His Third Wife

by Grace Octavia

  He seemed to notice how Jamison was looking at him and straightened up a little on the stool—as much as he could.

  “So, tell me, what are you going to do about that Uncle Tom reporter?” Emmit asked.

  “Guess I need to talk to him,” Jamison said. “Have to. I have a long way to go in office and I can’t have him sniffing around every time I fart. Got to find out what’s got him up my ass.”

  “Fuck ’is ass!” Emmit declared harshly, and then he laughed at his outburst. “What the young people say—no homo?”

  “I know what you meant.”

  “That fool ain’t got no territory in this motherfucker. Just young and dumb. Thinking he can use his stories to make it to CNN. Take more than that.”

  Jamison watched a few brothers trail one another to the back of the bar with their hands moving in and out of their pockets.

  “He’s falling for that Obama post-racial America shit. We’ll see who gets his ass when the white people are done with him.”

  “White people?” Jamison quizzed. The way Emmit said the words was so solid it sounded like he might have a clue who was behind Dax.

  “Oh, no, man.” Emmit seemed to straighten up as he read Jamison’s interest. “I don’t mean it like that. I mean in general. But we can find out. I can have him pumped.” Emmit looked at Jamison hard. By pumped he meant he’d get a full folder of everything Dax had ever done in his life. Anything and everything. Deeds and dirt. If he loved his mama, Jamison would know. If he liked kiddie porn, Jamison would know. Politicians, bigwigs, and shakers used pumps to keep folks in line. None of the information was ever reported to the police—they were usually the ones who delivered the pump to the person being pumped. The person who requested the pump just used it to gain clout in the dispute, whatever it was.

  “He’s clean,” Jamison said, even though he might not have revealed that much information to Emmit if he wasn’t drunk. He’d already ordered one the night after the scene at the courthouse.

  “Clean?” Emmit laughed as he got up from his stool. “Ain’t nobody clean.”

  Though no one had left, the bar was half empty. The only people left were couples sprinkled around on the couches, leaning into one another.

  “Ain’t nobody clean. Ain’t no old lady clean. The pope—that nigga ain’t clean,” Emmit went on.

  “I checked, Emmit,” Jamison repeated.

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “What are you saying?”

  Emmit picked up a toothpick off the bar and pulled a little meat from his right front tooth that had been bothering him all night.

  “I’m saying,” he said while sucking the little piece of flesh back into his mouth, “let me order the pump. My man is good.”

  “Really? You’d have Dax pumped for me?” Jamison looked at Emmit crossly. This was the kind of exchange two men who liked each other or owed each other had. He was never really sure how much Emmit liked him, so he wondered what he owed him. What he’d want.

  “Yes, young man, I would.”

  “For what? What will I owe? Or do I owe you already?”

  Emmit stretched and turned in a way that let Jamison know he was heading to the back of the bar with everyone else.

  “You leave the Ras situation alone . . . stop asking questions, and we’ll call it even.” Emmit grinned and waited a few seconds before turning away from Jamison. “I’ll have the pump to you by the end of the week. I think my grandson has a golf tee with your son on Saturday. Be there and we’ll talk.”

  Jamison didn’t respond. It was customary that he not do so for so many reasons.

  “You coming back here to see about these girls? Compliments of the house,” Emmit asked as Jamison got up from his stool.

  “No, big brother. I’m headed out to my car to sleep this off,” Jamison said.

  “Suit yourself,” Emmit said. “And make sure you sleep in the passenger’s seat.”

  “I got you.”

  “Desperate Housewives”

  Jamison woke up to sedans rolling past him filled with people on their way to church. The sun was up and bright, making everything outside of the front window of his car carry a white light around its edges. The inside of his car was warm and the pool of sweat that had been gathering on the leather beneath where he’d rested his head on the passenger’s seat would be dry in minutes once he was behind the wheel.

