“What were you thinking?”
“Excuse me?”
“You had this look on your face.”
“Really?”
Omar stopped one of the twins and ordered two more mimosas. Neither knew where to begin so they filled in the awkwardness by discussing the weather.
On their fourth round of champagne and orange juice they got around to Brando. Vanessa was straightforward about her intentions. She needed a man to keep hold of her man, and Brando was the one.
Omar listened coolly, not knowing whether to be put off or turned on by her candor. Then resentment started to brew, ever so slightly. Her condescension, her faux fag-haggishness, her sympathy-seeking confiding as if he was her sissy-mammy hairdresser was beginning to piss him off.
“My husband is bisexual,” she continued. “I accept that. I have no choice. I love him. He loves me. But he has needs I can’t fulfill. Now I don’t want him out there with every Tom, Dick, and Harry. I need someone safe, dependable, someone to fulfill that other side of him, not someone to fall in love with him. I think Brando would be perfect for him.”
“And what makes you think that Brando is that kind of freak?” Omar finally asked.
“What makes you think that he isn’t?” she asked back. “William finds him very attractive. I find him very attractive for William. And I am all about pleasing my husband, by any means necessary.”
“So what’s your story?” Omar then asked. “You like to sit back and watch?”
“I sit back, I watch, I wait my turn.”
“Our Lady of the Leftovers,” he said, thinking out loud.
“Excuse me?”
“I don’t know you that well, Vanessa, but let me tell you something—”
“What can you possibly tell me?” she asked incredulously.
“I can tell you this. You’re a fucking idiot.”
“Excuse me?”
“You are,” he went on, knowing the booze was doing most of the talking. “Why the hell would you want to be with a man you can only half fulfill, who can only half fulfill you? What is wrong with you? Your husband maybe straight, which I doubt, but his dick is gay, his asshole is gay. He wants what you want. What else do you need to know? Think better of yourself, lady. Think better of your womanhood, for God’s sake. Get you a man who needs all of you, because there’s a part of your husband that you can’t satisfy. Realize it, get over it, stop shoppin’ for him, and move the fuck on away from my man.”
“Your man?” she asked derisively, eyes rolling. Now she was pissed off.
“Yes,” Omar snapped, rolling his eyes right back, “my man. Brando.”
“Brando?” She then laughed, hooted actually, in spite of the read-down. “Shiiit,” she said in a ghetto-fabulous voice she had spent a lifetime repressing, “you just as fuckin’ deluded as me.”
Brando was too preoccupied with the trial for his ears to be burning, but he had talked to Omar earlier that morning.
Omar’s breakup with Shane had slowed him down considerably, had decidedly changed the tone of his voice. Brando noticed that. There was something different about the way Omar sounded—a new softness in his voice, introspection, a maturity melancholied by some strange longing that was not just the residue slathered from losing Shane.
Omar had broken up with lovers before and the melodrama was usually over the top and gotten over quickly. But this was different. Omar was different, and Brando wasn’t quite sure why.
Brando made a mental note to save next Sunday for Omar. Their friendship deserved it. Their brotherhood deserved it. Their love for each other deserved it.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Engagements in New Orleans, Atlanta, D.C., Philadelphia, San Juan, Saint Louis, and Chicago filled Miss Zara’s schedule, and in each city she packed the clubs with her diva faithful. Omar had been commissioned by Clik magazine to do a profile on her.
She was now back in Los Angeles and ready to sit down for the interview. Omar was the perfect choice. He was a friend. He knew her well enough to tell her story honestly, boldly, with a decided sense of humor and a bit of fudge, with just enough bittersweet sadness.
While so many others did not, could not get what she was all about, Omar understood her, from one motherless child to another.
“I am so sorry I missed your show, doll,” he said when they hugged and kissed upon his arrival at her Rossmore Avenue penthouse. The resplendent Art Deco apartment had been home to silver screen vamp Mae West during the last forty years of the platinum blond’s life.
“Yeah, I heard you had trade at the last minute.” Miss Zara smirked.
“Well, I ain’t the one no more, now that I turned in my ho’ card.” Omar chuckled, allowing himself to be led by the satin-clad diva into the study where spotless, floor-to-ceiling French doors opened out to the Los Angeles Country Club golf course below.
“Heard that, too,” Miss Zara said as she settled elegantly into the softness of a brocade-and-silk-covered chaise that sat in front of an eighteenth-century étagère that displayed various awards well earned throughout her career.
Omar sat in the leather high-back across from her. Eli entered and placed a sterling tea set on the table before them. Miss Zara would not let her man leave without first getting a small kiss and a deep whiff of his musk-scented body wash. As he walked out of the room she marveled at the familiar thick legs and calves and firm bubble butt moving unconsciously sensual under snug-fitting jeans.
“How’s Brando?” she then asked. “How’s he coming with the case?”
“It’s got him going,” Omar answered with a sigh as he set up his tape recorder. “Actually, I haven’t seen much of him lately. We talk on the phone now and then, but I haven’t really seen him.”
