by Carl Weber
“Sandra, just give me two weeks. That’s all I’m asking. I’ve gotta figure out a way to tell my kids.” It was the best I could give her. I was still too scared to give her a wholehearted “yes.” I really did need to think about how to tell them, but I was also buying myself a little more time to get used to the whole idea of being in a committed relationship.
She nodded. “I understand. But you should understand this: If you don’t make a decision in two weeks, I will.”
Jamie
25
“Baby, I’m gonna miss the hell out of you.”
Louis pulled the covers back, kissing me on each breast as he stood next to our bed. I wriggled lower so that our lips met.
Things had been good between us recently, much better than should have been expected considering what I found in the briefcase in the basement. He hadn’t given me one reason to be jealous, not one suspicious phone call or text, so part of me had pushed the contents of the briefcase to the back of my mind. That was the part of me that wanted things between me and Louis to work out. I loved him so much, and I really wanted to believe that he wasn’t doing anything behind my back. So when things were good, I just went with the flow.
Now, the other part of me was still working on a plan. I could have just confronted Louis about the driver’s license, but I knew that wouldn’t be enough. Even if he was busted, he would act just like any other man and come up with an innocent story, like it was an old fake ID or something. And me, loving him the way I did, might believe any flimsy excuse just because I wanted it to be true. So, no, I wasn’t gonna give him a chance to lie to me. I would hold on to what I knew—that Louis got texts from a strange woman that made him run out of the house when we were about to get busy, and he had ID from Detroit, where he’d never mentioned living—until I knew for sure what it all meant. Then, if I discovered that he did indeed have another family or a whorish lifestyle, I ’d hit him over the head with it so hard it would knock him on his ass.
In the meantime, I kept quiet about things and enjoyed all the good loving Louis gave me. He’d been really attentive lately. The night before, he took me to Louie’s, a romantic seafood restaurant in Long Island. The food was delicious, and the service was great—he must have slipped the waiter some money or something, because I swear they treated us like we were regulars. This morning, he was getting ready to go away for a few days. This was his first business trip in a while, and I wanted to give him a little going-away present.
Our kiss became passionate. I slid my hand up his thigh, reaching for his penis as I attempted to seduce him back into bed.
“Uh-uh, no can do.” He backed out of my reach, shaking his head.
“Um, are you sure about that?” I asked, looking down at his stiff member, which told me something different.
“I’ve got to get going.”
“But he wants to play. And so do I.” I rubbed my hands over my erect nipples, where he’d been kissing just moments earlier. “Besides, you started this.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” He placed the covers back on top of me.
I kicked them off and got into my best centerfold pose. I dared him to walk away as I rolled over onto my stomach, arched my back, and turned so he could see all that I offered.
“Fuck!” He licked his lips, enjoying the view, and I hoped he was on the verge of doing something he knew he shouldn’t.
“No, fuck me,” I teased. He stepped closer and ran his hand over my ass. I reached up and began to stroke his dick.
“Babe,” he whined, glancing at the clock. “You gonna make me late.”
“No, I’m going to make you very late,” I promised as I lowered my lips onto his penis. I was ready to swallow him whole, and for a second I thought he was going to relax and let me do what I did best. But before I could really get going, he pulled himself out—and I wasn’t happy about it.
“You know I want to …”
“So do it.” I took a lick and he moaned.
“Mmm, this isn’t fair.”
I gave him another lick.
“Please, baby, I can’t.”
I stopped, holding him in my hand and looking up at him. “Yes, you can.”
“Really, I can’t. I have to go by the shop, and then I gotta get on the road.”
“You expect me to believe you can go three whole days without getting some?” I pouted. It wasn’t often that Louis turned down one of my patented blow jobs, and my radar was kicking in. Something wasn’t right.
“It’s only three days. Besides, I got some last night. And as good as you were, that should hold me a hell of a lot longer than three days.” He laughed and kissed me on the cheek.
What straight man in his right mind turns down oral sex, no matter how much he got the night before? I was about to ask him that, but he darted into the bathroom almost like he was running away. I heard the shower running; I assumed it was a cold one.
I wasn’t used to Louis resisting me, and I wasn’t liking it at all. Hell, we were still in that honeymoon stage, or at least we should have been, yet here I was practically throwing myself at him, and he was more interested in getting to work on time. This was not a good sign.
I ’d seen my daddy turn down offers from some fine women over the years, and it usually meant only one thing: He had someone else offering something better. This one time, a lady from the church showed up, looking ready to get busy on the front stoop before Daddy even invited her inside. The fool had no idea I was sitting in the living room watching TV and saw the whole thing. She was rubbing all over my father’s chest, whispering in his ear, no doubt telling him all the nasty things she wanted to do to him. You should have seen the look on her face when Daddy basically said, “No, thanks,” and sent her on her way. Even I was a little shocked that he was telling her to leave, because this was one beautiful woman. But, of course, thirty minutes later, someone even hotter showed up, and it was obvious from the way he greeted her that he had been expecting her visit. He gave me money to take the bus to the mall, and then he escorted contestant number two back to his bedroom. So, with experience like that under my belt, I knew that it was never a good sign when a man turned down sex.
