The old man across from me was laughing now, laughing and pointing down at the wet spot seeping through my rust-colored linen pants. I knew then that it wasn’t a dream at all, that it was a nightmare instead, one filled with women and seedy encounters.
One from which there seemed to be no hope of ever waking up.
Twenty-Eight
Is she traveling?” I asked the woman who’d answered Chevy’s private line.
“No, I told you, she no longer works here,” she said again, through clenched teeth.
“Yes, yes, you did say that—”
“Twice,” the woman snapped, and then I heard a click and a dial tone.
I stared at the phone for a while before dropping it back onto its base.
Something very strange was happening over there in Brooklyn. I couldn’t get ahold of Noah or Chevy. They both lived in the same damn house, yet no one ever answered the phone.
I finally called Noah’s office and his assistant told me that he’d taken a leave of absence.
Yes, something very strange was happening in Brooklyn.
I picked up the phone and buzzed Geneva.
“Yessum, Missus Atkins,” she said with a snicker.
“Stop being so silly,” I chastised, even though I couldn’t help but smile. “You up for taking a trip with me to Brooklyn tonight?”
There was silence.
“Helllllllllloooo?”
“Brooklyn, why there?”
“Because I can’t reach Noah or Chevy, and I think something is wrong.”
“Aw, Crystal, Brooklyn is so far away,” she whined.
“Stop it. It is not—it’s right over the bridge,” I reminded her.
“Yeah, well, maybe so, but it’s a goddamn world away!”
“Geneva!”
“And the people there are weird.”
“They are not!”
“Yes, they are. People get mugged in Brooklyn. It’s all those damn trees, dirt roads, and farmland!”
“What are we, back in the eighteen hundreds now?”
Geneva laughed.
“So will you come with me?”
“Sure, just let me go home and get my Glock first!”
“I’ll see you after work.” I laughed and put down the phone.
Three hours later, Geneva and I were on the A train headed toward Brooklyn. We’d been to Noah’s house maybe six times since he bought it, and just the thought of that made me feel ashamed.
“It shouldn’t take something like this to get us to Noah’s house,” I said to Geneva as the train streaked through the tunnel.
“Uh-huh,” she mumbled between bites of her Scooter Pie.
“I didn’t even know they still made those,” I said as I watched her tongue pick the cake out of the corners of her mouth.
“Yep, they still make them,” she said as she devoured the sweet pie.
“I guess your diet is history, huh?”
Geneva’s face went flat and she turned slanted eyes on me. “No!” she bellowed, and some passengers looked up from their books at us.
“Shh, I just asked a question—you don’t have to get so defensive and loud,” I whispered.
“Whatever,” she mumbled.
I’d hurt her feelings, so I patted her knee and said, “This is kind of like a trip, huh?” It was corny, I know.
“A trip?” Geneva spouted, spraying bits of Scooter Pie in my face. “Sorry,” she uttered as she attempted to wipe away the crumbs she’d just covered me with.
I pushed her hand back, completing the job myself, and said, “Well, it’s like an adventure, you and me on the A train to Brooklyn. It’s exciting!”
Geneva gave me a crooked look. “A train ride to Brooklyn is exciting now? Girl, you’re not getting out as much as I thought you were.” She laughed.
I smirked at her. “I guess what I’m trying to say, Ms. Geneva,” I said from between pursed lips, “is that I’m glad you decided to come with me.”
Geneva eyed me for a moment, and then her face softened. “You know, I wouldn’t let you come here alone. We’re girls, and that’s what girls do for each other.”
Out on Fulton Street now, we tried hard to get our bearings among the rush hour crowd that had exited the station with us.
“Um, ’scuse me, sir, which way is Stuyvesant Avenue?” I asked a young, good-looking man with a baseball cap who was walking by. His head jerked at the word “sir,” and then a broad smile spread across his face. He nodded toward the corner and said, “That way, Ma,” before giving me an appreciative look and walking on.
“Ma?” I looked at Geneva for guidance.
“Oh, that’s their word for girl, lady, chick,” she said nonchalantly.
“Oh,” I mumbled and we started in the direction his chin had indicated.
Halfway down Stuyvesant Avenue I realized that I didn’t have the address with me. “Do you know the house number?” I asked Geneva, who gave me a comical look and shrugged her shoulders before saying, “Lost in Brooklyn.”
“Is everything a joke to you?” I asked, frustrated more with myself than with her.
“Just call Noah and ask him,” Geneva muttered as she dug into her pocketbook in search of her pack of cigarettes.
“How many times do I have to tell you that neither one of them has been answering the phone, so what sense would it make to call now?”
“What about the cell phones?”
“They’re not answering those either,” I said, and then I thought about it and said, “Well, Noah’s not answering his and Chevy’s is temporarily disconnected.”
Geneva gave me a blank look, popped the cigarette between her lips, and lit it with her green Bic lighter. “Oh,” she breathed as she cocked off a plume of smoke.
We walked on as I tried hard to remember what Noah’s brownstone looked like, but they all seemed to look the same.
Frustrated, I pulled my cell phone from my purse and dialed Noah’s number. It rang just once and then his outgoing message came on.
