The Cocktail Club

by Pat Tucker

  “Yeah, she probably ran with that information and immediately went to work to see what destruction, if any, she could cause,” Felicia said.

  “Girl, I feel like such a head case. Seriously, now I’m always thinking someone is out to get me. This crap with the DWI has left me utterly messed up in the head. And I swear, I can’t feel any benefits of having this doggone lawyer!”

  “What do you mean, you don’t feel the benefits? You’re free, aren’t you? I mean, you’re not in jail, Ivee. Now, don’t get me wrong. I can only imagine how hard this is for you, but, honey, let me tell you. That lawyer of yours has saved you unimaginable heartache.”

  “How do you know that? You ever been arrested for DWI?” I asked.

  I really didn’t mean for my question to sound as sarcastic as it did, but I hated when Zion, and even Ted, tried to convince me that I was better off because we had an attorney. We may have had Ted, but we still paid a grip in other fees. I still had a provisional license, had to sign up for classes, and much more.

  “No, not me personally, but I have a cousin who spent six months in the county jail for it!”

  “What? Six months in jail!”

  “Ummm, yeah, and that ain’t even the half of it. By the time she finished paying all those fees, she still had to drive around with this contraption on her car, and they made her pick up trash at the park,” Felicia said.

  “Girl, bite your tongue!”

  “I’m dead serious.”

  “Well, shoot, how come she didn’t have a lawyer?”

  “Get real, Ivee. Do you think everyone can afford to pay for an attorney? She was trying to hide the whole thing from everyone, so she went with the public defender. Not only did her case drag on for months on end, but she said every time she had a court date, which was at least once every month, she’d be assigned to someone new, and that was like starting her case all over again.”

  I couldn’t absorb all of what Felicia said. I didn’t want to.

  “Well, that’s downright crazy. But public defenders are real attorneys, aren’t they? And why was her case passed around so much?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Yeah, they’re real attorneys, but in many cases, they’re just starting out. They don’t have the years of experience of a lawyer who specializes in a particular area, and one day they may be working on a DWI case, the next, it could be shoplifting, then it could be rape. They don’t have the time or the resources to focus on any one case in particular.”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t see how a first-time offender, with no prior criminal record, could spend more than a day in jail,” I said adamantly.

  “Well, you don’t have to see it, but I’m telling you what happened to my cousin. And if you don’t believe me, I can have her give you a call. You better believe you are way better off with representation than without!”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” I said.

  I made a mental note to myself. I wouldn’t express my concerns about Ted to anyone else.

  “Oh, and also, she can barely get a good-paying job, since that damn arrest. It’s still on her record, and if I’m not mistaken, I wanna say it’s been something like three or four years now.”

  “Girl, please!”

  I was suddenly mad that I had called Felicia back. The last thing I needed was something else to worry about connected to the arrest. Not only did I not know how it would impact my current job, but I hadn’t even given thoughts to how it would impact my future. So, now I’d have an arrest record. Good Lord!

  Before long, Zion came back. He had several bags that he brought in and took into the kitchen.

  “Hey, babe?” he said.

  That sounded odd to me because lately he’d call me by my name, if he called me at all.

  “Yeah, what’s up?”

  “Ted wanted to know how much you know about your company’s morality clause.”

  I whipped my head around in his direction. “The morality clause,” I slowly repeated.

  “Yeah, you do know one exists, right?”

  Dammit! I need a drink!

  47

  PETA

  In the midst of my belligerent tirade, I didn’t see Pamela when she walked up. Had it not been for Beverly, she could’ve cold-cocked me, and I wouldn’t have known what hit me. I could’ve killed that trick with my bare hands.

  “Hey, Peta, how are you, honey?” She had the nerve to greet me like we were old friends.

  When she approached, something in me clicked, and I swung.

  “Oh my God! What the hell!” she screamed. She grabbed the side of her face and stumbled.

