by Mark Anthony
Nicole, who is very comfortable around Steve, had on some tight shorts and a tee shirt, just your regular relaxing type of gear. When she got up and went to answer the phone, Steve tapped me, and while pointing to Nicole, he asked why I would cheat on “that.” Having no reasonable response, I smiled and said, “Yo, kid, I’m just sayin’.”
It’s mad ill because it’s like men have this impenetrable code of silence when it comes to cheating. Like, I could have just told Steve that I had had sex with Toni an hour ago. Yet he would be able to look Nicole in the face as calm as ever, kiss her on the cheek, and comment on how great her food is and the whole nine. Similar to what he has been doing. See, like any other guy, Steve knows how to play the game. And if roles were reversed, I would play the game the same exact way. Men never took a class on this stuff, and we don’t even have to discuss how to do it. But we had to have learned it somewhere ’cause it just oozes out of us too damn smooth. I would bet that LL was subconsciously learning how to play the game by just being around us, and we didn’t even know it.
When Wednesday showed up, I couldn’t wait to call Toni. I’d been wondering if she’d actually received the flowers. I was starting to lose my mind. I was thinking thoughts like, What if she chose not to come in to work on Tuesday? What if she thinks the secret admirer is some other punk who’s sweating her? All kinds of thoughts were rambling through my mind.
When I work, I carry my cell phone with me, and that day was no different. I decided to wait until around eleven o’clock in the morning to call Toni. I figured I would catch her before she was real busy with customers. I felt a little nervous about calling her, but those jitters were normal. I would say most men are a little nervous when they make that first call to a female who has got it going on. I had no idea what I was gonna say or how I was gonna say it, but that usually works better for me. I knew I had to just come at her as myself so she would at least sense the sincerity.
I dialed the shop’s number, and it rang twice. But before someone picked up, I quickly pressed the end button on my cell phone. I decided to page Toni and put in my cell number for her to call me back. My reasoning was, by having Toni call me it would help break the ice a bit. So after I paged her, I simply went about my business as usual. I didn’t want to be sitting around with sweaty palms and all that. But I did, however, keep an eye on my watch and noticed that it was only ten minutes later when my cell phone rang.
I answered on the first ring, but I tried not to sound too eager as I said, “Hello.”
“Hi. Did somebody page Toni?”
I was screaming inside. Toni had actually called me back. She sounded sweeter than ever.
“Yeah, how you doin’, Toni? This is Lance.”
“Oh, Lance what’s up, boo?”
Boo? Ah, man. That was all I needed to hear, I reasoned to myself. If I never spoke to Toni again it would have been a’ight ’cause she called a nigga “boo.” Yo, plus she knew right off the bat who I was.
I decided to get right to the point and not beat around the bush. So I donned my Mack voice and replied, “Nothing much. I was just calling to see how you were doing, and I wanted to know if you liked the flowers that I sent you.”
There was a quick moment of silence followed by a childish-sounding laughter of embarrassment.
“Lance, you sent those flowers? When I found out they weren’t from who I originally thought they were from, I was trippin’ the whole day, trying to figure out who sent them. Yes, of course I liked them. That was so sweet, but—”
Before Toni could mess up the flow and throw acid all over my program, I interrupted her by Mackishly playing down the situation.
” What were you gonna say? Listen, before you say anything, I just wanna say that I’m glad you liked the flowers. I also wanna ask if it’s okay if I drop by your job tonight and pick you up. And after I pick you up, why don’t me and you go to Juniors restaurant?”
Toni chuckled and said, “Lance, whoa, slow down. Slow down . . . I heard of being straightforward, but man . . . Lance, like I was saying, the flowers were very nice and thoughtful, but I can’t go out to eat with you.”
“Why not? All I wanna do is take you to get some cheesecake. That’s it. No strings attached. A’ight? We can eat cheesecake and talk about a few things.”
“Talk about a few things like what?”
“Things.”
There was another brief pause, then I heard a sigh, followed by short laughter.
