Her Designer Baby

by Shawna Washington

  Making my way back down the hall into the living room, with all of these thoughts vying for attention, I say, “Emilio, do you…” My voice trails off. He’s not on the couch where I expect him to be. He’s standing by the end table.

  Holding my little purple purse in his hands.

  My brows knit in confusion. “What are you doing?”

  He sets my purse back down on the table. “I was just looking to see if you had a mint.” His eyes lighten and strike with a bright appreciation. He smiles and puts his hand in his jacket pocket. “You look beautiful, Radiah. Are you ready?”

  He hasn’t missed a beat. So I don’t know why I don’t believe him. But I don’t. I don’t believe him. Maybe it’s because it doesn’t seem like him. He’s been so polite, so...chivalrous. Going through a woman’s purse, even just to look for a mint, is so opposite to everything else he’s done until now. Why wouldn’t he have waited for a minute, to ask me instead of going through my things? It’s a breach of privacy and he knows it. Only a fool wouldn’t realize it. And Emilio is not a fool.

  “A mint?” I repeat it because I’m just too incredulous. A part of me really wants to let it go. A part of me really wants to ignore my suspicions, because honestly, I have no idea what I’m even suspicious of. Why would he be going through my purse? He doesn’t need cash, or anything else I can possibly think of. It’s obvious Emilio has money. So then...what?

  Taking his hand back out of his pocket, Emilio straightens his palm down at his suit jacket. His words are very even and calm, almost amused. But there is something of a menace in that cool demeanor. Something of a taunt in the way he says, “Something wrong, Radiah?”

  “Well.” I hesitate. Should I just drop it? I should. I really should. I can tell he’s becoming agitated. But to be honest, I’m feeling a little agitated too. And it’s just not in my nature to let something like this go, though a part of me wants to. I know that if I don’t talk about it now it’s going to be on my mind all night. And I don’t want that. I just want to understand what he was really doing. I want him to give me a real answer, one that makes real sense.

  “Yes. Something’s wrong. I don’t believe that you were just looking for a mint, Emilio. You could have waited for me. You could have asked me if I had one, you know? Not just start digging through my purse while I’m in the other room.”

  “Really? That makes you act like this?” Shaking his head, he looks away, towards the window. The smooth line of his jaw ticks. His eyes are amused, but it’s not the kind of amusement that does anything to set me at ease. “Honestly, I didn’t think you’d mind. I mean, what do you think I’m looking for? Cash? The truth is that I didn’t think you were so uptight, Radiah. So, yes, I looked in your purse.” He swings his eyes forward again. He gives a short, barking laugh. “For a damn mint.” His shoulders widen. “Because I can see how badly you want me to kiss you again, Radiah. You haven’t stopped ogling me since I walked through the door.”

  “What?” I can hear the shaking in my voice. I really hadn’t expected him to get worked up. “I mean… You should have asked, Emilio. You know that, right?” There are boundaries. And sure. I like him, but we don’t know each other well enough for that. And my eyebrow arches. “How badly I want to kiss you?” What’s going on? Why is he acting so strange all of a sudden? “What were you doing? Really?”

  His brow lowers. His eyes are glaring. Deliberately, he starts walking towards me. The look in his eyes, the menace in his movement, makes me take a step backwards. I can’t believe what I’m seeing. I can’t believe what I’m hearing. It’s like Emilio is literally becoming a different person. I even think about calling out for Carla, just to have her here. Just in case.

  In case of what?

  “Are you stupid? I just told you what I was doing!” He shouts it. “That should be good enough for you!”

  He’s yelling. His face is flushing red and when he stops a few feet away from me, stares down at me with that hard-eyed glare, I feel something I don’t let other people make me feel. I feel something I’ve rarely ever felt, ever. I feel afraid.

  Summoning all of my courage, because he has does this to me, because I feel afraid, I meet his eyes dead on. I’m not going to flinch, not now. “Yeah. You told me. And I’m telling you that I don’t believe you.” I don’t take my eyes off of his. “And with the way you’re acting now? All I want is for you to get out, Emilio. Now.”

  His flush deepens. Very quietly, with a heat in his voice that makes it seem like he is seething with anger, he says, “I was wrong about you. You’re nothing but a little bitch, Radiah.”

  “Get out.” I say it again, as firmly as I can. Backing away from him, towards the door, I reach for the handle and pull it wide as soon as I am near enough. There are other apartments in this hall. If I have to, I’ll scream at the top of my lungs. “Get out now, Emilio.”

  He walks forward and I press my back against the door to create the most space I can between us. I don’t want him anywhere near me. I can’t stop trembling. He glares at me as he passes through, then he keeps walking forward without looking back. Closing the door quickly, I lock it and I turn, pressing my back against it. My heart is hammering. What had just happened? I want to cry. Not because of the fear, although I was afraid, but because it had been so sudden, so unexpected. No matter how many times Alexei and I might have argued, he’d never raised his voice at me. He’d never called me a bitch.

