Hold Me in Contempt

by Wendy Williams

  “Why didn’t he say anything? Why wouldn’t he say he was with you?” Tamika asked. “Do you think he knows who you are?”

  “I never told him. I never let on about anything. He doesn’t even know my last name.”

  “Does he know where you live?”

  “No—well . . .  ​yes. He’s never been to my place. But yes, he does,” I said, remembering Baboo dropping me off. “He knows people who do, but I’m not worried about that. I don’t think he would do anything to me. He’s not like—”

  “Are you joking, Kim?” Tamika widened her eyes on me. “You just said it yourself. He’s a fucking drug dealer, which, I might add, isn’t all that surprising.”

  “Don’t do that. I’ve already beat myself up about it. How didn’t I know—whatever. This isn’t about that. This is about right now,” I shot back. “I get it. I fucked up. And that’s it, but I can’t change that right now. And besides, you were the one who told me to sleep with him. Remember? ‘Try something new’? ‘Get a little dick’?”

  “Yes. I said to fuck that white boy one time. Not make him your fucking boyfriend!” Tamika scolded me like I was a wayward teenager.

  “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  “You have feelings for him. Don’t lie to me, Kiki. I’ve known you forever. You’ve been feeling dude since day one.” Tamika waited, and we let my lack of response confirm her pronouncement. “I’m not going to cuss you out about it right now. We ride with each other and that’s it. What’s the plan?”

  “I need to get that tape. I have to figure out how to get the videotape of me at the Clocktower before the detectives from the Eighty-Fourth figure out what King is hiding.”

  “How are we going to do that?” Tamika asked, looking out the front windshield in the direction of the Clocktower, which poked up just a little over the other buildings downtown.

  “I guess we’re about to find out.”

  “No doubt! I got you, cuz. You know that!” Tamika squinted at me and puckered her lips mischievously in a way that told me trouble was on the way for both of us.

  Now, if this was NCIS, there would be a freeze-frame shot of me pulling out of the space in front of the car-rental agency. The director would want to give viewers a chance to really think about what was about to happen. At that moment, I could’ve stopped everything: dropped my crazy cousin off at home, driven straight to the office, told Paul that I’d slept with Rig McDonnell and needed to be removed from the case, and vowed to never ever hear anything about King again. If only life were that easy and people always made those right decisions. In that moment, nothing in that line of thinking sounded rational to me. In fact, it seemed irrational. It would’ve meant career suicide, because if I opened up to Paul about anything concerning King, he’d want to know everything about our short fling. Legally speaking, by telling the truth, I’d then be obligated to tell the “whole truth and nothing but the truth.” And that would mean me being dragged into the case, too. I could already see the headline on the cover of the Daily News: ada blows dealer. They’d be all over me. Stuff would come out about my family, my mother, maybe even my involvement with Paul. I’d seen it done too many times not to know how a headline assassination could annihilate a career in a New York minute. I’d end up with no career, no future, and no place to go but back home with my father and Kent.

  I pulled out of that space in the rental car. My crazy cousin riding shotgun was the perfect costar, and we were busy plotting and planning like it was 1990 and we were setting up to break into the water-gun balloon-game booth at Coney Island to steal a three-foot-tall pink and purple teddy bear Tamika felt she’d been cheated out of by the cheap manager. We’d actually gotten away with that. Certainly, we could handle this.

  So, an hour later, Tamika was running and screaming into the front door of the Clocktower Building with her hands over her head and no Louboutins on her feet. “Oh my God! He took my shoes! My shoes! My purse! He took my purse and my shoes!” she screamed a little more dramatically than we’d discussed when outlining our half-baked scheme to get Frantz away from his desk in the lobby, so I could find out where the videos were from the cameras around the building.

  “Miss, is everything okay?” I heard him say. Tamika had punched in my number, set her cell phone to speaker, and stashed it between her breasts so I could hear everything they were saying.

  “No! Some crackhead just stole my purse and my shoes! I need help!” Tamika answered. “Help me!”

  “I can call the police?”

