Disrespectfully Yours

by Raynesha Pittman

  “Hell yeah, suck on Daddy’s day care. My unborn kids need attention too.”

  Now she remembered why she preferred quiet encounters with him. He was twenty-five, and he talked like a twenty-five-year-old. She forced herself into a zone so she could block him out and continued bobbing and weaving like boxing greats. She was winning the fight with her defensive moves alone, and Devin didn’t mind losing. Excess saliva dripped from his steel now, and she wiped her crotch with it as if it were a tissue, then walked to the chaise in front of her bed and got down on all fours.

  “Why did you invite me to your house and not tell me to meet you on Gilligan’s Island?”

  She almost laughed in his face when he mentioned her nickname for the hotel. She called the W Hotel Treasure’s Island, the Hilton her bat cave, and the Marriott Gilligan’s Island.

  “We’ll talk about it later. You’re going to make her dry up with all this talking.”

  “I know how to get her wet again,” he shot back, feeling immortal.

  Meagan wasn’t in the mood to talk, but her real reason for not getting off the chaise to face him was that her arthritis had flared up, and it would take her a minute to get out of her current position. Surrendering at his words, she fell over and rested her head on the bed.

  “I didn’t meet you at the Marriott, because I wanted you to see the real me. I’ve lied and played games with you for months, and you trusted me. I want that trust back. I want us back. I’m married, but I’m unhappy. And the only time I feel good is when I’m with you, lying in your arms. Does that answer your question?”

  “Hell yeah,” he said, nodding his head. “Now make her smile at me.”

  Chapter Five

  “Hey, baby, go downstairs and tell my boys I said to bounce. I’ll get your limo driver to drop me off.”

  Devin was sitting on the chaise, breaking his weed down on a dollar folded lengthwise. Meagan had heard him, but sex with him always left her in a state of needing recovery and outpatient rehabilitation.

  “Angelo’s off tonight,” she said as she lay facedown on her animal-print throw rug on the floor.

  “Nah, he was out there in the limo when we pulled up. He shook my hand and everything.” He was trying to seal his blunt with his saliva, but his cotton mouth was interfering. “Bring me back something to drink too.”

  With strength that had to come from God, Meagan leapt to her feet, threw on her robe, and went downstairs. She couldn’t hear the high volume on the television from her bedroom, but as she headed down the stairs, she was sure they were putting her surround sound to full use. Will Smith’s loud voice from a rerun episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air gave her the feeling that it was being filmed live in her house.

  As she approached the entertainment room, she called, “Hey, fellas, can you turn it down a notch? Devin told me—”

  “I been put them studio gangstas out.” Angelo was smoking a blunt on the couch, with his feet up on the coffee table, exactly like J. Seed had done. “Why did you let them College Park niggas in your spot? You—”

  She cut him off as she stood in the doorway. “What in the fuck are you doing in my house?” Meagan scanned him from head to toe with death in her eyes.

  “I’m here to make sure you don’t let the young man spend the night at your house.” He hit the blunt again and then put it out on the base of the pot holding her plastic flowers.

  “Who I let spend the night ain’t none of your motherfucking concern. Get the fuck out.” She walked over to him, knocked his ankles off her coffee table, and wiped the ash stain off her pot with her hand.

  “So now we’re touching each other?” He jumped to his feet and locked his blunt-free hand around her jaw, forcing her to pucker her lips. “You don’t want us to start touching each other. You’re scared to get fucked by a real man. That’s why you married that old-ass dick and are getting wiener from the Boys and Girls Club of America. You know you can’t handle dick your age.”

  She grabbed his surprisingly hard dick and squeezed as hard as she could, but he seemed to enjoy it. Honestly, she enjoyed it too. She had always had a thing for foreplay but had never encountered a man willing to play the “get rough and then get fucked” game. After letting his army base go before his soldiers came marching out, she dug her nails into the wrist of the hand holding her face.

  “You’re right. I have never been able to handle dick my age. It’s never enough,” she confessed.