  All of my rage and frustration barreled out at once, and my fists wouldn’t stop. Soon, several women screamed and began to pull at us. We fell.

  In one swift move, I felt myself being pulled up from the group that had tumbled to the ground. As I was pulled away, I swung and kicked at Pamela one last time.

  “You backstabbing bitch! You used me!” I yelled.

  “Get her off of me! Oh God! Get her off me!” Pamela screamed.

  When I looked up, it was Beverly who had ushered me away from the melee and not a moment too soon. As she drove off in my car, I heard the faint sounds of sirens in the distance.

  “I don’t know what got into me,” I said. “I’m tired. I’m so sick and tired.” I buckled my seatbelt as she sped along the feeder road of I-10.

  “I feel ya, Peta. I woulda whupped her ass for you if you had told me what that tramp did to you! She deserved that thumpin’, no doubt!”

  My nerves were a complete wreck, so I was glad Beverly decided to drive. For sure, I had lost it. I couldn’t remember the last time I had gotten into an actual fistfight. I eased back in the seat and wondered how the hell my life had become this train wreck.

  “You think she gon’ try to press charges against you?” Beverly asked.

  “Honestly, I really don’t give a damn. She sought me out, blew my phone up, and begged for meetings so she could duplicate my business idea. I almost would’ve rather she’d been up front about what she was trying to do,” I said. “And then, to park her truck in the exact same spot!”

  “Yeah, that’s ratchetness for real right there. Well, as far as I’m concerned, you did the right thing, and I’d tell anybody who wants to know that all I saw was you defending yourself.”

  Beverly was trying to be helpful, but I needed to think. I needed to figure out my next move. Pamela’s trucks were now spread out across the city, and my business was in trouble.

  Even if the insurance company came through with the money for the other two trucks, I didn’t think it’d be enough to get me out of the hole. And then Kyle still refused to make this thing right with his child support, and that only made things harder.

  “Turn at the next light,” I told Beverly. “I really appreciate you helping me out back there. I probably would’ve killed that woman,” I admitted.

  “She deserved that ass whupping, for real. That was dirty what she did, and then she had the balls to sneak onto the RV? Oh, just thinking about it makes me want to turn this car around,” Beverly said.

  I laughed for the first time in a very long while and said, “That wouldn’t be a good idea. If I go to jail, I’ll need someone to bail me out.”

  She laughed at that.

  As she drove along I-10, I didn’t even want to ask her how she’d get back home or back to the RV. I wanted to get inside and get a drink.

  “I’m gonna call and have my dude pick me up from here if that’s okay with you, or I could walk up to the gas station around the corner,” she said.

  I swatted away the idea of her walking to the gas station.

  “Of course your man can pick you up here. I’m glad you were there. Poor Farah looked like she didn’t know what to do,” I said.

  “Yeah, that lil’ old white lady ain’t used to seeing no mess like that.” Beverly chuckled. “I gotta be honest. I didn’t think you had it in you. All I know is one minute
ol’ girl walked up on you, and the next, she was stumbling backwards and trying to find her legs. Then, you kept swinging.” She laughed.

  I laughed, too. It must’ve looked like a real circus. I couldn’t believe I actually hit the woman. She deserved it, but once I was removed from the situation and was able to think straight, I hoped she didn’t call to have me arrested.

  Imagine my shock when we pulled up and Kyle’s car was in the driveway. I could barely wait for Beverly to park my car.

  “You know, Beverly, why don’t you go ahead and take my car. My ex-husband is here, and I need to talk to him about something,” I said.

  “Peta, you’re gonna let me have your car?”

  I tilted my head and frowned. “Uh, no, but you can drive it home and pick me up tomorrow on your way to work,” I clarified.

  Beverly laughed. “I didn’t mean let me have the car. I meant I don’t want to leave you without your vehicle. If something happened with your daughter, I wouldn’t even feel right.”

  She looked toward the house.

