The Company We Keep (14 page)

M
iguel came strolling back in less than five minutes later. This time he had not even bothered to pack his personal belongings, collect his briefcase and laptop, or leave the building. This was the third time that Victor had “fired” him in less than two months and each time he’d rehired him. The last time Victor was in a firing frenzy, the victim had been John, his long-suffering secretary.

“I don’t know how you put up with Victor’s shit, Miguel,” Nicole said to him, shaking her head. “The first time he fires me will be the last time.”

“One of these days I won’t come back. Believe me,” Miguel told her with a serious look on his face.

“Want to have lunch?”

“Sure,
chica
. This time it’s on me. You pick the place,” Miguel said before he left to return to his office with a proud strut in his walk, whistling all the way.

Nicole’s desk was busy most of the time, but like almost every other person in a position similar to hers, she always found time to manage her own agenda in the workplace. Teri was trapped in a midmorning sales meeting with Victor and other employees
from the sales department. Miguel, one of the few people at Eclectic whom Nicole liked to interact with, was busy working on the report that Teri had requested.

Nicole looked around before she snatched up her telephone and made a few personal calls. She made an appointment to get her nails done, she returned a call to her cousin Wodell Scruggs in Compton who owed her fifty dollars, and she called her mother in San Jose.

Unlike Teri, Nicole didn’t have a pleasant relationship with most of her family. For one thing, Wodell and the rest of her cousins usually called her only when they needed money or wanted to dump some sob story on her. Last month her cousin Lola Boone showed up at her door one night with her twin nine-year-old daughters, looking for a place to hide from a boyfriend whose favorite sport seemed to be slapping her upside her head.

The next day when Nicole got home from work there was Lola stretched out on the sofa that Chris slept on drinking and smoking like she didn’t have a care in the world. But the worst part of the scenario was that the same abusive boyfriend that Lola had fled from was in her kitchen frying the last of her pork chops! And Lola’s girls were all over the place and into everything—fucking with her makeup, making long-distance calls to their daddy’s relatives in San Francisco, and jumping up and down on her bed as if it were a trampoline.

By the third day of Lola’s presence, Nicole was ready to slap her upside her head herself. As soon as she put her foot down, Lola packed up and left in a huff. But a week later she apologized profusely in a voice mail message she’d left on Nicole’s work phone.

Nicole dialed Lola’s home phone number, expecting to get her voice mail. Despite her cousin’s trifling ways when it came to men, she was one of her favorite relatives. Next to Teri, Lola was the only other sister she admired from afar for her accomplishments. Lola was not just another thirty-five-year old black woman walking up and down the streets of L.A. She had a lot going for herself, even though she often didn’t make the most of her talents.

Anyway, Lola had a degree in journalism and a kicked-back job
writing investigative pieces for
New Century L.A.
magazine. She wrote about everything from the city’s gang problem to which L.A. hotels to avoid. Nicole hung up when the abusive boyfriend answered.

One thing she could not understand was how some women could put up with just about anything to have a man. It was even more baffling when the woman involved had as much going for her as Lola. Lola’s excuse was always that she didn’t like being lonely. Hell, yes, she was lonely, too, Nicole thought to herself. She knew she could have kept Greg in her life if she’d been stupid enough to put up with his infidelities and other foolishness. And from all the hints he’d dropped since their divorce, he’d come back to her in a heartbeat if she’d let him. She was not even going
there
. She realized now that that Korean heifer he’d married had actually done her a favor by taking him off her hands. She’d remain alone for the rest of her life if Greg Mason was the only man she could get.

Thank God she still maintained a couple of male friends that she kept on the hook to satisfy her biological urges. A wicked smile crossed Nicole’s face. She was deep in thought, hoping she’d meet someone interesting that she could have a “regular” relationship with soon, when Teri’s line rang. It was Eric, that fine-ass photographer who had caught her roving eye at the Andrewses’ Valentine’s Day party.

“Teri’s in a meeting,” she told him, her voice quivering. Something was wrong with this picture. No other man had ever made her this nervous. “Would you like to leave a message?”

