Friends and Lovers (43 page)

A room service cart rattled by the door and I imagined a tray full of scrambled eggs and fruit and croissants and butter and jams. My stomach growled.

Tyrel asked, “Hungry?”

“Starvin’ like Marvin in Nickerson Gardens. Let’s hurry. If they’ve eaten up all of Alejandria’s cooking, I’ll make you breakfast.”

I had to hold my belly and laugh after I said that. That was so typical, the stereotypical response to a good brother who had dished out some good loving, a sister offering to cook breakfast to refuel his empty tank. I envisioned my standing over a hot old-fashioned cast-iron stove with an apron on and a checkered scarf wrapped around my head, sweat dripping while I grinned and tap-danced and sang.

I dressed, didn’t even bother straightening my hair. It was a perfect match for my wrinkled outfit. So I let it be.

“I look homeless,” I whined with my lip poked out. I felt so juvenile. “And your clothes don’t even have wrinkles.”

He said, “I’ll have to change before I go pick Daddy up.”

“What time is he coming in?”

“His flight’s due in a little over two hours.”

“Can I ride with you?”

He smiled. “Sure.”

No way I was gonna go through the hotel’s lobby looking this jacked up, so I talked Tyrel into taking the musty stairwell down the five flights so only a few people would see us. Last night, the palm tree-lined parking lot facing Centinela was packed because some social organization was having a black-tie gala to close off a weeklong conference in one of the ballrooms, so we had to park in the lower-level underground parking.

As soon as we stepped out of the stairwell, we saw a towtruck pulling away a four-door rental car. Tyrel cursed. His 240ZX was blocked in by a white Corsica with a Hertz sticker on the window, pretty much the same way a few of the other cars next to us had been blocked in last night.

I looked at my watch and sang, “Oooohh. Debra gon’ be mad. I’m already feeling bad for not being there last night.”

Tyrel went over to the stupid rental car. The Corsica was parked horizontally. Tyrel’s car was stuck between it and the wall. Half a foot and there would’ve been enough room to maneuver out without ripping off the bumper.

I should’ve been mad, but I smiled. Maybe somebody had done like we’d done, reunited because it felt so good, rushed their emotions to a warm room, undressed, and slipped into a moment of passion and pleasure and sympathy that went past daybreak.

“Damn.” Tyrel shook his head.

He pointed his remote at his car. The alarm chirped, his power doors clicked open. Tyrel walked over to the
Corsica and peeped inside before he tried to open its doors.

He said, “Locked.”

“Keys inside?”

“In L.A.? You must be joking, right?”

“Not joking, just hoping.” I rubbed his shoulders to keep him from getting anxious. “Guess we’re trapped together.”

Several people got off the elevator, yawning and too tired to smile, but they walked to other parts of the structure. Tyrel put his hands on the rental’s hood. He said, “Engine’s cold.”

“They must’ve been here all night too.”

“Let’s hope they’re registered and wrote down the plates on the registration form.” Tyrel pointed inside at an empty Jack Daniel’s bottle and Twinkie wrappers. “They came in loaded.”

Tyrel raised a brow and licked his lips. “If we didn’t have to go, I’d kidnap you a little longer and wait it out.”

“Mmmmm, sounds tempting.” My eyebrows wiggled. “If we didn’t have to go, I’d let you.”

“Maybe another day?”

I blushed, felt relieved that this might turn out to be more than a one-night stand with an old flame. “Maybe. If you’re a good boy and be nice to me, you might get lucky a time or two.”

We grinned at each other for a moment.

Tyrel said, “Let’s go tell the front desk we’re blocked in.”

I shook my head at my wrinkled clothes. No comb, no brush, no mascara, no Listerine. Not a single luxury. “You go. I look like a Heidi Fleiss reject. I’ll be fine waiting right here.”

After we shared tart tongues and funky breath, Tyrel handed me his keys and trotted toward the hotel.

I licked around my mouth and shouted, “Tyrel, get some gum.”

He waved and kept on trotting. I loved the way his bowlegs moved with a smooth athletic rhythm and
thought about the times we’d jogged the beaches from Venice to Santa Monica.

He hopped on the elevator. I leaned against the car and tried to push some of the stubborn wrinkles out of my jacket, just in case we ended up having to go straight to LAX to get his daddy. This first impression would be unforgivable. Trying to hand-iron my clothes was a lost cause.

