Till You Hear From Me: A Novel

by Pearl Cleage

  A guilty flush crept over my cheeks and I was glad she couldn’t see my face. I had shared my working with Obama fantasy as working with Obama fact, and now my story was coming back to bite me on the butt.

  “No, they’re still doing the vetting,” I said, hoping it might be true.

  “All the more reason for you to be on top of this,” she said. “Think about it, Ida B. What are you gonna say when they call and ask you was that your father all over the Internet talking about tacos and sangria?”

  The throbbing behind my right eye moved over to include my left one. This was my worst nightmare. I was hoping enough time had passed so that I could be evaluated by Team Obama on my own merits, but Miss Iona was right. If this interview is as bad as she says it is, who knows how far its effect might ripple? On a slow news day, anything was possible. Look at Joe the Plumber.

  “Just do this for me, will you?” Miss Iona said gently, correctly judging from my silence that her arrow had landed. “Look at the video of the whole interview on YouTube and then if you don’t think we need to worry, I won’t call you about this again.”

  That wasn’t too much to ask. I felt guilty about not clearing up that White House thing, but as much as I hated to admit it, I guess there was a part of me that was still hoping I’d get that call: Will you please hold for the president? No way I was going to let the Rev mess that up for me if I could help it.

  “All right,” I said. “You’ve got a deal.”

  “Great,” she said. “Call me back as soon as you see it.”

  “You want me to look at it right now?”

  I don’t know how you can hear somebody raise their eyebrows through the phone, but when I said that, I heard Miss Iona raise hers. “You got something better to do?”

  “I was trying to meditate.”

  “Girl, please,” she said. “You got the rest of your life to meditate. This is your future we’re talking about!”

  TWO

  Every Trick in the Book

  WES WALKED INTO THE SMALL ROOM WHERE HE KEPT HIS TREADMILL and his weights, flipped on CNN for background noise, and laced up his new cross-trainers. They felt good. He was glad he could afford an apartment big enough to accommodate his workout. Wes Harper hated his body. Not the perfectly conditioned, well-muscled one you could see. The one he carried around inside his head. The fat one. The one his mother had so lovingly overfed that at thirteen, he had soft, fat thighs that rubbed together when he walked. He was the one with the cheeks too chubby not to pinch. The one who never made the team, never got the girl, and was the butt of every fat joke known to man, no pun intended. When he got to prep school, football changed all that, but it was the memory of his adolescent body that kept Wes motivated. He liked to sweat.

  Even when his head was elsewhere, like it was today, he got on that treadmill for forty-five minutes, six times a week. He also played tennis and golf when called upon and was good at both. He liked doing business on the golf course and few things compared to the pleasure of trouncing those shit-talking white boys from the first tee to the eighteenth green.

  But this meeting wasn’t about kicking their ass. It was more about them kissing his. Wes Harper Communications had officially arrived. Some of his so-called friends had actually laughed out loud when he said he was going to open his own full-service public relations firm in New York City, and now, ten years later, he had an impressive client list that included corporate giants and rap star moguls, politicians eager to move up, and businessmen eager to break into the always lucrative African American urban market. Wes had the ideas, the energy, and the contacts. No one could beat him for getting it done, and everybody knew it. Even the guys who had been waiting for his country ass to fail up here in the big city, playing with grown folks. Who’s laughing now? he thought. Who’s laughing now?

  Wes could feel the sweat running down his back as he reviewed the conversation he’d had late this afternoon with a Republican contact who had become almost a friend during the long months of the last presidential race, although using the word “friend” with these guys was stretching it. Oscar said there were some people interested in talking with him about a few things, but they were very concerned about not drawing attention to their activities. Could a meeting be arranged for Sunday morning at Wes’s offices, not theirs?

  Of course Wes had agreed and then asked if he should prepare anything specific or just come ready to listen and react. His contact had said no preparation would be necessary. They wanted to talk about recent high-volume voter registration efforts in Georgia, the man said, and since he was from Atlanta, and still had family there, they thought Wes might be able to offer some insight.

  Of course he could offer some insight, Wes thought, turning up the speed on the treadmill to a lazy trot. Insight, access, and the one thing you can hope, but never plan for: personal history. Rev. Horace A. Dunbar, the mastermind behind all those shiny new voters, had not only christened Wes as the infant son of his closest friend, Eddie, but had performed the ceremony at Wes’s first wedding, which Wes didn’t hold against him even though it ended badly, just like his second one.

  Horace Dunbar had been pastor, mentor, friend of the family all his life. The man was practically his surrogate father. When he left Atlanta for boarding school, the Rev had given him five books—the King James version of the bible; a copy of Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources by Martin Lings; Old Path White Clouds, a biography of the Buddha written by Thich Nhat Hanh, an activist monk who Martin Luther King nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize; The Autobiography of Malcolm X, with Alex Haley; and The Big Sea, the first volume of poet Langston Hughes’s autobiography. He included a note that said, “Great men are defined by great ideas. Here are a few to get you started.” If they wanted information about Rev. Dunbar’s operation, they had hit the mother lode without even knowing it. All they knew was that Wes was from Atlanta. They had no idea how close his connection was to exactly what they needed. He couldn’t have asked for a better break.