  He released her and took a step back so she could see him smiling at her. She was beautiful, but so were all the distractions in life that could send you to hell, he thought. He knew better than to tempt fate.

  “I wouldn’t fuck you if I could. I’m in your house, waiting to talk to you. I didn’t want to interrupt what you had going on but . . .” He shrugged his shoulders. “I had to come by and tell you that I was in the car when you talked to William earlier. He came back from Florida today, and you know where he’s at and with whom.”

  “I don’t know with whom he is. Who is she?”

  “That’s thing,” he said, sitting back down on the couch. “I’ve never met her or seen her. He won’t even say her name around me, and he got her, her own driver. When they go out, he doesn’t use me.” That was partly a lie. He knew exactly who this woman was, well, sort of, but he had never driven her around by his own choice. William had asked him if he had an issue driving for his mistress too, and he had said yes, so William had left it at that.

  Meagan joined him on the couch. “Why didn’t you just call and tell me?”

  “Shit, I was with him at the strip club until a little after midnight. I came by here to see if the lights were still on. I didn’t expect to see the fake Wu-Tang Clan pull in behind me.”

  “So y’all hang out now?” The strip club were the only words of his she’d heard.

  “He has been asking me to go with him for a while now, and since I’m working with you, I took it as an opportunity to get more information out of him. What I really want to know, though, is, how did William’s first wife die?”

  Meagan’s mind took her back to the meeting that was supposed to happen so many years ago.

  The clock read twelve o’clock, and William had failed to make it back. He’d said he was just taking Clara’s car to put gas in it after he’d used her car to get his tire fixed, but that was forty-five minutes ago. Meagan was getting antsy, and so was Rita.

  “Clara, if he doesn’t come back by twelve thirty, let’s take his car and leave. I’m not about to keep wasting my time waiting on him,” Rita said, rolling her eyes up to the ceiling.

  “Girl, we can go now. He knows I don’t wait.”

  “No!” Meagan yelled, joining the ladies by standing up. “It’s really important that y’all stay for the news.”

  “Well, if you know what the news is, Georgia Peach, you can tell us, so we can go,” Clara countered.

  “I . . . I would prefer that he told y’all. It’s his surprise. I’ll be right back.”

  She ran to the restroom and stood before the mirror, smiling from ear to ear. So what if her face and ass still hurt from his discipline? And who cared about him fucking his past one last time? In minutes, he would be all hers. She used the restroom, washed her hands, and began brushing her hair back in place with the palm of her hand. Just then the restroom door opened, and her mother walked in.

  “So, what’s this bullshit about? I know you know, because you changed clothes for it. What do you have going on?” Rita asked, eyeing her daughter like she was in a face-to-face conference with the other woman.

  “You’ll find out when he gets back. If you were important to him, you’d already know, but you’re not, so you’ll find out when she does.”

  Meagan nodded her head at the back of the restroom door and then continued to look at herself in the mirror. A smile formed as she vainly compared herself to the two older women. She was sure she had them trumped in bed too, because William had no problem telling her that she was
the best at everything he asked her to do. In minutes, he would share the news with all of them as he announced their engagement.

  Rita stepped behind her daughter in the mirror and played in her own curls as she said, “You’re so beautiful, baby, but don’t forget you’re my copy. Not a carbon copy. That’s too close to the original. You’re more like that third copy that doesn’t get printed clearly.”

  “Mama, your jealousy is showing again. We do look alike on the surface, but the original is played out and overused. From what I can see, your old ass can’t even hold your legs up anymore.”

  “So, you were watching us this morning. I hope you were taking notes. You know, William has a very big dick, and it would take a bitch to have no walls to allow him to dig deeper by keeping her legs up. I think you’ve played the game for too long if you can take my dick with your knees on your shoulders.”

