Unzipped: An Urban Erotic Tale (30 page)

In the blighted area around Forty-second Street, Pearl had run across many young girls who were out there hustling on the track. Some of them were busy fucking like grown women all day and all night when they were barely twelve and thirteen!

For days Pearl sat on an abandoned stoop and watched as the young girls picked up tricks and rode off down the block with them. She knew the customers would pull over on a dark street or even lean up against the side of a building and get their trick on, using the young girls like they were nothing but disposable pieces of meat to be pinched, rubbed, and fucked at any man’s whim.

There was one street chick in particular who caught Pearl’s attention because she stood out from all the rest. The girl had something about her that struck Pearl’s heart, and it wasn’t just because she was gorgeous and had a body that kept men rolling up and down the streets eager to buy what she was selling. The young ho looked like she was about fifteen, right about the age that Pearl and Diamond were when they gave birth to their daughters. She didn’t laugh and joke around with the other girls between customers the way normal teenagers did, and she didn’t crack a smile when a john pulled up and invited her to climb into his whip, neither.

In fact, the girl looked dead as hell to Pearl. Like she was there in body, but definitely not in spirit. Her street name was Cookie and she reminded Pearl of Diamond. She wore the same haunted look of hopelessness that Pearl had so often seen in her sister’s eyes, and her heart went out to the child who was busy selling the only thing she thought she had of value. The girl had just taken care of a john and was walking slowly back to her designated spot on the track when Pearl saw something that fucked her straight up.

It was a ghost from her past. A too-pretty niggah whose dieseled-up body was draped in fine rags from head to toe.

Scotch Allen hadn’t changed much over the years. He was still a gorgeous no-good hustler who used young girls any which way he could. Irish would never tell Pearl exactly what he had done to
Scotch to keep him out of Harlem, and secretly, Pearl had hoped his gaming ass was dead and buried.

Pearl had gazed at Scotch for long moments as he barked in the face of the young girl Pearl had been watching. This muhfuckah had fathered and lost two daughters by her and Diamond, yet Pearl felt absolutely nothing except disgust toward him.

She started feeling way more than that when he pushed up on Cookie and snatched her by the arm and slung her down into a row of metal garbage cans that rattled loudly on the street. Pearl jumped to her feet, pumped. She felt herself going into fight mode and had to check herself. There was nothing to be gained by fucking Scotch up out on the streets. Even though she was more than capable of putting him on his ass, Pearl forced herself to stand down as she thought about how good it would feel to serve that muthafuckah up! But there was more than one way to kill a sewer rat, she thought, as she whipped out her cell phone and chose Carlita’s name from her list of favorite numbers.

“Slimy ass!” Pearl muttered as she waited for her call to be answered. Scotch would get his, Pearl vowed. All in due time.

In the safe haven of the bedroom they shared, Pearl and Menace had spent a lot of time just talking. They put their fears and their dreams out there, as well as their hopes for the future. They put their love out there too. The love they had always felt for each other.

“I never fucked with your sister,” Menace told her. Pearl believed him because she could see the integrity in his eyes. “You were wrong about what you thought you saw in the bathroom that day. Nothing ever happened between us. I never touched her.”

“But still,” Pearl countered, “even if nothing did happen, you
kicked me outta your room that night, remember? I was real young, Menace. That shit really hurt.”

He nodded. “I know and I’m sorry. It hurt me too. I just didn’t have shit to offer you, Pearl. I had too much respect for your father to be messing with you like that. What we were doing felt real good, it just didn’t feel
right
.”

That young love was in the past, and both of them were fully grown now. Menace was man enough to put his shit out there first.

“I love you, Pearl. I been loving on you for years, girl. Probably since the first day I saw you. I was just a pup back then. A scared kid who was trying to find his way. But I’m ready now. I’m ready to love you the right way now. But I need to know what you got for me.”

Pearl had nothing but love for him and she told him that. The same love she’d always had, but only now it was stronger and much more mature.

Menace made it clear that even though his business was in Philly, his heart was in Harlem. He wanted to stay connected to the streets of his youth and to continue the work that Irish had started at No Limitz.

