“It’s not like that. Think of how things look. Dior shows up at the hotel, nobody could miss that. You got busted, Richard! You brought your sideline woman around your wife. What did you expect to happen?”
“The elders are all jealous. Mad ’cause they couldn’t pull a fine young thing like Dior for themselves.”
“That’s nonsense, Richard. You should listen to yourself. As a matter of fact, that’s what I want you to do.” Phillip picked up the DVD case from the coffee table then tossed it at him. “This is a copy of last Sunday’s worship service. It’s one of the only remaining copies. We had to trash the others. They were useless.” Phillip had Richard’s attention then. It troubled him to be so direct but it had to be done. “Because of the erroneous information and the wrong scriptures you quoted during your sermon, the entire recorded program had to be destroyed. I wanted to pitch for you, really I did. When several of the sisters from the ladies auxiliary said they smelled alcohol on your breath afterwards, I didn’t have a leg to stand on.” Even though it was hard to take, Richard was ready to listen to everything Phillip had to say. “People are counting on you, Pastor, people like me who know what a great man of God you are. One who has fallen, but a great man irregardless.”
Richard wore a beleaguered frown. “Oomph, some great man I turned out to be. My wife ran off and she took the kids. I’ve been trying to reach them at her parents’ home, but they won’t take my calls.” He smacked his lips then eyed the DVD cover as if he was finally willing to examine himself. “Is it that bad?”
“Yeah,” Phillip cautioned. “But it’s not the end unless you cause it to be. Just take a break, go to your family even if Nadeen is too hurt or too prideful to take your calls. Patch things up, get her back here, and we’ll work it out. The elders know they need you. But not like this. Not with the drinking and certainly not with Dior on your mind. Do what you got to do, Richard, or the Methodist Episcopal Greater Apostolic Church will have no recourse but to go in another direction without you.”
Richard looked at the messenger from the corner of his eye. “Recourse?”
Phillip grinned then threw his hands up defensively. “That’s their word, not mine.” He stood up, then shrugged his shoulders. “When will you get back to me with your plans?”
“I’ll let you know as soon as I come up with some.” Richard shook hands with his best friend then hugged him like a long lost brother. “Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse.”
“Take care of yourself, Brother Pastor. I’m not ready to stop believing in you.”
“That makes one of us,” Richard jested. “I’ll be in touch, Phillip, thanks again. They sent the right man to straighten me out.”
Thirty-one
Clear Blue Easy
There weren’t any words, phrases, or expressions to describe the ghastly feelings flooring Richard after he viewed the DVD Phillip delivered. He understood why the M.E.G.A. Church leadership destroyed the evidence of this horrendous sermon. Richard wanted to ask forgiveness for dishonoring the holy Word of God on the heels of a champagne binge, but he didn’t feel worthy. Serving the Lord in his brokenness was tougher than he thought. Richard wanted his family back, his life back, and the mental health he enjoyed before meeting Dior restored. He needed closure. He needed to end it face-to-face, to remove all doubt that he still wanted her.
A long shower invigorated him. A close shave made him feel like new money. His black Lexus sedan idled inside of the garage, purring to go. Richard tossed his cell phone charger and a number of toiletry items into a duffel bag along with a week’s worth of jeans and sweats, then he slung the travel gear over his shoulder. He’d begun to pick up the shattered pieces of what used to be his life. Richard locked the doors and windows, then set the home monitoring system with a small remote control. He backed out of the garage, staring at the house his ego built. Although elegantly designed, it didn’t hold the attraction it once had. Empty vessels rarely do, he thought while zooming down the driveway.
Minutes from Dior’s neighborhood, Richard parked in front of a convenience store parking lot to gather himself. Dior was strong-willed, crafty, and had to be handled right. The direct approach was his best bet. He decided to march in, tell her how it was going to be, then bounce. She’ll be lucky to get a word in edgewise, he thought. I’m running things now and I wouldn’t have been in this trouble if I had been from the jump. Richard dialed Dior’s cell phone. If she didn’t answer, he was prepared to park down the street from her house and wait it out.
“Where you been, sugar?” she answered. Her voice sounded strained.
Richard chose his words carefully. “Hey, I’m about to run out of town for a minute. You mind if I stop by?” He said just enough to pique her interest, making it difficult to refuse his company even if she was so inclined.
