Playing Hard To Get

by Grace Octavia

  “I was thinking,” Lionel started, “maybe we should get a nanny. Like a real one. Someone to move into the house. Hell, we have seven empty bedrooms.” He tried to make this idea sound as spontaneous and lighthearted as possible.

  “Why would we need a nanny?” Tasha was trying to be just as lighthearted. “I’m home with the girls.”

  “I don’t know, Tash. Sometimes when I come home, you all seem like you’re just tired of each other. They’re hollering. You’re trying to get them to go to sleep. And why is Tiara still in the room with Toni?”

  “I don’t need any help, Lionel.” Tasha’s attempt at duplicating lightness evaporated with the last sip of her water. She’d become defensive. She slid her shades back on and crossed her arms. “They’re just at an awkward place. Two babies. We’ll be okay. Besides, I have to pull my own weight.”

  

  Out of the spa and in the city, Tamia was struggling with her commitment to behaving badly. Her first Queen Bee goal was to win her big-city corporate brawl by losing her small case. It was a simple plan. Pretend she cared, build an effortless case that any opposing attorney who’d tried more than three cases could pull apart in seconds, sit back and let them bury her in facts and fiction, wave the white flag, and move on with her life. While the dramatic plot was new to her, she knew it was nothing new to top attorneys. People brought and sold cases every day in the Big Apple. Favors were used. Old frat boys from Yale and Harvard leaned on shields and no matter the verdict, both sides would meet up for drinks and jokes as soon as the gavel of judgment fell. The only uninvited party would be the client, in the dark.

  Standing in the bathroom at the office, she looked for something in her reflection in the mirror. Something to speak to her and tell her that this was part of the game. How the big boys got to the top. She was a winner, always had been. And if winning this time meant losing, she would have to do what she had to do. It wasn’t her proudest moment, but certainly there would be many prideful moments to follow. But what would her father, the great Judge Dinkins, think? He’d had his own life and no doubt had to make these decisions on his own about what was ethical and what was easy. Now it was her turn.

  She buttoned her jacket and stepped back to look at her outfit, a charcoal gray power suit that hugged her thighs just enough.

  “Please tell me that’s your brother,” said Maria, another attorney, bursting into the bathroom as if they were at any high school. “Your cousin…your nephew. Anyone but your boyfriend!”

  “What? What are you talking about?” Tamia turned to her.

  “That man.” Maria’s blush lips quivered. “He is so…rugged.”

  “What man are you talking about?”

  “The one in your office. He’s sitting at your desk.”

  “A man in my office? What?” Tamia threw a tissue she’d sat on the counter into the garbage and hustled out of the bathroom.

  Outside, women were gathered in clumps she knew meant new gossip. As she walked past, they looked at her and smirked jealously.

  “What?” she murmured, adjusting her jacket as she turned toward her office.

  Months later, when she was on her way to becoming homeless, hairless, and wearing only a sari, she’d try to remember how this thing went. How she saw him first. Was it the smell? The sound? The face? Or just him, all of him sitting and waiting for her as if he’d always been there?

  By then, with everything that led to that moment, she’d forget what came first, but really, it was the smell.

  When Tamia walked into the office, her heart nearly racing with anticipation of nothing she was expecting and everything she didn’t know, there was this aroma, this enveloping scent that wafted so clearly around her that she’d felt suddenly like she was standing in a field of flowers or sitting in a pew at midnight Mass as the priest walked past, shaking an incense ball filled with frankincense and myrrh. It was sugary and fiery, clean and complex. Standing in the doorway, Tamia thought it was everywhere, but there was nothing she could see to connect it to. The office was empty. Her chair was turned and facing the window, as it had been when she’d left for the restroom.

  “Naudia,” Tamia called, turning to see if Naudia had returned from lunch and let someone into her office.

  “It’s funny how they make these windows. So big and wide. Like they’re daring you to go outside. I say jump.” There was a laugh.

  “What?” Tamia turned back to her desk, where the voice, knowing and a bit detached, maybe arrogant, was coming from.

