Cheaters (22 page)

Tammy said, “Good. This is good.”

“You read it that fast?”

“About forty pages. I started reading while I was walking to my car and I couldn’t stop. Actually, I never made it to my car. I ended up coming back and sitting in the sand down by where the skaters are clowning.
Dayum.
Your characters are unbelievable.”

“Wow.” I smiled. “That’s a serious compliment.”

She sat next to me, inches away. “You write better than I sing.”

“Now you’re stretching it.”

“No joke. I read a lot. I read at least two novels a month, and I’ve read a million scripts. This is your calling.” That smile of hers became nervous and unsure. “I did have to come back and tell you. I hoped you were still down here somewhere, but at the same time I hoped you were gone.”

With her last comment we stood and gazed at each other.

She said, “Let’s walk. Walk and think.”

We passed by a plethora of sidewalk vendors. Walked in silence as Tammy headed toward the ocean. I followed her behind the racquetball courts and gymnastic equipment, trailed her to the three-foot wall that separated the bike

and skate trail from the part of the beach where half-naked people were tanning.

She stopped by the wall. I stood next to her, gazed at the ocean like I was trying to see as far as China.

Tammy spoke in a bittersweet tone. “You’re married; Darnell.”

Softly I said, “I know.”

“Why did you say you wanted to see me?”

“Because.”

“I’m listening.”

“You’re fantastic.”

“You don’t know me. Singing and dancing doesn’t make a woman fabulous. It’s all show. An illusion. Not real. That’s not me on stage. That’s Tammy the entertainer.”

“Can I get to know you? I mean Tammy the person.”

“Get to know me?”

“As a friend.”

“As a friend?”

“Yeah. As a friend.”

“My friend Karen says men and women can’t be friends. Somebody’ll always want to bump the relationship to the next level.”

“She’s wrong.”

“Is she?” Tammy bounced her feet against the wall, did it in no particular rhythm. “Your writing is so good I’m considering snatching my work back from you.”

I reminded her, “No excuses. No apologies.”

“I hate I said that now.”

We laughed. Which was good. I thought that we’d never laugh together again.

She released a nervous sigh. “Darnell, I can’t tell you enough how much I liked your writing. Especially the love scene. It’s so erotic. It moved me.”

“Thanks.”

Tammy said, “So, you think I’m fantastic.”

“Yep.”

“No one has ever told me that.”

“Everybody should. Anybody who can’t see that is a fool.”

“Well, I was raised in a house full of fools.”

“I’d like to meet your house full of fools.”

“Be careful.” Her tone was dead serious. “I just might

drag you out to Laughlin and torture you with their presence.”

She pulled a blue felt pen out of her purse, took my hand, wrote her home number in my palm. Wrote slowly. It tickled. The number that was on the business card that she’d given me last night was to her answering service.

Then she walked away. No good-bye.

I stayed on the other side of the wall. Watched her stop at a stand, buy a Smoothie, then once again she went north.

I stared at the numbers in my hand.

My thoughts were heavy as I took the 90 eastbound to the 405 south to the 105 east to the 605 north to the 60 east. It was an hour drive from Venice to the city of Walnut. An hour of solitude as I drove from the coolness of the coast into the heat of the east.

The sun was setting, and Dawn was just getting home. We pulled up in our double garage at the same time. I sat in my car for a moment before I eased out. She had hopped out of her vehicle almost before she stopped.

Her heels click-clopped on the concrete as she walked to the back of her red Range Rover and took out her briefcase, pulled out her open house signs. Her Sue Grafton novel was sticking out of her briefcase. So she’d been reading that during the slow moments of her day. My wife had on a green skirt that hugged her hips and hit right above her knees; beige blouse that was thin enough to show the sexiness of her bra. Her hair didn’t look as together as it had this morning, and her armpits were dank with perspiration.

My wife was beautiful. More beautiful than Tammy.

Then she opened her mouth. “Today was such a waste. So damn hot all day. Help me with these groceries. It looks like the neighbor’s kid rode that damn mountain bicycle across our lawn again. Last time that happened, the bastard broke two of our sprinklers. Darnell, please talk to them, because if I have to go over there again, first I’m hurting somebody, then they’re going to write me a check to get my sprinklers repaired.”

