Free The Color of Law by Mark Gimenez

furnishings at the Market Center or shop more economically at the Army-Navy store, play golf at the exclusive Brook Hollow Golf Club, eat a wide variety of ethnic food, buy cheap used cars, illegal drugs, fake IDs, and counterfeit designer purses, enjoy topless strip clubs and all-nude salons, lodge overnight at the Salvation Army homeless shelter, get an abortion, or pick up a prostitute.
    “Who’s we?”
    “Me and Kiki.”
    “What’s Kiki’s last name?”
    “How would I know? That ain’t even her first name.”
    “What time?”
    “Maybe, ten.”
    “ P.M. ?”
    “Shawanda don’t work no morning shift.”
    “What—”
    “You want me to tell this here story or not?”
    Scott held his hands up in surrender. Shawanda Jones continued her story, extremely agitated and animated, her arms flying about.
    “Anyways, we was feeling good and looking good, me wearing my blonde wig, Kiki red. We was strolling, men driving by, whistling, yelling, ‘Yo, mama, suck this!’ Black dudes, Mexicans, they just window-shoppers, can’t afford no class girls like us. We wait for them white boys in nice cars. They like us ’cause we ain’t dark and we in shape—me and Kiki, we do them exercise tapes most every day, got us a new one,
The Firm
? Use dumbbells. Check this out.”
    She pushed up the short sleeve of the jail uniform and curled her right arm and flexed her biceps, displaying an impressive bulge for a girl. Great, a heroin addict who worked out.
    “So, maybe ten-thirty, white boy driving a Mercedes, one of them long black jobs got them blacked-out windows, he pull up alongside us and roll down the window and look us over. We know one of us is fixing to get picked up. He say, ‘Blondie, get in.’ Well, Shawanda don’t just get in when some trick say get in, so I saunter on over, lean in the window, car smell like a whiskey factory. He say he pay a thousand dollars for all night. I say, ‘Show me the money.’ I got that from that movie? He pull out a roll of bills could choke a horse, so I get in, almost slide down to the floor, my leather skirt on that leather seat. He reach over, grab my tit, say, ‘Them real?’ I say, ‘Honey, all a Shawanda real.’”
    She abruptly groaned, grabbed at her midsection, and doubled over again.
    “Shit!”
    She remained in that position for a long moment. Scott had often suffered leg cramps back when he played ball, and man, they could really hurt. So he had some amount of empathy for her. Still, he checked his watch and thought of billable hours going unbilled and wished she would get on with it. Finally the cramps abated, and she straightened and started talking nonstop again.
    “Anyways, we drive off. I figure we goin’ to a motel? ’Stead we go to Highland Park, street sign say. I ain’t never been in no Highland Park—black girl know better’n to go there. Pretty soon we drive up to the biggest damn house I ever seen, through big gates, behind a big wall, go round back. Get out, I follows him inside, place is fine. He ask me I want something to drink, I say okay. I’m thinking, white boy got money and place like this and good-looking to boot—what he want with Shawanda?
    “We get upstairs, in bed, I find out. He climb on top and start working hard, he say, ‘You like it?’ Course, I say, ‘Oh, yeah, baby, you so big.’ Tricks, they like to hear that shit. Then he say, ‘Tell me again, nigger, you like my white dick?’ Now I don’t much like nobody calling me nigger, but for a thousand bucks I don’t say nothing but, ‘Oh, yeah, baby.’ Then he slap me, hard, say he always give it rough to his women. Well, nobody slap Shawanda. I punch that white boy in his mouth, knock him outta me and flat off the bed, jump up and say, ‘Ain’t gonna get rough with Shawanda, honky!’
    “He come at me again, all mean now, so I scratch his face, then I pop him a good one, BAM!” She made a roundhouse swing with her left fist. “Right in the eye. We fall over the