Craig thought about Patricia Harmon’s boobs for a moment and then laughed. “You are absolutely right on that one, Lamont. Patty Harmon’s boobs never move. They look just like coconuts, and, like they’d hurt your hand if you tried to squeeze one of them.”
“Does your wife know that you’ve given this much thought to Patty Harmon’s coconuts?”
“No. Besides, there isn’t anything a hard-edged and greedy woman like Patty can do for me but go somewhere and sit down.”
“I hear you,” Lamont said. “On that and on the other valuable advice you gave me. You know, there are black churches planning to work with their members on problems with closing costs and creditworthiness.”
“Well, that’s where you’ll need to concentrate your efforts, at least as a start.”
“I’m already on it,” Lamont assured him.
“Good. And thanks, Lamont. You’ve taught me a good lesson today about the importance of a past that I didn’t understand. We don’t always consider the value of what we are losing when we try to map out the future. If you can make the finances work, I’ll have your back.”
“Naw, man. I’m the one who should be thanking you,” Lamont told him.
They headed toward Craig’s silver Range Rover and then clasped hands before Craig climbed into his car. As he drove off, Lamont spun around for another look at the Cashmere thinking about how much more he could have told Craig.
The Cashmere bred so many colorful characters—many with clever scams that managed to keep them one carefully placed footstep on the right side of the law. Parvell Sykes’s uncle, Big Gold, was one of them, with his liquor houses, and most inventive of all, his “Telephone Friendship and Comfort Service.” As much as Lamont hated to admit it, Big Gold was way ahead of his time—imagine finding eight women who were willing to install a second telephone line in their homes so that they could provide “friendship and comforting coversation” to men for a monthly fee.
But even though Big Gold was a petty felon himself, he deeply resented the new criminal element—ill-mannered, nondressing, noncommerce-minded, “treasonistic”-acting, “New Jack City” Negroes that practically chased him out of the Cashmere.
And, of course, Mr. Lacy was on his mind when he told Craig about the “blind man with a gun.” Mr. Lacy had had tears in his eyes on the day that Lamont and James helped him move out.
“Son, I tried to hold on but I have to go,” he told them. “Couldn’t even entertain my lady friends with all of those trifling-tail Negroes hanging around outside every night. And that isn’t good. You know a playa need his ‘entertainment’ or he’ll get mean and ornery. Liked to make me shoot out the window on a Wednesday night, it was so bad.”
“Why,” Lamont mumbled, as he made his way to his car, “would Durham, for all of its talk of needing decent and affordable housing, let a vibrant community like the Cashmere crumble away into this mess?”
He sighed heavily, shaking his head in disgust, as he got in the car and drove off. He didn’t know how he was going to do it, but he had to win that contract. No other developer, no matter how much money and clout he had, could bring the same understanding, sense of history, and love to rebuilding the Cashmere. Green Pastures was the only firm that could do it right.
Chapter Seven
THERESA TUGGED AT HER SKIRT. EVERY TIME SHE moved, it rose up to the middle of her thigh, making her feel like one of those middle-aged hoochie-mamas who believed they could beat down old age with something as inept as a short, tight Ultrasuede skirt. She thought about changing for the second time this morning, but dismissed that notion as soon as her eyes landed on an e-mail from “silkygatorfeet.”
“’Bout time,” Theresa mumbled, as she tugged at her skirt for the third time, before opening Parvell’s e-mail. She hoped that he had taken the time to check his schedule and shed some light on his plans for the Christmas holidays. She had three party invites lying on her desk and the RSVP dates were closing in.
Until this morning, she had not even heard from Parvell. And to make matters worse, they had not gone out together since that ill-fated dinner at the Washington Duke Inn, phone tag between them was no longer the exception but the definitive rule, and about the only contact she’d had with the man was when he shook her hand while he was standing next to Rev. Quincey in the receiving line at church.
