“Well never mind that now baby. There’s someone here I want you to meet.”
“Oh? And whom might that be?”
“My ex-husband Tommy dropped by to discuss the party arrangements for his little sister next Friday.”
“Ah splendid, I’ve been looking forward to meeting the man who foolishly let you go. But as they say, one man’s loss is another man’s gain.” He chuckled with a peck on the cheek then came over smiling and extended his hand. “Corbin Blake Ramsey the third, pleased to make your acquaint-YOUUUU!”
“Hey, how you doin?” Tommy grinned devilishly looking up at Corbin like he was meeting him for the first time, then casually filled his face with Reese’s Pieces from the glass dish on the coffee table.
“Thanks for allowing me to have the space. Seeing as you’re the bigger person out of the two of us”
Corbin’s slight frame shook with anger. “Nicolette, what is this-this person doing here?” he demanded.
“What are you talking about? I just told you. Tommy dropped by to discuss the party.”
Corbin shot Tommy a scornful look. “This is your ex-husband? This-this-”
Tommy drew himself up so that he towered over Corbin and fixed a cold stare upon him. “Choose your next words carefully.”
Corbin’s eyes stretched over Tommy’s rock-solid frame and swallowed his pride.
Nicky stepped in, physically interposing herself between them. “Calm down boys! Now what’s going on? You two know each other?” she asked confused.
“The hooligan I was just telling you about! The one, who took my parking space, it’s him! He’s the one!” Corbin blurted out in a frenzy of jumbled words standing safely behind Nicky. Tommy shook his head in disbelief.
Nicky turned to her ex-husband for an explanation, “Tommy?”
As far as Tommy was concerned this had to be a joke. There was no way she could be serious about this old ass Nipsey Russell looking mofo with his corporate suit, tortoise framed glasses and monogrammed sleeves. “Nicky, he’s overreacting. Okay so maybe I taxed his space, but so what. This is Brooklyn. If you’re slow you blow. Look I feel like this, if I’m willing to let the ‘drug mobile’ comment go, then he should stop his whining.”
“Whining? Who’s whining?” Corbin whined.
“Baby, calm down, remember your blood pressure.” Nicky said. Tommy flinched like he felt a sharp dagger twist in his back when she called Corbin, ‘Baby’.
“I’ll have you know sir that whining and stating one’s case are two entirely different matters altogether!” Corbin said to Tommy.
“Whatever. Look I’ll let it go, if you do the same.” Tommy shrugged already bored and looked around the room stopping at Nicky’s entertainment center. “So what kind of VCR is that?”
“It’s not a VCR, it’s a CD player.” Corbin snootily explained as Nicky plopped on the couch realizing what a mistake it was bringing her ex-husband and new friend together.
Tommy walked over turning up his nose at the sound system like it smelled funny and picked up a Madonna CD. “What do these things cost? Five-six bucks?”
“Try twenty.”
“Twenty? Aw man forget all that, you can’t even tape off of the radio. Besides it took me forever to switch my eight-track collection over to cassettes.” He winked at Nicky.
“Perhaps, but the sound quality from CDs are much more lucid than those antiquated cassette tapes.” Corbin explained like a salesperson at Crazy Eddie’s.
“Antiquated? Speak English,” Tommy laughed.
“I am speaking English. Perhaps if you spent more time at the library expanding your vocabulary than stealing parking spaces, you might know what it means.” Corbin glared. Nicky cut her eyes at Corbin and shook her head. She couldn’t believe the level of testosterone in the room.
“Take a chill-pill Old-school. I was just messing with you. I know what a CD player is. Got one myself.” Tommy smiled.
“This one’s paid for!”
“I also know what antiquated means.” Tommy insisted, disregarding being called a thief.
“Yeah sure you do.” Corbin smirked in disbelief.
“Antiquated; old, out of date, old fashioned, ancient, a veritable relic, hence the word an-tique!” Tommy smiled enjoying the verbal fencing match, “And just because I like you so much Corky, I’ma use it in a sentence. Wanna hear it? Here it goes! ‘Nicky is way too young and fine to be dating your antiquated ass!”
Corbin’s top lip curled with detest. He wanted badly to invite his girlfriend’s ex-husband outside for an old fashion ass whoopin but he didn’t share Tommy’s flare for satire nor did he share his burly size seeing as he only used his overpriced gym membership twice in the last year and a half. His frown strained into a tight smile. “So what do you do? -Wait don’t tell me, let me guess. I know, you’re one of those rapping homeboys who makes noise with their mouth while spitting?” he asked in that same condescending tone Tommy had already come to identify him with. Tommy smiled and shook his head. “No?…Hmmm, well judging from your size my second guess would have to be something that required a lot of heavy lifting, little thinking and paid far below minimum wage.”
“I work in the construction field.” Tommy replied.
“Typical. I figured you for the type who swings a sledge hammer at their ‘ahem’ job.”
