What You Sow

by Wallace Ford

  “There’s nothing to forgive, Kenitra.” As he put his arms around me again, I could see that he had tears welling up in his eyes.

  I have no idea why I also remember the incredibly small details from that evening. I recall that my hair was damp from my quick shower and that I had not had time to make even the briefest attempt at makeup. I noticed that the streets were wet and slick from an early autumn shower, which gave the city more of a dreamlike quality than usual.

  As we drove across First Avenue, we passed what seemed to be a minor traffic accident. The police were trying to separate a turbaned taxi driver from what appeared to be a six-foot-tall, two-hundred-and-fifty-pound transvestite. The accident didn’t seem to have caused too much damage to the taxi or to the Volkswagen Beetle into which the sequined, wig-wearing transvestite managed to squeeze him/ herself with, I noticed, very stylish, four-inch Jimmy Choo stiletto high heels. Nevertheless, despite the minimal damage, the two drivers were beyond irate and seemingly about to resort to violence.

  While we were stopped at a red light, I adjusted my sunglasses and continued to observe a few more snippets of yet another urban vignette courtesy of the Gotham City Players. I saw both drivers gesticulating in a wild and increasingly dangerous manner. They were shouting unknowable curses and imprecations at each other, and the two harried police officers were clearly getting tired of the whole scene.

  That’s when the transvestite pivoted on one of his/her high heels and hauled off and slugged the cab driver with what had to be a stunning left hook. With his/her other hand, he/she grabbed his turban, which began to unravel as he sank to his knees, seemingly knocked senseless.

  For what seemed like the slowest two seconds in the history of the planet, the cops stood motionless as the transvestite held the taxi driver upright by his unraveling turban while getting ready to unload another blow to his head. And then it really got interesting.

  Just as the light was about to change, the taxi driver miraculously regained consciousness and grabbed the transvestite around both of his/her legs and rose up off the ground, giving a pretty good imitation of a linebacker tackling a wide receiver in the open field. The cab driver, however, was somewhat hampered by the fact that the transvestite was still holding a handful of his turban, which continued to unravel and which was still attached to his head.

  Nevertheless, he found the will and the strength to continue to rise off his knees. Amazingly, he lifted the transvestite right off the pavement, and they both shot up and over the top of the Volkswagen Beetle, landing on the other side of the car in a hopelessly hilarious tangle of legs, arms, an unraveling turban, a flying wig and rocketing sequins.

  I remember noticing two things as the light finally changed and our car drove off, taking me to my next appointment with destiny. I remember the two policemen leaping over the Volkswagen after the battling pair, hats flying and nightsticks at the ready. And I remember that the transvestite was not wearing any underwear.

  I couldn’t help but laugh out loud at the Keystonian scenario. First it was a giggle, then a chortle and then an uncontrollabe laugh. Sture looked at me like I was crazy. And then he started laughing, too.

  I guess the stress and strain of the situation had us both wound so tight that we needed a release. There was no time for a drink. Or sex. So that little burlesque performance on First Avenue had to suffice.

  We laughed like silly schoolchildren. And I am sure that the driver must have thought that we both had lost our minds and that he was taking one or both of us to New York Hospital for psychiatric observation.

  “Are we going to the Payson Pavilion?”

  When the driver actually asked us whether we were going to the psychiatric wing, we both stopped laughing—for a moment. Then what he meant by his question registered with both of us simultaneously and we started laughing again, harder and harder. We laughed until tears were pouring down our cheeks and we were gasping for breath. It was almost impossible to answer the understandably bewildered man’s question.

  “No, driver. We are going to the main hospital entrance.” The paroxysms of laughter made me feel like my sides were going to split. And for a few brief moments, the laughter took me a million-million miles away from Gordon and New York Hospital.

  It was a good feeling. And as I recall, it was the last good feeling that I would have that night.

  CHAPTER 19

  Gordon

  Every Beat of My Heart

  After our little adventure at the Purple Dragon, the Dark Lord and I started going uptown at least two or three times a week. It wasn’t like I had shit else to do lying in that motherfucking hospital bed. The worst part was not being able to move or speak while being able to hear and see everything.

  I could see the tubes and wires and monitors crawling all over my body, under my arms, up my nose and between my legs, and I did not feel a damn thing. I could see the doctors coming around every few hours, poking, prodding and shining those fucking lights in my eyes. From their comments, I gathered that they couldn’t see any reaction or response from me even though, every time, I tried my damnedest to shout, blink, wink, flinch or wiggle or do something to let the doctors and the whole fucking world know that I was alive.

  I heard the nurses and orderlies when they were checking my vital signs or changing the sheets or bathing me. I heard them laughing and joking with each other, ignoring me like I was just a piece of furniture. I had heard the doctors tell them that talking to me might help my recovery by eliciting some kind of response from me, but those useless motherfuckers never said a word to me unless the doctors were around.

  When the doctors were around, they were like Heckle and Jeckle, yapping and laughing and chatting with me just like they had been instructed. When left to their own devices, however, they did just what they had to do and nothing more. That meant bathing me, changing my sheets, and making sure that my tubes and wires and monitors were functioning properly.

