The Company We Keep (20 page)

T
eri loved her grandparents and would have been willing to walk through fire to accommodate them. But sometimes they were as fractious and unruly as toddlers. By the time she dropped them off at LAX she was a nervous wreck.

All the way to the airport, her grandfather had complained about her driving. No matter what speed she drove, it was either too slow or too fast. “Can’t this thing go any faster? I told you to get a Buick!” A few minutes later it was, “Slow down, girl! You almost ran over that squirrel crossing the street!”

Her grandmother was no better. “I hope I locked all the doors and all the windows. I hope I didn’t leave the oven on. I hope those Donaldson boys don’t break out my front window the way they did the last time we left the house for a few days,” the old woman whined. On top of everything else, both grandparents looked like they were going to church. Grandpa had on his best navy blue suit and fedora; Grandma had on a flowered dress with a white collar and a wide brimmed hat with a feather on the side. She had on enough rouge to coat a bus.

“I’ll go back to make sure you locked all the doors and windows and turned off the oven,” Teri volunteered.

“Lord, I hope we don’t have to deal with a terrorist situation on that plane tonight,” Grandpa complained, shaking his head.

“I doubt if any terrorists will be on a plane to Slidell, Louisiana,” Teri said with a mighty sigh.

“Well, if they had enough of the devil in them to get on a plane going to San Francisco, then hijack and crash it, not to mention all the rest of those planes they crashed up that September, what’s to stop them from doing the same thing on a plane to Slidell?” Grandma asked, leaning forward from the backseat.

Teri didn’t even bother to respond to that last comment. Unless she agreed with her grandparents, having a conversation with them was usually a no-win situation.

“Don’t forget to take your pills. Both of you,” Teri reminded in a tired voice. She was thoroughly exhausted by the time she dropped them off and left the airport.

She took her time going home from checking her grandparents’ house. She stopped at a Chinese takeout next door to a Cat’s Paw shop. Even though everything on their menu was greasy she picked up some egg rolls. She started nibbling on the way home, driving with one hand, eating with the other. By the time she entered her living room the container was empty and her greasy lips were shining like new coins.

She saw the light blinking on her answering machine. Before listening to any of the messages, she called Nicole, assuming at least one was from her.

“Did you call?” she asked when Nicole answered on the sixth ring.

“No,” Nicole told her, speaking in a low voice. Teri groaned and rolled her eyes around like marbles. From the sound of Nicole’s voice, she was up to something that Teri did not want to hear about.

“Oh. Well, I won’t keep you on the phone long.” Teri told Nicole about the episode with her grandparents and how worried she was about them. “I know that when one of them goes, the other won’t be that far behind. It seems to happen to all elderly couples. Girl, that is one thing I am not looking forward to. I could be planning two funerals in the very near future and that is not something I want to think about.”

“Then don’t.” Nicole didn’t even try to hide the impatience in her voice.

“I…you know you are sounding kind of strange tonight, even for you. Did I call at a bad time?”

“I have company,” Nicole whispered, confirming Teri’s suspicions.

“Humph. I figured it was about time for one of your maintenance men to pay you a visit. I’ll let you get back to whatever it was you were doing. Get enough for me this time. I could sure use some.” Teri chuckled. She sat down on the arm of her couch with the remote in her hand. “How did you manage to get away from Eric in time to get home for your little rendezvous?”

Nicole took her good old time responding. “I didn’t…”

Teri gasped. “Oh shit! It’s Eric?”

“Uh-huh. I really do have to go now. Are you going to be in the office tomorrow?”

“As far as I know,” Teri said, speaking slowly. It was a struggle for her to suppress her disappointment. On one hand she was glad that Nicole had finally got Eric alone in her apartment. And despite his relationship with Yvette, she hoped that things would eventually be more serious between him and Nicole. From what she’d witnessed in Eric’s loft between him and Yvette, she had a feeling that Yvette’s days were numbered.

