“I know that he turns me on. I also know that I can talk to him about anything and he listens and understands.”
“Maybe it’s an act. Your husband listens and understands your needs.”
“You are right. He did do that and many other things when we first got married, but after so many years together, I believe things have changed. After all, couples get used to each other and become less sympathetic and less understanding during the course of their marriage. Right now, I think that is exactly what has happened in my marriage.”
“You know what, Malika? Getting involved with another man will only make matters worse in your marriage. Trust me, I know.”
“I knew that you had stepped out before! When did this happen and who was it with?”
“It doesn’t matter the who or what, but it was last year and things did not work out. I met this guy named Jonathan. I fell hard for him, but he wanted only sex. At first, I could deal with that because the sex was great. But you know what? I really did fall hard and wanted more, but he just kicked me to the curb.”
“Well, that happened with you and I can’t live by your experiences. I have to live by my own.”
“You know, Malika, nothing I say will change your mind. All I have to say is, this is your life and there is nothing I can do to stop you. But I want you to consider this one thing: when you are with Travis, think about his wife and children. Think how you would feel if you were in her place and some hot professional woman had her sights set on stealing your husband.”
“Actually, I don’t know if that’s what’s happening. But I’m going to send him back home. I just want to spend time with him. I am not giving up my marriage and my son. I do love my husband. I love them both.”
“Well, I’m not sure you can be in love with two men at the same time.”
“I’m not sure either, but I am. So for right now, I just want you to be here for me and to listen.”
“I can do that for you, but I just don’t want you to make the same mistakes I did. It was very painful for me.”
“Are you over him?”
“Yes. But it took a long time.”
“He really hurt you?”
“Yes.”
“I have to follow my heart and right now, it craves two men.”
Pamela and I sat there at that table, by the huge picture window, staring at the cars that passed. We were deep in thought. I was thinking about Travis and how this happened to me. Yes, I needed counseling.
After we finished our lunch, we hugged and parted ways. She assured me she would always be my friend and be there whenever I needed her and I assured her the same. I was so glad we had lunch, because I knew she cared a lot about me and my happiness, and she wanted the best for me. That gave me the strength and the will to try again to talk to my husband. I had to make him listen. It was the only way I would be able to resist temptation. Dexter had to understand my needs.
I drove back to the office and asked my secretary, Ingrid, for Sarah’s files. I was ready to audit to see what she had been doing with her clients. I could not continue to battle with a subordinate every day. I felt if the other staff continued to witness this without Sarah receiving some type of repercussions, they would eventually begin to try me and that was not going to happen. So I was on a mission. I was going to let this woman go and move forward with our program’s mission.
As I read Sarah’s files, I immediately noticed that she had not made visits in the last six weeks with 60 percent of her clients. This was a major no-no as our contract specifically stated that we had to make biweekly visits. That was strike one. Strike two occurred when I contacted 10 percent of her clients, surveyed our services with them, and was told by the clients that they were not satisfied with Sarah. Other complaints against Sarah ranged from never returning calls to losing their important paperwork. Others said Sarah was not dependable. She promised to return with things they had requested and she never did. I assured the program participants that I would look into their complaints and would get back to each of them. I planned to meet with her the next day after I documented everything and figured out my plan of action.
As I documented information on Sarah, my phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Are we still on for today?”
“Yes, Travis, we are.”
“I’ll see you at four.”
I hung up the phone and I knew a smile stretched across my face because I could feel it almost touching my ears. Boy, I loved me some Travis. As I sat there, thinking and smiling, the phone rang again.
“Hey, Karen, how are you?”
“Girl, I’m fine. How’s the family?”
“Everyone here is fine. How are Tim and Shannon?”
“They are all fine. I talked to Mom and she said that you lost some weight. I want to know how much and what did you do to lose it?”
“I’m not sure, but I may have dropped about two dress sizes.”
“Girl, that is good. But you know it is not enough. You need to lose about thirty more pounds. You know men don’t want fat women. You could lose your husband if you don’t get all that weight off you.”
“Karen, it seems to me that you are the only one who is worried about my weight. Dexter isn’t complaining.”
“Men usually don’t. They just walk out on you when you least expect it. Trust me, I work with nothing but men and I hear them discussing this all the time. Yeah, they want to have sex with a fat woman, but they don’t take them home for keeps.”
“Karen, you have two seconds before I slam this phone in your ear.”
“Why do you get so upset when I try to help you? I am your sister and if I don’t tell you stuff, who will? You should trust your own sister enough to listen. After all, I do love you.”
“You sure have a funny way of showing it. You don’t do anything but piss folks off because you talk too much. There are some things you should keep to yourself. Be glad that I’m your sister because anybody else would beat your ass.”
“This conversation is over.”
I was shocked. Karen actually slammed the phone in my ear. That really surprised me. Karen was the type of person who everyone feared. No one wanted to hear anything bad about themselves from her. She was beautiful.
