by Deidre Berry
Welcome to the Matrix
The transatlantic flight back to America was a miserable, not to mention humbling, experience.
When you’re used to traveling by private jet or first-class at the very least, it is exceptionally hard to accept a downgrade to economy class.
Talk about culture shock. I had no idea that coach was such a zany, zoolike atmosphere. l’ve heard horror stories, but you know. . . .
The one and only other time I had flown coach was when I was eleven years old and traveled with my grandmother from Chicago to North Carolina for a relative’s funeral. I remember it being a pleasant experience, probably because in those days people dressed up nice for travel, and for the most part were courteous and acted like they had some damn sense. Nowadays, not so much.
First, since when did passengers have to start paying for snacks and beverages? And why are there always at least three howling babies onboard, placed strategically throughout the cabin so that they can collectively get on everybody’s damn nerves?
There was no leg room to speak of, and the flight attendants quite obviously saved all their smiles and friendliness for the folks up in first class.
It was way janky, and I have never felt like such a second-class citizen in my life.
To make matters worse, I had the middle seat, and was sandwiched in between what looked to be the Unabomber’s identical twin brother, and a ginormous woman whose bad body odor and expansive flesh kept infringing upon my personal space. How she was able to get onboard without having to buy two seats was beyond me, but I sighed, shook my head, and decided to sit there and take it like a woman. There was no telling what all I was going to have to face once the plane landed in New York, so I had better start toughening up ASAP because newspapers were all over this scandal.
In one paper, a leading socialite who reportedly lost two million dollars of her inheritance in the scheme spoke under condition of anonymity and was quoted as saying, “I’m willing to bet that girlfriend of his has something to do with this, too. Eva Cantrell is a known opportunist and something like this has her fingerprints all over it.”
Now, who does that sound like to you? If I had to venture a guess, I would say that the unnamed and anonymous socialite was none other than Zoë Everett. That sounded exactly like something she would say, and it was just like her to make an inflammatory statement like that and not have the guts to sign her real name next to it
It was the ultimate sucker punch, and an outright lie.
An opportunist in my book was someone who sought out relationships for the sole purpose of exploiting them to further their own agenda. I was nobody’s opportunist. It just so happened that I fell in love with a wealthy man, who as it turns out was a con-man. See the difference?
The Unabomber’s twin started snoring before the plane even taxied down the runway. I looked over at him, all scruffy and content, and thought that it must be nice not to have something weighing so heavily on your heart and mind that you couldn’t fall asleep even if you wanted to.
After a long, tortuous eight hours, my flight from Switzerland touched down at JFK Airport on a beautiful, sunny Tuesday afternoon. Despite everything that was going on, I was so happy to be back in New York that I would have kissed the ground if it wasn’t so grimy.
I emerged from the gate, and was pleasantly surprised to see that Tameka was there waiting for me. I sighed with relief, happy at last to see a smiling, familiar face.
She had proved to be a true friend in my time of need. And to think, I was scared to call Tameka at first, but she had come through like a champ.
For Donovan to leave me stranded in another country with no concern as to what would become of me was the lowest of low.
The thought of skipping out on the ski resort bill crossed my mind, but it would be nearly impossible to escape undetected with all that luggage I was carrying around. Besides, I was pretty sure that nonpayment for services rendered was a crime no matter where you are in the world, and I didn’t want to add sitting up in a Swiss jail to my growing list of problems.
I needed roughly twelve thousand dollars to take care of the ski resort bill, and to get a one-way plane ticket back home. There were less than five people in the world I could call for that kind of money. Donovan and Zoë had been among them, but now they were off the short list, for obvious reasons. Kyle, who normally would have given me his right arm, just plain didn’t have it, which I was sure had something to do with Irwin, his new high-maintenance lover.
“Give Tameka a call,” Kyle had suggested. “I know she’s good for it.”
“No, her and Jamal are going through a divorce and she’s having a hard enough time getting child support out of him as it is,” I said, “plus Donovan got Jamal for some money too, didn’t he?”
“Mmm-hmm . . . that’s what they say.”
“Well, that’s out of the question. She’s probably mad at me just like Zoë.”
“Yeah, but Tameka genuinely loves you like I do. I haven’t talked to her about it, but I’m sure she knows that what Donovan has done has nothing to do with you.”
I made the phone call, and Tameka picked up after the sixth ring. The connection was a bit staticky, but I could clearly hear her sons in the background, yowling like three wild banshees. We spoke for only a few minutes, but I hung up relieved, and thanked God for Tameka Monroe-Harvey.
“Pack your things and go to the Swiss Air counter at the airport, where they should have your boarding pass,” she had said. “Now pass the phone to the concierge or whoever I need to give my credit card number to in order to clear up those outstanding charges.”
As Kyle would say, it was an act of love.
Except for asking to borrow twelve thousand dollars, I didn’t have to explain much to Tameka. I didn’t have to. Donovan J. Dorsey, Wall Street golden boy turned shiesty-ass crook, was the talk of the town. Just like Kyle, Tameka had read enough in the newspapers and seen enough on various television news reports to have the full picture. And at that point, they both knew much more about what was going on than I did.
