Maybe it is divine intervention that Alizé, my smart college grad, MBA-student friend is right here before me.
“You are just the person I need to see,” I tell her as I take my notepad and the book I was reading to sit on the counter before her. “Can you help me draw up a business plan?”
Alizé frowns a little as she looks down at my notepad and closes the cover of the book to read the title.
I stand and put my hands on my hips in full fabulous mode as I give her my best smile. “I think the day spa is a good idea. Don’t you?”
Alizé’s frown deepens. “You mean like Bubbles and Bliss or Serenity—where we already go?” she asks. “One part of a solid business plan is finding a need that is not being met. I think there are enough day spas in New York.”
My chest was pumped up with pride but Alizé’s words—her disapproval—deflates me right on down. “Why do you have to hate?” I ask as I snatch my things back from her critical view.
Her mouth drops open as she looks down at me. “Cris, are you trippin’?” she asks me in a high-pitched squeal of nothing but pure disbelief.
I look around and thank God we are alone. “I just asked for your help not your damn opinion,” I whisper up to her.
Brrrnnnggg.
I hold up my hand and pick up the ringing phone. “Lowe, Ingram, and Banks. How may I direct your call?”
The elevator dings and I look up as a teenage delivery man walks through the opening doors with a massive spring bouquet in his hand. I hang up from the call just in time to hear Alizé tell the boy: “Negro, please. You have to be old enough to ride this ride and if I felt like breast-feeding a child, I would have a baby. Boy, you better get your little self up out of my face with a quickness.”
“This little boy will have you hollering and moaning, baby,” he tells her with more teeth than lips.
“Probably from you poking me with that little ass dick,” she shoots back just as calm as she please.
“Little? Shit, it’s so big if I pull it out right now it’ll cover the sun and make it dark.”
Alizé arched a brow. “Good, do that so your mama can call your young ass on home for your bedtime.”
I reach between them for the clipboard and quickly sign it before these two start swinging. “Thank you, Jamal,” I tell him with a sweet smile.
He shoots Alizé another mean look before he turns to me with every last one of his pearly whites on display. “Nice to come face to face with a nice polite woman of style and grace,” he says with emphasis before he accepts my five dollar tip and walks away with one last glare at Alizé.
She just waves her hand dismissively as I look at the card. I am not surprised to see they are for me. For the last two weeks flowers, expensive chocolates, and other trinkets that a woman loves have been sent to me. I open the card as Alizé eyes me with open curiosity.
“This is for you?” she asks. “This has to be a five-hundred-dollar arrangement.”
Danielle,
I want you in my life. Just ask.
The world is yours without question.
Marc
I smile as the scent of his cologne reaches me.
I met Marc Ellison during that weekend in the Poconos and although I have told the handsome and ultra-wealthy investment banker that I have a man (who was sitting and glaring at us talking from across the room) he has made it his business to woo me with every possible gift a man can give a woman. I have not laid eyes on him since that trip but he has definitely made his interest known. I have no intention of giving in but I have to admit that it feels like good old times to be pampered again. He is definitely a brother on a mission.
“I know damn well you not letting Mohammed spend most of his check on your ass.”
“Who?” I ask, looking up at her as I place the card to my nose and inhale Marc’s scent.
“Mohammed. Your boyfriend. The man who loves and adores you. The man you are losing because of your dreams and delusions of fucking grandeur.”
Damn. I forgot all about him.
Alizé puts her tote back on her shoulder and her shades back down over her eyes. “I have to get going so that I’m on time to meet my evaluation . . . but I’m not hating on you for wanting to start a business or to give yourself a better life. Just remember the same people you step on and hurt on your way up are the same ones you have to face on your way down.”
She turns and struts to the elevator. Like she planned it, the door opens and she steps on and turns. “Get your shit together, Cris,” she tells me just before the doors close her off from my view.
Chapter Thirty
Alizé
Okay, I know I could have moved in with my girls but I am only making eighteen dollars an hour at the internship and I no longer have a baller to feed my designer clothes and shoes addiction, so a chick like me ain’t looking for no parts of no rent. Straight up. Plus, my father and I get along so well so I thought I could spend some time with him while I work out my drama with my mama. But I never knew just how much time his fiancée, Andrea, spent at his apartment and with my situation with my mother still an issue, I am rethinking my living arrangements.
“Yes, yes, yes!”
I roll my eyes at the sound of Andrea calling for Jesus and turn up the television from my spot on the sofa bed. Them two is at it again and I’m trying so damn hard not to throw up the smothered pork chops she brought over for dinner. Who knew my daddy was such a freak?
I lean across the bed to grab my cell phone from the end table. I start to call Dr. Locke out the house for a freakfest but I change my mind and dial the girls’ apartment instead. Dr. Locke is getting to be a little too caught up in this here pussy. I’m looking for sex not a relationship. He even offered to take me with him to a week long conference in Brazil. Puh-lease.
The phone just rings so I hang up. Everybody must be out. I don’t even bother with their cell phones. Just because I’m stuck in hell don’t mean I have to call and ruin their plans bitching about it.
“Oh . . . oh . . . oh . . . oooooooh Charles. Charles.”
