Hold Me in Contempt

by Wendy Williams

  “So, you have a little black in you?” I laughed, looking at King. I could see it then. I imagined that was what made his skin so beautiful.

  “I come from a long line of men who love black women,” he said. “It’s funny because they claimed they were passing, but I look at pictures and they both looked black to me. My grandmother had an Afro—she used to iron it on the ironing board though. Never went out in the sun.”

  The second morning I awoke in King’s bed, I got up and went around the room trying to put together pieces of the outfit I’d been wearing when I got there.

  King sleepily called out, “Stay. What do I have to do to make you stay?”

  I returned to bed and went back to sleep. We played hooky a second day. Kept the blinds closed so tight it was easy to forget the world outside was still in motion. I forgot to plug in my phone. Maybe I didn’t want to plug in my phone.

  Morning three, I got up again. King called out again.

  “I can’t,” I answered before he finished.

  “Why not?”

  “Because . . .  ​I can’t. I have to go. I just have to.”

  King got out of bed and met me in the living room, where I was looking for my shoe. “Why?” he asked. “Why can’t you just stay here? With me?”

  I stopped my search and smiled at him. “You’re not tired of me yet?”

  He approached me slowly, trying to con me back to bed with his eyes. “I’m definitely tired . . .  ​but not of you. I’m tired because of you.”

  He almost pulled me in with his stare, but I walked away. “I have to go.”

  Inside, I felt the same way he did. I wanted to stay there in the darkness with him and forget about anything outside. But every once in a while the sunlight would shine through the blinds and I knew I couldn’t pretend my world didn’t exist. Being with King, I felt like I was safe in a cocoon or a cradle. But even caterpillars and babies have to leave their confines sometime. And though King seemed perfectly content in the high-rise Brooklyn Eden we’d been creating out of Chinese delivery and On Demand movies, I knew his outside world was catching up with him too. His phone was rattling all night. A few times he’d left the room to make a call and returned out of his fun mood. Sometimes I felt like he was running away from something just like I was running away from something. I didn’t know what he was running away from. But I didn’t know what I was running away from either.

  Downstairs, Baboo was waiting in his car, but I demanded that King have Frantz get me a random cab off the street.

  “No more tabs on me,” I said.

  “No more ignoring my calls,” King answered.

  “No more.”

  He kissed me on the cheek so sweetly and helped me into a cab Frantz had led into the circular drive in front of the building.

  “Here,” King said, handing me a little Baggie filled with pills he’d pulled from his pocket.

  “What’s this?” I said, taking it. There were maybe fifty pills inside.

  “A little extra in case your back starts hurting again.”

  “I don’t need it.” I frowned, trying to return the Baggie, but King lifted his hands and stepped back.

  “Throw it away if you don’t need it. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

  I stashed the Baggie in my purse, vowing to throw it away once I got home, and waved at King standing in the drive as the taxi drove off.

  The city looked so strange to me after coming out of the darkness King and I created in the Clocktower. Summer had come while we were in our cocoon, so though it was late morning and rush-hour traffic was just slowing, the sun was already pounding down on the concrete, making me wish I had worn the dark summer shades I usually saved for midsummer walks.

  The ride back to my place was slow and silent. The driver was white with a head of gray hair. The name on his permit was George Thomas. He wasn’t wearing a colorful turban, and his cab wasn’t dingy.

  When we got to my place, he happily accepted my money and pulled off like he’d never see me again. And he probably wouldn’t.

  Standing in front of my building, I looked up at my dark living room window.

  “Welcome home, Queen,” I said to myself in a low voice before stepping toward the front door.

  I was about to walk inside, but something told me to look back over my shoulder.

  Taking the empty spot where the taxi had been was a familiar police wagon with the front window down and familiar eyes ogling me.

  “You getting in pretty early,” Paul said, hanging out the driver’s side window. He’d often drive the wagon around the city when he was on “official” business or just creeping. “Your daddy know you keeping company with folks this time of morning?”