She had plenty of alcohol in her living room minibar, but she popped open the Rémy Martin that she’d purchased at the gas station as soon as she got off the phone with Nicole. She took a few sips before she pushed the Play button on her answering machine. The first call was from her hairdresser, calling to confirm the appointment she had scheduled for Saturday. The second message was from someone who had dialed her number by mistake. The third message was from Harrison. It was brief and to the point. He had just called to say how he’d enjoyed seeing her that afternoon and that he was sorry she had to put up with Young Rahim’s antics. Then he hung up. He didn’t ask her to return his call and he didn’t say anything about wanting to see her. Again, she felt that “can’t beat ’em, join ’em” feeling. She used to know Harrison’s telephone number by heart but had recently forced herself to forget it. She stumbled across the room to the stand by the door where she’d left her purse. She dumped out the contents to locate her palm-size address book. She had writ
ten his number in red ink. But it was no longer his number. As soon as she heard the recorded message indicating that the number she had just dialed had been either disconnected or changed and was now unlisted, she got tears in her eyes.

“I guess it’s not meant to be,” she said, dragging herself into her bedroom. “Shit!” was the last thing she said before she finished her drink and turned in for the night.

Teri slept like a baby that night and didn’t wake up until after eleven the next morning. She fixed herself some toast and made herself a tall mimosa. She had used only a splash of orange juice and a lot of champagne. She got an instant buzz, and it was a lot smoother and milder than the one from the Rémy Martin the night before. She was admiring the granite-top counters she’d recently had installed during a home improvement frenzy last month when the telephone rang. She grabbed the cordless off the counter.

“Teri, are you all right?” It was Nicole, calling from the office.

“I’m taking a day or two off,” Teri replied, looking at the wall clock above her stove. “If I have any meetings, reschedule them for next week in case I don’t make it in tomorrow or Friday…”

“Okay. What did you do last night after I talked to you?”

“The same thing I usually do. I hope you had a good night,” Teri commented, rubbing the back of her head. She made a mental note to avoid that potent-ass Rémy Martin shit from now on and stick to wine, margaritas, and mimosas. She returned to her bedroom and crawled back into bed with the telephone.

“I did…and I plan to do the same tonight.”

“I see. Well, you can tell me all about it when I see you.”

“Listen, you just got a call…”

“And?”

“I didn’t know if you wanted to talk to Harrison. He said he left a message at your home number last night but that he hadn’t heard from you yet.”

She was back on her feet in a flash. An earthquake couldn’t have jolted her out of bed any quicker. She got so tangled up in her sheets she stumbled and inadvertently plopped back down on the side of her bed.

“I tried to call him back, but he’s got a new phone number and he didn’t leave it. What did he say? What time did he call?”

“He called just a few minutes ago. Here’s his work and home numbers,” Nicole said.

Teri wrote Harrison’s numbers down on the back of a dog-eared
TV Guide.
She couldn’t get Nicole off the telephone fast enough.

H
arrison was on the air, so Teri got his voice mail when she called him back at his work number. She didn’t want to sound too eager, so all she said was that she’d received his message and was returning his call. She sat there for the next ten minutes hoping he’d take a break and call her right back. He didn’t, but she knew he would.

She took the telephone with her into the bathroom when she couldn’t hold her bladder any longer. He returned her call an hour after she’d left him a message.

“Teri, I know you’re probably busy, but I wanted to ask you anyway,” he began. “I read the magazine interview you did, and I was wondering if you’d be interested in letting me interview you on my show.”

“When did you see it?” she wanted to know. Damn that Lola. She hadn’t even dropped off a copy of the magazine for Teri. And she couldn’t buy it because it wasn’t on the newsstands yet.

“While I was out with Trevor last night we ran into Lola. She had a few copies with her.”

“She was supposed to have delivered me some copies by now.”

“So she told me. Anyway, you’ll be proud of how she showcased you. She devoted half a page to you, and just a few lines to the other four women.”

