by RM Johnson
Asha pulled purses, jackets, and sweaters out of the closet as well, placing them all on the bed. She stepped back, her hands on her hips and looked around her at the disarray her room—her life—was in. She couldn’t believe it. If she had only maintained that she was straight. If she had only denied Angie the right to even speak to her after she’d made that initial pass at her, none of this would be happening. Jayson and Asha would still be friends. She wouldn’t have been thrown out of her place, she would’ve voluntarily left, because she would’ve been moving into the house that Gill had bought her.
How she wanted to take it all back. But she couldn’t. The tears started to fall again, Asha crumpling to the carpet, sitting there cross-legged, her face buried in her hands. She needed to talk to someone, be with someone desperately, and if she didn’t think Jayson would slam the door in her face upon seeing the first glimpse of her, she would’ve run up there looking for him to comfort her. But there was no one. She raised her head, smeared the tears from her cheeks with the heels of her hands, and reached for a shirt off the bed. She shook it out, holding it out in front of her by the shoulders, then folded it neatly. She stood up, searched the bed for a pair of jeans, folded them, then two more pair, a few Tshirts, and a couple of nightgowns, and folded them all, tucking them into a duffel bag she grabbed from out of the closet.
Asha had been on the road for three hours now, and she was only three turns from her mother’s house. She didn’t know why it took losing everyone for her to think about telling her own mother her problems, but she hadn’t seen her in months, and she knew her mother would understand. That is, she’d understand the part about Asha being upset by losing her best friend, and her fiancé. Asha would never tell her about the fact that she was a lesbian. Her mother was older, and Asian, born and raised in Japan, and still took issue with the philosophy Americans had regarding relationships—the freedom, and the willingness they had to act disrespectfully to each other.
Her mother had been totally submissive to Asha’s father, a tall Native American. She never questioned any of his decisions, never talked back to him, and never disrespected him, publicly or otherwise. Her place was to help her husband be the best man he could be. To love him and care for him in whatever fashion he needed caring for. That was the place of all women in her mind, to be forever at their man’s side.
Asha could see the expression on her mother’s face if she were to tell her the only person she wanted to love and care for was a woman. Asha smiled to herself, pulling into her mother’s driveway.
The house looked the same as it always had, and everything was still neat and tidy. The only difference was, instead of Asha’s father doing the lawn and landscaping work around the house, Asha’s mother now did it.
After Asha’s father had died ten years ago, her mother went into a tailspin of depression. She normally woke up early, but after his death, she wouldn’t crawl out of her dark room until some time in the early evening. She barely said anything more than good morning and good night to Asha. Asha remembered walking up to her mother’s bedroom door, about to knock, but thinking twice. She placed her ear to it. She heard her mother in there sobbing, trying to muffle the loud sounds in a pillow. Asha had tried to open the door, but it was locked. She stood there another moment, thinking of knocking again, but knew if her mother locked the door, she didn’t want to be bothered.
A week later, exactly seven days after her father was buried, Asha’s mother called Asha down to the kitchen. The kitchen clock read 7 A.M. when Asha finally staggered into the room. A full breakfast had been cooked and was waiting for her. Her mother, looking healthy and bright-eyed, stood at the counter stirring up a pitcher of orange juice. After that breakfast, Asha had to ask her mother, “What happened? Why are you better now?”
Her mother reached across the table and took her daughter’s hand.
“Asha, I loved your father. Loved him first day he speak to me. We had so much fun, every day like a fairy tale, until one day he gone. I had to grieve, Asha. Get all pain and hurt out now. To carry it with me for rest of my life, like casting huge shadow on his memory. So I took week, and let hurt do what it would to me. Now it’s time is over. It’s time to be happy self again. Your father would want it this way,” she said, smiling at Asha.
