A Little Bit of Karma

by ReShonda Tate Billingsley

  Jay shrugged. “I didn’t know that. All I knew was I didn’t want to take that chance.” He looked me in the eyes. “There would’ve been time, Shannon. You know all this notoriety and success is fleeting. We could’ve talked about it and taken some time, and maybe we could’ve come to some kind of agreement.”

  “We didn’t have time to take,” I said, a mist covering my eyes. Why had we both chosen deception as a way to deal with our issues? “Jay, you don’t get it. My time is running out. I’m approaching forty.”

  “You’re two years from forty,” he replied. “And more and more women are having babies later in life. But the bottom line is you were okay with it before we got married. But it’s like you just forgot about that. You changed your mind and decided you wanted a child and screw how I felt about it. You became consumed with it. So much so that it was all you talked about. And then when I didn’t give you what you wanted, the part of you that’s used to getting your way developed a permanent attitude. You know what it’s like in this stressful field we’re in. You think I like having to smile in these women’s faces all day long?”

  “Yeah, I do,” I quipped.

  “No, I don’t,” he said matter-of-factly. “It’s a job. Remember, this has been my life since I was eighteen. And now that the book and show are doing so well, it’s only getting worse with the women going overboard. I didn’t want that. I wanted stability. I wanted peace. I wanted you. Those women throwing themselves at me back in the day, and even now, don’t impress me. In fact, I’m tired of it. It’s why I got married. I wanted to be a one-woman man.”

  “Humph,” I said, rolling my eyes. “That’s laughable.”

  He groaned. “See? That’s exactly what I’m talking about.” He turned to start the SUV. “Who wants to deal with this day in and day out? I don’t even know why I bother trying to talk to you.”

  I reached out to touch his hand to keep him from turning the ignition. This was the first time we were having a heart-to-heart and I didn’t want to mess it up with bitterness. “I’m sorry. You just have to understand, this whole thing hurts.”

  His chest rose, then fell as he released his grip on the key. “I do understand that and I am so, so sorry. But my point was I do what I have to do when it comes to the Lovejoy brand. We’ve built our success on this whole fixing-heartache-among-women act, and that’s all it is—an act. At the end of the day, I just wanted to come home to relax and enjoy my wife. Instead, for the past year, I’ve come home to someone I love, but whom I no longer like.”

  That hurt, but I let him finish.

  He continued. “I had to deal with my wife walking around with a chip on her shoulder, mad as hell, rationing sex because she decided to change the rules and I didn’t want to play the game her way.”

  “So what? That gave you an excuse to go out and cheat?”

  “No, it didn’t,” he replied. “I was wrong. I take responsibility for my actions. You didn’t push me into the arms of another woman. That’s a decision I made fully on my own. Would I have made that decision if you hadn’t turned into this woman I couldn’t stand?” He looked at me pointedly. “No. But that still doesn’t make what I did right. I can apologize every single day to you. I know I was wrong. I should’ve just left before I got involved with Vonda.”

  I was quiet and pensive. “How did you meet her?”

  “At Starbucks,” he said. I could tell he didn’t want to answer these questions, but I was glad he did. Finally. “We just started talking,” Jay continued. “She said she used to be a fan.”

  “That’s unlike you,” I said. During his heyday, Jay had had a reputation for not crossing the line with groupies. Ericka, his daughter’s mother, had been a groupie, and after she’d turned up pregnant, Jay had sworn that no one else would trap him like that again.

  “I know.” His voice was filled with regret. “I went against my better judgment, and I ended up with Psycho Sally.”

  “Did you invite her to the Virgin Islands?” Since Jay was opening up, maybe I could get some answers.

  Jay shook his head. “No, Shannon. I swear, I would never do anything like that. She knew about the retreat just like everyone else did. I actually started pulling back from her long before you found out. The more I got to know her, the more unstable she seemed. She was obsessive and clingy. But every time I tried to walk away, she would go ballistic on me, and it just got to the point where it was just easier to pacify her, say what she wanted to hear, until I could figure out how to permanently get rid of her.”

