Rhyme & Reason

by Nia Forrester

  “Yeah,” Deuce said pointedly. “You are being insensitive.”

  “So, where’s the delicate flower right now?” Kal asked, unperturbed.

  “I left her at my place. Seemed like the best thing … considering.”

  Kal said nothing.

  Deuce had filled him in on Zora’s return. He’d filled him in on some of it, anyway.

  Since he’d been with Asha, Kal viewed monogamy with the zealousness of the newly-converted. The messed-up part was, Deuce wasn’t even sure how hearing about what happened between him and Zora Saturday night would play—would Kal be offended on Regan’s behalf? Or relieved that he had reconnected with Zora? So he had been delaying the inevitable moment when he would tell his best friend that things had just gotten complicated.

  “I was ‘bout to hit you up, myself,” Kal said in a tone that indicated he was changing the subject. “We ‘bout to come out that way.”

  ‘We’ these days always meant him and Asha, an indivisible unit.

  “Yeah? Why? When?”

  “Ash needs to see her moms, so I thought I’d come for the ride before classes start up again.”

  “Cool. How long?”

  “About two weeks from now.”

  “You got someplace to crash?”

  “You offerin’?”

  “Yeah, if you need it. You can take my crib, and I’ll stay by my pops’ place in the city.”

  “That’d be righteous. ‘Cause we are damn sure not staying with Denise.”

  “You know I got you, but your girl might want to be with her mother, so …”

  “Nah, son. Where I go, she goes.”

  “Must be nice,” Deuce said before he could stop himself.

  “I’m pretty sure whatshername would surgically attach herself to your side if she could,” Kal said, laughing.

