G-Spot (20 page)

Gino was reading my mind.

“Even if it’s her, Juicy, you won’t see nothing. First they put them in a coffin, and then they put the coffin in a metal box.”

Slowly, I turned the key. It moved real easy, like it was either oiled or a new lock. Feeling along the ridge handle underneath the lock, I pulled once and nothing happened. Grandmother was heavy. Twice, and still the shit didn’t budge. Gino stepped up like he wanted to help, but I shook my head and put some ass behind my pull, and the entire drawer slid open.

My heart almost stopped, and by the way Gino’s body shook, I knew his did, too.

We stared down into the darkness of that drawer with our mouths wide open.

But it wasn’t Grandmother’s moldy body that had me and Gino sprung.

It was every dime of G’s money.

And at the End . . .

Gino and I missed our flight, and neither one of us was mad about it.

Plus, they don’t let you transport the kind of cash we were holding in your suitcases anyway, so flying out west was out of the question.

There had been rows and rows of bank in Grandmother’s crypt, each one stacked at least three bricks high and I don’t know how many across.
All I saw were 50s and 100s. All of it banded and sealed in clear plastic.

My hands were shaking so bad Gino had to help me lock that bad boy back up, and then we jetted to a cheap motel off of White Plains Road and came up with our plan.

We bought four duffel bags from the army-Navy store, then found one of the car dealerships that were known for taking cash under the table in exchange for a brand-new ride. Back at the cemetery it took us over an hour to clear out the crypt and stack the money inside of the duffel bags, and as soon as we closed the trunk we hauled ass getting out of there.

Cash talked real loud with the dealer we went to, and I had picked out a gray 2004 Volvo. Nice ride, lots of features, but not flashy enough to scream “drug money” and get us pulled over for driving while black. Gino was chilling behind the wheel, taking us out west, and I sat back in the leather seat and tried to stop my head from spinning.

Finding G’s money didn’t bring my family back and it didn’t solve all of my problems neither. I had no idea where Grandmother was actually buried, and the location of Jimmy’s body would always be unknown to me, but I comforted myself with the thought that I had done something for the living even if I couldn’t do anything for the dead.

We had hit Harlem one last time before watching the bright lights of New York City fade in our rearview mirror, and I felt good about what I’d done. Gino had taken me to Rita’s house where I gave my girl enough cash for her to not only buy herself a slamming house and pay her tuition in full, but enough to put both of her sisters through college and treat herself to all the Naughty Girls toys she wanted. I’d tore Brittany off a hunk of change, too, dropping it off at her crib in a big red box and making her promise not to open it until after I left. I had a feeling Cecil and his little detail shop were gonna be like last week’s dirty drawers once my girl saw how lovely I’d left her rolling.

And now, Gino had checked us into a Hilton Hotel in Ohio off I-70, heading west. We could have stayed at a posh luxury hotel like we used to when we were traveling with G, but neither of us needed all the bells and whistles or the reminders of that kind of high-rolling lifestyle. Besides, we wanted to keep a low profile. Money had a way of drawing trouble to you like flies to shit, and we were way past all that. We were starting over from scratch, just me and Gino, and even though we had mad money to burn we both wanted to put it to better use.

“California . . . I can’t wait until we get there,” I said, whispering into Gino’s chest. He held me close as we stood in the middle of the hotel room. It was nice and clean, but it sure wasn’t the Taj Mahal. “You can build your business any way you like it, boo.
As a matter of fact, the way we’ll be clocking we can do just about anything we want.”

Gino kissed me and nodded. “But, what do
you
wanna do, Juicy? We both know what I want, but let’s talk about something that you really want.”

I thought for a quick minute.

I want . . . , I said, moving even closer to him and squeezing
him around the waist. During the three weeks wed been in Brooklyn we hadnt had
sex once. Gino had known how bad I was hurting, and all he had done was hold me
and kiss me and be there for me every single moment. . . . I wanna do something
that I like to do. I wanna push my JuicyOriginals from my own dress shop.
And . . .
I wanna have me some babies, Gino.”

“Babies?”

His lips were on mine again, so soft and wet I started getting dizzy.

“Yep. Babies.”

He was teasing his tongue along the softness of my lips and my coochie started coming alive.

“Well, come on then,” my man whispered, leading me toward the bed, pressing his hard dick against me and sliding two fingers down into my panties. “Come on, Miss Juicy Juice. Let’s go get started.”

During the 1920s and 1930s, around the time of the Harlem Renaissance, more than a quarter of a million
African Americans settled in Harlem, creating what was described at the time as “a cosmopolitan Negro capital which
exert[ed] an influence over Negroes everywhere.”

Nowhere was this more evident than on West 138th and 139th Streets between what are now
Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., and Frederick Douglass Boulevards, two blocks that came to be known as Strivers Row. These blocks attracted many of Harlem’s
African American doctors, lawyers, and entertainers, among them Eubie Blake, Noble Sissle, and W. C. Handy, who were themselves striving to achieve
America’s middle-class dream.

With its mission of publishing quality African American literature, Strivers Row emulates those “strivers,” capturing that same spirit of hope, creativity, and promise.

About the Author

NOIRE
is an author from the streets of New York whose hip-hop erotic stories pulsate with urban flavor. Visit the author’s website at
www.asknoire.com
.

G-Spot
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

A Strivers Row Trade Paperback Original

Published in the United States by Strivers Row, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.

Strivers Row and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Noire.

G-Spot: an urban erotic tale / by Noire.

p. cm.

1. African American teenage girls—Fiction. 2. Los Angeles (Calif.)—Fiction. 3. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 4. Middle aged men—Fiction. 5. New York, N.Y.—Fiction. 6. Drug traffic—Fiction. 7. Nightclubs—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3614.O45G13 2005

813′.6—dc22

2004052249

Strivers Row website address:
www.striversrowbooks.com

eISBN: 978-0-345-48199-3

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