Flip Side of the Game (8 page)

“No.” I said, praying that he couldn't tell I was lying.

“Are you telling me the truth, Vera?”

“What did I just say? Why would I lie? Stop sweatin' me about that shit!”

“Sweatin' you? Why are you so defensive? Let me find out that you met Roger for lunch and see what happens.”

“And what's going to happen?”

“I'ma leave your fuckin' ass, plain and simple.”

I was two seconds away from slapping the shit out of him. “Who are you talking to?”

He looked around the room, with his arrogant-ass, and said, “Do you happen to see someone else in here?”

“Oh, so, you're being smart?”

“Sometimes it's hard to tell whether I'm being smart or being stupid! The way you act at times, you'll make somebody hurt you.”

“Ooooh, so now,” I said, twisting my face, “you wanna hurt me? How could you love someone you wanna hurt?”

“Your mouth is what will make someone want to hurt you. But since you seem to be in dire need to change the subject, and you want to know why I love you, I'll tell you. I love you because every time I think, every time I breathe, I want it to be with you. I love being around you, the joy that you bring, the excitement of your spirit. I love you because the love you have for me is straight the hell up, and you're not trying to be with me just because you hit a gold mine, because if the truth be told, you haven't asked me for jack!”

“So, what does that mean? And another thing, your li'l punk-ass reason for love is weak! Because if I loved you, it would be because I've never met anyone like you, I've never felt the challenge of the heart, and being with you makes me think about brand new beginnings. And yes, I gotta thing for you! And yes, I no longer just like you, I'm straight feeling you, but so the fuck what? I'm still not committing to you.”

“You know what, baby? I just figured it out,” he said. “I need to give you exactly what you've been asking for, time and space. I'm not the one, sweetheart. I have less problems in the hospital emergency room than I have with you. When you grow up, call me. Until then, remember your little don't-hate-the-player-hate-the-game line, and be sure to apply it to yourself!” He picked up his running Nikes, slipped them on his feet, threw on his throwback jersey, and headed for the door.

“Where are you going?”

“I'm going to give you some time. You're not ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“For me.”

“You haven't even given me a chance,” I heard myself saying, which was the complete opposite of what I meant to say, which was “Kiss my ass.”

“I give you a chance every day, Vera. Give me a minute to think. This shit is too much!”

He slammed the door when he left, and my three-hundred-dollar silk pillows ended up getting tear stains after all.

But this time, I couldn't let him go. I ran through the living room and snatched the front door open. He was standing on the front stoop.

“Look Taj,” I said, breathing heavy and out of breath. “I'll try, okay? I'll try.”

The gossip hour/book club meeting with the girls was exactly what I needed. I hadn't spent any quality time with them since Lee blew up Pastor James's spot. Shannon insisted that we have the meeting at her house, although we had no book to discuss.

“You were layin' it down, girlfriend. Seems like Roger couldn't deal,” Shannon insisted, while sucking the ice cream off her spoon.

“Seems like it,” Angie insisted. “His ass was pussy whipped!”

“You three are about as educated as tramps can be,” Lee said, adding her two cents in.“You shouldn't be messing with nobody's husband anyway!”

“Lets not forget,” I reminded Miz Thing, “people in glass houses, et cetera, et cetera.”

“Nowadays,” Shannon said, cutting me off, “it's hard to find a man that will give up the dick with no strings attached.”

“No you didn't,” I insisted. “How long have I been telling you that? Men are not like they used to be.”

“I know,” Shannon agreed. “Now, they're the ones that want a commitment and want to be in relationships.”

“You see where I'm going with this, right?”

“I feel you, girlfriend,” Angie said. “My ex-husband still trying to get back with me.”

“Oh, no he's not!” I said.

“Yes, he is, but I told him hell no. Stay in L.A. and take care of Bey-Bey and the rest of the get-along gang. Just send me my alimony check!”

“A high five to that! I'm wit' you, girlfriend.” Shannon laughed.

“Well, girls,” Shannon continued, “I have to admit something to you.”

“Bitch, you better not be pregnant. You know that pregnant shit is contagious!” Angie screamed.

“Don't be stupid! Quincy is going to be moving in with me.”

Did this heifer just say Quincy? Shannon and Quincy were Aunt Cookie and Uncle Boy in the making. Every other goddamn week they were in love, and in between those times, she couldn't stand his ass. Too much drama, if you ask me. I told her a long time ago to fuck him and keep it movin', but nevertheless, here we went again.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I had to know.

“Nothing is wrong with me, I just figured that Quincy is good for me.”

“Weren't you just talking about how you can't find dick with no strings attached?” I snapped. “What did he do so great this week that makes you wanna live with him?”

