A Price to Pay for Everything

by Kameisha Jenkins

  Natalie struggled to maintain her composure. No this mutha lova' didn’t.

  “Alright then, since you insist on proving yourself an asshole, I want to see Henry. He is a close friend of mine and I know that he would not appreciate your lack of service.” Natalie waited for Rodney to flinch when she name-dropped. Instead he grinned.

  “Henry? Is that right? Well he aint’ here. I am.” Rodney replied to Natalie’s challenge while forming a crooked smile. She felt her anger pulse through her veins and then out of her mouth.

  “Perhaps I don’t understand what the fuck suddenly became funny, but yes, he does own this station doesn’t he?” Natalie clenched her fist so tight that her nails were cutting the insides of her palm.

  Now giggling at Natalie’s growing anger, Rodney decided that he liked the way she looked when she was frustrated. She looked so powerful and powerless at the same time. At the very least, she was entertaining.

  “Look Ms…?” He paused for Natalie to fill in her name.

  “Logan.” Natalie spat as if she dared him to utter another word.

  “I am sorry but we are not interested in any more life insurance, time shares, or fast and easy ways to increase our net worth…” Rodney quipped.

  “Excuse me, do you think…?” Natalie prepared to tear into her newest victim. Rodney stopped her cold by placing his greasy hand up to her face, sending Natalie into hysterics.

  “You know what? To hell with this. Whoever your manager is needs to know how sorry your ass is as a worker. I am sure he has a business card and I am not leaving until you find one. I got all day, how about you Sambo?” Natalie demanded and instinctively placed her hands on her hips. She felt the need to be stand offish, but remembered that she had an appointment with a client in an hour.

  As she collected her belongings, her business cards fell from her organizer. Angered by the facght that she was beginning to look like a bumbling fool, she snatched them up quickly and deliberately, making sure that Rodney could see that she was agile and not some softy that he could just railroad. She then stood straight up and folded her arms like she did when she was a little girl in Maryland challenging her brother to a quick relay race to the power line at the end of their suburban street.

  Rodney met her determination with a curious amusement that was displayed on his face as he reached into the desk and handed her a business card with the service station’s logo. Natalie instinctively inspected it for legitimacy and shoved it in her purse.

  “You just messed up, negro.” Natalie said matter of factly to launch a final assault to seal her victory.

  “I here you shawdy. Thanks for stopping by Ms. Logan.” Rodney added a hint of pronounced nastiness when mouthed her last name.

  Natalie stormed out the office, hopped into her BMW and exited the service station. She heard the voices in her head start to scream obscenities and slammed her hand against the staring wheel as she pressed the volume button until the voices were drowned up by the sound of the same songstress proclaiming that someone didn’t know about her.

  “See, that’s what happens when you try to show a black business some love. Fuck him!” She screamed at the top of her lungs and was clearly shaken by the sound of her own voice.

  “That mutha’ fucka’ don’t know who he messin' with. He aint gonna' have a job when I finish with his punk ass. Who the fuck does he think he is…don’t he know who I am? Stupid assed niggahs can’t stand to see a bitch with shit…I got something for his ass though.” Only, her lips weren’t moving.

  Natalie began to shake and cry uncontrollably as her anger began to consume her. She knew that she was taking the incident too far by trying to have the rude attendant fired, but she had to let him know that she demanded respect, and if it were not offered to her, she would forcefully take it.

  At the service station, Rodney stood dumbfounded by his experience and began to grow nervous about Ms. Logan’s threats. He wondered how far she would actually take the issue and decided that it was not worth the worry.

  Deciding that he had enough drama fending off the neighborhood gang members that regularly tried to rob the station, he thought it better to smooth over the rough edges just in case.

  He noticed that she had missed a card in her rush to grab her belongings that fell on the floor. He was about to reach down to assist her, but she scowled at him and he retreated immediately. He made himself remember that the card was still under the desk and not to bring it to her attention. He retrieved the card and noticed that her first name was Natalie. He wondered how such a hard woman could have such a soft name. He knew that she wouldn’t make it to her office for at least an hour because of the lunch rush and left her a message apologizing for the incident.

  Given her behavior, he knew that it was likely that a message on her voice mail would not be enough to soothe her. Praying that she wasn’t someone checking up on him from the Board of Trade, he hung up the phone and hoped for mercy. He didn’t need anything messing up his plans to franchise his late father’s service station.

  Chapter 5 Ilene

  As Ilene turned the key in the lock of her expansive home, a part of her wished that it wouldn’t work. She said a silent prayer for her husband to have changed the locks or leave all together. The sight of his black Cadillac Eldorado parked in the garage suggested that she would not be so lucky.

  His voice sounded urgent when he interrupted her lunch at Justin’s in Buckhead. He demanded that she come home immediately. She fretted about enduring another argument that he would forgive her for anyway. A nervous uneasiness made her stomach flutter as she considered what the cause of his anger might be. Had he noticeder screw up?

