Commitment (38 page)

“Nah, my wife’s not in the business,” he said finally.

Keisha bit the t
ip of a nail and smiled at him.
“I ain’
tryin’ to be nosy or nothin’.
I was just askin’.
You sure you don’t want to dance with me?”

Shawn shook his head again.

“A’ight.
I guess I ju
st have to go dance by myself.”
Keisha took one gulp of her daiquiri
and headed for the dance floor.
Then Chris
was leaning over his shoulder.

Shawn shrugged him off.

“Don’t
get caught out there, man.
Bitches nowadays be ambitious.
Can’t tell whether they after the dick
, the money
or
a
record
ing
contract.”

Shawn
spent half the evening with Chris, Mike
and Darryl and the other half working the room, hitting all the essential
bases.
There were at least six dudes in the club he needed to talk to
, just to avoid
a
beef later on.
In between, he watched
Keisha as she moved on the dance floo
r,
gyrating, spinning,
and
writhing
.
If he was single, he would’ve been al
l over that
.
But he wasn’t single, and what was more, h
e co
uld feel the buzz from the Remy, the
beer, and the champagne finally starting to kick in and realized he hadn’t seen his wife for at least two hours.

W
hen it was well past one and
she
still
hadn’t come looking for him
, he
scanned the room, doing a slow three-sixty on h
is barstool until he found her.
She was sitting on the
opposite
side of the club at a table by the window, laughing at someth
ing someone was saying to her.
She
threw
her
head back
as she laughed,
her face relaxed, eyes c
losed and mouth slightly open.
Shawn craned his neck to look past the crowd so he could see who she was sitting with. 

Brendan.
He was leaning in to say something to her
,
his lips almost touching her ear
, and
Riley
tilted her head toward
him to listen, laughing again.
Shawn bit down hard on his lower
lip, watching them for awhile.
Brendan cupped a hand by his
mouth and said something else.
This time
Riley
looked at him in disbelief before
erupting into laughter once
again.

Shawn pushed h
imself up and went toward them.
Brendan saw him before
Riley
did, and leaned back in his seat, still smiling from whatever joke he and
Riley
had just shared.
Shawn kneeled next to
her chair and blew in her ear.
She spun sharply and smiled when she saw that it was him.

“Where you been, stranger?”

“Drinking too much.”

“I
can see that
,” she nodded
, putting a cool hand on his cheek
.
“You ready to go
home
?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.
Lemme just run to the Ladies Room one last time.” 

She got up and disappeared
in
the crowd. 

Shawn took her seat, staring at Brendan who shrugged.

“Whassup?”

“You
tell me,” Shawn said pointedly.
“What’s up?”

Brendan’s eyes narrowed in confusion for a moment then he laughed. 

“Don’t come
at
me with that bullshit.
Ain’t nobody tryin
’ to push up on your woman
, dawg
.
”

“Yeah?”

“Shawn.
You’re buggin’.
And y
our ass is drunk.”

He leane
d back, thinking, or trying to.
His head was all fucked up.
Brendan was his boy.
He should be thanking him for looking out, not making al
l kinds of stupid accusations.
He held out a wobbly fist and Brendan finally leaned forward to give him some pound.

By the time
Riley
came back, he was
seriously feeling the liquor.
Standing up, looking around at the flashing lights and hearing the lou
d music made him even dizzier.
He didn’t remember the ride home, or even how h
e made it up to the apartment, and only
vaguely remembered
Riley
peeling
his clothes off as he lay prone on the bed, and turning off the ligh
ts and getting in next to him.
Then she was wrapping her arms about his waist and resting her head on his shoulder and everything went bl
ack.

He
a
woke sometime later;
it must have been
near sunrise
because there was a pale light entering the room, and a fresh, damp smell
from the shower
. The bed next to him was empty.
For a flash, it was like the old days when he woke up
to find that
Riley
had already
gone and h
e sat up, startled.
But this time, he could see her across the room,
wrapped in her robe, hair
still wet
,
staring at the bluish glow of her computer monitor
and
typing rapidly.

She paused, turning to smile at him.

“I’m right here,” she said before turning to face the computer again.

