my chin and made me raise my head to look at her, and I saw so much pain in her eyes.

“C'mon,” she said, hugging me first, then pulling me toward the downtown side of the tracks. “I don't give a fuck what you say, Candy. I love you, but your head ain't on straight, girl. That means you staying in Brooklyn tonight.”

The downtown A train was coming and we rushed down the steps. A Saturday-night crowd was waiting on the platform. I was freezing and wishing my coat had made it out of the limo with me. I couldn't wait for the train to come so I could get next to some heat. We stood on the edge of the platform and looked down the track into the black hole of the tunnel, and I was thankful to see headlights in the distance and hoped we could both get seats.

Dom was still running hot. She didn't even care about my black eye no more. Now she couldn't stop ranting about my back. She said it looked like one of those Greek brands that college boys in fraternities sported on their arms. She was steady talking shit about Hurricane and how I needed to leave him. She
told me I needed to get Caramel out of that mansion and hide out in a homeless shelter until I could get back on my feet. She could get a list of them, she said, and she was sure there were some for battered women in secret locations with security and all that to protect beat-up women and their kids.

It seemed like one second she was standing next to me with her hand on her hip, making noise and laying out a plan for my escape, and the next second was a blur. The A train whooshed by and Dom was gone.

Somebody screamed.

People at the far end of the platform started hollering as the train squealed to a stop.

For a moment I truly didn't know what had happened. I looked toward the front of the train where everybody was pointing. A man who had been waiting stood stock-still. He looked like somebody had splashed him with a whole bucket of blood. Two transit cops came running, one fat, the other one skinny. A white lady pointed and screamed, “Her head! Her head!” and that's when I saw Dom's shoe. It was a red Luichiny pump. It had been knocked off her foot and was laying on the platform about fifteen feet in front me.

I sank down to my knees. “No,” I whispered, clutching my stomach as the conductor got off the middle of the train and ran toward the front. People were hauling ass down the platform to see what had happened. The skinny little transit cop was leaning over next to a bench vomiting. I watched him stagger and sit down as even more people rushed past him. It was gonna take more than just his partner to hold back that crowd.

“No,” I whispered again, reality trying to sink in on me
while I tried my best to keep it away. And then somebody was grabbing me by the arm, yanking me to my feet. I panicked. The uptown train was coming in on the opposite track and I just knew my ass was gonna go flying off the platform next.

“Yo, Candy” Omar said, hauling me up, looking crazy as fuck. He was one of them niggahs who had just punched us out of the limo. I stared up at him, scared shitless and shaking harder than I ever had in my life. My eyes darted around looking for help or someplace to run, but his fingers clamped down on my arm and dug in until it hurt. “Let's dip, ma. Hurricane want'chu.”

O
mar yanked me out of that train station, hemmed up by the collar. The commotion was unreal, and transit cops and travelers were so busy running downstairs to the platform to see what had happened that not one person seemed to notice that my ass was being jacked or stopped to ask me if I was okay.

He jerked me up and dragged me up the steps and out of the underground station. Before we were outside good the winter air was cutting my ass in four different directions. Omar was so tall he had me walking on my tippy toes. I focused on keeping my balance and feeling the icy cold penetrate my body, trying my best to push that last crazy image of Dom from my mind.

Omar pulled me around a corner, and the second I saw Hurricane coming toward me I knew he had lost his mind and there was no point in trying to run. He was walking down the middle of the street holding a huge black gun in his hand. He was swinging his arm naturally, like carrying his shit out in the open like that was the normal thing to do.

He stepped up on me and swung hard, knocking the shit out of me with that gun.

My head wrenched to the left, and I staggered and lost one of my shoes.

At first the side of my face flashed real hot, then it went numb. Blood trickled from my cheek and hit my bare shoulder.

“Please!” I tried to scream, but I couldn't feel my lips. “I didn't tell her!” Hurricane bashed me upside the head with the gun again. Over and over and over. I fell against a car and tried to cover my head. He snatched a fistful of my hair and slammed my face down on the hood. He whipped me with that pistol in pure silence. New Yorkers walked past us and looked over for a quick second, then kept it right on moving. Minding their business and staying the fuck out of Hurricane's.

By the time he was finished whipping my ass I had crawled all over the hood of that car. It was a light blue Mercury whoopty and it was smeared with my blood. Hurricane was breathing hard, but I was barely breathing at all. My throat wouldn't even open up so I could get enough air. Hurricane wiped his mouth with the back of his bloody gun hand and spoke in a deadly whisper.

“Trifling bitch,” he told me. “Your ass is MINE. No matter how far you run, I will find your black ass and stomp it all the way in. I could push you off a roof and wouldn't nobody give a fuck. You could drown in a motherfuckin swimming pool, and won't nobody come looking for you. You could disappear down that street gutter right fuckin’ now, and wouldn't nobody say a word. You mine, Candy, and can't nobody save you. Believe that.”