by Mary Monroe
CHAPTER 40
Louis called me up before I left work and invited me to have dinner with him that night. I appreciated his offer, and as much as I wanted to be with him again, I reluctantly declined.
I didn’t know how long our romantic relationship was going to last, so I wanted to do everything I could think of to keep it fresh and exciting. I knew from experience that too much of a good thing too soon was not a good thing. Even though he had asked several times to see me more frequently, I didn’t want to get bored with him by seeing him too often. And I didn’t want him to get sick of seeing me. I decided that once or twice a week was enough for now.
Later in the week, I regretted not taking Louis up on his offer, because I didn’t see him the following Thursday, like we had planned. And there was more than one reason for that. Rhoda was too busy planning Jade’s wedding, so I had not been able to catch up with her to coordinate our Thursday night bowling ruse.
With all the last-minute preparations and running around she had to deal with, she was too exhausted to go bowling that night she said when she finally did return one of my calls. And since she was my cover, I couldn’t use her as my alibi, in case Pee Wee went to the bowling alley when I was supposed to be there and wasn’t. Ironically, he was the other reason I had chosen not to see Louis that Thursday night.
I had called the barbershop during my lunch hour to give Pee Wee a message from his daughter and was told that he’d left for the day. As usual, I didn’t identify myself as his wife, and this time I didn’t even attempt to find out where he’d gone. My dear, sweet Rhoda supplied that information herself a half hour later. She could not have called me up at a better time. I had just concluded a particularly disturbing call. A debtor had threatened to come to my office and blow my brains out if I “harassed” him again about a bill he claimed he was unable to pay. The threat had come right after I told him that when I’d called his number a few days before, his roommate had informed me that he was “still on his Mediterranean cruise.” I had received numerous threats from debtors over the years. So far, none had carried out their threats, so I didn’t let this one scare me much, either. Besides, I had other more serious situations to be concerned about.
“Is Pee Wee feelin’ any better?” Rhoda wanted to know. “Did he make it home all right?”
“Better than what? What are you talking about?” I asked.
“I went to finalize the cake details at Joset’s Bakery a little while ago, and I saw him comin’ out of Dryer’s Drugstore next door. He told me that he’d left work because he was sick,” she said. “He had just picked up a prescription.”
I was immediately concerned, but I didn’t want to jump the gun. I decided to make light of the news Rhoda had just shared with me. “I bet it was some more Viagra,” I replied.
“Some more Viagra? Is he really usin’ that shit to perform?”
“He must be!” I exclaimed, my head throbbing and my ears ringing.
I still had no proof that my husband was seeing another woman, but trying to convince myself that he was made it easier for me to continue my behavior with Louis.
“Well, if he is seein’ another woman, she must be fuckin’ the livin’ hell out of his ass. He looked like Rasputin with lead poisonin’.”
“You should have seen him the day he came back from his alleged overnight fishing trip. He looked like roadkill.”
“Anyway, Jade changed her mind about the cake again. Now she wants angel food.”
“That was her first choice,” I said, my voice rising. I wanted it to sound like I was a lot more concerned about Jade’s wedding cake than I was about my husband.
The truth of the matter was, I was truly concerned about him leaving work to go home because he didn’t feel well. I could not remember the last time he’d done that. I almost wished that Rhoda had not told me about him picking up a prescription. I wanted to believe that it was for Viagra and not something that I had to be worried about. I was concerned, but I was also curious. I wanted to know what was going on with my husband, but I knew that he was the only person who could tell me that. Well, I was now at a point where I was tired of guessing. I wanted to know what I was up against. What Pee Wee had to tell me would help me decide just how far I wanted to go with Louis.
He didn’t answer the telephone when I called our house five minutes after my conversation with Rhoda. I tried every fifteen minutes for the next two hours. Finally, I left the office and rushed home, praying I wouldn’t walk up on his corpse in my living room. Or something much worse. Like him fucking another woman in my bed.
