Though ten years in age separated them, they were as close as brothers, having gotten picked up for the same thing at the same time, scooped off the streets of Washington DC one night, for possession with intent to distribute. Greg was the lieutenant, Spencer was the street seller and it was only through divine intervention that what they had on them when they were picked up was a lot more cash than drugs. In the few moments they had alone in the back of a squad car, Greg had been the one to tell him not to say anything to the cops, no matter how innocuous he might think it was.
‘If you say anything, these motherfuckas will make it look like you flipped, just to flip other niggas. And then you’re a dead man. Don’t even speak if you don’t have to.’
That had been back in the day when Washington DC was a bloodbath, with bodies being found with shocking frequency under bridges, in the Anacostia River, and in the 3rd Street Tunnel as the drug wars raged on. DC’s most notorious drug kingpin Rayfull Edmond had just that year been convicted, and rivals were warring over his turf. Death for snitching wasn’t even a remote possibility; it was a likelihood.
So, Spencer had exercised his right to remain silent and gotten a five-year sentence, serving only three. Back then, the jails and prisons were so overcrowded with drug offenders that not only had Spencer and his co-defendant, Greg, been sentenced to the same prison, they were even on the same cellblock. That was where their bond solidified, and Spencer still thought of his brotherhood with Greg as one of the best things that had come out of his time locked up.
“You coming to the cookout Sunday?”
“Yeah,” Spencer said absently.
A woman in skintight jeans and a shimmery white blouse walked by their table and he followed her with his eyes. Glancing over her shoulder, she smiled when she saw that he was looking. She was long-limbed and slender, with a nice, firm figure. But maybe too slim for him. A few more curves, and she might be …
“Alone? Or you bringing someone?” Greg asked.
“Why?” Spencer turned his attention to his friend once again.
“’Cause I told Ryann.”
Spencer shrugged. “So I’ll bring her.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
Greg grinned and took a swig of his drink. “So that’s how it is with you ‘n’ her now?”
“That’s how it is.”
Nothing more needed to be said.
~18~
“Are you shitting me?”
Spencer held the phone away from his ear. “Nope. Dead-ass serious.”
“Why?” Joyce demanded. “All of a sudden, why?”
“I just think it might be my time.”
“Suddenly. Out of nowhere? It’s time for you to be a father.”
“Our mother’s gettin’ older, and you wouldn’t know this, but she doesn’t look so good these days. I want her to see a child of mine. I want her to see me become a parent.”
On the other end of the line, there was a rush of breath as Joyce exhaled. “So, let me get this straight. You’re having a kid with a virtual stranger just because our mother has cancer?”
“She’s in remission.”
“All the more reason what you’re doing is crazy.”
“No crazier than me impregnating your … wife.”
“So you’d rather have a baby with a stranger than have one for me,” Joyce said.
“A baby is not a package for me to give you like it’s Christmas, Joyce. It would be a person. A person I helped make. How the hell would I feel seeing you and Mimi …?”
“Misty!”
“I know her name. I’m just sayin’ …”
“So, you heard me talk about adopting from Guatemala and you got this bright idea that you could one-up me by just going ahead and making a baby of your own, right?”
These family arguments while he was walking through Whole Foods on a Saturday morning were getting old.
“No one’s trying to one-up you. And it had nothing to do with you and your little international adoption scheme. Seeing Ma with May’s two … you should see her. That’s the only thing that’s keeping her going these days. Other than that …” Spencer’s voice broke.
“Spence, you said it yourself. She’s in remission,” Joyce’s own voice softened somewhat.
“But for how long? And the treatment alone? It makes her weak. She’s not like some thirtysomething year old who’s about to get up and run a marathon after beating breast cancer. It took something from her. And not just her breasts. You just don’ know.”
Joyce was silent for several long moments.
“And the woman I’m doing this baby thing with?” Spencer continued. “She’s not a stranger. Not anymore.”
“Well then I guess I should congratulate you.” To her credit, Joyce only sounded slightly bitter.
“Not yet. She’s not pregnant yet. But we’re working on it.”
“How long?”
“How long what?”
“Have you been working on it.”
“Three months now.”
Joyce sighed again. “You think I should come see her?”
“Who? Ryann?”
“Who’s Ryann? No, I meant our mother. Do you think I should come see her?”
“Yeah, Joyce, I think you should. And Ryann’s the woman I’m with.”
“Oh, so you’re ‘with her’? I thought you said you both just agreed to have a kid together.”
“Yeah, we did. And I’m not with her, with her.” At least he wasn’t sure he was. “But it’s … it’s complicated.”
Joyce gave a gruff laugh. “I bet it is. Well, good luck with that. I’m going to talk to Misty about when we might plan on driving down there, and I’ll call you midweek when we confirm everything.”
“You really have to bring Misty? I mean, if you want to reconcile with …”
“Package deal, Spencer,” Joyce said. “She goes where I go. If our mother has trouble with that, point her to that passage in the Book of Ruth she loves so much—‘whither thou goest …’ You know the one, right?”
