Cheaters (32 page)

He asked, “You thank a television and a few other thangs worth all this trouble?”

“Those were gifts.”

“If she bought ‘em, then give ‘em back.”

I shook my head. “It’s the principle of the thing.”

He shook his too. “I talk, but you never listen.”

“I’m listening.”

“Son, if she paid for it and she want it back, give it to her. You working, get another one. If you done fall on hard times, I’ll buy you one and you can pay me back when you can.”

“I can afford a television. Like I said, this is about principle. What about what she did to my car, to my clothes—”

“That’s not the point, son. As long as you got what she want, you ain’t gonna have no rest. And stop jingling that change in your pocket.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’ve seen this before. You’ve seen it happen to other people. You have to learn from others’ mistakes, ‘cause you ain’t gonna live long enough to make ‘em all yourself.”

Days like this reminded me why I didn’t like him. I knew his attitude wasn’t because I wasn’t his blood child, because he treated my older brother, Nathan, more favorable.

I asked him, “Have you ever liked me?”

Pops leaned back in his chair, stared at me. At last he responded, “I don’t have to like no man, nigger, white, or otherwise.”

“Didn’t say you did.”

He leaned forward and asked, “Have I ever mistreated you?”

“Not
mistreated.
”

“If it weren’t for me, ain’t no telling where you would be. I tell you, men like me, men who step in and pick up where other men leave off, and don’t ask for no more than

a thank-you every now and again, don’t get nothing but bullshit and grief.”

“You always treated me different.”

“Raise your head up, son. If you want to talk man to man, look at me when you talk to me.”

I did.

The chairman of the board said, “Now state your case.”

I did.

At the end he rocked in his seat, said, “If I did treat you a little different, it’s not directly because of you. You’re the spitting image of your pappy, and it’s hard for me to see past that.”

“I’m not my daddy, Pops. I’m me.”

“You’re your pappy in more ways than you realize.”

I shifted.

He added, “That’s why me and your pappy fell out. One of us was still trying to be a boy, one of us was trying to be a man.”

“You never did like my daddy, did you?”

“He was my best friend. We played together as children. But even the best of friends might not stay that way forever. That’s the fork in every man’s road.”

“You ever think about him?”

He nodded. “I raised his children like they were my own. I did what he didn’t do. I did more for you than I did my own. That’s why I expect more from you than I do my own.”

My reflection was in the mirror over Pops’ desk. My ears were with his words, but my eyes stayed on my image. After all those years he still held a grudge for my daddy.

Junior stuck his head in the door. “Steph, phone.”

I turned around. “Who?”

“Brittany. You’ve been tracked down, bro.”

Brittany had paged me damn near a hundred times since sunrise, putting in 9-1-1 each time. In the past she had ignored so many of my pages, so I didn’t break my neck calling her back.

I headed for the phone that was outside the office.

Brittany said that we needed to talk, face to face. Her voice had an edge of impatience, strained, up an octave.

I got ready to go see what was up. Before I could get to the door, Pops called me to the side.

He grunted. “Stephan?”

“Yeah, Pops?”

“I’m telling you just like I told your brothers. The same thang I told your sister. The same thing my daddy told me when I was a fool. So don’t think I’m aiming at mistreating you.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Common sense ain’t
common
sense. Everybody ain’t got it.”

An hour and a half later I was back at the Phillips Meadows condominiums, facing Brittany, a jittery woman with a snarl of agony spreading over her flushed face.

“Do you have the claps?” Brittany asked.

“Do I have the which-a-what?”

“Claps.”

“Hell naw,” I said defiantly. “Why would you ask me that?”

She maintained eye contact, showed me eyes haunted by inner pain. “Tony said I gave him the claps.”

“You serious?”

She folded her arms. “Would I lie about something like this?”

I asked, “You been to the doctor?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“Gonorrhea.”

A tremor ran through me, clutched my neck.

I hadn’t slept with Brittany since I’d been with Chanté. Hadn’t felt the slightest hint of anything clogging up my plumbing. It’s funny, but the moment Brittany gave me her grief, that was who I thought of. Chanté. My relationship with her.