  All he was waiting for now was the best available research on what the Reverend had been up to since he sided with Jeremiah Wright and effectively removed himself from access to all things Obama. He caught Toni Cassidy, his newest associate who was as fine as she was smart, on her way out the door and told her he needed everything she could get him on Rev. Horace Dunbar by seven o’clock. With only one day before the meeting, he wanted to make sure he was current. The question about whether or not he needed to prepare was rhetorical. Wes always prepared. She promised to bring whatever she could find by his apartment later and he dashed out to meet another client for drinks.

  He glanced up at the clock. He would have just enough time to take a quick shower before Toni arrived with the research and some Chinese takeout from his favorite spot around the corner. That’s one of the things Wes liked about living in New York. The Chinese food in Atlanta was a joke and the offerings in New Hampshire, Chinese and otherwise, were not much better.

  When Wes arrived at prep school, carrying sixty extra pounds and a hearty appetite, he was shocked at the blandness of the New Hampshire cuisine. With no decent collard greens for miles and only a blank stare in response to his request for cheese grits in the Phillips Exeter cafeteria, Wes found it easy to stick to his new self-imposed diet. He started lifting weights and as fat turned to muscle, he drew the attention of the football coach, who encouraged him to try out for the team and afterward awarded him a spot on the squad.

  The rigorous training program imposed the physical discipline he was looking for and the plays seemed second nature to him after just one practice session. The coach was delighted. Wes was fast and strong and smart, willing to take a hit and deliver one, but he had a truly special gift for plucking impossible passes out of the air with a grace that was almost balletic. Exeter had gone co-ed thirteen years before Wes got there in 1983 and his new body, plus his football hero status, guaranteed him the female attention he’d never had before and he loved it. As one o
f only a handful of black Exonians, Wes reveled in his uniqueness and so did many of the white girls he met, whose previous experiences with African American men were largely limited to the service capacities and a super nigga or two they might have met under rigorously supervised circumstances.

  At thirty-eight, he had racked up enough real world accomplishments not to miss the glory of catching that Hail Mary pass to deliver the big game for the home team, but he knew women appreciated a man who kept in shape and Wes liked women. He didn’t consider them his equals, although like most of the middle-class men of his generation, he was fluent in the feminist rhetoric required of men who had worked with and for women most of their professional lives. When Wes thought about women, it was as sexual partners or employees. Necessary, certainly, but highly interchangeable. The large pool of smart, attractive, ambitious black women without romantic partners gave Wes an endless supply of lovers and entry-level associates who expected nothing more than whatever he was prepared to give.

  Toni was a perfect example. She was smart, sexy, and as ruthless as he was, maybe more. At twenty-seven, she was engaged to a guy finishing up his medical residency in Boston. His schedule was brutal and they were lucky if they saw each other once every couple of months. In between visits, she indulged herself with Wes, which made their working relationship more interesting for both of them and didn’t compromise her commitment to her fiancé, who understood that she was not the kind of girl who liked to be alone. In exchange for his tolerance, he extracted a promise that she would always be super safe and postponed any expectation of monogamy until after the wedding, which would not be for another two years. In the meantime …

  What the hell was he doing, thinking about Toni? This was no time to get distracted. Daydreaming about pussy was not on the agenda. These next twenty-four hours were all about focus. If he could get his firm on retainer with the Republicans while they rebuilt what was left of their increasingly marginalized party, his business would close out its first decade in the black, in more ways than one. He had made his bones with these guys during the long, bizarre march of the McCain-Palin team toward the crushing defeat that was election day, 2008. By the end, they were prepared to try any and every trick in the book. That was Wes’s specialty.

  After a few recommendations from some fellow Exonians on the inside of the doomed campaign, he became attached to a shadowy squad of saboteurs who traveled around the country nonstop, disrupting Democratic events, distributing false or misleading in formation about Democratic candidates, and fueling the fringe element who still thought Barack Obama was the scariest thing they’d seen in ages. Although they were ultimately unsuccessful, his creative efforts to try to hold back the tide of history on their behalf did not escape the notice of those scrambling to salvage what they could of the GOP. He knew this meeting was the next step in formalizing a long-term relationship that would make him and his small firm an integral part of that ongoing process.

  He also knew some of his Obama-obsessed friends would think he was making a deal with the devil, but he didn’t intend to broadcast the relationship any more than he had told anyone about his work during the campaign. They wouldn’t have understood, even though some of the stuff turned out so perfectly, he wanted to tell somebody who could celebrate his genius with him. Just his work on the Joe the Plumber narrative was worth its weight in gold. But he wasn’t in this business for bragging rights. He was in it for money and power. The meeting on Sunday was going to place him a lot closer to both. All he had to do now was focus and stay loose.

  He turned up the machine another notch and loved the burn in his legs as he started to run. These Obama motherfuckas were used to being the smartest niggas in every room, he thought, but all that shit was about to change.

