A Rich Man's Baby

by Daaimah S. Poole

  “No, I’ll call you when we finish up, or I’ll just come to your room,” he said as he shut the cab door. I said okay. The taxicab driver was getting impatient, and I knew it was four in the morning and he wasn’t going to call me. What was the likelihood of that happening? Then I asked him for some money; he said he had to go to the bank in the morning. All he had on him were credit cards, but he gave me one orange and a few purple and black chips.

  “What am I supposed to do with this?”

  “Cash it in. If you don’t want it, give it back. I’ve been gambling. I’m tapped out.”

  I wanted him to get out of my face. I didn’t know why, but right then and there I knew it was over. Something just told me.

  I wasn’t chasing Mark’s ass no more. I came all the way out here and he was still frontin’. I didn’t have time for him sending mixed signals anymore. Tanisha wasn’t saying anything to me. She could tell I was upset. I spent all this money and he was gonna say, “I’ma call you.” He would probably have laughed if he knew everything I went through just to come out there just for the chance to meet up with him. I fell back on the bed. My head was a little dizzy from all the champagne.

  That’s it. I’m through if he doesn’t call me by six. He has until six in the morning; then I’m over him.

  When I finally was awakened by Tanisha pulling the drapes apart and letting the sun in, I turned to the alarm clock and it read eleven o’clock. I looked down at my phone and saw I didn’t have any missed calls. I let out a little frustrated scream.

  “What’s wrong with you, Adrienne?”

  She was still talking on her cell phone. Her fucking ear was going to burn off.

  “Nothing is wrong with me. You are going to get brain cancer and your cell phone bill is going to be seven hundred dollars again.”

  She shushed me, then told Kevin she had to call him back.

  “Kevin just paid my cell phone bill this month, thank you very much, and he is sending me a tri-band phone. I’m about to be global. What’s really wrong? I’m not paying you enough attention, Adrienne? I thought I left my children home,” she joked.

  I threw my pillow at her. I wasn’t laughing anymore; I was on the verge of crying. “I’ve been trying to crack him, and I just can’t. It is like he is brick hard. I’m ready to just give up.”

  “I think you should just…”

  “Go ’head and say it. Leave him alone, I know, but why do he give me money and take me out, then nothing?”

  “His money don’t really mean anything to him,” Tanisha said.

  “I’ve been taking my time with him and everything. I’ve been trying to do everything in my power to hold on and stay around, so when I do get pregnant it wouldn’t be suspicious, but I just can’t take any more. I really can’t.”

  “Take a shower and let’s go get breakfast,” Tanisha said.

  “I might as well. I’m not going to be with who I want to be with. So I might as well eat my troubles away.” She laughed but I was serious.

  I wasn’t trying to be cute for anyone. I checked to see what time our flight was leaving. It was leaving at seven at night. That gave me enough time to gamble a little, then take a nap and pack.

  We went downstairs to the restaurant and were seated. Every other table was coupled up from the night before. Our waiter came over and poured water into our glasses and asked us what we were having. I was hungry from all that drinking. I was going to order everything. Who cares? I thought.

  “We’re ready to order,” Tanisha said.

  “Yeah, I’ll take a short stack of pancakes, a western omelet, and bacon,” I said as I eyed the menu to see if there was anything else my stomach longed for.

  “You got an admirer over there,” Tanisha joked after the waiter brought out our food. I turned around to see a real husky, big-baby kind of guy smiling at me.

  “I see him. I’m not in the mood,” I said, cutting my eye at the guy.

  The young guy kept staring at me. When my food came I made sure I picked up the entire pancake and put in my mouth after I saturated it with syrup. And I let the syrup drip down on my chin like “yum-yum.” You would think that would have turned him off, but it didn’t. He had the audacity to come over to our table and pull up a seat.

  “How are you just going to invite yourself to our table?” Tanisha asked as the husky young guy pulled his chair in closer.

  “I don’t know; y’all look lonely,” he said as he scratched his dark, curly, coal-black hair that shone.