“And what is it you do, mister mouth almighty tongue everlasting?” Tommy asked wondering what kind of game this buster could have possibly kicked to pull a hottie like Nicky.
Corbin grinned widely like this was the moment he had been waiting for. “Me? Oh, nothing really. I’m just a simple investment banker for a little company called Charles Schwab. Maybe you’ve heard of us, we’re one of the leading brokerage firms in the country.”
“I have, and I figured you for the type with one of those Wall Street jobs responsible for Black Monday.” Tommy said dismissively.
“I may not have been the cause of it, but I sure as hell benefitted from it.” He laughed smugly.
Nicky was becoming bored of their dick measuring contest. Especially when figuratively and physically her present couldn’t measure up to her past and she wanted to bring this to an end. “Look boys this is obviously not going the way I had intended. So why don’t we just call it a night? Tommy I’ll see you at the party. If there are any last-minute changes, I’ll call your mother.” she said.
“Cool,” Tommy nodded. He was relieved that she didn’t want to call off Tee-Tee’s party. His mother would have killed him.
Corbin took off his glasses and cleaned them with the paisley print silk handkerchief in his breast pocket. “No, no honey not yet. My new compadre was just about to enlighten me on what kind of job it is that I have.” he said reigniting the beef to which Nicky tossed her hands up in defeat. “So, go on Tommy…tell me, what kind of job do I have? On second thought, let me tell you. I have the kind of job that pays me a lucrative salary so that I can afford my condo on Park Avenue, a summer beach house in Martha’s Vineyard and my beloved Porsche. The kind that allows me to travel the world and experience different cultures abroad. The kind that recruited me during my senior year at Harvard and paid for me to go back and get my MBA. And this one you’ll love. The kind of job that allows me to shower my lady with the finer things in life. Basically, the kind of job you don’t have.”
“Petty. But finally, something we can agree on,” his inner Trouble Consultant remarked.
“Sorry, I can’t hear you over my success.”
“Calvin, success has nothing to do with being rich or being poor or just being plain average. Everything else is relative. But I wouldn’t expect a narrow-minded person like yourself to understand.” Tommy said. Nicky lifted her eyebrows half impressed and half perturbed. It wasn’t that long ago her ex was singing an entirely different tune. A tune that caused them to break up, and she wondered if the new woman in his life had something to do with his new outlook.
&nb
sp; Corbin looked like he wanted to laugh. “Spoken like a true have-not. And for the record, my name is Corbin.”
Tommy eyed Corbin from head to toe and had to laugh to keep from hooking off on him. “Kervin, you really shouldn’t speak on things you know nothing about, brotha.” he advised in a facetious tone. High paying Trouble Consulting gigs had his phone ringing off the hook and on the advice of a financial advisor he once protected he put a large amount of money into a high-growth mutual fund and turned an even larger profit. The advisor also helped him create a portfolio and invest in some safe stocks to which he could retire and live quite nicely, if he wanted to.
Corbin shook his head sadly. “Here we go. So I choose an education over hanging on the corner drinking malt liquor with the homeboys and for that I’m considered a sell-out to my race.”
“No, you’re a sell out for looking down on those homeboys who did not have the same choices you did. I’ve been A-1 since day one.”
Corbin raised his hands in frustration. “Don’t speak of choices to me. This country was founded on honesty, truth and the equal rights of all men.”
“No, what this country was founded on was the bones of Indians, and the backs of your fellow Africans!” Tommy snapped.
“Oh please! Save the pseudo self-righteous crap you prehistoric throwback. Black people are born knowing that whatever is to be gotten out of life we’re always the last to get ours. That the short end of the stick has our name written all over it. But instead of working hard to get ahead, what do most of us do? Bitch and complain about how the white man is keeping us down. So what life’s not fair. Boo-hoo! Get over it, and above all else, get yours.” Corbin advised pausing to admire his gold Rolex and cufflinks. “Hmph! I know I sure as hell am.”
Tommy shook his head. “Boy I tell you, if Martin Luther King had the same outlook as you, we might still be drinking out of colored fountains.”
Corbin stood up abruptly. “You know I would continue this battle of wits with you, but from that last comment, you are obviously unprepared, uninformed and unarmed.” he said and made an about face for the kitchen.
“A word of advice,” Tommy called to him.
Corbin paused smirking, “You are giving me advice? This should be good.”
“Be careful of the toes you step on today, because they might be connected to the ass you have to kiss tomorrow.”
“So insightful. And where pray tell did you pick up that spiritual and enlightening banal cliché? PBS? Masterpiece theater? The unemployment line?”
“Uppercuts Barber shop,” Tommy stated as a matter a factly.
“How charmingly ghetto.” Corbin laughed and continued into the kitchen.
Tommy shook his head and turned to Nicky. “Seriously Nicky what the fuck? This dude is super whack.”
