“I can’t believe there’s no money,” Val wondered aloud in David’s office. She’d leaned into the desk and he could see straight down the path between her breasts to her belly button. “Well . . . what about the other money? That twenty percent from Jamison’s will? You know.”
“No. I told you I can’t talk about that. We already had that conversation.” David struggled not to look down Val’s dress. He felt some electricity roll through his body to his groin. He slid his cell phone off the desk and sent a text to his assistant to come in and save him with a list of things he had to do.
“No, we didn’t. Look, I want to know where that money is going, David. I have a right to know,” Val pleaded.
“I already told you. When Jamison came in to update his will, he said he wanted to donate his money to charity. His entire life insurance policy and half of his dividends from Rake it Up.”
“That policy was worth five million dollars and half of what I get each quarter. All to some charity?” Val said. “And what is the Fihankra Organization, anyway?” she added referring to the group where Jamison’s monies had been wired. “I looked it up and I can’t find it anywhere. No organization operates with that name here in Atlanta or anywhere else where I could find it. That doesn’t sound odd to you?”
“It’s really not my business to know. I simply follow my clients’ wishes. And, if you really want to know: No, actually, it doesn’t sound odd to me that someone like Jamison would want to donate money to charity,” David answered as his assistant walked in, holding the stack of files she kept beside her desk for such occasions. “Many of my wealthy clients donate their money to charity. Especially when they have so much money to go around.” He looked at Val as the assistant came and stood by his side with the files. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I do need to get back to work.” He pointed to the folders and his assistant worked to look especially annoyed with him. “I have all of these contracts to look through. A tough afternoon of litigating ahead of me.” He smiled graciously at Val, as if he’d been so generous with his time and was sad to indirectly send her away.
Val sucked her teeth loudly again to demonstrate her displeasure. The assistant had come trudging in with that same salty face and pile of papers during her last visit. “Something ain’t right about that twenty percent and either you know it or you’re hiding what you know. It don’t matter to me which one.” She stood and slung her Céline purse over her arm with marked attitude. “I’m going to find out either way.”
“Don’t go making trouble, Val. Come on,” David said. “Stop while you’re ahead. Just do what you were supposed to do with that money in the first place. You know what Jamison intended. It was for the child—”
Val’s coldest stare stopped David’s lips from uttering another word. He knew not to go any further with anything he was going to say.
Val turned from the desk and started to walk out.
“I’ll be back,” she said without looking back at David and his assistant watching her walk away with their mouths open. “And don’t try to play me with that stack-of-files routine again. I ain’t stupid.”
Val had never been a club girl. Not really. She’d partied a lot. Partied hard and all night long. Did splits and all kinds of tricks on speaker tops and bar tops and tabletops and even on a few poles here and there, but she’d never gone for a “good time.” For her it was work. From the right shoes to the right hair and scent of Tom Ford’s Black Orchid sprayed here and there and between this and that, going to the club was about finding the right man or the man next to the man to get to that man to get whatever she wanted at that moment. Now, that could range from attention to rent money, so the stakes were too high for any night out at the club to be considered a good time.
While Jamison’s publicist made Val swear off any of her old haunts when they’d gotten married and Val was supposed to be learning how to be a “respectable” first lady of Atlanta—a plan that included new wigs, less makeup, and more fabric above her nipples and below her knees—she’d found herself a returning customer during her newfound widowhood.
But like the bright lights and nightlife had changed, Val’s reasons for being there had changed too. It would be rather zealous to say she was no longer on a search for a suitable suitor—that could never be far from Val’s imagination, even with Jamison’s money in her hands. Still, her participation was less easy to define. It started with a drink. A reason to get out of the house. Out of that house. Away from her mother. Away from everything in her head. She’d follow her old routine. A long, hot shower. Hot shea butter on her skin. Black Orchid between her thighs and behind her ears. A dress so tight she couldn’t wear a bra or a thong. Legs out. Arms out. Hair down her back. Eyelashes batting. Lips puckered and glossy. A ride into the city with the windows down. A big tip for the valet. Saunter in with her vacant eyes straight ahead. No line outside to wait on. The bouncers know her. Sit at the bar in VIP with a drink that came in a small glass with no ice cubes.
“Hey, I’m Monty.”
It never took long after she was seated and had ordered a drink for someone to show up and take the seat beside her. That night after the meeting in David’s office about Coreen and the money, it was Monty.
Val just smiled over her shoulder at him. It was never a good idea to show any kind of attention that quickly.
Then the bartender came over and asked Monty what he wanted to drink and he requested something like a Gentleman Jack and Coke.
When the drink came, Monty reached out for the glass and Val, who’d been silent and only nodding along to the loud music, got a peek at his dated but respectable Rolex.
“You come here often?” he asked, noting to himself that Val had peeped the watch.
“No. Not really,” Val lied. She’d been there two times that week and to most of the clubs on that row in Midtown on the other nights. There was always a reason. Her mother on her nerves. Coreen on the phone. Kerry calling and worrying. The lawyers. David. Whatever.
“Funny, I thought I saw you here Monday.” Monty chuckled.
