by Mary Monroe
For a fleeting moment a hellish thought crossed my mind: Somehow Wendy had discovered my deception. That thought didn’t stay with me long because Wendy had been the one to encourage me to use the company credit card for personal reasons in the first place. She couldn’t expose me without cooking her own goose.
I convinced myself that whatever it was that Wendy needed to discuss with me, it had nothing to do with the credit card.
CHAPTER 43
It was a busy morning. With the telephones ringing off the hook and customers in groups of three and four dropping by, Wendy, Pam, and I were too busy to do much of anything else but what we were being paid to do, for a change. With the exception of Dennis Klein going out to meet his wife for a cup of coffee around ten, Mr. Rydell and the rest of the reps remained in their offices until just before noon. Then they strutted through the reception area like a bunch of hens.
Wendy waited by the side of my desk for Pam to run out and get her lunch. She was anxious to get me to that deli to have that mysterious discussion with me. During these few minutes, Wendy gave me quick hard glances, looking away each time I looked up from my desk and caught her looking at me. I didn’t know what it was she needed to discuss, but the sooner we got it over with, the better.
“Wendy, can you give me a hint as to what this is all about?” I asked in a gentle voice, cupping my hands on my desk.
“Trudy, this is hard enough for me. As a matter of fact, I need some air so I can clear my head and get my thoughts together,” Wendy replied, deepening the mystery. She spun around and ran to her cubicle, dashing back out with her purse. “I’ll see you at the deli,” she mumbled, running out the door.
As soon as Pam returned, a few minutes later, I joined Wendy at the deli next door. She was already seated at one of the tiny red plastic tables in a corner, with a grilled-cheese sandwich on a plastic red plate in front of her. Now that I had become accustomed to eating at the more upscale restaurants, I felt out of place in a cheap deli. Getting used to the “good life” had not been an easy thing for a person like me to do. Somehow I had managed to do it, and I enjoyed every minute of it. However, now when I had to backslide to the way things used to be for me, I realized how much I had changed. I had to constantly keep in mind that the lavish lifestyle that I had borrowed for myself was still just that: borrowed.
Borrowed and stolen.
I never would have guessed that the private conversation Wendy wanted to have with me was about her love life. I was understandably surprised when she began. “Daryl broke up with me,” she announced, talking before I could even sit down in the weak-legged red chair across from her with the sandwich and bottle of water I’d grabbed. It had been a while since I’d sat on such a wobbly, cheap chair.
“I didn’t know that,” I said in a low voice, sincerely concerned. A couple at a table close to ours had turned to look and listen as soon as Wendy opened her mouth to speak. “Are you all right with that?”
I was hungry but not for what was on the plate in front of me. You would have thought that I was staring at a grilled mouse instead of the lopsided ham sandwich I’d selected. I made a mental note to treat myself to a lobster dinner with all the trimmings and a huge glass of champagne soon.
Wendy shrugged and blew her nose into a napkin and blinked. From the look on her face and the way she twisted and turned in her seat, she was in great pain. “The relationship wasn’t going to work out. I’ve known that for a long time. Long enough to have two kids.” Wendy sniffed and shook her shoulders and head, as if she could shake away her pain. “Besides, I always knew that a woman like me could do a lot better.” For the first time, I saw a side of Wendy that made me feel sorry for her but that didn’t last long. Nothing could have prepared me for the bombshell she hit me with next. “Trudy, I know how you went after Daryl.”
“Excuse me?” I used my tongue to push the food in my mouth to one side. I had to cough to keep from choking. As soon as I was able to swallow, I left my jaw hanging open as I stared at Wendy with an incredulous look on my burning face. “Why . . . I . . . I can’t believe my ears,” I stammered. I shifted in my seat and had to struggle to cross my legs. I held back a grin that was threatening to take over my face. “Please tell me you are kidding,” I said seriously, glancing around the room.
