The Company We Keep (24 page)

T
eri’s grandparents returned from Louisiana the following Friday night. She was with them when Harrison called her on her cell phone. “Hey, baby, can you meet me at the Power Bass around eight?” he asked.

“Tonight?”

“Tonight,” he confirmed, disappointment already creeping into his voice. This was the third time this week he’d invited her to spend some time with him at this particular club. “Can’t make it again, huh?”

“Well, maybe later. My grandparents just returned from their trip, and I wanted to spend a little time with them. Would you like to come over here to get reacquainted with them?” Teri chuckled.

“What’s so funny?”

“I won’t go into detail, but they’ve been after me for the longest to find…a man. For some reason they think I’m going to grow old and die alone.” Teri was disappointed when Harrison didn’t respond right away.

“I don’t think you have to worry about that,” he said flatly. “Why would they even think that?”

“You know how old people are. I can’t wait for you to really get to know them this time.”

“Well, I’d like to. But not tonight. Why don’t you check with them and see when it would be a good time for me to visit. I want to assure them that they have nothing to worry about. Their ‘baby’ is in good hands.” His words made Teri feel warm all over. She exhaled and smiled so hard her face ached.

“They always have a big cookout on the Fourth of July and invite just about everybody they know.”

“The Fourth sounds fine. You can count me in, baby.”

“That’s a month from now. Do you think you can make it? Don’t you need to check your calendar?”

“As long as I’m not the guest of honor at the next funeral I attend, I can reschedule whatever else is on my calendar for the Fourth. Off the top of my head, the only thing I can think of is a little gathering with some of my folks. But I’d been hoping that something better would come along so I could get out of that. Don’t you worry, I’ll go with you no matter what. This is one time you can count on me, baby.”

“All right now. I am going to hold you to that.”

“Listen to me—I will be at that cookout. Now let’s consider this case closed.”

“Okay, but like I said, you can come with me tonight if you want to. Maybe we could go on to the club from there. Those two old nanny goats go to bed with the hens, so I won’t be over there with them that late.”

“Naw, that won’t work for me. Trevor’s riding shotgun with me tonight and we’re supposed to hook up with some other industry folks there. These are some important people that it wouldn’t hurt for you to know, too.”

“Uh, if I can make it I will. Otherwise, let me take a rain check,” Teri said casually.

“I see. You know, rain checks don’t do me much good if I can never collect on them. And I’ve racked up quite a few from you these last few days. What’s up with that?”

“Harrison, if I had my way, I’d be available every time you wanted to see me—”

“Please don’t go there again right now. Let’s end this conversation now and on a happy note. If you can make it to the club around eleven, fine. If you can’t, don’t worry about it.”

“Keep your cell phone turned on so I can call you later,” Teri advised. “If nothing else, I’d at least like to talk to you before I call it a day. I know I’ll need somebody to talk to after a session with my grandparents. Flying makes them cranky and I’ll have to hear a full report.”

Harrison suddenly felt sympathetic. He was glad to see that Teri’s devotion to her grandparents was still intact. “You sound tired, sweetheart. Maybe you should go on home after your grandparents. We can always go to a club some other time.”

“Don’t worry about me. I am fine. I don’t care how tired I am now, or later. I would still love to spend some time with you tonight,” she said, her voice dragging.

“I’ll leave my phone on.”

Harrison and Trevor had been at the club for about two hours when Yvette rolled in with June Mattox, one of her clonelike friends. June was a bug-eyed ex-stripper with platinum blond braids halfway down her back.

“I thought this was one of those uppity clubs that only let celebrities and such up in here,” June whispered to Yvette as they sauntered in without having to pay the twenty dollar cover charge. The huge Latino bouncer guarding the door winked as he waved them into the club.

“It is,” Yvette said, smiling at every man in sight. “I promised the DJ a BJ.”

“Say what?”

“I promised the DJ a blow job. I do it all the time. Come on, let’s try to find a seat near the VIP section. I’m hot tonight.”

Yvette was hot in more ways than one. She was practically on fire because she was so angry. A few hours ago, she had come home from a jaunt to Tijuana and found that that punk-ass Eric had packed up all her shit and set the boxes by the door! If that wasn’t bad enough, he took the key to his place from her and even paid a cab to haul her and her belongings to June’s place. Well, she was glad to be rid of that limp-dick motherfucker and that mealy-mouth daughter of his.

