Robin nodded.
“I’m sure they’ve prepared a sumptuous meal for your luncheon. Enjoy your time at Kingdom Citizens.”
Angela left, leaving Robin alone amid tastefully understated floral wallpaper, the fragrance of fresh flowers, and the beauty of a well-lit vanity accessorized in gold. Robin pulled out her compact and repowdered her sweaty face. She dabbed a touch of gloss over her lipstick, sprayed a touch of Ashanti between her breasts, and popped in a mint. She looked at her watch: 1:05. This is it. Grabbing the door handle, she walked out of the ladies room and almost ran over Derrick.
“Whoa, excuse me,” Derrick said, grabbing Robin’s arm.
“Oops, I’m sorry,” Robin said at the same time, almost spitting her mint into Derrick’s mustache.
“Are you okay?” they said in unison.
That broke the ice. Derrick looked at her, stepped back, looked again. “Robin?”
Robin was suddenly shy, but covered it with volume. She hoped she looked okay, hoped the mirror hadn’t lied. “Derrick Montgomery! It’s been a long time!” She grabbed Derrick and hugged him tight.
Derrick hugged her back. “Robin! It’s good to see you.” He began walking toward the dining room. “When I got your note, I couldn’t believe it. I told Vivian I was having lunch with you. She would have joined us, but an emergency appointment came up. She sends her best.”
They reached the dining room. Derrick pulled out Robin’s chair and waited for her to be seated. He walked around to the other side of the table and sat down. Almost immediately, an older lady came out of a side door with a pitcher of lemony ice water.
“Good afternoon, Pastor,” she said, pouring his water. “Good afternoon,” she said to Robin as she filled her glass.
“Good afternoon, thank you,” Robin replied. It was as though Derrick had his own personal maid service. She could get used to this.
Derrick looked at Robin with a big smile. It had been some time since he’d talked with anyone from Pilgrims’ Rest besides Mother Moseley. He’d run into other members from time to time, in his travels, but none lately. Looking at Robin made him realize how good it was to reconnect with people who’d been a part of his life’s journey.
“You look well, Robin,” he said. “What a pleasant surprise to get your note. I didn’t even recognize you that day, all clandestine in that hat and everything.”
Robin took a sip of her water. “I started to say something, but the line was long and I really didn’t want to bother you. That’s why I wrote the note. Thought that if you had time, you’d call, but if you were too busy, or had other reasons…”
“Of course I’d call. It’s been what, ten years or so?” The server came in with a bowl of rolls and two tossed salads. Derrick grabbed a roll immediately. “I see you’ve been at it again, Margaret. You and these homemade rolls are going to send a brother straight to the gym. Robin, this is Margaret. She’s going to be one of our premiere bakers at Kingdom Citizens’ new restaurant, Taste & See. Margaret, this is one of my former members from back in the day, from my very first ministry, Pilgrims’ Rest Baptist Church.” He said the last line with a southern preacher’s flare, and proudly.
“Well, nice to meet you,” Margaret said warmly. “Now, what y’all want to drink?” she asked.
Derrick looked at Robin, nodding at her to go first, and she said, “Oh, a cola is fine for me.”
Margaret turned to Derrick. “I guess you’ll have your usual? And as for those rolls, they aren’t jumping in your mouth by themselves. I don’t see a gun anywhere near your head, neither.” She let the implication of those statements linger behind as she sashayed into the kitchen.
“You’ve got to try these rolls while they’re warm. And here, she makes this honey butter to go on it. C’mon now, dig in!”
Robin’s stomach chose that moment to growl. “Well, I guess I’d better!” she said, reaching for a roll and the butter knife.
“Oh, wait, we have to thank the Father first.” Derrick said a quick prayer, closing with, “Amen!”
“Amen,” Robin echoed mindlessly. She was looking at Derrick and thinking of something she’d like to eat beside Margaret’s bread.
There was a moment of silence as both enjoyed the light and fluffy rolls and salad. Margaret came in with Robin’s cola and Derrick’s raspberry iced tea.