  “Well, she’s permanently gone now,” I said, my mind returning to the fiasco we’d found ourselves in the middle of.

  “Yeah, and I don’t want to be blamed for that.” Jay turned the SUV back on. “So let’s go see what we can find out.” He looked at me and, for the first time in a long time, smiled at me.

  I returned his smile. “Thank you for your honesty. I’m glad we could talk.”

  I just wished we had done it a long time ago, I wanted to add. But I was at least grateful that I could get some closure.

  twenty

  I fought back the bile rising in my throat. If I didn’t get my emotions under control, I was going to throw up all over the floor. All the empathy I had been feeling toward my husband just thirty minutes earlier was out the window as we stood in the middle of Vonda’s living room.

  I glanced around the room once again. Never in a million years had I thought I’d be stepping into this… this shrine to Jay.

  “I’m sorry,” Jay said as he darted around the room, removing the pictures. Five-by-sevens, eight-by-tens, a poster from his first album. There had to be thirty pictures of Jay all over Vonda’s home.

  “Just how long were you seeing her again?” I asked as I slowly surveyed the room. I felt like my body was there, but my mind had been transported to another place, back to the place that fueled my anger and bitterness.

  “I told you, it really wasn’t that long. A couple of months.” He glanced around the room like he couldn’t believe the sight himself. “I told you she was obsessive. I mean, half these pictures weren’t here when I was seeing her, which means she added this stuff after I told her it was over.”

  This wasn’t making sense. This chick had become obsessive, and Jay really wanted me to believe he was innocent in all this. “So you did nothing to encourage this?” I asked.

  “Of course I did,” he admitted. “I started it in the first place; then when I saw she was spazzing out on me, I tried to distance myself instead of just cutting her off. I told you I tried to take the easy way out.”

  “By avoiding the issue?” I knew that motif all too well. It was a quality about him that drove me crazy. It was part of why we hadn’t discussed our own issues in detail.

  “I… I’m sorry,” Jay said as he scurried past me and turned more pictures facedown. But there was no way he could move fast enough to keep me from seeing the virtual shrine inside Vonda’s apartment.

  I followed Jay into the bedroom. It was obvious someone had beaten us here, as all of Vonda’s drawers were hanging open and it looked like every crevice had been inspected. But despite all the mess, all I could focus on were the pictures—pictures that were everywhere. Of Jay by himself. Of Jay and Vonda at the park, eating ice cream, attending some type of function, selfies that she had blown up and had printed.

  I picked up a photo of Vonda holding Jay’s three-year-old niece, Meghan.

  A lump formed in my throat. “Y-you took her around Meghan?” was all I could say. Meghan was my heart and joy. She filled the void of the child Jay and I had yet to conceive. And he’d had the audacity to bring another woman around her?

  “It’s not what it seems,” Jay mumbled.

  How in the hell could he even fix his lips to say that?

  “Really, Jay? That’s your response?”

  “Shannon… seriously, Vonda followed me one weekend when I took Meghan to the park. She just showed up.”

  “Who is this man?” I s
aid, holding up a picture of Jay and thrusting it in his face. “Because the Jay that I knew,” I continued, fighting back tears, “he could be a little arrogant, and even a little chauvinistic from time to time, but I would’ve never believed he was capable of this.”

  Jay was usually confident, but at this moment, he simply looked defeated. “It really wasn’t—”

  “Did you love her?”

  “Shannon, let’s not do this,” he pleaded.

  “Did you love her?” I screamed.

  He released an exasperated sigh. “No, I didn’t. I swear to God.”

  “So you ruined our life over some chick you don’t even love?”

  Jay didn’t even bother trying to respond.

  “Did you ever tell her you loved her?”

