by Mary Monroe
He gulped and gave me a surprised look. “Huh? Oh! Mrs. Harper, you don’t have to take me to lunch or anything else. I was glad to be of some assistance to you. Like I said, I was just doing my job.”
“I know. But it would make me feel a whole lot better if you’d let me do something nice for you,” I insisted.
“You’ve already done that as far as I’m concerned. Inviting me to have dinner with you and your family was more than enough. And the food was off the chain! I haven’t eaten such a screaming good dinner since my grandmother died. I’m glad I spent the first half of my life with her.”
“Oh? Your grandmother raised you?”
“Off and on, I should say.” He smiled.
“Where were your mother and your daddy?”
Curtis stopped smiling. “My daddy died of a stroke when I was four. Mama was around. Well, to be more specific, she was all over the place. Sometimes I wouldn’t see her for weeks at a time. She was a pretty woman, so she had a lot of admirers, if you know what I mean.”
I didn’t know what he meant, so I was glad he told me. “We lived with her pimp for two years.”
“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.” Not only was I shocked, but I also felt truly sorry for this man. He had endured a rough life, just like me, and deserved so much more. Just like me . . .
“She didn’t stay in that life too long. Thank God she had enough sense to realize how destructive it was. Anyway, I didn’t like the way my mama’s men treated her and they didn’t like me. So my grandmother took over and moved me in with her. She passed when I was twelve and then I moved back in with Mama.”
“We have something in common. The man my mama married didn’t like me, so my grandmother took me in.”
“Hmmm.” Curtis gave me a strange look. “Uh, why did you move in with your grandmother? I know it ain’t my business, but your daddy is one of the richest black men in the state. Where was he at the time?”
“I was ten when my mama married my stepfather. My real daddy didn’t even know about me until my mama died in a car wreck a few days before the new millennium rolled in. I didn’t know about him either. My mama had told me some off-the-wall bogus story about my daddy dying in a plane crash. Anyway, Daddy came to my mama’s funeral, saw me, and put two and two together. I look just like his dead brother’s daughter. But he still had a DNA test done to be sure.” I snorted. “He didn’t waste any time stepping up to the plate. He started taking care of me and my grandmother right away.”
“Old brother Kenneth Lomax sounds like a righteous dude.”
“My daddy is an angel in my book. He was real generous to me and my grandma. Right after my mama’s funeral, he moved us into a real fancy condo he owns near downtown. He took us to fancy restaurants with names I couldn’t even pronounce. One time he even picked us up in a stretch limo. My grandma died not long after he had moved us into his condo, so he brought me to live with him. He sent me to a real fancy boarding school in Iowa where I learned good manners and how to speak better English than that gibberish most of those ignoramuses back in the hood use. And when I graduated from high school, he bought me my first car—a BMW—and a different new car every year.” I looked toward the door again to make sure the coast was still clear. “He bought me a Jaguar this year. It was real hard for me to go from living in the hood to living in Pacific Heights.”
“I’ll bet it was. Well, everything worked out for you anyway, Mrs. Harper.” Curtis patted my shoulder.
“Please, call me Sarah,” I told him.
He smiled and gave my shoulder a firm squeeze. “Sarah.” He sniffed. “We have something else in common. Sarah was my daddy’s mama’s name.”
I grinned. “Look, I really would like to take you to lunch. It’s always nice to connect with people who grew up the way I did.” I looked away for a moment. “Sometimes I feel so lonely. I spend so much time on my own. That’s why I was in the store the day I had my accident and lost my baby. I just wanted to be around people. The mansion is so big and sometimes the only people I talk to all day are the housekeeper, our chauffeur, or the maintenance people who come around from time to time.”
“Hmmm. What about your stepmother? Is she good company to you during the day? Or does she go to a job every day?”
“Puh-lease!” I rolled my eyes so hard it hurt.
“Oops! Excuse me. I didn’t know it was like that.” Curtis laughed.
