A Special Relationship

by Yvonne Thomas

  The loud motor of a city bus could suddenly be heard on the far street behind them. Carrie turned quickly to the sound. “Oh, no!” she cried as the bus, her ride, flew past. She thought to make a run for it, maybe cut him off on the next street, but she didn’t even bother. Everything that could go wrong was going wrong in her life right now and missing her ride was, it seemed to her, exactly what she should have expected.

  “That was my bus,” she said as she turned back to Robert.

  Robert only nodded, he wasn’t about to get in any deeper, and she knew it. She was a hard luck mess of a case, that was all there was to it, and who in their right mind, she wanted to know, would get involved with bad news like her? That was why she didn’t ask him for any favors. That was why she resigned herself to yet another long wait for the next bus to arrive. And that was why she pulled out her paycheck and attempted to hand it to him.

  “Will you give this to your wife— ”

  “She’s not my wife,” Robert said too quickly, which surprised him, but it didn’t seem to even faze Carrie.

  “Will you give this to your friend then? Please?”

  Robert looked at the envelope containing the undoubtedly small check this woman had worked so hard to earn, then he looked at her. And he saw immediately why Alphonso wouldn’t take it either. “I’ll give her your apology,” he said. “That’s more than she deserves to get from you.”

  Carrie would have argued with him, she would have insisted. But she couldn’t. That small check was all she had and Mona would have a fit if she didn’t show up with it. She hated being like this, where she couldn’t do what she knew was right because she couldn’t afford to. But she also knew Robert to be a real man. He wasn’t going to take it anyway.

  “Well,” she said, “goodnight. And please don’t forget to tell her how sorry I am.”

  Robert didn’t say anything. Carrie, figuring him to be tired of her for certain now, began to walk away from him and back toward the bus stop where she’d come from. Robert watched her, in her little tight-fitting purple uniform and her flat shoes, her beautiful, slick black hair pushed under in a bouncy bob just above her thin neck. He knew he should just get in his ride and hit the road, forgetting about Carrie Banks forever. But he couldn’t. “Carrie,” he said. When she turned and looked at him, he exhaled. What was he getting himself into, he wondered. “Come here.”

  Carrie didn’t hesitate. She walked back up to him quickly, hoping that he wasn’t going to do or say anything that would make her lose faith in him too. “Yes?”

  Robert could do without the formalities, he got enough of that at work, but such a wall of respect could only help to keep distance between them. “I want you to promise me something.”

  She nodded, although she had no idea what he wanted. “Okay.”

  “I want you to promise me that you won’t worry about what happened here tonight. It was an accident, you know it was an accident, and I want you to stop beating yourself up about it. Can you promise me that?”

  Carrie smiled. “I can try—”

  “Not try, Carrie. I need you to do it.”

  She nodded, as his sincerity touched her. “Yes, I will. I’ll do it.”

  Robert smiled a smile that seemed to transform his face. Carrie didn’t think it was possible, but he looked even better when he smiled.

  “You need a ride?” he asked her.

  “I could sure use one, yes.”

  “All right then,” he said, looking down at her uniform for some reason, and he said it in such a way that it seemed to her he was still trying to convince himself that he was doing the right thing. “Let’s go.”

  Carrie hurried to keep stride with him as they walked to his Cadillac Escalade that sat near the back of the parking lot. She felt comfortable walking with Robert, as his suit coat flapped briskly in the wind, as his every step down seemed deliberate and self-assured. But when he opened the passenger door of his big SUV for her, and she was standing beside him ready to step in, she froze. It was one thing to talk to a man in a parking lot, or to even sit in that man’s office. It was another thing entirely to get in his car. With him as the driver. With doors that locked. In a vehicle capable of going well in excess of a hundred miles per hour.

  She looked at the big, beautiful, jet black SUV with its wide gold trim, and then she looked at Robert.

  “What is it now?” he asked her.

