Love in a Carry-On Bag (20 page)

Chapter Thirty-Six

Second Skin

I
t was late Sunday
afternoon when Warren heard an insistent knocking on his front door. He hadn’t left the apartment since rediscovering his music room, and was enjoying being zoned out and disconnected from the outside world. The banging increased with a steadiness that was both annoying and hard to ignore. Rolling onto his side, he stumbled to stand on bare feet. His knees wobbled and head spun from the sudden movement. On the walk down the hall he leaned against the wall for balance.

“Who is it?”

“It’s me,” her voice was small.

Warren turned the knob and unlocked the door. The lights from the hall were bright and his gaze felt disoriented, but after squinting and stepping back he was able to focus.

Blanche Laurent stood there removing her sunglasses. “What happened to you? You look like shit,” she touched his face with her hand. His bottom lip was bruised, and his chocolate skin ashen and dry. He was still wearing his tuxedo shirt and trousers from the night of the wedding, though damp and wrinkled. He smelled like sweat and spoiled salami.

“What’re you doing here?” Warren backed away and shuffled across the room to the sofa, collapsing against the pillows.

“Why is the music so loud?” Blanche scanned the apartment. Warren could hear her heels clicking around. The living room felt stuffy, and the leaves on his favorite fern drooped like dog’s ears. Warren felt weak and was slouched over when Blanche thrust a glass of water in his face.

“Drink this.”

Warren obeyed, and finished half the glass before setting it down on the table. His stomach ached. When was the last time he had a meal?

“Bret was ranting about firing you on Friday…”

“Friday?”

“You know they don’t play the no call, no show. How could you stay out a whole week? Are you insane?”

Warren scratched his head. He hadn’t realized so much time had passed.

Blanche stood and paced through his living room. She wore a trench coat tied tightly at her waist and very high aqua and black printed heels. “In your defense I told him you called me sick. At first he didn’t believe me but, you know I can be very persuasive,” she looked down at him and smiled. Her lips were painted blood red and the sight of them made him nauseous.

“How’d you find me?”

“I know people in high places,” she purred. Blanche stopped in front of him and held his gaze. Even in his current state, Warren recognized that unmistakable look of desire in her eyes, and when she propped herself in the seat next to him he knew she had come to bone.

Warren’s head felt groggy. He needed time to think. “I’ll be right back.”

“Where are you going?” The front of her trench split and Blanche slid closer, showing off a pair of creamy thighs.

“I’ma take a shower.”

Blanche scooted forward as if to follow him, but he touched
her shoulder and said, “Alone.”

Twenty minutes later, Warren
walked slowly down the hall wearing his shawl-collared robe, drying his hair with a hand towel.

“I ordered Chinese,” Blanche leaned against the kitchen counter. The buckle on her trench was loose, revealing a diamond-studded bra. But before Warren could comment, the telephone rang. Happy for a distraction, he picked up the cordless on the second ring.

“Hello. Hey, what’s up?” he signaled to Blanche that he would be right back, and carried the phone down the hall and into his bedroom, where he closed the door.

“See you in half
an hour,” he said into the receiver before ending the call. Ten minutes later he walked back into the living room, smelling like frankincense and dressed in black from head to toe. Blanche’s eyes twinkled as she put her hands on her hips and said, “I hope you like lo mein.”

Warren didn’t want to hurt her feelings, so he kept his voice light as he confessed that he had to go.

“But I’ve ordered food, and I was hoping…”

“You can wait until the food arrives and then take it home with you,” he had his money clip in his hand and dropped a few bills on the countertop. The music had started up in his head, and when he reached for his trumpet case he couldn’t wait to shed.

“Just let yourself out,” he replied, but when he glanced at Blanche the trench coat came down over her shoulders. Her panties were lace with the same diamond studs as her bra.

“If there is no time for dinner, surely we can skip right to dessert,” she winked, cat-walking the few steps towards Warren. But when she leaned in to kiss him he pushed against her waist
to hold her at a distance.

“Perhaps some other time,” he tapped her wrist, and then eased out the door, shutting it behind him.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Believe Me When I Say

“
L
ike a moth to
the flame burned by the fire.” Erica hummed and rocked in her seat. “My love is blind can’t you see my desire?”

Janet Jackson’s “That’s the Way Love Goes” became Erica’s theme song. It was upbeat and lively and Erica needed upbeat. Upbeat gave her courage. So much courage that she was on the Accela express with a manuscript in her lap heading to D.C. After her night out with Tess she decided that if her relationship with Warren could be salvaged, then she had to cast pride aside and make the effort. Being put first was Warren’s biggest gripe, and she was determined to show him how vital he was to her. Erica couldn’t go on without him and she was prepared to beg, grovel and plead. She would even stand on her head while singing “I Apologize” by Anita Baker if that’s what it took to convince him. They belonged together, and she wasn’t leaving D.C. until he understood.

