I said, “Excuses?”
He nodded. “Two grown and sexy people, yes, it would be a shame if we didn’t get together.”
“You don’t even know my name.”
“I’d just as soon call you beautiful and any and every synonym for it,” he said. “Let’s see. Gorgeous. Stunning. Breathtaking. Ravishing.” He paused, smiled, said, “Feel free to stop me whenever.”
I shook my head, said, “Waiting for you to get to pulchritudinous.”
I was a poet. Words were my friends. His mouth fell open briefly; he licked his lips, narrowed his eyes. Such a sexy countenance.
He said, “What’s your name, girl?”
I couldn’t play the hard-to-get card anymore. He had me too excited.
I swallowed, said, “Nikki, with two Ks,” in a tone that was straight up trifling coming from a pregnant, married bitch. Then I thought about things. There was no ring on my finger anymore, no man keeping me warm at night, and I wasn’t even showing yet. It was on like Lena Horne.
He said, “Damn right you’re a Nikki with two Ks.”
“What’s that supposed to mean.”
“The name suits the lady.”
“And you are?”
“Lucky as fuck,” he said, “to be in such beautiful company, Nikki.”
Polished but had some vinegar in him. I liked, I liked.
I said, “I agree. But I still need a name, player.”
“Darnell,” he said. He offered a hand. I took it. Held it. His eyes were like the saleswoman’s smile: chicken soup.
I said, “Okay, we’ve been introduced. But I still don’t know you. You could be a psycho ax murderer. Could be one of those Barry Bonds fuckers, too.”
I had some vinegar, as well.
He asked, “Barry Bonds?”
“Looking to hit it and run.”
He said, “Bonds. Never. You see what the steroids did to that brother’s dome? Makes O.J. Simpson look like the cat with the tiny head in Beetlejuice.”
“He ain’t ever tested positive.”
“Uh-huh.”
I said, “Heard steroids shrink your nuts, too.”
He laughed. “Well, there you go. My nuts the same size they been since high school.”
Playful, I said, “Stuck in puberty, are we? Somehow that just ain’t intriguing me, Darnell. A high school boy’s thing just ain’t gonna move me.”
He said, “I developed early. I’m not lacking for size. Believe me.”
I looked down at the bunch in his pants. Didn’t mean to do that. He was right. He wasn’t lacking for size. It was big and round as a fist. When I looked back up Darnell was smiling.
“Curious, Nikki?”
I couldn’t speak.
He said, “Curiosity killed the cat. Would love to kill your cat, Nikki.”
I shook my head. “We don’t even need to be talking that stuff, yet.” Then I paused. Realized I’d said yet. Regrouped.
Darnell nodded. We were still holding hands. “A psycho ax murderer, or a Barry Bonds, huh, Nikki? You’re right, I could be both,” he admitted. “And you could be the second coming of Lorena Bobbitt. I could wake up in bed with my dick outside in the grass.”
I smiled at that description.
I said, “Colorful.”
“Thanks.”
“Still, I’m not into going out to dinner with strangers.”
He said, “That’s the point of dinner, get to know one another. Find out if we have a connection. Try and cross psycho ax murderer, Barry Bonds and Lorena Bobbitt off the list of possibilities.” He paused. “But I’ll grant you that one excuse. Now, two more reasons why you shouldn’t go out with me and I’ll step away.”
I heard, “She’s married and she’s pregnant.”
I let out a groan and closed my eyes. I felt Darnell’s hand slip away from my touch. I opened my eyes. He looked at me so deeply I had to turn away. When I turned back a moment later he was gone, but his cologne lingered. My friend Zelda and her friend Sela were standing where Darnell had been. Zelda looked angry; Sela looked amused.
I fumed, “You’re a straight-up hater, Zee.”
“You’re pregnant, legally married. You were about to mess up big-time.”
She was on point like Steve Nash. But still.
“Hater,” I repeated.