  Two years ago, she made the mistake of removing her wedding ring when she was entertaining one of her “associates” who just happened to own the firm that her son wanted desperately to work for. When she was done with their “visit”, she forgot to retrieve her ring and knew better than to expect for a cleaning lady to turn in a 2-carat princess cut solitaire left by people who checked in as Michael Jackson and Pat Boone.

  After her son obtained the position, Ilene made it clear that she had no further need for her convenient friend and threatened haul his ass to court with damning evidence if he tried to fire her son. Her insurance policy was the videotape of their love making that she made him view as proof of their affair. She coyly informed him that the tape could be delivered within an hour if ever he opted to change their arrangement.

  She quickly replaced her lost ring with hush money her friend called a gift, leaving her husband none the wiser. Though she always denied her alleged affairs, Ilene knew that her missing ring would be irrefutable evidence that pointed towards her infidelity this time.

  Deciding that her farce of a marriage had gone on too long, she made the decision to admit her infidelity and finally take them both out of the misery they existed in for 25 years. But only on her terms.

  The thought of one of her “friends” informing her husband angered her and she was determined that she would stop short of nothing to make sure they paid dearly for their actions. She always made sure that she had evidence of the affairs or some type of trump card that could ruin their perfectly ordered lives.

  Her most recent tryst involved a local attorney and councilman, Paul Cummings who, Ilene learned from her private investigator, had a particular zeal for young boys. While she found excuses not to sleep with him, she had him followed and waited for her opportunity to expose his secret. Undoubtedly bothered by the fact that his mistress no longer wanted to sleep with him, Paul confronted her in hopes of announcing the end of their affair.

  Disgusted and amused by his gall, Ilene pretended to cry profusely. In an attempt to console her, Paul reached for his handkerchief and offered it to her. She pushed it away and reached in her purse.

  Assuming that she was going to retrieve a delicate handkerchief to wipe her tears, Paul drew back and gasped for air as he realized that what she was retrieving was actually the m
esh underwear that his young male lover wore the previous night, stained with his DNA.

  She slipped her manicured hand into her purse again and pulled out 5 pictures that colorfully illustrated him and his lover in compromising positions gratifying themselves and each other.

  Immediately infuriated, Paul knew what Ilene was capable of as her sobs turned into muffled giggles. He retrieved his checkbook in quiet defeat. It would be the first of many monthly checks written out to cash in the amount of $15,000 a pop. He would later be forwarded bills from various department stores charged to his account.

  His accountant tried to discreetly warn that his liabilities should be checked before it became a bigger problem. Knowing that his account histories were public records due to his elected post, Paul struggled to rein Ilene in. Nothing worked. Reluctantly, he paid her costs deciding that the truth would be far more expensive.

  As she slipped out of her chocolate suede Stuart Weitzman pumps, she listened intently to see if she had any uninvited guests. She heard nothing. She walked slowly across the 2-story marble foyer, her feet stinging and turning beet red as they adjusted to the cold surface. Instinctively, she turned on the heating subsystem that heated all of the flooring in the home. Though it was 73 degrees in Atlanta, she hated when her feet were cold. It reminded her too much of death.

  “Ilene, is that you?” Charles Campbell yelled as he came around the corner with a handful of pap. Damn. Ilene’s heart began to race.

  “Yes, it’s me. What’s wrong with you Chuck? Why are you yelling?” Ilene asked. She quickly decided that she would go against her original plan to confess. The fact that her husband’s nostrils were flaring wildly influenced her decision.

  He quickly approached her. The gray hairs in his head seemed to have overpowered the black ones. Instead of looking distinguished and well aged, he began to take the posture of an old man exhausted of his wife’s antics.

  Ilene’s pulse quickened as her enraged husband came dangerously close to her face. She winced as he spoke.

  “What the hell is this? I am sick of this shit, girl!”

  Charles was clearly not in a mood to be soothed as he waived the documents he clenched in front of his wife.

  “What are you talking about?” Ilene began to feel her stomach rise to her throat as she feared her husband’s next words.

  “You tell me. You got a goddamned story for everything. So what the fuck is this?” Charles waited for his wife’s admission.

  Ilene’s feigned ignorance incensed Charles as he threw the papers in her face.

  Wincing from the sudden thrust of papers in her face, Ilene quickly refocused her eyes so that she could decipher what was on the document before it hit the floor.

  Shit. Fuck. Shit.

  When she realized what the documents read, she slowly closed her eyes and tears flooded them. Charles had the bank statement for the account in Trinidad that she had never disclosed to her husband. The account had over one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars in it and was registered in her maiden name. But how did HE get it?

  “We been married for 25 years, and you still got secrets. I never asked you to work and you have the fucking nerve to do this shit. Look around Ilene, you’ve been the queen and I’ve been the worker bee. All those times I had to take out loans to buy you those expensive assed clothes to wear around the house, and I find this shit!”

  Charles grew disgusted at the sight of Ilene’s tears.

  “Chuck, you’re overreacting...” Ilene sounded dismissive but later evolved to an apologetic tone when she realized that Charles began to bite his bottom lip the way he did right before he hit her the one time before.

  “I had this account before we got married. It was a gift from my grandfather. He put it in my maiden name so that I could always have access to it. He told me to hang on to it in case things didn’t work out. I never told you about it because I didn’t want you to hate my family anymore than you already do.” Ilene pleaded.