The train sped into the station and Erica was one of the fastest passengers to disembark. Taking long strides, she made her way out to the taxi stand on Massachusetts Avenue. The line wasn’t long, and when she slid into the backseat of the cab she felt so optimistic that after rattling off the address to the driver she whispered to herself, “Please, get me to my man.”

Her heart was beating like a conga drum when she reached his front lobby. She had no baggage, just her purse with an extra pair of panties in case he had gotten rid of her things. The doorman recognized her face and waved her through. On the elevator ride to his 8th floor condo her hands started to shake, and she reapplied her lip gloss and checked her nose through the reflection of the door for something to steady her. By the time the elevator arrived on his floor, her confidence had begun to waver. But Erica willed herself to continue down the hall by putting one foot in front of the other.

The original plan was to knock, but at the last minute she decided that she hadn’t come all this way for him not to let her in. She decided she would use her key, and felt relieved when it turned in the hole with little effort.

“Sweetie. You’re back. I knew you would change your mind.” Stiletto heels clicked from down the hall towards Erica, but she was so shocked to hear a woman’s voice that she couldn’t locate her tongue.

“Honey, I…” Blanche turned the corner, but stopped moving when she saw Erica.

In all of the scenarios that ran through Erica’s head, this one hadn’t made the cut. The longer she stood there the harder it was for her brain to process what was happening right in front of her: Blanche, in the middle of Warren’s apartment wearing a sleazy trench coat, under-damn-wear and some fuck me pumps. Erica could feel her eyes bulging from her head like she had thyroid disease.

Even though there was about fifteen feet between them, she could smell the woman’s peachy perfume, and it added to the sickness rising in her stomach. Her nerves were sloshing around like runny eggs in a frying pan, but she had to make herself speak.

“Where’s Warren?”

“Not home.”

“What’re you doing here?”

“I was invited. Can’t say the same about you,” Blanche stood her ground with composure, and watching her with that smug I-got-your-man-look made Erica want to fly across the room and fight her. Last-day-of-school-style, when it didn’t matter how hard you beat a bitch’s ass because you couldn’t get suspended. Erica could already feel the thinness of the whore’s hair in her hands as she flung her around the room, knocking down furniture. She could hear the glass splattering and smell the blood, but shook the vision.

Blanche tilted her head sideways, but she didn’t move to close her coat. Like Erica wanted to see her bony ass.

“Look at you, standing there looking like a trailer whore. So tacky.”

“That’s not what Warren said.”

“So how come he’s not here?”

“That’s none of your concern. Not anymore right? Don’t hate, girlfriend.”

Did she just say girlfriend? “Makes sense. Hoes are excellent on the rebound.”

“I’m not going to take too many more of your hoes,” Blanche’s tongue slapped against the roof of her mouth, and Erica detected a little lower east side New York in her, but she wasn’t scared. After all she had been through, Blanche could pull a gun on Erica and she wouldn’t even flinch.

Erica took three long strides and shortened the space between them. “Where is he?” she demanded.

“Why? He’s so done with you.”

“Really? Is that why you’re standing there looking like a video vixen trying to seduce him?” The walkway wasn’t that long, and
she had gotten close enough to see the nervousness cross Blanche’s hazel eyes. “I know Warren’s scent, and I don’t smell sex in the air.” Erica rolled her neck. “Looks a lot like rejection to me.”

“Is there a message?” Blanche fumbled with her belt, as if she had just remembered her nakedness.

“Yeah. Fuck you,” Erica shouted in Blanche’s face, and then turned on her kitten heels and walked out of the apartment.

Erica’s tough girl act
was stripping down fast, and she knew she couldn’t hold it together while waiting on the only elevator in the building, so she dipped into the stairway. On the sixth floor landing she started feeling winded, like a hammer was pounding against her chest. By the fifth floor, the tears were streaming, and at the top of the fourth she had to hold onto the banister for support. After three more steps, vomit shot from her mouth with such force she had to hold on for dear life. Her head was hot but her brows cold, and she was sweating like she had a fever. How could she have been so blind? Warren was messing with Blanche the whole time. Why else would she be sitting in his apartment half dressed? And buzzing around the office bringing him black coffee? The excuse Warren had given about them just sitting together at his father’s dinner was bullshit. He had invited Blanche when Erica couldn’t come. Probably screwed her in his car on
the way home, that’s how the condom slipped.

