Cheaters (9 page)

Each time we did this, I never knew if it would be the last time. A relationship like this couldn’t go on forever. We almost had something a few years ago, but now we were just good old-fashioned fuck buddies.

NQA, NSA—No Questions Asked, No Strings Attached.

I roamed back upstairs. My keys were dangling in the lock.

Even though I hadn’t known how to tell her without coming across weak, I’d really wanted Brittany to stay. For more than just the sex. I wanted company. I needed to feel connected, to somebody who used to know me better than I knew myself. Part of me wanted to grip on the shreds of the old relationship. The forever connection we had until I let her go because I thought I’d found a better woman.

I was exhausted, but I couldn’t sleep. Didn’t want to dream. I had a feeling that nightmares like the ones Jake had would plague me all night long. I didn’t want to sleep alone, and I didn’t want to wake up by myself. I needed some warmth.

I gave up Brittany for what I thought was real love. It still feels like yesterday, but six or seven years had slipped by since I messed around and fell for Michelle. A cocoa brown complexioned, long-haired sista who could’ve passed for Janet Jackson’s twin sister. Well, stunt double, at least.

The sista was fresh out of Berkeley and had gotten disengaged right before we met. She told me about the relationship, how they’d basically just grown apart. As high school sweethearts they were compatible, but as adults with several hundred miles in between them, they didn’t have much in common.

After I met Michelle, my attention shifted like the wind. I tried to keep my carnal account with Brittany open as long as I could, but a brother can’t be in two places at the same time. I could pull it off and see two or three people on Christmas, because that was twenty-four hours and that could be worked out. The hard holiday was New Year’s Eve. It had one moment at midnight.

I spent that holiday with Michelle. By that point I was spending all of my time with her. Hiking, jogging the river trail, catching movies, sitting in parks reading to each other, deciphering Shakespeare sonnets, doing all the romantic things listed in
Ebony
and
Jet
magazines.

Brittany called me one day at work.

“Stephan, you’ve been MIR since Christmas,” she said. MIR meant Missing in Relationship. She asked, “You seeing somebody?”

Michelle felt so right, so real, so forever.

I simply said, “Yeah. I met somebody.”

She paused. “That serious, huh?”

“It’s getting there.”

“Why didn’t you say so?” She didn’t raise her voice. Her tone was still sweet, mellow. But it sounded like she cared about me more than I’d given her credit for. She went on, “I’d much rather hear the truth from you than somebody else.” A pang was in her voice, underneath the lightheartedness. “Let me know how it works out.”

“I will.”

“Stephan, six months from now you’ll be calling me.”

“You think so, huh?”

“You have my number, so don’t be a stranger.”

Back then I was living in Cerritos, thirty minutes south of L.A. That was in the early part of January. By February, Michelle had moved in with me.

The wind shifted in July, right after Independence Day.

What was predictable became unpredictable.

She disappeared on a Friday. Didn’t call on Saturday.

Sunday morning she crept in with a stiff smile and stood over me and my bowl of Froot Loops. She didn’t have a regular smile, but an I-hope-you-can-take-this-neutron-bomb-I’m-about-to-drop-on-you smile.

She hemmed and hawed, so I started the conversation with a hard tone. “Where have you been for the last two days?”

She shot my mood down by cutting to the heart of the matter: “Vince and I are getting back together.”

“Vince? The guy you was engaged to?”

She nodded.

I swallowed my spoonful of Froot Loops. “You’re bullshitting me, right?”

She shook her head.

“When did you and Vince decide to get back together?”

“I think, I mean, well, Vince, I care about Vince, and I, um, maybe might want to try and get back together with him.”

“You’ve been in contact with him?” I scooped up another spoonful of cereal. I was surprised at how smooth my movements were, at how tame my voice sounded. “You two talked about this?”

Her eyes said that her mind was already made up. This was an FYI session. Not open for discussion. She made it

sound so simple. I’d had more trouble at McDonald’s making a decision between a Big Mac and a Quarter Pounder.

In a flash, I thought back over the entire relationship, tried to find a flaw, determine which moment changed what was so loving into bullshit like this.

All I could do was ask, “Okay, tell me. What did I do?”

