Cheaters (7 page)

That culture-free desert town was about fifteen minutes east.

Karen inhaled, then asked, “What does he do?”

“He’s an engineer at a Fortune 500 company in Irvine.”

Karen passed me the J, then spoke in a judgmental sort of way. “This gets to the heart of what I wanted to talk to you about.”

I matched her tone. “Which is?”

“You need to slow down. I hope you’re not going to stop seeing Michael today, then start seeing this Thaiheed tomorrow.”

Tammy horned in. “Karen, Chanté shouldn’t stop living her life because of a fool. It’s called moving on to the next episode.”

“What I’m giving is from my heart. All I’m saying is I have nothing but love for my sister. She’s a queen, of Mother Africa, and I want her to start acting like one. We were by her side when Craig did her wrong, and now Michael.”

Karen meant a lot more than she was saying. In between

the lines I felt my character being questioned. Miss Better Than Thou always did that. I started to feel uneasy.

I responded, “Thaiheed’s just a friend.”

Karen tsked. “That’s what you said about Michael three weeks ago. And here’s a news flash: men and women can’t be friends. Somebody is always going to want to take it to the next level.”

“Fine. Then help me figure out why men treat me like this, and I know I’m a good catch. I’m single, live in a condo, have a good job. Hell, my finances are straight. I have a degree. I know what to do with money. With my portfolio, I should be a black man’s dream woman. Any man’s dream woman, to tell the truth.”

“This
condo
and your
good job
and that
portfolio
won’t do you any good if you end up suffering from dementia in an AIDS hospice,” Karen added, in a Maya Angelou tone of reason and responsibility. “Our bodies are flowers. Don’t let every bee that buzzes by pollinate your garden. Your body is a temple; treat it as such.”

All of this moral criticism was from the Queen of Get High.

I sniggered at that Negress, but not a damn thing was funny. My inner spirit was being smacked around right now. “So how am I supposed to know when a brother’s lying?”

“Get a damn clue, Chanté. You’re the stupidest sista with a degree that I know.”

From my soul rose a cringe that made me tremble.
“Ouch.”

My dark eyes stared at Karen, shooting her the look that a sister gives when somebody has gone too far. The bitch had insulted me under my own roof.

The two seconds of silence felt like an eternity.

“You need to have somebody tighten you up,” Tammy told Karen. “Couple of orgasms will give you a new attitude.”

Karen retorted, “I can do that myself, fuck you very much.”

My voice was shaking as I said, “Vibrators don’t count.”

“Much better with a man,” Tammy sang. “One of these days you’re gonna stick that thing in you and get electrocuted.”

“If I met a halfway decent brother, I’d still be in a relationship.”

Karen scratched her breasts. “Bastards make promises, come too quick, and have the nerve to look at you like you’re the one who has the problem.”

“Even though he was a dog,” I said with a mouth full of pisstivity and pizza, “Craig always made me come first.”

“For real?” Karen’s face asked me if I was lying.

I nodded once or twice. “For real. He had a slow hand.”

Karen looked amazed.
“Always?”

“Yep, always.” I frowned. “And a buck-fifty dick.”

Tammy raised a brow so high it looked like the arch at McDonalds. “What’s a buck-fifty wee-wee?”

I used two fingers as a ruler, spread them apart to show my girls what I meant. “A dollar is six inches long. He had about a buck fifty. And a two-dollar tongue.”

Tammy’s eyes bucked. Karen’s tongue rolled out like carpet.

I said, “But that don’t make him a man.”

Tammy shouted, “That makes him a mule.”

I was absorbed in the bitterness of the memory. I told Karen, “I don’t believe Craig asked you out.”

Karen’s brow rose in offense. “So, what’re you saying?”

“Nothing.” I tunneled my hands through my hair, shook my head. “Drop it.”

The bastard had disappeared from my life, then came back without even a simple phone call, then had the nerve to ask Karen out. That hurt so bad I forgot about Michael and his bounty hunters. Well, not forgot. It was just that a new pain had muffled the other one.

Then quiet fell over us. A smothering kind of silence.

I don’t know what they were thinking, but my mind was on Craig. Thinking about him was enough to break my spirit.