“And you miss him.”
“Well, yeah. I’m used to having him around.”
“You’re in love with him, aren’t you?”
“Hey, look, we’re here to talk about you, okay?”
“Okay.” She smiled.
Chapter Forty
If I had been there, I would have killed him,” Clymenthia Teager testified on cross-examination from Madrano. It was the first day of the defense’s case. Brando had gotten the jury’s sympathy with Clymenthia’s testimony. But now the prosecution was asking the questions.
“Jeanette Bell is my family,” Clymenthia continued. “To protect her I would have killed her attacker. I would have done what anyone whose family member was being attacked would have done.”
“You would have murdered him for what he did?” Madrano questioned carefully.
“Yes,” Clymenthia answered without a blink.
“And do you think it was okay for Jeanette Bell to murder Mr. Alexander?”
“Objection, Your Honor,” Brando called out. “The use of the term ‘murder’ with regard to my client is prejudicial. Murder is an unlawful killing, and until this jury determines that Miss Bell’s actions were unlawful, Miss Madrano should not play hard and fast with so serious and inflammatory a term.”
“Sustained,” Judge Stork ruled.
“Then let me put it this way,” Madrano said. “Do you think it was okay for Jeanette Bell to kill Mr. Alexander?”
“Under the circumstances, yes.”
Marion Madrano was a great respecter of the dramatic pause. She allowed the witness’s answer to hang in the hush of the courtroom, an echo, a seeking of revenge, a cry for blood. She then looked over at the jury, twelve ordinary citizens listening to a rich and famous lesbian defending her girl who’d killed a man.
“No more questions for this witness.”
As Marion Madrano returned to the prosecution table, Brando, too, considered the jury. In spite of inherent sexual-orientation and socioeconomic prejudices that worked against his client, he was convinced that one woman’s support of another woman’s defense against rape still had a persuasive chance. He called Dr. Eleanor Jamison to the stand.
Dr. Jamison gave detailed descriptions of Jeane
tte Bell’s injuries. The blown-up photos of her bruised body dramatically underscored the violence of the act. The doctor’s dispassion in recounting her examination lent great credence to her statements.
“In my opinion, Jeanette Bell was raped,” she concluded.
“Thank you, Dr. Jamison,” Brando responded softly. He then turned to Prosecutor Madrano. “Your witness.”
“Dr. Jamison,” Madrano began as she rose from her seat, “what did Jeanette Bell say happened to her that night to cause the injuries in question?”
“She said it was a wild night that got out of hand.”
“A wild night with a man, correct?”
“Yes.”
“No further questions.”
As Madrano moved back toward the prosecution table, Brando rose quickly. “Redirect, Your Honor.”
“Proceed, Counselor.”
Brando approached the witness. “Dr. Jamison,” he began, “when Miss Bell said that her injuries were due to a wild night with a man, did you believe her?”
“No.”
“In your professional opinion, what did you believe?”
“Objection, Your Honor,” Madrano interrupted. “Asked and answered.”
“Sustained.”
“Dr. Jamison, did you encourage your patient to report this incident to the police?”
“Yes.”
“Did you encourage her to report the incident because in your professional opinion you believed she was a victim of a crime?”
“Yes.”
“Is it uncommon for rape victims not to report this kind of crime?”
“It’s not uncommon at all.”
“Why is that?”
“Many reasons. Shame, fear of retribution, the victim being made out to be the villain.”
“You mean like what is happening today in this court?”
“Objection!” Madrano screamed heatedly.
“Mr. Heywood,” Judge Stork threatened.
“No further questions, Your Honor.”
Charlene Alexander then took the stand. Under Brando’s careful probing, she described years of abuse she suffered at the hand of her husband—sexual torture, beatings, threats against her life. With great caution Brando road-mapped the alleged rapist’s history of violence.
“Was he like that in the beginning?” he asked solemnly.
“No,” his widow answered.
“When did you notice the change?”
“When he got back from the Middle East.”
“What was different about him, in your opinion?”
“He treated me like the enemy. He enjoyed hurting me.”
“Objection!” Madrano jumped up. “This goes to the witness’s unqualified assessment of the victim’s state of mind.”
“Your Honor, this is his wife,” Brando protested, “a woman who suffered years of spousal abuse—”
“And who did not file one police report,” Madrano interjected loudly.
“Because she was afraid to!” Brando bellowed.
Judge Stork considered both litigators with careful eyes. “Overruled,” he said finally.
Brando continued to question the witness. “How much do you weigh, Mrs. Alexander?”
“A hundred and thirteen pounds.”
“And how much did Ramon weigh?”
“Two hundred and sixty pounds.”
“Thank you,” Brando then said softly. As he headed toward the defense table, Madrano rose immediately to her feet and began her questioning without hesitation. She did not want the image Brando had painted to linger any longer in the jury’s mind.
“Mrs. Alexander, let me first say how truly sorry I am for your loss of your husband. I understand. I’m a widow myself.” Technically, Marion Madrano was a widow. The first of her three husbands had died weeks before their divorce was finalized.
