The Deal, the Dance, and the Devil (4 page)

So by the time the twins were ten and Ethan was just four, they would sit with Adam as he took care of our money. Even if all they did was open the envelopes, Alexa, Alana, and Ethan knew the financial side of life as a Langston. They knew about mortgages and phone bills, they knew that TV didn’t come free, and heat and air-conditioning cost money, too. He even went beyond what I would’ve done; he told them how much their parents earned.

“There’s no Santa Claus. You and I work hard to provide for them, and they need to know that.”

That was the Adam Langston philosophy on child-rearing.

The girls and Ethan learned about budgeting and saving, about allowances and earnings. About setting goals and having dreams. The problem was they knew only the good; Adam hadn’t brought them over to the dark side of what had been going on for the past two years.

Though he hadn’t moved—Adam was still holding his head
in his hands—he knew that I was there. My heart was never whole without him, and I knew he felt the same. He didn’t have to look at me to see me.

I strolled into the office and stood behind him; when I touched him, he moved. Just slightly, though—his head rocked back a bit, but his eyes were still closed. My fingers kneaded his shoulders. Gently at first. Then I applied more pressure, letting the anxiety of my day surge through my hands for his pleasure.

He released a moan that made me smile. I looked down and straight onto the paper that had been Adam’s focus. It was handwritten, two neatly lined columns. One—a list of all our expenses, from the mortgage to the money that we gave to our families. The other column listed our income—only mine was there. There was a line with the word
savings,
but that was it—no number was next to it. I guess that meant there were no savings left.

My smile, now gone. My massage intensified; I needed to lose myself in his pleasure.

It worked … for a little while. Our thoughts for these moments were not of bills and the people who collected them. But then Adam’s tension returned. Even though I still pressed his shoulders, his muscles tightened, and I knew that his eyes had opened.

“I have to tell you something,” he said softly, and I pressed harder. “The bank called. They’re proceeding with the foreclosure.”

Had it gone that far?

My fingers still moved, but without the strength that I started with. He put his hands over mine, stopping me, then pulled me around until I faced him.

“The bank called,” he repeated. He tore at my pants.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, my voice filled with angry passion.

“I did. I just did.” Now he ripped my slacks from my hips, and within a moment, he’d taken my panties away, too.

“You should have …” I straddled his lap. “Told me before!”

He pulled my naked center against his, and I was already ready. My mouth couldn’t find his fast enough, but once I did, I couldn’t get enough. Our tongues were at war, and so were our hands.

It was my turn to tear away his clothes, and within seconds, I lost myself in the pleasure that was his body. His steel-tight chest was as hard as his core, which was the part of him that I craved. My fingers explored him, as if I was trying to discover new places. But it was all familiar, all wonderful. All that I needed.

My husband was the best at foreplay, always wanting to please me first. But today, no preamble was necessary. When we united, my joy was instant. And so was his.

But it was not enough.

Rising from the chair, Adam carried my one-hundred-and-seventy-pound frame as if I were as light as air. Without disconnecting, he laid me on the floor, and we sought new pleasure.

I knew it was getting close to the time when our children would come home, bursting through the door and then busting in on us. But right now, I didn’t care. And anyway, it wasn’t as if that hadn’t happened before. Our children had seen us making love so often I sometimes wondered if we’d damaged them for life.

But my thoughts left our children and I turned every bit of my attention to the man I loved. Right now, he had my mind as much as my heart, and all I could think about was the bliss that was overtaking my body. Ecstasy blanketed me, filling me
with sensations that made me pray that I could stay right in this place.

I moaned.

Adam cried out.

Then the slam of the door and the shrill cry of, “Mom!”

And it was all over.

Chapter 4

W
HEN
A
DAM YELLED OUT,
“Y
OUR MOM
and I will be right there,” our children knew that was code for, “Give us a minute or you’re gonna see something you may not want to see.”