Spencer sighed, and held the phone away from his ear. Talking to his sister was always the most draining part of his week. When he put the phone back to his ear, she was still on her tear.
“… heard of the Stonewall Uprising? Well, since then the queer community isn’t invisible anymore, okay? So you and May, and our mother will just have to get used to it.”
“Call me when you’ve made your plans, Joyce,” Spencer said. He ended the call without waiting for her response.
“Spencer?”
He looked up, and it was funny, but he did recognize her. Despite his sense, all that time ago, that if he ran into Mariana in daylight he wouldn’t know who she was, he did.
In jeans and a pink long-sleeved tee with white tennis shoes, she had her straight dark hair pulled back into a long ponytail that rested on her shoulder. Her lipstick matched her tee almost perfectly. Clearly, she was a fan of pink. She was carrying a shopping basket that had only three items in it. Two bottles of wine, and peppers in a plastic sack.
“Hey,” he said. Leaning in, he kissed her on the cheek. “Small world, right?”
Mariana nodded. “Very. So …” She indicated his grocery cart. “Stocking up.”
“Something like that. I never know what to buy in this place.”
“Definitely not all that,” she returned, laughing. “My pocketbook wouldn’t be able to take it. I just come here for wine, and spices I can’t always get anywhere else.”
“Planning to cook?” Spencer asked.
“Maybe.” She gave him a coy smile. “If I did, and invited you, would you come?”
“Maybe.” That was what he said aloud, but something inside was saying a direct and distinct ‘no’.
“My kitchen is tiny,” Mariana warned. “And not as nice as yours.”
“So, if I was to take you up on your offer, you’d have to come cook in mine.”
Laughing, Mar
iana shook her head.
“What?” Spencer asked.
“I just spotted you like, thirty seconds ago. And now I’m coming to your house to cook for you? I bet women have to watch out for you.”
Grinning, Spencer didn’t even attempt to respond to that. Instead, he took a couple steps closer to her and lowered his voice a little.
“Nah. Don’t you remember?” he said. “I’m perfectly harmless.”
“Well, I texted you a while back so you could … remind me. You didn’t respond.”
“Must have missed it,” he lied. “Texting is how I do most of my communication for work, y’know? Must’ve gotten lost in the shuffle.”
“Well there’s no shuffle here,” Mariana said, in that slightly-accented lilt of hers. “You want me to come cook for you, or no?”
Spencer swallowed. He’d been flirting with her because, well, it was what he did. But having her over to his house, having her cook for him? That would be something else entirely. And where was that going to lead?
He and Ryann had never talked about this. Dating. Seeing other people. Whatever.
They had never talked about it, and as asinine as it sounded, Spencer hadn’t even thought about it. Mostly because Ryann was a whole lot of woman and for the past eight and a half weeks, damn near all his free time was occupied by her. Between all the screwing like rabbits, they hung out at her place, or at his, and went to the movies and occasionally to jazz clubs with Ivy and her man; and then they screwed some more. Turned out, making a baby was hard—though very pleasurable—work.
This weekend, Spencer was free only because she was in Chicago for the week, visiting with some folks who were trying to build a new initiative with a young, former-Congressman who was still hoping to make a career off his Daddy’s civil rights legacy. Ryann was going to be helping raise funding for that, and arranging for his re-introduction into the Washington DC scene.
She’d warned Spencer not to expect to hear from her too much, since she would be doing what she called the “full-court press”—meetings by day, power-lunches, and then working dinners at night. She would be visiting potential donors, schmoozing with the ex-Congressman himself, and then taking a red-eye back late next Saturday night.
“Spencer?”
Mariana was awaiting his response. “How does matambre arrollado topped with chimichurri sound? And to round things off, dulce de leche … paired with a nice, full-bodied Argentinian red.”
“Sounds like a whole lotta stuff I can’t pronounce.”
“Don’t worry. By the end of the night, I’ll have you speaking Spanish, papi,” Mariana said looking up at him through her eyelashes.
“You remember where I live?” Spencer asked.
For the third time in as many minutes, Ryann glanced down at her phone. Okay so she had told Spencer not to expect her to call, but did that mean he shouldn’t call her? Even to check to see if she’d landed okay? Ivy had called her about an hour after her plane arrived at O’Hare the evening before.
But far greater than her annoyance with Spencer was her annoyance with herself. Why should he call? For the last few weeks, they had been all over each other, so this trip had come at precisely the right time to re-establish some boundaries.
And besides, Ryann had plenty here to keep her distracted.
She liked Chicago. It wasn’t as overwhelming as New York, nor as somnolent as Washington DC. It was busy and cosmopolitan without being exasperatingly overcrowded. She could wander the shops on Michigan Avenue without being bumped and jostled by pedestrians every three steps, and sometimes, she discovered cute little boutiques that had not been there her last trip, and would likely not be there when she returned for her next.
At least, these were the things she had been telling herself when she felt a completely inexplicable pang of loneliness when she woke up in her hotel suite that morning. It was on the twentieth floor of the Radisson Blu, and had a wonderful view of Millennium Park. The client had booked it for her, and was covering the cost, so Ryann felt guilt-free about the opulence, enjoying her room service breakfast that morning with the drapes flung wide, looking down at the world.