Wendy gave me a hot look. She sucked in a deep breath and fixed her eyes on me, shifting her gaze to every twitch my face made. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Wait a minute. Let’s back up here,” I said, holding up my hand and trying not to laugh. “You wanted to talk to me about me going after Daryl?” I had to stop talking long enough to laugh. It wasn’t just a chuckle it was a guffaw that brought tears to my eyes. “Where the hell did you get that idea?” I asked after I’d composed myself.
“Trudy, I can understand why a woman like you would go after a man like Daryl.” I didn’t know how to take the forlorn look Wendy gave me. She was the last person I needed to pity me. She snapped off a chunk of her cheese sandwich and washed it down with a huge swallow of Snapple. “It doesn’t matter.” She was serious.
“The hell it doesn’t!” I exclaimed. “What did Daryl tell you?” I was still more amused than I was angry.
“Do you deny that day in the park with him? He told me all about how you came on to him. And how you wouldn’t let up even after he told you all about me.” Wendy sighed, and then an unbearably sad look crossed her face. “I tell him all the time that he’s too pretty for his own good.”
“Look, let me straighten out this mess right now. Daryl came after me with both guns blasting. He told me he had him a White woman, but he never mentioned her name.” It was on the tip of my tongue to tell Wendy everything that Daryl had said about her but under the circumstances, I couldn’t. Her life was miserable enough. “And for the record, Daryl is not my type. I wouldn’t—I didn’t give him the time of day.” By now I was too angry to laugh again.
“Daryl has never lied to me,” Wendy said weakly. “He says he doesn’t even like . . . Black women. Especially ones that look like you.”
I tilted my head and stared at Wendy’s face for a long time. My ears were literally ringing. “Wendy, you can believe whatever you want. But if you think for one minute that I would go after a punk like Daryl, you are sadly mistaken. He has nothing I’d want and from what he told me, he has nothing to offer you either.”
“He loved me,” she said in a small voice. “He must have told me a thousand times.”
“I bet he did. And you believed him?”
“Of course I believed my man.”
“Then why are you wasting your time asking me what happened?” I sneered. My face felt like it was hot enough to fry an egg.
“I wanted to see if you’d be honest with me . . .” Wendy’s voice sounded so weak and pathetic, and she looked so neglected. I still felt sorry for her.
“What difference does it make? If you believe Daryl over me, why do you even ask?” I pushed the plate in front of me away. “This lunch was not a good idea,” I snapped. Surprisingly, I found myself wondering how Ann Oliver would have reacted if she had been the one who Wendy confronted. For one thing, I didn’t think that Wendy was stupid enough to believe that a woman like Ann would even speak to a man like Daryl. It bothered me that she thought I was. I started to rise. “We have to work together so I suggest we forget this conversation ever took place. As you know, there is enough drama going on with my job in other areas.” I didn’t have to spell it out. She knew I was talking about Ann.
“Trudy, please don’t go,” Wendy wailed, touching my arm.
“I think I should,” I hissed. “I need some air now.”
“I didn’t want to bring up this subject, but you seemed like the kind of person I could talk to woman to woman. Please don’t go. Please try to forget about Daryl.”
“Oh, I already have.”
“You are one of the few Black women I can call a close friend.”
I gave
Wendy a look that could have melted steel. If I was what she called a close friend, she was worse off than I thought. “Wendy, like I said, let’s forget this conversation about Daryl ever took place. There are more important things we can talk about other than Daryl. And if you want my opinion, dumping him was the smartest thing you’ve done since I met you.”
“I didn’t dump him, he dumped me,” Wendy admitted with an extreme pout. I was surprised that she wasn’t rolling on the floor crying like a baby.
“Well, either way, you are rid of him. You deserve somebody who appreciates you.”
