by Raqiyah Mays
“Nah, I’m fine.”
“I didn’t ask if you were fine. But I do want to know how you’re doing. Why do you sound like that?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.” I paused. “Why is your call coming through as ‘unavailable’?”
“Oh, I forgot to tell you. I found this block-number feature on the phone and I wanted to try it out. I see it works. That’s good for if I need to stalk.”
I didn’t reply. Making a mental note of needing to see whether my phone had that feature.
She was quiet before continuing. “Sean come see you today?”
“He was going to, but he’s on deadline. So . . .” The words drifted off before I sucked my teeth. “And I understand that. I mean, if he doesn’t turn in his cover story to Denise on time, he won’t be writing for Buzz again.”
“Uh-hm.”
“What does ‘Uh-hm’ mean?”
“So he hasn’t come to see you after you’ve been in the hospital and had surgery?”
“Well, he’s on deadline. And it takes a lot of transcribing and time. I mean, I’m cool.”
“Cool? So you’re okay with that?”
“Yeah. I mean, of course I want him to see me. But I also don’t want him to resent me because he came, and then got back to his computer and couldn’t write. You know when writers get into a rhythm it’s hard to really get them out of it.”
She paused for a second.
“That’s some bullshit,” she continued. “And I don’t like him. I can’t wait till y’all break up.”
Meredith. Always quick to call my men out and express her opinion. She’d always been right. Anyone she didn’t like typically didn’t last. But I never listened.
“I need to take some more painkillers. I think it’s been six hours, stomach is starting to sting.”
“No, stay away from that addictive crap. I’m coming over to see you. I got some medicinal marijuana to cure your pain.”
“I could use that . . .”
“I know. See you in a few minutes.”
The hemp smoke tasted fabulous floating through my lungs and out my nose. My head and mind opened up my body to thoughts of relaxation and contemplation. Clarity. A third sensory eye. Meredith and I sat in her car, smoking up the windows. Nodding our heads to Big Pun’s Capital Punishment. My pink bunny slippers perched on her dashboard as I reclined the seat back to a 180-degree position. I was glad my mother had gone to work. Relieved to be alone to smoke, giggle, and be relaxed long enough to let the truth speak freely.
“Last night, I had a dream that Sean was cheating on me,” I said, after blowing out a long cloud of white. Clearing my throat and pulling again. Smoking in silence was our way of taking it all in.
“I was standing there, watching him hugging this girl. He hugged her, kissed her, put his hand in her pants. And I started crying.”
I took another pull before passing the blunt. Holding the smoke in my mouth, I saw visions of the dream drifting in my head. The fear in my heart skipped along like brain zaps on a hospital monitor.
“And you remember what I told you about women in my family and dreams, right?”
Meredith nodded her head as she pulled on the joint. She’d rolled it smooth and tight.
“Yeah, the women in your family are psychic,” she said. “Y’all see the future.”
“It’s crazy. I hate when I have the cheating dream,” I said. “It’s always a sign. Always comes true.”
“That’s crazy. So what are you gonna do?”
“I dunno, girl. I love him.”
“You are always in love, Meena. You better stop falling in love before you really know and trust these guys. Protect your heart.”
“I know. I try. But the sex makes all the walls I put up come right down if I see relationship potential.”
“And if he’s not, you can fuck him forever and not feel a thing. I know. I get it. But love is not enough to make a relationship work. Just because you love somebody doesn’t mean you’re supposed to be with them,” she said. “Both of my parents told me that. They say it all the time.”
The words seeped into the clouds of smoke. Her mother and father had remarried each other after both of their failed first marriages. Meredith came a few years later.
“Like when you fall before you know someone well. When you don’t trust your instincts, sex dulls them even more, love blinds you altogether, making it hard to tell truth from fantasy. You start doubting yourself, doubting your soul. Living without integrity to your own damn self. Literally lying to yourself. We can’t do that as women. We always know. I mean, I always know when a man isn’t being honest with me. I think every woman does. And I know sometimes you can’t control who you feel love for, but you can control who you give love to. You can control who you’re in a relationship with.”