Pearl had found her heart in some unexpected places too. She couldn’t get those young streetwalkers out of her mind. She spent a lot of time downtown just chillin’ with them. Finding out what wound was causing them to sell their bodies to strangers and what she could offer them that would help them heal.

It was beginning to become a personal mission for Pearl. A mission of giving back some of what had been given to her. Talking to the young girls, she saw Diamond’s eyes, and sometimes even her own, in almost all of their faces. Their stories weren’t that different from Diamond’s or Pearl’s. They’d walked the same streets and breathed the same air. There but for the grace of God
went Pearl, and she understood that the only real difference between her and these young girls was the guidance and influence that had been so unselfishly given to her. Harlem had never called out to Pearl before. But it was damn sure calling her now.

“I made my decision,” Menace had announced a week earlier. They were sprawled across his bed eating Chinese food and watching an episode of
The First 48
. A nineteen-year-old man had been gunned down while holding his infant daughter in his arms.

“I’ma go ’head and work here,” Menace said firmly. “Right here in New York. I’ma go back to Philly and shut everything down, then look around for some office space somewhere uptown. That way, I can run my biz and still run your father’s center too. You feel me?”

Pearl was feeling him all right. Feeling him hard. Menace had taken her under his wing and provided the same kind of love, protection, and high hopes for her future that her father once had. It was so easy for her to see why out of the thousands of young thugs that had flowed through No Limitz over the years, Irish had chosen only one to bring into his home and into their lives. He had chosen Malik “Menace” Brown for all the right reasons.

“You sure?” Pearl had asked. She knew he wasn’t the type of man to just say shit off the cuff, but she had to ask anyway.

“Yeah,” he’d answered. “I’m sure.”

Pearl had lain beside him quietly. It didn’t really matter if he was in Philly or in Harlem. She lived and worked in D.C., and there was no way they could be together every day. And that was what Pearl wanted. To be with this man every single goddamn day.

The last few weeks had been a period of joy and healing for Pearl. She’d done a whole lot of crying, but she’d done a lot of
laughing too. No longer was she afraid to close her eyes at night. The nightmares had vanished, and even though the grief and sorrow would always be with her, Pearl had discovered that love and happiness could actually cure a broken heart.

Sex helped too. Lots of good, hot, tender sex with a dark-skinned cutie who had a monster dick and knew how to stroke it with love. Even though they slept in the same bed, during the first two weeks she was there Menace had refused to touch her. It had taken twelve stitches to close the knife wound that Krazy Kevvie had left in her back. The doctors had assured them that no vital organs or nerves had been damaged, but Menace was scared he’d hurt her and he fought like hell trying to make Pearl keep her hands to herself.

Of course she snuck him.

Shit, Pearl liked to get her gushy on and it had been almost ten long years since she’d had the dick of her dreams. She’d woken up real early one morning while Menace was still sleeping, and she’d sucked his soft dick into her mouth while he was weak and defenseless. By the time he opened his eyes his package was hard and wet, and Pearl was giving him the juiciest dome he had ever had.

They flowed naturally in bed after that, and it wasn’t hard to pick up right where they’d left off all those years ago. Of course, Pearl was more experienced now and her sex game was nothing to sleep on.

They’d had their quiet moments too. Times when they talked in soft tones about their families and what their losses meant to them, and about how they wanted to live the rest of their lives in a way that would always make their parents proud.

“I gotta tell you something,” Pearl said the next Monday night as they were eating dinner. Menace had already found a prime spot for office space and had met with his attorney, a realtor, and
the building management and signed the contract that would make the space his. He’d been running around handling his biz all day long, and Pearl had been up in his apartment by herself.

“Whassup?” he’d asked, getting down on some chicken wings Pearl had baked. She couldn’t cook shit else, so if Menace wanted to be with her he was gonna have to either take her out all the time, or get used to eating a whole lot of chicken.

“Remember when we talked about finding a zone of purpose and doing big things in our own little sector of that zone?”

Menace licked his fingers and nodded.