  I remember one time when they were changing the sheets, somebody fucked up and I fell onto the floor—face first, as I recall. That caused a bit of a ruckus, and I had to laugh to myself at the commotion that my accident caused.

  It seemed like every doctor and nurse in the whole goddamned hospital showed up in my room. People were running around shouting orders, reading my charts and checking my vital signs like they were really concerned.

  But they weren’t fooling me for a minute. The only things that concerned them were their own asses and what might happen if a lawsuit came out of this little mishap.

  As it turned out, the only injury I suffered was a broken nose. And since no one came to see me with any regularity, the hospital—the doctors, the nurses, the orderlies and the administrators—conspired to keep the whole incident out of my file. Since I wasn’t going anywhere, my nose healed on its own, and all was right with the world.

  Of course, I shouldn’t say that no one came to see me. That fucking-ass bitch wife of mine would come about every three months to see if I was dead yet. I could see in her eyes that that was what was on her mind.

  She had to know that if I ever got my ass out of that hospital bed, I was going to make her suffer so fucking much that she would beg me to kill her. I still can’t understand why my blood pressure and heartbeat did not elevate when she walked into the room with that slick snake motherfucker Paul Taylor. She was probably fucking him, too.

  Not that I could blame Paul if she was fucking him. Kenitra was a knucklehead and a troublesome bitch—with a capital “T.” But that was still some of the best pussy that I had ever had. And some of the best head, too. And after a good beatdown, she would do anything, and I mean anything, that I wanted her to do.

  They obviously didn’t realize that I could hear every word that they said in my presence. So it didn’t take me long to figure out that Paul had somehow found the ten-million-dollar rainy day fund in the Bahamas that I had put in Kenitra’s name several years earlier. And they both seemed to be pretty pleased with themse
lves that they had taken my money and transferred it to an account some fucking where so that she could live like the mother-fucking Queen of Sheba somewhere in California.

  I do have to hand it to that bitch; however. She never stood too close to my hospital bed. She had enough sense to know that if she did, somehow, someway, I would find a way to get my hands around that pretty throat of hers and strangle her ass right there on the spot.

  Sometimes I would try to count the days for her visit, trying to time her quarterly visits by the calendar on the wall in my room. I would wait and wait, and finally she and Paul would appear at the door and take a step—just one step—inside the room.

  And that’s when I would concentrate. I would focus. I would try to send telepathic messages to Kenitra to come over to my bed. That’s it ... just ... a ... little ... closer. That’s it, just a little closer so that you can get a good look. Just a little closer so that you can see that I’m still alive. Just a little closer so that I can strangle your cheating, lying, thieving, whoring, pretty black ass. Just a little closer ... please ... just ... a ... little ... closer....

  But I had to hand it to the bitch. She always did have serious survival skills. She knew how to fake that she had passed out or was unconscious when I was beating the shit out of her or tying her up or fucking her in the nastiest, and most degrading ways.

  She always had good survival skills. And I figure that whether or not she could hear my telepathic messages, or just read them in my eyes, she had enough good sense to stay the fuck away from me.

  CHAPTER 20

  Diedre

  Darn That Dream

  From the moment that Paul got the call from the hospital, every terrible, horrible memory about Gordon and his betrayal came bubbling to the surface of my mind. I remember it like it was yesterday.

  Paul and I were still in bed that September morning, watching Today to find out what had gone on in the world while we slept. We were still reeling from learning the night before of Gordon and Ray Beard combining forces to support the mayoral candidate opposing the incumbent mayor whom Gordon had proposed that Morningstar support. We were further shocked and dumbfounded by the news report that morning.

  In a shocking development in the New Orleans mayoral race, local police announced the discovery early this morning of the body of the victorious mayoral primary contender, Percy Broussard. The candidate was discovered with two of his financial supporters, Gordon Perkins and Raymond Beard of New York, both of whom are in intensive care in local hospitals in New Orleans. The three men were found in the suite of a local hotel where a victory celebration had been held a few hours earlier. All three men were found naked, and the door was locked from the inside.

  The cause of Mr. Broussard’s death is unknown at this time, but a reliable source has told NBC News that a kilogram of cocaine and several bottles of vodka were found in the suite. Mr. Broussard appears to have died from cardiac arrest, and Perkins and Beard are suffering from severe drug overdoses. This report will have to be confirmed after an autopsy is performed on Mr. Broussard and further toxicological tests are performed on Perkins and Beard.

  NBC News has also learned that police responding to an anonymous call discovered documents that clearly implicate the Broussard campaign in a plot to forge documents and falsify testimony related to recent charges against Mayor Percy Lodrig and his father.

  The Lodrig campaign is almost certainly going to demand a new primary election, and it would seem, even at this early point, that Prince Lodrig will be reelected mayor of New Orleans.

  Paul and I found small comfort in his ignominious demise. By the time we learned that Gordon’s lying ass was in an intensive care unit somewhere in bayou country, we were too involved in trying to ensure the survival of Morningstar to spend too much time caring about him.