Meredith rambled on, making all the sense in the world. She tended to do this when she was high. First being quiet, like a therapist taking notes. Then talking a mile a minute. Morphing into superintellectual weed-smoker mode. Pontificating on the ways of love, where her words ran into one another with no periods, occasional commas; her points ran on. When Meredith finished, she took a long pull, held it in for ten seconds, and exhaled. “So what are you gonna do?”
“I don’t know, girl. I’ll figure it out.”
“You need to snoop,” she said, smiling. “Get your private investigator on. Next time you go to his house, look around. There are always signs.”
“I need to move to Brooklyn.”
“Whatever. Doesn’t matter where you live, if he’s a cheat,” Meredith answered. “Just do the digging.”
I could see the sense of that. My dreams usually manifested, like instinctual infidelity premonitions. When it came to the women in my family, we never knew if the nightmare we envisioned meant the cheating would occur in the future or if we were seeing the past. Regardless of when the transgression took place, we always found out, in the most blatant manner.
Chapter 19
My first day back in the office at the end of July, and I was greeted with a present—a mile-high inbox. Paper leaned sideways like a raggedy tree. Tiny hot pink Post-its with Denise’s red writing twinkled like old Christmas tree ornaments. But I didn’t mind, getting to work fifteen minutes early, logging in, and spending all day reading and responding to the hundred e-mails I’d received over the past two weeks. Pure heaven.
I’d missed the loud creative hustle of an office full of artistic minds on steroids. Biggie blasting from one speaker. Mary J. Blige blaring from another. U2 and Bob Marley echoing from the mail room. Someone unabashedly yelling “Fuck!” after hanging up the phone and screaming, “I hate fucking publicists!”
That was the life of working at Buzz. This was the real world. My real world. Not one of being locked in a house on an empty side street in Jersey, watching Rap City on BET. By the end of the day, I’d happily gotten through all of my e-mails when a new message pinged my inbox, titled “Beautiful Return.”
Dear Lovely Meena,
Welcome back. Your missing presence left a gaping hole in my heart. One where my mind craved for the beauty of healing that only comes from the soft caress of a woman such as you.
Sean
I smiled so hard that I didn’t realize someone was standing behind me. Timberland boots, a crisp, new tan pair, baggy jeans, and a polo shirt. I nearly fell out of my seat when I realized it was Sean holding a bouquet of mixed flowers next to a crooked smile. He looked half-embarrassed, half-nervous.
“Wow,” I said, wide-eyed. “Just got your e-mail.”
“I know. I just sent it. I was standing over there,” he said, pointing toward the elevators. “I wanted to watch you open it.”
“Are you stalking me, Sean Baxter?”
“I will if you don’t pack up so we c
an go eat.”
“Cool. But I’m still on that medication, so I can’t drink.”
“It’s okay, more for me. Come on, lady.”
The rest of the summer seemed perfect between Sean and I. Romantic dinner dates, boat rides, long walks, days spent sleeping at his house with random clothes stuffed in my own drawer. It was like the surgery and time apart had been a blessing to bring us closer together. I was in love. He was my king. And I was the happiest I’d been in my life.
By the fall, we were in a routine, with Friday date nights to see the newest movie release. On one typical evening, I logged off, grabbed my bag, locked Denise’s office, and headed to the lobby with Sean. We stood at the elevator, smiling, brushing shoulders, until the door opened and a girl stepped out.
I recognized that familiar face. Young and bright. Ballerina hairdo with a bun at the top. Flowery ruffled shirt falling from her shoulders. Same church skirt worn at the Buzz mixer, hanging below her knees. Kelly Jones.
We stopped short. She paused, gaping at Sean. And out my side view, I could see his eyes stretched wide. He’d stopped breathing.
“Um, hey, Kelly.” His voice quavered. “You know Denise’s assistant, Meena Butler, right?”
