“There’s nothing realer than those things,” he said, tilting her chin upward so he could kiss her. She tasted salty.
“Have you been drinking seawater?” he accused when he pulled away.
“No.” She laughed. “But I did use it to gargle after I ate that nasty apple.”
Jamal laughed and looked at her. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah.”
“Why would you …?”
“Nana used to say that was good for oral health. Occasional salt gargles.”
“Your Nana—God rest her soul—didn’t know what she was talking about,” Jamal said, still laughing.
Kayla playfully punched him in the arm. “Yes, she did! She was an unrecognized sage. A … a … genius unappreciated in her own time.”
And then a cloud passed over her features and she sighed a sigh so deep her shoulders and chest heaved, like someone suppressing a sob.
“It’s okay,” Jamal said. “I know you miss her.”
“Every day. Every day, I miss her. I just wish that in that last year I didn’t focus so much on what I had to do for her. I wish I’d spent more time thinking about the things she did for me.
“And I wish I’d just … talked to her more, y’know? When people get old, we just park them somewhere, even if it’s in their own home. And we think of them as our duty or something. We don’t listen to them as much. See them as much.”
Jamal nodded.
“She liked you though. I wish she could have known you better. You would have loved her. She would have loved you. And I wish she could be here to see me get married …”
“You still want to do that?” he asked carefully. “Get married?”
Pulling free of him, Kayla sat up so she could look him in the eye.
“Of course! I never didn’t want to do it … I just didn’t want to do it without you.”
“How you gon’ get married without me?” he said, twisting his lips.
“You know what I mean. The planning. All of the … stuff.”
“You’re not. You won’t.”
“It just … feels like I’m on my own sometimes. You don’t get it.” She shook her head and looked away, out at the water.
“Hey.” He tugged on a few of her locs. “Then explain it to me. What don’t I get?”
She shrugged.
“C’mon, baby. Talk to me.”
Kayla lay against him once again, this time pressing the side of her face into his chest. Jamal had a feeling she was doing it as much to avoid having to look directly at him as she spoke, as she was doing it to be close.
“I don’t know where my father is,” she said. “Like, at all. And you know I don’t have much of a relationship with my mother. I don’t even think she wants to have much of a relationship with me. I talk to her on holidays, if that. And when I told her I was getting married; do you know what she said?”
“No. You never told me.”
“She said, ‘that’s nice’. My mother. Said ‘that’s nice’ when I told her I was getting married. She didn’t ask when. She didn’t ask where. She did even ask who. I don’t think she even cares if she’s invited.”
Jamal said nothing. His mother wasn’t much better. Their relationship wasn’t strained, wasn’t awkward, or difficult. But it wasn’t close. He sometimes had a hard time picturing her ‘mothering’ him, because he couldn’t recall it having happened.
“So, you’re ‘it’ for me. And Devin … is ‘it’ for me. I don’t have anyone else. And I know that might sound clingy, or pathetic …”
“It doesn’t sound like any of those things, Kayla.”
“You two are my family. And this wedding, and this … life? It’s huge and it’s new, and it’s scary … and so I just want you with me sometimes. You’re my fiancée, but you’re more than that. You’re one-half of my entire support system. D’you understand?”
Jamal nodded. He did. For the first time. He fully understood.
“I know I need to adjust, get used to the idea that I can have friends again, make plans, do things …”
Jamal remembered her telling him once about how her friends, one by one had fallen off the radar once her grandmother became ill. Kayla had become that friend who missed parties and milestones, flaked on dates, canceled plans, and didn’t often return calls.
And so soon, the calls stopped coming. Her friends moved on without her. There weren’t too many social opportunities for a twentysomething-year old who was working full-time, going to school part-time and caring for an ailing relative. Devin was the only one who hung in there, and according to Kayla, he was always the only one who mattered anyway.
“And I’m going to,” she continued, “but for now, while we plan this wedding, I just … I need you.”
“You have me.”
“For now. But what about when we get back to New York. Will I have you then? Or will I have … Claire?”
Jamal laughed. “I thought you liked Claire.”
“I do. But it’s still so weird. I mean, our wedding is supposed to be a statement about us. You and me. Not some stranger telling me what’s tasteful, or what’s … current. And the way she just … is always there, and so accommodating. It’s just …”
“Just … what? Something make you uncomfortable about her?”
“No, it’s just weird, that’s all. Like having a paid friend or something.”
“Then get rid of her.”
“I can’t. She like, knows stuff.”
“I know other people who know stuff. People who wouldn’t be your ‘paid friends’.”
“Like who?” Kayla challenged.
“Don’t worry about it. When we go back, let me take care of it. And if you like my alternative, get rid of Claire. If you don’t, then keep her. Deal?”
She shrugged, then nodded. “Deal.”
“Don’t sound so enthusiastic. Don’t I always got you?”
She looked at him sideways, and Jamal laughed, sitting up, so she had to as well. He cupped her face in both his hands.
“Damn. Did I mess up that bad when I missed that dinner?”
She twisted her lips, but said nothing.
