by Mary Monroe
We walked in silence to the restaurant, located in the middle of the casino. We sat down at a table close to the entrance. We each ordered a glass of white wine. I had no appetite, so I didn’t order anything to eat, but Matthew ordered a cheeseburger.
“Rachel, I’d still like to get to know you better,” he began, taking my hand in his. “Do you think you’d like to try again?”
I nodded. “When you saw me with that man in my doorway, he was an old friend. Believe it or not, I was kissing him good-bye. We had pretty much broken up already, but that was to be the last time we were together.”
“I see. Are there any other old friends you want to tell me about?”
“Not long after that, I did meet someone else. We were very serious for a while. He even moved in with me.”
“What is the status of your relationship with him now?”
“Do you really want to know? It’s a long, ugly story.”
Matthew looked at his watch, then into my eyes. “I don’t have anywhere to go this evening. If you want to share that long, ugly story with me, I’d like to hear it.”
I swallowed hard and began. “His name is Seth. I loved him with all my heart, and we were going to get married.” I paused. The waitress delivered our wine, and after a few sips I told Matthew the rest of my story. I told him everything—except the part about my acts of revenge against Seth. I didn’t think he would have much sympathy for me if he knew about that.
Matthew sat stock-still. He stared directly into my eyes, which had pooled with tears. “Rachel, I’m sorry you had to go through that. Maybe that brother didn’t really love you, anyway. For him to decide not to marry you because of your family’s mental issues, but to stay on with you until you’d helped him pay off his debts, was bad enough. But for him to be courting another woman at the same time, who he married shortly after he broke up with you, that’s unforgivable! You must have been so hurt.”
“I was for a while. But I got over him. So now that you know about my family, you need to make up your mind now if you want to get involved with me, if that’s going to be a problem in the future,” I said. I knew that it was presumptuous to think that far ahead, but I had nothing to lose by telling him now.
“I have some family issues, too. If I tell you about them, you might decide you don’t want to get to know me.”
“Why don’t you tell me and let me decide?”
“My only brother, Ralph, who is two years older than me, has been in the state mental hospital for two years. I’ll bet that if you could see inside his head, you wouldn’t be able to tell his brain from a scrambled egg. That’s what crack did to him. My middle sister, Lila, also has a history of drug abuse. She’s doing five to ten, without the possibility of parole for three years, for trying to sell her teenage daughter to a dealer to settle a debt. Her fifteen-year-old son, Jerome, doesn’t do drugs, but he’s currently on probation for trying to rape a neighbor’s four-year-old daughter.”
“Whew. That’s deep. What about your parents?”
“My mother passed last year. She had a rare blood disorder. My father is still around, but I don’t have a relationship with him.”
“I’m glad to see that you turned out all right.”
Matthew smiled and squeezed my hand. “I’m glad to see you turned out all right, too.”
The waitress set his burger in front of him, but he ignored it.
“So, where do you want to go from here?” I asked.
“We can go to your place if you want to,” he answered. “Or we can go to mine.”
I chuckled. “That’s not what I meant. What I meant was, do you want to start over again? I mean, that is, if you are not involved with somebody else.”
“Do you still communicate with Seth?”
I drank some wine before I responded. “Not exactly.”
“He’s still around?”
“Uh-huh. But we go our separate ways.”
“I’m glad to hear that, because I’d really like to see you again real soon. And I will tell you now, I don’t care about your family’s mental issues.”
Chapter 59
Seth
THE TENSION HAD EASED UP IN MYHOUSE BECAUSE I HAD DECIDED to let Darnell do whatever he wanted to do, as long as it didn’t impact the rest of us too much. It was the only way I could keep the peace. I didn’t know what else to do. It was bad enough that he didn’t go to school unless he felt like it. When he did go, he was as disruptive and disrespectful there as he was at home. On top of that, he was two grades behind and was threatening to drop out of school altogether because, according to him, education was for punks. I couldn’t believe that in this day and age young black men in America had slid into such a warped sense of reality.
