Groove

by Geneva Holliday

  “Um, I’m going to five too,” I said.

  The doors slid closed and the elevator began to climb.

  Once we got to the fifth floor and the elevator doors opened again, the two men turned to face each other, leaving a wide gap for me to pass through.

  “After you, ma’am.”

  This day just keeps getting weirder, I thought as I stepped between them. As I passed my eyes caught hold of the shiny brass badgs that hung from chains around their necks. The badges had big blue letters pressed into their center that said DEA.

  I heard the little girl in me moan, Oooooohh, you’re in troubbbbbbble!

  I walked toward Noah and Crystal, but my eyes were on the DEA agents, who were marching past the nurses’ station and back toward the exam rooms.

  “Are you okay?” Crystal said, a wisp of a smile still on her lips.

  I shook my head yes, my eyes still on the men, even though I couldn’t understand why I was so bothered by them.

  “Miss Girl, can you tell me again about someone trying to kill—” Noah had started to chide me, but I put my hand up when one of the DEA agents reappeared, asked the nurse something, and then turned and looked directly at us.

  “Oh, shit,” I said.

  The agent marched over to us and said, “Are you with Chevanese Cambridge?”

  Noah and Crystal’s eyes were pinned on his badge. They nodded their heads slowly up and down, and then I knew that they were feeling that same uneasiness that I was experiencing.

  “Come with me, please,” he said and turned on his heel and marched away.

  We followed him into an empty examination room, where he told us to have a seat; he then left, pulling the green curtain closed behind him.

  We all exchanged looks and did exactly what we were told. There were only two chairs in the room. Crystal took one and let Noah take the other, because it looked as if his legs had turned to rubber.

  “What the hell has Ms. Drama gotten us into!” Noah snarled.

  Crystal looked at the curtain and then back at Noah. “Shhhh,” she hissed at him.

  We were separated from the next room by a soft retractable wall, which offered about as much privacy as the hospital curtain that enclosed us, so we were able to hear the entire conversation going on between Dr. Chin and the agents.

  “The X-ray revealed foreign matter in her stomach. Looking closer, I realized what it was, and that’s why I called you guys.”

  “You did the right thing,” one of the agents said.

  “How much longer?” the other inquired.

  “Shouldn’t be too much longer now. We gave her a double-strength enema,” Dr. Chin said.

  We all shook our heads in disbelief.

  “Am I hearing what I think I’m hearing?” Noah whispered. Crystal and I just nodded.

  “Why are they holding us, though?” he said.

  “They’re probably going to say we were her accomplices,” I blurted out.

  Noah’s eyes bulged. “I can’t do no time! I am too pretty, and you girls know what happens to pretty boys in prison!”

  “We haven’t done a thing. We’re innocent,” Crystal said, and I was surprised at the calmness in her voice. “If Chevy has done what they’re suspecting she has, it is all on her.”

  A moment later we heard another voice say, “We’ve extracted all of the foreign matter, Doctor Chin.”

  “Put the bowl down here,” Dr. Chin said. “Hmm, just as I thought. Condoms.”

  Noah made the sign of the cross on his chest, squeezed his eyes shut, and began silently to pray.

  It was eerily quiet for a few minutes on that side of the wall, and then one of the agents announced, with great disappointment, “It’s sugar.”

  Noah, Crystal, and I looked at each other in disbelief and said, “Sugar?”

  After an odd moment of silence that was followed by some embarrassed clearing of throats, the curtain enclosing us was snatched open.

  “I don’t know what your friend was planning to do,” the agent started, blanketing us with an icy stare, “but whatever it was, I suggest you all think better of it.”

  We all exchanged looks.

  “You’re free to go for the moment, but know that Big Brother is watching all of you,” he said as he tapped his left eye with his index finger.

  Noah was the first to scamper nervously past the DEA agent, and Crystal and I followed close behind.

  Dr. Chin was standing in the hallway, watching the agents march toward the elevators. He had a dumbfounded look on his face, and when he looked up and saw us approaching he turned and started to walk quickly in the other direction. “Your friend is in room 203,” he mumbled, before snatching a clipboard from a passing nurse and demanding that she follow him.

  “Punk,” Crystal said.

