by Mary Monroe
“No, I’m not.”
I gave Joan a thoughtful look before I brought up a subject that had been on my mind for a long time. “Can we talk about something real personal? It’s okay if you don’t want to.”
“Why wouldn’t I want to talk about it? We talk about personal shit all the time. You can say whatever is on your mind.”
I didn’t want to beat around the bush, so I jumped into the subject with both feet. “John is so whipped, you could spread him on a slice of bread. The same goes for Reed. He’s so crazy about you, he’s ready to kill himself if you leave him. DrFeelGood wants to give you breast implants and reorganize other parts of your body for free. And now you’re telling me that John wants to relocate you so he can have you all to himself. I could go on and on about all the perks you get from your men. Please don’t take what I’m going to say next the wrong way. Girl, you’re not that hot. What do you do in bed to make your men act like fools?” I held my breath and hoped I hadn’t offended Joan.
She gave me a pensive look. “I’ve been asking myself that all my life.” Then she giggled and hunched her shoulders. “Whatever I’m doing in bed, I must be doing it damn good, huh?”
“Apparently! Well, if you ever figure out what it is, please let me know so I can start doing it too.” I laughed, but I was serious. I’d lost count of all the men I’d been with in some very expensive hotel suites, and I had received some nice gifts from a few. But so far not a single one had ever treated me the way most of Joan’s men treated her. She beamed as I stared at her in awe. Compared to her life, mine was as dull as dishwater. Had it not been for Joan, I’d have never found out about the sex club, and I’d still be getting poor-quality sex, if I got any at all.
“John also said that he would buy me a place anywhere in America so I’d have somewhere to go when I wanted to be alone.”
“Damn! I’m afraid to ask if he offered you anything else. I’m jealous enough!”
“He said he’d put me in his will and let me pick out the car of my choice.”
“That’s a hell of a tempting offer, or maybe I should call it an ‘indecent proposal’ like in that old Demi Moore movie. Now I’m really sorry I was not available when he tried to get a date with me. Too bad you can’t take him up on it.”
“I don’t know about that—”
“What’s wrong with you?” I interrupted. “If you think Reed will kill himself if you leave him and just move back in with your mama, what do you think he’ll do if you leave him and move to Phoenix to be some rich man’s mistress?”
Joan shook her head. “I don’t want to think about that right now. It’s giving me a headache.” She stopped talking and checked her watch. “I can’t stay long. I’m supposed to be at Walgreens picking up some Advil for the headache I told Reed I suddenly got when he hinted about us having sex tonight. YUCK!” Joan grimaced and shook her head again. “I do not want that man to stick his dick in me too soon after John did such a thorough job on me. I want to savor the feeling as long as I can.”
“Oh, come on, girl. Is Reed really that bad in bed?”
“He is to me. Shit. I get more pleasure from my gynecological exams.”
Joan’s comment was funny, but she didn’t laugh. I did, though. Her eyes darkened, so I stopped and gave her the most sympathetic look I could manage. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to laugh,” I said sheepishly.
“Lola, you don’t know how miserable I am with Reed. I’m trying so hard to be happy with him, but nothing is working. And I don’t care what he says or how nice he is to me—that doesn’t help much. What I don’t understand is why he won’t let me go so he can find a woman who really wants to be with him.” Joan was not the crying type. I had known her most of my life, and I could count on one hand the number of times I’d seen her in tears, and those few times had involved funerals. I could barely believe my eyes now as huge tears rolled down the sides of her face like fat raindrops.
“You want something to drink?” I asked. I was just about to go to the kitchen and get her a paper towel to wipe her face when she pulled a handkerchief out of her purse.
“No, don’t bother with that, Lola. I’ll be fine.” Joan choked on her words and mopped her cheeks and nose at the same time. “I’m sorry. You know I don’t like getting all emotional in front of people, not even you.” She sniffled and let out a weak chuckle.
