“I hear you. Well, I got your back too,” she said, wanting Black to know how much she truly did appreciate him. “Who got your back?” Bianca asked.
“Nobody got mine,” he said with great pride, “but I got mine.” She could hear him poking out his chest through the phone.
“That’s not true. All that you do, somebody got you. Got to.”
“No! Nobody don’t. My momma some shit, my sisters be on they own shit until they need me, my li’l brother it’s another story, and homeboys, you know how that shit go. So, I try to stay on the good foot with all around me, just in case I do need something, but all in all, I know I got me, and that’s all I need.”
“Deep!” she said.
“Yup,” he had to agree.
“I get it now.” She understood more about Black in this conversation. “That’s why you always let me know you got me and go all out for me, because you know what it feels like not to have anybody.”
Black’s mother was some shit. She had always used him and had taken cold advantage of him for as long as he could remember. The only thing she had ever given him was her ass to kiss, and then pointed him in the right direction to get a job as a lookout when he was still in elementary school. From that time on, he’d been hustling, getting his own, taking care of his mother, sisters, and pretty much anybody else. Whatever he made, he blessed everybody else.
“Yup!” he agreed. “But I don’t do what I do because I want you to return the favor, ’cause I know expecting people to do for you as you do for them ain’t realistic. Just ’cause I do, don’t mean you gon’ do. Shit don’t work like that. This the real world.”
“I know and understand firsthand, and if you don’t know anything, know that I got you like you got me,” Bianca promised. “And that ain’t no bullshit.”
Though she hated making deals with money, merchandise, or resources she didn’t have, at the end of the day, her heart was pure. If she didn’t have anybody else, she had Black, and she would roll with him until the wheels fell off—best believe that.
CHAPTER 22
After Bianca spent at least ten hours in the holding cell with Dana, who now insisted on being calling Diamond Diddy, the two girls had made the time they were locked up speed by, reminiscing about the old days. They brought one another up to speed on pretty much all their war stories and get-money sagas—and the things in between—that the two old friends had missed in each other’s lives.
After being out on bail for almost three weeks now, things were moving not as fast as Bianca needed them to; but with the help of Black and his nickel and diming, and her online sales trickling in, she was somehow making ends meet. But Bianca had still not made good on her word. She’d promised Diamond Diddy that they’d hang out.
“Girrrrl, this shit just ain’t right. You been blowing me off for a couple of weeks now,” Diamond Diddy complained on the phone.
“I know. I’m just still trying to get settled out here.”
“Girl, you can be out here for five years and you still not going to be settled. This is just one of those cities where, no matter what you do, the transition is just hard, so you thinking you can’t go nowhere until you feeling one hundred is not going to work.”
“I hear you,” Bianca said in a dry tone.
“Now, look. I already know you done hit the stores up, so you got some cute shit you can throw on.” Diamond insisted that they go out and have a great time. “Not to mention, after the time you’ve had since you’ve been here, you need a night of lots of drinking, giggles, and real Miami fun!”
Bianca couldn’t deny it. “You ain’t lying. Now that I think of it, I could really use a night of excitement.” She leaned down and polished her toenails a topaz color.
“All right, so are you up for it?”
She hesitated, her mind flashing back to her first night out on the town and how disastrous it had turned out. “I guess . . .” Before she could shut it down and change her mind, Diamond cut her off.
“Okay, then it’s all set. I got something in mind.”
“Nothing heavy, but I do wanna get out of the house.”
It was settled, and tonight was the night.
Bianca was running unusually late as she rushed inside of Gypsy’s Lounge, only to realize that it was definitely the place to be. The huge warehouse-style building was so unassuming from the outside. No one would have ever known what was behind the walls. There was no denying that on this night, it was definitely the place to be. It seemed like everybody and their grandfather was hanging out.
There was a huge boxing match going on, and for those who hadn’t made it out to Vegas for the big fight, Gyspy’s seemed like it was the only place to be. There had to be about twenty-five hundred people in there, crowded around the mega screen televisions in the sports bar part of the strip club. The actual sporting event drowned out the fact that the establishment was an upscale gentlemen’s club that catered mostly to white men, and the girls that worked there were Caucasian and wore evening gowns. But tonight, the sports bar aspect definitely catered to all kinds of men—black, white, Chinese, Cuban, and anything in between.
With a jam-packed house, the chances of her finding Diamond through the tight, standing-room-only crowd was slim to none, so she grabbed her cell phone from her
