He was drinking tonight because he needed time to locate a lady, and a man sitting at a bar drinking a nonalcoholic beverage looked, quite frankly, like a pussy. In society, perception was reality. He wanted to come across as a man with an edge, even though, with his appearance and bearing, he didn't exactly need a drink to do so. But a little extra emphasis never hurt.
The bartender quickly delivered the cognac. Taking a slow sip, Isaiah checked out the scenery.
There was a group of red-faced white guys in Dockers and polo shirts sitting at one end of the bar, knocking back Budweisers and talking about their boring corporate jobs. A trio of white girls on the other side of the counter, drinking wine and laughing too hard. An overweight sista with a cute face, and her friend, a bigger girl with an ugly face, sitting near the corner, both of them glancing at him and then turning to whisper to each other in the childish way some women do.
A scan of the restaurant and billiards room yielded no prospects either.
He was about to get up and check out the arcade area on the other side of the complex when he spotted someone walking along the corridor past the bar, on the way to the restaurant ahead.
He saw her from behind, and what a sight she was. Big booty fighting the seams of her designer jeans. Tiny waist. A purple halter top that showed her lean, bronzed back to perfection, her mane of brown hair swishing over her slender shoulders.
But she wasn't alone. A tall, dark-skinned brother with an Afro walked beside her, his New York Yankees jersey dragging down to his knees like a skirt. Although the guy didn't see Isaiah, he wove his hand possessively around the woman's waist, as though to announce to onlookers: Don't even think about it.
But Isaiah had already decided that she was the one.
He kept his attention on the couple as they went to the restaurant. After the hostess seated them, Afro Bro got up and walked to the restrooms, a cell phone pressed to his ear.
Big mistake.
Within twenty seconds, Isaiah was at the table. The woman's front was just as fine as the rear. She bore a strong resemblance to Beyonce, and from the way she carried herself, you could tell she knew it. She had confidence. He liked that.
Isaiah slid into the booth in front of her.
She blinked. "Umm, excuse me, that seat is taken"
"It sure is," he said. He sipped his drink. "By me. Afro Bro committed a fatal error: never leave a beautiful woman alone in public."
His boldness earned a flickering smile from her. That flash of a smile, and the fact that she didn't immediately tell him to get stepping, told him she was interested.
"I'm Isaiah." He offered his hand; she shook it, and he held on for a second longer than was necessary. "It's a pleasure to meet you. And you are?"
"Why should I tell you? You come sitting here uninvited. You might be a psycho or something."
"I might. Or I might be the man you need tonight."
"Hmph." But she still didn't ask him to leave.
"How about you tell me your name after I get rid of Afro Bro?"
She laughed. "You gotta lot of nerve"
"Is that what they call it? I call it confidence."
"You think he just gonna let you sit here? Akili ain't no punk like that"
"Here he comes. Let's see"
The guy came striding down the aisle, Afro bouncing. He stopped at the table and scowled at Isaiah, and then looked at the girl.
"Who dis?" he asked Beyonce.
Beyonce looked at Isaiah, striving to contain a grin, and he realized that she liked to see men competing for her attention. "He said his name is Isaiah."
"You know him?" Afro Bro asked.
"Nope," she said. "He sat here and started talking to me when you was walking away, talking on your cell and stuff" She rolled her eyes.
Afro Bro turned to Isaiah. His eyes hardened. "All right, brah. Get up and push on"
"I'm more comfortable here" Isaiah drank his cognac. "Why don't you go play some arcade games while I get to know the pretty lady here?"
"What?" Afro Bro stiffened. "Wanna step outside?"
He was a big man, with large fists, and probably knew how to use them, but Isaiah wasn't going to let it come to that. He disliked hand-to-hand combat-his beating of the redneck at the Waffle House notwithstanding. Fisticuffs were barbaric, something the old Isaiah would have done. These days he was better than that.
Beyonce leaned back in her seat, her pretty eyes glimmering with amusement as she measured them, pondering which man would win her hand.
Isaiah fixed his gaze on Afro Bro.