  “We look lonely? No, we are fine. What can we do for you?” I asked with a mouthful of food.

  “I was just saying hello.”

  “How old are you, little boy?” I questioned him as I chewed my food with my mouth wide open. I was not in the mood to play with his young ass. He wasn’t a bad-looking guy. His face just had marks where pimples used to reside, and he looked like he was lost in the wrong hotel.

  “Twenty-two,” he said proudly.

  Tanisha and I looked at each other and laughed.

  “Well, I’m twenty-five and she is thirty-three.” Tanisha kicked me for saying her real age.

  “Okay, age ain’t nothing but a number. How long y’all going to be here? I want to take you out. When you leaving?” he said in a country drawl.

  “Tonight. Where you want to take me to, huh? Listen, thank you, but no, thank you.”

  “I’ll take you wherever you want to go,” he said confidently.

  He didn’t get it; he was out of his league. I wiped my mouth and looked him dead in his eyes. “What’s your name?”

  “DeCarious Simmons.”

  “DeCarious, I want to go shopping and my girlfriend wants to go shopping too! There is a mall right down the street. You want to deal with me, I’m a bill.”

  “Yeah, I got lots of bills. I can handle another one.”

  I was getting a kick out of talking dirty to him and being disrespectful. I was acting like I was joking, but I was saying things that I knew I meant.

  “Okay, eat your breakfast. I’ll come back and take you shopping,” he said.

  “Why were you so mean to him?” Tanisha asked as he walked away.

  “Because I’m tired of being nice. What do you get when you are nice? Nothing. He is not coming the fuck back, fuck him.”

  I finished eating my food, and to my surprise, he came back and he had these other two guys with him and asked, “You ready?” When we got to the mall, he told us to get what we wanted.

  He walked out of the store to take a call and I thought: how convenient. I looked at Tanisha like I know he’s trying to play games, but I went along with it anyway. We went into Neiman Marcus, and I bought three pairs of shoes and two pairs of jeans. Tanisha bought two dresses. She said she wasn’t trying to take advantage. But I was. He went to the register and pulled out his credit card. Then I thought it probably was stolen and he was into scams until it went through. He handed me our bags and then took us back to our hotel. He asked me what time my flight left and then asked for my phone number.

  I’m not changing my position. So what, you spent some money? I thought.

  “No,” I said, smiling. I didn’t want him to think I was impressed, because I was. If his goal was to blow my mind, he did. I gave him my number after he asked for it for like the fifth time. And then he asked us if we had a car to the airport.

  “We were going to catch a cab,” I said.

  “I’ll call car service for you.”

  By the time the Lincoln Town Car took us to the airport, I was hoping he was going to call me.

  At the airport, I pulled out my phone and did a Google search on my iPhone. DeCarious Simmons, first-round draft pick out of the University of Florida. He was a defensive tackle, signing bonus: two million dollars. Signed with the Seattle Seahawks. I fell back in my seat.

  “What?” Tanisha asked.

  “Look at this shit,” I said as I covered my wide-open mouth with my hand.

  “Damn.”

&
nbsp; “I treated him real bad. Was I nasty? Was I being rude?”

  “Were you nasty? Yes, you were so rude. I never seen you treat somebody so mean. You took all your anger from Mark out on him.”

  “Damn, I don’t know how I’m going to redeem myself. Shit, you think he is going to call me?”

  “He might if he likes to be punished.”

  When we landed, I had three messages and two text messages. My luck had just changed. Mark was on my phone saying, “I came to your hotel and they said you checked out, call me.”

  I wasn’t calling him. I was there for three days. He had his chance. It was now time to see what was up with Mr. DeCarious Simmons. It was amazing how shopping and a signing bonus could make you forget about the love of your life.

  Chapter 40

  Adrienne

  DeCarious played in Seattle but was from Atlanta, Georgia. He didn’t waste any time inviting me to come see him. His season was over and he had a few things to wrap up before he went home. I thought I was going to have to apologize for acting like a bitch in Vegas, but he never mentioned it, so neither did I. He was a little younger than I wanted, but other than that he had everything I wanted in a man. He had a four-million-dollar-per-year contract, but he had crazy bonuses. He did okay.

