Ladies Listen Up

by Darren Coleman

  She was silent and had an almost pained look on her face. She was fighting with herself. It was obvious.

  “Alicia, I’ll tell you what. You can just give me your work number and I’ll call you there. If you decide between tonight and the time I call you that this is really a bad idea, I’ll lose your number. It’s obvious to me that you need someone to talk to. Someone that will listen for a change.”

  She half huffed, and laughed at the same time. “It’s that obvious, huh?”

  “You did sit out here for two hours talking to a brother.”

  “True dat. And you know, I could hook you up with a friend of mine. I think you’d like her. I know she’d like you. She’s into you pretty-boy types.”

  “Oh yeah.” I smirked. “I don’t think you could handle that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Suppose she and I hit it off. What would you do with the chemistry between you and me? You’d be sitting over there at the cookout with him, mad ’cause he ain’t me.” I laughed, but I was serious and she knew it.

  “Boy, you are too much.” She shook her head.

  “So, what’s up with that work number?”

  “Why don’t I just take yours and—”

  I cut her off. “Won’t work. You’d be too scared to do what you really want to do. I can’t take that chance.”

  “You make it sound so drastic and serious.”

  “You make it sound like it ain’t.”

  She scribbled her number down on the back of her loan officer’s card. I helped her into her car and we just stared into each other’s eyes; for a second it was obvious that she didn’t want to leave. “It was so nice talking to you. I mean that.”

  “You, too.”

  “I’m serious. You just don’t meet many men around here who know how to talk to a sister, or better yet, listen to one. I don’t know what you had on your agenda before you met me, but you made me feel like there was nothing more important in the world than talking to me. Thanks.”

  With that, she pulled off.

  I called her early Tuesday morning and asked her to stop past my crib. She said she would have to think about it first. Still, we sat on the phone and talked for half the day and she got almost no work done.

  It turned out that she didn’t come that evening, but I relented and she wound up coming the next day. It turned out that her inclinations against being alone with me were well founded. We had sat on the floor in front of my couch and talked for three hours about our dreams, hopes, and fears. We connected as time slipped away. She left her scent in my home that night and I stayed up for a couple hours thinking about her.

  We wound up kissing each other gently on the lips before she sped home to her fiancé.

  The next day had me filled with excitement as I spent every available minute trying to persuade her to come over again. She did. That evening we listened to Erykah Badu, Jaheim, and, ironically, Tweet, while we drank white Zinfandel. This time I canned the sensitivity and I stuck my fingers inside of her panties and massaged her pussy until she came while I sucked her tongue. She ran out of the house after telling me that she couldn’t do this again. I was too dangerous, she said. Even still, she couldn’t keep herself from calling from her home phone while her man was asleep upstairs.

  “Diego, I don’t know what it is about you. You are so confident, even a little cocky. Normally, that would turn me off and make me think that you’re really insecure. Hiding behind the bravado. With you, though, it seems like you couldn’t be any other way if you tried.”

  The next day I smiled like I had the winning lottery ticket when she showed up at my doorstep as the sun was beginning to set. We fucked like two newly released prisoners and she got a chance to see one reason why I was so confident. We fucked until we sweated buckets and there was a puddle of her juices in my bed. I didn’t let her out of the bed until I felt like I had mastered her body. “Oh my gawd, it’s so big,” she yelled out as I stroked her out.

  When I finished, her eyes gave away everything that she didn’t want to say. She didn’t understand why I had come into her life, then and not sooner. Her wedding was three and a half weeks away.

  She was at my house nearly every day after that. I would bang her as she bent over my steps even while he called her cell phone. “I got to go. I…got…to…go,” she’d cry out as she came all over me. The sex was intense, the conversations were deep. It felt something like love, though it couldn’t have been. Three weeks later we were lying in my bed naked, sweat coating our bodies. With her head on my chest she said, “There’s no way I can stop seeing you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean even after the wedding. I can’t.”

  I thought about the reality of it. This woman had consumed all of my time, my thoughts, for the past month, yet in a few days she was getting married to another man. I then said the only thing that I could think of. “You can’t do it. You can’t get married.”

  There was silence in my room for a moment. “It’s too late. My mother and uncle have spent too much money. Maybe I can do it and just get an annulment.” She was estranged from her father, but her uncle had stepped up and always taken care of her.

  I shook my head in disbelief. “Nah.” I thought about it then added, “Listen, maybe I’m being selfish. Maybe you should just give your marriage to him a try. But if you marry him, I can’t see you anymore.” I heard the words, but I knew full well there was no way I’d stop hitting it. I didn’t care if she was marrying Mike Tyson; there was something about her, something more than sex, because she wasn’t even in my top fifty as far as that aspect went. I simply enjoyed her, and the way she adored me filled me up in ways I’d never experienced.

  She left my house that night with tears in her eyes. Standing at my door, she asked, “So you’re serious? If I do this, you and I are over?”

  I nodded and showed no emotion. It was the pimp in me.

  Four days later, on the Saturday morning that she was supposed to be getting dressed for her wedding, she rang my phone. The night before, during the rehearsal dinner, Alicia had called off her wedding.

