Mr. Mysterious In Black

by S. Ann Cole

  I sought my cell phone and sent him a text.

  Baby,

  I’m awake.

  I need more.

  Please come back to bed.

  Love you.

  Noticing blood, evidence of my lost virginity, I made a trip to the bathroom, freshened up and padded back to bed.

  For a passing half an hour, I lay in wait. No reply from Nelly.

  Another thirty minutes crept by. Still no reply. Vigilant I laid, waiting to see my love return to his bed, to my arms, but he never did. The boys’ voices still chattered rowdily outside.

  Deciding on dragging Nelly from their company and back into the flat myself, I quickly got dressed and went outside into the cold night air. I journeyed to the backyard where I was instantly hit by the pungent scent of marijuana; puffs of smoke emanated from where the guys lounged under The Big Tree. It was a bit dark, the only light being a weak shade from Nelly’s back porch, and the small fiery glows of their cigars and marijuana.

  I scanned for Nelly as I walked towards them, but he wasn’t there. All members of the Nine Life Clique were present excluding, Darren, Larry and the head, Nelly. And I thought to myself that wherever Darren was, that’s where Nelly was. Darren was Nelly’s right-hand man.

  Hesitantly, I asked, “Where’s Nelly?”

  They all stared at me for a beat, before erupting into howls of laughter.

  “Where’s Nelly? Where’s Nelly?” they jeeringly echoed.

  I stared bewilderingly back at them.

  Travis, the one who despised me the most, stood up from his chair and stepped forward. “I reckon he’s down by Mrs. Forrest’s ramming his cock into Tanya’s cunt.”

  The boys howled into another fit of laughter. “Give it up, did you?” I heard one say.

  Travis spoke again, “I goaded you yesterday so you’d finally give it up and stop holding out on m’boy.” Travis snorted in derision. “You didn’t actually think he’d stay with you, did you?” His eyes softened slightly and there was a hint of something less than hate in his eyes when he leaned over and whispered against my ear, “That’s what happens when you choose the wrong guy, sweet girl.”

  Tears pricked at my eyes and I blinked them back and wrapped my hands around my, now internally heavy stomach.

  Another guy spoke. “Nelly got wha’ he wanted. You’re of no more use to him. Time fo’ a new bitch.”

  “He keeps returning to my cousin Tanya’s cunt. Seems to me he loves it there,” said another. “Run along home now lil girl. I bet that lil puss is on fire.”

  To block out their vitriolic words, I placed my hands over my ears, turned on my heels and darted back into the flat. Snatching up my cell phone, I called Nelly’s number. It went straight to his voicemail. Refusing to believe what the guys had said, I dialed his number over and over again. But it was always the same result: Voicemail.

  What choice had I, but to believe?

  It was true. Everything Nelly has ever said to me was a lie. Lies, lies, lies. He. Did. Not. Love. Me.

  My knees gave way and I fell to the ground, my hands wrapped tightly around myself as tears deluged from my eyes. In that position I remained, curled like a fetus on the ground, unable to stop my tears. The chattering voices outside quelled as the night progressed. And still, I cried on. Dawn broke. And still, I cried on. The sun rose. And still, I cried on.

  Alas, I was soon drained, depleted, could cry not a drop more, for dry heaves had left my throat sore.

  Reluctantly, I uncurled myself from the floor and plodded out of Nelly’s flat. In the sky, the sun shone bright; to my face its heat spoke as I walked dejectedly home. The neighborhood was quiet, as was customary on Sunday mornings. Soft gospel music leaked from a single house as I passed it. But no life, except mine, walked the streets. It was just me and my broken heart.

  Dad’s cheeks were red with rage when I pushed my front door and entered the house.

  “Start sleeping out now, Sadie?! Since you began seeing that cocky ass boy you’ve been acting like your grown…”

  I dragged past my dad in his apoplectic state, caring not what he would do to me. I wished he would hit me. Put a bag over my head and suffocate me. Because I deserved to be beaten for being such an imbecile. A complete lummox.

