“We’re just going to a friend’s house to relax, that’s all, Carrie, goodness,” Mona said. “You need it and I need it too. You’ve been in J-ville for over a month now and the only friend you’ve made is that annoying-behind Millie Rawlings. These people are our age and they know how to have some fun.”
“What kind of fun, Mona?”
“Fun. Talking and laughing and chilling. Just come on!”
And she did. Against her better judgment she went along with Mona. The first indication of trouble was early on, when they got off of the bus and made the block-long walk to a small, shack of a house on a dark, near deserted-looking street. The house, however, was lit up from room to room and was jamming. The music could be heard nearly a block away. Carrie wanted to turn around right then, but it was too dark, the neighborhood was too isolated, and she was too concerned for her sister’s safety to not at least make sure she was going to be okay.
The second indication of trouble was when they stepped inside the small house. Wall to wall college kids, all males, were inside and became even more animated when somebody announced that the “entertainment” had arrived. Before Carrie could say a word, which she was about to, Mona smilingly told the boys to “hold your horses” and escorted Carrie into the bathroom at the end of the small, narrow hall.
As soon as the door closed, Carrie fumed. “Entertainment?” she said.
“Don’t blow a gasket, Carrie,” Mona said as she unzipped her nap sack and began pulling out clothes. “All you got to do is assist me.”
“Assist you to do what?”
Mona rolled her eyes. “What do you think? Sing spirituals?”
“I knew I shouldn’t have listened to you. ‘We’re just going to visit friends, Carrie.’ Yeah, right.”
Mona slipped out of her T-shirt and put on a halter top. “You ain’t got to dance. All you got to do is hand me my props, that’s all.’
Carrie frowned. “What props?”
“Just props, Carrie, okay? My wand, my bunny tails, stuff like that.”
Carrie couldn’t believe it. Bunny tails and wands! She should have known. She actually thought her sister, for once, was concerned about her and was just trying to cheer her up with this night out. Instead she brought her to the original animal house to assist her with a strip tease! Carrie shook her head. She wasn’t getting any breaks, she thought.
“Hand me those garters, Carrie,” Mona said but Carrie didn’t even hear her. She left. She walked out of that bathroom, down that narrow hall, with every intention of not looking back. But as soon as she stepped into the living room, she stepped into a hornet’s nest of testosterone. Men began clapping as if her appearance was a part of the show and started grabbing at her and groping her. They even cornered her. She was screaming for them to leave her alone, but they had no mercy. Why was she there if she didn’t want this, some of them were asking. One of them even pulled on her blouse so violently that it nearly ripped in two, exposing her bra and causing the men to whoop and holler even more.
“All right boys!” Mona voice could be heard over the noise. “Forget that wall flower. Come on to mama!”
And they went, every one of them, toward the real entertainment. As soon as they did, Carrie sprinted out of that house and as far away as she could get. The neighborhood was nearly deserted and the darkness of the night gave her an eerie feeling, but she held her torn blouse together by the catch of her hands and didn’t look back. She was down, nearly out, but she wasn’t about to throw in the towel just yet. Misery loved company, and Mona had been trying every way she could to get Carrie down in that gutter with her. But Carrie wasn’t going down like that. She was in trouble, and she needed help, but not that kind, she’d decided.
***
Bill Johnson, a linebackers coach for the Jacksonville Jaguars and Robert’s best friend since college, leaned back in the chair in front of Robert’s desk and smiled. He was a couple years younger than Robert, better looking according to many of the women they used to compete for, and had a way about him that made him instantly likeable. His best feature, he felt, was his skin color, a black-as-a-shoe deep dark tone that was smoother than cream. And when he smiled, the contrast was remarkable. “Is that shocking enough?” he asked Robert.
Robert didn’t have to respond. His actions spoke for him. He’d been tossing files into his briefcase to take home to review when Bill first came into his office, now he just stood there astonished. “What’s her name?” he asked Bill.
“Shelby. Shelby Kirkland. Prettiest woman you’d ever want to meet. Her dad used to be the head of the NAACP. And she said yes.”
“You’re so proud of her why haven’t I met her?”
“Because I didn’t want you to think of her as another one of my females. I mean this lady’s classy, okay? Her family are iconic in the black community. I had to get this right.”
Robert nodded. He knew what Bill meant. Some women just stood apart from the rest and when you found her, you felt compelled to be cautious. Robert was the same way when he first met Gloria. He could only hope his friend’s lady didn’t turn out like Gloria. He continued packing up files. “When’s the big day?” he asked.
“Still being worked out. But soon.”
Robert looked at his friend, the only man he had ever loved, and his heart went out to him. “Who is this Shelby anyway?” he asked almost angrily just as his cell phone began ringing. “What does she do for a living?”
“She’s the woman of my dreams, man, that’s who she is.”
Robert pulled his cell phone from inside his suit coat. “That’s no answer and you know it.” Robert then flipped open his cell phone. “This is Kincaid.”
It was New York. A contingent of mid-level executives had flown up there to finalize plans to take over a small but conceptually lucrative dot com, but there had been a snag in the negotiations. Robert listened carefully, although he hardly felt the matter warranted his attention, and before he even bothered to tell them what to do, the land line phone on his desk began ringing. Although it was Robert’s private line, he chose to ignore it. Bill, however, didn’t.
