Madam, May I

by Niobia Bryant

  “I need more of all of it,” she said aloud, leaning forward in her chair to reach for her glass of wine.

  “Security alert. Front gate.”

  She sipped her wine and set the glass down while she fed the counter and looked to the television screen showing Yolanda “Tasty” Norton entering her visitor code to unlock the gate.

  She put the cash counter back in the drawer and dumped the bundled cash into her tote bag before closing the hidden door to the fireplace. She replaced her heels and double-checked her hair and makeup in the mirror over the pedestal sink in the adjoining bath. With one last look around her haven, she reclaimed her seat behind the desk and watched via the security screen as Denzin ended his run on the treadmill in the exercise room in the basement. He made his way upstairs and to the front door.

  Bzzzzzz.

  She looked at the three iPhones on her desk. One for business, one for personal usage, and the last for Portia. She picked up the one in the bright pink case. A text.

  PORTIA: Have 2 cancel dinner. Picked up eXtra hrs @ work. #SchmoneyGang

  Desdemona smiled at the cash emojis as she simply replied with the “ok” emoji. She’d been trying to spend more time with Portia, but if work called and she chose to answer, there was no fault to be found in that. She was fighting like hell to ensure Portia stayed out of the pussy game.

  Knock-knock-knock.

  She set the phone facedown on the desk along with the rest and cut off the television. “Come in,” she said.

  Tasty and Denzin both entered. He claimed a seat on the edge of her desk and she stood before it. Desdemona eyed the shortbread cutie with wide eyes and pug nose with a dimpled chin whose short hair perfectly framed her round face. “Hello, beautiful people. What’s up?” she asked, sitting back and crossing her legs in the burnt rose gold dress she wore with matching metallic heels.

  “I wanted to tell you in person that I’m done. Probably one more session should do it, and I will be graduating from law school next month debt-free,” she said, smiling and revealing the gap in her teeth that worked for her cuteness. “I’m ready to focus on taking the bar and getting to work as soon as possible.”

  Desdemona gave her a warm smile. “Your regulars will miss you, but I am happy for you,” she said, rising to come around the desk and offer her a hug. “You got in, reached your goals, and now you’re getting out.”

  Tasty returned the hug.

  “Now hopefully I will never need your legal expertise, Miss Solicitor,” Desdemona joked as she came back around her desk.

  Denzin chuckled as he eyed them both. “I told her the same thing about me,” he said.

  Tasty’s eyes became serious. “If there ever was an issue, Mademoiselle, I’d be there for you for free,” she said.

  Desdemona shook her head. “No, you wouldn’t, because I would not let you. It would bring too much attention to you and a possible connection with me,” she explained, rising again to walk across the room to her closet for two wineglasses and two fresh bottles of her favorite wine.

  She paused, thinking of her GED test coming up that weekend. She truly admired the woman finishing law school, especially when she had no clue what her next step would be if she passed. “Let’s toast to you,” she said, walking back into the room to hand the unopened bottle to her. “This one is for you to take.”

  “Wow. Thank you,” Tasty said.

  Desdemona set the glasses on the desk next to her half-empty one and used the open bottle to fill their glasses before handing them each one. “Congratulations, Tasty, may you kick ass in every court in which you show up with your extraordinary black girl magic,” she said, a twinkle in her eye.

  “Hear, hear,” Denzin agreed, lightly tapping his glass to each of theirs.

  “Now, to make sure you have all the study time you need and to send you on your journey as soon as possible,” Desdemona began, sitting down and removing a stack of money from her tote under the desk. “You are done as of today. I will reschedule the session you have for tomorrow and set you free.”

  She set the money on the desk and slid the five thousand dollars with one pointed fingernail toward her.

  Tasty’s eyes widened as she set the glass down and picked up the money. “This is enough to pay my final law school bill, Mademoiselle.”