“I’m sorry,” he said lowering his voice and leaning in to kiss her gently on the lips. “I’m sorry…” Another featherlight kiss. “I’m sorry.” And another.
Kayla exhaled and shut her eyes, and Jamal pressed his forehead against hers.
The house smelled like mangoes when he woke. Jamal instinctively reached for the space next to him and was surprised to find that Kayla was not in bed with him. The room was hot, despite the fan above and there was a mosquito, or sand fly buzzing next to his ear. Turning over, he glanced at the clock on the nightstand and was shocked to see that it was already past ten in the morning.
They had hired a driver the evening before and gone into the town to explore the nightlife. After dinner at a small, family-run seafood restaurant, Jamal and Kayla had walked the streets together, stopping wherever caught their fancy. He bought her a pair of delicate gold hoop earrings, that she immediate put on, replacing the simple gold studs she had been wearing, which she then handed to him to put in his pocket for safekeeping.
She wore a red maxi-dress that she bought off a street vendor’s stall and her locs were swept to the side, and over her shoulder in a loose ponytail, and her skin still glowed from the sun. While they walked, her eyes were heavy-lidded, and a little unfocused because they’d had more of the bottle of gifted rum before leaving the villa, and then two more drinks apiece at dinner.
Just before they wandered into a noisy club, where a band was playing live music, Kayla had tugged on his hand, pulling him down to her so she could speak in his ear. She smelled like a combination of the sea, and the simple powdery perfume she always dabbed behind her ear.
‘This feels like a dream sequence,’ she said. ‘In a movie about someone else’s life.’
Now he wasn’t a sentimental kind of dude by any stretch, but that moment, with her looking at him that way,
like he’d unpinned the stars from the sky and handed them to her … well, Jamal was grateful that they were going into a place where it was too dark for her to see his face.
Getting out of bed now, Jamal took a shower in the tepid water, and dried off with one of the almost threadbare towels and pulled on sweats. When he made his way out to the living room, he didn’t see Kayla but still there was the aroma of mangoes, and now, the steady percussive beat of reggaetón.
He followed the music into the kitchen and paused at the door, taking in the sight. On the stove, a skillet contained large, orange and crimson slices of mango, sautéing in what smelled like rum and sugar.
And in the center of the room Kayla was holding both of Nadia’s hands. Both women were dancing and swaying to the beat, the older woman’s hips moving expertly, and Kayla mimicking her as best she could, spinning in circles, dipping and rocking. She was barefoot, wearing a transparent white cover-up, and beneath it, a cerulean. two-piece swimsuit and had her head thrown back, laughing at her every misstep.
“Muy bien!” Nadia was saying encouragingly. “Muy bien!”
Seeing Jamal standing at the door, Kayla’s eyes lit up, but she continued dancing.
“Baby!” she said, as though he was the last person on earth she would have expected to see. “We’re making mango dish pie!”
And in that moment, with the sun behind her, the light in her eyes, and the aroma of mangoes in the air, Jamal was sure he had never loved anyone as much as he loved Makayla right then.
~22~
“It’s fine. Go ahead and turn it on.”
They had just landed at JFK, and the air stewardess had moments earlier announced that it would be fine for passengers to turn on cellphones. Makayla didn’t need to open her eyes to know that Jamal was barely containing the urge to reach for his.
“I can wait till we’re in the terminal,” he said. “Let’s just get off this plane first.”
Laughing, Makayla sat up and extended a hand. “Give it here. I’ll even turn it on for you.”
“I said I don’t need to.”
“I know it’s killing you. Give it here.”
After a moment, he dug into his bag, shoved beneath the seat in front of him and fished out his phone, handing it over. Makayla held down the button to power on the device and waited through the white screen with the familiar icon. Then, before the home screen had even fully loaded, the cacophonous series of chimes began sounding, so many that they were almost a single continuous note.
From the seats all around them, there were twitters and chuckles, as people recognized the sounds of someone who had been off the grid, reentering society. The barrage of voicemail notifications and text messages went on for almost a minute, and Jamal took the phone from between her fingers., turning off the sound, so that instead it buzzed. Even that went on for far too long.
Makayla’s stomach dropped.
The messages had been appearing way too quickly for her to read any single one of them, but she did see this much—more than a few were from ‘Madison Avenue’. Turning in her seat to look at Jamal, as he scrolled through a few messages on the home screen, and then opened the messaging app, she felt all of the good vibes from the last two and a half days evaporate like mist.
Jamal ‘s brows were furrowed, and his jaw hard. He twice grunted, and a few times ran his hand over his face. When he looked up, it was only to glance impatiently out of the window, checking to see how much progress that had made taxiing up to their arrival gate.
“Fuck,” he muttered under his breath, when he saw how far away they still were from the terminal.
Makayla watched him, wordlessly. He seemed to have completely forgotten that he was not alone.
Looking down at his phone again, he exhaled a deep breath and opened the message app again, scrolling through a long list of message threads and finally settling on a name, and beginning to read. As he did, he sighed audibly several times and once done with that thread, moved on to another.
Finally—and only once their plane came to a halt and the tone sounded, that prompted folks to leap from their seats—he looked at her. Pursing his lips and then licking the lower one, he spoke.