  “Go on. Talk to your ol’ man. I can sit here and wait for my dude to come. It won’t take long. He works close to here. You ain’t gotta worry about me. I’m glad I was there to help you out, Rocky!”

  I laughed at her comment and got out of the car. I may have been nervous, but I hoped, for Kyle’s sake, that I’d left all the fighting back at the BP campus. It was obvious I wasn’t scared to throw a blow or two.

  When I walked into the house, I didn’t see him right away. It was too early for my daughter to be home from school, so I was baffled by why he was there. I was glad he had finally surfaced, but I didn’t appreciate the way he welcomed his way into my house after I had been trying for months to catch up with him.

  “Kyle!” I yelled.

  He rounded the corner and emerged from the kitchen with wide eyes. So, he had been popping in and out of my house when he thought no one was home. I hated him with a passion.

  “Hey, I was dropping off some stuff. Kendal said something about y’all being low on food when I talked to her last night,” he said.

  I stared at him.

  “You don’t have anything to say for yourself, and what you did to me—to your daughter?”

  Kyle stood with the familiar simple expression on his face, and I wanted to slap the taste out of his mouth. He dropped back against the wall and looked as if he was trying to brace himself for what he thought was coming next.

  “I tried to talk to you, but you were too busy. I didn’t mean for stuff to go down like this,” he said.

  “What am I supposed to do? For the past several months, your daughter and I have been eating off the kindness of friends. What kind of shit is that?” I moved closer to him.

  Kyle inched backward.

  “Why you always gotta be so damn extra, Peta?” he asked.

  A wave of raw hurt gushed over me. My world had literally been flipped upside down, and this fool thought I was being extra.

  “That’s what you think I’m doing? You think I’m being extra? You have no clue what’s been going on with me over the last few months. How could you be so damn condescending?”

  He rolled his eyes as if I had gone exactly where he expected. There was nothing I could do to inflict on him the kind of pain I had suffered.

  “Look, I brought some food, and I refilled your favorite,” he said as he motioned toward a massive bottle of Skyy Vodka.

  “You think a couple of meals and a few drinks will do the trick? I need you to undo what you did,” I said.

  Kyle shook his head at my suggestion.

  “No can do. I tried to talk to you. I tried to tell you that I needed that order lifted so we could qualify for our new house. Ain’t nothing I could do about that. Besides, you signed the papers, Peta.”

  “Kyle, you know good and well I had no clue what I was signing. You slipped those papers in front of me after a night of drinking. Any judge would throw it out,” I said.

  “See, this is why I don’t take your calls. You think I wanna hear all this crap? Damn, Peta, handle your business and stop leeching off of me! You thought I was gonna support you forever?”

  He shook his head.

  My blood boiled until it felt like my skin might melt right off my bones. His indifference to my suffering and callous comments made me sick to my stomach.

  “Oh, and by the way, my wife and I talked, and we decided with all you’ve got on your plate, maybe Kendal should move in with us for a while. You know, just ’til you get back on your feet. Especially since you’re talking about shacking with some man.”

  I heard his words, and then the blood flowed from his mouth. I looked into his wide, panic-stricken eyes and couldn’t move. The sound of his head as it thumped against the edge of the granite countertop stayed with me.

  I stared at the knife that I’d shoved into his chest, and looked down at his hand that covered a growing crimson spot on his shirt.

  “Peta, hh-help me,” he managed.

  “The way you helped me?” I asked.

  He fell to the floor like a rag doll. I stood over him and watched as the life began to drain from his horror filled eyes. The joy I felt, scared me, but only a little.

  48

  DARBY

  The thing about guilt is it kind of had this power to make me want to do right, at least initially. Despite the fact that I had barely laid my head down two hours before, I was up and in the kitchen before Kevin and the boys came downstairs.

  I wondered whether Kevin was going to say anything else about the way I had crept into the house. They’d been at the table for a good ten minutes, and he hadn’t said a word.

