Chapter 5
five
“Ay, Kamry, go clean the grill and make sure this trash gets taken out,” QaMeesha called, as she pranced into the office with the till under her arm.
Kamilla frowned. The walk by wind was just as foul as her attitude.
The stench was similar to a small rodent crawling inside of her and dying.
And the nerve of her to attempt to hand that out without paying someone for enduring the foul aroma.
Kamilla curled her lip, brows furrowed, and she groaned to herself.
Out of retaliation, jealousy or whatever else, QaMeesha let the people responsible for cleaning the kitchen and breaking down the small restaurant off early.
There wasn’t any other reason for it, outside of the fact that Kamilla had attention she didn’t even want.
Several times throughout the day, she begged God to just let her disappear.
The advances from men and attitudes from women, along with trying to figure out her first job was all too much.
That on top of the things she was already battling was all too overwhelming.
Not to mention, she still had to figure out how to get back to her aunt’s house and deal with staying out of Martez’s space for the rest of the night.
QaMeesha’s bullshit was the very last thing she wanted to deal with.
Kamilla pushed the wired headphones into her ears, donned her hands with the gloves necessary to use the cleaning chemicals, and began doing what was asked of her.
Kamilla wasn’t any stranger to hard work.
There were plenty of days she cleaned local businesses or homes with her mother.
Her go-to playlist was a few tracks she converted to mp3 from her father’s first album.
Countless days, she listened to his tales of street life in L.O.
Never in a million years did she think she would be in the epicenter of the place that made him.
The place he’d found his woman – the place he’d found love.
By the time she was halfway through the playlist, the bulk of the equipment had been cleaned and ready to open the next day.
After wiping down the last of the surfaces, she moved on to cleaning the floors.
The trash, she saved for last. Slipping into the employee bathroom with her bag in tow and using some wipes until she could get a shower, she changed out of her uniform into a lounge set that would hopefully keep her undetected on the way home.
Two large bags of trash in tow, Kamilla clocked out and balanced the trash out of the back door. She was immediately hit with a cloud of Azul Kush. The potent smoke choking her.
“Oh my God! What the hell is that?” she asked, amid her coughing.
“Put your hands in the air,” Cairo’s baritone rattled with slight laughter.
“And you’re going to rob me?” she screeched, as he took the bags of trash from her hold.
He kissed his teeth. “Girl, no. Why would I rob you?”
“I don’t know,” she breathed with her hands still above her head. “I don’t know what your motives are or why you’re lurking behind people’s businesses. You smoke that shit? My lungs are burning.”
Cairo laughed, tossing the bags in the dumpster with ease. He took in her bewilderment. “Just breathe.”
“I’m trying,” Kamilla huffed. “Do you just smoke in alleys?”
“I was waiting on you. Chose to pass some time,” Cairo answered, as if waiting on someone he just met like this was normal.
Kamilla’s frown deepened. “Do you think is normal?”
“Making sure my friend is good?” he posed, snuffing out his blunt to ensure she wouldn’t have any more coughing fits.
She searched her surrounding for cameras as she folded her arms. This had to be some sort of sick joke. “You are out of your mind.”
“I am, but that’s besides the point. The shit is getting spooky out here. I am very sure you don’t where the fuck you are or how to get home. And your first run-in with some gang shit, you damn near bust your head open.”
“You can stop bringing that up, honestly. I’d like to forget about it and you, for that matter,” Kamilla grumbled.
“You don’t want to do that. That’s why you still standing here,” Cairo tossed as the back door opened.
“You didn’t clean the bathroom,” QaMeesha’s nagging voice hit Kamilla’s ears before the stench hit her nose. “Get back in here and finish, Kamry.”
“First of all,” Kamilla huffed, visibly irritated. “It’s Kamilla. Kah-Mill-Ah. It’s simple if you passed the third grade. Second, I’m off. You clean the damn bathroom. Been barking orders at me all day like I’m a dog.”
Kamilla stomped off, no real sense of direction but sure she needed to get away from two opposite forms of unnerving.
QaMeesha, in the worst way possible, and Cairo in the most frightening.
Around the building on the opposite side, she started up the block.
Wrong way, wrong territory. In L.O. public spaces, restaurants, businesses or anything of the sort were neutral territory.
Azul Hearts, Crimson Kings, and the Loso Vatos knew the price of handling gang business near innocent bystanders.
However, when you entered their territory, the gloves were off.