  3

  Crossing the Thin Line

  Alicia was no more than twenty feet from me. I had nothing on my mind other than the fact that I was about to finally do this. Get out of the game for good and make this beautiful woman my wife. Her uncle walked her to my side, and when the pastor asked, “Who giveth this woman to be married?” he responded and released her.

  The ceremony was small, with no more than seventy people in attendance. After her last fiasco, she didn’t have the nerve to try for another big wedding or ask her girls to stand for her again, so she only had two bridesmaids. At her mother’s insistence she had reimbursed the entire wedding party for their expenses from gowns to tux rentals, and even airfare for a couple of folks.

  That was all behind her, though her mother always made it clear that she didn’t approve of the way our relationship had started. Today, though, was our day, as we were getting married at the Marlboro Country Club in front of our closest friends and family. She wore a white Vera Wang wedding dress that stopped above her knees. It was cut in the front to accent the little cleavage that she did have. Our pictures were going to be beautiful. At five feet ten inches, I had half a foot on her even with the three-inch heels she wore. My tux was custom-made and hung perfectly on my 175-pound frame. I’d cut my hair short, and with the waves in it, coupled with my complexion, I even admitted that I looked a little like a young Boris Kudjo, only with a better smile. When I’d arrived, even my own mother told me I was handsome, and she gave out compliments about as freely as you’d give a kidney. It definitely made me smile.

  As the ceremony went on Alicia read her vows to me first. Next, I had a little surprise for Alicia as the music began to play in the background and my best friend, Jacob Marsh, began to sing. He had a voice as good as any R&B star, and when he began to belt the notes out to Kenny Lattimore’s “For You,” t
ears welled up in her eyes. It thrilled me to be moving her in such a way. My romantic side hadn’t always shone as much as it was shining at that moment. I mouthed the words I love you to her and the tears began to roll. She looked at me and I saw such a look of utter surprise that it startled me.

  I smiled and said, “You all right, baby?”

  Still there was no response as she stared right through me. Then Jacob called my name. “Dee, look.” I turned around to see three women entering the room in a rush. The question What the fuck? slipped out of my mouth.

  “What is she doing here?” Alicia yelled. She’d seen Kristen before. One night at a party, Kristen had tried to make it known to Alicia that she and I had history. Up to this minute, all Alicia knew of was the distant past.

  Instantly I charged toward the crazy bitch. “Kristen, I don’t know what you trying to do, but if you don’t get out of here right now, your ass is gonna be sorry.”

  The room began to erupt with voices. I could hear people mumbling and asking, “What’s going on?”

  I was now up close on Kristen and realized that the third girl was her best friend, Gina. I didn’t know the one standing right beside her, but I had slept with both Kristen and Gina, together the first time, but afterward I had crept on the regular with Gina behind Kristen’s back. “Kris, I don’t know what the hell you thinking coming up in here trying to start some shit, but I swear I will kill your ass for this. If you know like I do, you better turn your ass around and—”

  “Fuck you and your wedding, Diego,” she yelled. “Does this bitch know?”

  There were oohs and aahs from the audience and by now the bridesmaids were coming over to see what was up.

  “Do I know what?” I heard Alicia’s voice as I turned around. She was now right behind me. The place was silent.

  “Do you know that I have been fucking your man, driving your car after he drops you off at work? Oh, and that new crib that you are building—we done already christened that joint. I got the splinters in my ass to prove it.”

  Alicia took a deep breath as her eyebrows curled. “I don’t know who you are, but I would appreciate if you would leave. Somebody call the police before I go the fuck off.” Immediately someone ran out of the hall to get security.

  Kristen smacked her lips. Kristen was only five-two but she looked like a a fitness instructor and she’d come ready for trouble, dressed in capris and Nike track shoes. Her hair was already in a ponytail and I was ready to take her down if she jumped at Alicia. In fact, the only reason I hadn’t hauled off and slapped the shit out of her already was that there were women in attendance. Then Kristen said, “Oh, so you’s a dumb bitch, huh? Diego don’t love you. He don’t love nobody but himself. His ass been fucking my best girl behind my back and here’s a news flash. Her ass is pregnant.” She pointed over at Gina, who looked like she had come against her will.

  I looked over at Gina. Her stomach was indeed poking out. My head began to spin. I instantly went back to the night that the condom had busted, and my mouth dropped open.

  After that, things happened so quickly. Alicia began to scream as she asked me if the things being said were true, over and over again. I felt dizzy and my stomach knotted. I had had several affairs, or fuckbuddies, while we were together, but in an effort to do right going into my marriage, I had cut them all off a month before the wedding. All except for Kristen, who swore she would be there for me forever, and never breathe a word of our affair to anyone. I guess that was until Gina told her about us.