“First of all, Miss Dick Hound, I owe you no explanation as to why I want my man living with me. Nobody has said anything to you about your undercover brother and your in-house dick! You ain't slick, and I don't know about you, but I'm thirty-one and will soon be thirty-two. Folks can hear my biological clock ticking all the way in Afghanistan. And yes, I still believe that you can't find decent dick with no strings attached, but that ain't got shit to do with Quincy.”

“Are you crazy, Shannon?” Angie snapped. “I've been married, and believe me, there's no way you wanna look at the same goddamn man every day,” she slurred, as if saying the words made her tired. “Trust me. Men get comfortable. Either they think you're their mama or they feel their yo' daddy. Men take breastfeeding to a whole 'nother level!”

“Well,” Lee interjected, “I don't see anything wrong with commitment. All men are not alike.”

“You're sure right,” I said. “Some are nice, but dumb as hell, and some are smart, but just irk the shit outta you!”

“Amen,” Angie said. “And some are sweet in bed, but jacked up in the head, and some have it straight in the head, but jacked up in the bed.”

“See, Angie,” I said, “you get my point.”

“Mm-hmm, and when you are dealing with the fine descendants of the Zulu, Ashanti, Ibo, Yoruba, tight packer, loose packer, and Chicken George tribes, it requires lots of emotionally filled time.”

“Time I don't have,” Angie said.

“Well, I do,” Shannon said, “and I think that living with Quincy is the best decision that I can make for my future.”

“Well, do you, boo, 'cause I'm sick of the mu'fuckers myself. I can't find a decent man to save my goddamn life.”

“Shannon,” Lee said, “I thought you said Angie had a profile online.”

“Oh, no you didn't, bitch!” Angie screamed. “I told you not to say anything!”

“I only told Lee,” Shannon said, “and Vera, but that was it. I didn't tell anybody else. So, you may as well tell them what went down. I was too embarrassed to let the shit out myself.”

“All right,” Angie said, rolling her eyes. “Y'all know I ain't had no dick in months, since the episode with the li'l twenty-year-old at the ice cream parlor. So, needless to say, I been lonely as hell, and I figured, fuck it. It's 2004, the new millennium. I'll try and date online. Plus I figured I was equipped, being that I have a few degrees in men.”

“What degree? O.P.P.?” I said, laughing.

“Fuck you Vera. I don't do that shit anymore.”

“Well, what other degrees in men do you have?” I asked.

“I have
Dog-
ology,” she responded. “
Cheatin'-
ology, and
Busted-
ology also. Then there's the
I'm-sorry-
ology, and the
No, I don't want to get back together-
ology, and some of these I have earned two or three times.”

“Damn, and I thought I was bad,” I said, shaking my head.

“Anyway,” she continued, “I chatted online with all kinds of men, but there was this one that captured my attention. He lived here in Brooklyn and was self-employed. My only worry with meeting him online was that he might've been fat. Lord knows I can't deal with no fat man, especially since I've got my own set of chubby-like problems.”

“Would you tell the story?” Shannon said.

“All right, well, after a few chats and one telephone conversation, I thought Daddy-O.com seemed pretty trustworthy, so we set a date and agreed to meet at Soul Café. I was so excited to be going out that I wore my best one-piece strapless bra and girdle combo, my apple green chiffon halter top dress, and my Cinderella high heel mules. Daddy-O.com and I—Eugene was actually his name—decided to meet in the parking lot before going in to have dinner.

“At first, I saw a couple of guys who I thought may have been Eugene, however, as I got closer, they either walked away or stood back and looked at my ass. I knew that Eugene and I agreed on seven-thirty, and he assured me that he was a stickler for promptness. But it was five minutes after eight and no Eugene. He said that he drove a dark green Windstar, but the only Windstar that I saw was parked in a handicap parking space. After about five minutes of standing around and looking for Eugene, I heard someone calling my name:
Angela, Angela Adams. It's me, Eugene.

“Well, divas, when I turned around and looked, Eugene was about three and a half feet from the ground! My Lord! Truthfully, his height didn't bother me as much as the patch over his right eye, which he felt a need to lift up to show me how the eye underneath wandered and caused him to see me going round and round. Which, by the way, he thought was funny.

“During dinner, Eugene seemed to be quite intelligent, and if I could have gotten over the fact that he required a booster seat and the patch over his eye, he wouldn't have been half bad. Once dinner was over and the bill came, Eugene explained that his patch caused him to see only half of the menu's prices, and that he wasn't going to pay sixty dollars for anybody to eat! And to add insult to injury, he told me that had he known I would be so expensive and not have any consideration for the afflicted, that he would have left my lonely-ass home.

“Bastard! I left his half-seeing ass there! I started to yank his booster seat from under him, but instead, I jumped in my car and headed home. And since that time, with the exception of the li'l boy at the ice cream parlor and the li'l security guard, I've been sitting on my custom designed leather sofa, in the comfort of my Afrocentric living room, adding to my collection of Annie Lee figurines and waiting for Santa Claus to drop Prince Charming off at my house.”