“Nothing.” Her voice cracked, lips moved for a few moments before more words found their freedom. “You didn’t do anything.”

She sobbed her way into the bathroom.

Something had been going on right in my fucking face. I hadn’t noticed the funk because I was too busy making everything smell sweet.

Michelle hurried and packed a small overnight case. When she stopped at the door, she looked at her feet and said, “I’ll come by and pick my stuff up while you’re at work.”

Just like that. Gone.

Three days later, she called a little after midnight. I was wide awake. Hadn’t slept much since she left.

“Stephan,” she said, “I need to see you.”

Michelle showed up at my door in her Morris Brown College sweats. Twitching, rocking, waiting for me to signal that it was okay for her to come inside.

I said, “Come on in. It’s cool.”

She looked different. The kind of change a person had when something tragic had happened to them. I didn’t ask what she’d been through.

Michelle stared at everything wide-eyed, like it was the first time she’d ever been inside the apartment.

“Can I sleep on your sofa?” she asked. “I just need to regroup. I’ll leave first thing in the morning.”

“Take the bed. I’ll crash on the sofa.”

By the time I made my pallet and laid down, she had changed. She stood in the doorway in my plaid pajama top. The top was unbuttoned so I could witness the rise in her breasts, her long legs.

She watched me. I watched her.

She walked over, took my hand, led me to the bedroom.

No real passion. Too much pain. Contrived lovemaking. It was hard to pretend that it was cool, because every time I gripped her hair and pushed myself deep inside her, I

imagined that somebody else had done the same thing last night. Maybe only a few hours ago. She was giving me the same motions and moans she had been giving somebody else. I wasn’t loving her, I was stabbing her. She accepted the pain.

We finished and lay next to each other like strangers.

I still cringe when I think about it. What was messed up was that I was unable to surrender to a good thing like Toyomi, but I could stand out on my porch, underneath cobwebs and dust that had settled into the grooves and crevices of a stucco wall, and love in the moonlight with Brittany. But after Michelle I’d stuck to safety nets.

Samantha.

I needed to get a grip on myself and realize what a good thing she was. Samantha always welcomed my noon visits, didn’t reject my midnight calls. She was always happy to see me.

Two in the a.m. Still couldn’t sleep. I decided I’d call her and see if she’d let me swing by and cuddle up with her. I could pack a bag and RSVP some affection forty freeway minutes away.

Her phone rang twice. An exhausted voice answered. A voice too deep to belong to a woman. I hung up. I had the right number. I’d programmed her digits into my phone’s speed dialing.

That hurt. That pissed me off.

I called back. The dude answered again. Picked up and answered like it was his phone, like he had the right.

I hung up.

No need to deny what was up.

I needed a bigger net.

Upper-middle-class Baldwin Hills was where my people lived. A mostly black but still multicultural neighborhood. I drove to my folks’ two-story stucco house located in the mouth of the cul-de-sac named Don Diego. Palm trees. Exotic shrubbery. A castle-high view of planes cruising into LAX.

Once a month on Sunday we had family church at FAME, followed by a mandatory “Soul Food” day at Momma’s house. Ever since she saw that
Soul Food
movie, she wanted everybody to get together at the house, for no particular reason. I guess my momma likes to keep tabs on her dysfunctional family.

The children had put up a volleyball net in the backyard, and my older brother’s three teenage children—Akeem, Ronda, and Nathan Junior—along with about six of the neighbors’ children, were jamming CDs on a ghetto blaster when I walked around back, following all the jubilant noises.

My chocolate, Michael Jordan–bald, goatee-wearing stepfather, Pops, was at his grille dressed in his greasy chef’s hat and ragged knee-length jean shorts with sandals and black knee-high silk socks. He was wearing the Walkman I gave him for his last birthday, listening to some old-school Jimmy Witherspoon blues, no doubt. He moved his headphones and took his King Edward cigar out of his mouth, waved at me when I walked through the gate.

Pops said, “You know it’s almost Monday now, son.”

“It’s barely two.” I shrugged. “I got tied up.”

He shook his head. “You better settle down. People dropping dead left and right out there.”

“What makes you think it was a woman?”