  I hear the door open at the end of the hall. Carla. She’d have heard Emilio shouting. He’d shouted so loudly…

  He’d shouted at me. For this?

  Had called me a bitch, for this? Because I’d called him out on a mistake I could have easily forgiven? I wish I could go back, rewind to the moment Emilio came to the door and just walk out the door with him. I wish I’d been ready to go. It feels like a few seconds have changed everything and I don’t know why.

  Carla comes rushing down the hall. Turning aside from her, I shake my head. I can feel the tears starting to well up in my eyes. As happy as I’d felt only a few minutes ago, as good as I’d felt, I’m feeling just as horribly sad, just as horribly bad. It’s like everything good is suddenly...gone.

  And I don’t even understand why.

  Carla stops in front of me. “Radiah? Are you alright? I heard him yelling! What happened?”

  “Yes. I’m fine.” I still can’t look at her. I still can’t believe this just happened. That’s all I can say to her, I can’t say anything else because I don’t know anything else. I don’t know what happened. Or rather, I know what happened—I just don’t know why it happened.

  “He said he wanted a mint. I mean, I found him going through my purse. And I just asked him what he was doing.” The tears I’ve been holding in start to water. “And he started shouting at me. Said he didn’t think I’d act that way. He called me…”

  Carla touches my arm. Her voice is soft, soothing. “I heard.”

  Closing my eyes, I find myself pressing nearer to her, leaning into the embrace of her arm as she wraps her arm around my shoulders. I don’t understand. What had I done? We’d just kissed. He’d just…

  I’d just…

  It’s over so suddenly. I miss what I had only a few minutes ago. I miss feeling hopeful. I’d just had butterflies in my stomach. Now, my stomach is knotted and sinking, is full of dread and leaden with sadness.

  I’d liked him. I’d really, truly, liked him. I’d liked him so much a part of me is wishing I just hadn’t said anything about the mint. But, even now, I know that’s not true. Even now, I know it’s better I said something. As much as it hurts, if that’s the way he’s going to act, to talk to me…

  I can’t believe it. I want to open the door and run after him and demand answers.

  Carla had been right. I should have known. I should have known better. I feel like what he said I was. I feel stupid. I feel stupid dressed up, I feel stupid with my makeup streaming down my cheeks. I feel stupid because I’d been so happy.
I feel stupid because I’d trusted him.

  I feel stupid because I’d wanted him. I feel even more stupid because I’d thought he’d wanted me.

  For the first time in a long time I don’t fight the tears back. For the first time in a long time, I just let myself cry.

  I just didn’t realize how many tears I’d been holding in for so long. They all come out. They come and they come, and they don’t stop coming.

  Alexei

  It was the Italians that killed Boris. I have dispelled any doubt and reported my findings to Abram. It did not surprise him. The Italian mafia has not been pleased with the territory we have been taking. More and more, our organization is seizing the neighborhoods they used to control. It is not a thing that will stop anytime soon.

  ‘Boris,’ Abram said, ‘was only the first.’

  Boris, we all knew, had been a calling card for war.

  No one was safe. Vasily has demanded that every member of our organization exercise caution.

  Yet, I do not worry for myself. I never have. It is the people I care about that I worry for and that is why I have deliberately kept that number so small. There is the organization. Men like Boris and Vasily who have become more than people I work with.

  And there is Radiah.

  Above everyone else, and everything else, there is Radiah. She alone is like no other. She is my family in a way I have never experienced family before. I know, so often, I do it wrong. I don’t know how to do family. Not a real family, not a family that doesn’t come with bullets and backs pressed against the walls.

  Radiah will not talk to me. I have called her. I have laid on my back in the bed at night with the phone in one hand and my head resting against the other, looking at the little screen, unsure of what to do to make her answer. I don’t want to push her. I have called. I have not gone after her though. I have not pleaded, I have not begged. When I have texted her, I have simply said, ‘talk to me, Radiah.’

  ‘No’ has been her only, consistent reply. She refuses to talk, refuses to even tell me where she is, although I know she is at Carla’s. I have made sure to know this; she is not with me, but I will not stop looking out for her, even if, at this point, I’m looking out for her against her own will.

  I know why she feels this way. If I could easily make it better for her, I would. I have thought of these things too. I have thought of me, and I have thought of her, and I have thought of words like together, words like marriage. I know that I want her. I want her more than I have ever wanted for anything. But I have given my word to the people who think of me as family and now, especially now, I cannot bear the thought of letting them down. They are in danger. I want to protect them. I want to make them stronger. They have made me stronger. They raised me up from poverty and gave me a life and wealth I’d never imagined having.

  Could Radiah even want the kind of man that I would have to be were I to turn my back on them now? Could she want to be with a man who abandons the people who have given him everything? I know how much her own friends, how much her own family means to her. I know she’d never turn her back on them.

  And then, there is more. I have no doubt that she will make a great mother. But I can’t see myself as a father. My own father...when I think of him, I think about the glare of his eyes and I think about the weight of his fists. I think of the slur in his words and the ugly twist of his mouth.

