Still Candy Shopping (6 page)

I stood there in disbelief. I wanted to grab my money back from that ass hole so bad but I decided against it for fear that he’d rip my fucking head off. So instead of reacting in the way I knew would cause me harm, I asked them both if I could leave.

“Yeah. Carry your ass!” he said without even looking my way. He and Brenda stood there at the entryway of the room and argued about how much money he had to give her. I walked by them and found my way back to the back door. As I exited the house I felt so defeated. And just think that I had just went in there with two pills of heroin and a pocket filled with money, but I left empty handed. What in the hell was I going to do about it? I couldn’t go back in there and demand that they give me my stuff back so I threw my duffle bag across my shoulders and headed up the block.

My mind started racing. I immediately went into hustling mode. I had to get some money back into my pockets. I had a major heroin addiction and I knew that in a matter of a couple of hours, I was going to need to feed it. So when I got to the end of the block I stood at the corner and tried to pick up a trick or two. All I needed was twenty bucks. That would get me two more pills of dope and that would do me good for the night if the heroin didn’t have a bunch of cut on it.

Thank God a car finally pulled up curbside. It was an old clunker with a middle aged black man in the driver seat. I leaned down into the passenger side window and asked him if he needed a date. He was your typical desperate looking man who looked like he wanted his dick sucked. I tried not to look at him head on because he was not easy on the eyes. In fact, he looked somewhat scary. He also acted like he was paranoid. He looked over his shoulders at least five times while I waited for him to tell me what he wanted. “Whatcha need baby?” I asked.

I opened the passenger side door and sat down on the seat. Right after I closed the door, I asked him to pay me up front. He retrieved his wallet from his back pocket and then he pulled out a fifty-dollar bill. Instead of handing it to me he balled it up in his right hand and said, “I’m gonna hold it right here until you make me cum.”

I was instantly turned off by his response. I was not happy at all by his arrangement and I made it known. “Look, I don’t know what type of mess you got going on and I really don’t care. But, I’m telling you right now that I am not going to touch you or your dick if you don’t pay me up front.”

“No. No. The last time I paid a prostitute my money first, she jumped out of my car and ran off. So you gon have to take care of me before I give you anything.”

Frustrated by his stubbornness, I almost blew my top. “Look man, where the fuck am I going to run to? You can lock the fucking door if you like. I’m not gonna try to run off with your damn money. Now do us both a favor and pay up so I can get down to business.”

I guessed this idiot wasn’t in the mood to bargain with me. He noticed how he’d gotten more agitated than me. “Bitch just get out of my car.” he snapped as he reached over my lap and grabbed a hold of the door handle.

I was appalled. “Wait. Hold up.” I said hoping he would reason with me. I needed that money he had in his hands. So, I wasn’t about to get out of his car until I got it.

“Nah, I ain’t waiting on you. Get the hell out of my car right now.” He spat and pushed the passenger side door open. And before I could persuade him to give me a chance to work with him, he planted both of his hands on the left side of my hip area and pushed me as hard as he could. The force behind his hands knocked me half way out of his car. I honestly had to catch myself. I grabbed a hold of the door handle to balance myself. “What the fuck is your problem?” I roared.

“Get out of my car!” he screamed and then he shifted his gear in drive. His car started moving when he let his feet off the brake pedal. I was utterly shocked. I was hanging halfway out the passenger side door while this asshole’s car was moving.

“What the fuck is wrong with you. Stop the car so I can get out!” I yelled. But he didn’t listen. As a matter of fact, he pressed down on the accelerator and the car picked up more speed. I knew right then and there that he had no intentions on stopping his car so I turned my body around facing the curb and forced myself out onto the ground. BOOM! My body hit the pavement hard. I tried to break my fall with my hands but it didn’t work. I scratched my hands and knees up pretty bad. But it wasn’t that bad that some peroxide and warm water wouldn’t help.

Now as I helped myself up from the ground I looked down the street and watched that asshole as he sped out of the neighborhood. I shook my head and wondered to myself, how in the hell am I always getting into one thing after the next? My luck was fucked up. And if I’d got into another crazy incident, I would just fall dead on the spot.

Once I brushed myself off, I looked around me noticed how a few people where whispering and talking. I knew they were talking about me because their eyes were glued to me. I sucked my teeth and rolled my damn eyes at them. I had to give them the impression that I didn’t care less what they were saying about me. And right after I turned my ass to them, I grabbed my duffle bag from the ground and continued up Washington Street.

As I traveled down Washington I crossed over Proscher Street, and as soon as I hit the next block this guy approached me. Now I was already fucked up and didn’t feel like being bothered, so I tried to pass him, but he stood directly in the path I was walking.

“Do you know me?” I asked him.

“Nah, I don’t know you, but I did see you get thrown out that car a few minutes ago so I was just wanted to know if you were all right,” he replied. His voice was deep and masculine.

