Lifestyles of the Rich and Shameless

by Noire

  So, three days a week Malisha and Trey made the drive uptown to a very expensive school of music therapy, where trained instructors propped him up on a stool and guided his small, stiff hands through endless renditions of classical piano pieces.

  At first Malisha couldn’t believe her baby was actually pressing the keys and playing the notes, but the smile on his face and the beautiful melody coming from the piano was enough to make a believer out of her.

  Malisha was convinced that she had found the key that could permanently unlock the gates of Trey’s mind, but unfortunately, the state only paid for a limited number of therapeutic lessons each year. When Trey’s benefits ran out, the boy retreated back into his shell, and Malisha could see his smile—and the light in his eyes—dimming more and more each day.

  So like any good mother, Malisha had made a decision. If she couldn’t get the state to pay for Trey’s lessons, she would scrape the money together any way she could. It didn’t matter if she had to rob, beg, borrow, or steal, her son was gonna get outta that bed and get his three music lessons every week, come hell or high water.

  In the beginning, Malisha had felt ashamed each time she dipped into her cash box at work. She’d been working at Omega Bank since way before the accident, and the people she worked with had been damn good to her over the years. She convinced herself that she wasn’t stealing from the employers she respected and cared about. All she was doing was pinching off the profits of a large corporation full of greedy shareholders and a corrupt board of directors.

  Hell, Malisha rationalized as she slid a hundred-dollar bill from the stack of money she had just counted down and slipped it under her skirt. Tellers didn’t get paid no kinda real wages anyway. They were responsible for hundreds of thousands of the bank’s dollars every day, yet most only made about ten bucks an hour for their duties.

  Malisha had never been one to come up with a light drawer. Almost all the other tellers came up short every now and then, but Malisha was careful. She double- and triple-counted every penny she gave out, and she never gave out a dime more than she was supposed to.

  So, the first time her tally sheet failed to equal out, she was met with astonishment from her supervisors, but not a hint of suspicion. After all, Malisha was human, just like everybody else. It was easy to miss a crisp new hundred-dollar bill when you were counting out thousands all day. Those new bills stuck together like crazy, and it wasn’t unusual for even a seasoned teller to be short at the end of the day.

  Malisha knew she had to be careful about when and how she took money, because Trey’s lessons had to be paid for in advance. She cut corners and tried to make ends meet from her paycheck as much as possible. She stopped eating lunch with her coworkers, and took leftovers from home instead. Personal grooming and appearance was very high on Malisha’s list of priorities. It was something the bank really stressed too, but Malisha gave up her bimonthly trips to the hairdresser and the Korean nail salon. She permed her own hair, and pried off her acrylic tips and polished her own nails when they chipped.

  But no matter how carefully Malisha tried to balance what she had and what she needed, she just wasn’t a thief at heart, and when she slipped up, she slipped up big time.

  The bank had recently conducted an annual internal audit, and some sharp-ass white girl had smelled a big fat rat while examining Malisha’s old tally sheets.

  Why is it that this teller started coming up short so regularly six months ago? Her shortages have totaled exactly five hundred dollars every month. Is there something going on in her life? Why hasn’t this been annotated on the branch’s monthly infraction report?

  Malisha knew she was in hot water when the branch manager called her into his office. He was a portly middle-aged white man who had always been nice to her. But as Malisha sat down across from his desk, she could tell right off that he was not about the bullshit.

  “We’ll make this quick, Malisha,” he said, peering at a printed report on his desk. “You’ve been coming up short. Regularly. And in a way that makes it obvious that you’re not making simple mistakes in your counting.” He took off his glasses and leaned back in his chair. “What you’re doing is, you’re stealing.”

  Malisha’s mouth had shot open and a string of protests and denials fell out. Hot shame crept up her neck and she was actually fuckin’ offended that this fat bastard was sitting there calling her a liar and a thief!

