“You hear me, Malika? What about you and Travis?”
“Sorry, I’m really late for an appointment. I’ll talk to you later.”
Just like that, I got up and grabbed my purse. So far, my day had been ruined. As I prepared to leave, Sarah got up and walked to her desk. I locked my office door, told Felicia I would see her after lunch, and then walked out the door. Just like that. I didn’t look back. Not once.
As I walked, I was thinking that I needed to quiet this girl, but how? As I pondered this thought, I hit the elevator’s down button. As the doors opened, Travis walked out. My eyes lit up and he smiled.
“Hey, where are you going?” he asked.
Before I could respond, he said, “I came to spend the morning working on the computer system and then take you to lunch.”
“I was leaving to get some air. But I am free right this moment and forever,” I said.
“Right!” he said, looking at me with those beautiful, hypnotic eyes, as if he didn’t believe I was actually free forever. “Come on, let’s ride.” He gently grabbed my hand and led me onto the elevator. As we stepped on, the doors closed. I moved to the corner and he scooted close to me, looking into my eyes. This man was so close that all I had to do was snap my fingers and the air between us would hit him in the face. As he looked down at me, our faces were so close that all I had to do was turn my face upward and our lips would touch. I wanted to turn. I wanted him to kiss me. We stared at each other until the door opened.
I knew it finally: our attraction was real. He wanted me like I wanted him. All I had to do was make that move. But I was scared. This was not me! I was not fast like my mother used to say about girls who did it with the neighborhood boys. I was not a whore. I was married. Or was I? The way I felt, I wasn’t sure if I was married or what, because if I was, why was I feeling like this about another man?
We exited the elevator and walked toward his Benz. He walked to my side of the car and opened the door. I entered the car. Just ask me, I will go with you anywhere. “Ask me,” I said out loud, not meaning to.
“Ask you what?” he asked, while turning to face me.
“I was just thinking out loud.”
“You had a bad day I gather.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Let’s see if I can make you forget it.”
“I’m sure that you can. Make my day.”
Travis looked at me, perplexed. I could tell he was confused. Finally, he said, “I know the perfect place to take you.”
I smiled. He’s taking me to a hotel. Yeah! Yeah! Just my damn luck, he turned into a Dierdorf & Hart’s restaurant. Was this supposed to be what I needed? Now I was depressed. A fat girl’s anthem, to take me to a restaurant!
When we walked into the restaurant, all heads turned. I was proud to be with this man. He was a man who knew exactly what to say to a woman to make her heart sing. He was very smart and his baritone voice was mesmerizing and soothing. As I sat at the table, staring at him, he searched the menu. I thought again about his wife. Was he this tender and in touch with her feelings? Did he make her toes curl when he touched her? Did he know when her heart was lonely and needed to be fed? I wondered what kind of woman was she. After all, she had him. She must’ve been someone who was very special to have such an attentive man.
“A penny for your thoughts.” He surprised me.
“I was just thinking,” I quickly began. “I was wondering; people who have a nice person to share their lives with, do they know?”
“Do they know what?” he asked.
“Do they know they have someone special to share their lives with and a person who will listen and treat them with kindness?”
He looked at me and smiled. “Most people don’t know how to treat their spouses because they take them for granted.”
“What do you mean?”
“You become just like that.” He pointed to the coat rack and I stared.
“The coat rack?”
“You see,” he continued, “when people have been together for a while, they stop doing the very things that attracted them to each other in the first place. They stop talking to each other and they basically lose touch with the other person’s feelings. They become stuck.”
“The coat rack is there. Its duty is to hold coats and umbrellas.” I saw where he was going with the analogy.
“Right! It’s going to be right there in that same position. Unless, that is, someone decides to move it. To change its position. Or even to get rid of it.”
“That’s good.”
“If people are having problems they have to do something different. Make changes and agree to work it out. But people become accustomed to standing in one spot, like the coat rack. People forget whatever it took to get a person is the same thing it is going to take to keep them.” He looked at me and winked his left eye.
“That’s great food for thought. Thank you!”
I sat there wanting to tell him that if he would have me, I wouldn’t forget. Every day, I would make every effort to make him feel loved. I wanted to say it, but I lost my nerve. So I said, “It’s too bad that people lose that special connection. I have a friend who is going through that now. She goes home every day and her husband doesn’t talk to her. She said that she feels unloved and lonely. What do you think she should do?”
“She should try to talk to her husband,” he responded. “Explain her feelings and if he loves her, maybe he will make the effort to improve.”
“What if he doesn’t?” I asked.
“If he doesn’t, she should try to find out why he won’t talk. Maybe he doesn’t feel that a problem exists. Maybe it’s her pressuring him.”
“You know what, Travis, my friend has told her husband, but he won’t change. She said she is getting frustrated because everyone keeps telling her the same thing.”
Travis picked up his glass and took a swallow of water. He picked up his napkin and dried the water droplets from his hand.