  “Your dick? Bitch, please. I was in good spirits this morning and felt like giving to the less fortunate. That was called goodbye dick. This little meeting my man called was to give Clara her divorce papers and to tell you that he no longer needs your rent-a-ho services. You’re being dump, Mommy. Your garbage-ass pussy didn’t make the cut.”

  Rita stared into her daughter’s eyes through the mirror, and she saw the truth in her evil look. Her daughter wasn’t lying, and she knew it. All those years of holding on to William in the hopes he’d leave his wife for her had been a waste. He’d fuck her and make promises that he was going to leave Clara soon, and that was the truth. The lie was that he planned on leaving Clara for her. Not knowing what to say back to her daughter in her own defense, Rita ran out of the restroom. Meagan took her exit as her first victory of the day.

  She was feeling good about breaking the news to her mother and was sure that her mother wouldn’t share the news with Clara before William did. It would incriminate her to tell Clara his plan to leave her, because Clara would want to know what had made her privy to his plan. As she folded a piece of gum in her mouth to freshen it for their first kiss once they announce their engagement, the restroom door opened and, simultaneously, the entire restaurant shook.

  “What was that?” her older coworker asked with one foot in the restroom and the other in the hallway.

  “I don’t know,” Meagan replied, ready to find out.

  When she made it to the front of the diner, half of its customers were outside, staring at the side of the building, while the others, their mouths open, were glued to the windows. She couldn’t get a clear view of the outside, but she made out enough of the scene to cause her to run out the door. William’s car was in a ball of flames, its front end inside the brick barbershop next door. The men from the diner had formed a ring and were urging the onlookers to move back. There was another loud bang as the hood of the car flew up, and that demolished brick wall became her mother and her godmother’s burying place.

  “So are you going to tell me or what?” Angelo asked, snapping her out of her recollection.

  “They died in a car accident. Faulty brakes, clogged gasoline line, or something. I don’t remember what the investigators called it.”

  “Who are they? There was somebody besides his wife in the car?”

  “Yes, my mother was in the car with her. They were always together.”

  Angelo looked puzzled, but then the information he had been collecting started to make sense. He had the what, when, where, and how. Now he needed to find out who and why.

  “Well, I told you what I came to tell you,” he said. “Are you done entertaining the child, so I can drop him off?”

  “He’s staying with me until it’s time for me to go to work. And you never told me what you found out.”

  He stood up and rubbed his head, which she recognized as the gesture he made when he was becoming frustrated. “Let me dig a little more and make sure I know what I’m talking about first.”

  “You don’t sound as confident as you were before. Is he out to get me or not?”

  He walked to the front door and looked back at her. “Cloudy thoughts can show only blurred visions of the truth. Let the weather change, baby,” he said, quoting Devin’s lyrics from the song he had written about Meagan.

  She didn’t have a clue whom he was quoting, and so she just shrugged.

  Angelo walked out the door and hit the interstate to take a two-hour drive to clear his mind and retrace his steps. He hadn’t thought his plans through and didn’t have a clue about what he was getting himself into. He had heard rumors about the deadly crash back in Albany, but he didn’t remember hearing talk of there being someone in the passenger seat with William’s first wife. Instead of questioning Meagan on a subject he could tell she knew nothing about, and not wanting to look suspicious to William, he decided right then that his best bet was to go back to the crime scene.

  It was early, and the residents of Albany were just beginning to get out and start their day. Instead of wasting time waiting for the barbershop to open, he drove straight to the mortuary. It was seven o’clock in the morning; he knew someone would be there. An older man in a Sunday school shirt with a bow tie and overalls met him in the parking lot.

  “That’s a company car, not your own private property to do as you wish with. And where have you been? You know your mama will be back from her treatments soon.”

  “I know, Pops, but I told you I picked up a side job driving your limo. I can’t eat off your plate forever.”

  “You sho’ know what to say. But I stopped feeding you. Yes, this here is my mortuary, but you are an hourly employee. You make your checks and eat thanks to them and him.” His father pointed his index finger at the sky. “And why haven’t you made it to church?”