And Kamilla was stomping her attitude-ridden self right into Vato’s territory.
The rev of the engine behind her and shout of her name grabbed her attention.
“Kamilla!” Cairo shouted before throwing his car into park and hopping out.
“I can get home, Cairo. Would you leave me alone?” she snipped.
“You keep walking this way you ain’t never getting home,” he stated, hearing a whistle that almost caused his body to freeze. In a swift move, he pulled her off the sidewalk, opened up the passenger door and forced her inside.
“C4, fuck you over here on my cuadra, ese?” a man about a foot shorter than Cairo moved across the street, clad in a black and gray plaid shirt, black Dickie shorts, and black air forces.
A black bandana tied around his head, a Modelo in his hand, and a blunt pinched between his fingers. “Who’s the bitch?”
“Tres, watch your mouth,” Cairo offered in a tone so eerily cool, even Kamilla was inclined to listen.
Shutting the door herself, she sat still in the car and could still hear everything thanks to the windows rolled halfway down.
“Ah, she’s yours,” Tres said with a sinister laugh. “You tell her pretty ass to stay on her side before I have to take her.”
“Promise or threat? You know how I feel about pint-sized niggas challenging me,” Cairo spoke, sitting on his hood as if he weren’t going to move.
Tres looked him over. “Crazy how you look just like me and chose the other side.”
“Nigga fuck you,” Cairo shot back. “I chose the side that chose me. Fuck you talkin’ about? You think ‘cause we share some DNA, I’m going to bow to you?”
“Your papa was a Vato. He’s rolling in his grave knowing you Azul,” Tres said with a scoff, spitting near Cairo’s shoes.
“My pops was a bitch and any nigga thinking he wasn’t, is a bitch too. So tell me, you the boy or the girl in your shit.”
“Fuck out my face, pussy. Keep that green ass bitch on your side ‘less you like watching her be fucked,” Tres threatened.
“Only thing get fucked ‘round here is the nigga playing pussy, pussy. Walk your tiny ass back across the street before I turn this shit into Friday the 13th, feel me?” Cairo spat, looking Tres dead in his eyes.
Tres stood still for a long moment. A silent challenge to see who was going to move first, Cairo was comfortable enough and crazy enough to stay put all night as a dare for anyone to bother him or his.
Tres conceded. They may have been cousins on their fathers’ side, but they knew who was the crazier of the two.
Cairo won by default. He was indoctrinated long before he picked up his first gun.
Once Tres was on the other side of the street acting as if Cairo wasn’t ready and willing to blow up the entire block, Cairo stood, rounded the hood, and got inside the car.
As a show of who had the bigger dick, he drove down the block, hit a U-turn at the stop sign, and revved his engine back down the block.
It wasn’t until he passed Loso Tacos that he looked over Kamilla.
“I need you to drop the stubbornness.”
“I didn’t know,” she protested.
“I know. You don’t know shit about where you at, which is all the more reason when I tell you to get in, you get in. These niggas around here ain’t like me,” Cairo defended.
She raised a brow. “No? From my vantage point, all of y’all are the same.”
Cairo let an annoyed laugh fall from his lips. “There’s all these niggas and then there’s me.”
“And who are you?” she shot back.
“The lone wolf. The one that will blow every block up and not feel an ounce of remorse about it. Out my mind? Without question. That reason alone is why you need to take heed.”
“The alternative?”
“Letting this gutter of a place gobble you up and between you and I, I think you too pretty to turn into QaMeesha,” Cairo shared, earning her full attention. “Oh, look who’s listening.”
Kamilla turned away and sighed. “At least tell me where I shouldn’t be?”
“Everywhere I’m not,” he replied.
“You’re this territorial of all of your friends?” she sassed, folding her arms over her chest.
“You my only friend, so congratulations, you get all the attention,” he replied with a wink before turning the beat back up.
“What is this beat you keep playing?” Kamilla asked after about a minute of listening to the beat clearly in need of tweaks.
“Something I’m working on,” he shared. “You not feeling it? I feel like it’s missing something.”
“It’s missing a lot. You need to level out the treble, add a snare, maybe some keys on top of the treble,” she shared with a shrug of the shoulders.
Cairo slowed to a stop before turning onto the highway. “You know music?”
She wouldn’t reveal who her father was until it was absolutely safe to do so. Safe. Yeah, this was going to be a problem. “I know a little bit. If I ever make it to OSU, I’m studying music history and business management.”