  The chair swiveled around and inside there was this man. A dark man with dark eyes and long, dark dreadlocks that because of his complexion seemed more a part of him than not. He was sitting back and wearing a military jacket with a thin T-shirt beneath. He looked like he was about to pitch a tent or start a war. She couldn’t decide which one, but knew neither activity seemed right for her office—not in her seat either.

  “Are you looking for Tamia Dinkins? This is my office.”

  Flat out, Tamia was put off. And she didn’t know if it was because of what she was looking at or where it was seated. She stepped in from the doorway and saw a tan knapsack on the floor beside the desk. Buttons and patches with little sayings crowded every side. It seemed like the perfect accessory for him. She’d seen men like this before. In undergrad at Howard at poetry readings and selling incense at the student center. They were always angry and usually high. Well, she’d never spoken to one but that was how they looked.

  “Yeah, they told me to come see you.”

  “They?”

  “I’m Malik. I’m from the Freedom Project.” Malik stood up and his 6'5" frame seemed to erase every available square foot of space around Tamia. He was on the other side of the desk, but everywhere at the same time. She tried to find her breath. Looked at the wooden beads around his neck. Stood there.

  “I apologize, sister.” Malik looked confused. He held his hands out defensively. “Did I do something wrong?”

  “Oh,” Tamia tried, breathing again. “I’m just not used to people—you know…” She gestured toward the desk.

  “I’m sorry. My bad,” Malik said, stepping back from the desk and walking toward Tamia. They had the awkward moment of trading positions in the small space, their bodies nearly brushing against each other. “I just wanted to see the view. See what the real people look like walking by the tower.”

  “It’s okay really. I just…” Sitting down, Tamia looked at her schedule on the computer screen. “I’m sorry, my notes say I’m working with a man named Richard…”

  “That’s me. But I go by Malik.” He sat down.

  “Oh, well…then,” Tamia said slowly, and had her mother not died when she was just a little girl Tamia would’ve known that she sounded just like her at that moment. “That’s fine…Mal-ik.” She was trying to sound welcoming, but she never understood the concept of black people with perfectly good names “going by” something else. Gerard became Little G and Taylor became Tee Tee. And then everyone in the ’hood was complaining about why they couldn’t get out. It was a sad state of affairs where being unique meant being held back, and while Tamia would never let anyone hear her admit it, she always thought her own name was a little too unique.

  Malik, having sized Tamia up in an equal way, felt the opposite. Tamia wasn’t unique enough. The card he was given said “Da-Asia Moshanique Jones,” and while he wasn’t excited about taking the hookup one of his father’s former employers arranged, he thought at least “Da-Asia” sounded like a sister—a real sister, who was probably coming from where he was from and could understand his situation. But what was before him, in Tamia, was a sister but not what he’d call a “real” sister. Her monkey suit was the color of the wallpaper, her hair was processed, and what was up with the way she’d said “Malik”? On her mouth it sounded like a lock or illness.

  “Weren’t we supposed to meet later this afternoon with Attorney Jones?”

  “I was in the neighborhood and figured I’
d come by earlier. Is that a problem?”

  “Well, we have a pretty orderly way of running things around here,” Tamia said, and while she certainly wasn’t trying to sound patronizing, there was little way out of it because inside she was really thinking who doesn’t know you can’t show up at a corporate office unannounced…or anywhere these days? Hell, even the tiniest of downtown restaurants now took reservations.

  There was silence now as the accidental adversaries sat on either side of Tamia’s desk thinking things about each other they’d later share with other people. While Tamia was thinking about how clear and shiny his eyes were, big like a little boy’s, she’d tell Troy about how ridiculous it was that he’d shown up for a meeting with his attorney dressed like a storm trooper, and while he was thinking of how soft and silken her wrists looked he’d complain to his neighbor about how he knew this would be a waste of his time and he’d probably be better off with some white boy than this bourgeoisie wannabe. But that would be all of the talk later. Now Malik was looking at the degrees on the wall and Tamia was swallowing spit she’d gathered from beneath her tongue. They could hear the pendulum on the clock in Maria’s office next door ticking.

