He didn’t want to sit down. Didn’t understand why they’d even asked him to. One white officer told him to sit down, or else he would get handcuffed and taken to the car downstairs. They were intimidated by his height. If only they could have seen his dick, they’d have probably shot him dead out of a feeling of sheer inadequacy. Demitri wanted to say something, I knew he did, but when he made eye contact with me, I begged him with my eyes to stand down. I had no desire to witness what would happen if he didn’t. I breathed a sigh of relief when he did finally sit. He sat down on the bed and kept his eyes on me.
“No,” Nicole and I said in unison.
All three officers gave us skeptical glances. They didn’t believe us. There were no warrants. No unpaid tickets. No parole violations. Nothing they could arrest any of us for. That hurt their feelings. They so desperately wanted some reason to fuck with Demitri. It ate them alive that they couldn’t. So much so that they made him face the wall, with his hands behind his back. They wanted to search him.
Nicole said, “You have no probable cause to search him. My sister is an attorney, and I know this search isn’t legal.”
They ignored her. I pulled out my cell phone. Made sure the officers knew it was only my phone. In fact, I stood up and asked the black officer to get it from my pocket for me. He did. I called David, Summer’s husband. Made sure the officers heard me say his name. Made sure they knew I was on a first-name basis with one of the attorneys who had represented the last family the Clayton County Police had had a violent run-in with. It hadn’t turned out so swell for the officers involved, and this encounter now probably wouldn’t turn out well for the APD, either.
Five minutes later, the officers were gone. So was Demitri. Since Nicole had said it was with him that she had been arguing, he had had to leave the premises. They’d allowed him to leave. Told Elliot to stay put until Demitri was gone. They didn’t want any confrontation from the two men.
“He was my ride,” I said as I looked toward the door.
“I’ll take you to your hotel,” Elliot said.
“No the hell you won’t,” I snarled.
Before he could respond, Nicole said, “It wasn’t that you were bisexual that really bothered me. I mean, it bothered me, but it was the Demi factor that got to me. I want to believe you didn’t know him, but . . .”
Elliot shook his head. “Y’all have fun playing me like a violin, though?” was his response.
“I didn’t play you. I cheated once,” she said.
“You were emotionally cheating. Every time we had a problem, he was who you ran to?”
Nicole said nothing. Elliot kept staring at her, waiting.... When she still didn’t answer, her silence answered for her. Elliot walked into the bathroom. I and my doppel-gänger were left alone. Her energy was circling the room like buzzards circling a dead carcass. She wrapped her arms around herself like she was cold.
Both of us looked toward the bathroom when we heard Elliot flush the toilet. The sun was on the horizon. I was tired. My flight was set to leave later in the day. I needed to get to my hotel. I needed to get away from it all. Get away from all the madness that had just occurred in that hotel room.
I tucked my phone in my pocket. Picked up the helmet and walked out of the room. I didn’t expect Nicole to follow me, but she did.
We left Elliot in her hotel room. She grabbed her cell phone and a pack of Newports from her purse. We walked to the elevator as other hotel guests stared at us. Some random person wondered if we were twins. Neither of us gave a response.
“You smoke?” I asked once the elevators doors closed.
“I do when I’m stressed. I work in a mental institute when I’m not teaching at the college. Sometimes . . . sometimes I need a smoke,” she said, then exhaled.
I nodded like I understood. I didn’t. “Why did you really come here?” I asked her.
“Wanted to see Elliot.”
“So it wasn’t about Jacques?”
Her head whipped up and she look at me when I said her son’s name. “It was, but it wasn’t,” she said. “I needed to make sure I was doing the right thing.”
I didn’t respond to that.
She asked, “You really fuck both of them?”
“Yes.”
“At the same time?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You knew they were . . .” She hesitated, then said, “You know?”
“Bisexual?” I said for her.
“Yes.”
I nodded.
“You didn’t care?”
“No.”
“You knew they were together when you met Elliot?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“You didn’t care about that, either?”
“No.”
“What kind of woman are you?”