“Just let her know I called,” he replied. He had such a crisp, professional-sounding voice.

“Okay. And you have a nice day,” she said, biting her bottom lip. She sniffed and pressed her lips together, listening with the telephone pressed against her ear so hard it irritated her earlobe.

“Sure,” he said. He didn’t hang up right away. She could still hear him breathing. “Nicole, you have a nice day, too,” he added. He still didn’t hang up.

“Uh-huh,” she finally said. She had to move the telephone to her other ear and hold the damn thing with both hands.

“Bye, Nicole. I hope I see you again soon,” he said quickly. His
last comment made her heart skip a beat. Didn’t he look at her like she was something good to eat at the Andrewses’ party? How could such a smooth, polite, and pleasant brother like him be involved with a loud, matted, weave-wearing skank from ghetto hell like that Yvette? And now what in the world was he up to—obviously flirting with her? Well, she’d find out soon enough if it was the last thing she did. He had hung up but her telephone was still in her hand.

“I need to set up a meeting this week with Trevor Powell,” Teri told Nicole. Nicole had been so deep in thought she didn’t even know that Teri had returned from a meeting and was standing right in front of her desk.

“Huh?” She placed the telephone back in its place, blinking at it like she didn’t know what it was.

“Nicole, are you all right? You look catatonic or something. And if I didn’t know any better, with that glazed look in your eyes, I’d swear you just had an orgasm,” Teri said with a dry chuckle. Then she gave Nicole an amused look that quickly turned to a look of envy.

“I’m fine.” Nicole shook her head and started to fiddle around with the pens, pencils, and other knickknacks on her desk. “Uh, Eric called. That photographer.” She coughed and cleared her throat.

“I’ll have to call him back later,” Teri mumbled, looking at her watch. “Grab your pad and pen. You and I have to talk to a blind rapper.” Teri rolled her eyes and beckoned Nicole to follow her.

“A
blind rapper. Humph! I’ve heard everything now. I don’t know what this world is coming to,” Teri mumbled as she and Nicole marched down the hall toward the conference room. “I don’t even want to think about what we’ll have to deal with next.”

They were caught off guard by the blind rapper as they quietly entered the conference room. He was talking to somebody on his cell phone, but as soon as he realized they were in the room, he turned his head in their direction, grinning like a player with twenty-twenty vision. “Hello, ladies,” he said, his head rocking from side to side.

Nicole looked at Teri and said in a low voice, “I thought you said he was blind.”

“He is. Victor told me he could smell pussy and fish from a mile away. Only thing is, he can’t tell one from the other.” Teri didn’t tell Nicole that Victor had also said that whenever the blind man, whose name was Ernest Townes, passed a fish market he flashed his most flirtatious smile.

“Well, it sure looks like he knows what we are,” Nicole mentioned.

“We could be two catfish standing here for all he knows,” Teri insisted.

“I will be with you ladies in a minute,” Ernest said, licking his bow-shaped lips. His dark glasses hid his eyes, but the rest of him didn’t look half bad. It was hard to tell his age. He could have been anywhere from twenty-five to forty-five. Judging from his high cheekbones; smooth skin; and bone-straight, jet black hair slicked back in a duck tail, he had more than a few drops of Native American blood flowing through his veins. He returned his attention to his cell phone. Both Teri and Nicole were sorry that the man was blind and had been since the age of seven. But he was not to be pitied. Within a minute of their arrival he was fussing and cussing at the party on the other end of the line. “Fuck that shit! Hell no! Kiss my black ass!” he roared with his head and body rocking from side to side in the chair he occupied at the head of the conference table.

Marvin Woods, the rapper’s manager who was also his stepfather, was just as crude. He entered the room and goose-stepped over to the rapper. “Get your blind ass off that phone!” he shouted, snatching the cell phone out of his stepson’s hand. Marvin slapped the telephone up to his ear and started fussing and cussing at the same party on the other end, too. “Fuck you! Hell no!” Marvin looked enough like Ernest to be his real father, and according to the rumor mill, he actually was.

“Teri, exactly what are we supposed to do here?” Nicole wanted to know, speaking in a whisper.

