Naeema hopped off the motorcycle and turned the key in the ignition all the way to the left to lock the wheels before she rushed down the street and took the steps two at a time to bend down next to Coko. She frowned at the fresh scent of vomit blending with her body odor. "You okay?" she asked, lightly shaking her shoulders.

No response.

Naeema turned her over onto her back and she went cold at the woman's eyes rolled up into her head and her tongue sticking out of the side of her mouth as she drooled heavily. "Shit," she swore, unzipping her jacket and snatching it off to ball it up under Coko's head.

Naeema stepped over her to enter her house. "Phone, phone, phone," she said, wishing she had brought her cell and not wanting to leave her alone too long.

When she turned and entered the living room, that stench that clung to Coko's body filled the air. The red and black decor fucked her head up for a second. The room looked like the pit of hell, with its black walls and floors and red furnishings, along with an eerie red light beaming from the lamp. She spotted a cordless phone on a low round table next to a bright bloodred leather sofa, but when she saw the back and battery were missing, she threw that useless motherfucker against the wall.

She was just turning in a circle in the middle of the room among the clothes and papers scattered everywhere when she spotted a cell phone on the mantel of the black-painted fireplace. She ignored the open baggie of off-white powder next to it, knowing it was heroin.

She called 911.

Naeema assumed most people fucked with pills or coke. Pedope, the cheaper form of heroin, was what everyone was sniffing back in the 1990s. Heroin? Who the fuck wanted to shit up themselves if they couldn't cop a hit soon enough? Child, please . . .

Walking back onto the porch, she was shocked to see Coko struggling to rise to her feet. Naeema stepped forward to help her, holding her breath to keep from inhaling her scent.

"What the fuck you doin' in my house?" Coko asked, her words slurring.

"What the fuck you doin' passed out on your porch?' Naeema shot back, sick of her attitude every time she tried to help.

Coko leaned against her heavily and Naeema had to damn near drag her inside the house and across the black floor to let her body slide down onto the sofa. "I called an ambulance," she told her.

"I don't need no ambulance," Coko snapped as she scratched at her skin with nails that needed a fill-in bad. She had at least an inch of new growth.

"Yes the fuck you do and a bath, like . . . yo," Naeema said, walking over to the window to unlock and open the bitch wide.

"Bitch . . . fuck you," Coko said, covering her face with her hands seconds before she turned her head and threw up on the floor.

Naeema cringed. "That shit killing you," she said, shaking her head.

Coko wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "I don't give a fuck if I die," she said, closing her eyes.

That's a fucked-up place to be.

"They killed the man I loved."

Keno wasn't no angel.

"My bitch left me."

That freaky bitch needed to go.

"My moms act like I should kiss her ass for paying my bills."

I did wonder how a junky paid a mortgage.

"But she stole my son, so fuck that and fuck her."

Naeema walked across the living room, being sure to miss the vomit, and looked first before she entered the kitchen. The red, white, and black decorations continued, but you could barely tell from how nasty it was. The sink and kitchen table were filled with dirty dishes and the garbage can was overflowing. Roaches were everywhere like she loved their asses. The floor hadn't been mopped in weeks-maybe even months.

She searched like hell for a clean glass and opened the freezer for ice. Wasn't a damn thing popping in that bitch but ice.

She poured her a glass of water and grabbed a stiff dish towel then headed back to the living room. She pushed the glass into Coko's hand and covered the throw-up the best she could with the towel.

"Your son worth you getting it together," Naeema said, looking down at her as fresh wind finally blew through the sheer black and red curtains at the window.

Water spilled out of the glass as Coko struggled to sit up on the sofa. "What the fuck you know?" she asked, before taking a deep sip of it.

I know you need to wash your ass, Naeema thought, eyeing the dirt under her nails and on the bottom of her feet. This glass probably the only water her ass been around in a minute.

"I know I'm about to tell you something that if you pop off at the mouth I will pretty much fuck you up," Naeema said.