Sending Darnell back to his mother was out of the question. I couldn’t do that if I wanted to, because Caroline had disappeared. Her telephone number had either been changed or been disconnected, and she had ignored the letters that Darnell and I sent to her. Her family was no help. No matter which one I called and tried to get information from regarding Caroline’s location, they told me basically the same thing: “I don’t know nothing.” If I couldn’t save Darnell, no one could. Apparently, Caroline had given up on him, but I refused to do so. Nor would I give up on my marriage and my business.
I just tried to make the best of a bad situation. Unfortunately, it seemed like the harder I tried, the more problems I encountered in everything. Things remained pretty much the same with Darnell and Darla from one day to the next. They were predictable. He acted like an idiot; she acted like a bitch. But I never knew what to expect when it came to my business and other personal aspects of my life. I was determined to live as normal a life as possible.
A couple of weeks after the audit, on a quiet, uneventful Saturday evening, I took my family to dinner and a Disney movie. Ten minutes into the movie, Darla got so bored, she fell asleep. A few minutes later, Darnell decided to leave and sneak into another movie in the same complex, saying, “Disney is for sissies!”
The restaurant and the movie theater were located in a mall that catered to the high-income community. The crime rate was fairly low, so I had never had a problem in this area. Until tonight. When we left the theater and returned to my car, it wouldn’t start. It didn’t take long for me to figure out why. Someone had put sugar in my gas tank! The clumsy motherfucker had spilled at least two pounds of sugar on the ground below my gas cap. I had to call a tow service again. I didn’t even attempt to call anybody to come pick us up. I didn’t want them to witness my agitated state, Darla’s bitching and moaning, and Darnell’s rotten attitude because of this inconvenience. I called for a taxi.
We waited for the taxi in a nearby pizza parlor. And that was no picnic, not with a surly teenager, a horrified wife, and a cranky baby in tow. An hour later we were still waiting for that taxi. When I could no longer stand to listen to Darla’s nonstop bitching, we boarded a city bus. That was another nightmare. The local city buses had become frequent crime scenes and, in some cases, toilets—literally. A strong-smelling puddle of urine was on the floor by the side of the seat that Darla and I eased down onto. There were two sinister-looking young characters occupying seats in the back, and Darnell recognized them, so being on a bus didn’t bother him. As a matter of fact, the way he was shucking and jiving with his homeboys, you would have thought he was at a party in the hood. Darla continued to bitch and moan, and she didn’t stop even after we got home.
I could understand her being frustrated, because I definitely was, too. Having my BMW keyed and the tires slashed had been bad enough, but somebody putting sugar in the gas tank was the last straw. Was this damn vehicle cursed? I wondered. Or was this another one of Rachel’s pranks? This speculation chilled me to the bone. However, I still had no proof that she was the culprit who was tormenting me, and I didn’t want to find out, because I didn’t know how to stop her. In this case, I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. My brother Damon had been the victim
of the same prank in the same neighborhood a few months ago. Anyway, the car that I had loved for so many years was causing me to have headaches that made my head swim.
The following Wednesday I traded it in for a Range Rover.
Other “headaches” plagued me, though. Two days after I purchased my new vehicle, I left work around noon to go to my annual routine checkup. When I arrived at my doctor’s office, the receptionist told me she had no record of my appointment. The doctor was so booked up, he wouldn’t be able to see me for another two months. An hour after I returned to my office, I received a mysterious telephone call from a woman who disguised her voice. She told me, “Your wife is fucking my husband. . . .”
That was all I needed to hear! I had no reason to believe that Darla was having an affair, but I was going to confront her, anyway. As soon as the caller hung up, I called Darla at home and told her about the telephone call.
