Dirty Old Men [And Other Stories] (Zane Presents) (5 page)

No sense in leaving her a message if she said she was gonna call me. She knows what she said she was gonna do,
he told himself.

But Brenda never bothered to call him back. She didn’t even call him the next day. So Clarence grew nervous about it.

Is she trying to dodge me now?
he contemplated.
Nonsense! It’s only been three days. It hasn’t even been a week yet. What the hell is wrong with me?

So he forced himself to leave it all be for awhile and focus on other things. He took his mind off of her, he even called up a woman he had dated on and off, who was closer to his age. He wanted to see if she would go out and grab a bite to eat with him, just for the hell of it.

“And we can take my younger kids with us?” she asked him.

Clarence had forgotten all about it. That’s why he had stopped calling the woman. Everything was a package deal with her. And her kids were cumbersome.

Shit! She can never just go out on the fly? What the hell I even call her for like this?
he snapped. He remembered that he was forced to plan a week in advance to go out with her. Either that or bring her younger kids along with them. But Clarence was not interested in starting the hell over with a family again; he simply had some manly needs to deal with. He wanted some pussy.

In fact, sometimes he wished that he had never gotten divorced. The dating game for an older man was not as simple as he thought it would be. Everything involved some form of sacrifice or complication. And if the woman didn’t have kids to negotiate around, then she wanted to drag a good man to the altar and plan on having some. But Clarence was not fast to jump at that idea either.

So he responded, “You know what, you can ah, call me back when you feel like going out again as a regular woman and not as a momma.”

“Well, I
am
a momma, Clarence. That’s what it is,” she refuted. “I can’t make
believe.
So any man who can’t understand that, well…”

Clarence didn’t waste any more time with her. He said, “Okay, well… good luck with that.” And when he hung up, it only pushed him closer to the college girl. He was tired of all the extra baggage of older women.

By that second week, Brenda had finally called Clarence back.

She explained, “I’m sorry I haven’t called you back earlier, but I’ve been so busy with school and my job and everything that I ran out of time.”

Clarence didn’t care. He was overjoyed to hear from her again.

“Oh, believe me, I understand. That’s what you’re down here to do, take care of business. But I’m glad you got back to me. How is that car of yours doing?” he asked.

“As a matter of fact, somebody hit me last night while my car was parked on campus. Ain’t that some shit? And my insurance deductible is five hundred dollars.”

Clarence was sorry he had asked. But he damn sure wasn’t bailing her out of that one. She still owed him on his first loan. And now that money seemed in jeopardy.

“Well, let me ask you a question, Brenda. Does somebody have a voodoo doll on this car of yours or what?” he joked.

That caught her off guard and made her laugh. She said, “I know, right? And just when I was starting to get back on my feet and catch up on my bills.”

Clarence told her, “Well, it sounds like you’re gonna have to ride around with that thing looking ugly for awhile. You can still drive it, right?”

“Yeah, I can still drive it…a little,” she answered.

It sounded like a set-up. Clarence assumed that she wanted him to ask her what she meant by “a little” so that she could go into a more detailed sob story. So he began to smile at it all.

Okay, here comes the pitch,
he mused. “A
little?
Well, can you still drive the thing or what?”

“Well, whoever hit me, they pushed my back bumper into the left side wheel, you know, on the driver’s side. So now like, the bumper is rubbing up against my back wheel. Ain’t that crazy? I can only drive like, thirty miles an hour now. And it’s so embarrassing. Everybody on campus was looking at me like I was crazy. I can’t keep driving around like that. I have to get this thing fixed.”

Clarence shook his head with his cell phone in hand and grinned.
She’s not getting me with this shit,
he convinced himself.

“Well, what it sounds like you need someone to do is to pull the bumper back away from the wheel. But you don’t have to get the whole thing fixed. You’re still young. This is only a starter car.”

“No it’s not, I
love
my car. I had a starter car two years ago,” she argued. “And I’m not going back to that.”

Clarence heard her out and went silent over the line. He had said all he planned to say about it. The rest was up to her.

She said, “So, I don’t plan on asking you to help me out again, but I guess it’ll take me a little longer to pay you back now.”

Clarence figured he could kiss that money good-bye. At the rate she was going, she wouldn’t see an extra six hundred dollars unless Santa Claus existed, or she lucked up and hit the damn lottery.

He asked, “Well, do you have any student loans or anything that you might be able to use?”

“Yeah, but I used all of them already. Remember, I’m in my senior year now.”

Clarence remembered that she was a marketing major. “Do you have any good leads for a job, as soon as you graduate?” He was already planning to wait long-term for Brenda to turn things around for herself. It was what all college students had to do, dig themselves out of a hole. His own daughter would have to go through it in a few more years herself.

“Well, you gotta hang on in there then,” he advised Brenda.

“I know, but…I wish I had some
help
sometimes, you know what I mean? But my parents can’t help me at all. They’re struggling right now to take care of my younger brother and sister back home. And with me being the oldest, they’ve gotten used to me finding a way to make things happen for myself, but I get so
tired
of this sometimes.”