  Carrie began biting her lower lip. Robert frowned. “What is it?” he asked again.

  Carrie hated herself for being so cautious, but she couldn’t help it. “What if you’re a maniac?” she asked him.

  Robert smiled, and then he laughed out loud. Why does he even bother? “Suit yourself,” he said as he closed his passenger door. Then he gestured toward the street. “Your bus stop awaits you,” he said, and then began walking away from her to the driver’s side of his SUV, shaking his head and still smiling as he went.

  By the time he got into his truck, however, Carrie had already climbed inside, placed her purse on the floor, put her house keys in her hand, and was just about to put on her seatbelt. Robert wanted to ask why she suddenly had her house keys out, of all things, but he already knew the answer. If he tried anything, she aimed to scratch his eyes out.

  ELEVEN

  His car smelled like him, Carrie thought, as she leaned back on the large leather seat of his big SUV and tried not to worry so much. It had that same fresh, clean, sweet cologne smell that was all over him every time he came near her. She looked at him, as he backed out of the parking lot and, based on her directions, began heading east of downtown. She didn’t believe in chance. She didn’t believe that she just so happened to run into him twice in two weeks by accident. Could God have sent this hunk of a human being to her, she wondered. Could God have decided that it was her time to get a good turn for a change? Then she smiled at her fanciful thinking. The man just had dinner with his girlfriend for crying out loud! His very tall, very gorgeous girlfriend. Get a grip, she thought with a smile and leaned her head back against the headrest.

  Robert glanced at Carrie as he stopped at a red light on Forsythe. She looked so young, he thought, as her head tilted back and her gorgeous thin neck revealed no lines whatsoever. He’d guess she was barely twenty-two, if that old. So young and so green. He could have laid any line on her tonight and she would have believed him and gotten in this truck with him to be carted off to her doom. Didn’t she read the papers? Didn’t she watch the news? Weirdoes didn’t have to look weird. They were, in fact, usually the boy next door. He could have been a maniac just as she suggested, for all she knew. But she got right on in this truck just the same. And just the thought of it angered him. Then he became angry with himself. He didn’t even know this woman, knew, in fact, next to nothing about her, and he was already worried sick about her. He didn’t need this aggravation, he thought, as he pulled away from the now green light and absently but angrily hit his hand against the steering wheel.

  Carrie, who heard the thump, looked at him. “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  “No, I was just. . . No. You said I keep up Forsythe?”

  “Until you get to Liberty, yes, sir. Make a left on Liberty and then you have a long way to go, all the way down to 8th Street, where you’ll make a right.”

  Robert nodded. Carrie smiled. “You remembered my name,” she said.

  Robert glanced at her. “What’s that?”

  “You called me Carrie in the parking lot. I didn’t think you remembered me.”

  How could he forget her, he wanted to say. “You aren’t easily forgotten, young lady,” he said instead.

  Carrie smiled even greater, although she wondered why he felt a need to keep referring to her as young. She didn’t feel all that young, not with the kind of hard life she’d had to live. She wasn’t as old as he was, she reasoned, but she wasn’t some child either.

  Robert looked at her again. “I’m surprised you remembered me,” he said, testing her.


  Carrie took the bait and laughed. “How could I forget you? You gave me water, let me sit in your office and rest for a while. You’re the kindest person I’ve ever met.”

  “Come on.”

  “You are.”

  “Because I gave you water and a place to sit? I hope that’s not true, Carrie. I hope those two little common courtesy acts does not make me the kindest person you’ve ever met.”

  “Not just because of that.”

  “Then what?”

  “It’s just, I don’t know, I can’t put it into words.” Carrie said this and looked at him. He smiled. He understood.

