Zero Degrees Part 1

CHAPTER 1

“Excuse me.” Rita Mae Bishop stopped the U-Haul truck beside a boisterous foursome of young Black man who was standing next to a gray Chevy Caprice. “Would you gentlemen be so kind as to help me and my daughter gets some of this heavy stuff inside? I’ll give you all a few dollars for the help.” Her sweet, southern voice was gentle and benevolent, the voice of an older, loving mother.

“Where to?” asked a hideous-faced boy, the Ugly Duckling of the group. He stepped closer to Rita’s door and peered past her, studying her beautiful daughter with the reddish-brown complexion.

Rita Mae Bishop’s new home was three houses down from where the four boys were standing. It was a yellow, three bedroom house that sits next to a vacant lot on the corner of Eighth Street and Willard Avenue.

But the four guys wouldn’t have cared if Rita had lived fifteen states away. After getting a look at her eighteen-year-old daughter, they would have lugged every item in back of the U-Haul from Indiana to California.

Rita’s daughter was Alexus Costilla, a thick and proportionate, young woman who was mixed with Mexican and African-American, and was often compared to the rap artist Nicki Minaj. Her supersized derriere and meaty thighs had made her the most sought after girl in Brownsville, Texas. But her strict Mexican Father hadn’t allowed her to date.

“Wait until you’re twenty-one,” he once said from his seat at the dining room table, where he had always repackaged the drugs that he had smuggled in, before hitting the streets to sell them.

But Alexus didn’t want to wait. So, whenever the opportunity had presented itself, she’d crept around, meeting and seducing and sexing boys and girls at her school, then dropping them abruptly and moving on to the next. It had been fun, exploring her sexuality, learning what she’d liked and disliked.

Now things were different, she told herself.

Because Papi was away in prison.

Clad in a cherry-colored Fendi jacket—one of the few things the Feds had not seized, over a snug-fitting pair of Apple Bottom jeans and red-and-black Jordan sneakers, with enough layers of MAC lip gloss on her succulent lips to thoroughly coat ten sets of kissers, Alexus Costilla stood quietly as the sidewalk in front of the new house, keeping a close watch on the boys as they carried the last of her and Rita’s boxes up the concrete stairs and through the front door.

Two of the boys had already introduced themselves –a skinny, light-skinned teenaged boy said his name was Young D, and a similar-looking young thug had introduced himself as Lil Mike—but Alexus had only nodded solemnly and turned her head, setting her pretty green eyes on a passing city bus.

A short and chubby, handsome faced boy who had been the recipient of brief, clandestine stares from Alexus as he lifted the heaviest boxes with ease, walked up to her and said, “You missing some teeth or something?”

“Hell no!” Alexus felt insulted. She looked the fat fool up and down, searching for something to degrade him about. But his black-and-gray Coogi sweater, his baggy black Coogi jeans, and his jet black Timberland boots were flawless.

“I’m Blake,” he said, smiling. “Didn’t mean nothing by that teeth comment. I just couldn’t understand why you weren’t talking.” He turned to glance at his three comrades, who were standing just inside the front door of the house, taking orders from Rita. Then his eyes moved back to Alexus, and for a moment he gazed at her wet lips. “You know who you look like?” he asked finally.

Alexus crossed her arms. “Who?” She looked at him as if her eyes were daggers and she was ready to stab him directly in the heart.

Raising his hands in surrender, Blake said, “Hold up, baby, I apologize. You’re the last person on Earth I want upset with me. I’m just tryna be nice, welcome you to the neighborhood, get to know you.”

“I’d like to meet the person who taught you how to start a conversation,” Alexus said snidely.

“Can I get your name?” asked Blake.

“Bad Bitch. Any more questions, officer?”

“Aw yeah?” Blake’s thick eyebrows rose, and an ingratiating smile grew on his face. “I like you already.”

“I’m sure you do,” replied Alexus. She took a thick ponytail holder from her left wrist and pulling her long and curly black hair back, said, “I need some weed, and not just any weed. I’d prefer Kush or Haze.”

“Ain’t none of that out here. My bruh Streets got some dro, that blueberry shit. I know a nigga in Chicago who sell Kush, though. But that’s a forty-five minute drive from here.”

“Can you get a few pounds?” Asked Alexus.

Blake’s eyes went wide, A few pounds of Kush? He wondered if she was joking.

“Prob’ly,” he said.

“What do you mean ‘probably’? Call and find out!” Alexus nasty attitude was out of habit, but her prudent mind was swarming with monetary thoughts, and she knew that she would need a thug’s sucker to survive in the drug game without her father. Especially in a new area. Hustling was in her blood, and she had a family reputation to uphold and protect.

While Blake was on his cell phone talking, and staring at the crotch of Alexus’s tight jeans, Alexus inhaled deeply, loving the scent of his cologne. She looked him up and down and concluded that she liked him, although he was in serious need of a haircut. She figured he was a small time drug-dealer, judging from the rust-laden Caprice he and his crew had been crowded around.

Blake ended the call and slipped his Blackberry to the waistline of the jeans. “Forty-five hundred for a pound,” he said. “My nigga got seven left.”

Nodding thoughtfully, Alexus said, “Okay, I need you to take me to him sometime today.” Then, out of the blue, she palmed and squeezed the crotch of Blake’s jeans.

He froze in complete shock…

“Hmm.” Alexus smiled. “Impressive. I might need a taste of that, too.” Her hand dropped. “Leave your number in the mailbox. I’ll call you in a bit.”

She sashayed away from Blake, shaking her thick, round ass harder than usual. She was certain it would hold his attention. No man could resist her biracial features, her unblemished, perfect face, and her perfectly shaped, too-large-to-be-true “ghetto booty,” that’s what her schoolmates had called it.

As Alexus started up her front stairs and she took a peek over her shoulder and saw that Blake had his phone aimed at her round backside.

Grinning, Blake recorded video of Alexus’ ass until she disappeared inside the yellow house.