After The Dance (36 page)

As it turns out, it didn’t matter much what her plans were, because when I punched in the code that Scoobie had previously given me for the door’s lock, the durn thing wouldn’t budge. After double-checking the numbers and reentering them a couple more times, Nora said, “You know what? I bet that sneaky bastard’s got this mug rigged up some kind of way so that you need a different code every time you try to open it.”

I told her it wasn’t a big deal because when Scoobie got back home I fully intended to tell him that our journey together had come to an end. Even with the possibility of finding our son seemingly so close, there wasn’t any way that a long-term relationship between the two of us could ever really work—not with all the lies and unspoken truths steadily growing between us, and I meant his as well as my own.

Of course, within seconds of me making the grand announcement, the FedEx package with the new pics of Tariq arrived at the door. Good thing I had Nora there to remind me of all I stood to lose by not letting go of Scoobie—like my dignity, my self-respect, and the opportunity to fix all that I’d messed up with Carl.

“Don’t you go getting weak on me” is what she’d said on noticing the tremble in my hands as I fumbled through the new glossies of the little boy my arms still longed to hold. “If Scoobie’s sincere about wanting to find this child, he’s gonna do that whether the two of you are together or not. Hell, for all we know, the lying SOB may have known about Tariq and his whereabouts from the git. No, I’m
saying, girl, think about it. There might not even be a detective Clarke. It’s not like you’ve ever actually seen or talked to the man. And these pictures—pssst, how do we know they haven’t been in Scoobie’s possession for years now?”

As far-fetched as it initially sounded, over the next couple of days, I found myself wondering if Nora wasn’t on to something. It was entirely possible that Scoobie had been using my desire to reconnect with our son as a way of getting whatever the hell it was he wanted from me.

Yeah, I spoke to his jive tail quite a few times after my visit inside his room of horrors. But since I knew a longdistance war of words wouldn’t give me the type of closure I needed, I let him go ahead and think that everything was hunky-dory. I’m telling you, girl, I went so far as to write myself a script and was planning to have Nora rehearse it with me. But as fate would have it, Scoobie’s flight put him back in town much earlier than I anticipated and he was already at the house waiting on me when I stopped by there after work.

“Are we celebrating something?” I asked on accepting the warm kiss on the lips and the cold glass of champagne he’d met me with at the door.

“Indeed we are,” he said, grinning at me like he’d already had one glass too many and had bumped his head, to boot. “We’re celebrating us. Me, you, our son, Tariq, and the wonderful life that lies ahead of us.”

“Umpf,” I said, before downing a couple sips of the bubbly. Just because I understood and fully accepted the necessity of confronting Scoobie on the sorriness of his actions and letting him know it was time he took a flying leap, didn’t make the task of doing so any easier. A part of me had actually wanted things to pan out the way he’d been insisting they eventually would: I’d let go of the past; we’d fall in love; we’d find our son, safe and sound and willing to forgive us for abandoning him; Scoobie and I
would go on to get married; and we’d all live happily ever after. But as I sat there on the sofa, swirling the champagne in my glass and trying not to grit my teeth as Scoobie talked about finalizing our plans for Florida, I realized there was no way in hell I was going to spend so much as another hour with this man.

“So when do you want to do this?” he asked, passing me a calendar with all the dates I’d seen in the doctor’s letter marked off.

I set the calendar on the coffee table in front of us and looked at Scoobie before I told him point-blank, “I don’t.”

He was like, “Oh, come on, Faye, there’s nothing to be afraid of. Dr. Goldstein is one of the best surgeons in the country. We’ve talked about this a dozen times already.”

“No, just because you’ve found a way to interject the subject into durn near every conversation we’ve had in the past month or so doesn’t mean we’ve actually talked about it” is what I told him. “So hear me loud and clear,” I said, raising my voice over the durn Sinatra homeboy had crooning in the background. “I’m not the least bit interested in letting any of your surgeon friends meddle with the size of my breasts or suck any of the fat outta my ass, okay?”

He shot me a look of disgust and said, “Now, why do you have to say it like that? Look, babe, it’s not like I won’t be right there with you every step of the way. Matter of fact, I’m thinking about having some procedures done myself.”

“Yeah?” I said, surprised to hear him confess even that much. “Like what?”

