“I know Demi.” He looked at Sheba. “I didn’t know she was your cousin.”

  “Have you seen her tonight?” Sheba asked and wondered how well he knew her.

  “No, sorry, she ain’t been up here tonight.”

  “I tried to tell them she—”

  “Shut the fuck up, Jamarco,” Jordan said quickly and turned back to Sheba and Chanel.

  “You know where she might be?” Sheba said.

  “She always be with Ty, Rick, and them. You know him?” Jordan asked, and Sheba shook her head.

  “She ain’t with them. Anyplace else you can think of around here where she might be?” Sheba asked, and Jordan thought about it.

  “There’s a crack house around here”—he paused—“not too far from your grandmother’s house.”

  “I know where it is,” Chanel said and started for the car.

  “It was nice to see you, Jordan,” Sheba said, walking away.

  “You staying with your grandmother?”

  “Yes.”

  “I might stop by and holla at you,” he said as they got to the car. Chanel shook her head as Sheba waved to Jordan and got in the car.

  “Good luck with that.” Chanel started her car. “Grandma won’t even let her own grandsons in the house.”

  “I know, right.”

  “He doesn’t stand a chance. And who is he anyway?”

  “Somebody I used to know a long time ago,” she said, smiling.

  “Somebody you used to fuck, judging by that smile on your face.”

  Sheba raised her hand. “We ain’t got time for that now, Chanel. Where is this crack house?”

  “It’s a couple of blocks from Grandma’s house.”

  “Stop by the house on the way and see if she came back,” Sheba said, and Chanel drove to the house. When they got there, Jody and Floyd were coming out.

  “Did she come back?” Sheba asked when she got out of the car.

  “No, she didn’t come back,” Jody said.

  “We were going to see if she’s at the crack house.” Chanel started to get back in the car.

  “We been there already,” Floyd said. He knew the men who sold out of there. “She was there, but she left with somebody right after she got there.”

  “Who?” Sheba demanded to know.

  “My boy didn’t know,” Floyd said.

  “What are we gonna do now?” Chanel asked.

  “We keep looking,” Floyd said like there was no other option and it should be obvious to all of them.

  “How’s Grandma? She still up?” Sheba asked.

  “She’s still up. Worried about Demi,” Jody said.

  “I’m going to check on her. Where were you two going?”

  “To another spot where I know she used to hang out,” Floyd said, anxious to get back to looking for her.

  “I need to talk to Jody, so why don’t you and Chanel go check that out?”

  “We gone,” Floyd said and got into the car with Chanel while Sheba went into the house to check on their grandmother.

  Sheba then talked to Jody before they rolled out and continued to look for Demi for the rest of the night, but they didn’t find her.

  The sun was up the next morning when the four came dragging into their grandmother’s house after searching all night. They were tired and feeling frustrated that they couldn’t find her, and their grandmother was feeling stressed and anxious about Demi being missing. Nobody really got much sleep before they were back at it, back in the street asking if anybody had seen Demi.

  Throughout the day, four of her grandchildren were in and out of her house, leaving her to worry, and her emphysema symptoms began to worsen. She found it hard to breathe at times. Miss Pearl was coughing and wheezing more and producing more phlegm. As she moved around her house, Miss Pearl was having trouble catching her breath and was having headaches. She got some relief from her inhaler. However, by the morning of day three, as her symptoms kept getting worse, Sheba noticed that she was having trouble speaking in full sentences, and she called Dr. Green. He recommended that she go to the hospital right away.

  “It’s gonna be all right,” Sheba said to her grandmother and put the oxygen mask over her nose and mouth. “The ambulance is on the way.”

  Miss Pearl nodded and motioned for Sheba to come closer. “What about Demi?”

  “Don’t worry, Grandma. Jody and Floyd are still looking for her.”

  “It’s her fault that Grandma is like this,” Chanel said, looking out the window for the ambulance to come. “You heard what the doctor said about it causing flare-ups. Grandma doesn’t need all this worry and stress.”

