Lust

by Victoria Christopher Murray

  The problem was, though, I didn’t have to look that deep to know that Tiffanie was right. I mean, there wasn’t a lot that was right about our sexual situation; Tiffanie and I had been holding it down in bed for the last couple of years, though it had been work to get to even that point. At first, I’d been all about hittin’ that, but that hit had made a quick left to love. That was my bottom line—I loved that woman and couldn’t get enough of her.

  But I guess after our long three-year engagement, what was a little more time? If having four sexless days were important to her before we stood in front of God and her grandfather, then I was going to do it. On Friday she’d be mine—all alone and all the time.

  “I promise, I won’t hassle you about this anymore.” I made that promise as if she were standing in front of me.

  But on Friday night? On our honeymoon? Forget about touring Dubai; the most I planned to see of that city were the sights I could take in from the hotel window.

  I swung my chair around, needing to get my mind right. I had to stop thinking about Tiffanie and our honeymoon or I wasn’t going to be ready for this call with Jaleesa.

  I opened the folder that my assistant, Hillary, had laid out on my desk, but now, instead of thinking about my girl, my thoughts shifted to my boy.

  Just thinking about seeing Trey in an hour or so made me lean back, take in the moment, and smile. It had been too many years. We’d hooked up a couple of times after I’d left him in Atlanta, but once he got locked down, I’d locked him out.

  It wasn’t that I wanted to leave my boy out there like that. It was just something that my father had taught me:

  Don’t associate your name with or on anything that’s connected to someone on the inside. Because what folks don’t know is that they watch those on the inside and their connections on the outside.

  It was a lesson from my father, Jerome King, who was the truth—at least when it came to matters of the street. He’d raised me, or should I say he mostly raised me. The amount of time we spent together was limited by the amount of time he spent in jail. My childhood memories were filled with him being on the inside way more than he was ever on the outside. But he was still my teacher, passing on to me a perspective that I needed. He didn’t want me in prison. Period. That was the extent of his dreams for me, but he was serious about his responsibility to make that happen.

  So even though the only opportunities I ever saw came to me from the streets, I wasn’t gonna be that cat. I had the same dream for my life as my father. That’s why I had no choice but to handle Trey the way I had when he went to prison.

  Four ounces.

  Twenty years.

  I never thought I’d see my boy again. But the thing was, I hadn’t left Trey out there alone. He just didn’t know that I had his back the entire time he was locked up.

  Slamming the folder shut, I pushed back from my desk. I needed to get my mind into my business. I hadn’t gotten to this level without strict discipline, but right now, it was hard to concentrate. Standing in front of the window that covered the whole wall, I took in this grand view of U Street. Trey and I weren’t even teenagers when we worked this block, first as runners for Smooth Luke, one of my father’s connects, then for ourselves after we started buying our own bricks. At fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen, we had more money in our pockets than most people who lived in this neighborhood then earned in five years.

  But U Street was a different place now. No longer was it the pulse of the ghetto. Now, the U Street Corridor was a bustling section of this metropolis with hardly a black face in sight. Chocolate City had turned from dark to white in the seven years that Trey had actually served.

  Seven years.

  In prison.

  The guilt I had to push away every few weeks passed over me like a shadow. And with that old guilt came that old thought: Maybe if I’d been down there in Atlanta with Trey, I could have controlled him and he wouldn’t have done that time. But like I always did, I pushed that thought aside. No matter where I was or wasn’t, no matter what I said or didn’t, this story would have had the same ending—because of Trey Taylor.

  “You know we don’t need to be getting in any beefs with those boys over in Northeast.”

  “You should have let me handle him,” Trey said as he slammed his fist against the dashboard of my first car.

  I kept the car moving because I wasn’t trying to catch any kind of Five-O attention. But if Trey put any marks on my Mustang, he and I were gonna have a situation.

  I kept my calm, kept my voice steady as I tried to school my boy. “This is business, Trey. You need to stop taking things so personally.”

  He looked at me as if fingers were growing out of my ears. “It was business that he made personal. Don’t no white boy call me boy.”

  I sighed. How many times was I going to have to check this cat? He was my boy and everything, but there was always something; we were always on the verge of some kind of blowup.

  “We’re seventeen; to most people we are still boys. Plus, what difference does it make what he calls you as long as you got his money?”

  “Yeah, well, that may be how you handle it, but I need more than his money, he better give me his respect, too. He’s lucky that I didn’t have my piece on me.”

  “And what would that have done? Suppose he had a piece?”

  “You think that matters to me? I fear no man.”

  Just like back then, my head started to throb. Over the years of our brotherhood, I’d had to check Trey too many times. I’d had to talk us out of too many beefs. My boy was wild with a spirit that listened to no one, especially not me. He’d head left just because I said go right. He hated that I was the decision maker.

  But that’s how it had to be because no one wanted to deal with Trey and his hot head; I’d tried to tell him that a cool head always claimed victory. But Trey believed that rolling up on someone defined him as a man.