I sighed and smiled. The air in this penitentiary wasn’t really circulating, but it was cool enough to keep it from smelling too old. It was dusty, but not enough to bother me.

Every time the elevator opened, people went to other cars. More cars pulled in. One parked by me. It was an older white lady in a powder-blue leisure suit. When she saw me, the hag pursed her lips and gave up a sideways glower. I spoke. She didn’t. The blue-haired prune gripped her shoulder bag and scurried toward the elevator. I flipped her off.

I looked myself over again, in a Catwoman suit and a wrinkled jacket, hair out of control. I didn’t want anybody else to think the wrong thing, so I got inside the car, let my seat back, closed my eyes, and decided it was time to doze off. I got comfortable, started grinning and thinking about all the love I gave last night, thought about how I had worked Tyrel like he was going out of style and gave myself a buncha mental high fives. I was the one, the two, the three, the four, and the five.

I dozed into euphoria and dreamed I was a queen of queens, riding down the Nile while caramel-coated servants fed me ripe grapes and fanned my face with big, colorful peacock feathers.

Gentle taps on the car window woke me up.

He said, “Want some gum?”

I yawned out, “That was quick, baby.”

I giggled, sat up, gave a broad smile, then opened my eyes. It wasn’t Tyrel. Our eyes met. Definitely wasn’t Tyrel.

He was close enough for his breath to fog the glass. I shrieked. The brother had on clothes so wrinkled and
dirty they made the homeless look decent. Hair was too nappy to be happy.

I twisted my body so fast I thought my rib snapped. My eyes searched for help. Not another soul was in the garage. I tried to swallow, but I ended up choking on my own saliva.

Richard the Rummager’s eyes were the color of old ketchup. He told me to open the door. I shook my head and leaned away. He banged on the window, yanked the handle, scowled down at me.

My heart rose to my throat when the car rocked like a seesaw. Cigarette smoke oozed out of his greasy face like he was a dragon getting ready to burn me to a crisp.

I yelled, “What’s wrong with you?”

“Morning, Shelby.” Richard stopped tugging on the car door long enough to drop his cancer stick and stomp it. “You have a good night last night?”

I swallowed a mouthful of disbelief, jerked around, looked behind me, then out the driver’s side, then behind me again. Not a single soul was in the garage but me and the Rummager.

I didn’t know where he came from or what the hell to do. Richard took a step back, smiled, and threw his arms open.

“Come here, Shelby.
Now.
“

Over and over, he told me to get out of the car and come to him.
Think, Shelby, think.
With his hate-mug grimacing down on me, I was trapped, so when he backed up a few feet, I jumped out and slammed the car door. That hullabaloo the door made rang like a steel snare closing. I took a step his way with a serious don’t-start-no-shit-won’t-be-no-shit look, and my body language backed me up.

Richard came toward me. I went toward the end of the car. This was unreal. I blinked a few times, pinched myself, but when I opened my eyes, he was in front of me.

“Don’t look like you got much sleep.” Richard sucked his teeth. From where I was, his breath smelled more
putrid than rotten fruit. He said, “Neither did I. You know why?”

It was time to run to the elevator like I was Gail Devers, my mind screamed
go, heifer, go
, but my limbs had locked up with shock. I didn’t have control of my body. Plus I didn’t know where to run, toward the hotel or up to the streets. I could run farther than Richard, but in flat shoes with smooth bottoms, I wasn’t sure I’d outsprint him up the ramp, around the building, and into the lobby. If I did outrun him, I wasn’t so sure I wanted to break into a four-star lobby of white people and Asians, looking the way I did, with an indignant black man staggering on my heels.

“What do you want, Richard?”

“What is up?” He spat and the slobber dangled from the corner of his face. He jammed his hands into his pockets. My heart did a boom-boom. Richard snatched out a wrinkled pack of Camels, popped the last one in his mouth, then yanked out a green disposable lighter. Tobacco burned to life when he inhaled.

“You know”—he coughed—“I used to be able to smoke these without choking. But that was before I met you. You didn’t know it, but I quit smoking for you. The day I met you, you asked me if I smoked. I said no, that I had been around a bunch of people smoking. By the way you asked I could tell you didn’t like men who smoke, so I quit”—he snapped his finger—“just like that. Proud of me, baby? I did it all for you.”