  “I know,” Sheba said, looking at Miss Pearl, who had closed her eyes and dropped her head.

  “Ambulance is here,” Chanel said and went to let the paramedics into the house.

  Once they had Miss Pearl ready to travel, they exited the house and took her to the ambulance. It was at that moment that Demi came staggering down the street in time to see Sheba get into the ambulance with her grandmother to go to the hospital. And when the door was closed, Chanel turned to Demi.

  “This is your fault.” Chanel started walking toward her car.

  “What did I do?”

  Chanel stopped and got in Demi’s face. “Don’t you think Grandma was worried about you? Her stressing about your selfish ass is what brought this on.”

  “I’m sorry,” Demi said, and Chanel started for her car. “Where are you going?”

  “To the hospital, and no, you cannot come with me. I don’t even want to see your face right now.”

  “What should I do?”

  “I don’t give a fuck what you do. I’ll worry about what to do with you when Grandma gets better,” Chanel said and got in the car.

  Chapter 12

  With tears streaming down her cheeks, Demi watched the ambulance and then Chanel pull off and head for the hospital. She dropped her head in shame, and in pain, she went inside her grandmother’s house.

  Sheba and Chanel spent the day at the hospital as they worked to get her flare-up under control before they went back to their grandmother’s house.

  Demi was still there when they got there, sitting on the couch watching television. She stood up and looked at her cousins.

  “I’m sorry. I’m such a fuckup. I didn’t mean to make Grandma sick.”

  “That’s because you’re selfish and you never think of anybody but yourself and what you want,” Chanel spit out and went into the kitchen.

  Sheba shook her head. “I need to get you some help. Until then, I can’t let you out of my sight.”

  Demi shook her head and melted into Sheba’s arms, crying. “I’m sorry.”

  The following day, Chanel was still mad, so she decided to stay home while Sheba took Demi with her to the hospital to assure her grandmother that Demi was safe. She was just that disgusted with Demi. For her part, Demi apologized to her grandmother for being so much trouble and for making her sick and causing her flare-up. Then Sheba and Demi visited treatment centers from the list that Chanel had compiled until they settled on the Lakeside Behavioral Clinic. The following day, with Sheba and Floyd there to support her, Demi was admitted into their adult inpatient program.

  Demi was taken care of, and her grandmother’s flare-up seemed to be under control with antibiotics and oral corticosteroids. Dr. Kulkarni advised that the exacerbations may last for two days or two weeks, depending on the severity of the symptoms. She recommended that Miss Pearl remain hospitalized to see how things went. With those items off her plate, Sheba took the time to get together with Jody.

  “You just don’t know, and maybe you do, but it just feels good to be here in this house.”

  “I know what you mean. No matter where I was in the world, this house was always home,” Sheba said as they sat down in the living room.

  “It was hard not being able to come home.” Jody looked around the room and ran his hands up and down the armrests of their grandfather’s chair. “But anyway.” He pulled an envelope out of his pocket and held it up. “This is what you wanna talk about.”

  “What’s that?” Sheba asked. Jody told her that he had gotten $20,000 for the kilo. She at least thought the envelope would be fatter.

  “The money,” Jody said and opened the envelope. He pulled out a plastic card. “This is a prepaid debit card. There are four of them actually. Each one has five thousand dollars on it. This way you can use them to pay Grandma’s bills and for Demi’s rehab without dropping a lot of cash. Cash transactions over ten thousand dollars attract the attention of the IRS.”

  “They do?”

  “Yes, Sheba, they do. The law requires that businesses report cash payments of more than ten thousand dollars to the IRS.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “They think it helps to detect money laundering. But there are always ways to work around it. To avoid that shit altogether, keep your transactions under five thousand dollars.”

  “Which is why you got cards with five thousand dollars on each.”

  “You always were the smart one in the family.”

  “Thank you, Jody.”

