No One in the World

by E. Lynn Harris; RM Johnson

  He heard them say their good-byes. Eric quickly headed back to his bedroom, where he sat on the edge of the bed and waited.

  A minute later, there was a soft knock.

  Eric stood. “Yeah. Come in.”

  The door opened, and Cobi stepped in, wearing slippers, his work slacks, and an unbuttoned, collared shirt.

  Eric looked at his brother with both sadness and disgust.

  Reading his brother’s expression, Cobi said, “What, Eric?”

  Angrily, Eric said, “You talk that garbage to me about honesty and not keeping secrets, and you’re doing that.”

  “I’m sorry you had to find out that way, but this is my house and I didn’t have to tell—”

  “Then you’re a hypocrite,” Eric said, stabbing a finger at him. “My past is my past, and I shouldn’t have had to tell you, but you say you weren’t going to let me come back here so I had to . . . but you’re hiding that.” Eric turned away from his brother. Under his breath, he said, “You’re a nasty motherfucker.”

  “What?” Cobi said. “What did you just say?”

  “I said, what you were doing, what you let him do to you is some sick shit.”

  “There is nothing sick about it. We were making love, and if you haven’t realized yet, I’m gay. That’s how we do it.”

  “Can you just get out?”

  “I can’t, not without us talking first.”

  “Just get out the room! I don’t wanna talk!” Eric yelled and could not stop himself from being transported back to that little dark room twenty-three years ago.

  It was his second foster home. His foster mother’s name was Ms. Mosley. She was a loud, rude, hateful, uncaring, squat little woman. She told Eric several times that the only reason he was there was so that she could collect a check from the state.

  Ms. Mosley had a boyfriend, a beady-eyed, mousey-looking man, named Calvin. Eric feared the man from the first time Calvin looked at him with those shiny, ratty eyes of his. Those eyes said he was a predator, that he had plans for Eric, and that it was just a matter of time before he executed them.

  Ms. Mosley worked at the fish-packing plant. She’d leave at four-thirty in the morning when it was still dark outside, leaving Calvin asleep in her bed.

  The first early morning Calvin entered Eric’s room, Eric had suddenly woken up to the full weight of the heavy, grown man on top of him. Eric was on his stomach. His pajama bottoms had been yanked down to his calves. Calvin was fully erect, and was trying to enter Eric at the moment he was snatched from his sleep.

  Eric yelled and squirmed, trying to flip his little body to get out from under the man, but he was too heavy, too strong.

  Calvin was harshly whispering something over and over in Eric’s ear, as he wrestled to spread Eric’s little legs apart.

  “Don’t fight it, little boy, you gonna love it,” he kept saying, his voice rough.

  Eric continued to struggle with every ounce of his strength until the man pushed into him.

  Eric screamed, never feeling a pain so extreme. He yelled and cried louder, until he couldn’t cry anymore.

  Afterward, there were the warnings from Calvin. “Don’t you ever think about telling anyone about this.” Then the threats. “If you do, I’ll kill you.”

  Eric kept his mouth shut for the three years Calvin continued to rape him.

  He had gotten to the point where when he heard the doorknob turning, his mind would just go elsewhere, far away. He liked to pretend he could remember back to when he was an infant, before he was put up for adoption, back when his mother might have loved him.

  He would think those thoughts until after Calvin was finished, leaving him wet and sticky and in flaming pain.

  “I’ll see you next time,” Calvin always said at the door, before stepping out.

  Now Eric looked up at his reflection and saw that there were tears in his eyes. “He always said that,” Eric said, noticing his twin brother in the mirror, the same tearful expression on his face.

  Cobi walked up beside Eric, placing a hand on his shoulder, and asked, “Did you ever tell anyone?”

  “Not until now.”

  “Is there anything I can do? I have a friend who’s a therapist.”

  “No,” Eric said, sounding grateful. “That was in the past, and that’s where I want it to stay. I need to focus on now and getting my daughter back.”

