Just Another Damn Love Story

by Caleb Alexander

  Third nodded. “But if we all lived together again, then both of you could share me all of the time.”

  “Yeah, and that’s a really good idea,” Sterling said uncomfortably. “But, your mother and I have to have different houses right now.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, we like to do things different. Your mom has certain ways of running a house, and your dad has his ideas about how things should go. So, instead of arguing about which way to do things, we each have our own house so that we can do things the ways we like.”

  “My teacher says that everyone should compromise.”

  Sterling threw his head back in laughter. “You kids are getting sharper with each passing generation. Here, climb onto this swing so I can push you.”

  Third seated himself on the swing, and Sterling pushed from behind.

  “I’m really proud of you, Third. You’re doing really well in school, and you’re doing really well at home. You help your mother a lot, and you’re a fantastic kid. You’re the best son in the whole world.”

  “Are you buttering me up?” Third asked.

  Sterling laughed and rubbed his son’s head. “No, I’m not buttering you up! I’m just telling you how fantastic you are. You make me the happiest dad in the world, and I’m just letting you know it, that’s all.”

  “Can we go get ice cream?”

  Sterling peered at his watch. “We’ll ask you mother if she’ll let us go for some ice cream.”

  “You think she will?”

  “Maybe, if we let her go with us.”

  “I love you, Dad.”

  “I love you too, Third.”

  Chapter Four

  Chin Chin’s was Manhattan’s premier spot for upscale Asian cuisine. Nestled between 2nd and 3rd Avenues, the restaurant was patronized by the Big Apple’s elite. Wall Street movers and shakers, as well as sports stars, music artist, and runway superstars could be found sitting in the restaurant’s VIP section throughout the day. The restaurant’s delectable cuisine, as well as the potential for star gazing, was what made it one of the city’s trendiest spots. It was also what made the restaurant a favorite meeting place for Kimberly and her girlfriends.

  “Hey!” Kimberly rose from the table and greeted Mia, who was the first to arrive.

  “Hey, girl!” Mia said, hugging Kim. “I thought that I was early.”

  Mia was half Malaysian, and half Philippine. Her skin was a deep caramel, while her hair was long and wavy. She had full lips, hazel eyes, and thick natural eyebrows. She could have continued to model, and been a runway superstar, but instead her dreams took her to Princeton, where she majored in political science. She graduated from college at the age of eighteen, and received her Masters at the age of twenty. By the time she turned twenty one, she had her Ph.D in Political Science, and was a rising star in New York’s State Democratic Committee. Her current job was with the National Democratic Party’s New York office.

  “Let me look at you!” Kimberly told Mia, lifting her arms up. “Girl, love that Obama ’12 t-shirt! That is so cute!”

  “Twenty-twelve, girlfriend!” Mia said, hi-fiving Kim.

  “Are we gonna get it done?” Kimberly asked.

  “We gone get it done!” Mia told her.

  Mia had been one of Kim’s best friends since Princeton. Mia had been in graduate school, while Kim was an undergrad. But they were the same age, and they were dating roommates across the campus. Mia’s dating of Black men, often earned her the consternation of sisters on the street, and often brought Kim into the mix in defense of her friend.

  “Hey, girlfriends!” Brittany squealed as she walked to the table and hugged Kim and Mia.

  “Hey, girl!” Kim said, exchanging hugs.

  “Hey, girlfriend,” Mia said, hugging Brittany in turn.

  The three of them took their seats, just as the waiter approached and left menus around the table.

  “You cut your hair!” Kimberly declared.

  Brittany patted her pixie cut and modeled her new hair style for them, while they pretended to ooooh and aaaaah. Brittany was the silly one of trio. She had a goofy sense of humor, and took things much less seriously than the other two. She was white, privileged, and rich. Having light, naturally blond hair, crystal blue eyes, a gorgeous shape, and a degree from Princeton gave her an advantage in life that most would die for. The fact that her parents owned Sherwood Hotels didn’t hurt either. She could afford to take life as it came. Brittany’s biggest problem was whether she should marry Brent, the thoracic surgeon, or Bret, the oncologist. She had life by the horns, and like few others, truly controlled her own destiny.