Two sets of footsteps dashed up the stairs as I searched for my pants on the other side of the desk. Though the zipper was broken, I still put them on. I didn’t want to trudge through the hall to my bedroom butt-naked—literally.

Neither Adam nor I said a word as we dressed. We held hands as we made our way into the living room, then he waited until we were settled—Adam on the sofa and me across from him in the matching overstuffed chair—before calling out to the twins. In seconds, the two came barreling down the stairs. Alana for once moved as fast as Alexa.

Though the doctors declared that our daughters were identical, that was often hard to believe. Yes, they looked alike, walked alike, talked alike, but they had polar opposite personalities. It was not only hard to believe that they were twins;
sometimes I hardly believed that they were being raised in the same household.

Alexa was feisty. Alana was gentle. Alexa was creative. Alana was cerebral. Alexa was self-centered. Alana was a sensitive spirit who made me believe at times that she could feel down into a person’s soul.

Alexa, with her confidence and her strut and her gregariousness, was most like Adam. Alana was most like me.

Right now, though, there was very little difference between the girls. Both sets of light brown eyes shined with excitement. Their long, slender legs moved from side to side, as if they were working hard to keep their words inside.

Just looking at them made me smile. Glancing at Adam, I saw that he was doing the same; our children were what we needed.

“What’s got you girls all—”

Before I could finish, Alexa spoke up. “We finally got it. The first invitation to the really big sweet sixteen party!”

They giggled; Alana said, “What’s so great is that it’s New Year’s Eve. It’s Chloe Wellington’s party, and that means that not only is it the first party but it’s going to be our first New Year’s Eve party ever!”

Alexa picked up where Alana left off. “Chloe is having a party first, with all the boys, of course.”

“Of course,” I said, and we all laughed when Adam growled playfully.

Alexa continued. “And after the party, some of Chloe’s special friends have been invited to stay over.”

“And of course,
we
were invited to stay,” Alana said.

“Of course,” I said again, and chuckled.

“’Cause we’re special,” Alexa topped it off.

My head moved back and forth from one daughter to the other. This was huge for them. For years they’d been talking
about turning sixteen. That rite of passage had always been a big deal, especially in this neighborhood. But it was made even more exciting by a television show that featured rich kids having parties for their sixteenth birthday that were beyond sweet.

“Chloe’s party is going to be ridiculous!” Alana said.

“But of course, ours is going to be better!”

This was proof that good times didn’t last. As soon as Alexa uttered those words, my anxiety rushed back. I didn’t have to look at Adam to know that the same had happened to him.

“Mom, Dad.” Alexa said our names so sweetly that I knew what was coming. “Are we still going to get cars for our birthday, too?”

Our daughter had no idea that she was killing us softly; I answered, “We’ll see …”

As if she was exhausted from her explanations and her questions, Alexa flopped down onto the couch next to Adam, while Alana settled on the arm of the chair where I sat. “Daddy, I think we should really start planning the party now,” Alexa said. “I know you said that money was no object, but we should still set a good budget, right?”

Ah … lessons from the father.

For the first time, I looked directly at Adam. Though he tried to keep a smiley face, his slumped shoulders gave him away.

“That’s a good idea, Lex,” Alana said, calling her sister by the name only she used. “You and I should sit down and do the budget and then give it to Mom and Dad.”

“That’ll work, Lan.” It was Alexa’s turn to use her pet name for her sister. “Let’s go and do it now.”

Together they jumped up and were out of the room and up the stairs before Adam and I could blink. We sat in the quietness for a moment. Then Adam said, “I have to pick up Ethan.”

“We need to talk to the girls.”

He didn’t reply. Just stood and walked toward the closet.

“Adam!” I followed him. “We have to tell them what’s going on.”

He whipped around. “No!” The man who’d just made sweet love to me now had a different look in his eyes. “No one needs to know, Shine,” he said, calling me by the name that only he had for me.

“But …”

“No one,” he hissed. “There’s no need to get them upset when things are gonna get better soon. I got a callback this morning from American Express for another interview.”