  And it might have been funny except that Deuce hadn’t been talking about Regan at all.

  ~~~

  “Good of you to join us.”

  Deuce had been trying to slip in unobtrusively and get lost in the shuffle as everyone took their places around the conference room table for the weekly Development team meeting. But he should have known better. Even though he had no reason to know, of course Jamal Turner would have heard that he hadn’t been in the office on Monday.

  The moment he walked in, Jamal looked up from under those formidable eyebrows of his, and now was offering him this sarcastic greeting. Deuce searched his memory, trying to recall whether he had missed a meeting when he wasn’t in the office. He didn’t think so. He had checked his schedule, and there was nothing, but Jamal probably had a hundred spies.

  Across the table, Harper Bailey offered him a sympathetic smile. She had been Deuce’s mentor when he first joined the team, and the only person who didn’t immediately view him as a competitor who had an unfair advantage because he was the son of the company’s founder.

  “Stop through my office after this,” Jamal said, making and holding eye-contact.

  Deuce mumbled his assent and looked down, pretending to busy himself with firing up his iPad and preparing to take notes.

  The meeting was a report-out on two new artists they were working with, and a strategy session on Devin Parks, who was less new. He was one of Harper’s gets and turning into a real moneymaker. But dude was complicated and tortured and difficult to handle so darn near every time he came up, there was some troubleshooting to be done. They walked through about forty-five minutes of Harper’s updates on the work she was doing with him, and then, as was always the case, they got to the Problem of the Week.

  This time, Parks was refusing to open for one of SE’s big-name rappers because dude had once been arrested on a domestic violence charge involving the mother of his three children.

  “He’s not going to do it,” Harper was saying, shaking her head. “Just flat out won’t appear, even if we book him. Even if we put his name out there on the promos.”

  “Did you tell him I said …?” Turner began.

  “I did. And he said to tell you he didn’t give a f… that he doesn’t care who asks, he isn’t doing it.”

  The room erupted in titters at Harper’s avoidance of the cuss-word that was undoubtedly part of the precise quote from Devin Parks.

  “And for the record, I support his decision,” Harper said after clearing her throat.

  “If he says he ain’t appearin’ with every rapper who smacked a girl around once, then he’s gon’ have to do a lot of solo performances,” someone else said, to more titters.

  “Stereotype much?” Harper said.

  “I’m jus’ sayin’ …”

  Jamal sighed, and tapped the tip of a pen against the surface of the conference table to restore order. “Okay. Moving on. I’ll talk to him myself.”

  “Okay,” Harper said, letting the word drag. “So that’s what’s up with that. As far as his appearance on …”

  Deuce tuned most the rest out. Opening his text messages, he mulled over whether to send one to Zora. In the history, there were all the increasingly frantic messages he had sent her on Saturday, asking where she was, asking her to call him. He felt a ping just beneath his breastbone, thinking of how she told him to come over. After all the time and everything else that had passed between them, she still didn’t hesitate.

  Come now, she’d said as soon as she heard his voice. Come now.

  But he had to deal with this situation with Regan, which he felt guilty even thinking about in those terms. Like her ordeal was a mere inconvenience, and a distraction from getting his woman back.

  That was who Zora was. It didn’t matter that they hadn’t spoken in months until recently. Didn’t matter that this very second some other woman was sleeping in his bed. Zora was his woman. That was an immutable, unchangeable fact.

  Not that there had ever been any doubt that he still wanted her, but if there had been, Saturday night eradicated all that. Familiarity in sex was supposed to mean boredom. But Zora was home. Her body, her scents, her sounds, were like going home. Everything with her, every sensation felt like the way it was supposed to be. Just sleeping next to Regan since Saturday night felt strange.

  “Update from you, Deuce?”

  He looked up at the sound of his name.

  “Nah. Nothing to report. Still waitin’ on the mock-ups of the logo, and notes from the focus groups. Should have that by end of day though.”

  Something worked the corners of Jamal’s mouth, but he said nothing for a moment. When he finally spoke, it was to let folks know the meeting was done. As he stood, he inclined his head toward the door, looking directly at Deuce.

  “Walk with me,” he said.

  Deuce took a breath and stood, following Jamal out of the room while everyone else looked on.

  Jamal walked with wide strides, making his way down the hall with a sense of purpose and intention that signaled to folks that they needed to get the hell out of his way. Deuce walked alongside him, saying nothing.

  He turned and looked Deuce over. “Nice suit,” he said.

  Deuce wore a suit every day, though not with a tie.