I looked at him from head to toe and noticed how much taller he was than me. He had to be about six feet one, weighing every bit of one hundred ninety pounds. He was a skinny guy for his height. At first glance he looked to be in his late twenties, but something inside me told me he was older. He was wearing jean shorts, sneakers, and a white T-shirt. He looked like he had just left the barbershop because his hairlines were razor sharp. The only jewelry he had on was a gold watch, so to me that meant that he wasn’t the flashy type, and whatever he was doing out in these streets wasn’t anything to call home to mama about.

“I got banged up a little bit. But I’ll be all right.”

“What’s your name?” he asked.

I was not in the mood to be holding a conversation with this cat, but I stood there and tried my best. “It’s Faith,” I finally told him.

He moved in front of me once again to block me from walking away. I looked up at him and asked, “Are you lonely? Need some companionship?”

Before I took Slim up on his offer, I looked into his eyes to see if I could see through all his nice gestures. Normally cats from this part of town didn’t have a nice bone in their bodies. They were full of ulterior motives. But for some reason, I couldn’t see any bullshit from this guy. If he was hiding something, then he was doing a damn good job of it.

I followed him to the second floor of the apartment building. He lived in apartment 2-C. All the lights were on in the apartment, so I could see everything from the front door. I immediately took inventory of the entire living room and noticed that everyone who lived there seemed to have problems with tidiness. I set my duffel bag on the floor next to the couch while Slim started cleaning up. Plates, cups, forks, women’s clothing, and shoes were all over the living room. There was barely any space for me to sit on the sofa, but I made the best of it. The main thing was that I was out of that hot night air and inside soaking up some good AC that was pumping through the vents. Slim left the room and returned a few minutes later with a couple of paper towels and a bottle of peroxide. After he handed them both to me I applied the liquid to the paper towels and then I proceeded to clean the effected area around the cuts and scraps. It didn’t take me long to clean myself up and when I was finally done, I sat the bottle of peroxide down on the floor next to my feet and laid my head back on the sofa.

Before I could fully relax in the coolness, I heard a knock on Slim’s front door. I sat up on the sofa while Slim answered the door. He looked through the peephole and then he opened the door. Two young girls walked into the apartment dressed in short, skimpy dresses and high-heeled sandals. Their hairdos were jacked up. One of the girls wore red extensions hanging down her back while the other girl had purple fucking hair extensions pulled back into a ponytail. I assumed that they were in their early twenties because their immaturity showed big time.

As soon as they stepped into the house, Slim closed the door behind them. The girl with the red hair spoke first.

“Slim, me and Jennifer ain’t getting no play on Goff Street. So can we go on Church Street down there by C Avenue with Sabrina and Tacora?”

“Yeah, go ’head. But don’t come back here an hour from now talking about y’all ain’t getting no play down there either, because there’s gonna be some consequences,” he threatened.

My eyes popped when I heard this young girl ask this cat’s permission for her and the other young girl to go down on Church Street. The cat was out of the bag. These chicks were fucking prostitutes. And Slim was their pimp. Now all the clutter of women’s clothing and shoes made sense.

As the girls were about to head back out onto the streets, I politely got up from the couch, grabbed my duffel bag, and walked toward the door to leave. “Hey, Slim, I gotta make a run,” I told him as I began to leave.

I looked at Slim’s face and could see that his whole demeanor had changed. He literally looked like he was possessed with a demon. I couldn’t fucking believe my eyes. I tried to run for the door, but he reached over and grabbed me by my hair. If I’d moved one more inch, he would have snatched every strand of hair from my head. That was how tight his grip was.

Caught completely off guard, I screamed, “Get off me!” Both girls looked at me as I struggled to get him to loosen his grip.

“Shut the fuck up, bitch!” he snapped and yanked me backward, causing me to lose my balance and fall to the floor.

Lying on my back, I looked up at Slim, who by this time was standing over me. “What is wrong with you?” I screamed. “Are you crazy or something?”

I had to let this bastard know that I wasn’t his fucking property, so he needed to recognize that. Unfortunately he had some other shit on his mind, because as soon as I expressed how I felt about him putting his hands on me, he reached down and wrapped his entire hand around my throat. I tried to prevent him from choking me, but everything I tried just would not work. I thought that maybe one of the young girls would get up the nerve to help me, but I found out the hard way that I had to deal with this psycho on my own.

While I gasped for air and struggled to get his hand from around my neck, he started lifting me up from the floor. Where in the hell was he getting his strength from? I tried to cry out, but the only sound I could belt out was a choking sound. And from the looks of things, my situation did not look like it was going to get any better unless I stopped resisting. So that was what I did. And guess what? The asshole loosened his grip and eventually released his hand from my neck altogether.