Disclaimers: This story contains offense language, characters who are morally ambiguous and deals with dark themes and graphic violence. You've been duly warned so don't complain if this isn't your proverbial “cup of tea”. The characters in the following story are of my own creation. Any similarities to anyone living or dead are purely coincidental. No part of this story may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from me, the author. This is an alternative fiction. Any comments can be sent to me at bironel@gmail.com

Dreaming

in the

Pit

By Everett Deane

Synopsis: An urban tale of Karima Jenkins, a female ex-criminal who clashes with her tenant Sienna Joffe, a dedicated public school teacher who is instrumental in helping Karima to resist the “pull” of Sincere, a man who has returned from the dead to reclaim his most treasured acolyte, Karima.

My sincerest apologies: Dear Reader, I'm truly sorry that this has taken me so long to finish. Please charge this offense to my head - me, giving into my numerous fears. Still battling with those troublesome dragons. Then life changes of renovations, fasting, relationship endings and beginnings. I humbly appreciate your patience. Without further ado, here is chapter four.

Many Thanks: To H. Yoakam who helped me with this story way back in 07 and Lee Fitzsimmons who stepped in and being immensely helpful with sound advice and editing.

The Chapter Opening Quotes: At the start of each chapter are what I call “borrowed seeds” which sprang from essays, performances, novels, TV shows, films and songs I've bumped into along the journey of the characters of DITP. These “borrowed seeds” inspired the weaving of this story. However, I don't own them, only borrowed them and have tried to concisely give an accounting of their original source(s). If your curiosity has been provoked, I encourage you to explore them at your leisure.

Chapter Five

“Lady you gotta be “the shit” to YOU. Stop waiting on verification if you are or if you ain't “the shit” from ME. Blaming me for stuff I ain't in control of! Then she says: You just messed up my self esteem!

So I says: Bitch, it's called SELF ESTEEM! It's the esteem of YOUR SELF! How did I just fuck up how YOU feel...about YOU?"

"So what, if she keeps talking about you and hating on you. What do you think a "hater's" job is? TO HATE!

If you have someone hating on you right now you better think of how to get five more people hating on you by summertime. You need haters to make you stronger. Without haters most people wouldn't try to become better. Just tell them “You just hate me because you can't be me!”

-Katt Williams, as performed on the HBO Comedy special The Pimp Chronicles. Part 1.

It was after she finished applying the final coat of polyurethane polish on the wood floor in the unit she was working on when Karima decided to go downstairs, sit outside in the warm afternoon sun, and read the morning newspaper.

As she was being entertained by a peculiar article about a labor dispute between a notorious city developer and various unsavory construction companies, Karima's reading was interrupted by a belligerent teenage boy. Kalid had stopped in front of her building and began arguing with a group of teenage girls across the street.

Let me put a pause on this news gathering and peep this drama , Karima thought.

“You chicken heads need to recognize the realness!” Kalid yelled across the street.

The girls threw up irritating chirps, syncopated neck rolls, and one finger salutes with much attitude.

“Y'all bitches is lucky I'm on some other business, otherwise I'ma have to LEARNT you something!” Kalid threatened. The girls laughed walking off to wherever they were going. He turned to face an amused Karima and addressed her as though she were interested in the conflict he had with the girls across the way.

“You see that disrespect! They need to recognize the truth. The realness. See?” Kalid commented.

“Enlighten me… realness?” Karima asked as she put her newspaper aside.

Kalid narrowed his eyes trying to see if this dark older Sistah wearing locks was trying to mess with him too. But he couldn't see any injury in her inquiry. He sized her up as one of those earthy back to Africa types as he noticed her pant splotched cargo pants, her old black hi-top converse sneakers and a tee-shirt with a picture of two people rowing a canoe with the caption below it that read “Paddle Faster! I hear banjos!”

He offered views that he thought she wanted to hear since she was sitting out in front of the building he wanted to enter, “The truth is ALLAH. Respect his word. Respect his vision. Truth.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Karima offered as she picked up her newspaper to continue reading.

“I would have learnt them some truth… if I didn't have other business to handle. Word.” Kalid revealed as he looked menacingly in the direction the teenage girls had disappeared.

Karima nodded her head, seemingly agreeing with those sentiments as she turned the page of her paper.

“You got the key?” Kalid asked.

Karima looked up at the boy, taking in his thin height and aggressive stance in his sagging pants.

“Key to what?” Karima asked.

“The door you sitting in front of,” Kalid remarked. He needed to get inside pronto to handle that business. Back to Africa here needed to catch up to speed as far as Kalid was concerned.

Karima looked back at the door of her building than back at the boy standing in front of her. She picked up her newspaper and gestured with it, “Why would I have a key to that door?” she asked, pointing to the door in question behind her with her folded newspaper.

Kalid exclaimed with frustration, “You sitting in front of it ain't you?”

“Don't mean that I'm the door watchman,” Karima replied as she began to resume reading her paper.

“I got important business with someone who live here,” Kalid replied.

Karima eyed the boy from the corner of her eye, taking note of his demeanor as well as his attire. She noted he was a troubled youth who seemed hell bent on trouble-making. “Then your business should let you in.”

“So you saying you ain't got the key?”

Karima ignored the stupid question letting her eyes drift along the obituary page. She always read this section of the paper when she was deep in the kill game. She had a perverse sense of pride when she read about some of her work in the obituary. Karima could be as violent as the next man, but her best work, back in the day, was when her marks expired in such a way that no police suspicions were raised.

She noted on the top of the page that an elder assemblyman died in his sleep at the ripe old age of ninety-three. He was survived by three sons and a daughter. Karima read further that the man's wife took her leave from her mortal coil ten years ago. Seems that sleep took wifey's ass too. That was the most dignified way to take one's exit from the trials of life as far as Karima was concerned. Especially since many of the ways she used to forcibly escort folks on their next journey rarely left the marks with any dignity.

“Why you sitting here if you don't live in this building?”

Karima stared up at the young man standing in front of her with a steely gaze. She was both annoyed and amazed. Annoyed this scrawny snot-nosed kid with delusions of adulthood was questioning her, and amazed how close arrogant, rude folks drift towards their demise, seemingly ignorant of how they purposefully arrived at a place of life termination. Karima never had a problem permanently terminating the rude and belligerent. It was the purely innocent marks that gave her pause, stilling her hand momentarily, and causing the subsequent nightmares when her hand would follow through with the proscribed contract.

Karima folded the paper under her arm and stood quickly, towering over Kalid. Her shadow fell across his face and its darkness unnerved him. He took a step away from her and back into the afternoon sunlight. It was the look in her eyes that punctured an air escaping hole in his confrontational swagger. A life-less look.

“Forget you then. I'll swing back later to handle my business.” Kalid reveals dismissively as he walks away, with his navy blue boxers peeking out over gravity defying tight blue jeans held up by a thin black belt under his butt cheeks. He'd be back another time to settle accounts with that noisy teacher.

Kalid had found out where that teacher lived from the school office. Last week, he forced that girl, Sherraine who working in the administration office to “bless the mike” in the girl's gym locker room when he cornered her there. Today, after he glued some classroom doors shut, he found that donkey chick hiding from him and threatened to reveal to everybody in school what she did for him last week in that locker room if she didn't give him Ms. Joffe's address from the staff files. He had a video of the act he forced on her and he was prepared to send to every number in his cell phone contact list. Kalid smirked and sent the video of Sherraine giving him head out on his cell phone with the flick of a finger and soon he was gonna get some embarrassing pics of that mouthy teacher too.

Karima watched the boy's bulbous navy blue butt cheeks switch as he waddled away, with the rhythm of a street soldier, his steps heavy with the cadence of a street hustle, penguin style.

Karima sized up immediately that this kid was in some way connected with her annoying tenant, the indignant teacher. How could someone so small piss so many people off ? Karima mused. She had noticed a man casing out the building a week ago. He wasn't anyone she recalled having dealt with in her past. He seemed interested in her tenant's coming and goings. She also recognized that the diminutive teacher probably wouldn't welcome any sort of visit from this kid regardless of his business with her.

Karima wiggled her nose. It was her nose that signaled something was wrong with that boy. He had the stench of revenge all over him. Earlier this morning the small woman pissed her off and Karima entertained dark thoughts about using her hidden talents to hasten her annoying tenant's demise.

Karima didn't want to get involved with whatever seemed to be driving towards her tenant, but she'd be damned if that kid created mayhem and mischief on HER property . This kid is going be the one who got learnt the hard way if he came back here starting some BS , Karima thought darkly.

Once the boy disappeared around the corner, Karima took out her key to the front door from her cargo pants pocket and entered her building with her newspaper tucked securely under her arm. She walked down the hallway taking note of a few more tasks to complete.

Especially the surveillance camera. It was installed but not hooked up to the building's electrical system. She planned to install a state of the art security system. She entered the elevator she had finally got working after she had to bribe the city inspector. Back in the day, the city would have had to appoint a new city inspector behind that BS. Now I'm like regular folks paying graft to weasels to keep my day to day rolling correct. And they call my action illegal back in the day… amazing , Karima mused.

— — —

Sienna settled into the leather backseat of the taxi, letting the suburban scenery drift past the closed taxi window. She heard the driver speaking some non-English language on his cell phone as he navigated the taxi through the streets. Sienna smiled to herself as she recognized the universal utterances, vocal tone, and characteristic body language that the taxi driver was speaking with his woman, girlfriend, wife, or... perhaps boyfriend.

During the cab ride to the apartment, Sienna absentmindedly scratched a curiously annoying row of bumps on her forearm as she recalled how fortunate she was that Peggy called her. She didn't have to rush home to grab a bag for the weekend festivities because she always kept one locked in her office.

She didn't want to face that hostile building owner again. Not after the heated argument they had before Sienna left for work earlier this morning. The recalled anger sat on Sienna's face as she remembered the heated words and thinly veiled threats from the enigmatic, caustic building owner.

— — —

In the morning, Sienna had exited the elevator, rushing through the long hallway towards the front door of the building. She put on her sunglasses to shield her eyes from the bright morning sun light. She noticed THAT woman sweeping up the street in front of the building.

Karima felt someone staring at her and turned to face Sienna glaring at her behind the safety of tinted plastic.

“What was up with all that yelling this morning?” Karima inquired.

“Excuse me?” Sienna responded, incredulously.

“The yelling. I can't have all that going on in my building. You gonna have to keep it down or move.” Karima informed her. She couldn't recall if the little woman had company last night nor did she direct her observations around the comings and goings of the woman. She didn't really notice if the woman was a social butterfly, but if she was going to entertain her guests so loudly, she could be a problem when Karima ever decided to sell off any of the other units in the building.

Karima realized, once again, that it was a mistake selling her lofts without further screening of potential occupants, but it was beginning to look suspicious that no one lived in the building while she worked in it every day, year after year. With a tenant, her hard work looked normal. Just another city landlord renovating prime property for sale. Not a lost soul whose only therapy from the bad dreams and worst memories was hard, back breaking restorative work on her building. One of Karima's dark secrets was that she had remodeled and deconstructed the loft unit she had sold to the real estate broker, that had represented Sienna, six times before she moved on to work on another unit in the building. Her thoughts were interrupted by...

“You have some nerve! As loud as you play your music!” Sienna accused.

“I listen to music while I work,” Karima explained with a sigh.

“Who the hell works at six AM in the morning?” Sienna asked.

“Someone with a long list of things to do and wants to get an early start on the day! Not someone who sits at a desk shuffling papers all day!” Karima retorted. This little woman was working her last nerve, and that was not a good thing to do, considering that Karima only had two hours of sleep last night.

