Platinum

by Aliya S. King

  “Go like that,” he said. “Fuck both of them just like that. Then come back.” Cleo looked him in the eye.

  “Okay.”

  “Okay what?”

  “Okay, daddy.”

  He put a hand between her legs, massaged for a few seconds, and then brought his hand to her mouth. He put two fingers inside her mouth and she licked them, keeping eye contact, the way he liked her to, the whole time. He finally opened the door and looked out into the empty hallway.

  “Go.”

  Cleo walked across the hallway, barefoot and wearing just the towel wrapped under her arms. Her hair was in a windswept disarray from the few minutes she’d spent on the patio giving him a blow job while the salt air from the ocean whipped into her nose and mouth. There was a shiny layer of sweat covering her entire body and she could still taste his semen in her mouth. She was numb, both mentally and physically.

  The door opened and a short Latino man wearing dark shades looked over her shoulder to see where she’d come from.

  “Happy birthday,” Cleo’s lover said, holding his dreadlocks back with one hand. “Enjoy your present.”

  Cleo dropped her towel, right there in the hallway. The man with the shades grabbed her arm and brought her inside.

  “Thanks, yo,” he said, smiling wide. “Good looking.”

  “CAN YOU DESCRIBE THE FIRST MAN FOR ME?”

  “The first man ever? Back home?”

  “No, the first industry guy.”

  “He was a producer. Pretty well known. About six feet tall. Light brown. Great physique.”

  “We need more qualifiers if you’re not going to use his name.”

  “Raps sometimes, widely known as faithful to his wife. He and his wife were once on the cover of a popular magazine together.”

  “Right. And that same night, after the photo shoot …”

  “We had sex for the first time in his DeLorean.”

  “How did you feel about him?”

  “I liked him a lot actually.”

  “Why aren’t you revealing his name? You’re giving up everyone else’s.”

  “He helped me out at a time when I really needed it. I’m not blowing his spot up.”

  “Who was the next one?”

  “Ras. Someone I’m still involved with to this day. I feel like I’m his soul mate. Like we were meant to be together.”

  “Except for the fact that he’s married.”

  “In spite of that.”

  “So why aren’t you with him?”

  “That’s not the purpose he needs me to serve in his life right now.”

  “Didn’t you tell me he passed you off to his manager and some other random guy?”

  “Yes. I hate him for that.”

  “You could have said no.”

  “I could have.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  Cleo smiled with her mouth closed and shrugged her shoulders. And then, for the first time since she started telling Alex her story, her eyes welled up. The tears did not overflow. Instead, they seemed to retreat back into her tear ducts and her face became stony once more.

  “You love him?”

  “Yes. And he loves me too.”

  “So he shares you with his boys?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you tell me what you remember from that day in the hotel with Ras? I need details.”

  Cleo leaned back in the diner booth and closed her eyes.

  “Ras has an irregular heartbeat. Two small moles behind his left ear. Penis curves to the right. Small patch of scaly skin behind his left knee. Minor scar from a knife wound at the small of his back. Minor scar on right big toe. No toenail on left pinkie toe. Has both ears pierced but they are both about halfway closed.”

  Cleo’s eyes popped open and she looked at Alex and smiled. “And he has my initials tattooed on his ring finger.”

  “Get the fuck out of here,” Alex said.

  “True story. We were both high as hell. It was after a show in, like, Akron, Ohio, or something. His wife was in New York at Fashion Week. I flew home with him. But first we smoked with some of his people. They must have laced it with something, ’cause we were freaking out.”

  “And so you got tattoos?”

  Cleo pulled a thick silver band off her ring finger. There, in script, were the initials RB. The letters repeated around her finger three times.

  “So he has your initials under his wedding band?”

  “It’s crazy, right? I think he really gets off on that. Having this double life.”

  “You looked like you were in a trance when you were running down everything you know about him,” said Alex.

