This Can't be Life

by Shakara Cannon

  If it came in the sack no stems no seeds in the bag then

  I could remember

  And if it wasn’t for the Sunday All Star weekend game then

  I could remember

  But silly me, silly me, baby, tell me how could I ever forget to be your love

  Never realize that you need love, too

  Spend my life makin’ up to you

  Oh, oh, ohhhh, girl, I forgot to be your lover

  Damn, I love this song! I sang louder, trying to outdo Jaheim’s silky, Teddy Pendergrass sounding voice. I finally pulled into the driveway of the make believe video set and rang the buzzer. I saw Tyron’s red Ferrari, his black Mercedes Benz S600 sedan, and his charcoal grey AMG G55 Benz wagon, all the current year, parked in front, so I figured he would be here.

  “Come in. The front door is open,” Tyron said, through the intercom. The gates started to open and I pulled in and parked behind the G5. I hopped out the car, feelin’ excited to see him, even though it hadn’t even been 24 hours since we hopped off the plane at 7:00 this mornin’. I walked into the house and heard Frankie Beverly and Maze coming out the speakers in the ceilin’. I walked toward the bedroom and started to bob my head and sing along with the lyrics of Before I Let Go. I thought back to the Budweiser Super Fests that I used to go to every summer. Frankie Beverly and Maze always stole the show.

  I stood in the doorway and watched as Tyron sat on the edge of the bed with the phone to his ear. He was beratin’ someone for bein’ incompetent and not doin his job like he was supposed to.

  “I can’t do everything! If that’s the case, why in the fuck am I paying you a high six mothafuckin figures a year, plus? You went to school for the job you doin’ now and you can’t even get that shit right! I suggest you ask them mothafuckas up at Yale for some of your money back because you can’t seem to do the simplest tasks that are required of you. You said you needed a secretary. I increased your budget for that. Then, you needed an assistant. I made that happen. What the fuck else do you want from me? To hold your fuckin’ hand? This is a multi-million dollar company that I’m running, and I need people on my side that can help me do this shit. Not people that I need to baby-sit. I can’t do this shit once a week. From now on, you don’t report directly to me. Starting today, you report to Mike Jones and he’ll report to me. I can’t keep tellin’ yo ass that you should know your job and be able to do that shit right. Instead, you call me once a week asking me how you should do something. You should have learned how to be a self-starter in undergrad, my nigga. This is real life, and in real life, when you can’t handle the shit you’re supposed to handle, mothafuckas get demoted just like you just did. Report to Mike, man, because I don’t need this extra stress.” He hung up the phone, walked into the bathroom, and closed the door like he didn’t even see me standin’ there.

  I walked to the kitchen and poured him a glass of water. If he drank alcohol, I would have poured him a shot of somethin’ strong, but since Tyron is a completely sober guy, water would have to do. I was feelin’ kind of salty toward whomever that was that fucked up my man’s mood. I walked back into the room and found him standin’ in front of the French doors, lookin’ out toward the ocean in deep thought. I walked up behind him and rubbed his back with my right hand still holdin’ the glass of water in my left.

  “You all right? I brought you a glass of water. All that talkin’ you were doin’, I’m sure you could use it.” I handed him the glass and he finished it all in one sip.

  “Mothafuckas get on my nerves. This shit never fucking ends.” He handed the empty glass back to me without as much as a thank you. I took the glass back into the kitchen and when I came back, he was sitting on the bed. I wasn’t exactly sure of what I should do or what he wanted me to do. I was still learnin’ how to deal with him and his mood swings that shifted him into a completely different person when people were around or when business called. I took his place in front of the French doors and stood there, watchin’ the waves crash onto the shore.

