by Omar Tyree
“Half of these channels don’t even work. I hate hotels like this.”
Her husband Michael attempted to get some sleep under the covers beside her, while facing the opposite direction. The flickering lights from the television were distracting him. “Why don’t you just give it a damn rest and get some sleep, Nat? Shit!” he fumed
“Don’t you curse at me,” Natalie snapped at him.
“I didn’t,” he argued.
“Yes, you did.”
“I wasn’t cursing at you; I was just expressing my point.”
“Well, you need to express your point in a different way.”
Michael rolled over to face her. He said, “Look, woman—”
She cut him off and said, “Michael, don’t you start that with me.”
“I’m just saying, Natalie, we have a flight in six hours, so you need to get some damn rest.”
She said, “I don’t know what you resting for.”
You didn’t do nothing down here but get in the damn way, she thought to herself.
Michael asked her, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” she snapped. But she was about tired of his shiftlessness. She wished that there was something more that he could do to make himself valuable instead taking up space and embarrassing her with his drinking and flaunting. He was only a nuisance now.
We probably need to see a marriage counselor or Reverend Gilmore at the church again, because I swear I can’t take this much longer! she reflected. And the fact that my writing career has been stalling is really not helping matters much.
Michael continued to study his stern-faced wife, who refused to look at him, while she stared at the television set.
“You’re not acting like nothing,” he commented.
She took a deep breath and tried to ignore him. Just shut up and let me be, she told herself.
She’s probably thinking about my job situation again, Michael assumed. He figured she would much rather be in a big old fancy hotel downtown somewhere, like what they used to stay in. She would rather fly back to Detroit in the middle of the day after sleeping all morning and ordering room service. She would rather be able to visit a hotel spa late at night and get a good back and foot massage. And she’d rather had a big, flat screen TV that actually worked.
I know she misses all those things, Michael told himself. But so do thousands of other Americans. It ain’t like we the only ones suffering right now. What the hell else does she want me to do?
“Would you stop staring at me, please,” she finally responded to her husband. She could feel his eyeballs beaming on her through the dark.
He took a deep breath of his own and mumbled, “What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to leave me the hell alone, Michael. You go to sleep.”
“You said I don’t have nothing to sleep for. Why, because I don’t have a job anymore?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Well, you’re thinking it. Tell me you’re not.”
Natalie tried again to ignore him but failed. “Maybe you should go out and volunteer or something,” she suggested to him.
Michael was stunned by it. “Volunteer? And do what, spend all day long working and make no money to show for it?”
She said, “It’s better than sitting around at home all day. At least the children can see you going out to do something.”
Michael sat up in bed and said, “I knew you were thinking about that.”
“Well, of course I am,” she finally huffed at him. “I’m out here breaking my natural-born ass to hold this family together, and all you seem to be able to do is get drunk and chase hot-ass women. And it’s embarrassing. All of this shit is embarrassing,” she raved, gestured to the room.
Michael took another breath and said, “I know you better calm down in here.” He wondered if the other guests could hear her through the walls, she was so loud.
Natalie eyed her husband and said, “Or what? I wish you would tell me what to do in here after I paid for this cheap-behind room. I wish you would.”
It was all coming out in spades. Natalie couldn’t help herself anymore. Her whole trip to New York had been a challenge. Then she tossed a gallon of kerosene on the building fire.
“I should have left your ass at home with the kids.”
Influenced by the deep soul of his pride and manhood, Michael Cumberland reached out with both hands grabbed his wife around her neck.
“You don’t talk to me like that, got’ dammit! I’m doing what I can do!”
Natalie was surprised as hell! Her eyes stretched wide in panic. Michael had never put his hands on her in violence before. He had always shaken his head and walked away in their arguments. But there was nowhere to go in that no-thrills hotel room. Her honest rant had taken him by surprise as well. Natalie was usually tactful with her husband. She had always thought about how she said things to him.
Once he realized what he was doing, Michael let his wife go and jumped up out of the bed, still fuming at her. He repeated, “I’m doing all that I can do!” while standing out in front of her in his boxers and a plain white t-shirt.
Natalie felt so shocked and violated that her husband’s words didn’t even compute. All that she could think about was attacking him. How dare he choke her like that after all she had done for him? How DARE HE?