“Oh my God, Lance . . . Alright, I’ll go get some cheesecake with you.”
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, I screamed in my head.
Toni then pessimistically added, “Lance, I don’t even really know you. I mean—”
I quickly interrupted, “Toni, like I said, no strings attached. I just wanna talk to you about a few things.”
“But Lance, by the time I get off I’ll look too through. You don’t even wanna know how busted I’ll look by the time I leave here. Plus, I ain’t even dressed to go out.”
I responded, “Toni, don’t worry about how you’ll look. See, you making this more than it is. We just gonna eat some cheesecake. You don’t have to be dressed for that, right?”
“Yeah, okay . . . Lance, I gotta go. It’s getting hectic in here.”
I joyfully said, “Oh no problem, so what time does the shop close?”
Toni replied, “I’ll be leaving here around eight.”
“Eight o’clock is good. I’ll pick you up from the shop.”
“Lance, why don’t I just meet you in the lobby of Juniors, at let’s say . . . eight-thirty? It doesn’t make sense for me to leave my car here and then afterward have you drive me back to the shop to pick it up.”
“That’s true. Okay, so I’ll see you at eight-thirty. You know where it’s at, right?”
“Yeah, on Flatbush Avenue, downtown.”
“Okay, so I’ll see you later.”
“Okay. Bye.”
After that conversation, I had to check to see if my pants were still dry.
“I knew it,” I confirmed to myself. I knew I could bag that. I knew it. Ever since I looked into Toni’s eyes at the shop that day, I knew I had it locked. Yeah, if I was some busted nigga who had nothing going on, Toni would never have accepted my offer. But she saw the face, the Lexus, the muscles, and the baldhead, and that’s why she accepted. This date had been confirmed ever since the day I pulled her over on Pennsylvania Avenue.
I tried to calm down and concentrate on the rest of the day, but it was extremely difficult.
About fifteen minutes after having confirmed the date with Toni, I called my older sister, Tiffany, to make arrangements for her to pick up LL from the daycare center. Tiffany had no problem with doing me the favor. In fact, she often looked out and picked LL up for me when I would work overtime or something. When I was done speaking to my sister, I immediately called Nicole.
“Hi, baby.”
My wife, sounding very excited and surprised, said, “Lance! Hi, honey. What’s up? I’m glad to hear from you.”
“I just had to hear your voice, so I decided to call you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. You know how much I love you, right?” Nicole responded with a laugh, and I added, “What? You think I don’t love you or something?”
Nicole giggled then she replied, “Nah, I know you love me.”
“Okay, just making sure. I have to stay on top of those kinda things, you kna’imean?”
After telling me that I was crazy, Nicole laughed. I interrupted her by saying, “Oh yeah . . . Listen, baby, I wanted to let you know that Tiffany is gonna pick up LL, so can you pick him up from her house when you get off?”
“Why? What happened?”
“Well, my supervisor just asked me if I could work until about ten tonight.”
“Until ten? Lance, tell him you can’t do it. Did you forget about Wednesday night Bible class at the church?”
“I knew it. Man, I knew I had something to d
o. Man, I already told him I would work late. See we had this big gas main that broke, and we have to restore about eight hundred homes that have no gas.”
My wife, sounding disappointed, said, “Well, if you already told him you would, and being that it’s an emergency, I guess you have to work. So I’ll see you around eleven, right?”
“Yeah, that sounds good. Oh, Nicole, don’t worry about dinner ’cause I’ll just eat Chinese food or whateva.”
“Okay, but Lance, you know we’ve already spoken about your work hours interfering with other things. I don’t mean to be nagging you, but you can’t keep putting your job before God.”
“I know, baby, but I really can’t help it tonight, a’ight? We’ll talk about this later, okay? I love you.”
“Okay. I love you too. Bye.”
