A Woman's Revenge

by Sherri L. Lewis

  I said, “So he takes you to Baltimore. He takes me down to Reston.” Blake must have wanted to keep her a secret, just like me.

  She frowned. “Takes me to Baltimore? I live in Baltimore. You mean he drives you an hour and a half away to take you out to dinner?” She laughed that bitter laugh again. “You poor girl.” She gave me such a condescending look I shrunk down in my seat some.

  The next picture was a black-and-white and had been taken from a distance. It was another woman who looked like us. Her head was thrown back as she laughed at whatever Blake was whispering in her ear. A third picture had another woman who looked like us but she looked a little older and a little thicker. She was smiling real hard with Blake’s lips close to her ear. I looked away quickly, my heart pounding in my chest. “Where did you . . . How did you . . .”

  “Private investigator.” She looked into my eyes. “You okay?”

  I shook my head slowly.

  “First time you been cheated on?”

  I nodded.

  Christine patted my hand. “Sweetie, I wish I could tell you this was going to be the last. All men cheat. It’s just their nature. Poor things just can’t help themselves.” She shook her head, eyeing the pictures. “I’ve never seen it this bad, though.”

  I looked at her and figured she had to be in her early thirties. The look in her eyes said she had been through a lot. The tone in her voice said this kind of hurt and heartbreak weren’t new to her. “Why? Why would he . . . Why do they?” I asked.

  She stared at me like I was from another planet. “Are you serious?”

  I nodded and looked away. I didn’t believe that all men cheated. Maybe that was her experience, but they couldn’t be all bad. Maybe I could figure out from her how to know which ones would cheat and what made them cheat. Even though my heart felt like someone had just driven over it with a truck, I still wanted to get married and have a family one day. It was the only thing I had ever wanted, since I didn’t have a real family growing up.

  “I’m going to give you this for free.” She fanned the pictures out. “Why men cheat.” She chuckled to herself. After she shuffled a couple of the photos around, she organized them into little stacks. “Sometimes it’s because they’re bored or feel like they’re not getting what they need from the relationship.” She arranged the stacks in order on the table. I was shocked to see pictures of Blake with his arms wrapped around me behind his locked office door. I thought we had been discreet. How did someone get pictures of us at work?

  Christine continued, her voice getting angrier as she kept talking. “Some men cheat because they can’t find everything they want in one woman. So they get what they need from several women. Looks like Blake has a wide range of interests and tastes he’s trying to feed with a bunch of women.”

  She stopped shuffling the pictures and took a big sip of water. “Ready? Let’s take a look at the many faces of Blake Harrison.” She pointed to her own picture. “I’m a lawyer, like Blake. Truth be told, I’m actually smarter than Blake. So I fulfill his need for a brilliant woman who can challenge his intellect.”

  She picked up the first stack of photos, all of Blake and the same woman. Her makeup and clothes were real dramatic looking, and even though the pictures were taken secretly, she looked like she was on stage or something. Like the world was watching her. She had to be almost six feet tall because she was almost as tall as Blake, who was six foot two.

  Christine said, “This one lives in New York and is an aspiring singer, model, and actress. I guess she fulfills his artistic side.”

  My eyes bugged out when I looked at the next stack of pictures. The girl had on a tight tank top with her breasts spilling out of it, and super tight jeans. She looked like me, Christine, and the New York model lady except for the blond wig she was wearing. What was really crazy was Blake’s outfit. Most days he wore thousand-dollar suits. The most casual thing I had ever seen him wear was Dockers and a button-down shirt. In this picture, he had on an oversized jersey with a baseball cap, Tims, and jeans.

  “Who knew Blake had a little thug in him?” Christine chuckled. “This one lives in Philly.”

  She looked me up and down. “Let me guess. Not only are you his personal assistant who waits on him hand and foot, you’re the sweet little church girl who reminds him of his blessed mama—God rest her soul.”

