27
Karma looked at the package again. It had her name and company address typed neatly on the label, but there was no return address.
The package had arrived just before she’d left the office and now it sat on her kitchen table as she and Seneca stood staring at it.
“Well, open it,” Seneca urged for the third time. “You’re acting like a freak.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“I didn’t call you a freak, I said you’re acting like one.”
Seneca was right. She was behaving like a freak, but something about the package got her skin to crawling; she’d almost tossed it in the trash on the subway platform, that’s how intense the feeling was.
“Maybe it’s from that guy you won’t tell me anything about.”
Karma looked over at Seneca, who was now sprawled out on the couch, her index finger stuck deep into her ear foraging for wax. Suddenly Karma couldn’t figure why it was she kept her as a friend. Mentally she shifted Seneca over to the acquaintance column of her life.
Finally Karma took a deep breath and ripped open the package, and as she did she could hear Seneca scurry from the couch and to her side.
“Wow,” Seneca exclaimed as she stared down at the ivory-colored silk teddy. “That looks expensive,” she said, reaching her stubby fingers out to touch the material.
Karma snatched it quickly away. “You just had your finger in your ear.”
Seneca rolled her eyes and stood back on one leg.
There was an envelope lying on the red tissue paper the teddy had been wrapped in. Seneca swooped it up, opened it, and read the note aloud: “Karma, meet me at the Pierre Hotel this Tuesday at eight p.m. Give me a chance to make it all up to you. Wear this with stilettos and nothing else. I will send a car to meet you at work. CJ”
Seneca’s eyes popped. “What the hell?”
Karma just smirked at her before snatching the note from her hand.
“Now that,” Seneca said, “is some freaky shit!”
“Shut up,” Karma said as she walked off toward her bedroom.
“Is this what you guys do?” Seneca asked, following close behind. “I mean, I like it. Okay, I love that kind of shit!”
Karma tossed the teddy onto the bed. Who did this CJ think he was? No phone call in two weeks, just a few three-word e-mails, and now this? What did he think she was, some kind of call girl? He never asked, just demanded and assumed she would do whatever he wanted her to do.
And so far she had, hadn’t she?
She was so stupid!
“I really need to be alone right now,” Karma spouted suddenly.
Seneca was wounded. “What? Why?”
“I just do.”
“Why are you mad at me? I didn’t send you the teddy.”
“Seneca, please.” Karma’s voice was stern.
“Whatever,” Seneca said as she turned and walked out of the bedroom. “You may be Karma Jackson, but you still got a lot of Mildred Johnson’s ways.”
“What?”
“You’ve got to loosen up. The man wants to play sex games, so what? Stop being so conservative and let your wild side out of its cage sometimes.”
Seneca was at the front door, her hand on the knob. “Every man you meet is not a potential mate. Sometimes they’re just for fuck’s sake.”
She swung the door open and walked out.
Karma stood and watched as the door slowly swung closed.
Everything Seneca had said was true. But Karma was no prude, she didn’t have a problem with casual sex, it’s just that she wanted to be more than a toy to this man.
He was Grade A, something special, husband material, and she wanted nothing more than to be a wife.
28
“Hey, baby.” Claude’s sexy voice slithered through the telephone lines, wrapping itself all around her.
Crystal pressed her thighs together; just the sound of his voice made her moist.
“Hey, yourself.”
Claude said he was still in LA. He had to extend his trip another few days, but assured her that he would be back on Friday.
“Miss me?”
“All day and all night.” Crystal giggled as she flipped over onto her back with a little grunt.
“Are you in bed?”
She was ashamed to say that she was in bed in the middle of the afternoon. But she’d had a restless night and decided when she put the kids down for their nap that she would do the same for herself.
“Yes, I am. But you see—” She started to explain herself but Claude cut her off.
“Really? That’s nice,” he purred. “Are you naked?”
Of course she wasn’t naked. But she would play along.
“Uh-huh,” she giggled as she slipped her hand down between her legs.
Claude hadn’t allowed himself to cum. He would save that for Karma.
Women weren’t the only ones who could fake it, he snickered to himself as he climbed into the marble shower stall of his bathroom en suite at the Pierre Hotel.
Jaihara had needed more comforting than expected, and so Claude ended up taking the red-eye from LAX, which got him into New York around seven in the morning.
“I love my life!” he bellowed as the hot water came rushing out of the faucet and crashing onto his skin.
It was nearly ten o’clock; he suspected that if he’d read Karma right (he had a knack for reading women), the front desk would be calling up soon to announce her arrival.
Claude’s plan was to meet her at the door, buck-naked. If she ran, it was no sweat off his back. If she stayed, he’d treat her to the best fuck of her life.
He flexed his muscles as he stood and admired himself in the vanity mirror. What had he done to be so goddamn good-looking? Not just good-looking, but smart, successful, powerful and rich? He had it all, didn’t he?
And his story wasn’t some movie-of-the-week tearjerker either. His father wasn’t an abusive alcoholic who couldn’t keep a job and his mother wasn’t some strung-out addict who’d met a tragic end at the mouth of a dark alley.