  “Do you have any questions for me?” Malik asked. “This is an interview, right?”

  “Yeah.” Tamia took a pad from her desk and tried to remember what she’d read in the folder that morning on the treadmill. While she was usually prepared to meet a new client with a list of questions, a recorder, and sometimes Naudia taking additional notes, she’d planned on letting Jones lead Malik’s questioning and only half read the first few pages. “Let’s see…” She flipped open the case file.

  “I’m just gonna come out and say this so there’s no confusion,” Malik said. “I did what they said I did. It’s not what they’re calling it but I did do it. And I’ll do it again.”

  “What?” Tamia looked at Malik like he was crazy and this time she did nothing to hide what she was thinking. “I don’t think you need to say that right now. Not here.” Her voice was hushed. “My job is to maintain your innocence. You tell me what happened and I’ll decide what you did and didn’t do and until then I don’t want to hear you say anything like that again.”

  “I know the game you’re playing, but I’m saying I don’t want to play games. They say I enslaved my own brother. I say I freed him. I’m a conscious brother and I can’t lie about something I did that I knew was right just because a bunch of unconscious people said it’s unethical. Have you ever had to do that, sister? Put your head out there to do something that was right, even though the law said it was unethical?”

  Tamia nervously swallowed what was inside of her mouth again and nodded.

  “Sister, are you conscious?” Malik leaned in toward the desk as if he was saying a secret, but his voice was still loud enough for someone walking past the office to hear.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Conscious? Are you conscious?”

  “As opposed to unconscious?” Tamia smiled uneasily. “Sure I am.”

  “That’s not what I mean. I’m asking if you’re conscious about the war against African people in this world. About how white supremacy threatens the very existence of blackness”—his voice was getting louder with each word and Tamia wanted to close the door to her office but she was afraid if she got up she would have to walk farther away and he’d only get louder still—“That whiteness is a genetic mutation and—”

  “Mr…. Mal-ik…I need you to stop.” Tamia put her handsup crossly. “I am sure all of this stuff—”

  “Stuff?”

  “—is very important to you and where you’re from—”

  “Where I’m from?”

  “—but this really isn’t the place for it.”

  “Not the place?”

  “We need to focus on your case. On the facts. Not your rhetoric about…whatever that was.”

  “Rhetoric?”

  And just like that the accidental adversaries were easy enemies and Malik was on his feet.

  He grabbed his knapsack and as he bent down Tamia rolled her eyes.

  “I knew this was going to be a waste of my time. I’m out. Peace.”

  

  As Tamia’s cautious client was making an abrupt exit in Manhattan, Troy’s righteous rival had yet to arrive at the meeting of the Virtuous Women in Harlem. And it was a bad thing too, because Troy had come to the church early to meet with Myrtle and inform her of her decision to take over the organization before she told the rest of the women. This was step one of her Queen Bee competition goal and thus far, she was falling short.

  She sat, quiet and nervous, in the corner of the meeting room, watching as women robed in an outdated mix of floral patterns sauntered in, thanking the Lord for the day he’d made and following up with a bit of premeeting rumor dispersal.

  “You okay, First Lady?” asked Kiona, pulling up a chair beside Troy. As usual, she was underdressed in jeans and a tight T-shirt—an outfit that would no doubt prompt Sister Glover to open the meeting by talking about the “proper image of a Virtuous Woman.”

  “I’m fine, KiKi,” Troy tried to reassure her.

  “I’m saying, we’re just planning the next bake sale today. It’s not that serious…well, unless Mother Wildren insists on bringing her prune pie again.”