“Vera’s a hot mess, if you ask me. She has more on her plate than a glutton. She spends hours at a time, several days a week shopping. She goes to the spa, the gym, the shows in Vegas, and buys three-hundred-dollar lunches. And she goes to the hairdresser and plastic surgeons so often, I’m surprised she hasn’t turned into a bionic woman with all of the fake things on her body! She even goes around helping churches feed the poor, so she says. And even when she is in the house with me, we don’t have that much to talk about. She’s as shallow as a duck pond. So, no. She’s not good company to me.”
“Don’t you have any friends?”
“Not really. I hung out with my homegirls from the old neighborhood as long as I could. But I got tired of them asking me for money or making stupid, jealous remarks about me living in Pacific Heights. Daddy sent me to that fancy boarding school so I could learn how to act like I had some class and fit in better with other wealthy people. But that didn’t really help. I still feel like a fish out of water. You saw how dull the conversation was at the dinner table this evening. . . .”
“Now that you mention it, it was pret-ty booooring.”
We both laughed. “Pret-ty booooring is right.” I coughed to clear my throat. I felt so comfortable talking to Curtis. He seemed like the kind of man I could say just about anything to. “You already told me you like barbecued ribs. . . .”
Curtis laughed again. “All right, Mrs. Har—uh, Sarah. I’ll let you treat me to lunch.”
“When? How about tomorrow?”
Curtis raised an eyebrow. “I have to work tomorrow and I don’t get but an hour for lunch. We’d have to do it on one of my days off, which is Wednesday and Thursday.”
“All right. We’ll go to lunch next Wednesday.”
“You tell me the address of the place and I’ll meet you there. I should have my car out of the shop by then.”
“Oh, I don’t mind picking you up,” I said quickly. “Why don’t you give me your telephone number? I’ll call you the day before just to confirm everything.”
“Cool.” Curtis pulled a pen out of his shirt pocket and eagerly scribbled his telephone number on a matchbook cover and handed it to me. “If a woman answers, don’t get nervous. Mama usually answers the telephone.”
I glanced toward the store again. It was foggy now, and I couldn’t see the door. A few seconds later, Collette slunk out of the fog and strutted toward the car with a pinched look on her face.
“Uh, I don’t know if you realized it or not when we were eating dinner, but my folks are . . . uh . . . not normal. I mean, they don’t get loose like I do.”
“Oh, I picked up on that right away. Vera must have mentioned the names of all the high-end stores she shops in twenty times. Cash and Collette seem more like stowaways. And, your husband . . . well, his mind seemed to be everywhere but at the dinner table. What a crazy setup you live in!” Curtis let out a loud groan and rubbed his nose. “And excuse me for saying this, but I couldn’t wait for that dinner to end so I could get away from them.”
“I feel like that every day. Some days I feel so uncomfortable at that dinner table I can barely get my food down,” I complained.
Curtis gave me a serious look. “Other than your daddy, the only other interesting person at that dinner table was you. You are one special lady, Sarah.”
A compliment like that coming from a man like him made my head swell. “Thank you,” I mumbled. “By the way, I don’t think they need to know about me treating you to lunch next Wednesday.”
“I feel the same way,” Curtis said with a nod. “Just pr
omise me one thing.”
“What?” I held my breath. Collette was just a few feet from the car now.
“After you treat me to lunch next Wednesday, the next time we get together you let me pick up the tab.”
The next time we get together? “Oh! Yeah. That’ll be fine with me,” I gushed.
Collette snatched open the front passenger door and plopped down in her seat, groaning like an old woman. “You look like a cat that just swallowed a canary, Sarah.” She gave me an accusatory look out of the corner of her eye. “What’s up with that big-ass smile on your face?”
“Nothing,” I replied, glancing at Curtis in the rearview mirror. I was not the only one who looked like I’d just swallowed a canary. He looked like he’d swallowed one too. The man’s face was glowing like a lightbulb.