“Grab your stuff real quick, we have to get out of here.”
Jackson was waiting for them at the arrivals terminal when they exited, and Jamal paused only long enough to open the door and allow Makayla to get into the backseat first. He hadn’t said a word to her as they walked through the terminal toward the exits, so she still had no idea what was happening, and she was frankly afraid to ask.
None of the questions swirling in her mind could possibly have answers that she would like, so for now, Makayla decided not to ask them. Instead she sat back in her seat and stared out the window. She would give him—and herself—just as much time as it took for them to get back to the safety of their apartment, and then she needed to know what the hell was up.
But she didn’t have to wait that long. Moments after they pulled away from the curb and out into the snarl of airport traffic—the rows of aggressive Yellow Cabs, the private passenger vehicles and shuttle vans—Jamal reached for his phone again and dialed a number. Fumbling in his bag at the same time, he eventually found what he was looking for, his Bluetooth headset. Putting it on, his fingers clumsy in his eagerness, he got it on and spoke a name in something of a bark. Of all the names Makayla might have expected, it was not that one.
“Devin,” he said. “What the hell?”
Their living room resembled the war room of a political campaign office.
Devin was there, as was Robyn Scaife, Bryant Staynor from SE’s development team, and Gayle, Jamal’s assistant. One by one, they had arrived within an hour of Jamal and Makayla crossing the threshold and through it all, she managed to keep her composure and not ask questions. But neither had Jamal volunteered any information.
As soon as they got in, he went to his den to get his laptop, and sat on the sofa and powered it up. Then he made some more calls, and cursed out loud when he realized his phone had died, and asked Makayla in a very terse tone to help find his phone charger. She did, and brought it back to him then went into the bedroom to make a call of her own.
During the ride, she had only heard once side of the conversation with Devin. Jamal had been asking him over and over about some document, and whether he understood what it meant, and what it could mean. And on the other end, Devin was responding loudly enough that Makayla could hear his voice, though not what he said. The conversation concluded when Jamal told him that they needed to talk in person, and told Devin to “get your ass over to the apartment right now.”
It wasn’t that shocking that Jamal would take that tone—he was never less than exasperated with Devin. What was shocking was that from what Makayla could hear, the only thing that came from the other end of the conversation, was the sound of acquiescence.
And once they were in the apartment and she was alone, having left Jamal on his computer out front, she sat on the bed and tried to reach Devin for herself. But there was no answer.
Now, forty or so minutes later, he was sitting on her sofa, flanked by Robyn and Bryant Staynor, and across from Jamal. Gayle, like Makayla was standing, hovering off to the side.
Robyn, dressed in a tan suit and white blouse had obviously just left the office, as had Bryant Staynor. They, and Devin, appeared perfectly calm.
“This was his decision to make,” Robyn was saying, her voice calm.
“Did you think you had an obligation to tell me?” Jamal said, leaning in with narrowed eyes.
“Actually not,” Robyn said. “Devin is my client. Not you.”
Jamal made a snorting sound and threw up his hands.
“That’s not just a fiction, Jamal,” Robyn continued. “Me asking him for that dollar, explaining the difference between engagement and non-engagement? That wasn’t just theatrics. Once he engaged me, I was bound to do what he wanted me to do.”
Turning his attention to Devin, J
amal opened his eyes wide as if asking for an explanation.
“Have you seen it?” he asked.
“Nah,” Devin said, sounding defiant.
“Well you should.” Jamal turned his laptop, resting on the coffee table, in Devin’s direction.
From her vantage point, Makayla could only see that the browser was open, but not precisely what page it had been navigated to, though the color scheme looked familiar.
Devin glanced at the monitor briefly and then looked away. Since getting there, he hadn’t completely met Makayla’s gaze, and there was no time for her to pull him aside because closely following his arrival, Robyn and Bryant had showed up, and then shortly after that, Gayle.
“And there’s more,” Jamal said. “It’s all over the place. Is this really the introduction you want?”
“It is what it is, man,” Devin said. “It’s not like it’s a lie.”
“You told me you didn’t remember him.”
“I don’t. But you know what? Back then, I was … out there, man. I don’t know enough to swear he’s lyin’. And that’s the truth.” Devin shrugged. “So, might as well let this come out now. I can get out from under this for good … just let the chips fall …”
Jamal ran a hand over his face. “You sure this is what you want?”
Makayla watched the exchange, noting the subtle change in the way the two men in her life related to each other. Jamal was still exasperated, but he was leaning in, actively listening, waiting to hear what Devin thought—something he had never cared that much about before. In his eyes, Makayla saw concern.
And Devin was his old recalcitrant self, poised to disagree, but he also was leaning in, and clearly reading Jamal’s face while he considered a response to the question. He actually cared what Jamal thought.
When had all this happened?
“This could be a big nothing and be over in a day; or it could haunt you the rest of your career. There’s no way to tell. It’s a risk. But it’s not too late to get control of it, we can marshal some resources and take this kid down. If that’s what you want.”
The Takedown Page 21