“Noah, Geneva and I are in Brooklyn, right on Stuyvesant Avenue, and I can’t remember your house number, so if you’re there, please pick up.”
I waited for the sound of his voice, but all I got was the beeping sound telling me that the machine had finished recording my message and disconnected me.
I turned and looked at Geneva, who dropped her cigarette butt to the ground and stubbed it out with the toe of her beat-up Reebok.
“Back to civilization, then?” she said snidely.
I didn’t even answer her; I just huffed and started back up the street.
Twenty-Nine
Monday morning found me unable to keep my eyes open as I sat listening to the counselors complain about the lack of security in the various rehab houses the Ain’t I A Woman Foundation sponsored throughout various inner-city communities.
My head had started pounding as soon as I sat down and switched on my computer, and that had been around eight o’clock. Now, after two hours and two Tylenols, the marching band that had been rehearsing inside my head was giving a concert, with encores.
“It’s not fair Ms. Atkins,” a slight, dark-skinned girl with long braids named Camika complained.
She looked every bit of the part of a gutter rat, with her electric blue fingernails and powder blue mascara, but was far from it. She’d grown up in Baldwin, Long Island, and had graduated summa cum laude from Barnard. She was the perfect reminder that one really should never judge a book by its cover. “Our houses have two security officers for sixty in-house residents. That’s not enough. Have you seen the reports on the violence we’ve had over the past ninety days?” she continued.
I nodded my head yes.
“We need more security personnel—there’s no way around it.”
“One woman was sodomized by a resident, another was beaten and cut up in a stairwell. Ain’t I A Woman shelters are experiencing real problems in Houston, Chicago, and Los Angeles, but Detroit is the worst,” Cameron, a
tall wiry white boy with red hair, quietly interjected. He was the junior director and though he looked only twenty-two he was actually thirty and studying for his doctorate.
I looked across the mahogany table at the dozen or so faces that looked back at me—black, white, brown, yellow, all eager to give back to communities that most of them had never even set foot in until they came to work for this organization.
I remember when I was in their shoes: young, eager, and ready to link hands in solidarity with others who wanted to see homelessness, disease, war, and anything else we thought destructive and inhumane obliterated.
Now I was just a paper-shuffling delegator with a fancy title and a fat paycheck. Was I really making a difference sitting behind my desk? I didn’t think so.
“Ms. Atkins?”
I blinked and came out of my daydream. The band in my head had actually taken a break, but the tension in my neck told me that it would be a short one.
I looked at the faces once again and tried to put together something that wouldn’t send them away too disappointed and disillusioned with life.
I straightened my back and dove into the same old bullshit I’d been spouting since I’d assumed my position.
“Like I told you before, AIW has been strapped financially the past year. Donations are down and unfortunately we have had to cut services in some places, and security hire is one of them,” I said in the most apologetic voice I could muster. “The new budget is currently being prepared, and I promise you that we are working on trying to increase funds for security personnel,” I lied and abruptly stood up, signifying that this meeting was at an end.
I turned my back on a lot of angry faces and could have sworn I heard “bitch” thrown at my back as I walked through the doorway and out into the hall.
Back in my office, I settled myself down behind my desk, allowing the cool blues and warm whites of the room’s decor to work their soothing magic on me.
The spearmint tea my secretary brought in for me had succeeded in quieting the pain in my head but did nothing for my mind, which was locked on Chevy and Noah.
I was becoming very concerned about them and could have kicked myself for not having emergency contacts for them. Chevy’s mother was living somewhere in Phoenix, remarried, so her last name was a mystery to me. Noah’s mother was right in Queens but had changed her telephone number two years ago. I’d never gotten the new one from Noah, and Mrs. Bodison’s paranoia prevented her from being listed in the telephone directory.
I didn’t want to sound like some crazed, irrational friend, but if neither one of them contacted me soon, I would have to call the police.
I turned to my computer monitor and stared at the seventy-six e-mails that awaited my attention. My eyes roamed to my desk clock, which indicated that noon was just around the corner.
I would try to knock out as many e-mails as possible and take lunch at one.
Problems, problems, and more problems. I answered each e-mail feverishly, eager to be done with them. Then I opened one from Sweet Cheeks.
Sweetie,
I’m sorry that I have been AWOL—but I am going through something that has me upside down and inside out. I’m sorry that I have not returned your e-mails or telephone calls, but I am working through some issues at the moment and need some time alone.
Will call as soon as I find some footing.
Smooches,
Noah
P.S. By the way, Chevy is alive, well, and unemployed. I think there is a new man in her life.
I read the e-mail five times, but the relief I felt was short-lived and replaced by anger. We’re all supposed to be best friends, I thought to myself. Anything that affected them, affected me, and vise versa, or so I thought.
I felt hurt and tossed aside. I hit the delete button, switched off my computer, grabbed my bag, and headed out to lunch.
Thirty
Wednesday, hump day for sure. I was lying there, basking in the afterglow of what I thought was the best sex I’d ever had, and it was all a dream.
