When All Hell Breaks Loose (19 page)

“What kind of shop does she have?” Eric asks from across the table.

“What kind of word is ‘delectables’?” Phil laughs. “She must be uppity.”

“Gourmet desserts, pies, and sweet treats,” Tim brags. “She is a first-class lady all the way, and finer than Tina Turner could ever hope to be.”

“Mr. Johnson, I’m going to be like you when I grow up,” Franklin, one of the interns, comments with a smile. Tim raises his hand in the “Stop” position. “No, my son, the world can only take one Mack Daddy at a time. And right now I am in the prime of my career.”

We all laugh. I look down the table and LaShawn is talking to Simone. I figure the conversation must be deep because neither of them has heard a word the fellas have said. “Hey LaShawn,” I call to her. “How’s school so far?”

She looks over at me. Her eyes seem to be admiring me. “It’s good.” She smiles.

I look over at Simone and she cuts her eyes at me. “Gregory, you interrupted our conversation. Do you mind?”

“Aw Simone, the man was just being cordial.” It was Phil and he was nursing his third hurricane.

“No Phil, it’s cool,” I say.

“Phil, don’t get loud with me. I will call you out you keep on,” Simone blurted.

“See, that’s what’s wrong with bitches!” Phil yelled. “Always using bullshit to come down on a brotha!”

Everyone stops smiling. A few of the interns look outright scared.

“Yo Phil, chill out,” Eric says.

“No, FUCK THIS! Simone, pull my card, you trifling trash bitch!” Phil gets up from the table and looks at Simone and LaShawn. Spit is spewing from his lips wet with liquor. “You two dyke bitches been gettin’ on my nerves since day one! Pull my card, I DARE YOU!”

The entire table gets quiet. Some of the interns look like they are about to break. LaShawn’s mouth is open and instantly her eyes are full of tears. Tears appearing too frightened to fall.

Simone’s catlike eyes squinch so tight, you can barely see the white in them. She gets up and stands facing Phil. He looks like Fred Sanford would look against an Amazon version of Aunt Esther.

Simone pulls no punches. “I may be a dyke bitch, but you ate this
dyke bitch’s pussy! Fuck you, Phil Putnam! You ain’t nothing but a little-dick-having fart! FUCK YOU!” Simone snatches her purse from the floor and looks at LaShawn, who is crying up a storm. “I’m sorry, LaShawn,” Simone says as she leaves the table.

I look up and Adrian is standing not far from Phil. She’d witnessed the entire outburst. She stands like stone, with a disturbed look on her face. I can see the anger in her eyes. She goes over to LaShawn, who is now sobbing heavily. Adrian and two other females take her to the bathroom.

Tim is laughing like a wild man. “Phil, I can’t believe you, man! I can’t believe you called Simone out like that.”

Phil looks at everyone remaining at the table. “Man, Simone Lacy pissed me off! I ought to beat her stupid ass for saying that.” He sits back down and orders another drink. “Fuck her, man.”

“Phil, don’t you think that’s enough?” I ask, referring to the drink order.

He ignores me. Tim is still laughing. “Phil, you fucked Simone for real?” he asks.

“Man, I was drunk when I was with her. That bitch was all on me like white on rice.”

Jamal gets up from the table. “I’m going to play some games, anyone care to join me?”

Franklin and the remaining interns join Jamal and head to the arcade area of the restaurant. Tim is still egging Philip on. “Tim, how did you find out she was a lesbian?”

“I saw Simone at this house party the night after we got the Dillinger account. It was out in Arlington. Me and some of my boys had been invited. It was a huge house. I’m talking about seven or eight bedrooms, swimming pool, Jacuzzi, all that shit. Well, anyway, we get up in there and I had to pee. We’d drunk a case of beer before heading out there. When I asked, half the fools in there were high and couldn’t tell me shit, so I ventured off to go look for the toilet myself. I stumbled upon this room. The only light in it was this blue light from a closet that was wide open. I walked in and it wasn’t nothing but bitches in there butt naked all over each other.”

“Oooh damn!” Tim said excitedly. “I would have been in heaven!”

“Tim, chill out, man,” I say, still interested in the story.

“Well, I thought I was too,” Phil continued. “Shit, I came in the room and started taking off my clothes. Then, this white lesbo looks up at me and says, ‘The bisexual room is down the hallway.’ At first I started to cuss her ass out because I ain’t no homo, but just as I was about to, I looked up and there Simone Lacy was big as day. She was lodged between two women that were freaking her down.”

