Dating Games

by RM Johnson

  “No,” Livvy shot back. “Why don’t you just cool off,” and then she threw the twenty ounces of steaming coffee at him. She knew it wasn’t as hot as it was when it was first given to her, but he still yelled out when it splashed across his face and chest. She knew it just stung him more than horribly burned him, but that would be more than enough.

  As he frantically tried to wipe the hot liquid from his face with his hands and the end of his necktie, Livvy looked at the shocked couple still sitting in their chairs, clutching the arms like they were on a highspeed roller coaster.

  “If you haven’t bought that car from this man yet, don’t. He’s a lying son of a bitch. And if he lied to me, then he probably lied to you too.”

  “Livvy,” Wade said, able to open his eyes now.

  “Go to hell, Wade,” Livvy said, then quickly walked out of his office, picking up speed, and running out of the showroom and over to her car. She got in, sat there a moment, and wanted to laugh at how funny Wade had looked, swatting at his face like he was being overrun by a swarm of killer bees, but she couldn’t. The urge to cry was just too powerful, and the thought of how once again she had been played for a fool did nothing but make the urge more intense.

  She let the tears fall, not even bothering to wipe them away. She cried all the way home, all the way up to her apartment, and even when she felt she wanted to stop, she couldn’t. The tears just kept coming, even after she had gotten home, and she knew it wasn’t just because her heart had been broken, but also because of the fear of being alone again. The pain that would come from knowing that no one loved her, no one cared.

  Livvy couldn’t deal with that again, just couldn’t, and especially now. She shot a glance at the phone and thought a moment about calling Carlos, but she couldn’t. She had finally gotten over him, and she knew that he wanted her only when it was convenient for him. But Livvy also remembered some of the times they had shared, and she felt herself standing from the sofa, taking a step in the direction of the phone. She thought about all the times they had made love, the last time in particular. How wonderful it was, how he told her that he truly loved her and that he never wanted them to be apart.

  Livvy was standing just in front of the phone now, looking down at it, telling herself she shouldn’t call Carlos. But he had been calling her so much lately. After all they had been through, she could’ve at least had the decency to have called him back. She would do that now. That’s all she would be doing, calling him back.

  Livvy picked up the phone, dialed his number, wiping tears from her eyes and cheeks, trying to pull herself together. The phone rang three times, and she prayed that he’d pick up, swearing that if he did, all she would do was talk to him, all she would do was explain how she was feeling, what she was going through. Maybe she would even tell him about Wade. Maybe Carlos could give her some advice about men. Who knows, maybe they could become just good friends.

  The phone rang a fourth time.

  THE WAY Carlos made love to her this time was so good that Wade was fast becoming a memory.

  Livvy was lying on her belly, Carlos was spent, lying heavy on top of her, blowing soft, cool air into her ear. “ good for you, Mommy?”

  “Ah, si, Papi,” Livvy said, smiling, her body still shaking from the huge orgasm she had just experienced.

  Carlos raised himself up, allowing Livvy to roll over on her back. He lay his slick, sweat-covered body back on top of hers, and kissed her deeply. He pulled back from her and said, “I thought you had forgotten about me. Thought you didn’t love me no more.”

  “I thought you had forgotten about me.”

  “Never,” Carlos said, sounding very committed. “You’ll always be my woman. I will always love you.”

  And those were the exact words Livvy needed to hear at that moment. She wrapped her arms around Carlos’s bare body, clasping her hands together, closing her eyes, and never wanting to let go.

  It was after 11 P.M., and she was hungry, but she wouldn’t eat. She didn’t want to interrupt this for anything. The place could’ve been on fire, and she would’ve preferred to lie there and risk getting burned. She decided they would just lie in bed, make love some more, and in the morning, Livvy could call in, say she was sicker than she’d thought. She’d make them a huge breakfast, and they’d lounge around in bathrobes and make love some more. It would be perfect, she thought, and then she heard the tiny, electronic sound of “London Bridge” being played. It was Carlos’s cell phone.