She reached for a Vons grocery bag, but I stopped her. I kissed her. First her eyes opened with confusion. She leaned away, gawked at me like I was insane, but I held

her face, softly, and let my tongue muffle her negative comments. I kissed her like it was the first time that our lips had met.

She caught her breath, asked, “Darnell, you’re messing up my blouse. C’mon, now. Stop. What’s gotten into you?”

“Let me be your husband.”

And I kissed her some more.

“Darnell, I have ice cream in here. It’s going to melt.”

The garage door was up and I was inside a warm garage, feeling my wife up like we were sixteen-year-olds.

She whispered, “At least let the garage door down. People are outside. The Asian kids across the street might be looking.”

The garage door hummed down and my mouth was on Dawn’s breasts. I had loosened her top and taken her softness from inside her satin bra. My mouth was all over her. My hands were exploring, like this was the first time. Touching. Feeling. Squeezing all of the physical things that defined her as a woman.

She started to moan, loosened up, gave in when I pulled her skirt up, and reached to unzip my pants. She shuddered and clung to me when I pushed myself inside her. Pushed as far as I could, as hard as I could. She said a few words to God. Then she cursed, held me, and moved her hips in surrender, allowed me to go deeper, deeper. And we stood there against her truck, being man and wife. With every moan I tried to make her sing, tried to make her dance. I closed my eyes and imagined she was Tammy.

When I woke up the next morning, Tammy and Karen were already gone. It was too late to get down to 24 Hour Fitness for Angela’s class, so I rolled over and called Stephen. He’d been on my mind all night.

I asked him, “Were you asleep?”

“Damn right.”

We both laughed.

Stephan told me that he had been planning to play racquetball with Darnell and his wife. “But Darnell called and canceled. He said that his wife had an open house today, and he couldn’t make it either.”

“That’s your firefighter friend in the Shaka Zulu suit?”

He chuckled. “The other guy. The big one.”

“Oh. The one who was jocking Tammy all night.”

“The one that Tammy was jocking.”

I said, “Since you’ve got all of that energy, and I really ain’t in the mood for the gym, you ready to change my oil?”

“Give me about an hour.”

“Okay.” I yawned. “Give me directions to your ponderosa.”

He did, then said, “Playing it safe, huh?”

“Playing it safe. See you between noon and one.”

I made it to Stephan’s around two. He met me out front of his condo, then had me park. He drove me to Wal-Mart to get a filter and oil and whatever else I needed.

When we got back and he parked under his wooden carport, I had a look around at all the Mexican palms and evergreen trees that lined the beige and brown condos. The ones on his side had stalls, but the ones facing his had detached garages. All the buildings were about the same beige shade of stucco as mine. That was pretty much the description of every house, apartment, and building in the area.

I asked him, “Any units for sale around here?”

“Plenty. People are still getting laid off, so owners are bailing left and right. I’ve seen a few three-day notices tacked on doors. A few have had to get removed by the sheriff. My buddy Darnell did unlawful detainers for one of my neighbors. People moved in, didn’t pay rent, then wouldn’t move out.”

“A lot to consider before you start trying to be a landlord.”

“That’s why I’ll never do it.”

We were walking up his shaky concrete stairs when a door opened and somebody at the top stuck her head out.

She was in a housecoat and rollers. At first I thought it was his girlfriend because of her frown, but when I took a closer look, I thought it might be his mother. Even closer, I thought grandmother.

“Hi, Stephan.” The lady spoke to him but stared at me. “I heard you out here painting this morning at the crack of dawn.”

I smelled the paint that she was talking about.

I didn’t know why the lady was gawking. Maybe it was my green spandex shorts and oversized pink T-shirt that bothered the woman. Her eyes made me feel like I was butt naked.

“How’re you today, Rebecca?” Stephan smiled and introduced me.

I said, “Good afternoon.”

Rebecca adjusted her clothes, turned up her nose. “Hi.”

Then the heifer closed her door. Closed it hard.

Damn.