  “Girl, with that Halle Berry cut, and that big old butt, people are going to think you got a little black in you,” Mia told Brittany.

  “Well, I’ve had some black in me before,” Brittany laughed. “Remember Gary?”

  “You’re nasty!” Kim laughed.

  Brittany rose and started bouncing her butt like a video girl. The three of them broke into uncontrollable laughter. Brittany seated herself and tugged at Mia’s red, white, and blue Obama t-shirt.

  “That is so cute!” Brittany told her.

  “That’s what I said!” Kim told them.

  “What’s your boy gonna do?” Brittany asked.

  “Win!” Mia said determinedly. “He doesn’t have a choice, not with Mia on his team! It’s win or win, no other option.”

  “They are really getting down on him about changing his position on drilling offshore,” Brittany told her.

  “And for changing his position on opening up the national petroleum reserves,” Kimberly added.

  “He had to,” Mia told them. “People are so blind, so short sighted. All they are worried about is how much they are paying for gas today. They don’t understand that nothing can be done to change gas prices in the immediate future. We could discover an oil deposit the size of Texas, but it takes time to extract it, refine it, and distribute it. And we don’t have enough refining capacity to deal with the oil being extracted now! But all they want to hear is more drilling, more oil, forget about the environmental consequences!”

  “Calm down, girlfriend!” Brittany said, laughing.

  “Well, you know how I get about my candidate!” Mia warned them. “Don’t mess with my Obama.”

  “You sound like Obama girl!” Kimberly told her.

  “I hope I don’t see you on U-tube!” Brittany laughed.

  “Can you imagine me shaking my skinny Asian ass on U-tube?” Mia said, laughing.

  “Just don’t get a stalking case when he shows up to campaign in New York,” Kimberly added.

  “Girl, speaking of crazy, how’s that super ghetto boss of yours?” Mia asked.

  “Crazier than ever,” Kim exhaled. “Still screaming and shouting about getting her money.”

  Mia and Brittany laughed.

  “She sounds like she should be singing the hook in a Rick Ross video!” Kim told them. “Get my money!”

  “Girl, how you still there, I don’t know,” Brittany told her.

  “It’s a job,” Kim exhaled. “Besides, I keep telling myself that things will get better. She’ll leave, get fired, get promoted, something will happen. It can’t get worse, so it has to get better.”

  “What about your crazy client?” Mia asked Brittany.

  “Ms. Diva, or Ms. Pencil Neck?” Brittany asked.

  “Ms. Pencil Neck,” Mia told her.

  “Girl, I want to strangle her,” Brittany told them. “She thinks that since she’s with the Ford Agency now, that her shit doesn’t stink. She refuses to take the jobs that I get for her as her agent, and refuses to do the promotions that I set up for her as her publicist. And she has a bad habit of making everyone around her feel fat.”

  Mia and Kimberly laughed.

  “Girl, I know that I am not fat,” Brittany told them. “Yeah, I got a booty on me, but other than that, I’m not fat. And my booty is not all flabby and fat with cellulite either.”r />
  “Girl, you are not fat!” Kim told her.

  “Then tell me why this bitch asked me if I had to shop in the women’s section of the department store? Brittany asked.

  “No she didn’t!” Mia chimed in.

  “Just because her anorexic, size zero ass shops in the junior miss section…”

  The waiter arrived.

  “Grand Marnier Shrimp,” Kimberly told him.

  “Same here,” Mia added.

  “Same here,” Brittany told him.

  The waiter nodded and disappeared.

  “You better watch your weight, Brittany,” Kim said jokingly.

  “Girl, don’t play with me,” Brittany told her. “I spend all day with skinny bitches, with pouty lips, walking like their legs are broke, with people telling them all how beautiful they are. The last thing I need is to be reminded that I’m not a size zero!”

