G-Spot by Noire Page A

looking at all I could say was, “Oh, shit. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!”
    “Oh, what?” Grandmother came up behind me. “I know you ain’t grown enough to be cussing up in my house like you paying the damn rent.”
    I didn’t even turn around to answer her. I couldn’t. My eyes were fixed on the scene below. Macaroni was laying on the concrete just to the right of the stoop. He was on his back with his eyes open, and a puddle of blood was leaking from the back of his head.
    Grandmother looked out the window on the other side of the chair and I heard her catch her breath. “Lord have mercy! That fool done finally fell his ass off that damn roof. He shoulda kept his crazy behind from up there in the first place. Now poor Mother Leland gone have to pray up some money to put his no-good ass in the ground.”
    But less than an hour later we were all back at the window again. This time it was the police car we were staring at. The morgue hadn’t even come for Macaroni’s body yet, although somebody had thrown a white sheet over him, and when Jimmy hollered for me and Grandmother to come look again, it was little Fletcher being led out in handcuffs that bucked our eyes this time.
    We never did find out what happened to make Fletcher push Macaroni off that roof, but of course we made up all kinds of stories. Whatever it was that Macaroni had done to Fletcher when I made Jimmy leave him out in the hallway by himself, it was enough to make Fletcher kill him.
And he ’fessed right up to it, too. Went right in his apartment and told his grandmother what he had done, and stayed there waiting while she prayed over him and called the police.
    A few years went by before we saw Fletcher again. We’d heard he got sent to some boy’s home upstate, but by the time I was a senior in high school Fletcher was back in Harlem again. By then his grandmother had died and some Puerto Ricans had moved into her old apartment, but Fletcher said he wasn’t looking to stay there no way. He never did tell us where he lived, but Jimmy heard he was staying with somebody on the Lower east Side, even though he ran the streets of Harlem every day.
    I had cut school and was hanging out with my girl Brittany down in Taft projects when I found out that Fletcher was scrambling for G.
    “Whassup, Fletcher,” I said as me and Brittany waited for the elevator. He was playing handball against the mailboxes on one wall, slamming killers like he was outside on a court.
    “Flex,” he said catching the ball and looking me up and down. “It’s Flex now. How you doin, Juicy?”
    “I’m good,” I said, looking at him for signs of a killer. Fletcher’s glasses were gone and his teeth were almost fitting in his mouth. He had gotten a little taller and put on a few pounds, but he still had that same grin and hopeful look in his eyes that he did when he was a kid.
    “You looking good, too,” he said, and I remembered the crush he had had on me all those years ago. “Know what?” he asked.
    “What?”
    “Remember when we was little and I used to like you?”
    I nodded and laughed. “Yeah. You was a pain in the ass back in the day.”
    “Well, I still like you.”
    I shook my head and threw my hand in the air like I wasn’t trying to hear it.
    “Naw, naw,” he said, grinning and bouncing his ball. “I know you G’s woman now, and I respect that. I ain’t stupid enough to step on my boss’s dick. I’m just saying you was always real nice, Juicy. I still think you nice.”
    “You was a cool kid, Fletch—I mean Flex. We missed you when you left the building. I’m glad you’re back in the city.” I was hoping the elevator would hurry up and come so we could get this convo over with.
    He nodded. “I missed y’all too. You and Jimmy was like the only real family I had.” The elevator finally came and Flex waved as I waited to get on. “Later, Juicy. Do your thing. But remember what I told your grandmother that time. I still mean that