Cheaters (16 page)

I shouted, “She knew we’d been having a hard time—”

Toyomi countered, “When did we start having a hard time?”

“He ain’t worth it, Toyomi.” Shar rolled her eyes at me. “You heard what he said. Don’t let him play you like that.”

Toyomi had a bottle in each hand. Breathing heavily. Her ponytail had come loose, allowing her hair to dance with anger. With wide eyes she screamed, “I don’t want to see you.”

Toyomi, Ray-Ray, and Shar. Not to mention all the white people who were watching us. Everybody was sneering at me like I was the bad guy.

My insides were loose, as blubbery as a sea lion. That was how it felt one moment, but the next I ached for freedom, like I was clamped in the jaws of a great white shark.

I had lost.

Enough of yelling up at her balcony. This was about as useful as trying to cut down a redwood tree by shouting at the damn thing.

I eased back into my car and started driving away. A bottle bounced off my trunk, another barely missed my window. I floored it, screeched, and bounced over a speed bump. Four bottles crashed on the sides and in front of my ride at the same time. Toyomi didn’t throw all those by herself. Not that quick.

My fingers were throbbing. I was disoriented, dazed.

A half mile outside her complex, I pulled into the lot at the College of the Desert long enough to check out the damage to my car. Dents. A window was cracked like the Liberty Bell. I leaned against my car for a moment, my head down, fingers massaging my temples. Until I stung. The heat punctured my skin like needles. I moved on.

Turned my air on low. Drove slowly up Monterey toward the freeway.

I stopped at a red light at Country Club Drive. Spent that time wondering how something so much in control could flip the script. Guilt swooped in, covered me in huge waves.

Then my car was bumped from the rear.

I’d been rear-ended and almost knocked out into traffic.

This day was going every way but the right way.

I was ready to get out cursing until I looked behind me.

Toyomi.

Fuming and biting holes in her bottom lip. Revving the engine of her Subaru. Her eyes hotter than the Chicago fire.

We were the only cars in the intersection. Nothing approaching from the south. Not a damn thing on the north side. But a steady flow of cars were zipping east/west. People at the Mobil gas station on the right weren’t paying attention. Neither were the people at the Sav-On mini-mall.

She backed up, bumped me again. Not hard, but hard enough to show she was borderline psychotic. She let down her window and slung a bottle. It bounced off my hood, rolled into the street. Her car door flew open. She ran up, slammed her fist into my window.

She screamed,
“Ouch!”

“What’s wrong with you?”

“I hurt my hand,” she huffed.
“Open this door!”

My insides were shaking like I had malaria. I’d never seen a sista look that vile.

“Stephan, how could you do this to me? I loved you.”

Traffic slowed.

My pulse had the pace of a wild stallion. I sped through the red light. She jumped into her Subaru. Ran the light. Chased me the way they did Rodney King.

My Mustang was up to eighty when I whizzed through the intersection at Frank Sinatra Drive. I hoped that after a few miles, she’d think about what she was doing and back the fuck off.

She didn’t. I crossed Gerald Ford Drive; she was still in pursuit.

I had a feeling she wanted to kill me. The thought of death rushed into my head. A not-so-pretty image of a crashed Mustang, a beautiful fire, smoke that could be seen for miles, came to mind. That and me pleading for mercy while Toyomi stood over me out here in Timbuktu, laughing as she toasted a marshmallow in the flames.

I put the pedal to the metal.

I couldn’t go out like that, not on a barren road on the edge of a tourist town populated by old white people who liked to golf and play shuffleboard between Bob Hope specials.

Toyomi’s headlights flashed on and off nonstop, like deranged eyes. Her car stampeded like it was possessed.

She caught up, jumped in the lane to my right.

Her stare challenged my existence down to the bone. I tried to tighten my mouth, exude sheer madness, wanted to come across like I wasn’t scared shitless, but I don’t think it worked. My sweaty forehead and quivering lip were a giveaway.

She screamed. Curses rattled from her thick lips.

She grabbed something.

Bottles flew out of her window like migrating birds. The first flock of Cokes were no-hitters; she whipped past me and threw several more so I’d crash into them head-on. Her engineering brain had come to life. I swerved, switched lanes, got behind her, and slowed. She jammed on her brakes, tried to make me rear-end her, but I skidded around her and almost ran off the road.