  “I can see him in my mind’s eye on that balcony as if he’s standing right here, butt-ass naked.”

  “Photographic memory doesn’t really exist.”

  Cleo shrugged. “I just know I can tell you about the small patch of gray hair he has in the back of his head and the little wiry hairs that grow out of his earlobe and the three freckles shaped like a pyramid on his inner thigh.”

  Alex just nodded and scribbled.

  “You have tattoos?” Cleo asked.

  Alex moved up the sleeve of her T-shirt without looking up.

  “It’s a flower,” Cleo said. “But it’s not finished.”

  “I get it updated every year,” Alex said, still keeping her head in her notebook.

  “You can’t just do the whole flower at once?”

  “Each petal represents another year of sobriety.”

  “How’d you know you had a problem?”

  Alex finally looked up. “I woke up in a strange man’s bed. Had no idea how I got there. And wasn’t sure if I’d had sex with him or not.”

  Cleo snorted. “You call it a problem. I call it Tuesday.”

  Alex laughed, loud enough for a few patrons to look over at their booth.

  “I guess we just see things differently when it comes to that kind of thing,” she said.

  Cleo’s face fell and she clenched her teeth and gave Alex a severe look. “I’ll bet we don’t. I’ll bet we’re a lot more similar than you’d ever like to admit.”

  Alex clicked off her recorder and stood up to leave. “I doubt it.”

  FOR THREE STRAIGHT MORNINGS, BETH FOUND BRIGHT RED BLOOD IN her panties. She should have been in a panic. But she was not. Dr. Hamilton sent her for a battery of tests. And the look on her doctor’s face—worn lines and furrowed eyebrows—should have worried Beth even more. It did not.

  Beth did not know what the future held for her. And her mission in life was to make it through one day at a time. She had tunnel vision. And because of Z’s lifestyle, she felt like she was always one phone call away from her life being completely turned upside down. So she put little faith in planning. And she never looked for the bright side in anything.

  But she knew without a shadow of a doubt that her child was fine, safe and warm in her belly. And no amount of bright red blood would change that. She thought about telling Dr. Hamilton about how rough Z had been with her for the past few nights. But she didn’t. The look on Dr. Hamilton’s face whenever Beth came into the office let her know that the doctor was two seconds away from calling the authorities to investigate the entire family.

  Beth gripped the steering wheel of the Navigator tighter as she turned out of the parking lot of Dr. Hamilton’s office. As soon as she got to the first traffic light, her cell phone began to vibrate.

  “Yeah,” she barked into the phone.

  “Beth. Please remember, I want you to rest. No exercise. No sex.”

  “I know. I’m on my way home right now,” Beth said. She looked in her rearview mirror. For a brief second she thought the doctor was standing in the parking lot, watching to see which way her car was heading.

  “Your tests are fine. But I’m worried about the blood. Take it easy, okay?”

  “Mm-hm.”

  Another call was coming through. Beth rushed the doctor off the phone and switched to t
he other line.

  “Turn to Power 105 and call me back,” Kipenzi whispered. She hung up before Beth could say a word. She punched the dial on the dashboard until the radio tuner settled onto Power 105. She turned up the volume and tried to make out the two women who were talking. She knew one was Angela Rodriguez, the afternoon DJ. And she was obviously interviewing someone, but Beth couldn’t tell who it was.

  “So, was it a one-night stand? Or did you two have a relationship?”

  Beth felt goose bumps forming on her arm. A woman’s high-pitched voice answered the DJ.

  “We were together for, like, an entire week. He was in my hometown for a show and he wouldn’t leave. He stayed at my house for a while.”

  Beth recognized the voice instantly now. It was a girl from Philly she’d spoken to on the phone about a year ago. She’d called to let Beth know that she was pregnant and she claimed the baby was Z’s. Beth had just told her the number to their attorney and hung up on her. She’d never heard anything else about it.