  “Good. Go be great, Tasty,” she said, finishing her wine in one deep swallow before picking up her phone and pretending to open emails. In truth, she wanted to avoid any back-and-forth of pleading with the woman to take it.

  “Thank you,” she stressed.

  Well, that was easy.

  Desdemona looked up from the phone in surprise and amusement. “Go. Be great,” she repeated.

  Tasty nodded with enthusiasm before quickly coming around the desk to hug her again before doing the same with Denzin and then taking her bottle of wine and cash before she left with one last wave.

  “Man, boss, you some black girl magic your damn self,” he said.

  Desdemona felt truly happy. “You know what, Denzin, I fucking agree,” she said, allowing herself to finally feel proud that she was willing and able to dole out good will.

  “To you,” he said, raising his glass in a toast.

  “To change,” she corrected before they toasted.

  * * *

  “Hello, neighbor.”

  Desdemona paused in unlocking the door to her condo. She turned to find a thirty-something woman with the kind of curls and complexion that made her heritage difficult to place. “Hello,” she said, before turning back to her door.

  “Actually, I’m new in the building and thought I’d introduce myself.”

  Desdemona looked pensive for a moment before straightening her face and turning again. The woman now stood behind her with the door to her apartment ajar.

  “Melissa Colbert,” the petite woman said, extending her hand.

  Desdemona Dean.

  “Alisha Smith,” she said, sliding her hand into hers. “Nice to meet you.”

  “I’ve been seeing you in the elevator and going in and out of your apartment, but I decided to work up the nerve to finally introduce myself,” she said, taking a comical little bow as if proud of her accomplishment.

  Desdemona chuckled. “Are you new to New York?” she asked, forcing herself out of her comfort zone of not mingling with her neighbors unless necessary—and so far, to date, it hadn’t been.

  She splayed her fingers and motioned her hand back and forth a bit. “It’s been three years since I moved from Boston, but I’m brand-new to trendy Tribeca,” she said. “I’m in advertising.”

  Oh? Me? I’m in the procurement of sexual pleasure. Isn’t that interesting?

  “You’ll love Tribeca,” she said, pushing aside her unease at the line of questions that normally followed after a first-time meeting. Husband? Kids? Career?

  Desdemona looked past her neighbor to her door being nudged open by a nose. Moments later a small French bulldog with a beautiful fawn coat sat in the doorway with its tongue wagging and an adorable pink collar with a bow around its neck.

  Melissa looked over her shoulder and then smiled. “That’s Frenchie. I won her in my divorce earlier this year,” she said, turning and bending. With a soft clap of her hands, the dog came trotting forward.

  “Adorable,” Desdemona admitted, looking down as the woman stroked her.

  “Are you afraid?” Melissa asked, looking back at her. “I didn’t think to ask.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  Melissa picked the dog up into her arms. “She’s ready for her walk,” she said. “Listen, maybe we can do dinner. Let me know. My mother thinks the divorce broke me and I need a friend. She’s mistaken about the divorce, but maybe she’s right about the friend.”

  “We’ll see,” Desdemona said, shying away.

  There was a shift in Melissa’s eyes—a wariness—even as she smiled. “Let me know,” she said with a shrug before turning to cross the hall and enter her apartment.

/>   Desdemona turned to her own door, finally undoing the lock with her key before entering. She paused and stared at the door across the hall. She felt so weird having never had a friend. Not in school, where she struggled to find herself without her father, and not during her streetwalking days, when she grappled with the truth of the change in her life. The control levied upon her by her fear. And not as a high-powered madam, constantly juggling balls and finding friendship the one thing she could afford to never pick up.

  Closing the door behind herself, she locked it before she set her bag and keys on the table in the foyer and kicked off her flats. Removing the pin that secured her topknot, she ran her nails over her scalp and shook out her hair as she turned on the lights as she made her way through the apartment. She drew a bath, lit candles, and used the remote to turn on the television in the mirror over the double sink that she hardly ever used.

