by Mary Monroe
“Girl, what’s wrong with you? Have you lost your fuckin’ mind?” she hollered. It was a Thursday, and we were having lunch at a pizza parlor not far from my office. “What good is a lover if you’ve got to pay him for his time? I have nothin’ against gigolos, but if a paid lover was the best I could do, I’d service myself. Lord have mercy.” Rhoda had to fan her face with her napkin.
“Gigolo? If Louis Baines is a gigolo, I’m the happy hooker. It’s nothing like that,” I wailed. “Louis wants to be with me. He’s the one who initiated this affair. He has never asked me for any financial assistance. As a matter of fact, I practically had to make him take the check to get his oven taken care of.”
“And that’s another thing! Don’t you think that three thousand dollars sounds like a lot to replace an oven?”
“I did think that that was a lot for an oven,” I replied, giving Rhoda a thoughtful look. “But there must be some that cost that much.”
“Well, maybe that’s what an oven would cost in the White House or Buckingham Palace. But we’re talkin’ about an oven in a pooh-butt restaurant in Richland, Ohio, that serves baked chicken gizzards!”
“Look, Rhoda, the man said it cost three thousand, and I didn’t question him.”
“You should have! You should have asked him to show you where he was gettin’ an oven from that cost that much.”
“Why, Rhoda? Like I said, he didn’t ask me for the money, and I practically had to make him take it,” I said, knowing that my defense was weak.
“Why? His problems are not your problems. Listen to me. Havin’ an affair is one thing. It could cause a lot of trouble, and a lot of people could get hurt. That’s why it’s so important to keep it in perspective.”
“I don’t want a little thing like a busted oven to keep us apart. When that damn thing fizzled out, he was too distraught to see me, even though he wanted to. I went to his apartment one night, and he couldn’t even get a hard-on. I just went through that impotence shit with my husband. I’ll be damn if I go through it with my lover, too.”
For a moment, I forgot where I was. I glanced around to make sure that none of the other patrons in the pizza parlor were listening to my conversation with Rhoda. The slice of pizza on my plate had gotten cold. I had only nibbled on it since we sat down. I still had not completely regained my passion for pizza, thanks to Jade.
It had been three weeks since Jade had come home from the hospital. This was the first time that Rhoda had been able to leave the house. Even though Lizel and Wyrita had everything under control. Not only were they running Rhoda’s child-care facility, but they were tending to Jade’s numerous needs, too.
“Well, it’s your life. I can’t tell you how to live it,” Rhoda said with a thoroughly disgusted look. “I’m just glad you’re happy.” She pressed her lips together and looked at me for a long time.
“Rhoda, I’ve never been like this before in my life,” I said evenly.
“Like what?” she asked, giving me a look that I could not interpret.
“Doing all this crazy shit with and for Louis. It must be my midlife crisis, huh?”
“Midlife crisis, my ass. You’re just a damn fool. That’s all this is.”
“As my best friend, I expect a little more compassion from you,” I said, pouting. “You don’t have to sound so coarse with me, Rhoda. This is a very confusing time for me. My marriage is on the rocks and a hard place. My parents both have one foot in the grave. And, my damn menopause must have kicked in, because I’ve been experiencing hot flashes all week, not to mention periods that are no longer regular.”
“Please don’t go there. I’m goin’ through the same thing.”
“It explains a few things. I’ve been doing a lot of stupid shit lately.”
“Tell me about it. And that’s just my point. You’ve been doin’ a whole lot of stupid shit lately. I just don’t want you to get yourself into somethin’ you’ll regret,” Rhoda told me. “And since you brought up the subject of a midlife crisis, that’s an excuse we can both use, I guess. I mean, why else would upstandin’, well-respected women in the community like us risk our marriages?”
I didn’t bother to remind Rhoda that she’d been with her lover for most of her married life. “Since when did you need an excuse to justify your actions?” I asked with a sneer. “Especially one like menopause.”