Erica’s bag fell from her hand and she dropped on the step right next to it. The smell of her regurgitated tuna sandwich was noxious, but she couldn’t go on. Her body had become like cement, too heavy for her to even curl into a ball and hide. It was really over. Dead and gone over. There was no way they could bounce back from this and no turning back after what she had witnessed.

Hot damn.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Black Man Free

W
arren had spent twenty-four
hours locked in the room with his mother’s spirit. As she was his first teacher, he trusted her and spent much of his life loving her more than anyone else. His pain had anchored him to the floor, so she knelt before Warren and brought him to his feet. Her vine-like hands held the rhythm of the beat, while she chanted in a language that he had never heard. Calling the confusion from his head and replacing it with pure beauty. As she pressed her fingertips to his ego, the power it held over him thinned and was replaced with the divine Light of his Spirit. Warren wept openly with his mother, until every ounce of moisture was drained from his body. Then she kissed strength into his third eye, throat, palms and soles of his feet while whispering, “My son, get up. God lives inside of you.” She said it three times, and as he rose to thank her, she curled through the room like a puff of smoke and vanished. Once she did, Warren became conscious of the outside world again, and the person trying to break his door down.

It was James who called after Blanche arrived, inviting him to play a gig at “The Spot” in Arlington. Before he left home, Warren had anointed himself in frankincense, and the aromatic powers of the oil had him floating through the dark Virginia dive bar, like he was a weightless leaf. The college club was outfitted with wooden tables and a mixture of ladder-back chairs. A pool table sat in the corner on the right, with the platform stage taking up most of the space adjacent to the bar. The crowd
was
a blend of students seeking inexpensive beer and mature regulars who came to hear the music. James was always the first to arrive at a gig, and was on stage tightening his drums
.

“Black man,” he stood, wiping his hands on the front of his jeans, pulling Warren into a half handshake, half hug. “Fuck happened to your lip?”

Warren touched the open wound, having forgotten that it was there. “Shedding,” he replied.

“Well I hope you can still play, because I have the mother of all gigs lined up.”

Warren pulled up the piano stool. James was essentially the band’s manager.

“I got a call from this promoter I know in New York. There’s a major showcase going down. A&Rs, record producers, anyone who’s anyone is going to be there,” James paused. “And I got us on the list to play.”

“Say word,” Warren scratched his overgrown goatee.

“We get to play one song, five minutes, original tune. Talk to me, brotha. You’re the best writer in the band. Tell me you’ve got something new.”

Warren unfastened his trumpet case. Shoved in with his horn were sheets and sheets of new music. The songs had come to him so fast, that he had to scribble to keep up.

“We might need to work on some of the arrangements,” Warren said, sorting the pages. Then he pointed to the notes while humming the highs and lows of the beat.

James’ fingers started waving the way they did when he got excited, and when Warren sang out the finale, James slapped him five. “That’s it.”

It was late when
Warren walked through his front door, and he was relieved that there was no sign of Blanche or her lo mein. He had been thinking about Erica on the drive home, and now that he was standing in his doorway it was like he could smell her. Being locked away for so long with himself had made him sensitive. He knew it was weird, but Erica’s presence was suddenly so strong that he almost called her name. Once he flipped on the light the sensation passed, but he still missed her. A yearning had opened up and he had no idea how to quench it. Could their relationship be fixed? Warren wanted to see her, and the gig in New York proved to be his best opportunity.

Still antsy from the drive, he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep, so he pulled his laptop from his briefcase. His lip had started to throb and his fingertips were sore, but the music was still on in his head. The song they were going to play at the showcase was called “Love Burdened Eyes,” and he had written it while thinking of Erica, and those wounded eyes she often turned on him at the end of their weekends. The song summed up the tug-of-war in their relationship and the constant battling that he felt, and he couldn’t wait to hear it full out with all the instruments doing their part.

Ten new emails sat in his inbox. James must have gotten home fast because the first one was from him. It was the guidelines for their upcoming gig, and Warren almost dropped the computer when he read that it was being held at the Iridium Jazz club. Talk about serendipity.

The Iridium was where he met Erica on a humid summer night. Warren had been on stage at the jazz club jamming with a young quintet. They were rendering a song from Miles Davis’ album
Sketches of Spain
, and Warren knew he was failing in
comparison to Davis on the tune. When he looked out into the audience to see if anyone noticed, he saw Erica.

She was sitting alone, sipping a drink with her pink nails pressed against a red straw. Her reddish-brown hair hung loose on her shoulders, and the vanilla halter she wore reflected the tan on her summered skin. Warren was immediately attracted to her, so when he closed his eyes and blew, he envisioned himself asking her out. From that moment he didn’t miss another note.