I drove like a bat out of hell, narrowly missing a tree. A few blocks after that, I made such a sharp turn at a corner, I almost hit a mailbox sitting on the curb. A few blocks later I almost hit a pedestrian who was taking his good old time crossing the street. I almost hit several other vehicles along the way. I wasn’t concerned about getting a few tickets, but I was concerned about causing a serious accident. Halfway to my house, I slowed down considerably. Turning on the radio helped; by the time I reached my street, I was fairly calm.
Our house was in the middle of our block. As soon as I turned onto Reed Street, I could see Pee Wee’s car parked in front of the house. And from the looks of things, he had parked it in one hell of a hurry. One of the front tires was on the sidewalk. Right behind his Firebird was Rhoda’s husband’s Jeep. Otis had become so set in his ways and predictable, I could read him like a script. He visited only when he and Pee Wee wanted to sit around and drink beer and look stupid. And since Otis was the lead foreman at the Patterson Street Steel Mill, he could come and go as he pleased.
The last thing I expected to see in my own living room was a strange man stretched out on my sofa, with a can of beer in one hand and the telephone in the other.
“Who the hell are you?” I asked, walking toward him, with my hands on my hips.
“Me? Who de hell are you?” he had the nerve to ask. He gave me an annoyed look as he whispered into the telephone before he hung up.
“I happen to be the owner of this house!” I hollered, looking toward the kitchen.
Rhoda’s husband, Otis, suddenly appeared in the living-room doorway. He shuffled into the room, with his shirt unbuttoned and his belly hanging over the top of his pants like a short apron. Like Pee Wee, Otis had let himself go to the dogs. His shoulder-length dreadlocks were almost completely gray and so matted, I couldn’t tell where one ended and another began. His once handsome face was now hard, with hollowed-out cheeks and sunken eyes. It was hard to believe that forty-six years could do that much damage to a man who had once been so handsome. Now he looked bad enough to haunt a house. With a gremlin like him for a husband, it was easy to understand why Rhoda maintained a lover! He was the man on my sofa that I had not recognized, Ian “Bully” Bullard of London, England, by way of Montego Bay, Jamaica.
“Oh, ho! You are Annette! How cheeky of me not to realize it was you!” he shouted. At forty-nine, Bully was more handsome than ever and still had the body of a prizefighter. He and Otis were originally from Jamaica, but Bully had lived in England so long, his accent had become a combination of Jamaican and English. He had been Otis’s best friend for decades and Rhoda’s lover for almost as long.
“Bully, I’m sorry,” I said, grinning. I reached out to shake his hand, but he gave me a bear hug instead. His embrace was powerful and comforting. This was what a woman liked. Not those little pats on the shoulder or the jaw that I got from my husband.
Bully had been an off-and-on houseguest at Rhoda’s residence for most of this year and the year before, but I hadn’t seen much of him during the last few months. And he wore a mustache now, which was why I had not recognized him immediately.
“You’ve become quite dry since de last time I saw you,” Bully said, leaning back to look me over. He thumped both of my cheeks with his fingers, like he was inspecting a cantaloupe. For the first time in my life, my face was lean enough so that my cheekbones stood out prominentl
y. Bully shrieked and jumped back like I’d bitten him. “Are you all right? What was it?” he asked, with a look of pity on his face.
I never could figure out why the first thing people thought when somebody they knew had lost a lot of weight was that there was something physically wrong with that person. Because I had eliminated so many pounds, I was in better shape now than I’d ever been in my life. Two doctors had told me that. I had more energy than I’d had since I was a teenager, and my blood pressure and cholesterol were finally at normal levels.
“Jesus surely must have wept for you,” Bully said, shaking his head. He turned to Pee Wee, who had moved to the middle of the living-room floor.
The way Pee Wee was clutching his can of beer with both hands, you would have thought it was his dick. “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with her. She just stopped gobblin’ up so much food. That’s all,” he had the nerve to say. “Baby, what are you doin’ home so early?” He looked at his watch and snorted like a bull.
“I came home because I was worried about you,” I said, glaring at him. “I kept calling and calling, and you didn’t answer.”
