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  “Aww, baby, is this for me?” said Daisy, her arms reaching out for a large bouquet.

  “Naw, baby, don’t touch that. Those right there is for my momma. Don’t worry though, I got yours right over there,” he said, pointing to a larger-than-large bouquet that was lying on the kitchen counter. “Come on, I want to take you home to meet my momma, baby.”

  “Meet your momma? Why you didn’t tell me? My hair ain’t done or nothing.”

  “Girl, you ain’t got to worry about that hair. Let me see the real hair and I’ll tell you if everything is all right.”

  He pulled her pants down and she let him peek inside her panties. “Girl, you looking all right to me, come on, let’s go.”

  Daisy felt like a queen. She had never ever had a man say he was taking her home to meet his momma, never. Reggie was good to her, but it had only been three months since she met him. But it had been the most wonderful three months of her life. Reggie was even talking about getting married and having a big wedding and everything.

  “I don’t have any family. My momma died and I don’t know my father. I do have a cousin, Kimmie Sue, and my auntie Tildie.”

  Daisy couldn’t help but to try to figure out who would sit on her side of the church. She could see Calvin Stringer and the girls from the Honey Dipper and the Honey Pot. Oh, damn, not Calvin. And then the worst sight of all, her many, many johns, and seated in the front row, that good-for-nothing Felix. Hell no, no way.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Reggie, startling her. He was wondering why her face looked pale with thought.

  “Oh, god,” she jumped, “you scared me to death.”

  “So, just Cousin Kimmie Sue and your auntie Tildie, huh?”

  “Yeah, that’s it.”

  “Well, I got some family, so we’ll pack the church in.”

  He said he wanted children and told her how important children would be to their relationship. As far as Daisy was concerned, babies wasn’t no problem. She was fertile Myrtle when it came to having babies. Even though she didn’t have any, at twenty-one she had terminated six pregnancies, each and every one of them, and vowed that she wouldn’t be careless ever again after the last.

  The one problem that she did foresee was figuring out how to tell Reggie that she worked in a massage parlor and was fucking and sucking more dick on a daily basis than he could possibly imagine. Technically, she had him thinking that she was a receptionist for Zaslow, DeSimone, and Goldstein. It was pathetic. He’d drop her off at work, watch her walk into an office building, and figure she was at work all day. Little did he know, she’d wait in the lobby, then go catch the El line out to Kensington and be at the Honey Pot forty minutes later, getting dicked down all day long. She’d hop in the car when he’d come to pick her up, kiss him on the mouth, and act like it was nothing.

  The only thing was, the more time she spent with Reggie, the harder and harder it lay on her conscience. She just couldn’t stomach the sex acts. Every day, she’d pretend the strangers fucking her were Reggie and she’d come like a race horse, building her clientele. Then when she got home, Reggie would be on her and she’d pretend he was one of the strangers at the Honey Pot and come even harder, keeping Reggie feeling like he was the biggest winner. Reggie just loved being treated like a king. And if Daisy did nothing else, she made sure he knew he was king. She licked everything, including his asshole, and once he took her home to his momma, oh it was really on, that night when they got back to her apartment, he started telling her how much he loved her and how much he wanted to be with her. He even stressed to her how much his mother liked her.

  “My momma told me I better marry you, girl. She said she wants you to give her some grandbabies. What you think, you think you could do that for my momma?” he said coyly.

  “I sure can. Daddy, I can do whatever you want me to,” she said as she sat on his lap and nibbled on his ear. That was all Reggie needed to hear. He knew he had her, mind and soul.

  “What if I want to fuck you in your ass?”

  That’s it, Daisy thought to herself. She stood up, and began to slowly undress in front of him. She watched as the bulge inside his pants began to grow. She slipped out of her panties until she was standing in front of him completely naked. Then she got down on the floor, on her hands and knees doggie style. She turned around, looked behind her, and simply asked, “What you waiting for?”

  Two weeks later Reggie dropped her off at the make-pretend office building. She went around the corner, caught the train to the Honey Pot, and sure enough, soon as she got inside Calvin was on her ass about being late.