“You’ve got some damn nerve asking me if I’m having an affair!” she screamed. “No, I’m not having an affair, but I should be! For one thing, you’re not taking care of business the way you’re supposed to. I sit in this damn house all day, every day, with a baby that’s driving me up the goddamned wall and your punk-ass son, while you’re out wining and dining everybody in town!”
“Baby, what do you want me to do? I have to work, and part of my work is to socialize with my clients and potential clients.”
“You might want to think about socializing more with your wife! I can’t go on like this. I’m telling you now that if you want me to stay in this marriage, you’d better do something, and you’d better do it fast.”
“What am I not doing now that I was doing when we first got together?”
Darla let out a disgusted sigh. “For one thing, you used to take me out to dinner more often. You ought to know by now that I don’t like to cook. . . .” Darla served microwaved TV meals, hand-delivered pizzas, and sandwiches when she didn’t feel like cooking, which was at least three times a week.
“I figured that out a long time ago,” I said in a lighthearted manner so she wouldn’t accuse me of being sarcastic. “Let’s go out to dinner tonight. Just you and me. I’ll get Mother to keep the baby, and we can send Darnell to stay with one of his friends. No, I have a better idea. Let’s go to Reno this weekend. Would that suit you?”
“Vegas would suit me better. Reno is for rednecks, the Spanish-speaking crowd, the ghetto crowd, rude Asians, and senior citizens in polyester outfits.”
I forced myself to laugh. “You’ve got a point there, baby. Start packing. I’ll have my secretary make the arrangements first thing tomorrow morning.”
I forgot all about that telephone call. I refused to believe that Darla was cheating on me. . . .
Vegas used to be one of my favorite hangouts, but it had become very expensive for me since I’d met Darla. Not only did she insist on staying in only the best rooms in the most lavish hotels on the Strip, but she also went on shopping sprees that almost reduced me to tears. When we visited Vegas last year, she ran up five thousand dollars on one of my credit cards and another two grand on another card in less than six hours! She purchased jewelry and clothing from several high-end stores. After she lost the two grand I had given to her to try her luck at blackjack, she got a cash advance on one of my cards for another five hundred and fed that into a slot machine. That trip had been very painful to me.
This visit would turn out to be just as painful. Maybe even more so. She insisted on us taking a stretch limo from the airport to our hotel, as opposed to a cab or the hotel shuttle. “Cabs and free shuttles are for cheapskates,” was her reason this time. I didn’t protest when she insisted on staying at the Venetian, one of the most upscale hotels/casinos on the Strip. The reason I didn’t protest was that I had accrued a lot of points at the hotel over the years. They rewarded me with comps, which included lavish suites that I didn’t have to pay for.
Our suite faced the Strip, so the view was spectacular.
“Darla, this is such a nice, romantic setting,” I commented, looking around the elaborately decorated room and at the two huge beds. “I hope you’re feeling as frisky as I am,” I teased. I started unbuttoning my shirt and moving toward Darla. She stood in front of the window with her back to me. And she took her time turning around.
Darla snorted and screwed her face up into a grimace like I’d never seen before. “Seth, if you wanted to fuck, we could have stayed home.”
“What? I thought we came down here to have some fun.”
“We did. But if you think that includes sex, forget it.” She gave me a cold look before she continued. What she said next horrified me beyond belief. “You’re not that good, anyway. I do a much better job on my own. . . .”
Had she told me that she had been born a man, I would not have been more shocked. It was a struggle for me to come up with a response. “Thanks for letting me know,” I mumbled. No woman had ever criticized my lovemaking skills before! Had I slid that deeply into the abyss, and was I no longer the passionate and well-honed lover I once was? Or thought I was, I should say. Could other women, Rachel especially, have been lying to me about how great I was in bed? Darla’s insensitive comment was the kind that could turn a man from sex and drive him into a monastery. “I think I’ll slip into some more comfortable clothes and go play a few table games.”
“Go ahead. I’m going to go out and pick up a few items,” Darla told me, already flipping through the six credit cards she kept in her wallet.