I looked her over. She and Sela were like bookends. They were both stylish beyond anything I could imagine. Both thick, with ass and boobs I prayed for growing up, but never got. Well, I got the ass, but my boobs hadn’t ever been more than a wishful handful, until then, with James’s baby growing inside me.
“Why are you studying me so hard?” Zelda asked.
I sneered, shook my head.
“Whatever’s on your mind, speak freely. No secrets among friends.”
I started with, “Just ’cause you don’t like dick…” but stopped as Zelda moved right up on me, closer than Darnell had been. Zelda would challenge you like that. Sela played the background, still looking amused.
I tensed up as Zelda raised her hand. Braced myself for the slap that was coming. I talked a lot of shit, but I hadn’t really ever been one to throw down for real. I loved me some Tupac, but I wasn’t even close to being a thug myself.
Zelda didn’t hit me, though.
Instead, her hand moved to my stomach. She touched it in the same way I imagined she touched Sela’s body, with tenderness, love and care. Despite that troublesome image, I didn’t move away.
“Think of the baby,” she whispered. “And don’t worry your pretty little confused head about what I do and do not like. Okay?”
I nodded. She moved in closer, looked me eye to eye. “And if dick is so important to you, Nikki with two Ks, Sela and I have a toy that will do the trick. And it won’t lie to you, leave you and take all your money, either. Only thing you’ve ever got to give it is a wipedown every so often and some batteries. So don’t you hate, girl.”
Ouch. I guess she told me.
In the background, Sela chuckled.
Zelda moved to her lover, and they clasped hands and moved away. It wasn’t my thing, but they obviously loved one another, were obviously committed to one another. I thought of my husband. More than I’d ever had.
I touched my stomach. I did as Zelda said. I thought of the baby. I also thought of her offer, her man-substitute toy.
I yelled out, “What size batteries does it take, Zee?”
But she didn’t answer. She and Sela kept walking.
I was a mess. You’ve got to get your shit together, Nikki, I told myself.
CHAPTER 5
“A fuck swing?”
I didn’t answer my wife-to-be. Instead, I focused on the living room. The overturned coffee table, the scattered magazines, her neoprene waist bag, its contents spilled on the carpet like milk. Claritin allergy medicine, a pack of tropical-flavored Life Savers, her key ring, a Razr cell phone with Akon’s “I Wanna Love You” ring tone programmed into it. Akon never sang from her phone unless I was calling. She had me and only me. A perfect situation.
I nodded at a spot in the corner, bordered by her maple wood bookshelf on one side, her stereo on the other. In between the bookshelf and the stereo was a patch of empty space that was absolutely perfect for what I had in mind.
I said, “We could set it up over there. That’s all the space we need. And it’s right by the stereo. Pop in a CD…magic.”
I was nonchalant, calm, unaffected. Her gaze was on me, watching, wanting answers. I wouldn’t give her any of the answers she sought. Ever.
She repeated, “A fuck swing?”
I continued to ignore her, left her standing in the middle of the room, moved over to the empty spot between bookshelf and stereo. Shelves of self-help books and romance novels to my right. CDs of everything from Heather Headley to India. Arie to my left. I settled into the spot as if it was prime real estate in Manhattan. A plot of land Donald Trump would want to scoop up.
She raised her voice, said,
“Baby?”
I knew if I pushed her too much more the storm front might return. That wouldn’t be to my benefit. I wanted her on edge, true, but not so much that I lost her. No so much that she equated our relationship with tension and drama.
So I turned in her direction and said, “Yeah, love?” There was no love.
“A fuck swing?” She fought with the thought. It was all there to physically witness: lines in her forehead, troubled eyes and tight lips. “Michael?”
Three times in less than a minute I’d gotten her to say a word she hated. Fuck. That was just the start. Before it was over I’d get so much more from her. In the end, she’d be able to find something, on every level, I’d taken from her. Stolen from her. That I snatched right out from under her. I got a warm feeling inside just thinking about it.