She had perfect features and was the perfect dress size, about a size four. Her bad qualities were that she knew it and treated others as if they should all bow down to be in her presence. Her husband was so in love with her that he could see no wrong in her. But others dreaded her coming around. It was too much trouble. You had to clean your home from top to bottom and purchase new things, because she would be so critical of everything in your house. You either let her think you were doing poorly financially or put on a big façade and pray her stay with you would be short.
Karen would hurt your feelings and would actually think you were the one with a problem if you fought back. She would be pissed if you said something to hurt her feelings. She could dish it out, but she couldn’t take it.
I, on the other hand, was fed up with her and her fat jokes. I was ready to battle, but Mom begged me to keep peace in the family. Karen had one more time and it was on.
I quickly finished documenting my notes on Sarah’s files. Now I had to write a corrective plan of action. This would be the first step in forcing her out. The corrective plan would be for thirty days and I would make it too difficult for her to meet her goals. After I wrote up what I needed her to accomplish, I put the plan in a manila folder, locked it in my desk drawer, and cleaned off most of my desk. Everyone had left the office except for Felicia, who was organizing her things before she left. The social workers and the nurse were out on home visits, seeing their clients. Ingrid left earlier to attend her daughters’ teacher and parent meeting. I could hear Felicia locking her file cabinets. It just happened to work out that the office was nearly empty. Most days were like this because it was flexible since we were a home visiting program and we arranged our schedules around the families.
Travis would be there in thirty minutes and I preferred that Felicia would not be in the office.
Felicia finally came to my office and said she was leaving.
“Come on, Malika. Let’s go. You know I don’t want to leave you here alone.”
“That’s okay. I have a lot of work to finish. You can leave. I will not stay late.”
“All right. You be safe and call me on my cell if you need me.”
“I’ll call you if I need you, but really, I will be okay.” Felicia was finally gone. Hopefully, she would not bump into Travis on her way out. But he wasn’t due for another twenty minutes. In the meantime, I decided to read my e-mail.
Around 4:00 P.M., I heard someone knocking on the door. I waited a minute before opening it. I didn’t want him to think I was just sitting there waiting for him. When I opened the door, my smile felt like it had expanded across my face and was as wide as the Mississippi River. I hated that shit. I knew he could read my feelings because how I felt about him was all over my face.
“Hi, Travis, how are you?”
“I’m fine. Can I come in?”
Travis walked over to the network center and began to fiddle with the system. I walked into my office. Sitting at my desk, I had a clear view of him. Occasionally, I would look up and he would be staring at me and smiling. Damn, he was handsome. I would smile back and continue to work. When I looked up the fifth time, he was not at the network. I peeped around and he suddenly appeared in my office.
“I see you are working hard,” he said.
“Yes, you can say that,” I replied. “Come in, I can spare a minute.”
Travis took a seat in front of me. We began to talk about the network system. “Your network is fine, but I wanted to make some suggestions on increasing your hard drive.”
“Do we need to do that?”
“Yes. With the amount of data your staff is entering into the system it is slowing down how the commands are responding.”
“Will that be costly?”
“Not really, I can check around and give you three bids for the things you’ll need.”
“Okay, then do that and we’ll look at the best bid and go from there.”
I had a black horoscope book on my desk. He picked it up and found his sign. He was a Scorpio. From what I had read and heard from so many folks, the Scorpio was a total freak. Hell, that turned me on even more, knowing that was his sign. I told him I was a Capricorn and we looked each other’s signs up and read them. We were compatible. That was good. Though I really didn’t believe in horoscopes, it was good to know that even that book made us a possibility.
“Travis, how do you get men to listen, you know, to hear what is really being said?”
“To get a man or a woman to listen to you, remove all interruptions; or take them out of what is familiar to them. This way they will pay attention to what you have to say.” Then he turned back to look at the book he was holding in his hand. Travis lifted the book up high in the air, he asked, “How often do you look at this book?”
“Pretty much never. It’s the first time I opened it while you and I looked through it.”
“Why?” He shifted in his chair and turned to face me directly, waiting on my response.
“I get too many interruptions at the office and the book is always here. There was no rush to read it.”
I thought he was through with our conversation about getting a man to listen because he was so focused on that book. But he quickly returned back to our initial conversation.
“To get a man to listen, remove him from his comfort zone. Take him away from his regular patterns. It’s like this. You expect your significant other to be there for you. Usually they are unless they are working or shopping, but they always return. You expect your spouse to return because they always do. So there is nothing new. You have these patterns and basically, folks keep to them. It doesn’t mean you don’t love the person, it’s just that you know they will always be there.”
“But you shouldn’t bank on that,” I said. “If you ignore your spouse, eventually, someone else will pay attention, then there’s trouble. People want to be noticed, touched, and loved. If their spouse doesn’t do it, somebody else will.”
“That’s why it is so important to take a person out of their normal comfort zone. It’s like a breath of fresh air. It’s like this book on your desk; it becomes useless if you never read it. Same thing with relationships! You have to keep talking to make things happen. If they don’t hear you in a familiar place, do something different.” He used the book to demonstrate it couldn’t help you if you never read it, similar to a man not being able to hear your concerns if you couldn’t get his full attention. So to fix the problem, he needed to know there was one.