She woke from a troubling sleep, drenched in sweat. Sweat that pasted the tight tiny curls of her locks against her head and neck. She looked around her darkened bedroom and quickly switched on the lights not wanting to be in the dark any longer.

It was the darkness of her dreams that wanted to suffocate Karima. She just knew it. Dreams of being confined in the dark, alone, the fear in her throat, a fear that the air was receding . In the rhythm of her panting breath, she clawed at the dark surrounding her trying to find an exit. As Karima rose out of bed she realized she needed to lose herself in paint job number ten in the unit under her current tenant. She recalled noticing the time was five thirty when she put her utility belt on over the jeans she quickly had slipped into.

“Not that it's any of your business but I do more than shuffle papers all day. I teach. I'm a teacher! A high school teacher and my work is just as demanding and physically taxing as tiling a floor or painting a wall! In fact, it's more important.” Karima heard as Sienna insulted the very work that was her lifeline to regular life.

“Not if you want a roof over your head,” Karima replied darkly.

“With a good education children can do more with their lives then get paid to get dirt under their finger nails!” Sienna continued. How dare this creature demean her profession!

“I've worked jobs where I got paid good money to get dirt under my nails, making more money per hour than any gloried baby sitters if you ask me. I bet you probably don't even have a degree in any of the subjects you teach! When I was in school, none of those teachers knew as much as I did! Those teachers were only two chapters ahead of the class but I was always three chapters ahead of them.” Karima countered as she considered ways to get rid of the annoying pest of a woman.

A single strike to the little woman's solar plexus would drop her like a sack of potatoes. She could then just cut off her airflow with one tight fist. Or perhaps a quick round house kick to the woman's neck. Placed right, this chick's neck would snap like a twig under a three hundred pound gorilla. But the proximity to the soon to be deceased would raise policing flags. So Karima's murderous thoughts drifted back into the ether from whence they came.

Sienna grimaced. She was aghast how easily she began insulting this working class woman who had some fortune in life to acquire property and she was angry how quickly THIS irritating woman mined the one area of her career she was apprehensive about with a cutting insult.

“I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings. I just-” Sienna reluctantly began her apology.

“You need to tend to more important things then my feelings,” Karima interrupted.

“What does that mean?” Sienna asked.

“The fact that you don't know should alarm you,” Karima replied cryptically over her shoulder as she walked away to resume completing the numerous items on her “to do” list.

— — —

Back in the city, later in the afternoon, Karima stared at the concrete wall long and hard, willing the plaster she just used to patch up numerous wall imperfections, to dry quicker. She needed to throw some paint on this particular wall. She needed to throw herself into the act of painting a wall. She needed this physical activity more that this particular unit in her building needed to be completed. She had no intentions on advertising for any more tenants given the problems she was having with her first tenant… Ms. Joffe.

Karima grimaced as she recalled how the height deficient woman preoccupied Karima's time in a bewildering maze of complaint proceedings. Initially, Karima's ire was provoked over the little woman calling the police. There was one major pet peeve that Karima had: Cops!

She hated police. Not because she feared them. Not because they investigated her past dealings. She was too good at what she did for that to happen. She hated them because every cop she every encountered was crooked.

Murders and thieves were bastards to be sure but they had some well documented and respected codes. The elderly and children were off limits except under extenuating circumstances. Crooked police had no code. They were crooked through and through. Thugs respected the hustle because the hustle is nothing personal, it's just business. What made crooked cops so reviled on the street was the dishonesty. A dirty cop's hustle is always personal because they save the biggest lies for themselves.

Thugs knew who they were and broadcasted out loud what they were... thugs. So if you got burnt dealing with a thug that was on you, because you knew what he or she was about from the jump. Crooked cops tried to be something they weren't. You never know, what's the deal with them, until too late. They weren't revered guardians of the public peace like the press liked to portray them. They were dirty code-less thugs with badges. The ones who weren't dirty just got painted by the same brush as their crooked colleagues. It ain't fair but that was the nature of the street life.

When Karima was ten years old there was that nervous cop who stole the stereo unit from her mother's neighbor when they came by on a noise complaint run. The old man didn't even use his stereo system. He only liked to watch the game shows on his TV but his downstairs neighbor hated when the old man used to complain to the landlord about the noise from her stereo so she narc'ed the old guy out instead to the cops. Those cops came and didn't hear anything particularly noisy but that didn't stop them from taking that old man's stereo set, his beloved TV, and his last bottle of Black Cherry soda. Karima knew rough guys that would get cut the F up if they touched the last Black Cherry soda.

Cops ain't got no sense of the code.

Over the years as Karima matured under Sincere's tutelage, she noticed that folks in the hood used cops to get more violent revenge on each other. Cops notoriously entered guns drawn into every situation so when you wanted to get folks seriously hurt, you called the cops.

Your boyfriend cheated on you with your girlfriend or “clutch the pearls” your mother? Call the cops. Tell them he sells drugs. Boyfriend would be ventilated.

Your money grubbing girlfriend, wifey, aka the mother of your children working your nerves over some BS child support? Call the Po Po and be sure to tell them the bitch has a gun. No more baby mama drama.

When you wanted to actually get folks some help, you called the fire department.

When Karima was 19 years old she encountered a rotund cop named Smithy who ran the drugs for a small time Eastern European cartel. She managed to keep her business with Sincere away from Officer Smithy's attention but a few of her street colleagues weren't so lucky.

Officer Smithy couldn't be trusted and Karima warned a few of the dudes, but no one was trying to hear her. When the police brass and city politicians downtown needed a large drug bust to look like they were tough crime fighters on and in the paper, Officer Smithy often gave up the very kids he groomed to run the drugs he stole from other drug dealers, or the stash that was confiscated in past drug raids. Officer Smithy used this to create openings for future employment for the next batch of elementary kids looking to make that paper .

One kid Karima ran with from time to time was named Wandee. Karima warned him about Officer Smithy but Wandee wasn't so lucky on his paper chase .

Wandee was a funny relatively harmless kid always cracking jokes. At least he could get Karima to laugh. She was a tough audience. She often told him he needed to leave the drug game behind and be a comedian. He never thought he had the talent for that hustle. He had a baby sister, and he worshipped the ground she walked on. His sister Janelle was two years younger than him, and she was a genuine person, honest and real. There was nothing fake or superficial about her. She had a special gentleness about her. A bit plump with a pretty face, Janelle was a history buff. She could recall all the dates and events that happened in the past. She loved that stuff.

Wandee wanted his kid sister to do whatever she wanted so he was a veteran on the streets slinging that pharm for Smithy since he was twelve years old, working hard for over ten years with Smithy to bankroll his sister, Janelle's college education.

But when Janelle rejected Officer Smithy's advances off to jail Wandee went.

See there goes that personal shit. There wasn't nothing business promoting about that move. As Karima saw it, rejection was part of the attraction/“gotta get some sex” game. Men diss women they ain't feeling on the regular. You too fat, too skinny, too tall, too smart, too old, too dark, your hair too short, but you ain't never too young. Mama always told Karima men are like buses they keep on coming. So you keep it moving.

Women reject a dude's interest every day, worldwide. There wasn't nothing to get an ego bent outta shape over that. There's other women, you just... keep it moving.

Wandee was Smithy's best seller. His absence disturbed the drug flow on the streets. The Eastern Europeans who were supplying much of it were pissed so they put a hit out on Officer Smithy. That contract fell right into Karima's hands. He was hard to kill while trying to make the hit as bloodless as possible. It took THREE bottles of Hennessy X. O. cognac and a car with broken door locks and faulty brakes to dispatch that crooked fat cop to the unknown beyond.

That was a difficult job because the unwritten rule on the street was you don't kill cops . Dead cops negatively affect the bottom line. Rule number one: Nothing interferes with the growth of the paper. Nothing . But crooked cops that got out of line were fair game. And they always get out of line. It's the nature of being a crooked cop. The schizophrenia of being both a keeper of the law and a law breaker isn't something that can be balanced well.

One just had to finesse the hit so it looked legit. Karima covered her kill of Officer Smithy with a DWI accident which no one suspected.

That fat patrolmen drank cognac like water. It pissed Karima off that his habit was so expensive. You can't get a bottle of the stuff for under two hundred dollars! So she didn't look suspicious, Karima brought all three bottles of cognac at different liquor stores across the city. She entertained the idea that when she got rid of Smithy the drugs would dry up. Two weeks late another crooked cop Officer LeFleur, a mean Haitian cop, took the deceased fat cop's place without even a hiccup in drug supply on the street.

After big brother Wandee went off to prison, Janelle fell under Officer Smithy's influence anyway. After he was done with her, he sold her to a pimp. She made enough money to purchase her freedom from him with the intention to stay in the sex game to pay her way through college but the illegal sex industry don't support the women with college ambitions so Janelle's dreams of studying history and anthropology faded away to be replaced by a living nightmare of drug addiction and prostitution.

Karima saw Janelle from time to time on the street. She never thought to try to get Janelle out of the life because she choose to remain in the mix after she successfully brought her freedom. No one was forcing Janelle and she knew intimately the demands of the world's oldest profession and handled her business like a trooper. A few times Karima, a homeless man folks called the Professor, and Janelle would have interesting discussions about political and historical events with more depth than is ever covered on a current events talking heads TV show - until the economic demands of the street pulled them away to their different underground worlds.

When Janelle showed up one evening, thin, wearing an unrecognizable gray skin tone from head to toe, strung out on something, Karima noted that she hadn't seen Baby Sister around for two years. She nervously approached Karima for money for drugs or oral sex in exchange for drugs, Karima couldn't help her. She pushed Janelle away.

Wouldn't help her slowly kill herself.

Karima knew it wasn't money or more drugs the Janelle wanted. She wanted something else but was too afraid to ask for it. Karima vowed to herself if Baby Sister has the courage to really ask, she will have the equal courage to give it to her, no matter what.

That was the least Karima could do for the sister of the boy who used to make her laugh.

When a few days later Janelle was no longer afraid she boldly asked Karima for a gun. Karima obliged with a heavy heart. She was prepared for this. She gave Janelle an unregistered, clean small caliber .22 with two bullets it in. She knew the girl was no longer for this world but she didn't know if Janelle also had a score to settle with someone else who wronged her. She wanted her to have the chance to complete that unfinished business, if she so desired. So she gave Janelle the extra bullet.

Prostitutes worldwide probably have a list of grievances where their humanness is violently stripped away. It was the nature of that industry. Sexualized beasts of burden can't be seen as human. What we do to them would be too close to what we do to ourselves.

Karima discretely followed Janelle to an abandoned alley and watched the tired whore/history buff take her life, not wanting her to be alone when she did it. Janelle knew she was there and smiled as she pulled the trigger. Before the loud pop, the girl hidden inside the whore laughed, happy to be free. Happy to be history. She didn't have a use for the second bullet.

After Janelle's suicide, Karima paid all the costs for flowers, the opening of the grave, the burial, the headstone, limousines, and even got Sincere to get her brother out of jail to attend her funeral. Wandee was a shadow of his former self locked away under triple life sentences for his first and only drug selling offense. Karima put Janelle to rest like she was a state dignitary.

Out of respect for the boy who used to make her laugh. The memories irritated her eyes and sinuses. Painting walls was like painting over dirty lives made more filthy by the demands of street life. She needed to paint not entertain cops.

