Hittin' the Bricks: An Urban Erotic Tale (23 page)

“What happened!” Eva cried. He had left the crib looking damned good in his fresh Sean Jean gear and spotless AF1s. Now his shirt was ripped, his lip was swollen, and there was a hole in one knee of his pants. He went straight to his mini fridge and gulped out of a carton of orange juice like he was dying of thirst. Then he took a cold piece of pizza off the tiny table and set it on a paper plate. His platinum chain caught a glint from the light and sparkled around his neck. He pushed a button to open the tiny microwave, then finally looked at her. “Hold up. Lemme nuke this shit for a sec.”

“Hold up
hell!”
Eva blurted out. “Where you
been?.
Tell me what the hell happened to you!”

Mello took a big bite of pizza and said, “Your fuckin’ cousin happened to me.”

Eva looked puzzled. She reached out and touched the cut on his lip tenderly. “Fiyah did this to you?”

Mello thought about the way Fiyah had dipped from the scene while he was getting his ass kicked, and got heated all over again. “I told you that cat is grimy Eva. Fuckin’ punk- ass bitch!”

“But what happened? Y'all got into some shit? I heard on the radio that somebody got shot on the Avenue yesterday. Did somebody shoot my fuckin’ cousin?”

“Nah, but somebody shoulda popped him one. He rolled up at the café's youth set with a gat and a baby sniper packing a fuckin' water gun. Hell yeah he shoulda got shot. The kid took one for him instead.”

Eva was crushed. “How the fuck you gonna say something like that, Mello? You saying my cousin deserves to get shot down in the street like a dog?”

Mello stopped chewing. “Hold the fuck up. Am I hearing you straight? Fiyah's got the baddest psycho muhfuckah in Harlem looking to tap your ass, and there's a twelve year- old kid laying up in Harlem Hospital with a hole in his neck. I went to jail over a toy fuckin’ gun, and spent twenty hours in a pissy cell getting stomped out by a bunch of NYPD Blue Boys, and you grillin’ me just ‘cause I talked shit about your cousin? You sound crazy, baby. Real fuckin’ crazy.”

Eva threw her hands up. “Okay! Cool! Fiyah fucked around and made a lotta bad moves. But you ain't gotta take that shit out on me, Ramel! He's family, goddammit!
My
fuckin’ family. What am I supposed to do, just shit on him and keep it moving? What the fuck do you want me to do?”

“You can start by keeping your ass right here in my room and letting your cousin take his punishment like a fuckin man.”

Eva overflowed. She jumped bad real strong because for the very first time Mello had really hurt her feelings and she wanted him to know that shit.

“I tell you what, Ramel. You might not give a fuck about your little bit of missing- in- action family but I got mad love for my cousin. No matter what the fuck he does wrong, that's not gonna ever change. Never. And I'm getting about tired of sitting up in this box all day too. You get out there on the streets every day and you
do
shit! You see people, you talk to people, you eat what the fuck you wanna eat. I missed a whole week of my life ducking and hiding and fucking around in here with you. If I feel like going out, then you can believe I'm gonna step.”

Mello gave her a long, cold look.

It was so long, and so cold that Eva actually shivered under his gaze.

“Fuck it then. I ain't into keeping chicks where they don't wanna be. Run out there on the streets and catch up with your sherm- ass cousin. Ask him to keep Brody and his crew off your ass. I'm done.”

Eva snatched her phone off the bed. She grabbed a ponytail holder from the nightstand and tied her hair back, then she slipped on her shoes and picked up her purse. Without saying another word to Mello, or even looking at his black ass, she bounced.

T
he streets of Harlem were a blur as Eva walked briskly away from Mello's crib. All kinds of noise was bouncing around in her head, and once again she felt like that unwanted little girl from a cold tenement apartment in Brooklyn. The little girl who had abandoned her baby in the dark of night, and who was now getting caught up in foul karma as the one person she truly loved practically abandoned her too.

Tears were in her eyes as she brushed past people on the sidewalk
. She'd heard Mello calling her name as she ran down the steps of his building, but she had igged his ass and kept on going. Her phone was vibrating in her purse and she ignored that too. Let him blow it up. She wasn't about to answer that shit.