I met that fine brotha when I was partying with Karen and Tammy out in Moreno Valley at this club called Pinky’s. Moreno Valley—Mo Val—is another one of the Inland Empire’s desiccated, one-mall-for-everybody, one-club-for-black-people kind of towns. A good place to go watch tumbleweeds get tangled up. The only reason I went out there was because I heard 92.3 FM saying that KKBT was going to be out in Mo Val for a Friday night shindig.

Craig touched me, talked to me, made my heart ricochet. That feeling of getting weak all over took hold. I fell for

him while Brian McKnight crooned his one last cry. I believe in love at first sight, but that’s another thing I’ll be giving up for Lent. Craig was tall, funny, ambitious—at least he talked a good talk—and in the Air Force, forty-five miles east of where I lived.

For a year we had dinners, sex, and movies—most of it at my expense because he didn’t have any money-management skills.

The last time I saw him, it was on a Monday. We were in his stuffy room on base. After we had finished the loving, he said he was going to rent a car on Wednesday, November 11, Veterans Day, on my birthday.

“Yeah, Smoochiez,” he’d said. He always called me Smoochiez. He said it was because he loved the way I kissed. Told me that my lips were so arousing. He held me. “I want to take my baby to dinner at the Shark Bar in Hollywood.”

I beamed. “Mmmm. Sounds good.”

“Then we can shoot over to the Shubert Theater on the Avenue of the Stars to see
Phantom of the Opera.
”

I asked, “You serious?”

“Does this look serious?”

He showed me the tickets.

He gave me that crooked grin that made him look so suave and sexy. “Front and center, so close that when the Phantom passes by, you can reach up and snatch that little mask off his face.”

I was so elated that when I left Craig at midnight, I floated the forty-five miles from Mo Val back to Diamond Bar.

Wednesday I took a vacation day to get myself together. I hit Nordstrom. Tried on a million outfits. Found a hip-hugging black sequin dress that had the right cleavage to pimp out my twin 36C cups. A little sumthin’-sumthin’ that nobody else would have on. I got a manicure and pedicure.

I didn’t know what to do, wear my hair wavy, blow-dry it and make it straight, or pin it up. I ended up putting my do in spirals that hung down and framed my face.

After all was said and done, I finished dressing a little before four. Craig was supposed to be here at four-thirty.

The next thing I knew, the sun had gone down.

Six o’clock became eight became nine-fifteen.

By then I was tired of pacing back and forth from phone to door to window, so I finally wiped my eyes and admitted to my well-dressed self that I had been stood up.

I had seen the tickets, so somebody was having a good time on my birthday. I speed-dialed Craig again, but this time there was no answer. His stupid answering machine was turned off. He always turned it off when we made love. Told me the only sounds that he wanted bouncing off his four walls was me.

I changed into ripped, dirty, baggy jeans, a wrinkled rayon blouse, and a Recycle Black Dollars baseball cap that Karen gave me. I ended up all alone at In-N-Out Burger, eating a greasy double-double hamburger and sucking on a strawberry milk shake.

It was 11:47 when I got back home. No notes on my door. The only new message on my machine was from Karen and Tammy. They were partying hard at Shelly’s, and had stopped getting their groove on long enough to call and sing me a tipsy version of Stevie Wonder’s Happy Birthday song.

Tammy yelled, “Enjoy the play.”

Karen added, “And Craig.”

“Get that freak on!”

“We’ll bring you your birthday presents next week!”

Tammy yelled, “Love you!”

“Tammy, don’t yell in my ear.”

“Sorry.”

Karen laughed, yelled, “Kisses! Love you!”

Other than that dose of friendship, which generated a half-hearted smile on my rigid lips, no messages were on my machine. They were having such a good time, I didn’t want to call them and muck up their night.

11:59. Too mad to cry. Too hurt to sleep.

A couple of days crept by, and I still hadn’t heard from him. I had called a hundred times. No answer, day or night. Anger turned into worry. Some of the UFO creatures from the
X-Files
could’ve swooped down and kidnapped him. He could’ve fallen and hurt himself. Or had a car accident and been in a coma. Or worse. If something tragic had happened, it wasn’t like my name was on a slip of paper to get notified. I wanted to make sure he was okay, just to ease my mind, so I prepared for bad news as I sped back

out to his dorm or barracks or whatever they called those funky little rooms on base.

The bastard had transferred to Germany. He had received his orders, his TDY, two months before my birthday.