  Trey’d been the reason why I’d finally quit the game. Between his mouth and his temper, I felt the tick of the clock. Someone was going to come for us—either another player or Five-O.

  So when it was time to leave, I left. But I couldn’t convince Trey to get out with me because he lived on adrenaline and the edge and he wasn’t afraid to serve time.

  That right there was his problem. He liked the fact that he’d had a few short stays; that added to his street-cred résumé. As long as a shorty came to hit him up once in a while, he had money on his books, and he had access to his Mary Jane, he was straight.

  Until.

  Four ounces.

  Twenty years.

  Moving away from the window, I hoped that by the time I got to my desk, my mind would be back to business. But when I sat down, it was still all about Trey. What I wanted to believe was that this hard time had been a good thing. Maybe in a twisted kind of way, this bid had changed him, had helped him to get some sense.

  And if he had changed, then I was ready to do all that I could to help. While he was here, I was gonna talk to him, feel him out, and if I liked what I saw, I’d set him up, have him work with me.

  The thought of that made me smile, ’cause as rough as the bad times were, it really was all about good times. Trey was my brother and I could imagine us standing shoulder to shoulder again.

  But the wild card—had Trey changed? And that question brought along a bunch of others—if Trey hadn’t changed, could I work with him again? Could I trust him? Would he (knowingly or unknowingly) ever bring me down?

  So many questions.

  The vibration from my cell phone broke my thoughts.

  Are you ready for your call with Jaleesa? She and her agent are on the line and I will connect you.

  I texted back: Y

  That was all Hillary needed, and by the time my cell phone rang, I had flipped from personal to professional.

  “
What’s up, Jaleesa?” I said to the former model, former talk show host, now minister, who was the breakout star of a reality show and would, in the fall, be starring in her own series.

  Right now, my head was back into my business. I’d handle this and in about an hour, it would be all about my friend; then I’d have all the answers I’d need.

  3

  Tiffanie

  He was just a man. This was just an airport. But both that man and this airport had my blood pressure rising.

  I jumped from the car and sprinted across the lot, even though I didn’t feel stable running in these four-inch-heel red bottoms. Really, I shouldn’t have been running—I shouldn’t have even been walking. Trey’s behind should have met me at curbside, but Damon wanted Trey’s homecoming to be more personal.

  I slowed my steps and tried to pull back all the negativity that was rolling through my mind. The only reason I was upset was because this was Trey. I would’ve met any of my friends right at the gate if I could get past TSA.

  It was crazy that I had these feelings for a man I’d never met. It was just that I had heard too many stories about him that I just didn’t like. Now, of course, Damon had told me all about his role and the things he’d done. But a person only had to spend two seconds with my boo to know that he’d changed. It wasn’t hard to see Damon’s heart. He’d been changed from the inside.

  But Trey? He hadn’t changed. I knew that because when Damon and I first met, I would hear him on the phone trying to school his friend, but Trey didn’t want to learn. And so what happened? Prison! And he was probably harder now than before. That’s why I felt he didn’t need to be anywhere near my man.

  But on some ole program for nonviolent criminals, Trey had been released, just in time for our wedding, and Damon wanted him to be there. It didn’t make a lot of sense to me; seven years was a long time not to see someone and still call him your best friend. But Damon explained to me that just because you hadn’t seen your brother, no amount of time passing would ever take away the fact that you were brothers.

  I tried to understand that, though if I had to explain it to anyone, it felt like Damon was trying to make up for the lost time to Trey, especially since it was Trey’s idea to stand up for Damon.

  All I could do was pray that Trey would stand next to Damon on Friday night, and then be on the first thing heading back to Atlanta on Saturday morning.

  I rushed into the terminal, peeped at the screen, and released a deep breath when I saw that Trey’s plane had just hit the tarmac.

  I strolled over to the carousel where his bags would be and took a moment to calm down and focus my thoughts. There were so many things I had to do this week, and I pulled out my phone to review my personal to-do list. Today alone, I had to meet our wedding planner at the Willard to review the seating arrangements, and then run over to check on my grandmother’s dress. As I scanned the checklist, my mind kept wandering back to my favorite subject, Damon King, and right away, I smiled.

  Yeah, he had an attitude this morning, but how could I be mad at my baby? All I had to do was think about all that he’d done for me, from the fabulous gifts that he gave me—usually wrapped in one of those little blue boxes from a store that shared my name—to the credit cards I had for all the top designer stores. And then there were the gifts that really mattered—the thousands of dollars he’d given me so that I could finish my last two years at Howard, the opportunities he’d provided to help me polish my social skills in a Jack and Jill sort of way, the events he took me to: legacy banquets with Oprah, political fund-raisers where I’d even met Michelle Obama.

  His goodness rained down on me, yet one of the best gifts was still a month away—because of this man, I was about to have my own business.

  My grandparents always told me that my blessings began the day I was born; not that I ever believed them. How could I, once I became old enough to understand why I was living with them and not my mother?

