by Cydney Rax
Despite myself, I’m starting to have doubts. There have been enough little things that have bothered me…as much as I want to trust Seaphes, what Ursula is saying is starting to nag at me. She sees this and continues. “As a matter of fact, when we get back to work I want you to go in on something with me. It’ll be harmless fun.”
Ursula leans in further and describes what she thinks I should do.
When we get back to work I am prepared to conduct a test. Although I have to admit I have been silently stewing at Demetria ever since she dominated Seaphes’s time for the Walk America event, I know I have to give in and act like we’re on good terms. So I roll by her office still holding my purse and wearing the biggest smile I can muster up.
She is sitting at her desk scrutinizing some documents.
“Hey, Demetria, how was lunch?”
“Oh,” she says, looking surprised. “I thought you were pissed at me.”
“Why would I be pissed at you? May I sit down?”
“Sure, knock yourself out.” She continues concentrating on her work and talks to me without looking at me. “I dunno why. But I passed by your office and said good morning, and you turned your head away.”
“Oh, it wasn’t on purpose. I was busy.”
“You weren’t on the phone. No one else was in your office. You looked dead in my face and ignored me. Is it because of Seaphes?”
“Girl, you gotta be kidding me,” I tell her with wide eyes. “What does he have to do with anything?”
“Nothing, actually, and it’s about time you realized that. I don’t mean to sound insulting, but you gotta be more secure.”
“Oh, like how secure you are with Thaddeus?”
“What did you say? That’s an altogether different thing. Thaddeus is intentionally acting foul—he won’t talk to me, and keeps sending me these stupid text messages…”
“Oh, yeah, what have the messages been saying?”
Demetria grabs her BlackBerry and scrolls through the messages.
“Look at this. I tried to get him to go talk with me, and this is what he writes. ‘I am trying to decide if having a one-on-one will be worth it.’ It sounds so cold, like he never knew me, Vee.” She puts the phone down between us on her desk. “I am this close to cursing his ass out, but I’ve been chilling. And that’s because of your man, okay? He’s been keeping me sane. Talking me out of doing things I might regret. He gives me good advice and I need that, you know that, right?”
“Right,” I say slowly. “Of course.”
Her office phone rings and she picks up and listens for several seconds.
“What?” she says, looking confused. “What the hell are you calling me about that for?” She listens for another few seconds, then turns around a little to yell into the phone. “Damn, I don’t care!” she says. Meanwhile, I reach over and grab her cell phone and drop it into my bag. Easy.
She’s still yelling. “Call somebody who gives a damn!” She hangs up finally and turns to me. “I can’t believe it,” she says.
“What happened?”
“Percy Jones had the nerve to call me just to ask if I looked at TV last night, that I Love New York crap with her transvestite-looking ass. He wanted to know who I thought would win. What the hell do I care who she ends up sleeping with? See, Percy and I are hardly on the same level; he can barely hold a conversation with me. That’s why he’s messing around with Ursula.”
“Yeah, they both deserve each other.”
“Wait a second, weren’t you two acting buddy buddy yesterday at Walk America?”
“Girl, I was just being nice. She was gossiping, wouldn’t shut up.”
“Well, at least you know how to pick your friends. I don’t know what any man would see in a woman like her.”
I stand up and excuse myself, grateful that she is so busy running off at the mouth that she doesn’t notice I slipped her phone inside my purse.
As planned, Ursula and I meet up on the third floor in the ladies’ room.
“You get it?” I ask.
“No, actually. I was in there for a while, but he wasn’t about to leave while I was there. Excuse me for saying so, but your boy was acting like a real prick. It seems like every time he sees me he gets on the immediate defensive. I guess I’ve screwed up royally with him.”
“Whatever happened between you two?”
“We were lovers,” she says point-blank, and looks like she’s going to keep talking.
“Okay, I don’t want to hear any more. But…you two are through, right?”
“Huh?” she asks distractedly. “Oh, yeah, you don’t have to worry about him ever wanting to hook up with me again.”