And to add insult to injury, Parvell did not even take a moment to chat with her that Sunday. He just gave her one of those blasé handshakes preachers gave to bothersome folk who hopped in the line simply to irk, dress down, or hit on a minister. She had noticed, though, that he took a whole minute to talk to Charmayne Robinson, apparently impervious to the audible sighs and coughs of the folks standing behind her. In fact, he never released Charmayne’s one hand from the two of his, while she deliberately held up the line just to agitate any woman in church with her sights set on Rev. Sykes before sashaying out of the sanctuary.
Watching the two of them carry on like that made Theresa so mad she decided to hop back in that line, push that old high yellow Charmayne out of the way, and give Parvell a good piece of her mind. But just as she spun back around, Bug pulled her aside and tried to direct her attention to Parvell’s stark white clerical robe with the fancy white brocade stole with “Communion Sunday” embroidered all over it in iridescent bugle beads. Theresa studied the robe a moment and then stared back at her little brother as if to say, “And?”
Bug put the bulletin in her hand and pointed to the date.
“SO?”
Theresa’s brother closed his eyes and shook his head.
“What Sunday is it?” he asked her.
“Fourth, why?” Theresa answered with just a taste of exasperation. Here she was trying to get Parvell straight, and Bug was worrying the daylights out of her over the man’s robe. ROBE—Parvell’s robe. She read the date on the bulletin again. It was the fourth Sunday, and that fool was all dressed in white like it was the first Sunday—Communion Sunday.
When Parvell released Charmayne’s hand, he glanced at Rev. Quincey’s unpretentious, but finely tailored, black silk robe, smirked, and proceeded to caress the bugle-beaded words on the stole with his fingertips.
At that point Rev. Quincey stole a look at that first Sunday Communion stole and proceeded to do what he did best to a wolf whose sheep’s covering was slipping off his shoulders—engage the fellow in a friendly round of what his wife, Lena, called “Negro Checkmate.”
“Man, you must have paid a fortune for that robe,” Quincey said to Parvell, never missing a beat with shaking hands with his parishioners.
“Why would you ask me something like that, Obadiah?” Parvell replied. “It’s no secret that I invest quite a bit in my wardrobe. Everything I put on my back costs a pretty penny.”
“Oh,” Rev. Quincey said mildly, pausing in the conversation to kiss each cheek of the group of little girls waiting patiently to give the pastor the biggest and brightest smiles they could muster on their pretty brown faces. He smiled at them, thinking that they resembled a garden—a garden filled to the brim with the loveliest array of flowers in every hue of brown imaginable.
He turned back to Parvell and said, “I hear you, Dawg. There is no doubt that you drop some serious cash on your clothes. But something tells me that you outdid yourself on this particular garment.”
“Why is that,” Parvell said, trying to talk and keep the flow of parishioners steady like he’d seen Rev. Quincey doing.
“It’s fourth Sunday, Reverend,” Rev. Quincey said smoothly. “And since you are standing there all decked out in a first Sunday Communion outfit, the only thing I could conclude was that it was too expensive to go to waste on one Sunday out of the month.”
Theresa and Bug barely made it out of earshot of the two preachers before they collapsed into a fit of hysterical laughter. Aside from the pastor’s smooth “punking” of Parvell, the expression on his face after being “punked” was almost as priceless as his Communion robe appeared to
be.
Parvell snatched his hand away from the stole and cleared his throat, searching hard for a plausible lie as to why he was standing up here making a fool out of his own self.
He said, “I’ve been inundated with ministerial requests lately, and with this one exception, the rest of my robes are dirty and being cleaned. And I just hated going up into the pulpit in a mere dress suit—just didn’t seem suitable, if you’ll pardon the pun.”
Rev. Quincey rolled his eyes upward, as if making a silent “Jesus, give me strength” plea and shook hands with the last of the folk standing in the line.
“So, do you still think Pimpalicious is the man for you, Big Sis?” Bug asked Theresa, hoping that this display on Parvell’s part would be the straw that broke the camel’s back in their alleged courtship. Because from what he could see, Parvell looked more to be Charmayne Robinson’s man than he ever did his sister’s.