  Kim, Mia, and Brittany broke into laughter.

  “Speaking of junior miss, Brent said that he saw John at the mall the other day,” Brittany announced.

  “What does that have to do with junior miss?” Kimberly asked.

  “Bret said that the pop tart he was with, looked young enough to be his little sister,” Brittany told them.

  “What?” Mia asked, leaning in.

  “He said that the little girl looked about eighteen.”

  Kimberly exhaled and waved her hand, dismissing the topic. “Well, another baby momma for him. Girl, I have moved on, and I wish him all the best.”

  “C’mon, now, Kim,” Mia said. “We are your girls, and we know how much John meant to you.”

  “He was your fiancée,” Brittany added.

  “You stayed in bed for how long after you two broke up?” Mia asked.

  “All water under the bridge, “Kimberly told them. “I am so over that man.”

  Mia and Brittany exchanged knowing glances.

  “Yeah, sure,” Mia told her.

  “I am.”

  “Men like John don’t exactly grow on trees,” Brittany declared.

  “You have two of them,” Kim reminded her.

  “Yeah, but that’s only because my last name is Sherwood.” Brittany told them. “I got assholes coming out of the closet, thinking that they are going to get their hands on some of my Daddy’s money. Girl, I’ve had boyfriends that have left Ferrari brochures on the bed.”

  “Get out of here!” Mia said, bursting into laughter.

  “Yes, I have!” Brittany shouted. “Trust me, good men don’t come a dime a dozen!”

  “Men are dogs!” Mia declared.

  “More like animals,” Kim told them.

  “I agree, they are animals,” Brittany said. “But some of them do make good pets,”

  The three of them broke into laughter.

  Kimberly exhaled. “I wonder when I’ll find the right pet.”

  “Until then, do what I did,” Mia told her.

  “What’s that?” Brittany asked.

  “Get a tea cup poodle to keep you company during the day, and vibrator named Kong to keep you company at night.”

  “Bitch, you’re nasty!” Brittany told her.

  “Slut,” Kim said, shaking her head and laughing.

  Mia smiled at them. “Thank you.”

  Chapter Five

  The meeting at K&G Men’s fashions was going as expected. It was another boardroom filled with men, ogling her body. Even though she had chosen a very conservative jacket and skirt by Escada, their eyes still walked up and down her body, and their seductive smiles and suggestive whispers amongst themselves told her what they were thinking. They weren’t paying attention to what she saying, only to the way her ass looked in her skirt. It was another wasted presentation.

  “Gentlemen, now if you turn to page ten in the prospectus, you’ll see the correlation between advertising in our magazine and the revenue growth companies have experience from it,” Kimberly told them. “We have been extremely profitable for similarly situated companies. I can guarantee you that your numbers will show an increase many times over what you spend. Your ad will pay for itself in a day.”

  Ken, the company’s vice president, leaned forward in his seat. “I compliment you on a very thorough, very persuasive, and very well done presentation. Our numbers are very positive this fiscal quarter, and our projections for next quarter are through the roof. I’m just trying to gauge how beneficial these ad dollars would be, being as though our revenue is already well into the black. There's a balance that we have to strike here, and spending money on advertisement while our numbers are so positive, might be throwing away dollars that could be well spent elsewhere.”

  Kimberly started to speak, but Ken held up his hand silencing her.

  “I’m just having a hard time visualizing a thirty percent increase in sales, when our sales have reached an all time high at present,” Ken continued, while shaking his head.

  “I have a problem seeing such a bump in revenue, because your readers are primarily women, while our buyers, distributors, and consumers are almost wholeheartedly men,” Kerry, the company vice president added.

  She was used to this argument. “Women buy men’s clothing. They make purchase decisions for their husbands, for their boyfriends, and for their sons.”

  “Our business suits are primarily purchased by a different demographic, Ms. Neel,” Ken told her. “Our buyer’s mommies don’t pick their suits. We sell business attire for executives who have climbed the corporate latter to some degree.”