  Seattle was cold and rainy, like forty degrees outside, but the rain made it seem much colder. Young Jeezy was playing throughout the house loudly. The smell of weed was covered with Febreeze. I guess he didn’t want me to know he smoked. He had a blue and green Seahawk banner in his living room above his sixty-five-inch LCD television hanging on the wall. His apartment didn’t reflect how much money he made. DeCarious had a thin mustache and a gold tee with a landing strip of hair under his bottom lip. For some reason he looked better this time. I don’t know what it was. I could see he had taken a trip to the jewelry store, since the last time I had seen him. He had two medium-size square diamond earrings in his ear.

  “You got to excuse the place. I haven’t really been here.”

  “It’s okay,” I said as I moved a sweatshirt he had sitting on the sofa. He pulled out some pictures and talked a lot about his family for the first two hours I was there. His parents were still together and he was the youngest of four boys. He told me how his parents were always in his ear about remaining humble and not spending all his money crazy. His cousin Rock was his best friend and worked with him as his personal assistant. I got comfortable and he kept taking calls.

  “What’s up, man? Yeah, I might have to do that. Let me see if I can get a ticket…. No, I didn’t win, but I came up on in Vegas. Yeah, I’m going to bring her out there so you can meet her.” He said all this when he looked over at me. He hung up the phone and said, “What’s up, beautiful? You want to go home with me? My cousin just called me and said they having a party at home.”

  “Right now?’

  “Yeah, when you got to get back home?”

  “I didn’t bring that many clothes; you going to have to take me to the mall if I come.”

  “Okay, let me get my stuff together.”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to meet his family, but I did want to see his house and go shopping. We hadn’t even fucked yet, and he was wide open on me just because he thought I was real pretty.

  His cousin met us at the airport. He pulled up in an apple-green old-school Impala with gold shiny spoke rims. It was very flashy. He looked me up and down and said, “’Bout time you got a pretty girlfriend, DeCarious.”

  “DeCarious told him to shut up and introduced us. His name was Rock. He was DeCarious’s personal assistant, aka weed go-getter, aka flunky. He was cool, though, and did whatever DeCarious asked. Rock revealed some pertinent information that I needed to know. He told me how DeCarious never had a bunch of girlfriends because his parents made him concentrate on school and told him to leave the groupie girls alone, and always was in his ear about being humble.

  We drove up to this gigantic house in Alpharetta, right outside of Atlanta. The next house was down the road, and there were nothing but tall trees all around the property. I’d seen nice houses before, but this was a mansion. There were eight bedrooms. It was a newly built house that sat in the middle of a long cobblestone driveway. It looked like it could be made into three little houses. It had four baths, cathedral ceilings, marble floors, an exercise room, a recreation room, and a free-form pool. Rock lit up some weed and smiled at me; he had droopy red eyes. First, he asked me if I had any friends; then he asked if I was staying. I didn’t say anything to him. As he smoked, he tried to pass me weed. DeCarious slapped it out of his hand and said, “She don’t smoke. She not no hood rat. She is a lady; leave her alone.” Rock apologized and then said he was about to go to the store and asked if we needed anything.

  Later that night, we went to the Magic City; it was a strip club downtown. We were ten cars deep. All DeCarious’s friends and people he went to school with came out to party with him and Rock. We had bottles of Hennessy and vodka on the table. Rock was all excited looking at the women. He was tossing ones on the stage telling the stripper to work for her money. She was humping the stage and clapping her ass cheeks together. I hadn’t ever been to a strip club, but it was normal for women to be in the club down here. There were a bunch of naked women swinging upside down from poles and giving out lap dances. DeCarious’s friends were constantly coming past our booth, giving him pounds and asking to take pictures like he was the mayor.