  “Look, dammit! Y’all always coming in this motherfucker late! Don’t make me five your ass,” hollered Calvin, holding his stupid hand up with his pokey fingers extended.

  “I told you my boyfriend don’t know and I got to catch the train and I don’t mean to be late, Calvin, but if he find out… it’ll just mess up everything.”

  “Mess up everything for who, you or me? Next time you late, I’m docking your ass five dollars every five minutes. Five!” he hollered at her again, still holding out his hand in her face.

  “Someone’s here to see you,” said some Asian-looking chick Calvin had sitting naked at the front reception desk. Where’d he find her?

  “See me? Who?”

  “He’s in room three, already paid for an hour massage. You better hurry.”

  Daisy opened the door to room three and peeked inside.

  “I been missing you, Daisy Mae,” said Felix as he licked his tongue at her. She immediately knew what that meant.

  Yuck, how’d you find me? she thought to herself.

  She knew she couldn’t do this anymore. At least not while Reggie was in her life and if there was any chance she was going to have a man who loved her, and wanted to be with her, she couldn’t jeopardize it anymore. She had been sneaking around long enough behind Reggie’s back. She just couldn’t do it anymore. She didn’t want to. Besides, why should she risk losing a good man? Reggie said he wanted her to get pregnant, he said he wanted them to get married and even asked her would she like to help him find the new house he was planning on buying. He even gave her the number to a real estate agent and told her that their limit was five hundred thousand dollars. Can you imagine me living in a five-hundred-thousand-dollar home? Even she couldn’t imagine it. Felix began to suck her chest, lick her nipples, and feel between her legs. The sex act itself was horrible, just too much to bear. Felix had this stale, cigarette breath and his fingers looked like he had been working on a chain gang, all dirty under the fingernails, and the thought of him touching her, licking her, and fucking her made her throw up, literally. She couldn’t make it to the bathroom fast enough and left behind her a trail of vomit leading to the toilet where she buried her head.

  “What the fuck!” Felix hollered. “God damn it, I didn’t come here for nobody to throw up on me,” said Felix as he wiped her vomit from his leg and foot.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” said Daisy as she crawled off the floor and ran out the door.

  “Where the hell is you going?” yelled Felix down the hall.

  All the commotion had the receptionist standing naked in the hallway. “Is everything all right, sir?”

  “Hell no, ain’t nothing all right. She’s sick. Daisy done threw up in here all over the place. You done sold me some sick pussy and I want my money back!”

  “Okay, sir, just one moment, I’ll take care of everything, don’t worry. Come back in your room and lie down, everything will be fine. I’ll let Calvin know what happened right away. Don’t worry,” said the receptionist as she closed the door behind an aggravated Felix.

  However, it wasn’t fine. Calvin tried to straighten everything out, offered him another girl, but Felix didn’t want her, he wanted Daisy.

  “No, if I can’t have Daisy Mae, then I want my money back,” Felix ordered.

  You best believe that Calvin was not a happy camper having to hand back the money that Fel
ix had paid, but he had no choice.

  “Daisy, get in here, now!” screamed Calvin.

  Daisy walked through the door into the office of the Honey Pot and stared at Calvin.

  “Calvin, look…”

  “No, Daisy, you look. You in here is costing me money. If you so god damn sick, why didn’t you stay home?”

  “I didn’t know I was sick. I just can’t do it no more,” she said as tears began to well up in her eyes.

  “Do what?” asked Calvin, as if she was talking about something so horrific he needed time to figure it out.

  “Do… this. I just can’t, I can’t.”

  “Can’t?” questioned Calvin, his temper becoming irritated.

  “No, I can’t, I can’t do this no more,” said Daisy Mae, for once in her life standing up for herself.

  “So you throw up on the man? No wonder he wanted his money back. You listen here, and you listen real good, I ain’t got time for this shit, you hear me, Daisy Mae? You come up in here late all the god damn time, can’t do your job ’cause you got a dead momma, and you know what, I say okay to that. But now you got some funky-ass nigga in your ear, feeding you a bunch of bullshit and now you can’t do your job.”