“Chilli’s pizza,” Bill said after he picked up the phone. Robert looked at him crossly. “Wait, don’t hang up. I was just kidding. This isn’t a pizza joint. Yes, it’s Robert Kincaid’s office. How may I help you?”
“Did you already offer the three percent?” Robert said into his cell phone as Bill was on his desk phone asking for the name of the person who was requesting to speak with Robert.
“Carrie?” Bill said into the land line and Robert immediately looked at him. “Carrie who?”
“I’ll call you back,” Robert said into his cell phone and shut it off. Then he reached for the phone in Bill’s hand.
“Who’s Carrie?” Bill asked as he handed the phone to Robert. Robert, however, ignored him.
“Hello?” he said into the phone. Then he heard that voice.
“Robert?” she said.
“Yes.”
There was a pause. Then sniffling. “Carrie, what’s wrong?”
“Can you come and get me?”
“Of course I can come and get you. Where are you?”
“She told me we would just be visiting her friends. But that was a lie. All those men, and they thought I was gonna dance too.”
Robert’s heart dropped. Men? Dancing? “Carrie, where are you?” he asked again, but this time slowly, not only to help keep her calm, but to keep himself from falling apart too.
SEVENTEEN
She was leaned against a dark, deserted corner building when Robert’s SUV drove up. When she saw him she stood erect, revealing the torn blouse she was holding together with her hands. He got out of his truck and hurried to her, his heart pounding with anxiety and worry, his very soul unable to contain his dismay. He looked at her, he took his hand and lifted her chin to him, and what he saw disturbed him even more. Not only was she shaking like a leaf but she had that blank, almost catatonic look that peop
le who’d seen unspeakable horrors often displayed. He pulled her gently into his arm, and began looking around at the land that time forgot they stood upon. He removed his suit coat, placed it around her, and then walked her to the truck.
They drove in silence nearly the entire way back to Dresel Street. It wasn’t until Robert turned onto 8th Street and was within blocks of Carrie’s home did he finally ask her what had happened.
“Popena—”
“Your sister?”
“Yes. She had agreed to put on a dance show for these guys when I thought we were just going to visit friends of hers. That’s what she had told me. But it was like a fraternity party or something, I don’t know. They were drinking and loud and it was just awful.”
Robert glanced at her, and then at her torn blouse beneath his coat. “What happened to your blouse?” he asked her.
“Party. Drinking. Rowdy guys. You do the math.”
Robert exhaled and stared at the road ahead of them. There was a testiness to Carrie tonight, and he fully understood why. This same woman who thought she’d come to town and take the place by storm was being swept around every which way she turned. And Robert felt awful. That last night he’d seen her, when he all but dragged her out of Simms, had tormented him since. He knew he should have checked on her. He knew he should have made sure that she could make it after that. But he didn’t do a darn thing. He didn’t want to get involved. He had a heart to protect after all and as for Carrie’s heart, well, that wasn’t his problem.
Now he felt as if it very much was his problem. This kid was being eaten alive in this maggot-infected world just as he’d predicted all along and he was too selfish, too drowned in his own despair, to even do what little he could have done to help her. But what could he do? He offered his assistance to her, and he offered it more than once. He even offered her a job at Dyson but she refused. She had to take care of her business herself, she said. And he was perfectly content, at the time, to let her will stand. But looking at her now, as she still couldn’t stop her little body from shaking, as her eyes still had that glazed over look of terror deep within them, her will was about to take a backseat to his. He’d make her pack a bag and come with him. No matter what.
He didn’t know exactly where he was going to take her, but he knew he wasn’t going to let her spend another night anywhere near her sister’s influence. He didn’t want the responsibility. Lord knows the last thing he wanted was to have yet another problem on his plate to deal with. But he didn’t see where he had a choice. God worked in mysterious ways, he knew that to be a fact, and it seemed predestined for him to have to do this. It seemed preordained that he should work his will, his oftentimes iron-clad will, on a good, Christian, but feisty as all get-out lady like Carrie Banks. Problem was, and it was a major problem, how in the world was he going to get Carrie Banks to bend to that will?
Remarkably, and yet another indication of God’s mysterious ways well at work, he got his answer almost as soon as he turned off of Phoenix Avenue and onto Carrie’s street. Police cars, an ambulance, and even a fire truck were in the front of her building, and people were standing around either dazed or excited as the entire area was cordoned off.
“What in the world. . .,” Robert said as his Escalade slowed near the outer reaches of the police tape, his eyes unable to believe the scene before him. Carrie, however, wasn’t interested in speculating. This was her home. She wasn’t going to wait around for somebody to tell her anything. Without so much as glancing Robert’s way, she opened the door of his SUV and hurried out. Robert, terrified that Carrie was walking into a situation he wasn’t certain was all that secure, slammed his stick into park, grabbed his keys, and hurried out behind her. She was already talking with a bystander, one of those young men Robert thought he recognized as hanging out on the stoop, by the time Robert came up beside her.