Coko leaned back and looked her up and down with her yellowy eyes.

"My son was killed," Naeema said and then gave her face that was filled with Now fuck with it.

Coko just sipped her water.

"Look, I didn't raise him and now I don't have a chance to get to know him," Naeema told her, reaching up to grip the ring dangling from the end of her chain. "It's the worst feeling . . . so if you can pull your shit together and get your son, you should."

The sounds of the siren in the distance filled their silence.

"Trust me, I ain't judging you. I'm not in no position to look down on you about your son," Naeema added.

Coko eyed her over the rim of the glass. "Sure don't fucking sound like it," she said with a twist of her mouth.

No, this bitch didn't?

"Keep sucking random dicks and fucking for dope, bitch. Live your life," Naeema said before she reached over and knocked the small bag of heroin from the mantel to spill onto the floor.

Coko threw the glass at Naeema. It flew barely a foot before it dropped onto the floor and crashed. She was too weak to do any better.

Naeema just waved her hand, dismissing her, before she turned.

"I'm sorry."

Naeema was at the open front door. She stopped at Coko's softly spoken words. The red lights from the ambulance reflected in her eyes as it double-parked in front of Coko's house.

"I'm sick of living like this," she said.

The EMTs hopped out of the ambulance and came up the stairs just as she heard Coko vomit again behind her. "She's inside. She's up now but she's real weak. I found her passed out and damn near foaming at the mouth," she told a thin Puerto Rican dude with curly black hair.

Naeema started down the stairs as they rushed inside but she stopped. This smart-mouth bitch don't deserve no help.

She stood there having an inner battle while neighbors either peeked out the window or boldly walked down the street to see up close what was going on.

But her son deserves a mother-his mother-just like mine did.

Turning, she jogged back up the stairs and stood just outside her living room as they ran tests on her. "You want me to call your mother?"

Coko looked up at her and shook her head. "She would use it against me with my son," she said, tears forming in her eyes as she hung her head. "I don't have nobody."

Naeema remembered saying those same words to herself many a night when she was pregnant and homeless. It was the worst feeling in the world.

When the EMTs loaded Coko into the back of the ambulance on a stretcher, Naeema made sure her door was locked and pushed her motorcycle back into the garage before she climbed in the back with her for the ride to the hospital.

Naeema had been at the hospital all morning and early into the afternoon with Coko before she finally left and made her way home. Coko was admitted to the psychiatric ward for them to begin her detox before she entered a rehab facility. Getting clean off drugs was tough. Getting clean off heroin was one of the toughest. Naeema sent prayers up for her recovery.

She smiled at seeing the door now filling the entrance to the kitchen. As she undressed she walked across the room to push it open. "Well, I'll be damned, Sarge," she said when it swung back and forth smoothly. "Gotta find some other shit for him to do 'round here."

Naeema stepped out of her pants, leaving them on the floor, as she sat on the edge of her unmade bed and pulled the original wad of stolen cash from her bag. She rolled it between her fingers and tossed it up into the air to catch. If Bas was innocent, did that take the stain of my son's blood off of it?

She dropped it back into her bag atop the gun she'd taken from Rico, then she removed her lingerie and walked into the bathroom for a hot shower. She stood under the spray, letting the water rain down on her head as she wiped her face with her hands.

Naeema had a craving and it was really fucking with her.

She'd been fighting it since the day before and it hadn't edged off yet. "Shit," she swore, tilting her head back so that the water flowed down her neck and onto her breasts.

Her nipples hardened.

She turned and pressed her head against the wall, letting the water slide down her back and onto the rounded top of her buttocks. He got me fucked up.

She had dick on the brain. One dick especially. It felt like no matter what she tried to do, there was a male voice in her ear taunting her: "Come get this dick. Come get this dick. Come get this dick.

She wanted it. She needed it.

