Authors: Nikita Lynnette Nichols

Lady Elect (9 page)

BOOK: Lady Elect

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Chancellor Wells, the eldest of the deacons, spoke. “And that's all that we ask, Bishop. See, you're a young cat, but we've been around much longer than you, and we know that the church can't help everybody. There are reasons why we established certain rules, and most of them are for the protection of our pastor.”

Lance accepted the rebuke like a man and shook each deacon's hand. He was grateful for the slap on the wrist and appreciative that they hadn't thrown him out of the church for bringing such shame on them.

Never in all of her life had Arykah laughed at something so hard. Listening to Lance describe the funeral had her mouth wide open and her head thrown back screaming and laughing at the same time. Tears ran down her face, and her abdomen ached, but she couldn't stop. She was practically rolling on the living-room floor.

“I'm glad you're getting a big kick out of this, Cheeks. Had you been there, you wouldn't have laughed.”

“Don't be so sure of that. It's a good thing I didn't go to the funeral. As soon as Justin's uncle told that man to sit his faggot behind down, I would've hollered.”

Lance shook his head, turned away, and walked toward the kitchen. “I'm hungry. I'm gonna cook.”

The telephone on the end table next to the sofa rang as Lance was walking by, and he saw Adonis's name and home number on the caller ID. “It's for you, Cheeks.” He knew it was Monique calling to gossip with Arykah about what Adonis shared with her about what had happened at the funeral. When Lance set a wok on top of the stove, he heard Arykah scream in laughter. For half an hour, she and Monique had a good time laughing at Lance's expense.

When Arykah sat down at the kitchen table opposite of Lance, she still couldn't stop laughing. “According to Adonis, the drag queens came in their own limousines.”

“Well, I wouldn't know about that,” Lance said. “I wasn't in the pulpit five minutes before all heck broke loose. When we shoved everybody outside, I wasn't interested in looking to see who was riding in what.”

“So, are you gonna address what happened at the funeral when you get to church tomorrow morning?”

“I wish I didn't have to, but I know I should say something. I know it's hot gossip right now. I'm sure every member already knows what happened.”

Arykah chuckled. “Well, I bet the next time the deacons say that you can't eulogize somebody, you'll listen.”

Lance agreed. “You got that right.”

Chapter 7

The
fire alarm jolted Lance's body awake. In a panic, he sat straight up in the bed.

His nostrils inhaled smoke. When Lance looked to his left and didn't see Arykah, he threw the covers from his body, jumped out of bed, and ran from the bedroom. “Cheeks! Cheeks! Where are you?”

Arykah heard Lance call out to her. She was in the kitchen fanning flames over the stove with a dish towel. The black smoke filled her lungs. She was coughing and gasping for air at the same time. “I'm in the kitchen,” she managed to say.

Lance arrived at the archway of the kitchen. The smoke was thick, and the alarm was screaming. Through the black cloud in the kitchen he could see Arykah's silhouette. He saw her waving a white cloth over orange flames at the stove. “Oh my God,” Lance exclaimed. He ran to the pantry for the fire extinguisher, then rushed to Arykah's side. The flames were dancing about twelve inches high above the stove. “Move back, Cheeks.”

Lance pushed Arykah out of his way and extinguished the fire. It took about fifteen seconds for the entire fire to cease. When the last flame was blown out, he turned to his wife. “What happened?”

Arykah stood in the middle of the kitchen in a short pink sheer teddy. It was her intent to prepare breakfast for her husband and serve it to him in bed. Arykah wasn't a professional cook. Frying chicken, making spaghetti, and boiling hot dogs, she could handle with no problem. She really didn't think that frying bacon and scrambling eggs would be very difficult.

“I don't know how the fire started. One moment I was frying bacon, and the next moment, flames shot up from the skillet.”

Lance opened the kitchen windows and the door to the patio to let fresh air inside.

Soon after, the fire department was banging on their front door. Lance quickly made his way to the front door and yanked it opened just as a fireman was getting ready to use his big ax to gain entry.

“Is everything okay here?” a fireman asked Lance as he rushed inside, followed by three more firemen carrying a huge fire hose.

“Yes. The fire is out, but there is a lot of smoke in the kitchen,” Lance stated.

“Bring the fans inside,” the lead fireman yelled over his shoulder to his crew. When he arrived in the kitchen, the fireman saw Arykah placing a burnt frying pan in the sink.

