Free Lust by Noire Page B

and muscular body into the cramped backseat of the car.
    “Then maybe y’all muh’fuckas need to do a better job,” Trey spit coldly before the officer closed the door. “So a niggah like me ain’t gotta keep doing that shit for you.”

 
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER 13
     
    My roommate’s name was Egypt and she was a real sharp chick from the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. We had finally started giving each other a little convo after almost a week of doing the New York-thang and staying out of each other’s space.
    Egypt had stayed in this shelter quite a few times so she knew the drill and how they liked things done. The staff had put us on the schedule together to clean the kitchen, and now that the dishes were done and we’d wiped all the counters down with bleach and water, we were sitting at the table together tearing up some cheese doodles, onion and garlic Wise, twisted pretzels, and Dipsy Doodles corn chips that we had mixed together in a brown paper bag. 
    “I don’t know, Egypt,” I said, running my mouth as I crunched on a pretzel. “I’ve had some fucked up things happen in my life, but I never thought I would end up in a homeless shelter. I don’t even know how I got here.”
    I was glad we had finally stopped igging each other and started talking. Neither one of us could believe that life had stomped us down so far that we’d ended up in our present situations.
    “Well my ass ended up in here because I was stupid as hell,” Egypt told me bluntly, without putting a drop of sugar on it. She was tall and dark-skinned and very, very, pretty. She had a stacked body, beautiful dreadlocks, and a gorgeous white smile, but there was something real sad and haunted about the look in her eyes.
    “See, I used to be a crack-head,” Egypt admitted as she dug her hand inside the greasy paper bag and came out with a handful of the mix. “Nah, hold up,” she corrected herself. “I used to be a crack hoe .”
    I stared at her. Egypt looked so fly and sounded so smart that it was hard for me to believe she had been out on the streets smoking crack and I told her that.
    “Oh, a minute ago I would have said the same thing about me too,” she laughed. “From the outside looking in, I had it going on. My father owned a barbershop called Fat Daddy’s on Livonia Avenue, right across the street from Tilden Projects. We lived in ghetto luxury in our apartment upstairs over the shop, and I had everything a little black girl from Brooklyn could ever want. But anybody can get caught up in a bad spin, Juicy. All it takes is a couple of hard knocks and one or two stupid-ass decisions and you can end up flat on your ass, you know.”
    Oh, I knew. I damn sure knew.
    “For me,” Egypt kept going, “it started when my dude Lamont—they call him Hood in The Ville—got knocked. And then right after that my father ended up getting murdered by some of the same drug slangers and power players that he had helped raise up in the streets. Those cats fucked him up, Juicy,” she said miserably. “They tortured him without an ounce of mercy. I came home from school one night and found his dead body in the kind of condition that no daughter should ever have to witness.”
    Egypt shivered and hugged her arms.
    “I was only seventeen, and all of a sudden I was left by myself in the world. All of that loss was just too much for me. I mean, yeah, I was raised in the belly of the hood, but my father had spoiled the shit outta me. He’d shielded me from most of the ugliness that lived in Brownsville. In the world, really.”
    She shrugged.
    “But after those same guys that he had fed and protected and trusted, upped and betrayed him and murdered him like that…I just slipped. I couldn’t handle it. Girl, you just don’t know. I miss my daddy so damn bad , but in a way I’m glad he’s dead and he didn’t have to witness all the gutter shit his baby girl went through.”
    “I do know,” I said, thinking about my family and