  “Executive assistant,” I said with not enough fire in my voice. It felt like she had stabbed me in the heart.

  The waitress came to take our food order but I knew there was no way I could eat. I was ready to throw up the little bit of water I drank looking at the pictures scattered across the table.

  “Well, if it makes you feel any better, you and I were the only ones who graduated to fiancée,” Christine said. “The model and the Philly girl seem to be random weekend flings.”

  I thought of the hotel, limo, and train reservations I had made for those weekend flings that I had thought to be business trips. My stomach turned. What kind of man had his woman make his travel arrangements to go sleep with his other women?

  “The only one I can’t figure out is the older lady.” She pushed the other pictures to the side and fanned out three pictures. “I would say she’s filling his mother hunger, but even though this chick is forty-one, she doesn’t look like anybody’s mama. And judging from the fact that my PI said most of their time together was spent having loud sex, she don’t act like nobody’s mama either. They live in the same building. Maybe she was just a convenient piece of tail. Maybe she did all the freaky stuff I refused to do.”

  My face turned red with embarrassment at her talking about sex so openly. “Well, at least I never had sex with him.” For a brief second, I felt a little better. It was my only consolation in this whole mess.

  For the first time since the whole conversation started, Christine’s mouth dropped open and she looked shocked. “Never had sex with him?”

  I shook my head with a sense of pride that I had more dignity in this whole thing than she did.

  A broad grin spread across her face. “Then, honey, you missed out on the best part of Blake Harrison.” She let out a laugh so loud several other people in the restaurant turned to look at us. When Christine stopped laughing, she placed a hand on my cheek. “You poor, sweet child. Promise me one thing. Next time you’ll deal with a man your own age?”

  My cheeks went red again. I looked down at the table.

  She sat back in her chair and downed the glass of wine the waitress had brought at her request. She slammed the glass down on the table so hard I thought it would break.

  “Remember this.” She gave me a serious look. “When you wade through all that bull crap and get to the root of the matter . . . Why do men cheat? Because they can.”

  I pulled the stacks of pictures toward me, wanting to burn each one of them into my brain to give me the strength to do what I needed to do the next time I saw Blake Harrison. The pictures of the older lady were farthest away and I strained to see her.

  Christine saw me looking and slid them toward me. “Yeah, take a good look. You can see how fabulous you’ll be sixteen years from now.”

  I picked up the pictures, staring into the older, thicker woman’s beautiful face. I closed my eyes, shook my head, and stared at them again. I let out a gasping breath.

  It couldn’t be. I looked at the last picture that gave it away. As seemed to be his habit, Blake was whispering something in her ear. With her head thrown back, mouth wide open, I could almost hear that familiar laugh bellowing out. I hadn’t heard it in more than ten years, but it was a sound I could never forget.

  I started shaking so hard I dropped all the pictures. Christine picked them up, shoved them into the envelope, and then stared at me with concern in your eyes. “What’s wrong, honey? Are you okay?”

  I shook my head and could barely get the words out. “That’s . . . that’s my mother.”

  Chapter Three

  I honestly didn’t know how I made it back
to my apartment. After I recognized that face in those photos, I got up and took off running. Christine called out after me, but I just kept running until I didn’t hear her voice anymore. I didn’t remember getting in my car or starting it up or driving the twenty-minute drive home.

  I sat in my car parked in front of my apartment and finally broke down. I didn’t know what tore me up the most: finding out who Blake Harrison really was or finding out that my so-called fiancé had slept with my . . . mother.

  I screamed out loud and banged both fists on the steering wheel. I thought I hated her as much as I could hate any person before, but now I felt new levels of hate rising up in me. My grandmother had always warned me that my hate for my mother would eat me up one day and right now I believed it would. I knew, sure as I was black—as Grandma used to say—if I saw her right now, I would kill her.