The guy glared at him, ready to rumble.
Focus.
A fat vein in the middle of Isaiah's forehead had begun to throb. Energy stirred at the base of his spine, spread throughout his body, like currents of heat.
"You heard me," Isaiah said.
Command.
"Get out of here and go play some games," Isaiah finished. And he added, "Sucker."
Afro Bro's lips parted as though he were in a trance. His eyes glazed over.
Then, lowering his head, he shoved his hands in his pockets and walked away. He didn't look back.
"Oh, snap!" Beyoncd said, turning in her seat to watch the guy disappear in the games pavilion. "You scared the hell outta him!"
Isaiah casually sipped his drink.
"Now, sweetheart, you were going to tell me your name?"
Later, Isaiah clawed his way out of a nightmare: a dream of being a child again and watching his mother being beaten by one of her knuckle head boyfriends and he was too small and weak to help her.
Leave my Mama alone....
Climbing out of sleep, Isaiah exhaled, blowing the images out of his mind's eye.
On some nights, more so than others, the past clung to him like an old, heavy coat.
He switched on the bedside lamp. The clock read four forty-two A.M. He'd slept for about three hours. Long enough.
That was another dimension of the new and improved Isaiah: he didn't require much sleep. Before, he was notorious for sleeping eleven or more hours, well into the afternoon, which had driven Mama nuts. These days, about three hours was all he needed to be refreshed and sharp.
He'd placed the old photograph of Mama and his father next to the clock. He picked it up. He traced his finger across his father's features.
They looked so much alike, no one could ever deny that they were father and son.
His eyes grew teary. He wiped them, angrily, and put the photograph facedown on the nightstand.
"Turn off the light, baby"
He turned around in the bed. The woman from Dave & Buster's lay beside him, blinking groggily.
What was her name? Yolanda, Keisha, something like that. Her name didn't matter; once you got past the video-vixen body, there was nothing memorable about her. She was like too many women Isaiah knew: adrift on the sea of life, preoccupied with clothes and shoes and hairdos and nails, holding her breath for a man to come along and infuse her world with meaning and purpose. Even the sex had been ho-hum, a session of merely going through the motions, like a boring exercise routine.
Isaiah suspected that Gabriel's woman was nothing like that. He was sure Gabriel's girl was a singular woman of substance and passion.
Gabriel got the best of everything. This unfulfilling onenight stand of his served only to emphasize the disappointing divide between his life and Gabriel's.
What's-her-name rubbed her eyes. "What time is it?"
"Time for you to get out"
That woke her. She sat up, scowling. "You kicking me out?"
"I got to handle some business."
"This early?" She pulled the bedsheets to her bosom, covering herself. "How am I gonna get home?"
"Call a cab." He peeled some bills out of his wallet and tossed them at her. "I'm gonna take a shower. When I come out, I want you gone."
"Damn, why you gotta be so mean to a sista? I thought we had a nice time."
"Please. I would've rather done some push-ups"
<
br /> She started to open her mouth to spit some venom at him, evidently thought better of it, and shut her trap. She threw aside the sheets and grabbed her clothes, her lips poked out in the universal feminine sign of anger.
But she didn't cuss at him. No doubt she remembered how he'd ordered Afro Bro to take a hike. In spite of her obvious anger, she was afraid of him. Smart girl.
He walked to the bathroom, closing the door behind him.
As the door swung shut, he saw something in the mirror. A human silhouette, the size of a man. Centered in the glass.
He whirled around. There was no one behind him. He pushed open the door. The woman was on the other side of the bedroom, talking on the phone to a taxi company. It hadn't been her.
Isaiah ducked back inside the bathroom and flicked the light switch.
The figure in the mirror had vanished.
He shut the door. Leaning over the sink, he stared at the mirror. The phantom did not reappear.
He was certain he'd not simply seen his own reflection. The shadowy form had been fixed in place, like a statue, whereas he had been walking forward, into the bathroom.
What had it been? A hallucination?
He could not accept that answer. He was too well grounded, mentally, to succumb to illusions.