“Oh, was that you? I thought it was that fool boy Bobby at the shop, so I didn’t pick up,” said Pee Wee. He gave me a look that was so smug, it made my stomach turn. “I turned off the answerin’ machine, too. I didn’t want to be bothered.”
“Apparently!” I hollered. “I just hope none of the calls you ignored were from your daughter.”
“How could she call? I thought you told Rhoda that your mum and dad and de little one was out on a boat for a while,” Otis interjected. “Which is a shame, because they can’t be reached to hear about Jade’s wedding in time to come, eh?”
“Uh, that’s right,” I muttered. One of the biggest problems I had with telling lies was that if I didn’t keep them straight, I had to tell even more lies to keep the first one on track. “My folks can’t be reached….”
“Baby, you want a beer?” Pee Wee asked me, shaking his can in my direction.
“No, I don’t want a beer. I want to know what’s going on. Rhoda told me she saw you at the drugstore, getting a prescription filled.” I saw no reason to tell him that I had called his work and been informed that he’d gone home sick.
“Well, if she had asked me, I would have told her that I was pickin’ up some more of that salve to send to Charlotte for that rash she keeps gettin’ on her legs and arms from them eels she can’t seem to stay away from. Your mama called the other day and told me to pick it up and send it down there by FedEx.”
“Oh. I didn’t know,” I replied. His explanation made sense, but it didn’t explain why he had lied to his workers about going home sick. I knew that Otis was his close friend and drinking buddy. So he didn’t have to lie because he wanted to spend some time with him. And besides, Pee Wee was self-employed and could do as he pleased. “Well, I have plans for this evening. I’ll let you enjoy your company in peace.”
Pee Wee was quite indifferent about me leaving the house again so soon. Not that he could have stopped me, anyway. I excused myself and got back into my car and slammed the door shut so hard, the windows rattled.
I drove past Rhoda’s house, hoping she’d see me and come outside. I didn’t want to take a chance and call her house again and risk having to suffer through another unpleasant encounter if Jade answered the telephone.
I didn’t see Rhoda, and her SUV was not in the driveway, like it usually was. But her future son-in-law was sitting on the front porch steps, alone.
Not only did Marcelo look like a man who didn’t have a friend in the world, but he looked like a man who was awaiting his own execution.
CHAPTER 41
I drove around for about an hour before I pulled into the parking lot of the Grab and Go convenience store on Liberty Street, near Rhoda’s house. I needed to purchase a few things, and I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go at the spur of the moment.
As I was collecting my items, I thought about paying a visit to Miss Rachel’s, the beauty shop where I got my hair done, so I could catch up on my gossip. That idea didn’t appeal to me for too long. The more I thought about it, the more I realized I really wasn’t in the mood to sit around with a bunch of women, listening to them verbally crucify almost everybody I knew. By now they’d have all heard about Jade’s upcoming wedding. It would no doubt be the main course on their shit list. I certainly didn’t want to hear any more news about Jade anytime soon.
Just as I was about to leave the store, with the sugarless gum, deodorant, eyedrops, grape Slurpee, and some condoms—Louis forgot to bring some the last time—that I’d purchased, somebody tapped me on the shoulder. I whirled around to see one of the last faces I wanted to see.
“Hi, Wyrita,” I muttered. I struggled to hide my irritation as I attempted to ease toward the exit.
Wyrita had on a pair of flip-flops, but that didn’t stop her from goose-stepping up to my side, blocking the door so I couldn’t escape. I suddenly felt like I was a hostage. “Girl, what do you think about Jade getting married, with her lazy self? She won’t wash a dish, vacuum a floor, or do nothing else that a good wife is supposed to do. What kind of wife is she going to make?” Wyrita had a basket in her hand that contained a bottle of wine, several cans of sardines, and a large bag of Fritos. She lived just a block away, so I wasn’t surprised to see her in a housecoat, with rollers in her hair. “And to a Mexican at that. Them hot-blooded Spanish dudes is mucho macho. He ain’t going to put up with her shit. He’ll be whupping her happy ass left and right in no time.”