“Then why did you ask me a dumb-ass question, then?” Val snapped, finally looking over at Monty. He was brown and cute. Had deep dimples that probably could be annoying to look at sometimes.
“Hold on, boss lady!” Monty held up his hands like Val was about to hit him and she smiled. She could see the muscles in his forearms through his thin fall cashmere sweater. “Don’t hurt a brother. All these young things in here and I see something sophisticated like you at the bar and I want to know what’s up. I’m just trying to get to know you.” He surveyed Val’s plump torso resting in the seat.
“Ain’t much to know, I’m afraid,” Val said dismissively.
“Well, maybe I’m just trying to look at you, then.”
Val stared at Monty again and there were those dimples.
He peered into her and she nearly felt his eyes peel her shoulder straps down and her dress up. Later, there were more drinks and some laughs. Val loosened up some. Monty literally saw her shoulders fall and her frown dissipate. She told him nothing of herself and tried to seem disinterested whenever he spoke of himself. At one point a Jay Z song came on and she got up from her chair and started dancing really close on his lap. That was after he’d let it slip that he was a plastic surgeon and was opening a third clinic in Buckhead next year. She leaned back and let her Persian wavy weave fall on his chest, twerked her thighs in and out until his penis grew so stiff he could feel the blood vibrating in the tip as she bounced up and down.
“You’re turning me on,” he whispered in her ear and she blamed it on the alcohol. “What’s your name?” he asked again for the third or fourth time.
“Does it matter?” Val laughed and downed the last of her drink so quickly it made her throat burn and her chest hot. “Hey, you want to dance?” She just grabbed Monty’s hand and started pulling him toward the dance floor. They tunneled through a crowd of people ten to fifteen years younger than both of them. The
re were waitresses carrying buckets of champagne and vodka, outliers puffing marijuana. and little girls in heels so high they could hardly stand up straight.
Monty kept trying to pull Val back out of the party maze and smoke, but the more he pulled, the more Val protested, becoming more risqué and wild with her dancing. She’d pulled his arms around her waist and backed up against him on the dance floor. In the darkness, neon laser lights highlighted only slivers of her body.
“You fucking know you want this,” she teased in whispers beneath the booming hip hop music that Monty didn’t recognize at that point.
“You know that’s right,” he said in her ear. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Why you want to leave so bad?” Val snapped and her body suddenly became rigid and erect with no movement. She stood up straight in the middle of the dance floor and Monty felt she was about to make more of a scene.
“Oh, no, it’s nothing, bossy lady.” Monty put up his hands again and flashed his nicest smile. “We can dance some more!” He did a quick two-step that looked so out of place in the youthful crowd. He’d already told himself that the woman he’d been coming on to for over two hours when he could’ve been chasing some of the less bitter, scantily dressed targets around him would be some challenge; but somehow to a man like him, she’d be worth the extra energy in the end. There was that myth—the one about angry women in bed, how they’d be so forceful and wild. This made him look at Val like some kind of lioness with a broken paw. An animal whose behavior was at once unpredictable and all too predictable. Plus, he thought he’d recognized her from somewhere. And the alcohol muddying his thoughts convinced him that she must be a former model, maybe an old video girl he’d seen someplace before. That turned him on even more.
Val loosened up again and started dancing. The alcohol in her body made a mess of her thoughts, too. She wondered what the man’s name was who was rubbing his penis into her thigh. She couldn’t remember seeing her mother when she stopped at the house before leaving for the club. She tried to remember what Jamison’s hands looked like when he was the man dancing behind her. What was the shade of red on those bloody sheets on the bed? Why had her baby died? What happens after death? What was a woman? A man? How long could hurt last?
“Let’s go to the bathroom.” Val pulled Monty through the crowd again, but this time he didn’t resist at all. He felt around in his back pocket for a condom.
In the bathroom, Monty’s back was against the stall door and Val was undoing his pants. She hadn’t looked into his eyes once, but he’d caught glimpses of her icy stare on parts of him and somehow that thrilled Monty. He’d given a hundred dollars to the bathroom attendant to lock the door outside for twenty minutes.
Val kissed and sucked on his chest as she lowered his pants. She rimmed the tip of his boxers with her tongue and hummed into his middle so he could feel the promise of where her mouth was going next.
“Shit, you’re so fucking hot. I knew this was going to be good,” Monty said, like Val needed some of his encouragement and this thing was really about making him feel good.
Val giggled to herself at how silly all of these men could be. She wondered how long it would take for each one to turn from this helpless thing with his whole manhood under the control of her mouth, to something more like Jamison, so distant and unwilling to see her for anything else.
Jamison’s cold eyes on her in the hospital room after the doctors had removed the last remaining pieces of their child from her uterus flashed in Val’s eyes and erased the effects of any liquor in her bloodstream. But Val told herself to keep going. It would feel better soon.
Monty’s pants began to slip down lower and then the top fell over, making the contents of his pockets fall out in familiar sounds. The wallet. The keys. The ChapStick. The ring.
The last sound was a ding, like something golden or platinum hitting concrete.
Even over the soft ricochets of music seeping into the bathroom from the club world outside, Val knew what that sound was.
She looked down and between the ChapStick and wallet was a little silver band.