  But then, one day back in 2008, I began to feel that maybe God hadn’t forgotten about me. I leaned back on the post where I stood, closed my eyes, and remembered . . .

  May 27, 2008

  HOWARD UNIVERSITY. THE Blackburn Center. Waiting to speak to my financial adviser and praying that he could help me. I shook as I waited—not out of fear, just anticipation. Two years of college and every bill had been paid. But now there were two years in front of me, and even though I had walked by the faith that my grandparents had taught me, I couldn’t figure out how faith was going to get me to graduation.

  My grandparents had already scraped together what little they had, and without their sacrifices, I wouldn’t have made it this far. Howard had done its part, too, with a partial scholarship that covered what my grandparents couldn’t.

  But now, facing my junior year, expenses were going to be higher by a third. Everything, from textbooks to housing, cost more. My grandparents told me to come back home to save money on room and board, but now that I’d tasted this morsel of freedom, there was no way I was going back to living under my grandfather’s roof and rules. The lock he kept me under didn’t even have a key. I knew it was because he loved me, I knew it was because he didn’t want me to end up like my mother. But his love didn’t let me breathe and I had come to love all the inhales and exhales of my life.

  So, if I wanted to graduate, if I wanted to stay on campus, if I wanted to continue living this life . . . I needed cash money.

  I picked up the current issue of The Hilltop and flipped through the pages, hoping one of the articles would keep my attention until Mr. York called me into his office. But then, something caught my eye, and it wasn’t anything in the school newspaper. Actually, it wasn’t just my eyes that were distracted. It was more like—all of me; like a feeling swept over, then hovered above me. I looked up to search for what had upset my equilibrium and at the front door, there stood this brother.

  Even though he was feet away, I could tell that he wasn’t a student. He was way too distinguished-looking in that tailored suit, looking like a model in an ad for life after graduation. As he strolled closer, I saw the diamond earring that glittered from his lobe and the gold diamond-laced watch that peeked from under the hem of his sleeve.

  But what really gave him away, besides all of his sophistication and apparent money, the real reason why I knew he was a full-fledged man, was because of the way he moved. He strutted like he knew all about life.

  My lips parted as I watched him, and I hoped that he didn’t think I was gawking. It was just that I couldn’t take my eyes off what looked like power personified. I was impressed with his importance.

  As he turned toward the information desk, his eyes met mine. He stopped. He stared. He pivoted. And then, without speaking to anyone else, he came straight toward me.

  He stood just a few inches outside of my personal space and said, “I can fix it.”

  I blinked and even turned to my right and left because I couldn’t figure out a couple of things: number one, was he speaking to me? And number two, if he was, what did he mean? “What?” I asked.

  “Whatever you need, whatever you want,” he said, with his catlike eyes laser-focused on mine, “I’ll give it to you.”

  Then he sat down next to me. At any other time, I might have gotten up and moved, just because I didn’t want to be pulled into a conversation, but with the man who’d introduced himself as Damon King, I wanted to stay.

  “And your name?” he asked.

  “Tiffanie Cooper.”

  He held his hand out and I shook it, remembering all the things I’d learned about being professional: keep your handshake as strong as your eye contact.

  “So, what is it that you need?” he asked. “How can I help you?”

  I hesitated, because for a second I wondered if he were some kind of pervert. But then, if he were, why would he be so dressed up and hanging out in the financial aid office of a
college?

  “I don’t think you can help me; I’m here to talk to my ­adviser.”

  “So, you’re a student here?”

  I resisted the urge to say, ‘Duh,’ and just nodded. “I’m a rising junior, and it’s time for me to get a job.”

  He grinned. “See? I told you I could help you. I’m looking for an intern to expand my company and you’re the woman to help me.”

  The word pervert came back to my mind because his response was a little too convenient. “What kind of company do you have?”

  “Oh, I do a little of this and a little of that.”

  What in the world?

  “I really have several small companies all rolled into one,” he said, explaining further. “Entertainment, real estate, anything that can make money in this new millennium.”

  “So you’re looking for an intern?”

  He nodded. “And like I said, you’re the woman who can help me make this happen.”

  I tossed the magazine I’d been holding back onto the table and shook my head. “I’m not looking for an internship; I need a paying job.”

  He frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Internships. They give you experience, but no money.”

  “Who would work for no money?”

  “Exactly!” I said.

  “Well, my internship pays.”

  Once again, this man had my attention. “How much?”

  “How much do you need?”

  I laughed out loud and he grinned. But he didn’t get it because he asked, “What’s so funny?”

  “You . . . asking me . . . how much money I want to make.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  When I’d first laid my eyes on this brother, I thought he was the sophisticated, intelligent type. Now, I didn’t know if he was playing me or had just gotten off some kind of boat. But if he were playing, I was gonna play him. I decided to give him a number—around the minimum wage and then increase it by two dollars. “I’m looking to earn about eight dollars an hour.”