Catt Chasing (13 page)
Authors: Shana Burton
Chapter 20
Jamal yawned and tried to shake himself awake and focused, but he was so sleepy that the dividing lines in the road seemed to be running together. “I can barely keep my eyes opened.”
“I told you not to try to get on the road after the game,” lectured Catt, who was nodding off herself. “How much longer 'til we get to Cleveland?”
Jamal checked the navigation system. “Four hours,” he groaned. “I can't even do it, Catt. You're gonna have to drive.”
“I'm just as sleepy as you are!” she cried. “We put in the same time at work and the same three hours at the game.”
“You never drive!” complained Jamal. “This ain't gon' work. Either you're gonna drive, or I'm stopping to get a room for the night.”
“We're in the middle of nowhere,” Catt pointed out, looking ahead at the dark, deserted road. “This is the kind of place where the police usually find the body years later.”
“Well, Catt, if they kill me, at least I'll be able to get some sleep!”
They drove another ten miles before Jamal spotted Sunlight Inn, a cheap one-story motel, probably more accustomed to being the site for illicit affairs more than a good night's sleep.
“We're checkin' in,” asserted Jamal, pulling off the road to the motel's parking lot.
“Jamal, will you look at that place? It's got STD written all over it! Let's just ride a little further down the road.”
Jamal stretched his seat back. “Catt, if I could go further, I would, but this is it. I don't even have the strength to get out and pay for the room.” He passed her his credit card. “Go and handle that.”
“It's almost three o'clock in the morning. I'm not getting out this car to check in some dingy motel. No!”
Jamal let his eyes fall shut. “Put all that praying you do to good use. The Lord will protect you.”
Seeing that she was out of options, Catt called for a legion of angels to camp out around her as she made her way from the car to the lobbyâif it could be called suchâof the motel.
The door was locked. She rang the bell and was greeted by a smarmy, chain-smoking desk clerk, who talked to her through an armhole in the window.
“You want a room?” he droned.
“Yes, sir, two please.”
He fired off several hacking coughs. Suddenly, Catt was grateful for the plastic window that stood between them. “That'll be $33.76 a piece.”
She handed him the credit card. “Umm . . . can I request your best room or at least your cleanest one?”
He tossed two keys attached to green rubber “Sunlight Inn” key chains through the hole. Slowly, he blew out a ring of smoke. “They're all clean. Rooms 123 and 124, 'round the corner to your left.”
When Catt returned to the car, Jamal was already asleep. She poked him to get his attention. “If you were hoping for room service and a mint on the pillow, you might be outta luck.” She tossed him a room key.
“At this point, I'll settle for a blanket and a pillow.”
“I'm glad
clean
is optional, considering where we are.”
clean
is optional, considering where we are.”
Jamal mustered the energy to drive around the corner to their rooms. He walked Catt to her door.
She unlocked it and flipped the light switch. The lamp cast a dim light on the two full-sized beds, dusty dresser, and watercolor art that made up the room. “Maybe I should've left the light off,” she mumbled, looking around at the sad excuse of a motel.
Jamal turned up his nose. “That wouldn't have done anything about the smell,” he noted. The room reeked of curry chicken and stale beer. “Looks like they spared
all
expenses with this one!”
all
expenses with this one!”
Catt pressed down on the bed's flowery comforter to make sure the bed was sturdy. “As a rule of thumb, I never stay at a hotel where I can get into my room from the outside. Nothing about this place looks safe . . . or sanitary, for that matter.”
“Are you going to be okay over here by yourself?”
“It's just for one night, right? I'm sure I've stayed in worse places.” She frowned at spotting a dead roach near the bed. “Then again, maybe not.”
“You know, this doesn't look like the safest neighborhood. Maybe you should crash with me for the night. The rooms do have two beds.”
“Are you sure?” The prospect of spending the night with Jamal appealed to her about as much as spending the night alone in the room. She pulled back the comforter and found a condom wrapper underneath.
“You need more proof?”
Catt frowned in disgust. “Jamal, this place is beyond gross! Let's just go somewhere else.”
“Let's check out my room first. It might be better.”
“It would have to work hard to be worse,” she quipped.
Jamal unlocked his door. Absent from his room were the roaches, condoms, and lingering odors. “Okay, it's not so bad,” he replied, scanning the room for rodents and bugs.
Catt pulled back the sheets on one of the beds. “It doesn't appear that anyone's had sex in this bed within the last twenty-four hours.”
Jamal sat down on the bed and pulled off his shoes. “See? I told you it wasn't so bad.”
“I'm still getting my disinfectant spray out of the car and hosing this place down. I'm getting the blankets out of the trunk too. There's no way I'm letting these sheets touch my skin!”
True to her word, Catt used an entire can of disinfectant spraying down the sheets, the toilet, the doorknobs, and the sink. She flared her blanket out over the bed and lay down to rest, only to find that all of the cleaning and spraying had taken the tiredness out of her.
If she was going to be up, she needed company. “Psst, are you asleep?”
Jamal turned over in his bed. “Would it matter if I said yes?”
“I can't sleep,” she told him.
He yawned. “Well, I can! Good night!”