  She undressed and stepped into the tub, enjoying the feel of the heated water as she lowered her body beneath the depths until her chin dapped the surface and sent rings out in the water. She looked around at the beauty with the sound of the Eyewitness News in the background. “Lonely is not the business,” she said, arching a brow when her words seemed to echo.

  “The search continues for a missing thirteen-year-old girl in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. Local police are asking for any information regarding the disappearance of Ayanna Lewis, who never made it home yesterday evening after school.”

  Desdemona turned her head to eye the cute black girl with sideways cornrows the younger girls called “Lemonade braids” after Beyoncé sported them in the video of the same name.

  “She is five foot, three inches tall and weighs one hundred pounds. She was last seen wearing a black T-shirt, jeans, and black sneakers with a black hoodie. Anyone with information on Ayanna should call the police.”

  Desdemona prayed the little girl was somewhere safe and not in the clutches of a man looking to trade her innocence for money. “Be safe. Be smart. Be vigilant. Get home, Ayanna,” she said aloud in prayer. Sex trafficking was an all too real epidemic in America, and she knew that firsthand.

  “One begets the other.”

  “Get out of my head, Loren,” she drawled.

  She didn’t linger as she normally did and finished her bath, pulling on a red robe of soft lace that stroked the floor as she moved. “I need work. Work is good,” she said, sitting on the couch and picking up her laptop. “Work is distracting.”

  But it didn’t work.

  Plum was in rehab. And fired.

  Red was living her temporary dreams on the Upper East Side. And quit.

  Tasty was steps away from being a lawyer. And resigned.

  Her roster was short by three, and it was nearing a year since she’d even interviewed a new courtesan. She thought of Jann’s unenthusiastic lay with Denzin and winced as she closed the laptop. There was a time she would have been pressed to replace them, but she wouldn’t. She didn’t want to.

  Three less people to worry about.

  These days she was feeling like less was definitely more.

  Even the mansion in Riverdale was a burden she was considering letting go. The multiyear lease was up for renewal in six months. No monthly rent. No upkeep. No weekly cleanings. No worries over raids.

  “I think I better let it go,” she sang in baritone, making herself chuckle.

  Maybe it’s time to let it all go.

  The thought of that made her feel light-hearted.

  If not now, when? If not me . . . then let someone else do it. Plum left it to get clean.

  Red left it to get a man—even part-time.

  Tasty left to follow her dreams.

  And so many more had come and gone over the last seventeen years for one reason or another. And still, Desdemona remained. She wondered if and when she would have the courage to walk away from the business. The money was good, and the work was far easier than when she was streetwalking.

  I’m only thirty-five and love my lifestyle as is. Five million won’t last me for the rest of my life.

  Desdemona drummed the tips of her fingernails against the laptop as she tilted her head to the side and looked up at her family portrait above the fireplace. She squinted as a reality settled upon her. “The hell,” she said, sitting up straight.

  Both of her parents died young. Super young. She had outlived her mother by a couple of years and was closing on her father’s age in the next five years. She frowned. Deeply.

  Desdemona pressed her fingertips to her pulse but dropped her hand, realizing how silly that was.

  Am I going up yonder early like my parents? Then what will happen to the money, the house, the clothes, and all the other material things she cherished and was afraid to lose?

  “I am so confused,” she whispered, still eying the painting.

  With a breath, she laid her back against the couch and looked up at the high ceilings. She became pensive, remembering how it felt to skydive in Vegas. Schedule to take her GED. Think about college. Make love to Loren. Travel more.

  Any time she stepped out of her comfort zone she had found nothing but bliss.

  The power of “Or.”

  I could keep living and making money just as I am, or...

  She was uneducated but far from dumb, and she knew there was a middle ground—a compromise between where she was and where she knew she would one day be, out of the game. “No extension on the mansion lease. No new courtesans or consorts. Wean the service hours down to just the weekends,” she said, ticking each off on her fingers. “Less business. More pleasure. Live with no regrets.”