  “My father knows I’m a grown woman and doesn’t keep tabs on me,” I answered from the door.

  Paul laughed. “Oh, I wasn’t talking about your father. I meant your daddy—big daddy.” He pointed to his face.

  I was supposed to laugh. I didn’t.

  “So, you’re just going to stand over there? So far from me?”

  “You’re the one showing up at my place randomly . . .  ​once again,” I said. “I thought we had an agreement about this.”

  Paul chuckled at my resistance as the old judge from my floor and his wife walked out of the building pretending not to see me.

  I stood waiting for Paul to get out of the wagon.

  “You always want things your way,” he complained, coming to me and attempting to open the door.

  “My way? What are you . . .  ​look, what do you want? Why are you here? Again?” I pulled his hand off the door handle to make it clear he wasn’t even walking into the building with me.

  “Calm down. Shit. I was just making sure you were okay. I’ve been calling you for days. No answer,” Paul complained. “I’m saying, I’m not just your lover. I’m also your boss. It’s my job to make sure you’re all right.”

  “Paul, news flash: You’re not my lover. And your position as my boss is under question as we speak.”

  Paul grinned. “So, you got a new job? Is that where you’re coming from?” he probed, looking at my attire. “I’m not sure what kind of firm allows attorneys to wear jean skirts, but okay.”

  I crossed my arms over my breasts and poked out a hip, making sure my pose conveyed my disinterest.

  “So, you’re not going to tell me where you were?” Paul asked.

  “Not at all. Want anything else before I go upstairs . . .  ​alone?”

  “Fine. You want to play hard. We’ll play hard,” Paul said. “I’m actually here on official business. I need to talk to you about something.”

  “What?”

  “I can’t tell you about it down here . . .  ​on the street. Why can’t we go upstairs?” He reached for the door again, but I swung my hip to the other side to stop him from walking past me.

  “Kim?” he pushed.

  “Paul?” I answered, mimicking him. “Just tell me what’s up. You said it’s official business; let’s be real official.”

  He pouted and gathered himself again. “We have a new case starting up. You’re the only person who can work it.”

  “Well, the ‘only person’ is on vacation, so that’s settled. Why don’t you try passing it on to Easter?”

  “I’m serious, Kim. This is gonna be really big.” Something in Paul’s eyes changed out of playing mode and shook us back to our work. I compromised and agreed to sit and talk to him in the wagon.

  He told me about a case he’d been following with Elliot. Jim Reddy, the DA in Kings County, had contacted them months ago about a growing drug ring in Brooklyn that had been gaining attention in headlines for years. They were selling prescription pills to students at Brooklyn College, Pratt, and LIU, in dorms and at parties. Reddy had known about the operation for years. It was common for dealers to sell to students. But the ring was growing more powerful, elusive, and unpredictable. They seemed to have an endless supply of mone
y and pills they pumped onto the campuses by way of strippers and call girls sent to provide comfort to the bored and dejected. He’d been working with his chief and the Brooklyn PD to just get a face, a name behind the operation, but they kept following weak leads and the small charges they did get through on the dancers and prostitutes seldom led to indictment, and none of them snagged the leader. Reddy contacted Paul because the streets were talking and the ring was open for business in New York County—our county. They finally had a face and a name.

  “I wouldn’t trust the case with any other prosecutor. I want you to be cocounsel with me,” Paul said. “Now, Elliot is working on the arrest, but we already have some of the report, stuff sent in from Brooklyn and even the Bronx, and I want to have those charges ready to go before the grand jury once Elliot moves, so we can get an indictment. You know the faster we move with things like this, the better. Don’t want their lawyers to see it coming.”

  “When do you need me back?” I asked, reverting into my old role so anxiously I actually felt a thirst in my throat and twitching in my fingers. As he’d laid out the details, I’d thought of the charges. Knew the words to write. The calls to make.