His father, Adam, was a successful dentist, and his mother, Vivian, a homemaker with a master’s degree in art.
Claude grew up in Freeport, Long Island, went to public school, excelled in sports, didn’t make prom king but got to fuck the prom queen, and then went off to Pennsylvania State University on a full scholarship.
The only time Claude ever worked for someone other than himself was when he was sixteen years old and spent the summer as a lifeguard.
In college, he’d kept mostly to himself. He liked to read the Wall Street Journal and daydream about his bright future.
He convinced his father to buy some stock in AOL. Claude had explained to his father that the Internet was going to be what the telephone had been a century earlier. “And you remember what happened to that Ma Bell stock, don’t you?”
In a few years AOL made them all rich. The rest, as they say, is history.
That had been the first of a number of wise choices.
The blaring sound of the phone cut through his musing. “Hello?”
“Miss Karma Jackson is here, sir. Shall I send her up?”
CJ looked over at the clock. She was eight minutes early.
“Yes, please do.”
29
Shelly stared at the blinking cursor on her computer screen. It had been blinking that way for nearly twenty minutes straight.
“Starting is the hardest part,” she whispered to herself.
She went through this each and every time she sat down to write a new book. It made her crazy.
Glancing over at the desk calendar, her eyes fell on the number fifty, written in red marker beneath the date, July 10.
Shelly was supposed to have fifty pages and she didn’t even have a first sentence.
Jumping up from her desk, she strolled over to the window and lit a cigarette. Inhaling deeply, she stared out onto the street, which was empty except for the mailman.
She had ideas swirling around in her head like a windstorm, but couldn’t seem to settle on just one.
“Just write!” her mind screamed at her. “It’s not like this is something new. It always comes together in the end!”
It was true, she thought as she stubbed the cigarette out and walked back over to her desk. It did always come together in the end.
His hands kneaded her thighs, slowly turning her muscles to butter. His hands were like fire on Magda’s skin and she fought to contain herself.
Am I pressing too hard? Aldo, her masseuse, inquired.
No, Magda responded, and then a groan escaped her and she threw caution to the wind, tossing the towel to the floor and exposing her nakedness.
Miss Magda! Aldo cried in surprise.
Magda turned over and spread her legs; she wanted Aldo to see her Eden, already dripping with her nectar.
I want you to drink from my vessel, Aldo, Magda cried as she clutched his wrist and tugged him downward.
Aldo’s lips brushed her thigh and then she felt his tongue …
Shelly suddenly pushed back from her desk. “Damn,” she muttered as her wheeled chair rolled to the wall and stopped with a bump.
She hated writing sex scenes; they made her hot.
“Whatever,” she said aloud, and rolled back to the desk, where she opened the bottom drawer and pulled out a black and gold vibrator.
Slipping out of her shorts and thong, she propped her legs up on the desk and leaned back in the chair, forcing it to tilt dangerously back on its stem.
Shelly flicked the switch and the vibrator came trembling to life.
Teasing her clitoris with the pointed tip of the device, her eyes picked over the various framed newspaper articles and pictures of herself with friends and family members, until finally her eyes fell on the framed movie poster of Training Day, which pictured Denzel as the bad boy cop of her dreams.
She steadied her gaze and slid the vibrator deep inside her. “Oooh,” she moaned, “Denzel, Denzel,” as her body bucked in the leather chair, sending her wetness slipping down the crack of her behind, where it puddled beneath her cheeks.
Shelly moved the vibrator in and out at such a rapid rate that her orgasm jumped the starter bell and caught her off guard.
A scream exploded in her throat as pleasure ripped through her abdomen.
She wanted to smoke a cigarette, but was too weak to move. She imagined she must have looked a pitiful sight, her shorts and underwear strewn on the floor, her feet resting on the edge of the desk, knees splayed wide, exposing the creamy-colored goo of her orgasm.
“Crystal?”
Shelly was truly surprised.
Crystal smiled, a bit embarrassed. “Hi,” she said, giving her a little two-finger wave. “I hope I didn’t interrupt you?”
She had interrupted her. Shelly had masturbated two more times, finally releasing enough tension to pound out twenty very good pages. When Crystal rang the bell, she had just hit her stride.
“No, not at all,” Shelly lied as she smiled down at Javid and Kayla. “Come in.”
“I was going stir crazy and just wanted a little adult company.”
“Well, come in,” Shelly said again.
“No, no, I actually wanted to know if you wanted to join me … I mean us, for a walk?”
Shelly considered Crystal for a minute and then thought about her work in progress; she could hear it calling to her from the study, but Crystal looked so needy.
“Okay, no problem, let me just grab my keys.”
Shelly couldn’t remember the last time she’d been to the playground. She and Crystal were quiet for a while as they watched Kayla and Javid rip and run with the other children.
“Gosh,” Shelly said with a sigh, “remember when you had that type of energy?”
Crystal nodded her head and took a tiny sip from her water bottle. “It seems so long ago.”
“I keep telling myself I’m going to start running, bike riding, something, anything to get this old body in shape!”
“Old? Please,” Crystal quipped with a roll of her eyes. “You look great!”