As I sat there I became angry because I had talked to my husband. I had asked him to work with me, but he didn’t feel there was a problem. I was getting sick and tired of folks telling me the same shit, and everything I tried gave me no results. Frustration snaked across my face. I picked up the napkin and wiped my forehead and nose because I felt they were shining because my body temperature was increasing.
“You know, Malika, I am going through something similar. I love my wife, but we are slowly being pulled apart. I’ve spoken to her about it, but she doesn’t see a problem. When I reach for her at night she pulls away because she is so tired from running with the kids and working. But I have my needs and she doesn’t feel she needs to address them. We’re talking about it. You have to decide if your marriage is worth saving. For me, I want it to work, but it’s hard when you know someone else would be willing to love you and meet your needs.”
“So what you are saying is, fight for your marriage?” Now I was pissed. I thought we were heading somewhere as a couple together but he was just like my friends and my mother. Talk to your husband, tell him, keep talking. Damn I was more frustrated now than ever. So now I needed to know what he wanted from me. Soon I would find out. This was getting tiresome. If he wanted me, he wouldn’t tell me to work things out with my husband. I believed he knew it was me and not some friend. But I could play that game too.
“Travis, I will tell my friend what you said. I’m sure that will help her.”
The waiter returned and we ordered lobster, crab cakes, and shrimp. We stared at each other as if we were looking into each other’s soul. Both of us were wondering what was next and then his cell phone vibrated. He pulled it out of the holder that was hooked to his waist and looked at the number on the phone. He pushed end on the phone and put it back on his waist. He looked back at me. “What happened at work today? You looked like it was rough.”
“It was rough. It was Sarah. Sometimes she can be sweet, easy to get along with, then just like Samantha on Bewitched, she ch
anges. Within a finger snap, she goes from sweet and lovely to the most deadly and doggish person I’ve ever seen. This happens in a split second. It’s like she has a split personality.”
Travis said, “Please be careful around her. You don’t know her intentions. People can be so devious. I worry about you being there with some of the women you employ. Just be careful. People are so cold and easy to turn violent out of jealousy, hatred, and misery.”
“I don’t think she is that bad. I mean, I don’t think she would stoop so low as to try to hurt me. At least, I don’t think so.” I smiled.
I couldn’t help thinking, if only he knew how carefully I would be unbuttoning his shirt, gently kissing his eyelids, lightly sucking his earlobes, as I move down his throat to his chest and nipples. Shit, just thinking about him naked made me press my thighs together to stop the throbbing.
Why did this man have so much power over my feelings? Why didn’t he know he had the power to make me his love slave? After all, here I was, salivating over him, wanting to lick his body like a kid licking an ice cream cone. If I didn’t get myself together, I was going to fall apart. Already I had crossed the boundaries of professionalism, because I was having lunch in the middle of the morning with my contractor. But I wasn’t thinking about business, I was thinking about sex.
“You always seem so deep in thought. Is everything all right with you? I mean, I realize that you go through so much with the women on your job, but you can’t let them get you down. Hold your head up high. It is nothing but jealousy.”
I looked at him and wondered if he was a blind fool. I was thinking about putting his dick in my mouth and he was thinking I was thinking about some women. What the fuck was on his mind? I looked him in his face and was just about to say, “I want to suck your d . . . d . . . d . . .” but instead I said, “I really want to taste the lobster. When are they bringing out our lunch?”
We sat in the restaurant, laughing and talking about his business. He and I shared so much information with each other. We talked about our desires.
“You know what I want, Malika? I want to grow my company like World Wide Computers. I want to be big in this industry. I know I’m on the way.”
“You can do it too. I know you can.”
“What do you want, Malika?”
“I want to accomplish a lot, but I really want to become a bestselling author and start a small, independent publishing company.”
“Really! I didn’t know you liked to write.”
“I love the art of writing stories.”
“Have you written anything?”
“Some short stories.”
“I would love to read them.”
“Okay. I’d like that!” This is why I really had affections for him. Dexter thought my writing was insignificant, not important. He had never read anything I had written. Travis wanted to.
He encouraged me to get busy and to write to my heart’s content. He told me I could do anything because I was smart, talented, and very attractive. I smiled and thought about the two of us lying in bed, talking business.
Then I felt my eyes close. I was slowly getting ready to seduce him, and then I shook myself. I informed him we needed to leave. As we walked out of the restaurant, we stood on the sidewalk and chatted. We talked in the car and he walked me back into the building, rode up the elevator with me, and we sat on the bench in front of the doors and chatted some more. Sitting on that hard bench was becoming a habit! We couldn’t get enough of each other.
Chapter 11
Another Day’s Journey
I didn’t know how I made it safely home. I was thinking about my lunch meeting with Travis. I was singing and humming all over the place. The next thing I knew, I was pulling up in the driveway. When I got out of the car and bent down to pick up the newspaper lying in the yard, I saw my good friend, Zena. We had been neighbors and friends for about twelve years. It was funny thinking about our relationship. For twelve years, she and I had been walking, trying to lose weight. Funny thing though, we were still the same size we were when we started walking twelve years earlier. All those long years of walking and talking, and dreaming and hoping and still, well, you know what I mean.