I thought I must have a ghost in the apartment, or maybe it was the late-night cheesesteak hoagie, fried chicken wings, french fries, and double-thick chocolate milkshake I had at around eleven last night. Whatever it was, I am in heaven and wanting some more, but I can’t seem to get back to sleep. I need to find my way back into the dreamworld where that good-looking buck of a man had my legs up on his shoulders and his head down between my legs while his tongue—which was as long as a human arm—was up inside me, touching places I didn’t know existed!
And after that he bathed me! BATHED ME!
Not a shower, not a soak in the tub, but a real sensual bath complete with bubbles, silky oils, a soft sponge, his magical hands, and Jill Scott crooning in the background.
This man, this god, lifted my big ole ass out of the bed. Lifted me! And carried me to a clawfoot tub that was six feet long and four feet wide and lowered me into water that was the perfect temperature and felt like silk.
“Ease back, baby,” he whispered. “Make room,” he said, and so I did by spreading my legs wide enough for his massive body to slip comfortably in between them.
He climbed in, his chocolate-colored skin already glistening as he plunged his hand beneath the water and slowly searched for the sponge. His fingers, feather soft, brushed against my thighs and then the silky wet hairs of my pussy as he hunted, finally locating the sponge.
“Lean back,” he whispered, and I did, and he lifted the sponge into the air and squeezed it until every last drop of water beaded on my breasts and pooled in the space beneath my throat. He bent his head and licked me dry.
It went on like that forever, until he said, “May I?”
And I heard myself say, “Yes, you may.”
Slowly he moved himself over me so that we lined up almost perfectly. He kissed me deeply, and I found myself unable to resist the sweet taste of his probing tongue.
We kissed for a long time, while his hands caressed my breasts and toyed with the lobes of my ears.
When his penis brushed against my thigh, it created music beneath the warm, sudsy water.
“Please,” I muttered and gripped his waist, pulling him closer.
He slid into me then, and I arched my back to accommodate him. We moved in perfect harmony and I heard myself whisper in his ear, “I love you.”
And he whispered back, “I love you more.”
And that’s when some fucking drunk in a Cadillac jumped the curb outside my window and slammed into the street lamp, dragging me from the best wet dream I’d had in years!
Damn!
My eyes flew open and I saw the cracked ceiling of my bedroom and heard the static drawl of my television. I knew it was all a dream and could have cried right there from the disappointment.
“Shit!” I mumbled to myself as I climbed out of bed, slipped my feet into my worn slippers, and padded out to the kitchen. I clicked on the light and swung open the freezer door to examine what I had left to munch on. Well, there were my good friends Ben and Jerry, and, look, they’d brought Rocky Road along with them!
I plucked the pint of ice cream from the freezer shelf, grabbed a spoon, and settled myself down at the kitchen table and began to eat. The container was only half full, so in six bites everything was gone.
I tossed the container aside and reached for my pack of Newports. Lighting one, I inhaled deeply as I stared through the darkness and tried to recall my dream lover.
Thirty-One
The shrill sound of the phone snatched me from my sleep, and I grabbed it up in the middle of the third ring. “Hello?” I managed to gurgle as my heart beat wildly in my chest.
Kendrick was beside me and promptly turned over, grabbing the pillow and throwing it over his face.
“Hello?” I whispered again when only clicking sounds came out of the receiver.
Someone was on the other end, babbling frantically. “Who is this?”
“It’s Chevy!” Chevy screamed.
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“Chevy?” I said stupidly as I looked at the fluorescent green numbers on the clock on my nightstand. It was 3:15 a.m.
“Where are you?” I said, shocked to finally hear from her and even more surprised to hear from her at this hour of the morning.
“Jail!” Chevy screamed back.
Kendrick and I walked into the lobby of the 100th Precinct at 3:50 a.m. I was amazed at the amount of activity that was going on in the precinct at that hour. Kendrick sat down heavily on a bench situated directly across from the main desk, yawned loudly, and then leaned his back against the wall.
“Excuse me, I’m here for Chevy—I mean, Chevanese Cambridge,” I said to the aging Hispanic officer behind the desk.
“What’s the name again?” the officer said without looking up. I inhaled deeply and stared at the shiny bald spot on the top of his head.
“Chevanese. C-H-E-”
“Last name,” the man curtly cut me off.
“Cambridge,” I replied and then looked over my shoulder to see Kendrick walking through a door marked MEN.
“When was the perp brought in?”
“Um, a few hours ago, I guess.”
The police officer, head still bent, turned his body toward the monitor of his computer terminal and typed in Chevy’s last name.
“Cambridge, Henry,” the cop said, still not looking up.
“No, Chevanese. C-H—” I started again.
The cop cut me off again. “Cambridge, Pauline.”
“No, no, I said her name is—”
“Cambridge, Martin.”
I could feel my anger building. I dragged my hands down my face, trying hard to keep myself together. “Her name is—”
“Cambridge, Chevanese,” the cop said and finally looked up at me, offering me a wry smile revealing the black space that sat where a front tooth should have been.
I always assumed that the city had a good dental plan, I thought. “Yes, yes, that’s her,” I said with a heavy sigh of relief.
“You here to bail her out?” he asked, one gray eyebrow climbing his forehead.
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