  I never imagined that these skeletons would come falling out of the closet on top of my head in a million years. “I don’t believe this shit,” I said under my breath. I looked back at Alicia and the look in her eyes told me that I was busted. The next thing I knew, Kristen swung at Alicia and landed an open-handed slap across her face that sounded off through the hall. I saw red and lunged at Kristen. I wrapped my hands around her neck and tried my best to choke the life out of her. The second girl, who was with her, pulled something from her bag and swung it at the back of my head. The next thing I knew, I was on the ground trying to get my vision back in focus. It turned out that the girl was a D.C. officer and she’d hit me with her foldout billy club. I’d probably suffered a mild concussion from the way I hit the floor, but the pain in my head was nothing compared to all of the destruction I’d caused.

  By the time Jacob helped me to my feet, the place was in a complete uproar. A lone police officer came running, talking on his walkie-talkie, coupled with two rent-a-cops. People had obviously decided to leave the cursed affair and I saw Alicia’s mother trying to comfort her a few feet away, all the while she was chanting, “I told you about him. I told you this nigga wasn’t no good. It’ll be okay, baby.” She kept saying this to her daughter, who was near hysterical and nearly hyperventilating. “Someone call an ambulance.”

  “Come on. We got to get out of here,” Jacob said, pulling me from the floor.

  “I can’t leave her like this,” I shot back. I tried to move toward her. As soon as Alicia saw my face she began to scream at the top of her lungs and lost her breath.

  Her mother charged me and I flinched, thinking she was about to hit me, too. I was wrong about her, but I didn’t see her uncle as he threw a straight right to my cheek. “You son of a bitch” was all I heard as I stumbled to the ground. People were moving about, rushing out of the hall.

  “I told you we got to bounce.”

  This time I listened as Jacob whisked me out the side to the limo. We climbed in, and once we had the doors closed safely behind us, he looked into my face. I could see he pitied me, but at the same time he was disgusted. “Yo, man, don’t say shit,” I said.

  He shook his head and burst out laughing. He told the driver to take us to his place. “No, better yet, do you have another gig tonight?” he asked the driver.

  “No, sir.”

  “How much to take us to Atlantic City?”

  “How’s two-fifty?”

  “Make it three hundred, but take us to the liquor store first.”

  I said nothing. I gazed out the window thinking about the mess that was my life. Forty-five minutes later we were on I-95 headed to gamble, sipping on Hennessy.

  “You know, Diego. Maybe you should look at what happened today as a clue that you need to make some changes in your life. You could write a book.”

  I laughed. Finally I was beginning to get a buzz from the liquor. “Yeah, right, on what? How to fuck up your life and everyone you come in contact with?”

  He laughed. “Nah, you should make it on something for women on how to avoid men like you.”

  “Thanks, man.”

  “Hell, if the book is good enough, Alicia might even come back to your ass.”

  “Man, you’re crazy as shit.”

  “I’m crazy? You just had your wedding crashed by Kristen and your soon-to-be baby’s mama. Then you got your ass whipped by a sixty-year-old man, but I’m crazy.”

  “Man, that shit ain’t funny.” I half laughed to keep from feeling completely miserable. The rest of the ride up, he helped me laugh to keep from crying.

  “Yo, when we get back you need to have one objective.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Damage control. I mean, shits already blown sky-high, but you just need to start trying to pass out umbrellas before it starts falling from the sky. Whatever you do, leave Alicia alone because there ain’t no way you can possibly straighten this mess out.”

  Jacob was a true friend. He even took my cell-phone calls when it all began to blow up. My mother wanted to blast me. All she could focus on was her embarrassment. Alicia’s best friend called to curse me out. Jacob fielded it all without hesitation. The only call I took was from my coworker Lisa. She was my best friend at work and a sixth-grade teacher.

  “Motherfucker, you’re crazy.” She laughed into the phone. The next thing she said was “Aren’t you glad you listened to me and didn’t invite any of those assholes from work to
the wedding?”

  “Yes, Lisa.”

  “So, what are you going to do now? Are you going to be with the ghetto bitch who busted in?”

  “Hell no.”

  “You need to kill that bitch. She’s crazy.”

  “No doubt. Look, I’m gonna keep drinking this Henny and I’ll talk to you later.”

  “All right. You gonna be okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m cool.”

  Then she started laughing again. “So, are you coming to work since you aren’t going on your honeymoon?”

  “Fuck you.” I laughed back and hung up the phone.

  I told Jacob how grateful I was that he’d helped me escape, even if it was temporary. As I gazed out the windows as we cruised toward a night of gambling, my mind drifted. If I ever wrote a book, I was thinking that it would sell. People loved drama and sex. I was no writer, but for the right price, who couldn’t tell the truth?

  4

  Birds of a Feather?

  After seeing my world go up in flames, Jacob was determined to keep his house in order. A situation had come up and he was now willing to do the unthinkable to get her off of his back. Anna had gone from being his number one fan to borderline stalker. At first he’d welcomed the attention; now the junior had him way past worried. In a world where young people only tend to worship ballplayers, actors, singers, and rappers, Jacob, at first, had been truly flattered at the crush that Anna had on him. She complimented him on his clothing, his teaching, and then, eventually, his looks.

  She had begun to show up in between classes just to say hello, and now that she had a car and no longer had to catch a bus home, she made it her business to stop by daily after school for a chat. It was during one of these chats that Jacob began to notice that Anna seemed a little detached from reality.