  Loren.

  Desdemona closed her eyes and saw the face of her biggest regret. Loving Loren. She loved him. The very thought of him made her warm, her heart swell, and her stomach fill with flutters likened to a million butterfly wings. Still, she had accepted that she could not have him. There was no way. There was no Loren and Desdemona. No happily ever after.

  No chubby babies with wild curls and beautiful eyes smiling up at me and saying “mama.”

  She jumped to her feet, pushing aside longings that she never before had.

  It was time to get some of Bobby Brown’s prerogative and do what she wanted to do. Taking on Portia had put the kibosh on Desdemona’s momentum to travel and explore. Her ward was working and saving money as she built up more time on her job to qualify for a decent apartment. She didn’t need as close guidance as she once did.

  Desdemona looked over at her front door before coming around the sofa and striding to the foyer to open and leave it ajar. She crossed the hall just as a door down the hall closed. She paused with her fist near the door to find the couple down the hall standing there staring at her—the husband a little more than his wife.

  “Albert!” she exclaimed, her face reddened with anger.

  Desdemona looked down at her lace robe and shrugged. People are so weird about the human body.

  She ignored them as Becky, or Emily, or Susan pulled Albert down the hall to the elevator at the end of it.

  Knock-knock.

  She gave them a wave just before the elevator doors closed on the wife scowling and Albert smiling.

  “Hello again, neighbor.”

  Melissa’s eyes dipped down Desdemona’s body and then back up again. “Uhm, Alisha, I can see nipples, dear,” she said dryly, her eyes twinkling with amusement.

  “Okay. They’re probably not very different from your own or what you see on television. Just nipples,” Desdemona said, liking that the woman was more amused than horrified. “I thought about it. Let’s go get dinner. Tonight, if you’re free . . . and I promise to put the nipples away.”

  “Thanks,” Melissa said. “And explain to me how I am supposed to enjoy a great meal and wine with all of this inspiration to work out in front of me. A little cruel. Just pointing that out.”

  Desdemona laughed. She was funny. Good. “Ready by seven?” she asked.

  “That’ll work,” Me
lissa said.

  Desdemona turned and walked across the hall to her own apartment.

  “And now I can see your buttocks. The split and everything,” she called behind her.

  “It’s just a butt, Melissa,” Desdemona said before stepping inside and closing the door with a chuckle.

  Two hours later the women were seated at the bar of Smith and Williams, a converted carriage house that was small and intimate with a rustic and unique décor of muted shades of green that gave it character.

  “I just want to toast your ownership of a bra,” Melissa said lifting her cocktail.

  Desdemona inclined her head and raised hers as well. “Next we’ll work on panties,” she said.

  The bartender laughed. “I’ll toast to that not happening.”

  Desdemona gave him a playful wink before sipping her drink. “Another round of oysters,” she said over the chatter of the crowded space.

  He nodded and turned to Melissa in question. “Chicken meatballs, please.”

  “Coming right up,” he said, before walking down the metal-topped wooden bar.

  Melissa leaned over closer to Desdemona. “And your number,” she whispered.

  “Seriously?” she asked, eyeing him.

  “No. After my divorce I am enjoying some me time and not immersing anyone’s energy with my own,” she said.

  “A break is good. Unpack the baggage,” Desdemona said.

  “What about you?” Melissa asked, sucking the juices from the orange slice in her drink.

  Here we go. Husband? Kids? Career?

  “I had a little something with someone special but I ended it,” she admitted, thinking of him and feeling that same warmth spread across her chest.

  When will my love for him fade?

  “Why?” Melissa asked.

  “Huh?”

  “Why’d you end it with the special guy?”

  “He’s too young, and we’re too different,” she said.

  Her face was expecting more and became exasperated when Desdemona offered no more. “Okay, so my hubby of the last fifteen years—who was working on his music career while I held down the job and the bills—was sleeping with my assistant and using my money to fund the bullshit.”