“Yeah, that’ll be cool. Hey, where . . .” she said, catching herself in the middle of overplaying her hand. She knew he’d been going through it because of the way he botched the sermon on television. She attempted to study along in her Bible like she had before. He was so far off the mark, she couldn’t keep up. “Never mind, Richard, come on.”
She spied on him from the window as he parked the car. Dior was surprised to see a spring in his step. A friend of a friend had informed Tangie of the latest church chat, which had Dior’s name sprinkled all over it. Richard didn’t have to tell her that he was in hot water with the elders and ditched by Nadeen. What she didn’t know was how he planned to go about keeping his head above the tide. Regardless, Dior was prepared to go along for the ride.
“Hey, Dior,” Richard muttered. He looked straight through her as if she wasn’t scantily clad in tight cotton shorts and a revealing crop top. “Can I come in?”
“Why would I tell you to come over and not let you in?” she asked apprehensively. “Are you sure you want to be here?”
She posed a very pointed question. Richard grinned awkwardly. He didn’t want to be there, not anymore. “Like I was saying on the phone, I’m going out of town for a while. I have some business to tend to in Georgia.”
“I figured that’s where Nadeen took the girls,” she said knowingly. “Yep, I was going to call and see how you were managing things, but I didn’t want to press.” Dior didn’t like the way the story was being directed. It was time to rewrite it to suit her happily ever after. “Come upstairs with me while I straighten up my bathroom.”
“I really don’t have time to watch you scrub your bathtub,” he objected.
“How soon we forget. Before your wife ran out on you, there wasn’t anything you wouldn’t mind watching me do to my bathtub,” Dior huffed arrogantly then strolled casually up the carpeted stairs. Richard stood on the tiled floor, reluctantly wishing he could have simply blurted out what an ignominous mistake it was to step outside his marriage, turn, and walk away. Dior was onto his strategy. She baited him to join her on the second floor. When he started up the stairs, she instituted her plan. She sat on the vanity chair, rearranging bathroom cleaners beneath the sink. “What’s the matter, sugar? You don’t want a foot massage tonight? Too much on your mind?”
He leaned against the doorjamb, peering into the bathroom. “Now you’re talking. I’ve got way too much on my mind and going on in my life. The walls are crashing down around me, Dior. You’re not even a member of the church and you know what’s going on. Oh wait, that’s right, you’re the reason I’m fighting for my marriage and my job,” he said, so-there fashion.
“You knew what you were getting into when you started with that perfume you bought me in the beginning. Oh wait, that’s right,” she mocked, “it was your so-called token of appreciation. Dangling the carrot got you just what you wanted. The rabbit.”
“Okay, so I thought it would be easier to manage. I was wrong.”
“You can’t put no handcuffs on love.”
“Love? Who said anything about that? Love didn’t have a thing to do with your changing hotels, now did it?”
>
“You’re telling me that love didn’t play a part in you flying me to another state so I could be next to you, a few tiny blocks from your wife and kids? Hello.”
“Don’t try to put that on love. Put the entire New Orleans trip on me being an idiot.”
Dior was growing more agitated by the second. She stood up from the cloth-covered stool then opened the first drawer nearest to Richard. “Uh-uh, I can’t do that.” Dior swung her hips then rolled her eyes. “Ain’t nothing changed with us.”
“Everything has changed!” Richard grunted angrily. “I’m shut out of my life, people at the church are having secret meetings to shut me out of that, and it’s all because I let my weakness for you get in front of what I really love. You screwed me, Dior, and I let you.”
“You loved every minute of it too. Don’t lie and say you didn’t.” She closed her eyes and pretended to be Richard, in the throes of passion. “Ooh Dior, it’s so good,” she mimicked in a wimpy voice. “I ain’t never had it put on me like this before. You got me tossin’ and turnin’ in my sleep. Forget about the meeting at the church. I’d rather stay up in yo’ sweet stuff.” Her rendition of Richard’s pillow talk was highly insulting but that didn’t stop her from pushing his buttons. “You can act like such a punk. I told you not to come if you couldn’t stay but you kept on coming. I gave you several chances to walk away before the skillet got too hot. It’s true what they say about getting out of the kitchen. Now it’s too late. There’s a bun in the oven.” Dior rubbed her flat stomach then posed in the mirror as if she expected to see early signs of change in her figure. “Alicia Allamay, that has a nice ring to it,” she howled. “Ooh, what if it’s a boy? Alexander Allamay? Even better, we could be having twins. You know twins run in my family.”
