Going Broke

by Trista Russell

  “Good day, Mrs. Stewart.” I had to keep my cool. “My name is Tatiana Graham.” I paused. “Did you receive a package in the mail today?”

  “I sure did.” Then she went off. “Who are you? Why in the hell are you trying to break up my home? How long have you known my husband?”

  I tried to remain focused. “Mrs. Stewart, I can explain, but first I’ll need you to calm down.”

  “Don’t tell me what you need me to do,” she screeched. “I don’t know you.”

  “Mrs. Stewart, I am not the woman in the picture.” I needed her to trust me. “I’m calling to try to help you. Like I said a moment ago, my name is Tatiana Graham. I am a private investigator out of Trenton, New Jersey.” I read from my script. “While I was working a case last week. I ran into your husband and this woman, and I thought you should know about it.”

  “How do you know my husband?”

  I did my research. “That’s not important. The fact is that I knew that he was married and the woman he was with wasn’t you.”

  She started crying. “Well, who in the hell is she?”

  “Honestly, Mrs. Stewart, that is a question only your husband can answer.” I took a deep breath. “I don’t know her name, but I do know that she is someone that Mr. Stewart is seeing intimately whenever he’s quote-unquote out of town on business,” I said. “I’m contacting you and other women like you today because I walked five miles in your shoes. I was married to a man that lied and cheated every chance he had. You, just like I did, deserve more than this.”

  “When was this picture taken?”

  The picture she was looking at was her husband and Star, the Elite girl, sitting in a booth in the hotel lounge having drinks. Innocent photo, you think? Try again. Star was sitting on his lap, dangling the cherry from her drink on the tip of his tongue.

  “The picture you’re looking at was taken over the weekend at—”

  “The Black Businessmen Convention.” She finished my sentence then let out a sound of pain. “That lousy fuckin’ bastard.”

  Forget being proper, emotions had this sistah catching a ride on the bus to Ghettoland.

  “I can’t believe that this li’l-dick, fat muthafucka has the nerve to be cheatin’ on me. After all these goddamn years.”

  “Mrs. Stewart, I’m truly sorry.” I then went right for the jugular. “I went through the same thing, which is the reason I started my PI business.” I took a breath. “I followed my husband on what was supposed to be a business trip, but instead I walked into his hotel room and met a woman on top of him.”

  “Oh my God,” she exclaimed. “I would’ve killed him.” She didn’t stop there. “I would’ve grabbed him by his shit and bit it off.”

  “Well, I did the next best thing. I filed for divorce and showed the judge the pictures of him and his mistress around town that a friend of mine had taken a week before I caught them. Honey, I cleaned his ass out completely.” I laughed and added, “Alimony is a lovely thing. That’s how I started my own business, and I kept both houses.” I sweetened the pot.

  “You go, girl.” She tried to laugh but sniffled instead. “That’s what his trifling ass gets.”

  “That’s what they all need to get.”

  “You’re absolutely right,” she said weakly. “I still can’t believe that this is happening to me. I am so damn good to this man. I cook, clean, take care of the children, make sure that I’m in shape, and fuck his bad-body ass whenever he wants me to.”

  “Forget being his wife for free; being his ex-wife might be more rewarding.” I continued my pitch. “Mrs. Stewart, with the pictures that I have of your husband, you’ll walk away with—”

  “‘Pictures’? I only have one. You have more pictures?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Why didn’t you send ’em all?” she asked. “Send them to me. I want to see all of ’em.”

  “I’ll send them under one circumstance,” I said firmly.

  “What?”

  “Don’t turn the other cheek and let him do this to you again.”

  “Oh, hell no. You don’t have to worry about that. I always thought that fat fuck was up to no good,” she said. “Send me the pictures. You only get one chance to make a fool out of Virginia.”

  I smiled. “The picture I sent you is sadly just the beginning of his evening with this young lady. I have eighteen more of Mr. Stewart during the convention, but they may be hard to look at.”