  I kept screaming and banging until my head hurt and my voice was raw. It never occurred to me that someone might hear me or see me. If they did, I was surely gonna get carried off to the crazy house.

  Maybe that’s where I belonged. Because I was crazy to believe that someone like Blake Harrison could have actually loved me and wanted to marry me. That thought had crossed my mind so many times during our whirlwind romance. Why would someone like him pick someone like me? I had thought it was God’s blessing.

  I let out another scream. This was no blessing. It was a curse.

  There was a soft knock on the passenger’s side window. I looked through my swollen eyes to see who it was. Just when I didn’t think this situation could get any worse....

  It was Gerald Dawson, one of my neighbors. He had taken me out to dinner a few times and to a few movies. We had even gone to church together and out for Sunday brunch afterward. He was a really sweet guy and I actually had enjoyed our dates, but when Blake first expressed an interest in me, I dropped Gerald like a hot potato. A simple guy like him didn’t hold a candle to a man like Blake, so I dismissed him without a second thought. I guess this was divine justice: him getting to see me all torn up over Blake a few months after I hurt his feelings.

  He knocked again. “Sabrina, you okay?”

  I dug in my purse and found some old, crumbly tissue and dried my face. I tried to wave him away, but he came around to my side of the car and opened the door. “What’s going on? Is everything all right?”

  “I’m fine. Please, just go away.”

  “You don’t look fine. Is there anything I can help you with? Did someone die or something?” He was so doggone sweet, just like he had been every time we went out. Made me feel even worse. The tears started flowing again and I dropped my head onto the steering wheel.

  “No. Nothing like that.”

  “Okay.” He shifted from side to side for a second. “Is there anyone I can call for you? I hate leaving you alone like this.”

  “No. Please just go.” I made myself smile at him. “I’m fine. Really.”

  “Okay. Well if you need anything call me. You still have my number?” His eyes were hopeful.

  I nodded. I couldn’t tell him I had deleted his number from my phone after my third date with Blake. “Thanks, Gerald.”

  He patted me on the shoulder and left.

  Somehow I dragged myself into my apartment. I closed the door and leaned back on it, crying real hard at the thought that there really was no one he could call for me.

  I lost my best friend, Janine, over an argument we had when I confided in her about my relationship with Blake. She had said a bunch of stuff that I thought was mean and jealous then, but I now knew to be the truth. She had apologized and tried to make up, but I had dissed her too, looking forward to the new set of classier friends I would have in Blake Harrison’s world.

  Janine still called me once a week—every week—and left the sweetest messages about how much she loved me, inviting me to go places and hang out with her. I always ignored her, thinking she’d get the picture, but every week, right on schedule, her name would show up on my caller ID. The rest of our circle of friends didn’t take so kindly to being ignored and had stopped calling. There was no way I could call any of them now.

  I hadn’t been to church in months. I worked so hard for Blake during the week that I needed Sundays off to rest. It was wrong, but I figured I’d have time for God later when I was married, well off, and didn’t need to work anymore.

  I cried all the way down the hall to my bedroom, peeled off my suit, and crawled into bed. I prayed for sleep but all sorts of thoughts kept creeping into my mind. Those brown, beautiful faces flashed through my mind, one by one. How had Blake managed to juggle all of us? I guessed I was his Friday evening girl. He must have gone to Baltimore on Saturdays and Sundays. He had his occasional weekend trips to Philly and New York. And then my mother . . .

  I screamed so hard I was sure my neighbors would call the police because they thought someone was trying to kill me. I cried until my voice was ragged. When I finally quieted down to occasional sniffles and sobs, my cell phone chimed to let me know a text message had come through. It was from Blake:

  Dinner plans at the club got cancelled so you can come over for a nice dinner with your future husband. Remember to use the service elevator.

  Dinner plans got cancelled? I bet they did. I was sure he had planned to be in Baltimore with Christine. So since she had cancelled, I was supposed to drop everything and go have dinner with him? Did he make Christine the lawyer use the service elevator?