“So, Robin,” Derrick began again, “how is it that you’re in California, looking me up after all these years?”
The story Robin had concocted rolled off her tongue easily. “My job,” she said, swallowing a mouthful of salad. “I’m overseeing a project here.”
“What company do you work for?”
“IAC Products. It’s a manufacturing plant in Tampa. We make the large bolts and other connecting devices that go into everything from bridges to airplanes.” She felt there was enough truth in this to be safe. She’d worked for IAC long enough to talk about the company with a fair amount of intelligence.
“Hmm, that’s an interesting career choice for you. How’d you get into that?”
“By accident. I moved to Tampa, and after a failed relationship, found myself in need of immediate work. They had an opening, I needed a job, and almost eight years later, here I am.”
“You must enjoy it.”
“It pays the bills.”
“You mentioned a relationship. Are you married, children?”
Margaret interrupted them with aromatic plates of spicy sausage lasagna. Robin was thankful; she knew this subject would be trickier to navigate, especially with a pleasant face. Another server came in with more iced tea and a fresh cola. Robin looked at her watch: 1:20. She glanced at the door and at the table setup. Both she and Derrick’s water glasses were still almost full.
“So, you’re married, right? Kids?” Derrick repeated around a mouthful of lasagna. “Man, this is good!” he added.
“Actually, no,” Robin said. “I’m divorced.”
“Oh.”
Robin took a bite of her lasagna and was silent. She glanced at her watch: 1:25.
“Hey, Sister Vivian,” her assistant, Tamika, said as Vivian entered the office. “Ooh, you are rushing. Where’s the fire?”
“I didn’t think I’d make it in time for my appointment. I can never figure out why they decide to do road construction in the middle of the day. Traffic is congested enough as it is. But I’m here, praise God.” Vivian placed her large Louis Vuitton bag and briefcase down and quickly scanned the phone messages. “Anything important in here?”
“Well, nothing except…hold on a moment.” Tamika picked up the telephone. “Kingdom Citizens, Sister Vivian’s office, this is Tamika.”
Vivian picked up her purse and headed to her office behind Tamika’s reception area.
Tamika stopped her. “That was for you, Lady Vee. Your husband wants you to come to the dining room.”
“He does? He knows I have an appointment. What else did he say?”
“It wasn’t Pastor Derrick, must have been one of his assistants.”
“Angela?”
“No, I know Angela’s voice. I’m sorry, I didn’t ask.”
“It’s okay.” Vivian looked at her watch. It was 1:30. “Has Mrs. Reynolds called?”
“No, not today. I’m surprised she’s not here yet.”
Vivian placed her belongings in her office and returned to Tamika’s desk. “It’s okay. Derrick’s having lunch with an old church member, probably wants me to say hi. Look, I’ll only be a minute. When Mrs. Reynolds comes, get her something to drink, make her comfortable. I should be back in no more than five, ten minutes.”
“I still want children,” Robin said, taking another bite of the lasagna. It was probably the best tasting food she’d ever had. She and Derrick had been chatting pleasantly all through lunch. She could already imagine this as a daily affair.
“Well, what are you, thirty-eight or nine; it’s not too late,” Derrick said. “Vivian was thirty when she had Derrick Jr., and we had Elisia
two years later.”
Robin looked as if she was listening, but her mind was on the ice water sitting on the table. She gauged its distance from there to Derrick’s lap. He probably wouldn’t be too happy about getting that debonair-looking suit wet but…
“Oh, that’s right, you have two beautiful chi—” Robin began. She made a dramatic gesture of pointing to Derrick and knocked her glass of water over. It fell into Derrick’s tea glass. The liquid from both glasses poured into Derrick’s lap.
“Oh!” Derrick exclaimed, jumping up.
“Derrick!” Robin exclaimed at the same time, jumping up with her napkin and running around to his side of the table.
She took her napkin and began frantically wiping at the large stain on his shirt and pants. She rolled the napkin over his manhood. “Derrick,” she said more softly.
Derrick backed up. “It’s okay, Robin,” he said, a slight frown on his face. He took another step backward.