What am I getting myself into? I immediately asked myself as I started the motor.
CHAPTER 41
VERA
THE FOLLOWING WEDNESDAY MORNING, SARAH PRANCED INTO THE kitchen a few minutes before eleven. There was such a smug look on her face you would have thought she was King Solomon’s favorite mistress. She wore a pair of jeans and a T-shirt with the words HOT STUFF printed across the front in once-black letters now faded by too many washings. She looked like she was on her way to a fashion show at the Salvation Army.
“Why are you dressed like that?” I asked. The frown on my face got even bigger when I saw she had flip-flops on her feet, showcasing ashy feet with toenails that looked more like bear claws.
“I’m going to lunch with Lupe Menendez, a friend that I haven’t seen since she came out of her coma.” Sarah’s eyes glistened like raindrops.
“Excuse me?”
“Lupe. She used to be one of my main homegirls. She got into a fight with a girl when we were in eighth grade and the other girl had a gun in her backpack. She shot Lupe in the back of her neck. Lupe’s been in a coma all these years until last week,” she explained. To me, Sarah looked unusually cheerful for somebody whose friend had been the victim of such a cruel act of violence.
The knowledge that Sarah still associated with people like this Lupe amazed me to no end. “I hope the girl that shot your friend went to jail.”
“No, she didn’t. Before the cops could find her, Lupe’s older brother, Javier, tracked her down and blew her face off with a sawed-off shotgun. He’s in jail, though.”
“My God, my God. Well, I hope your friend is going to be all right now and that she has family to look after her.”
“Oh, Lupe’s fine now. Her daddy got shot and killed a few years ago trying to rob a drug dealer in Mexico City. But her mama and her seven brothers and sisters still live in the building Grandma Lilly and I used to live in.”
I groaned and let out a mournful sigh. “If you’re going to your old neighborhood, you’re dressed appropriately, I guess. You don’t need to wear any of your nice clothes and draw attention to yourself. Those desperate, broke-ass people over there are just waiting to cook a goose like you.” Sarah didn’t like it when I implied that she might become a kidnapping victim someday. The same disgusted look that always appeared on her face when I brought it up was on her face now.
“Vera, don’t you think that if somebody wanted to kidnap me they would have done it by now?”
“Just be careful. Your daddy has enough to worry about.” I shook my head in exasperation. “I hope you’re not driving your car over there. Let Costa drive you.”
“No, I’m driving my car,” she giggled. “I really would draw attention to myself if I rolled up in front of Lupe’s building in the town car with a chauffeur behind the wheel.”
“Humph! Just make sure that that can of mace I gave you is still in your purse.”
I left the house a few minutes after Sarah did. I had a lot of things on my agenda for the day, but the most important thing I had to do was go to the bank and open a new savings account in my name only. Kenneth and I had several joint accounts and numerous credit cards. Our accountant took care of our bills and other expenses related to the business, but I took care of our personal expenditures. I had opened several credit cards in my name that Kenneth didn’t know about. With all the gifts I purchased for my lovers, some months I had to rob Peter to pay Paul. But as long as Kenneth didn’t know how out of control I was when it came to money, I was not going to worry about it.
I opened the new bank account with five thousand dollars that I had squeezed out of the monthly household expenses last month. My plan was to siphon out a few thousand dollars from the household money every month and funnel it into my new account. In a few years, I’d have at least a million dollars or close to it. So if Kenneth dumped me and if I had managed my money well, I’d be all right until I landed another wealthy husband.
Despite my increasing paranoia, I had no reason to believe Kenneth was going to divorce me. However, I still felt more comfortable having something to fall back on in case he did.
“Would you like to add someone to this account, Mrs. Lomax?” asked Mr. Garra, a molelike little man who looked more like an undertaker than a bank employee.