She would normally have called Ivy to gloat a little, but her thoughts instead drifted to Spencer and what he might be doing with his Saturday morning. But she already knew. He had a routine that Ryann had become as familiar with as her own.
He woke around five and went to the gym, where he worked out for an hour. Spencer was a closet clean-eater, so once home the breakfast he made himself would be something like yogurt and granola with honey pulverized in his industrial strength blender. (Eggs, sausage and toast was what he ate when he was at her house; and he did it without comment or judgment, which Ryann liked.) After breakfast, he showered and was out of the house by eight-thirty. He did his shopping at Whole Foods and then after dropping off his groceries, went to the barber. Following that, was an afternoon at his sister’s, and then his evening was free.
Ryann had been part of his Saturday routine for a few weeks now, going to run her own errands while he did his, and then invariably hanging out with Ivy while he visited his family. They got together once again in the evening, either at her place or his, and Spencer would look at her with narrowed eyes and faux-suspicion, asking, ‘What have you been up to all day?’ as though she had snuck off when he wasn’t paying attention, and almost certainly had been getting into mischief while gone.
They were trying to get pregnant, so of course there was often sex. But not always. Sometimes they watched television and went out to local restaurants, and once to a lounge to see Angela Winbush perform. Because some of his work was physically-demanding, Spencer occasionally wanted to turn in early, and fell asleep before they could get the babymaking duty in. He always gave it the good ol’ prep school try though.
Once, he had fallen asleep, head on her chest while kissing his way up her body. He’d only made it as far as the underside of her left breast and the next day Ryann lied and told him he fell asleep with her nipple in his mouth. She had teased him mercilessly all week about that, reminding him that while he was supposed to be making her a mother, she had no interest in being his mother and having him fall asleep at the breast.
“Something funny?”
Ryann’s head jerked upright, and she realized that she had not only been staring sightlessly down at her phone, but smiling while thinking about Spencer.
“An amusing email,” she lied, setting her phone aside on the table in front of her. She was meeting with the chief of staff for former Congressman, Representative Jackson Parris. Parris had left office in semi-disgrace after being accused of misappropriating campaign funds. He was eventually exonerated, but the stain of the accusation remained. Now he was in need of some image rehabilitation, and a boost for a new non-profit he had formed. Ryann, having been a longtime fundraiser for the Congressional Black Caucus had been brought in to help with that.
Thankfully, she wasn’t being asked to do any direct fundraising for him, but rather to share some of her expertise about who might be amenable to giving money to someone who had been suspected of misappropriating funds; and the best angle to use with those contacts. These consulting jobs were the easiest, but also the least rewarding. These were the ones that made her feel like taking a shower afterwards. Smarmy people who claimed to be doing work for the public good, but whose modus operandi was to use that as a guise for their own good.
The former congressman’s chief of staff Lance Bethel, with whom she was currently having a lunch meeting, was probably a good guy. But Ryann had spent most of their time together resisting the urge to tell him to run for his professional life. While she may succeed in helping him raise some funds and even friends for Parris, his career—either as a politician or a social justice leader—was dead on arrival.
“You think this is a waste of time, don’t you?”
Ryann froze, for a moment wondering whether Lance Bethel was a mind-reader.
“Think what is a wa
ste of time?”
Smiling, Lance leaned back in his chair and picked up his water glass. “You smiled, just as I broached the subject of reaching out to some K Street consultants. You think they won’t touch Parris with a ten-foot pole.”
“If there’s anything I know about K Street consultants,” Ryann returned. “They would touch just about anyone—with or without the ten-foot pole—if the price is right. But that isn’t what you’re really asking.”
“What am I really asking?”
Lance Bethel raised his eyebrows. They were thick and black and silky, and he had a pleasant clay-toned complexion with a red undertone, like someone who hasn’t yet, but is just about to get a deep brown suntan.
Like some Midwestern professional men, he wore his suit a little more self-consciously than those in Washington DC. It was easy to picture Lance Bethel in a Polo shirt and chinos. He probably hated wearing a tie to work every day. Most Washington DC types looked like they had come out of the womb in dark-blue suits, and with conservative, close-cropped haircuts. Spencer was a rarity. He looked just as good in a well-cut suit as he did in jeans and a work-shirt.
And naked. There was that as well.
“You’re asking whether there’s any way out of the hole Parris is in,” Ryann said, returning her thoughts to the matter at hand.
His dark-brown eyes met hers.
“Yes,” he said after a few beats. “That’s what I’m asking.”
“Well, there isn’t.”
Ryann tapped her fingernails against the back of her cellphone, struggling not to turn it over and look at the face again. Just in case Spencer had texted her.
“He’ll raise enough money to make himself a comfortable living for the Midwest, maybe get his name in the regional papers as a comeback kid, working once again for the public interest. But if what he wants is another shot at DC, that’s not happening.”
Under normal circumstances, Ryann prided herself on being frank, and direct. What she had just said was downright brusque; and not particularly nice. But it was also true.
The Lover Page 18