“Ma'am, are you all right?”

“Yes, I'm fine,” Arykah said. Her statement wasn't the truth. She was embarrassed at her failed attempt to seduce her husband with breakfast in bed.

The lead fireman instructed his team to place three huge fans near the patio door to direct the thick smoke outside. He noticed the damage to the stove and the backsplash.

“Someone trying to cook?” he asked.

“Well, Iâ” Arykah started.

“I was careless,” Lance interrupted her.

Arykah wasn't aware that Lance had returned to the kitchen. She saw him standing in the archway of the kitchen. “Huh?”

Lance walked further into the kitchen and stood next to Arykah. “If my mother told me once, she told me a thousand times to never place a dish towel on top of the stove.”

“You know,” the fireman started as he positioned one of the blowing fans closer to the patio door, “dish towels left on top of stoves are the leading cause of kitchen fires.”

“I guess I gotta be more careful the next time I try to surprise my beautiful wife with pancakes in bed.” Lance kissed Arykah on the cheek.

Arykah was speechless. Lance had just taken the rap for her mistake.

As the smoke made its way outside, the kitchen became brighter. Lance noticed that one of the firemen was focused on Arykah's attire. Her short sheer teddy left nothing to anyone's imagination. Her every body part was visible. But her private body parts were for Lance's eyes only. He spoke softly in Arykah's ear. “You trying to get me locked up?”

Arykah didn't have a clue what Lance was talking about. “What?”

“You want me to go to jail?”

“Lance, what are you talking about?”

“Can you please put some clothes on before I catch a case?”

Arykah looked down at what she was wearing. In the midst of all the commotion, she had forgotten she was practically nude. Without another word, she scurried away. As she exited the kitchen, Arykah tried to cover her backside with her hands. But her backside was large. She couldn't cover it all. The fireman didn't take his eyes off of her. He got a good look at her voluptuous assets until she was out of his view.

Lance cleared his throat and crossed his arms over his chest. The fireman connected his eyes with Lance's and knew that he'd better be about the business at hand. He shut the fans off and prepared to leave.

After the firemen had packed up their gear and left, Lance found Arykah in the shower. “Is there room for me?” he asked her.

“Absolutely,” she smiled.

Lance stripped from his pajama bottoms and joined his wife in the shower.

Arykah lathered her soap sponge with body wash and ran the sponge across Lance's chest. “So, how much damage did I cause?”

“Not much,” Lance stated. “It shouldn't cost a bundle to replace the stove, hood, and backsplash. It's not even worth getting our home owners insurance involved.”

Arykah turned Lance around to face away from her. She lathered the sponge again and massaged his back and shoulders with it. “Why did you tell the fireman that you started the fire?”

“Because I could tell that you were a bit embarrassed.”

“Humph, that's an understatement. I wanted to make breakfast and surprise you in bed.”

Lance turned around, wrapped his arms around Arykah, and pulled her body into his.

“Well, I appreciate the effort. You get an A for that.”

“But I destroyed your favorite spot in the house,” she whined.

“Obviously you don't know where my favorite spot in the house is. Let's rinse these suds off and I'll show it to you.” Five minutes later, Lance brought Arykah to their bed and pointed at it. “
This
is my favorite spot in the house.”

After Mr. and Mrs. Howell enjoyed each other at Lance's favorite spot in the house, Arykah started her fashion show for him. Her first choice to wear to Sunday service was a burnt-orange wool two-piece skirt suit with Swarovski crystals decorating the collar and cuffs around the wrists.

Lance lay in bed with his arms extended behind his head. “That's beautiful, Cheeks. You're showing your knees. You know I like that.”

Arykah's next choice was a winter-white sweater dress she found at Macy's. “It's a little snug but SPANX will take care of that. I'll sport my winter-white boots with this dress.”

“Yikes,” Lance commented. The dress, a size twenty-two W, hugged Arykah's curves in all the right places. And the boots she spoke of were a favorite of Lance's. Arykah's legs were plump and round. Lance thought his wife to be extremely sexy when she wore boots because they fit her thick legs like a glove. “I like the dress better than the suit,” he said.

“Girl, smoke was everywhere,” Arykah said to Monique. They were in Arykah's office at the church.

Monique sat in a chair across from Arykah's desk. “That's what you get,” Monique chuckled. “You know you ain't got no business trying to cook anything. Name one time when you actually put a meal together that was edible. That's why God blessed you with Lance. He knows you can't burn.” Monique thought about what she just said. “Well, obviously you
can
burn.”