The woman was serious.

I pretended I was on the Starship Enterprise, and prayed for warp drive.

She became larger and larger in my rearview.

The 10 was two hundred yards away, and I was doing a hundred, too fast to slow this bullet down.

I ran the light in front of Home Depot. She ran it too.

Once over the overpass, the street narrowed, curved real deep, forced me to ease up. A turn came up much too fast. I panted, growled, wrestled with the steering wheel. Found control and barely kept my ride from flipping like a pancake. My tires screeched and vibrated on the asphalt.

Then I was back on the 10 freeway.

I was free. Westward bound.

Home free with jubilation in every beat of my heart.

Then I checked the rearview. Damn.

A mad-ass car was buffaloing through traffic. Lights flashing like Stephen King’s
Christine.
Toyomi was on my ass like a motherfucker.

No matter how fast I went, her reflection grew.

With an iron fist I hammered my steering wheel over and over. A thousand times I yelled, “Damn!”

Toyomi accelerated around the four lanes of traffic, caught up, rode my bumper, swerved and switched into the lane to my right, pulled up and matched my speed of 85 plus.

A lopsided, malicious, take-no-prisoners frown was rooted in her face. My toes curled like fists.

She gritted her teeth, veered at me.

My nostrils flared; I winced, swerved away.

With a tom-tom beating for my heart, I scowled over, saw tears flooding from her eyes. She pulled strands of reddish-brown hair from her face, pursed her full lips, showed me the middle finger of love. Her eyes were those of a tiger, telling me to stay the fuck out of her jungle.

Toyomi whisked off at the exit to the Morongo Indian Reservation.

Vanished.

My face was flushed, skin so hot that the torrid air of Palm Springs chilled my body like an Antarctic breeze.

I raised my eyes to the sunny skies, exhausted and aching like I’d run the L.A. Marathon, and said, “Thank you, Jesus.”

Craig said he’d meet me at the IHOP right off the 60 at Archibald. Outside of the imported greenery, the area was industrial and barren. One step above being a truck stop in Barstow.

I freshened up. Put on a fresh coat of dark brown eyeliner, cocoa lip liner, and spiced cider lipstick; sipped lemonade, and tried to be patient while I sat in a booth. When you’re hot and sweaty, waiting forty-five minutes felt like a month of Sundays.

Just when I thought I’d been stood up again, Craig pulled up. Just like that, sweat spouted on my nose, on my neck. Anxiety warmed my breasts and buttocks too. He was driving a new gray car. I wondered whose car he had borrowed. He disappeared. He must’ve been parking on the other side nearest Archibald, where I had left my car.

A moment later, he strutted toward the building. My heart quickened. Then he was coming through the front door.

The sun had tanned his caramel skin. I was burnt like toast as well. That was probably why Mr. Mumbles thought I was everything but a sista. When my flesh gets this fried, it does have a tendency to accent the Indian features in my bloodline.

That’s beside the point.

Craig saw me. He wiped his hand over his yellow Tommy Hilfiger shirt, tugged his shirt down to his shorts. The quality of his wardrobe had improved. His hairy legs were almost as dark as his brown sandals. His hair was so short he looked bald.

I shouldn’t be here. I knew that already.

But bits and pieces of Craig were still floating around inside me, like speckles of litter in a clean pool. As he came my way, I remembered the first time I saw him, and I felt so shy. He read me. But that was then, this now. His ass won’t be able to read me, not ever again. The day a blind man with no hands can read Braille is when he’ll know what I really feel.

He sat down across from me and said, “Hey, Smoochiez.”

God, I hated that nickname. Used to love it; now I hated it. I wanted to grab his neck and puke down his throat.

I said, “Whose car are you in?”

“Mine.” He had a pompous grin. “I bought a Nissan Maxima.”

“Brand-new?”

“Yeah.” Then he asked me, “So who fixed your car?”

God, I was pissed. All the money he saved when we were dating is what bought that fucking brand-new car. I said, “Craig, let’s not start off by pretending nothing has happened.”