“Oh, yeah,” she said, forcing a smile. “I heard about you. Hey.”
I thought about not replying. But for the sake of fakeness and professionalism, since we were in the Buzz offices, I forced myself to mutter one word.
“Hey,” I said. Blank face. No emotion. Cold, icy, and stiff.
Tense silence followed the end of that one word. She kept staring at Sean, me, and back to him again. Breaking the stagnant energy, I stepped onto the elevator. Sean followed, dropping his head like a kid, mumbling at Kelly without looking at her “A’ight then,” as the doors closed.
Our eyes met, she the bitch in a church dress, me the bitch with the man she wanted. We’d meet again.
“What’s that company she works for?” I asked Sean when her face was out of sight. “Did you say it was EW?”
“No,” he said, staring at his phone, trying to look busy when he wasn’t. “EUR.”
“Oh, right, they’re always clogging up the fax machine with their blasts.”
“Yeah, she writes all their little updates,” he said, checking his phone twice for a reply. “They’re funny. Kinda quirky. I look forward to those blasts every day.”
“I bet you do.”
“What does that mean?”
“I just thought you weren’t into entertainment gossip stuff,” I said, pressing the button for the first floor after realizing we hadn’t moved. “You always say it’s so trivial and a waste of journalism. What did you say again? ‘A tool to distract the masses’?”
“I mean, yeah, it is. But I didn’t say I don’t sometimes read them when I need a convenient distraction.”
I sighed at his obvious lie.
“What’s wrong now, Meena?”
“What do you mean, ‘now’?”
“I don’t know, seems like something is always bothering you.”
“No, something is not always bothering me, Sean.”
It was his turn to be annoyed.
“Listen, I’m hungry,” I said, exiting the elevator into the lobby. “It’s been a long day, I got here crazy early. Let’s just go eat. I may have to have a sip of wine. I need it.”
After an Italian dinner of ten words and a bottle of wine, I woke in the middle of the night at Sean’s house. We were coupled up on the bed, atop the covers, holding hands, asleep in each other’s arms. Had to have been the wine. I drank so many glasses after my run-in with Kelly Jones; compensating for insecurity with inebriation seemed the only thing to do. After we got back to his place, made sloppy sex mixed with the taste of fermented grapes and vodka, we passed out, holding each other like cuddling babies.
The discomfort made me sweat. Sean’s arm around my neck and his sticky, hot fingers nestled into my palms. I felt a tiny cramp bubbling up my spine. A little woozy from all the wine, I pried myself from his grip and crept to the bathroom. Even on my tiptoes, the floor squeaked. I stopped walking, trying not to wake him. He snored so loud that the pencils on his desk rolled to the side. The movement was a reminder: investigate. A reminder that Sean wrote a biography of dates on his jumbo desk calendar. Each box had an important deadline or meeting. I took a moment to reacquaint myself with a map of where he’d been.
I squeaked to his desk, reading carefully. Due dates for October magazine assignments, Buzz, Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone, Vibe. And then my eye stopped on the weekends. “Meet Kelly,” read one date outlined twice with a star. The following Sunday, “Meet Kelly for brunch.” I looked at the calendar closer and flipped back to July during the weeks of my surgery. “Meet Kelly. 7:30 p.m.” was written with an exclamation mark on two separate dates. My heart throbbed with infuriation that rammed into my throat, wanting to scream, fighting my need to stay silent. I wanted to be destructive, pull the calendar off his desk, scribble cuss words across it, crumple it up, and light it on fire. But then I heard a loud snore, and Sean coughed himself awake. Bed springs bounced with a tiny squeal as he tossed. And with each sound, I tiptoed back to his bedroom, slid under the covers, and lay on my back with my eyes wide open. Maybe he’d met her for a casual meeting of writers. Perhaps he was schmoozing, hoping for more work with her company. One side debated: There has to be some explanation. The other side ached and seethed: He’s cheating. Fuck him!