  “No,” he said, running his hands over his head. “But she told me.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “Nothing. That’s part of the problem, I never said anything.” He stepped to me and tried to take my hands. “But, baby, we’ve got to stay focused. We’ve got to find out what it is these people are talking about. Vonda is gone, and unless we figure all of this out, we can find ourselves paying the price for that.”

  “Right, and I’m caught up in the middle of all this drama because of you.” I snatched my hands away and hit his chest. And before I knew it, I couldn’t stop. I pummeled his chest with a flurry of fists. “Why did you do this to me? To us?” I cried.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he repeated, as he pulled me toward him.

  “You sure are,” I cried. “How could you do this to me?”

  I sobbed as he held me tightly, rocking back and forth, caressing my hair and mumbling “I’m sorry” over and over.

  We stayed that way for what felt like ten minutes, me crying and Jay trying to console me. I hadn’t really meant to get so emotional, but the weight of everything we’d been through—of all that I was seeing now—had simply taken its toll.

  We were interrupted by the sound of the ringing telephone. Both of us stared at the home phone until it stopped ringing and Vonda’s answering machine popped on. I hadn’t even known people still used answering machines.

  Vonda’s greeting played; then a voice said, “Hey, it’s Keri. Where are you? I am so worried about you. I don’t have a good vibe about this, and maybe this whole plan needs to be dropped. These are some dangerous people. Give me a call. I’m going nuts over here. I need to hear from you.”

  Jay jumped to pick up the phone. “Keri?” It was too late. She had already hung up.

  “Who is Keri?” I said, as Jay hung the phone back up.

  “That’s Vonda’s best friend. I just thought maybe she could give us some insight into what’s going on.”

  Jay picked up the handset again and pressed a button.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “I’m calling her back.”

  “Put me on speakerphone,” I demanded.

  Jay did as I asked. Keri answered on the first ring. “Oh my God, Vonda, where have you been?”

  “It’s not Vonda.”

  Silence filled the phone.

  “Keri, it’s Jay.”

  “I know who it is. What are you doing calling me from Vonda’s phone? Where is she?”

  Jay paused. “Look, Keri, I need to know what’s going on. What kind of dangerous game do you think Vonda was caught up in?”

  “Why are you in her apartment? Where is Vonda?” Keri’s voice was filled with panic.

  “Keri, what are you talking about? What plan?”

  She hesitated, then her tone turned flippant. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Keri, you said these people are dangerous. What people? What was Vonda into?”

  Keri paused, then rushed her words out. “Do you know where she is? She needs to get out of town. They came up to my job looking for her, and my neighbor said she’d seen two men in my apartment.”

  “Well, someone has definitely been here too,” Jay said.

  “See, I told Vonda she was playing with fire. You’ve got to convince her to get out of town. Where is she?”

  Jay was quiet as he exchanged glances with me. Finally, he said, “Keri, Vonda is dead. She was murdered in the Virgin Islands.”

  Keri gasped. “Noooo!” she cried. “No, no, no,” she kept repeating.

  “Keri, I need you to calm down.” Sobs continued to fill the phone.

  “Where are you?” Jay asked.

  The phone went dead.

  I was just about to ask whether he should’ve revealed so much to this Keri woman when someone banged on the front door of the apartment.

  “Vonda, is that you?” a voice called out from the other side. “It’s Mrs. Murphy. Open the door, I need to talk to you. There’ve been some funny people creeping around here and I don’t like that. I told you I don’t condone all this foolishness up in my place.” She pounded on the door again. “Plus, you owe me this month’s rent. I’m tired of you being late, then trying to avoid me. I’m gonna use my key,” she threatened.

  Jay and I froze, unsure of what to do. “Come on,” he said, pulling me toward the window. He jimmied the window open and both of us climbed through it and outside onto a patio area. We’d just pulled the window closed when the front door flew open. An elderly woman with graying hair and a pink-and-purple housecoat stuck her head in the door. I didn’t see much after that because Jay and I hightailed it back to the SUV.