  THREE

  The Enemy of My Enemy

  AS BAD AS I THOUGHT THE REV’S YOUTUBE DEBUT MIGHT BE, IT WAS SO much worse. Within the space of fifteen endless minutes, my father managed to offend or insult Latinos, gays, feminists, black parents, the president of the United States, and the pastor who had succeeded him in the Rock of Faith pulpit, not necessarily in that order. The reporter’s first innocuous question—“Do you think that the election of Barack Obama signals the dawn of a new America?”—set the Rev off like a firecracker on the fourth of July.

  “A new America?” he roared in the grainy video. “Looks like the same old place to me!”

  And he was off. Ranting and raving, charging and countercharging, in a swirl of angry words/words/words that sounded like they ought to make sense, but didn’t. I had never seen him like this and it was all I could do not to turn away, but there was something that wouldn’t let me. Something almost as disturbing as what he was saying and that was the way he was saying it. For as long as I’ve known him, the Rev has moved through the world chin up, chest out, eyes focused unblinking on whatever lay ahead. But now, sitting on the dark green leather sofa in the new pastor’s study, spitting out the most cynical, simplistic views about the most complex, sensitive issues of the day, he didn’t look strong and focused and certain. He looked sad and saggy and old. Even his magnificent voice sounded hollow and lacking in conviction.

  “All I’m saying is this,” the Rev practically spat out the words. “Being black is different from being a member of these other groups you’re talking about. They have their issues. We have ours. The problem is these other groups—the gays, Latinos, women—all of them learned how to organize and confront for change from the African American freedom struggle. They all acknowledge it if you ask them when there’s no cameras on them, but once the media boys get there, they act like they never even heard of Dr. King.”

  I closed my eyes, but I could still hear him, angry and strident. “The gays fighting back at Stonewall? The women marching around and burning their bras?”

  Burning their bras? Had the Rev slipped through some kind of time warp? Half the women in America these days have probably never even owned a bra!

  “Those Latino kids staging a walkout over immigration issues? They learned all that from us, but do we ever get a thank-you? Not likely.”

  “But didn’t they learn their lessons well?” the reporter asked off camera. “Didn’t those lessons help to put the first African American president in the White House?”

  The Rev leaned toward the unseen reporter and pointed a long, slender finger in his direction. “And so what if they did? Brother Malcolm used to say when white America gets a cold, Black America gets pneumonia. It’s the same today. New paradigm, old paradigm, race is, was, and always will be the dominant force in American life and the sooner Barack Hussein Obama realizes it, the better off he’ll be.”

  Then he turned directly to the camera, which up until that point he had ignored so completely, I didn’t think he was even aware of it.

  “You owe Reverend Jeremiah Wright and the whole black community a public apology, Mister President, and until he gets it, I remind you of that old saying, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

  He paused for what I guess was supposed to be dramatic effect. “Jeremiah Wright is my friend.”

  What the hell did that mean?

  Was he using the Internet to declare himself an enemy of the president? The same president I was still hoping might offer me a job? There weren’t enough Excedrin Migraine tablets in the world to stop the throb that was now beating in my brain nonstop.

  I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose tightly, which didn’t do anything but make me want to sneeze. I picked up the phone and punched in Miss Iona’s number.

  FOUR

  Old-School

  “TELL ME AGAIN WHY YOU NEEDED ALL THIS STUFF SO FAST ON A FRIDAY night?” Toni said as soon as Wes opened the door. She was standing in front of him close enough for Wes to smell her perfume. “Because I’m beginning to suspect this was just an excuse to get me up here so you can try to have your way with me.”

  Wes had already showered and shaved, set two plates and a couple of forks out
at the counter, and put a bottle of Pinot Grigio in the freezer for a fast chill when Toni rang the bell and he buzzed her in. He felt good, energized, and on top of the situation. He smiled to himself. The situation wasn’t the only thing he hoped to be on top of before the evening was over. He had just wrapped up a busy week with no time for anything but business and Toni’s exhausted fiancé had flown in the weekend before with roses so she wouldn’t think the poor man was too distracted to remember her twenty-seventh birthday. Wes hadn’t been in the mood to call in a backup, so the truth was, he was horny as hell. Toni probably was, too. Her fiancé had a bright future, but based on what she’d told Wes, he didn’t seem to be very creative between the sheets.

  Wes took the bag of Chinese food out of her arms and pulled her gently inside. She slipped off her coat and tossed it casually on the closest chair. She was wearing a slim black skirt, a white silk blouse, and black pumps with four-inch heels.

  “Exactly what stuff are we talking about, Miss Cassidy?” He grinned. “My research? My dinner?”

  Toni ran her fingers through her hair in a lovely gesture that Wes had only ever seen in the movies and tossed her head, her smile revealing small, white, slightly pointed teeth. He spread his grin a little wider.

  “My pussy?”

  She raised her perfectly arched eyebrows. “Getting a bit presumptuous, aren’t we?”

  “Don’t worry,” Wes said, putting the food down and leaning over to give her soft, fragrant cheek a quick kiss. “Your secret is safe with me.”

  She laughed and handed him a bright red file folder. “I have no secrets. You know that.”

  “It is your greatest charm,” he said, opening the slender folder. “Is this all you got?”