“Don’t try to run one of those ghetto games on me,” he said, feeling weak-kneed while feigning indifference. “I’m tired of being manipulated by you and the sooner you accept that, the sooner we can both get on with our lives.” Richard didn’t believe Dior because he couldn’t deal with it being the truth.
“Man, you’re just plain tired,” she goaded him. “I got proof right here, somewhere. Where’d I put it?” Dior began fishing through the top drawer. “Keep on calling me a liar and I might name the baby after you, Dick.” She laughed at his shoddy attempt at dismissing her. These were things Dior knew how to do: plan a pregnancy with someone else’s husband and all the body slapping that led up to it. “Ah-hah, here is the proof. Clear. Blue. Easy. Uh-huh, told you I was pregnant.” She waved the home pregnancy kit in his face.
Richard saw what he’d hoped to recapture flash before his eyes, except Dior kept sticking her nose in it. She couldn’t be carrying my child, she couldn’t be, he thought. My luck cannot be that bad. “Dior, get that out of my face. I’m not going to debate this.”
“Because you can’t,” Dior teased. She raised her hands in the air then started her victory dance while continually harassing Richard with what she called “the proof.”
“If I’m supposed to think my feet were the only ones in that tub of yours, you got another thing coming,” he grunted nastily. “And I’ve warned you once to keep that thing away from me.” Richard swung his hand to knock the cardboard stick from hers. When Dior ducked away, he caught her wildly across the face. Accident or not, Dior snapped. She raced into her bedroom. Richard heard her sniveling but couldn’t chance falling for another in a long line of her tricks.
“I told you never to put your hands on me!” she screamed hysterically. “Richard!”
He rounded the top of the banister, looking back. Richard’s heart saw a woman distraught over a misunderstanding and an affair that fell apart on her. His eyes saw her trembling hands gripped around the pistol she aimed in his direction. Richard cowered against the wall. “Whoa, Dior! Put the gun down!”
“I promised I wouldn’t ever let no man put his hands on me again and get away with it. Look at my face, Richard! Look at it!” A red welt ran over the top of Dior’s left cheek.
“It was an accident. You have to know that.” Richard’s chest swelled as Dior lowered her aim momentarily. He lunged forward, grabbing the gun barrel with both hands. Dior scuffled mightily to keep her finger on the trigger. Richard grunted as he fell against the banister with a tight grasp on Dior’s hands. They wrestled heatedly. He growled. She cussed and sputtered. They both went tumbling down the stairs. Two thunderous shots fired. Dior screamed.
Richard came crashing down hard on top of her at the base of the stairs. Moments passed without either of them moving a muscle. Eventually, Richard groaned. He clutched at his chest and shoulder. He climbed off of Dior, searching his body for gunshot wounds. It was nothing short of a miracle; both shots missed him. There wasn’t an ounce of blood anywhere. Richard peered at a couple of golf ball–size holes in the wall, inches from the place he’d made his stand.
“You almost killed both of us,” he complained. “You’re crazy, certifiable. Uhhhhhgh! I must have . . . busted my knee.” He looked Dior over then kicked the gun from her reach.
“Ouuch,” she sighed tenderly. “My whole body is tingling and my head is ringing. Just help me up. Come on now, I wasn’t gonna shoot you.”
“You shot at me, twice!” he argued.
“Ahhhh, okay, I was mad. Now I’m sore all over.” Dior tried to extend her hand to Richard. “Ouuch! Come on, help me up.” She raised her eyes to rest on his. Dior didn’t like the way he was standing over her, like a grim pallbearer. “What’s wrong?” she asked, feeling a shooting pain in her back. “You’ve got to help me up. I can’t seem to move.” The moment she realized that’s why Richard was staring at her with dim-lit eyes, Dior panicked. “I can’t move, Richard. Wait . . . why can’t I move?”
His eyes rounded with a reflective gaze. He choked back a horrible gasp then stumbled toward the telephone to dial 911. Okay, okay, he thought nervously. I’ve got to get an ambulance here in a hurry. Dior looks bad. Her legs are sprawled out like that man Phillip killed in the car accident. Dior needs an ambulance or she’s going to die. When Richard picked up the phone, he had every intention of begging the operator to get the nearest rapid-response vehicle to Dior’s address. Paralyzed below the neck, she groaned about excruciating throbbing in her legs and feet. Richard assumed they were phantom pains typically experienced after victim’s limbs were lost or had become inoperable. Richard held the phone in his unsteady hands, willing to bet everything he owned that Dior would never walk again.
