“Damn, Juicy,” he said, shaking his head. “Look like you fell off that table last night. If I didn’t know no better I’d say those were fist prints on your face, but wouldn’t no real man beat his woman like that, so it musta been that table that got a hold of you.” Then he turned and stared at G, who stared right the fuck back at him.

It didn’t matter how comfortable the seats were on the plane. I was so sore it was torture to stay on my ass in one spot all that time. Every few hours I had to get up and stretch my body, then walk to the rear bathroom and back before I could sit back down. I managed to hide my face with a pair of shades and a Donna Karan cap pulled down low over my forehead, but it still felt like everyone could see my red and purple welts and I thought they all knew that my ass had gotten kicked.

I was happy as hell when we landed in New York. City air had never smelled so good, but since I was still at the top of G’s shit list, I could barely enjoy it. Pacho picked us up at the airport and I was disappointed to see that Jimmy wasn’t with him.

“Where’s my brother?” I asked him as he loaded our bags into the ride.

“At work,” G answered for him, and the way he said it shut me right the hell up.

But shut up didn’t mean backed up. Back at the apartment, G told me to unpack his stuff while him and Gino made a run down to the Spot. Gino gave me a look on his way out the door, but I didn’t even acknowledge it. G could beat my ass all day long, if he wanted to. I was still gonna find a way to get Jimmy out of that damn Spot, and even though she wasn’t supposed to talk to me no more, I knew just the person who could help me.

Chapter Eighteen

As soon as G and Gino were gone I jumped in the shower, then got dressed real quick and caught the first train heading to Harlem. I stood outside looking up at Dicey’s window and getting a crook in my neck for ten long minutes, but my girl didn’t answer the bell and she didn’t look out the nosey Susan either. Aggravated, I slammed my hand against the whole panel of bells, and finally somebody buzzed me in. I didn’t even bother to hold my breath going up those pissy stairs. I hit them by threes and was on the second floor before my feet had touched the floor good.

The television was turned up loud and Dicey’s door was sitting open, and for some reason something gripped me.

“Hey,” I hollered toward the doorway, trying to sound cheery even though my mouth was dry. “Damn, Dice. You must think you down South or somewhere, chilling up in here with your door wide open.”

She was sitting in her leopard-skin chair, and from where I was standing I could see both the TV and the back of her head. One of her hands was dangling over the armrest of the chair but she didn’t even turn around to see who I was.

“Dicey,” I said, walking into the apartment. I saw a pack of strawberry Twizzlers sitting on an end table and slid two out the pack. “Don’t you know how to close your door? This is Harlem, baby! Your ass laying up here sleeping while niggers downstairs scheming on moving all your shit out on a U-Haul.”

I was sticking the Twizzlers in my mouth when I smelled it. Blood. It had been a long time, but some things you just never forget.

“Dicey?”

I peered around that big old chair and my stomach lurched like a roller coaster. I dropped down to my knees and stuck my fist into my mouth to keep from screaming, biting down hard on my knuckles as the tears rushed from my eyes.

Blood was everywhere. Dripping from her mouth, covering her shirt, soaking into the carpet on the floor. “Dicey!” I whispered, terror damn near paralyzing me as I stretched my hands out toward her. All of a sudden I was right back in that pissy bed with cold air blowing through the room and the smell of gunpowder and shit choking me. No, not Dicey.

I wanted to shake her, to call 911, to grab something and press it up to her neck and mouth to stop the bleeding, but a part of me also noted the glazed look in her eyes, the bruises all over her yellow face, and the way her left hand was clutched stiff and bloody against her chest.

“Oh my God,” I moaned, hugging her limp body. I pulled her toward me, pressing her face into my stomach, crying and holding her cold stiff hand as I rocked her back and forth. I didn’t give a damn about the blood that was soaking into my clothes, I just wanted my girlfriend back.

WHY? WHY? WHY? I cried. Dicey didn’t have no enemies! Everybody loved her! She was cool with everybody and their grandmomma! My mind just couldn’t comprehend it. The house didn’t look robbed, and I just couldn’t seen anybody having this much beef with Dicey.

All I could do was stand there crying and holding her and rocking her back and forth, and it took me a minute to realize that Dicey was clutching something in her hand. Something soft, and somehow still warm. I uncurled her fingers and stared, my eyes bugging almost out of my head when I realized just what it was she was holding.

It was her tongue.

I was way past scared. My life was on the line, and there was only one person I could turn to. I closed the door to Dicey’s apartment and locked it. I was scared to be up in there with a dead body, but I was scared to leave, too. I needed to get across town, but my clothes and hands and even my shoes were covered in blood, and I knew I wouldn’t get far on the streets looking like I’d just butchered somebody’s whole family.

I was shaking and shivering, and had to force myself to walk into Dicey’s bathroom, tears coming out my eyes the whole time. I wanted to block the reality of this situation from my mind as I turned on the water in the shower and stripped out of my clothes, but I wasn’t that damn stupid. My girl was dead in the front room with her tongue cut the fuck out and this shit had G written all over it. He hadn’t done it himself, of course. He was too smooth for that. But he’d ordered it done, and that was the same thing in my book.

I needed to think. Needed to come up with a plan, and I forced myself to forget the image of Dicey’s dead eyes and the bloody stump of her tongue, and think about Jimmy and how I could scheme up a way to be free of G so that both of us could survive.

I let the hot water rinse my tears away as I scrubbed myself down and put my mind on survival mode. My hands were trembling as I soaped myself over and over, trying to get the smell of Dicey’s blood out of my nose, and by the time I got out of that shower I knew just what I had to do.

I rummaged through Dicey’s closet and dresser drawers until I found something that didn’t swallow me. I pulled on a pair of flat leather Timberland mules I found near her bed and threw a belt around the waist of the size-sixteen sundress I’d found with the $180 price tag still on it. Homeboy shopping network, I thought, remembering all the crazy times I’d had with my friend. I knew damn well Dicey hadn’t paid no yard and change for no damn dress. I wanted to start crying again, so I hurried up and grabbed a plastic shopping bag and stuffed my bloody clothes and shoes in it and left the apartment.

I stood in the doorway and gave one last glance at the sister who had proven she was totally down for me and Jimmy, and had died for us in the process.

Dicey was gone, but Jimmy was still alive. I had to focus my energy on him.

Thirty minutes later I was standing on Rita’s stoop. I’d snuck on the train and cried all the way to my stop. I didn’t care about how people were looking at me neither. There was nothing I could do to stop the tears from falling.

“Damn, Juicy,” Rita said, opening the door to let me in. She was eating a sandwich but wrapped it in a napkin when she saw the look on my face. “What?” she asked, leading me in the back of the house to her bedroom. “That motherfucker hit you again? Huh? What?”