  We took the stairs down three flights and after some time found ourselves standing in front of room 203.

  Chevy was propped up in a hospital bed, snoring, a Tide commercial blaring from the wall television.

  I picked the remote up from the nightstand and turned the volume down.

  “Wake up, heffa,” Noah yelled as he gave Chevy’s arm a nasty jab.

  Chevy’s eyes rolled and her lids fluttered open. “Hey,” she said, giving us a sleepy smile.

  “Hey, nothing. Do you know what—” Noah started to screech, but Crystal pulled him away from the bed.

  “None of that matters now,” she said in a soft voice, then turned her attention to Chevy. “How are you feeling?”

  “Well,” Chevy said, smacking her mouth like a geriatric patient, “I did feel like someone had stuck their hand up my ass and pulled a grown person out of my stomach, but after the Percocet, I feel fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnne as wine.” She half slurred, half laughed.

  “I bet you do,” Noah huffed.

  “Tell me something, Chevy?” I asked, coming to stand beside her. “How many of those condoms did you swallow?”

  Chevy’s face strained with concentration as she fought with the wall the Percocet had put up in her mind. “Oh, oh yeah, I remember,” she said, trying to raise her head, “forty!”

  “Forty!” Crystal yelled.

  “Damn fool,” Noah mumbled as he shook his head.

  “Well, what the hell did you tell them when they asked you why in the world you’d swallowed them in the first place?”

  A stupid grin spread across Chevy’s face and she blurted, “I said, ‘Haven’t you heard? It’s the newest craze in appetite suppression!’ ”

  That was Chevy for you—always thinking on her feet!

  Fifty-Eight

  Chevy rolled in and out of her Percocet-induced haze, sometimes muttering obscenities, other times laughing out loud, but mostly snoring like a black man after a long day and a fifth of Thunderbird.

  Dr. Chin strolled in and was visibly stunned to see us. He quickly moved his eyes to the clipboard he was carrying and said, “We’re just going to keep her overnight for observation. She’ll be released tomorrow morning at about eleven.” He then turned and rushed out.

  I just shook my head, stood up, stretched, and was about to suggest that we leave when Noah snatched the remote control from my hand, frantically pressing the volume button as he said, “Isn’t that Kendrick, Crystal?”

  We all looked up at the television to see a ragged-looking Kendrick peering menacingly into the camera. He was handcuffed and being shoved into the back of a police cruiser by two officers.

  Roz Abrams was at the scene:

  Police said they’d received an anonymous tip earlier that day and sent detectives here, Three hundred West Seventeenth Street, a luxury loft apartment building in the Chelsea section of Manhattan.

  Authorities walked in to find two men fighting. One man was Kendrick Greene. The other man has been identified as Abimbola Lenguele of the Nigerian Doshi drug cartel.

  There were more than eighty vials of the highly addictive drug Hades in the apartment, as well as assault weapons.

&
nbsp; Police are still searching for another member of the Doshi cartel, a woman, one Cassius Maynard.

  The studio floated a glamorous picture of Cassius in the upper-right-hand corner of the screen.

  Noah and I looked at Crystal, our mouths hanging open.

  Crystal couldn’t seem to stop her eyelids from blinking.

  “Are you okay?” I ventured, walking over to Crystal and throwing my arms around her and embracing her in a warm hug.

  “I’m fine,” she said, hugging me back. “To tell you the truth, I think I feel relieved. Is that wrong?”

  “Of course it’s not,” I said.

  “So I guess Ms. Drama was telling the truth?” Noah said, pointing down at the snoring Chevy.

  “Yeah, I guess she was,” Crystal said, bending and giving Chevy a loving kiss on the cheek.

  “Damn,” Noah breathed as he shook his head at the television screen. “You never know what’s going on behind someone’s groove, huh?”

  “Ain’t that the truth,” I said.

  Crystal nodded in agreement, and then her face broke into a sunny smile and she said, “I think I need a drink—what about y’all?”

  Fifty-Nine

  So that’s the story of how we ended up in the Brooklyn Hospital emergency room two days before Labor Day.

  Oh, sure, I could have given you the short version, but then you would have missed out on all the good stuff in between!