  “Got some good news which should help with that,” Cobi said. “My sister agreed to give you a job.”

  “What?” Eric said. “Are you serious? Doing what? No, don’t answer that. It don’t even matter. Thank you for that.”

  “Now what about us?” Cobi said. “Are we okay?”

  Eric stared Cobi in the eyes, then said, “Sure, we okay.”

  47

  Pulling the blankets up over my shoulder, I told myself I had nothing to worry about, that I believed my brother when he promised he wouldn’t tell a soul.

  I rolled over again to take a look at the clock on my nightstand. 11:32 p.m. She’d be awake, I told myself, reaching for the phone and dialing Sissy’s number.

  “Cobi,” she said. “You should’ve been tucked in by now. What’s going on?”

  “He knows, Sissy.”

  “He? Who? Knows what?”

  “Eric. He was supposed to have been out. Tyler came by. Eric came home early, walked in my room unannounced, and—”

  “Cobi, no,” Sissy sighed. “So what happened? Did you talk to him?”

  “Yeah, not long ago. He promised he wouldn’t tell anyone.”

  “You can’t be certain that he’ll keep quiet.”

  “He said he would, so I can.”

  “No, you can’t, or you wouldn’t be calling me for advice.”

  “Not calling for advice.”

  “I’m giving you some anyway. If you’re smart, you’ll take it. Get him out of there. That way when he tries to sell your story for money, you can say that you never even knew you had a twin brother.”

  “I won’t do that. I think I can trust him, and I know I have nothing to worry about.”

  “So why did you call me?”

  “Good night, Sissy. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  “Cobi, wait.”

  “What?”

  “You know there’s no way I can allow him to work at the company now. He knows too much.”

  “Sissy, you promised,” I said. “I just told him he had a job.”

  “Cobi, Eric is your brother, not mine. And just because you can’t see straight, doesn’t mean I can’t. Already, with all that’s going on, you’re taking too much of a risk having him at the house. I won’t take the same risk, having him at work. Good night, Cobi.”

  48

  Austen sat on the edge of her bed, her head resting on her folded hands. Her hair hung over her eyes, obscuring the legal-sized envelope from her vision.

  It had been sitting next to her for almost twenty minutes.

  Finally, she lifted her head, grabbed the envelope, tore it open, and pulled out its contents.

  The contract was twelve pages long. Austen flipped through all of them, till she stared down at the last—the signature page. Cobi had already signed. A blank line indicated where she was to sign. All she had to do was find the courage.

  Austen quickly thought about her options and just as quickly realized she had none.

  “Hell with it!” Austen said, springing from her bed, the contract in hand. She walked toward the kitchen, needing to find a pen in a hurry, scribble her name there before she talked herself out of it.

  She yanked a drawer, dug around a bit, and found a pen.

  She flipped back to the signature page, set it on the counter, and prepared to sign. When she pressed the tip of the pen to the paper, she found she could not do it. She couldn’t just sell herself for a half million dollars and go back on everything she believed.

  Austen dropped the pen back in the drawer, slammed it closed. What she decided to do was rip the contrac
t to shreds, maybe stuff it in a return envelope, and spend money she didn’t have to send it back to that arrogant Winslow woman.

  Yeah, that’s what she’d do, Austen thought, when she was startled by a loud knocking at her door.

  When she opened it, she was surprised to see two large Cook County sheriffs standing in front of her, badges on their chests, guns on their hips, and mirrored glasses over their eyes. Low chatter from a radio clipped to one officer’s breast pocket buzzed annoyingly.

  “Miss Greer?” the larger officer said.

  “Yes? What’s going on?”

  “I’m sorry, but this property has been foreclosed on, and we are going to need you to vacate the premises immediately.”

  “I . . . I . . . I have,” Austen tried to speak but was flustered. “I have things still here. Can’t you come back tomorrow?”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. The county needs you out today,” the other officer said.

  “I need time,” Austen said, feeling tears come to her eyes. She willed them back.

