Cover Girls (2 page)

By their last lap around the outer circle, all the executives were standing in the doorways of their offices, including the business owner, Mrs. Judson. The CEO stood with arms folded, an eyebrow lifted and frozen into place. She wore the cool scowl that was her trademark—along with an ultra conservative suit that looked like it was a designer original—but she didn’t speak or lift a finger as she watched Michelle chase Tonya out of the office and into the lobby. When they passed by the bank of elevators, Michelle noticed Shadrach, a brother—an upright, single brother—and a contract worker in the building, was standing just in front of a set of doors. He waved, as best he could with an arm full of packages, while they ran past, like he was waving at a parade.

Just beyond the elevators, Tonya bolted down the stairs. Michelle kept grabbing, but couldn’t get Tonya as she flew down the stairs behind her. The Bible-thumping fuddy-duddy was in great shape!

All the running and pounding down the stairs—Michelle’s heels
clack, clacking,
while Tonya’s
thud, thudded
—was putting some wear on the heels of Michelle’s new pumps, but she didn’t care. It was going to be worth it to rid the world of Tonya.

Soon they were out on the street. Tonya was almost kicking herself in the behind, she was running so fast, but Michelle was keeping up. It just seemed no matter how she turned on the steam, Tonya stayed out of her grasp.

They passed by a policeman on a corner who tipped his hat and laughed. They crossed the street and out of the corner of her eye Michelle noticed Trench, her hot and steaming bad-boy-toy, riding by on a bus. He was looking fine as always—his skin chocolate-y smooth and his wavy hair short and well-groomed. If she had had the time, she would have crooked her finger and called him from the bus, but—she looked ahead of her at Tonya’s feet kicking up dirt and trash on the city sidewalk—right now she had her hands full!

A few blocks down the street, Tonya saw her husband—well, her soon to be
ex-husband
—Todd, with roses in his hand, sitting at a table in a restaurant. He looked as though he were about to stand, looked as though he was about to start asking questions, asking her if what she was doing was the right thing to do, but Michelle didn’t have time to explain or chitchat with him, because. She was so close! So close to Tonya. Michelle pumped her arms and legs, gaining on the woman.

She had her! Michelle leapt and grabbed—

Beep-beep-beep-beep!

Michelle bolted up right in the bed. Her hand was drawn back in the air. Dreaming. She’d been dreaming!

No job was worth this, not even one with a promotion!

Hitting the button that turned off the clock alarm, she turned so that her feet landed on the floor, then held her head. She was still a little foggy. “This is crazy,” she mumbled to herself. “Absolutely crazy!” Now she was dreaming about personal phone calls. Work was taking over her home time.

Besides, she was getting her work done. What was the issue? It was just Todd and sweet old Miz. Ida—Miz Ida who was always her backbone, who had practically raised her, who usually kept her from going postal on Tonya and the rest of the pit crew—and Trench, sometimes.

But obviously, what was making Michelle really crazy wasn’t Tonya monitoring the calls. Michelle tilted her head to the right and then to the left; she could hear the muscles and tendons in her neck and back popping and cracking. All this was too much! It was Tonya—Miss Praise the Lord herself! Mrs. Judson and the phone calls were bad enough, but Tonya just wore her out.

If it weren’t for that stupid promotion and the power it held over her, dangling wildly over her head like the proverbial carrot . . . If it weren’t for the job, there wouldn’t be any pressure. Michelle couldn’t deny it; she wanted the chance at a promotion. Sure she did. It was her breakthrough.

She pushed back the covers of her sleep-tossed bed and prepared herself to get up and get going.

Was it really worth it all? Sure, the job was an upwardly mobile position, which made it easier to get promoted. She needed the job. What she didn’t need was Tonya, her very own self-appointed, do-good-all-the-time missionary.

Belief in God wasn’t the issue. Michelle didn’t need anyone treating her like she didn’t know God. He knew her heart. It just wasn’t necessary to be a holy roller twenty-four hours a day seven days a week. It was like having Todd at work and that—too much Jesus stuff—was exactly why the two of them were separated. She was tired of people like him in her life telling her how she should do things, telling her that she always had to be good. Bump Todd, bump Tonya, bump them all!