Both women were laughing when Lance knocked on Arykah's closed door.

“It's open,” Arykah spoke.

Lance opened the door and poked his head inside. “It's time to head down to the sanctuary.”

That was the part of Sunday morning service that Arykah loved the most. Walking into the sanctuary with all eyes on her and Lance as they walked hand in hand down the center aisle was what Arykah looked forward to. She rose from her desk and walked around to where Lance stood.

“Arykah!”

She turned to see why Monique had screamed her name. “What?”

The expression on Monique's face was horrifying.
“Your dress,”
she shrieked again
.

Arykah looked down at her dress. “What about my dress?”

Monique walked to her and studied the stain on the back of her winter-white dress.

“You're bleeding right through it.”

“What are you talking about?” Arykah asked Monique, already pulling Lance into the office so that she could check herself in the full-length mirror that hung on the back of the door. She saw a huge red stain just below the buttocks area of her dress. “Oh my God. What the heck is that?”

Lance studied the stain. “Didn't you just have your cycle three weeks ago, Cheeks? You're having it again?”

“Didn't we get freaky this morning?” she answered Lance with a question. “You know that I'm not on my period.” The presence of Monique never kept Arykah from speaking her mind. Arykah felt comfortable discussing personal matters with Lance in front of her best friend. Arykah focused on the stain. “I don't know what this is.”

“Well you must've sat on something,” Monique said.

Lance walked to Arykah's chair and saw a small puddle of red liquid in the middle of the leather seat. “What the heck?”

Both Arykah and Monique approached Lance and saw the stain on the chair. “What
is
that?” Monique inquired.

Arykah dabbed her index finger in the suspicious liquid and looked at it closely. “This is red ink.”

Lance frowned. “Ink? How did red ink get on your chair?”

Arykah looked at Lance with a scowl on her face. She knew exactly who was responsible. “Those b#@&*es.”

Because Arykah had referred to the mothers by that name on other occasions, Monique knew exactly who she was referring to. “You think the mothers did this?” Monique asked Arykah.

“I
know
they did.”

Lance knew Arykah was hot. And it was very possible that Mother Gussie and Mother Pansie were behind the prank, but he had no proof and neither did Arykah. “Hold on now. There is no proof the mothers are behind this.”

Arykah exploded. “Don't you dare defend them, Lance. Don't you
dare
defend them.”

“This is jacked up,” Monique said. She was just as angry as Arykah.

If Lance didn't calm both of them down, he'd have a second fire to extinguish. “I'm not defending anyone, and I'm not blaming anyone. But we gotta have proof before we can point fingers.”

Arykah was so hot, her earlobes were burning. “Little girls point fingers, Lance. I'm a grown woman, a grown
black
woman, and I don't point fingers. What I'm getting ready to point is my .357 magnum. Three holes each. When I get through capping off, those old broads' heads will look like bowling balls.”

Lance's eyes bucked out of his head, and his mouth fell open. This was the first he's heard of Arykah speak of owning a gun. “Cheeks, you own a gun?” They had been married four months and dated only for three weeks prior to the wedding. Lance was smitten from the moment he first laid his eyes on Arykah. And when she confessed to Lance that she was ghetto when he cooked dinner for her, he became more intrigued with her. Lance grew up at Freedom Temple, where the women were always so perfect and controlled. The fact that Arykah was headstrong and outspoken turned him on. She was different. The total opposite of what he'd be expected to marry.

Arykah always stood her ground and never seem to back down from anyone. She was strong, confident, and could hold her own. Lance knew Arykah was a pistol, but he had no clue that she owned one and knew how to shoot it.

Monique spoke. “She owns a gun, a machete, and stun gun. We both do.”

“Oh my Lord,” Lance said. Who did he marry, a vigilante? Lance wondered if Adonis knew that his wife was packing.

“You
better
call on the Lord,” Arykah said to Lance as she moved toward the office door.

Lance blocked her from leaving the office. “Cheeks, we have no proof.”

“The mothers hate me, Lance. What more proof do you need? Look at my dress. They jacked up my dress.” Arykah opened the door. “I'm getting ready to whoop some ...”

Arykah's vow to stop cursing was long forgotten.

Lance shoved the door shut. “What are you doing? You can't go down to the sanctuary and cause a scene.”

BOOK: Lady Elect

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