So she gritted her teeth, scrounged up her face, clawed both of her hands and launched out of the bed at her husband like a flying witch.
Michael saw her coming, but he unsure of what to do about it. Natalie had more body size than him and she was moving fast with it. And before he knew it, she was all over him.
“You don’t put your hands on me!” she screamed at him, clawing, swinging and kicking. It looked as if a human windmill was attacking the man. And the room was too small to get away. So he crashed into the wall with his wife falling over top of him.
“Stop it! Stop it!” Michael pleaded to her, covering himself against the wall. He didn’t want to get into a full-fledged fight with his wife. She may have had more body size than him, but he was slightly taller and stronger. He didn’t want to know what he would do to her if he really fought her back. It wasn’t as if he was a punk. He was from Detroit. But so was she.
Natalie was too pissed to stop her rage. “You don’t fuck with me!” she shouted at him, unchurchlike.
Michael tried to grab her hands to stop her wailing, but she was too strong and enraged for that. That only gave her clear angles to his face, where she bashed him with her fingers and fists. Once her nails clawed him in his right eye, Michael cried out and started throwing fists of his own in self-defense.
“AHHH, SHIT!”
He immediately connected with a right-handed hook across his wife’s jaw. Natalie fell back and tripped over the single chair that sat beside her. But she wasn’t done yet. She spun over and bounced back to her feet for round two, like a mixed martial arts fighter before her husband could regain his clear vision. As he reached out, half-blind to try and stop her, she swung a wide, right-handed haymaker at his head.
POP! Bulls-eye!
Michael fell into the TV to his right and Natalie was all over him with more punches, until both of her hands hurt. Her husband was in so much pain from her vicious barrage of punches that he fell to the floor and curled up, covering his head in the fetal position. Only then did Natalie stop her rage against him from the pits of hell!
“Don’t you ever put your hands on me again! You hear me?!” she shouted to him on the floor. She didn’t even realize their hotel room had been opened so the security could rush in. The guests in the room next door had heard the fight and quickly called the front desk to report it. And before Natalie knew it, three New York City Police officers were all up in her face inside the room, two black men and one Latino. One of the hotel staff from the front desk looked in from the door, a nervous white man.
“Calm down, Ma’am. What happened?” the officers asked her.
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“He put his hands on me. You don’t do that. You don’t do that,” Natalie repeated as if she was chanting. She was still breathing hard and heavy from the fight.
One of the officers stooped down to the floor to see about her husband, while the other two approach Natalie. “Okay, I understand. Just tell us what happened.”
Natalie calmed herself in the presence of the police officers and looked down again at her husband, who continued to curl up on the floor. Then she looked back up at the police officers, understanding that she and her husband were now in a big mess.
DAMN IT! Now I guess we won’t make our flight in time, she imagined. Now what are they gonna do . . . ?
Lauren Grandeis pulled out the keys to open the front door of her fourth-floor loft in the same Soho area as the publishing industry party held the night before. Vincent Biddle followed inside and onto her shiny hardwood floor.
“What time are you due back at the Javits Center in the morning?” she asked him.
“Before the rooster crows. But don’t worry about me. You know I only need three hours. I just wanna make sure you sleep well.”
Lauren smiled and turned to squeeze his right cheek. “You’re so incredibly sweet to me. What did I do to deserve you?”
Vincent grinned and refused to answer her. We will soon see, he told himself. Just keep putting my authors where they need to be.
He looked around her spacious one-floor loft and noticed a few replacement posters on her walls since the last time he had been there. Lauren was a huge poster buff, using them to decorate her multi-colored loft instead of artwork or paintings.
“I see you put up some new posters again,” Vincent commented.
“That’s always,” she told him, putting down her things and heading toward her private bedroom area. She had eight-foot falls strategically placed throughout the twenty-foot area, like a human maze. Each walled-off section had its own of group of posters, colors, lighting, décor and furniture, like a multi-room art museum. She even had color coordinated curtains instead of doors to separate each room. And on the outside of the interior maze of walls were plenty of large windows for a panoramic view of the Soho area of New York.
“So, when are you gonna start charging people to visit?” Vincent teased her. Her loft was easily worth over a million dollars. It was closer to two million. Her great sense of art and creativity had even rubbed off on him, influencing Vincent to create multiple illusions in each room of his own spacious home up in Harlem. Although he couldn’t match what Lauren had been able to do with her space.
