Vulnerable

by Bonita Thompson

  His pace brisk, he turned onto Occidental. He bumped into a young woman, and beer splattered over her faux leather coat and Rawn’s hand and bomber jacket sleeve.

  “Oh, oh, I’m so…” The young woman’s words ceased when she looked into his familiar bedroom eyes. Her grin shaped from ear-to-ear.

  Rawn thought she looked ridiculously goofy. “It’s okay.” He walked around her and threw her a perfunctory, “Stay warm,” over his shoulder.

  The young woman called out, “You don’t remember me?”

  He spun halfway around to look at her standing there with her warm bottle of beer and silly grin. There was something vaguely familiar about her, but Rawn could not recall where they might have met, or if they ever had.

  “Jazz Alley. I ask you if you got a girlfriend. You ask me what made a girl a man’s girlfriend. Remember?”

  Rawn slipped his hands in his jacket pockets to warm them up. The frost coming from the young woman’s nose reminded him just how cold it was. “Yes,” he said. “Right.”

  She took a few steps and said, “You okay? I mean you look…kinda sad.”

  Rawn was too distracted to fully take in her words.

  “Is it your girlfriend? She ain’t doin’ you right?”

  “There’s no issue with my girlfriend. I’m not sad.” His tone was borderline defensive.

  She took a few more steps and tilted her head. “Well, you look it.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Stefanie.” She felt very attractive just by the idea that Rawn wanted to know her name.

  “Stefanie, what are you doing out here in this cold?”

  “My car won’t start. I was over at the Latin Quarter. Left there, planning to go home. Don’t got triple A, so I’m headed for the bus. But that’s how fate work.”

  “Fate?”

  “Yeah. If my car started, I wouldna’ run into you.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “The Beach.”

  “Rainier Beach, you mean.” He did a surveillance of the square. When he was walking toward Sicily’s, he was distracted and did not see that the streets were mysteriously deserted.

  “You wanna give me a lif’? I got gas money.”

  For a suspended moment, he studied her young face. He remembered her now. What made it difficult for Rawn to place her at first was how different she was from when she attempted to pick him up at the Alley. Back then she tried too hard to look older, and her clothes and behavior made her look desperate. “I have something I need to do.”

  “You thank?”

  “What do you mean, you think?”

  “My mama always told me when you come up against a situation that ain’t feelin’ right, deal with it with a clear head. Rawn, you don’t look clear, baby.”

  “How did you get so wise?”

  Her laugh was happy and genuine. “I guess it be genes. See, if you give me a lif’, that might give you some time to thank about whatever it is you thank you need to do. ’Cause I betcha, if you had some more time to thank it through, you might just change yo mind.”

  Whatever you do, don’t tell Sicily.

  “Okay, look. If you leave your car, you’ll get a ticket. I have roadside service. I’ll hook you up.”

  “Baby, you so fine.”

  • • •

  While Troy went to his recently opened South Beach gym to show his face around the place for a few hours, D’Becca chose to stay at the condo. For quite some time, she stared at the brilliant morning sunshine and the bay that looked like glossy indigo-blue paint; the water was so blue it looked fake. The waves would come but so far, and suddenly, the water would become tranquil. How long did she stare at the mysterious, exotic beauty beyond Troy’s extended living room window?

  Without telling Rawn she was leaving town, D’Becca caught a red-eye to Miami two nights ago. Since Troy left for the gym, she had been gazing hopefully at her cellular for nearly two hours, wishing Rawn would call her and at the same time dying to call him. Every time she got up the nerve, something she could not name pulled her back. D’Becca imagined that it was a god’s whisper, or just her own lack of courage.

  When Troy picked her up at Miami International—his arms stretched out like wings to hold her—he looked amazingly at peace and there was life in his eyes like she had not seen before. He was so dark; the sun had tanned him three shades since she last saw him. Thinking back on it now, D’Becca realized how presumptuous she sounded when she asked, “Who are you sleeping with?” At that moment, where her mind was, she trusted that happiness was linked to intimacy, love, and another. Troy laughed and came back with, “Myself!”