“Welcome back,” Tameka said as I kissed her on both cheeks and hugged her tight. It was an expression of both gratitude and fear for the unknown that would undoubtedly overtake my life in the months to come.
“Girl, I can’t thank you enough,” I said. “I don’t know how soon I’ll be able to pay you back, but I’m going to pay you back every dime. I swear.”
“You’re my girl, and I love you,” Tameka said, “so don’t worry about all that right now, Eva, it’s cool.”
That would be easier said than done. I hated being indebted to anyone for anything.
Tameka and I stood at the baggage carousel for almost an hour, and the only bag I had received out of a total of eight bags was the garment bag containing the chinchilla coat that Donovan had bought for me in Paris.
“You said you had eight Louie bags?” Tameka asked, pointing out the obvious.
“Yes, plus these two,” I said, indicating the train case that held my makeup and the duffel bag that I carried on, which contained my jewelry, digital camera, and other valuables I didn’t want to lose.
And that is exactly what had happened to all the other bags I had checked with the airline. They got lost.
It was Murphy’s Law in full effect. Whatever could go wrong was most certainly going wrong.
Apparently, lost luggage happens all the time and is no big deal. At least that’s the impression I got from the folks in the lost and found department. More than a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of missing items and all I got after filling out a baggage inventory form detailing the contents of my lost luggage was a receipt with the reference and contact number of the Swiss Air lost and found office, and a terse “We will be in contact with you after the central baggage tracing office in Bern conducts a thorough investigation.”
The ride from the airport to the Central Park West co-op was uncharacteristically quiet for both me and Tameka.
&nbs
p; Usually whenever we rode in the car together, the music was bumping and the conversation was loud and rowdy. Not that day. Tameka had the volume on the radio turned down so low it might as well have been off.
It was just as well, because I didn’t feel much like talking anyway.
Instead, I stared out the window watching the multitude of nameless people on the street as they went about their respective days.
Bike messengers deftly maneuvered through traffic on their bicycles, food cart vendors served their waiting customers, and traffic cops stood in the middle of the street taking their jobs way too seriously, making manic, exaggerated gestures.
We passed the Naked Cowboy standing on the corner happily strumming his guitar in his tighty-whitey drawers. He was wearing a full-length brown sable coat over his underwear, but it was mid-November, and starting to get too damned cold for that gimmick. I wondered what he does in late December and January, in the dead of winter. If he had any sense, he’d keep the hustle going by packing up his guitar and going down to south Florida.
Some of the people on the street looked happy. Pedestrians walking in twos, holding hands and laughing like life was oh-so-grand and carefree.
Even the bums seemed happy-go-lucky.
I was jealous of them all. Mainly because no matter what their personal problems were at that moment in their lives, they weren’t nearly as big as what I had suddenly found myself having to contend with.
I could only imagine what Gwen would say about all of this. My mother’s voice was suddenly in my ear, very loud and extremely ghetto. “Eva, girl, it looks like you have really gone and stepped in it now! But it serves your ass right.... Didn’t I always tell you to keep your own everything so that the quality of your life doesn’t depend upon the actions of some damn man?”
Uh, no.... That was grandma.
The only useful advice Gwen had given me up to that point was to “cross at the green and not in between,” and not to eat yellow snow.
Growing up, Gwen was never a constant presence in my life, which was why I preferred to call the woman who had given birth to me by her first name, instead of mom, mommy, mama, or ma dukes.
Gwen’s voice was the equivalent of fingernails on a chalkboard to me, so I tuned her out and fished my makeup compact out of my bag so that I could fix my face.
I pulled the sun visor down, flipped open the vanity mirror, and winced at my reflection. I looked like death warmed over. Tired, bloodshot eyes with dark circles underneath. My eyebrows needed to be waxed, my makeup had melted, and a huge, stress-induced pimple had popped up all of a sudden on the tip of my chin, causing me to resemble the Wicked Witch of the West. I leaned forward to examine the zit, which was so hard that it hurt.
Yeah, like powder is going to help that look any better right now.
Disgusted, I snapped the mirror closed, just as Tameka slammed on the brakes so hard that we both would have sailed through the windshield if we weren’t wearing our seat belts.
Riding with Tameka was always an adventure because, quite frankly, she was the world’s worst driver. I gripped the overhead assistant handle for dear life as she swerved recklessly through congested rush-hour traffic. She raced through yellow and red lights, cut other drivers off, and switched lanes without using her signals
“Girl, will you slow down?” I said. “Why are you driving like a bat outta hell, anyway?”
“I’m late picking up the boys. I should have been there over an hour ago,” she said, gunning down the West Side Highway at a high rate of speed. I made the sign of the cross and said a silent prayer: Lord, please let me get home safe and in one piece. . . .
When we were only a couple of blocks away from my building, I breathed a deep sigh of relief. Ah, home, sweet home.
Even though I was angry with Donovan, the Funderburk was still my home, and I planned to stay there at the penthouse until we had a long talk about this mess he had somehow gotten himself in and made a definite decision about the future of our relationship. That was, if he decided to man-up and come back from wherever he was to face the music.