So when the local cops came to her building to follow-up on a complaint lodged by her tenant, Karima was pissed. Pissed that she had to pretend she was slightly retarded to get the police to go away. Pretend that this building wasn't hers but belonged to some old white guy who graciously gave her a management/construction job with free room and board. Pretend that she liked police and wanted to be one; asking those cops a thousand and one questions about how to apply for a job on the force and what was it like being a cop.

Folks always get a bit uneasy when you ask ‘em about how to get a job where they work. Like work and the resources work brings is governed by a stingy, selfish god.

The cops wanting to exit the situation quickly, appeased Karima's seemingly innocent curiosity, and got her to promise to keep the noise down to a minimum during the evening and early morning hours, if she was still working.

When the cops left her building Karima's anger grew until she rushed down into the basement of her building and took her anger out on the hanging punching bag she had set up in her no frills gym. After she sweated a couple of gallons of fluid punching and kicking that bag, she started on her free weights T through sets of chest press, pectoral flies, and dumbbell pullovers to maintain her plumb gravity defying milk satchels. She continued past the point where her anger ended and her muscle fatigue began. Past the moment her arms shook under the strain and begged to stop lifting those damn heavy dead weights.

She closed her eyes seeing the smiling faces of Wandee and his sister Janelle from better days. Days that held the faint promise of something better than their dead end futures.

After the cops' visit, Karima didn't stop playing her music loudly while she worked regardless of the time of day. The booming bass sound made her feel something so tired of being numb to everything and everyone around her.

The next level of complaint arrived in the guise of a flirtatious Latina lawyer. Karima was contacted by a representative of the Metro Condo Mediation and Advisory Board. The lawyer scheduled several meetings that Karima ignored and didn't attend. Karima couldn't be bothered by her frustrated tenant until the mediator arrived at her building to settle the matter.

Karima instantly noticed the middle aged woman, a salt and pepper brunette with streaks of white hair, short stylish haircut, wearing an oversized light gray business suit with a pink blouse, waiting outside the building. She was staring at both some paperwork spread across her car dashboard parked alongside the building and at Karima sweeping the sidewalk in front of the building.

The Condo mediator was a middle-aged Latina woman, roughly in her late fifties, early sixties, whose name is Marcia Aguido. She insisted that she be called Marcia, not like the Brady Bunch kid, she pronounced her name “Mar-see-a” placing a lot of emphasis on the “see-a”.

Ms. Aguido stepped out the car with her briefcase, locked the car after take a quick note of the neighborhood, and stepped up to tap Karima on the shoulder after an hour staked out in a beige four door compact rental car.

Karima turned to face the woman, inquiring, “What can I do for you?”

“Are you Ms. Jenkins? Karima Jenkins?”

“Who wants to know?”

“Ms. Jenkins, my name is Marcia Aguido.” Ms. Aguido handed Karima a white business card that simply read: Marcia Aguido. Legal Advice and Mediation. A contact phone number, a fax number and an e-mail address.

Ms. Aguido looked closely at Karima's face while Karima perused her business card, letting her gaze slowly drift down Karima's lean, physique. Her eyes appreciating the hard work Karima put into her tall, muscle tone.

“You may call me Marcia. I insist that you do.”

“So what can I do for you, Marcia?” Karima repeated.

“I've made numerous attempts to get you to come down to our offices to settle the dispute between yourself and,” Ms. Aguido paused referring to her notepad, “a Ms. Joffe. But we've had to reschedule with you numerous times. So I thought it best to come to you.”

‘I'm busy working on the building. I don't have time to take meetings.”

“So I see.”

Karima walked off into the building carrying the street broom and dustpan. She knew the mediator followed her into the building, but she didn't care. She still had work to complete on her to do list. She put the broom and dustpan in a hall closet and entered the open door of the unit of the ground floor she was working on. The entire building now had plumbing and a working central heating and cooling system. She needed to finish installing the insulation in this particular unit before the bare walls were covered.

Marcia watched Karima working intensely. “Do you freelance? I have some painting and tiling work I'd like to have done in my place.”

“I don't have a license as a private contractor and I don't want one,” Karima replied, very annoyed with the caulking tube clogging up after a few squeezes.

“Pity, I could use you.”

“Look that woman moved into a building that isn't completely renovated. I'm still working on numerous units. BY MYSELF! Most folks buying into developments under current construction do so for investments purposes only. Not live in them! THAT woman moved into THIS building knowing that she would be the only tenant for some time. When I work, I listen to music. So Ms. Joffe is just gonna have to deal with the rough patches until I get this build up to code,” Karima explained.

That little woman can bite me. I'ma gonna listen to my music. I need my music to shut out the memories. No to feel something, Karima thought.

“I understand the time constraints you are under believe me. Some people can be unaccommodating. Not like me of course. I'll try to explain these issues to Ms. Joffe when I speak with her again. So…. what do you do when you're not working?” Ms. Aguido inquired.

“I sleep,” Karima briefly supplied.

“Alone?” Ms. Aguido inquired.

“I prefer it that way.”

“Keep my card for when you want to change those sleeping arrangements,” Ms. Aguido suggested with a seductive wink and a smile, walking away with a supposedly sexy saunter back to her car.

Karima rolled her eyes and walked back into her building shredding the business card into bits. Unlike her boy, Corey, she wasn't interested in old chicks.

— — —

Sienna made her way up the walkway toward the three story luxury apartment complex. She climbed the stairs to the top floor, quickly reaching apartment 3Q . She smiled as she took out her key and opened the locked door, letting herself in. She was surprised that Peggy was using this apartment again. They often met at one of Peggy's apartment's downtown in the theater district of the city.

Her eyes quickly adjusted to the dimly lit, modern, neat apartment which looked as though Ikea had exploded therein. As she put her laptop bag on the glass coffee table, Sienna noticed the strangely beautiful young Asian woman seating on the couch with the close cropped haircut and wearing baggy jeans. Her eyes were closed and she was bopping her head to music piped in through large black Bosc headphones.

Sienna walked over and stood in front of the young woman and grabbed the headphones off her ears when her attempts at snapping her fingers in the young woman face was not successful in getting her attention.

“Hey!” the Asian girl exclaimed jumping up to her feet.

“Where is Peggy?”

“Oh you're Sienna. My bad. My father named me Esther but I prefer Baby Boi. BB for short, like the gun. She looked Sienna up and down before commenting, “She was right about you.”

Sienna blinked; surprised the enigmatic Peggy discussed their arrangement with anyone let alone the young woman who could for all purposes be under aged. Sienna grimaced then looked on shocked as the young Asian woman began to strip out of her clothes.

“What are you doing?” Sienna asked. She had to admit the body displayed before her was very pleasing to her eye. Not too skinny with just the musculature and soft roundness Sienna tended to like. She wasn't fond of the rock-hard body types nor the painfully thin types. She enjoyed the pleasant roundness, the adipose tissue in the right places and not to extreme excess.

Sienna noticed the piercings. Moisture formed on her upper lip.

“You gonna stay dressed all night?” Baby Boi asked as she turned up the stereo, sexy house music filled the living room.

“No. I mean yes! No. Forget all that... where is Peggy?” Sienna repeatedly asked.

“In the bedroom. She said this was a no clothes weekend,” Baby Boi pouted.

Sienna brushed past Baby Boi, fully clothed and frustrated. She had no plans to share Peggy for the weekend. At least not with some child, no matter how nice her…Sienna shook the continuation of that thought out of her head.

She was very annoyed at herself and at Peggy. The last time they did a threesome it ended in tears, shouting, and the police. As for bloodshed - well the bloody nose constituted significant bloodshed in Sienna's eyes. The police she could have totally done without. Thankfully Troy was available to help Sienna get out of that situation relatively unscathed and without public scrutiny.

Peggy must be crazy to think she was going to deal with that craziness again.

When Sienna reached the bedroom she found Peggy lounging on the king sized bed, wearing three inch red stain heels and a smirk, oblivious to the fact that the curtains at the bedroom window were wide open. On the bed next to Peggy was a scrabble game board with three tile ranks. Sienna noticed Peggy shuffling the hundred tile game pieces. The only saving grace, as far as Sienna was concerned, was that these windows face the densely wooded area behind the complex.

Sienna's annoyed gaze took in Peggy's long, smooth milk chocolate legs, thick thighs, and the slight roundness of her velvet soft belly that invited you closer. As Peggy shuffled the lettered tiles her pendulous breasts swayed ever so slightly in their teasing manner. Peggy looked up and smiled at Sienna, and for a long moment as Sienna shed her jacket to drop to the carpeted floor, she almost forgot what she was annoyed about.

“I thought I told you no clothes Sienna. You will not be able to draw a tile with clothes on! You're starting off the weekend with points against. Did you meet our weekend playmate BB? Isn't she too scrumptious? I thought I'd let you get a look at her before we begin,” Peggy teased, as her shoulder length light brown finger waves with auburn highlights cascaded off her slender, long neck.

“Peggy, I thought it was just you and me this weekend,” Sienna recalled.

Peggy stopped mixing the scrabble letters and stared up at the still dressed Sienna. She planned to play naked Scrabble all weekend with lengthy sex interludes. Clothes had no place in a game of naked Scrabble. Scrabble with two people wasn't as interesting as with three or more. Out of respect for Sienna, she only added one more person. What was Sienna's problem? She thought Sienna liked Asian girls. She was always with Troy , whose DNA screamed “me Asian too!” Her last three girl friends were Asian .

“Don't do this to me Peg. You won't believe the week I had. I don't have the energy for anymore drama!” Sienna pleaded as she interrupted Peggy's stream of consciousness.

“You know I don't respond well to pouting, Sienna.”

“I'm not playing with you Peggy.”

“Honey, you began the game the minute you opened the door and walked through it. Now get naked. I won't be gentle with that silk blouse if I have to get up off this comfy bed,” warned Peggy.

Sienna groaned knowing how expensive her blouse was, and how pleasurable Peggy could be when you just acquiesced to her demands. Sienna kicked off her shoes, slipped out of her blouse, tossing it on the chair. Standing in her bra and dress slacks, Sienna turned to face Peggy who had gotten up off the bed, her hands akimbo.

Sienna noticed from the corner of her narrowed gaze as Baby Boi entered the room with a bottle of scotch, a bucket of ice, and three glasses. Peggy smiled as she took the bottle of scotch and one glass from her, then commanded, “BB one of us is wearing too many clothes which need instant correction, so get to it.”

Baby Boi put her burdens down on the night-stand. She picked up the remote to the stereo unit in the living, sounds of slow sexy music blasted throughout the apartment. She knelt down in front of Sienna wearing her smirk of secrets. Sienna jerked in surprise when BB placed her hands on Sienna's hips, grabbing the zipper of Sienna's slacks with her teeth, and yanked it open with a quick head nod. BB released the zipper tab and stood as she pushed Sienna's slacks down, leaving Sienna in her Burgundy bra and matching G-string.

BB sucked Sienna's smiling lower lip and through the maddening sensations Sienna somehow registered that Peggy had gotten up from the bed and was behind her removing her bra with a single finger pop.

Maybe this weekend won't suck or maybe it will suck, but in a nice way , was the last thought that shot through Sienna's high mental processes which were shutting down completely as her lower body parts demanded instant attention and satisfaction.

— — —

He watched them through cheap binoculars, through the open window of the bedroom. The older woman's round breasts swayed as she moved about the bedroom drinking amber liquid in a glass tumbler. She was completely naked with a hairless pubic region. He felt the familiar arousal looking at her. He ignored the growing need to touch and be touched, wanting to see more.

Willing more with his stares.

Willing more with his sub-vocalizations and groans.

Willing with his desires, his fingers wet with anticipation.