I looked down at her. “What kind of woman are you?”
“They share you,” she said.
“They shared you.”
“Not to my knowledge. I mean, not at first.”
“That had to suck,” I said sarcastically.
Her upper lip twitched. I’d touched a nerve. “You look like me,” she said.
“When is your birthday?”
“September.”
“Mine is in January. You look like me.”
“What year?” she asked.
“Eighty-four. Why?”
“Then you look like me. I was born in eighty-three.”
That silenced me. It was silly what we were doing. But one woman always had to try to one-up the other, even when they both knew men were at fault for them being at odds.
“I look nothing like you,” I finally said to her. “I look better.”
“I’m the prototype.” She grunted. Turned her lips down as the elevator doors opened and we stepped into the lobby. Each of us held our head high. Walked like the world belonged to us. Like we didn’t just walk out of a den of lunacy. She stopped near the front doors and lit her cigarette. I stopped and pulled up my Uber app.
“You love him,” she said to me.
I feigned ignorance. “Love who?”
“Elliot.”
“If you say so.”
“I know so. He used to put that same look on my face.”
“And you still love Demitri.”
She didn’t dispute it but said, “He was my first love. Taught me things. I loved him so much. In some ways I still do. I loved Elliot too, but Demitri will always be the one who taught me things about love, about sex. I wish he wasn’t the way he was—”
“What is he? A human?”
“A whore.”
“Can’t a man leave the past behind and start anew?” I asked.
“No. Not in his case.”
“I didn’t meet a whore. I met a man with a good heart. He can be a bit of an asshole, but I didn’t meet a whore.”
“Once a whore, always a whore.”
“A whore with whom you cheated on a so-called good man. What does that make you?”
“He ruined my life. I’d found the perfect man in Elliot,” she said.
“No you hadn’t. He was living a lie. If it wasn’t Demitri, it would have been someone else.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Is Jacques Elliot’s son?”
Nicole’s eyes shot up at me like I’d offended her. “Of course he is.”
“Have you made sure?”
“Yes, I’m one hundred percent sure Jacques belongs to Elliot.”
I was about to say something else, but someone caught my attention. A man in a hoodie walked past Nicole and me. He stopped a few paces away. He moved the hoodie from his head. He was a bald-headed guy who looked as if someone had beaten him up, but his wounds were healing. He blinked hard. Looked from me to Nicole, then from Nicole to me.
“You know him?” Nicole asked.
I shook my head. “No.”
I got a chill in my bones. The wind picked up, and the skies darkened. The man in the hoodie kept staring at u
s. I felt as if I remembered those eyes from somewhere. I just couldn’t place them.
“Freaking weirdo. I saw him earlier. When Elliot and I were out here. Maybe he’s a guest of the hotel,” she said.
The man moved closer to us. There was a weird smile on his face. One that rattled me. Made me want to run and hide. Everything slowed down for me. For some reason, I thought about my mom. Wondered where Johnny was. In my peripheral, I could have sworn I saw Demitri riding his bike toward me.
If I’d had telepathy, I would have known that as Demitri walked out of the hotel, he saw the man in the hoodie again. As he was sitting on the bike in the parking deck, in the midst of his anger and hurt, he remembered that he’d seen that man before, when he’d been at the store. He’d also seen that man somewhere else, but that time, he’d had locs. Demitri revved up his bike. Went full speed ahead, trying to get back to the hotel to warn us. He didn’t know what was wrong, but he knew that it was odd that the man kept showing up where we were. But I didn’t have any magical powers. So I didn’t know any of that.
And as Demitri’s bike roared in the distance, one of the man’s hands moved around in a pocket of his hoodie. That smile on his face widened to unnatural proportions.
“Hey,” he said. “You remember me?” he asked me.
I shook my head.
He frowned. Looked from me to Nicole. “Then you. It was you,” he said. “You remember me?” he asked her.
Nicole moved back a little as she shook her head.