“For another
interview.
They didn’t call you back for a job.”

My words weren’t meant to hurt, but when Adam flinched, I knew they had hit hard. “Baby, I’m sorry. I only meant—”

“Let me handle this, Shine.” With his jacket on, he stomped through the mudroom, then closed the door behind him before I could say another word.

If there was ever a perfect love, what I shared with Adam Langston was close to that. But what kept it from being completely wonderful was not that we were going through bad times; it was that we differed on how we should handle things. I wanted him to share our challenges with me and then let our children know—at least a little—what was going on.

But Adam’s pride reigned over my wishes and his good sense. He’d been that way from the beginning.

The day the Bush fallout had hit our home, Adam had said, “This is our problem and I’ll figure out the solution.”

I’d been totally fine with that position—eighteen months ago. But in the year and a half that had passed, Adam had interviewed for everything from becoming a flight attendant to working at Barnes & Noble, but no one wanted to hire the man who’d been the comptroller for Rapid Speed Delivery—
the biggest competitor to FedEx and one of the first major companies to move all operations overseas.

Most employers told Adam that he was overqualified. A few told him that hiring him was a risk, completely sure that after they’d trained him, he’d leave within months when he found that better job.

That better job? Where was it? My belief was that he’d already had
that
job and now it was gone. And there weren’t many other $260,000 a year positions for any man, let alone a black man in this country.

The eighteen months that Adam had been out of work had felt longer than a lifetime. No household could stand losing that large an income for that long a time before the house would come tumbling down.

My husband had done an amazing job keeping our world turning. But with our savings depleted and my income covering only utilities and groceries and gas and other minor bills, the walls around us hadn’t been tumbling, they’d been crashing.

There weren’t many things left that could go wrong, but we needed to do right by our children. I wasn’t going to allow this to go on much longer without them knowing the truth—that a party and new cars were probably not in their immediate future. If Adam wouldn’t tell them, that was no problem. I would.

Chapter 5

M
Y HUSBAND,
A
DAM
E
MORY
L
ANGSTON, WAS
not always the MBA, Corporate America, Brooks-Brothers-suit-wearing, one-hundred-dollar-haircut-sporting man that he was today. Oh, no. Talk about humble beginnings. Our start was one and the same—the same neighborhood, the same schools, the same situations. Although we lived around the corner from each other, we didn’t officially meet until we were twelve years old.

It had been one of those D.C. summer days, when the air was so hot and heavy that it didn’t move. My girls—Brooklyn and Tamica—and I were just chillin’ on the steps. Our plan had been to do our favorite thing—work on our dance routine. For the past three years, we’d been the champs of the summer talent contest that was held every August down at the community center. We were sure that we were gonna win this year, too, because we’d added a prop—a jump rope; we were gonna mix it up and turn it out. But that day, it was too hot to practice even though one hundred dollars was on the line.

So we sat and people-watched, which was our second-favorite thing to do ’cause there was always something poppin’ in our neighborhood.

“Ooohhh, look who’s coming,” Brooklyn said. “Cash!” She leaned forward, jiggled her boobs, then pulled her tank top down tight so that her chest would look bigger than it already was.

I glanced at Tamica and shook my head. Our time had not yet come—we didn’t have much of anything to lure boys. But our girl Brooklyn was a whole ’nother story. We may have been twelve, but Brooklyn looked bigger and better than most of the mothers and grandmothers in the neighborhood. She had huge boobs and so much booty that she could’ve given me and Tamica some of both and all three of us would’ve been stopping traffic on Martin Luther King Boulevard.

Tamica said, “Brooklyn, you need to quit.”

“Quit what?” When Tamica rolled her eyes, Brooklyn added, “Don’t hate me ’cause I’m beautiful.”

As Cash and his boys got closer, only Brooklyn stood up, like she was some kind of greeting committee. I knew Cash and one of the other boys with him—Buddy. But I didn’t know the third boy. Really, I’d just started seeing him around, and I guessed he was new to the hood.