“Well, I just hope she’ll be happy,” I replied, and I truly meant that. As bleak as my opinion was of Jade, I still believed that she had at least one good bone in her body.
“Me, I’m going to make some man a damn good wife. I’m going to show you and everybody else. Especially the folks that laugh at me when I tell them that I’m going to be a perfect wife, like you.”
I had to blink to hold back my tears. What Wyrita had just said was one of the nicest things anybody had ever said about me. I was truly touched. “You think that I’m the perfect wife?”
“Think? Uh-uh, honey chile. I know you are the kind of wife I want to be like. You got it all figured out. I’ve heard other folks say the same thing about you.”
I had to blink some more. I knew that if I didn’t leave that store soon, I was going to have to go back and buy some Kleenex tissue. I was just that close to tears. “Wyrita, it was so nice to see you again, and thank you for saying such nice things about me. I really appreciate hearing that.” Wyrita had moved from in front of the exit, so I started to move toward it again. “I’ll see you at the wedding.”
“I hope Jade likes the salad bowl I got for her. I got it at Kmart for two dollars, but I stuck a forty-dollar Macy’s tag on it. Then I put it in a Macy’s gift box. Lizel got her a gift certificate to go to a spa after her honeymoon.”
Wyrita followed me to my car, still talking. “And Marcelo is such a nice, easygoing man. I’m going to Mexico on my cruise for sure this Christmas. I’m going to bring me a Mexican back home with me, if it’s the last thing I do. If Jade can get one, I know I can.”
“I hope you will,” I said, climbing into my car. Wyrita was still talking, so I had to roll down my window after I started my motor.
“And guess what? Lizel’s been trying to play matchmaker for me and Louis Baines, that fine-ass catering brother!” she yelled.
No, she didn’t say that! Yes, she did. Lizel was trying to hook Wyrita up with Louis. I wasted no time turning off my motor. “Oh? And are you interested in Louis Baines?” The last thing I wanted to deal with was competing with an attractive younger woman for Louis’s attention. My heart began to beat about a mile a minute as I awaited her response.
“He is cute, but I keep telling Lizel that he ain’t my type. I heard he was gay, anyway. Ain’t nobody never seen him with no woman, so he must be.” Wyrita was clearly disgusted by the thought of Louis being a candidate for the
husband she so desperately wanted.
“I heard that same thing myself,” I said, trying to sound as disgusted as Wyrita. “Maybe he is.” I started my motor again. I couldn’t get out of that parking lot fast enough.
I was glad to see that there were no cars parked in the vicinity of my residence when I reached my street. But I entered my living room with caution, anyway. Pee Wee had left the lights on in the living room and the kitchen. I was disappointed to see that the answering machine did not display any messages. My disappointment turned to anger when I saw that he had not turned the machine back on. There was no telling who had called. I could have missed all kinds of important calls! There was only one way to find out, and that was to call up some of the people I thought might have tried to reach me….
“Did you call me?” I asked Louis as soon as he picked up his telephone.
“No, but I wanted to. I hope you are calling to tell me you want to be with me tonight,” he said hopefully.
“I can’t do that, but I will make up for it,” I said, slowly sitting on my sofa. Something was poking me in the butt, so I had to wiggle around until I could retrieve it. I was annoyed to find an empty beer can in my living room, between the pillows on my sofa at that. “I just wanted to hear your voice. Is this a bad time?” I added, setting the beer can on the floor.
“There is never a bad time for you to call me,” Louis told me. One thing I had to give this man credit for was the fact that he always knew what to say and when to say it. “I’ve got all the time in the world for you, baby.” That was what I was talking about! The man truly had a way with words.
“I have to tell you right now that if you were not going to be at Jade’s wedding, I wouldn’t go,” I confessed. “You know how I feel about that girl, and you know why.”
“Sweetie, I know you are angry, and you have every right to be. But at some point, you have to let it go. The important thing is for you not to ever let yourself get in the position for shit like that to happen again.”