Naeema turned again in the shower and reached for her lavender bathing gloves and her bottle of body wash, but the feel of the slick soap against her body wasn't doing shit to cool it down. Don't call. Don't call. Fuck that.

There was so much other shit she could be thinking about besides the feel of his dick inside her as she came. But there it was.

Come get this dick. Come get this dick. Come get this dick.

Big, long, hard, curving, throbbing dick.

She leaned forward to cool down the water some and rush through the rest of her shower. Grabbing a towel, she dried off and wrapped it as tightly as she could around her body as she stared at her reflection in the steam-covered mirror.

Go get it.

She shook her head.

Leaving the bathroom, Naeema padded into the living room and used the remote to turn on the television. She settled on a marathon of I (Almost) Got Away with It on the ID channel. She was determined to get dick off her brain.

It didn't work.

She dug around in her Michael Kors for the baggie of Canna Sutra. As she prepped her pipe, she smiled at the label on the bag. "Good for bronchial dilation," she said. Naeema didn't have asthma and she doubted any of her contact's clients did. Although the first medicinal weed shop opened in Jersey in 2012, her connect Mook still brought his shit straight from a shop in Los Angeles.

"California . . . knows how to party," she sang the chorus from 2Pac's "California Love."

As she blazed Naeema lifted the TV just long enough to open the container and pull out her "Brandon file" to look through for the hundredth time or better. Her towel fell but she didn't bothering covering up as she took a toke from the dick pipe and settled on the bed to look through the police file.

Through the thick haze of smoke she released from both sides of her mouth she looked at the police photos of the crime scene. She tried to pay attention to everything, even the fucking trees lining the street. Brandon's body in the street. His bones protruding oddly from his slender teenaged body. His eyes vacant with death. His neck slashed. Blood pooling around him. The tire tracks of the car blackening the shirt he wore. The spit in the street and against the side of his face. What the fuck am I missing?

Her Jaws ringtone on her burner phone sounded off.

Then her other cell phone started vibrating loudly.

She set the picture down and dug both phones out of her handbag. She knew one was Bas calling. She looked at the other. Her heart pounded hard. Tank. She smirked as she looked down from one hand to the other with both phones going off.

Come get this dick. Come get this dick. Come get this dick.

From which one?

Naeema dropped both phones onto the bed and got up to grab one of the containers lining the wall, pulled out leggings and a long-sleeved fitted tee in black. Not bothering with underwear, she got dressed and slid on riding boots. She grabbed her keys and rushed across the room and through the kitchen to leave the house and reach the garage.

Naeema rode her bike through the traffic of the Newark streets until she pulled up outside Tank's house. There was a small yellow car in the drive that she didn't recognize but she parked behind it and walked across the front yard to jog up the stairs and knock on the front door.

The day she'd packed her shit and left him, she had left her keys to the house on his pillow in their bedroom along with a note saying she was sick and tired of being sick and tired of arguing.

She turned at the sound of the door opening. What the . . . ? Wait. What?

Naeema eyed the full-figured dark-skinned cutie answering the door to the house where she was legally still the queen. And from the look in the woman's eye, she knew damn well about her continuing reign.

Making a face like bitch please, Naeema brushed right past her and stepped into the living room.

Tank came out of the kitchen wiping his hands. "Who is at the . . ."

"She just brushed right past me, Tank."

Naeema looked over her shoulder and gave the woman a nasty up-and-down. "You lucky I didn't walk right over you . . . after I knocked you the fuck out."

"Na," Tank snapped, coming over to stand in between them.

Naeema nudged the back of his head. "Oh no, motherfucker, you don't ever give me your back," she snapped.

He turned to eye her hard. "Yo, why you actin' like this?"

"Like what?" she snapped, keeping her eyes locked on his.

"Childish."

Naeema leaned to the left to look past him at the other woman. "Better child-ish than whor-ish," she said with another wicked up-and-down look.

"But you the one in the funky spandex," the woman snapped, hostile as hell.

"Tina," Tank said, placing a restraining hand on her waist.