  “It’s for Grandma and Demi. But Floyd is right. We’d have made a chunk if you had let us work it. But what’s done is done.”

  “Suppose it wasn’t?”

  “Wasn’t what?”

  “Done. Suppose it wasn’t done and I had more. What then?”

  “What do you think we’d do? We’d break it down, chop it up, put a cut on it, and quadruple our money.”

  “Okay.”

  “Why, you got more?”

  “I do.”

  “How much more?”

  “Three more keys.”

  “Get the fuck outta here. You know how much money we could make if we handle them right?”

  “No, but I’m sure you do.”

  “So what you gonna do?”

  “I’ll let you know. I am going to sell them eventually. I just need to think about how and what is best for our family.”

  “You’re talking about Demi.”

  Sheba nodded.

  “I can tell you for a fact that I’ve never given her anything more than a blunt to smoke to mellow her out, no matter how much she begged me. I told her that I was never gonna be her enabler. Now I can’t speak for Floyd.”

  “The two of them have or had a special relationship,” Sheba pointed out.

  “They still do. He was really worried about her when she was MIA.” Jody chuckled. “I know that he stopped fuckin’ with her because of that robbery shit.” Jody shook his head. “But that shit hurt him. He won’t say it, but I know it did.”

  “I know neither one of you would do anything to hurt her. I’ll let you know what I decide.”

  “Cool.” Jody stood up. “I’m out,” he said, and Sheba walked him to the door.

  She had thought about using some of the money to buy a car, but in light of her conversation with Jody about the IRS, Sheba decided that the thing to do, at least for the time being, was to try to get her grandmother’s old Chrysler 300 running. Once Sheba got home the following day and had changed her clothes, she got the keys and went outside to give it a shot.

  She got in and put the key in the ignition. But when she turned the key, nothing happened. She reached for and pulled the latch and got out to have a look under the hood. Sheba lifted the hood and leaned in. Everything seems to be in place.

  “Everything looks good to me from there,” Jordan said, looking at Sheba’s ass as he walked up the driveway. It startled her, and he laughed when Sheba jumped.

  “You scared me.” She took a playful swing at him. “What are you doing here?”

  “I told you I was gonna stop by and holla at you.” He held his hands out to the side. “Well, here I am.”

  “How you doing, Jordan?” Sheba asked and leaned under the hood.

  “You know what you’re looking at?”

  “Not really.”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “It won’t start.”

  He leaned under the hood with her. “The battery is probably dead. When was the last time it was driven?”

  “At least ten years ago.”

  “If you’re planning on driving it, you probably need to get a new battery, new belts, filters . . . I’d get a new alternator, but that’s just me. And I’d definitely change the oil.” Jordan looked at the tires. “They look all right, but they might be dry-rotted, so I’d get new tires, too.”

  “I didn’t know you knew about cars.”

  “I work on cars.” He chuckled. “What’d you think, I just sling dope?”

  “Well, yeah. I mean, that’s all you used to do.”

  “I got a shop on Moreland. Them niggas you saw that night, they work for me.” Jordan stepped closer to her. “And that is not all I used to do.”

  Sheba stepped back. “I remember,” she said, smiling.

  Jordan smiled and pointed out into the street at a 2002 Trans Am. “I damn near built that myself,” he said proudly. “Be right back.” He went to the trunk of his car and came back with tools.

  It didn’t take him long to take out the battery and the alternator. After he put them in the trunk, he checked the size of the tires.

  “Come ride with me to the store.”

  “Let me lock up,” Sheba said, and as she went to lock the door, Jordan made a call to get her some tires. “Ready.”

  It took more than half an hour, and they passed by two parts stores, before they got to the store where Jordan got a discount. He got a new battery and alternator, new belts, oil and air filters, seven quarts of oil, spark plugs, and wires for a tune-up. When Sheba insisted on paying, Jordan said that he paid that bill semiannually and promised to let her know what her share was when he got the invoice.