“I don’t know,” he was saying to Carrie. “All I know was that a dude drove by shootin’, that’s all I know. I took off runnin’. They got a body in that rescue wagon though.”
“Why aren’t they leaving? Why aren’t they rushing him to the hospital?”
“Ain’t no him, it’s a her. And it’s probably because she done croaked already.”
“Died?”
“Yeah, what you think? You should have heard them shots. That drive-by shootin’ brother was looking for blood and he didn’t care whose.”
Carrie shook her head in great dismay. Robert wanted to throw his arms of protection around her and shield her from experiencing the horrors of man’s inhumanity towards his fellow man. It was fast becoming a night filled with so much drama that he was praying she’d be immune to it. But he knew she wasn’t. “Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy,” she said aloud. “I pray her soul was saved.”
“Amen,” Robert said, surprising Carrie.
“It was,” the young man replied. “Miss Millie always talking about God and junk. She was saved all right.”
It took Carrie a full second only to register what the young man had just said. She whipped her body around to him so fast that he literally took a step back. “Miss Millie? Millie Rawlings?”
“Yeah. That old church lady.”
“Are you telling me, are you saying to me that the lady they shot tonight was Millie Rawlings?”
The young man looked at Robert. Even he could see how adversely the news was affecting Carrie. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s what I’m telling you. Miss Millie dead.”
Tears welled up in Carrie’s eyes and she turned around to Robert. He didn’t have to ask who this Millie Rawlings was, because her eyes told him that she was somebody very special to Carrie. And it was all she needed. Another blow. Another letdown. Another sterling example of how cruel this world could be.
He pulled her into his arms but he did not linger there. He walked her, without even noticing if she was willing or not, away from the sirens, the people, the tragedy of the night, and to his shiny black vehicle. And once again the decision was made for him. He didn’t have to wait for her to pack a bag, he didn’t have to argue with her or drag her away against her will. Her will had bent, without any prodding from him whatsoever, into his will, and they both were near the breaking point. Because as sure as they now sat in his SUV, as sure as he was cranking up and taking them away from this horrid scene, even she knew he wasn’t about to leave her now.
EIGHTEEN
They entered the large suite of the Hyatt hotel in downtown Jacksonville and Carrie began walking around the room as if she were inspecting it. Her arms were folded, her eyes were darting from the sofa to the chair to the cocktail table to the ottoman to the wet bar. She didn’t even realize a concierge was in the room, or that he and Robert were involved in a protracted conversation, until Robert asked her what was her size. She turned and looked at him with such an angelic, almost peaceful look about her that even the hotel employee’s breath caught.
“Your clothes,” Robert finally pulled himself to ask. “What size clothes do you wear?”
She just stared at him as if he was speaking a foreign language to her.
“We’ll figure it out, sir,” the concierge said. “She’s small.”
Robert nodded, tipped the man handsomely, and closed the door behind him. When he’d gone, Robert exhaled. He knew it was his time to get out too. Carrie seemed to be in her own world. She wasn’t dazed anymore and she didn’t appear devastated. She seemed, in fact, totally at peace, as if she’d turned it over to Jesus and was more than willing to let Him work it out. But somehow, to Robert, it just didn’t feel like that was it. “I’ll come back in the morning, Carrie,” he said to her. “Pick up the phone and call for assistance if you have any problems. Have you eaten yet? Carrie? Do you need me to call room service?”
Carrie turned to him, her eyes now filled with tears. The reversal stunned Robert. She walked up to him so swiftly that it appeared as if she was running his way. “Teach me,” she said as she came.
Robert swallowed hard. �
�Teach you what?”
“How to be heartless too.”
A pang shot through Robert’s entire body, as he remembered what it was like when he lost faith. He grabbed Carrie and crushed her against him in a bear hug that nearly smothered her. She let out a cry so loud that Robert closed his eyes in anguish too. He didn’t want her to go through what he went through. He didn’t want her to become what he’d become. So he prayed. He held her close to him and prayed for her. He remembered what it was like when Gloria and Ashley walked out of his life. The pain was so unbearable that it rendered him numb for weeks. He didn’t cry out to God for mercy the way he should have. He was too hurt to cry. He was too devastated to pray. And that decision he made when he stood in the foyer of his home after all the confusion had left, caused him his life. He was still living physically. He was still taking his nourishments and going about his daily business. But everything about who he was and what he was, the very essence of his spirit, died that day in his foyer.
He lifted Carrie up into his arms as her crying didn’t cease but seemed even more manic. He carried her into the bedroom where he unturned the covers and laid her down. Then he sat on the bed beside her and smooth her silky black hair out of her pretty face. She stared at him as she cried, as if in him she was looking for some answer, some word of encouragement, some strength he did not possess. He exhaled. “Pray, Carrie,” he said to her.
“I prayed. All the time. I left Georgia praying. I came here to Florida praying. And it didn’t do any good. Nothing’s worked out for me. Nothing, Robert. And now Millie’s dead!” She said this with a pain that pained Robert. “She was a wonderful person, you would have really liked her. She used to always say that God is able, that’s what she always said.”
A Special Relationship Page 13