  I threw the cell phone across the room. It hit the wall with a loud bang and then fell into pieces on the floor. Next thing I knew, I had jumped out of bed and thrown on some jeans and a top. After I pulled on my tennis shoes, I ran toward the kitchen and started pulling open drawers.

  Blake knew me as the little innocent church girl. He didn’t know that before I got all saved and holy, I was raised by a mother who would cut a man real good without thinking twice. I had seen her stuff a butcher knife in her purse many a time before she’d go running out the door, yelling some guy’s name mixed with a bunch of cuss words. She’d come home, calmly wash the knife, and put it back in the kitchen drawer. All she would say was, “Sometimes, a woman just has to let a man know . . .”

  It was only after my mother ran off and left me that my grandmother started taking me to church. Grandma said she couldn’t have me turning out like my mother—being wild, getting pregnant, and leaving her with another child to raise.

  I shoved a couple of kitchen knives into my purse. I wasn’t sure what I was going to slash, but something was going to get cut tonight. Maybe Blake’s pretty-boy face.

  I got in my car and headed for Sixteenth Street. I pushed God’s voice out of my head. I was gonna get Blake Harrison and I was gonna get him good. I had to push my grandmother’s voice out of my head, too. Because with those knives in my purse and revenge in my heart toward some man, I was becoming something she never wanted me to be.

  Just like my mother.

  Chapter Four

  As I pulled up to Blake’s building, I saw Christine driving off in a Lexus coupe with a smile on her face. What was she doing here? Did she just confront Blake? No way would I be smiling after getting up in his face. And there was surely no way he would be smiling when I left.

  My first inclination was to proudly march up to the concierge and tell him to unlock the elevator up to the penthouse so I could make a grand entrance. I thought about the knives in my purse, though. I didn’t know what damage I would do when I got upstairs and didn’t need anyone identifying my picture as the last person seen going to Blake Harrison’s condo when the police started their investigation.

  I drove around to the service entrance and prepared to go up the back elevator like I always did. The problem was, I usually used the service elevator to ride up to the floor beneath his, and then would call from my cell phone for him to come down to get me since I had to have a special key to get up to the penthouse. Unfortunately, my cell phone was lying in pieces on my bedroom floor.

>   When I thought of the covert shenanigans I had let Blake take me through for the sake of “discretion,” as he called it, my blood boiled hotter. I got off at the floor beneath his and started pacing back and forth, trying to figure out how me and my knives were going to get upstairs. I paced up the back hall, and then to the main hall where the front elevator was.

  As I tromped by the fancy wallpaper and light fixtures in the hallway, staring down at the fancy carpet, I realized how nice and high class this building was. I would probably never get to live anywhere this nice. I would be stuck in my low-class apartment for the rest of my life.

  And then it really hit me. I was about to lose everything. Not only had I lost my fiancé, I was about to lose my job. There was no way I could continue to be his executive assistant. I wouldn’t be able to work in the same building. There was no way I could be anywhere near that man.

  Where would I find a job that paid me the inflated salary that Blake paid me? I’d have to go back to my one bedroom in the same complex I had upgraded from last year when I got the promotion and raise after switching from lowly secretary to Blake’s executive assistant.

  I stopped cold in the hallway when I realized I had given up everything for him—going back to college, my friends, my church. Now I had nothing.

  And now I was going to take everything from him. I would plunge my knife straight through his heart, just like he had plunged a knife through mine. Did he really think he was going to get away with this?

  I heard the elevator ding behind me and heard someone get off. I hoped they were going toward the opposite end of the building from where I was pacing. If a witness mentioned seeing me pacing on the floor below Blake’s, I could get a life sentence or the death penalty because they could say his death was premeditated.

  Chill out, Sabrina. You’re not gonna kill the man. He just needs to be shook up a little. Maybe shed a few drops of blood.