  He took a right onto Liberty Street and kept his eyes on the road. He thought about all of the women he’d known who had that same look in their eyes Carrie now had in hers. They thought they loved him too. And some did. Some loved him, some eventually despised him, and some, like Gloria, despitefully used him. She even admitted it, after the divorce, when the judge decided that, although he was not Ashley’s biological father, he had taken care of her for seventeen years and was therefore entitled to visitation. He drove up to Silver Springs, Maryland to see Ashley within weeks of the divorce. He also wanted to check on Gloria too, she was still in his system bad, and that was when she admitted it. She was using him, because she knew he was close to Paul and would therefore keep her close to Paul too. She never loved him, she’d told him, not ever, because she loved Paul so much. And Paul was right there. Dr. Paul Michael Hathaway. His longtime friend. Holding her hand and gloating in his triumph. They were going to be married themselves soon, they told him, and they didn’t need him coming around disrupting their lives by pretending to love Ashley.

  Robert remembered just standing there unable to say a word. They actually believed he could stop loving his child, or at least the child he thought for seventeen years was his. They actually believed he could be cold and callous like them. But he couldn’t. He even still cared for Gloria, the woman who admitted she never cared a day for him, that was how pathetic he was. He looked out of his side window, to hide the disgust that had to be on his face. How do you come back from that kind of deception? How do you trust somebody again when a wife you loved for twenty years wasn’t even trustworthy?

  Now Tyler and some of his other ladies and even this young Carrie Banks expected him to see the wonderful uniqueness in them and trust his own judgment again. When it came to acquisitions and other business dealings, yes, he’d trust his judgment over any other human being’s. When it came to women, forget it. He’d trust a child’s judgment first.

  “I hope Popena’s home,” Carrie said mainly to herself but Robert heard her.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “I said I hope my sister’s home. Popena, or Mona as she likes to be called now. She works at night but she might not have left yet. Her boss offered me a job and I wanted to let her know that I’m gonna take it.” This pronouncement brought a frown to Carrie’s face. But she was unemployed again. She had to tell Popena something.

  “Why didn’t you take it before?” he asked her. “Different kind of work?

  “Not really. I’ll be waiting tables there too. But it won’t be at no fancy restaurant like Jetson’s.

  “I see.”

  “But hopefully me and Popena will be able to work the same hours. That’ll make it a lot easier for me.”

  Robert exhaled. Getting her on at Dyson would be as simple as putting in a call to the director of human resources and telling him to hire her, but that wasn’t the problem. He needed to move this woman out of his life, not find reasons to keep her in it.

  As instructed by Carrie, he made a right onto 8th Street and then a left onto Phoenix and within a few blocks they were on Dresel Street. When they arrived at Carrie’s apartment building, Robert saw a large assortment of shirtless young men hanging out on the stoop gambling and playing loud rap music. They were also drinking and laughing and getting fresh with the hookers and having a big old time in front of Carrie’s building. Robert looked amazed, she thought, when his big, shiny SUV stopped at the curb and her less than shiny surroundings hit him like a jolt of reality in the face. Where did he expect her to live on a waitress salary, she wanted to know. In one of those fancy condominiums downtown?

  He stepped out of his truck slowly, as if he wanted to prove to her that he wasn’t stunned by what he was seeing, but Carrie knew better than that. This was like a culture shock to a man like Robert Kincaid, who probably never knew a day of poverty in his life. He also probably never knew a woman who could live in a place like this. Which only depressed Carrie. They were just too different, she decided.

  He opened the passenger door for her and she stepped out onto the sidewalk. More than a few brothers were checking out Robert’s truck, but all of the others seemed more interested in checking out Carrie. Robert’s jaws tightened at the sight of all of these hungry young men with too much time on their hands, men who had probably seen and done some things that would make even Robert’s skin crawl, and he immediately felt possessive of Carrie. He placed his hand on the small of her back as he walked her up the stoop and into her apartment building, his eyes trained on the young men as if he was daring them to try something. For some reason he wanted them to think that Carrie, that this particular woman, wasn’t available. And if they didn’t understand that, if they still wanted to try and get next to her, he wanted them to get a good look at what kind of man they would have to go through first.