Michelle got up from the bed and stomped to the bathroom as though there was someone to hear her. As she stepped from her warm bedroom rug onto the cold tile of her bathroom floor, the big checkerboard pattern of black-and-white tiles offered no comfort to her feet. She winced and stepped gingerly forward. Her feet clapped against the floor, sounding almost like Miz Ida’s hands had sounded years ago clapping in the church Michelle had been forced to go to with her from time to time—after her momma got religion. That was a joke, too. Her momma was just another hypocrite—after years of doing wrong, suddenly everyone expected her to forgive her mama. They wanted Michelle to play along and act like her momma was suddenly qualified for the big-hat-church-sister club. Well, there was a time when she herself had wanted to go, when she got religion herself. But she could never get passed her momma. It was too much to swallow. Her momma sitting in church made it hard for Michelle to find her own way to God—but that was a story for another morning.

Michelle opened the patterned-glass shower door and turned the water on hard and hot. She didn’t need someone telling her how to live her life—enough of her young years had been spent with people doing that, with people eating from the table at her expense. A job with a future that would bring in more cash was good, but at what price? She stepped into the steam and under the water. It ran down her soft, supple skin and rushed to the floor, forming warm puddles beneath her feet.

Michelle mused over her life—where she was and where she was going. There was one thing about which there was no doubt. No one was going to control her or hurt her again. That, she was certain of; it was definitely not negotiable. She had been hurt and misused as a child when she couldn’t fight for herself. But no one was ever going to control her or hurt her again.

Michelle took a rough loofah from the plastic loop just to the right of the showerhead. She had promised herself she would not get used again, and it was a promise she was going to keep.

She pulled the cracked shower door closed. Nothing was worth being used. Not marriage. Not her family. Not even a job. No one was going to use her. No one.

That was Michelle’s last thought before the hot water completely enveloped her and translocated her into an imaginary spa, and for the briefest of moments she was insulated from the toil of thought and worry by the comfort of the steamy water’s tender caress. She sighed and drifted into a moment of tranquility beneath the cascade of water that washed her worries off and sent them swirling down into the drain.

Chapter Two

T
wenty-four stories up from the concrete sidewalks and streets below, there were windows all around the floor on which Michelle worked. Of course, none of the
real
workers could see them. That is, unless one of the office doors—the offices that faced the outside and formed a cage around the large, wide open inner office—were left ajar. The workers were like inmates in a prison. Unless some light, some hint of the outside, escaped into the pit when a door was left accidentally opened or closed, there was no evidence of an outside world.

The outer offices with windows belonged to the bigwigs, the big shots, to those that had arrived. The outer offices belonged to those who had earned the right to daylight and to a view of the city because they had climbed the ladder and jumped the hoops to get there.

The people in the pit—in the inner office jammed with rows of desks, computer monitors, copy machines, and chairs—were all wannabes. They all wanted to be something, to be somebody. The temps wanted to be permanent. The secretaries wanted to be administrative assistants. The administrative assistants wanted to be executive assistants or even make the career jump to become investigators, analysts, team leaders, or project leaders. All the wannabes wanted to be managers and executives who worked long hours. Executives who dressed like strangers and pretended to be someone they were not so they could hide who they really were behind the doors of the offices that ringed the inner office—the offices that kept the wannabes in the pit.

Michelle scanned the room. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to play the game. She didn’t want to be a wannabe. She was sure she wanted the money, but she didn’t want to be someone’s assistant, or support staff forever. She just wasn’t sure if the price was too high.

What she was sure of was elevators. She looked at the bank of them—the doors painted a salmon color—that were just beyond the invisible line that separated her office from the hall. Thank heaven for elevators, because she was definitely not a stairs girl. There was no way she was hiking stairs, especially not twenty-four flights of them. If the elevators ever went, no doubt Miss Michelle would be gone too.

Just then, one of the elevators opened. Shadrach emerged and waved as though he knew she would be looking for him. His arms were full of express mail envelopes but he waved them at her in some kind of crazy mailroom sign language, some kind of weird secret postal Morse code. She had no clue what he was saying, but she nodded and smiled anyway.