  “The police? Are you kidding me? He took my Vuitton and my Louboutins! I need help right now! Come with me! We have to catch him!”

  “What am I supposed to do?” Frantz said, and I felt we were losing already. It was a stupid plan anyway. The cat chase only worked in the movies. Not in real life. There was no way Tamika was actually going to get Frantz to chase after someone who’d just mugged her.

  “Please, mister. I’m helpless and I need you!” Tamika’s voice was softer and sweeter now, and it sounded almost as if she was curtsying to Frantz or maybe even bending over so he could see her breasts.

  “Come on, Mika!” I complained to her voice in the speaker, though I knew she couldn’t hear me with the volume off on her phone. “This isn’t a freaking date. Oh, God, this is ridiculous. What am I doing?”

  I banged my head into the steering wheel, sure Tamika would come hopping out to the car shrugging at Frantz’s lack of response to her “chase my crackhead mugger with me” request. But when I looked up again, there were Frantz and Tamika running at top speed down the middle of the street. I ducked so Frantz wouldn’t see me and quickly got out of the car when I saw that Tamika had led him around the corner.

  “This is crazy! This is crazy! This is crazy!” I repeated as I padded quickly toward the Clocktower trying not to look suspicious. I wanted to turn around and get in the car and go home and forget everything that was happening, but it was too late. It was happening.

  In the lobby, I slid behind Frantz’s desk and looked around at the compilation of live feeds from cameras throughout the building. The cords at the backs of the flat-screen monitors led to a hole on the desktop. I looked under the desk thinking I’d see a VCR and a collection of VHS tapes, and right then I realized the error of the plot—it was no longer 1990.

  “What the fuck?” I cursed, bending down over a computer hard drive. “What am I supposed to do with this?” I peeked up over the control desk to see if anyone had walked into the lobby. Before Tamika had gotten out of the car to run into the building, we waited to see if King would walk out. He was the only person in the building other than Frantz who knew my face, and we couldn’t risk me running into him. By some stroke of dumb luck, he’d left in his Bentley just minutes after we got there.

  “Okay. I’ll just take the entire computer,” I said to myself, sizing up the nineties hard drive. I started pulling the wires from the base, rushing because I knew Frantz and Tamika would be back at any minute. I couldn’t hear anything but garbled noises on the phone and figured it was glued to Tamika’s breasts.

  “Who are you?” I heard from above when I was disconnecting the wires.

  “What?” I popped my head up, sure I was caught.

  Standing at the desk in front of me was an awkward-looking white girl who couldn’t have been older than ten or eleven with a mix of freckles and preteen acne decorating her cheeks and forehead.

  “Me?” I said.

  “Yes. You. Where is Frantz? Are you trying to steal his computer?” Her tone was privileged, accusatory. She sounded like she was going to scream for the police.

  “Me? I’m-I’m . . .  ,” I stuttered, keeping my eye on the doors behind her. “I work at”—I looked at the computer monitor—“Hewlett-Packard, and I came here to pick up the computer so I can take it to our lab to get fixed.” I casually picked up the heavy hard drive and smiled at her. “I guess I’ll just leave now.” I started walking out from behind the desk when I heard mor
e garbles on the phone in my pocket.

  I could feel the nosy little girl watching me limp along holding the hard drive, but I kept walking and smiling, praying I’d make it to the front door and out into the street before she decided to scream bloody murder, the cops arrived, and my fake-thug ass was loaded onto a bus to Sing Sing—in my mind it would all happen that quickly.

  But she didn’t say a word and I made it outside with the clunky computer in tow. And for a second I was able to feel the ecstasy of escape criminals must experience when they’ve gotten away with something. It was like that first sip of Jameson. The first toke of a joint. Everything outside seemed wonderful. I just needed to make it to the car.

  As I said, the feeling was fleeting. As soon as I turned the corner to where the car was parked, Frantz barreled into me with Tamika right behind him screaming, “Mayday! Mayday! Abort! Abort!”

  The hefty hard drive fell to the sidewalk, where it cracked and flattened.