“Okay, take out a hundred dollars and toss it in my candy jar for snacks.”
Vincent smiled it off as she disappeared through the curtains toward her bedroom at the very back of the maze.
“So, you actually have no clue of what you’re gonna do with these new authors?” she asked him over the top of her walls. “That’s not like you. You usually have a gameplan.”
With no ceilings to box in each room, Lauren could literally speak throughout the loft, as if it had no walls at all.
“It looks like you’re gonna help me out with that this time,” he responded. He took a seat in the dark brown leather chair that sat in her second lounge room. The décor of the second room was all about earthtones, featuring various browns, blacks, beiges, creams and greens. And there were long, exotic plants stationed throughout the room. Each room also had its own giant rug, a bookshelf full of books, and a small table and chairs to enjoy a meal.
“Sounds like more money for meee,” Lauren hummed in the distance. “I’ll be right out from my bath to call you in, okay? As always, make yourself at home.”
Vincent grinned and sat back in the long chair, shaped like the ones in a shrink’s office.
“An art lover could really get addicted to this place,” he mumbled. And I have the pleasure of being here and seeing her naked and relaxed, out of the thousands of men who would beg to, he reflected. How lucky I am.
Yet, Vincent respected her business talents more than anything. Lauren Brandeis got things done. She didn’t just talk about getting a meeting, a dinner or an article written, she got them. So Vincent felt honored and thankful to work with her in such close quarters, where one thing had led to the next. She had stopped him just short of penetration with his penis. But penetration with his tongue was doable. And where Vincent had opportunities to tempt her for more, he had become satisfied with full naked body massages and carnal tongue work.
In her bath, to the left of her bedroom, Lauren submerged naked into a giant, bubbling whirlpool, large enough for three adults to sit in comfortably. Only her toilet, long vanity mirror, personal shower, and cabinets had a door and a ceiling to box in her privacy, along with two boxed-in guest baths near the front entrance for men and women.
Overtop of her whirlpool were heated lamps to keep her warm. To the left of her was a tall, dark brown, king-sized sleigh bed, covered in a rich-colored quilt. To the left of her sleigh bed were tall burgundy curtains to block out or let in the sun from the windows. And throughout her private bedroom were her rugs, closets, dressers, cabinets, mirrors, lamps and various personal accessories. It was a room and a home to die for in New York, New York.
After soaking in her warm bath and washing herself for a good fifteen minutes, Lauren listened to the dead silence in her loft home and asked, “Vincent, are you still there?”
He was so relaxed on the leather chair in her earth room that he had closed his eyes in tranquility. It had been a long day, and a nice nap would be good.
“Yeah, I’m still here,” he asked her without opening his eyes.
Lauren paused for a spell. Then she asked him, “You wanna come back here with me?” She just loved how much power he had given her. So she felt satisfied and secure with him.
“I guess I can come on back,” he told her. But he failed to move. He knew that Lauren was slow-moving herself in her loft. It was the only place where she seemed to relax. So he gave himself another five minutes to relax himself, and by then, Lauren had climbed out of her bath, dried herself off, slipped on a silk, eggshell colored bathrobe, and pulled out a large burgundy beach towel to lay across her bed.
Vincent entered her bedroom through her curtains in the nick of time.
Lauren watched him enter her bedroom and smiled.
“Perfect,” she told him. “My body aches so badly for your soft hands.”
He teased her and asked, “And what if I wasn’t here?”
She paused and grinned. “But you are here, darling.”
As was their ritual, Vincent washed his hands in her bathroom sink and retrieved her bottle of Indian oil from her dresser to rub into his hands and address her beautifully curved and naked, light brown body.
“Are you gonna take off your jacket?” she asked him as he approached her on the bed.
“Anything for you,” he told her, pulling off his jacket. He had already taken off his shoes inside the earth room for his twenty-minute nap.
As he climbed onboard her bed and sat beside her naked body, he started his massage with her neck, at the nap of her long brown hair.
“Mmmmm,” she moaned as her neck and shoulders relaxed. “If you weren’t a book editor you could be a masseuse.”
“You tell me all the time,” he told her.