“Damn, that’s a shame. I thought Simone was fine too,” Eric says.

“She’s still fine,” Tim argues. “She’s just not fine for us.” He chuckles.

“No, this definitely takes away from her fineness, if you ask me,” Eric answers.

“Anyway,” Phil continues, “that Monday at work, I tell Simone that I want to hook up with her and if she doesn’t agree, then I would tell about seeing her. She agreed, but after we fucked, she tried to get sassy with me and there was tension between us ever since.”

I’m stunned, still thinking about the nature of this conversation. “Phil, what did that have to do with LaShawn?”

Phil brushes the thought away. “Aw man, I was just pulling her card. I didn’t know she was a lesbian. I didn’t mean to put her in this.”

“Well, now you know,” Eric interjects. “Now we all know.”

A brief moment of silence passes between us. The waitress brings Phil’s drink over and sets it on the table in front of him. He takes a swallow and sits quietly.

“Well, since the truth is setting us all free, I got with Simone too.” Tim admits. “The girl is good in bed, and I would do it all over again if she asked me.”

“Tim, you are a pathetic brotha.” Eric laughs.

“On the real tip,” I add.

Adrian and the other women come out of the bathroom. LaShawn is between them, their arms around her shoulders. Her eyes are puffed from where she has been crying. Her sorority sweatshirt collar is soaked with the tears that have cascaded down her face.

Phil gets up and goes over to her. “LaShawn, I apologize for what I said. I was talking about Simone. I wasn’t trying to accuse you of being gay, too.”

“It’s okay,” she sniffs. “It just caught me off guard that you would say something like that about me, because I’m not gay.” LaShawn looks at us. Her eyes lock on me before she walks back to her chair and sits down. I feel like a kid being punished. Her eyes hold the hurt she’s feeling.

Adrian is clearly upset. She walks by Phil and sits in the empty seat next to me. I hold her hand, but she doesn’t smile at me. The waitresses start bringing out everybody’s food. Eric goes to get Jamal and the others.

I lean over to Adrian and whisper in her ear, “Baby, I’m sorry you had to walk in on something like this.”

“It’s okay. It’s not your fault,” she responds coldly.

A few of the guys speak to Adrian. The mood at the table is solemn. The joy has been taken out of the whole evening.

WHEN WE GET to my apartment, Adrian’s mood still has not changed. I can tell she’s thinking about what happened.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m just bothered by what Phil did, that’s all.”

“That was messed up. I think it was those drinks he had.”

“Maybe, but I wouldn’t blame it all on the liquor.”

“I felt worse for LaShawn. I think if she hadn’t started crying, then it wouldn’t have been so bad.”

Adrian looks at me. “Greg, what about Simone? Phil put her business in the street and you’re thinking it would have been okay if LaShawn hadn’t cried.”

“Adrian, I’m talking about the mood at the restaurant. I realize that Simone’s feelings are still at stake.”

She sits on the bed and takes off her pants. “Phil has some serious issues. You don’t just up and do people like that. He needs his ass beat one good time. He’s pompous, arrogant, a loudmouth, and an obvious woman-hater.”

“I think he was more upset with her being gay.”

“Even more of a reason for Phil to be kicked in the nuts, because he still slept with her after the fact. He’s got problems.”

“I know, baby.”

“Why does stuff like this still happen?”

I grab her and pull her in next to me. “I don’t know, baby. Maybe one day it won’t.”

“Greg, what if that had been our daughter?”

I take a deep breath. The thought actually makes me shudder. “Hopefully it won’t happen to any of the children we have in the future.”

Adrian gets up and finishes getting undressed. When she climbs into the bed, she snuggles in next to me. I hold her tight as I feel the world around me and my fiancée being cracked by my friends and my family.

N
ext morning the phone rings early. I hear it but can’t force myself to move to get it. Adrian reaches across me and picks it up. From the sound of her voice, I can tell it’s someone from my family. Adrian hands me the phone and I croak a greeting.

“Hello?”

“Gregory, this is your mother. Could you please come over right away?” Her voice alarms me. I can tell she’s trying not to throw me into a panic, but it isn’t working. Her voice shakes as she asks me to come over, and the first thing I think about was Pops. Something has happened to my father.

“What’s the matter?”