She was turning down Lenox Avenue when she heard a horn honking. Eva looked over her shoulder and saw Mello's whip pulling up alongside of her.

“Eva!”

“Fuck you!” she said, turning her head and dissin’ him. She walked faster, her ass bouncing hard under her little pink skirt.

He honked some more.

“Eva! Yo, your aunt been tryna call you! Rosa is sick!”

Oh, that was some dirty- ass shit.

“That's low, Mello!” she screamed over her shoulder. “That some low shit even for a fuckah like you!”

“Check your phone, Eva. Something ain't right with Rosa. Your aunt was crying. She wants you to come home, baby. She needs you.”

Eva stopped in her tracks. There was no way in hell Mello would lie about something like that.

She turned around and looked at him. He was leaning across the front seat with panic in his eyes. Eva pulled her cell phone from her purse. She had six missed calls. Five of them from Milena.

“Get in,” Mello urged, and Eva jumped her ass in the ride quick and fast. Her heart was pounding as Mello pulled out into traffic and headed toward her crib. She tried to call her aunt back but the phone just rolled straight to voice mail. She checked her messages too, but all she could hear was Milena screaming and crying into the phone. In fuckin’ Spanish.

“Oh, God,” Eva prayed out loud as Mello wove the ride in
and out of lanes and around sharp corners. She couldn't remember praying this hard since that cold dark night down in the Howard Houses laundrymat. But on that night she was high and terrified and alone. This night she was with a real man. Somebody she knew loved her and would always have her back, no matter the cost. Everything was gonna be all right. Her crib was right up ahead. Not even five minutes away. Eva put her hand on Mello's arm and held on.

W
hat the fuck happened in here?!” Eva shouted the minute her aunt opened the door. The apartment had been wrecked. Shit had been tossed all over the place. Dishes, clothes, curtains. Somebody had dragged all the cushions off the sofa and cut them shits wide open.

Milena sank into Eva's arms. She looked raggedy. Her face was bruised and swollen and alcohol was heavy on her breath.

“He beat me,” Milena moaned. Eva looked into her mouth and pulled back, horrified. Her aunt's two front teeth had been fist- cracked. There was nothing but jagged little shards left sticking out from her gums.

“Fiyah?”
Eva said in disbelief.

“No. Fuego is in jail! His parole officer arrested him on a violation. It was Brody! He wanted me to tell him where you were.” Her face broke apart again as she cried loudly “But how the fuck was I supposed to tell him what I didn't even fuckin’ know?”

Eva felt her blood run cold.

“Auntie,” she said quietly. “Where's Rosa?”

Milena nodded toward the bathroom and sobbed. The door was closed. “She's in there. Brody put her in there. He was terrorizing us. Torturing us. Me
and
Rosa. He came here to kill Fuego, but Fuego got away. Me and Rosa was left here by ourselves and Brody almost killed us!”

Eva felt feverish. Like all this shit couldn't be happening. She glanced toward the bathroom just as Mello was backing up out of it.

Rosa lay limp in his arms as he called out her name. “Rosa! Wake up, baby girl. C'mon, Rosa. Open your eyes.”

Eva crossed the room in a panic.

“Lemme see her,” she said, her eyes scanning Rosa's small body for some sign of trauma. The girl was dressed in a short pink nightgown that smelled like vomit and old pee. Eva cried inside as the smell triggered memories of her own rank days.

“Rosa?” she said softly, patting the little girl's cheeks. “Can you hear me?”

Rosa was in and out. Her eyes would open for a few moments, and then fall closed again as her head slumped to the side and drool slid from her mouth.

Eva got closer. “Rosa?” she said, her voice shaking. She slapped the girl's cheeks harder, then lifted her eyelids and stared at her pupils.

“
Rosaaaaaa!”
Eva screamed. She shook the little girl's shoulders as the child opened one eye and grinned at her. Rosa scratched her arm weakly, then fell off into oblivion once again.

All the signs were there, yet Eva still didn't wanna believe it.