Unfortunately, I know just what might have my mama so fool over my daddy. I wonder if them two freaks in there don’t know that the walls of this one bedroom apartment—that can use a lady’s touch—is paper-thin.
Needing a diversion, I roll off the bed in my shorts and wifebeater to grab my briefcase from by the door. I hop back onto the bed and pull out the report my new supervisor gave the finance department members to review. I have to admit that Cameron hurt me by shifting me over to the finance department under Roger Franks—a short, balding, nerdy little white man with more glasses than face. In the end, the move was great for my education because I am learning so much—even if I missed seeing Cameron on the regular. Maybe not seeing Cameron and having blood pumping to my pussy and not my brain is helping to do what I really came to Braun, Weber to do . . . learn. In this new department I am so intrigued to see the principles we were taught in class actually put to use.
Even though I still love Cameron (and I do love him even if I say fuck him all the time), my focus is back where it needs to be.
Bzzz. Bzzz.
Still reading the report, I climb back out of bed and make my way across the short distance to the front door. I stand on my toes to look out the peephole and my heart stops to see my mother standing there . . . just as Andrea hits a high note that lets me know their little romp is over.
Biting my bottom lip, I open the door just as she rings the doorbell again. I slip out the door and pull it close behind me. “Hi, Mama.”
She looks me up and down. “Why are you in the hall dressed in your nightclothes, Monica Winters?” she asks me as she looks past me to peek through the crack in the door. I jerk it shut and she jerks back a little bit.
“I was just about to go to bed.”
“Well, I think we need to talk. Don’t you?”
I eye the dark form-fitting jeans and snug V-neck Baby Phat white tee she has on with gol
d sandals and my first thought is she don’t want to talk to me. She just wants to come over and flaunt all her newness to my daddy. “Are those my shoes?” I ask as I bend down to eye them.
“Listen, I came here to talk to you about moving your little grown behind home and I’m not talking in the hall—”
The door flies open and I nearly fall back inside the apartment. “Who’s at the door, Ladybug?” my father asks.
I look over at Mama and she eyes my daddy from head to toe in his robe. I look over at Daddy and he eyes Mama from head to toe in her new and improved look.
“Charles?” Andrea calls from behind him.
My mama’s face gets nasty as hell. My daddy looks uncomfortable as hell. And I wish I could press my body into the door and just disappear to hell . . . especially when Andrea walks right up to the door in her silk caftan.
Mama looks her up and down. I know she is not missing one bit of her—Andrea’s high-yellow complexion, blondish long hair, and tall curvaceous frame that is hard to deny even in a caftan.
Daddy clears his throat and looks at me and I look at him. Andrea just smiles warmly.
“I’m Elaine Winters, Charles’s first wife,” my mother says, not even bothering to extend her hand.
Andrea’s smile drops off her face like a ton of bricks. “I’m Andrea and it’s nice to meet you, Elaine,” she says.
The tension in the air is thick as hell. Real thick.
“I’ll let you all get back to . . . whatever you were doing,” Mama says with plenty of attitude. She turns to me. “Monica, I want you to come by the house tomorrow so that we can talk.”
Just before she turns, I see tears glistening in her eyes and my heart hurts for her.
I take off down the stairs behind her. “Mama,” I call out. She wipes her face before she turns to face me. I can see her sadness through that fake smile she gives me. I take her in my arms and I hold her like she’s held me so many times over the years. “Wait in the car and I’m gonna pack my stuff real quick and follow you home. Okay?”
She nods her head as she looks at me. “Thank you,” she tells me earnestly.
It’s easy for me to tell her to get over it but I look at the way Cameron turned me down and married another woman and then transferred me out of his department . . . and I still love him. Who am I to question her heart?
I let my pain over Cameron push me onto the dick of an older married man. Who am I to question her getting out the house more and finding a young tenderoni to ease her mind?
Plus, I miss her . . . and my bedroom.
Girl Talk
“Do we tell her?” Alizé asks as she stands between Moët and
Dom outside the entrance to Macy’s in Livingston Mall.
“Will she even give a fuck?” Dom asks, her eyes and her feelings safely hidden behind large black shades.
Moët’s grip on the carriage tightens in anger. “It doesn’t matter. We have to tell her.”
Alizé crosses her arms over her chest in her sweatsuit. “I already told her what y’all told me and I don’t see no change in her ass. Men ain’t shit.”
“Yeah and some bitches ain’t shit either,” Dom snaps, right on point with her usual sullen and angry demeanor.
They all thought of her neglect of them. They felt it and if he felt it too then maybe it led to the scene before them. It didn’t make it right but they understood what might have led to it a little better.
“Shit, I got so much of my own fucking problems,” Dom muttered.
“Yeah, but she is still our friend.” Moët eyed both of them long and hard.
“I can’t tell lately,” Alizé adds.
All three pairs of eyes were troubled as they watched Mohammed and Evette walking through the mall together. She lightly touches his hands and says something that makes him fling his head back and laugh. It’s the happiest they’ve seen their handyman in months.
“Damn,” they all said in unison.