  When they first met, D’Becca needed a personal trainer to stay in shape. At the time she was getting a lot of work to model swimwear and it was crucial that she kept her body toned. Airbrushing took care of small imperfections—cellulite and stretch marks—but she needed to be in shape. Troy taught her how to eat better. A nutritionist by trade, he introduced her to organic foods and gave her the inside scoop on how to cheat and still stay in shape and eat healthy. He was desperately in love at the time and she had just met Sebastian. In time they realized while they genuinely liked each other, the attraction came from their dysfunction when it came to falling for the wrong man. It took no time whatsoever for them to become hanging buddies, going to dinner and taking day and weekend trips to Victoria where Troy had friends. The first couple of years they held each other when they needed someone to lean on. So it came as a complete shock to D’Becca that he looked not just physically healthy, because Troy had a great body even at forty-one years old, but he was, as he said the evening before, in the best place I’ve been in my life. Because she had not heard him say anything like that before, she took him at his word.

  But within hours of being in Miami, perhaps it was envy that made her say, “It’s only been four months. What saved you in such a short time?”

  “I stopped going out with people because I was very attracted to them. I spent days—even weeks—alone and got in touch with in here.” He pointed at his chest. “I can’t keep falling apart just because someone breaks up with me, Becca.”

  “But…”

  “I didn’t want to tell you. I knew it sounded desperate and wretched. I know that if things worked between Jim and me, I’d never have left Seattle. Before we got serious, I spent two years working on opening a place in South Beach. I kept putting it off because I was in love with someone who lived thousands of miles away and had a business there so he couldn’t tail behind me. Anyway, I moved to that gloomy town just to be with Jim.”

  The sound of D’Becca’s cellular, which she held in her hands, shifted her thinking. The familiar number displayed across the screen was her agent’s. Their conversation lasted ten minutes. D’Becca needed to pack and be in New York the following morning—early. She would only have to work for two days, three at the most, but work would do her good. While she was packing, her cellular rang. She looked over at the mobile across the room set on the nightstand and knew it must be Sebastian, who had been calling her several times a day without leaving messages.

  When she reached for the mobile, it was the call she had prayed for all morning. “Rawn?”

  But he had hung up before she could answer. Her first impulse was to call him back, but not aware of why, she halted. D’Becca’s heart was racing; she was so confused and at a loss. She flopped on the bed and stared at the cellular for several minutes, her mind going back and forth to the conversation she had with Troy the previous morning.

  “I’m pregnant, Troy.”

  Troy had been making a smoothie and talking about having a small get-together so D’Becca could meet some of his friends. He dropped the banana he was about to peel. “Did you say you’re pregnant?”

  D’Becca had been washing blueberries in the sink. Her voice was detached from her emotions, and “Yes” had sounded like it came from someone else in the room.

  “Pregnant?” Troy repeated. “By
…Who’s the father? Do you even know?”

  It was then D’Becca broke down. For fifteen minutes, while she sobbed uncontrollably, Troy held her. Eventually, when she pulled herself together, she said, “What am I going to do?”

  “Do you want this baby?”

  “Troy…” She had sniffed her runny nose. “I’m not particularly mother material. I’m selfish; I don’t like cleaning Chai’s litter box. Do you really think I’m up for changing diapers?”

  “Do you have any idea who the father is? No, wait! Becca, why weren’t you using protection? Aren’t you on the Pill?”

  “A month ago I was working in Montréal—it was a last-minute thing and I was rushing…and I left my birth control at home. I don’t understand…There’s a doctor in every city—models have access to them, and they’ll give you a pill for anything. He refilled my prescription. I was using birth control, Troy. The only time I slipped up ever was in Montréal. Two days, that’s all.”

  “Okay, let’s figure this out. How many weeks?” When Troy had looked over to D’Becca, she seemed to be multiplying in her head the number of days she was late. Troy had said, “It has to be only weeks because you don’t look pregnant.”