“But you still want to hook up with him?”
She just stares at me with emotionless eyes.
I hand Ursula Demetria’s phone, tell her that I’ll see her later, and prepare myself to do one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. It feels weird to say you care about someone but you still don’t know if you should trust him. I guess it’s the way Hillary Clinton feels about Bill. She totally stood by her man when he publicly humiliated her with his philandering. You have to wonder if, behind closed doors, she pulled off her earrings and pumps and socked him in the eye on a few occasions.
I head up toward his office, and as soon as I lay eyes on Seaphes I can’t help but break out into a genuine smile. I can’t believe I’m playing games with him. He looks especially fine today, in his three-piece Armani, shoes shined to perfection, hair freshly cut. And he smells so good that at first I don’t say anything, just stand there inhaling him for a minute. Why can’t I just trust him? But I can’t stop thinking about what Ursula said. She sounded so sure. And I don’t want to be the last one to know if anything is going down between him and my friend.
“You going somewhere?” I ask, nodding at his fancy clothing.
“Yep, got an important meeting. And now my freaking printer is acting up. I need to print ten copies of a proposal. Can you help me, please?”
Blushing with the foolishness of what I’m about to do, I ask, “You want me to sit here and try to get the copies to print?”
“Yes, thank you so much! That way I can run downstairs for a few minutes and see if the project manager has the drawings I requested.”
And just like a man, Seaphes rushes from his office but leaves his keys and his cell phone prominently spread out on his desk. He makes things so easy, I think, and I grab his phone, rotating the track wheel and clicking it until it displays the call log. It shows me every number that has been dialed and received for the past ten days: Greta, Veron, Timothy, Aunt Crystal, Marimon (his boss), Sparkle, Floyd, Bank, Gerald, and quite a few other names. No Demetria.
When he comes back in, I hand him the documents that I got to print out while he was gone. “Here you go, baby. You get to your meeting. Good luck.”
“Thanks, Veron,” he says, looking me in the eyes and smiling. “You’re the best woman I know.” He gives me a quick kiss and leaves.
Feeling lower than the bottom of a coal mine, I sit at his desk and pull out drawers. Supplies, books, stationery. Finally I come across a file labeled PERSONAL as Seaphes’s office phone rings.
The caller ID says Demetria.
I pull out Seaphes’s personal file and tuck it under my arm, walk out of the office, and go to meet Ursula.
“You get his phone?” she asks.
“Girl, I looked at it, but I’m not going to steal the man’s phone.”
“Are you kidding?” she snaps. “We can copy and paste his address book and print out the info.”
“I don’t think it’s necessary to do all that.”
“Yes, it is! ’Cause with a man like Seaphes, it’s not just Demetria that you have to worry about. It’s the other freaks that he hides in the closet.”
“Ursula, you’re scaring me.”
“I’m not the one you should be scared of,” she insists. “It’s those other two conniving people that you gotta watch.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t see any calls to Demetria, so maybe he’s not as into her as you think.”
“Homeboy may have erased her incoming calls and texts. I know she texts him.”
“I’m sorry; how would you know all that?”
“Because people are stupid enough to say things to people, and those people come back and tell me. And I don’t forget certain information. You never know when you’ll need to use it.”
“Well, I’m just going to leave it. I looked through the phone.” I pause. “What about Demetria’s?”
Ursula waves it at me. “This tramp got so many men’s phone numbers in her address book that my hands are getting tired from flipping through this info. Shoot, is there anybody in Houston she hasn’t screwed?”
“Well, I got his personal file and I want to look through it, but I refuse to do it here. Let’s go sit in my car.”
“Great idea,” she says.
We head down and settle in my car. Ursula makes all kinds of disapproving sounds as she looks through Demetria’s phone. “Yep, she texts your boy a lot.”
“Let me see,” I say, feeling a little scared.
“See this name Sparkle? It’s attached to her cell number.”