  Beth got the SUV up to seventy and set the cruise control. As she flew up the West Side Highway, she listened to the radio, her hands gripping the steering wheel although she didn’t need to.

  The woman on the phone would only say her first name was Tasha. She was from Philly and she was claiming that Z was the father of her eight-month-old son.

  Obviously, she was looking for more than the usual child support amount. If not, she would have been filing her grievances in court, not on a nationally syndicated radio show. During the next break, Beth grabbed her cell phone and dialed the warm line to the station. She identified herself to the person who answered the phone, and within seconds she was talking to Angela Rodriguez.

  “Put that bitch on the phone,” she said to Angela, as she turned off the highway at her exit.

  “We’re about to come back from a break, Beth. You want me to give her your number?”

  “Put her on the phone now.”

  “Beth. Look, she called. I had to let her come up here and speak her piece.”

  “I’m not mad at you, Angela,” Beth said in a flat voice. “Just put her on the phone. Only take a second.”

  There was a shuffling sound and some muffled whispering. Beth slowed the SUV down. She was only a few blocks away from the house and she planned to be done with this conversation before she went inside. She knew the woman was on the phone because she could hear her breathing. Beth didn’t bother with formalities.

  “You’re not getting more than two thousand a month,” Beth said. “So there’s no need to go on the radio or do any magazine interviews.”

  The young woman coughed and sputtered. They were always surprised that Beth got to the heart of the matter, never bothering to question paternity.

  “Z told me that he wanted to make sure me and my child would be able to maintain the same lifestyle that his other children have,” the girl said. “And I just want to make sure he stands by that.” She sounded steely and rehearsed, as if she were speaking to a jury.

  “Well, I hope you were making at least six figures a month before you fucked him,” Beth said. “ ’Cause you’re only getting two thousand a month from my checkbook. And I pay all the bills. Where you live?”

  “Hoboken.”

  Beth took in a sharp breath. This chick was crafty. She’d moved into one of the most expensive cities in New Jersey. She would file for child support there so that the payments would automatically be higher than they would be in whatever housing project she came from.

  “Just curious,” said Beth. “Why Hoboken?”

  The girl cleared her throat. “I need to be close to New York, where I’m pursuing my career. And also, I … I think it’s important that, I mean, I think …”

  Beth sighed. “You want your son to be close to his father.”

  “Of course. Z said he was going to be a part of—”

  “Look, girl. Let me explain to you how this works. Z will take care of this child, financially, for the next eighteen years. I’ll make sure of that. Your payments will never be late. The child will have health insurance, and if there is ever any financial emergency, you can contact our lawyer at any time, day or night. If the child gets into college, Z—or his estate—will pay for it. You can have the money directly deposited into an account, you can have it go through the courts, or you can have a check sent to you overnight each month. Your choice.”

  Beth could hear the girl struggling to compose herself on the end of the line. She probably thought she was going to have a neck-swiveling argument with Beth. Maybe even a physical fight so that she could press charges and sue for even more money. That’s the way it had gone down years ago with the first one—a Puerto Rican girl from Miami. But these days Beth was too busy and too pregnant to chase girls down and fight them for violating the sanctity of her marriage.

  “I think my lawyer should probably call your—”

  Beth interrupted her. “Now let me tell you what will not happen,” she said. “You will not contact Z. And you will not contact me. Z will not be in this child’s life. There will be no visitation.”

  “I didn’t have any intentions on—”

  “You think right now that the money will be enough,” Beth spat. “But it won’t. When that child starts asking questions about Daddy, you’ll start feeling it. And you’ll feel that pull. You will want Z to be a father to this child you decided to bring into the world. Won’t happen. And that’s your cross to bear. He will have nothing to do with that little boy. Deal with it.”

  “I have to go. They’re coming back from commercial.”

  “My lawyer is Sal Sheffield in Manhattan. He’ll handle all the arrangements.”

  “Z came out to my spot a few months ago,” the girl said. There was fear in her voice.