The other woman, the one he had followed for the past week, was on her knees while the younger woman tormented and teased her with melting ice cubes on her neck and down… he was frustrated that he couldn't see all of her, that the window obscured his view of her topless body. Her breasts weren't easily seen. He was a breast man, through and through. He appreciated the feel of them, the salty taste of nipples, and the look in the eyes of their owners when they were handled the right way.

The younger woman straddled the woman kneeling on the floor and the binoculars slipped out his hand, falling to the ground, tumbling down the thorny brambles. He scrambled, getting scratched in the process trying to retrieve them.

— — —

Finally divorced from her professional slacks, bra and matching lacy G-string, Sienna's body was the territory both Peggy and BB, tried to outdo each other in getting Sienna to groan loudly. Her nipples were teased with one large wet, warm tongue as warm soft hands moved down her back. Peggy's lips were against Sienna's ear, her breath ragged, as she whispered, "WTF is not allowed. I can't believe how someone who majored in English sucks at Scrabble. Sweetie, Scrabble is a game of words NOT initials. I will allow NATO because that is an acronym."

Sienna nodded enthusiastically as it was getting difficult to vocalize anything Peggy would understand with what BB was doing with her fingers and the wonderful movement of her tongue. She struggled not to use her hands to hold onto BB to guide BB's rhythm. Her arms reached across the carpeted floor to stabilize herself for the explosion to come. Hopeful one of many. With Peggy that wasn't a certainty. Peggy could be sexually selfish.

But aren't we all to some extent?

Sienna recalled the last time they got together, Peggy was very generous so Sienna had high hopes for multiple releases this weekend.

Sienna's eyes rolled back in their sockets, she was so close...so close to release, when BB stopped and moved away. Sienna grimaced in frustration. She looked up finding Peggy lounging on the bed smiling down at her.

“You didn't forget the first rule of Peggy's code of sexual conduct?” Peggy asked.

Sienna glared at her.

“State the rule.” Peggy commanded.

“No one...Comes...before Peggy,” Sienna answered in a strained voice.

Peggy smirked lying back on the pillows. She sipped some more scotch leaving a small amount in the tumbler. She poured the rest on her chest allowing the amber liquid to drizzle down her honey brown belly towards her nether region, allowing it to add to her growing wetness. BB took the empty glass tumbler from Peggy. Peggy pulled her close for a harsh kiss, nipping BB's lower lip with cruel teeth, almost breaking the skin. BB jumped away rubbing her bruised lip.

“Oops. Seems I need a cleanup in aisle Peggy.” Peggy pouted with mock innocence.

Sienna groaned in discomfort. Her clitoris was engorged and drowning in her juices.

“I thought pouting was off limits,” accused Sienna.

“For you…not for me,” explained Peggy. “Now crawl to me.”

Sienna moved up from the floor but was stopped by Peggy. “No not you. Sienna gets the privilege to watch since she forgot rule number one.”

Sienna watched them. Lips that weren't hers kissed Peggy's lips. Slender quick hands, that weren't hers traced the curve of Peggy's breasts, one then the other. Nipples hardened and a slow rocking of entwined thighs built in intensity all while Peggy watched Sienna with a knowing smirk over BB's busy shoulders.

Peggy's eyes held Sienna's willing them to reveal something more vulnerable than arousal, deeper than desire. Daring Sienna to be more naked than she stood there silent, watching the act that she desperately wanted to be in the middle of and not consigned to its periphery.

Sienna was co-signed to be a spectator, idle hands at her side, impotent and invisible: A pair of frustrated, angry eyes watching.

— — —

In the last few sunlit hours of the weekend, Sienna settled in her seat on the train heading back into the city, placing her shoulder bag beside her and her weekend bag on the floor at her feet. She had an hour ride to the Metro Station and another twenty minute subway ride to her stop at her loft, but she hesitated to use the time to get some paperwork done and stared out the window contemplating the past 36 hours with Peggy.

She checked her cell phone noting two calls from Troy to get together with her and Lizz for drinks tomorrow on Tuesday, one from Lizz who needed a “wing man” on a blind date, and five text messages from Mrs. Aguido each one more cryptic and confusing than the one that proceeded it. Sienna sighed that at least the threatening building owner didn't kill Mrs. Aguido and bury her under a construction site. She hoped the lawyer could mediate a satisfactory compromise because all her money was tied up in her loft. She couldn't sell it if she wanted to and she really didn't want to do that. She loved her loft!

Her stomach growled loudly.

I'm still hungry! I feel like I'm starving. I'll stop for some take out before I go home.

Sienna thought her hungry state was ridiculous considering they had made a ridiculously large brunch mix mash of baked sweet potatoes fries, salmon salad with avocado slices, hot air popcorn, more scotch on the rocks, cheese whiz, and a large bag of organic but stale blue corn chips. Peggy seriously needed to do some food shopping for her love shack apartment because the three naked women channeled locust from biblical days the way they quickly cleaned out the paltry pantry.

Sienna absentmindedly scratched her itchy shoulder thinking how much food she ate and how unsatisfied her stomach was. It growled with annoyed impatience. If her stomach could speak it probably would have said, What made you think all that junk was going to satisfy me? Clitoris got satisfaction, numerous times but she isn't nearly as large as I am. And I have the more important job! Why do I get the junk and she gets the quality AND the quantity? Her clitoris would probably reply smugly, Don't hate me because you can't be me.

Sienna laughed out loud over her imaginary conversation of her various body parts. It was strange how she imaging them sounding like her acerbic high school students.

The woman sitting across the way looked up from her book disturbed by Sienna's laughter then returned to her reading when Sienna returned an annoyed stare. A sobering thought that briefly crossed Sienna's mind was the question; Could anything that happened this weekend be considered quality?

Her body was on automatic response all weekend with really nothing touching her deeply. She admittedly floated on the fanciful flight of the superficial, but with the recent stresses the superficial is a vacation of sorts.

Isn't it?

When Sienna looked deeper into that question for answers, what surprised her was that she felt cheated as though she was missing something, but not quite certain what it was she was missing and wanting to feel more deeply. She was really hungry for something and her stomach was on the right questioning journey.

Weird .

Both the annoying itch on her right shoulder blade and her stomach competed like toddlers for her conscious attention. She rubbed her finger tips across her itchy right shoulder blade, surprised to discover that she felt a series of healed, hardened scratches. Sienna groaned inwardly knowing that she must have all sorts of healed over scratches up and down her body.

Peggy needs a manicure to tame those dangerous talons of hers!

The hunger plaguing Sienna had began earlier in the day, waking her up from a fretful sleep of a disturbing dream. She slowly opened her eyes to find herself hugging Peggy who was curled up into a ball. Baby Boi was not in the bedroom. Her eyes squinted at the sunlight peeking through tree branches into the bedroom window. Sienna shifted her arms encircling Peggy's waist and her right leg straddled Peggy's hip. Still sleeping, Peggy took the opportunity to commandeer all the covers.

Sienna barely recalled the dream or nightmare but she tried to pick up the faint images to occupy her mind. She vaguely recalled that she was in a windowless, doorless room illuminated by a bright ceiling light, trapped with that disturbing Ms. Jenkins. They were screaming at each other but there was no sound coming from their mouths.

The frightening aspect of the dream was the shadows that surrounded them were swallowing up the light. The two angry women didn't notice until it was too late to stop yelling at each other and face the fast approaching darkness.

Sienna had found out THAT noisy, disturbing building owner's name after she exhausted other remedies to the loud noises that Ms. Jenkins refused to correct like a petulant toddler. Finding out that miserable woman's name was like gaining entry into that exclusive nightclub downtown, La Belle Amuse. La Belle was a great club because the clientele were older and more sophisticated. The infamous Lesbian Mafia of independent business women always showed up there on Thursday nights. Partygoers trying to gain entrance to La Belle needed to be on the RIGHT Twitter Update list.

If Mrs. Aguido's efforts don't result in any substantial resolution, I'll just have to sue her ass, Sienna thought darkly.

— — —

On the same lazy Monday early afternoon, Karima was listening to the song Soldier by Erykah Badu on continuous rotation of her $30 iPod she brought off a crack head when she noticed the mysterious man sitting in a car watching her building from across the street again. He was a tall white man with shady light brown hair that he hid under a red baseball cap. She knew he had been watching her building for two days. The first day she noticed him was when she accepted a delivery of Belgium wall tile from some shady Koreans who were selling it at ⅛ the original wholesale cost. This was the way she kept her renovation costs down by purchasing items which conveniently “fell off the proverbial truck” before it could reach its final destination.

Karima initially thought he had something to do with her annoying tenant and her constant complaints about nothing important, but she realized something else was driving this man's curiosity.

The thin white man in the baseball cap was sitting in a late model, maroon Volkswagen Passat, which had no wheel covers on any of its four tires. The hideous color of the car and the absence of tire embellishments indicated, to her, it was an undercover cop car.

Karima noticed him again today when he briefly got out of his car and bummed a light from a junkie who had a book of matches on him. They stood together in front of the bodega across from Karima, in solidarity, the undercover cop and the junkie, blithely smoking their lung tissue away.

Karima wondered which past job she did for Sincere warranted the attentions of the municipal's finest. She swore much of her numerous jobs flew under the radar and she never left any witnesses so she was mildly curious how she became an object of investigation.

Keeping her cool, Karima swept the sidewalk trash from in front of her vacant commercial space. She noticed with annoyance, her lone tenant walking down the street towards the building. The petite white woman was seriously a detraction for an otherwise enjoyable legit enterprise. Ms. Joffe, as she wished to be called, insisted that she wasn't a tenant but a share-owner since she owned her loft outright. Karima laughed to herself when she replied:

Then you can take care of any maintenance problems in your loft.

Ms. Joffe was livid threatening all manner of litigation until Karima calmly replied she didn't charge maintenance fees for the units so the stupid bitch was on her own. Since that confrontation the two women avoided each other, which suited Karima who didn't care for the constant complaining anyway. Then the sneaky wench sent cops and lawyers to harass her. There really should be extenuating legal circumstances when you make annoying disappear… permanently , Karima pondered for the hundredth time the past week. Karima sighed noting how peaceful the weekend had been in the annoying one's absence then she frowned as she recalled that the little woman was on her mind the entire weekend. Karima shrugged it off because of the visit from the cops and the lawyer who was more interested in getting between the sheets with Karima than getting her to acquiesce to the demands of the “Complaining Chihuahua”.

As though her thoughts called out to the solitary occupant of her building, Sienna turned the corner at the end of the block walking quickly towards the building. Karima stared at Sienna when she noticed that the man in the baseball cap subtly was watching Ms. Joffe walk down the street. As usual the “Complaining Chihuahua” aka Ms. Joffe, was oblivious to being the object of this mysterious undercover cops attention.

So she's the reason why he's been hanging around, Karima deduced.

Sienna noticed Ms. Jenkins sweeping outside the building and didn't want to interact with her so she averted her gaze. She didn't stop for the fast food because her stomach disgusted by all the junk, rebelled into a very sour mood. All Sienna wanted when she went upstairs was a hot cup of green tea, a hot bath, and to take a nap.

Sienna quickly walked past Karima as though she didn't exist to enter the building. The undercover cop moved fast snuffing out his cigarette as he jogged away from the bodega crossing the street towards Karima's building. Karima fought back the irrational feeling that she should prevent the man from following the smaller women, but her logical mind concluded that the woman probably knew the man so she refused to get involved, and continued cleaning the sidewalk to forestall hefty fines from the metro sanitation department.