  The larger officer glanced down at his watch. “We can give you three hours. What you don’t have out by then, we will have taken out.”

  “Okay,” Austen said, wiping at her cheek. “Okay. Can I close my door?”

  “Of course, ma’am. We’ll be out front in our car, waiting.”

  Austen hurried back into her bedroom and flipped on the light. She went to her dresser, pushed around the bottles of perfume, her jewelry, and other clutter, till she found the gold business card that Sissy had given her the other day.

  The card trembling in her hand, Austen dialed the direct number into her cell phone.

  A moment later, she heard, “This is Sissy Winslow.”

  “Miss Winslow, sheriffs . . . they’re telling me I have to go.”

  “Miss Greer, just relax. Now what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying I’m being thrown out of my fucking house. You said you were going to buy it. Do something. Stop this!”

  The phone pressed to her ear, tears spilling from her eyes, Austen could hear papers shuffling on the other end.

  “Okay, as soon as I get off the phone, I’ll call my people, send them over there, and we’ll handle this. Have you signed the contract yet?”

  Austen was quiet. She realized her back was against the wall, she was painted in a corner, between a rock and a hard place. Every lousy cliché she had ever heard she was now in.

  “Austen, did you hear me? Have you signed the contract?”

  Austen caught sight of a pen on her dresser. She grabbed it and quickly signed her name to the contract she was holding.

  “Yes,” Austen said. “Now send somebody over here to take care of this.”

  49

  I lunched with Tyler at an open-air café downtown on LaSalle Street, trying to convince him that he had nothing to worry about when it came to Eric making our relationship known. There were at least a dozen other diners there chatting and enjoying their meals on the beautiful sunny day. Tyler seemed uncomfortable.

  It took everything just to convince him to come out and be seen with me in public. He was very paranoid, and he sat picking at his tilapia, wearing dark sunglasses, and looking over his shoulder every now and again.

  “And what if he does tell somebody, Cobi?”

  “I told you we had a long talk last night. He promised he wouldn’t.”

  “Promised,” Tyler repeated with skepticism.

  He was about to say something else when my phone vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out and saw that it was Sissy calling.

  “Minor alteration in plans,” Sissy said, her tone very businesslike. “Ms. Greer was put out of her condo this morning, so she’ll be moving into your place today.”

  “Hold it. That doesn’t work.”

  “She’s been put out. Where is she supposed to—”

  “Get her put back in. We’re supposed to be buying her place anyway,” I said, wanting that woman to be anywhere but in my home. I just wasn’t ready. “Do something.”

  “It hasn’t been put up for sale yet, Cobi. Besides, the two of you will have to be married in less than twelve days. What is the problem with her moving in now?”

  “I’m not ready.”

  There was a pause. “Everything that’s going on right now, none of us are ready for. She’ll be at your place when you get home tonight. I’ll put her in the last vacant bedroom. Call you later, Cobi.”

  My sister hung up. I slipped the phone back into my jacket pocket.

  “Do you have any assurances, any guarantees your brother won’t tell?” Tyler said, not missing a beat.

  “No, other than the fact that he’s my brother and I trust him. Why are you so paranoid, baby?” I said, reaching across the table for his hand.

  He yanked away as if I was trying to do him harm. “Don’t call me that out here!” Tyler looked around for a moment, then turned back to glare at me through those dark glasses. “You just need to make sure your brother doesn’t open his mouth. We have too much to lose.”

  “Fine,” I said looking in both directions to make him think I was as concerned about our secret being found out as he was. “We’ve been together this long, and we’ve been fine. We’ll continue to be,” I said, not realizing we were being watched.

  50

  Blac didn’t know if the phone he’d been given was for his personal use, but he made the call anyway. The way Blac saw it, he was dealing with Eric to try to get Cutty’s money back, so he was sure Cutty wouldn’t mind.

  Half an hour later, the Audi pulled up in front of Blac’s house.

  In the South Side bar Eric and Blac drove to, they sat at a corner table in the very back of the establishment. Only two other men sat at the bar, drinking beers and having loud, drunken conversation.