  Most of the cars that had lined the street outside of Brother Renaldo’s house were gone, but some still remained. He checked to see if he could spot Scoot’s truck or Emmit’s Porsche, but neither was in sight. After looking at the time, he knew he’d missed a meeting and two church appearances. He didn’t have to look at his phone to see how many times Leaf and probably a few other people, including his mother, had called. He just turned on the car and drove home.

  He walked into the kitchen, where Val was moving around trying hard not to look like she was waiting for him.

  It was a little after 10 AM, but she was fully dressed. And not in church clothes. She’d started wearing these floral-print shorts and slacks with matching tank tops he’d seen some of the other women wearing in the neighborhood. Today the shorts were pink and white and green. The tank top was lime green. None of it looked good on Val. It was the kind of stuff Kerry might wear. Jamison figured Val was trying to fit in, maybe appear the way she thought she should look, being his wife—that’s what his publicist, Muriel, had instructed Val to do after suggesting she get a stylist. Val, of course, took offense to this and went about doing the work herself. She’d asked about having her auburn hair weave removed: “It doesn’t look like the mayor’s wife. Does it?” Jamison had just shrugged. He agreed but didn’t know what else she could do with her hair. If she even had any on her head. She was always wearing wigs and weaves.

  “Leaf called you three times. He came by here like an hour ago,” Val said, removing the hot water kettle from the stove. Lorna was off on weekends. “Your mother called twice, too. I didn’t pick up though. Didn’t think she was trying to hear my voice.”

  Jamison put his keys and cell phone on the counter where he always left them and continued walking toward the staircase to get upstairs.

  “Jamison!” Val called, but it sounded more like shriek.

  This little scene, short as it was, mirrored how most of their days had been together since the day at the courthouse a month ago. Val tried to pull Jamison into some exchange that was disguised as being casual, with no expectations. Jamison built an impenetrable fortress around himself that was meant to alienate, divide, evoke purposeful silence. The only time the husband and wife, mother and father, were engaged in anything that was decidedly communicative was when Val waved her white flag in the middle of the night and jumped on top of him to hear him breathe heavy sighs into her ear.

  But more and more, Val was wondering why she was waving any flag. What she’d done to be losing so miserably at a war. Or what the war was. Well, she knew what the war was. But shouldn’t he be over that by now?

  Jamison heard his name, so he stopped walking. He turned around. He was unbuttoning his shirt. He looked at Val but never asked why she’d called him.

  The silence nearly humiliated Val, standing there in her lime green tank top and floral print pants.

  “Did you hear me?”

  Jamison frowned before he was forced to speak. “About what?”

  Val pondered before she answered. “About anything? I’ve been talking to you—I keep talking to you. It’s like you don’t hear me.”

  “About Leaf? My mother? I’ll call them both back when I get out of the shower.” Jamison was about to turn back around.

  “It’s not just about that,” Val said. “It’s everything. You don’t hear me about anything.”

  Jamison’s expression was as serious as a doctor’s when giving a grim diagnosis. “I ignore you,” he said.

  Val wasn’t ready to hear what she knew.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “I don�
��t know. The sky is blue?” Jamison laughed wickedly.

  “Don’t do that.”

  “You won, Val. You got pregnant. You got married.”

  “And you?”

  “Yeah, I don’t know what I got.” Jamison looked through Val.

  “Oh,” Val said, walking toward Jamison. “So you don’t know me now? You used to.”

  “I used to know a lot of things.”

  Val stood in front of Jamison. Her stomach was getting larger, but still it was smaller than he thought it should be for a woman who was well into her second trimester—well, that was what Jamison’s mother had said when she pressured Jamison to find out more information about the pregnancy.

  “Tell me something I don’t know, Val. How many months pregnant are you?” Jamison asked.

  “What?”

  “Just answer the question.”

  “Why?”

  “Val!”

  “Why?”

  “I’m the father. I should know when the baby is coming. And you know what the publicist said, we need to make an announcement soon. What are we going to announce? Is the baby coming in January? February? March? July? When?”