I heard someone yelling my name. The man glanced to his right. I watched in slow motion as his hand eased out of his pocket. I gasped. A gun, bigger than any I’d ever seen, was in his hand. Nicole gripped my arm. Like me, she wanted to run but was too afraid to move. She trembled. My hand started to shake. It was as if the helmet was the heaviest thing I’d ever had to carry.
“Oh, my God,” Nicole whispered.
“Club Noir Eden,” the man said. “Remember me now?”
And it all came rushing back to me. The dread head wasn’t a dread head anymore. What I didn’t know, couldn’t have possibly known, was that the beating Demitri had put on the man was his undoing. Demitri had beaten him badly. Had snatched his dreads so hard that he’d pulled plugs of locs out by the root. Had left his scalp bleeding. Had shattered the man’s eye socket and his pride. A gay man had violated his manhood, and he had to pay. Both Demitri and I had to pay.
In the man’s mind, I was a tranny, anyway. He knew they all looked like real women these days, or so he thought. I was too fine to be a real woman to him. He was gone kill him a tranny bitch and a bitch nigga. He smiled the way Heath Ledger did when he played the Joker and slowly raised the gun.
I stopped breathing. Right then and there, I stopped living.
Nicole’s phone rang. I jumped. She screamed. The man fired one shot. Nicole’s limp body hit the ground. The other guests realized what was happening and scattered. Back in the hotel, Elliot was just stepping off the elevator. He didn’t know what was going on yet.
The man fired another shot. The bullet hit my shoulder. The impact sent my left side jerking backward. The next shot went to my stomach as the man backed away. Third shot hit me on the right side of my chest. I fell backward in slow motion.
I heard the revving of an engine. A blur faster than the speed of light threw itself in front of me. A fourth shot caught Demitri in the side as he picked the front end of his bike up and ran the man down.
If I had been able to see what was happening, I’d have seen Demitri go flying from his bike. Went down so hard, he cracked a few ribs. The man got back on his feet. Realized it was Demitri, the man who’d beaten him senseless in that alley. His anger kicked up another notch. He kept firing. Walked closer, firing bullets into Demitri’s back as he did so. They were loud. Like bombs exploding in my ear at close range.
I had an out-of-body experience. My thoughts were clearer than they had ever been in my life. I wanted to live. I thought about my mother again. I hadn’t finished my book. Elliot. I loved Elliot. I couldn’t leave him. Demitri . . . he tried to save me. Shielded me with his body.
It hurt. My whole body hurt. Help me, God. Help me. I couldn’t breathe. It hurt to do so. My eyes rolled around in my head as the screams and yells of other guests echoed in the distance. I saw Nicole. Blood. A lot of blood had pooled underneath her. Her eyes were open, looking toward the heavens, but there was no life in her body. A shell of who Nicole used to be was all that was left of the mother and wife.
I heard Elliot. Somewhere in the distance. I wanted him to run. I told him to run. At least I thought I did. In reality, I didn’t say a word. If he had arrived sooner, Elliot would have been killed too. If the man hadn’t run out of bullets, if he hadn’t kept firing at Demitri, Elliot would have been his fourth victim. And he didn’t give a damn. Ridding the world of faggots and trannies was his calling.
Sirens wailed in the distance. The man tucked his gun back into the pocket of his hoodie. He had to get out of there. But he didn’t. He never got a chance to. Nicole lay across from me. Demitri lay to the right of me, facedown in the grass. I didn’t know which one of us took our last breath first.
Elliot
I was somewhere above the earth, looking down. Chaos and madness surrounded me. I didn’t have to dial 911. People inside the lobby had already done it. I’d stepped off the elevator into hell. Mona and Nicole had left me in Nicole’s hotel room. Mona had that damn helmet, and I was afraid of her swinging at Nicole if she pushed her too far.
I hadn’t known that when I stepped out of that elevator, I’d see the devil in a hoodie. I wasn’t sure if I was crying now. My actions felt infantile. Useless. I couldn’t save them. Couldn’t be the Superman they were used to. Mona was on her back, her left arm extended toward Nicole’s right arm. It looked like a replica of the famous Michelangelo painting The Creation of Adam.