  “Save it,” he said, deading all that indignation tumbling from her lips. “I’ve been in this business long enough to recognize a case of sticky fingers when I see one. So tell me,” he continued calmly, “which one of your bills are you having trouble paying? Whatever it is, it’s costing you about five hundred dollars a month. So what gives?”

  Malisha sniffed back tears of guilt and shame as she opened up to the bank manager and begged him for mercy. She thanked him for being so understanding after the accident, and for all the books and stuffed animals he’d bought for Trey over the years. She told him how big Trey’s smile was when he played classical music on the piano. She told him how desperate she was to keep that smile on her baby’s face.

  “Honestly, Mr. Wortman,” Malisha pleaded. “I’ve been working here a long time. You know me. I’m not a thief,” she sniffed. “I’m trying to be a good mother. Trey wouldn’t be in his situation if it wasn’t for the mistakes I made that night. I’m sorry I stole from y’all. I just didn’t have anywhere else to turn.”

  “Well, turning to your cash drawer is certainly not an option,” he said. And then his eyes got softer as a kindly look crossed his face.

  “Look, Malisha. You are a good worker. One of our top employees. And I like you. I really do. It was a tragedy, what happened to your family, and everybody here feels bad about it. We really do. But let’s face it. We’re running a business here, and you’ve broken the law. There’s no way the bank can foot your son’s tuition at his music school. I don’t think I have to tell you this, but you can’t just go in your cash drawer and take whatever you need, no matter what you need it for. Like I said, every employee at this branch feels awful about your situation, but your personal expenses are your personal responsibility.”

  Malisha could only nod wordlessly as he spoke, because she knew the white man was speaking the truth.

  “So here’s the deal,” Mr. Wortman said, his voice growing cold and businesslike again. “You’ve got two choices. Either you pay the bank a restitution of all the money you’ve stolen, or you get fired. If I have to fire you, then you’ll never get an employment recommendation from us, and there’s a possibility that you could be prosecuted. The only thing I can offer you is a little extra time to repay the bank, Malisha. But that’s it. You have got to pay.”

  Malisha spent the next few weeks in a state of constant worry. After making the first two restitution payments to the bank there was barely enough money left in her account to buy Trey’s food, let alone pay for his music lessons.

  But Trey had to have those lessons! As his mother, this was the least Malisha could do for him. She had to give her son a reason to smile. She just had to. The sight of him laying in bed limp and listless was enough to make her want to put a bullet in her head.

  If you could gather up all the guilt in the universe, it wouldn’t have come close to what Malisha was feeling as she left work for the day. The dude she was dating had offered to bring dinner over for her and Trey, and even though she had played it off like she had to think about it, deep inside she was grateful they wouldn’t have to finish off the can of Spa-ghettios she had leftover from the night before.

  Malisha thought about the man she was allowing to get deeper and deeper into her and Trey’s life. This guy named Noble Browne. They’d developed a real tight relationship over the past few months. Noble had said he wanted to find him a wife, and even though he’d admitted from the gate that he was seeing other women, Malisha was trying damn hard to make him forget those other bitches and concentrate his attention strictly on her.
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  See, Noble was just the type of guy she needed right about now. He was honest and he was dependable. He put it on her in the sheets, and he was loving and gentle with her son. True, he had a fake leg that kinda freaked her out, but Malisha tried hard to ignore the sight of it when he was on top of her and it was propped up against the damn bed. The first time she’d seen it, she’d almost screamed. He shouldn’t have snuck it on her like that! They had been kissing and touching and all that, and when Malisha had run her hand innocently down his thigh it had felt like she was touching a tree. And the stump. Oh, that stumpy part that was left of his leg. Malisha couldn’t even look too close at that. It straight messed her up.

  The good thing was, you couldn’t even tell Noble was an amputee unless he took off his pants. He walked and did everything else just fine. He had told her about how he had convinced them to let him stay on the force when they had wanted to retire him. He was still a cop, just assigned to work traffic control, and he got a big plus in her book for that.