I said, “Not sure if that’s the actual name for it. But…basically, yeah. We just harness ourselves in and do our thing. I hear the sex is acrobatic, love. We’ll be like Ray J and Kim Kardashian. Pam and Tommy Lee. R. Kelly and the Olsen twins. Can’t you just imagine it, love?” There was absolutely no love.
“I don’t know what to say, Michael. And we need this contraption…” Her nose wrinkled. “…in our living room?”
Her place, yet she was calling it our living room. Victory was mine.
“We can take it out when guests come over, of course.”
She didn’t mention the fact we never have guests over, that besides me no other soul made Akon sing or visited her home.
She said, “Thought our love life was strong.” Voice sputtered like a car thirsty for fuel. “But now you want props.” Sad, confused, fearful. She’d been through so much in a span of a few hours. Her uncle, and then me. I let her stew in her insecurities, let the pain cut. It was a smooth cut, a knife through a warm stick of butter. I orchestrated the situation carefully. I was the maestro. A role I’d played three times before, to perfection. It was old hat.
After a while she said, “So I was wrong?”
I said, “About?”
“Our love life being strong.”
The decent thing to do would’ve been to give her some level of reassurance. But sex was where she was most vulnerable. Her uncle had made it so. And sex was where I planned to exploit her most. Sex was my weapon.
I said, “You haven’t noticed a drop-off?”
“Oh,” the only word she could get out.
I said, “I see you’re getting upset. Forget I mentioned this.” I moved to her, pulled her close. She fell into my embrace like a spoiled child that had just been chastised, hurt and angry but needing that hug so badly. “Didn’t mean to upset you. Just…don’t want us to get stagnant, lose what we have. Been there, done that. It’s not a good thing when it happens. I can’t handle the thought of having that happen to us.”
I paused, waited. So much was riding on her reaction. If she let my dismissal stand, I had much work still to do. If she reconsidered, actually consented to the fuck swing, I was on the right track. It was a big moment. Would paint all the moments yet to come.
She said, “You’ve never used a…a fuck swing with anyone else before?”
I smiled. Kissed her forehead. “Never. I get to pop that cherry with my baby. If you’ll agree to try it with me.”
“Don’t know if that’s good or bad.” She sounded tortured. I loved that. “You need a merry-go-round, a seesaw and a damn sandbox to get off with me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
Not much of a denial from me.
She said, “Not much of a denial.”
I fought off a smile. You couldn’t tell me it wasn’t destiny, that we weren’t meant to be, we were that in sync. In some odd way, I felt as if we were soul mates.
I said, “Don’t make this about you. It’s about us, baby.”
“I don’t satisfy you.”
“You do.”
“Number one hundred and eleven’s the dud. Law of averages says some of them have to be duds, right? How many others were duds?”
Wilt Chamberlain claimed twenty thousand lovers. I’d opted for a more modest sum, one hundred and ten before her. The real number was certainly higher, but the number I’d given her would suffice. Until then, she’d never repeated the number, never let jealous-green color over her hazel eyes. She’d been holding it all in, I supposed. That was good. The dam had broken. It wouldn’t be long before she drowned. I wouldn’t offer a raft, a hand, a rope to hold on to.
I said, “You’re far from a dud. I’m marrying you, baby. That’s a big step for me. And one I didn’t take with the others.”
I’d put emphasis on others; let it hang in the air like my wife-to-be’s regret regarding her uncle.
She said, “I can’t stop thinking about your football days…all the women.”
“You’ve never mentioned any of that before.”
She smiled. It was a sad one. “Some things best kept inside. That’s the burden of being a woman. We have to hold so much inside. So much.”
I said, “Yes, there were a lot of women. I was searching, is all.”
“For?”
“One I wouldn’t need a seesaw and a sandbox to get off on.”
“And?”
“And, well, I’ll be honest. Had women from A to Z. Alicia to Zena, Zora.” I smiled. “Actually have had two women in my life whose name started with Z. That’s impressive, don’t you think?”
Her voice cut the room into squares as she said, “Thank God for your NFL pension. You’d never make it as a defense attorney.”