“You do that, honey. Just . . .”
She whirled around to face me. Another grimace, this one more severe than the previous one, was on her face now. “Just what?”
“Just don’t lose control. I have to make payments on these cards every month, you know. It took me a long time to clean up my credit, and I want to keep it clean.”
“Then I suggest you keep making your payments on time,” she said with a smirk.
My chest tightened, and bile coated the inside of my throat. Credit cards had become a very painful subject to me. I still got angry when I recalled the two times my cards had got declined when I’d attempted to use them. Because of that, I never knew what to expect when it came time to use one now. What I couldn’t figure out was how the credit card folks had screwed up and entered information into their system that indicated I had canceled three different credit cards on separate occasions. They had promptly resolved the issues to my satisfaction. Just to be on the safe side, I had canceled my fourth credit card and my debit card and had requested ones with new account numbers. However, I had decided that for all future lunch, dinner, or drink dates with clients, I would pay with cash.
I had no reasonable explanation for my ongoing string of bad luck. But the thought of Rachel being behind at least some of my misfortune was on my mind all the time, and so was her warning. Karma is a bitch named Rachel. If she truly was the person responsible for the mysterious mishaps that I had been experiencing since our breakup, I still thought the best thing for me to do was just ride it out. The bottom line was I still had no evidence against her and, therefore, no proof.
That was about to change.
Chapter 60
Rachel
P EOPLE RARELY CALLED ME AT 7:00 A.M. ON A SATURDAY MORNING. When Mama called, she never identified herself, and sometimes she didn’t even say hello. As soon as I’d pick up the telephone, she would start talking like we were already in the middle of a conversation. This morning was no different.
I grabbed the phone on the first ring. “Hello.” It sounded and felt like I had cotton balls in my mouth.
“Your sister finally got herself a boyfriend. And he ain’t no rapper.”
“Who is this?” I rolled over in bed and sat up. “Mama, is that you?”
“You don’t know my voice by now?”
“I’m sorry, Mama. I was just waking up when the telephone rang. What’s this about Janet having a boyfriend?” As far as I knew, the only sexual encounter that my siste
r had had with a man was the fiasco with the rapper in Miami. I didn’t know how to react to this news. “I’m happy to hear that. What’s his name?”
“Frank Morrison’s brother just moved here with his three boys. Marvin, the oldest one, took one look at Janet in her blue sundress and fell in love.”
“What’s he like?”
“If you wondering if he’s got mental problems, the answer is no. I have to say, this boy ain’t no Mr. Universe in the looks department. He’s got the face of a mule, but his mind is as sharp as a tack. He even went to college, and now he works for the city. He takes Janet out two or three times a week, and him and her just got together a couple of months ago. I didn’t say nothing about it before now, because I wanted to see how it was going to go. Your sister treats him like Prince Charming, and he treats her like Cinderella. What more could we ask for?”
“Mama, there are men out there who will take advantage of girls like Janet. Like that rapper. I advise you to put her on some kind of birth control.”
“Birth control? For what?”
“In case something happens.”
“I didn’t put you on no birth control, and nothing happened to you.”
“I knew how to take care of myself, Mama.”
“Janet seems to be taking pretty good care of herself.”
“What do you know about this Marvin? What if he gets her pregnant and dumps her? Do you want to raise another baby at your age?”
“For your information, Dr. Phil, he asked her to marry him last night. That’s what I really called to tell you. And another thing, she ain’t done or said nothing . . . out of the ordinary since she took up with Marvin.”
“I’m happy to hear that, Mama!” And I really was. If there was hope for my sister, there had to be hope for me. “I’ve met somebody, too,” I said in a tentative tone of voice. “Someone I’m sure you’ll like.”
“Oh? Well, if I was you, I wouldn’t wait to tell him about our family. You better tell him real quick. Unless you want him to run off the way that Seth did when he found out about Janet and Ernest.”