  But there was something else that had Malisha wide open on him too.

  Noble was gwapped up. Paid. Richer than a mothafucka!

  Luckily, he was the type of dude who didn’t mind spending money on her and Trey. Whenever Noble was around, he paid for everything. Malisha had never once had to dig in her purse in his presence. And even though they had to lug around Trey’s wheelchair everywhere they went, Noble liked taking them out. To dinner, to the movies, to the park. Wherever.

  The problem was, Noble gave her things, and not cash money, which is what Malisha needed to pay her bills. It wasn’t like he was stingy with his doe, it was more like he was careful. He’d buy her jewelry and gifts, and he had even used his credit card to get her air conditioner fixed, but he had never offered to pay her car note or her rent.

  Of course, Noble had no idea what kind of financial trouble Malisha was in, and she damn sure wasn’t about to tell him. He wasn’t gonna be able to guess neither, because Malisha kept herself up. It wasn’t like she walked around looking like she was two steps away from a soup kitchen. She looked like a stunna, and she played that role like a champ. Her clothing was quality, and she always looked classy and sexy. Even if she was dead broke.

  Malisha knew Noble was standing on a pot of gold because she’d met him when he came into the bank to fill out an application for a safety deposit box.

  As luck would have it, the girl who usually handled the job had just been promoted, and when the branch manager had asked Malisha to take Noble downstairs to the vault, she’d jumped right on it.

  Noble had handed in his application, then chose one of the biggest damn boxes the bank had to offer.

  “What you gonna put in there?” Malisha couldn’t stop herself from blurting out when the tall dude dressed in a police uniform had pointed at a box that looked more like a safe. “Your car?”

  Noble had laughed, and the sight of his ultrabright smile and warm brown eyes made something stir in Malisha.

  “Nah, I’m not gonna drive the ’Vette up in there,” he said chuckling. “You ain’t gotta worry about that.”

  But a few weeks later, Noble was back in the bank and he asked for Malisha specifically by name.

  “Hi,” she’d said after closing her teller’s window and meeting him at the customer service desk. It wasn’t every day that a customer had a teller paged for service, but her supervisor was grinning and shucking like Noble was somebody important instead of a regular old traffic cop.

  “Anybody at the desk could’ve helped you in the vault,” Malisha told him, even though she was flattered that he had specifically requested her. “All you need to do is sign in on the log, and we’ll get you the control key.”

  Noble had grinned.

  “I didn’t want just anybody. I wanted you.”

  Malisha looked up into his strong, rugged face. That thing she’d felt the first time he smiled up at her was there again. But stronger this time. A whole lot stronger.

  “What you want with me, Mr. Browne?”

  “I want your number,” he said boldly. Then added, “And I wanna show you something too.”

  Malisha had almost shit when they used their keys to open the box, and Noble stepped back to show her what was inside.

  “What in the world is that?” she asked, stunned. Her mind just wouldn’t let her believe what her eyes were seeing right in front of her.

  “It’s gold,” Noble whispered softly. He stared at it with mad respect, and Malisha almost felt like they were in church. “Gold bars. I collect them.”

  Close ya damn mouth! Malisha chastised herself for acting like she’d never seen money before. Of course she had. Tens of thousands of dollars passed through her hands every day, and at any given moment there was more than a million dollars sitting right inside their vault. She wasn’t pressed out at the sight of mega dollars. But mega gold was something else. She’d never really seen it in bar form before, and she damn sure didn’t know any men who were stacking it like this dude was.

  She forced her eyes off the glittering metal.

  “You’re a traffic officer, right?”

  Noble nodded, then smiled.

  “I’m wearing the uniform and carrying the badge, ain’t I?”

  Malisha shrugged. “Yeah, you are. But I didn’t think traffic cops made that kind of money in New York. I must be working the wrong job.”