“Is that right?” Teri was not a boastful or arrogant woman, but she was human. She knew she was good at what she did. Was it possible that she could eventually be in as high a position as Suzanne de Passe was over at Motown? Victor had even told her that she’d probably be running his company when he retired because she was the only person who could do his job as well as he could. How could she not pat herself on the back every now and then? It pleased her to know that so many other people thought the same thing.

“Hearing about your success, as if I didn’t know about it already, was so refreshing. I think it would be a big inspiration to a lot of young folks out there. You and I both know that most of them need all the help and inspiration they can get. I can work around your schedule as long as we do it within the next three weeks. I’d like to do this before the story gets stale. Like, before the next issue hits the stands.”

“An interview?”

“And you don’t have to worry about me taking up too much of your time. I know how busy you are. Ten minutes max is all I’m asking for. But I’ll settle for whatever I can get. The last interview I heard Donald Trump do lasted only two minutes, but he kicks so much ass when he speaks, the less he says the better. It keeps him fresh and it makes people want more of him. Same with you…”

“Oh. Thanks for the compliment. You just made my day. Well, how about this Friday morning? I could stop by the station on my way to work.”

“Hold on, let me check the calendar.” Harrison put Teri on hold, and she had to suffer through half a minute of the tail end of Young Rahim’s latest tune, then another minute and a half of Trevor’s latest before Harrison returned. “I—hello? Are you still there?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I thought you’d left me there for a moment. Look, you sound tired and I hope this is not a bad time for you. But if it’s all right with you, I can come by your office again or you can call me when you get to your office. I’d really like to get this set up ASAP.”

“We can talk now. I decided to take a day or two off,” Teri mut
tered. She cleared her throat and scratched her chin. She wanted to laugh at the turn her life had taken. An
interview
? The one man on the planet that she had finally decided she wanted to be with and now all he wanted from her was a damn interview. Was it finally too late for her? She’d been turning down requests for dates left and right. Not just from Harrison and Dwight, but from a lot of other men. She had no reason to believe that the invitations would stop coming! Hell, she wasn’t even thirty yet and nobody had to tell her that she was still one of the most beautiful black women in L.A. But had she played her last hand and lost? Was life going to pass her by after all?

Teri couldn’t control her thoughts as she sat waiting for Harrison to respond to her last comment. Two of the things that she always had to fall back on—her grandparents and Nicole—didn’t seem so secure anymore. Her grandparents could outlive her, but the reality was that they wouldn’t be around too much longer. And she was not that close to any of her other relatives, so it would be as though she was an orphan all over again.

If Nicole’s relationship with Eric did go somewhere, she’d have to find other things to occupy her downtime because that sister’s time would become severely limited. Nicole was the kind of woman who liked to spend as much time as possible with her man when she was in a serious relationship. When she was still married to Greg, Teri wouldn’t see or hear from her for weeks at a time. And as treacherous as women in her age group were these days, cultivating another close relationship with one was something she didn’t even want to think about, let alone do. With a job like hers, what heifer could she trust? She couldn’t count the number of women she’d met who had tried to use her to get to some of the artists she worked with. Her hairdresser had been hounding her for months to hook her up with any available rapper she knew. Her teenage she-devil of a cousin Cynthia, and some of her she-devil friends, had gone behind her back and used her name to get free concert tickets and invitations to all the star-studded after-parties. It never ceased to amaze her how low some women would stoop just so they could suck dick or fuck some arrogant-ass performer who only wanted to use them like a receptacle.

“Nine-thirty, Friday morning. Can you make that?”

“I’ll be there,” Teri said.

“If you could get here at least fifteen minutes early that would be nice. We could have some coffee and I can go over my interview questions beforehand. Most of my subjects prefer to do it that way. It makes them feel better prepared and more relaxed.”

“I’ll be there between nine and nine-fifteen,” she said firmly.

“Thank you, Teri. Oh, before I go, I want to apologize for all that drama you and Nicole had to go through yesterday.”