  Tamika and I winced at the damage and looked at each other, ready to give it a Harlem run, but Frantz must have been from Harlem too, because he caught both of us by the wrists in some kind of ninja hand lock before we could get away.

  “I know you,” he said to me. “You’re King’s girlfriend.”

  “Girlfriend?” Tamika and I said together.

  “What are you doing here? Why are you taking my computer?” He looked at Tamika. “And why are you with this crazy woman?”

  “I am not crazy! Ain’t my fault your slow ass couldn’t keep up!” Tamika snapped before I cut her off.

  “Listen,” I started. “I can explain everything. Just don’t call the police. Please! I beg you. I’ll explain everything.”

  In the back office of the Clocktower, Frantz was sitting on top of a desk, leering down at Tamika and me. He’d called in some other guard to stand post out front.

  I’d just finished telling him my entire story—well, not the true story (I wasn’t that stupid), but the version I concocted that I thought could at least get Tamika and me out of the Clocktower without handcuffs and a one-way ticket to Sing Sing.

  “So, you mean to tell me that you two came here to steal my computer because you’re married to a government official who might be in the running to be the second black president of the United States and you don’t want there to be any evidence of the affair you’ve been having with a white man?” Frantz repeated the case I’d pleaded back to me, somehow managing to make the elaborate story I told sound pretty crazy.

  “I know that’s hard to believe, but you have to trust me. My husband is well connected, and I can’t let this ruin him!” I said. “I like King. But I just won’t risk everything I’ve built and throw it away!”

  Frantz stared at me for a minute, and then he just started cracking up, laughing so hard it was obvious there was no way he believed me.

  I tried to get Tamika’s attention so we could prepare to run again.

  “Look, forget all that, mister. Let’s have a real talk,” Tamika said, getting up from her seat slowly and slinking toward Frantz as if he were the teacher and she a bad student.

  I could only rest my face in the palm of my hand in disbelief. I imagined the police sirens closing in on the Clocktower. The DTs from the Eighty-Fourth laughing as the cops brought me in for booking. This was it. I was going down. Kim 2 and Ronald would have the last laugh, after all. Not only would I be alone forever, but I’d be alone in prison.

  “Talk about what?” Frantz looked puzzled.

  Tamika stood in front of him and played with his cheap uniform tie as she spoke. “We can forget everything that’s happened here today. All walk out of here with nothing but good memories.”

  “Oh, I was going to walk out of here with good memories anyway,” Frantz said, seeming like he was on to Tamika’s game.

  “Well, I can make those memories even better,” she said, pushing the tie between her breasts.

  “And how will you do that?” Frantz asked.

  “I’ll make love to you real good,” Tamika purred. “If you make that little ol’ recording disappear and let us walk out of here. You won’t regret it.”

  “Oh God,” I complained into my palm.

  Frantz sucked his teeth and flicked Tamika’s hand from his tie.

  “Sit down!” he commanded so harshly that I felt it in my back and Tamika straightened up and actually took her seat next to me. “You . . .  ​are a horrible actress,” he said to her after getting up from the desk. “And you have daddy issues I suggest you work out with a therapist.” Then he turned to me. “And you, what the hell are you doing? I don’t even know you, and I know you’re better than this. Running around here stealing computers like you ain’t got no damn sense. And bringing this one with you?” He pointed at Tamika, and I shrank in my seat from the scolding. “Don’t you have any other friends who would’ve maybe given you better advice?” Tamika and I glanced at each other, discomfited.

  “I was just—” I tried, but Frantz stopped me.

  “No. Don’t. Please don’t say anything else about your husband or anyone wanting to sleep with me. That insults my intelligence. I’m the doorman at the most expensive residence in Brooklyn. I have a goddamn master’s degree. I probably make more money than both of you.” Frantz exhaled and stood in front of me. “Listen, sweetheart. I know you’re hiding something. And I know you really, really want that surveillance footage. That’s the only thing that would make someone like you do something stupid like this—” He stopped and looked at Tamika.

  “What? It was her idea!” she said.

