Still Candy Shopping (11 page)

“So why you keep asking me those stupid ass questions? Y’all know it’s hot out there, so whatever we do is gon’ have to be right.”

The way I remembered Paris, she was really thick. She definitely had the apple booty of a video vixen with B cup breasts. And no one in this room, including myself, could fit any of her clothing. We all had to be at least ten to twenty pounds lighter than Paris. Tacora and Sabrina had to be a size five or a six. And Jennifer looked like she was a size four. She was the smallest of us all, so I figured the best thing to do with Paris’s clothes would be to throw them away or donate them.

“I don’t think any of us can fit her clothes,” Sabrina said. “You might as well throw them out.”

“Well pack up her shit and throw it in couple garbage bags from the kitchen. I’ll put that shit in the dumpster when it gets dark.”

As instructed, all of Paris’s things were packed away in huge garbage bags. I saw Jennifer and Tacora keep a few shirts for themselves, but I would be damned if I pocketed a couple of her things. There was just something about inheriting things from dead people. I just couldn’t get with that program. I even got an unsettling feeling just thinking about it.

Six hours had passed since my last hit of heroin, and I was starting to feel it. I was completely out of dope, so I was thinking of some clever shit to get my hands on some more. I knew Slim would kill me if I asked him to go and cop a pill of dope from the streets. All I needed is for him to play Mr. Nice Guy and give me a chance to get myself together. Even if he’d cop me a half of pill of heroin, I would be just fine. My life at this point would be smooth sailing.

I was sitting on the sofa in the living room watching TV with Jennifer when my stomach started cramping up. I tried to play it off, but Jennifer knew what time it was. “You’re starting to get sick, aren’t you?” she asked.

“No, I’m not.” she assured me. “I seen him with a couple of them in a medicine bottle yesterday. I think I seen him stick the bottle in the hall closet where he keeps his clothes.”

“You think he’ll give me one of them?” I wondered aloud, hoping Jennifer would say yes.

“Oh no, you can fucking forget it. I know for a fact that Slim isn’t gonna give up a damn thing. ” she said. “He’ll rather see you suffer first before he would do anything for anybody.”

My heart sank when Jennifer told me that my chances of getting a pill of meth from Slim were zero to none. I was devastated because I needed something right now, and like Jennifer said, Slim wasn’t going to let me leave this place, so what the fuck was I gonna do?

Slim was outside in front of the building talking to a couple of guys he knew who lived in the neighborhood. Now I knew Jennifer informed me that there was a slim chance that Slim would give me a pill of methadone, but I refused to believe it. I got up the gumption to look for the medicine bottle. Jennifer told me that she’d seen him place the bottle inside the hall closet so I knew that that was the placed I needed to look first.

As I slid off the sofa, I looked at Jennifer and said, “Look out for me, because I’m about to check the closet.”

“Wait, check the refrigerator first because he might’ve taken it out of the closet and stuck it in there.” she instructed me.

The kitchen area was less than five feet away and it was an open space next to the living room, so it wasn’t hard to see everything from where she was sitting.

“Where in the refrigerator?” I asked as I walked quickly toward the kitchen.

“I don’t know,” she said in a whisper to keep Tacora and Sabrina from hearing her. They were in the bedroom listening to a rap mixed CD Slim bought from some guy in the neighborhood. The music was fairly loud, so they wouldn’t be able to hear us unless we wanted them to.

When I opened the refrigerator I immediately looked inside the butter compartment, but it was empty. Then I searched everything that wasn’t nailed down. I went to the extent to search underneath every egg in the egg carton and I dug inside the flour bag. I was beginning to believe that the medicine bottle of meth pills weren’t there after all. I closed the refrigerator and stood there puzzled.

Jennifer looked at me and hunched her shoulders. “If it’s not in the refrigerator, then it has to be in the closet,” she said. “And it maybe in the shorts he had on yesterday too.” she continued.

I sighed heavily and tried to figure remember what color shorts he had on yesterday. “Which shorts did he have on yesterday?” I asked.

“The blue jeans ones that had the yellow stitching around the back pockets. They should be in his dirty clothes hamper,” she said as she pointed to the only closet next to the living room.

I rushed over to the closet and opened the door. The smell of dirty clothes hit me dead in the face. The stench was horrible, so I held my breath as I looked for the jean shorts he wore yesterday.

I searched his dirty clothes and could not find his jean shorts anywhere. I was getting frustrated as hell. I knew that I only had a few minutes to find the medicine bottle if it was in this apartment, so I went into detective mode.

I didn’t respond to Jennifer’s warning. My mission was to hurry up and find my cure pill, so that was what I concentrated on. Unfortunately my search came up dry. I searched Slim’s entire dirty clothes hamper and came up with absolutely nothing. I was frustrated and sick to my stomach all at the same time.

I started looking through the items he had on the built in shelves. When I moved his deodorant to the side and saw a vitamin bottle, my heart dropped. I picked up the bottle and opened it, and, bam, there were two meth pills wrapped up in a clear plastic sandwich bag. I was excited as hell.