“I know you’re in pain, and it’s probably a good thing for you to show your emotions. We all need to have a good cry every now and then. I’m too embarrassed to tell you how many times I’ve sat in my room and boo-hooed up a storm about one thing or another.”
“Yeah, I know.” Joan sniffled some more and shuddered as she returned her handkerchief to her purse. “Even after the wonderful afternoon I spent with John today, I’m still miserable as hell. I don’t know how much longer I can live under the same roof with Reed!”
“But you’ve been miserable for years. You should be used to him by now. At least he’s not beating you or having affairs with other women. You get to have fun with other men and you do pretty much everything else you please.”
“No, Reed doesn’t beat me or cheat on me. Yes, I get to have fun with other men, but I have to do it behind closed doors. I can’t even go out to a movie or shopping at a mall with any of the men I fool around with. When they take me to dinner, it’s always a restaurant in whatever hotel we’re hooking up in. And even then, we have to request a booth or a table in a secluded area in case somebody I know wanders in.”
“Well, as long as you stay with Reed, you’ll have to keep making some sacrifices, I guess. And the one thing you have to keep in mind is that no man is perfect. I’ll bet even Michelle Obama has a bunch of complaints about Barack. I’m sure she’s been close to enough men to know that there’s something wrong with all of them, so what’s the point of trading a skillet for a frying pan? Besides, what if . . .” I paused and thought carefully about what I wanted to say next. I didn’t want to make Joan feel any worse, but since she was already about as low as she could get, I said what was on my mind. “What if you do leave Reed and he . . . you know?”
“What if he kills himself?”
“Yeah. Are you still worried about that?”
Joan nodded. “It’s on my mind almost every day, especially when I think about leaving him. His suicide would haunt me for the rest of my life.” When she pulled her handkerchief out of her purse again, I thought she was going to cry some more, but she didn’t. She just blew her nose again. By now it looked like a big, red cherry.
“So there is no way you’re going to move to Phoenix, huh? And what about your family? You know you could never be happy living too far away from that crew.”
“That’s so true. Oh, I just don’t know what to do with myself! I don’t want to hurt Reed, and I don’t want to hurt my family.”
“I hope you don’t want to hurt me either. I don’t know what I’d do if you moved away,” I admitted. “Especially for a man!”
“Lola, lately you’ve been talking about finding a husband yourself a lot more than usual. Now let me ask you something personal. And you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.” Joan paused long enough for me to panic. Every muscle in my body tightened, and I had to breathe through my mouth. “If something really serious develops between you and that truck driver and he decides to relocate and wants you to go with him, would you go?”
It was a fairly tame question, so I began to breathe normally again. But it was also a hard question for me to answer. I responded with the most reasonable answer I could think of. “Like you said I was doing a while back, you’re getting way ahead of things. I haven’t even slept with Calvin yet. By the way, I e-mailed him like I told you I would.”
“And? Does he want to see you again?”
“Yup!” Just the thought of knowing that Calvin wanted to see me again made me tingle with excitement. “He’s in Chicago right now visiting a sick uncle. As a matter of fact, his uncle is dying. Calvin
didn’t mention him having a wife or any children, so I guess that’s why he has to get things in order for him. He went to see him right after our coffee date, and not long after he returned to California, his uncle took a turn for the worse, so he had to turn around and go back to Chicago.”
Joan gave me a dry look. “A sick uncle, huh? That could be just a smoke screen, you know.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“How do you know he’s telling the truth? He could be off somewhere with another woman just to throw you off.”
“Why would he need to ‘throw’ me off? If he doesn’t want to see me, I’m sure he’d find a better way to let me know. But he said he wants to see me again and when he gets back to California he’s going to get in touch with me.”
“Well, I sure hope he does. And I hope you get some nookie from this dude real soon, before your pussy explodes.” Joan laughed. I did too. I was glad that she was in a better mood now.
I was in a much better mood myself.