It was late Saturday evening. I’d parked, then walked over to my uncovered spot where Brittany had parked, right underneath the noise from the freeway. Cow smells, carbon monoxide odors masked the pleasant scents from the evergreen trees nearby and the fruit trees in the distance.

She said, “You sure you don’t have the claps?”

“Positive. I’d know. As soon as I pissed, it’d burn like I was being jabbed with a hot needle.”

“So, you’ve had it before?”

“Back in high school. Been there, done that. You?”

She nodded. “Freshman year in college.”

I said, “Tony could be playing you.”

“Meaning?”

“Maybe he caught the claps, and now he’s trying to make you think you gave it to him. Reverse clap-ology.”

“I thought about that.” She paused, then said, “I took an AIDS test.”

“AIDS?”

I stopped breathing. Shudders came. Gripped me the way I imagined the Grim Reaper took hold of its next customer.

She added, “Took two, actually.”

My breath caught. “Why two?”

“Because I didn’t trust the first one.”

I swallowed, licked my lips. “And?”

“Negative. Both of them.”

I released my wind. Cleared my throat. Shudders went.

The fleshy part under her red eyes looked puffy, heavy, made her look elderly, worn out. I wasn’t used to seeing her without her smile. Not used to this mood she had.

I said, “This is scary.”

“Don’t I know it.”

“We’ve been skydiving without a parachute.”

She sighed. “Don’t I know it.”

She rubbed her nose, sniffled, cleared her throat.

I asked, “You seeing somebody else besides me and Tony?”

“That’s irrelevant.”

I didn’t press her any more because I didn’t want my questions to boomerang back to me.

She was too intense for me to feel comfortable. She pressed on. “You sure that you didn’t give me the claps, then somehow forget to tell me?”

“Britt, we go way back.”

She sighed. “I know. You were my dream man back then.”

“And you know me.”

“For an eternity I’ve known you. You practically lived at my apartment for a year. Until you met Michelle.”

“And she dogged me out.”

“Well, Stephan, what goes around…” She sounded

bitter for a moment. Like old feelings that she’d been hiding all of these years were rising to the surface.

I leaned against her car. She did the same.

Cars went over speed bumps. Up Town and Country some white kids had their portable goal out, shooting hoops on the blacktop. A few families were strolling here and there, walking rat-sized animals that were passed off as dogs.

She said, “What happened between us?”

I shrugged. “We met too young.”

“I wasn’t too young. It was you who couldn’t slow down.”

For a few minutes we talked about who we were then.

Then who we were now.

I told Brittany, “We need to back off.”

In so many words I said we needed to stop acting like high schoolers and grow up and be responsible.

She smiled. “Oh, boy. Here we go again.”

“What?”

“I’ve heard this speech before. You’ve met somebody.”

“Yeah. No. Hell, I don’t know.”

“Six months from now you’ll be back to your same old ways.”

That assessment of my character hurt. That summed up what she thought of me. I blinked a few times and wondered about me. I put my hand in my pocket, jingled loose change, heard my daddy’s wisdom in the winds, and wondered about me.

“You crying?” I asked her.

She wiped her eyes. “Just thinking about a sad song I heard today. Thinking about a sad movie. Anything but crying.”

In the middle of her denial, she pulled a Kleenex out of her pocket. The way the tissue was nearby let me know she’d been shedding tears awhile. She dabbed her eyes, finger-combed her golden hair as she shook her head and chewed the corner of her bottom lip.

“Maybe you should work it out with Tony. Neither of us are getting any younger.”

“Uh-oh. Sounds like your sensitive side has come back.”

“I’m serious.”

She blew her nose. “I know.”

Brittany shows up and tells me that she’s more radioactive than Chernobyl. All of this shit catches up with you, sooner or later. You play, you pay. Then you forget the price, ignore the lesson, get that immortal and invincible feeling, move on.

Brittany said, “I’ll call you in a couple of months, just in case you’ve toggled back to your senses. That’s if she hasn’t dogged you out, like Michelle did, and you’ve already called.”