  We came back from the strip club drunk and full of erotic energy. DeCarious made love to me like a real man. His young ass didn’t have the biggest package, but he made up for that with his stroke; he positioned my body all over his body the entire evening. And as he did it he said he just wanted to take care of me. “I promise you I won’t cheat on you. I’m going to be real good to you.” He stared into my eyes. I turned away. I was fearful of believing what he was saying was true. Even through the liquor he seemed sincere.

  The next day, a knock on the door awakened us and a southern-sweet voice was saying, “DeCarious, good morning, baby.” I was naked at the opposite end of the bed and trying to find something to cover my body with.

  “One minute, Mama, I be down,” DeCarious said, rubbing his eyes.

  “Who is that?” I asked.

  “My mother. We have to go down and eat breakfast.”

  I slipped on some jeans and a T-shirt, and followed DeCarious downstairs. I didn’t want to meet his mother, but I didn’t have a choice. We came downstairs and she had everything stretched out on the table like a buffet. There was bacon, pancakes, home fries, scrambled eggs, and toast. Who eats all this food? I thought. She made DeCarious a gigantic plate filled with everything.

  “Ma, this is my friend Adrienne from Philly.”

  She was dressed in a white suit and wearing opaque stockings and white nurse-looking shoes. I said hello and she told me to help myself to the food. I grabbed a piece of toast and a few pieces of bacon. She looked at my plate and politely told me to put more food on my plate. She then began wiping down the counter and did the dishes and put her coat on to leave.

  “Where you going, Ma?” DeCarious asked, taking a break from his plate.

  “To church, where you should go sometime. I’ll be by later on with your dad and bring dinner.” She smiled at me and said that it was nice to meet me and left.

  Chapter 41

  Tanisha

  Kevin told me he was thinking about coming back to the States on one of his breaks. And I didn’t even think he was serious. I was at work when I saw his number come on my phone.

  “Tanisha, I’m in Richmond, Virginia.” I almost jumped out of my seat. I walked out of the office to the corridor so I could hear him talking.

  “I’ll be in your city like six. Can you come and meet me? My friend Rick is going to bring me out there.”

  “Where are you going to stay?” I asked.

  “With you. I’ll call you when I leave here.”

  “Okay.” I wanted to see him so bad, b
ut he couldn’t stay with me. I didn’t want him to see my house. It just wasn’t what he was used to, and he didn’t know about the children. I couldn’t even pick him up in my piece of a car. I called Adrienne to ask what I should do.

  “Rent a car; tell him your car’s in the shop.”

  “I can’t bring him home either.”

  “Just take him to a hotel. Tell him you don’t bring guys home to your house. Tell him you just didn’t think it was appropriate yet.” Adrienne had all the answers. She told me to come and get her so she could drive me there when I left work. I called Budget rental car and reserved a sedan. I made a reservation at the Loews. She told me to rent a Ford Explorer instead of the sedan, but it was like fifty dollars more a day. I reserved the room. I called my manager, Patrick, and left him a message saying I had to pick up Kierra early from school; she was sick and I had to leave early.

  I pulled up to the train station; it was six and he wasn’t there. I walked around and called him. But his voice mail kept coming on saying that I couldn’t leave a message because it was full.

  I built myself up for a whole day and I wanted to see him so bad. By ten, I thought he had stood me up. So I went home, but just in case he called, I slept with the phone next to me hoping that the ringing phone would wake me up and I would hear his voice at the other end. I wanted to cry I was so disappointed. All I wanted him to do is call, that’s all. I mean if he called right now this moment this second, it would make up for waiting for all these hours. I just started staring at the phone, hoping that would make it ring. Ring, phone, please ring, I thought. I wanted so bad to see Kevin. I missed him; I needed to see him. Maybe he was tied up. I know my heart was. Damn it, I should have known better. But why would he call me and then stand me up? It didn’t make sense.

  At eleven-fifteen, the phone rang and Kevin was on the line apologizing for being late. His friend had something to do and they got caught up running around. His phone battery had died and he needed to charge it. I told him it wasn’t too late, and I stood up and brushed the wrinkles out of my clothes. He told me to meet him at the train station; he would be arriving in the next half hour. I walked into the bathroom and splashed water on my face.