  Angelo couldn’t help but to laugh. “Pops, why are you nagging like a little old lady? I see all those years playing both parents have caught up to you.”

  “Watch your mouth, Junior.” He chuckled. “I never played Mama to you. You got everything you needed from me and God.”

  Every time he brought her up, Angelo Sr. could still see traces of hurt in his son’s eyes from being abandoned by his mother. Her return gave him no comfort because he knew she had come back only because she was dying of cancer.

  “Whatever you say, Pops.” He laughed. “Look, do you remember when that car exploded at the barbershop on Oglethorpe Boulevard when I first started college?”

  “I remember when you dropped out of college to work on the production line at the candy factory. All those years of praying you through high school, only to watch you throw away your chance at furthering your education to pack chocolates. Pop the hood so I can check the oil. I’m sure you haven’t been checking it.”

  Angelo popped the hood like his father had requested of him. “I’m serious, Pops. Do you remember that car explosion?”

  “Yes, I remember. How could I forget? That was the biggest thing to happen in the city since Ray Charles. Why?” he said, shaking his head at the dipstick, which showed that the limo was low on oil.

  “How many people were in the car?”

  “One. It was a member of our church. Mr. Tolliver’s wife. They owned the building where Auto World is at now. It used to be a diner. Good food. Lousy customer service.”

  “Are you sure there was only one person in the car, Pops? I heard it was two.”

  “It could have been seven people in that car, son, and we wouldn’t have known. The car blew up, and the body or bodies blew up with it.” Angelo Sr. silently prayed for forgiveness. He didn’t like the feeling of lying to his son or the feeling of knowing he was lying under God’s listening ears. He quickly changed the subject. “Go look in the back of my pickup truck and grab four bottles of oil and the funnel before the engine locks on you. If you blow a head on my limo, I’m taking it out of your check.”

  “What check?” Angelo mumbled.

  “The check you haven’t been earning that I still deposit into your account each month. That check.”

  “Ah, you’re talking about
my allowance.” He chuckled.

  “At forty-three years old, you should be ashamed of yourself for still needing an allowance. I don’t know where I went wrong with you, boy.”

  Angelo walked to the truck to dodge listening to his father voice his disappointments. Now wasn’t the time for him to hear how he had turned into nothing and wasted his life. It wasn’t in the blueprints he had made for himself to purposely fail, but truth be told, he had. After high school his dad had given him the option to go college, pursue a trade, or join the service. He had chosen school and then had dropped out before he’d been given his first test. Not because it had been hard. He had dropped out because getting educated didn’t put and keep money in household pockets like a full-time job did. He had understood that you get the knowledge to make the money, but bills hadn’t seemed to comprehend that process. He had wanted to have his own place, but if he’d stayed in school, he’d have to continue to live with his father, and live by his father’s rules. That meant God was first, next was God, and finally, he’d have to structure his life around God. Angelo Jr. loved the Lord, just not as much as his father did.

  While his father had drilled marriage before sex, everything and everyone who was Angelo Jr.’s age had believed in sex, no marriage. Sex had been one of the issues, but it hadn’t been the biggest. His true reason for wanting to fly as far away as he could from the nest had been that he didn’t want to be expected to be the next pastor in the family. It wasn’t his calling. After many years of going back and forth with his father, someway, his dad had still won, as Angelo Jr. was known for driving funeral cars and driving a limousine for those with money. Doing funerals by day and being a hired driver by night seemed to please both him and his father, but there had to be more for him, and he was going to get it. If everything worked out the way he had planned, his father wouldn’t need the building fund he collected every Sunday to expand the church and the mortuary. Angelo Jr. pay for the upgrades himself.

  His father was old, and death had been following him of late. It wasn’t a secret. Knowing that everything his father owned would one day be his, Angelo Jr. looked at the upgrades as an investment in the future he had left. He wouldn’t take on being a pastor or a funeral home director, but renting the place out to someone who could take on both titles would be profitable.