  “Thank God, because I need to work.” With wet eyes, D’Becca had added, “I think I’m about four weeks. I haven’t had any morning sickness. Is that unusual?”

  With a how-should-I-know look, Troy had asked, “What if this baby’s Rawn’s?”

  D’Becca bowed her head and had let out a heavy sigh. “I don’t know. If I had a choice, I’d want Rawn to be the father. It wasn’t until I began to spend time with Rawn that I realized I didn’t love Sebastian. I was in love with…something, but not Sebastian.”

  “So would he—would Rawn be okay with having a biracial kid?”

  “I’m not sure, but Rawn’s not…By nature he’s not the hypocritical type. I just don’t know if this is something he would want.” Unconsciously, D’Becca had brushed away tears that stained her cheek.

  “Would he?…”

  “I know what you might be thinking. Trust me, Rawn is accountable. He would never turn his back on his child. But I don’t know that it would be fair to do this to him.”

  “Fair?”

  “This wasn’t planned. We never talked about having children. I know he loves teaching young people, but is he ready for that level of responsibility right now?…”

  “If you don’t want children, do what needs to be done to make sure that doesn’t happen. Yes, condoms aren’t foolproof—nothing is. But I don’t leave home without one. Any man who doesn’t want to leave something behind that might in any way implicate him…especially having babies he doesn’t want or isn’t ready to have… Come on! Both people need to take responsibility. There’s an epidemic out there, and it doesn’t discriminate. You’ve been sleeping with two men. You should’ve protected both of them, and you should’ve used a condom every time.”

  “Rawn did… Except…three times he didn’t.”

  “And what if it’s Sebastian’s?”

  D’Becca had swallowed hard. “He said he didn’t want more children. Three was his limit. I promised him I would never do that to him.”

  “You’re a lot of things, Becca. Risqué and reckless as hell. But you do keep your word.”

  She rushed to her feet and covered her face. She had turned to Troy and said in a distressed voice, “What do I do?”

  “Ask yourself: What choice do you have?”

  The cellular chimed, and it broke D’Becca’s musing over a past she could not change, and her nomadic thoughts. She looked at the number flashing. Reluctantly, she answered, “Hello, Sebastian.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Khalil was on a Virgin Atlantic Airways flight to London when he called Rawn, and in particular to finalize the plans for Vail. “I got my father’s timeshare and I need to know what to do about lift tickets,” he said. “So is D’Becca coming or what?” He tried to juggle the in-flight phone while he simultaneously perused Black Enterprise and talked to Rawn.

  “Do you want to know what’s gone down in the past two days or should this wait until we hook up in Vail?”

  He was about to down the remainder of a gin and tonic from the plastic cup, but replaced the beverage on the airplane table. “If you tell me you told Sicily, man, I swear!”

  “This thing—it’s sideways. I can’t even figure out how.”

  “Hold up! How can it be sideways? The only way this thing can go completely wrong is if you run your mouth off to Sicily.” As an afterthought, Khalil asked, “You didn’t?”

  Rawn sighed and sat on the edge of the bed in the semi-dark. “Tamara came by here.”

  “Came…How’d she find out where?…” Khalil lowered his voice—“Bitch is stalking.” His mouth turned upside down.

  “I can’t keep this charade up. How do you do it time after time, and like it’s nothing?”

  Khalil bypassed the remark because the surface of things was never exactly what was beneath its façade. He preferred to let his best boy go out believing he was always on top of his game. “Don’t tell Sicily. Let it go,” he urged.

  “She’s my…I report to her. Yesterday we had lunch and man she couldn’t stop talking about Tamara. Her head…it’s—she’s got a serious jones for this woman.”

  Khalil poured the last droplet of liquor in the cup. He had his own issues, but would not put those before Rawn’s pressing circumstance. It was not the time to be selfish. But it was flying that always freaked Khalil out. Without stopping, he gulped the gin and tonic down with the hopes of unwinding. “If you haven’t made reservations, make them, but don’t even tell Sicily. It could all be innocent and everything, but she might drop your itinerary—and it may not be intentional—on Tamara. I sho’ nuff don’t want her showing up uninvited. There’s no love lost between us, man. Tamara freaks me out.”