  “You are familiar with our demographics, Ms. Neel?” Kerry asked.

  “Of course,” Kimberly told him. “And the women who read our magazine are primarily professional women, who are married to professional men. And I do believe that you are underestimating the number of men who pick up our magazine and read through it.”

  Ken leaned back in his chair, exhaled, and gave Kimberly a long hard glance. The silence throughout the room was deafening, as he stared at her for what seemed to be an eternity. For the first time in a long time, Kimberly found herself becoming nervous.

  “I’m inclined to give you a chance, Ms. Neel,” Ken told her. “A very small chance. We’ll take out a single ad, and watch the numbers the following month. If we show a bounce, and our marketing department can trace that bounce to your magazine, then you’ll have yourself a full year’s worth of advertisement. If not, then it was nice doing business with you.”

  Kimberly couldn’t help the smile that crept across her face. “You won’t regret it, sir.”

  Ken nodded, closed his prospectus, and rose from the table. “See Martin from accounting, and he’ll take care of the check. Then get with Dan in marketing.”

  Kimberly nodded, and began to gather her presentation material. This would get Laquisha off of her back for at least a day or two. And two days without Ms. Ghetto Queen screaming that ‘a bitch better have her money’, was better than none. It would give her time to concentrate on some of the big fish that she had lined up.

  *****

  Kimberly left K&G Men’s Fashions with a bounce in her step. Gravity seemed less weighty, and the burden on her shoulders to produce ad revenue was less heavy. She was on cloud nine and felt as though she could conquer the world. It was this new found confidence that allowed her to do something she never imagined doing; something that she had only dreamed of doing. Kimberly stopped at the large double glass doors to Vespasian’s New York office, pulled them open, and strutted inside.

  She had passed those doors several times throughout her career. Always on the way to or from meetings with other companies, she dreamed of the day when she could take on a meeting with the Italian giant. But for the longest, like everyone else in the marketing and advertising industry, she was deathly afraid of approaching the fashion giant. Everyone knew that Vespasian had their own powerful marketing arm. You didn’t call them, they summoned you. They advertised when they saw fit, which was rare, because such household names didn’t really need to advertise. In
the world of automobiles, one rarely saw a Rolls Royce advertisement. In the world of private corporate jets, one rarely came across a Gulfstream ad. The best didn’t advertise, they simply set the standards. In the world of men’s business suits, Vespasian was the standard bearer. Her shaking legs told her that she had just made a humongous mistake.

  “May I help you?” the receptionist asked.

  “Yes, I’m here for the meeting,” Kim lied. Her voice crackled because of her nerves.

  “Oh, you’re late,” the receptionist told her. “They’ve been expecting you.”

  The receptionist pressed a button beneath her desk, and a pair of glass sliding doors opened just behind her. “You can go into the conference room, they may still be in there.”

  “Thank you,” Kim said, nodding and smiling. She raced through the doors not believing that she was truly in. Now, she just had to convince the company's head honchos that advertising in Mocha, was the best thing they could ever do for their company.

  Kimberly crept down the hall until she came to a massive set of wooden double doors. The bronze plaque outside of the door read President, and she could hear someone in the office talking on the telephone. She exhaled, smoothed out her skirt, and pushed open the doors to find her target hanging up the telephone.

  “May I help you?” Wilson asked. He removed one of Sterling’s boxes from off of the desk and sat it on the floor.

  Kimberly was utterly surprised to find a Black man sitting behind the president's desk, of an Italian fashion house. Perhaps he was simply in charge of the company's New York office, she thought. But nonetheless, she thought it good fortune. The brothers didn't seem to be able to keep their eyes off of her, and for the first time in her career, Kimberly decided to use all of her assets. She stuck out her chest and seductively strolled further into the office. “No, but I can help you.”

  Wilson lifted an eyebrow. “Oh, really? And how would you be able to help me?”

  “By significantly increasing the revenues of your company,” Kimberly told him.