I headed to the bathroom, determined to give Louis one more chance to make me think differently. I climbed into the shower behind him.
“Can you pass me the soap?”
Louis handed me the soap, but he didn’t seem interested in me being in there with him, naked, slippery, and ready for action. He picked up the shampoo and lathered up his hair. I slipped my hands between his legs and massaged him until he started to grow. The whole time, he just finished washing his hair and rinsing the soap bubbles off.
“Jamie, I got to go.” He moved my hand away, did a final rinse, and stepped out of the shower, leaving me in there feeling like a fool.
A few minutes later, as I watched him get dressed, I said, “Hey, why don’t I go with you?”
If he had nothing to hide, there was no reason I couldn’t go with him. His answer didn’t help ease my worries one bit.
“I got so much work to do, you’d be lonely. Besides, that crappy motel I’m staying at is no place for a bona fide princess. You’d hate it.”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
“Jamie, you think Red Lobster is slumming it. There ain’t no way you’d enjoy it.”
“I could deal with it.”
“But I don’t want you to ‘deal with it.’ Besides, I’ll be home before you know it. Three days isn’t a long time.”
“I don’t like being away from you even for a day.”
“Don’t you have a hair appointment tomorrow anyway?”
I ’d had a standing appointment for the past five years and he knew it, but he also knew I didn’t let it hold me hostage. My hairdresser would always fit me in another day if I had to reschedule. Besides, what man in his right mind cares about a woman’s hair anyway? This was some bullshit excuse.
“Please,” I whined. “I’d much rather go w
ith you.”
“Next time, honey.” I kept pushing, and he kept refusing. We were at a standstill. “We’ll go away as soon as this is over.”
“As soon as what’s over?”
“Just all this work.” He kissed me gently on the lips and walked toward the door. Why did I keep getting the feeling that as soon as he didn’t like where the conversation was going, he would just run away? It was time for me to get serious about finding some answers.
As soon as Louis’s car pulled out of the driveway, I opened my computer. Thank God for the information superhighway. I went to one of those search engines where you can type in a person’s name and get their vital information, like addresses, phone numbers, and any known relatives. If he was telling me the truth, then a search on Louis would reveal no known relatives.
What I discovered after putting his name into several different search engines was that not only did he have no known relatives, but also Louis Kennedy of Jamaica, Queens, had only one known address—the one we were living at together. There were no records of him ever having lived anywhere else. I checked the names of a few other people, including myself and Darnel, to test my theory: Anyone who has ever had a credit card statement or a phone bill mailed to them will have that address show up on their search records. Most people move a few times in their lives, and their records will show at least a few different addresses. This was true for me and my brother, as well as for my father and Crystal, but not for Louis. Basically, this search engine made it look like Louis didn’t even exist before he moved into Jamaica, Queens. What the hell was going on?
I typed in a search for Rashid Jensen. I had an inkling of what I would find, and my stomach was in knots as I pushed ENTER. Just as I had feared, there were in fact records of a Rashid Jensen in Detroit.
I typed in my credit card number and paid to get the information on Rashid Jensen. And there it was in black and white: the same address that was on the driver’s license in the basement and a phone number to go with it.
With shaking hands, I dialed the number. I don’t know what I expected to hear, but best-case scenario would have been a recording saying the number had been disconnected. That’s not at all what I got.
“Hello?” It was a woman’s voice, with lots of talking and laughing in the background, like she had a full house.
It took me a moment to get my thoughts together to ask, “Um, do you know a Rashid Jensen?”
I heard the woman say, “Somebody’s calling for Rashid,” in a muffled voice, like she’d placed a hand over the receiver. The background noise became silent.
She spoke to me again. “Yeah, I know him. Why? Who is this?”
She had the nerve to ask me that! Who the hell was she? “This is his woman, that’s who this is!” I shouted to make sure she knew that I wasn’t just some ho on the side. If anyone was on the side, it was her.
“His woman?” She sounded surprised. Again, there was some muffled talking to the other people in the room with her, but I couldn’t make out what she said this time. “So you live with him?” she asked when she came back on the line.
“Yes, I live with him. He sleeps with me every night.” Take that, bitch. You the ho, not me.
“You don’t live in Detroit, do you?” she asked.
“No, we live in Jamaica.” I made sure to emphasize the we.
Again she started talking to the other people. Why did she need to keep conferencing with them? Did they share one damn brain or something? “Jamaica, Queens, or the island of Jamaica?”
“Do I sound like I’m from the islands? We live in Jamaica, Queens.”
This time when she relayed my answer to her people, I heard lots of chattering in the background. For some reason, this news was really exciting them. I was starting to get a little leery of this woman and her crew. She was asking too many questions, and it dawned on me that she didn’t seem to be upset in the least that I said I was Louis’s woman. If she was his wife or something, she sure wasn’t acting like it.