“Thank you,” Charlene Alexander responded.
“Was your husband a good provider, Mrs. Alexander?”
“Yes.”
“Did you love him?”
Charlene Alexander thought about how things used to be between her and Ramon, in the beginning. He was a gentle bear of a man when they first started dating, the man she married, the man that went off to war. But he was not the same man when he returned. She missed the man she first knew. She had mourned his loss from the day he got back from Kuwait.
“Yes,” she finally answered, tears welling in her eyes, “I loved him.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Alexander. No more questions.”
Chapter Forty-one
Court adjourned for the weekend. It was two o’clock. Saturday morning. Brando sat alone in his living room, pondering many things, every angle, searching his mind for stones unturned, torturing himself for the inadequacies he believed plagued his defense. Marion Madrano was a formidable opponent whose skills and, indeed, activism for the rights of women he greatly admired. She would be the last person to go after a rape victim, unless she believed that the rape victim was not a victim at all. That, he knew, was how the jury could see it, see this delicate daughter of migrant workers fighting for the rights of a dead war hero, gone too soon.
“You’re doing just fine,” Clymenthia said to him softly, startling him out of his conflicted train of thought. “Truth will trump perception, Brando.”
“What are you doing still up?”
“Same as you. Thinking about the case.”
“Where’s Jeanette?”
“Out like a light. That’s how much confidence she has in you.”
“What about you?”
“I agree with her. Now all we need is for you to agree.”
With a small smile he conceded.
“Thanks,” he said.
She hugged him.
“I need this, too,” he said, still in her embrace.
“You also need to go be with your boy Omar.”
“I know. We’re getting together for brunch tomorrow.”
“Good. It’ll take your mind off the trial for a second; let you clear your head.”
“Clym?”
“Yeah?”
“Collier was in the courtroom the other day.”
“I know. I saw him. He’s very proud of you.”
“Did he say that?”
“Yes.”
“So you two spoke?”
“Yes.”
“What else did he say?”
“He wished he could have stuck around to tell you personally.”
“You think it’s true what they say?”
“About what?”
“You can’t go back?”
“Oh, I don’t know. All I know is I’m not a big fan of ‘can’t.’ Do you still love him?”
“I’m not sure. It’s just that I’ve been thinking about him a lot lately. You know, I’ve always been a little envious of you and Jeanette.”
“Why?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever had what you two have.”
“It’s haveable, baby. It really is. But it doesn’t just happen. Now get some sleep. Dream about Collier. Then do something about it.”
“Thanks.”
Chapter Forty-two
That Sunday found Omar and Brando arriving separately at their favorite table at Lucy Florence. The renewal of the ritual made Omar feel awkward, but the warmth of their meeting eyes, enthusiastic smiles, and tight hug confirmed that their friendship had not lost a beat.
Neither Brando nor Omar noticed Vanessa and William Ellerbee staring at them from across the crowded room.
The two handsome men sat down at the table with great gusto, then leaned across it with cool conspiratorial snickers. They were like kids at a private school plotting harmless mischief. They updated each other on things they already knew. Omar had been following the trial through the media, and Brando praised Omar on his recently published profile of Clymenthia Teager in Essence. Given the present situation, the article took on a new poignancy.
“Clymenthia loved it,” Brando said.
“I know,” Omar said, barely able to keep his eyes from staring longingly. “She sent a nice thank-you note.”
“So what’s been happening, man? How’s the track runner and the Silver Lake thug prince?”
“Who knows?” Omar sighed. “I kinda kicked them to the curb. Or maybe they kicked me to the curb. There hasn’t been anybody since Shane.”
“Really?”
“Really. But I’m over him. We had some good times together. I even forgave him for reading me the riot act.”
“You sort of deserved it, Omar.”
“Yeah, I guess I did, huh?”
“Yeah, I guess you did.”
“So now I’m a new member of your club.”
“And what club is that?”
“Celibacy Anonymous.”
“Please.” Brando half laughed.
“It’s true,” Omar defended good-naturedly. “I haven’t had sex in like six weeks.”
“That’s not celibacy, Omar, that’s a breather.”
“For me that’s celibacy. The last time I went without sex that long was when I covered the Sparks exhibition tour through the former Soviet bloc back in ninety-nine.”
Brando had to laugh. Omar was still the same old Omar. Had it only been a month since they last saw each other? It seemed so much longer.
“There’s your girl,” Omar said, looking up.
“Excuse me?”
“And your boy.”
Omar nodded and waved at someone behind Brando’s back. Brando looked over his shoulder. Vanessa Ellerbee was nodding back at Omar; then, catching Brando’s eye, she smiled invitingly. William perked up. Brando gave them both a cordial thumbs-up and returned his gaze back to his friend.
“Are you going to call them?” Omar asked, after casually sipping his coffee.
“I don’t think so. I’m not that kind of freak.”
“Yeah. Right.”
“Omar, how long have you known me?”
“Too long. Not long enough.”
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