Shadrach was cool. Not fine, but nice enough looking. Not pushy, but he had a good head on his shoulders. If she were really smart, she would just relax with some older man like Shad . . .

Michelle pushed the thought aside. The last thing she needed to think about was another man. She had Todd calling to nag her every day and Trench running in and out of her life and her apartment like she and it belonged to him. Her plate was full, and she wasn’t sure that everything on her plate was a good choice.

Shad kept waving and mouthing something. He knew she couldn’t hear him! Her phone rang. She pointed to it, waved him away, and mouthed, “I’ll talk to you later.” Shad nodded and then moved on as she lifted the receiver.

It was Todd. What was new?

While he nagged at her over the phone—
“Are you going to church, Michelle? I love you, Michelle. When can I see you, Michelle?”
—she nodded and scribbled on a pad as if she were taking notes. Of course, no one in the office who watched her believed she was taking notes. No one believed she was on a business call, but the charade was enough to create a reasonable doubt. The scribbling was enough to create a sustainable defense, should she need one. Like, say, should the telephone police make an unexpected visit.

Todd was droning on and on. Michelle turned on her radio. Hip-hop queen Mary J. Blige was singing her hit “No More Drama.” Mary was right on time. That’s exactly what Michelle wanted: no more drama. She cleared her throat. “Todd?”

He kept right on talking. “Michelle, I’m not trying to pressure you.”

That was pretty silly. In fact, it was a lie. How could Todd not be trying to pressure her when he was calling every day, sometimes two and three times a day? “Michelle, I miss you,” he said. He said it every day, and it made her sick.

Well, not really sick, but she wasn’t going to be responsible for how he felt. He was on his own if he wanted to call, if he wanted to hang on and wait or send flowers or anything else. She wasn’t promising him anything.

Sure, it felt good to know someone thought the sun rose and set in her. And it felt good to know if she called, he always came running. Yeah, it felt good. But that didn’t have to mean anything. Anybody would be a fool not to accept the attention he gave, and one thing she was not was a fool.

“I love you, Michelle. And I’m willing to wait until you’re ready, until you feel the time is right.”

But accepting his attention didn’t mean she loved him. For sure, it didn’t mean she was in love with him. When it came to love, he was on his own. “Look, Todd, that’s on you.” Michelle could hear her voice raising and feel her chest beginning to tighten. “If you want to call and say all this stuff, it’s on you. The way things are right now, we may never get back together. You know that, right?”

She scanned the office as she spoke and saw Tonya looking in her direction. Tonya looked at her, then appeared to be looking around the office as though to see if other people were watching.

What was her malfunction? Forget Tonya. Michelle sat forward. She had to get this straight with Todd. She could feel her heart rate beginning to increase; the strain and tension felt like a band around her head and chest. “Look, I know you’re saying you aren’t putting pressure on me, but that’s exactly what you’re doing.” She mocked his voice. “‘Michelle, I’ll wait for you.’ How is that supposed to make me feel, Todd?” She made her voice sound more assertive. “You know my situation, right?” There was no answer. Why did he always have to make her bring it up? Why couldn’t he just leave well enough alone?

But he’d started it, so she was going to finish it. If Todd was going to talk to her, he was going to do it on her terms. “I said, you
do
know my situation, right?” He was not going to box her in.

His voice was just above a whisper. “You’re seeing someone.”

If he was going to call every day and send gifts she didn’t ask for, he was not going to be able to rub it in her face later. She was telling him the real deal. Let
him
feel stressed. Let
his
neck and shoulders tighten. She was getting the drama out of her life.

“That’s a nice way of putting it, Todd.” Sarcasm dripped from the side of her mouth. “I’m doing more than seeing him.
Him
has a name, remember? And you do remember that you and I are legally separated.”

“You don’t have to be nasty, Michelle.” Todd’s voice sounded steady and serious—very serious. “I know what you’ve said, Michelle, but I still love you.” His voice rose, forceful and masculine. “I know what you’re saying and I know what you’ve said. But you’re my woman. You’re my wife.”