“I was only with your cheesy ass because I felt sorry for you!”
she had told him before she left that shithole he called home. She had also told him that she didn’t appreciate him using her up during the best years of her life. A woman was only twenty-something once. Because of Eric and that little monkey he tried to make her help him raise, she now felt like an old woman in her forties. He and Akua, that nappy-headed, future Jezebel of a daughter of his, had aged her in a way that she would never recover from. But she had news for him. He would be sorry that he had played her. She wished that she could see his face in a few months when he started receiving the bills for the four credit cards she planned to open in his name. And if she was still this pissed come Monday morning, she’d call the utility company, the cable company, and the phone company and have his service cut off. It would take him days to straighten out all that mess. And that bitch Nicole’s butt was hers when and if she ever ran into her on the street.

“’Vette, look over there in the VIP section. Ain’t that that radio dude Harrison Starr?” June asked after a bored-looking waiter had taken their orders. They had plopped down at a table across the room from where Harrison and Trevor were holding court. “You told me you met him at that Carla woman’s Valentine’s Day party that Eric took you to.”

“Yes, that is that butt-plugging, fag-ass motherfucker,” Yvette snarled. At the same table with Harrison and Trevor were several musicians that Yvette had seen from time to time. And hovering over them all were two half-dressed heifers looking like they wanted to suck every dick in sight. “He’s the one that’s always on the radio going on and on about that record company cow Teri.”

“Is she the same one you told me was Nicole’s homegirl?”

“Uh-huh. She is just as big a bitch as Nicole, maybe even bigger. I’d like to coldcock her just as much as I’d like to get my hands on that Nicole.”

“And that looks like Trevor Powell sitting with Harrison.”

“And he’s just as big a punk as Harrison! Don’t nobody but old folks and sissies listen to that shit he sings. And if you ask me, when he sings it sounds like somebody stepping on a moose’s tail.” Yvette and June both roared with laughter at Trevor’s expense.

June and Yvette didn’t wait for the men to ask them to dance,
they jumped up and danced alone or with each other. About an hour after they’d entered the club, which was now so crowded you could barely dance, Yvette moseyed over to Harrison’s table and asked him to dance anyway. He was surprised to see her and even more surprised that she interrupted his conversation with Trevor to ask him to dance. The other women at his table wanted to jump up and take turns slapping Yvette. They decided that from the looks of this sister, she’d been around the block more than a few times so she had to know the club protocol: don’t snatch food off another woman’s plate until she stops eating. Especially in a club that catered to the hip-hop crowd.

“Maybe later,” he told her, giving her a smile and a casual wave.

“Aw, come on,” she said, pulling him up by the arm. The woman sitting next to Harrison could not believe her eyes! It was a good thing her friend held her back. Yvette went on about her business as if she didn’t even see the two women at the table. “I’m going to be leaving in a little while, and as crowded as this place is getting, if we don’t dance now there might not be enough room to dance later.”

Even though it was obvious from the look on Harrison’s face and his body language that he did not want to dance, he shrugged and rose. With Yvette still holding on to his arm, he followed her. It was one of the biggest mistakes he ever made in his life.

“I danced with you a few times at the Andrewses’ Valentine’s Day party, didn’t I?” Harrison asked, trying not to show Yvette how bored he was with her.

“Uh-huh,” she murmured, pulling his arm up and around her shoulder in a way so that his hand landed on her right breast. This crude gesture made him wish he had not agreed to dance with her after all.

He pretended not to notice where his hand was, but he discreetly moved it. “You’re Eric’s girl, right?” he asked as soon as they got out on the floor, moving to the rhythm of Kanye’s “Gold Digger.”

“I was until a few hours ago,” she pouted. She proceeded to tell Harrison how she had come home from “visiting a sick relative in San Diego” and caught Eric in bed with another woman. He’d threatened to kill her if she didn’t leave immediately. She’d
packed her things and called June. Yvette was proud of the fact that she could concoct such a believable lie at such short notice.

“Shit. That’s pretty cold. Well, you seem to be handling it all right, out here dancing and having a good time. That’s a good sign.”

“I’m only here because June had to meet her man here. I have to hang out somewhere until my uncle Buddy gets home tonight. He’s on his way back from Vegas…”

“Well, I hope everything works out for you, Yvette. If there’s anything I can do for you tonight, just let me know. If you need a ride or a few dollars, I’ve got your back. My little cousin Dana went through a similar situation a few months ago.”

“A ride would be nice,” Yvette said. “The car June’s driving belongs to her man, and when we leave here with him tonight, I don’t know if he’ll be willing to drive me to my uncle’s house in Compton.”

“Well if a ride is all you need tonight, I can help you out. Just let me know when you’re ready,” Harrison said, giving her a gentle squeeze around her waist.