“You’re married?” Val was still on her knees, but she looked up at Monty like he was so far beneath her.
All he could say was, “So?”
“Nigga, you’re married?” Val stood up for the question this time and poked out her hip, like a black woman who was about to curse a man out for some major transgression.
“What?” There were those annoying dimples again. “Come on, boss lady, don’t act like you care about that shit.” He held up his hands and smiled to bring Val back to him.
“Fuck that boss-lady bullshit. I don’t fuck married men,” Val shouted so loud the attendant and all the women arguing with her about opening the bathroom door could hear.
“Oh, suddenly, you have standards?” Monty’s smile turned to an ironic chuckle. He tried to grab Val, but she slapped his hands away.
“Don’t fucking touch me. You should’ve said something, motherfucker. Who you think you are?”
“Said something to whom? You wouldn’t even tell me your fucking name. Fuck this!” Monty pulled up his pants clumsily and gathered his things from the floor before opening the stall. “Shit ain’t worth it anyway,” he said as he and Val walked out into the main area of the emptied bathroom.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Val asked angrily.
Monty went to the sink to freshen up like it was his bathroom vanity at home.
“You saw how many bitches were out there?” Monty quizzed with heat in his voice that didn’t sound natural but still stung. “I don’t have to do this shit.”
“How many bitches? Fuck all those bitches. I’m the bitch in the bathroom and last I checked, I was the baddest bitch on the floor.” Val’s hand was back on her hip and all of her old attitude was in her voice.
“Yeah right, sweetie. Maybe it’s time for a reality check,” Monty said nonchalantly as he groomed his goatee with the bathroom attendant’s dirty hairbrush. “You’re . . . what . . . about fifteen years older than the youngest chick in there? And those is young titties. Young pussies. You fine as shit, but your shit ain’t their shit. And you better know it. Any nigga fucking with you is being nice. Fucking charity case.” He threw the brush down and proceeded to the door, where the attendant had started knocking. “I don’t have time for this shit.”
He threw a piece of paper towel into the trash and left Val standing at the vanity, where a gang of chicks with frowns on their faces stared at her when they entered the restroom in a line.
“You okay?” the attendant asked Val when she got into the restroom and found Val standing in front of the mirror, looking blankly at herself. “You need me to get security? I knew something wasn’t right with that nigga. But you was with him, so—”
“I’m fine,” Val said sharply before turning her back and walking out like nothing had happened.
Outside the club, the line was thick and still growing, though it was far past midnight. Fancy cars with shiny rims and rappers and athletes in the front seat inched past slowly, so whoever was inside the car could be seen by some desperate girl in line. It was an old trick that still worked.
The valet pulled Jamison’s sparkling Jaguar around with the top down as Val had instructed.
She tipped him with a hundred-dollar bill and walked to the car, knowing everyone in line wondered who she was. Some did know, though. And she could hear them chatting, “Isn’t that the dead mayor’s window?”
Just when Val was about to get into the car, another valet pulled up behind her in a Porsche.
Monty came straggling out of the club with no one on his arm and headed toward the driver’s-side door of the Porsche.
Val stopped and watched him with a frown that he happily returned. She reminded herself that back in the day, when she was one of those girls in the line with her feet hurting and nipples shivering in the cold, she would’ve cursed him out royally for saying just half of the things
he’d said to her.
She was about to get into her car, but then something in Val made her turn and charge over to Monty. Maybe she was about to curse his name or slap his cheek or knee his crotch. Maybe all three.
Monty nervously tried to rush to his car, but Val was fast even in her heels, and she caught up with him just before the valet handed him his keys.
“You ain’t shit,” Val said to Monty. “You come here and you think you can say anything to me! Fuck you! Fuck you three times!”
Monty saw red in Val’s eyes and he knew not to say anything. He stood there and tried not to look too apologetic or hopeless. He couldn’t risk a scene. Getting arrested again wouldn’t go over too well at home. His wife was actually the plastic surgeon in the family. He was her office assistant.
When Val was finished cursing, she didn’t know what else to do. She told herself to back away, but her feet wouldn’t move. Then she did something she hardly expected—well, that no one watching expected. All of the red in her eyes and the anger in her heart fueled a passion that literally threw her into Monty, where she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. Full tongue down his throat and lips pressed over his, she tried to devour him in a second.
The valets standing there didn’t know if they should cheer or tell the two to move on, as they were holding up the car line.
Monty didn’t know what to do, either, but the confusion was certainly turning him on.
Before Val let him loose, she ordered him very loudly, “Follow me.”
It was after 1 AM and the highways connecting downtown Atlanta nightlife to suburban sprawl were thinning out, but still active enough to provide some fantastic glow show of blinking lights and expensive zipping hot wheels along the interstate.
Val opened the Jag’s engine up in the fast lane, doing 95 the entire way home with Monty struggling to keep up with her in his Porsche. His wife was calling and texting. His heart was beating so fast the balding forty-three-year-old who’d just had his bulging belly liposuctioned four months ago might have been having a heart attack. Still, he continued the pursuit and zigzagged through the traffic to keep up with Val.
His Last Wife Page 6