He took a deep breath. Streams of sweat poured into his eyes. Each time he closed them to wipe it away, he kept seeing Nadeen’s face. She was sneering at him disappointedly for getting himself caught up in a situation where everyone lost. He saw Mahalia’s sullen expression as the police carted him off to jail. Richard’s heart skipped a beat when Roxanne’s last giggles tickled at his ears. He imagined her visits to prison, year after year, until she found better things to do with her time than to look in on a man she once thought could do no wrong. Phillip’s words played in his mind too. “They’re daughters, Richard. They’ll never give up on you.” Richard wondered how long his friend’s perception of truth would stand up against a felony assault rap with a maximum sentence. He rocked back and forth, agonizing over doing the right thing and self-preservation. Contemplating his fate as well as Dior’s, he recognized that this unfortunate tragedy provided the exit he wanted from her life. What if I can’t do anything to help her, he said to himself. What if the paramedics get here and it’s too late? I can’t just leave her lying on the floor like some wounded animal in the streets. Do something, Richard. Do what you’re supposed to. He stood there, listening to the dial tone and playing the odds of Dior’s death if he neglected to call emergency personnel and nobody happened to find her for hours, if not days. After he’d held the phone for what seemed like forever, Richard jumped when the phone began to beep impatiently.
Once he’d compared two probable endings, he returned the receiver to its base th
en swept perspiration from his face with the back of his hand. I’m sorry, Dior, he said silently, while wiping the telephone down with a dishtowel to remove his fingerprints. He stared around the house in an odd fashion, skulking about aimlessly like a desperate man who’d broken into her house only to discover there wasn’t anything worth taking.
Richard was drowning in a sea of uncertainty. For a man who spent most of his adult life plotting his future well in advance, he had no direction or designs on how to proceed with fleeing the scene of a criminal act. “I am sorry it turned out this way for you, but I was never supposed to be here,” Richard said, limping to Dior’s side. “I was never supposed to . . .” he reiterated before he broke down and wept.
Dior was woozy, bordering on incoherent. Her eyes rolled back in her head as she witnessed Richard using his shirttail to open her front door. “Please don’t leave me like this,” she cried. “Richard! Don’t go!” The last thing she remembered before losing consciousness was her lover’s cowardly retreat in the face of peril.
Richard gassed up his luxury sedan and then hit the first interstate he came across heading east. He tried to follow the traffic laws to avoid suspicion, all the while reading his rearview mirror for highway patrol cars closing in on him. Richard told himself more than once how it had to be that way. He had to leave Dior or risk giving up his freedom and his family forever. And, although there were no guarantees of reconciliation with Nadeen once he made it to Atlanta, Richard was no longer above begging and pleading. He was up for whatever it took to get her back, whatever and then some.
Thirty-two
Burning Bridges
Dior woke up screaming. She was frightened by a loud hissing noise that sounded like a den full of snakes. Her eyes flew open as the alarming noise grew even louder. “What’s that?” she whined. “Somebody! Somebody help me! Anybody!” Droplets of water pelted the front window as if thrown by angry hands. Dior’s insistent panting stopped when she realized she had been terrorized by the sprinkler system, set to spray the shrubs every other morning at five a.m. Ouch, I hurt all over, she thought. I’ve got to get up. She lifted her head from the white ceramic floor but couldn’t move any part of her body below the neck. “Uhhgh, what’s the matter with me?” Dior grunted. Suddenly her dark eyes focused on the bullet holes in the wall, inches above the staircase railing. “Wait, wait, where’s Richard? Richard!” she yelled, remembering the terrible fall and everything that led up to it. “I know you didn’t leave me. You didn’t leave me and your baby. You couldn’t have.” Dior flinched each time the sprinkles splashed the window as if it were a delayed reaction to being squirted in the face with a child’s water gun. “The first thing I do when I get up is yanking that sprinkler control box off the wall in the garage,” she snarled. “Help!” she hollered as loudly as possible. “Somebody help me! Why won’t somebody help?”
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