  He walked up behind me and wrapped his arms around my shoulders. We stood in silence for what seemed like an eternity. It felt good having this man who stood at least six inches over me, holding me like he was. Nothin’ needed to be said. We just listened to Frankie Beverly sing about happy feelings. The sun started to set as we stood there, quietly watchin’ it disappear into the horizon. Tyron began kissin’ the back of my neck gently, sendin’ chills down my spine. He pulled my hair out of its bun and ran his fingers through my thick curls. With his left arm wrapped snuggly around my upper body, he kept me in his embrace. I started to turn around to face him, but he told me no.

  “Stay just how you are,” he whispered huskily. He moved from behind me and I could tell that he went into the bathroom. He then returned and, through the reflection in the glass panes of the French door I was standin’ in front of, I could see him lightin’ the candles that were placed around his room. Then the lights went off.

  “Don’t move,” he whispered. Shortly after, Luther Vandross began spewin’ from the speakers, Since I Lost My Baby. I smelled the sweet, warm scent comin’ from the candles as he came back to me and shifted me around to face him. Lookin around I noticed the flames castin’ shadows against the white walls. The flickerin’ of the flames made the room seem surreal as he began to kiss me passionately as if we weren’t together less than 24 hours ago. I returned his kisses with as much if not more intensity than his and embraced him wholeheartedly, feelin’ like if I were to let go, I’d lose him. He pulled away from me and looked into my eyes. I held my breath until our lips reconnected. I felt as if I was gettin’ my air supply from him, and if he were to stop kissin’ me for too long, I’d suffocate from lack of oxygen. I felt like cryin’. I was fallin’ in love with this man and I knew it was somethin’ I shouldn’t be allowin’ myself to do. But I was fallin’ and fallin’ too fast to brace myself for the landin’. I didn’t know if I was goin’ to land on my ass or land on my feet, but I knew that landin’ was inevitable because no human could fly, and right then, I felt like I had wings.

  Part Two

  Simone

  It had been four months since my life was turned upside down, but it felt like it was just yesterday. I’d been seeing Dr. Marge once a week and feeling a lot better about myself. But the most magnificent thing was that the nightmares have stopped! As far as I was concerned, life was good. I received the insurance settlement from the salon about a week before, but I hadn’t yet figured out what I wanted to do with it, if anything. I kept it locked in my home office safe and hadn’t had the urge to go and deposit it until today.

  I pulled up to Bank of America and parked right in front of the bank. I hopped out of my car and pulled up my Hudson jeans that were starting to fall off. I had lost a couple of pounds over the last few months, not eating and laying around the house. I planned on gaining that weight back as soon as possible. I wasn’t about to forfeit all of my clothes. I walked into the bank and went straight to a new accounts rep and informed her that I wanted to open a six-month Certificate of Deposit Account. I sat down and handed her my ID and my other account information as well as the insurance check for over a half million dollars. When I first saw the check, I just looked at all the damned zeros myself. I was amazed, but certainly, she must be used to seeing checks and accounts with balances this large if not larger, I thought.

  She looked down at the check, then up at me…then down at the check and up at me again. Then she started to punch some numbers into the computer. I watched her fingers and noticed that it was my personal checking account number that she was entering. I knew when my account finally pulled up on the screen because her eyes widened when she saw that my savings and checking accounts also held very high balances. What she didn’t know was that I worked hard for my money for years and deserved every damned cent. Yeah, I received perks here and there, but nothing came easy to me. Men only seemed to give when you didn’t need, but when you need it, it’s hard as hell to g
et a damned nickel out of a man. So all of my perks were nice gestures, but never a save the day kind of thing.

  “Is there a problem?” I asked the older woman as I crossed my right leg over my left.

  “Um, no, there isn’t. I just have to get an approval for a check of this amount,” she replied nervously. What seemed to be perturbing her was that I was a young black woman with more money than she’d probably ever seen run through her own account. She was flustered, even trembling slightly. She probably thought she was about to get rewarded for uncovering a big check counterfeiting fraud. Yeah, that would be the day.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said, getting up and carrying all the information that I had given her, including the check. I sat back with not a worry in mind. I had noticed that the check was drawn from a Bank of America account, and I knew all she was going to do was call the company or compare signatures to make sure I wasn’t trying to get away with fraud. They could check all damned day and wouldn’t find any damned shady shit even near me.

