A Cold Piece of Work

by Curtis Bunn

  He also had her phone number, e-mail address and home address from the team parent roster. So, he had means to reach her. Before he would, though, he had to give her a reason for his disappearance. And that was a problem, because nothing he said would make sense to her.

  Finally, he decided on something he did not frequently do: he would tell Michele the truth. Even if it did not make her feel better, he would have done what was right, albeit many years too late.

  Solomon was surprised that he was nervous as he approached the church. Confidence had been the foundation of his existence, be it at work or socially. But as he got to the front doors of Berean at 9:50, he began to doubt himself.

  He decided he would take a seat in the back aisle of the center section, which would give him a vantage point to see Michele enter the sanctuary from any entrance. Before doubt took over, he spotted her.

  She entered from the left side of the building, alone. It was like she was walking in slow motion. Solomon hoped Michele would be in a forgiving and jovial mood after church, making it an ideal time for him to make his initial move.

  When the service ended, Solomon positioned himself outside the sanctuary door Michele would exit. The palms of his hands were sweaty and he suddenly felt a need to go to the bathroom. But leaving meant he might miss her, so he waited.

  Just a minute or so later, Michele emerged from the doors. She was chatting with another woman, who noticed Solomon and smiled at him. “Hello,” she said.

  Michele turned to see Solomon, whose deep brown and sometimes enchanting eyes where fixated on her. “Hi,” he said.

  “What are you doing in church?” Michele responded without hesitation. There was no detection of anger in her voice or how she looked at Solomon. She held it together beautifully. “Diana, you’d better step back. He could get struck by lightning at any moment.”

  “You know him?” Diana said.

  “I thought I did—a long time ago,” Michele answered. “Let’s go.”

  Michele and Diana began to walk away from Solomon. He followed them. “Michele…”

  She turned around. “Oh, you remember my name?”

  “Can I speak to you for a moment, please? Just for a minute.”

  “I’m going to go ahead to my cousin’s house for a cookout,” Diana said. “Call me later, okay?”

  She left and Michele turned to Solomon. “Let’s go outside. What I have to say probably shouldn’t be said in church.”

  They stepped out into the perfect spring afternoon and Solomon pulled out his sunglasses. Michele reached in her purse and pulled out hers.

  “I really need to apologize to you,” Solomon started. He had rehearsed some of what he wanted to say to her, but he forgot it all.

  “For what?”

  Solomon took off his sunglasses. He wanted her to see his eyes, hoping she could detect the sincerity and truth in what he was about to say.

  “For being a coward with you. I can’t explain it in any other way than that, Michele.”

  “But what does that mean? And why should it mean anything to me all this time later?”

  “I can’t say whether it should mean something to you or not,” he said. “What I can say is that it means I had feelings for you back then that I was afraid of. And I didn’t know how to handle them. So I ran away from them to avoid having to deal with them.”

  “You’re right—that’s what a coward would do,” Michele said. “You don’t do people like that. And you’re claiming you had feelings for me? That’s hard to believe, based on your actions.”

  “Listen, I couldn’t sleep ever since seeing you last night, Michele. I had all kinds of emotions running through me. I was shocked to see you at first. Then I was embarrassed because of what I did. Then I was…I was glad to see you.”

  “I can understand being shocked; I was, too,” Michele said. “And I can understand being embarrassed. But glad? Why?”

  “For a few reasons. One, I really like your son—I’ve tried to be a mentor to him—and I was glad to know his mother is someone like you. Two, it meant I could finally man-up and apologize to you—and, to be honest—get rid of some of the guilt and regret I’ve been carrying with me. I tried to not think about it, but it would never go away. It just wouldn’t.”

  “But you never tried to reach me, Solomon, even with this so-called regret.”

  “Yeah, I know. It was like, the longer I waited, the harder it was to do,” he said. “I got here, got engulfed in the job and getting adjusted and convinced myself that I was doing the right thing. Not the right thing by you, but the right thing for me. I didn’t know how to handle really caring about you.”

  “That sounds silly, Solomon,” Michele said. Her arms were folded, which Solomon took to mean that she was not open to what he had to say. She was, in fact, closed and withdrawn. However, she listened to him and still responded, which meant she wanted to hear what he had to say.

  “It sounds silly. But it’s the truth… Listen, I’m not good with feeling vulnerable. I felt like eventually you would—”

  “Eventually what?” she asked.

  “Hurt me,” he said, looking down. “Break my heart.”

  Michele dropped her arms to her sides and shook her head. “You know what? I’ve got to go pick up Gerald.”

  “Michele, I’m sorry. I know it was wrong. It was stupid. But that’s the truth.”

  She took a deep breath and pulled off her sunglasses. “You cared about me but you planned to move out of town and didn’t tell me about it. You didn’t say, ‘bye.’ Just left me on the floor sleeping. And you did this because you thought I might break your heart?

  “First of all, you have to have a heart before it can be broken. And anyone who does what you did to me doesn’t have a heart.”

  Solomon ignored the slight. “I never told you the third reason I was glad to see you last night,” he said.

  Michele did not respond.