“Hey there, Brown Sugar,” the e-mail began. Theresa smiled, then frowned. The sweetness of this salutation was so out of character for Parvell, she read the line twice to make sure that her eyes were not playing tricks on her. But there it was, in bold brown print—Brown Sugar. Parvell had never, ever called her anything sweet. In fact, she didn’t ever remember him calling her anything that came close to a weak sugar substitute.
Theresa’s eyes scanned down the e-mail, landing on the link to an e-card.
“Nice touch, Parvell,” she said, then wondered if he were okay. She dismissed that notion, clicked on the link, and waited for the card to open. Anita Baker’s song “Serious” started playing, and Theresa sat back in her chair, anticipating something sexy and endearing in the note section of the e-card. It didn’t take long for Theresa to discover that not only was Parvell okay, but that he was in rare form when she read:
“Anita sings the word ‘serious’ so eloquently until I was compelled to attach the song to this note to further clarify what I want to say to you. Theresa, my darling, we are through—Seriously speaking, thu-roo! I am serious, so serious, Parvell Sykes.”
Theresa’s mouth hung wide open so long she barely caught the drool that was about to spill out of her mouth and onto her skirt. The song was coming to an end and before she could close this e-mail, a P.S. popped up.
“the ring . . . I want the ring back.”
“What ring?” Theresa asked herself. Then she panicked when she remembered the ring box she’d lost.
“That was a ring worth returning? I figured it cost a lot, but not that much.”
Theresa closed her eyes and shook her head in disgust. She should have been hurt—her so-called man was breaking up with her. But about the only thing she felt was relief, and then anger. How dare Parvell end their relationship with an e-mail playing one of her favorite songs? That was so mean and so Parvell. And then, for him to have the nerve of Job’s wife to ask for that ring back, put the icing on the cake.
And what made this situation go from bad to past abysmal was the fact that Theresa had to come up with a ring she’d never seen, and was clueless about where it could possibly be. It was a shame she had to give up the ring if she ever found it—it would have been nice to sport a flashy ring at holiday time, pretending that she had a special man in her life. It had been years since Theresa had a man in her life, a piece of significant jewelry to show for it, and especially at this time of the year.
She closed her eyes. What would it feel like to have Parvell by her side on Christmas morning? In her mind’s eye, she saw herself getting up and running down to a gigantic Christmas tree, warm and cozy in a beautiful red velour robe, trimmed in white satin, with a perky red velour Santa hat on her head. Theresa practically slid under the tree and pulled at the biggest box she could find. She had been eyeballing that box all day, Christmas Eve day, when she first spied Parvell placing it underneath their tree.
Theresa stopped tearing at the wrapping paper on the box for a moment to admire their Christmas tree. It was eleven feet tall, thick, lush, and smelled so good. The silver and lavender ornaments, orchid velvet bows, violet silk ribbons, and silver and lavender brocade skirt wrapped around the base of the tree was so pretty one of the neighbors called the Durham newspaper and asked them to feature it in the Christmas Eve edition. The headline read— “Durham’s Premier Boutique Owner and Hubby Do a Christmas Room to Put Santa’s Elves to Shame.”
Theresa pulled the box out from under the tree and finished ripping the bright red foil paper off, frowning for a moment—that red definitely clashed with all of that beautiful lavender and silver. After plowing through yards of plain white tissue paper, she found a small box and grinned from ear to ear.
“Diamond earrings! Six carats—three for each ear,” Theresa exclaimed with glee, and opened the smaller box, face dropping so fast the rapid change in emotional altitude made her dizzy. Nestled in black tissue paper was her gift along with a note that read:
“You have not done a thing to please me this past year. If your name was Virginia, and I told you, ‘Yes, there is a Santa Claus,’ I would be compelled to present you with these two pieces of coal . . . Respectfully yours, Parvell.”
The imaginary Theresa started to cry, and then proceeded to break down into hysterical sobbing. This made the real Theresa so mad, she reached out to slap the imaginary self upside the head for crying over that trifling and no-good man, and succeeded in slapping the mess out of herself. Theresa’s head was ringing so hard, she didn’t even hear the telephone until a second before the last ring. She glanced at the caller ID and frowned—the call was from Lamont Green’s company, Green Pastures.