It’s not easy, but lying comes so natural to me. It’s to the point that when I lie it doesn’t even feel like I’m doing it. It’s especially hard when it comes to lying to Nicole. But like always, I just mentally block out the wrong that I do. As for missing Bible class so I can creep with another woman, I definitely felt horrible. But I block out the feelings of guilt of leading my wife to think that I’m husband of the year, when actually I’m using my skills to dis her. I mean I don’t let those feelings sit in my conscious mind, ’cause if I did, there would be no way I could carry out my devilish actions. Yet the dark side of me wants to go ahead with the evil deeds. It’s that dark side that rises out of my subconscious and plays itself out consciously. But the guilt and all that, I always quickly force it back to my subconscious so I won’t drive myself insane.
When work was over, I rushed home. I was excited like crazy. I blasted the basement stereo as I showered and changed clothes. I knew that I had to be in and out of the house quickly so that I wouldn’t get busted by my wife or anyone who might see my wife later on in the evening. Before I left the house I called the dispatching office at Con Edison and informed them that if my wife called they were to call me on my cell phone and let me know, but by no means were they to tell her that I had already left for home. In reality I knew that if Nicole needed me that she would just beep me or call me on the cell, but I still had to cover all my bases.
Before I knew it, it was a little past seven, and I was already parked and waiting near Juniors. It’s so ill, but as was the case with any given day, as I sat in the car, I found myself thinking some sick sexual thoughts. I would say that I easily think about sex, sometimes six times or more every hour of the day every day. I’ll fantasize about a woman I saw during the course of the day, a sexual encounter I had when I was seventeen, the topless dancer I saw—it didn’t matter. Sex of some sort was always on my mind.
Being that I had some time to kill, I decided to try to reach Scarlet, so I called her at her house. When she picked up, I stated, “See, I kept my promise. I told you that I was gonna call you, and I did.”
“Lance?”
“Yeah, this is Lance. Oh, you done forgot my voice that quick, or are you confusing me with some other cat?”
“No, I didn’t forget your voice. It’s just that I only paged you and called you like two days ago and now you wanna return my call?”
“Scarlet, you know that if I ever don’t return your call it’s because I’m with Nicole. You know that.”
“Oh, so you’re saying that you’ve been with Nicole for forty-eight hours straight?”
“Got damn, Scarlet. Damn. Why do you always come at me with so much drama? It’s like lately every time I speak to you or see you, you come at me with some rage and drama. And you expect me to wanna eagerly gravitate to that?”
“Lance, listen. Don’t even go there. Because it is not about me, and you know that. You are an expert at spinning the situation and making it seem like I’m always the one to blame. But how the hell do you think I’m supposed to feel? You didn’t have no problem with me going down on you the other day. Did you? Of course you didn’t. I guess that wasn’t no ‘rage and drama’ at that moment because you was getting something out of it. And then you got the nerve to not even return my calls. You tell me, how the hell am I supposed to feel? Tell me because maybe I got this whole thing twisted.”
Well, she did have a point. I mean, I guess that was foul. Considering she had serviced me quite lovely that morning, I could have at least called her during the day or even the next day so she wouldn’t feel so cheap and whorish. But at the same time Scarlet was forgetting that I had told her we had to stop seeing each other. Why couldn’t she just get that through her head? And she must have had some short-term memory loss because I had never asked her to go down on me.
In a very calming tone, I replied, “Scarlet, see you’re getting things twisted. I never asked you to go down on me. You took that upon yourself to do that, and plus—”
Scarlet immediately and rudely interrupted me. “What? Oh my God. Lance, I can’t believe you would even say something like that. You were the one who was reclined back and enjoying it. Why the hell didn’t you tell me to stop?”
“Come on, you know that no man in his right mind would tell a woman to stop in the middle of some head unless it wasn’t good.”
“Lance, you know what? That just proves that you think it’s all about you. You really are only thinking about yourself and looking out for yourself, so I guess I should just do me and not even worry about you.”
Finally, I thought. Scarlet was finally getting it.