  “Because I knew instantly that I still have feelings for you.”

  She smiled, placed her right hand over her heart and feigned dizziness. “Oh, my. Solomon Singletary—The Invisible Man—has feelings for me. Well, forgive me for not being honored. And I guess that means I won’t see you again, because according to you just now, you left me in D.C. because you had feelings for me.

  “Listen, I’m getting angry, so I’m leaving. You said what you had to say; I gave you more than a minute. I listened to you. Now I’m leaving. Your conscience should be clear now. You can go on doing whatever you were doing.”

  She put her glasses back on and turned away from Solomon. Then she quickly turned back.

  “Oh, and stay away from my son,” she said. “He won’t be returning to that team you coach. I don’t want him around you.”

  And before Solomon could say anything, Michele turned and left him in front of the church.

  Demoralized, he put his sunglasses back on and watched her make her way to her car. Demoralized, but not defeated. While he wanted a better reaction from Michele, he was not surprised by her position. In fact, he would have been surprised if she reacted any other way.

  The key was that she got to hear what he had to say. There was no way around Michele not thinking about it and processing it. And maybe through that process she’d soften some. Whatever the case, Solomon was not done.

  As he spoke to her, he sized her up. She had gained a noticeable few pounds, but her figure remained well proportioned. She had her hair colored and cut into a different style. She wore contact lenses instead of glasses, offering a direct view of her subtly intoxicating eyes. She did not wear a wedding or engagement ring, which meant she probably was not serious with another man—at least, that’s what he hoped.

  And when she smiled, even though it was a sarcastic reaction, it was like the sun got brighter. He had forgotten how warm her smile used to make him feel.

  CHAPTER 6

  BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU ASK FOR

  Michele made it to her car, tossed her sup
ple dark brown purse that matched perfectly her beige and brown dress onto the passenger seat and put her hand over her mouth. She was relieved to get away from Solomon without breaking down.

  She did not rest well the night before, either. Seeing Solomon mixed up a confluence of emotions that ran through her mind and heart like a virus run amok. How could he be the coach her son talked about with such admiration? She was mad at herself for not going through the paperwork the rec center sent home when she signed him up for basketball. Solomon’s information would have been right there.

  As it was, she was looking forward to giving “Coach Money” a hug and resounding “thank you” for being a positive influence on Gerald’s life.

  Michele noticed how much more responsible around the house and committed her son was about school. When she asked him about his vast improvement, Gerald said: “Coach Money told me that I had to be a man for you. He said to be a good basketball player meant I had to be a good son. So I made sure I cleaned up my room and took out the trash and stuff. Coach Money said every day I should try to make you proud.”

  Before Solomon, Gerald did not have a male influence of any consequence in his life. Michele’s father lived in Phoenix. Her brother was in the Army, stationed in Kentucky and serving a long stint in Iraq.

  She seldom talked about the kid’s father, even to close friends. He “was unwilling to man-up to his responsibility,” she said of him. In her more frustrating moments, she told Gerald, “Your daddy is no good.” She regretted the words; trashing him would do nothing to help Gerald. But sometimes the burden of raising a child alone—forget the money, just the assistance and teaching of life lessons from a man’s view—caused a momentary lapse in judgment. But she’d always recover.

  “It’s just you and me, baby,” she said. “And we’re fine, right? We’ll always be fine. Your daddy, well, I think he’s just not feeling well. Sometimes when people don’t feel well, it’s best that they stay away and get better… Sometimes they get better, sometimes they don’t.”

  It frustrated her that Solomon had such an impact on her son. Ever since he disappeared, all she wanted was to have bad thoughts about him. She wanted to hate him.

  To learn that Solomon, of all people, brought something to Gerald’s life, well, it freaked her out. There was a time she thought so highly of him, to where she even envisioned herself as his wife.

  It was a presumptuous notion, knowing Solomon for just six months. But she had met enough men and been disappointed by enough of them to know that he brought something out of her and into her life that she had not experienced. Ironically enough, he was a comfort.

  While he at times displayed how spoiled he was by other women and even his mother, as Michele determined, he treated her as a gentleman, with respect. He engaged her with thoughtful conversation and supported her on her dramatic career change when others thought she was misguided to abandon a promising career as an attorney. He made her feel protected and like a woman.

  That’s what made his disappearance so shocking and so devastating. She was comforted by him and had come to need his presence. On her way from church, she recounted that morning she woke up alone on the floor.

  Solomon had left her while she slept early one morning once before, so she was not surprised to search her house and find that he was not there. She called him and left a message: “Ah, I thought I told you to not leave me again while I slept. You’re so hard-headed. Call me later.”

  That call never came. By nightfall, Michele got worried and called Solomon again. His cell phone went straight to voice mail. She left another message: “Solomon, what’s going on? Let me know you’re okay.”

  She then sent him the same message in a text. After a late dinner, she drifted to sleep on the couch while watching repeats of Entourage. When she woke up, it was nearly 2 a.m. and she had heard nothing from Solomon.

  That was not his modus operandi. He always called back. Somewhat panicked, Michele called his home number. It was disconnected. She became puzzled then, and anxious.