Rhoda wet her lips with her tongue and rolled her eyes at me. Then she gave me a dismissive wave. “Did Pee Wee take you to that bed-and-breakfast yet?”
I shook my head and chuckled. “No, he has not even mentioned it again. Why?”
“Lord knows, I need a break after all I’ve been through.” Rhoda pushed her plate away and took a drink from her Diet Pepsi. She cleared her throat and sat up straighter in her chair. “Bully has to go back to London again next week to wrap up the sale of another one of his buildings. He’ll be gone for a whole week. We’re goin’ to spend this weekend together before he goes, though.”
“And?”
“Bully really likes you. And I was thinkin’ how nice it would be if we all spent the weekend together—at a different bed-and-breakfast, of course. I know a place in Cleveland.”
I gave Rhoda one of the most incredulous looks I could manage. “What about your husband? What are you going to tell him?”
“The same thing you’re goin’ to tell yours. We’ll tell them that we’re goin’ to a spa in Cleveland.”
I gasped. “You want me to bring Louis?”
Rhoda gasped back at me. “I know damn well you didn’t think I was talkin’ about a romantic weekend getaway with our husbands.” Rhoda laughed.
I tried not to laugh myself, but I did, anyway. Because under the circumstances, spending a romantic weekend with our husbands was ludicrous. We both wanted to have some fun, and we knew that that would not be the case with our husbands. Otis hadn’t made love to Rhoda in years. And Pee Wee, well, he still had to get back up to speed for me to enjoy having sex with him again. Why waste a weekend at a bed-and-breakfast with two duds like our husbands? I prayed that it really was menopause that was making me act like such a fool. And I prayed that it would end soon. I really didn’t like the woman that I had become….
I looked around the restaurant and lowered my voice before I spoke again. “Rhoda, you told Bully about me and Louis?”
“So?”
“So what if he gets drunk and blabs to Otis? Otis is one of Pee Wee’s closest friends.”
“Get a grip, woman. Do you think Bully and I would still be hittin’ it after all these years if he was the kind of man to shoot off his mouth?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know if Louis can get away on such short notice. He’s going to be very busy trying to get caught up now that he has a new oven to work with. I’ll call him up when I get back to the office,” I declared.
“Well, I need to know by noon tomorrow. We have to confirm our reservations by then. And, by the way, it’s nine hundred a night per couple. Plus gratuities.”
“Nine hundred a night?”
“You get what you pay for. Donald Trump spends money like that for things like this all the time.”
“Well, he’s Donald Trump. We’re not. And you had the nerve to question a three-thousand-dollar oven.”
Rhoda released an impatient sigh and gave me a look that let me know that she was annoyed with me. “Look, if you can’t afford it, it’ll be my treat!”
“You don’t need to pay for me to be with Louis,” I protested.
“I’m just tryin’ to help,” she said, softening before my eyes. “It’s just that we haven’t done anything like that together in a while.”
I held my hand up to her face. “Shut up. I’ll go. I can use my American Express. The one Pee Wee doesn’t know I have. The money is no problem for me,” I said, knowing damn well that if Louis and I went, the money would come from my pocketbook. Since I’d only agree to do this once, it didn’t seem so bad. I eased my guilt by reminding myself that I knew a
lot of women who had done things much worse than what I was doing now. And, it helped for me to convince myself that as long as my husband didn’t know, it wouldn’t hurt him.
I didn’t know why, but for some reason, that bogus invoice entered my mind a few seconds later. It was the first time I wished I had not done something for Louis. And I didn’t feel too comfortable doling out another large sum of money on his account so soon—even though he knew nothing about the bed-and-breakfast weekend yet.
I promised myself that if Louis agreed to spend a weekend at a bed-and-breakfast in Cleveland, it would be the only time that I would finance such a venture. I was happy spending time with him at that cheap-ass Do Drop Inn motel or his apartment, and he had told me time and time again that that was good enough for him, too.
CHAPTER 52
Louis was not at his place of business when I called him an hour after I returned to my office after my lunch with Rhoda. His assistant day cook told me that he had left work for the day and was probably at his apartment.