Now standing outside her mother’s house, Asha rang the doorbell, and realized this may have been the reason she’d packed up her things and come out here. She had two weeks to move, but figured it would only take her one. Like her mother had done when her father died, Asha would take a week to grieve over all the bad things that had just happened to her. She would get all the pain and all the hurt out now, accept who she was, the life she would live, and then get back to being herself again.
When Asha’s mother opened the door, Asha was smiling, or at least the closest she had come to smiling in quite a while.
“Asha!” her mother said excitedly, stepping outside the door, throwing her arms around her daughter. “Why didn’t you call? Tell me you coming?”
Asha didn’t answer, pulling back from the embrace to get a look at her mother. She looked the same, physically fit, beautiful tan complexion, half the wrinkles of the average fifty-seven-year-old, and just enough gray in her straight black hair for her to be considered wise, but not old. Asha couldn’t remember a time when she was more happy to see her mother.
“I didn’t call because I wanted to surprise you, Ma.”
“Well, yes. It’s big surprise. Big, big surprise,” her mother said, opening the door, bidding Asha in.
“You still got my bedroom upstairs, right, Ma?” Asha said, carrying her bag into the house.
“No. Turn into exercise room. But can put pillow and blanket on treadmill. Make very comfortable for you.”
“Maaaa,” Asha whined.
“Just joking.”
35
Gary didn’t know just how the hell he had gotten into the situation he was in. Faith was just a beautiful woman he saw at the perfume counter at Bloomingdale’s one day trying on testers. She caught his eye immediately, and even though he was only there to buy a couple of pairs of boxers, which he had already purchased, he couldn’t just walk by without saying a word.
Gary walked up to the counter, looking down at the women’s perfume, at the same time feeling the woman next to him take notice of him being there. She turned away as if she thought nothing of him, but Gary knew that’s how all women would’ve responded. It said nothing about how she felt about him.
“Which one are you trying?” Gary asked, still looking through the glass.
The woman looked around, as if she had to make sure the question was directed to her, then said, “Oh, um, Chanel Allure.”
“That’s a good one, hunh?” Gary said. “I need to know, because I want to buy something nice for this very special woman.” Gary noticed that the woman in front of him now seemed to relax and smile a little.
“Oh yeah, it’s my favorite. She’ll like it a lot.”
“Good.”
The saleswoman in the white coat came back to the counter. “Have you been helped, sir?” she asked Gary.
“No, but I’ll take the large bottle of Chanel Allure.”
“Good. Let me get that for you,” the woman said, taking a box from the beneath the counter. “Have you decided yet, miss?”
“Oh no, not yet,” Faith said, smiling. “You can take care of the gentleman first.”
The saleswoman took Gary’s credit card and asked if he would like the perfume gift wrapped.
“Yes, please,” he responded. He knew this would give him more time to speak to the beautiful woman with the gorgeous smile, and what he believed to be an equally gorgeous body pressing against the large sweater and loose pants she was wearing.
“Faith,” she said, after Gary had asked her what her name was. He extended his hand, and she placed such a soft, smooth hand into his, that he knew one day he wanted to feel that hand on his bare body.
“Such a
beautiful name, for such a beautiful woman,” and yeah, he knew it was also such a corny line, but it always worked, just like it was working that very moment. Faith blushed, lowering her head to try and hide her wide smile.
“So here you are, sir,” the saleswoman said, ready to slide the brightly wrapped box of perfume with the huge bow on top into a shopping bag.
“I won’t need the bag, but thank you,” Gary said, taking the box.
“Well, whoever the lucky woman is, she’ll like that,” Faith said.
“I’m glad to hear that,” Gary said, presenting the box to Faith. “Because the lucky woman is you.”
And that was the first step that led him on the path to here. Yeah, he had a wife whom he truly loved, even though things were rocky sometimes, and two sons whom he would kill for, but this, he thought, would just be a little tryst on the side, something to keep the spice in his marriage.