  Beth had pulled into the cul-de-sac in front of the house. None of the cars were parked haphazardly across the front drive, which meant everyone was still out for the day. She had an hour before Boo and the nanny would be bringing the kids home from school.

  “You fucked him again. And?”

  “I’m pregnant. Again.”

  Beth tapped her front tooth with a fingernail and stared out the window. What looked like rain turned out to be snowflakes, the first of the season.

  For once she was stumped. He’d never had more than one child with another woman. She thought she felt something like sadness gripping her chest, but she released it before it could take hold.

  “You’ll get another fifteen hundred a month for this one,” she said. “It won’t be double, so don’t even think about it.”

  “I think this one is a girl. That’s what Z said he wanted. A girl.” The woman’s voice was barely above a whisper and Beth could hear someone urging her off the phone.

  “Sorry, sweetheart,” Beth said with a sigh. She rubbed her belly and then turned off the car, with the cell phone still tucked under her ear. “I beat you to that one.”

  Beth got out of the car, closed her coat tight against the chill, and tried to walk fast up the driveway and to the front door. Now that she was truly showing, it was easy to start wobbling. Some days, like today, she fought against the wobble, making it a point to stand straight and put one foot in front of the other the same way she did when she wasn’t thirty pounds heavier.

  She entered the security code next to the doorbell and pushed the door open. Out of habit, she listened first before walking into the foyer. If the cleaning service was in the house, she’d go straight upstairs. Years after moving from Queens, she still felt weird having people inside her home who worked for her. She usually liked to remain out of sight until they were done. She saw a woman sweeping the kitchen floor and she headed for the staircase in the center of the hallway. She pulled off her coat with one hand and dialed Kipenzi’s number on her cell phone with the other.

  Kipenzi picked up after the first ring. “Is she telling the truth?” she asked Beth.

  “No reason to believe she’s not.”

 
; Kipenzi sighed. “I am so sorry. That shit is fucked up.”

  “You know how these girls are.”

  “Did you hear about the other chick?” Kipenzi asked. “The one who’s supposed to be writing a book about all the industry men she’s been with?”

  “I know Z’s dumb ass will be all up in that book.”

  “So you know the chick I’m talking about? Her name is Cleo or something?”

  “Never heard of her. But if she’s making a business out of fucking rappers, I’m sure my husband’s got his own chapter.” Beth turned down the hallway toward her bedroom, instinctively looking in the kids’ bedrooms as she made her way. “This chick from the radio says she’s pregnant again.”

  “What?” Kipenzi yelled.

  Kipenzi’s response made Beth feel that sharp pain in her chest again. It was one thing to let Z’s affairs roll off her back when no one else knew about them. But Kipenzi’s reaction reminded her once again that hers was not a normal marriage.

  “You gonna say something to him?” Kipenzi asked.

  Beth had just walked by Zander’s room. The door was closed and she thought she heard some movement coming from inside. She looked at her watch. He was still in school. She opened the door to see if the dog had been locked inside during the morning rush again. Instead of seeing the dog sitting on Zander’s bed, she saw Zander himself. He was in the center of his bed, his back against the wall. His legs were spread wide. Beth was surprised to see that his legs were long enough to be wide open and still reach down to the floor. His baggy jeans, unzipped, hung around his ankles like a puddle covering his construction boots.

  A young black girl was on her knees between his thighs. She was completely naked, her brown spiral curls whirling around as she bobbed her head back and forth over Zander’s penis. Beth took in the scene completely. Both of the teenagers were oblivious, Zander because he was seconds away from having an orgasm and the young girl because she was seconds away from throwing up.

  “Kipenzi, can I call you right back?”

  Beth said this just a bit louder than necessary. Zander’s eyes flew open and he pushed the girl away with his knees and pulled his pants up in one rapid motion. The girl had flipped onto her stomach and was now facing Beth, her face wet and her eyes wild with embarrassment and fear.