  But I remember that from the very beginning, I thought that Gordon simply was too evil to die and that he was going to visit additional plagues on all of us as long as he lived. And, God forgive me, I wished that he would die. And die is exactly what he did not do.

  For the past three years, Paul had been the point man for seeing that Kenitra was liberated from Gordon, the ten-million-dollar secret account in the Bahamas being an absolute godsend. And for the past two years, I watched Paul take the calls from Gordon’s doctors, informing him of the minimal changes in his condition.

  But I knew. Gordon was not going to die. And I knew that someday, somehow, Gordon would revive and would find a way to torment us once more.

  And that is why I was more than surprised when Paul got that late-night call summoning him to New York Hospital because Gordon’s condition had taken a dramatic turn for the worse. There is something maniacally awful and symmetrical about late-night calls from hospitals. The calls never bring good news, and the calls are never ever forgotten.

  Paul started to move with a sense of orderly madness, moving fast to get dressed and ready to go, without any seeming rhyme or reason to his pace or order of getting ready. At times like this, Paul usually did not have a lot to say.

  “I think I’m coming with you.” I started to figure out what to put on Paul Jr. and what I was going to wear. Clearly, time was not our friend, but I was also used to moving fast at a moment’s notice.

  “What about Paul?” Paul stopped as he was putting on his scarlet knit pullover, which I had bought for him at Paul Stuart for his birthday. The expression on his face registered a surprise that puzzled me for a moment.

  Paul had never known me to be the homebound wife or homebound mom. And now, with a medical crisis involving the co-conspirator who posed the most danger to the investment firm that I headed, Paul expected me to stay at home and wait for his call? Paul could be loveably insane at times, but this was not one of those times.

  “Paul, sweetheart.” I spoke in slow and measured tones. We did not have time for an existential rationalization of our relationship—again. But I know that at times, I fervently wished that I could understand how that man’s brain worked. At that moment, I had not a clue.

  “Paul, Paul Junior is not made of Steuben glass or Cuban sugar. I will wrap him in a blanket after I get dressed and the three of us will ride down to the hospital. Did you really think that your ‘wifey-poo’ would sit here with our baby while you faced this crisis by yourself? Aside from the fact that you shouldn’t have to do this alone, Jerome and I are the principals of Morningstar and we need to be there for whatever the hell is happening at that goddamn hospital. And we need to be there tonight. And you, my fine feathered protective lunatic husband, had better call Jerome so that he is not looking to kick your ass in the morning.”

  “Did I ever mention that you have a way with words?”

  “Not lately, mon cher.”

  “That’s because, though you have been blessed with many skills and talents, you were obviously unavailable when tact and discretion were being passed around.” Paul was kind of smiling as he resumed dressing.

  Frankly, it didn’t matter to me whether he wanted me to come or not. I was going to the hospital. But the last thing that we needed at that point was another battle in the War of the Roses. I prayed that he was going to use the sense that the Good Lord had given him.

  “Diedre, when you are right, you are right. I’ll call for a car and get Paul ready while you get dressed. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  My silent prayer had been answered. As I started getting dressed, I smiled to myself. I was pretty certain that he didn’t know that Sture would be there, too.

  It was going to be a very interesting impromptu late night gathering. And, it was really not much of a surprise to me that the events of the evening would be courtesy of one Gordon Stallworth Perkins.

  CHAPTER 21

  Jerome

  Cristo Redentor

  At fourteen and twelve, my boys, Jerome and Channing, were certainly old enough to be left alone at one in the morning as I got dressed to head out from my home in Hastings-on-Hudson, about forty-
five minutes outside of New York City. There really was no need to try to get a sitter at that time of the night, and I am sure that my two guys would have taken it as some kind of supreme insult if I had done so. I did, however, wake Jerome to let him know that he was “officially in charge” and that I would be back in time for breakfast. I also took the precaution of engaging the security system for the house and informing the security company’s monitoring desk as I left for downtown.

  Paul had been particularly terse and tense in letting me know about the call that he had gotten from the hospital and the need for him to go to Gordon’s bedside in the middle of the night. Given the fact that Paul would rarely use a sentence if he could use a paragraph instead, I figured that the doctors had not given him much more than a summons over the phone and, most importantly, he must have thought there had been a fairly serious and ominous turn of events.

  Ninety-nine percent of the time, I trusted Paul’s judgment implicitly, and this was one of those times. When I hung up the phone, I never hesitated. I checked on the boys, got dressed, secured my home, got in the car and headed down from Westchester County to Manhattan. As I made my way over to the New York State Thruway, I called from my cell phone and advised the twenty-four-hour dispatching desk at Teterboro Airport that Paul and I would not be flying to Los Angeles later that day.

  My Mercedes-Benz practically drove itself, and at that time of the night, there was barely any traffic on the highway. The relative solitude on the road gave me time to reflect and to think about my conversation with Diedre at the office.

  I truly had it set in my mind that I would never have any contact with Ray Beard again. When I received that chickenshit letter from him announcing his departure from the firm, I just knew that there would never be a reason for us to speak again. Still, looking at the whole thing objectively, I could understand his reasons for making the business decision that he made, even if I didn’t agree with that decision.