  I wasn’t lying. I actually had a picture of Star on her knees in front of Mr. Stewart in what they thought was a dark alley. After Will brightened it up, the picture was a sight to behold.

  “I can’t believe this.” She was sobbing. “Please send them.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Stewart.” I really was. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes, I just can’t believe this.” She was hyperventilating.

  “Mrs. Stewart, I didn’t call you today to hurt you. I just wanted you to be aware of what was going on. The truth of the matter is that I can’t send you the pictures without you being a client of mine. I could lose my business taking pictures of your husband without you hiring me to do so. Mr. Stewart could actually sue me. He’s a lawyer, and he knows all of that.”

  “Well, as of right now, I am your client. You have my consent to go to the convention and find out what he’s really doing,” she said. “I want those pictures. What do I have to do to get them?”

  I took a deep breath. “First off, you might want to keep your findings on the down low until you make a definite decision and speak to a divorce attorney. Telling him about the pictures will give him too much time to confer with his legal team. We have to catch him off guard.”

  I had no idea what I was saying, but it sounded good. Watching Court TV was paying off.

  “That’s what I was planning on doing. How much do you want for the pictures?”

  She was making this too easy for me.

  “I won’t charge you as much as I normally do.” I pretended to be calculating figures. “How about two hundred and seventy five dollars each?” I closed my eyes and waited for the rejection.

  “I don’t give a damn. It’s his money anyway,” she huffed. “Send me all of them.”

  In another forty minutes, I promised Mrs. Stewart that she’d receive all of the pictures as soon as the blank money orders, totaling $4,950, were in my hand. To guarantee her that I was looking at pictures of her man, I told her what he was wearing in some of the pictures. I also told her that if she didn’t have the pictures at least four days after sending off the money orders, she could call the police. My fingerprints were all over the picture that she had in her possession, and that was the truth.

  By the end of our talk, she was willing to Western Union the money to me. I declined her offer because I’d have to give her my real name in order to claim the money. I instructed her to send the money orders to a post office box that I’d opened while I was in Trenton. However, I asked the postal worker to forward my mail to a Miami post office box belonging to Mrs. White. Tremel had given me the key to check his mail two months ago. I still checked it twice a week, and I had the only key.

  For the next six and a half hours, I talked to fourteen other women, but only eight of them bought into my black male photo gallery. Six women were comfortable with not seeing anything more. They claimed that they knew about their men, and as long as he was bringing home the bacon and not an STD, it didn’t matter.

  I was cursed out several times, called everything, and told that they’d report me if I contacted them again. One brainwashed asshole of a wife had the nerve to put her “dick-been-everywhere” husband on the line. But still, after the chips were down, they didn’t fall the way I had planned, but I was still looking at collecting $42,300 within a week.

  In the midst of my jubilee, I suddenly thought of what those women were feeling, what I had selfishly put them through just so I could pay my rent. I tried to justify my actions, reasoning that I did what I did to free them fro
m their doggish men, but once again, I was in it for the love of money. I had once more proven to myself that not only was I willing to hurt myself, but also others all for the love of that mean green.

  The last call I made was a courtesy call. It was to the wife of the owner of the camera, Norman Hall. It turned out that he was the owner of several jewelry stores in Ohio. His wife sounded like she was going to meet her maker, when she answered the phone. I expected that reaction from her, because her package was different than the ones sent to other women. I sent her twelve pictures of Norman and I having sex. I didn’t ask her for money; I just wanted her rapist of a husband to be exposed. I told Sheila the truth: I was the woman in the picture, and her husband paid to have sex with me but played too rough. I told her how I begged him to stop but he wouldn’t. His friend snapped the pictures, and I was able to escape only when she called Norman on his cell phone.

