by Mary Monroe
“I don’t know why you want to hold on to that old jalopy, but that’s fine with me,” Floyd grinned, holding me around my waist so tight you would have thought that he was afraid I was going to stumble over the railing.
I wanted to hold on to my old car. It had too much sentimental value for me to remove it from my life. Besides, there was no way I could explain a brand-new BMW to Paul. But I accepted it anyway, just to shut Floyd up. As long as Paul didn’t see me batting around in that fancy ride, he’d never know about it. My plan was to keep the Honda until it stopped running, no matter how many new vehicles Floyd insisted on buying for me. It was one of the important props I still needed to keep up appearances with Paul.
Valerie was still driving around in her three-year-old Altima, so she was more than happy to put some miles on my new steel gray BMW. I eagerly left it with her when I flew up to Alameda to spend time with Paul and when he was in town. She was doing me a favor by helping me keep it out of Paul’s sight. Each time I handed it over to her, she snatched the keys out of my hand like a child snatching a piece of candy. “Girl, when my honey saw me pull up to his apartment in style, he about shit his pants. He thinks I’m doing so well with Paw Paw’s,” Valerie told me with a misty-eyed look. “Russell is not perfect, but he’s perfect for me,” she swooned.
I still had not met the man who had opened Valerie’s nose so wide I could drive a car through it. But I couldn’t wait to do so. She had reluctantly mentioned that he was “a little younger” than us and that he shared a two-bedroom apartment with three other people. One was his mama. “Him being so young, I can still mold him to my liking,” she decided.
“Is this Russell really the kind of man you want?” I asked. “Young, broke, and still living with his mama? Is he with you for the right reasons?”
“Since when did you become an authority on this kind of shit? We can’t all hook up with two gorgeous, well-heeled men, like you did. Some of us have to settle for what we can get.” I didn’t like the hopeless look on Valerie’s face, or what she was saying. And she wasn’t through with me yet. “You, of all people, know what my love life has always been like. I’d like to think that you’d be happy for me, no matter who I hooked up with, as long as I was happy.”
“Val, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. It’s just that I don’t want to see you get hurt. You’ve got your own business and your own home. But you are not that young anymore. Those are the facts of your life. Stir in a young, handsome, broke-ass man with a big dick, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. I—”
“Girl, shut the fuck up! You with your two husbands! All right! Enough is enough. Let’s change the subject before one of us says something she will regret.” There was complete silence for a few moments as Valerie and I regrouped our thoughts. I was about to speak, but she beat me to it. “And by the way, did you hear about Moanin’ Lisa getting engaged? She brought him into Paw Paw’s two nights ago. He looks like a flying monkey, but she was beaming like a lighthouse she was so happy. And for the first time in all the years I’ve known her, she was not moanin’. Dude works as a custodian at the Greyhound bus station, but that didn’t seem to bother our girl.” I was glad that Valerie had steered the conversation in a different direction.
“That’s nice. I hope she will be very happy,” I said.
Valerie gave me a steely-eyed look. “You want her to be happy? Don’t you think I deserve to be happy, too?”
“I want you to be happy with your young honey, but I don’t want you to get hurt, or used in the process.”
“Dolores, I’m in love with Russell, and if being used feels this good, I hope he doesn’t stop until he uses me up.”
“You sound like that old Bill Withers song,” I commented. I could tell from the puzzled expression on Valerie’s face that she had never heard of it. “Anyway, I can’t wait to meet this man that’s got you smiling so much these days. When are you going to hook up a party so you can introduce him to all your friends?”
“Well, it was supposed to be a surprise, but I’m planning one for your thirty-fourth birthday this month. Paw Paw’s will be closed for the evening, and I know that’s not going to set too well with some of my regulars. But, fuck ’em. What the hell! My friends come first!” Valerie gave me a playful pinch on my arm. “Don’t get confused and bring the wrong husband.”
“Which one is the wrong one?”
