I told G I didn’t want to go to Grandmother’s burial, and he said he understood. He arranged for Grandmother to have a private burial and even paid for her headstone and let me pick out the type of letters and what I wanted it to say. The next night he picked me up from the apartment and took me over to the Spot. He made security lock all the doors and turn on the bright lights. He told them to turn off the music, get the hoes out the back rooms, and then he called out all his staff, even the cleaning people.

“All right. I’m gonna ask y’all once and I expect the motherfuckin truth.” He held me by my arm and walked me up on the stage. “This is Juicy from 136th Street. Who in here done had some of this? Anybody in here done sucked her or fucked her? I wanna know if you so much as smelled this pussy. If your fingers been in it. If your tongue been in it. If your dick been in it. If you’ve rubbed your clit on it.”

All I heard was a bunch of “no G, no”s.

“Good, then. Juicy is mine, and that’s all I’m gonna say.”

Everybody knew what that meant. I was smiling inside because like I said, I had never been touched. Plus, I was hyped about G’s money and thought I had just hit the number big time. I just knew I was going to lay up in that phat apartment he kept on Central Park West and have neck-cracking sex with an experienced man in a round waterbed.

Instead I was so disappointed I could have died. G’s entire bedroom was done up in mirrors, the walls, the ceilings, and even the floors. There wasn’t a streak of dust on them either. The bed wasn’t round and it wasn’t a waterbed, but it was huge and it felt like the mattress was made of pillows.