  I relaxed and picked up a pamphlet that had information on small business loans. I started to leaf through it out of boredom when I felt someone staring at me. I looked up to find multi-platinum selling rapper, C. Banks staring at me while belittling the branch manager for his check card getting stuck in the ATM machine.

  “This is not acceptable,” I heard him say, never once taking his eyes off of me.

  “What if I was somewhere else? Out of the country or something? I don’t have time to waste. If I had time to come in here and do all this, I would have just come in here in the first place.” The man he was talking to was beet red. C. Banks wasn’t yelling but he was talking to a grown man like he was a child. The branch manager looked as if he wanted to disappear.

  “I’m sorry, sir. Actually, I’m very sorry for this inconvenience. I’ll go and get your card out of the machine right now and make sure that this doesn’t happen again,” he replied, wiping sweat from his brow. C. Banks dismissed him by answering his cell phone when it rang. I put my head down and pretended to read the brochure, knowing full well that he was still staring at me. For some strange reason, he turned me on, and I was so not into rappers. I chalked it up to it being way too long since I had some wanted attention from a man.

  “You already asked me what I was doing. If you didn’t want anything or have anything significant to talk about, why’d you call me?” I looked up and noticed that he was talking on his cell phone, sounding very indifferent with the person on the other end.

  “Well, I’m busy. I’ll holla,” he replied into the phone, before flipping it closed and dropping it into his pocket. I was using my peripheral views to watch him as he watched me. The banker finally returned, apologizing for taking so long. I was just happy that I didn’t have to pretend to be reading the damned brochure any more.

  “Okay, everything is fine,” the banker said to me.

  “Of course, it is. Why wouldn’t it be?” I asked with a fake smile on my face.

  “No, ma’am, I didn’t mean it like that,” she replied, getting nervous again.

  “Yeah, I’m sure you didn’t.” I readjusted my legs and looked over toward C. Banks in time to see the manager return his bankcard to him. The manager was still apologizing profusely. I kind of felt sorry for him.

  “Whatever, man,” he said, pocketing his card. He took one last glance at me before walking out of the bank without so much as a thank you to the bank manager.

  When I walked out of the bank 15 minutes later, I noticed C. Banks smoking a cigarette and leaning against the passenger side of a black Escalade ESV with black tinted windows. I kept walking toward my new, super charged Range Rover Sport that I’d gotten to replace my totaled out Benz. I noticed that he was walking toward me, cigarette still in hand. I started searching around my purse for my keys, bypassing them a couple of times on purpose to give him more time to get to me.

  “Hey, beautiful, what’s your name?” he asked, before taking a pull of his cigarette. The dimple in his right cheek indented deeply into his toffee complexioned face.

  “I’m Simone Johnson,” I answered, extending my hand to him.

  “Carlton Banks, but you can call me Banks. Everybody else does.”

  “Well, I don’t like to do what everybody else does. So, can I call you Carlton?” I asked with a mild degree of difficulty.

  “Nope. Only my moms call me that.”

  “Well, it was nice meeting you then, Banks,” I replied curtly, and unlocked my car door. I proceeded to open it and threw my handbag into the passenger seat. I was raising my right leg to get inside when he stopped me.

  “Hold up. Damn, ma. You can call me Carlton if that makes you feel better, shit you can call me whatever the fuck you want!” He replied, laughing, revealing a set of beautiful white teeth and that damned dimple again. I smiled and took his cigarette out of his hand and flicked it into the street.

  “Second hand smoke kills and I’m just starting to love my life, so please, not around me.” I rested my butt against the side of the driver’s seat and smirked at the look on his face.

  “Well, I’ll be got damned.” He was shaking his head from side to side in disbelief.