“Russell has met Floyd, but he knows nothing about Paul. The only thing we have to do is coordinate the date. We need to make sure that Paul will be up north.”
“Oh shit. I just remembered something. He’s taking me to dinner at Alioto’s in Frisco on my birthday.”
“Then we can have the party before you go up there, or when you return. What about Floyd? I know he’ll want to spend your birthday with you.”
“I’ve already got that covered. I told him that I have to do the Puerto Vallarta cruise that weekend.”
There was a slight smile on Valerie’s face as she looked at me and shook her head. Then she grabbed me by my shoulders and shook me, all the while giving me a look of playful contempt. “You bitch. Sometimes I hate you so much I want to beat the dog shit out of you! You’re pretty, but you are not drop-dead gorgeous. You’ve got big, flat feet and hair that looks like it belongs on a rag doll. You are not even particularly intelligent. On top of all that, you are already showing your age,” she said, adding a smirk. “I don’t know what the hell you do to deserve so much. But one day I hope you will share your strategy with the rest of us.”
“Well, if I ever figure it out, I will,” I muttered. Valerie released my shoulders and gave me a big hug.
CHAPTER 51
I knew that I was not the first woman to commit bigamy, and I would not be the last. And trying to juggle two husbands in two different cities was one of the hardest things I had ever done before in my crazy life. That was why I could not explain why I got involved with another man!
It all started when my Honda ran out of gas on the freeway. I reluctantly accepted a ride with a handsome young stranger. He was tall. I could tell that even though he was sitting in the driver’s seat of his noisy, battered Ford. His seat looked as if it was pushed back as far as it could go, and even then his long legs still looked scrunched up. He had small, intense black eyes and a smile that lit up his coconut brown face. Short black hair covered his head like a skullcap. He had nice teeth, even though they were slightly crooked. I liked what I saw, and I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about how lucky some woman was. Besides Paul, he was the only other man I’d met with a goatee who I found attractive. A shiver went up my spine when I realized that this brooding stranger looked like a younger combination of my two husbands!
“You look safe,” I commented. “How do I know you’re not a serial killer?” I teased, already in the front passenger seat. Even though I was making light of a potentially serious situation, getting in a car with a stranger could have been a fatal mistake.
“You look safe, too. How do I know you ain’t no serial killer?” he chuckled, and slapped the steering wheel with the palm of his hand. “Sister, you can relax. I’m not going to hurt you in any way. As a matter of fact, you can use my cell phone to call somebody and tell them who you are with.”
There was so much junk piled up on the backseat, I could barely see out the window. I couldn’t tell where the musty smell was coming from, the junk on the backseat or the young man’s body. His hands were covered in dust and grease, and so was the denim jumpsuit he had on. I had always found blue-collar men attractive, and the one sitting next to me was the cream of the crop. He looked cash strapped, and couldn’t have been more than twenty-three.
He leaned over, jabbing into my lap with his elbow. With a grunt, and a sexy grunt at that, he removed his car registration from the glove compartment and dropped it into my lap. I managed to hold back a gasp, but that caused a lump to dance a James Brown jig down my throat. I had to cough hard to clear my throat. I was sitting so clos
e to the door, I had to shift in my seat so that I could pick up the document.
“Marvin R. Meecham,” I read aloud. “So is that what they call you?”
“They call me a lot of things. Some I won’t repeat.” He laughed. “You can call me whatever you want to call me.” He had a gentle voice, and that made me feel more comfortable.
“Mr. Meecham, you can just drop me off at the nearest gas station,” I told him.
“Nobody has ever called me Mr. before,” he told me. Even though he was young enough to be my baby brother, there was an air of maturity in his demeanor that I thought was just as attractive about him as everything else.
“What do you do?” I asked, looking his dingy jumpsuit up and down.
“I do a lot of things, baby,” he told me, glancing at me with a hungry look in his eyes. There was something suggestive about the way he’d answered my question. Him being so young and luscious, there was no telling what he meant.