“Scarlet, see it might come across that way, but deep down you know that it isn’t even like that.”
“Lance, I don’t know what to think, but I guess that deep down you don’t even know what you want. I know that this has nothing to do with Nicole, because Lance, I know and you know that you can’t ever be faithful to her, so why are you even fooling yourself? Lance, just admit it. This is all about you getting with somebody else. You think that I’m stupid? Yeah, when everything was new and exciting and I was the hottest stripper in New York, you had no problem being with me, right? But now that the whole fantasy is wearing off you feel like it’s time for something new, and you figure that you’ll just dump me and move on to the next best thing.”
“Scarlet, that is so far from the truth, and you know it. Because if it was about wearing you out and moving on to the next best thing then tell me how did I stick around for five years? I could have easily moved on much sooner. Why can’t you just respect my wishes and know that the best thing to do is to give me some space—permanent space—and we’ll just see how things turn out?”
“Lance, I’ve told you this time and time again, and I’ll tell you again. I’m not gonna be your third option, and I know that that’s all that this whole ‘space’ thing is about. Now I’m gonna end this conversation by telling you this: You better start spending more time with me. And be very clear on this: When I find out who this other chick is, Lance, it’s gonna be on. Let me find out. I’m telling you, Lance, you better handle your business because the moment that I suspect some sloppiness, I’m gonna be right there all up in your ass.”
And with that Scarlet hung up the phone on me.
Man, I needed that type of drama like I needed a hole in my head. I knew I couldn’t be sloppy. There was no room for even one false move. I knew that for my sake, and for Nicole’s, and especially for Toni’s sake, because up until now Toni was mad innocent and totally oblivious to all of my ways, and the last thing I needed was for Scarlet to find out about Toni and roll up on her or something. And believe me, Scarlet would have no problem rolling on Toni.
Although I had to keep Scarlet in cut-off status, I knew that I had to use the only weapon against her that I had. And that weapon was between my legs. Yeah, in my mind, Scarlet was history, and she would remain history. But so she wouldn’t cause World War III, I knew I would have to keep Scarlet satisfied with some good sex. Spending quality time with her was really not an option, because after all, there are only twenty-four hours in a day, and I was determined to get things jumped off with Toni
, which was sure to occupy a lot of my time. But for the sake of peace, I would have to make time to break Scarlet off some pipe here and there.
When eight o’clock came, I decided to make my way inside Juniors. I went to the bar and ordered a rum and Coke. The drink helped me relax. While I sipped on it, I contemplated taking off my wedding band, but I knew that Toni already knew what time it was. Besides, I ain’t even trying to play no “I’m single and available” crap because that requires too much work. I’ma keep the marriage thing real with her.
Being that it was a Wednesday night, the restaurant wasn’t that busy. The waitresses weren’t all that either, but that didn’t matter, ’cause I knew my girl would have it going on. I must admit that for a moment I started to get paranoid. I was thinking, What if Toni stands me up? She didn’t seem like a no-class lady, but on a first date I knew to expect anything. Deep down, I doubted that she would stand me up. Besides, if she was gonna do that, I knew she would have had the decency to call me on the cellular. Again feeling paranoid, I thought, What if she’s erased my number from her pager and has no way of reaching me? I looked at my watch and noticed that it was seventeen past eight. My phone hadn’t rang, so I thought it was safe to assume that Toni was on her way.
I finished my drink, and I just parlayed. I had on a pair of black jeans with a beige, short-sleeve, tight-fitted shirt, and some casual shoes that looked like ankle boots. I didn’t want to be too dressy being that Toni was gonna be coming with her work gear on.
Well at least work gear was what I thought Toni would be wearing. As I made my way from the bar to the restaurant’s lobby, I saw Toni looking as good as ever. She had on black high heels with stockings, and she had on the bomb dress. It was some kind of slinky material that clung close to her body. Her outfit almost caused my mouth to have to be scraped from the floor. After having picked up my fallen jaw, I walked over to Toni and hugged her.