I Saw Your Profile (6 page)

    
He stood up and
reached for her hand. Nicole gave it to him. They walked the short distance
from the living area of the suite to the bedroom.

 
   
“I’ll let you get undressed
in private.” Chauncey shut the door and went across the hall to the bathroom.

    
Nicole changed into a
long, blue satin nightgown and climbed into one of the queen beds. Though she
didn’t usually sleep in panties, that night she kept them on.

    
Chauncey wore only a
pair of white briefs when he joined her in the bedroom. Even in the darkness,
she could make out the outline of his muscles.
 

    
Nicole sent up a quick
prayer for strength, hoping it would help keep her legs closed.

    
Chauncey slid under
the covers, pulling her body close to his. “I just want to be next to you,
that’s all.”

    
Nicole laid her head
on his chest. “I had a great start to my new year. Thank you.”

    
“Happy New Year, Lady
Nicole.”

    
Their schedules kept
them from seeing each other for a long time. They kept in touch with more
emails, phone calls and instant messages.

 
    
Three months after
their first date, Chauncey took a train to Baltimore and she picked him up in
her green Jeep Cherokee.

 
    
She told Jay he was a
friend whom she liked a lot who might become more.

    
“Like a boyfriend?”
her son asked.

    
“Something like that,
honey. We’ll see.”

    
Chauncey stayed at her
home for two weeks, making dinner for her when she arrived home from work. He
played video games with her son and they shot hoops in the backyard.

    
For Nicole, it was
like having the family Jamal Sr. had deprived her of. He was hardly ever home
when they lived together and he never was much of a father. Chauncey gave her
an emotional closeness that she’d never experienced with her son’s father.

    
Also, Chauncey wasn’t
afraid to talk about his feelings.

    
“I loved Lydia
completely. I was devastated when I learned of her betrayal,” he said about his
ex-wife as they washed dishes together after dinner one evening.

    
“Finding your wife in
bed with another man is not easy for any man, but I tried to work things out
for my son’s sake. But she chose her lover over me. I came to the states
because I felt I had to get away before I did something I would regret.
Besides, there are more opportunities here for people of color. Racism in
London is even worse than it is here in America.”

    
“She must’ve really
hurt you.”

    
“It was as if someone
had stabbed me with a knife and twisted it. It was a year before I dated again.
I threw myself into my work. I try not to hold her actions against all women.
But it has been difficult for me to trust again.”

    
After the first week,
Chauncey moved from the sofa bed in the living room to her bedroom at night,
and back to the sofa bed in the morning for Jay’s benefit. He made her believe
she was the best thing that ever happened to him.

     
“Do you believe
in soul mates, daahling?” He slid his tongue over her toes as they lay in bed.

 
    
Her breathing got
heavier with each lap of his tongue.

    
“I’m. Not. Sure.
Why?”
 

    
“I know we haven’t
known each other long, but I feel as if I’ve known you for years, Lady Nicole.
You’ve stolen my haart.”

    
He caressed and kissed
her all over, even the deep, golden stretch marks on her flabby stomach.

    
They made love.

    
Chauncey squeezed his
eyes tightly and roared like a mountain lion when he came. “Grrrr Grrrr Grrrr.”

    
She whispered as they
panted their way back to earth, “I’ve never heard a noise like that before.”

    
He pulled out and lay
next to her. “That was the sound of satisfaction from a man
in
love.”

    
He kissed her
forehead.

    
She wasn’t convinced.
It was too soon.

    
“If you say so.”

 
   
“I do,” he said. “And one day
soon you will trust in my feelings for you and you’ll be able to trust yours
for me.”

    
Chauncey peeked across
the hall to make sure Jay was still sleeping, and then went to the bathroom to
flush his Trojan. Nicole followed to take a shower. He climbed in behind her
and massaged her shoulders, working his way down to the small of her back. She
leaned into him and purred her satisfaction.

    
“Mmm. Your hands are
like magic.”

    
“You are the magician,
Lady Harris. You’ve shown me how to love again.”

     
A month later,
Chauncey was back on Amtrak for what was supposed to be another two-week visit.

    
He stayed for three.
When he left it was to get his clothes, his truck and other personal things.

     
For most of the
first year they lived together, he contributed little in the way of money. He
said it was hard trying to build clientele in an area like Bowie, even though
it was a stone’s throw from D.C.

    
He did his part in
other ways. He watched Jay after school, cleaned the house, did the laundry,
and helped with the cooking.

    
They worked out
together at the gym every morning before she went to the office. He would often
stay after she left, working on his huge biceps, perfectly chiseled pecs, quads
and hamstrings.

    
The three of them went
to the nine o’clock service at church every Sunday. They ate together and held
hands to say grace before each meal.