“We need to set up his photo session with Eric. That’s what Eric was calling about,” Teri whispered back. Just hearing Eric’s name made Nicole tingle all over.

“Oh?” she responded, turning her head so Teri wouldn’t see the mysterious smile on her face. “Oh.”

“My grandmother told me there’d be days like this. Well, this is ‘one of those days,’” Teri decided, in a bone-dry voice.

Harrison Starr’s granny had told him the same thing that Teri’s had told her. He was having one of those days, too. His had certainly gotten off to a fairly bad start. He had forgotten to set his alarm the night before and had overslept. He’d opened his eyes just in time to take a quick shower and run out the door. He had
taken a shortcut to work, only to get caught up in a traffic jam caused by a three-car accident on the freeway. He made it to work on time by the skin of his teeth.

He usually stopped at Starbucks to get his coffee and a muffin or a bear claw every morning. But this morning he had to settle for that deadly vending machine shit in the studio break room that looked more like pee than coffee. He had dressed in such a hurry that he didn’t realize he had buttoned his shirt wrong until a coworker told him.

Now, after making what he considered a rhetorical comment about what he thought a woman should do to be a good mate, an irate female caller was giving him hell. This was something he should have been used to by now, but he wasn’t. And that bitch—who should have had something better to do with her time at ten o’clock in the morning—was so loud he had to hold his earphone away from his ear to keep his eardrum from throbbing.

“…and another thing, black boy, your whole notion of what a woman should do to be a good mate is ill. You got that?”

Chuck Irby, the perennially distressed station manager, rushed into the booth with a horrified look on his mulish face, rotating his arms like a windmill. Harrison tried his best to ignore him, but Chuck stood in front of him, making Harrison dizzy with all that arm action.

“Thank you for your comments, sister, but I must move on,” Harrison said, trying to remain calm and diffuse the situation at the same time. “Thank you again, my sister. Have a nice day.” He hung up, grinding his teeth before he spoke again. “Any other listeners like to make a comment?” The same wild woman who had just hung up called again.

“Nobody else was listening to your tired ass!” she barked.

“I have to call it the way I see it, ma’am.”

“You ain’t no Dr. Phil! You ain’t even Oprah! You ain’t
nobody
!”

Harrison wiped his brow with the back of his hand and held his breath for a few moments. Some people were like trees when it came to trying to have a rational conversation with them. The woman on the other end of the line was as pliable as a dead sumac.

“Are you finished this time?” Harrison asked, praying that he
didn’t lose his cool and slide down to the same level as this difficult caller.

“Naw, I ain’t finished! I bet you ain’t even got no woman, and I ain’t surprised. Probably couldn’t catch one with a fishhook! I seen your picture and you look like a straight-up fag to me!”

“Hey! You hold on there, now. Don’t go
there
, sister.”

“I am not your damn sister! You sissified, suit-wearing punk!”

“Well, you are sure acting like it.”

“You dumb, egotistical bastard.”

Chuck pleaded with Harrison to hang up but to do it very politely. Harrison knew that he was fighting a battle he had no chance of winning and the best way out of it was to let his opponent think she’d won.

“Please accept my apology,” he said. He hung up before the caller could say another word. He expected her to call again, but after five minutes had passed with no additional calls, he breathed a sigh of relief.

Chuck left the booth, but he stood outside so he could watch through the glass. Harrison shook his head and wiped his brow again with the back of his hand. He glanced at Chuck and gave him a weak smile and a nod.

The afternoon was much more pleasant than the morning for Teri. She returned from another meeting shortly after noon. Nicole was on the telephone, pretending like she was on a business call until she saw Teri. Then she started talking the usual trash that she engaged in with her cousin Lola. “Yeah, girl this; yeah, girl that.” Teri shook her head and rolled her eyes at Nicole as she collected a stack of telephone messages from her desk.

Just as Teri was about to enter her office, something on the radio on Nicole’s desk caught her attention: Harrison Starr’s voice. Had he always sounded that sexy? she asked herself. Nicole ended her telephone call, and Teri stood by the side of her desk listening and enjoying the sound of that sexy voice…