Chapter 19
Calvin
I WAS IN THE LAST PLACE ON EARTH I WANTED TO BE: CHICAGO. IT was my least favorite city in the whole country. To me, it was a cold-blooded, angry place filled with cold-blooded, angry people of all races.
During one of my visits several years ago, I’d been mugged and beaten to within an inch of my life by two thugs who had mistaken me for another dude. The only reason they had let me live was because I’d talked them into checking my ID.
There was a lot of crime in San Jose, but innocent young kids were getting shot to death much more frequently in Chicago. And I didn’t like this city’s cold weather. It was February, so there was still snow on the ground. I couldn’t believe I had once lived in such a brutal place. My toes ached every time I recalled walking to school in the winter, praying that the thick socks and brogans my uncle made me wear would protect me from frostbite episodes. But I would have walked on water to spend time with Uncle Ed.
Uncle Ed had already sold the rat trap of a car he’d been driving for the past ten years, so I had picked up a rental. I arrived at his shabby, green-shingled house on the South Side a few minutes past noon on Sunday. The front door swung open and he came outside a few seconds after I parked the car in his ice-covered driveway. “I’m glad you made it! I was getting worried about you, boy!” he yelled in his raspy voice.
“I’m glad I made it too,” I said, piling out. I retrieved my luggage from the trunk and proceeded to walk toward the porch. The ground was so slippery, I practically slid all the way up to the steps. I held on to the railing to keep from falling. But it was so rickety and raggedy that it was practically useless, so I fell anyway. I took a deep breath and wobbled back onto my feet.
I was happy to see a huge grin on my uncle’s heavily lined, bronze-colored face as I followed him inside to his living room. He clapped me on the back and gave me a bear hug. As cold as it was, Uncle Ed was barefooted and he had on a thin, ratty housecoat. His long, balding head looked like a dried-up coconut. He looked terrible. I’d seen corpses that looked more alive. He used to be quite obese, but now he was a bag of bones. I was tempted to comment on his appearance. But my uncle was a smart man. He had to know just how wretched he looked.
“Driving a car is real risky here this time of year, so I had to take my time,” I explained, setting my suitcase down on the floor. “How have you been?”
“Well, for a dying man I guess I’m doing as well as can be expected. I was up all night puking my guts out.”
“I’m glad I could come right away,” I said as I looked around the cluttered room. It had been a year and a half since my last visit, but it looked like nothing had been moved or cleaned. The only thing Uncle Ed had added to the mess was a naked ironing board. It stood in a corner with car parts on top of it. Every ashtray I could see was overflowing with cigarette butts and stale wads of chewing gum. A cleaning woman supposedly came to the house three times a week. She must have been one lazy bitch, because fast-food containers, empty beer cans, and old newspapers were all over the place.
Uncle Ed also had a hospice nurse who checked in on him every other day. He had refused to move into a nursing home or an assisted-living facility. Being the proud man he was, he insisted on staying in his own house as long as he could.
“I don’t feel much like cooking these days, but I can boil up some beans and fry some catfish if you want to eat something,” he told me, nodding toward the kitchen.
“I’m fine for now. I grabbed a sandwich before I left the airport. But you don’t have to cook at all today. We can have something delivered.”
“Oh, don’t worry about me!” Uncle Ed hollered, waving his hand in the air. He motioned me to the couch, and we sat down at the same time. “I don’t eat much no more nohow. And when I do, I usually order something and have it brought to me. But the pizza and other delivery folks don’t like to come out here too often, and never at night. The last time I had a pizza delivered, them young devils that used to live next door jumped on that poor woman. They robbed her and made her suck dick until the cops showed up.”
“That’s a damn shame,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t know what this world is coming to when a person can’t even do his or her job and not have to worry about getting assaulted or killed. That poor woman. . . .”
“On the subject of a ‘poor woman,’ you ever find out what happened to your wife? She’s been gone about four or five years now, eh?”
“Uh, yeah, something like that. And, no, I haven’t heard anything about where she went or what happened to her,” I replied with a lump in my throat.