Shawn settled back onto the bed, closing his eyes once again.
All the unremarkable things he’d done
every day
of his life alone, now had a new
texture
to them because
of her
.
Running into her in the bathroom as she brushed her teeth, skirting around her in the kitchen as she made coffee in the morning, or stepping into the shower and finding it already damp fr
om her having taken one first.

He’d had girlfriends, lovers, wh
atever you wanted to call them.
But never anyone he’d shared so m
uch of his personal space with.
Imagining what it would be like
before he’d met
Riley
Shawn
expected
he’d feel stifled
in a monogamous relationship, never mind a marriage
.
But every morning when he woke up and saw her sitting at her computer like she was now, it surprised him all over again just how nat
ural it felt and that a
fter such a short time, he couldn’t conceive of it being any other way.

g

Everyone around the office had yet to start treating h
er like a regular person again.
Greg was still looking betrayed because
the day she’d come back to work after a
weekend with
a
diamond ring, was the first time he’d hea
rd she was involved with Shawn.
To make matters worse,
less
than
three
weeks after that
they were married
.
Now
Riley
occasionally
caught
him looking at her with slightly narrowed eyes, as though he wasn’t s
ure whether he knew her at all.
And as if that weren’t enough, a couple of the girls from the mailroom had taken to hovering around her office,
hem
ming and
haw
ing, then finally asking for autographs
from random rappers she’d never met
, concert tickets, and passes to parties at hip-hop clubs around town
that she’d never even heard of
, as though she would have any idea how to go about getting
any of these things
.
So now,
Riley
kept
her door
shut
when she was inside working, but she was just as likely to be sitting at her desk, staring at the ceiling, wondering when life would return to normal.

Last week she had accidentally gotten on the wrong train, heading toward Queens instead of the new
place
.
It was still
so strange walking up to the building and having
Ed
the doorman greet her like a
visiting dignitary
.
He was tickled by the fact that Shawn was a rapper, and mentioned several times that his d
aughters’ kids loved his music.
O
n the day they’d moved in, Shawn had tipped him a hundred dollars for carrying a couple of
boxes, and since then had treated him like an old friend, patting him on the b
ack
every time he saw him
. 

Riley
, on the other hand, had yet to get over the
awkwardness
of having a man old enough to be her grandfather opening her do
ors and carrying
her packages
whenever she got out of a cab.
She had taken to avoiding
Ed
altogether by going in the service entrance when she had
bags
with her.

Shawn was home
after a week in
California but he didn’t keep
regular
hours,
often
going to t
he studio late in the afternoon
and returning after midnight.
When
Riley
saw him, it was usually as a
mound in the bed next to her when she left in the morning or a
shadowy figure in the bedroom door, undressing with the light off to keep from waking her
late at night
,
which
invariably
he did anyway.
Sometimes t
hey lay next to each other in the dark and talked about their day, and
other times they
didn’t talk at all, but did other things that kept them up
till the early hours of the morning
.

Living with Shawn was like being
a kid
al
lowed to live in a candy store
stuffing herself, not quite believing that the whole set-up wasn’t temporary and trying to get her fill before someone asked her to leave. Except what she was gorging herself with was epic, crazy, relentless
, thigh-aching
sex.
For weeks now, she had been dragging herself to work, eyes barely open,
bruise-like shadows
beneath
her eyes,
her face buried in the New York
Times
and
hands clasped about
a steaming
espresso
. 

This morning, she had forgotten the paper,
but
was
still
sitting with her hand
s clasped around the coffee cup only this time
staring at her computer monitor, reading the news
online
when someone opened the
door without knocking. She looked up.
It was Dawn. 

“How long
have
we known each other
Riley
?”
she asked.

“Few years.
Why?”

“Do you trust me?” Dawn asked sweetly.

“To do what?”

Dawn laughed.
“C’mon,
Riley
.
Do yo
u trust me?”

“Yeah.
I guess.
Why?”

“Look, I understand why you didn’t advertise the fact that you were getting married to s
omebody famous and everything.
But now how about sharing the joy?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Dawn.
And I haven’t had my coffee so I’m not sharp enough to guess. Maybe you’d better be a little more direct.
”