Rita cried along with me then. She’d gotten soaked trying to get me cleaned up, and now she sat next to me wearing a green duster and holding me in her arms as I told her how G had set us all up, how Jimmy found out G was gonna kill me and had come back to help me. I cried as I told Rita how guilty I felt because me and my bullshit had cost my baby brother his life.

“Jimmy came back because he loved you, Juicy. Don’t let that grimy motherfuckin G steal what you and your brother had. G is the one who was guilty. Jimmy was straight-up loyal to him, but G still set him up too, right? Just like you wouldn’t have left Jimmy out there hanging, your brother couldn’t leave you out there like that neither. Come on,” she said, pulling me to my feet, “you need to lay down, Juicy. Get some rest, chica. Later, we’ll figure out what to do.”

I followed Rita into her bedroom dragging my feet.

“I got that package for you,” she said, and reached into a closet and handed me my dance bag and the MGM bag that contained half of the money that had been in G’s safe.

I dropped the bags on the dresser next to the envelope I’d gotten from Cooter and just stood there.

Rita had just pulled down her blankets and was ordering me to get in the bed when I eyed the telephone on her nightstand. I knew it was crazy, but my emotions were wrecked and I needed to hear his voice one more time, even if it was only on his voice mail. “Okay, Rita,” I told her. “I’ll lay down for a while. But first let me make a call.”

I dialed his cell phone digits and screamed out loud when the phone was answered on the second ring.

“Speak.”

“Gino!” I started babbling and crying all over again. I couldn’t believe it. Gino was alive. I was expecting his machine to pick up, but my man was alive and somehow I wasn’t by myself anymore.

“Juicy, Juicy, Juicy, Juicy…”

All he could do was say my name. Over and over again.

I heard all kinds of noise in the background and it sounded like somebody was making an announcement over a loudspeaker.

“Baby, you okay?” he shouted. “Juicy, where are you? I’ve been calling the Spot. Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I sniffled. “I’m… okay. They said you were dead. I’m at Rita’s house. In Harlem. Where are you?”

“At the airport, baby. I just landed at JFK. I caught a flight back as soon as I could. Hold tight, baby. I’m coming to get you.”

I reminded him of Rita’s address but I was scared to hang up. Scared the whole thing would have been a dream if I disconnected the call.

“I’m on my way, baby. Just let me rent me a ride, and I’ll be there in a minute.”

I forced myself to hang up the phone. Rita was squeezing my hand and we both started crying again. “He’s alive, Rita,” I said, still trying to convince myself. “He’s really okay.”

“Yes,” she nodded, and wiped her nose. “It’s all right now, Juice. Everything’s all right now.”

I waited like a crazy person. Pacing back and forth around Rita’s living room table. Wearing a path in the floor between the twelve steps from her kitchen to her bedroom, and then the four from her bedroom to her bathroom. I darted to the window every time a car went by, although common sense told me it was gonna take a minute before Gino could rent a car and get here through traffic.

I was doing my best to hold on until my man arrived, knowing how bad grief was gonna come down on both of us when he heard about G and Jimmy. I didn’t have it in me to tell him about them over the phone. That was something I thought he should experience with me right by his side.

What seemed like ten hours was actually closer to two. Gino pulled up in a rented Sean Jean edition Explorer and I forgot about how cold it was outside. I was busting out the front door, duster and all, before he could step on the sidewalk good.

Gino almost broke down when he saw me. “Juicy.” his whole body shook and he cupped my face in his hands, careful not to touch my thousands of bruises. “Damn, baby. Oh, Juicy.”

Gino had a black eye and a long slash down the side of his face that had about thirty stitches holding it together. His left arm was in a sling and a cut had scabbed over on his top lip.

In the privacy of Rita’s bedroom, me and my man cried together as I told him about Jimmy and G. Gino cried even harder when he heard how Jimmy had sacrificed himself for me, and he said he was sorry he wasn’t there to protect both of us.

My man was a rock for me as he held me in his arms and we drew strength from each other. I saw the deep pain in his eyes as he traced the bruises all over my body. I knew I looked bad, and it hurt him to see how G and his friends had beaten and abused me.

Even though I knew Gino loved me, I didn’t want to tell him how I had worked the rooms at the Spot. I couldn’t tell him how his father had pissed all over me and brought in mad niggahs to use my body like a piece of meat.

I was hurting so badly for my brother that I didn’t want to relive all of that pain and humiliation and Gino was cool with that. He said he’d never press me to tell him anything and that I didn’t have to talk about it ever again in life if I didn’t want to.

We fell asleep in Rita’s bed holding on to each other as tightly as we could. I kept waking up during the night, startled and crying, and checking to make sure Gino was still there.

“I’m right here, Juicy,” he whispered in my ear. “I’m right here and I ain’t going nowhere.”

We hid out at Rita’s for two days until it was safe to slide downtown. Shit was hot on the streets of Harlem with G gone. The police, his connects, everybody was out of control. Rita told us G’s whole crew was being shook down and locked up left and right. She said Flex was in the hospital on critical after getting popped by some kid trying to take over the projects, and Moonie’s apartment had got raided but the cops were too late. The house was empty and nobody had seen Moonie in days.

Gino had mad family in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn. A bunch of loud-ass close-knit Puerto Ricans who loved their Gino to death. They took us in and treated us right and gave us time and space to get our heads together and heal, which was exactly what we needed.

Three weeks had passed since I’d run naked out of the G-Spot, and the backlash from G’s murder was still vibrating through New York City. With all the arrests and street hits we were reading about in the Post and the Daily News, Gino and I both agreed that it was time to put this crazy city behind us. We had kept the Explorer even though renting it for so long had gotten expensive. I wanted to pay for it out of the twenty-five hundred I’d stolen from G’s safe, but Gino said he had some decent change and that I should hold on to what I was carrying. We were planning to turn it in at the airport later on today, right before we hopped on a flight out west.

Gino drove slowly as we headed toward Woodlawn Cemetery on 233rd Street in the Bronx, and I held on to his thigh real tight the whole time, dreading what I was going to do, but knowing it had to be done.

I hadn’t stepped foot inside a cemetery since the day I almost fell into my mother’s grave, but with Jimmy gone and no closure to be found, I was determined to visit the spot where my grandmother was buried and tell her good-bye before I left New York for good. Maybe I would feel better just being near her final resting place since I didn’t have a clue to where Jimmy’s bones were buried.

The Boogie-Down was hopping when we came off the Cross Bronx Expressway and headed for the Bronx River Parkway, and when we got to the cemetery the tall black metal gates were open and we drove right in. I looked down at the slip of paper in my hand, and read Gino the name of the section that Grandmother was buried in.