  Carrie, however, wasn’t giving those guys a second thought. She was suddenly embarrassed by where she lived, as the noise inside the building was only slightly less irritating than the noise outside, and the smells, of urine, of liquor, were worse than ever as they walked up the stairs.

  Robert walked slightly behind her, his hand still pressed against her lower back as if he were afraid she was going to get away from him, his eyes unable to fully accept these surroundings. He knew she wasn’t living high on anybody’s hog, he knew life circumstances had dealt her a less than flattering hand. But living like this? In this war zone? It made him want to make her pack a bag right now. And take her where, he wondered. Into his world? Into his horrors? Leaving her alone would be less cruel, he decided.

  He stood next to her at apartment number six as she fumbled with her keys. His hand was still on the small of her back, it was, in fact, that way even as they walked up the stairs, and she didn’t know quite what to make of it. The press of his hand felt good to her senses, and just the thought of him so close to her did manage to relax her around those horrible boys out front, but what she couldn’t figure out was if he was just being nice again or meant more by the gesture. But since she couldn’t exactly ask him, she decided not to dwell on it.

  “Thank you so much for the ride, Mr. Kincaid,” she said as she continued to fumble nervously with her keys. “I seem to be all thumbs tonight.”

  Robert took the keys from her hand, although he still did not release his hand from her back. “Which one is it?” he asked her as he looked at her key chain.

  “That one,” she said, looking at the keys.

  Robert looked at her, as their closeness wasn’t lost on either one of them, and then he put the key she had selected into the door lock. “Do they hang out like that all the time, Carrie?” he asked her.

  “Who? Those guys out front? Yeah, they do. Maybe not the same ones but it’s always a group hanging out there. I just ignore them.”

  She could feel Robert’s hand slide from the small of her back to curve around her waist. He also pulled her closer against him. “Do they ignore you?” he asked her and then looked at her. Her heart was pounding by their sudden closeness and she looked him in the eye. “What do you mean?” she asked him.

  “Do those young men bother you, Carrie?” he asked in his naturally firm tone. “You know what I mean.”

  Carrie looked Robert in the eye when he said this and her stomach tightened. He smelled so sweet and his eyes looked so compassionate that she wanted h
im to hold her. Her body was screaming for him to hold her. “No,” she said. “They pretty much ignore me too.”

  Robert looked at her mouth and then into her eyes. “They’d better,” he said to her and for a long moment they just stood there. Then he turned the key in the lock and pushed open her door. His heart skipped a beat as she moved past him and walked across her threshold. He didn’t hold her or kiss her, but he once again showed such kindness towards her. Which was what she needed most.

  Robert, however, seemed distracted by her door lock. He looked at it and rattled the knob. Then he looked at her. “Make sure you lock this door,” he said.

  “I always keep it lock.”

  “Good.”

  “Even Popena believes in that.”

  Robert didn’t respond. He had said too much already. Asking her about those young men. What was he going to do, he wondered, if she’d said no, they come on to me every day and I’m afraid of them? He’d have to do something then, he knew, and that was the last thing he needed to do.

  “Take care of yourself, Carrie,” he said.

  “You too, Mr. Kincaid. And don’t let Dyson work you too hard.”

  Robert laughed. “I won’t.”

  Carrie found herself staring at his face while he laughed. And even when he stopped, and found himself returning her stare, she couldn’t even force herself to look away.

  Robert exhaled as he looked at her, as he glared at this delicate creature in this hell hole of a living space, and he did something he knew he shouldn’t do, he knew he wouldn’t do ordinarily, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. He moved up to Carrie, invading her personal space with the agility of a thief in the night, and pulled her into his big arms. She closed her eyes, as if by reflex, and returned his hug with a tight grip of her own. She wanted to cry it felt so good to be held like this, her face rammed against his broad chest. She wanted to break down in tears at the warmth of him, the sweet smell of him, the touch of him. So she did.