  “This ain’t no kind of job, Calvin. I swear this ain’t.”

  “You insulting me, Daisy Mae, ’cause it sounds like you think you better than somebody.”

  “I’m better than this, Calvin. I’m better than this.”

  “No you’re not, you no better than the rest of the girls,” he said, ready to unleash his fury on her. “I don’t know who you think you are, but when you ready to come on here and sell pussy for a living you let me know.”

  “I’m not for sale no more. I got a man who loves me and is going to take care of me. He said he wants to marry me.”

  “Bitch, is you crazy?” Calvin laughed at her so hard, he needed to grab the back of a single standing chair.

  “Who the fuck are you laughing at?” asked Daisy, ready to attack Calvin and scratch out his eyeballs. How dare he laugh at her like that.

  “You, Daisy, you’re a real funny girl. You been stripping all your life, selling pussy all your life, and now all of a sudden you meet some man and you think he’s going to marry you?”

  “Yeah, he’s gonna marry me.”

  “Yeah, you’re killing me,” said Calvin as he bent back up, fixed his facial hair, and let go of the chair he was leaning on. “You can’t make a ho a housewife, everybody knows that. Oh, but then he doesn’t know you’re nothing but a whore that’s been fucked by the entire town,” he said, throwing the money he owed her on the desk.

  “Fuck you, Calvin, I quit,” said Daisy, picking up the $213.

  “Quit,” he said, not really believing that she was serious. “Quit, you can’t quit. You need me.”

  “You must be out your mind. I don’t need this dump, and I damn sure don’t need you!” said Daisy. She slammed Calvin’s door behind her.

  “Bitch must be crazy,” Calvin muttered to himself as he opened the door and looked down the hall at a bunch of naked women eavesdropping. “What the hell y’all doing standing around? Get your asses back to work, dammit!”

  “This is Monica Casey and I’m standing in front of City Hall. Here with me is Captain Daniel Fuentes of the Thirty-second Police Precinct. Captain Fuentes, there is a massive manhunt now taking place for the prime suspect in the Somerset murders.”

  “Yes, we are asking the public at this time to help capture the man identified as Bernard Guess of Twenty-third and Ridge Avenue, in North Philadelphia. Police believe he’s extremely dangerous and armed. He’s wanted in connection with the recent murders on the 2500 block of Somerset Street. Any information, tips, or knowledge of the murders or whereabouts of Bernard Guess can be phoned in to crime stoppers. The number is 1-800-55-CRIME. Again, that’s 1-800-55-CRIME. There is a twenty-five-thousand-dollar reward for anyone who has any information that helps lead to the arrest of Bernard Guess.”

  “Okay, let’s show the sketch of Bernard Guess for the public. Again, there is a twenty-five-thousand-dollar reward for any information leading to the arrest of Bernard Guess, the prime suspect in what police have begun to call the Somerset murders, where three people were murdered in a row home apartment building on Somerset Street on November 5 and two others, a woman and a nine-year-old boy, were murdered in the same row house one week later. The woman, identified as Saunta Davis, identified Guess before she died in Temple University Hospital. Police believe these murders are related. Police are also asking that until Guess is apprehended you use extreme caution and care.”

  Nard picked up the remote and turned the television off.

  “Fuck,” he whispered, then threw the remote down on the tattered mattress inside the studio apartment on Forty-third and Baltimore Avenue. I got to get the fuck out of here. This tight-ass apartment. It’s hot in this motherfucker and where the fuck did this broad go? Motherfucker asked this bitch to get some Chinese food. Shit don’t take 101 minutes to get no Chinese food. What if she knows I’m wanted by the law? This bitch, what if she knows I’m on the run? I should’ve never let her go to the store. Fuck!

