1 CARMEN
Carmen swiveled her wrist to glance at her wristwatch as she shuffled up the steps of Nikki's apartment building. It was 6:00 a.m. on Saturday and the Chicago air was already heavy with sweaty humidity.
"I hate this sticky and clammy weather," Carmen complained as she wiped perspiration from her forehead and the base of her neck. "Nikki had better have her behind out of bed," Carmen muttered as she noticed a peculiar, scruffy-looking man exiting the brick building. The man was wearing a green T-shirt and cutoff blue jean shorts with black grime stains on the thighs. The grungy man had a face that only a mother could love and reminded Carmen of the scrawny rock and roll icon Mick Jagger. As she approached the entrance, he held the door open for her.
"Thank you," she whispered as she eased by him and walked over and pressed a silver button on the wall to call for the elevator. She stared mindlessly at the orange elevator light, paused on the eighth floor. She sighed impatiently, then turned around to look out a nearby window while she mulled over her thoughts. Carmen was disillusioned with the fact that Nikki wasn't doing anything useful with her life. Her baby sister had a day job at an adult bookstore as a peep show girl and an evening job as a stripper at a seedy gentlemen's club. Carmen was sure their parents had to be turning over in their graves, knowing that Nikki was making a living exposing her body to men old enough to be her grandfather. That wasn't the way either of them were raised. Yeah, Carmen whispered to herself as she continued to glance out the window. Nikki's life is dreadful, in my opinion.
Carmen shouldered much of the blame for Nikki's appalling lifestyle, and the guilt she toted around was a heavy burden on her heart. Carmen continually attempted to clear the unspoken tension between her and her sister, but reconciling with Nikki was turning out to be a monumental task.
Their mother had passed away years ago from a combination of cancer and being a perpetual worrywart. Two years later, their father, Anthony, died. At the time of his death, Carmen was twenty-one years old and became guardian of her then fifteen-year-old sister, Nikki. The untimely loss of their father was the root of the tension between them. Nikki blamed Carmen for the death of their father and she knew it, although Nikki hadn't verbalized it as much lately. Blame and guilt were parasites eating away at Carmen's soul and she was tired of toting around her baggage of unhappy feelings. Carmen exhaled, hoping the shift in her breathing pattern would rid her mind of the unwanted and haunting thoughts. She turned back around to check the progress of the elevator and noticed that the scrawny man who had held the door for her was still hovering around the doorway, glaring at her. He licked his lips, flicked his tongue at her a few times, sounding like a dog slurping up water, and brushed his fingers across the stubble on his chin. Carmen translated the glint in his lustful eyes and realized he was having a sexual fantasy about her in his mind.
"Go to hell," Carmen snarled at him as she flipped up her middle finger. "Damn weirdo." The man didn't seem to mind Carmen's harsh words because he continued to glare at her. "Nikki has to stop moving into these apartment buildings filled with freaks and crackpots," she muttered as the bell on the elevator chimed.
Carmen stepped inside the elevator and pressed the third-floor button. When she got off the elevator, she noticed that the hallway carpet was wet. She wrinkled her nose because the musty and moldy odor was overpowering. She moved quickly down the enclosed corridor toward Nikki's apartment. Curling her fingers into a fist, Carmen drummed on the door with her knuckles. A short moment later, Frieda, Nikki's roommate, answered the door.
"Hey, Frieda," Carmen greeted politely as Frieda allowed her access to their small, cluttered, two-bedroom apartment. The place was littered with piles of laundry that needed to be either cleaned or folded but Carmen couldn't tell which.
"Is Nikki out of bed yet?" Carmen asked, crinkling her nose while comparing the untidiness of the apartment to Nikki and Frieda's chaotic and messy lifestyle.
"Why are you asking a question that you already know the answer to?" Frieda scraped her fingernails up and down her belly before releasing a loud yawn that assaulted the already stale air with the rotting smell of her morning breath.
"You know damn well Nikki and I are vampires and function only after the sun goes down." Carmen tried to inconspicuously cover her nose with the palm of her hand. Frieda's breath literally smelled like spoiled food and its foul odor was making her dizzy.