I went out on the floor to see if there were any issues I needed to address. I was glad when Gloria assured me that everything was under control. After I signed some documents that she had shoved into my hand, authorizing one of our process servers to pay a visit to one of our most defiant debtors, I returned to my office and closed the door.
I called Louis’s apartment every half hour for the next two and a half hours, and all I got was a busy signal. I looked at the clock on my wall and realized that three forty-five was close enough to quitting time that I could just leave for the day. Since I had not been able to reach Louis by phone, I decided to try and catch him at home.
Since Louis had given me a key to his apartment, I didn’t think it would matter if he knew I was coming or not. Nevertheless, I didn’t like to make surprise visits to people, because I never knew what I would stumble into. One time I let myself into my parents’ house unannounced and walked in on my mother and father making love on the kitchen table. It was not a pretty sight. I prayed that I would never again see a man and a woman in their seventies having sex as long as I lived.
Before I left my office, I called Pee Wee at his barbershop just to hear his voice. I knew that I had to do my part to help restore our marriage, and every little thing helped as long as it was something positive. He was glad to hear from me.
“Baby, I can’t wait to get home so I can get my hands on you again,” he told me, whispering like an obscene caller. Then he did something he had not done in years: he made kissing noises. That brought tears to my eyes. “I’ve said it before, but I will say it again. God was showin’ off when he made you. And if He made a woman better than you, he kept her for Himself.” This was the man that I had known and loved most of my life. I was glad to have him back. And, I was tired of deceiving him….
During the ride to Louis’s apartment, something attacked me that I had been denying, dodging, and fending off for a long time: regret. I could not ignore it, because it hit me like a sledgehammer. I truly regretted getting involved with Louis Baines. I knew right then and there that I had to end my affair soon.
By the time I got to Louis’s street, I had decided that immediately after the weekend at the bed-and-breakfast, I would sever our relationship. I had to. There was no excuse for it now. It was going to hurt me as much as it hurt him, but it was time for me to do the right thing. Besides, I was tired of all the sneaking around and all the lying. How Rhoda and other women managed to have affairs for years and years was a mystery to me. I’d only been at it for a couple of months, and it had almost driven me crazy.
Now, I had to admit that it had been fun, but everything I believed in had convinced me that all good things had to end at some point. I was glad that I chose to end the relationship while it was still exciting. I would never forget Louis, and I knew that he’d never forget me. I’d walked on the wild side, gobbled up some forbidden fruit, and nobody had gotten hurt. A weekend rendezvous at a bed-and-breakfast would be bittersweet. But it would be the perfect way to end a whirlwind romance. It was all good. Life was good. I was a happy woman. Yankee pot roast, his specialty, would never be the same in my eyes again.
When I didn’t see Louis’s van in the parking stall in front of his apartment building, I decided to go home and attempt to reach him by phone again later. But before I drove back out to the street, I changed my mind and decided to let myself in and leave him a note. I didn’t think he’d have a problem with me being in his residence in his absence, or he wouldn’t have given me a key in the first place. And he had told me that I was welcome to visit anytime I wanted to.
My pulse started to race as I approached his apartment. I could hear him inside, laughing, before I even knocked on the door, and that made me smile. He sounded so cute. I was glad he was in a good mood. Had things worked out differently between Pee Wee and me and had we parted company, I sincerely believed that Louis and I could have had a serious chance for a real future together—in spite of the differences in our ages and backgrounds. We enjoyed each other’s company, and we were both ambitious. However, I didn’t know any woman, especially a woman in my position, who would marry a man who was broke as often as Louis was. It was a struggle for him to pay for our motel rooms and the expensive meals that we enjoyed at Antonosanti’s.
When he couldn’t afford to take me to that fancy restaurant, he relied on coupons that he cut out of the newspaper for “buy one, get one free” meals at other restaurants. One night, when the motel declined his credit card, we made love in the back of his van. I couldn’t bring myself to do it in my car or on that sofa in his apartment. I had sunk pretty low, but I didn’t see things that way. All I could see was that I was having fun. Because of Louis’s ambition, and the fact that the young brother could “burn” any meal as well as my mother, if not better, I knew that one day his business would be much more successful. And that I would reap the benefits—if we were still together.