He balled up the empty pack and slung it into my face. I tried to swat it away, but it came too fast. Felt like it had cut me right over my eye.

Every second made the space between us smaller, helped the distance between me and freedom stretch out. The sounds of cars rolling by on the streets were loud. But nobody came down.

“Did you have fun?” He was sneering and inhaling and coughing and spitting. “Did that punk-ass have a good time with you? You rock his world?”

I said, “What’re you doing here?”

“You mean, what are
you
doing here?” Richard’s
upper lip clung to his teeth. “Why do you think I’m here? I followed you.”

“Why?”

He blew smoke out of the corner of his mouth and his nose at the same time. “You’re intelligent. Why do you think?”

“Why’re you doing this to yourself?”

“Why’re YOU doing this to ME?”

A yuppie couple in Bermuda shorts and tank tops got off the elevator before the echo faded. They turned their heads and walked away so fast all I heard was sandals flapping against their soles. Their car started and screeched away.

Richard grabbed my arm. “You coming back to me?”

I jerked away and growled, “Richard, will you please leave?”

He grabbed at me again.

I jerked away again.

He snapped, “Are you begging me to go?”

“Yeah, whatever it takes to get your monkey ass out of my face. Now, please, leave me alone.”

I started imagining Tyrel finding me laid out on the cold concrete, blood dripping everywhere. Then being laid up in Daniel Freedman’s ER, hooked to an IV, trying to talk over my swollen lips and explain to a frantic Debra what happened.

He snapped, “Look at me.”

I got up in his face.
“What the hell do you want?”

“How was it?”

“Richard, don’t clown.”

“How was it?”

“Why?”

“Because I want to know, dammit. Was he better than me?”

“None of your damn business. Now leave me alone, will you? Please go the fuck away and stop harassing me.”

“You just couldn’t wait for me to leave, huh? At least you could’ve waited for me to get on the plane. You know, this shit hurts real fucking bad.” Richard kicked
the ground, dropped his cigarette. “You know what I ought to do?”

He slammed his fist into the hood of the Corsica. I moved away. He moved and cut me off. The brother was more psycho than Norman Bates. He picked up his cigarette and took a long pull. My eyes were darting from wall to wall, searching for security cameras so I could jump up and down and do a help-me dance.

Richard was standing like a bull and growling like a bear. “Look, even with all the bullshit you are putting me through, I still love you, and I will still marry you. I mean, I want to marry you, and we can work our way through this. Maybe we’ll have to get some professional counseling, and—and—I can forgive you for this because I-I understand that you just had something you had to get out of your system, and even though I don’t like it, this is the only way you knew how.”

“Richard, stop. Please! It’s over. Ain’t no me and you.”

“Don’t let that nigga come between us.”

“It’s not because of Tyrel.”

“I understand. Don’t be ashamed. I forgive you.”

“What?”

Richard leaned against his car. “Baby—”

“You ain’t the one, two, three, four, or the five.”

“What?”

“Hold a mirror up and check yourself. Look at how you’re acting. You think I would wanna be with you?”

“You did this to me.” He spat at me. “You!”

“You’re doing it to yourself.”

“So are you dumping me for him?”

“This ain’t about him or you. This is about me.”

“You trying to tell me he makes you happy?”

“Fuck. You don’t listen.”

“I listen. That’s why I’m here. I know what is up. I knew about you calling him. I knew about last night. I listen.”

He smiled and reached to touch my face. I slapped his hand as hard as I could and pushed him so hard he stumbled. His eyes bucked. Right then I knew that was
the wrong move. He ran at me and shoved me hard into Tyrel’s car. Threw me so hard my side slammed into the hood and my leg walloped into the grill. I stumbled, but I refused to fall. Then he pushed me again and I tumbled into the side of the car. I shrieked and the next thing the rough asphalt was catching my body.

He roared, “See what you made me do?”

I scooted away and screamed, “You’re a punk, Richard.”

This was a brother I’d never met before. This wasn’t the businessman who sent flowers and begged to take me everywhere. Hold on, maybe this was the real Richard, with the mask off. If I’d married him, this was how I would’ve been living.

When I made it to my feet, I wanted to kick his dick so hard it would come out of his throat, but he was sideways, like he knew I wanted a shot at the million-dollar mark.