She turned to her aunt. “What the fuck did you give her!” she demanded, rage burning in her entire body.

“It wasn't me,” Milena cried weakly. “I didn't give her nothing. I swear. It was Brody”

Mello looked puzzled.

“Eva, what's up?” he asked. “What's wrong with her?”

Eva cried from her gut and her knees wobbled with grief.

“She's high, Mello,” she gasped. Anguished tears ran freely down her face. “She's fuckin’ high! Rosa's nodding!”

Mello sat down and stared at the limp little girl in his arms with disbelief.

He sat her up. “High? On what?”

“Smack. Heroin,” Eva moaned.

Mello was quiet for a quick moment. Rosa's chin had fallen to her chest. Her lips were turned down at the corners and she bobbed slowly downward, then got it together slightly and sat back up.

“Nah,” Mello said, shaking his head in denial.
“Duji?
How you know it's that?”

Eva pushed Rosa's braids over her shoulder. She touched a vein in the girl's neck that appeared swollen and red, and said in a soft, hollow voice, “Because I used to shoot that shit myself.”

T
hey didn't have time to wait for no ambulance. Paramedics wouldn't come this deep up in the hood without a police escort anyway. And that could take all day to arrange.

Mello ran to his car with Rosa in his arms. He buckled her into the backseat then he sped off, honking his horn at the city traffic as he tried to make other drivers get the fuck outta his way. Even at the rate of speed he was driving at, he couldn't stop himself from taking quick peeks at Eva. What she'd said upstairs in the apartment had fucked him straight up. Rosa was sick. Eva said the girl was so high it could kill her, and getting her to the hospital was his primary mission. Even though Mello knew it wasn't the time or the place to get with Eva about her past, he couldn't get that shit outta his head.
I used to shoot that shit myself.
Those words had come straight outta Eva's mouth. Out of the mouth of the girl he loved.

He ran a red light and slammed on the brakes as a young boy walked his pit bull puppy out in traffic. Mello had no choice but to wait, and he couldn't help but glance at Eva.

She sat there with her eyes screwed closed and her fists clenched tight. Her lips were moving and he knew she was praying her ass off. Praying for Rosa.

“Eva,” he blurted, unable to keep his mouth on lock. “You used to get high?”

He nosed the car back into traffic and resumed his highspeed drive.

“I was a junkie, Mello,” she said, sounding miserable and empty. “I was a ho too. I had a baby when I was fourteen and I left him in a laundrymat.”

Mello was struck down. His whole body went numb and his stomach lurched violently. His head was buzzin’. He felt physically sick. But the moment he looked over at Eva … at his baby … at the fine- ass chick who had won his heart, nothing else mattered except her.

“ T- that's cool, Eva,” he said. She had been a kid when all that shit happened. It was in the past and she didn't owe him
no more explanations neither. “I don't care what you been through, baby girl. I still love—”

The sound of screeching tires cut the air. A burgundy Expedition came hurling toward them. A loud crash and the cracking of breaking glass. Suddenly the windshield was flying toward him in shards, and all Mello could do was lunge across the seat for Eva and duck …

The impact ripped the hood off Mello's car. The engine block was thrust toward the steering wheel. The smell of burning oil was in the air, then Mello closed his eyes and his thoughts drifted skyward with the smoke …

T
he first person on the scene was an elderly Asian man named Daniel who owned a fruit stand on 125th Street. He saw a young black woman crawling out of the mangled car through the shattered passenger window, then lost sight of her in the thick smoke as she ran toward the back door of the car.

Immediately he went for the driver. It was a young black man, and he'd been knocked unconscious by the impact. Even with all the blood on his face, Daniel recognized him. His name was Ramel. He worked a vendors’ table on 125th Street and he came into Daniel's store to buy Fuji apples almost every day.

Ramel was trapped in the wreckage. He must have been leaning sideways in his seat when he was hit because the left side of his body had absorbed a lot of the impact in the crash. The kid had probably been lucky, Daniel knew. The steering wheel had been driven forward, and it would have gone right through the young man's chest had he been facing the dashboard at the time of the collision.