  My legs mounted the stairs and I locked myself in my room, curled up in my bed and pulled the covers over my head. All my worst fears had come to pass. I knew. I knew this would’ve happened. I knew that once I revealed my love for him, he would leave me.

  How could he have been so cruelly convincing? He’d professed his love for me in over fifty different ways. And it was all so he could get me in bed? How could I have been so dense? I forced myself unto him. Begged him to have sex with me. Handed my virginity over to him most willingly.

  I refuse to believe this.

  Nelly? No.

  Nelly was too sweet, too kind, too gentle. Slow, passionate, ardent. Attentive and cautious. Excellent on self-control. Only for this outgrowth? He promised me he’d never leave me. He promised me he’d never hurt me. He said I was his everything. I just couldn’t understand why he would do this.

  Are all men like this? Is this what love feels like?

  No, it’s what a heartbreak feels like, you idiot!

  For days, I laid in bed. Ignoring the banging on my door and the threats of my father. Dad had somehow forced his way in on the third day and came yelling all that was deaf to my ears. I didn’t budge, hoping he would do me some damage. But still, he didn’t hit me, when I most needed him to. Oh, how I wished he would.

  Food touched not my tongue. Water touched not my skin. School saw not my frame. All I did was cry and sleep. Cry and sleep. Eventually, I had to get up. As much as I wanted to, I wouldn’t drop out of school. Besides, mom wouldn’t allow it. She’d seen the love bites, calculated what happened, but she never forced me to talk about it. I’d told her everything anyways, because I figured, of all people, she would understand the cruelty of men.

  It was the following week that I’d finally gotten it through my soggy brain that Nelly didn’t want me. All my tears and weakness were sucked from me and all I had left was strength. My weakness cylinder had drained down to ‘E’ and my strength cylinder, untouched, was on ‘F’. There was no choice but to utilize my strength fuel and start living again. So I’d showered and got dressed for school.

  But it was on that day that my father chose to be his old self; he would empty my strength cylinder all by himself, leaving me with nothing. Nothing at all.

  As I stood by my study desk in my bedroom packing my bag for school, my room door burst open, and in the doorway stood my father with a baseball bat in his hand. With his tall, muscled body, his hardened face and unlovable cognac-brown eyes, he was as frightening as he’d always been. “You want to be a woman, Sadie? Then I’m going treat you like one.”

  There was nowhere to run to, so I closed my eyes as he charged towards me, and braced myself for the first blow…

  One week after my battering, I was discharged from the hospital. I’d been comatose for forty-eight hours, and they’d kept me hospitalized for five days. I came out with fractured ribs, a broken arm, a twisted ankle, a battered face and retrograde amnesia. My being in a wheel chair had me befuddled, because there was no memory of how I ended up like that. It was when I got home that my mother told me the truth about what happened…

  But there Dad was, my abuser, sitting placid in his old recliner, watching sports on television. “If he did this to me, shouldn’t he be in jail?” I’d asked my mother.

  “Yes. But how would we survive if that happens, darling? He’s the breadwinner. How would we survive without him?” She’d said this smoothly, her overly long brown curls flowing down her shoulders as she dressed one of my facial scars with ointment. Her face being as beautiful as a blooming rose. She was calm and composed, and I wondered if she was being that way just for me. Just to make me calm and worry free.

  “But…But what did you tell them
? As in, about how I got like this?”

  “That you were attacked on your way to school.” She never looked me in the eyes. Because she expected me to understand. She expected me to forgive daddy, because we couldn’t survive without his aid. And I wanted to yell at her and tell her that we wouldn’t be alive much longer with daddy. With daddy, we wouldn’t survive.