But that’s as far as he got. Robin pushed him up against the wall and began kissing him, touching him, trying to unbuckle his belt.
Derrick was so surprised that for a moment, he didn’t move. What is this woman doing? Just as the answer began to dawn on him, two doors opened. One was the side door and Margaret. “Is everything all right Pas—”
The second was Vivian at the door to the dining room. “Hey, honey—”
Both women were shocked into silence by the sight they saw: Derrick and Robin making out in the dining room.
But only for a moment. Vivian recovered first as she saw Derrick struggling to disentangle himself from Robin’s viselike grip on his body. She yelled out to Margaret, “Call security!”
Margaret was gone before she finished the second word.
“Robin!” Vivian said, trying to grab Robin’s arm and pull her away from Derrick.
“Don’t touch me!” Robin said, pushing Vivian away. Vivian stumbled back into the dining room table.
“Hey, don’t do that.” Derrick had freed himself from Robin but now came toward her again.
Robin became indignant. “My God, you were all over me!” she scathed. Then she turned to Vivian. “He was trying to reach over the table for me and knocked over his water. I was just trying to help him clean it up when he grabbed me, pushed me up against the wall, and began, began, having his way with me!”
“Oh, baby, you can’t believe that,” Derrick said as two burly security guards burst into the room. One headed directly over to Robin. “Let’s go, ma’am.”
Robin was a stout woman, but no match for six-foot-one, two-hundred-fifty pounds of “get out.” The other guard grabbed her purse as she was led out of the room.
“I can’t believe you still want me after all these years, Derrick,” she said as the guard half walked, half dragged her away. “Are you still remembering how good it was in the office at Pilgrims’ Rest? Are you still remembering my good puss—”
That’s the last Vivian, Derrick, and Margaret heard coherently, though the muffled shouting continued as she was taken out of the building, across the parking lot, and placed in her car. The three stared at the closed dining room door for minutes.
Margaret slowly walked over to the dining room table, picked up the two empty water glasses and Derrick’s soggy plate. “Lord have mercy,” is all she said as, shaking her head, she walked back into the kitchen.
Vivian turned and looked at Derrick. “What on earth just happened here?”
26
My Man’s Bone
“You’re not going to believe what happened.” Vivian had told Tai that Derrick was meeting Robin for lunch, and couldn’t wait to call her. She dialed her number as soon as she got home, figured she was too upset to talk on a cell phone in LA traffic.
“What?”
“Robin attacked Derrick!”
“What?”
“You heard me, that woman attacked my husband! Attacked him!”
Tai who had been in the middle of cleaning out her closet, sat down amid piles of clothes. “What happened?”
“Okay. Derrick says everything was fine at first. They met, were talking, Margaret starting serving them.”
“Uh-huh.”
“They continued talking, catching up, general chit-chat, right? Then all of a sudden, Robin accidentally knocks over her glass of water into Derrick’s lap!”
“Why did you say it like that?” Tai repeated the exaggeration the way Vivian had done.
“Keep listening, I’ll tell you. So water spilled all over Derrick’s clothes. He jumped out of his chair. Then Robin jumped up and went around the table with her napkin. Derrick thought nothing of it until…” Vivian could barely go on. She was seething.
“Until what, girl?”
“Until she grabbed his dick!”
“What!” Tai guffawed. “You are not serious.”
“Totally serious. He said she was wiping his shirt, and then his pants, and then she went there. She grabbed my man’s bone, girl….”
“Girl, stop!”
“He tried to push her off him but she backed him against the wall and started kissing him, feeling him up, trying to take off his clothes!”
Tai couldn’t help it, she was cracking up laughing. “Okay, stop. I can’t take any more of this madness. What are y’all putting in the water at that church, women acting all crazy?” Both women knew Tai was thinking about Millicent as well as Robin.
“It gets better. Because that exact moment is when I walked in.”
Tai stopped laughing, her voice dropped to a whisper. “You caught them?”
“When I walked in, she was all over Derrick.”
Tai gasped. “What did you do?”