“It’s your father, he’s—”

“POPS!?!? Is he okay?”

“Baby, I hope so. He found Corduroy dead this morning. Right after he bagged the dog up, he came in the house and locked himself in the bathroom. I’ve been knocking on the door for the past hour and he won’t answer, but I can hear him moving things around in
there. I was hoping that maybe you can get him to come out. I’m so worried about him.”

“I’m on my way. Just continue to talk to him and see if he will come out.” I reach over Adrian and hang up the phone.

“What is it, baby?” she asks groggily. “Is it an emergency?”

“No. I just need to make a trip over to Pops’s and take care of something.”

“I’ll come with you.” She moves to get out of the bed, but I pull her back. She falls comfortably against the pillow.

“No, it’s okay, baby, I won’t be gone too long.”

Adrian almost immediately falls back into her sleep. I pull on a pair of sweats and a T-shirt, grab my keys and wallet, and rush out the door.

When I get to the house, Louise is standing at the bathroom door knocking softly, calling Pops’s name. When she sees me, she stands back to give me room. Her face looks worried. It’s a look I never imagined she could even be familiar with.

“He’s still in there,” she says to me.

I knock on the door. “Pops?” There’s no answer. I knock and call his name again, but there still is no answer. Then I hear the sound of things being moved around as if Pops is in there cleaning under the cabinets. The doorbell rings, and Louise hurries down the hall to answer it. “That’s Nina. I called her right after I called you.”

When Shreese steps into the house, Pastor Dixon steps inside behind her. Mind you, it’s seven-thirty in the fuckin’ morning! I look at her like she has lost her ability to think. She returns an even colder stare, graced by a thin-lipped smile. She greets Louise with a kiss and introduces her to Dixon but says nothing to me. Not a damn word. I go back to trying to get Pops to answer me by knocking on the door. “Pops, come on out.” Still no answer.

Shreese walks up next to me and knocks. “Daddy, it’s me, Shreese. I just want you to know that Jesus loves you, Daddy, and nothing is too much for you to bear, okay?”

At that moment, I can’t do anything but walk out the front door. I’ll try to climb through the small bathroom window like I used to
do when I locked myself out of the house back in the day. My mind is swimming even more because not only has Shreese brought Dixon into a private family matter, but I notice her car is nowhere in sight. All I see is my car, Pops’s car, and Dixon’s Mercedes. I shake my head, disappointed that Shreese would do what I think she’s doing.

I walk around to the front right of the house and climb on a water bucket to reach the bathroom window. I snap the screen off and raise the window, surprised to find it still unlocked. We never locked it when I was small. I pull my leg up as high as I can to grip the windowsill and hoist the rest of my body up, but my muscles scream out and I have to let go and regroup. The second time isn’t so bad, and I pull myself up just enough to have one leg inside and the other outside while I straddle the windowsill, bent at a ninety-degree angle. Smoke hits my nose as I take a moment to catch my breath. I immediately know what it is. The window is set on the wall where the tub is and I will have to fall down into the tub and look out the shower curtain to see if Pops is okay. I lean in, prepared to fall, and rip my shirt on a nail as I fall through the window into the bathtub. A sharp pain rips through my legs as they land in the tub. The noise is enough to make me realize I shouldn’t do this ever again. I get on my knees and pull back the shower curtains. Pops is sitting on the bathroom floor, Indian-style. There is a towel underneath the door covering the crack and Pops has the butt of a joint, as round as a cigar, dangling from his lips.

“Greg. Son, what the hell is you doing? You gon’ break your neck climbing through that window.”

“Pops, what are you doing man? Louise called this morning worried sick because you had locked yourself in here and wouldn’t come out. That’s not cool.”

The smell of the joint is strong. Pops has his eyes closed like he’s meditating and he’s obviously high. He opens them and looks at me again. The whites of his eyes are the color of cranberry juice.

“Son, this is long overdue. I know the joint may surprise you ’cause I never smoked around you and Shreese, but I had to send Corduroy to dog heaven in style.” His words drag but his eyes still have the sparkle in them that makes my dad seem younger than what he
really is. I can’t believe he’s smoking weed, though. I experimented in college but never liked the way it made my mouth feel, like I’d sucked on cotton, and now here I sit with my old man. A seemingly seasoned weed-smoking professional. I sit on the side of the tub and watch him smoke away his blues. He has one of those after-sex grins on his face.