  By Friday, over half the money I was expecting was already in my bank account. I mailed out all of the pictures and was sitting pretty, until I thought about the dangerous reality of what I had done. I was sure that the husbands would somehow want to know who the private investigator behind the pictures was. I was paranoid times ten, walking around like a crackhead, looking over my shoulders, swearing I heard someone calling my name, and scared to turn corners.

  I was even reluctant to meet Nat at the restaurant on Ocean Drive where we agreed to have drinks. Nat and I hadn’t seen a lot of each other lately, so I made the sacrifice and drove the short distance. I got there at 7:00.

  We first wanted alone time to catch up on all of the talking we missed out on, so we asked Nick and Tremel to allow us two hours together and to meet us at 9:30 for dinner.

  “So how are you treating my buddy Mel?” Nat asked from across the table.

  My mind was still cloudy. “Mel is fine. You should know, you see him every day at school.”

  “I know, but I asked how you’re treating him.” She smiled.

  “He’s okay.” I hadn’t touched my drink yet. “We’re okay.” I looked over at a man at another table. I sure thought I heard him say my name. I was trippin’.

  “Are you okay?” She looked at me strangely. “You’re like on another planet.”

  “I’m fine,” I lied. “Just thought I heard something.”

  “Well, hear me, damn it,” she joked. “Are you still looking for a job?”

  “Not really.”

  “So what are you doing for money these days?”

  I snapped. “What are you trying to say?”

  “Whoa, li’l mama.” Nat threw her hands up jokingly. “Who you think you talkin’ to?” She playfully put her dukes up.

  “Damn.” I dropped my head. “I’m sorry.”

  “What’s wrong with you?” She pushed her drink aside. “Don’t tell me that Tremel has insufficient funds in his dick account,” she said with a smile.

  “Naw.” My eyes welled up with tears.

  “Talk to me.”

  I stared at her for a while. There was too much to say. For me to tell her about what was happening now, I’d have to start from how I got involved in it all in the first place.

  “Nat, I got myself involved in something crazy.” I was close to crying already. “It’s a long story.”

  She looked at her watch. “We have two hours before they’ll be here. It can’t be that long of a story.” She reached over and touched my hand. “Start talking.”

  “I don’t even know where to start.”

  “At the beginning—My ears are wide open.”

  I took a deep breath. “Well, it all started when I went to the Bahamas . . .”

  Over the next thirty minutes, I told Nat everything, from my first meeting with Conrad all the way to me playing photographer in Trenton then making the phone calls.

  By the end, she had moved from across the table to sitting next to me in the booth.

  “You made a few bad decisions, Sarai, but that doesn’t make you a bad person . . . especially if you’ve learned from your mistakes.”

  “Honestly, I don’t know if I’ve learned. I’m just scared about getting caught.”

  “Caught by whom?”

  “It eats me up to think of what will happen to me and Tremel if he finds out. I’ve been lying to him since day one. I slept with Doctor Baker right before our first date. It’s been one lie after another, over and over and over again.” I wiped my eyes. “If I loved him so much, then why would I do this to him?”

  Nat’s voice was so soothing. “I believe that you love him, but you’re also human.”

  “Humans know better, though.”

  “But they also make mistakes.” She continued with her logic. “Now you have to confess them to him.”

  “Confess to him? He ain’t a damn Catholic priest.”

  We both laughed.

  “You’ve got to tell him, Sarai.”

  “Tell him?” I looked at her like she had just slapped me. “I can’t tell him about any of this.”

  “Yes, you can.”

  “What would I tell him, Nat?”

  “Tell him the truth about what you’ve been doing.”

  “It’s not like I’m still doing it.”

  “But in order for you to have peace of mind, you have to tell him something.”

  I rolled my eyes. “The only thing my mind isn’t peaceful about is Conrad and these men coming after me. I’m through with everything else.”

  “Okay, I understand. But what if he finds out from someone else?”

  “Shit.”

  The thought made me sick to my stomach. What Nat was trying to get me to do was right, but I’d rather be wrong and still have a man.

  “I can’t lose him.”