After the performance, he lingered on stage with the other musicians as they packed up their instruments, but his eyes never lost Erica. When she glided toward the exit, he excused himself from the guys and fell in step beside her. She thanked him as he pushed open the door for her, and it was then that he noticed miniature freckles on her cheeks. They were like cinnamon drops sprinkled on a slice of French toast, and when she smiled, Warren’s heart really did stop.

“What would make a woman come to a jazz club alone?” They were on the corner of 51st and Broadway.

“My girlfriend was supposed to meet me but she flaked,” Erica looked into traffic.

“Can I hail you a cab?”

She laughed. “We both know a black man can’t get a cab to Harlem,” she stepped into the street waving her wrist back and forth, making her gold bangles clank. When the taxi stopped, Warren opened the door for her, and then slipped into the seat beside her.

“Then I guess we’ll have to share,” he smiled. It was a bold move, but there was something in the way she flicked her hair that told him it was okay, even though they spent the first five blocks in frozen silence.

“Do you play trumpet full time?” she chipped at the ice.

He tucked his trumpet case under his feet and explained that he was interning at the United Nations by day, playing his horn at night. When he asked her the same, she told him that she had attended NYU and was now climbing the ladder in publishing. Their conversation flowed, and as the driver rounded the corner of 125th Street, Warren invited her for a nightcap, which she accepted.

The Lenox Lounge had been a landmark in Harlem since the late 1930s, serving as a popular backdrop for many jazz legends, and a place for Harlem Renaissance writers to congregate. The Art Deco club lured a spunky mix of local hipsters, students, and tourists, and as Erica and Warren shared a round of drinks in the semicircular booth, the top layer of their lives unfolded. When the house lights signaled closing time, Warren insisted on walking Erica to her apartment. And as they passed through her front gate, he remembered her apologizing for her landlady’s idea of garden art.

“The house has been under construction since I moved here,” she said referring to the wooden porch, which drunkenly staggered toward the left.

“When can I see you again?” Warren dabbed at the sweat forming on his brows.

Unlocking her front door, she stepped into the vestibule, quietly analyzing him for so long it made him wonder if she had heard the question.

“Tomorrow, I’ll be at the diner on the corner of 135th and Lenox, ten o’clock,” she whispered, and then closed the door behind her. Warren watched her through the glass pane as she walked the stairs, taking in the best pair of legs that he had ever laid eyes on.

The memory had come to him without effort, and all he
wanted was to go back.

For the office on
Monday Warren was careful in overdressing the part, selecting a brown suit with a paisley tie, wing-tip shoes and silk socks. It had been over a week since he trimmed his facial hair. The rough look suited his mood, and he didn’t care what the handbook said. As he walked through the door that led to his department, he collided with Blanche. He caught her by the arm to keep her from stumbling. She moved her bangs from her hazel eyes, studying him, like she was expecting something. When he didn’t respond, she slipped him a piece of paper.

“It’s a doctor’s note explaining your absence,” she whispered. “Your lip looks better,” she squeezed his bicep on her way down the hall.

In his cubicle, Warren felt out of place. Brett, his manager, buzzed him before his computer had finished booting, and Warren could tell by the way he ordered him to his office that he wasn’t happy. Still, Warren took his time walking over.

“You wanted to see me,” he stood in Brett’s office doorway. On the mantel sat an exorbitantly large portrait of Brett’s perfect family: prom queen wife, blonde daughter, blue-eyed boy and a dog named Prissy.

Brett had been reading the newspaper and took his time folding the section back and making a neat pile before acknowledging Warren. “Nice of you to grace us with your presence,” his tone wore spiked heels.

“I have a doctor’s note,” Warren stretched the slip toward him, but Brett batted at it like it was an annoying flea.

“What do you think you’re pulling, missing work without calling, and then strolling in here with some bogus note? You’re taking advantage.”

“Of what?”

“No one else on the team would ever pull a stunt like this. If it weren’t for your father…”

“What does he have to do with this?” Warren replied hotly.

“You might not be standing here.”

“Is that a threat?”

“Call it what you like it. I’m just telling you to watch what you do, Buddy. Big brother’s eyes are all over you.” Brett turned back to his paper, “And Daddy can’t help all the time.” His last remark was a whisper.

Warren knew his worth, and at this point it had nothing to do with his father knowing Stan. Brett had a lot of nerve threatening him. Warren was the one busting his ass while Brett shuffled papers and called meetings every ten minutes masquerading as the expert. Jackass.

If they fired Warren it would be a relief.