He never knew Faith would want to get married, and the only reason that Gary kept telling her that he would was because that ass had gotten so good to him that he didn’t want to give it up. He knew it would all end if he told her that he would never leave his family, which he knew he never would. He and Lottie would get into it, and he would leave temporarily just to hurt her some, make her feel bad, make her feel he could live without her if he had to, when he knew he never could. Faith provided a place for him to stay for a little while, but to live with her for the rest of his life—he didn’t think that was possible.
Faith had never really meant much more to Gary than just some really good sex, so doing what this psycho Jayson had asked him to wasn’t that big a deal to him. Gary could almost understand why this Jayson guy wanted it to go down this way, considering the look on his face when he walked into that hotel room.
Gary hadn’t even known Jayson was there. He just kept thumping away at Faith, and he had to admit that that had to be the best nut he had ever busted. When he finally did see Jayson, the boy looked crazed, and Gary thought he was a dead man. But surprisingly, Jayson did nothing, said a few words, and walked sadly out the room. But his anger had to come out some way. All men have to get some sort of revenge if they find their woman with another man, and Gary knew this was Jayson’s.
“It’ll be five hundred dollars,” Jayson said over the phone to Gary.
“Five hundred dollars!” Gary gasped, speaking as low as he could in his home study, so his wife or kids wouldn’t hear him.
“Judging by Faith, I knew you were into fucking beautiful women, and I wanted someone so fine that when Faith saw her naked, stretched out all over her sofa, getting boned by you, even she would be jealous. Call them back, give them your credit card number. All right?”
Gary didn’t speak, but what he should’ve said that very moment was fuck it, he thought.
“All right?” Jayson asked again.
“Yeah. Yeah. All right.”
If he could’ve gotten his family out of the city by tomorrow, the next day at the very latest, he wouldn’t have gone through with this. But something led Gary to believe, that since this Jayson guy knew about him leaving in the first place, knew what city he was going to, even knew where he’d be working, he would know how to get that damn videotape to his wife, and that he could not allow. His children meant everything to him, and he wouldn’t lose them over a little sex he had gotten.
It would go down in three days, Jayson told him.
“And when she walks in, when you get caught, you’ll say nothing to her about my involvement. I had nothing to do with this. I told the woman everything, and how everything is supposed to go down, so you don’t have to worry about her opening her mouth. Got that?”
“Yeah,” Gary grunted.
“Now you call Faith and tell her that you’ll have a surprise for her when she comes home on Wednesday,” Jayson said, during that last phone call. “She’s crazy enough to think it’ll be that divorce from your wife you never had any intention of ever getting or an engagement ring. She’ll come home happy, anticipating some life-altering surprise, and that’s just what she’ll get.”
Gary heard the excitement in Jayson’s voice as he spoke about the plan. “You’re sick, you know that?” Gary said.
“I’m sick? I’m sick?” Jayson said. “I’m not the one who’s cheating on his wife, has been for two years, lying to some woman, telling her that one day you’d marry her. I’m not the one knowing that there was another man with intentions of making that same woman his wife, but continuing to fuck her. You ruined my life with Faith, my plans to make her my wife, when you knew you’d be leaving town anyway. And you’re calling me sick.”
“Yeah. I don’t love Faith, never have. But you’re doing this twisted shit to her, and you still love her, don’t you?” There was silence. Truth-fully, Gary didn’t care if Jayson did or didn’t. He was just trying to find a way to make this weirdo call the whole thing off.
“Go ahead, you sick motherfucker. You still love her, and still you want to hurt her like this.”
There was another long moment of silence. “Just be at Faith’s at five sharp on Wednesday ready to fuck,” Jayson said, and then hung up the phone.
36
I didn’t know anymore. Was I doing the right thing? That son of a bitch, Gary, called me sick. But who in the hell said I still loved Faith? Wouldn’t I have been some kind of fool to still have feelings for her after she did what she did to me? The mere thought of her, the mention of her name, should have driven me into a killing frenzy, but it didn’t. When I thought of her, for some reason, I still thought of all the good things in our relationship.