  She felt him stir above her, but she tightened her embrace.

  “Don’t get that.”

  “Baby …”

  “Let it ring,” Livvy pleaded, holding him even tighter.

  “Can’t,” he said, tearing himself from her, leaping out of bed, and grabbing the phone off the dresser, where it was prominently displayed, as if he had expected it to ring.

  “Carlos,” he answered. “Yes … yes … okay. Be there in half an hour,” he said, then clicked off.

  When he looked back to Livvy, she was sitting up in bed cross-legged, shaking her head.

  “Don’t say it,” she said.

  “I got to go, baby. Business,” he explained, slipping on his pants.

  “At almost midnight? What kind of fucking business is that?” Livvy said, knowing she shouldn’t have been there, but she couldn’t help herself.

  “Livvy,” Carlos said, leaning into her, buttoning his shirt with one hand, caressing her face with the other. “You will not do this. Business happens when business wants. I cannot argue with that.” He stepped into his shoes without even putting on his socks, just stuffed them into his pants pockets.

  He leaned back over the bed toward her, “Now give me a kiss goodbye.”

  She gave him a long hateful look.

  “C’mon, now.”

  She did as she was told, and then he was gone, leaving Livvy lying in bed, the sweat from his body not even dry on her skin yet, the phantom feeling of him inside her still present.

  “Business,” Livvy huffed, just after she heard Carlos walk out the front door. She knew it wasn’t any fucking business. It was some other woman. She just knew it, and at first she told herself that she had no right to get angry, but then thought why didn’t she? She was the woman who was there for him when he had nothing. She was the one who held his hand through every endeavor, celebrated with him during his first triumphs, and comforted him during his many failures. She was the woman who made that man strong, and now, just because he was successful, did that mean that she had to take his treating her like nothing? Did she have to lie there while he used her as a stress reliever, a toy for his pleasure, and then say nothing when he decided to roll out on her not even five minutes after getting his thang off?

  Hell naw, Livvy thought, jumping out of bed and quickly throwing on some sweats. She was used by Wade, but she’d gotten back at his ass today, and she would do the same thing with Carlos.

  FORTY

  BY THE time Livvy jumped off the elevator and ran outside, she saw Carlos’s car just pulling out of the parking lot. She got in her car and followed him, making sure to keep a good distance behind him so he wouldn’t spot her.

  She didn’t have to drive for long. It was just a few blocks before he had stopped in front of an old frame house, looking as though it would topple to the ground any day.

  Livvy stopped abruptly, still a number of car lengths behind him. She didn’t know what he was doing, whether he was onto her, but she pulled in between two cars that were parallel parked on the street and waited.

  She saw the brake lights of his car flash, then the white reverse lights quickly blink, and she knew he had put the car in park. Livvy continued to wait intently, her eyes going back and forth between the car and the house it was sitting in front of.

  She had an idea why he was there, but she was hoping that she was wrong. Livvy was praying that it was truly business. Hoping that some man would walk out of that house wearing a suit, carrying a briefcase, and rol
l out huge architectural plans of some structure he wanted built, and that would be the end of that.

  But Livvy was pretty sure she was just dreaming, and that was confirmed when the front door of that crumbling house opened, and out walked a beautiful woman about ten years younger than Livvy. She wore a tight-fitting dress, her long, loosely curled hair flowing down over her shoulders and back.

  It wasn’t like Livvy was telling herself to do it, more like her body had just taken over her mind. She pulled the car out of the parking space and just sat there in the middle of the street, still a good distance away from Carlos and the woman now walking to his car.

  As she sat there, tears started to fall down her face for the second time today. It wasn’t even because he was with another woman. There had been rumors that he had been cheating on her for years, and she’d always known it might have been true. It was more the fact that he had just left her. That he had just climbed out of her bed after lying with her, making love to her, blowing in her ear, and telling her that she would always be his woman, that he would always love her. Then the first phone call he got, he was up and running. Running just down the fucking street. The dog didn’t even have the decency to shit outside his own backyard.