  Nard was so paranoid, he didn’t know what to do. He did know that for twenty-five grand, he’d turn his own self in. The more he thought about it, the more he thought that was exactly what she was doing, and instead of her returning with Fong Wu’s Chinese food, he was positive she would be returning with the police. He could see them now, banging down the door, weapons drawn, lasers flashing, and a barrage of metal bullets slamming him up against the wall. And if the police didn’t somehow manage to Sean Bell his ass then he’d be arrested and his entire life would get flushed down the toilet.

  He quickly gathered all evidence that he was ever in the apartment. Maybe I’m bugging, maybe she’s not turning me in. He finished stuffing his few belongings into a dirty pillowcase and made his way up the fire escape and onto the roof. We’ll see if she comes back with Chinese food or the Thirty-second Precinct.

  Nard was pretty much stuck. Only a few more hours though and Sticks would have everything set up for him. The plan was to get him out of the city and down to Miami. Once he got to Miami, he’d take a private boat for a small fortune and sail out of the country to one of the seven hundred islands in the Bahamas. It didn’t matter to him, as long as he wasn’t arrested. He watched carefully as Cathy came around the corner carrying a bag of Chinese food. There was no sign of the police anywhere in sight.

  “Wheeww,” he said, letting out a sigh of relief. He grabbed the dirty pillowcase filled with his belongings and made his way back down to her apartment floor. She was standing at the door fumbling with the keys, trying to hold the food.

  “What you doing in the hall?” she asked as he came around the corner.

  “Nothing, man, getting ready to go outside and look for you. I’m so hungry, I can eat a horse. You was taking too long.”

  “I know, they was crowded and they didn’t have nothing ready. So I had to wait.”

  Cathy Robbins was a small-framed, petite young girl, no more than twenty-one years old. She lived alone in her seven-hundred-square-foot studio apartment and worked as a salesgirl at the popular clothing store City Blue on Thirteenth and Market streets. She didn’t have a steady boyfriend and she was smart enough not to have any children. Her mother had kicked her out when she was only fifteen and she never knew her father.

  They went back inside the apartment and Cathy took the Chinese food into the kitchen. Nard flopped back down on the mattress, which was the only furniture in the unit besides an old chair that was in the corner next to an end table. She handed Nard a plate of shrimp fried rice and General Tso’s chicken.

  “I’m gonna take a shower, okay?”

  “Yeah, sure. When I’m done, I’m gonna run downstairs.”

  “For what, where you going?” she asked, concerned.

  “Nowhere. I’m just going to get a pack of cigarettes and take me a smoke.”


  “Oh, yeah, well do that down there. I can’t stand no cigarette smoke. I don’t know how people smoke them things,” she muttered to herself as she closed the bathroom door.

  Nard flicked on the television and watched as the picture came in full view. His face was large as day on the twenty-seven-inch Panasonic. He tried to flick the channel as quickly as he could, but dropped the remote.

  “Police are looking for the suspect and crime stoppers has a twenty—”

  He changed the channel before the reporter could finish her sentence.

  “Don’t say my name in this motherfucker. That’s all I need, for this broad to figure some shit out.”

  Good thing Cathy didn’t watch the news. He turned to Channel 17 and turned the volume up a bit. No, fuck that, no television for her, he thought to himself. He decided it would be best that while he went outside to call Sticks, she have no access to the outside world or the situation he had found himself in. He reached behind the entertainment cabinet and turned the TV off. Then he put the remote in his pocket, left his pillowcase, took her key ring so he could get back inside, and closed the door behind him. He was wearing a baseball cap and dark sunglasses. It wasn’t his side of town, so the people he passed on the street were merely a sea of foreign faces. He made his way down to the corner of Forty-fourth and Baltimore to the pay phone. He put his quarter in the slot, dialed his number, and waited for Sticks to pick up.

  “Yo, nigga, you got me, right?”

  “Yeah, homie, chill, I’m there, nigga. Seven-thirty, right?” Sticks asked, confirming everything.

  “Yeah, seven-thirty, the corner of Forty-third and Baltimore.”

  “Okay, I got you, don’t worry. And look, all that paperwork you needed, I got it right here.”