  “Sure,” he went on. “And because of that I’m going to let you off this one time. Let you go think about what you’re doing and maybe stop yourself while you’re ahead.” He looked into my eyes. “There’s a lot of trouble to be found around here. And I wouldn’t want you to be caught up in it. You understand me?”

  “Yes,” I answered humbly. “And does that also mean you’re giving me the footage?”

  Frantz went back to his seat at the desk. “Nothing to give,” he said frankly.

  “What?” Tamika said.

  “You know how much it costs to live here?” Frantz asked. “I’ll just say this—all of the residents at the Clocktower aren’t exactly operating on the up-and-up, so to speak. Half of my residents are the side-pieces of Manhattan gangster and Wall Street rainmakers.”

  “So?” Tamika pushed.

  “So, we don’t keep the footage. No way. No how. Not from the lobby anyway. What you see are the cameras and videos we use to make the good, white people, celebrities, and old farts feel nice and safe here at One Main Street. The feed goes into the computer, where it’s stored for twenty-four hours. And if nothing happens—like two crazy people coming in and trying to steal the computer”—he pointed to the busted-up hard drive on the floor beside the desk—“it’s erased.”

  “Erased?” I repeated.

  “That’s right. Those images of you here that night when you came to—you know—they’re gone.” Frantz folded his arms and smiled at me. “Been gone. So, you came all the way over here to start trouble with your little Bonnie and Clyde routine for nothing. Besides, even if you’d gotten away with the computer, it wouldn’t have been worth anything. The feed uploads to an online server. That old hard drive has nothing on it. These are all things real criminals would’ve checked out.”

  When Tamika and I left the Clocktower and fell into the front seat of the sad little white rental car, we looked at each other like strangers who’d met in the bathroom at Webster Hall in the nineties and had sex with no condom in a coked-out haze. Disgusted by our partner. Embarrassed by our behavior. There was nothing to say. We should just go our separate ways forever and forget anything had ever happened. But we weren’t strangers. We were cousins with mothers who were sisters, so any shame we could feel because of a ridiculous act like trying to break in to the Clocktower and steal security footage would not go unnoticed by two humans going separate ways. Not at a
ll. It would be confronted and beat out by . . .  ​laughter.

  “Oh my fucking God!” Tamika howled hysterically, laughing, chortling, and screaming all at the same time. “Can you believe that? Can you believe what fucking just happened?”

  “No! I can’t! I fucking can’t!” I was trying not to laugh, but there was nothing else I could do with the nervous energy ballooning inside my stomach. My heart was still racing in disbelief. Like I’d just walked out of the biggest surprise party ever.

  “You were so good, Kim!” Tamika turned to me to recap the events. “The way you spoke to Frantz. Those tears! I believed you, girl. You deserved an Oscar for that shit!”

  “I was not crying!” I protested, already laughing at recent memories of me sitting before Frantz like he was a judge.

  Tamika mocked me. “ ‘I like King. But I just won’t risk everything I’ve built and throw it away!’ ”

  “How do I sound like a broke-down Marilyn Monroe begging for change on a street corner?” I joked. “I was much better than that!”

  “Not better than me! I deserve an Oscar-Tony-Emmy for my portrayal of Mrs. Halle Berry on a New York City street corner in the epic Negro classic Jungle Fever,” Tamika said reverently before repeating Halle’s classic line, “ ‘Yo, Daddy. I’ll suck your dick good for . . .  ​those Clocktower videos!’ ”

  “You were ridiculous! Oh my God. I can’t believe you said you were going to sleep with that man,” I charged, finally starting up the car to escape. It was dusk, and the rush-hour traffic was just beginning to slow. Though we were still in the middle of something that could get both of us into a lot of trouble, our childish joking worked to lighten the pressure from the longest day I’d had in a while. The day wasn’t even over, and already I’d only returned to work after being sent home by my boss/former lover, sat in on a meeting where the white man I’d been sleeping with was implicated in two murders and deemed a mastermind drug dealer, witnessed his interrogation about said activity, been confronted by my boss/former lover about his divorce and what I owed him once it was finalized, and gotten caught trying to steal the computer from the most prestigious address in Brooklyn. The joking was more than necessary. It had been earned.