Madam, May I

by Niobia Bryant

Desdemona offered him a smile. “Definitely not who I am. It has always been my job to protect my clients, and that doesn’t end because a wolf like you stole one of the chickens from the coop. I’m here to prove to you that you are not slick or being smart or protected by this move. I found you. Others can. She may. That’s all.”

  Hunter nodded as he adjusted his tie. “What do you want, Mademoiselle?”

  “What I’m owed for the miles you are about to put on Red’s pussy for free.”

  He held up his hands, motioning about the room. “Does any of this look free to you?”

  “No, it just looks temporary for Red,” she countered quickly. “The place to stay and pretty clothes and fancy food and accepting being hidden away... until you’re tired of her.”

  He smirked.

  “And until you pay me what you owe for the privilege of meeting her through me, then yes, it’s free,” Desdemona assured him.

  “And if I don’t pay you?”

  “Then you’re no longer just my ex-consort but also a thief, and thus no longer have access to my protection of your secrets,” she said, arching a brow as she tilted her chin up a notch and eyed him with an unrelenting stare. “Fifty thousand should do it once and for all.”

  Another stare between them. This one more hostile.

  He released a heavy breath as he rose. His steps echoed against the quiet.

  “And Hunter?” she said, reverting to his first name as a clear show of equality.

  He paused.

  “Betrayal cannot be met with loyalty.”

  She could count to ten before his steps resumed. Desdemona looked up at the sound of his footsteps nearing. For a brief second, she imagined him nearing her with a gun in his hands instead of cash.

  Pow!

  She blinked, finding him handing her the money instead. She removed her portable cash counter from her pocketbook, giving him a smile as she fed it the money and verified the amount. “Thank you,” she said, then rising from the seat to walk over to the rear of the other sofa to select two dresses from the stack. “I already charged the card you had on file for those two dresses. C.Y.A. all day. Right?”

  He just clenched his lips so tightly that the skin around them blanched.

  “Your info will be deleted today, and you will never see or hear from me again, Hunter.”

  “Good,” he mumbled.

  The front door opened, and Red entered, looking warily between them as she held a small brown paper sack.

  “Red, can I talk to you for a second to say goodbye? Alone,” Desdemona said.

  The ginger looked hesitant before giving Hunter a look begging his permission.

  Hunter threw his hands up in exasperation. “Get it over with and get her the fuck out of here, Red,” he said before leaving the room with short, angry strides.

  “I had every right to quit,” she began. “You said anything you did for us was a gift and not something to be repaid or held over our heads.”

  Desdemona nodded. “Absolutely true, Red,” she said. “Or should I call you Kevna now?”

  “I’m still Red to him,” she said with the hint of a smile.

  “And to you?” Desdemona asked. “Who are you? Or have you given up on your dreams of selling luxury real estate? Because sitting here waiting for him at his whim and his wife’s allowance will lead to you taking your eye off the ball.”

  Red looked down at her feet as she continued to hold the bag of bagels. “I’ll get back to it one day,” she said, not sounding like she believed it herself.

  “And he is giving you a stipend while you quit work?”

  “It’s not like that with him, Mademoiselle. I love him,” she said earnestly.

  Good grief.

  “Never forget that you matter, Kevna,” she said, intentionally using her real name.

  The woman looked up at her.

  “Any person entirely relying on someone else for money is foolish,” Desdemona said, reaching in her tote for the money. “Since I failed in teaching you that, little girl, I decided to look out for you.”

  Desdemona removed five thousand dollars from the stack to keep as a finder’s fee and crossed the space between them to drop the rest atop the bagels in her bag. “That’s forty-five thousand I just convinced your great love to pay me for stealing you from my roster. I only did that to ensure your naïve behind has a nest egg tucked away for the day he decides he’s just as tired of you as he is of his wife,” she said, walking over to bend the rest of the dresses over her arm. “Or if you decide you’re ready to leave and want a little something to help you do it. Either way, never contact me again.”