“You flatter me, Crystal.”
Crystal turned and looked Shelly square in the eye. “We’ve got to be the same age.”
“Really? How old are you, thirty-three?”
Crystal beamed. “Now you’re flattering me. I’m forty!”
“You look damn good, girl.”
“Thanks. So what are you? Forty-one?”
Shelly gave her a sly smile. “Fifty-one.”
Crystal’s mouth dropped open. “You are a goddamn liar!” she screamed, and leveled a slap on Shelly’s knee.
“Ow! Am not.” Shelly laughed as she retrieved her wallet from the denim Coach swing pack she carried.
“See?”
Crystal stared at Shelly’s license picture and the birth date beneath it. It was true.
“Shelly, you look fabulous!”
“Well, you know what they say,” Shelly said as she flipped the wallet closed. “Fifty is the new forty!”
Their conversation jumped from books to music to favorite foods, and all the while Crystal marveled at Shelly’s tight, flaw-less skin, straight white teeth, and washboard stomach.
“Stop staring, Crystal, you’re freaking me out,” Shelly complained.
“I’m sorry, girl, I just can’t believe it. When I grow up I want to be just like you. Or at least have your body!”
Shelly blushed, looked at her watch and announced she had to get back home.
“I understand, girl,” Crystal said. “I appreciate the company.”
“Hey,” Shelly said as she rose from the bench and stuck a Newport between her lips, “let’s get together and do a spa day or something?”
Crystal’s face lit up. “I would love that!”
“Invite your girls, Geneva and …” Shelly snapped her fingers.
“Karma,” Crystal reminded her.
“Yes, Karma.”
Shelly exhaled before leaning over and whispering in a conspiratorial tone, “There is something about that chick, I think she’s got a story.”
Crystal laughed. “Don’t we all? Hey, maybe I should start writing a novel?”
“Maybe you should,” Shelly threw over her shoulder as she strolled away.
Crystal wasn’t sure, but she thought she heard Shelly add, “If you discover what I know about your man, you’ll have a number-one bestseller on your hands.”
30
Shelly poured herself a drink, a tall vodka and grapefruit juice, and carried it out to the patio.
She eased herself down onto the chaise longue and sipped. That wasn’t a nice thing to have said, she scolded herself.
And even though she’d barely said it above a whisper, she knew she’d still been close enough for Crystal to have overheard.
Shelly regretted it now, but at that moment she wanted Crystal to know with whom she was lying down every fourth night or so.
Claude Justine, the new millennium Valentino!
“Ha.” A bitter laugh escaped Shelly’s throat.
She took another sip of the drink to wash away the nasty taste his name left in her mouth.
Claude Justine, a man who had many wives and concubines. A polygamist to the twentieth power!
She drained the glass then.
Shelly had fallen under his spell exactly eighteen years ago. She’d become his wife and given birth to his daughter, their daughter, and then she found out that there were two other wives—she didn’t know about the children—and in turn and of course as one would expect, Shelly had lost her ever-loving mind, threatening to kill him and those bitches!
What got her was that when she confronted him, he didn’t even deny it. When she threatened to tell the world, he fell down on his knees and cried.
Claude confessed that he knew he was sick, a result of his extreme insecurity.
The women meant nothing to him. She was the only woman he want
ed, the only woman he needed!
He would never go near those other women ever again.
“Cross my heart and swear to god.”
Stupidly she believed him and forgave him and a month later, labor pains cutting though her body as she twisted and turned in the hospital bed, Claude came to her with a hefty document. “Baby, I know this isn’t the right time, but I need you to sign these.”
His attorney stood behind him, his face slowly turning a pale green.
She hadn’t even asked what the documents were for. Never in her wildest dreams could she imagine that Claude would pull such a stunt.
Shelly signed everywhere Claude instructed her to and then he signed and then the attorney notarized everything right there in the delivery room.
Shelly found out the news when she was suckling her daughter for the first time. The attorney had come back, sticking his bald head around the green privacy curtain.
“Where’s Claude?”
Shelly hadn’t expected the attorney to be the first person to come visit her after she gave birth.
The attorney’s face was like stone as he handed her a large manila envelope, heavy with documents.
Shelly stretched out her free hand and grabbed hold of the envelope. “Did he have a business meeting to attend?” she asked.
She knew Claude was a very busy, very important man, and so her feelings weren’t too badly hurt when she realized nearly a day had gone by since she’d given birth and he hadn’t come to visit.
The attorney was tight-lipped. But Shelly didn’t miss the flicker of shame in his eyes.
“Good day,” he stammered before turning to leave, and then, almost as an afterthought he said, “and congratulations on your beautiful baby.”
Shelly shrugged her shoulders and tossed the envelope aside.
Later, after she’d left three messages on Claude’s phone, she reached for the envelope and began thumbing through the paperwork.
It began, “I, Shenelody Miller …”
Shelly read through, with growing horror, the paragraphs upon paragraphs of legal jargon. And with each turn of a page, her vision clouded with tears.
It appeared that she had signed divorce papers and had agreed never to reveal the fact that she had known or even been married to Claude Justine.
Lover Man Page 10