  He knew what he was up against. People still called him “Chris Scaife’s kid” behind his back, so he couldn’t afford to show up with casualwear, even if the dress-code permitted it. Not if he ever wanted folks to stop thinking of him as someone’s “kid.” Even on Fridays, he made sure he had pressed pants, his shirt tucked, with loafers or brogans.

  “Thanks,” Deuce said, just as they arrived at doorway into the large executive office.

  “Shut that door behind you.”

  Deuce obeyed and steeled himself.

  “S’down.”

  Deuce sat, and Jamal took the chair opposite his, studying him for a few moments.

  Deuce had known Jamal Turner his entire life. He wasn’t just a boss, he was his father’s closest professional confidante, a good friend of his stepmother’s and godfather to Deuce’s youngest brother, Landyn. He, and his wife Makayla were at e
very family gathering at the Scaife family homes, and even vacationed with them on occasion.

  But here, in the workplace, Jamal cut no corners, and most of the time, treated Deuce like he could just as easily be some guy who worked the mailroom, whose name he could barely remember.

  “Where was you at yesterday?”

  “I was … I had a … situation over the weekend. A couple situations, actually, and …”

  “You did, huh?”

  Deuce nodded. “Yeah. And some of it spilled over into Monday, so …”

  He let his voice trail off. He wasn’t sure who knew about his mother’s diagnosis, and no doubt, Regan’s scare at work wouldn’t even qualify as a half-assed emergency in Jamal’s book.

  “This isn’t the kind of workplace where people need to call out sick,” Jamal began. “You don’t work from a desk all the time, so no one ever really knows whether someone is where they’re supposed to be. Y’know what I mean?”

  Deuce nodded.

  “So, if Harp blows off an entire day and goes to Jones Beach or takes a long nap at home at two in the afternoon, I would never know. No one would know. And to tell you the truth, if she did that I wouldn’t care,” Turner continued. “You know why?”

  This Socratic Method approach was as nerve-wracking as it was annoying. Deuce’s father used the same interrogative technique before he ripped him a new one.

  “No,” Deuce said dutifully. “Why?”

  “Because she’s a beast. Her work …” He leaned forward. “Her work entitles her to occasionally dip out to go to Jones Beach or take a nap in the middle of the afternoon. She could probably—quiet as kept—do my job in about two years.”

  Deuce exhaled. Now he knew where this was going.

  “You, on the other hand?” Jamal clasped his hands between his legs. “You got here when? Practically yesterday. You have two things workin’ ‘gainst you.” He put up a finger. “Your inexperience…” Then another finger. “And your name.”

  Letting that sink in for a moment, Jamal held Deuce’s gaze so he felt like he couldn’t look away even though he wanted to.

  “People want you to fail, man. They yearn for it. You hear what I’m sayin’? They see you walk in here, in your … what’s that? A Brioni suit? And your … your Balmain loafers, and they just salivate thinking of the day you’ll fuck up.

  “So, what do you do? You skip Monday. Just skip it. Like you own this joint. But guess what? You kind of do own this joint. Which only makes them more eager to see you …”

  “Jamal, it was a …”

  “A what? An emergency? Is that what you ‘bout to say?”

  Deuce knew better than to continue.

  “Lemme tell you what an emergency looks like, Deuce. My wife is thirty-six weeks pregnant. And last week, I get a call in the middle of the night summoning me to Paris because one of our artists is about to get arrested for attempted murder after slicing …”

  Jamal paused and shook his head, looking up at the ceiling as if to say, ‘you can’t make this shit up’.

  “Slicing his driver open with a Japanese sword. So, I have to leave my pregnant wife—who’s scared as shit because this is our first kid—get on a plane and fly across the Atlantic to see whether I can prevent them from sending this dumb nigga to the guillotine or whatever-the-hell they do over there. I gotta hire lawyers, pay medical expenses, and then pay off a scared undocumented immigrant who just wants to keep his job and stay in France despite almost having his guts spilled out onto the pavement. And all this while keeping Kayla calm by phone so she doesn’t go into early labor.”

  “I hear you. It was just …”

  “I don’t care what it was just, Deuce.” Jamal moved closer, scooting almost to the edge of his seat. “You know what I’m doing here?”

  Deuce shook his head.

  “I’m warming the seat for you. This is your family business. Your father’s legacy to you. I might become a partner one day, or I might not. But either way, this is not a public company. I’m watching your father’s money. Your money. Your sisters’ and brothers’ money. Your children’s money. And if we do this right, your children’s children’s money. You understand what I’m sayin’?”

  Jamal leaned back in his seat once again. He watched, and seemed to be waiting for the words to sink in.

  “Now,” he said after almost a minute of silence. “Tell me about your emergency.”

  “Nah,” Deuce shook his head. “It’s not …”

  Jamal exhaled. “I thought so. Get your ass in here every day unless you’re dying. Get here earlier than anyone else in Development. And don’t leave until they’re all gone.” He made as if to stand, and then thought of one last thing. “Oh. And wear jeans and boots once in a while. They’ll think you’re tryna show ‘em up, wearing that fancy shit all the time.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “You ever feel like you just … stay fuckin’ up?”