I knocked gently on the door at first, but there was no response. I looked around and waved to one of the white boys who lived in the apartment next door. Even though I knew Louis was home, I started to leave. I stopped when the boy spoke from his opened window.
“Yo,” he said with a sly grin. He was so blond and fair skinned, he almost looked like an albino.
“Yo,” I said back, giving him a casual wave.
“You looking for L. B?”
“Excuse me?”
“You looking for Louis Baines?”
I nodded.
“Well, his van broke down on Liberty Street today, and he’s depressed about it. He could probably use some cheering up.”
“Thanks,” I muttered, then headed back toward Louis’s apartment.
I didn’t knock this time. Instead, I took a deep breath and let myself in. I saw right away that Louis was talking to somebody on the telephone, and he was still laughing. He was kicked back in a low-back, metal folding chair in front of the larger of his two rear windows. His bare back, still displaying some scratches that I had given him, was to me. He stopped laughing and listened, nodding, to whatever the party on the other end was saying to him. His bare feet were propped up on a hassock.
I gently closed the door and stood a few feet in front of it. Sadie let out a meow and rolled her crossed eyes at me as she padded across the floor to a bowl near the door with some fried chicken wings. I was glad to see that Louis had removed some of the meat from the bones before filling Sadie’s bowl. I had advised him to do that so that Sadie would have less trouble eating her meals.
Since I didn’t want Louis to turn around and think that I was trying to eavesdrop on him, I thought that it would be smart for me to make my presence known. I was just about to cough or clear my throat to get his attention. But I didn’t get a chance to do either one.
He suddenly laughed some more and then resumed his conversation, spitting out the words “that funky, old, fat woman.” I widened my eyes, shuddered, and forced myself not to laugh. I felt sorry
for the target of his roast. But what he had just said, and the shrill, concise way in which he had said it, was downright comical. However, since I’d often been somebody’s target myself, I was not one to make fun of people. I didn’t approve of it when other people did, either.
My desire to laugh disappeared as soon as I heard him mention my name. “Annette is the one you should be thanking for making our dreams come true. God bless her! I never would have thought that a bill collector would be the one to save my ass after all the ones I had to dodge back home. That’s what makes this so sweet!” He placed so much emphasis on his words, they seemed to hang in the air. He paused and guffawed so long and hard, he started to choke on some air.
As soon as Louis composed himself, he continued. “Sweetheart, this is turning out way better than we planned! I…huh? Did I…Uh-huh, I did. Well, baby, I can’t lie to you. There was just that one time that I slept with her. You know how women like her are!” He paused for a few moments, and for a split second, I thought he had felt my presence and would turn around and explain himself. But he didn’t.
He resumed his conversation with vigor. “That heifer! She wouldn’t take no for an answer. I…What did you say? Did I enjoy it? Hell no, I didn’t enjoy touching that woman! Fucking her was like sticking my dick in a piano! A nasty-ass piano that smelled like catfish stew at that! I had to soak my poker in Epsom salts and warm water after I got rid of her that night.” He paused for about a minute and a half. Whatever the party on the other end was saying must have bothered him, because he let out several loud sighs, gasps, and gulps, and he waved his fist in the air a few times before he spoke again.
“Sweetheart, I know I promised you that I wouldn’t, but she practically raped me, and I had been drinking a lot. I have a feeling that she even slipped something into my drink to reduce me to such a weakened condition! You know how big-boned women like that can be, and this one came after me with a bag full of tricks. She didn’t stop until she had put me in that trick bag! I didn’t want to piss her off. I knew that a hefty woman like that could stomp my place into the ground like Godzilla did Tokyo if I made her mad enough.” He paused and laughed some more, slapping his knee and stomping his foot on the hassock so hard, he almost fell off his chair.
