Commitment

by Forrester, Nia

  “You want another one of those?” he offered.

  She nodded and looked pleased as she set the glass aside. Shawn called over the bartender and ordered a daiquiri and a draft for himself.

  “Some ladies over there would like to buy you a glass of champagne.”

  The bartender indicated a table with three women who were huddled together, smiling at him. He nodded in their direction and told the bartender to send them a bottle of the best wine the house had to offer. Keisha tapped him on the shoulder to regain his attention.

  “I asked you was that your girl you came in with.”

  He held up his left hand and pointed at the platinum band on his index finger. “My wife.”

  Keisha pulled back, her eyes widening. “I ain’ know you was married.”

  “It didn’t make the six o’clock news,” Shawn said.

  Keisha looked at him as though trying to decide whether she was being ridiculed. “I don’t know, I just thought I woulda heard something like that,” she said finally. “And I definitely didn’t notice no ring.”

  The bartender put their drinks in front of them and Shawn went to work on the champagne.

  “Why you think you would’ve heard I got married?”

  Keisha shrugged. “I told you, I like your style. I follow your career.”

  “And now you want to be in a video.”

  “Yeah. You said you’d watch me on the dance floor, right? How ‘bout you just come dance with me instead?”

  He thought about it for a half a second, but knew that dancing could easily get out of hand. Especially with a girl like Keisha. He shook his head.

  “Nah. That’s a’ight.”

  “Your wife might start riffin’, huh?”

  Shawn shook his head again.

  “Then c’mon.” She put a hand on his arm, squeezing it lightly. “I could tell all my girlfriends I danced with K Smooth.”

  “Next time,” he downed the rest of his champagne, and scanned the club, looking for Riley.

  “So how long you been married?” Keisha leaned into his line of sight.

  “About a month.”

  “Oh!” she said, as though that meant he was less married than if it had been a year or two. “What’s she do, your wife?”

  Shawn looked at her. “You ask a lot of questions.”

  “Just curious. I was wonderin’ if she was in the business.”

  In the business.

  Only people ‘in the business’ used that phrase. He looked her over once again. So Keisha was one of those girls - rap groupies who hung around aspiring rappers and producers and promoters, working their way up the ladder until they scored the biggest fish they could.

  They went to concerts, loitered backstage and knew more about your career than you did. They made an art out of stroking the egos of guys who already thought the world of themselves. They liked the fast life, the fast cars, and the whole image that was sold to the public in music videos. They were willing to do almost anything to be a part of that life.

  In the beginning of his career, he’d fallen for it --- women who were almost too fine to be real would throw themselves at him and he seldom refused. But as time went on, he got hip to the game - it wasn’t about him, it was about the package, the life he lived, the money he made. After he realized that, he treated them differently, he used them like they used him.

  The fact that Keisha was Mike’s cousin had thrown him a little bit, but now he recognized all the signs. The perfectly done hair and nails. The flawless make-up, the tight and revealing clothes. And her claim that she ‘followed his career’. Yeah. Him and how many others? She was on the hunt and for now at least, he was the prey.

  “Nah, my wife’s not in the business,” he said finally.

  Keisha bit the tip of a nail and smiled at him. “I ain’ tryin’ to be nosy or nothin’. I was just askin’. You sure you don’t want to dance with me?”

  Shawn shook his head again.

  “A’ight. I guess I just have to go dance by myself.” Keisha took one gulp of her daiquiri and headed for the dance floor. Then Chris was leaning over his shoulder.

  Shawn shrugged him off.

  “Don’t get caught out there, man. Bitches nowadays be ambitious. Can’t tell whether they after the dick, the money or a recording contract.”

  Shawn spent half the evening with Chris, Mike and Darryl and the other half working the room, hitting all the essential bases. There were at least six dudes in the club he needed to talk to, just to avoid a beef later on. In between, he watched Keisha as she moved on the dance floor, gyrating, spinning, and writhing. If he was single, he would’ve been all over that. But he wasn’t single, and what was more, he could feel the buzz from the Remy, the beer, and the champagne finally starting to kick in and realized he hadn’t seen his wife for at least two hours.

  When it was well past one and she still hadn’t come looking for him, he scanned the room, doing a slow three-sixty on his barstool until he found her. She was sitting on the opposite side of the club at a table by the window, laughing at something someone was saying to her. She threw her head back as she laughed, her face relaxed, eyes closed and mouth slightly open. Shawn craned his neck to look past the crowd so he could see who she was sitting with.

  Brendan. He was leaning in to say something to her, his lips almost touching her ear, and Riley tilted her head toward him to listen, laughing again. Shawn bit down hard on his lower lip, watching them for awhile. Brendan cupped a hand by his mouth and said something else. This time Riley looked at him in disbelief before erupting into laughter once again.

  Shawn pushed himself up and went toward them. Brendan saw him before Riley did, and leaned back in his seat, still smiling from whatever joke he and Riley had just shared. Shawn kneeled next to her chair and blew in her ear. She spun sharply and smiled when she saw that it was him.

  “Where you been, stranger?”

  “Drinking too much.”

