Madam, May I

by Niobia Bryant

  The woman nodded and released a breath that seemed to vibrate into the air.

  “I’m surprised to see you here,” Desdemona said, accepting her glass of wine from the bartender and taking a sip.

  “I’m an accountant at the firm that handled the counting of the votes for the awards,” she said, her eyes brimming with pride. “I’m on track to become a junior partner.”

  Zora’s wide-set eyes and innocence had made her a favorite for consorts seeking to be coddled and comforted. Her dalliances had never been about wild and adventurous sex, but sweet and tender lovemaking—not every consort’s cup of tea, but for those who chose that, they paid well. After just two years she had earned enough to graduate from college debt-free and retired from service to establish herself in her accounting career.

  “Not bad for a little black girl from Newark,” Desdemona said, raising her glass to toast the poised and polished young woman standing before her.

  Zora licked her lips and blinked her eyes as if to fight back some emotion tied to her upbringing even as she raised one of the wineglasses she held to touch it lightly to Desdemona’s. “Are you still only taking fifty percent?” she asked, changing the subject and lightening the mood.

  “The accountant in you is asking that, Zora,” she said. “What would Kitty think?”

  Kitty was the name she had used as a courtesan.

  “Touché,” Zora said.

  Desdemona fell silent as a bald man of average height and cute looks stopped next to Zora and eased his hand on her lower back as he pressed a kiss to her temple. And in less than a few seconds, she took in their wedding rings, Zora’s unease, and the proprietary look in his eyes.

  He’s picked up on Zora’s vibe with women and is worried. He’s not wrong. Some of her happiest consorts were women.

  “I thought I lost you,” he said.

  Desdemona said no more and turned away from them. “Who’s that, babe?” he asked.

  “I don’t know her,” Zora lied to him.

  In truth, she doesn’t. Hell, do I even know myself?

  Desdemona left the party, ready to leave the celebrity and the fanfare behind. Once in the back of her Lyft Lux Black XL, she looked out the tinted window at the city still vibrant and alive with lights, noise, and movement, but her thoughts were on her disdain for the type of pretense and falsehood in which Zora and her husband dwelled. She’d had enough of that growing up . . .

  “Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray to God my soul to take,” six-year-old Desdemona said with her eyes pressed closed tight and her hands pressed together beneath her chin as she knelt by her bed. “God bless Daddy, Miss Zena, my teacher Miss Scott, new black Barbie doll, and the braids Miss Zena gave me today, and my momma up there with you in heaven.”

  “A-men,” she said in unison with her father and stepmother, Zena, before lovingly stroking the heart-shaped locket she wore around her neck.

  “Okay, up in bed,” Zena said, folding back the covers of her twin-size bed in her princess-themed bedroom in shades of pink.

  Desdemona did as she was bidden, smiling up at her father and Miss Zena as each bent to press a kiss to her forehead. She missed her mother and talked to her in heaven so much that people thought she had an invisible friend, but things had turned out to be nice at her father and Miss Zena’s. Never enough to make her forget her mother, but enough to make her loss a little easier to take.

  “Good night,” she said, before turning on her side and hugging her sweet-smelling pillow close.

  Miss Zena turned off the castle-shaped lamp on her nightstand.

  They left the room together, leaving her room door slightly ajar, and Desdemona closed her eyes, falling asleep.

  Desdemona blinked, pushing the sweet and tender memory aside as the car hit an infamous NYC pothole and jostled her body back and forth a bit on the back seat of the SUV. She was thankful when it pulled to a stop before her building. “Have a good night,” she said to the burly driver before opening the back door.

  “Same to you,” he said.

  Desdemona tucked her clutch under her arm as she crossed the sidewalk to the double doors of the building. She smiled and nodded at the doorman as he held the door for her. In the elevator she leaned back against the wall, lightly patting her clutch against her thigh.

  I wish I didn’t care. But I did. I do.

  Once in her apartment, she didn’t bother with many lights, preferring the beauty of the lit nightscape through her windows. She stepped out of her shoes, removed her artsy cape and let it drop to the floor, and pulled the pins from her knot now to let her hair free as she walked across the living room and leaned against the sill to look out at the reflection of the city against the Hudson River.

  Crossing her arms over her chest, she lightly stroked her clavicle as her memories of her past reclaimed her attention. Loneliness was something she thought she had gotten used to. The death of her father just five years after her mother had been tough. The treatment of her by her stepmother after his death had made her mourning even worse.

  Another death. More change . . .

  Ten-year-old Desdemona stood in the doorway of Miss Zena’s bedroom, hating the nervousness she felt about talking to this woman who had become a stranger to her again. Her eyes darted to her father’s side of the bed, and she missed him like crazy. It had been just a month since he died, but everything was different.

  She is different.

  Desdemona eyed her stepmother sitting on the foot of the bed in her nightgown rubbing lotion on her arms. She stopped suddenly, and her face became tight with annoyance. Desdemona stiffened.

  “What?” she snapped, looking straight ahead as if avoiding even laying eyes on her.

  At that moment she wished she didn’t have to bother her at all. But she did. She had no one else to rely on. “Could you do my hair?” she asked, her voice soft and hesitant.