  Troy and Kiona chuckled at the memory of the pie and its aftereffect stinking up the building. Over the time Troy had been at the church, she’d found Kiona to be one of the most real and hated members. It was funny, she thought, how that seemed to go together there. Sometimes she wondered why Kiona remained at the church and why they hadn’t run her off yet. But the truth, Troy learned, was that while Kiona and her jeans and wild comments had made lots of enemies over the years, she loved God and worked harder than almost everyone at the church. Not one bake sale or drive or Girl Scout meeting went by without Kiona, her tight jeans, and her opinions.

  “Hey, Kiona,” Troy started, “you were here before my husband became the pastor, correct?”

  “Sure was. Pastor Brown. Lord, that was a wonderful man of God.”

  “So you were also here when the Virtuous Women were started?” Troy asked, watching a few more women come in and sit at the table.

  “Guilty as charged,” Kiona answered. “First Lady Brown started the Virtuous Women to bring the women of First Baptist together for true fellowship and service. It was so much fun.”

  “What was she like? Like, how did she handle being the head of an organization with so many spiritual women? She must’ve been like a saint or something.” Troy laughed, but really she was serious.

  “Please, that woman was far from a saint. She was late to most of the meetings and forgot a few events. That woman was a trip.” Kiona looked at Troy. “But, you know, there was something about her. Something human and real and just plain good that just made all of us love and respect her. Women were fighting to join this organization just to be close to her. It was like you knew that no matter where you’d been or what you’d done, she’d love you and embrace you. And, if you ask me, that’s what we should look for in any First Lady. Especially one leading the Virtuous Women.” Her voice quickly went low. “Not the riffraff we have leading us right now…but you didn’t hear that from me.”

  “Oh, stop it,” Troy chided, playfully spanking Kiona’s hand.

  The exchange between the two women quickly turned from a conversation to a confessional, as Troy opened up and informed Kiona of her decision to lead the Virtuous Women as she was expected to. For Troy, who needed to let someone outside of herself and the other Ts know of her plan, it let a bunch of guilt and anxiety off of her shoulders. She actually felt good when the meeting was finally opening and Kiona promised not to tell anyone of her plan. But she immediately realized that even the most real, most well-intentioned woman couldn’t keep a piece of hot gossip like that to herself—not for very long. And the wildest thing was that while Troy hadn’t even seen Kiona speak to any of the other women in
the room, one by one, they turned to Troy with speculative stares. It was as if the bit of communication was being transported among these heavenly women telepathically…or via text message.

  Robed in a leopard-print duster that kissed the floor beneath her six-inch leopard-print heels, Sister Glover shifted into the room like a judge prepared to hear her next case. She greeted her jury, smiling pleasantly at their waves, took her seat, and clasped her hands on the table.

  “Let us begin with prayer, sisters,” she said with a weak nod to Troy, who was seated to her right.

  

  “I need you to do something!” Tamia began rattling off her demand before she fully entered Charleston’s office.

  Inside, at the far end of a triangular corner enclave whose size would be the envy of any high-rolling New York office, stood Charleston beside a floor-to-ceiling window that looked out over the city. His assistant, Christina, an Irish redhead with envious, lime-colored eyes, was sitting in a chair beside his desk, typing as he spoke. Together, they looked up at Tamia.

  “That’ll be all,” Charleston said.

  “But we haven’t finished the letter…” Christina knew better than to push. She saved the file on her laptop and hustled out of the room as quickly as her rented Prada heels would allow.

  Tamia stood before the sleek chrome and glass desk, her arms crossed, her teeth tight in a grimace. There was nothing else to say. Malik and his words had ignited fire in her in some way she didn’t know, couldn’t explain. The nerve of him to speak to her in such a way when he needed her, Tamia kept thinking as she charged upstairs to Charleston’s office. And what did he mean anyway? Her “level of consciousness”? The only thing he needed to be conscious of was keeping himself out of jail. That was the problem with men like him; they were always focused on the wrong things.

  “People are going to start to believe we’re sleeping together,” Charleston joked, walking around to the front of his desk and sitting before Tamia. His jacket was off, revealing matching Burberry suspenders and a bow tie. It was pretentious, but that’s what he was going for.