  The next day as I sat on our porch in my wheelchair, sketching with my uninjured hand while mom chatted with Mrs. Forrest at the gate, Molly, my classmate who resided a few blocks away from us, skipped past the gossiping adults at my gate and up to my porch. Molly was tall with fiery red hair. She had volume in the right places, and slimness where it should be. She possessed a striking attractiveness and was lusted after by almost all breathing males, but Molly wasn’t a fan of guys. She shared her curves with the gals.

  She was my only friend in the community, but I’d always shy away from her because of her eventual lusting that annoyed me no end. Now, however, I was glad for some company. Because I’d felt so alone with my missing memories, you see. And having Molly here to remind me about things that happened in recent times was life-giving.

  Molly filled me in on all the important things, until she got to telling me about my ‘boyfriend’. A boyfriend that I had absolutely no memory of. Molly called this boyfriend of mine ‘The Rich One’, and told me of all the rumors that were surrounding him at present.

  The Rich One, she said, visited the neighborhood no more, leaving behind all sorts of rumors. Mrs. Forrest’s daughter, Tanya, was found out to be pregnant, as was another and then another. Chatterers assumed that The Rich One was the one who’d knocked them all up, and that was the reason he no longer came around.

  Darren—who hasn’t been seen either—had relocated his family in some upscale neighborhood in the west. It was nothing he could afford, so talebearers claimed it was The Rich One’s doing—for Darren was The Rich One’s closest friend of the clique. Travis was now clique leader, and he’d stop by my house asking to see me on multiple occasions when I’d been “locked away”—whatever that meant.

  “It’s as if he’s vanished from the face of the planet,” Molly whispered, twirling a string of gum around her finger. “And The Nine Life Clique, they’re all being tight-lipped.”

  Everyone, she said, wanted to know where the Mysterious Rich Boy from the west was. Everyone except me.

  For it was then that I’d found it in my heart to forgive my father. My hate for his brutality had morphed into appreciation. Because, by the end of Molly’s tales, I was pretty sure that the lost memories of my ‘boyfriend’ weren’t sweet memories. And I prayed to God they never returned.

  The high-pitched sound of my alarm wrenched me from my sleep. Sunlight streamed through the wide modern cut windows in the bedroom. It was morning. A new day, a new job, a new start.

  Not entirely new, though, I thought, as I flipped back the covers from the bed. Because, of all the dreams I’d had since I met Natalio, this was the one that decided to remain remembered. There were no flashes, no flitting in and out. This one, the worst of the memories, decided to reside.

  Wasn’t I a lucky wench?

  Not.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Geo Lee was a joy to work with. He was bubbly, charismatic, jocular and gay—occupying both denotations of the double entendre. I’d left Tevin’s house a sapping mess that morning but was instantly invigorated once I’d stepped through the doors of GLFH. That, along with the aid of a large cup of must-have espresso coffee.

  There we were, sitting around an immense oak table in an all-glass meeting room choosing fabrics and patterns for an upcoming fashion show. Geo Lee had gushed about a few of my designs and decided he’d run them in his show. Though the designs would bear his name, I was ecstatic that I could actually wow a fashion icon like Geo Lee.

  Kiwan, an Asian beauty with jet black, bobbed hair and small squinted eyes, was nodding furiously at Geo Lee’s rapid words. She was an accessory designer—a hell of an accessory designer, incidentally. But she seemed overwhelmed by Geo Lee’s new requirements.

  It appeared he’d canceled his previous ideas for the Fashion Show and was now taking a completely different turn on very slim time. And I assume that’s why we were around this table all day with racks, and fabrics and accessory materials strewn all about us.

  My calculations were verified an hour later when Geo Lee finally collapsed in his high-back, white leather chair and beamed at me.

  “You’re like my savior, Francé. I should damn well asphyxiate Natalio for keeping your talented ass away from me!” He sent his eyes to the heavens. “You remind me of myself when I just started out and my head was jam-packed with ideas. Up until last week, I thought I’d lost my touch. You see those bland work suites on display down there?” he said, pointing to the floor. On the first floor, were mannequins displaying dull, gray, black and beige work suites, for both men and women. The typical banal apparels.