“Hmm, sneaky,” I say and read the texts.
CALL ME.
LUNCH 2DAY?
DID U ENJOY UR SELF LAST NITE?
“Wait, what does she mean by that?” I say. I show the message to Ursula.
“Uh-huh. See? I bet they hooked up for a nice little fuck session. Bitches are so stupid. One thing you never do, if you’re a smart ho, is leave a paper trail. No text messages, e-mails, nothing that mentions the hookup. Nothing is private anymore, it’s a damn shame,” she says, energetically looking through Demetria’s phone.
I give her a funny look and start flipping through Seaphes’s personal papers. His time sheet notes that he’s been out several times in the last few years for funerals, which is sad. I dig through a lot of papers with his insurance information, that kind of thing. Suddenly, my eyes enlarge when I notice a silver-framed photograph showing Seaphes grinning as he poses cheek to cheek with a woman sitting on his lap. She’s smiling too, holding up her hand and flashing a gorgeous ring on her wedding finger. And she’s wearing a sterling silver heart-shaped pendant that bears an inscription: SEAPHES LOVES SAPPHIRE.
“Who the heck is she? I never knew he was engaged….” I stop talking, too angry to realize he had more than one fiancée.
“He’s a sneaky bastard,” she says, awed.
“You know, I can’t do this anymore. My head is starting to hurt,” I say, feeling the painful lump in my throat. “Maybe this is why they say be careful what you looking for. That’s why I’ve never done a criminal history background on a man or gotten on that site DontDateHimGirl.com. Some things I just don’t want to know.”
“Veron, when it comes to your man you have to know certain things, even if it hurts,” Ursula says. “Shoot, you think I enjoyed waffling through my husband’s shirts and pants pockets after he’d been gone all night? You know how it felt when I went through his briefcase and found hundreds of Polaroids of strange, fat white women in various provocative poses?”
“Ursula, why are you still with him?”
“I don’t have anybody else. And having somebody is better than having nobody.”
“No, no,” I say, reaching out to touch her hand. “Ursula, it shouldn’t be that way. You deserve better than that, and so do I.”
“Well, all that sounds good, but for the life of me I feel stuck like Chuck right now. My man has physically threatened me, can you believe it? I don’t listen to him half the time, but other times I wonder if he’s serious or if it’s just the Courvoisier talking. Most of the time it’s the booze. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
“Me, either,” I say, trying to fight off the guilt that’s plaguing my heart. If Seaphes isn’t worthy then let him be unworthy. I don’t feel right going through his phone, his personal file. I shut the folder and decide to just take it right back inside and put it back in his office while he’s at his meeting. And I’m never going to check his phone again.
I need to figure out for myself what I want to do about Seaphes.
—39—
DEMETRIA
I am driving like a wild woman down I-45 south, returning to the scene of the crime. Bennigan’s. The spot where I met a man for lunch today. The food was good, the conversation was better, and the sex was off the chain.
Mario Rodriguez is my Hispanic hottie. With his buff body, beautiful dark brown eyes, and thick eyebrows, he makes me feel woozy whenever he stares into my eyes, even though he’s kind of a slacker who drives an old beat-up van with tinted windows. I haven’t kicked it with Mario in months, but it was time for a recharge.
I spent fifteen minutes eating in the restaurant with him, and then another twenty minutes on his lap, in the back of his van, with my dress bunched up around my waist, my panties pulled to the side, and his dick stuffed inside of me, casually making love and continuing the conversation that we started while eating. I loved rocking back and forth on his lap, his arms wrapped around my waist, him speaking Spanish with his thin lips and thick mustache pressed against my neck.
“Amo su cuerpa,” he says, squeezing his fingernails into my arms.
“What does that mean?”
“I love your body.”
“Mmmm,” I moan. I furiously hop up and down on him some more until we both get released and relaxed and are ready to return to work.
And now I am parking crooked in Bennigan’s parking lot so I can run inside. I realize when I get in that I took off my shoes in the car and left them there.