— — —

Sienna had pulled her mail from her mail slot and was sorting through her subscriptions and bills as she walked towards the renovated freight elevator as the man in the baseball cap reached her and grabbed her by the shoulder, forcibly turning her around to face him.

“Stay away from my wife!” the man in the red baseball cap commanded. He dug his fist of nails into her shoulder barely breaking her skin under her silk blouse.

“You're hurting me!” cried Sienna.

“Stay away from my wife!” the man in the red baseball cap repeated.

“I don't know you or your wife!” Sienna exclaimed.

“I know you. I've been watching you for weeks! If you come within ten feet of my wife again, you'll get worse than a bruised shoulder,” he remarked. He pushed her away from his grasp. Her mail flew across the lower hallway as Sienna bumped against the closed elevator door.

“Fucking dykes. It was fun watching you two for a while but your visits are becoming habitual and I'm not having it. You understand me?” he demanded.

“Your problem is with your wife not with me,” Sienna exclaimed.

“Please I know my wife is a freak that's why I married the bitch, but you mark my words I'm not gonna be made a fool, not behind my back,” the main in the red baseball cap retorted. He balled his hands into meaty fists ready to pummel something - like this dyke's pretty face.

Karima finished cleaning out front and entered her building. She immediately noticed her “tenant” being menaced by the undercover cop.

This bitch is more trouble than I thought. Should I get involved or should I leave it be? Hmmm. Karima pondered.

The man moves menacingly towards Sienna and blocks her escape to the stairs. Sienna quickly notices her evil Landlord entering the building over her assailant's shoulder. Her face a mask of indifference. Sienna frantically pushed the elevator button to escape when...

“Is there a problem…Officer?” Karima asks.

Startled more by his profession being revealed than the intrusion, the man turns around to face Karima...all six feet of her.

“Who is this, your “boyfriend?” the man sneer at Sienna.

Karima allows the blatant insult to sit on her face as her eyes narrowed focusing all attention on “he who disrespects”. She fights to keep a tight rein on her building anger because this man's wife is a nanosecond from becoming a widow.

Sienna, surprised by the dark energy spilling off of her landlord's aura, thinks quickly and responds, “If you're a cop I want to see some identification. I'm going to need it for my harassment suit. I don't know you or your wife and you've physically and verbally threatened me!”

“It's your word against mine.” the man remarks.

“No it's my word and that videotape in the camera over my shoulder, Sherlock,” quips Sienna.

Sure enough the man in the red cap looks up and notices for the first time that there is a surveillance camera pointed right in the direction where he initially accosted Sienna. He grimaces.

“Well I'm gonna have to confiscate that tape,” he remarks. “Where's the owner of this building?”

“I'm right here and if you don't have a warrant, you don't get that tape,” Karima quietly intones.

The man's face turns the exact shade of red as his baseball cap before he moves pass Karima to leave the building. “Just stay away from my wife!” he yells as he slams the front door leaving the building.

Sienna picks up her mail scattered across the lobby floor. Karima watches her then remarks, “That camera isn't working yet.”

Sienna replies, “He doesn't know that besides...I think I just did him a favor…” Sienna leaves the rest of her remarks unspoken as she smirks at Karima.

Karima looks at Sienna with intense curiosity. “I didn't know you were a dyke.”

“I still am a dyke,” Sienna retorts.

“If you're gonna play that role you better learn how to defend yourself. Dudes are territorial. They don't handle poaching very well.”

“I'm not playing a role. This is who I am…is there a problem?”

“I'm prepared to pay you twice what you paid for the loft to vacate my building in thirty days, plus any incidentals, within reason.”

“You can shove your offer up your ignorant homophobic ass!”

“I judge no one's sexual preferences. I just don't need all the trouble that surrounds you. Word of advice, watch who you piss off, Ms. Joffe. Undercover cop there could only make life difficult…others may be more than difficult. As for my buyback offer, I won't be so generous the next time.”

— — —

After three weeks of avoiding her enigmatic building manager, taking long train rides, reading books, avoid reading the book on media arts, meeting Troy and Helen for cocktails and getting sick of being the silent witness of the love fest between them, accompanying Lizz on the “disaster of the century” that was her blind date, taking long meaningless walks in the city parks, and matinee foreign films, Sienna realized she was bored. The only plus was that the loud music in the building was limited to daytime hours. The booming bass hip hop music began at 8AM and stopped each day at 6 PM. Sienna realized she needed some variety in her life if the next six months were not going to be a disaster. She entertained the thought of working on her consultation business and sat down to write out a business plan. It took her hours to realize that she didn't have a clue what business concern potential clients should consult her about.

— — —

Annoyed, Sienna scratched a persistent itch in the same spot, the same web of scratches on her right shoulder from her last “Peggy Session”. She went into the bathroom to get a better look at the area in her full-length mirror.

This should have healed by now, she thought. She looked at the clock on the bathroom wall it was 3 PM. Suddenly it dawned on her, it was three o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon, and there was no noise in the building. It was quiet. So quiet in the entire building, it was spooky.

She heard the water dropping in the sink in the kitchen. She quickly went to the faucet and tightened it, shutting off the drips. She heard the tick tock of the kitchen clock. She felt the rumble of the subway trains underground about six blocks away, but it was the silence that had a presence.

Sienna grabbed a light jacket, slipped into her shoes by the front door, and grabbed her purse and her car keys to find a drug store to get an ointment that she had used with success for just this same sort of skin issue.

Sienna thought to drive a few blocks to the strip mall when she recalled there was a drug store a short walk away. She dropped her car keys back into her slot on the wall near the front door, exited, locked up, and left her loft.

— — —

Once outside, she walked more slowly than she would if she were rushing to work down the street, taking in the sights. She walked passed men playing dominoes in front of the bodega, one of them yelled out loud, “Lord hurry up and close the heavenly gates! ‘Cause one of your angels just escaped!”

It was so corny even Sienna laughed as she continued toward the drug store. She didn't realize there was a fish market, an organic dry cleaners, a coed martial arts boxing gym, numerous liquor stores, and many Chinese fast food take out restaurants in her neighborhood.

She walked past her subway station, an elementary school, a large park with a dog run and a major bank. She went into the bank to get a few dollars from the ATM. She turned the corner and found the drugstore next to the stationary store where she remembered it was located.

Sienna entered the drug store and quickly found the ointment she needed. She also got some cotton balls, facial soap, and allergy medicine. As she stood in the long line of customers, she was happy to find that the line snaked around a display of many chocolate candies. She loved the smell of chocolate, but this was cheap chocolate and she promised her tongue and stomach, especially her stomach, the sensual treat of organic Belgium dark chocolate or bust!

Sienna noticed that Ms. Jenkins was in line two people in front of her with a basket of items. So she's sick that's why it's so quiet , Sienna surmised. Sienna tried to see what the enigmatic woman was purchasing, but she couldn't see around the large hulking man directly in front of her.

Her curiosity was interrupted when a loud commotion started between the young sales clerk serving customers in the line Sienna and Karima were standing in and an elderly woman.

“280 dollars?? That can't be right!” exclaimed the elderly woman.

“I'll have the pharmacist check it again,” the sales clerk offered. The sales clerk handed the package to the pharmacist, a small Southeast Asian man named Mr. Singh He took the package and immediately picked up the phone to make a call.

The large hulking man directly in front of Sienna yelled impatiently, “I don't have all day!”

“There must be some mistake. I just got out of the hospital.” The elderly woman offered as she displayed the hospital tag still attached to her wrist.

“Please step to the side so I can take care of the next customer,” the sales clerk suggested.

“I have to get out of line?” the elderly woman asked.

“No just wait on the side and I'll take you as soon as Mr. Singh clears this up with your insurance plan,” the sales clerk soothed. Three customers were served before Mr. Singh approached the sales clerk and the elderly woman.

“What is the co-pay?” asked the elderly woman.

“No co-pay this prescription is $280, Madam,” explained Mr. Singh.

“For how many pills?” the elderly woman asked.

“Thirty pills, Madam.”

“How much for ten pills?”

“You will need a new prescription to change to amount, Madam. I can't alter this,” explained Mr. Singh.

“I just got out of the hospital an hour ago! What am I going to do now?” lamented the elderly woman.

Mr. Singh remained quiet having nothing new to add. He was sympathetic to the woman's plight but he couldn't dispense less than the prescription by law without authorization.

“Next Customer!” the sales clerk shouted as she handed the prescription back to the elderly woman who stood there staring at the useless paper in her hand.

Karima stepped up to the counter and placed her items next to the cash register. She purchased ibuprofen, a large tube of an analgesic heat rub ointment used to relieve the muscle ache in the small of her back, Epsom salts, and a pack of minty fresh chewing gum. The sales clerk quickly totaled Karima's order.

“That will be $15. 69,” the sales clerk replied.

Karima handed the sales clerk three crisp hundred dollar bills.

“No this is too much!” smiled the sales clerk.

“That should cover my bill and this woman's prescription,” Karima supplied nodding at the elderly woman still standing dazed next to her.

The sales clerk glanced at Mr. Singh who nodded it was okay. It didn't matter to him who paid for it as long as it was paid for. The sales clerk handed the change to Karima and the package of pills to the elderly woman.

“God bless you sweetheart!” the elderly woman gushed as she gently touched Karima's arm.

The backache that plagued her all day was gone but she felt awkward. Normally Karima stayed outside the comings and goings of the drama of life around her, not getting involved. Stepping in to stop her neighbor being assaulted was out of place and this act was also uncharacteristic for her. It just annoyed her that the doctors at the hospital stupidly wrote a useless remedy for the older woman.

Why did they even bother? Karima mused. She despised empty gestures more than she did rudeness.

It reminded Karima of the last time she saw Sincere, when he was tasked to take on an impossibly difficult hit that didn't serve the interests of the client. It was personal. It had nothing to do with business. Karima refused to assist Sincere with the hit. Sincere and Karima had the first and only physical disagreement over Karima's decision. Karima's refusal highlighted the philosophical differences between them concerning their profession. Sincere seeing them as godlike and Karima seeing them as tools for weak men.

— — —

Sincere characteristically wore his gray Kangol hat backwards over his short Caesar haircut. He wore dark sunglasses and a matching gray track suit with bright red piping down the arms and legs. Underneath his track jacket he wore a crisp red tee shirt. As Karima approached him, Sincere was smoking a long slender brown hand-rolled cigarette of organic tobacco and other flavorful additives - his own personal concoction.

Sincere blew out a mouthful of aromatic smoke after he deeply inhaled it. He nodded a slight greeting to Karima who returned their characteristically subtle greeting.

“Let's walk,” Sincere suggested.

In silence they walked together for a quarter mile past cleaners, restaurants, liquor stores, laundromats, storefront churches, barbershops and bodegas where Sincere collected the day ‘rent' or ‘security fee' for the Pabon family that ran the criminal activities of the neighborhood. The Pabon family was currently preoccupied with personal matters so Sincere was asked to make the rounds for the day collections. The Pabon family tasked Sincere to manage the enforcer operation where internal and external assassinations were sanctioned from above the mob food chain. Additionally, Sincere managed cleanup jobs when various criminal activities went a bit awry. Many of the contracts came from above the Pabon family, specifically from the Espinosa - Mancinelli mob family who ran all the criminal activities in the city. Sincere was usually contracted through a notice in the obituary section of any of the city newspapers.

Francis Pabon, the head of the Pabon family, personally contacted Sincere for a hit on “Tiny” an infamous member of the Espinosa - Mancinelli.