  ‘Stupid, stupid,’ he said to me. ‘You worthless little shit, you good for nothing piece of garbage, you ruined my life. Look at you, Alexei.’

  I can hear him all of the time. Like an undercurrent, the sound of him is always here, is always now.

  I don’t think I know how to be a father. I see other men with their children and they make it look easy. I see them pushing their daughters on the swings or throwing a football with their son and for me, those images seem out of reach, they seem too foreign.

  Will my eyes look frightening to them? Will my hands seem like fists no matter how much I strive to keep them soft? My hands are hard. My heart is hard. Sometimes, I wonder what is inside of me. Can I really be so different from the man who raised me, from the man who made me? My father is like gravity in my stomach, a cold marbled dread that never seems to truly go away no matter how much distance I put between us.

  A continent of distance hasn’t even been enough. I can still see him. It is like we are staring at each other across a great divide and all of the seeing only makes us grow somehow more alike.

  It is him that is the dark inside of myself; him, and not the men I work for, as violent as they are.

  Radiah knows so little of this. If she were to know it, I know her eyes would wet with tears. I know she would wrap her arms around me. I know she would kiss at my jaw; she would murmur soft words.

  She would feel pity.

  There is little more that I hate in this world than to be pitied. Maybe only shame is the thing that disturbs me to an even greater degree. And yes. I feel that too, when I think of being a boy, when I think of my father. I feel shame.

  Leaning back against the couch, I half close my eyes. It has been a long day, a long day of knocking on doors and then breaking those doors down when they did not open. A long day of striding forward, impervious to glares, impervious to the waving barrels of guns, impervious to the shadow of injury, to the implication of death. It has been a day of demanding answers. A day of walking away and knowing my back might easily be torn apart by a hail of bullets. It has been a day of meetings and a lot of listening and a few chosen words that were meant to be lean and precise. To intimidate.

  I should be going over the surveillance tapes I procured. I should be making phone calls.

  All I can think about is Radiah.

  Would they try to get to me through her? The more I learn about how they went after Boris, the more convinced I am that all of our families, all of our friends, are in danger. But Radiah won’t let me protect her. Unlike Abram’s woman, my woman is out there. Alone.

  ‘No,’ she has said.

  I don’t take no for an answer—not in this, not now. Her no might mean something I cannot accept. She cannot get hurt.

  Shifting my back, and arching my hips, I pull my phone free from the pocket. Again, I call her. Again, she does not answer.

  Tonight, I cannot quell my worry. Instinct is something I do not turn my back on—I have lived this life too long not to respect my gut. It has saved me before. Saved me too many times for me to even count.

  If she will not answer, I will go to her. I need her to know that she might be in danger. I need her to let me do at least this for her: protect her.

  * * *

  Knocking at the door, I stand waiting. My gun is tucked into my waistband behind my back, hidden by the short coat.

  Carla opens the door. She looks up at me; her lips part into a small, surprised circle. I know her. Not well, but of all of Radiah’s friends, I know Carla best of all. We have sat together at restaurants and we have laughed. We have shared dinner and small talk. I know the woman has always been there for my Radiah and I respect her for it, I am thankful to her for it.

  Nodding a greeting down to her, I lift my eyes past her. To look over her shoulder, down the hall behind her. Suddenly, I realize how much I want to see her. I realize how much I am hoping she is here. “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know, Alexei. I haven’t seen her since I got home. Alexei?” With her hand still curled around the edge of the door, Carla takes a step closer. “Are you alright? Is everything…okay?”

  I look back down at her. She’s not here. Where then? Already I am going through the possibilities.

  “Is everything alright?” she asks again. “Is Radiah in some kind of...danger?”

  Have I put Carla in some kind of danger too? Just because she knows Radiah? I don’t know how far the Italians are willing to go. I know my own organization would do everything in its power to stop another organization from encroaching on their territory though. I know I am a part of a
group of men that will stop at nothing. The sorrow I feel for dragging Carla into this makes me consider just how much risk I’ve put Radiah into.

  I hadn’t planned it. If anything, I fought my feelings for Radiah for so long just because of this. But it had been a fight I’d lost, and I can’t say it was a fight I ever really wanted to win. I can’t imagine my life without her.

  Inside, I am in turmoil. Inside, I don’t know what to do. But outwardly, my composure is unwavering. Outwardly, I know exactly what to do. And I do it.

  “Everything is alright. Lock the door,” I tell her. “I have left someone downstairs. And if you need anything, call me.” Reaching into my pocket, I pull out a small business card. It has my name and my private number listed across the white background, and nothing more. Holding it out to her, I wait for her to take it before turning, and heading back to the elevator. I am determined to find Radiah. I will start by looking for her in some of her favorite places. I know the places she likes and it is those places I will go to. Already, as I reach the front door of the building, the sun is beginning to set. It doesn’t deter me. I will look through the night into tomorrow.