  “You’re a fucking trip, yo. I swear,” he smiled, walking up closer to me. He was all up in my personal space before he finally stopped. I was becoming annoyed because he was making me so damned sexually charged. I thought my knees were going to buckle. He stood maybe two inches above my five foot nine inch frame, but I had on at least two inch heals so we were eye to eye. I was trying to act hard and stare him down like he was staring me down. We stood there for close to a minute, which is a hell of a long time to be staring into a stranger’s eyes, especially one that was so close and looked as good as he did.

  His hair was cut close to his head and his eyes were tight and slanted like he had a taste of Asian in his blood. His eyes were so dark, almost black. He had a tattoo of a woman’s name in cursive on his neck. I couldn’t front any more so I looked to the side, pretending that I was distracted by the armored car that had just pulled in front of the bank.

  “You ain’t gully,” he smiled, still standing mere inches from my face. His gaze had not wandered, even after I threw in the towel.

  “Whatever,” I couldn’t for the life of me look back into his eyes. There was something so mysterious and sexy about this man that I was all messed up and bothered.

  “Well, I have to get going, Simone Johnson. It was nice meeting you,” Carlton said, beginning to walk away.

  “Oh, so you’re just going to leave?” I asked, taken aback.

  “What else am I supposed to do? Play games with you in the parking lot of the bank all damned day?” he asked, smiling and walking backward slowly.

  “You don’t want to keep in touch with me?” I asked. I was definitely out of my element and he knew it. I had never before in my life asked a man if he wanted to keep in touch with me.

  “What? You wanna keep in touch with me?” he asked, feigning surprise as he walked back up to me.

  “Yeah, why not? You don’t want to keep in touch with me?”

  “I can see some fun in that,” he said, pulling a pen out of his pocket.

  “You got some paper?” he asked, licking his lips.

  “Why don’t you just lock me into your phone?” I asked, wondering why he wanted to write down my number when I just saw him on his cell in the bank.

  “I like the old school method. You got a problem with that?” he asked, licking his lips. He was so damned sexy he made my nipples hard, and he knew it, too.

  “Whatever. Hold on,” I laughed as I reached over to the passenger seat and fished through my handbag for paper. Unfortunately, the only thing I came up with was the deposit receipt that I’d just gotten from the bank. I handed it to him with the printed side face down. I didn’t want him to see how much I had deposited, but to my surprise, he turned it over and looked at the amount printed on the bottom of the rectangular slip without
even a hint of shame.

  “Damn, ma! Like that?” he asked, smiling at the figure.

  “Why are you so nosy?” I asked, surprised. I couldn’t believe he had the nerve to do that. He wrote his number on the back of the receipt, handed me the paper and told me to call him. I watched him as he walked toward his truck, and for the first time, I noticed two huge men, one sitting in the driver’s seat and the other standing next to the front passenger door of the dark truck watching us.

  “I’m going to have some fun with him,” I whispered to myself, as I got in the car and pulled onto the street. I turned up the volume on the radio and Banks’ latest single, “You Owe Me,” just happened to be playing. Laughing, I picked up the phone and dialed Talise at work. When she answered, I said excitedly, “fuck Stella. Your girl just got her groove back!”

  Stacey

  I can’t remember the last time it rained like this. I was tryin’ to make my way up PCH toward Topanga Canyon and home, but I wasn’t gettin very far. My mouth began to water and I could feel my breakfast movin’ up my throat. I hurriedly and recklessly pulled over to the side of the road just in time to swing my door open and earl all the nutrients that I had consumed this mornin’ out of me. Raindrops moistened my hair and neck as I gagged, trying to release all that could be released. I was beyond sick and it was all in my mind.

  It took every ounce of dignity that I had not to beg Tyron to take me with him to New York. Since he will be gone for three whole weeks, I was hopin he would invite me to come out for a few days, at least. That was wishful thinkin’. He’d already told me beforehand that it was completely out of the question for me to ever think that I could go to the East Coast with him. That was one of his many rules: never ask for anything and never speak to him or acknowledge him in public. Those were the two most important rules that should never be broken. He meant that seriously.