  “That’s what I’ve resorted to,” he sneered. “Me. Geo Lee. Producing such hideousness!”

  Snickered I did.

  “But then, I saw your vibrant, out-of-the-box sketches. And I was inspired. Like finally! Someone who understands me.”

  “I am most honored to be working for you, Mr. Lee,” I replied in all humility.

  “Oh, it’s my pleasure, Francé. How’s Natalio by the way?”

  Crimson colored my cheeks. Darn. I was doing so well at keeping my thoughts of Natalio at yonder all day. My Blackberry, I’d been sure to leave it at the house so I wouldn’t be distracted by calls or texts, or be tempted to call or text. “Um, he’s fine. I think.”

  Geo Lee regarded me with perception. “Found out he’s a vampire and dumped him? Can’t be his Bella?”

  My cheeks flushed a deeper shade of crimson.

  Crap. I should’ve worn a turtleneck top.

  “Explains why he’s always in black,” Geo Lee teased. “But judging from the freshness of that lovebite, it can’t be more than twenty-four hours since he’s sucked your blood.”

  My mouth opened and closed repeatedly, not knowing how to respond to Geo Lee’s bluntness.

  Sensing my discomfort, he pursed his too-plump lips and sagely said nothing else about Natalio.

  “Well, I guess that’s our day,” he muttered through an exhausted sigh. “Eleven hours spent around this table without respite. You girls should go get something to eat.”

  I nodded, while Kiwan made something akin to a grunt.

  For sure it was a busy day, but it didn’t feel like work to me. Every minute of it I enjoyed. It was usual for me to design, without recess, for hours. I’d been creating costumes on demand for dancers for the past three years. And dancers are impatient. If they have to wait any longer than two days, then those sales are lost.

  “Any new sketches?” Geo called after me as I was about to leave.

  “Tons,” I grinned.

  He held out his hand.

  Oh shit. They’re at my apartment.

  Geo looked at me knowingly then cast his eyes upwards, “Francé, I’ll be nice because it’s your first day, and I’ve deprived you of lunch. But if you’ll be working with me, then you must always be prepared. Okay?”

  Abased, I nodded and bid him farewell.

  As I drove home in Tevin’s Chevrolet Trailblazer—the least flashy of his four vehicles—I fought a losing battle of keeping my thoughts Natalio-free. I’d grown so attached to him, only to discover that he’s the man who was once the center of my world. The man who’d introduced me to love and happiness. The man who’d broken my heart.

  What was he doing right now? I wondered. Was he frantic or did he not care that I’d left? If he’d come back into my life with the intention of shredding what was left of my heart, then I highly doubt he’d care that I’d left. Because I’d willingly given myself over to him—again. Too good an actor he was. So cruelly convincing, and just as withholding as he was when he’d ‘played’ Nelly. Only now I k
new fully who he was.

  A sudden zealousness flooded me, and I grew desperate to check my cell phone, desperate to know if he’d called. Not that I’d call him back, but at least it would imply he cared to some extent. My foot pressured the gas pedal hastening the trip home. But my stomach complained at being ignored again, so I steered the vehicle into Burger King’s Drive Thru and grabbed a Chicken Club Sandwich with Swiss cheese, a strawberry milkshake, up-size on everything. Yes, I was famished.

  Anxiety ridden, I burst through Tevin’s front door, muttered a breathy “Good evening” to Kelsy who was busy in the kitchen preparing something with a yummy pungent. Hopping from foot to foot, I wrenched off my heels and bolted upstairs in search for my cell phone.

  I need to know.

  I need to know that this time, at least, he tried to reach out to me.

  Air of relief rushed through my nostrils when I saw that I had twenty-five missed calls, four text messages and one email from him.