  “Whatever, Jordan.” Sheba nodded knowingly. “Thank you.”

  When they got back to the house, the guys Jordan had called for the hookup on the tires had arrived. They already had two Michelin Pilot Sport tires on the front, and they were working on the rear. When they finished, Sheba ignored what Jordan was talking about, and she paid the men for her tires. Once they were gone, Jordan took off his overshirt, got some rubber gloves, and went to work.

  Sheba went and got a lawn chair from the garage and sat in the shade, talking to Jordan while he worked on the car. While they talked, she enjoyed the sight of Jordan. His T-shirt was drenched, and sweat was dripping off his honey-kissed skin.

  “You look hot,” Sheba said. “Do you want something to drink?”

  “Got any beer?”

  Sheba got up and came to the car. “Let me drive your car and I could go get some.”

  “Keys are in my left front pocket,” he said with his biceps bulging while he tightened the belts. Sheba reached in his pocket. “Little more to the right.”

  Sheba grabbed the keys. “No need. I already know what’s there. You still drink Moosehead?”

  “You remembered,” Jordan said as Sheba walked to the car.

  “I remember more than you think,” she said. She got in and drove off.

  By the time Sheba got back with the beer, Jordan was finished and was sitting in the lawn chair in the shade. She handed him a beer, and he handed her the keys.

  “Start it up.”

  Sheba got in and turned the key, and it started right up. “Thank you, Jordan.”

  “No worries. Leave it running for a while,” he said, and Sheba came to sit down on the steps next to him.

  “You need to tell me what I owe you for this,” Sheba said and cracked open a Moosehead.

  Jordan picked up the now four-pack between them. “Paid in full,” he said, holding it up. “But you could answer a question for me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “What did you mean when you said you remember more than I think?”

  “Nothing. Just something to say,” Sheba said and took a sip.

  He pointed his bottle at her. “You say that now, but you remember us.”

  “Of course I do. We used to have a good time together.”

  “Lots of fun and lots of sex.”

  “Sure did,” Sheba said, and her mind once again drifted to memories of Jordan being deep inside her, making her scream.

  “You remember the first time?”

  Sheba pointed to the garage. “In the garage on my grandfather’s old workbench.”

  Jordan drained the bottle and stood up. “Yeah, you remember. I’m out.”

  Sheba stood up. “You should clean up before you go.”

  “I’ll be all right,” he said quickly and then thought about it. “Yeah.” He nodded. “I should clean up.”

  “Right. You don’t wanna be going around all funky,” Sheba said and led Jordan into the house to the upstairs bathroom, but they didn’t make it that far. He kissed her hungrily as they stumbled into the wall in her room. He pinned her against it, and then he kissed and sucked her neck and chest. Her fingers roamed wildly across his body. She pulled the T-shirt over his head, rubbed his chest, and lathered his neck and chest with kisses.

  She looked up into his eyes. He reached for her face and pulled her toward him. Their tongues became entangled in passion. He took off his pants and then anxiously helped her get undressed. He kissed her again and gently laid her body down on the bed and lay next to her. Her breasts seemed to glisten, and her nipples grew harder as he ran his tongue across them.

  Jordan kissed her lips and kissed his way down her body, lingering at the nipples. He continued working his way down her body. He crawled between her legs, spread her lips, and then he slid his tongue inside her. He tongued her clit, and she grabbed his head to hold it in place while she screamed in ecstasy.

  Sheba lay next to him in bed, and she began gliding her hand up and down his dick. He leaned closer to her and lost himself in her chest, licking and gently sucking her nipples.

  She gently pushed him on his back, put a condom on Jordan, and straddled his body. Sheba grabbed his dick and eased herself down on it. She rode him slowly while he continued to feast on her nipples. He began to feel her legs trembling on his thighs, and he pushed harder. She bore down on him and increased her pace. She began pounding her hips furiously onto him until she reached a very loud climax.