“Uh, I meant what kind of work do you do?” I asked, clearing my throat and then biting my bottom lip. My whole head suddenly felt like somebody had wrapped a steamed towel around it. The air got so hot I was surprised I didn’t see some smoke. I didn’t know if the heat wave caressing my face was embarrassment or lust. Being this close to a man like Marvin made me nervous. Without thinking I glanced at his crotch, and what I saw made me grin like a Cheshire cat. If that wasn’t bad enough, he saw me looking at his lap. He parted his thighs slightly so I could get an even better look. I replaced my grin with a stony look, pressing my lips so close together they felt as though they’d been glued shut. I sat up straighter in my seat and aimed my eyes at the road in front of me. If I could have moved closer to the door, I would have. But I was already so close to it, the door handle was jabbing me in my side.
“I work on cars mostly,” he said. “And anything else I can get. That’s what I get for dropping out of school in the ninth grade,” he said in a sorry voice. “And, I get by with a little help from my friends,” he added in a mysterious tone, spoken in a voice almost as low as a whisper. I had no idea what he meant by that, and I didn’t even want to know.
I had just dropped Paul off at LAX. With all of the running around I’d been doing this particular week, nightclub visits with Floyd and his lawyer and the brassy blond he’d just married, shopping and having lunch with Valerie, and other particulars, I had overlooked a lot of the little things. One just happened to be gassing up my car. I hadn’t bothered to check the gas gauge until the car stopped. And this was one of the few times I’d left one of my residences without my cell phone. Valerie had my BMW, and I had just gassed it up before I handed it over to her.
“You live in L.A.?” Marvin asked, glancing at me as he swerved around an eighteen-wheeler. He drove like an escapee in a stolen car. It felt like we were on a roller coaster. Each time he passed another vehicle, or changed lanes, my knee hit against his.
“Uh-huh.”
“Family? Husband? Kids?”
“Uh-uh. Just me.” One thing I had learned was not to give too much information about myself to people I didn’t know that well. Especially people I didn’t plan on seeing again. Things had a way of coming back to haunt me.
“Here we go,” he said, pulling into a Chevron station. As soon as he stopped the car, he ran into the office and came out with a gas can and ran straight to one of the pumps. After he filled the can with gas, he beckoned for me to roll down the window on my side. “Do you want me to take you back to your car or do you want to call somebody else?” he asked.
“It’s just down the freeway a few miles. I can walk,” I said, forcing a smile. He gave me a dry look and climbed back into his car, gently placing the gas can on the backseat floor.
“Unless you got a death wish, you don’t walk along no freeway in L.A.” He started the car and zoomed back onto the freeway.
“I don’t have but a few dollars cash on me. Will you give me your address so I can send you a check when I get home to settle this?” I said.
“I’d rather settle for a drink,” he grinned, glancing my way again with his lips parted. “I only drink beer, so it won’t set you back too much.”
“I think I should just send you the money I owe you for the gas. I don’t go out drinking much these days.”
“Whatever,” he said with a hint of disappointment in his voice. He put a CD in the player and we listened to Toni Braxton all the way back to my car.
After he poured the gas into my tank, he waited until he was sure my car would start. Then he started walking back to his car. I honked my horn and he ran back. “You forgot to give me your address so I can send you a check,” I told him. Not only did he give me his address, he included his telephone number. I planned to put a check in the mail as soon as I got back to the condo I shared with Floyd, and that’s just what I did. Why I called him, too, was a mystery to me. “This is Dolores,” I stated.
“Dolores who?”
“Oh. I’m the woman who ran out of gas on the freeway. I just wanted to let you know that I put the check in the mail a little while ago. And I wanted to thank you again for helping me. That was a nice favor you did for me.”
“Well, would you do a favor for me now?”