“Damn girl,” Lee said, trying to stop herself from laughing. “Tell us about the eye going round and round again.”

I cracked up! As I wiped the tears out of my eyes from laughing so hard, my cell phone rang. Shannon, Angie, and Lee stopped their conversation and were dead in my mouth.

“Hi Taj,” I said, answering the phone.

“Can you skate, Vera?”

I couldn't believe he asked me if I could skate. Hell, all ghetto kids can skate. Even if you only had one skate and learned to skate by holding onto the back of a bike, skating was as innate as survival, and here I had Mr. Fine-ass Yuppie calling me and asking me if I can skate!

“The question is, can you skate?” I asked him.

“Oh, you're challenging my skills?”

“Yo' skills? What skills? The ones from the hospital?”

“Hold up. You think I was born and raised in the hospital. My first word wasn't
doctor
.”

“Yeah, right. What was it,
nurse
?” I said, and then mouthing to Angie, Lee, and Shannon to get out of my mouth!

“Understand this, I might not look like the hood,” Taj said, “but I'm certainly from the hood. And though you may think differently, you weren't the only one eating choke sandwiches and government cheese. So, please, just name a time and place, throw your skates on, and let's get it goin'!”

“The hood, please,” I said. “I'm not talking about a bad street in a nice neighborhood. I'm talking about niggas just runnin' the place. About the bar on the corner, the hustler on the move, and the old lady down the street whippin' ass! I'm talking about ghettofied love, baby. That's the hood.”

“Sweetheart,” he said, trying to talk over the back and forth paging of the hospital intercom, “you ain't said nothin' but a word. Brick City, baby! Represent! Brick City!”

Now, I just about died laughing when he said that. “You better quiet that down before the rest of the doctors start hiding their shit, thinking they about to get jacked up in there! You need your job, baby. Don't scare the white people.”

“All right. All right. I lost a little control for a moment,” he said, sounding as if he was straightening up his pointed polo collar, and now sounding more astute than the episode he just had. “You know what they say, you can take the man out the ghetto, but you can't take the ghetto out the man.”

“Or the doctor, in your case. Meet me at seven at the skating rink uptown.”

I must have had the word
cheese
written across my face for the remainder of the meeting, because Shannon kept telling me to close my mouth. Taj had just cracked me the hell up. Imagine a thugged-out yuppie skating. That shit is classic!

After I left Shannon's, I hurried home to shower and change, then I left back out so that I could meet Taj. I had on my tight leather shorts and the matching top. I had my Christian Dior sports bag, and I was sharp as shit when I arrived at the skating rink.

When I pulled up, Taj was standing outside waiting for me. He walked over, kissed me on the lips, and said, “Damn, girl, why in the hell you wanna do this to a brotha?”

“What?”

He took my hand and placed it on his dick. It was so hard that I could almost feel the veins bulging out.

I started to smile, and I looked at him and said, “It's all good. It lets me know that a sista is handling her business.”

“But, damn, why do have to handle it right here?” He pulled me against his chest and said, “Let me get a quickie.”

“You can't be serious.”

“For real. R.Kelly wrote ‘Sex in My Jeep' for a reason.”

I mushed him playfully on the side of his head and said, “I'll lay it down for you later. Now stop being fresh. The kids standing across the street,” I said, pointing, “are watching you feel all over my ass.”

He stepped back, looked me up and down, and said, “The skating rink is that way.”

I smiled, and the sweet scent of his body lingered in my nose. His gear was tight; I must admit. He had on a Knicks throwback jersey, baggy carpenter jeans, and blue Tims.

“I see you feeling to go back to your roots, Mr. Brick City,” I said. “'Cause you thugged-out as hell!”

He smiled. “This little routine you have going on here is adorable, but put your skates on and let's see what you can do.”

“Oh, you got jokes? Well, let me see if your feet work as well as your mouth does!”

The music in this place was slammin'! I hadn't heard “One Night Love Affair” and “Ten Percent” since I was twenty-three and hanging out in the Peppermint Lounge in Jersey. So, when “Follow Me” came on, I had to do my thing on the floor! And honey, while the disco ball was twirling around and all the people were gettin' down, you couldn't tell whether I was Stella, Vera, or a Don Cornelius disco diva. All right!

“Oh, I see you have some skills!” Taj said, standing back and admiring my groove. “Well, Miz Thang, watch this,” he said as the music changed from “Follow Me” to The Jungle Brothers' “Girl, I'll House You.”

Don't you know that this so-'n-so did a split with them baggy-ass pants on, and then pulled himself up and took off with the roller-skating version of the moonwalk.

Check this out, I broke out with a Michael Jackson kick and a nasty-girl snake. The next thing I heard, the DJ had changed from the Jungle Brothers to the Cha-Cha Slide, and everybody and their mama rushed to do the roller skating version of the Charlie Brown! All right now!