He turned over and put his arm around me. I wanted to bite it and spit angry venom on his wrists. But instead, I let it lie atop me, feeling heavy, hot, like an anchor confining me to this bed of disloyalty. Had he fucked her? I pondered the question until I fell asleep. When I awoke two hours later, I rolled off the mattress, hopped in the shower, double-scrubbed my vagina, and knew for sure what we needed to do: take a trip to the STD clinic.
Chapter 20
I didn’t realize how long my shower took that morning till Sean knocked me out of a daydream.
“Uh, did you drown?” he said, banging on the door. “I have to pee.”
“What time is it?”
“Eight thirty. Thirty minutes past the time you got in there.” His voice sounded muffled. I could hear the vibrating bass of the Red Hot Chili Peppers blasting from his stereo system. “You want some eggs or a bagel? I was gonna get breakfast.”
“Nah, my stomach is bothering me.”
“Okay, I’ll be back.”
As the door slammed behind him, I stood in the shower, numb to the touch of water bouncing off my body. Tiny drops steamed up the small, square window above the tub, allowing specks of sunlight to poke through the glass. Past the smears were the sights of overhead subway lines, a random rooftop, grime, and pigeons flying. As I stared out that window, all I could see was Sean fucking Kelly. Tossing. Turning. Grunting. I know it was a daydream. I knew it was a thought I shouldn’t have. But I couldn’t help the boil of envy, the seething resentment of knowing that he had made time to meet with her, while on deadline, but couldn’t come see me in Jersey—his sick girlfriend, sewn up from surgery. How fucked-up was that?
I felt the burn of tears welling in my eyes as I stood under the showerhead, forcing myself to let the water hit my face and slap me around for being a blind, bumbling idiot.
“Hey, I got you a jelly donut,” Sean said as I turned off the shower. “And tea with milk and sugar. I know you’re not hungry, but you might be later.”
“I hate jelly donuts. I told you that. And is it soy milk?”
“No. Since when do you like soy milk?”
“Since I decided to be a vegetarian.”
“When did you decide that?”
“When I was sick in bed in Jersey,” I said, leaving the bathroom with a large black towel tied around my body. “You’d have known if you’d visited me.”
“
Oh my God, you bringing that up again?” Sean sipped his tea too fast, burning his lips, wincing in pain. “Shit!”
“Uh-huh, God don’t like ugly. Especially with that selfish shit coming out your mouth,” I said, a tiny smirk on my face. “I’m so embarrassed to tell people you didn’t come visit me after surgery that I lie and say you did. They’ll go, ‘Oh, he’s such a good boyfriend’ . . .”
“You know what, Meena? I told you why I couldn’t come. So deal with it.” He sat in his chair and turned on the computer. “Why can’t you just stay in the moment?”
“Why couldn’t you come see me? Oh. Right. ’Cause you were on deadline. You had people to see.” I picked up my tea to check it, slowly envisioning myself splashing it across his desk. “What’s that you say, ‘I have things to do, places to go, people to see’?”
“I was here writing.”
“Right,” I said, spewing sarcasm. “Just you and your lonesome computer spending time together.”
“You know what? I see you’re trying to be funny.”
“Not at all. You said you were here both weekends, right?”
“No, I didn’t say that. But yes, Meena, I was.”
Lie. I thought this to myself, wanting to spit out the word onto his damn calendar. But I didn’t need to. The look on my face spelled things out.
“You think I’m lying?” Sean glanced at me and back at his computer with an aggravated smirk. “Obviously you do by that look you’re giving me.”
“I think we should go to the STD clinic.”
He looked up, eyes dazed, confused, like a drug addict.
“You know there’s one a few blocks away from the Buzz office,” I continued, “so we can go one morning before work, get in there early, beat the crowd, and get out in a few hours.”
“Well, uh . . .” he stammered, like the jelly donut was lodged in his windpipe. Finally he managed to say, “Well, why do we need to do that?”
“I always do this with my boyfriends. We’ve been together eight months. You say I’m wife material, so let’s go do what committed couples do—go to the doctor and get checked together.”