  “I can see that,” she nodded, putting a cool hand on his cheek. “You ready to go home?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay. Lemme just run to the Ladies Room one last time.”

  She got up and disappeared in the crowd.

  Shawn took her seat, staring at Brendan who shrugged.

  “Whassup?”

  “You tell me,” Shawn said pointedly. “What’s up?”

  Brendan’s eyes narrowed in confusion for a moment then he laughed.

  “Don’t come at me with that bullshit. Ain’t nobody tryin’ to push up on your woman, dawg.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Shawn. You’re buggin’. And your ass is drunk.”

  He leaned back, thinking, or trying to. His head was all fucked up. Brendan was his boy. He should be thanking him for looking out, not making all kinds of stupid accusations. He held out a wobbly fist and Brendan finally leaned forward to give him some pound.

  By the time Riley came back, he was seriously feeling the liquor. Standing up, looking around at the flashing lights and hearing the loud music made him even dizzier. He didn’t remember the ride home, or even how he made it up to the apartment, and only vaguely remembered Riley peeling his clothes off as he lay prone on the bed, and turning off the lights and getting in next to him. Then she was wrapping her arms about his waist and resting her head on his shoulder and everything went black.

  He awoke sometime later; it must have been near sunrise because there was a pale light entering the room, and a fresh, damp smell from the shower. The bed next to him was empty. For a flash, it was like the old days when he woke up to find that Riley had already gone and he sat up, startled. But this time, he could see her across the room, wrapped in her robe, hair still wet, staring at the bluish glow of her computer monitor and typing rapidly.

  She paused, turning to smile at him.

  “I’m right here,” she said before turning to face the computer again.

  Shawn settled back onto the bed, closing his eyes once again. All the unre
markable things he’d done every day of his life alone, now had a new texture to them because of her. Running into her in the bathroom as she brushed her teeth, skirting around her in the kitchen as she made coffee in the morning, or stepping into the shower and finding it already damp from her having taken one first.

  He’d had girlfriends, lovers, whatever you wanted to call them. But never anyone he’d shared so much of his personal space with. Imagining what it would be like before he’d met Riley Shawn expected he’d feel stifled in a monogamous relationship, never mind a marriage. But every morning when he woke up and saw her sitting at her computer like she was now, it surprised him all over again just how natural it felt and that after such a short time, he couldn’t conceive of it being any other way.

  g

  Everyone around the office had yet to start treating her like a regular person again. Greg was still looking betrayed because the day she’d come back to work after a weekend with a diamond ring, was the first time he’d heard she was involved with Shawn. To make matters worse, less than three weeks after that they were married. Now Riley occasionally caught him looking at her with slightly narrowed eyes, as though he wasn’t sure whether he knew her at all. And as if that weren’t enough, a couple of the girls from the mailroom had taken to hovering around her office, hemming and hawing, then finally asking for autographs from random rappers she’d never met, concert tickets, and passes to parties at hip-hop clubs around town that she’d never even heard of, as though she would have any idea how to go about getting any of these things. So now, Riley kept her door shut when she was inside working, but she was just as likely to be sitting at her desk, staring at the ceiling, wondering when life would return to normal.

  Last week she had accidentally gotten on the wrong train, heading toward Queens instead of the new place. It was still so strange walking up to the building and having Ed the doorman greet her like a visiting dignitary. He was tickled by the fact that Shawn was a rapper, and mentioned several times that his daughters’ kids loved his music. On the day they’d moved in, Shawn had tipped him a hundred dollars for carrying a couple of boxes, and since then had treated him like an old friend, patting him on the back every time he saw him.

  Riley, on the other hand, had yet to get over the awkwardness of having a man old enough to be her grandfather opening her doors and carrying her packages whenever she got out of a cab. She had taken to avoiding Ed altogether by going in the service entrance when she had bags with her.

  Shawn was home after a week in California but he didn’t keep regular hours, often going to the studio late in the afternoon and returning after midnight. When Riley saw him, it was usually as a mound in the bed next to her when she left in the morning or a shadowy figure in the bedroom door, undressing with the light off to keep from waking her late at night, which invariably he did anyway. Sometimes they lay next to each other in the dark and talked about their day, and other times they didn’t talk at all, but did other things that kept them up till the early hours of the morning.

  Living with Shawn was like being a kid allowed to live in a candy store stuffing herself, not quite believing that the whole set-up wasn’t temporary and trying to get her fill before someone asked her to leave. Except what she was gorging herself with was epic, crazy, relentless, thigh-aching sex. For weeks now, she had been dragging herself to work, eyes barely open, bruise-like shadows beneath her eyes, her face buried in the New York Times and hands clasped about a steaming espresso.

  This morning, she had forgotten the paper, but was still sitting with her hands clasped around the coffee cup only this time staring at her computer monitor, reading the news online when someone opened the door without knocking. She looked up. It was Dawn.

  “How long have we known each other Riley?” she asked.

  “Few years. Why?”

  “Do you trust me?” Dawn asked sweetly.

  “To do what?”

  Dawn laughed. “C’mon, Riley. Do you trust me?”

  “Yeah. I guess. Why?”