“Why him now,” Theresa said. Last thing she wanted to do was talk to Lamont Green. Bad enough she had to read Parvell’s e-mail and then get her feelings hurt in her own fantasy about him. She pushed the button and waited for somebody to answer.
“Green Pastures. This is James Green speaking.”
“Whew,” Theresa said. She was so glad Lamont had not answered that phone.
“Huh?”
“Uh . . . James . . . uh, hey . . . how’s . . .”
“Theresa?”
“Yeah,” she answered, trying to sound chipper and nonchalant. “Uh . . . I noticed that your number was on my caller ID.”
“You mean my brother’s number, right?” James asked, grinning. He could not believe that the oh-so-together Theresa Hopson was all discombobulated over this call to Lamont’s office. Maybe the Big Dawg had made some headway with Miss Thang after all.
“Well, yes, kind of . . . I . . . uh . . . thought that I should call back. You know, to find out.”
James was enjoying this. But being the good Christian brother that he was, decided to put an end to the sistah’s misery.
He said, “I called you, Theresa, because I have something that belongs to you and thought that you might be looking for it. I could . . .”
James glanced at his watch. Lamont was on his way to the office. If he could get Theresa over here soon, she’d run right into his brother.
“You know something,” he said smoothly, “why don’t you come by Lamont’s office?”
“There . . . as in Green Pastures?” Theresa asked, hoping that she didn’t sound as goofy as she was feeling.
“Yeah, here—Green Pastures,” James responded, trying not to laugh at her. He’d forgotten that Theresa was not the coolest woman when it came to men.
“Can’t you just drop it off by the store?”
“I could,” James began, “but I won’t be able to get to you until tomorrow. My plate is pretty full today. If the expensive jewelry box I am holding is any indication of the contents, Theresa, I am thinking you’ll want to get this as soon as possible.”
All of a sudden, Theresa sighed with relief. Here she was having an anxiety attack over the lost ring and one of the most trustworthy people she knew had been keeping it safe all of this time. She could have saved herself a whole lot of grief if she’d only done as Miss Queen Esther had instructed her to do, and follow the adv
ice of 1 Peter 5:7 . . . casting all of her anxiety on the Lord because He truly cared for her.
“I could meet you at Green Pastures if you can get over there in about thirty minutes,” James said.
“I thought you were already there,” Theresa said.
“Company phone.”
“Okay. Well then, I’m on my way,” she agreed, hoping to get over there and out without running into Lamont.
Theresa turned off the computer and went to run the comb through her hair and dab some gloss on her lips. She did a quick check of her outfit, now wishing that she had chosen something else to wear this morning. Even though it was one of her favorite outfits, she didn’t relish rolling up in Lamont’s place of business dressed like she wanted to be seen by a man. Because this was definitely a man’s “eye-candy” outfit—snug and short peach, Ultrasuede skirt, a creamy white silk mock turtleneck, peach fishnet stockings, and peach, cream, and dove gray suede high-heeled boots with a matching applejack-styled hat.
She grabbed her dove gray suede jacket and headed out the door. The last time she wore this outfit, Parvell had practically busted a gasket. They were attending a reception at Eva T. Marshall University, and just about every other brother they ran into—young and old—commented on her ensemble, especially those sexy high-heeled boots. About the only brother who didn’t compliment her was Parvell.
Theresa backed up from the front door and hurried to check herself out in the foyer mirror. Good—that’s how she looked—awfully doggone good. What in the world was wrong with a man who couldn’t recognize the striking sister staring back at her? Maybe her people were right—Parvell leaving her would be the best thing that ever happened to her.
As Theresa pulled into a parking spot right in front of the building, it occurred to her that she had never been in Lamont’s office suite on Consultant Place. His building was in a great location—up on a hill that offered a pleasant view of Martin Luther King Parkway below, along with the clusters of pine trees that contributed to Durham’s lush and woodsy landscape. Plus, it was in walking distance of the grocery store, movie theater, Fuddruckers, Starbucks, Bruegger’s Bagels, CVS pharmacy, and several other businesses, in an area frequented by just about every manner of folk in the city.
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