  Desdemona retrieved her tote and headed to the front door.

  Red reached out and grasped her wrist. “Thank you,” she stressed.

  She nodded. “Going forward, be smarter,” she advised before taking her leave.

  * * *

  Desdemona pressed her fingers to her mouth and then touched her father’s side of the standing headstone. She clung to it, looking down at his name engraved in the marble. It had been years since her last visit to his gravesite. Her reasoning was twofold. Coming there brought home to her that his body looked nothing like it did when he lived. Then to top it off, seeing that the other side of the headstone was still empty meant his wife—Zena—was still alive somewhere in the world.

  She hadn’t seen her since the night she ran away and was perfectly fine with keeping it that way. Dead or alive, Zena was of no consequence to her. On her twenty-first birthday, she had strolled into the office of Hervey Grantham and staked a claim to the balance of her father’s estate. She used it to expand her business and truly elevate from streetwalkers and call girls to her paramours once Number One gave her the co-sign and the wealthy consorts started calling.

  She rarely thought of the woman who had made her life hell, and hated the reminder that she wasn’t skidding on her own path to literal hell yet.

  To hell with her and her coordinates. I’m here for my daddy.

  Of late, the painting on her mantelpiece didn’t suffice to feed her hunger for her parents, so a visit was warranted. It was her father she remembered most.

  “I’m tired, Daddy,” she whispered, still stroking his headstone. “Not the ‘I’m tired and I’m ready to off myself and see you in heaven’ level of tired, but just ready for a change. Newness. Other. You know?”

  She gave the marble one last pat before walking along his grave to sit on the marble bench she had added to the foot of his grave years ago. Crossing her ankles, she tilted her head to the side. “I do wonder if you are proud of me, even though I know you wouldn’t be. You’re not. I’m sure you’re somewhere in heaven frowning, but no one is perfect. Not even you and Mama, but I love you both so much anyway, so I can only hope you both have the same grace for me.”

  The spring winds blew her hair back from her face, and the scent of the graveyard’s gardens filled the air. She allowed herself a moment to enjoy both, closing her eyes and inhaling deeply.

  “Is Loren right? Am I a part of the bigger problem?” she asked in a whisper, giving life to the seeds of doubt he had planted that last day they shared in her home.

  “One begets the other.”

  “Whatever,” she muttered.

  I’m good to people. Even when they aren’t good to me. Even when life hasn’t been good to me, Daddy.

  A beautiful multicolored butterfly fluttered up to her before landing on her knee. She smiled. It was the first she’d seen of the creatures since winter finally began to thaw.

  A symbol of change.

  She stroked the tattoo on her inner wrist when the insect rose and flapped away. Live with no regrets. Lately, she felt she had plenty.

  Cha-ching. Cha-ching. Cha-ching.

  She crossed her legs and reached for the phone from the side pocket of her Vuitton bag. Number thirty.

  “Hello,” she said, forcing lightness into her tone. “I haven’t heard from you in a while.”

  �
�Work has kept me busy, but now I need to unwind,” Jason Reedman said.

  “Absolutely. The whole weekend, like always?” she asked, shifting her eyes up to the sky.

  He chuckled. “Yes, the wife is away for the weekend, so it’s time to play,” he said, sounding amused.

  She opened her mouth to say something cute and flirty, but the words would not come, and the aversion to his glee about cheating on his wife was new to her.

  Is helping a husband cheat on his wife my fault, too? How, when he would just get to someone else? He chooses to cheat. He chooses to love the beauty of a woman with a stiff dick. I don’t make him or any of the others disrespect their vows.

  She rolled her eyes heavenward, enjoying a rather comical image of choking Loren until his head popped off his neck and floated away like a balloon. His effect on her thoughts and beliefs, even subconsciously, was more far-reaching than she ever imagined. It had been two weeks since she had sent him out of her life, but his imprint remained.

  Damn it.

  “Mademoiselle?”

