by Pepper Pace
Nicole looked him deep in the eyes. “You never let me know that you felt that way. I had no idea.”
“That was by design. Mean Marty was not letting anyone in.” Briefly his expression appeared amused. “It used to kill me when I’d see Fred and the guys hugging on you and calling you Baby Girl. I’d get so jealous.
She shook her head slowly. “Marty, I can’t believe this…” He really hid it well.
“You really didn’t know? I mean I couldn’t help it sometimes when I’d be staring at your ass and…I thought it was so obvious.”
Nicole looked at him amazed. “Frankly, I thought you were an asshole.” She scowled. “Remember the tomato incident?”
He half smiled. “Yeah. I remember there being two crates of tomatoes in the walk-in and you sent someone to the store to buy fifty dollars worth of puny hot houses. Did I ever tell you I hate hot houses? About as much as I hate canned soup.” She felt her cheeks warm. He put his arm around her shoulder. He was grinning.
“I’m sorry I was an asshole.” He kissed her lips lightly and her breath froze in her chest. She pulled back suddenly.
“Why did you curse out Fred that day? Was it because of me?”
“No.” He looked surprised. “I was pissed at him…or maybe just pissed in general. But it was because of Mrs. Carpenter, or rather, Sister Carpenter; that poor old nun. She lives at the convent and she told me once that the food there is horrible. She once said to me that her one sin is coming in to the restaurant to eat, but only when she can afford it. You know, the nuns that live at the convent make very little money. I’ve once seen her pay her bill with change, down to the pennies…I’ve tried giving her free meals but she won’t take, what she calls charity. Imagine a nun refusing to take charity.” He had a brief look of reflection on his face as he told the story. “But anyway, we kinda came up with a way to benefit both of us. I get to give her some good home cooking and she doesn’t take a hand out.” Marty looked at her. “So yeah, that’s what that was about. But I told him about it and we got it cleared up.”
Nicole didn’t know what to say. “Well, why did she call him a ‘boy?’”
His brow went up. “She’s seventy. She calls me boy.” He chuckled and then seeing her serious expression he ran his thumb tenderly over her knuckles.
“Baby, Fred and I are good.”
“Ok.” She whispered, staring deeply into his grey eyes.
“Ok.” He repeated. “And you and Fred. How good are you two?”
Nicole reflected on how long she’d had to stew, contemplating the nature of the relationship between Marty and Kendall. Well she wouldn’t be mean and make him suffer as she had, but she did intended to give him a teeny bit of payback.
“Oh Fred is great. He’s probably my best friend.” Marty looked crushed. “I mean, when I need a friend sometimes he’s the only person I have to turn to.” Which wasn’t a lie. He was the only person that she could call ‘friend’.
Marty looked into her eyes so deeply that she could see his eyes tracking every movement of hers. Damn, she had never been looked at that hard. She decided to come clean.
“He is a great guy. I’m sure his boyfriend appreciates his friendship as much as I do.”
His eyes widened. “His what?” He suddenly smiled. “You’re evil.”
She laughed until she fell back on his bed and then she stuck out her tongue at him.
He just froze. “Damn that’s sexy…” He kissed her again, quicker, more passionately then he had before, his bare arms on either side of her, supporting his body above hers. She ran her hands up his body, not believing the hardness of his muscles beneath his loose fitting t-shirt. She could not believe that she was touching the body that she had admired for so long. He was perfect. He was hard and sculptured without being hulking. Nicole felt herself begin to throb erotically.
But there was something she had to do. Because he had been brave, she would be as well. So instead of enjoying his kiss, she placed her hands flat against his chest and gently pushed him away. Slipping from beneath him, she slowly walked across the room.
“What’s wrong? Am I moving too fast?”
“No, that’s not it.” She turned to him and there was a look of pain deep in her eyes. “Now it’s my turn to tell you something…and it’s not a pretty story.”
Marty stood, pulling her into his arms. “Baby, I told you the most horrible story about myself and you listened without judgment. You don’t have to do this now. There is nothing that you can tell me that will affect how I feel about you-”
“But I have to tell it for me.”
Reluctantly Marty released her. He sat back down on the bed. “If it’s that important to you, I’ll listen to whatever you need me to hear.”
Nicole stared at an invisible spot on the carpet. This wasn’t a story that she could tell and look Marty in the face with the telling of it.