  She didn’t bother to add that her fuzzy and unkempt braids were drawing too much attention from classmates.

  Zena released an agitated breath before rising from the bed to retrieve the hair comb, brush, and hair grease from the adjoining bathroom. “Come on,” she said with barely concealed irritation.

  That’s how it always was. The new normal. She would do what was required: cook, clean, wash clothes, and send her to school, but every second of it was laced with her annoyance. Her coldness. It was clear she did what she did out of obligation and not love.

  She hates me.

  Desdemona walked into the bedroom, her feet bare and her steps padded by the plush carpeting. She sat down on the edge of the bed, already knowing to hold her neck stiff because Miss Zena’s rough movements would cause her head to jerk back and forth. It was why she waited to remind her about her hair for two weeks.

  “If your little behind wasn’t so grown you would tie your hair up like I said and make it last longer,” Zena said.

  “I will,” she said softly, hating that pang of hurt she felt.

  Miss Zena never hit her, but there were no hugs either. Not anymore.

  Why do you hate me? Desdemona mouthed, wanting to give voice to the words. To her feelings.

  But she didn’t.

  She knew the answer. Kinda.

  The day of her father’s funeral she overheard Zena telling someone how she was stuck raising the child her husband had with another woman when she wasn’t able to ever have one of her own.

  “Maybe, in a weird way, she is your chance to be a mother, Zena,” the woman she had spoken to had said.

  “Or she’s a daily reminder shoved down my throat,” Zena had replied. “His will leaves everything to her, and for me to get a stipend every week I have to agree to be her trustee. So, I don’t have any choice but to raise her. Daniel fucked me over once again.”

  Well over twenty years and she remembered her stepmother’s rejection of her so very clearly.

  I don’t have any choice but to raise
her.

  Being somewhere when you knew you weren’t wanted was a bad feeling—particularly for a kid. It took adulthood for her to understand that her mother had been her father’s mistress, and the façade Zena put on of the happy family faded with the death of her father.

  It was one of the first lessons Desdemona learned about honesty and trust.

  She turned from the window and looked around her apartment. The fine things in her life that she acquired on her own. She was thankful for it all. The highs and the lows. The lessons and the blessings. “Not bad, kiddo,” she said, before turning to cast her gaze out at the view once more.

  Chapter Three

  One month later

  “Yoweeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”

  At the high-pitched squeal of pleasure, Desdemona and Denzin shared a look across the island in the kitchen of the Riverdale estate.

  “Plum,” they said in unison, both without a doubt who could make a grown man hit a falsetto note to rival an opera singer.

  “Did you know the term ‘pimping’ is from the early eighteenth century?”

  Desdemona tilted her head down to look at Denzin over the rim of her oversize tortoiseshell glasses. “It didn’t mean then what it means now,” she said. “And I’m not a pimp.”

  Denzin flipped the page of the book he was reading. “I agree you have no pimp-hand.”

  She dropped the pen she was using to check through the list of her courtesans’ latest round of blood tests—everyone was drug and disease free. “If you would like me to backhand you, I can,” she said.

  He chuckled. “No thank you, Mademoiselle,” he said.

  “There’s a level to this, and I’m not scaring or beating anyone and we all make good money together,” she said, her tone offended.

  “Yes, we do,” he agreed, before falling silent.

  Desdemona crossed her legs in the crimson red matte jersey floor-length skirt she wore with a matching cap-sleeved crop top. She settled back against the padded back of the high chair as she pushed her spectacles atop her curls. She eyed him. “How’s your mom?” she asked.

  Denzin’s brows creased. “She passed away last month,” he said, looking at her before shifting in his seat and looking away.

  Desdemona eyed him curiously. “I’m sorry to hear that, Denzin. Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.

  He shrugged a bit. “We’re not friends,” he simply said.

  True.

  She shifted her gaze away from his.

  “You only know my mother was sick at all because you asked me why I wanted to get into the business,” Denzin said. “Hell, I don’t even know your real name.”

  She leveled her eyes with his. “None of that means I don’t care about any of you and what you’re going through,” she said, reaching over to lightly grip his hand. “Are you okay?”

  He nodded and turned his attention back to his book.

  His mother had suffered from a rare disease, and he insisted on being her caregiver—physically and financially. He needed both the free time and fast money that work as a courtesan afforded him. It wasn’t just his dedication to his mother and his beauty and physique that led Desdemona to hire him. She trusted him. There was no one she trusted more.

  Desdemona used her pinky finger to flick her glasses back down on her nose before turning her attention back to the file before her. Once she was done with it, she reached for the all-black cross-cut paper shredder at her feet to set it atop the island. She shredded everything.

  The silence was broken up only by the steady bzzz of the motor of the shredder and the occasional flip of the pages of Denzin’s book. Fahrenheit 451.

  “Wasn’t there a movie with Michael B. Jordan’s fineness with the same name?” she asked, remembering watching the film on Netflix last year. “Is it good?” she asked, removing her glasses and folding them before placing them in the red alligator case.

  Denzin glanced up at her. “Yeah, it’s pretty dope,” he said. “You can get it when I’m done.”