“I wouldn’t want to, either. I’m a lover, not a fighter.”
“A lover that goes through the trouble of keeping records of all the women he’s slept with.”
She’d really been holding things in. That was good. I’d given her that number, one hundred and ten, with a story about me keeping tabs on the number of women I’d been with. I even told her I had a hard copy of it I kept in a safe deposit box. That left her with a little something to think about. It left her wanting to be more important than any name on those slips of paper tucked away at the Bank of America.
I said, “Let me finish.”
“Finish.”
“I kept those records, made ’em in the first place, because I wanted to be able to look back over my romantic life with perspective.”
She was skeptical. “Okay.”
I said, “Regina was the first woman I listened to, really listened to. Before her, I heard, but I didn’t really hear.”
“Michael, I—”
I cut her off. “Dana. Neat freak. Hypochondriac. Had to have hand sanitizer in her pocketbook at all times. I thought it was a bit much at first, then I realized how right she was. Everything is so dirty. I had bad habits before Dana. Threw my clothes anywhere, etcetera. She broke me of all of that.”
My wife-to-be was silent. Each name made the pain more immense.
I said, “Rachel. She got me to read. She gave me books as gifts. Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice. James Baldwin. Some Anne Rice erotica.”
“Michael, please.”
I couldn’t push much farther.
I said, “Since you’re going to be my wife, there’s something you should know about my history with marriage.”
She swallowed. Heart probably skipped a beat. Every word I used, every sentence, was carefully planned and worded. Since you’re going to be my wife, there’s something you should know about my history with marriage. She was probably thinking I was about to confess to having a wife somewhere. That I had a messy divorce to complete before we could ourselves marry. I actually had three. I’d never tell her that, though.
She said, shaky, “Tell me. Whatever it is, Michael. Just tell me.”
I took her hands in mine. Mine were warm. Hers were clammy. Mine were calm, steady. An earthquake resided in hers. I rubbed over her hands with my thumbs. Paused. The pause was intentional, of course. Orchestrated. I would not proceed until she said something.
After a beat sh
e said, “I can handle it, whatever it is.”
That was the moment I’d planned for since I first saw her. I’d rehearsed my lines a thousand times, envisioned this scene a thousand different ways.
I said, “Something you should know about me.”
Her eyes were on constant blink. She swallowed.
Through a deep sigh I said, “My history with marriage…”
“Your history with marriage,” she mirrored.
“I used to say I’d get married when Oprah married Stedman.”
My wife-to-be was slightly confused, but managed, “That isn’t happening ever, probably.”
“Exactly.”
“But we’re getting married,” she said. “You proposed without hesitation.”
I said, “Exactly.”
She finally got it. Her gaze softened. Eyes turned hazel again. A smile played at the corner of her lips.
She said, “You had me scared to death. Then you say something…something so beautiful, so…You rehearsed all of this?”
Like I’d said, we were soul mates of a sort.
I said, “Every line. Went over this a thousand times.”
She punched my shoulder, playful again. “You probably have…never knew a man…so smooth.”
“Like a knife through a warm stick of butter.”
She said, “Know what I’m thinking right now?”
“I know what you’re wanting right now.”
“Oh, really?”
“No harm in wanting your back twisted.”
She punched me again, said, “I feel so unworthy of you at times.”
“Ditto. Hazel eyes, a beautiful body, smart. Poised. I think, why me?”
She looked around the living room, gaze falling on the overturned coffee table. She frowned. Then looked at me. Hazel eyes that turned my legs to water. But I’d dealt with beautiful women before. Like I’d said, all of my wives had been beautiful. Her hazel eyes turned my legs to water, but I’d wade through that.
It wasn’t about love. It wasn’t about catching feelings. It wasn’t about the attraction. It was about the commodity of wives. My version of the Dow Jones.
She said, “I acted a fool, Michael. Now I’m embarrassed.”
I shook my head. “I messed up.”
Counterfeit Wives Page 6