“What?” My heart rate increased and my mouth felt bone dry inside. Given my history with men, and me with my weak self, I should have hung up and disposed of this man’s telephone number immediately. But I didn’t, and it was a mistake that would cost me dearly. . . .
“Hold on to my phone number, in case you change your mind about buying me that drink.”
I wanted to blame everybody but myself for what I eventually did. First of all, I was upset with Floyd, because he was wearing me down to a frazzle. When I was with him, we went nightclubbing two or three nights a week. He’d made a few new friends who I didn’t like—loud, coarse men he’d met in the clubs we went to. I didn’t like them hanging around the condo, usually looking for handouts. These leeches included a wannabe rap singer looking for a financial sponsor, a wannabe actor looking for a financial sponsor, and a few wannabes who hadn’t decided what they wanted to be. But they were still looking for a financial sponsor, too. Then, on a regular basis, I had to listen to Floyd’s detailed, tear-filled account of how the system had failed him. It did me no good to remind him that he was now a free man, his name had been cleared, and because of his tragedy he now had more money than he could have earned in three lifetimes.
Paul had started to get on my nerves even more than Floyd. It was bad enough that I had to put up with his family when I visited him in Alameda. Now he was bringing various relatives from the Bay Area to our home in L.A. who I had to wait on hand and foot—and clean up after them like a maid.
Oh, that Paul, and that Floyd. I still loved both my husbands and I knew they loved me. What Floyd saw in me was obvious. We had so much in common—the foster home experience, no biological relatives in our lives, limited education, and the fact that we had both endured the lower middle-class experience.
What Paul saw in me was another story. To him, I was a challenge. He had told me that more than once. I represented everything his family had tried to protect him from. He even told me once that I was a refreshing change from all the hissy prissy debutantes who had attended UCLA with him. Those were the only kinds of women he had dated and almost married before I “took advantage of him,” said his mama. Paul had confessed that marrying me was the only time he’d defied his mother and that it felt good. However, that old biddy was so certain that our marriage wasn’t going to last she referred to me as Paul’s “first wife.” Well, I had news for her: I would be Paul’s first wife and last wife—as long as he didn’t find out about my second husband.
Paul was more of a challenge to me than Floyd was. Even though Paul had begun to get on my nerves, I absolutely adored the man, despite the many obstacles I had to deal with. I continued to overlook the fact that he still took it upon himself to educate me in the housekeeping department. Our bathro
oms were major thorns in my side. Thanks to him, I probably knew more about grout, lime scales, and rust stains than Mr. Clean. When I didn’t want to be around Paul, I ran into Floyd’s arms, and vice versa. However, there were times when I didn’t want to be in the arms of either one. Like now. I was undergoing some emotional issues that only another woman could relate to.
I was disappointed that Valerie’s shoulder was not available for me to cry on much lately. When she wasn’t tending the bar, she was with that new boyfriend that she bragged about all the time. I was glad that she was in love with somebody, but this duckling was already on my shit list and I hadn’t even met him yet—and wasn’t sure I wanted to. For one thing, I didn’t like the fact that she was helping him out of one financial difficulty after another! There had been a few times when I’d had the nerve to lend her money to lend to him! And according to her, he was fucking the living daylights out of her. “Now I know what real love is,” she told me, after giving me a blow-by-blow account of her latest bedroom tryst. I just smiled. If Valerie thought that what she had was real love, and it made her happy, that was all that really mattered. But I prayed that she would not lose her perspective and do something really foolish in the name of love. She didn’t need to screw up her life over a man. I was screwing up enough for the both of us.
I thought about booking myself on a cruise, a real one. And on any ship but the Encantadora. I missed my old job, but being on that particular ship would have brought back too many painful memories. It represented a life that was no longer mine. For the sake of my sanity, I had to do something for myself. It felt like the world was closing in on me. I had to get away from everybody and everything. That was when I remembered that handsome young stranger who wanted to have a drink with me. Without giving it much more thought, I called him up.