It took Teri a moment to clear her head. She had been doing that a lot since this phone call came in. “You don’t need to apologize. You didn’t do anything crazy. Besides, I’m used to Rahim acting a fool. I don’t expect him to behave any other way.”

“Does he clown like that when Victor’s around?”

“He’s worse. The last time he came for a meeting before Victor left for his vacation, Victor said something Rahim didn’t like and he called him a motherfucking bastard.”

“I am surprised that Victor is still working with this dude.”

“Oh, we deal with shit like that all the time. These Rastas are coming by next week. Straight off the island of Jamaica, ganga and all.”

“They bring their own shit with them? How do they get through customs?”

“I don’t know what in the world those fools do. All I know is whenever they show up, they are already stoned out of their dreadlocked heads and then they still light up some more of that shit right in front of me, and Victor, and everybody else. And that’s some secondhand smoke that does not need to be discussed. It’s so potent, we all get an immediate contact high. Even more so than I did during my wild youth in college.” Teri laughed. Harrison loved to hear her laugh.

“Teri, I hope I am not being too forward, but I won’t know unless I ask you.”

“Ask me what?”

“Now that business is out of the way, we can talk on a more personal level. Just for a few minutes. I have to get back on the air in five after the news break.”

She hesitated before she replied. “What else did you want to talk to me about?”

“You and I had a few good times together and I know you don’t want to go there again with me, but can we at least be friends?”

“We are friends, Harrison. Despite everything that happened between us, we are still friends. At least that’s what I thought.”

“Then as friends, can we have dinner and drinks every now and then? I really miss talking to you.”

“Aren’t you involved with…somebody right now?”

“The only person I’m involved with these days is myself. Yes, I do date from time to time, but there is nothing going on in my life that would prevent me from seeing you or any other woman.” She didn’t like hearing the part about him and “any other woman.”

“I see,” she said with hesitation.

“I heard that Dwight was trying to get back with you,” he told her in a stiff tone of voice.

“Well, it’s not going to happen,” she said quickly. She knew that Harrison considered Dwight to be his biggest rival. “He was one of my biggest mistakes.” She’d ended her month-long fling with Dwight two weeks before her tryst with Harrison.

“So he didn’t mean anything to you then?”

“I didn’t say that. And just so you know, I didn’t love him at first, but I eventually did. I cared a lot about that man. Why I did, I don’t know. I just know I did. But like I said, he was one of my biggest mistakes.”

“He’s still calling you,” Harrison stated. His voice sounded gruff and distant.

“How would you know that?”

“Guys talk. Gyms are the new barbershops. I hear things.”

“Well, you can’t believe everything you hear. But just so you’ll hear it from me, yes, Dwight is still calling me. I am not interested in getting back with him. I don’t want to have dinner with him, drinks or anything else because he…he comes on too strong. And believe it or not, most women don’t like to be hit over the head with a dick. Not that he’ll be lonely. A relationship with him would be too crowded, and you of all people know I don’t go there.”

“After the interview on Friday, can you hang around until I finish my show or do you have to go to work?”

“I’m taking Friday off,” Teri revealed, her heart pounding against the inside of her chest so hard she could hear it. The loud thump-thumping made her think of a gothic piece she’d read in high school. She couldn’t even remember the story behind
The Tell-Tale Heart
. But she remembered how it had frightened her. She was frightened now. If she wanted to get back with Harrison, it was now or never. “I’ve got an even better idea. Why don’t you come over to my place after you finish your show? I’ll thaw out some salmon steaks.”

“Do I have to wait until Friday to see you?”

“I think it would be better if we waited until Friday. I really want to do this interview and I want it to go well. If you come over here tonight and things don’t go well…well, you know. Doing a live interview on Friday might be kind of awkward.”

“I see. Well, I don’t want to lose out on that. I’ll see you on Friday.”

“Yes,” she replied, her voice so low he could barely hear her. “Bye, Harrison.” She didn’t wait for him to reply. She hung up the telephone and made herself some more mimosa.