  Zora hadn’t planned on answering the phone. She told herself all afternoon that if he called back, she wouldn’t. And yet she did.

  When Deuce’s initials showed up onscreen before eight that morning, just as she was getting out of the shower, Zora felt relief and elation and anger all at once. She wasn’t surprised when he hadn’t called her that first morning. She would have been more surprised if he had, because she imagined he would have been tied up with helping his … helping Regan with statements to the police and listening to her talk and comforting her and … stuff.

  Zora didn’t want to think about what the ‘stuff’ might entail, because she knew that at least for her, and for Deuce when he had been with her, sex had sometimes been a source of comfort.

  But as that first morning—Sunday—turned into afternoon, evening and then late-night, she grew less understanding. And then even less so by Monday.

  That night, she had even begun to entertain the thought that he didn’t want to talk to her, that he regretted what happened between them. Maybe he was too embarrassed to tell her it had all been a foolish mistake brought on because he was feeling overly emotional after his mother’s news.

  She remembered telling him she loved him and regretted that she stopped him when he wanted to respond. Then she wondered what his response might have been. Maybe he wasn’t going to say he loved her too. Maybe he was going to confess that he didn’t any longer.

  Only this morning, when she finally settled into sad resignation had he called. And then he called again around midday—which she ignored—and now just after six o’clock, once again.

  This time Zora answered because a small part of her knew that whatever Deuce thought of what happened on Saturday, he would never believe it was a mistake.

  Now, hearing the exhausted, defeated edge in his voice, she no longer felt like giving him crap about how long it had taken him to call. Instead, she just answered his question, though she had no idea what motivated him to ask it.

  “Sometimes,” she said. “Yeah, sometimes I do feel like I stay fucking up.”

  Like now. She felt like that now.

  He said nothing in response.

  “Bad day?” she asked.

  “The worst.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Still at work. Hanging out for a minute.”

  “How come?”

  “Long story.” Deuce said.

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “Yeah. No. I don’t know.”

  This was where she would say, ‘babe, what’s wrong?’

  This was where she would tell him to come to her, to drop whatever he was doing and just come to her.

  And once he got there, he would lie with his head in her lap, she would rake her fingers across his scalp, and watch his eyes gradually become heavy-lidded until they shut entirely and he was breathing evenly, and fast asleep.

  Or, he would kiss her almost before she had a chance to shut the door, and they would have noisy, frantic sex, only partly undressed. And heaving and panting once he came, Deuce
would press his forehead to hers and stare into her eyes, and she would watch, in real-time, as his calm returned.

  But those options weren’t available to them any longer. Or at least, they shouldn’t be.

  “How’s your … how’s Regan?” she asked, trying to sound casual as she said the name.

  If she was going to keep answering Deuce’s calls, she would have to figure out how to sound normal whenever she said the name Regan. It was a perfectly fine name, now forever ruined.

  “Not so great.”

  “What happened exactly?”

  “She and a one of her co-workers were tossing stuff out in the dumpster behind the restaurant where she works. Couple guys rolled up on ‘em with guns and robbed the joint. Made everyone lie down on their stomachs … Lots of screaming and yelling, smacking people around … cleaned out all the cash … busted the manager upside the head …”

  “Oh my god, that must have been so terrifying.”

  “Yeah, she was pretty much hysterical when I got to her. Since then she’s been in and out of it. Sometimes acting like she’s fine, other times not wanting me out of her sight. Other times crying … just … a mess.”

  “God, I’m sorry,” Zora said. “I can only imagine.”

  She could also imagine Deuce holding her, this faceless girl whose misfortune she almost resented rather than felt sorry about.

  “It’s why I didn’t call earlier. She won’t even leave the apartment since …”

  He broke off, and Zora knew why. Regan was at his apartment. He wasn’t home, and that was the only reason he was able to call. Regan was at his place waiting for him.

  Zora exhaled slowly and looked across the coffee shop where she was sitting, trying to read the textbook for a class she was taking when the semester started. Being in the apartment had been depressing, with only her thoughts as company, so she went out to grab some java and pastry and be around other people for a while.

  Asif was out all day at his meetings and running errands and doing whatever it was he did, and this time she hadn’t been invited. In fact, he had a been a little weird with her since Saturday night when he stumbled across Deuce in their bathroom.