    
Nicole sent clients
his way whenever she could. Women in her office and others who worked for D.C.
government, ladies from her church, sisters from her sorority. Word eventually
spread and Chauncey was on his way to making business.

At first, he wouldn’t take
clients from three to six so he could still watch Jay.

    
One day, she came home
and he was teaching Jay to play cards. She asked Chauncey about the last time
he saw his own son.

    
“When I left London,
about two years ago.”
 

    
“You miss him, don’t
you?”

    
“Of course. We were
very close. He stayed with me the night before I left London, and on the
morning of my depaarture, he acted out because he didn’t want me to go. I was
stern with him and told him he had to behave like a man, but after his mother
came and picked him up, I cried.”

    
Chauncey’s story
brought back memories of her own father. Nicole was daddy’s little girl and
everything she wanted, he gave her.

    
Her eyes became misty
as she recalled a business trip her father had to take when she was little. She
had a tantrum and begged him not to go. He left anyway, but she remembered the
tears in his eyes as he walked out the door, and the huge stuffed animal he had
for her when he came back.

    
Her father was her
first love and his death was the hardest thing she ever had to get over.

    
She always wanted to
marry a man just like him.

    
That day, she believed
Chauncey was that man.

Chapter
Six

All
day
Janelle Carter listened to women talk about their love lives while she did
their hair. She made them beautiful for their first dates with I-Hope-He’s-Mr.
Right. For He’ll-Probably-Come-By-for-a Booty-Call-Tonight.

    
And for their weddings
to I-Finally-Found-Mr. Right.

    
They talked about how
good or bad their men were in bed.
     
How many times
they made them come. How they couldn’t wait to do it again. How they wouldn’t
waste their time.

    
To them, she was just
the hairdresser who kept their secrets.

    
What they didn’t know
was she had a secret of her own.

    
Janelle cruised
LoveMeBlack.com regularly checking out men and taking on the personas of her
clients.

     
She was never
Janelle Carter, the overweight, divorced mother of two who spent most nights
home alone. That is unless she was in the chat room for overweight women, the
most popular chat room on LoveMeBlack.com on Saturday nights. The topic was
usually “Big Beautiful and Loving It,” and they mostly talked about sex.

     
Janelle didn’t
have a profile. She emailed men who did. When they asked for a picture, she
sent them the one taken when she was a hundred and twenty-five pounds at her
bachelorette party the night before she married Alvin. When she was cute and
sexy. Online she could be anyone she wanted.

    
Monica, the
five-foot-seven, one hundred twenty-pound probation officer.

    
Vivian, the sexy
social worker.

    
Linda, the tough
assistant commonwealth’s attorney.

    
Her salon was on Bank
Street, near the
John Marshall Courts Building
so she got a lot of courthouse employees. And their
lives were certainly more exciting than hers.

    
She never met any of
the men she emailed because she’d be exposed. Whenever it got to that point,
she just disappeared. She got her fun from the attention she received online.

    
Janelle didn’t like to
go out. Fat women eating alone in restaurants or standing alone in line at the
movies always drew attention, and not the good kind. Pity stares and snickering
behind their backs.

 
  
Who needed it? Especially when the
World Wide Web had so much to offer?

    
One day, as she was
checking out men in the D.C. area, she came across a massage therapist using
his profile as an ad for his business, Touch You Tender. She was mesmerized by
the image of the tall, black stallion.

    
And her clients would
love what he was selling
.

Massage
therapy services provided at reasonable rates. Full or partial body. Egyptian
pedicures, hand and foot reflexology. Willing to travel. All in the privacy and
comfort of your own home or business. Group rates available. Contact Chauncey.

    
The masseuse sent his
price list and she made the arrangements. He and his partner would provide
their services over two days, Friday and Saturday. She would get a twenty
percent cut, and she figured the publicity would generate more business for the
shop.

 
    
They had thirty-minute
and sixty-minute time slots. Janelle booked mostly massages and a few facials.
No one signed up for reflexology because they didn’t know what it was and
neither did she.

    
She made reservations
at a motel close to the salon since he didn’t know the area. They would provide
their own supplies, but she had to provide the ambience.

    
She cleared out her
storage area to make room for the massage tables and used a bamboo partition to
divide the area. Two women could receive massages at a time.

    
Janelle and a few
stylists would keep open their stations since several clients booked hair
appointments following their massages.

    
Chauncey and his
partner arrived an hour before the pamper party to set up.

    
 
“Thank you for having us,” he said. He
licked his lips and extended his hand. “I’m sure this weekend will be
profitable for all of us.”

    
Janelle shook his hand
but never saw it because her eyes were fixated on his body, which looked as
though it had been sculpted from onyx.

    
“Was the drive long?”
Janelle asked in her Kewpie doll voice.