"Well, she's the one who told me to be here this early. I've got to drop my car off at the repair shop, and she promised me that she'd drive over there with me, so that I wouldn't have to sit there and wait while a mechanic worked on my car."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Frieda answered as she scratched the side of her neck. "She told me all about it. I think that she would have left work earlier but this older dude walked into the tavern and started paying her some attention. And you know how Nikki has a soft spot for older men."
"I know," Carmen answered. She wasn't giving her full attention to what Frieda said because she didn't want their conversation to last longer than necessary. The only thing she wanted her to do was to stop talking. Carmen sauntered into the kitchen area and inspected a banana sitting on the countertop. After checking it thoroughly for bruising, she decided that it appeared safe enough to eat.
"He was a nice-looking man," Frieda continued, to Carmen's annoyance. "He looked like he used to play football or something. You know the type that probably has a large stash of money hidden somewhere."
"Humm," Carmen coyly answered, hoping that Frieda picked up that she didn't want to continue their conversation. Carmen noticed a chair that wasn't cluttered with clothes positioned in a corner of the room. She decided to sit down and wait for her sister.
"You don't seem like you're in a talkative mood. But then again, you never are. I'm going to go back to my room. Besides, Francisco came over early this morning and gave me some grownman loving. My body trembles just thinking about having my ass in the air while he sucks on my sweet, juicy Spanish pussy." Carmen could not have cared less about Frieda's sex life; and if her pussy was as funky as her breath, Francisco had to be one nasty motherfucker to put his face anywhere near her smelly ass.
"Yeah, whatever. You're telling me way too much information," Carmen said and began to leave. She was glad Frieda was taking her body funk back into the bedroom.
"There is no need to be jealous, honey."
Oh, Lord, here we go, thought Carmen. Now she thinks that I'm being insulting.
"You and your stuck-up attitude will get a man to fuck you right one of these days. Hopefully he'll be able to mellow you out some. How long has it been now since that no-good professor dumped you? What, nine years? Or is it ten?" Freda snickered. "He had your head all messed up when he cancelled the wedding on you after you'd spent all of your money planning this elaborate event, which you specifically told me I wasn't invited to. I still haven't forgotten that evil shit. I'm glad he cracked your prissy little face and left you all broken up. You needed to be taught a lesson." Frieda used threatening hand gestures to emphasize her point.
"Frieda, it's too damn early in the morning to dig up old shit and start a fight with me. I didn't come over here for that." Carmen was more than willing to bare her claws and stir up an ugly argument if Frieda didn't back down. "Trust me; you do not want to toy with me this morning."
Frieda chuckled. "You don't scare me, honey. Not one bit." Frieda said her peace and then made her way down a narrow corridor to the bedrooms. She banged hard on Nikki's bedroom door.
"Your snooty-ass sister is here," Frieda said, loud enough for Carmen to hear her. The animosity between Frieda and Carmen was like a knife in her back that she couldn't reach. In fact, as Carmen saw it, Frieda was a part of the reason that her relationship with Nikki was so sour at times.
After the death of their parents, Nikki and Carmen moved into an apartment in the Ravenswood community on Chicago's North Side. Carmen, who had always been more mature than her years, worked as an audiovisual supervisor at a branch of the Chicago Public Library and attended Truman Community College in the evening. Carmen was responsible, levelheaded, and ambitious. Nikki, on the other hand, was an impressionable and rebellious high school sophomore who didn't respect her older sister as her guardian. Nikki was an untamed free spirit who was fascinated and seduced by Chicago's nightlife and the freedom it represented. She would often sneak out of the house on school nights and hang out with her friends at the beach, someone else's apartment, or a neighborhood park where she and her friends would loiter and be loud as well as rude. One night, after waking up and discovering that Nikki had once again snuck out of the house, after she'd specifically told her not to, Carmen decided she'd had enough of Nikki's disobedience. She went searching for Nikki to confront her and perhaps physically fight her, if that's what it took to make Nikki abide by her rules.
"Nikki! I am not going to allow you to hang out on street corners all night with your friends and come home whenever you feel like it!" Carmen shouted at Nikki after she'd located her and forced her to come home against her will. Carmen had spent an hour combing neighborhood streets, and her temper had reached its boiling point.
"Are you listening to me?" Carmen barked at her sister as they reentered their small apartment. Nikki's ears were completely closed to Carmen's ranting. She stood defiantly in the center of the living room with her arms folded across...