“That’s the other thing I wanted to discuss with you,” Wendy said, suddenly blinking and grinning. I couldn’t believe how fast and far her moods could swing. It usually meant she’d had a few drinks. But there was a sparkle in her eyes that I had never seen before. “I’ve already met someone else anyway. Actually, I met him a few weeks ago. He made it clear that he wanted me to be his woman, even then. I’m a one-man woman, so I held him off until . . .” Wendy paused and actually looked embarrassed for a split second. “I couldn’t get him off my mind. That’s when I realized that things were not going to work out between Daryl and me. Lord knows I tried. I tried to the very end. You saw how sweet I was to him when we took you to Ann’s place. Well, he told me to my face to leave him alone and that’s just what I plan to do,” Wendy sniffed and lifted her chin, like she had just won a battle. “My new friend will be here any minute,” she squealed, clapping her hands together.
Before I could respond to Wendy’s announcement, a tall Black man in a dark gray suit entered the deli. He looked at me first as he started walking toward us, smiling and strutting like he owned the whole block.
A lot of men like him had been coming on to me since my makeover. But none I really liked enough to risk losing James over. I prepared myself to deliver the usual brush-off, but it wasn’t necessary.
This gorgeous, well-dressed Black man wrapped his arms around Wendy’s shoulders from behind and kissed the side of her face.
CHAPTER 44
“Hello, sweetheart. How are you today?” He had a nice deep voice and there was a lot of sincerity and passion in the look he gave Wendy. I was positively amazed. My jaw got so tight that I was afraid I might not be able to open it again.
Wendy sucked in her breath and turned to face the handsome Black man. “Hi, baby,” she cooed. Turning to me she said, “Trudy, this is Mark. He works at the bank next door. Mark, this is Trudy.”
“How you doing, sister?” Mark smiled, returning his attention to Wendy before I could respond. “I can’t stay, sweetie. I have several appointments I have to prepare for.”
“What about tonight?” Wendy whined, looking like a frump with mustard lining her thin lips.
“I’ll see you tonight just like I said I would. But I really do have to get back to the office.” Mark glanced at me and gave me a casual wave. “It was nice meeting you, Trudy.” Just like that, he was gone.
“What do you think?” Wendy wanted to know. There was a wide grin on her face, but her eyes seemed flat and empty. It was the same look I’d seen on the faces of too many other women, Black, White, and everything in between. It was the look of desperation. It bothered me to know that some women placed so much importance on having a man. But I had to admit to myself that I didn’t know how I would behave if I hadn’t already stashed James so firmly into my hip pocket.
“He’s a step up from Daryl,” I smirked, no longer interested in my ham sandwich. And, no longer upset over Wendy’s outrageous accusation. “Is it serious?” A great sadness hovered over my head like a heavy black cloud. Culturally, I was as Black as I could get. Biologically, half of the blood that flowed through my veins was White. I had no idea what it was to be a White woman in America and probably never would. I was happy with what I was, as far as race was concerned. Despite the fact that my daddy had chosen to marry a White woman, he had taught me to have a lot of racial pride. Therefore, as a Black woman, I shared the same frustration that a lot of other Black women I knew experienced on the subject of Black men with White women. On the other hand, the only reason I had not dated White men was because the right one had not approached me.
“I hope so.” Wendy placed her elbows on the table and gave me a thoughtful look. “My folks don’t like me dating Black men,” she announced, not waiting for me to comment. “I gave them hell for years. After the drugs, the drinking, and everything that goes along with it, I lost a lot of my self-esteem. When I thought I was ready to settle down, I didn’t have the nerve to go after any decent White men. I decided that only a Black man deserved what was left of me.”
“And they all seem to think the same thing,” I remarked, wondering if my White mother had thought the same of herself. “Despite what you think of yourself, you don’t seem to have any trouble attracting the kinds of men you like.”
“Before Daryl I was with a dentist. For a Black man he was as fine as they come,” Wendy stated with a wide smile on her face.
A dentist! A shiftless bum like Daryl was one thing. He was unemployed and crude. He was the kind of man who would go after a snake as long as it had a job and a pussy. But for a woman like Wendy to attract the cream of the crop of Black men it was a mystery and an insult to me and all other Black women. I couldn’t wait to discuss this indignation with Freddie.