I didn’t answer right away. I was so busy organizing my thoughts that I had almost forgotten where I was. I looked around the plush bank office, admiring the healthy-looking green plants in every corner. There was a file cabinet behind Mr. Garra’s red-oak desk. On top of the file cabinet was a framed picture of his family—two adorable children and an attractive, decades-younger blond wife. She probably loved the puppy her son was holding more than she loved her homely husband. She had the kind of smirk on her face that made me think she and I shared the same secret. And we probably did. Women like me can usually spot another woman with the same motives.
Mr. Garra cleared his throat to get my attention back. “Mrs. Lomax. Will you be adding someone else to this account?”
“Huh? Oh, no. Not at this time.” I smiled. “You have a beautiful family,” I commented, nodding toward the photograph.
“Well, there’s nothing like family. Each day is better than the last.”
“You’re right.” I nodded. “There is nothing like family.” I should have shut my big mouth while I was still ahead. I didn’t like telling strangers too much of my business. I didn’t realize I was doing just that until it was too late. “I have a wonderful husband and a daughter and son-in-law. We’re all very close.”
Mr. Garra lifted his chin and gave me a dry look. “I see. In that case, you should definitely include a beneficiary on this account. Heaven forbid, but if something were to happen to you, the state will take over your estate unless you provide beneficiary information for this account in your last will and testament. Otherwise, your family will have to struggle through probate and other forms of red tape for years before they can gain access to whatever is still in this account upon your passing.”
“Never mind all that!” I snapped. I didn’t like to get excited unless I was having sex. Excitement usually made me have a hot flash. One of the worst ones I’d ever experienced suddenly shot up from my feet to my face. It felt like somebody had just shoved me into an oven, face-first. I gasped for air and I fanned my face with my hand.
“Are you all right, ma’am? Would you like a glass of water?” Mr. Garra was around my age, so I figured he probably thought I was having a senior moment. And that was probably true. My memory had rapidly begun to fade. Last week when I went shopping downtown, I couldn’t remember where I had parked my car. I had wandered around like an Alzheimer’s patient for an hour before I located it. Getting old was a bitch. That was another reason why I had to ensure my future. And if Bo and Sarah had another child—and I prayed that they would make another one soon—at least I’d have a rich grandchild to fall back on. In the meantime, I had to do what I had to do.
“I’m fine, thank you,” I insisted, rising. I stuffed my copies of the documents I had just signed into my purse and scurried out like a burglar.
CHAPTER 42
KENNETH
I WAS GLA
D TO BE BACK TO NORMAL. WELL, NORMAL FOR ME. I STILL didn’t feel as well as I used to, but I felt well enough to return to work.
It was a typical foggy Frisco morning when I left the house, driving with both hands on the steering wheel and squinting my eyes like that old cartoon character Mr. Magoo. Even though I stayed in the slow lanes all the way, impatient motorists behind me kept honking their horns for me to speed up, but I refused to do so. The last way I wanted to end my life was in an automobile accident.
By the time I pulled into my personal parking stall behind the store, I was aching in several places on my body, short of breath, and dizzy. I had to sit still for five minutes to compose myself. After I had taken several deep breaths, massaged my chest, and swallowed a few pills, I felt better. I wobbled out of my Lexus and stumbled into the building through the employee entrance.
In spite of what I told people, I felt like a dead man walking and I tried to hide it. I didn’t want anybody to feel sorry for me, which most of them did anyway. People looked at me with pity and a few held their breath when I approached them. The same day I returned to work, half a dozen people came into my office to check and make sure I was still breathing. No matter how many times I told them to stop worrying about me, a few continued to do so. Finally, I closed and locked my office door. And it was a good thing I did that. I fell asleep sitting at my desk several times and once I tumbled from my chair and hit the side of my head on the corner of my desk. Luckily, nobody noticed the small knot that had immediately formed on my head and remained there for three days.
I went about my normal routine. Within a week, I had resumed all of the duties that I had put on hold during my time off. By then people had stopped looking at me like I was already dead. They had even stopped asking me about my health. Life was good again.