“Tiny” Mancinelli was a three hundred and forty pound flamboyant bisexual transvestite who ran the illegal numbers business and other underground illegal gambling dens across the city. A deep taste for the dramatic, Tiny set-up numerous flamboyant social balls and dances in conjunction with his gambling dens. His family was entertained by his antics, even the most conservative Mancinelli uncles and cousins turned a blind eye to Tiny's various relationships because he was good for business and none of his relationships progressed to the point where they interfered with the business. That is until the one between Tiny and the seventeen year old goddaughter of the Francis Pabon.

Pabon barely tolerated Tiny, especially when he insisted on attending family meetings dressed like a very ugly woman. Pabon detested Tiny when he discovered he was fooling around with his god-daughter. Then when his goddaughter decided she wanted to be a he, Pabon wanted Tiny dead.

The Espinosa - Mancinelli family set up the enforcer operation as a check so that no one knew who the hitters were to keep everyone honest. Even Pabon didn't know that much about Sincere, where he lived or the associates that Sincere utilized on various jobs. Sincere thought it was time that the Espinosa - Mancinelli family feared the power his dark operation had over the entire city. He considered the hit on Tiny to be the best opportunity to underscore that fact.

Karima saw things differently. She knew a few things more than Sincere did. The Espinosa branch of the mob family were thorny survivalists. They thrived under numerous takeover attempts before Karima was born. The Mancinelli side of the family tended towards the bizarre. Tiny was a Mancinelli through and through. He was the one who convinced Pabon's goddaughter she needed to change her sex for them to be together. That ditzy girl never experienced a sex identity confusion a day in her life. She didn't even know that Tiny was a happily married man with two sons who lived in an exclusive community on the outskirts of the city in a million dollar split level house. His wife enjoyed cross dressing as much as Tiny did. Nor did she know that Tiny's long-time boyfriend Antoine lived in the neighborhood. It was Antoine who introduced Tiny to his wife. With her ear open to local gossip, Karima found all this information out and that Tiny netted the three families a consistently growing bankroll that totaled 200 million at the last accounting.

Tiny's untimely death would be bad for business , Karima concluded.

After the last collection was made, Sincere finished smoking his last cigarette and stamped out the butt on the ground.

“This Saturday night at the Queen's Ball,” Sincere informed Karima.

“I won't be there,” Karima replied.

“You're still holding a grudge because I used Sparks instead of you on that last job? Sparks didn't walk away from that one and he wasn't supposed to.”

“This isn't about Sparks or the money that was due me. This stinks Sincere. It's ripe and I'm surprised you don't smell it.”

Sincere stopped walking turning to face Karima. They were standing in front of an abandoned construction site. He lowered his sunglasses and stared at her. “Girl you mistake me for these chumps out here. You know who you talking to? “ he yelled.

On the same street, a man pushing a cart full of empty bottles he had scavenged around the city was startled. He quickly crossed the street to get away from the anger man yelling at the young woman who surprisingly, wasn't fazed by the outburst. Karima watched the little man with the broken down shopping cart hurry away before she spoke her thoughts out loud.

“Let Pabon do it himself if he got a jones for the fat man's death. Pabon don't have clean hands.”

“I gave my word and my word is bond.”

“Words are empty promises. Business is what the three families respect and the fat man is good for business. This Pabon shit has the stink of personal all over it. Let that fool girl become a boy. Maybe she'll finally learn something. Besides, Pabon ain't even her blood!” Karima exclaimed.

“You disappoint me. Seeing everything with a limiting gaze. You don't see the opportunity here that has landed in our hands?”

“There is no opportunity here.”

We could be like gods in this godforsaken city and you want to bow and scrape before lesser men like a slave?”

“We work for arrogant, violent men. We are their weapons. Nothing more, nothing less. We get paid to complete jobs to maintain balance. You taught me that!”

“What did you think I was training you all these years for? You tower above all this! Working for Pabon was training. A cocoon. We exist beyond the petty business dealings of small minded men. Now you will step into your full maturation. This one death will create the chaos we need to consolidate our power. We hold the power of life and death in our hands! “

Karima looked into Sincere's eyes seeing the mania in those bright orbs that she never noticed before. But she owned this man her life and she would not turn her back on him even if he was wrong. She planned to sit out the hit but she would come to his aid when the shit hit the fan. She noticed his smirk and then she realized he knew she would never betray him.

“You planned all this didn't you?” Karima asked.

“Did I introduce that silly girl to Tiny? Maybe I did, maybe I didn't. That girl was born gullible. Tiny is a narcissistic drama queen. It was inevitable those two lost souls would meet. I didn't orchestrate Pabon's homophobia but I'd be a fool not to capitalize on it. Karima, sometimes you have to manufacture your opportunities. What better way to destabilize the three families then by plunging them into turf wars and personal vendettas. It's ironic that my operation which is supposed to abolish such chaos will be at the center of it.”

“Even if the fat man is dead. The Pabon family will be history too. Then your operation will be out of work. This is messing with my paper and I have specific retirement plans.”

“This isn't about paper! Money comes and goes. This is about power! I can't believe you don't see the obvious! While they are fighting each other we pick them off one group at a time, fueling the hated between them. The only organization left standing will be mine. I've groomed you to be by my side. Then one day it will all be yours to do with what you desire.”

“I have no stomach to run drug houses, manage whores, or run the gambling shops. I'm not interested in running an organization of frustrated thugs with penis size hysteria.”

“Like most women you can't see your true power. Content to squeeze yourself into some box someone else has made for you. I've told you a thousand times-”

“Boxes are homes for the dead,” Karima recited from memory.

“I've trained you but you can't evolve to your true potential if you stay asleep.”

Karima rolled her eyes but didn't notice the change in Sincere's stance until it was too late. The open handed blow he struck against her right ear knocked her to the ground. A phantom bell rang in her right ear loudly. The burning sensation across the right side of her face matched the redness in her cheeks.

How could he have gotten under her defenses so quickly! She pondered briefly as she had to draw her arms in a defensive position to protect her head and torso from the kicks Sincere pummeled her with. He was an angry blur of gray and red raining down kicks and punches as he yelled at her, “Are you awake now?”

Karima curses inwardly getting a quick hold on her anger, swallowing it whole until it burned her stomach. Pushing it down until her body remembered all the training she pounded into her muscle memory.

She grabbed hold of Sincere's foot in the midst of a hard kick to her head and twisted it, throwing him off balance and down to his knee. Sincere tried to jump up but she quickly wrapped her body around his leg and punched into the outer side of his knee rapidly and unrelenting until she and Sincere heard the horrifying pop sound.

She released him to his pain and scrambled away swinging at his face with a back handed punch. Dazed by the blow, Sincere stretched his limbs away from his rapidly swollen right knee.

Karima stood, taking stock of her condition, one or two broken ribs, a certain concussion, and a pissed off disposition. She wasn't in any condition to continue the fight between them and wasn't prepared to kill him, yet. She quickly pulled out a slick ebony black Glock 17. Shaking her head negatively when Sincere reached for his concealed weapon, she silently gestured to him to pull his weapon out slowly and slide it towards her along the ground.

Sincere hesitated and Karima's left eyebrow rose as her finger tightened on the trigger of her Glock.

She stopped the momentum of the M1911 pistol skipping across the ground with her sneaker. She bent down to pick it up with her weapon still aimed at Sincere's head. She put her weapon away and brandished Sincere's automatic pistol. She liked the weight of her Glock better, quickly deciding that she would have no problem throwing away Sincere's pistol if things popped off between them. She held no delusions that her soon to be former mentor didn't have another weapon concealed on his person.

As the thick drizzle of blood oozed down his face, Sincere stared up at her from the ground. Holding her injured side, his pistol pointed at him, she looked down at him, “I'm awake now and I'm out.”

“You ain't out until I say you're out! Out is what Sparks got! You want the same I'll oblige ya!” Sincere threatened.

“You quickly gonna have more to deal with than me if the fat man dies.” Karima predicts. She slowly walks away until she is at a safe enough distance to avoid gunplay from Sincere. She decides she has to sever all ties to him and his associates. Her retirement plans would have to be moved up. She had a decent bankroll although she had planned for her paper to be longer with a few more jobs. She had enough to get by and reinvent herself.

“Who do you think you are? You were nothing and I made you. You don't leave me. I leave you!” Sincere yelled down the street at her disappearing form. He struggled to get to his feet. He didn't anticipate that Karima would be so stubborn. Frustrated he focused his energies on getting to his feet, checking his tiny Ruger LCP pistol concealing in a holster on his left leg and completing the hit on Tiny.

Dealing with Karima would have to wait until after the dust settled , he decided.

Sayonara Sincere, Karima thought as she removed the cartridges, tossing them and his gun into the gutter before disappearing underground in the subway system.

— — —

That weekend Tiny was killed at the Queen's Ball with a single gunshot as he stood on stage dressed in an evening gown and tiara. The force of the bullet knocked his bejeweled tiara off his head as it shattered. Tiny's skull with a large exit wound.

In death, he looked grotesquely fabulous. To cover his tracks, Sincere created a fire that killed a good portion of the audience trapped in the dance hall. It was a tragic fire that claimed 116 lives.

The three families were united in grief for a week until the city coroner's report revealed that George “Tiny” Mancinelli and twenty of his security guards were shot execution style prior to the fire.

The Mancinelli branch wanted the Pabon family wiped off the face of the earth. Even unborn Pabons weren't safe. The Espinosa branch of the family wanted to be rid of both the Pabons and their cousins the Mancinettis. The Espinosa family had planned a coup to consolidate power but the bloodshed was relentless ending the reign of all three families in a sea of dead bodies. In the midst of the criminal confusion, Eastern European fractions fought against Asian gangs for control over the vacuum of power, derailing all of Sincere's plans.

Sincere disappeared never to be heard from again.

— — —

The sales clerk smiled admirably up at Karima as the elderly reached up and kissed her on her cheek. Caught unaware in the middle of her memories, Karima nodded awkwardly at the elderly woman , mortified when she turned around to find her annoying tenant, Ms. Joffe, smiling at her. Flustered, Karima hurries out of the drug store, carrying her purchases. Her headache replaced by some unknown aliment which colored her cheeks a copper-red.

— — —

After Sienna witnessed what happened in the drugstore, she became intensely curious about her enigmatic building manager. Without any shame and bored out of her mind , Sienna began to spy on Karima.

She noted when the woman began working in the building early which was relatively as easy as following the loud music. In the current unit there were no doors yet so it was easy to watch from a discreet distance behind an exposed wooden beam what the busy woman was doing.

The woman worked tirelessly fixing, replacing, plastering, tiling and painting. Up and down ladders. Carrying tools and equipment back and forth. Sienna could see how satisfying it was to enter a chaotic space and see some semblance of order slowly emerge. Sienna noticed that Karima seemed to plow through her work as though she were in a trance, driven by the beat of the loud hip hop music.

Sienna followed the mysterious Karima when she took her lunch breaks. She never ate breakfast preferring to dive right into work but she ate large lunches. Her diet was worse than either Troy 's or Sienna's.

Karima commonly ate greasy food she purchased from the local Chinese takeout restaurant which consisted of French fries or fried rice with fried chicken wings or fried fish or drank gallons of coffee and water from the donut shop Sienna loved. Then the frustrating woman would disappear after 6 PM to the basement of the building to lift ridiculously heavy weights for hours. Based on the woman's atrocious diet and the weight lifting fetish, Sienna deduced her noisy building manager either used to be a police officer or a night club bouncer.

— — —

Troy dashed back into the kitchen and picked up her cell phone vibrating on the marble counter top she had just installed. She answered the call and was immediately thrown into a conversation that started without her.