“I grew up in the projects…I guess you’d call it the ghetto. My life…wasn’t good. My mother was single. She had five kids—that lived. We all had different fathers and my own Daddy had twelve kids—at last count. None of my brothers and sisters were close. We all had different Daddies and so, for the most part, a lot of my siblings would be off with other relatives that I didn’t even know. Actually, my youngest sister; I’ve only seen her a few times in my life. She lived with her Dad’s family, so really, my Mama was all I had. And I loved her; don’t get me wrong by what I’ve just said. I loved my Mama with every breath of my body.” She sighed. “I guess my world revolved around her. She was…god, as far as I was concerned.” She remembered something that she had heard from a movie once; to a child mother is the word closest to god….
Nicole cleared her throat as she recounted the events of her life. She didn’t see the carpet that she was looking at, but the linoleum floor of their townhouse home; the one that she’d had to get down on her hands in knees once a week in order to scrub the old wax off before another sibling put the new wax on.
“We were on welfare so I never had much.” She turned to look at him reluctantly. “Welfare was all I knew. I figured I’d grow up, have kids and be on welfare, too. Then there was school, which I was horrible in. I got held back in 9th grade twice, then I just quit.” Marty looked at her surprised. “Once I dropped out I just hung out with friends, smoked dope…nothing too hard. James, my boyfriend got me a little job at the stadium. He was much older than me; actually he was a grown man. I was just 16.
“The Stadium was the best thing that ever happened to me. It wasn’t the ghetto and I got to see the other side- life outside of the projects.” She was finally brave enough to meet his eyes.
“I guess seeing different people with nice things made me decide that I wanted more, so I joined the Job Corps. I got my GED high school equivalency and then went to trade school. I received certification in accounting, childcare and computers. I was there for two years but I couldn’t seem to learn enough. I was like a sponge and I wanted to know more. I also liked the structure so I decided to join the Army.”
When Marty raised a surprised brow, Nichole just nodded and smiled briefly. “I fulfilled my two years and stayed for another two. I probably would have been a lifer. I have a bachelor’s in communications and was just a few months shy of my associates in computer programming when I received news that my Mother had died.”
“Ho vissuto in un piccolo appartamento fuori di Napoli.” She said in fluent Italian. “That means; I lived in a small apartment in Napoli…and that’s about all the Italian I can remember.” She smiled briefly and Marty did too, knowing that he could never have figured out this side of this amazing woman on his own. He just knew that he admired her even more than ever that she’d been able to pull herself out off the hell she’d been living.
“In Italy I made real friends for the first time in my life. I lived in this little apartment owned by this chubby little Italian woman who wanted to marry me off to one of her sons.” She had a reflective smile on her face.
“Tomas was the youngest and he was unlike anyone I’d ever met before. He thought I was a goddess.” She chuckled.
Marty knew that he should probably be jealous of this Tomas, but he also knew that she needed someone to see the beauty in her and therefore he was happy that he had been there to show her.
“But then I got the call about my mother.” She had promised them that she’d return, but had never even called. “When I got home I saw that nothing had changed there. I had. But everything there was just the same, even that fucking linoleum floor that I’d had to scrub once a week since I was nine years old. You have to understand, Marty. My Mother was my life in the projects. I mean, she was hard on us. You could call it abusive. But I loved her. Being back there without her made me feel isolated; alone. It made me want to seek out my family connections again…which, in my case, had been the streets.
“I discharged from the Army and got an apartment and a decent job in an office. But I was back to hanging out with my friends on the street, smoking dope…and now…I could afford the harder stuff.” Nicole closed her eyes and when she opened them again she stared into the distance. “I started using heroin, and coke. James; my old boyfriend, and I got back together. Before I knew it I was pregnant.
“For a hot second I got some sense and kicked James to the curb and stopped doing dope.” She shook her head angrily. “But then my job let me go because I was pregnant.”
“What? But that’s illegal.”
“Yes, but they did it in a way that made it appear that they were just downsizing. I was last hired so I was first fired.
“It killed me to do it, but I couldn’t find another job so late in my pregnancy. So…I had to get on welfare.” Nicole swallowed. “I really worked hard so that I would never have to resort to that life. But with all of my training in the workforce, still a pregnant 25 year old black woman was no big catch.” Marty looked at his feet silently.
“I was alone so…back came James. But I didn’t use, not while I was pregnant; never when I was pregnant.” Marty didn’t look up. Nicole took a deep breath and despite her resolve, felt her eyes sting. “Alicia was born and…she was so beautiful. She looked like a little Angel. Everybody told me to get her into modeling or movies. I just…” Nicole paused. “I found myself a little job when she was a couple months old…but there was no way, Marty, no way that I could afford a place out of the projects, daycare and a baby on that salary. So I let James back in my life with dreams that we’d get married and be a family. Together we could make it…well… he didn’t share my vision.