“Don't you want to talk?”
“Not at three in the morning, no.”
“Is this the kind of place you take your women to when you want to remember the sex but not her name?”
“I told you I'm trying to get some sleep, Tonya,” he groaned.
“Tonya?” repeated Catt. “Who's that?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You called me Tonya.”
“I called you Catt.”
“No, you called me Tonya,” insisted Catt.
“Okay, so I called you Tonya. It was a Freudian slip.”
Catt sat up. “So who's Tonya?”
“Just some chick. Now can you please shut up so I can get some sleep?”
“I will as soon as you tell me about Tonya.”
Jamal pulled the blankets around him. “Let's see . . . we met, it didn't work out; now it's over. End of conversation.”
“Jamalâ” she broke in.
“Why are we even talking about this, especially when I can think of a much better use for that mouth of yours at this time of night?”
She hurled a pillow at him. “Tell me what brought you to Charlotte.”
“Workâyou already know that. Now chill out with all the questions and go to sleep.”
Catt proceeded with her questions as if she didn't hear him. “I don't get it. You're a brilliant chemist who could get a job anywhere. Why would you settle for a company like Telegenic? There's got to be more to the story.”
“I've always liked North Carolina.”
“So you
are
from North Carolina?”
are
from North Carolina?”
“Yes. I spent the first part of my life in Raleigh.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really!” he replied, exasperated. “You've asked enough questions for one night. I need some rest.”
“Just one more question, I promise.”
“What is it?”
“What happened that made you think that you had to go all the way to Paris to get away from it?”
“I was ready for a change.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “I don't believe you. I think it's more than that, and I think it has something to do with Tonya.”
“You think too much. The best remedy for that is a good night's sleep.”
“Come on, Jamal, there's nobody here but the two of us. You can trust me. I want to know about Tonya and the reason you left all those years ago.”
“If I tell you, will you promise to shut up?”
She held up her right hand. “Scout's honor.”
He paused and sighed. “Tonya taught me rule number oneânever fall in love.”
“How so?”
Jamal sat up, rubbing his eyes. “When I met her, I was young and still stupid enough to believe that love could conquer all.”
“Some of us still believe,” she added.
“You can save yourself a lot of trouble and therapy by forgetting that now.”
“She broke your heart, didn't she?” surmised Catt.
“Not in the way you mean. Tonya and I were married. She's the only woman I've ever gotten on my knees to ask for anything.”
“You never told me that you'd been married before. Honestly, I didn't see you as the marrying kind.”
“Well, I was. We were married for about six years.”
“What happened?”
He lay back down. “I really don't want to talk about this right now.”
“Sometimes it helps to talk about things that have hurt you.”
“All the talking in the world won't change a thing. Nothing I do will ever bring her back.”
Catt sighed in empathy. “You must have really loved her.”
He nodded. “I did. Kennedy was my whole world.”
“Kennedy?” She frowned, confused. “I thought her name was Tonya.”
“Kennedy is . . .” he swallowed hard. “Kennedy was our little girl.”
“Little girl?” she echoed. This was the first time Jamal had ever made reference to having a child. Catt paused, building the courage to ask. “You said
was
your little girl. Did she . . . I mean, is she . . .”
was
your little girl. Did she . . . I mean, is she . . .”
“She's dead, Catt,” filled in Jamal. “She was only four years old.”
Catt flung her hand over her mouth. “My God, you must have been devastated.”
“It's true, you know. You never get over losing a child.” A sad smile spread across his face. “I can still hear her now saying, âDaddy, look what I found!' She was so beautiful too. She had my complexion, but she was Tonya up and down. Kennedy was a bright little thing tooâalways asking questions and wanting to know how things worked. If she hadn't had that asthma attack . . .” He lowered his head. He didn't say anything, but Catt knew that he was crying to himself.
She gave him a few minutes to compose himself before going on. Now, his brusque reaction to her making jokes about having children all over the country made sense to her. “I know going through that kind of heartbreak must've been hell for you and your wife. At least you had each other to lean on.”
Jamal shook his head. “Ironically, that's the very thing that broke us apart. The pain of Kennedy's death was just too much.”
“I've heard that the death of a child can destroy even the strongest marriage.”
“We didn't know how to be there for each other, I guess. I tried, but Tonya felt like I was âsmothering' her, as she put it. She never really accepted that Kennedy was gone, never wanted to talk about it. She completely lost it when I suggested that we pack up Kennedy's things and donate them to charity. She wanted to leave her room and everything just like it was before she died, but I couldn't live in the past like that. It was like having to relive her death every day. After that, things between us went from bad to worse. Eventually, we stopped talking, stopped trying to make it work. I guess losing Kennedy was something we couldn't fight against, no matter how much we loved each other.”
Catt's heart broke for him. “I'm so sorry this happened to you, Jamal.”
“Don't be. I stopped being hurt over the marriage a long time ago. Losing Kennedy is going to always be with me.”
“Is that when you left for Paris?”
“There was nothing left for me here except memories. My little girl was gone, my marriage was overâI just needed a fresh start.”
“But don't you see what you've done instead? You don't let anyone get close to you. Jamal, that's no way to live.”
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