“Girlfriend, what are you up to?” June asked Yvette as soon as Yvette returned to the table and told her what she’d told Harrison.

“Nothing really,” Yvette told her with a wicked smile on her face. “But I’ll tell you this much. Just listen…”

J
une went along with Yvette’s elaborate ruse. She supported everything Yvette had told Harrison. “If you can’t get the goose, get the gander. I hate Teri as much as I hate Nicole, and at this point I don’t care which one of those heifers I clown first,” Yvette declared.

“Girl, do you really think you going to hurt Nicole by tripping out on Teri? I don’t think so.”

“You just watch me,” Yvette sneered.

Since June’s boyfriend was bogus, she had to hide in the ladies’ room until Yvette had lured Harrison out of the club and to his car.

Once Yvette got into Harrison’s car, she directed him down one street after another until they came to a shabby house on a dark corner in East L.A. He parked on the street but he left his motor running.

“This is where your uncle lives?” Harrison asked. He checked to make sure his door was locked. “I thought you said he lived in Compton. Last time I checked, this neighborhood was 100 percent Latino.”

“Oh! I forgot. He just moved here last week. He’s married to a Mexican woman…”

“Well, from the looks of things, nobody’s home,” Harrison said with some concern.

“Yeah, I guess he hasn’t made it home yet. Uh, if you don’t have time to sit here and wait with me, you can just drop me off at the corner next to that taco stand and I’ll wait for him by myself.”

“Yvette, look around you.” Harrison gasped, his mouth hanging open. Right after he said that they heard gunshots. It was hard to determine which direction the shots came from. But a few seconds later, three shadowy figures darted across the street and accosted an elderly woman out walking her dog. Within seconds the shadows snatched the woman’s purse and her dog and disappeared behind a dilapidated building. Harrison removed his cell phone from his inside jacket pocket and called the police. As soon as he’d reported the crime that he had just witnessed, he snapped the phone shut and laid it in the cup holder. “I wouldn’t leave a dying dog outside in a place like this.” He gave Yvette an incredulous look.

“It’s not that bad,” she whined. “This is all some people can afford.”

“Don’t you have any other place to go tonight? What about the girlfriend you were with? If her man is a man, he won’t mind you hanging out at her place until your uncle makes it back from Vegas.”

“I could,” Yvette said, looking at her watch. “But they won’t make it back to her place until around one she told me.”

Harrison didn’t want to be in this location any longer than necessary, and there was no way he was going to leave Yvette here alone. One thing he didn’t do was kick a person who was already down. If only he had ignored her when she approached him in the club! Then he wouldn’t be in this mess. But he
was
in this mess, and he knew that the only thing he could do now was get out of it the quickest and easiest way he could. And it had to be in a way that suited them both. He knew that if he left her alone on the street and something happened to her, he’d never forgive himself. There was only one thing left for him to do.

“I can’t leave you out here. I can give you enough money for a room. I know some reasonable motels that you can stay in for a
couple of nights, if you want to. That’s just in case your uncle doesn’t make it back from Vegas until then.”

“Well, I could do that, but I don’t want you to be out any money trying to help me. I mean, I’ve cost you enough just in gas. If it’s all right with you, I can stay at your place until I can go to June’s place. It’s only an hour,” Yvette said with a pleading look in her eyes.

For her sake, it was a good thing she was a pretty woman. Had she not been, the DJ would not have allowed her to enter that nightclub for free even if she’d promised him ten blow jobs. Her beauty didn’t impress Harrison, but she thought it did. And she planned to use it to her advantage. It never occurred to her that he would have helped her regardless of what she looked like. She batted her eyes at him and sniffed.

“I promise I will never ask you for another favor again as long as I live. You don’t know me that well, so if you don’t want to do it, that’s cool.” When Harrison didn’t respond fast enough, Yvette started to open the door on her side.

“What if I take you to my place and give you enough cab fare to get you to your girl’s house? How’s that?” Harrison asked, rubbing the back of his head, which by now was throbbing like a bad toothache.

“That’ll work.”

Harrison stopped at an all-night gas station to fill up his tank. While he was doing that, his cell phone, which he had left on in the cup holder, rang. Yvette picked it up, and what she saw on the ID screen made her flesh crawl: Teri Stewart. She had just enough time before Harrison returned to erase the message that that bitch had left.