Demitri’s body was on the grass. In slow motion I’d seen him on his bike, trying to save Mona. Seen when the first bullet entered his body. Sacrificing his life to protect hers. My emotions couldn’t be explained. I didn’t own any one single emotion. I was in a whirlpool of them.
Dozens upon dozens of police cars swarmed the hotel. Three ambulances pulled in, one behind the other. Nicole was gone. Before her body hit the ground, she was dead. A kill shot to her heart. Still, the EMTs did what they were supposed to do. They went through the motions.
I thought about my son. My son . . . her son . . . our son . . . Her children were now motherless. Her husband, wifeless.
Mona held on. She was crying. Blood foamed from the corners of her mouth. Anytime she inhaled, she made these strange noises. Her body was ticking. Demitri’s body didn’t do anything at all. Not a single movement from his body.
“He came out of nowhere,” a woman cried.
She’d seen everything. Told the police the man had walked up to the women and had asked if they remembered him. Said something about Club Noir Eden. Officers asked me who I was. They tried to move me, but I refused to move from where I was. Crime-scene tape was in an officer’s hand. Paramedics told the cops Nicole was gone. There was nothing they could do for her. Horror in my eyes and unimaginable pain in my heart.
I couldn’t breathe. Fuck me. I couldn’t breathe. My chest was caving in. It was a nightmare. I had to wake up. If I could just wake up, we’d all be back in Nicole’s hotel room. Things would be different. I’d be kinder with my words. I’d say all the things I didn’t get a chance to say. I’d love Demitri better. He would be enough for me. I’d love Samona. I’d give her all the fucking love in the world. I’d tell her I loved her. So she would know. So it would mean something to her. I’d apologize to Nicole and mean it. We didn’t have to put shit in writing. I’d go back, and I’d do everything she wanted me to do.
I just . . . I just . . . I just needed to fucking wake up. Somebody wake me the fuck up. . . .
But nobody woke me. It wasn’t a dream. Radios squawked. EMTs shouted som
ething about prepping for transport to Grady. They needed a level one trauma center. I heard one EMT overlapping another EMT. They moved from Nicole to Demi. Carefully peeled him off the grass. Eight times he was shot. While one set of EMTs worked to control the bleeding from Mona’s abdomen and chest, the other set worked on opening Demi’s airway.
Mona’s shirt was cut from her body. Gunshot wounds to the chest, left shoulder, and abdomen. One EMT screamed into his radio about substantial internal damage. I didn’t know what cervical collars were, but one was put on Mona and another on Demi. Nicole was placed on a stretcher. A white sheet covered her. Her phone rang beside her. Malcolm’s face popped up on the screen. One of the EMTs handed me Nicole’s and Demi’s phones. I heard something about a hemothorax.
Phones were out. We’d be all over social media soon enough. People had no respect for the dead or the dying. News vans rushed onto the scene. Organized chaos. After a while all the words and conversation turned into white noise. I asked questions. Lots of questions. Was Mona alive? Was Demitri alive?
I didn’t remember the EMTs answering me. I didn’t know which ambulance to ride in to the hospital. I couldn’t get to the parking deck, because the police had it sectioned off. I got in the ambulance with Demi. They were both going to Grady.
“They both lost a lot of blood,” the black EMT said to me. “It’s up in the air right now, but Grady is a good trauma center. They’ll do all they can.”
Static came in over the ambulance’s radio, then a woman’s voice. Female gunshot victim crashing. Something about shock, then cardiac arrest. My cell phone rang. Demi’s phone rang. Nicole’s phone rang. First my mom. Then my pops. Then my sisters and brothers.
A text came in from my sister. Elliot, pick up. Please tell me this isn’t you I see on my TV. Please pick up, bro. Please, please, by God, pick up your phone.
I called my mom’s phone back. I answered all the questions.
No, I wasn’t okay.
Yeah, that was probably me they saw.
Yes, that was Demi.
One woman was Nicole.
Yes, I knew the other one too. Her name was Samona.
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