  “Yeah? Yes,” she said, softening her tone as she stroked her brows. “I’ll get it all set up and call you back with details.”

  “Perfect.”

  Desdemona was glad when they ended the call. Nothing was perfect. Not this deal. Not life. Not love. None of it. She learned early that every situation was a series of making the best out of it as possible. “Y’all taught me that,” she said, looking down at the ground beneath which her father’s body lay. “And so have all of the people I have met over the years. So many people trying to improve their lives in the best way they think they can, and I try not to burden them with the brutality or coercing or disrespect that I got. All of the women—and some men—who went on to live better lives with better careers. People who are happier than they were when I met ’em. Hell, like Franco, who wants to save up the money for gender reassignment surgery. There are two sides to every story, and on this side of it, I did my best to make people happy, Daddy. Doesn’t that matter?”

  I should have said that to Loren, but no, I couldn’t. Not without revealing a piece of my life closed off to him.

  “Why is a woman who chooses to prostitute of her own free will any worse than women who plot to marry wealthy men or those who have numerous lovers because it feeds their ego? So, a woman who freely fucks is more honorable than one who charges?”

  It was always easy to argue with someone after the argument was done. She had all the proper responses for Loren now. It doesn’t matter. It’s done. We’re done.

  Desdemona looked around at the many graves surrounding her. “Daddy, I really gotta get some friends,” she muttered with a little chuckle and self-deprecating shake of her head.

  * * *

  Desdemona tapped the end of her sharpened pencil against the page of the GED prep workbook as she looked out the windows at her view from where she sat at the dining room table. She was finding it hard to ignore just how much time she and Loren had spent in the very same spot—she studied and he sketched.

  This absence was so different from the time he ended their tutoring sessions through an email. What had once been missing a fun person in her life was a longing for a lover. And her hunger for him—the all of him—was a hundred times worse under her very own roof.

  Memories of him were everywhere, left behind like a haunting spirit. Tempting her. Making it hard to forget him.

  “Shit,” she swore, dropping the pencil and raising her reading glasses to press the bridge of her nose.

  Her life felt like that Deborah Cox song because she wanted to know how he got there when nobody was supposed to be there. Not love. But definitely in her life, filling the man space so easily that now she missed him. That wasn’t a part of the plan.

  She got up from the table and walked across the space and down the bending hall to her bedroom. The bed was neatly made, but sitting on the bench at the foot was a pillow. She picked it up and pressed her face into it to inhale deeply of the scent of him that still clung to it. She hadn’t washed the pillow since the day he left. Same pillowcase and all.

  And sometimes, late at night in her bed, or in a bath, she remembered him stroking inside her with ferocity and brought herself to an explosive climax that made her want him—in her bed and her life—even more. She still had so much to teach him about making love.

  And he could have kept pushing me to live life to the fullest. To smile, laugh and be carefree.

  Desdemona put the pillow down and went to her walk-in closet, opening the top drawer of the island. There atop the velvet lining with her expensive jewelry lay the necklace Loren gave her. She stroked the butterfly, loving the thoughtfulness behind his gift but dismayed that it reminded her of him, making the longing more intense.

  My first V-day—Valentine’s Day—gift at thirty-five.

  She closed her eyes with a soft grunt at the love they made that night. The Chopin and weed smoke blended in the air above and around them as they slow-stroked to one small climax after another until the final explosion that left them both shivering and weak.

  I want to feel that way again.

  Desdemona closed the drawer and hopefully memories of Loren.

  In the kitchen, she poured a glass of Rieussec. In the dining room, she reclaimed her seat at the dining table and tried to resume her studies. When they failed to hold her attention, she made her way back to her bedroom and pulled up his Instagram account on her iPad.

  Most were pictures of his sneakers with the hashtag #sneakerhead or of his different hair designs. Funny memes. Black history knowledge. Anti-Trump retweets. Covers of books he’s reading. Motivational quotes. A few big-butt beauties as his women crush Wednesday. Very few selfies.