She was pouring the sob story on thick, and Clarence was prepared for it, as soon as she mentioned that her car had been hit.

He said, “You need some help, hunh? Well, I’ve already given you help.”
And what have you done for me?
he asked himself. She was forcing him to think with the wrong head again.

She pleaded, “I know, but if you could like, help me out again, I swear to
God
, I will pay you
back. Honestly.
”

“I mean, you think I got like, extra money lying around like that that I can loan you for a year or two?” he questioned.
What the hell does this girl think I got going on over here?

She said, “Clarence, you guys get tips at the airport every day. And like, in two to three days, you could get five hundred dollars easy. I
know it.
And then I would get the car fixed with my money, and by the end of the week, you could give it back to me, and then I would have to work harder, or whatever I have to do to pay you back. I mean, for real.”

Clarence couldn’t believe his old ears. This young college girl was really pushing him hard now. She was even counting his pocket change at the airport.

He said, “Now you really wanna get this same car fixed that bad? It seems to me that this car is gonna cause too much of a steady problem for you. You may be better off having somebody drive you to and from work every day and pay them a couple dollars each way. I mean, Tallahassee ain’t but so big,” he advised her.

Brenda stopped talking for awhile. She let the dead silence sink in on him. Then she said, “So you can’t do that for me at all?” She remained persistent.

Clarence was even impressed with by it. She really knew how to put pressure on a man. But he also realized that he was letting her get away with it because she was young and didn’t know any better. It was the spoiled and desperate recklessness of her youth talking.

So Clarence leveled with her. “You know, a young woman could really find herself in a bond with a man if you keep going like this. Because if you talk to the wrong kind of guys about helping you out with money—”

Brenda cut him off, “But that’s why I’m asking
you
, because I know you wouldn’t do me like that. I mean, do you know how many guys talk about helping me out. I’m not dumb; I mean, I know what they want. And I’m not going out like that, simply because I need money. But somebody has to be on your
side.
You know what I mean? I’m only asking you to be on my side and look out for me like that. I need some
help.
”

Got’ dammit!
Clarence panicked.
What would Maurice say to this shit?
he wondered. The game had quickly climbed out of his reach. He found that he couldn’t handle this young woman with his simple logic. She would eat him up alive.

He took a deep breath and thought it over.
You a damned fool, Clarence,
he told himself before he even responded to her. “I’ll ah…see what I can do. But I won’t make you any—”

“Thank you, thank you,
thank you!
” she exclaimed, cutting him off again. “Oh my God, I promise you will
never
regret helping me. I mean, I will make you feel so
proud
of me.”

“Make me feel
proud, how?
” he asked her.

“When I become successful,” she answered. “And it will be all because of your help. I mean, I can be like, your little project.”

Clarence was stunned into silence. What the hell could he say to that? The girl sounded borderline
crazy.
And all he could do was smile about it. He actually liked the shit. She was a real character, and she made him feel needed. He was the only one on earth who could help her.

Clarence went back to work that next morning and found himself dodging, ducking, weaving, jumping, dipping, stretching, contorting and grabbing luggage like O.J. Simpson in an old Hertz Rental Car commercial before he went crazy for a white girl out in California.

The younger skycaps looked around at each other as if the old man had lost his damn mind.

“Hey, man, what the hell is wrong with Clarence this morning?” one of the younger guys commented to Maurice.

Maurice started giggling to himself and couldn’t help it. “Don’t worry about him. The boy in love and won’t admit it to nobody.”

“Well, you better tell his ass not to jump out in front of me again, man. And I don’t give a fuck
who
he in love with. That motherfucker’s fucking with my money now.”

Maurice laughed it off. “Now calm down and watch your mouth out here, young’un. We got passengers to take care of.”

“Yeah, and that motherfucker tryna take ’em all.”

The young coworker continued pouting.

“Come on now, you know he can’t take all of ’em. He’s on a roll today, that’s all,” Maurice explained. He found it all humorous. Clarence looked as if he had drunk five cans of Red Bull on the way to work that morning. And he had a quota to make.

By quitting time, Clarence had broken his three-hundred-dollar goal. In fact, he was closer to
four
hundred. But no one was happy about it but him.

On the way back to their cars in the parking lot, Maurice made sure to have a few words with him.

“Ah, Clarence… you sure you don’t have anything to talk to me about? Is your daughter doing okay with money in school? You need to bail your son out of jail or something? What’s going on, man? You need me to help you out?” He was being halfway sarcastic.

Clarence looked at him and chuckled. He didn’t even care anymore. He had done what he needed to do that day. And he was more than halfway there to five hundred.

So he answered, “I’m trying to make a living, man.”

“Nah, you tryna do
more
than that,” Maurice countered. “Last week, you was standing around daydreaming all day. Now you come back to work and turn into Superman.”

“I had a good day today, that’s all,” Clarence explained nonchalantly.

“Yeah, I can see that. But I don’t want you to hurt yourself out here on account of whatever’s going on with you, man. You know what I mean? And you damn sure didn’t make any of the younger guys happy about it.”