  In the morning, she called him again, to no avail. Then she decided to drive to his house. She wasn’t sure what to expect when she got there, but she surely did not fathom what she discovered: a For Sale sign in the front yard.

  Michele looked around to see if she was at the right house. She knew she was, but it didn’t make any sense that his house would be on the block. She walked up to the front door and looked through the curtain-less windows to the right. Inside was empty.

  Her heart raced. He was gone. She sat on his front steps to compose herself; it did not help. Dozens of questions ran through her mind, but two more than others.

  Why?

  How?

  She met his mother once, but that was out at dinner; she did not have a way to contact her. Maybe he was getting settled in a new place and wanted to surprise her. He was big on surprises, which was another reason she liked him.

  But the only surprise Solomon had to offer was that he did not call her. Days went by, then weeks. Michele’s emotions went from disappointment to anxiety to hurt to, finally, anger.

  She spoke with conviction and bitterness about him to family and friends. “I don’t care what he’s doing or where he is. I just don’t care,” she said.

  So she started dating as soon as she could muster enough tolerance to deal with men. The first guy to come along—Andrew, a blind date set up by her friend, Rhonda—was nice and respectful and was able to take her attention away from Solomon. But he wasn’t Solomon. Solomon had branded her; any man after him would be compared to him. And most men could not stand up to the standards he set.

  Still, she hated him—or wanted to hate him. “A lowlife,” she called him.

  At the same time, there was an underlying feeling that was contrary to her public declarations, even as she and Andrew became close. Even in her anger, she always wanted to hear from him, to learn why he did what he did, to see him even.

  Now that she had, she was uncertain how to feel. But she was surprised to feel relief and not outrage that he would offer such a lame excuse after nearly eight years. Why did she even give him a platform to talk? Why didn’t she walk away from him? She wanted to, but couldn’t.

  After she picked up Gerald from her cousin Sonya’s house and got him an early dinner and settled for the evening, she called Rhonda, who lived back in D.C.

  “So, all of this happened since last night?” she said to Michele. “Wow. What are you going to do?”

  “What am I going to do? I’m going to live my life,” Michele said. “What else can I do?”

  “You can do what your heart and your body are telling you to do,” she said. “Chell, you know you’re my girl. But I always thought that deep down, you wanted Solomon to come back, to explain himself and make everything right.”

  “Girl, are you crazy? Why would I want that?” Michele asked.

  “Why? You know why,” Rhonda said. “And because you loved him, that’s why. If you didn’t, answer this for me, and I’ve wanted to ask you this ever since you moved there almost two years ago: Of all the places to move to, why Atlanta?

  “I mean, after you heard he moved there, I would think Atlanta would be the last place you’d want to relocate to. But there you are.”

  “Well…” Michele said.

  “Well, what?” Rhonda said. “You don’t have to admit it to me, Chell. As long as you don’t lie to yourself.”

  “You’re a trip,” Michele said. “Why didn’t you say something before now? I moved here because I always liked Atlanta and everything I read told me Atlanta was a great place for my business.

  “Did I hear Solomon was here? Yes. But I didn’t come here for us to get back together. And I didn’t expect to see him. I knew there was a chance we could cross paths, but I didn’t count on it or want it. The bottom line is that Atlanta was the best place for me and I wasn’t going to not come here because Solomon was here.”

  She was lying to her friend. Despite all the
pain he caused, he left an imprint on her that, even in her fury, she could not shake. That was the magnitude of Solomon’s power as a man; he was like a tattoo or a brand, a permanent impression etched not in her skin, but in her very being.

  Moving to Atlanta very much had something to do with Solomon. Not everything, but it mattered. She did not expect to reconnect with him, but the idea that she could run into him was exciting, hopeful.

  However, after more than a year of going out to Atlanta’s hottest and most popular spots and not “running into him,” Michele gave up the idea of their paths crossing. It was far-fetched to think they could have a chance meeting in a metropolitan area of 1.3 million people. Then, when she least expected it, when she had no notion of ever seeing him, Saturday night happened, and then Sunday morning, leaving Michele utterly confused.

  She could not get out of her head that Solomon vanished on her. But the connection he made with her—despite the time apart—still existed. So, when he reappeared, the two dynamics fought against each other.

  Her pride would not allow her to offer him an overt inkling that she was relieved and even happy to see him. On one level, she was not into playing games. But he would devalue her as a woman if she immediately forgave him and carried on as if nothing happened. So she held back, which was the smart move, anyway. It was better, safer, to see where he really was coming from before putting herself out there. And even if he seemed sincere, he already showed he was capable of really hurting her.

  She never questioned herself about reconnecting with him. All she ever contended was that seeing him would be enough, hearing from him. She needed some explanation from him to gain closure on the matter. Michele tried to fool herself that that would be enough.

  The fact that he expressed an interest in her after all those years was more than she could have expected and added to her dilemma. But the dilemma was even more monumental because of two reasons: one, he made a connection with her son, Gerald. Two, she could not trust him.

  She could not teach her boy how to be a man, and so Gerald’s response to Solomon as his coach was important to her.