The waitress showed up and butted in before I could get this party started. She grinned enough to show her silver-capped teeth, asked me if I was ready to order, and before I could answer, Craig rattled off for her to bring him a Rooty Tooty Fresh and Fruity.

She gave him a subtle aren’t-you-the-rude-one look, then turned to me and smiled. “What would you like, ma’am?”

I hissed out what I was feeling. “Closure.”

Her brows rose in confusion.

Craig didn’t get it and was looking over the menu like there was actually a meal called “Closure.” I wished there was such a thing. A sista could pull up a chair, take a few bites, pay $5.99, then move on with her life. On a full stomach.

I told her I’d order in a minute.

She left.

I glowered at him. “
Phantom of the Opera.
Dinner at the Shark Bar. You renting a car. Any of that sound familiar?”

His head lowered. “That was a while ago.”

“November the eleventh. Which coincides with my birthday. Why didn’t you tell me you were TDY’ing out?”

He paused. Then he said, “I wasn’t feeling you anymore.”

“Not feeling me?”

“Not feeling you.”

Those words came from his heart. Told me of the nothing he felt for me then. Which was why it was so easy for him to ask Karen out now. No scruples. No morals. That stung like a hornet’s nest inside me, attacking my heart. But if he was trying to read this face, he’d have a better chance of seeing his reflection in the snow.

He raised his head, had a super-cool Maxwell sorta sneer. “I apologize. My head was all messed up.”

“So say you.”

“Now I’ve had time to think.”

His eyes were on my hair, my blouse. It was cold in there, and my nipples were standing on the mountain waving at people. I folded my arms across my chest, hid them suckers from him.

Craig asked, “Wanna catch a movie or something?”

“No, or as you put it, I’m not
feeling
you.”

“All I asked is if you wanted to see a movie.”

Sarcasm seeped out. “Of course you did. And we know what you’re
really
asking, so cut the bull. I have needs and you’re sure not one of them. So this will not be going there.”

“You’re right. You caught me on that one.”

I asked, “You seeing somebody?”

“So, do you want to come back out to the base?”

“For?”

He smiled.

“No, thank you,” I said. Part of me did want to win in whatever way I could, even if I had to tie him down and make him chant my name while I did a victory dance and spat in his face, but the part of me that refused to be the same fool twice was large and in charge. “Let me rephrase: Were you seeing somebody else when you were seeing me?”

I reminded him that he’d shown me tickets to the musical. Even when I felt I had all the answers, well, sometimes a sista needed to hear what she didn’t want to hear.

He chuckled. A coward’s guilty laugh.

Inside I felt my pang swelling. I gave in to the insecure feelings I’d been living with from day to day and asked, “Was it something I did or didn’t do to make you treat me like that?”

“Chanté, don’t get loud.”

“Oh, this isn’t loud. You want loud? I can do loud.”

“Don’t get emotional.”

I demanded, “Answer my question.”

A white family behind Craig, as well as a Mexican family behind me, and God knows who else, were peeping at us.

Craig said, “The only reason I agreed to meet you
this one time
was so you’d stop calling me at work. The commander—”

“I don’t care about your commander. I asked, were you seeing somebody back then. That’s all. Yes or fucking no. Answer so I can order and eat and take my butt back home.”

He cringed like he was walking barefoot on the sun.

I reassured him, “Don’t worry about hurting my feelings. I’m
way
beyond that. If you can be a man and tell the truth, then I can be a woman and, hell, I can take it like a man.”

He sighed.

I went on, “You do know how to be a man, don’cha, partner?”

He said, “Yeah.”

His pager went off. He checked it, double-checked the time on his beeper against the time on his watch, shifted.

I said, “You took her to see the
Phantom
?”

He bobbed his head.

I added, “On my birthday.”

Craig held on to that get-over-it expression.

At that moment I saw something that I had never seen before. I asked, “Have you ever respected me?”

He rubbed his eyes. Grunted like I was working his nerves.

Finally he asked, “You gonna eat?”

“You buying?”

“Okay, whatever. I’ll treat you to some eats.”

“Sure. It’s dinnertime, but I’ll grab some breakfast.”

He flagged the waitress down. I ordered a Rooty Tooty, a sampler, a number one, number two, glass of juice, and a Sprite.