“I was so shocked, at first I just stood there. Margaret must have heard the commotion because she came out of the kitchen at the exact same time. We both just stood there, mortified.”
Tai waited, silently, but Vivian could feel her and then what! through the phone.
“Derrick was able to get some space between them, and I went over and tried to grab her arm, help him get away. Then she pushed me against the table.”
Tai couldn’t help herself. She started laughing again, rolling around in her piles of clothes. “Stop, I can’t take it.”
“This isn’t funny, girl. I’m ready to kick somebody’s crazy behind!”
“You’re lying to me; you are making this story up.” Tai tried to regain her composure, sound serious, but the story was straight-up comedy.
“This is the truth, the whole truth, so help me.”
“So what did you do when she pushed you?”
“Nothing, security handled it. I’d told Margaret to call them as soon as I got there. They took her away, with her yelling about how Derrick wanted her and how they’d screwed in Georgia. Girl…it was absolutely insane.”
The last sentence stopped Tai’s laughter. Derrick and Vivian were married when they moved to Georgia.
“Oh my God, no, Vivian. Did they have an affair? I mean, I’m confused. I don’t even remember your talking about this woman. Where did she come from?”
Vivian gave Tai the background story, realized she may have never mentioned Robin before. That’s how far in the past Vivian had placed her. She assured Tai there had been no affair, that she’d quit her job and started working alongside Derrick just in time.
“Well, my history doesn’t allow me to be as sure of that as you are. For a woman to come back after all these years? I’m not trying to start nothing, Viv, but—”
“Derrick says there was nothing between them, says I can ask Mother Moseley. She was there the whole time.”
Maybe nothing but a dick, is what Tai thought. “Hmm,” is all she said.
“I’m not going there, Tai,” Vivian said, although her formerly made-up mind was already flip-flopping. Could there have been an affair? Is it possible I’ve been wrong about Derrick always being faithful? No, she would not doubt him, she wouldn’t doubt them. Fifteen plus years of fidelity is somethin
g they both treasured. She changed the course of her thinking by continuing the story.
“Anyway, after she left, and Derrick and I had regained our composure, we went back to his office to discuss what had happened. Figured out that Robin was the Mrs. Reynolds who called his office incessantly about a month ago. She planned this whole thing, Tai. Accepted the lunch with Derrick, scheduled the appointment with me, as Mrs. Reynolds, and excused herself to call my office once she thought I was there. I must admit, it was very clever. But there were a few things she didn’t count on.
“First, she didn’t count on the fact that almost everything that is said in the dining room can be heard in the kitchen. Margaret and the other workers heard the whole thing. Second, she didn’t count on my husband’s strong resistance to her blatant come-on, and third, she didn’t count on the fact that I trust my husband implicitly. It will take more than soggy pants and a crazy woman’s accusations to shake my faith in Derrick’s fidelity.”
Vivian said that last sentence to herself as much as to Tai. And then she was almost sorry she’d said it, considering all the infidelity Tai had lived through. “I mean, you know what I’m saying,” she added.
“You don’t have to feel uncomfortable, Vivian. Ours have been very different marriages. But they are both still standing. Two couples, two journeys, one God. That could be our tagline; you two, and me and King. It’s a great testimony, actually. How two very different marriages can stand the tests of time and get better, stronger, no matter what.” They both thought on Tai’s statement a moment, before she added, “I’m just glad nobody was hurt.”
“I am, too. And it’s just a shame because Derrick prides himself on being able to be open and available to all members, male and female. You know how hard I work to establish a strong sense of connection with all the female members, especially the singles. But stuff like this is exactly why Derrick no longer counsels women unless I’ve talked to them and okayed it.”
“So what do you guys think? Do you think this was it, it’s over? Girl, you never know. She might be a stalker.”
“Ooh, Tai, don’t say that, don’t even think it! Fortunately, the office cameras caught her on tape. All the security and office people know what she looks like. Plus, we filed a police report and obtained a restraining order. I guess time will tell.”
Love Like Hallelujah Page 15