  “Eat your food, boy,” Kevin finally said to one of the kids.

  He looked over at me when I turned around from the sink and said, “Where you been getting all this money to go hang out like you’ve been doing?”

  That question made me think about Carla, and how much I missed the money I made when I used to work with her. I still hadn’t talked to her, but after that stunt she tried to pull, I hadn’t been in a hurry to reconnect. I needed to do something. Chandler had taken up way too much of my time.

  It was one thing when we sexted each other, creeping around through text messages and Facebook, but we had moved up to a full-fledged affair. It was as if the devil rested on one shoulder and an angel on the other. I knew in my heart of hearts that screwing around with the man who was responsible for my sister’s death was an asinine thing to do. I never set out to catch feelings for Chandler, but somehow I did.

  The angel on my shoulder reminded me of the family I had. Images of my boys smiling and sometimes fighting popped up in my mind, but I was quick to shake those away.

  Kevin was a different story all together. For years, I had put up with his cheap and chauvinistic ways. But I had grown accustomed to his behavior.

  “I have been helping Carla do some bookkeeping for her business,” I said.

  The flesh around his eyes quivered, and he frowned.

  “You mean Carla, as in our neighbor down the block, Carla?” Kevin asked.

  “Yeah, how do you know her?”

  Kevin finished off the last of his food. He drank the rest of his juice and pushed his chair back from the table. Once he stood, he dug into his pocket and pulled out his keys. He hit a button and the car chirped.

  “I know nearly everybody in this subdivision. Hey, boys, go get in the car. I’m right behind you,” he said.

  We watched as our sons shuffled out the door and raced each other to get into the car.

  “I’m the man of this house. You shouldn’t be asking me anything about how I know someone who lives on our street. I may have been underestimating you for far too long,” he said.

  I was baffled by his statement, but there was also a part of me that didn’t really care. If he had been screwing Carla or some of the other women, he had done a good job hiding it.

  Kevin pecked me on my forehead and left.
/>   As I cleared the table, a funny thought popped into my mind. The way my husband pinched pennies, I doubt I had to worry about him paying for some ass.

  I shouldn’t put anything past him because he was still human, and he was still a man, but the way he was, he’d be hard pressed to spend more than twenty-five dollars. And because I handled the books, I fully understood that little bit of change wouldn’t get you a simple hello from Carla and the other ladies.

  When I finished the kitchen, I decided to take a long bath. My plan was to try and meet with Carla around lunchtime, and that was several hours away.

  Upstairs, the scent of vanilla floated out of my Jacuzzi garden tub, and I couldn’t wait to get in with a great book. I still had on my robe, so I decided mimosas would make the bath even better.

  I went downstairs and pulled a chilled bottle of champagne from the wine cooler. Once I mixed my drink, I poured myself a glass and started back upstairs.

  The sound of the doorbell’s chime stopped me.

  “Shoot, Carla, your timing sucks,” I muttered as I padded over to the front door.

  When I pulled it open and saw Chandler, a mixture of fear and excitement shot through my veins.

  “Aren’t you gonna ask me in?” he asked.

  I wanted to slap his face, and then slam the door in it. I wanted to ask if he had gone and lost his rabbit mind. But I didn’t. I stood frozen with my door wide open, my hand clutching a flute full of mimosa, and my eyes fixated on my lover at my front door. It finally registered. My lover was at my front door! Obviously, he knew exactly where I lived.

  “Okay, not quite what I expected, but here, let me invite myself in,” he said.

  Chandler eased past me and used a hand to push the door closed.

  “Ah, what are you doing here?” I managed.

  “I wanted to see you. I waited ’til he pulled off with the kids and waited for nearly an hour after that before I got out of my car,” he said.

  He spoke as if his explanation made complete sense. Did he not know the ethical rules he had shattered when he decided he had to see me at my house?