“Well, my friend is thinking about having an affair because her husband doesn’t pay attention to her and she feels insignificant.”
“Maybe she needs to talk to her husband about her feelings. I’m talking about really giving examples, removing all interruptions like the TV and get him to listen.”
“Trust me, she did. But he told her that he was happy and she should be too.”
“She needs to keep talking. Men are hardheaded. You have to make them see things your way.”
“My friend is almost there. She is very interested in this man. All he needs to do is say the word and it’s on.”
“She needs to take a vacation with him. I’m sure that will help.”
Suddenly a smile rushed across my face. It felt like a light bulb was turned on. “You know that’s a good idea.”
Travis sat there smiling. A couple of times I noticed him staring at the picture of my husband. Maybe he knew it was me I was referring to. I could tell by the way that he looked at me. Even if he wasn’t sure it was me, his face showed hopefulness.
We talked a long time about relationships. He didn’t divulge any additional information about himself. I still did not know much about him. But I didn’t really care. All I knew was we were together, smiling in each other’s face for almost three hours. I was glad Dexter was picking up our son or the school would have been calling me more than an hour ago. It was almost seven o’clock and I was still not ready to leave.
“Let’s get ready to go,” Travis said.
“All right, Travis, let me shut down my computer.”
As I walked over to get my purse out of my file cabinet, I could feel his eyes on my ass. I sort of bent over, so he could get a better look. Come on, Travis, go after this ass.
We walked out the door together, almost touching each other. He smelled so good. I couldn’t keep it to myself.
“What are you wearing? You smell good.”
“I’m not sure. Something my wife bought me.”
Why the hell you bring her up? You are confusing me. You sit your ass in my face for three hours and now you mention her? Stop playing with my heart. We talked all the way down to our cars. He opened my door and I got in. We talked for another thirty minutes. He put his head through my window, and said, “We better get going.”
“I know. I don’t know where we get so much to talk about.”
“Malika, we have a lot in common.”
I smiled. I wanted to kiss him. Our faces were so close, but I didn’t know what to do. I had been married so long, I was clueless. He was staring deep into my eyes with his head inside my window. He was in my personal space. I could tell he wanted to kiss me, but he too seemed afraid. Why couldn’t I just pucker up and kiss him?
“Be safe and I’ll call you for lunch.”
“All right,” I said as I started my car and left. As I pulled out of the parking lot, my phone rang. It was Travis.
“Malika, let’s go to lunch Friday.”
“All right, Travis, I’ll see you then. Call me.”
“I will. Good-bye.”
“Bye.”
I dialed my friend, Pamela. She picked up on the second ring.
“Girl, I have been with Travis for more than three hours
.”
“You didn’t fuck him, did you?”
“I wish.”
“Tell me what the hell you were doing for three hours?”
“We were talking. But I wish we did more. I’m tired of waiting. I want that man extremely bad.”
“You need to take your ass home and fuck Dexter. Stay your butt out of trouble.”
“Yeah, right! I am taking my butt to my family, but that will not stop what I want to do.”
“I have one question, Malika. Does this man know you have fallen for him?”
“He must know. Why else would he sit around me like that?”
“Maybe he is trying to keep his marriage intact.”
“You know what, Pamela? I don’t want to break up his home. Like I told you, I love Dexter. I just want some excitement in my life. I’m attracted to this man. I have never stepped out on my relationship. This would be a first.”
“That’s why you should not partake in that sin because you will only fall in love with him.”
“I know you’re right. I’m basically there now. I know this is trouble, but I feel like I’m riding on a fast-moving train and soon it’s going to slow down and something is going to happen.”
We chatted about twenty minutes before I turned into my subdivision. “I’ll call you tomorrow and we’ll talk more,” I said as I pulled into my garage. “I’m at home in the garage now.”
“Go give Dexter some and forget about Travis.”
“Oh, I am going to give Dexter some, but it’s not going to stop me from wanting Travis.”
“Bye, girl.”
“Bye.”
Chapter 14
Decisions Are for the Weak at Heart
I drove to the office bright and early. It was a cold but sunny Wednesday morning and I was scheduled to do battle with Sarah at 10:00. This was going to be a no-brainier for me. I would read her the riot act and she could do what I stated in her corrective plan or get to stepping.
As I pulled into the office lot, I saw Travis’s black Mercedes. Damn, I can’t keep going through this. Why is he here so early? I feel so jumbled in my mind with him. Why is he here now? It’s like he is torturing me. I feel like I’m out of control. Like I’m topsy-turvy! I can’t work or think when he is around me. Yet we are not moving forward or backward. We are at a standstill. How did I get here? I hit my steering wheel in frustration. I have to go in. Something has to give soon. I’m tired of this back and forth. I freshened up my lipstick, grabbed my briefcase, and walked into the office building. I spoke to several other tenants before getting on the elevator. When the elevator arrived, I stepped on and rode to the second floor.
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