  “Meeting is tomorrow,” Paul said, and I heard the thirst in his voice, too. This was what we loved. What we chased. “I think this is it, Kim. If I nail this—if we nail this, then the writing is on the wall. I can’t lose. It’s my ticket—”

  “Mayor?” I said, recalling something he’d whispered to me in bed one night.

  He nodded.

  “You think people will be looking at this case like that?” I asked, considering what that could mean for me, too.

  “These guys are moving on to NYU and Columbia.”

  “White kids.”

  “Jewish kids.” He looked at me. “I’d get the godfather behind me,” he added, and he wasn’t talking about a fictitious Italian Don Vito Corleone. Sanford I. “Sandy” Weill was rumored to be the most powerful man in New York City, maybe the world. The former CEO and chairman of Citigroup, he’d bought every New York mayor since the 1980s. No one brokered a deal in the city without his backing. When the president came to town, he met with Sandy.

  “I’ll be there in the morning,” I said, getting out of the police wagon.

  Paul watched me walk around the front of the car. I felt his eyes all over my body.

  “Kim,” he called when I was back up on the sidewalk and steps away from the driver’s side door. “I don’t care where you were all these nights. Just know that wherever you were, whatever it was, I won’t let it come between us.”

  “It’s none of your business,” I said, feeling like he knew more than he was saying—that was always a possibility with Paul. He never ever made a move or a statement like that unless he was sure of the terms. He wasn’t the type of person who lived in ignorance. He faked it.

  “You’re right. It’s not my business right now,” he responded distantly. “So don’t make it my business.”

  The same four bare walls I’d fled days ago for Brooklyn were waiting for me upstairs. There was no million-dollar art. No marble anything. No bacon in a skillet. No King. No nothing. And if it had felt quiet and lonely before, upon return it was dead. I turned on the radio and the television. Powered up my laptop. Plugged in my cell phone. Tried to remember what in the hell I’d ever done with myself in that apartment before.

  I sat on the couch and noticed a water ring on the table where I normally sat my glass each night. Beside it was the faint ring from the bottle of Jameson.

  I looked at the clock. It was just a little after noon.

  I got up and checked messages on my voice mail once my phone powered up. There were messages from Kent and Tamika. Another one from Dr. Davis begging me to call him to set up a meeting. Texts from Carol about the meeting with Paul tomorrow. She’d copied the police reports and put them on my drive so I could look at them from home.

  After thanking her by text, I decided to take a nap.

  I went into the bedroom and lay on my back. I closed my eyes and waited but I couldn’t find rest through the commotion I’d created between the television and radio. Still, it all seemed so quiet. I wondered what King was doing and turned over to the phone I’d placed on the bed beside me.

  I picked it up and was about to call him but decided against it. I didn’t want to seem too thirsty. I’d just insisted on leaving his place.

  I decided to call Tamika instead. She’d be an earful. And never one to disappoint, she picked up before the first ring was finished.

  “Girl, it’s about time you called me back!” she spat out in her most suspicious voice.

  “Hey, Mika!”

  “Hey yourself! You listen to my message? You hear about Vonn?” she blurted out.

  “What? What is it?” I asked.

  “It’s on the news. You see it on the news?”

  “I’ve been busy. What is it?”

  “Oh, no. Girl, you sitting down somewhere?”

  “Yes,” I said, suddenly sensing the urgency in Tamika’s voice and sitting up in the bed. “What’s going on?”

  “He’s dead, girl. Vonn is fucking dead.”

  I felt like she was telling me news about someone I actually knew. I asked, “How did he die?”

  “Was murdered! Shot in the back of the head. They found him on the bank of the East River last night. Wrapped in plastic. Fucked up!”

  “Who killed him?”

  “Fuck I know? Fuck I want to know? They’re saying it may be drug-related on the news. Dude has a long-ass rap sheet. And you know you don’t get shot in the back of the head and dumped in the East River by no stick-up kids,” Tamika went on speculating. “This had drug shit written all over it. Monique’s all fucked up about it, too.” She lowered her voice. “Don’t tell nobody I told you, but she might be pregnant by that motherfucker. She swore me to secrecy, but this shit is too crazy for me to keep my mouth closed.”