“She's either a cop or a bouncer.” Sienna spoke through her phone connection, as though her opinion was a fact, part of the public record.

“Who's a cop?” Troy asked.

“The building manager. Her name is Karima Jenkins. I've been monitoring her daily activities. Initially I thought that she was hiding some illegal activity with all that loud music but she actually listens to the garbage while she works! How can she concentrate? She's too anal she has to be an ex-cop. You should have seen how she handled Peggy's husband.”

“Sienna honey, are you stalking your landlord?”

“Stalking is such an ugly word. I prefer covertly gathering information.”

“Honey you need to stay busy. You should get a part time job for the next six months. Listen, I could use a project site manager in my office.”

“I have a job! I really should work on my business plan but who can concentrate with all this noise! I'm gathering information about her to use when I sue her for noise pollution. Which is better than having her bumped off.”

“That's a bit extreme. Didn't you tell Helen lately the music stops after 6 PM. Wait a minute! Did you just say the “Peg-ster's” hubby actually paid you a visit? How'd he know where you lived?”

“He came by last week trying to scare me. Peggy told me he was getting all suspicious, asking questions and following her around. I can't imagine how good he is as a detective when his wife can spot him trailing her a mile away. It was a matter of time before he tracked me down,” Sienna deduced.

“You and the hundred and one of Peggy's other bed-mates. How you holding up? You okay?” Troy probed concerned. As long as Troy knew Sienna, she had a knack for being in the center of a maelstrom of trouble and Troy wasn't in the mood to deal with the freaks and thugs in her family to bail Sienna out of another mishap. She spent two years in therapy dealing with those people she was related to.

“I'm good. He's relatively harmless. It's not like I'm trying to take Peggy away from him permanently just in small dosages.”

“Not having to work a day in her life makes her the catch of the millennium for a humble civil servant like him. I'd can see how royally pissed off Mr. Peg-ster would be if one of you sex buddies ran off with his piggy bank to help the Peg-ster spend up her trust fund,” Troy joked.

“ Troy please be serious. What time are we meeting for drinks?” Sienna asked, changing the subject.

“Listen, be careful Sienna. You don't know how violent Peggy's husband is. I think you better watch your back for the next few weeks,” cautioned Troy .

“Threats at the job. Threats in my love life. I can't say my life is uneventful can I?” joked Sienna

“You want to swing by the spot and stay with Helen and me for a while?”

“ And get sick to my stomach from the love festival you two have going on? Thanks but I'll pass. The thumping loud music vibrating the entire building should scare anyone threatening away,” Sienna joked.

“I had to offer or Helen would never let me hear the end of it. Listen to the latest, Lizz got us all into La Belle tonight. So be there at 8 PM,” Troy quipped.

“Why so early?” Sienna asked.

“Lizz got us free entry so the earlier the better. You need a lift?” Troy replied

Sienna glanced at the wall clock. She had roughly two hours to clean up and get ready to go out. Thoughts of calling Peggy to join them tonight briefly crossed her mind, but she decided to keep her distance until Peggy's irate husband quieted down. Even better if she met someone new tonight.

Variety is the spice of life. No need for Peggy to witness that , Sienna mused.

“I'm good. It's just four stops from me on the subway. I can get there in twenty minutes. Besides you're working all the way out in the boondocks. It will take you an hour just to pick Helen up. I'll meet you and Lizz at La Belle.”

Sienna hung up before Troy could respond rushing into her wall-in closet in her bedroom area. Frustrated, she tossed out various outfits, not happy with the color combinations of a number of outfits, not comfortable with the loose fit of another outfit, and dismayed with how little material the sexy black outfit was composed of.

Actually this might be the lure I need to land a new bed mate , Sienna mused. The black color was sexy, the material clingy and tight. She struggled into it and looked at herself in the full length mirror. Pouting and pushing up her hair, she preened before the mirror like a teenage runway model wannabe.

Her sexiest stare, her most beguiling pout.

The dress accentuated her assets. She kicked the other outfits she had rummaged through back into the closet to be sorted out later and quickly shut the door before anything fell out.

Sienna shimmed out of her sexy kitten dress, grabbed a pair of black pumps from her show rack to match and placed them on the floor beneath her dress hanging on the door. She jumped in the shower to exfoliate, check on any unwanted hair growth, and wash the grime of the day away. She checked for new growth in her landing strip region, concluding that she had three weeks before she would have to schedule another French wax appointment.

After her incredibly hot shower, Sienna luxuriated with her lavender scented lotion, spent an hour blow drying and primping her hair, quickly got dressed, grabbed her purse, her loft keys, a light wrap, her game face, and exited her building for an exciting evening.

— — —

Sienna swiped her monthly transit pass through the turnstile, entering the subway station. She skipped down the stairs to the downtown subway platform to wait for her train. She checked the time and took notice of the few people waiting on the platform with her.

Leaning against the metal platform beam was an older black man with a full white close cropped afro. He yawned, looking exhausted, wearing a dusty transit uniform. There was also an anorexic thin Asian teenager dancing dangerously close to the platform edge as she listened to the music blasting from her iPod through her ridiculously large black headphones. The teen girl impatiently kept looking down the dark subway tracks to see if the train was arriving. The last person that Sienna noticed was a homeless man sprawled out on the wooden bench knocked out. His offensive body odor and loud snoring propelled Sienna, pinching her nose between two fingers, to move far, far away from him and closer to the dancing teenager.

The first train to arrive in the station wasn't the one Sienna was waiting for which irritated her. She didn't want to be late meeting up with Troy and Lizz, especially since Lizz was her free access into the exclusive nightclub.

The subway car door opened and the teenage girl and the transit worker got on it.

“Please stand clear of the closing doors.” The train announcement bellowed from inside the subway cars so loudly Sienna heard it on the subway platform.

Sienna stepped aside as the formerly sleeping homeless man quickly wakes up and rushes off the bench, beating those closing doors. The doors finally close behind him and Sienna smirks as she notices through the subway car windows the other straphangers inside the closed subway car with the smelly homeless man quickly exiting into adjacent cars through the emergency exit doors at either end of the train car.

The homeless man sprawls out on an empty seat, in a quickly emptying train car and falls immediately to asleep as the subway car pulls out to the subway station.

Sienna peeks down the dark subway tracks to see if her train was arriving soon in a similar fashion as the teen girl did earlier. Thinking that this precarious ritual will speed up the train's arrival. She paces a bit on the subway platform, contemplating exiting and hailing a taxi.

She noticed that she was alone on the platform. Feeling a bit isolated and very impatient, Sienna looks across the dark river of metal tracks and debris, her gaze avoiding the rodents that dart back and forth along them, to see if anyone is waiting on the uptown platform.

She immediately notices her noisy enigmatic building owner and manager, standing alone waiting for the uptown subway service. Sienna darted behind a platform beam and peeked out at Karima, wearing black jeans, a turquoise tee shirt and a black jacket with the sleeves rolled up, checked her wristwatch a few times.

She cleans up good. Looks like I'm not the only one with plans for the evening , Sienna thought. For a fleeting moment Sienna wished she was following Karima rather than going to the most exclusive nightclub in the city. The roar and rumble of the uptown train exploded into the subway station, obscuring her view of Karima and pulling her from her thoughts.

Sienna looks down the darken downtown tracks again to see if her train is coming when she felt a slight push as someone rushed past her. The slight force knocked her off balance and for a horrifying moment she thought she was going to topple onto the dark, dirty subway tracks. Recalling with anxiety that was where the rodents frolicked.

She regained her balance only to be forcibly pushed off the platform, landing on her back on the tracks below. Dazed by these turn of events, Sienna thought it strange that she would be looking up at the end of the subway platform. Then she felt them before she saw them. One darted across her leg another by her head!

Rats!

She screamed hysterically when her mind finally caught up with where she landed. She looked around frantically to see how close she was to the infamous third rail, which was a one foot behind her.

“Oh my bad, Ms. Joffe. I ain't see you there.” Kalid yelled down at her as he apologized. He stretched his hands out towards his busybody chemistry teacher for her to grab hold of them.

Sienna looked up into Kalid's face and he looked mortified. She heard and saw the switch on the track lower indicating a train was coming soon. She scrambled up toward the platform edge, noticing for the first time that she scraped her knee and elbow. She grabbed Kalid's hand and he struggled to pull her to the safety of the platform, losing his grip too many times for it to be accidental as far as Sienna was concerned.

Aided by her mischievous student, Sienna crawled onto the platform. She took stock of her condition realizing she lost a shoe on the track. The rats could have it as far as she was concerned. Her left elbow was sore and her knee ached. Then she wondered why Kalid was at the subway station near her loft apartment. The Concourse Prep School was ten stops away in the opposite direction.

The downtown train Sienna was waiting for barreled into the subway station. Sienna sat down on the bench to calm down a bit. She looked at the train in the station as some passengers disembarked realizing she almost lost her life under the wheels of the subway car. She was perturbed that no one else noticed, not the transit workers nor the other straphangers that someone fell on the tracks.

Or was pushed , Sienna thought darkly as she fingered the slight rip in her sexy black dress, remembering that Kalid was the suspect in numerous violent attacks on former teachers at Concourse Prep. She pulled her wrap around her shoulders tightly.

“I'm really sorry Ms. J! Like I said I ain't see you but I'm sure glad I was able to help get you up in time. That was bananas! Man I'm sorry your dress got all messed up Ms. J! It's a shame ‘cause you…you look nice tonight.” Kalid apologized once again.

Sienna looked at the train as it sat for a moment in the station. The train that would take her to her friends, but she was in no mood for nightclubs, wanting to go back home and get cleaned up. But she posed a question she wanted answered, “What are you doing here Kalid?”

“Me? I'm just meeting up with my boys. You know hanging out. Just chillin'. You know how I do. Are you alright Ms. J?” Kalid asked as her moved closer to help her if she needed his help.

Sienna flinched violently away from him, stating, “I'm fine Kalid. My question is why are you in this part of town when you don't even live on this subway line?”

She swallowed slowly noticing for the first time that they were the only people on the platform. No one was waiting on the uptown side. No one. Not even a smelly homeless person. All the cars of the downtown train sitting in the station were empty as well. She didn't want to get on the train and be trapped with Kalid with no escape if he got on with her. At least she could get up to the token booth or outside the subway station to get away. Sienna liked these options better.

“Please stand clear of the closing doors,” The train announcement bellowed from inside all seven of the empty train cars.

“Just uptown visiting folks. You got a suspicious mind Ms. J. You know that?” You acting like you think I deliberately pushed you on the tracks,” accused Kalid.

“Did you?” asked Sienna, sheepishly.

“You always riding my ass in class! Always looking at me like I done something wrong. Like everything I do is wrong. Well who just saved your ass? Me that's who and do I get any thanks for that shit? No! See if I was wrong…if I was really wrong, I coulda left you on them tracks! Let the rats deal with your ass!” threatened Kalid as he exploded with anger.

“I am very grateful that you helped me Kalid,” Sienna stated to pacify Kalid to calm him down.

“Looking at me like I'm nothing. Like I don't know nothing. But at least I know you thank folks when they help you out a tough spot. But I had to remind you about that. Who's nothing now?” Kalid ranted.

Frightened into muteness, Sienna offered no words, knowing instinctively that anything she said would only inflame the angry teenager.

“Looks like I'ma have to learn you some manners Ms. J cause that ain't right what you just did.” Kalid promised cryptically. He moves toward her as Sienna scrambles away from him her backward movement stopped by the wooden bench she tumbles into.