I had no idea how I was going to be able to afford the monthly maintenance fees, which were close to thirteen thousand dollars a month, but what a joy it would be to finally get back to the serenity of my superdeluxe apartment and sleep in my own bed.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that Tameka kept sneaking peeks over at me as she drove.
I sensed that she was keeping something serious from me. “What’s up, Tameka?” I asked.
She gave me a solemn, closed-mouth smile, and then reached over and grabbed my hand.
“No, I prefer that you keep both hands on the wheel,” I said, placing her right hand back on the steering wheel. “Whatever it is, just say it. I mean, what’s the worst that can happen at this point?”
Tameka sighed heavily, like whatever she was holding in was causing her a considerable amount of pain. Then she spilled her guts in one big blurt.
“I’m not sure if you have a home to go back to. The feds raided the apartment while you were gone, and now word on the street is that Donovan’s mother has already sold the place.”
Oh, so that’s the worst that can happen at this point.
If what she was saying was true, I had officially fell down a rabbit hole, into an alternate universe.
I closed my eyes and laid my head on the tan leather headrest. “Please tell me you’re joking. . . .” I pleaded. I opened my eyes and looked over at Tameka, who shook her head sadly, letting the silence speak for itself.
With everything that I’d had to process in the last ten hours, the status of things at the penthouse honestly had not even crossed my mind until Tameka brought it up. Was it really possible that I was now homeless, along with everything else I had to deal with? Tameka pulled up in front of the Funderburk, and I was out of the truck and in the lobby before she’d even come to a complete stop.
“Ms. Cantrell, can I speak to you for a moment?” It was Clarence the doorman, with his nosy, backbiting ass. He was a short, pudgy black man in his late fifties, and had been a fixture in the building since long before I moved in. I cut my eyes at the sight of him. It was rude, but it was a knee-jerk reaction that I couldn’t help at that moment. My primary concern was getting upstairs to see what had gone on in my home while I was gone, and the last thing I felt like dealing with was a self-important doorman who gossiped like a bitch.
I had always been cordial to Clarence, tolerating his compulsion to tell me which tenants were into swinging and wild orgies, who was having money woes, and who had out-of-control sexual perversions and/or drug habits.
However, this was not the time.
“Not now, Clarence,” I said over my shoulder as I ran for the elevator bank.
“You’re trespassing!” he said in a loud, commanding tone that I had only heard him use with service people who failed to give him his due respect, and sightseers who really were trespassing on the property.
The words you’re trespassing made me stop dead in my tracks. They were like daggers in my back, serving as further proof, just in case I needed it, that my life had unequivocally changed. And not for the better.
I straightened my back and turned to face Clarence the doorman with steely resolve.
“I’m sorry, but what did you say?” I had heard him right, but I was just stalling for time. Wishing and waiting for someone to suddenly jump out and say, “You’ve been PUNKED!!” and that everything I’d been through in the last twenty-four hours was all part of an elaborate hoax.
That would have been too good to be true, which is why it didn’t happen.
“There’s no need for you to go up there,” Clarence said, in a kinder, softer tone. “The locks have been changed, and the place has been cleaned out and sold.”
“Sold by whom?” I asked tightly.
“By Mrs. Dorsey, of course. I mean, after all, she is the rightful owner of the apartment—well, she was until last week when the new tenan
ts closed on it.”
I felt my mind and emotions spiraling out of control, as my once-friendly neighbors briskly passed me by as if they didn’t know me from a can of paint. The fact that Donovan had registered the apartment in his mother’s name was news to me.
Without being asked, Clarence went into great detail, repeating much of what I had already heard from Kyle and Tameka.
The federal authorities had shown up at the co-op with a search warrant just two days after Donovan and I had left the country. Since Mrs. Annette Dorsey’s name was on the deed, the building manager called her to come over and handle the situation.
Clarence bore witness as authorities carted away everything that they perceived to be evidence in Donovan’s wrongdoings, including computers, a safe, and an entire file cabinet full of documents. “Word is, Mrs. Dorsey got so spooked that the feds could possibly seize the penthouse that she quickly sold it to the highest bidder, even though she had to sell it at a huge loss,” said Clarence.
What was worse, Clarence went on to say, was that he and many of the tenants in the building had been hounded mercilessly by hordes of photographers and by journalists looking for a quote or a scoop, and it had taken weeks to get the situation completely under control.
“You should have seen ’em out there, camped out like they were waitin’ on a Michael Jackson concert or something.” He shook his head, clearly still awed by the memory of it all. “Stuff like that doesn’t usually go on around here,” he said, his voice dripping with accusation.
By the time Clarence had finished relaying all that information, Tameka had joined me in the lobby, claiming that she was now pressed for time and was late picking her kids up from the baby-sitter’s.
“So where are my things?” I asked.
“Well, everything had to be moved out to make way for the new tenants,” Clarence said as if that alone should have satisfied my curiosity.
“That still doesn’t answer the question,” I said, feeling rage threatening to overtake me. “I had closets, and drawers full of my personal things. Where are they?”