  Livvy felt her foot lying heavy on the gas pedal, heard the engine revving, low and then high, each time she applied pressure. She knew that any other day, seeing what she was seeing, she would’ve felt like cursing the man out, like going off on him like never before. But after today and all the shit with Wade—, Livvy felt like killing Carlos.

  The woman got into the passenger side of the car and closed the door, and that was when Livvy threw the car in drive, punched the gas, and took off.

  It didn’t happen in slow motion as she always heard it did. It all occurred in the blink of an eye. One moment she felt the force of the car speeding off, throwing her back into her seat. Then she saw Carlos’s car become bigger and bigger in her windshield, and then the impact. It was as if she had hit a brick wall. She was jolted forward. She heard the deafening crumpling of metal. The seat belt yanked her back, and then for the slightest minute, she didn’t know where she was.

  Everything came back to her, though, when she saw Carlos stepping out of his car, looking as if he was ready to murder whoever it was who had rear-ended him.

  Livvy quickly undid her seat belt, jumped out of the car, and was taking hard, quick steps toward him, her right hand tightening into a fist as she went.

  “What the fuck!” Carlos said, when his brain finally allowed him to comprehend that it was really Livvy he saw heading toward him. “Bitch! Are you—”

  But before he could get another word out of his mouth, Livvy hit him squarely across the chin. From the impact of the punch, he fell. He dropped, and Livvy felt the urge to burst out in laughter, she was taken so much by surprise at how quickly and easily he was put down. But he had only fallen to one knee, caught off-guard, and he quickly sprang back up, grabbing her by her shoulders and shaking her furiously.

  “What the fuck’s wrong with you! Are you crazy, hittin’ my shit!”

  “Fuck you!” Livvy said, then spat in his face. The saliva landed in his eyes. Carlos took a step back, wiping at them.

  “You said you loved me! I put up with your ass for all these years, listened to all your promises that you never kept, and I got to catch you runnin’ around wit’ some trick-ass bitch!”

  The girl was out of the car now, and she gasped at the remark.

  “What you gonna do, bitch?” Livvy challenged, spreading her arms out, inviting a fight.

  The woman looked away, and Livvy was about to go after her anyway, before she was snatched by the arm and dragged back by Carlos to the rear of his car.

  “You see this? You gonna pay for this shit. You hear me?” Carlos shook her. Livvy didn’t respond. He shook her harder. “You hear me!”

  “No. I don’t hear shit,” Livvy threw back. “This don’t even compare to all that I gave to your sorry ass. You want it fixed, pay for it your damn self. Or get the bitch to fix it.” Livvy then turned to walk off. But Carlos grabbed her again.

  “No, you’re gonna pay for it,” Livvy heard him saying, and she was being forcefully spun to face him. When he’d spun her all the way around, she didn’t meet him with words, but with a heavy swipe of her hand, gouging his face with her nails. Carlos fell away again, backpedaling, his hands shooting up to his face. He pulled them away, saw the blood, and then he lost it.

  He raced after Livvy, grabbing her by her shirt, and hitting her with the back of his fist. Livvy whirled around, tripping over her feet, falling hard to the ground. She rolled onto her knees and tried to crawl back toward her car, but was grabbed by the hair, pulled up, and again, Carlos hit her—this time his fist, straight on, and Livvy felt his knuckles dig into her eye. She saw bright, starlike explosions. Her body gave. It wanted to fall, but it was being held up against its will by Carlos so he could continue pounding her.

  “Bitch, you wanna fuck wit’ me?” he yelled, and he slapped her with his palm this time. “Who the fuck you think you are?” And she was slapped again, this time with the back of his hand. “You ain’t shit but a fuckin’ piece of old pussy, bitch!” he yelled, and was rearing back his fist, still holding her by the hair, as if he was sizing her up for his most deadly blow, when the other woman threw herself on him, grabbing his arm.