As the downtown train exited the subway station, Kalid grabbed Sienna with one hand around her neck. She kicked and punched at the arm holding her, his tights fingers preventing her from screaming. He punched her in the face with his free fist three times to knock the fight out of her. With the stone hard hand around her neck, he squeezed the air out of her forcing her into the dark world of unconsciousness.

— — —

Moments later when Sienna regains consciousness, she immediately notices the painful tightness around her right cheek and jaw. She blinks only able to fully open her left eye. Her right eye is closed shut and swollen. She looks around with her good eye discovering that she's on her stomach and that Kalid is on top of her pining her down with the weight of his body. She struggles when she realizes what he has planned to do to her.

She whimpers and begins to scream when he slams a hard elbow into the back of her head causing her to bite down on her tongue. He mouth fills with the metallic taste of blood.

“See you ain't know who you was dealing with. I can show you better than I can tell you who you was dealing with. I told you I was gonna learn you. How this all goes down depends on how fast you learn.” Kalid threatens.

Sienna cries when she feels him fumbling to open his pants to expose himself and a hot slap hard on her exposed butt. Normally when Peggy did that she would be aroused. But this isn't consensual. This is violent and cruel.

Sienna grimaces as she prepares herself mentally for him to painfully enter her. All of a sudden, she doesn't feel his weight bearing down on her anymore. She feels the cold air brushing against her exposed buttocks. She carefully turns over on her side shielding herself with her newly freed arms expecting him to punch her again.

“Get the fuck off of me!” Kalid demands.

Someone grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and lifted him off the teacher as though he were a kitten. He couldn't twist enough to free himself from his attacker's painful grip. He kicked backward into his attacker to get free but the person holding him slammed him head first into a metal beam on the subway platform. Kalid lost his fighting resolve in a haze of a significant concussion.

Through the blurry haze of her good seeing eye, Sienna saw a dark figure manhandling Kalid. She fumbled to cover her exposed body noticing that her g-strip must have been ripped off and tossed aside. Her blood overloaded with adrenaline, Sienna was as afraid of the person who stopped Kalid as she was of the violent teenage boy.

Kalid's assailant dropped him to the ground and placed a thick steel toe work boot across his neck, pinning him to the ground. Kalid grabbed the leg attached to the boot, struggling to free himself as the foot pressed down against his throat.

Immediately, Kalid stops struggling when the barrel of a black automatic pistol is quietly placed on his forehead. He swallows hard when he sees a hand manually load a round in the single chamber of the pistol by racking the slide mechanism of the gun. A wet spot grows in Kalid's pants to pool on the concrete ground beneath him.

Sienna watches in horror as she is about to witness the murder of her adolescent rapist to be. She yells out, “God no! Please don't kill him!” Her plea wasn't only for Kalid's benefit but also her own. She didn't know if this person would turn the gun on her after Kalid was killed.

Kalid begins to cry with the gun barrel is placed in his mouth. A thin stream of his spittle is caught on the end of the gun barrel. His assailant removes the gun from his mouth wiping it clean on Kalid's tee shirt before slamming the body of the gun hard against Kalid's hard head, knocking him into the same unkind unconsciousness he had sent Sienna into earlier.

Kalid's attacker bends down to Sienna's level, facing her, slowly moving towards Sienna with hands in a gesture that indicated no further harm was to befall her. Sienna cries in relief when she finally notices her savior is her abrasive, enigmatic building manager, Karima Jenkins.

Sienna quickly scrambles on her knees into Karima arms, burying her face into Karima chest. Karima surprised by Sienna's response awkwardly returns Sienna's hug while keeping a grip on her trusty Glock. Karima knew that if Sienna was still unconscious she would have executed the weasel she recalled wanted to gain entry into her building a few weeks ago. Her annoying little tenant breakdowns into a disturbingly hysterical cry grabbing onto Karima's jacket and tee shirt as though she were her lifeline.

Karima sighs realizing that if she hadn't forgotten her cell phone and gone back to retrieve it from her apartment she would never have been able to stop Ms. Joffe from being raped.

Karima knew the noisy woman spotted her from the downtown subway platform. She knew the annoying creature was following her around like an amateur detective for the past week. Her uptown train arrived when Karima realized that she left her cell phone home. She used the uptown train's arrival to mask her quietly leaving the subway station so that her annoying tenant didn't entertain any crazy ideas of following her all night.

When Karima returned to the subway station she noticed that rude kid dragging something large towards the far end of the downtown subway platform. Curious, Karima watched until she noticed the boy was attacking someone. Without thinking Karima silently ran up the uptown staircase, dashed through the station corridor, and raced down the downtown platform staircase. It was when she knocked the boy out and turned to look how his victim was doing that she finally noticed who his victim was.

Sienna stopped crying but was very reluctant to let Karima go as Karima shifted her in her arms to release her.

All this explosion of heroism was an anathema to Karima's training under Sincere's mentorship. Karima learned valued lessons that indifference to suffering and thoughtless cruelty were the virtues of a perfected human being. These were the tools she used successfully in her past profession of death.

When did I ever listen to anyone who pleaded with me not to kill? The answer would have been never...until this evening. Karima thought, perplexed by her actions.

Where Sincere marched off into his mad quest for power, Karima was a student of living one's life by sheer will. Karima's philosophy concerned itself with knowing thyself tempered with knowing what you want and doing it. Knowing what you are doing and why you are doing it. She knew what she was doing in saving her irritating tenant but did not know why she was doing it. There was nothing to be gained by saving the annoying little woman from suffering. She needed for the little woman to release her from her tight grip.

“He's probably gonna wake up soon,” Karima explains.

“I need to call the police.” Sienna decides as she reluctantly releases Karima from her bear hug. Her eyes filled with big tears.

Karima picks up Sienna purse, which was rifled through and discarded in the large trash can nearby. Sienna cries as she frantically tries to find it in her violated purse. Karima walks over to Kalid's unconscious body and roughly searches all his pants pockets quickly finding Sienna's cell phone.

Karima hands it to her keeping a watchful eye on Kalid. She would have to slip away before the police came and investigated this situation. Otherwise she'd be under scrutiny by the cops. Karima preferred being under their radar. This puzzled Karima who firmly believed that selfishness and self concern were important attributes to cultivate.

As Sienna dials 911 to report her attack, Karima kicks Kalid hard in the side. He grunts in pain revealing that he is conscious as she suspected all along.

Kalid shyly opens his eyes weighing his options as he quickly notices the gun still in the hand of large woman who stopped him. He knew they must have called the cops while he was out. He had been in and out of trouble before so he didn't really care about the cops. All he was gonna get was a year or two of baby jail. He could do that in his sleep. Then he'd get out and finish what he started when this big black beast with the gun wasn't around.

Karima could see the scheming and planning the boy unknowingly telegraphed on his face. She had seen it many times before on the faces of marks, who thought they could trick her out of completing the contract on them.

If she hadn't asked me not to kill him, I could put this fool down before the cops get here , Karima pondered as she absentmindedly fingered the trigger of her Glock. Then she realized the only way he'd learn the error of his ways was only if she left him with a parting gift .

She heard Sienna giving the emergency operator the details of her physical condition. Kalid looked up at the dark shadow of Karima and flinched when she knelt down beside him wearing a maniacal smile. When she realized what she needed to do, she smiled and spoke to him only once the whole evening.

“I'd run now if I were you,” she whispered as she felt the rumble of the downtown trains approaching under her bent knee and feet.

— — —

A policeman cordoned off the area where Sienna was attacked, with yellow caution tape. Sienna was currently being treated by two emergency workers. Kalid moaned in pain. The emergency workers were finished dressing Sienna wounds and were preparing to transport her to the hospital for emergency care. The teenage boy wasn't going to be so easy to transport. He would have to wait for a more specialized emergency team.

The police stopped all downtown train service and was coordinating transit workers to remove the train that was partially in the station. The police patrolmen who first arrived on the crime scene enthusiastically volunteered to canvass the entire station for any witnesses and to search for the person who stopped the attack on the female victim. That task was preferable to manning the job that remained on the subway platform below. Once the train stuck in the station was removed, it was expected to be a nauseating bloody mess.

One of the patrolmen, a rookie, who first arrived on the scene, referred to his notes before he began to question the token booth operator and an elderly man who entered the subway station after the incident.

According to the patrolman's hastily written notes, the alleged assailant, a 17 year old Muslim male, known to the victim as a high school student, attempted to flee the scene after attempting to assault and rape her. A mysterious man who stopped the assault on the white female victim, a Ms. Joffe, by shooting the alleged assailant twice as he fled, hitting both the subject's right and left Achilles tendons. The alleged assailant's severed tendons caused him to stumble off the subway platform into the oncoming downtown train.

The alleged assailant as pointed out by the victim, was found moaning, pinned by his thighs between the subway platform and the lead car of the downtown train. Due to the significant amount of blood loss, the alleged assailant drifts in and out of consciousness, unable to give a coherent statement, other that shouting hysterically about a “big black beast with a black gun.”

The victim has no further information about her unknown savior who is possibly in possession of a firearm and should be consider dangerous.

“Did anyone find any shell casings on the platform?” the senior patrolman asked.

“Nothing recovered so far,” The rookie patrolman answered.

Once we get the tracks clear, detectives will search the tracks for any shell casings. You get anything from the token booth clerk?” The senior patrolman asked.

“Just about to question her now.”

They both watched Sienna being lifted by the emergency crew up the stairs to the ambulance parked above ground. The woman looked traumatized. They would question her again once she is stabilized at the hospital.

The senior patrolman turned to face the elderly man wearing a cap over his curly gay hair and a pair of eyeglasses. He told them that he entered the subway station immediately after the crime was allegedly committed. His partner walked over to question the token booth clerk.

“Did you see anything or anyone leaving the subway station?”

“I just heard that kid screaming something awful when he got squished by the train. That's all I heard. I certainly didn't want to see that happening you can be damn sure!” the elderly man exclaimed.

The patrolman asked the elderly man a few more questions before letting him go since his responses weren't very helpful. The elderly man was relieved that the uptown service wasn't interrupted by the police activity. He was running late as it was. When his train pulled into the station, he entered it and breathed a sigh of relief.

The train car was mostly empty so he sat down for a rest since he was riding to the last stop. He thought about the events that he witnessed, especially the ones he didn't reveal to the police.

He saw everything. He laughed a bit when the boy struggled to get that woman up from the tracks after he intentionally pushed her. He knew the boy was going to push her by the boy's body language. He saw the woman who shot that boy quietly leave the subway station unseen by no one else but him. The look on that boy's face when he realized he was going to be crushed by the train. That was priceless .

The elderly looking man smiled to himself as he recalled how superb the shooting skill was of the woman who stopped the boy as he tried to run away. He watched as she picked up her shell casings and pocketed them before she left the scene.

Initially, he was baffled why the other woman intervened in the first place. People are attacked, raped, suffer pain, and trauma from all sorts of violence and are killed everyday.

That's no reason to be “Captain Save a Ho.” Heroes are the mental projection of a slave mentality. A slave can't save himself, lacking true power. A slave always requires someone else to save him from the ravages of a stronger will. It's just the natural order of the strong triumphing over the weak. That was the way of the world, the elderly looking man thought deeply.

He discretely rubbed his goatee, rubbing away the gray dye to reveal the darker hair color underneath. He quickly removed his cap with the gray haired wig and the eyeglasses. He stuffed these items in a brown paper bag he found under his seat. Karima is a bit confused but she hasn't lost any of her training. Good. She'll need all of it. She's been asleep for far too long. Time for Baby Girl to wake up , Sincere surmised.

To be continued...

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