  “Look, I understand why you didn’t advertise the fact that you were getting married to somebody famous and everything. But now how about sharing the joy?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Dawn. And I haven’t had my coffee so I’m not sharp enough to guess. Maybe you’d better be a little more direct.”

  “I heard you just moved to a really nice place.”

  “Who from?” Riley sat upright.

  The last thing she needed was for the word to get around that she was living high on the hog while trying to write gritty reality-based stories.

  Dawn shrugged. “Word gets around.”

  “Does Greg know?”

  “Maybe. But here’s my point. What if I took some pictures of you and your husband in your new digs and . . .”

  Riley was already shaking her head. “Forget it, Dawn.”

  “That’s very disappointing, Riley.”

  “I’m not a celebrity!”

  “But he is.”

  Yes he was. Unfortunately.

  “I don’t think he’d be interested.”

  “Well could you ask?” Dawn persisted.

  Riley sighed. “I’ll ask. But even if he says yes, I will definitely not be in these pictures.”

  “Whatever you want. But think of how happy it would make Greg if you decided to share your happiness with Power to the People.”

  Dawn stood and turned to leave, pausing to look over her shoulder.

  “Could be a real positive career move, Riley.”

  When the door shut, Riley lifted the receiver to her phone and punched out some numbers without thinking. She hadn’t spoken to her mother in weeks. Not since before the wedding. Lorna would be wondering what had happened to her, especially since her number in Queens wasn’t in service any longer. To have no contact for this long a period of time was a record. Their fights tended to flare up and burn out just as quickly. Even now, the memory of their last conversation stung, but it didn’t matter. She needed someone who anchored her to reality, and whatever else she was, Lorna definitely did that.

  Listening to the phone ring now, all of the unpleasantness of their last conversation seemed trivial when measured against her need to hear her mother’s voice. Next to Tracy, there was no one else in the world she felt safe enough with to share her feelings on the subject of Shawn. Even Lorna’s cynicism would be welcome right now. Just as Riley was about to hang up, she answered. Riley took a deep breath.

  “Hey, Lorna.”

  “Mom to you.”

  Riley laughed. It was an old joke between them. In actuality, her mother had never liked it when she called her Mom. Riley had stopped calling her Lorna when she was about thirteen and realized that not one of her friends called their parents by their name. It had taken Lorna weeks to stop rolling her eyes when Riley addressed her by anything other than her first name.

  “How are you?”

  “No, how are you?” Lorna returned. “A married woman by now, I guess.”

  “Yeah, I am. I’ll have to tell you all about it one day when you can stand to hear it.”

  “And of course you’ll be in therapy for years because I didn’t support you, and didn’t come to your wedding.”

  “No,” Riley said. “I just miss you, that’s all.”

  “You alright?”

  “I’m fine. I just, sometimes want to talk to you, is that alright?”

  “Of course, sweetie. I’m sorry I was so . . . blunt.”

  That was Lorna all over – apologizing for the way she said something but never for the substance of what was said.

  “It’s okay,” Riley said, wanting to believe the words as she said them.

  “How’s Shawn?” The question sounded forced.

  “He’s good. Busy. We moved.”

  “Yeah? Where to?”

  “This place we bought on Central Park West.”

  “You mean he bought. Don’t start falling into that trap. It’s still his
money, I assume.”

  Riley closed her eyes and let the remark pass. “Anyway, let me give you the new number.”

  She waited while her mother rustled about for a minute and then came back. Riley recited the phone number to her and waited as she wrote it down.

  “That’s all. Just wanted to keep you informed. Let you know I was fine.”

  “Riley, why don’t you come home this weekend? I mean, come upstate. Bring Shawn.”

  “So you can torture me up close and personal?”

  “Stop being melodramatic. I’m not interested in torturing you. I want to meet my son-in-law.”

  “Are you sure, Lorna? I mean, if this is going to be a big deal . . .”

  “Of course it’s going to be a big deal for chrissakes. He’s married to my only child. But if you mean am I going to be a bitch, the answer is no. Okay?”

  “I’ll see if we can make it.”

  “Well if he can’t, I still want to see you, Riley.”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  “I love you, Riley.”

  “Love you too.”

  Riley hung up and leaned back in her chair. She felt better. Now she could drink her coffee and face her day, even if Greg and everyone else were still looking at her strangely.

  Twice a month around three in the afternoon, Greg held staff meetings where each staff writer was expected to give a progress report of the stories they were working on and pitch ideas for the next issue. Apart from the gourmet coffee and muffins, the whole thing was about as enjoyable as it had been deciphering a math problem on the board in front of the whole class when she was in sixth grade.

  Greg considered it a character-building exercise to have you defend your articles from the most merciless criticism everyone else could muster. For the last couple of weeks, even though she had doggedly pursued every available lead on her current slumlord story, Riley knew a part of it was that she was stalling. She could not for the life of her think of what her next piece would be about.

  With Shawn home, it was difficult to concentrate. All her old routines were shot to hell. Gradually, she’d stopped getting up at dawn to write before work, since being in bed had become a much more attractive alternative with him in it, and there were no more spontaneous stops at Harambe to sit for hours and brainstorm. Every free moment was in some way connected to him and his career.