  “No, Carlos, don’t. Don’t. Let’s just go,” Livvy heard her say.

  Livvy tried to look up at that girl, up at Carlos to see if he was listening, but her left eye had already ballooned completely shut, and tears blurred her right.

  Livvy didn’t hear a response from him, didn’t know what was going to happen next, until she felt him release her hair. As if she didn’t have a bone in her body to support herself, Livvy crumpled to the ground, there in the middle of the street, the one working headlamp of her car illuminating just how badly she had been beaten.

  THE CAR was wrecked, but it was able to get Livvy the few blocks back to her apartment. She stumbled out of the car, onto the elevator, feeling as though her head was not her own. As she rode up, she gently explored with the tips of her fingers the damage done to her face. She could feel how grotesquely puffy and distorted her face had become.

  She stepped off the elevator, unlocked the door to her apartment, and walked in.

  Ally was on the sofa again, watching TV, and after hearing her mother walk in, she said, “I’m turning it off now.” Pulling herself off the couch, she turned and caught sight of Livvy. Ally screamed, rushed over to her.

  “Mama, what happened?” she cried, tears already spilling down her face.

  “Nothing, baby,” Livvy said, taking Ally’s hand, and walking gingerly toward the sofa.

  “Mama, I said what happened!” Ally asked again, nearly hysterical. “What happened to your face!”

  “Baby, I said it’ll be all right.” Livvy sat down with Ally’s help. “Now just get a frozen hamburger patty out of the freezer and bring it to me.”

  Ally rushed into the kitchen, brought back what her mother asked for. Livvy took the frozen, plastic-covered piece of meat and gently placed it over her swollen eye. She winced from its cold touch.

  Ally stood there over her, still crying, looking helpless.

  “Mama, I’ma call the police.”

  “No,” Livvy said. “Just sit down, and don’t do nothing.”

  Ally did as she was told. Livvy leaned back into the couch, trying to get accustomed to the cold burning on the side of her face.

  “Mama, who did this? Who did this to you, Mama?”

  The sound of her daughter weeping for her was killing Livvy. The fact that she had to see this was not right. All those years her children had seen her mistreated and had felt sorry for her. And now, Ally had to see her mother abused and feel the pain of seeing her suffer. It wasn’t right, and it was all her fault. All her fault.

  Livvy turned to her child. “Alizé, it doesn’t matter who did i
t.”

  “It was Carlos, wasn’t it?”

  “I told you—”

  “Wasn’t it, Mama? Let’s call the police. Or I know some people. It won’t cost much, and they can—”

  “Ally, dammit!” Livvy yelled, pulling the frozen meat from her eye and slamming it on the table. “It wasn’t his fault,” she said, lowering her voice some. “I let him do this to me. Do you understand?” She looked into her child’s eyes with the one eye she was able to see through. “I allowed him to do this to me because I wasn’t strong enough to stop seeing him. I wasn’t strong enough to be on my own. I couldn’t just love myself. I had to have someone else say they loved me before I could see any worth in me. And look what it’s gotten me, Ally.”

  “Mama,” Ally cried, reaching for her mother’s face but not knowing where to touch her.

  “I want you to look at me. I mean really look at me, and see what can happen when you don’t value yourself—when you place a man over you and everything that’s important to you. Do you see me, Alizé?”

  Ally tried hard to look directly at her mother’s beaten face, but it was too painful for her, and she kept looking away. Livvy reached out and grabbed her chin in her hand, physically forced her.

  “Look.”

  And the girl did. Through the tears that flooded her eyes, she looked at her mother.

  “Do you see, baby?”

  Ally nodded.

  “This is why I’m so hard on you, why you always thinkin’ I’m being mean to you. It’s because I want better for you, sweetheart,” Livvy said, placing an arm around Ally’s shoulder and bringing her close. “I have to protect you, baby, because you just like I was.”

  “I am?” Ally said, looking into her mother’s eyes, almost sounding proud.