“What make you thank it wasn’t? You dabbling in ho soup.”

“See, you wrong. You know how far I live from here.”

“Forty-odd miles. Ain’t nobody told ya to move all the way out there in the middle of no-man’s-land.”

“My job’s out that way.”

“They got jobs up here. You should be up here near your family. That’s what’s wrong with Negroes. Everybody moves away from each other. You don’t see the Koreans and the Chinese doing that. They stick together, help each other out. That’s why they ahead.”

“When the helicopters stop hovering overhead at night, when fools stop cruising and clogging up Crenshaw on a Sunday night, I’ll move back.”

“Suit yourself. That Toyomi done called out here about twenny-hunnert times looking for you.”

“What she say?”

“Call her. What you thank she said? A few other ones been ranging the phone off the hook too.” He ordered, “Make ‘em understand that you don’t live here no more, and not to be calling here every other minute.”

“Yes, sir.”

He said, “Dabbling in ho soup gonna catch up with you, one way or the other. I done seen many a men get they life taken away over some foolishness. Yes, indeed. My own brother was gunned down over a no-count woman.”

“Yes, sir. You told me.”

“But you a grown man. So you thank. Just don’t brang any of that ruckus up here on my property. Keep it out of your momma’s house. She done seen enough in her lifetime.”

I knew he was referring to my daddy. He always did.

He had on a too-bright, too-busy Bermuda shirt that was so ugly it almost looked good over his pot belly. Barbecuing at his grille. And I do mean
his
grille. It’d take an act of Congress signed by God to get him to let somebody else barbecue.

Pops and Momma have been married over fifteen years. Might be closer to twenty. Since my younger sister is in college, it has to be closer to twenty, maybe more. In between celebrations, I’ve lost count. Me and Pops have never gotten along. When I was growing up, he either ignored

me, or was impatient with me. Made me feel like an outcast. He never mistreated me, just didn’t seem to care too much for me. Minimal contact. Few words. A lot of discipline. Momma knew how I felt about him, how he felt about me, and tried to love me more herself to take up the slack.

Momma stepped out the house, snapped out my name, and gave me her classic impatient frown. Her worn-out house shoes flopped with each quick step. She took off her reading glasses and started fussing while she rushed over to kiss me. “Where the doggone sodas I told you to bring?”

“In the car. I’ll get them out in a minute.” I kissed her face on her crow’s feet. She lightened up when I squeezed her.

“Well, we ain’t gonna be eating in your car. People are in the house as thirsty as I don’t know what. Toyomi called five minutes ago and wanted you to call her when you get here.”

“I’ll call her. Why you got your hair pinned up?”

“And before I forget, Brittany called last night. My hair’s up ‘cause it’s hot as hell be damned out here. I might go over to Cynthia’s shop on La Brea and get it cut off next week. Might get it cut short and styled like Nancy Wilson’s.”

“Momma, please don’t let Cynthia cut your hair.”

“Why you men always want a woman to have long hair while y’all have yours all cut down to the bone?”

“Because it looks good.”

“I ought to get a bald head like Jeremiah got. Now, go get them sodas before everybody dries up.”

I hugged her. “Yes, Momma. Where everybody at?”

“Junior at the shop on Crenshaw. He might have to work till eight, so him and Darlene and the twins might not be coming over. You know how funny Darlene can be, and Darlene’d have to drive because Junior still got that restriction on his license from that accident when he ran into the back of that white woman. I told that boy about riding around with no insurance on that car. He can’t drive nowhere but to work and those A.A. meetings. And you know how funny Darlene is about riding at night, especially coming into L.A.”

My short, buffed, no-neck, mahogany-flavored brother

Nathan stuck his head out the back door. He still had on dark suit pants and a white shirt. “What’s up, stranger? Why wasn’t you in church with everybody else?”

“Overslept. Y’all need to stop expecting people to show up for eight o’clock.” Especially when I’m wrapped around some warm legs. I waved, then gave the thumbs-up. “I like the beard.”

He grumbled, “Lisa said it makes me look distinguished.”

“When you start listening to Lisa?”

“The day we got married.”

“Nathan!” Momma called out.