He stood up and said, “I don’t know. I could use some tweaking here and there. Maybe a little Botox around the eyes, some collagen for my lips.”

I said, “Tweaking, huh? Is that what you call a vasec-tomy—just a little tweaking here and there?”

He frowned and rubbed his forehead. “Is that what this
is all about? So what’s the deal—you’re going behind my back and reading my mail now?”

I pressed my shoulders against the couch and stared at him. “You weren’t going to tell me, were you? You were just going to have this thing done without letting me have a say about it.”

He stared back at me and was like, “Faye, you’ve always known how I feel about kids. I’ve never wanted any. Never. So don’t act like this suddenly comes as some big surprise to you.”

“Well, damn it, Scoobie,” I said. “What about what I might want?! Did it ever occur to you that I just might like to have a family one day? And since you’re so adamant about not wanting any kids, where in the hell does that leave poor Tariq?”

He’d started pacing, but he stopped long enough to say, “I’m not trying to be cruel, Faye, but you made the choice to have Tariq. Had it been left to me, I would have done things differently. But since he’s here now, I plan to see that he’s well taken care of.”

“Should I assume that the same goes for Evan? Or is that something you’d rather I take up with Tina?”

“Forgive me,” he said, stepping over to the bar to refill his glass, “but I fail to see what Tina or Evan have to do with you and me and our plans for the future.”

“Man, damn the future” is what I told him. “What I want to talk about is the here and the now. Are you or are you not Evan’s father?”

Scoobie grimaced and finished off the champagne in his glass before he looked over at me and said, “I take it you already know the answer to that.”

I said, “So when were you going to tell me? Before or after you told me about the vasectomy? Face it, Scoobie, you haven’t been completely honest or forthcoming with me about a lot of things, whether it be Evan, the vasec-tomy you were going to have behind my back, or the sick
and twisted plan of yours to mold me into some kind of skinny-ass Stepford wife!” Girl, I reached down in my bag, whipped out the paper bearing his bizarre-looking cut-and-paste project, and threw it at him.

Oh yeah, now that really set him off. Through partially clenched teeth he said, “
You
accusing
me
of being deceitful? Now, that’s funny, especially when it’s obvious that you’re still getting some on the side from that crowbar-toting chump with the ten-year-old Corolla. What’s he do for a living anyway, pump gas?”

On managing to suppress the sudden urge to get up, go over, and in true drama-queen fashion toss what was left of my champagne into his all-too-smug mug, I offered him an icy stare instead and told him, “Your ass needs to quit.”

He laughed and said, “What? I know you’re not going to sit here and deny that he was here, are you?”

Even though I knew good and well what was coming next, when the brother snatched up his all-purpose remote and started clicking buttons, I couldn’t help but wince and brace myself. “Correct me if I’m wrong,” he said, pointing to the image of Carl that flashed up on the television screen, “but isn’t that your boy getting out of his raggedy-ass ride, or are my eyes playing tricks on me?”

“Yeah, he was here,” I said. “He stopped by and dropped off some of his birthday cake. But it wasn’t like we did anything.”

“No?” Scoobie said, looking like at any second he was going to start frothing at the mouth. “Then what do you call this?” He clicked from the image of Carl’s back door entry to a close-up shot of me and the brother in the kitchen with our lips and bodies fused together.

With his mouth all twisted up like he had a good mind to spit, Scoobie folded his arms across his chest and said, “I haven’t been able to view any of the other tapes as of yet, but believe me, looking at this for any length of time is
enough to turn my damn stomach. So why not be a good sport and save me both the time and the trouble by just telling me which room you
did
him in?”

Starting to feel for all the world like a scolded child, I dropped my gaze to the floor as I tried to explain. “I told you already, Scoobie, we didn’t—” Then it dawned on me, and I looked up and said, “Hold up, are you saying you’ve got some kind of hidden monitoring system set up in all of these rooms?”

An ugly, downright evil grin spread across his pretty face as he laid it out for me. “Rooms, hallways, closets, you name it” is what he said. “Trust me, if your boy so much as sat his rusty behind on one of the commodes up in here, I have it somewhere on tape. Got to, babe. I’m a busy man. How else am I supposed to keep up with all my valuables while I’m away?”

Not wanting to believe what I thought I was hearing, I stood up and said, “Spying on folks while they’re sitting up on the toilet? I hope and pray that is not how you’re getting your jollies these days.”