  “The way I see it, if he loves you, then you won’t lose him.” She smiled.

  “What are you smoking?—I want some.” I tried to keep my voice down. “He is not gonna want anything to do with my trifling ass if I tell him.”

  “Trust me, Sarai, you won’t be able to keep this a secret very long. Something is bound to fall out of line. Tell him something, a piece of the truth; it’s better than nothing at all.”

  “Even a piece of the truth is too much.” I was angry. “I was having sex with other men, and it doesn’t just stop there—I was doing it for money. Nat, I can’t think of any man who would want to stay with a woman, knowing that she’s been fucking other men while they’ve been in a relationship.”

  “Sarai, you’re never going to have peace of mind, if you’re always worried about Tremel finding out.”

  “Nat, I actually wasn’t worried, until I started talking to your cleanse-my-soul ass,” I joked. “I was fine. The only thing I was worried about was those men looking for me, but you’ve got me on a brand-new level.”

  She looked at me. “That damn boy is crazy about you.”

  “I know, but he’ll go crazy on me if I tell him.”

  “Do you love him?”

  “Without a doubt.”

  “So, how do you feel about lying to him?”

  “I feel terrible about it.”

  “Would you rather him learn about this through somebody else?”

  “No. I wish I could tell him,” I whined, “but I can’t.”

  “You know what?—Don’t even worry about hurting his feelings, because I have something to tell you. He’s been sleeping with a math teacher for the last six months.

  “What?” My anger spiked off the charts. “What?”

  Nat answered nonchalantly. “I hear that they might still be messing around, but I don’t know.”

  I thought my stomach was coming out of my mouth. “Why didn’t you say this before?”

  “See, that’s exactly what I mean.” She laughed. “Isn’t it worse to hear something from someone who doesn’t know the story, or someone who only knows the bad part of the story, rather than hearing it from the horse’s mouth?” She added, “Compare what I just said, which was gossip, to Tremel coming to you and saying, �
��I just want you to know that I used to date a teacher at the school where I work. She and I were still trying to establish something when I met you, but when you and I started getting serious and I realized that I had feelings for you, I told her that I didn’t think that we should see each other like that any longer.’ “

  I took a deep breath. “You were about to get him a severe case of foot in his ass.”

  She laughed. “You can’t get mad at anybody.”

  “Yes, I can.”

  “Okay, now all jokes aside, didn’t it sound better coming from him than from someone who is adding on or doesn’t know exactly what’s going on?”

  “Yeah, I see your point, but please see mine.”

  “I see what you’re saying, Sarai.”

  Nat and I talked a lot more, and at the end of our conversation, I had concluded that I still wasn’t confessing anything to Tremel. Knowing that our relationship was new, I didn’t feel that it was strong enough to handle what I had to say. I also couldn’t figure out what avenue of my life could ever lead to Tremel finding out. I was willing to take my chances. I hated lying to him, but I loved him too much to tell him the truth.

  By the time Tremel and Nick arrived, I had already returned from the restroom, where I washed my face, reapplied my makeup, and was looking just like I did when I arrived.

  Nat, Nick, Tremel, and I ate together, danced, and drank late into the night. Later, all four of us did something that people living in Florida could do on a daily basis but rarely take advantage of—we walked on the beach.

  Holding hands and kicking sand reconfirmed that Tremel was the best thing that ever happened to me. I regretted blowing the first opportunity I had to be with him, when I met him at Nat’s party; that would’ve given me extra time in his arms. However, in four months he went from being a janitor I didn’t deem worthy of conversation to being the light that lit the way in my life. I was in love with him. When I was with him, I smiled the way five-year-olds do when they see a McDonald’s Playplace.

  When my feet touched the Cleveland soil the night before Thanksgiving, I was a ball of tremors, not from the plane ride, but from pure nervousness about meeting his family. We grabbed our bags from the conveyor belt around 10:00, and I was glad that Avis Rent-a-Car had a crowd.