Perhaps, then, it had been a vision. That seemed a far more likely scenario to him. In his prior life, of course, the notion that he'd witnessed a vision would have been ludicrous. But now he lived a different reality. Phenomena such as clairvoyant apparitions could be part of it.
But it had been an apparition of ... what?
Or who?
Gabriel awoke from a dream of funhouse mirrors and objects manipulated by invisible forces.
He lay in bed, breathing hard, drenched in cold sweat. The dream images receded into the mists of his unconscious. Within a minute, he could barely recall what the dream had been about. But whatever it had been, it had left behind a residue-a pervasive sense of dread that made him peer fearfully at the dark corners of the bedroom, as though something malevolent watched him.
Snap out of it, Gabe. Everything's cool.
And it was. Dana was the only one in there with him. She slept next to him, nude, the warm globes of her hips resting against his leg. She felt so good that he didn't want to move; but his bladder had other plans.
Gabriel climbed out of bed and shuffled to the bathroom, keeping the lights off so as not to awaken Dana.
A murky, humanoid shape was moving in the mirror.
Gabriel let out a cry. He flipped on the light.
Nothing was in the mirror. There was only him, gaping at his reflection with puffy, frightened eyes.
"Gabe?" Dana asked in a scratchy voice. "You okay?"
No, I'm not okay, baby. I'm seeing shit in mirrors, and it's not a damn misinterpretation of anything.
But he said, "I'm okay, sweetheart. Go back to sleep."
"Thought I heard you shout.....
"I ... stubbed my toe on the door," he said. "I'm fine"
"'Kay," she muttered.
He didn't enjoy lying to her. He wasn't sure, in fact, why he lied to her. Maybe he was really lying to himself. The truth had nothing to do with nerve damage to hands, concussions, and misinterpretations of what he was seeing.
Something deeply unusual was going on, and their theories could not explain it.
Chapter 11
-saiah arrived at Reid Construction at seven o'clock in the i morning.
The parking lot was already half full. Early birds striving to beat morning rush-hour traffic.
The parking slots for the CEO and VP of operations were vacant. He'd been counting on that. Perfect.
Today was a big day, so he'd taken care to dress appropriately. He wore a gray Armani suit and polished loafers. The last time he'd worn a suit had been five years ago-when he was in court on an armed-robbery beef. The jury had convicted him, and he'd served five terrible years at a maximumsecurity penitentiary in Stateville. So much for the idea that clothes made the man.
The mind made the man. He knew that now. But visual impressions could be important, in the beginning.
The spacious lobby was as nice as he expected. Soft lighting. Oak paneling. Marble floors. Potted ferns. Award plaques hanging on the walls. He noticed framed magazine articles from Black Enterprise, Ebony, and other magazines, some of the same ones he'd clipped and saved over the years, which made him feel oddly familiar with this world of suits and ties, though he'd never worked a day in corporate America in his life.
A black woman sat behind a marble counter. Perhaps in her midtwenties, she had bedroom eyes, muffin-brown skin, long, dark hair, and full breasts that filled out her green business suit. Did fine sistas grow on trees in ATL? He wondered if Gabriel was doing this girl on the side.
The woman snapped shut her makeup compact, looked him up and down in that measuring way sistas do, decided he was worth a smile. She had cute dimples.
"Good morning, sir," she said. She had a husky Georgia accent. "How may I help you?"
Although Isaiah possessed talents that would have enabled him to manipulate this woman as easily as a child toying with Play-Doh, he'd learned that when dealing with a woman, charm and a winning smile could often secure whatever favors he wanted.
He grinned. "Good morning, sista. I'm here to see Gabriel Reid."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Reid isn't in the office yet. What time is your appointment?" She reached for the visitors' log on top of the counter.
"Oh, he's not here yet?" he asked, as though surprised. "That's fine. I'll go make myself comfortable in his office"
"Excuse me?"
"My name's Isaiah," he said. "Gabriel and I are family. I'm sure you can see the resemblance?"