Trying to look all contrite, he came over, put his arms around me, and was like, “Oh, come on, babe, you know that whole bathroom thing was just a joke. What’s this really all about, huh? Sex? And the fact that I haven’t been giving you any? Because if that’s all it is, babe, I can fix that right now. And I will. Just give me a moment to pray about it …”

Girl, I pushed that fool off me, grabbed up my purse, and told him, “You’re one sick puppy, you know that? Next time you talk to your surgeon friend you might want to see if he can’t refer you to a reputable shrink, ’cause I swear if you ain’t ’bout as crazy as—” I would have finished, but the rage I saw come to life in homeboy’s eyes made me momentarily lose my train of thought.

“Crazy as who?” he asked, coming toward me with his
fists all balled up and his face turning a deep red. “My mama? Is that what you were going to say?”

See, if I had really wanted to be mean, I would have been like, “Hey, man, if the durn shoe fits, kick yourself in the ass with it.” But knowing how sensitive Scoobie’s always been about his mother and her mental illness, I couldn’t go there, nor had I planned to in the first place. And that’s what I told him. “Scoobie, in all of our years together and with all the verbal knockdown, drag-outs we’ve had, you’ve never known me to stoop that low. What makes you think I’m going to start now?”

On reaching into my purse and pulling out the engagement ring he’d given me, I told him, “Bottom line is, I’m just not willing to give up any more years of my life trying to love you, Scoobie. I thought I could, if only for the sake of our son, but I can’t.”

And having said my piece and returned his ring, girl, I walked out of that cold, unwelcoming, camera-rigged relic of the old South that Scoobie calls a home and didn’t look back.

Ms Vic? Sure, I still see her around campus sometimes. But all that studying in the library and hanging out after class we used to do—that’s over. I told you, son, I’m too through letting these young girls out here make a monkey outta me.

And it’s just as well, ’cause last I heard baby girl had reset her sights on none other than my poor ol’ Uncle Westbrook. On the real money, ol’ dude called me and was like, “What the hell you give that li’l ol’ hot-tailed gal my
number for? You got a life insurance policy out on me or somethin’?”

I assured him that it wasn’t me who gave Ms. Vic his number. I’ve got better sense than that. No, see, that’s the type of stunt that’s got Squirrel written all over it. If anybody’s liable to cold straight set a brother up, he’s the one. I still owe dude some payback for the number he pulled on me a couple nights ago.

There I was, laid up on the sofa, listening to some music and trying not to nod off after having done my eight hours and then some when the phone rang. On seeing my cousin Squirrel’s number flash up on the caller ID, I picked up and was like, “Yo, partner. What’s shaking?”

He said, “You got it, cuz. What you doing tonight and who wit?”

I told him, “Same ol’ same ol’, man. Nothing and nobody. Why? What you into?”

He sorta laughed and was like, “Since I’ll be in your neck of the woods in another five minutes, why don’t I just stop by and let you see for yourself?”

I had a hunch he wasn’t exactly riding solo that night. So when he turned up on my doorstep a few minutes later, the fact that he had a woman with him didn’t surprise me. But when I realized that the woman in question was none other than ol’ worrisome-ass Nora, I didn’t even bother trying to suppress the “Damn!” that jumped up outta my throat in one loud, mad bark.

Nora grinned, pinched me on the cheek, and said, “Nice seeing you again too, sweetie.”

I pointed a finger at Squirrel and told him, “Now, how you gonna do me like this, man? Haven’t I always had your back?”

He shrugged and was like, “Hey, man, when it comes to making the ladies happy, a brother’s gotta do what a brother’s gotta do. And if I’m not mistaken, it was you who first hip me to that sweet fact of life.”

Nora said, “Don’t go blaming Nigel. If you’da answered your phone or tried to call somebody back sometime, it wouldn’t have had to go down like this.”

In my head I’m thinking,
Nigel?
It’d been so long since I’d heard anybody call dude by his given name that I’d almost forgotten it. The realization that these two coconuts had gone and gotten quite chummy since the night of my party kind of threw me for a minute. But on regrouping, I let Nora know that if she’d come to plead on her girl’s behalf, she was wasting her time,
Nigel’s,
and mine. Not only had I lost interest, I’d already moved on to bigger and better things.