“Hey, girl. What have you been up to lately?” I asked.
“Nothing much. You know I am back in school, studying to become a nurse.”
“How do you like that? It’s so much different than what you are doing. I mean, how do you go from being a certified public accountant to a nurse?”
“Bad high school counseling. Girl, as much as my ass talk, they should have called me Ann Landers and counseled me to become a reporter, nurse, social worker, journalist, or anything else. They put me at a table with a damn calculator and told me to shut my mouth and add. I haven’t been happy in my job since I graduated from college.”
“Finally, girl,” I said, “it is now or never.”
“I am going back to school to get a bachelor’s in nursing, and hopefully, later a master’s in nursing.”
“I’m proud of you, Zena. Girl, you know it is wrong for those high school counselors to misguide folks. They either lead you the right way or misjudge your abilities. Either way, you have to fight for what you want. For instance, my high school counselor told me to major in social work. She noted how everyone came to talk to me about their problems and how some of my friends told her I helped them with some pretty deep issues. She thought I should be a social worker because I was a natural with people. But she missed one thing: I needed to live. Social workers do not make any money unless they get into management, and that takes a master’s degree plus ground-level experience. Even though I like what I do, hell, I need more money.”
“You got that right, my Nubian sister.” Zena was just standing there as if she was in great thought.
Finally, I asked her, “Is everything all right?”
“Not really, girl. I think I am depressed.”
“Have you been to the doctor?”
“No. I don’t need a doctor to tell me that I am depressed. I feel like I don’t have any energy.”
I wondered if I should say something to her about what the signs of depression were. I wasn’t a doctor, but I did know about depression and stress. I didn’t know about depression and heredity issues, but I knew the symptoms. I decided to tell her the real signs of depression, but just as I was about to explain the symptoms, her husband called her.
“That’s my ticket. My man is calling me. I’ll holler at you later.”
“Okay, girl, if you need me, call me.”
“I will,” she said as she quickly rushed across the street. I put a note in my head to remember to discuss depression with her and to try to encourage her to see a doctor.
As I walked through the garage to enter the kitchen, Li’l Dexter walked up and hugged me. “We won our soccer match.”
Li’l Dexter had recently started playing soccer. “Sweetheart, that is wonderful. How many goals did you score?”
“Only three. But Coach said we are getting better every game. Plus, Dad was so happy we won. He was shouting in the bleachers. I saw him.”
I looked up at Dexter. He was so fine. I knew those women at the game couldn’t keep their eyes off him. He was a well-built man, with strong muscular arms and legs. He had a thick mustache and really long, thick eyelashes. He was handsome. If Dexter was willing to put in more time and energy in reigniting our marriage I wouldn’t be so confused. Suddenly, I felt jealous even though I was lusting after another man. It pissed me off, thinking someone was doing the same thing I was doing, wanting my man. If only he would work on his behavior and our relationship.
“Hey, how ya doing?” Big Dexter asked.
“I’m doing fine, Dexter. Thanks for taking Li’l D to the game.”
“You didn’t think I wouldn’t go support my son, did you?”
“No, that is not what I was saying. I am just glad that you take such an interest in our child.”
“You know you say
some stupid things,” he responded in jest.
“Whatever.” See, that was what I was talking about. He always found a way to piss me off. I decided I was not going to argue with Li’l D in the room. So I asked my son, whom I affectionately nicknamed Li’l D, what he wanted to eat. That was the best I could do to diffuse the situation. I walked toward the kitchen and walked up to the sink to wash my hands. I then opened the oak wood cabinet next to the stove and pulled out a large pot and two small ones. I was going to cook some green beans, corn, and spaghetti. Then I looked for the deep fryer to fry some tilapia fish. Reaching for the lemon-pepper seasoning, my mind floated to Travis. I felt the pit of my stomach weaken. Was I falling in love with this man? I couldn’t go an hour without thinking about him. This was a setup. Those little bitches at the office had poisoned my mind. I never thought of Travis like this until they started that mess at the office. Shaking myself as if I was shaking that man right out of my hair, I smiled. Then I started singing, “I’m going to shake that man right outta my head. I’m going to shake that man right outta my head.” Seasoning the fish, I laughed. That’s exactly what I was going to have to do.
“Malika, did you get the mail?” Dexter hollered.
“No!”
“At least you could have done that. Especially since you don’t do much here. What I need you for? My secretary said that you don’t do anything.”
“You tell that bitch to kiss my ass,” I angrily replied. “I told you to stop discussing me with that dumb ass. She would love to be your woman and you just sit there telling her my business. Stop talking to your damn secretary about me. You don’t want me to fire that yellow-teeth bitch, do you?”
“She doesn’t mean anything by what she says. She’s impressed with you. When I talk to her she just gets a little hyped, that’s all.”
“Well, you need to stop talking with her about me. You’re just making her think she has a chance with you.”
“I’m not interested in her. You should see her. She has gained a lot of weight and she is really fat. Plus, she has this acne all over her face. I think she is picking the bumps, because she has little dots of blood all over her face.”
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