  Eric ordered two beers and two cheeseburger plates from the overworked-looking waitress but was otherwise silent.

  When the beers came, both men took drinks and lounged back in the wooden chairs.

  “What’s up, man?” Blac asked, almost afraid of the answer. “Everything ain’t peaches and cream over in millionaire land?”

  Eric looked up from his beer bottle. “Cobi found me a job. Well, his sister did.”

  “Damn, that’s fast,” Blac said. “Then why don’t you seem happy?”

  “’Cause dude a punk.”

  “The man find you a job, and now you call him that. What did he do?”

  “No. I mean, seriously. My brother’s a punk, a faggot. A sissy on the down-low.”

  “Hell, naw. You got proof?”

  “I walked into his room last night, and I find him all cuddled up in bed, naked with this thick, mustache-wearing, Captain Kangaroo–lookin’ fool.”

  “They were fucking?”

  “They just finished,” Eric said, disgust on his face. “Glad I hadn’t walked in five minutes earlier. Cobi was like, ‘Nobody knows about this. You can’t tell nobody, or it’s my ass.’”

  And here it is, Blac thought, trying his best to hide the smile that threatened to appear on his face. Since the day Eric had told Blac about Cobi, Blac had been wondering exactly what angle he would take to get this man for his money. Now he knew.

  Blac was a sexual being. He loved sex and was blessed with the perfect body to express his passion and give pleasure to others. All that hetero-homo stuff was nonsense to him. Good sex was good sex. Whether he was getting his dick sucked, or eating pussy, riding a woman’s ass, or riding a man’s, it was still oral sex and it was still ass riding, and if it was halfway decent, somebody would end up coming and that was all that mattered.

  During his countless stints in prison, Blac had broken in several men that became his bitches. They were reluctant at first, but once they got a taste or a feel of the nine and a half inches of black granite he was slangin’, they couldn’t live without it. And now, Blac just had to find a creative way of introducing Cobi to the best he would ever experience.

  Blac lowered his eyes and
shook his head, as though he was just as disappointed as Eric was at finding out the news. “That’s messed up, dude. But you ain’t gonna move out or nothing, are you? I mean, he still seems like a decent guy. He is your brother, and he did just get you a job.”

  “Naw, I ain’t going nowhere unless he puts me out. Him being gay is gonna take some getting used to, but that ain’t what’s bothering me the most. He was all up in my face about this honesty nonsense, and he was the one lying about stuff. I’m just wondering what the hell else he’s hiding.”

  “I’m sure that’s it, man,” Blac said. “So he still cool with us meeting?”

  “Yeah, it’ll be cool,” Eric said, draining the last of his beer, then staring hard at Blac. “But, like I said, I wasn’t supposed to tell nobody about this, you feel me. The senator he’s fucking is all paranoid about them getting found out.”

  A senator, Blac thought. Damn, this just gets sweeter and sweeter. “Ain’t nothing to worry about, playa,” Blac said. “Your secret is safe with me.”

  51

  Several hours after Austen was evicted from her condo, Julia stood over Austen as she expressed little enthusiasm for the pair of gold, open-toe Prada pumps she was trying on.

  “Ooh, girl, they look fabulous. Stand up and see how they feel.”

  “I don’t like them,” Austen said, undoing the straps.

  “What? Those are the ones you wanted. I’m about to spend my grocery money for the month on those things to make you feel better.”

  “And now you don’t have to.”

  Not even an hour after Austen had called Sissy to tell her about the eviction, three brawny, uniformed men from a moving company showed up to move what little Austen had left down to a moving truck. When they finished, the place no longer contained even a matchbook of hers. Sissy showed up afterward, holding a Chanel shoulder bag. She walked in, pulled her dark glasses from her eyes, pushed them into her hair, and took a look at Austen, appearing generally concerned.

  “I’m sorry this is happening, but the movers told me they have all your belongings. You can come with me now.”