  This time Noble shrugged. “Or maybe you’re just working it the wrong way. I’ve been investing in gold for a long, long time. If you hold on to anything of value long enough, your bottom line will go up.”

  Malisha smirked. “Not in this crazy economy. I started buying bank stock four years ago when my son was born, and what I got back then for thirty-five dollars a share, is going for five dollars a share today.”

  “Yep,” Noble agreed. “I know it looks bad right now, but that’s the flow of the economic cycle. I invest in stocks and bonds too. And if you hold on to them long enough they’ll eventually do better.”

  “Yeah, okay.” Malisha was doubtful. The value of her little bit of stocks had damn near dried up. If she coulda got something decent for cashing them in, she woulda cashed those babies in a long time ago. “If you say so.”

  “I tell you what,” Noble had offered. “How about I take you out to dinner and we can talk more about the market? I can give you a few tips about investing in gold that might make you a much better profit than what you’re getting on other commodities right now.”

  Malisha shook her head.

  “Nah, that’s okay. I’m straight.”

  Nobled pressed her gently. “You said you have a son, right?”

  “Yeah.” She nodded. “I do.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Trey.”

  “And he’s four? I love little kids. How about the three of us hang out together sometime and grab a bite to eat?”

  Malisha sighed. She loved eating out. She remembered the days when her and Jamel used to hit plenty of nice restaurants. Jamel would always put Trey next to him in a high chair and feed his son right out of his plate. Those days, like most of Malisha’s other good days, were gone forever.

  “Nah,” Malisha said, shaking her head. “For real. That’s okay. My son was disabled in an accident. He uses a wheelchair and it’s kinda hard for us to get around in my tiny car. I can usually only take him out a few times a week, and that’s for his music lessons. Other than that, we’re pretty much homebound.”

  “That’s not a problem,” Noble said, then added smoothly, “I like kids and I like music too. I also have a nice-sized SUV. I can help you take Trey to his music lessons, if you let me. What do you say?”

  With just a moment’s hesitation, Malisha said yes.

  It was lunchtime, and Malisha was crossing the street to get to her car when out of nowhere a city bus ran the red light and started rolling through the intersection.

  “Watch it!” she screamed, jumping back just in time. She glared at the driver, who
she could have sworn had just had her eyes closed. She was a white chick with long blond hair, and she stomped on the brakes right after Malisha screamed.

  “You need to obey the damn law!” Malisha yelled as the white girl mouthed, “I’m sorry!” and the bus moved on. Malisha was pissed. She knew all too well what could happen when stupid people made driving mistakes. “I’m the one who had the damn light!” she screamed as the bus continued down the street.

  She watched the bus pull over to a crowded stop at the corner, and she was tempted to run over there and curse the white girl out for damn near clipping her, but Malisha’s anger turned into sorrow as she crossed the street and caught a glimpse of her white Ford Taurus.

  “Oh, hell no. I know I don’t see what I think I see,” she whispered under her breath as she jetted farther down the block. She had timed herself, and there was no way her meter should have already expired. Please no, please no, please no ... but when she got close enough to see what was up, she bust out in tears.

  Another parking ticket was waving from her grimy windshield.

  Why me? Malisha screamed inside. She rushed over to the meter and saw that there was still two minutes left on it. How could she have gotten a ticket when the meter was still running? How the hell was she supposed to pay the twenty or so tickets she already had when she could barely afford to put quarters in the meter every day?

  Malisha started stressing. She had already gotten a ton of notices about her unpaid parking tickets. She was about to be considered a scofflaw, and pretty soon these city fools were gonna put a damn boot on her tire. And how was she supposed to get to work for two weeks out of the month then?

  After paying her restitution to the bank and putting a little bit down on all her other bills, she only had enough money left over for a week’s worth of Metro rides each payday. That meant, every other week she was broke and ass out. The only reason she was able to get to work on those off weeks at all was because Jamel’s friend Poppy worked at a gas station and he hooked her up with a few extra gallons on her nonpay weeks.