   
 
“A couple of hours. We made good time
despite traffic. And the accommodations you chose for us are just fine. Clean
and affordable.”

    
He explained that
Tender Touch was a sole proprietorship. He hired masseurs to help him with
large parties.

    
He introduced her to
Max, his partner for that weekend. She shook his hand.

    
Max was fair skinned
and ripped. Larger than Chauncey, but less talkative. He was pretty-boy
handsome with broad shoulders, wavy hair, and a short beard.

    
He helped Janelle place
incense, candles, chips and plates of fruit and cheese at each station, while
Chauncey set up the tables in the back room.

    
Chauncey had given
four massages when he got a half-hour break in his schedule. Janelle was
between clients so he sauntered to her station and helped himself to some fruit
and cheese.

    
“Would you like a
massage? No charge for the hostess.”

    
“No thanks,” Janelle
said. “I’ve got a client coming in twenty minutes.”

     
“How about
twenty minutes of reflexology, then?”

     
“What exactly is
that?”

     
“It’s an ancient
healing art. When you treat the big toes there is a related effect in the head,
and treating the whole foot can have a relaxing and healing effect on the whole
body.”

    
“Okay. How much harm
could a little foot rubbing do?”

 
   
Janelle had no idea how
erogenous feet could be. It was all she could do to keep from having an orgasm
on the spot.

   
“How many parties do you
do?”

   
“As many as I can. At least
one a month. I’m on the road a lot.”

   
“Do you only do parties?”

   
“No. I have regular massage
clients, too.”

   
Chauncey stopped rubbing her
feet when Janelle’s client arrived.

   
When he stood up, she
noticed him staring at her. She felt her face.

    
It was warm and she
was breathing slightly faster. She wondered if he could tell that her insides
were throbbing.

    
He smiled. “How do you
feel?”

    
Janelle was
embarrassed. She jumped up and hurriedly began straightening her station with
her back towards him.

   
“That was relaxing. Thanks,”
she said without turning around.

   
When Chauncey finished with
his last client, he asked her to dinner the next evening.

    
Her eyes opened as
wide as quarters. Based on the rave reviews from the women he serviced that
evening, he could have anyone he wanted. She figured he’d gotten at least a
dozen phone numbers.

     
Without
accepting his dinner invitation, Janelle wrote her home number on the back of a
business card and handed it to him.

 
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” he said.

    
“Why me?” Janelle’s
insecurity oozed through the phone line when Chauncey called her the next
morning.

    
“Why not you?”

    
“I’m sure you had your
choice of women from the pamper party. Women a lot prettier than me.”

    
“You are just as
pretty as any of the ladies I met last night, and it’s not what’s on the
outside that matters to me.”

    
“Since when are men
not interested in a woman’s looks?”

    
“You have obviously
been dealing with the wrong men. And someone has hurt you pretty badly if you
can’t believe that a man would find you attractive. I enjoyed talking to you
and I’d like the chance to get to know you better. So will you have dinner with
me tonight after the pamper party wraps up or not?”

    
“I guess so.”

    
“Don’t knock me down
with your enthusiasm.”

    
“I’m sorry. Sure, I’d
love to have dinner with you.”

    
Chauncey and Janelle
had dinner at the Hard Shell, a seafood restaurant in Richmond’s cobblestone
historic district. Afterwards, they went to Shockoe Bottom, a trendy section of
Richmond, for drinks and a live show.

 
    
At one in the morning,
they found themselves talking in his truck outside her condo. They were both
born in the Caribbean and raised by single mothers. She never knew her father.
He spent little time with his.

     
She left Jamaica
as a child and was sent to the states to live with a family friend. She became
a citizen, married young and wrong. Two children. Divorced. Looking for Mr.
Right.

    
He left Barbados as an
adult and spent several years in Europe before coming to America on a temporary
visa. He was divorced with one son.

    
She liked his accent.
She knew little of her own culture and what accent she did have, she lost
growing up in Miami.

He suggested she spend time in
Jamaica.

    
“I’ve been there a few
times to see my mother. But our relationship is so rocky; I’ve never stayed
that long. I would like to, but it hurts.”

    
Chauncey lifted her
chin with his finger and turned Janelle toward him. “Water does run, but blood
does clod.”

    
 
“What?”

    
“It’s a Barbadian
saying. It’s like when Americans say, ‘blood is thicker than water.’ You’ll
work it out with your mother one day. Come on. I’ll walk you to the door.”

    
He got out of the
truck, walked to the passenger side and let her out. He held her hand as he
escorted her up the stairs. Chauncey took her face in his hand and kissed her
gently on the lips.

    
“Goodnight, Janelle.”

    
“I had a good time,”
she said. “Thank you.”

    
“I’m glad. Maybe next
time I’m in town we can see a movie. I’ll call you.”