I followed him inside and let my nosiness take over. My eyes went on a journey and checked out everything when he stepped out onto his patio. After he came back in with an armful of clothes and headed for the bedroom, I opened the patio door and stepped out, peeped inside the outside storage closet he left open. There was a dryer next to a metal bookcase. A basketball. Deflated football. Tennis racquets. A lot of how-to-fix-this and how-to-make-that manuals were on the glass bookcase in the living room. Electronics books. Computer manuals. Stacks of tattered
Wall Street Journals
and
Daily Bulletins
were withering away in a rack by his entertainment center. Green leather sofa, love seat, and ottoman. Place smelled like potpourri. Beige carpet, white walls made the room look bigger. Stereo in the living room, no television. Plants on each end table and on the kitchen counter. Impressive so far.

No pinkie ring. No Jheri curl. No come-ons.

Karen’s voice came to life inside my head, and jarred me:
Stupidest sister with a degree
…

“Nice place,” I told Stephan. “For a guy.”

“Nice comment, for a gal.”

“Ohhh, your plants are dying.” I pulled dead leaves out, threw them into his kitchen garbage can, searched his cabinets and found a large plastic cup and filled it with water.

I watered the plants in his living room, then walked into his bedroom. No waterbed. A love nest with a marble headboard and a paisley comforter. Matching sheets, pillowcases. The clothes he’d just brought in were scattered on the bed. He wears boxers, V-neck undershirts, has a lot of gym shorts and jock straps, so he must work out quite a bit. It’s amazing what you can tell about people just by looking at how they live. Plants were on top of his dresser next to
Ebony
and
Essence
magazines. I put the plants on the floor and pulled out a few more dead leaves.

I said, “These ferns and spider plants and the ones with the red leaves need light. I’m moving them by your window.”

He called out from the living room. “Make yourself at home.”

“Ha, ha.”

His bathroom was clean, had shades of green color-coordinated towels. A woman must’ve helped him get this organized. That had to be why the place had so much warmth.

“How can your crib be so clean and your plants so dead?” I asked. “You have a cleaning woman?”

“I’m just lacking in horticulture skills.”

I asked, “You have food?”

“Nope. Not a crumb.”

“I’m hungry,” I told him. There was something about him I liked. Before I knew it, trust took over and I was going against the grain of my heart. I bit my lip. “Why don’t you follow me home? I can cook something while you change the oil.”

He stuck his head in. “Where in Diamond Bar do you live?”

I hesitated, thought about reneging on my offer, then said, “In Allegro. The condos behind Vineyard National Bank.”

He said, “You’re at Diamond Bar and Grand.”

I shrugged. “It’s getting hot outside. You’d have to work in your carport. I have a garage, so you won’t have to work in the sun.”

At my condo, Stephan finished changing my oil in about thirty minutes. When he stepped out on my sun deck and

said he was already done, that surprised and impressed me. Seemed like every time I went to the dealer for an oil change, it took them at least half a day.

My photo albums were up in my loft, so while I finished getting everything together, he browsed through the pictures of my life. He saw me in ponytails, braces, high school, prom night.

He brought the albums down and sat at the kitchen table. “In most of these you look like a JC Penney catalog model.”

“You calling me a nerd?”

“You look so damn wholesome. Australia. Switzerland. Germany. I see you and your folks have been a lot of places.”

“What about you? You ever been away from North America?”

“Jamaica. Cabo. Canada a few times. Never off North America. Unless you consider Hawaii getting off North America.”

We chowed on turkey burgers and chattered like black buppies. I told him that my mother used to be events coordinator at a museum back in Chi-town, but she quit so she could trot the globe with Daddy. “I pretty much grew up in the museum.”

He asked, “So, you like museums.”

“Yeah. Haven’t been to one in a while, though.”

“Wanna roll? There’s an exhibit I want to check out.”

Stephan drove me into the city of Lost Angels, took me down on Museum Row to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. We checked out Rhapsodies in Black, a phat showcase of art from the Harlem Renaissance. We spent a couple of hours perusing paintings, sculptures, photographs by James Van Der Zee, Walker Evans, Carl Van Vechten.

I asked, “You heard of these people?”