Now it was Tuesday afternoon, and as I pulled my car in front of my apartment, I kept asking myself, why am I going through with this tomorrow? Because she needed to suffer as I had was the answer. Even if I did still love her, she needed to experience what it felt like to walk in and see the person she loved, whom she thought she was going to spend the rest of her life with, getting his brains screwed out and loving it.
I shut the car door and walked up the stairs to the building. I was steadily convincing myself that I was indeed making the right decision here, but I still wanted confirmation.
I opened the outer door of the building and walked inside. I stopped in the hallway outside Asha’s door, telling myself that I was going to check my mail, even though I knew the mail had not come yet. I was just standing there, thinking about my old friend, wishing that I could talk to her now, and regretting how I had spoken to her last. It’d been four days now, and this had been the longest time we’d gone without saying two words to each other.
I was questioning myself again, but this time about whether or not I was right to kick her out of my building. Dammit, I don’t know, I thought, walking very close to her door, trying to listen to hear if she was in there. She had lied to me, lied to me for all those years about who she was, and obviously about what I meant to her. I had loved her, and now I wondered did she ever feel the same about me, could she have? Did her sexual orientation stop her from loving a man the way she claimed to have loved me then? I didn’t know.
What I did know was that I missed her. I missed her like crazy, and all the times I walked down the stairs thinking that I would see her, I hadn’t. All the times I looked out my window, thinking I would spot her walking across the lawn, either toward the house or away from it, and then race downstairs, and pretend to bump into her, it never happened. Hell, we lived in the same building, and all the times in the past after a disagreement when she was the last person I wanted to see, she was popping up all over the place.
I raised my fist, prepared to knock on the door, telling myself that I had to be the big one here, since she obviously wasn’t going to come upstairs to try to fix things. But then, just before my knuckles hit the door, I stopped myself. Hold it. She was the one who lied to me, so why was I down here trying to call a truce. Sure, she found me rummaging through her things, and yes, I was pretty harsh with her, but if she really wanted to stay, she would�
��ve come up and spoken to me. That’s what has to happen, I thought, stepping away from the door. If she wants us to continue as friends, as neighbors, then she’ll just have to come to me. I didn’t think I was asking too much in light of the fact that her offense was far worse than mine.
Four hours later, after sitting on my sofa, allowing the television to watch me, I pulled a small business card out of my shirt pocket and set it on the coffee table in front of me.
The tiny red print on the card said, Discreet Escorts. I took the phone off the end table, leaned forward, and punched the number on the card into the phone. It rang only two times, then, “Hello, Discreet. This is Ginger, how may I help you?”
“I made an appointment tomorrow with Carmen …” I said, pausing, thinking of two things I could’ve said next. My conscience was telling me to say, “And I want to cancel it.” It was telling me to say, “I want to cancel it, because for some insane reason, I still love this woman I’m about to set up. I still love her, and as much as I want to know that she has suffered like I have, I can’t bear the thought of her feeling the slightest bit of pain.” My mind was saying all that to me, when I was interrupted by Ginger.
“I’m sorry, sir. You said you made an appointment with Carmen, and …”
And what, Jayson? What? I asked myself, forcing myself to make a decision.
“And I just wanted to confirm. Just making sure we’re still on for tomorrow,” I said, feeling the slightest bit of sadness and remorse.
“Yes, sir. Carmen, tomorrow at five at …” and she rattled off Faith’s address, and some other info that I really wasn’t even listening to. I hung up the phone before she was even finished with her pleasant farewell and appreciation for calling Discreet.
It was the right thing, I kept trying to tell myself, sinking into the sofa. If for no other reason, this would let Faith know that Gary definitely wasn’t the man for her. I kinda felt good about that. I just hoped tomorrow evening, after this was all over, there would be something else I could feel good about. Because right now, I mostly felt like shit.