“I’m serious.”

“You say that now, but with tomorrow you’ll get restless.”

We hugged. Kissed. She’d never kissed me that good. I didn’t want to kiss her, but I didn’t know how to not let her kiss me. Didn’t know how to close this meeting in a civil and comfortable way. Either way, it’s a damn shame when a beautiful woman kisses a man with that much passion and it does nothing for him.

Her eyes said she felt the nothing that I gave her.

I wanted to tell her that we needed to stop being a hit-and-run thing. We were creeping up on thirty. And these years have flown by. That means all of us will be forty before we know it.

This ain’t the lifestyle I want to be trapped inside when my pubic hairs start to gray.

She sighed. “I used to love your stanky drawers.”

“Used to?”

“You know why I keep coming back?”

“‘Cause you still love my stanky drawers.”

“Because I care about you and it’s hard to let go. Plain and simple. What I feel for you has made it impossible to completely give myself to anyone else. It’s not easy knowing that you’d do anything for a man who wouldn’t do half of that for you.”

My heart felt so heavy.

She hopped in her car and gave me that bright-eyed smile that was so much a part of her. Her mask. She said, “And you know why you keep coming back to me?”

Nobody answered that question. It hung in the winds that blew from the south.

She said she had a couple more stops to make.

Probably to have the same conversation, I thought.

She zoomed away, bounced over the speed bumps.

I mumbled, “Sky diving without a parachute.”

My dwindling desire to waste my time and money on a woman who already had a man had left Brittany more undesirable than I’d ever imagined. Even if we gave a relationship another shot, I’d never trust her. Especially if she was following me on the freeway. She’d never trust me either.

As I started up my stairs, Rebecca opened her door. Smelled like she was frying fish.

She said, “That girl from Palm Springs was out here.”

“When?”

“Little while ago.”

“You sure’ it wasn’t Chanté?”

“It was that chile from Palm Springs. I’d just come back from buying a new VCR, and the next thing I knew she was stomping up the stairs like she was about to blow the place up. I opened the door and saw her wiggling a key in your lock.”

A familiar voice came from behind Rebecca: “Key did not work. She kicked the door a few times, and she left cursing.”

Juan was behind her, sitting on her sofa. He was taking Rebecca’s new VCR out of the box, getting ready to hook it up to her big-screen television.

I spoke to him.

He said, “
SeñTorita
was very angry. Very, very angry
mujer.
”

At midnight, Chanté was in my bed, in the spoon position, naked and just as sweaty as I was. My fears became the passion that I loved her with, loved her strong. I kissed her on the back of her neck. The sweet and sour taste of her love was still in my mouth. Her breath held the scent of me.

I needed to slow down. With her was where I wanted to rest.

I sat up for a moment. Her hand rubbed up and down my back while I loosened the satin scarfs from around her wrists. I had tied her up, did things to her that made her crazy. Her breasts, thighs, and a few more spots were sticky because of the honey.

She purred. Kittenish eyes. Right now I’d feel guilty if I ever tasted any other tongue. Every subtle gesture from her came from the heart. The same feeling echoed from me.

She’s educated. Ambitious. Gives her all. And like I said, she has life skills, so she wouldn’t be a burden, financial or otherwise.

Infatuation, love, whatever I felt for Chanté Marie Ellis was rolling in so fast that stopping it would be like trying to halt a freight train. I wanted to take a scalpel and dissect my emotions, try and understand what about her made me feel this way, but there was no one thing I was drawn to. It was just the things that added up to her being her.

And that scared me.

This was one reason men saw other women. To thin out this feeling. Spread it around and keep it impure before it fucked you up beyond recognition.

She whispered, “Thirsty, partner?”

“A little.”

“I’ll get you some water.”

She took a couple of steps, then looked back.

I was eye-massaging her bare brown booty.

She said, “What I tell you about gawking at my ass?”

“Stop walking like that.”

She drifted away with rhythm, hips stirring the air and enticing every creature in a five-mile radius, laughing, left me squirming. That nighttime persona she had was large and in charge. It left me feeling aggressive and hungry. Empowered.