Freddie was already at the bus stop when I got off work that day. As soon as we’d settled into our usual seat in the back, squeezed so close together on the lumpy seat that I could feel her breath on my face, I told her about my lunch with Wendy. I repeated word for word everything Wendy had said—except the part where she accused me of making a play for Daryl. I couldn’t bring myself to share something that ridiculous. I couldn’t stop myself from laughing when I told Freddie what Wendy had said about herself and Black men, but Freddie didn’t see the humor.
“That is not funny, girl. I can’t believe you let that skanky White bitch sit there and talk that shit to your face,” she scolded.
“Why should I care about her and that banker? I don’t want him and I doubt if he wants me.” I sniffed. “Or any other Black woman.”
“You should have said something. Especially when she said that shit about only Black men deserving what was left of her blond beauty. I hope that banker’s got a teeny-weeny dick.”
“Wendy and I were the only ones from the office who didn’t go to Ann’s sister’s funeral,” I said, hoping that the change of subject, especially one so morbid, would calm Freddie down.
“That Ann,” she said softly. “Now that’s a sister with a basket full of curses. First she gets mugged, now this. She must not be living right.” Freddie gave me a strange look.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, wiggling my nose as Freddie breathed on my face.
“I hope you don’t take on any of Ann’s bad luck,” Freddie replied, giving me a curious look.
“Why would you think that?”
“Fate is some tricky stuff, girl. You going around using Ann’s name and pretending to be her could open up a big old can of worms in the luck department. You don’t think about that?”
“No, I don’t. I wish you wouldn’t think about it either. Bad vibes attract bad vibes.”
“Well, let’s hope that’s all it attracts.”
I gave Freddie an exasperated look. “Since when did you get so philosophical?”
“I’m not. I’m just trying to help you keep this thing in perspective.”
“Well, you can stop that. Everything’s under control,” I said.
I didn’t know if it was what I said that made Freddie give me such a hopeless look or the uncertain voice that I’d said it with.
CHAPTER 45
Ann returned to work the following Tuesday looking good for someone in mourning. As a matter of fact, the woman looked downright dazzling. She waltzed through the reception area wearing a bright yellow silk dress with black polka dots that made her look like a cute bumblebee. She looked even better t
han she normally looked. Her eyes were nice and clear and her skin had a fresh dewy look about it. Not that I was looking for signs of decay, but I could have sworn that before she left, she’d had some faint lines and moderate crow’s feet on her face. Now she looked like she had had a weeklong Swedish facial or something even more extreme. And I was not the only one who noticed it.
“I bet she’s had a mini-facelift,” Pam decided with a nod after Ann had passed us. “She looks five years younger.”
Slithering from her cubicle like a serpent, Wendy joined in the conversation. “Ann is one of a kind. Black women are generally more concerned about politics, relationships, raising kids, church, and stuff; not vanity—except for the celebrities. It’s nice to see a regular Black woman who really works hard at her appearance like Ann,” Wendy said, looking straight at me as she spoke. Her eyes roamed over my entire body, making me squirm. “And, Trudy, if I had half the butt you have, I’d walk around naked every chance I got.” That Wendy. I gave her the most dead-pan expression I could come up with before I dismissed her with a wave so aggressive it made my arm hurt. I could have been a lot more abrasive, but trying to check a woman as far gone as Wendy was a lost cause. After the things she had said to me during our lunch at the deli I should have put her on my shit list. But as hard as I tried to ignore and dislike Wendy, I couldn’t.
For some strange reason certain things didn’t bother me the way they would have before Bon Voyage became part of my life. Things like Daryl’s bold lies and the confrontation about him with Wendy. As a matter of fact, I had to laugh every time I thought about Daryl. The only feelings that I had for him were feelings of pity. Most women like Wendy eventually came to their senses. Either that or they moved on to another man that they could take care of.
Ann had arrived an hour later than her usual time. She mumbled a greeting to Pam and ignored me completely. But I didn’t hold that against her because I knew from experience how deep a tragic situation could sink a person.