Jennifer turned around and looked at me like I had lost my mind. “What the fuck are you doing? Just put it in your mouth and swallow it.”

My heart was racing at the speed of lighting. I knew that if Slim caught me stealing a pill of his methadone, I’d be in a world of trouble. Before Jennifer could say another word I tossed the pill into my mouth and swallowed it.

Jennifer turned around and looked back out the kitchen window. “Oh, shit! I don’t see him,” she said.

Hearing those words almost made me want to keel over and die, because that could only mean that he was on his way back into the apartment. Without hesitating, Jennifer left me in the kitchen all by myself and rushed back to the living room sofa. I couldn’t blame her, though, because I was treading on some very thin ice. But at this point, it really didn’t matter. I had swallowed the pill. What could he do to me now? The damage was already done. And my sickness will be gone in a matter of fifteen to twenty minutes.

Slim walked into the apartment. My heart fell to the pit of my stomach. I had my back turned to him, so I turned on the faucet water and made it seem like I was washing my hands.

“I hope ain’t nobody in the bathroom because I gotta piss real bad,” he said and walked through the living room area and straight into the bathroom.

I looked back at Jennifer the moment he closed the bathroom door. When Slim’s retarded ass came out of the bathroom, I was sitting on the sofa next to Jennifer. We were both acting like we were watching TV on Slim’s old, rundown thirty-two inch. The Maury show was on, and he was doing his famous paternity segment.

Slim looked at both of us and said, “Y’all stupid ass hoes would probably be up there too if it wasn’t for me taking control of your lives.”

“You got that right!” Jennifer commented sarcastically. “My life would’ve been fucked up if you would not have come along.”

Slim must have thought what Jennifer said was funny, because he burst into laughter. I looked at her like she was crazy. She and I both knew that this fool looked for anything to give him a reason to go upside our heads. And I was not in the mood to see any more drama for the day. I was becoming extremely ill and I wanted him to carry his ass wherever he was heading so I could feed my addiction.

Luckily for Jennifer, Slim had to go back outside and brushed off her comment. “I’ma take that little comment as a joke and let you slide this time, since I’m in a rush to go back outside. But you better watch your mouth from now on,” he warned her and exited the apartment.

I looked at Jennifer and asked her what her problem was.

“Faith, you just don’t know how tired I am of that nigga. If you’d been here as long as I had, then you’d probably try to kill his sorry ass!”

“Look, Jen, I know he’s an asshole and you wanna fuck him up, but making trouble for yourself ain’t gonna make the situation any better. Right now he has the upper hand. So just deal with it until you’re ready to bounce on him.”

I was stunned when Jennifer told me about Slim’s watchdogs. I always wondered how he kept the girls here for as long as he did and no one got away. Now my question was answered.

The Candy Shop part 2 Kiki Swinson

Since I had ten-milligram methadone pill around eleven am, I knew I’d be fine for the next six to seven hours. I chilled out in the bedroom so I could bask in the feeling of the drug. Plus I wanted to stay out of Slim’s way. The entire day he ran in and out of the apartment. He came in the bedroom to check on me a couple times, and when he realized that I wasn’t causing any problems, he left me alone.

Unfortunately I couldn’t get the same courtesy from Tacora. She burst into the room about thirty minutes after Slim paid me a visit looking for a pair of her shoes she said walked out of her bedroom. Jennifer walked into the bedroom behind her.

“I don’t know why you’re looking in here,” Jennifer said. “I told you I haven’t seen your shoes.”

Apparently Tacora didn’t take Jennifer at her word, because she got down on the floor and searched underneath both beds. Jennifer stood there with her arms folded and watched Tacora as she searched for her belongings. When Tacora realized that her shoes weren’t underneath either of the beds, she got off her knees and headed toward the bedroom closet.

I guess Jennifer got ticked off, because she said, “Whatcha going in there for? I told you your shoes ain’t in here.”

“I know you’re gonna let me find out for myself,” Tacora replied sarcastically and flung open the closed door. Inside the closet she started rambling around the floor of the closet in search of her shoes, and in the process making a mess of the items that belonged to Jennifer. So Jennifer walked up to Tacora and warned her that if she didn’t straighten her closet, then there would be consequences to pay. Tacora turned around and stepped up to Jennifer’s face and dared her to lay a finger on her. I sat up in the bed because I saw a brawl about to go down.

Jennifer looked back at me and chuckled. “Do you see this little bitty ass bitch acting like she’s about to beat my ass!”

I got up from the bed because it had become obvious that neither of them was going to back down. And even though Jennifer weighed a couple more pounds than Tacora, I believed that Tacora would have given Jennifer a run for her money. Tacora struck me as a chick with a lot of heart.

I got between them before either of them could throw a blow at each other. They were definitely talking trash to one another, but I made sure it didn’t get physical. While I stood between them, Sabrina walked into the room with a bath towel wrapped around her. She was in the shower when this whole thing started, so she only caught the tale end of it.