  She stopped at one of him in a suit and tie with his ankle crossed over his knee showing off his patterned socks and dope hard-bottom shoes. His hair was wild and his glasses were thin and gold, making the picture even more savage and sexy. “Future professor,” she read his caption, then smiled at all the women dropping heart-eyed emojis and kisses in the comments.

  She wasn’t mad at him. He was irresistible.

  And then she spotted the baby pic he had posted for throwback Thursday. “Awww,” she sighed. Every bit of it was adorable, from the massive curly Afro to his plump cheeks as he laughed, showing off one tooth trying to break through his gums. “I would love a little boy that looked just like . . .”

  The rest of the words faded as she sat up straight, surprised at even a moment of imagining herself with a child. A mother? Me? A child? For Loren?

  He would be such a good father.

  Desdemona gasped at that thought. “What is wrong with me?” she asked herself, her eyes wide as something so unfamiliar to her tugged at her. A longing for that forever love between a mother and a child. She envisioned Loren holding her from behind with his hands splayed on the round belly carrying their child.

  She pushed it away. “Nah, I’m good, love. Enjoy,” she said, but the longing still lingered.

  Desdemona hurriedly scrolled some more. “The biggest mistake you can make is holding on to someone who has already let you go,” she read the meme he retweeted from@feeling.forgotten.

  Her heart skipped a beat as she looked at the date. March fourth. “Oh, Lo,” she said, feeling her heart melt. “I wish I could forget you.”

  She went back to the post of him in the suit and pressed her finger and thumb against the screen, spreading them to enlarge the picture. She pressed her bare lips to the screen and shook her head as she accepted that somewhere along the line Loren Palmer had made a way into her heart, and she loved him.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Tuesday, April 23, 2019

  Have I sold my soul . . . and if so, did I charge enough?

  Desdemona fed the cash counter another stack of bills as she smoothed the hair that slipped from her loose topknot, more from habit than necessity. She eyed the television, taking in the lone occupied bedroom of the mansion as she
sipped from a glass of wine.

  On the second level, in the master bedroom, she eyed Liam Franks and Paulette Reeves talking as he massaged her shoulder and pressed a kiss to her nape when she lowered her head. They made a beautiful couple physically.

  Liam was tall and in good shape, with dark hair and piercing blue eyes. Paulette was a tanned and shapely size twelve with every bit of it in the right places.

  It was one of her consorts who had referred Liam to her, speaking of the forty-five-year-old’s desire to gather enough funds to make a comeback after being disgraced as a stockbroker, fired after being investigated for insider trading. Paulette, a well-known lesbian actress and high-profile activist for gay rights, liked to be sexed by a man twice a year and came to Desdemona for the privacy to do so—never wanting the same man twice.

  They were both single and had really good chemistry. If not for his current career and her inclination toward a serious relationship with women, they would have made a good couple.

  She turned the volume up on them.

  “Dildos are hard but not hot, and I like the heat of a stiff one sometimes,” Paulette said in her raspy voice as she turned to reach for Liam’s crotch.

  She closed out the screen displaying them just as he roughly snatched her body to his and kissed her like he was hungry. She didn’t watch or record the sexual activities or conversations of those who trusted her—unless it was a part of their kink.

  As the shuffling of the money in the machine came to an end, she looked down at yet another stack in her hand and then the bundles of cash on the desk. She thought of the money in safe deposit boxes in banks and the safes in her home. Those spread out across prepaid debit cards and the one valid banking account connected to her online boutique and showroom.

  She had nearly five million dollars tucked away, not including the value of her condo and furnishings, her vehicles, the inventory of her dress boutique, her diamond jewelry collection, furs, and designer items.

  When is enough enough?

  The money was good, but not easy. Juggling never was. There was no part of her life that felt complete. A little time here and a little there. Spreading crumbs of herself but never a full meal. Feeling as if she cheated herself. Not enough time. Not enough sleep. Exercise. Sex. Joy. Fulfillment. Freedom.