“So there I was. Two degrees and living in the fucking projects on fucking welfare! What people don’t always realize is that you can be on assistance and still work. You can get vouchers for your child for food, medical, even daycare. And obviously it’s reduced the higher paying job you have. So someone like me that finds a good job, but has to work their way up, can’t afford all-day daycare for a newborn baby, an apartment, and food…one of those things has to go. Hell I’m not even talking about phone, bus fare, cable, I’m talking the essentials.” She sighed again. She was here to tell the story, not to apologize, not to appear like a villain or a hero. She continued. “I went back to hanging out with my old friends and getting high.” Tears dropped from her eyes but her voice never changed and Marty never looked up.
“I thought…I convinced myself that I was keeping it under control when I only got high after Alicia went to bed. But then the crave started hitting me during the day and I’d take Alicia to a neighbor’s house for a couple hours while James and I got high. Then it was; put her in her bed or play pen and go get high. And then after a while it was; ‘she’s two. She doesn’t know what she’s seeing.’” Her voice broke and she swallowed back tears.
“James came over with some crack cocaine one day. I’d just made Alicia lunch and she was in her high chair watching her favorite cartoon show on TV Well…” She gulped. Tears dropping like fat rain drops. “James and I started smoking, sitting on the couch, watching cartoons with Alicia.” She still remembered the song playing in the background and Alicia’s tiny voice singing along ‘…if all the raindrops where lemon drops and gum drops oh what a rain it would be; standing outside with my mouth opened wide…’ “I remember coming fully awake. Alicia wasn’t in the highchair. James was still there nodding. Every time before, she’d be in front of the TV, even if she did manage to climb out of the highchair.” Nicole sniffed down more of the tears and continued in a hoarse voice, drops dripping from her chin and splashing her shirt.
“This time, though, Alicia was lying on the floor with…with crack rocks falling out of her mouth. I screamed, picked her up and ran to one of my neighbors. You see, I was so fucked up I didn’t even think to call 911. My baby hung on for two days…” Nicole defiantly swiped her wet face while Marty refused to look at her.
“My charge somehow was reduced to child endangerment and I got two years probation. I never asked for it, didn’t care at that point and to this day can’t remember how and why it happened. James got 18 months in prison for brining the drugs into the house. When the Judge looked at me, I saw in her eyes such contempt. She told me that what made my case so bad was that I did have an education…that this was a choice I had made. I don’t remember any of the events around that time but what that judge said to me will forever be seared in my brain. That was the very second I died. And the person that walked out of that courtroom was not the same person that walked in. No handcuffs, no jail sentence…but I was better off dead. The judge hadn’t lied. That had been my choice.”
Marty looked at her then. Tears dropped from his eyes, too. “Nicole, I am so sorry, baby…” She looked down at her hands.
“Although they didn’t set a punishment for me, I set my own…it was more a goal. I must finish my schooling, have a career and have a home. Until I’ve done that my life is not my own. Then I’m going to write that Judge and tell her that Alicia didn’t die in vain.
“That’s why I don’t have a car and I live in a shabby little apartment and school is my life. That’s why…”
“Why you can’t accept help?” Marty said solemnly.
“I don’t quite know who I am. The person here now is no one I ever knew before. I’m not the girl who lived in the projects or Alicia’s mother. I’m kind of…nothing; just a person trying to facilitate an ends to a means.”
Marty stood slowly. “I had no idea.” He pulled her into his arms. Nicole was amazed that he could stand to touch her after what she’d just told him. Gratefully, she allowed it. The door to Alicia was cracked open finally.
“Nicole. I want you to hear me.” He was holding her tight. “I’m not going to ask you to lean on me. I’m going to ask you to let me lean on you.” A small sob escaped her. “At first I thought it was me that was helping you, but now I know that it’s just the opposite. I need you. I need you.”
Nicole raised her arms and wrapped them around Marty’s neck.
“You feel this way even after the horrible story I told you?” She asked, face hidden in his neck.
He pulled back and looked deeply into her worried eyes. “I want to be with you. That’s all I care about.” This time when he kissed her it was gentle and reassuring. She became liquid in his arms.
“Nicole,” he croaked, pulling back from her.
“Yes, Baby?” she responded, eyes hooded.
“You’re fired.”
“What?” Her arms dropped away from him and she stepped back confused. “Are you joking?”
Marty’s eyes were apologetic. “I’m sorry, Nicole. I can’t have a personal relationship with one of my employees-”
Nicole’s mouth dropped in disbelief. “You’re serious?”
“If I worked that closely with my girlfriend, then it would be chaos-”
“You’re going to fire me?! You could just work days-”
“But then I’d never see you-”
“Well FUCK that!”
“I know of another j
ob-”