Nicky shrugged. “Hey, I thought it’d be a great idea if you two met before the party to avoid any awkwardness. I saw no reason to think that there’d be any problems.”
“And there wouldn’t have been, if ya boy Cornball on the Cobb, ain’t come in here acting like he’s all that.”
“His name is Corbin,” she corrected.
“You sure about that? Cause the brother doesn’t have a stache. And what’s up with his hair? Somebody needs to tell Cab Calloway that the conk is dead.” Tommy winked causing Nicky to smirk. “Hi-Dee-Hi-Dee-Hi-Dee-Ho.”
“Tommy stop.” Nicky said unsuccessfully trying not to laugh. Regardless of how upset she was with him he always could get her to smile.
“Aw come on Nick. Don’t tell me you’re serious about that Oreo-cookie.”
“You don’t even know him.”
“No, but I know his type. Over educated in everything, except what really matters. And how old is money-grip anyway? Strutting around here with Poligrip on his breath.”
“Who I date and how old they are is none of your business Tommy. I didn’t ask about who you’re bringing to Tee-Tee’s party now did I?” Nicky asked no longer smiling.
“True dat.” Tommy said thinking how obvious it was that she was thinking about it. “Actually, I’m surprised that you are still having it since your ‘Ahem’ boyfriend and I didn’t hit it off.”
“Why? This is my house. Lord knows I deserve it after all I went through.” She said with an all-knowing look that only her ex-husband could decipher. “The party is still on, and Cornba…I mean Corbin…dammit!” She cut her eyes at Tommy who was doing his best not to laugh but said nothing. “Will be attending. My only concern is your mother and Tee-Tee. You two don’t have to like each other. I just thought it would have been nice if you could get along since you have to spend time together.”
Corbin walked back out of the kitchen with a martini in one hand and a board game in the other. “Finished eavesdropping?” Tommy asked.
“I haven’t the foggiest idea what you are talking about.” Corbin said and popped the olive from his drink into his mouth with an arrogant smile then opened the box and proceeded to set up the pieces on the coffee table. “Nicky and I are about to play a rousing game of Scrabble. I would ask you to join us, but since purposely misspelled words like def and phat aren’t recognized in Webster’s Dictionary you might be out of your element.”
“Scrabble’s a bit too ostentatious for my taste. I’m more of a Dominoes man myself.”
Corbin’s eyebrows raised at Tommy’s use of the word ostentatious. “Big word. I’m impressed.”
“Little man. I’m not.”
Corbin smiled insulted, “Dominoes huh? You mean that tacky parlor game commonly played by unemployed home-boys sitting on milk crates in the hood?”
“No, I mean that thinking man’s competitive game invented by Black Egyptians to simulate war games commonly played by prominent men in the community.” Tommy said shaking his head at Corbin like he wasn’t worth the effort and headed for the door. He stopped in the doorway and looked back then his eyes lit up. Finally, he recognized something from when he used to live there and the human submarine known as Tommy Strong fired a torpedo, striking the good ship Corbin across the bow.
Savoring every syllable Tommy said, “Nice shirt!” to his ex-wife and walked out grinning. Corbin shot Nicky a confused look and her eyes dropped to the floor. At first, he was baffled by what just transcribed then he zeroed in on Nicky’s over-sized baggy Ocean Pacific shirt and knew that there was no way his small frame could fill out a shirt that big. Only a man built like Tommy could.
Chapter 7
Tommy and Nicky’s Brooklyn love story began during homeroom class at James Madison High School when he broke the ice after bashfully sending her a note asking: ‘Do You Like Me? Check yes, no or maybe’. She checked yes. That Saturday they rode the number three-train downtown and caught a matinee showing of ‘JAWS’ at the Duffield movie theatre then laughed over pizza and sodas. It was still early and since the weather was nice they decided to walk over to the Promenade, Brooklyn’s version of lover’s lane. They found a cozy bench with a fantastic view of the Manhattan skyline and with Tommy’s transistor radio serenading them, talked for hours about their hopes and dreams. Then as the moon did the electric slide across the harbor, they took shelter under each other’s shadows while Al Green sang, ‘Let’s Stay Together’ and shared their first kiss. Confusion and heat filled them like nothing they had ever felt before. It was simply magic and from that moment on they were connected at the hip. In their yearbook they were voted ‘Most likely to get married’ and shortly after graduation they moved in together to a railroad apartment in Crown Heights. Less than a year later Tommy asked Nicky to marry him and again she checked ‘yes’.
If Tommy had to choose one thing out of the many things he loved about Nicky it would have to be how she carried herself. She wasn’t some neck poppin, materialistic, hoochie-mama who would spit on you if you said good morning. Nicky was a rare breed, a female who everyone felt comfortable with. Blessed with girl-next-door beauty she was genuinely sweet and dedicated t
o her man and he missed her immensely.
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