No Dear Jane letter. No phone call. Not even a postcard good-bye. I hate it when people leave without saying good-bye.

For months, at least twice a week, I had felt his tongue moving up and down my thighs, called his name in more octaves than Marian Carey. And let’s not talk about what that relationship had cost me. I ran my Unocal card up driving all the way out there, my Visa had been used and abused, and my phone bill was sky-high.

He’d left my body exhausted, mind fried like a piece of chicken at Golden Bird. I should’ve seen it coming.

But I never do.

Stillness made the music feel louder. The Ohio Players were singing a sad lament of hopefulness, chanting that one day they were gonna be free from love, lies, and a lifetime of suffering.

We listened. Sang along. Mostly Tammy, ‘cause she can sing her ass off. She took us there, made us live inside those words. By the time the melody ended, the air in the room was serious.

Tammy’s tone was that of a hushed secret, saying this was just between us, between friends. “Let’s be real.”

A chill ran from my skull to my toes. I said, “Okay.”

Karen nodded.

Tammy asked me, “I mean, let’s be
real.
What are you afraid of, Chanté? I mean, I’m worried about you. I hate seeing you hurt so often. It hurts my heart when you’re like that.”

So much love was in her voice. Always so much love.

I paused. Let the song change. Now the Ohio Players were lusting over a sweet, sticky thing. My breath eased out of me, made me feel like my soul was collapsing on the wing of a sigh.

Finally, my voice was that of a nervous whisper. “Growing old alone. I’m not needy, but I like having somebody who complements my existence. I think I’m above average.

My biggest fear is growing old, being alone, and being broke.”

Tammy nodded like she was on the same page with me.

Karen remarked, “Chanté is so codependent it’s pathetic.”

My hand went to my neck, rubbed a bit. Karen’s words were like an arctic wind, and its stupefying chill numbed me. That callous cow.

My voice was very weak, unsure. “I’m not codependent.”

Karen fronted me hard. “What’s the longest you’ve gone without being with a man?”

I straightened my back and leaned forward. My body was strong, but my voice was still too soft. “But love, whatever love really is, comes and goes faster than I can handle it sometimes. Faster than I can understand it. I love being in love, and I love making love when I’m in love.”

Karen clarified, “Having sex.”

“Okay, I love having sex. I’m not going to fake like I can sit around and not want to feel what I feel when a slow hand—a hand that’s not attached to my body—takes me there.”

Indignation floated in Karen’s eyes. I was pushing the right button.

Karen leaned forward on her elbows, crept into my space. “I didn’t ask you about love. I specifically asked you what was the longest you’ve been without a man.”

I stayed eye-to-eye with Karen’s intoxicated hostility.

Tammy did her best to increase the peace. “Change the subject. Let’s play a game of spades or dominoes or something.”

“My cards are on the table,” Karen said to me. “I mean, damn, you gave it up to Michael. Seems like Craig was just over here. Shit, my sister, sometimes I wonder how many dicks have been inside of you.”

That insult jarred the hell out of me. I warned, “Don’t go there, Karen.”

The heifer kept tormenting me. “Tell the truth, Chanté. How many men have been inside of your basement?”

Nobody can hurt you like a friend.

Karen’s face knotted up. “Unless we’re talking about the wrongful imprisonment of Mumiá Abu-Jamal, or something relevant like disabling Prop 209, I don’t need to hear anything else about men. Damn men. Our existence, our reality

is much more than that. At least it should be. Brothers aren’t our problem;
we are our problem.
Instead of having a pity party, bitching and blaming, moaning and mourning and licking open wounds, we need to have a forum on empowerment. We need to be discussing why we keep ending up in the same damn place, year after year.”

Another slice of silence before Tammy chuckled uncomfortably, “We’ve had too much of this sin juice. And whatever them Colombians are putting in these herbs ain’t no joke. This mess’ll make you loco like a mofo.”

I cut off Tammy’s political and peaceful move, said, “Karen, since you’re giving it out, can you take some criticism?”

Her red-rimmed eyes turned on me, her tone grim. “What?”

I said, “Why don’t you go back to school? Get your degree from Riverside Community College, then transfer to Cal State.”

Tammy shifted, touched my arm gently. “Chanté, let’s change the subject. I don’t like it when y’all get hostile like this.”