  “I haven’t seen or talked to D’Becca in days.”

  “What’s up with that?”

  “Clueless. Don’t know.”

  “Have you gotten what you wanted out of this or what? No, even better: Has the Tamara episode made you rethink D’Becca?”

  Exhausted, frustrated, Rawn said, “Hell if I know.”

  “Listen, come to Vail. Getting off CI can help you gain some perspective. Moon thinks I’m making you up. She wants to meet this Rawn dude for herself.”

  “Yeah,” Rawn said in a subdued voice. “Sure.”

  Rawn purchased a roundtrip ticket to Denver on Priceline.com. When he was under the sheets with the hopes of shutting his mind completely off, his telephone rang. Blindly, he reached for the receiver. “Hello.”

  “Hi, Rawn. It’s me.”

  “D’Becca? Where are you?”

  • • •

  Once Sicily finally managed to straighten out ongoing complex issues with a student and her single parent—an owner of a small but lucrative personnel agency—and they agreed to meet again in two weeks, she flopped in her chair and took a deep breath. She opened her calendar to check and see what kind of time she had before her next meeting, but within seconds, began to reflect on how much she loved her position as the first headmistress and the first African American to head Gumble-Wesley. One wall in her office signified that pride; her accomplishments were framed proudly, along with her degrees. Sicily had hoped her time would be better managed. Strategically, she scheduled every meeting in fifteen-minute intervals, and yet it never quite worked out, so her executive assistant suggested she not do parent/student conferences back-to-back. She had to meet with faculty in ten minutes; that gave her enough time to drop by the ladies and detour to the pantry and grab a bottle of mineral water.

  She reached for the receiver and dialed Tamara’s home number—digits she learned by heart the evening they met. While they had sat in the Alexis Hotel’s Library Bistro having drinks while Pricilla Miles finished up an interview, they had exchanged numbers. Tamara leaned over and said, “We need to get together.” B
eforehand, Sicily wrestled with what approach would be appropriate; Tamara had a rather nebulous nature and it was hard to read exactly what her sexual orientation was.

  “Hey! I’m worried about you. Did you go out of town and forget to tell me? I thought you were coming by last night. Listen, remember my professor from Seattle U? You know, the one I told you used to hit on me?” In good spirits, Sicily laughed into the receiver. “Well,” she blushed, “he’s having this dinner party tomorrow night at his home in Leschi and I thought we could go. It’ll be a good time to schmooze. I’ll go ahead and RSVP, but let me know your schedule, okay? I miss you. It’s been a couple of days. Call me. ’Bye-bye. Call me!”

  Sicily stared at the receiver in the carriage momentarily before looking up, startled by her assistant standing in the doorway. She wondered how long had she been standing there. “Hi.”

  The two women were friendly and shared one thing in common: they enjoyed gossiping about celebrities and would set their VCRs so not to miss an episode of The West Wing, which they liked talking about. And for that reason, their relationship was relaxed and not so formal from day-one.

  “Did I spook you?” the assistant asked, her lips shaped into a wide and toothpaste-commercial smile.

  “Daydreaming.” She pretended to be adjusting her earring. “What’s up?”

  “Mrs. Bishop…”

  “Tell me no! Not again.”

  With laughter, the assistant said, “Do you want me to handle it?”

  “Would you?”

  “Absolutely! Oh, and John Davies called about the events committee meeting for next week. He needs to talk to you before end of school…”

  “Yes, I know what he wants to talk about. I’ve gotten a few e-mails. There’s brouhaha on who actually invented e-mail, but whoever the real inventor is deserves a Pulitzer.”

  “I hear you. Sometimes…it’s good to not have to deal with some people in person or by phone. Click send, and hello! I’ll take care of Mrs. Bishop.”