  “We’ll just have to try again later,” Jay said, once we were safely sitting back in his vehicle.

  My heart was racing like I’d run a 10K. “We’re not trying anything,” I snapped, shaking my head in exasperation. “We’re going to the police.”

  “We’re wanted for murder.” He turned to face me. “Are you willing to have our name dragged through the mud while we try to prove we didn’t kill someone?”

  I rubbed my temple, wishing we could go back to when the highlight of our day was laughing about callers and their problems.

  “We don’t know if police are even looking for us,” I said.

  “We don’t know that they’re not,” Jay replied. “And if they’re not, it’s just a matter of time.”

  I leaned back in the seat and folded my arms. I couldn’t believe this.

  “It’s bad enough I have to think about what you did, now I have to figure out how to dodge the police too?” My voice cracked at the same time a pounding filled my head.

  He sighed. “Shannon, we’re going to work all of this out.”

  “Just take me home, Jay.”

  “We can’t go home,” he said solemnly.

  That revelation was like a sledgehammer removing the wall holding up the dam. I buried my face in my hands and sobbed as I wondered how in the world my life had spiraled into this madness.

  twenty-one

  “So where are we heading?” I asked after I pulled myself together. We’d been driving for ten minutes and I had no idea where Jay was going. I knew one thing: I was ready to go home, get out of these clothes, bathe, get in my bed, and sleep until all this madness was solved.

  “We’re going to see Vonda’s friend and try to get to the bottom of what’s going on.” Jay kept his eyes focused on the road as he pulled onto the freeway. I didn’t say anything else because all I could think was that Jay knew the way to Keri’s place, which meant he’d been there before. It hurt that Jay had not only cheated on me but was apparently chummy with his mistress’s friends. He wanted me to believe the relationship had been meaningless, but he had integrated himself into Vonda’s life.

  I debated saying something but decided against it. I didn’t want to know any more about this relationship. I just wanted to get out of this trouble, then get as far away from Jay as I possibly could.

  When we arrived at a large apartment building, Jay swung his SUV into a private parking space and got out.

  “Are you coming?” he leaned in and asked when I didn’t move. “Or do you just
want to continue this silent treatment and let me handle this myself?”

  I released an exasperated breath as I followed him out of the vehicle and up the stairs to a second-floor apartment. Jay put a finger over the peephole, then knocked.

  “Who is it?” a voice called out.

  Jay lowered his voice. “It’s Charlie, from downstairs.”

  I folded my arms and glared. He knew neighbors too?

  Keri opened the front door, then quickly tried to shut it when she realized it wasn’t Charlie.

  “Go away!” she cried.

  Jay put his foot in the door to stop her from closing it all the way. “I need to talk to you,” he said.

  Keri pushed on the door, trying desperately to close it, but Jay’s Timberland boots made it virtually impossible.

  “I did my research,” Keri said through the crack in the door. “Police think you’re the one who killed Vonda. It’s in the Virgin Islands paper.”

  So the police were looking for us.

  “Keri, you know better than that!” Jay declared.

  “I don’t know anything!” She kicked at his foot as she struggled to close the door.

  I don’t know what came over me, but I kicked the door with all my might and sent Keri tumbling back.

  I bogarted my way inside. “Look, we don’t have time for these games!” I jabbed my finger in the face of the petite woman with flyaway hair.

  “Who the hell are you?” Keri asked, backing up against the wall as her eyes darted around like she was looking for something to use as a weapon.

  “I’m the pissed-off wife.” I stepped close to Keri’s face as Jay followed me in and closed the door. “Your bimbo friend and my no-good husband have gotten me caught up in all this drama and I need to get to the bottom of it. Now, if you know something, we need to know it.”

  “Look, lady, I don’t have anything to do with this,” Keri said, her voice trembling. The bravado she’d displayed previously was gone.