  “I don’t remember the exact date,” Val offered.

  “Don’t remember?” Jamison grinned like he was solving some mystery. “How don’t you remember something like that? When your baby is due?”

  “Well, if you were coming to any of the doctor’s appointments with me, you’d know when our baby is due,” Val said.

  “Whatever.” Jamison tried to turn again.

  Val stopped him again. This time with her hand on his arm.

  “Just talk to me. We have to talk to each other. Not this arguing all the time. That’s not getting us anywhere.” Val’s every utterance sounded like groveling.

  Jamison heard a disruption in her he wouldn’t have thought could be there. Not the girl in the platform high-heeled stilettos. The girl with the fire in her voice. The attitude that always sounded like she was in charge, or thought she was. When they’d met that was what had kept Jamison watching her. She was beautiful. Had a body. But so did so many other women who were making themselves available at all hours since his divorce from Kerry was final. But there was something about Val. Her attitude. Even when she was serving him, she was a feisty bird. And here she was now sounding like her wings were clipped.

  “Tell me what you said the day we met at the club,” Val said softly, invoking an exchange they’d often reminisced about when times were easier and Val was wearing lingerie or making Jamison fried chicken in the middle of the night in her thong.

  “I don’t want to do that right now,” Jamison said.

  “Just do it.... Just say it. Say what you said to me. What you asked me. That’s all I’m asking.”

  Jamison relaxed his jaw and tilted his forehead toward Val. “I asked what a beautiful girl like you was doing trying to get a job working in a strip joint.”

  “You followed me outside to my car. You opened the door for me. I told you I was about to get evicted. I needed someplace to stay. Or a way to pay my rent.” Val looked at Jamison for the next line in the story. It was a smooth line she knew he liked repeating.

  “I told you it was your man’s job to make sure you had someplace to stay.” Jamison’s ice dissolved to the floor. He grinned in an honest way.

  “And I said maybe you should be my man.”

  Jamison caught and held Val’s stare. He stayed there with her in the memory for a few seconds and then tried to look away from her, but she caught his chin and turned his eyes right back to hers.

  “And then you gave me money for my rent. And then you gave me a job,” Val said. “All so I would promise you that I wouldn’t be a stripper.” Val pulled Jamison’s body to hers by his chin and her voice went lower. “You were my hero. My knight in shining armor.” The hand on Jamison’s chin went to his belt buckle.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Thanking you.”

  Jamison’s pants fell from his waist with a clank from his belt buckle as it hit the floor.

  “Don’t do that—don’t—” he requested, but there was no real will in his words, no command. It was a soft whine that Val appreciated. It reminded her of where she might be in control.

  Val squatted down and made an obtuse pyramid of her knees with Jamison’s skinny naked legs in between.

  Jamison looked up at the ceiling and slowly rolled his eyes closed as the warmth of Val’s mouth made him erect. He held his hands at his waist like he was being fitted for a new suit.

  He thought he was saying “don’t” again, but the only sound in the room was coming from his cell phone ringing hysterically on the counter.

  Val moved her hands in long strokes up the sides of Jamison’s thighs and groaned like she stood to gain something of physical pleasure from the oral reward of a desperate new wife trying to make love make love.

  As Jamison’s breathing slowed, Val’s movements became quicker, more sporadic.

  He sighed and tried to back away. But then his heart quickened and suddenly his breath came harder and fuller. All ties to the world left his brain and the blood moved so quickly from his head he felt it zap at his heart. He nearly teetered onto Val but caught his balance and tried to steady himself by opening his eyes.

  And there, standing on the other side of the closed kitchen door, looking through the glass window, was a pale face that at first glance looked like a ghost.

  “Shit,” Jamison yelled and he jerked back so quickly he almost fell over in the trap of his pants.

  “What?” Val followed his eyes and turned to the door too as she got up. She wiped her mouth and squinted at the prying eyes before walking out of the kitchen.