“She’s probably dead.”
“Um . . . yeah. A lot of people think she is. Nobody has heard from her, there’s been no activity on her credit cards, which she used almost every day, and she hasn’t used her ATM card or her cell phone.”
“Hmmm. That sounds like a dead woman to me. It’s a crying shame she died so young, but she lived longer than a lot of folks. Anyway, I hope you took out some life insurance on her. When they do find her, she’ll have to be laid to rest, and a decent funeral will set you back several thousand bucks. You know how black folks like to go all out when it comes to a deceased loved one’s funeral—a roomful of flowers, music, fancy outfits, enough food to feed an army, and whatnot. From what you told me about Glinda’s family, they all sound just as trifling as she was, so don’t expect them broke asses to help with the final expenses.”
“Glinda and I both have generous insurance policies,” I said solemnly.
“I’m glad to hear that. Well, if she don’t turn up soon, I think you’ll have to wait seven years from the last day somebody seen her before you can have her declared dead. You can’t collect that insurance money until then. I know a real good private detective. He helped my last lady friend locate her brother that she hadn’t seen since they was little bitty kids and sent to different foster homes. I can get in touch with him and put him on the case. If Glinda ain’t dead or if she ain’t been kidnapped by aliens and took off to another planet, he’ll find her. He found the missing daughter of a man that used to live next door to me. She disappeared without a trace about a month ago. Come to find out, she’d been beaten so bad by some thug she had moved in with, she’d lost her memory. Somebody saw her wandering down a dark road and she didn’t know her own name or nothing else, so they dumped her off in one of them asylums. She didn’t look nothing like herself. My friend tracked her down and verified who she was by having them run her fingerprints. I doubt if your wife is locked up somewhere with a case of amnesia, but you never know.”
“Glinda and I were separated when she disappeared. If she is still alive, I’m sure she doesn’t want to be found. At least not by me.”
“But if she’s dead, don’t you want to know that so you can collect that insurance money?”
“I try not to think about her, and I don’t need that insurance money. If she’s still alive, I wish her well. If she’s dead, I hope she’s at pe
ace.” I put a somber expression on my face.
Uncle Ed gave me a sympathetic look and rubbed my back. “What went wrong? I know everybody kept saying she was a loose-booty and all, but what woman ain’t? And the same is true of most men. Even me.”
“I don’t know what all went wrong in my marriage. Glinda just didn’t want to stay married to me. I guess I wasn’t man enough for her,” I admitted. It was not hard for me to sound and look pitiful, because I really was. Despite all the time that had passed and the fact that I’d made Glinda pay for her betrayal, I still experienced some sadness when I thought about her. I had never loved a woman the way I loved her. My bouts of sadness never lasted more than a few moments, but my bouts of rage were much more frequent and lasted a lot longer.
“Humph! I’m glad I never got married again. If a wife of mine had fooled around on me the way Glinda done you, I would have wrung her neck! I bet if you’d whooped her ass a few times, that would have stopped her from making a fool out of you!”
“I used to think about doing that before she took off, but I’m glad I didn’t. I am not a violent man, especially when it comes to women,” I muttered. I had to press my lips together to keep from smiling.
Chapter 20
Calvin
AS WEAK AS MY UNCLE WAS, HE INSISTED ON BOILING SOME BEANS and frying some catfish fillets around six p.m. I made some corn bread and we enjoyed a very pleasant dinner.
We stayed up past midnight reminiscing about the good old times. Uncle Ed was alert and lively. He recalled things I had done in my teens that I no longer remembered. After a cup of hot tea and a handful of pills, he dozed off on the couch. I literally had to carry him upstairs to his bedroom, which looked like a tornado had hit it. He had two more bedrooms, and they were even more cluttered. I searched around until I found some clean blankets so I could sleep on the living-room couch. I was anxious for morning to arrive so I could resume my conversation with Uncle Ed. I figured that as long as I kept him talking, he wouldn’t die.