  “This is horrible,” I said. “Does she know anything? What happened? Nothing?”

  “No. She didn’t speak to him since I last spoke to you when he was missing. The po-po were knocking at her door last night asking when the last time was that she saw him. Said they found her number in his phone—” She paused. “That’s why I was calling you.”

  “What?” I felt a lump pushing through my throat.

  “Rig McDonnell—that’s the other person he spoke to before . . .  ,” she said. “They asked her if she knew him. She said she’d never heard the name. But then they showed her a picture. It was the white boy.”

  “King?”

  “Yes,” she said in a low voice.

  “Is she sure? This is crazy,” I said, remembering that King had told me his grandfather’s name was Rig, which meant “king” in Gaelic. “I need to call him. I was just with him, and he was fine. I guess he didn’t know.”

  “Do you think he—”

  “He what?” I cut Tamika off, knowing where she was going. “He killed him?” I laughed. “Are you kidding? That’s not like him. Plus, you asked where I’ve been all these nights—I was with him. Okay? So, there. He’s fine. King is fine.”

  “Well, that’s good news. I was worried. You know? With the cops having his picture and shit. They made it seem like he was . . .  ​involved.”

  “No way. And I can confirm that. The man didn’t leave my sight for two days,” I said. “We were locked up at his place.”

  “Did he say anything about Vonn? Did you ask him like I told you to?”

  “I forgot,” I said. “I wasn’t exactly thinking about Vonn then. Slipped my mind. Guess I’ll call him now. I’m sure he must know by now.”

  When I got off the phone with Tamika, I called King immediately, but it kept going to voice mail. I didn’t leave a message though. I didn’t want to mention his friend dying if he didn’t know about it, and I didn’t want to seem like I was all up in his business either. I sent King a text asking him to call me back, and he responded with one
word: OK. Then I lay in bed with the phone in my hand for hours, waiting.

  Chapter 10

  In Poor Richard’s Almanack, Benjamin Franklin wrote, “A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats.” One of my law school professors who said he “left the profession to hide in the academy” made my class write a five-page essay about the quote. I admit that I completely misunderstood the statement and spent my five pages writing about how insulting the quote was. Franklin was writing in absolutes. Generalizing. Pushing ideas that contributed to those horrible lawyer jokes that commonly opened with two lawyers drowning in the ocean and no one wanting to save them. I wrote about how Franklin’s statement didn’t take into account those of us who wanted to see true justice in the world. To make things better and have an impact. To change and protect. My professor put a smiley face on the top of the paper and a fancy “F” beneath it. On the last page, he wrote, “Come back and see me in two years.”

  It didn’t take two years for me to experience what Franklin was really talking about. After six months in the DA’s office, I rewrote the paper, sent it to the professor, and got a sad face with an A underneath it, and on the last page, he wrote, “Welcome to the practice.”

  My new paper was about the fish’s blood and what I saw it doing to me and every single lawyer I knew. At the end of the day, no matter what preconceived notions or ideals a new attorney has about her profession, her training in law is about winning. Not compromising. Certainly not losing. Winning. To win, you use your knowledge and understanding of the law, which you later realize is simply human-written conceptions of what justice is and isn’t based on the needs of the percentage of people who have the power to enact the laws. Training makes you so thirsty for this win, you’ll go to battle with anyone to get it. Use your laws like armor and weapons to offend and defend and win. After a while, your opposition is always the other lawyer, whatever laws they’re using to win. Your battlefield is the courtroom. Your audience is the jury. Your trophy is the ruling. Nowhere in there is mention of the countryman who led the two lawyers to the gathering. He became just a fish. A nobody who met his demise in the full stomach of the lawyer who prevailed in the end.