  “What the fuck?” Jamison wrestled his pants up on the way to open the door. “Man, what the fuck?”

  Leaf walked in, holding his cell phone out. “I’ve been calling!”

  “That doesn’t give you the right to roll up on my house like that, man! Me and my—We—Man, what the fuck?”

  “I couldn’t reach you. We had a meeting scheduled with the Rizzolis and when you didn’t show there, I figured you’d be at St. Philip or First Iconium in East Atlanta.”

  “I know. I know,” Jamison admitted, letting Leaf inside the kitchen. “I was fucked up last night. Slept in my car. I was going to call you when I got back on my feet.”

  “No problem,” Leaf said coolly. “You make messes; I clean them up. I told everyone you were ill but wanted to send me ahead to apologize for your absence in person. They ate it up.”

  “Good. Good.”

  “But that’s nothing. Right? We have bigger trout in our pond right now,” Leaf said excitedly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do you mean, ‘What do you mean?’? I’m talking about Ras,” Leaf said.

  “Ras?” Val reentered the kitchen with her brown bob “mayor’s wife” weave back in place and calmly joined Leaf and Jamison around the large island in the kitchen.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Taylor,” Leaf said formally with a hint of placation in his voice. “I certainly apologize for my intrusion.”

  “No problem, Leaf,” Val said. “What about that skank Rasta?”

  “Val, stop calling him a—” Jamison ordered.

  “Wait, you two haven’t heard about last night? You don’t know?” Leaf looked from Jamison to Val and back.

  “Know what?” Jamison asked.

  “It’s all over the news. It’s everywhere,” Leaf half-answered.

  Val and Jamison reached for the little gray television remote at the same time. Val got it first and clicked on the forty-two-inch screen hanging beside the dishwasher. The television was parked on the cooking channel Lorna watched as she cleaned the kitchen. Jamison told Val to turn to Fox. As she clicked, Leaf started with pieces of the headline.

  “They raided his house early this morning,” Leaf reported, and then there was a picture of Ras on the screen. “They found guns
. A lot of guns.” Leaf looked at Jamison. “You know anything about that?”

  Dax was standing in front of the little Old Fourth Ward house Ras had inherited from his grandmother when she died. Jamison knew the house well. He’d helped Ras install new hardwood floors for Ras’s grandmother one summer.

  “That’s a reported seventy-nine semi-automatic rifles found in the basement of drug kingpin Glenn Roberson’s—aka Ras Baruti’s—home here on Boulevard,” Dax said to the camera sternly. “Police have been clearing the place out since a bust that started at about three a.m. this morning.”

  “Drug kingpin? What the fuck?” Jamison said.

  Val shook her head. “Crazy-ass motherfucker—”

  Dax started speaking again and Jamison and Leaf quieted Val with annoyed hand signals. He was cradling an earpiece to his ear and speaking slowly to suggest he was giving the latest reports from the wire.

  “This just in—Roberson’s estranged wife, the mother of the two children he has custody of, was apparently the one who tipped police off to the arsenal found here in this small community,” Dax added. “Karena, the wife, told officers, and I quote, ‘He is a dangerous man.’ ” Dax grimaced gravely. “Such a shame. The people of this great city are truly better off now that this monster is off the street. Let’s hope our mayor makes sure it’s permanent.” He snapped out of his mood quickly and pepped up. “Back to you in the studio, Bob.”

  Jamison grabbed the remote from Val as the image on the television shifted to the anchorman and pressed mute.

  “I can’t believe this shit,” Jamison said. “A drug kingpin?”

  “It’s already all over the Internet,” Leaf revealed. “There are even some pictures of Ras training boys with the guns at some militia camp on the coast. Have you been there?”

  “It’s not a militia camp,” Jamison said. “And since when is owning guns illegal in Georgia?”

  “It’s not,” Leaf said, “but it doesn’t look too good for someone facing an intent-to-distribute charge. Jamison, they’re trying to build a case against him. The feds want him.”