“I’m sorry I’m barefoot, but I lost something,” I explain to the hostess, who’s staring at my feet. Yeah, I’m barefoot, but at least my feet don’t stink and I just got a nice pedicure. “Anybody turn in a phone?” I ask.
“No, ma’am. But we have tons of umbrellas and sunglasses.”
“Thanks for nothing.” I leave the restaurant cursing up a storm. I need to get a grip. It’s not the first time I’ve forgotten where I’ve left my phone. Sometimes I find it under my bed, inside the linen closet, or beneath the couch cushion in my living room.
Later, I’m minutes away from calling Verizon and reporting a lost phone when Veron walks in holding my phone in her hand.
“Phew! Thank you, babe. Where was it?”
“Ladies’ room.”
“Oh,” I say, puzzled. “I don’t even remember going there. Oh well—I’m glad I got it back. You’re the best, Vee.”
“Thanks,” she says, her eyes gleaming. “Glad I could help.”
“I’m totally losing it, though. I swear, I don’t remember visiting the restroom at all today.”
“Demetria, I have never seen you so stressed out. You must still be pining over Thaddeus.”
“I guess that’s it. He has no idea how much he’s hurting me. I can’t even think straight half the time.”
“You need to do something different,” Veron says. “Take your mind off him.”
“But I can’t. I have to see him, give it one last shot. If I can remind him of all the fun we’ve had and how much he means to me, I know I can get him back.”
Veron sits down and gives me a sympathetic look. “Well, let me know if I can do anything to help. I want to see you happy again. You’re not yourself.”
“Well, in some ways I still am,” I say and laugh. “I got me some on the side during lunch,” I whisper.
Instead of giggling with me, her face falls. “With who?”
“Shhh, lower your voice. No one you know.”
“You sure about that?”
“What, you know everyone I do? Anyway, his name is Mario.”
“Mario what?”
“Rodriguez.”
“That his real name or…”
“Yeah, girl! What the hell? Stop tripping.”
She just loo
ks skeptically at me.
“What? You think I’m lying? He drives a white van and works for Home Depot.”
She shakes her head, still looking doubtful. “Describe his penis.”
“It’s pretty big, beautiful brown, smooth, chunky. But unfortunately it tasted like chlorine. He likes to swim every morning before work, but it was still good.”
“Okay, fine.”
“That mean you believe me? What’s gotten into you, Vee, questioning me?”
“I don’t know,” she murmurs. “I’m sorry.”
“Apology accepted. Hey, I didn’t tell you that Thad and I are meeting up tonight. He wants to explain his side of the story, and if I have my way I’m going to spend the night with him…and every other night from here on out. I’m just ready to settle down, you know what I’m saying? I’m finally ready. Because I’ve come so close to losing someone that means a lot to me, well, it makes me want to change. And Thad’s the right man, the one who can support me.”
“Don’t get mad at me for asking this, but Demetria, if you really want to be with Thad as much as you say you do, why do you sleep around with other guys?”
I stare down at my hands and search for words that could make her understand. After several moments pass, she just shakes her head at me and walks out of my office.
She doesn’t get it; I know…it’s something I struggle with. I sniff and dab at my eyes with some tissue. And I spend the rest of the day trying to concentrate on work, but preoccupied with beating myself up. I have to change, be better, be right.
Because tonight is so important, I go through a ritual that I’ve created for whenever I need to have a clear mind. So I get off work an hour early. When I get home I light seven candles throughout my house. I draw the soapiest and hottest bubble bath I possibly can. When I slide into the water I wince; the heat is so high that I start sweating instantly, but I need the water to be hot, so it can cleanse me of my sins. After drying off, I give myself a facial, exfoliating and moisturizing with a cleanser that is supposed to give my skin energy and make it glow. And I wear the multicolored brocade dress that Thad got me in India. I want to look more beautiful than I’ve ever looked in my life, and by the time I blow out the candles and step out the door, I feel like my mission has been accomplished.