“Well, I think I found mine. I’ve been making calls all day, and there’s a position open in a field office on the Lower East Side. My lead instructor from the Academy is running things down there, and he said the job is mine if I want it.”

The room went quiet, then Menace said, “Do you?”

Pearl shrugged. She had been expecting him to jump up and down at the idea of her taking a job in New York, but he was playing it cool.

“It’s a decent job.” Pearl shrugged again. “So I might.” She had never shown much interest in her father’s outreach center in the past, but a whole lot of things had changed in her life and she wanted Menace to know she was sincere. “I’ve been thinking a lot about No Limitz.”

Menace didn’t say anything, but looking into his eyes Pearl could see she had his full attention.

“I know my father felt it was important to save young boys from the trappings of the street, but I’d like to do a little expanding to the programming. Open it up to young girls. You know, girls like Diamond who have a better chance of getting swallowed up by the streets than of graduating from high school. I can relate to girls like that,” Pearl said, her words coming out eagerly. “I’ve been out on these streets, Menace. I came up in
Harlem and ran around with thugs and got pregnant when I was fourteen. If it wasn’t for my parents I wouldn’t have made it. These girls out here need them an Irish and a Zeta. Between you and me, if we work hard enough, I think we could be that.”

Menace stared at her for a long moment, then nodded and took her in his big, strong arms.

“Damn, girl. You don’t know how glad I am to hear you say that. I’m feeling that shit, Pearl. Our young sisters need saving just as bad as our brothers do. But you hate Harlem. You think you got what it takes to live here?”

Pearl shrugged. She had what it took to do whatever she had to do.

“I ain’t gotta live with you or nothing. I mean, I’ll find my own crib and stuff, but yeah. New York is in my blood, and Harlem is home. Dead or alive, everybody I love is here.”

Menace grinned. “That’s what’s real, baby. I think I’m the shit, but a brothah was gonna have to turn into Superman to get back and forth from D.C. to New York every day, nah’mean?”

“No,” Pearl said, sitting up straight, a slight smile spreading across her face. “I don’t know what the hell you mean!”

“I told you I was gonna keep the center open and
work
in New York. I didn’t say nothing about living here. For the last week I been talking to a realtor in D.C.,” Menace said quietly. “I couldn’t see myself letting you go back there without me. I was willing to commit to a big-time commute every day because I believe you’re worth it, Pearl. I didn’t give a fuck how early I had to leave the crib or how late I got back, I just know I wanna go to sleep holding you every night, Pearl. Every fuckin’ night.”

Pearl melted in his arms, she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She couldn’t believe how far Menace had been willing to go just to be with her. Her man wanted to be with her just as bad as she wanted to be with him.

Later that night, after they talked and dreamed about plans for the future they wanted to build together, Pearl unbuttoned Menace’s pants and went down on him with all the love in her heart. She gave that neck pussy up to him without hesitation, and Menace took everything she offered and threw more back at her. He planned to take his time with her and was nowhere near ready to bust yet, so he pulled her up and smiled as she lay on top of him. He massaged her ass and eased her into a sitting position. Sucking her tongue, Menace slid his legs off the bed until his feet were touching the floor.

He stood up swiftly, holding Pearl in his strong arms. His muscles were rigid as he cupped her hips and licked her breasts.

“Put it in,” Pearl had moaned, eager to feel his thickness inside of her. “Come on, baby. Put that thang in.”

“Gotta wrap it up,” Menace whispered, walking toward his dresser holding her in his muscular arms.

“Do me a favor,” he said, turning his back on the dresser. “Reach in the top drawer and open up that box.”

Pearl did what he asked. She smiled as she pulled out an unopened box of condoms from his dresser drawer.

Menace carried her back to the bed and sat down. Still gripping her ass, he leaned back to create some distance between them, and sighed as Pearl cracked open the pack of Rough Riders and slid one over his rigid shaft.

He stood up again, balancing Pearl’s frame perfectly. With his six-pack clenched, Menace lifted Pearl in the air and impaled her on his joint. Both of them moaned as he lifted and lowered her, thrusting into her with long hard strokes.