“So who are you to him?” I asked. “And how do you know him?”
“It’s a long story, but I was planning on coming to New York in the next few days. Why don’t we get together so I can explain it to you?” she offered, like we’d go to lunch and be all civil and shit. Didn’t she realize this was my man we were talking about?
“I can come to your house if you like,” she said when I didn’t answer. “What’s your address?”
She must have thought I was some kinda stupid. Why the hell would I tell her where I lived so she could come over here and do God knows what? She might not have seemed jealous right now, but maybe that was all just an act. For all I knew, she wanted my address so she could come over here and beat my ass.
I hung up the phone, glad that I had blocked my number. I was hoping that the phone call would give me some answers, but I felt even more confused than before. Was this Rashid person the man I knew as Louis, or was it some kind of crazy coincidence that Louis had an ID with that name on it? And this woman in Detroit said she knew Rashid Jensen, but I didn’t get a description from her, so I couldn’t even be sure we were talking about the same man. Something treacherous was going on, but I still didn’t quite know what it was. All I knew was if it turned out that the man I loved was a bigger womanizer than my father, Louis’s ass was gonna be sorry he ever met me.
Darnel
26
I checked my rearview mirror, then glanced at my watch before I turned the corner to drive down Keisha’s block. It was 8:45, and there she was, like clockwork, standing next to her car. She was looking fine as hell in a hot-pink top and a tight skirt, but the frustration on her face didn’t do her beauty any justice. The way she was shaking her head told me she was not having a very good start to her day. I almost—and I do say almost—felt sorry for her as I pulled up next to her car.
I rolled down my window and asked, “Everything a’ight?”
She sucked her teeth and glared at me. “I’m not a fool, Darnel. I know you did this.”
“Huh? Did what?” I bit the inside of my cheek to suppress a smile.
She pointed at her front driver’s side tire. “You let the air out of my tire.”
“What are you talking about? I just got here.”
“You are such a fucking liar, you know that?”
“You need to stop trippin’, Keisha. I was just on my way to work. I didn’t do anything to your tire.”
“Yeah, right. This is a little out of the way for you, isn’t it?”
“Nope. I just moved to the other side of Baisly Park, so I guess we’ll be seeing a lot of each other, won’t we, neighbor?” I flashed a smile and put my car back into DRIVE. “Good luck with that tire. I know how you hate to be late for work.”
I pulled off slowly and started counting backward: “Three … two …” And before I got to one, she shouted, “Darnel, wait!” I put my foot on the brake and waited for her to jog up to my car. She leaned in the passenger’s side window.
“My boss is going to be mad if I’m late again. Can you—”
“How about if I give you a lift? That tire’s gonna have to wait.”
She glanced around the block as if looking for a better option than the one I ’d just offered. But it wasn’t like a tow truck was going to come down this street anytime soon, and she’d always been too damn cheap to pay for AAA membership, so riding with me was her only choice if she wanted to keep her job. I had her right where I wanted her. Since she’d stopped answering my phone calls, I felt like I had no other way to get her to talk to me.
“Oh, all right.” She went back to get her purse, then returned, looking like she dreaded every step.
When she got in, the scent of her perfume filled my car. It was something new and light, and it smelled kind of fruity. It wasn’t the scent I was used to, but on Keisha, anything smelled good to me. Once again, I realized how much I loved this girl, even if I hated her.
As I pulled away from the curb, Keisha sat
silently and glared out the window. She was leaning as far away from me as she could possibly get. I tried to reach out and touch her shoulder, but she jerked it away from me.
“Why are you so tense, Keisha? You should be happy I was driving by this morning, or else you never would have made it to work on time.”
She looked at me and rolled her eyes. “Please. You think I don’t know you planned this whole thing?”
“I still don’t know why you’re accusing me of doing something to your car,” I said with mock innocence. I was so furious about what I ’d read in her diary that I didn’t really give a shit if she knew I ’d messed up her tire.
“I’m accusing you because no one else would do some shit like that to me.”
“But why would I do something like that? I love you, Keisha.”
“I don’t know why you’d do it, but for some sick reason, you did. Just like you broke into my apartment.”
Damn! Now, that one I did care if she knew about. The last thing I needed was some more charges against me. I pressed her for details.
“What? Someone broke into your apartment? When?” I did a pretty good job of sounding shocked, if I do say so myself.
“You know when,” she said, folding her arms across her chest and giving me an evil glare.
“No, Keisha, I don’t. Was anything taken?”
She turned her head away and looked out the window as she answered. “You know what’s missing.”
I ignored her comment. “So, did you get a locksmith to come fix your locks?” I asked.
“They weren’t broken.”
“Wait. So, the locks weren’t broken…. How do you know someone broke in?” Things were looking better for me by the second.
Her shoulders sagged in defeat. “I just do. I was in the shower, and I heard a voice.”
“And did you see anyone?”
“No. I ain’t stupid. I wasn’t about to get out the shower and go investigate. What if it was some rapist or something?”