Once they made it to Harrison’s swank condo, which was a converted unit in a stately old building near the border of Long Beach, Yvette rushed inside behind him and made herself right at home, complimenting him on his good taste in décor. What she said was one thing, what she thought was another. His place looked like something out of a Tarzan movie. Who in the hell did this fool think he was, Shaka Zulu? She never could figure out why so many black Americans slapped some of the most loathsome African masks they could find onto their walls. That was bad
enough. But this suit-wearing baboon had spears and other voodoo-looking shit displayed all over his place. There was just no telling what his bedroom looked like, but she planned to find out.

Just when she thought she’d seen everything there was to see, she looked at another wall and did a double take. Was that a picture of a witch doctor right next to a picture of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr? Did Harrison, and others like him, think that doing shit like that made them more of a “brother” or more of a “sister” to the real Africans? If they really wanted to show some solidarity and human kindness, why didn’t they send some money to those starving African kids they showed on TV all the time? Why didn’t they go to Africa and adopt some of those little orphans like those white celebrities? As far as Yvette was concerned, Angelina Jolie and Madonna had done more for the Africans than any black American she knew, while the rich black Americans were spending their money on outlandish jewelry and gold teeth. She had always suspected that Harrison Starr was a confused jackass. The way he had decorated his place confirmed her suspicions.

While Harrison was in the bathroom, Yvette kicked off her shoes and wiggled out of her pantyhose. When he returned to his living room, he stopped in his tracks. He looked at her bare feet, then her face.

“What’s all this?” he asked with his jaw twitching.

“Oh, my feet were hurting from all that dancing I did,” she replied, rubbing the sides of her feet. “I hope my feet don’t smell.”

“Uh, don’t worry about that. Would you like something to drink?” he offered, not too pleased to see her so kicked back on his couch, too.

“You got any beer?” she asked, still rubbing her feet. And they did stink. They smelled like stale vinegar, and Harrison could determine that from halfway across the room. He planned to spray his crushed velvet blue couch pillows with some Febreze as soon as she left.

“No, I don’t have any beer, but I have just about everything else, though. How about some rum and Coke?”

“That’ll work,” she said, rising.

“Make yourself at home,” he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. But she was too dense to know that. “I’ll be right back.”

Yvette saw that Harrison had left his cell phone on a glass-top table by the door where he’d dropped his keys. While he was in the kitchen, the telephone by the couch rang. It rang four times before Yvette decided that Harrison couldn’t hear it from the kitchen. She picked it up.

“Hello,” she said, trying to sound as sultry as she possibly could. She did a good job, because on the other end Teri almost dropped her telephone.

“I’m sorry! I think I dialed the wrong number,” Teri wailed.

“Are you calling for Harrison?”

Teri hesitated before she replied. “Yes, I am,” she said firmly. “May I ask who you are?”

“Oh, I’m just one of Harry’s good friends,” Yvette cooed.
Harry?

“If Harry is in, could you tell him that Teri is on the phone, please?”

Yvette was elated. This was going better than she thought it would! She took her time responding, knowing that that would irritate Teri even more. She cleared her throat and yawned.

“Hello? Is somebody still there?” Teri hollered.

“I’m still here…” Yvette cooed.

“If Harrison is there, will you please let him know that Teri Stewart is on the phone and I’d like to speak with him
right now
.”

“He’s in the shower right now.”

Teri hung up. She was stunned and frustrated, but optimistic. She had to give the man the benefit of the doubt. There had to be a reasonable explanation for what she had just experienced. There just had to be! But if Harrison had picked up a woman in the same club that he had told her to meet him in, he was a straight-up fool. And she would be just as big a fool as he was if she put up with that. He didn’t answer his cell phone when she called him earlier, and he had not returned her call. Now here was a strange woman answering his telephone while he was in the shower! Oh, hell no. He had some explaining to do.

Teri had already left her grandparents’ house and returned to her residence to change clothes. She was in no mood to go to the club, so she had decided to call Harrison to see if he wanted her to come over or if he wanted to come to her place. As soon as she
heard a woman’s voice answer his cell phone, she’d pulled into the parking lot of a convenience store near the Staples Center.

She’d snapped her phone shut and headed toward Harrison’s neighborhood. She stopped her BMW so abruptly she almost jumped the curb in front of his building. His condo was in the front of the building. It looked like every light in his place was on. She took a deep breath before she rang the buzzer.

“Yeah,” Harrison said, sounding like he was out of breath.

“Let me in,” she ordered.

Harrison responded with hesitation. “Who is this?”

“You know who it is! Shit!”

“What? Teri? Teri, is that you?” Teri could tell from the way he spoke that he was surprised and disappointed to hear her voice. If what she suspected was true, he was dog meat.

“Who the fuck else? Or were you expecting another one of your whores?”