Chapter Thirty-One
Dom
“I’m glad that you decided to come in and see me, Keesha.”
I look at Dr. Copeland through my shades as I keep my sweaty palm squeezed tightly shut. “I needed more than that group shit.”
I know he hates for me to curse but he don’t say nothing so he must know I need his help. “Tell me what’s going on, Keesha?” he asks.
I look at him, this man who helped me stop using drugs by making me look at life. I mean really take a look at him. I can’t even wonder what the fuck it would be like to fuck him. I can’t even believe Alizé and her therapist is screwing. Oh, she didn’t tell me ’cause she still don’t trust me all the way but I overheard her and Moët talkin’ ’bout it.
Okay, it’s wrong as hell but it ain’t my problem. The only motherfuckin’ thing I want from Doc is some help. I got real problems a dick ain’t gone solve.
“I found out that my mother damn near flipped a coin on who my real father is and well, Doc, she picked wrong.”
“What happened?”
“About a month ago this man comes to my job and tells me that I am his daughter and that my mother told him he wasn’t my father. So all these years she’s been throwin’ it in my face that I’m just like my crackhead daddy . . . but this man ain’t on drugs. He’s married, has kids and works, and takes care of his family. He woulda taken care of me . . . too.”
My throat gets tight as I fight back the tears that fill my eyes. “I can forgive her for an honest mistake but she damn nears tells me to get over it because my life ain’t as bad as hers.”
“So this man is your father?”
I grasp my hand into a tighter fist as I nod. “We took a paternity test and the results came back last week.”
“Do you want a relationship with him?”
“I don’t know, Doc,” I admit as I open and close my fist. “I do know I’m tryin’ to stay clean and raise my child. Just when I’m gettin’ myself together the best I can here’s this . . . this . . . mess.”
“So you think this is enough to break down all the hard work you’ve done to stay clean?”
I lift my shades and lock my eyes with his as I raise my arm and open my damn fist. A small plastic Ziploc of dope falls onto the floor between us. “Yes,” I admit soft as hell as my tears run down my damn cheeks like they were freed from jail. “I brought that after I got finished talkin’ to Diane. I can’t take it but I can’t throw it away either and that scares the shit out of me, Doc.”
He raises his eyes from the bag of dope to look at me. I know he sees me for what I really am. A junkie on the edge of falling back into my fuckin’ addiction.
“Throw it away, Dom,” Dr. Copeland orders me.
I look at it and I want it so bad. I just want to get right on the floor, bust that bag open and bury my face in it until Diane, my daddy drama, my money problems, my friendship bullshit all is nothin’ but a fuckin’ afterthought . . . at least for a little while.
“Throw it away and show yourself that you don’t need it.”
Dope is a prison that I’m on probation from (I will never be completely free). I don’t want to go back to that hell again. I won’t. I can’t.
I reach down and take that bag into my hand. It’s damp and shit from my sweaty palms. I rise from my seat and walk over to the window of his small office. Under his watchful eyes, I look down at that bag of dope in my hand and open it. With one last breath, I push the window open and fling the bag out into the air.
The powder leaves the bag and swirls in the air before drifting down to the abandoned lot below.
“I’m proud of you, Keesha,” he says from behind me.
I close the window and stare at my reflection in the glass. “I’m proud of me too,” I admit softly, before wrappin’ my arms around myself.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Moët
Ilove my friends and the support they give me unconditionally but I’m proud of myself for doing this alone. Tiffany is my baby and my responsibi
lity. I need to handle this by myself. I prayed for some divine intervention and things are finally starting to go my way.
I can’t afford any more lawyer’s fees and to be honest my lawyer is going to have to sue me to get the rest of the money I owe her if this case wraps up before she sends her next bill.
I am going over just what I want to say to Bones when Helen walks into the conference room looking more man than woman with her short black hair and black suit. I can care less how she looks as long as she helps keep me in Tiffany’s life.
“Mr. Drooms and his attorney are on their way up,” she tells me before sitting beside me and placing her files on the table in front of her.
I finger the large manila envelope in my lap. “Helen, is there any way that I can speak to him alone before you guys get involved? I just think Bones and I should give it one more try working it out ourselves.”
She pauses in putting on her glasses as she looks over at me. “I would advise that everything be on the record and you both have representation for any meeting.”
“I know you know better than me but I still would like just a few minutes alone with him,” I insist.
The door opens and Cristal shoots me a smile as she leads Bones and his attorney into the room. It’s funny but it’s so late at night when she comes home and so early when she leaves for work, that I feel almost like she is a stranger to me.
Even as my attorney requests permission for me to speak to Bones alone, I’m wondering if Cristal will eventually move out of the apartment and chase her dream of opening a day spa—mind you Alizé had to tell me and Dom about that and the flowers she received from someone other than Mohammed. Was being rich and famous that important to Cris? I thought that mess with Mohammed and Sahad had taught her a lesson.
“What do you want, Moët?”
I look away from where I was staring off into the distance to find that me and Bones are alone. I shake my head for clarity as I open the manila envelope and pull out the three newsmagazines inside. I swallow over a lump in my throat as I push them down the length of the table to where he stands in a three-piece suit.
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