  She pushed aside the nervousness she immediately felt. “No thanks. I prefer TV to books,” she said, removing three green envelopes and a stack of cash from her Louis Vuitton tote. “I get bored quick.”

  “Cool,” he said from behind the book before turning another page.

  Desdemona placed two thousand dollars in each envelope. Her task complete, she drummed her stiletto nails against the top of the island as she looked about the chef’s kitchen. She sighed, crossed and uncrossed her legs, and shifted in her seat.

  “You’re bored.”

  She eyed him.

  He folded the top corner of the page and closed his book.

  “I am,” she admitted, looking down at her diamond butterfly bracelet and stroking the wings of one that seemed to be in mid-flight.

  “You’ve been feeling that for a while now,” he said assuredly.

  “I have.”

  “What’s the end game, Mademoiselle?” Denzin asked.

  “Who says there is one?” she countered.

  He nodded.

  “The same could be said for you . . . especially with the passing of your mother,” she said.

  His eyes flashed for a moment with pain that was haunting.

  She knew the loss of a parent all too well.

  “I’m not done yet. I’m not bored yet,” he said. “But I have an end game.”

  She leaned forward, crossing her arms atop the cool stone. “Care to share?”

  “Not yet.”

  Desdemona looked at her watch.

  “And your exit plan?” he asked.

  “Yet to be determined,” she said, rising to stand in her black open-toe wedge heels with large bows at the ankles.

  She didn’t miss that over the edge of the book his eyes lingered on her breasts sans bra with her nipples affected by the chill of the air-conditioning. “There’s a hair-thin line between employed and fired, Denzin,” she said decisively, not wanting to encourage a level of comfort in which he looked to her as a sexual object.

  His eyes went back to his book.

  She had no interest in bedding Denzin and wanted him to return the favor in kind.

  Cha-ching. Cha-ching. Cha-ching.

  She picked up her iPhone. She frowned a bit as she answered the call. “Yes?” she asked, walking out of the kitchen via the French doors to the rear porch. The night did nothing to keep the summer heat from immediately pressing against her body.

  “I didn’t sign up for a threesome.”

  Desdemona frowned. “And I didn’t arrange one,” she said, her voice filled with steel. “Where are you?”

  “I’m in one of the bathrooms. I lied and told them I had to shower first.”

  “Door locked?” she asked, as she paced the length of the porch.

  “Definitely.”

  Desdemona had sent Neesa on a session with Reverend B. C. Hines, a married televangelist of a megachurch in Atlanta with forty thousand members in his congregation and reportedly $80 million in annual revenue. “You dressed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Leave the hotel suite while I’m on the phone,” she said, waving her hand as something lightly flew against her cheek.

  “Actually, this is the only night I’m working and—”

  “You need the payment,” Desdemona finished, reentering the house.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m on the way,” she said, grabbing the envelopes, cash, and her other items to dump into her tote before she strode past the island and ended the call.

  “Everything good?” Denzin asked, closing his book again and rising to his feet.

  Desdemona nodded and gave him a reassuring smile. “Nothing I can’t handle,” she said over her shoulder as she left the kitchen.

  She made her way to the elevator and rode up to the second floor. She had a full house. All three bedrooms were occupied. The father and pair of sons were celebrating their pharmaceutical company’s recent $32 billion acquisition of its largest competitor.
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br />   She stopped at each door and dropped an emerald envelope in each plastic wall file holder attached to the wood with removable adhesive. Normally, the paramours collected the remaining fee beyond the profit on the dress purchase and the deposit before the session started and left the cash in white envelopes on the door for her to retrieve and divide. Green envelopes indicated everything in it was meant for them plus whatever tip their consorts gave them.

  She skipped the elevator and quickly descended the rear steps to reach the hall leading from the mudroom to the back of the kitchen. She activated the automatic starter of her vehicle as she strode across the mudroom to the door leading into the three-car garage. Her Maserati crossover awaited her.

  Behind the wheel, she dialed number twelve on her contact list. It rang once before Reverend Hines answered. “Which is the commandment about stealing?” she calmly asked.

  He chortled.

  “And before you start, there are no TV cameras and you are not in your pulpit, so save me the bible verses and hallelujahs,” she inserted dryly.

  His chuckles ceased. “Mademoiselle—”

  “Who are your colleagues?” she asked.

  “Two good servants of the Lord—”

  She sighed heavily. “Rev, please play with your congregation and not me?” she asked.

  “I’m the only one she had to service. They were just going to watch,” he said, his Georgia accent heavy.

  “And that would have cost you an additional grand. See how we circled back to stealing. You know this is all against the rules,” she reminded him.

  He fell silent.

  “Who are they?” she asked again as she dipped in and out of traffic, intent on reaching Manhattan as quickly as possible without drawing the attention of highway patrolmen.

  “They’re two ministers from my church. I vouch for them.”

  “Their names, Rev.”

  “Walter Young and Luther Poll,” he supplied.

  “Thank you,” she said even though she felt wary about whether he was telling the truth. “Get rid of them, please. I’ll be at your suite in fifteen minutes.”