"Matter of fact, I was thinking that you and Gabe do favor a lot," she said, losing her businesslike pose and giving him a glimpse of the earthy Georgia peach underneath the professional veneer. "You two could be brothers, seriously."
He approached the counter. He leaned forward and smiled as though they were co-conspirators. He swore he could see the flush in her cheeks. She was digging him.
"What's your name, sweetheart?" he asked.
"Rhonda," she said, and blushed.
"Can I trust you to keep a secret, Rhonda?" he asked. "Gabe doesn't know I'm here. I'd like to surprise him."
"Your secret's safe with me, Isaiah," she said, and winked. "Where are you from? You sound like you're from Chicago."
"You got it."
"I like Chi-Town brothas. Y'all know how to treat a lady." Her dimples reappeared in full force.
Perhaps he needed to rein in his charm a little. This girl was ready to leap over the counter and get it on. She was a beauty, but he didn't have time to deal with a woman. He had too much work ahead of him.
Still, he didn't want to turn her down cold. He winked at her slyly and asked, "Where's Gabe's office?"
"Second floor, far right corner off the stairwell. You can't miss it."
"Cool. Remember our secret, Rhonda" He felt her watching him as he strode away.
She'd been so impressed she hadn't asked him to sign the visitors' log.
As Isaiah strolled along the carpeted hallways, head held high, he smiled and said, "Good morning," to everyone he passed. The worker bees cheerfully returned his greetings, and he could tell from the way they looked at him that they thought he was a man of influence, and probably assumed that he was a blood relative of Gabriel's, too.
If only they knew the truth.
He found Gabriel's office. There was an oak door with a frosted-glass window on which GABRIEL REID, VICE PRESIDENT, OPERATIONS was engraved in black. A silver-haired, fiftyish black woman sat at a large desk outside the door. She had to be Gabriel's executive assistant. What a life.
Isaiah paid her a smile, too. "Good morning. I'm Isaiah, a relative of Gabriel's. I'm going to wait for him in his office"
"Hi, honey, Rhonda said you were coming up," she said. "I'm Angela, Gabriel
's assistant. You can wait out here for him, he should be in soon" She indicated a couple of chairs in a waiting area on the other side of the corridor.
His smile froze. "I'd prefer to wait in his office, Angela. We're family."
"I understand, but that's his private office, Isaiah." She sweetened her refusal with a light laugh. "Those chairs over there are quite comfortable. Can I get you anything? Coffee, juice?"
Isaiah's lips formed a firm line. He stepped toward the woman.
Sometimes charm and an affable smile could take you only so far.
He fixed his gaze on the woman ... and a thick vein began to throb in his forehead.
Focus ... command.
"Open the door to Gabriel's office, Angela."
Angela's smile quivered. Her eyes grew clouded.
Then she rose from her chair, like a robot, went to the door, and opened it.
Isaiah walked past her and entered the office.
"Thank you, Angela," he said. "Now fetch me some coffee. Lots of cream and sugar."
Smiling at him like a child eager to please a parent, she hurried away.
Isaiah clicked on the overhead lights. It was a huge, airy space, with numerous windows that offered a view of elms and dogwoods, blooming shrubbery, and rolling vistas of grass. Mahogany bookcases lined one wall, full of boring business texts. Another wall could have served as the Wall of Rampant Ego. From it hung Gabriel's framed degrees from Morehouse College and the Goizueta Business School at Emory University, photos he had taken with celebrities like Magic Johnson and diplomats like Andrew Young, and a handful of meaningless community award plaques.
A thirty-gallon aquarium stood in one corner, in lieu of a window. Colorful fish swam the clear waters. Isaiah bent and studied the mild-mannered creatures.
You could learn a lot about a person from studying their pets. People tended to choose animal companions that reflected their own personality. A man who kept a calming collection of fish in his office was a man who likely avoided conflict and danger.
In other words, Gabriel was the polar opposite of Isaiah.
Angela entered the office. "Here's your coffee, sir."
He took the steaming ceramic mug, sipped. Smiled.
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