  Little Eric came back from basketball camp the next day. I swear he looked as if he’d grown six inches!

  We all spent Labor Day with Noah and his lover, Zahn. They look good together and seem to be very much in love. And he’s a good guy; he totally understood when Noah shared his “little problem” with him.

  A month later and after some prodding, we finally got the entire version of Chevy’s involvement with Abimbola and Cassius. She claims that she’s learned her lesson and is working on changing her selfish, senseless, money-worshipping ways. I guess having to sit on a rubber doughnut for three weeks will do that to you. But I’m not quite sure she’s totally sincere; why, just the other day when we were strolling through the Village I caught her ogling a Pucci scarf in the window of a high-end boutique.

  She has to appear in court next week in order to clear up her warrant situation. Crystal got the attorney who works with AIW to represent her pro bono, and he feels that he can get her off with just a slap on the wrist and a year or so of probation.

  In the meantime, she’s still living with Noah, but he’s barely there and, in fact, seriously thinking about selling the house and moving to England with Zahn. He’ll be missed, but that’ll give me a reason to finally get my fat ass on a plane!

  Crystal is still beautiful and successful. The insurance money she received from the flood and the little she borrowed from her bank account allowed her to renovate the entire apartment, and it looks even more fabulous than before.

  She gets lonely sometimes and has confided in me that she doesn’t know when or if she’ll ever be able to let someone get as close to her as Kendrick did.

  I told her that her Prince Charming is out there, the two of them just haven’t found each other yet. She knows it’s true; she just likes to hear someone say it every now and then. In the meantime she’s decided to train for the New York Marathon, which brings things around to me.

  The Wednesday after Labor Day I received a call from the weight nazi Miriam. Right off she began ranting, raving, and belittling me, and once again I found myself sitting there like an obedient, emotionally abused child, just taking it.

  I looked around and saw the place I had made into a home. Turned and looked at my big beautiful son, who was standing at the stove frying franks. Thought about where I had come from and where I was going and realized that this bitch didn’t fit into my life—past, present, or future. I calmly said, “Miriam, if you call my home again, I’m going to come up to your office and put my foot so far up your ass, you’ll be able to taste the sole of my aerobic sneaker in your mouth.”

  And, with that, I hung up the phone.

  Not too long after that, I saw on the news that someone had finally blown the whistle on Calorie Counters, hitting the company with a $10 million harassment lawsuit.

  I was watching with glee as they brought Miriam Baxter out in handcuffs. She looked exactly the way I pictured her. Built like a man, face like a bulldog, and a military haircut. She growled at the cameraperson and head-butted the reporter who kept pushing his microphone in her face.

  I’ve since joined Jenny Craig and have lost two pounds!

  Little Eric and I spend a lot of time looking through college brochures. He’s excited that we’ll be attending college at the same time. He tells me how proud he is of me for making the decision to continue my education and even throws in an “I love you” every now and again.

  His father is coming around more often to be with Little Eric. It’s slow going, but they’re starting to warm up to each other, and I’m glad for that.

  I’d been hinting around to Crystal that I was beginning to feel guilty about sleeping with Eric and was thinking about cutting him off, so to get me to go the extra mile, she gave me a gift.

  A nine-inch-long, candy-striped vibrator!

  The first night I used it, I came so hard and screamed so loud, the neighbor above me banged on the floor and screamed, “Keep it down! Damn!”

  After that night I named the vibrator Mandingo and knew that Eric would never get another drop of my loving again!

  Anyway, it was time to stop fooling around with him. I realized that we were tempting fate each and every time we’d been together, because the last time we had sex, the condom broke. Now if that’s not a sign from God, I don’t know what is.

  My period’s not due for another week, but I’m not worried. Really, I’m not . . .

  GROOVE.

  Copyright © 2005 by Geneva Holliday.

  All rights reserved.

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  a division of Random House, Inc.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses,

  organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the

  author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual

  persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Holliday, Geneva.

  Groove / by Geneva Holliday.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  1. African American women—Fiction. 2. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction.

  3. Summer—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3608.O4847H65 2005

  813’.6—dc22

  2004062254

  www.randomhouse.com

  eISBN: 978-0-307-41901-9

  v3.0