  Damn. That shit was actually believable.

  “Hate your family? Ilene, please. Those people hated ME ‘cause I looked too much like a niggah and too little like the cracker you were dealing with when we met. But that don’t change the fact that the account is still open.”

  Charles felt relieved that he was able to remind Ilene of his distaste for the fact that she was engaged to white man before they got together.

  “His estate contributes money to it monthly as a ward of his will after he died. I wouldn’t keep something this important from you. I told you when he died a year ago that he left me something in his will, remember?”

  Ilene pleaded with her husband to accept her story. He didn’t.

  “Yeah, but you said that he only left you a few dollars and that taxes would probably eat it up anyway. You didn’t say shit about this much money. This is over $125,000!” Charles said as he desperately tried to believe what his wife was saying.

  “Because there was nothing to say. This money is yours as well as mine. I will give you the account number right now if you want it.” Ilene declared knowing that her husband was too proud a man to ever accept money from her.

  The look on his face told her that he didn’t fully believe her story so she decided to embellish a little.

  “I know how hard you worked to eep the household going and I wanted to surprise you with that time share in Key West, right on the golf course. Don’t be mad, Chuck I was going to tell you. I just wanted to get all of the financing together before I said anything.” Ilene said.

  She looked curiously at her husband to gauge his reaction. His anger had disappeared and was replaced with a defeated look. Visibly torn between believing his wife and telling her that he was sick of her conniving ways, Charles chose the path of least resistance. His tight scowl was coming undone.

  “Look Ilene, it’s real nice that you want to get me that time share, but I don’t like how you kept this shit from me. You should have told me. And anyway, we don’t have to get a time-share. It’s another bill and the cost of keeping it up would be more trouble than it’s worth. Why don’t we use some of that money to plan a trip like we wanted for our honeymoon? Your punk assed granddaddy would love that.”

  “Hey now, don’t speak of him that way. He might have had his ways, but that man loved me more than my own father. He never looked down on my mother because she was black. He was just trying to take care of me, that’s all.” Ilene interjected.

  “I’ll take care of you. I have been doing it for this long, right?” Charles said as savored the idea of having Ilene’s white grandfather pay for the room where he would have sex with her like the whore he knew she was deep down.

  He grabbed his wife and held her head close to his chest as they embraced. Ilene whimpered and moments later Charles’ shirt was dampened with her tears. They were tears of relief. After a few seconds passed, Ilene lifted her head from his chest and looked into her husband’s eyes.

  “I love you Chuck, you know that don’t you?” She said as she searched eyes for the answer.

  “And I love you too, baby. Sorry about coming off on you like that, but baby you got to be honest. You know I don’t like finding things out third hand.” Charles said to his wife as he placed her head back on his chest.

  He knew at that point that she was lying about the account because she only told him that she loved him when she was trying to apologize for one of her many mistakes. Instead, he chose to love his wife and let it go.

  As Ilene closed her eyes and enjoyed her husband’s embrace, she made a mental note to open another account for Paul Cummings and the rest of her “friends” to make their monthly payments to.

  Chapter 6 Marc

  “Hello, may I speak with Sherise please?”, Marc asked as he listened to the background noise of crying babies and Barnie that was about two settings too loud to be enjoyable.

  “Hole on”, a juvenile voice answered and screamed out the name of the person he called for.

  As he
waited, Marc closed his eyes and promised God that he would never bring someone home from the club again if he gave him this one favor. He was startled by the sound of someone wrestling to pick up the phone.

  “Ha-lo?” Sherise was overwhelmingly ghetto. What the hell? It instantly made Marc queasy.

  “Sherise, hey it’s Marc. I see you called me today…”, Marc started.

  “Hello Marchevis. So nice of you to finally get around to calling me. Have you been THAT busy? You know that we need to meet.” She asked with sarcasm dripping from her words.

  “Well, um, you know work has really had me swamped. In fact, I think I gotta work late tonight, but I might be able to break away for a minute.”

  The last thing Marc wanted to do was “meet” with her again.

  “Look, I am not about to beg you to deal with this. Either you do or you don’t, but I assure you that you won’t like the outcome if you keep trying to blow me off.” Sherise decided not to beat around the bush. She knew that Marc had money and she wanted some of it.

  “I know we need to talk about the situation, so what if I meet you for lunch?” Marc asked knowing she would not give ng abouportunity to relieve him of a $200 lunch. He cringed at the thought that he had sex with someone so utterly repulsive to him.

  Her apparent sophistication was only a thin layer that masked her overwhelming crudeness and blatant contempt for men who didn’t bow when she entered a room. She believed wholeheartedly that she was royalty and the fact that she lived in public housing was a mere setback that could be corrected with the right “investment”.

  “Oh, is that what you call it, a situation? I aint mad at that. Well, I was gonna go work at the shop for a lil’ while, but I guess I can call my sister and let her drop me off from there unless you gonna be in the area.” Sherise replied hoping that Marc would pick her up from the hair salon where she worked so that she could show him off around all of the females there.