Authors: Tina Brooks McKinney
Deep Deception 2 (24 page)
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
GREG CARTER
“Nancy, I didn’t know you still worked at the airport.” I feigned surprise. The years hadn’t been kind to her and she looked every bit of fifty rather than thirty.
“I guess you didn’t, you stopped calling my ass years ago.”
I suspect bitterness had a hand in her aging because her face had hideous scowl lines that marred any of the beauty I’d once seen in her. She also looked like she had found another lover, one that put on the extra weight she carried on her hips and thighs.
“You still look good, girl.” I was lying through my teeth. I also prayed that God didn’t choose this moment to come back and cast my black ass straight to hell for telling this lie.
“Yeah, right. What, you think I got ‘idiot’ stamped on my forehead? Are you going somewhere?”
It was obvious that flattery wasn’t going to get me anywhere, but I was still gonna try. “I was until I saw your pretty face again. Now I’d rather delay my trip and spend some time getting to know you again. What time do you get off?” I could tell she was not expecting me to come back at her like I did. She knocked over some luggage tags and some ticket jackets. Her bronze face turned a shade deeper. When she bent over, I could see the crack of her ass. However, with her added girth, this was not a very appealing sight. I loved the ladies, but I refused to sleep with anybody I had to throw flour on just to find the wet spot. Fuck that. “Did I embarrass you?” I chuckled as she attempted to act nonchalant.
“Can’t a girl just knock shit over?”
The madder she appeared to be the more I laughed until she didn’t have a choice but to laugh with me.
“Nancy, I seriously would like to spend some time getting to know you again. We could go to dinner or maybe go out for a drink or two.”
Her eyes lost focus as she gazed into space and for a minute. I thought I had her, but when her eyes returned to my face, they were as cold as ice.
“I don’t think so. The last time we were supposed to have dinner your ass didn’t show up.” She started looking over my head, perhaps to the next person in the growing line of people who needed tickets to destinations unknown.
“I was young and stupid then. I’ve matured since then.”
She shook her head as she sized me up. “I don’t think so. You’ve fooled me once, I’ll be damned if I’ll allow you to do it to me again.”
“Damn, girl, it’s just dinner. I didn’t ask for your hand in marriage.” I started to get an attitude. With the way she was looking, she ought to have considered herself lucky that I would be willing to be seen in public with her fat ass. I tried to talk myself down from getting angry, but it wasn’t working. Fuck it, I didn’t want to do this shit anyway.
“Fine, forget it. I need a ticket to Baltimore on the next flight.” I pulled my wallet out and dropped down my driver’s license and credit card on the counter.
She started typing on her screen without meeting my eyes, which pissed me off. Who the hell did she think she was anyway?
“You’re not going to give me a date?”
“Nope. Next flight is in three hours. Is that soon enough?” she asked before she swiped my card.
“That’s cool.”
“One-way or round trip?”
“One-way. Atlanta don’t have anything left for me.”
“Were you being serious?” she asked with her arm raised in the air.
“Yeah, I was. But no worries. All things happen for a reason.” I was sulking. I wasn’t used to being turned down, and it didn’t matter that I didn’t really want to go out on a date with her. She continued the transaction without advising me of the cost.
“One drink, that’s all.” She handed me my ticket and clocked out.
“So what made you change your mind?” I asked once Nancy and I were seated in Ruby Tuesday on concourse C of the Delta wing. I allowed her to choose the place and the one she picked was near the gate for my flight. I was truly curious about her abrupt change of heart because it wasn’t like she owed me anything or had anything to gain by doing so. For a moment I thought she wasn’t going to answer. Nancy and I had been inseparable at one point in time, but over the years, our relationship dwindled away to nothing.
“To be honest, I don’t know. I thought I was going to hate your ass for the rest of my life.”
“Damn, hate?” I wasn’t expecting her to say that and I quickly took a sip of my drink just to have something to do with my mouth. I knew that I’d hurt her feelings but never in a million years did I think my disappearing act would result in such a strong emotional response.
“Hey, I was young back then.” She shrugged her shoulders and took a drink herself. She started rifling through her purse.
“You still smoking those cigarettes? You know those things are going to kill you,” I said, laughing.
“We all got to die someday.”
Damn, back in the day she would have gotten all hot and bothered just for my mentioning death and her in the same sentence. I didn’t know this person sitting across from me at all.
“True. So tell me what’s going on with you? I don’t see no ring, so are you married?”
She looked surprised by my question and her eyes shifted to my ring finger. “If I were married, I wouldn’t be in this bar with you,” she snapped back.
“What’s wrong with having a drink with an old friend?”
“You are not my friend.”
This was going to be a lot harder than I’d originally anticipated. While I didn’t expect to walk back into her life and be greeted with open arms, I didn’t expect this verbal sparring match. “Damn, Nancy. Even though things between us didn’t work out the way you wanted them to, I’ve always considered you to be a friend.” Part of me just wanted to throw some money down on the table and get the fuck out of there. I didn’t need this bullshit.
“Whatever.” She played around with the straw in her glass and kept looking at her watch like she had someplace else to be.
“Shit, you clocking your watch like I’m keeping you from something. Please don’t let me hold you up any longer.” I was done with begging a bitch. It wasn’t like I was trying to get some pussy after all these years anyway. However, I said the wrong thing because I immediately sparked a dangerous reaction by my words.
“You know what, fuck you, nigga!” She was stubbing out her smoke and trying to get up at the same time.
“Nancy, hold on. Why are you getting all upset and shit? I was just trying to be respectful of your time. You didn’t have to cuss at a brother.” I was trying to hold back my laughter because her girth, coupled with her anger, may have contributed to her inability to get up out of the chair.
“No,
you
hold on. I didn’t ask your sorry ass to have a drink with me. Did I? No, you asked me, and when shit ain’t going the way you think it should, you want to do the same old shit you did back in the day—roll the fuck out.” She was no longer trying to get up, but I could tell she was still mad as hell.
you
hold on. I didn’t ask your sorry ass to have a drink with me. Did I? No, you asked me, and when shit ain’t going the way you think it should, you want to do the same old shit you did back in the day—roll the fuck out.” She was no longer trying to get up, but I could tell she was still mad as hell.
I looked around the restaurant to see if anyone was looking at us because sister girl was rather loud. “Why you got me on loud speaker? Take that shit down a notch before you get us thrown up out of here,” I hissed at her. She had a right to be a little upset or even downright mad at me, but I was not about to allow her to show her ass on me in public.
“Because your ass threw me out like dirty dishwater once you were done with me.” She was fumbling with her cigarette again, trying to get it relit, and I was glad we were in one of the few places in the airport that allowed people to smoke. Hell, she almost made me want to light up my damn self, but I’d kicked the habit years before.
“It wasn’t like that and you know it. We just drifted apart,” I said.
“You’re a liar and the truth ain’t in you.” Any other time I would have gotten pissed by anyone calling me a liar, but she was so comical I couldn’t stop myself from laughing.
“Oh, you think I’m a joke?” Once again she tried to snub out her cigarette and get up at the same time in a confined space. She was butting people in the back of their heads with her big ol’ ass, which only made me laugh harder.
I didn’t stop laughing until I realized that she was actually going to leave me sitting there without answering any of my questions. “Nancy, wait. I wasn’t laughing at you per se. I was laughing at the way you said it.” I was sincere when I said it and I guess she must’ve heard it in my voice because she plopped back down in her chair. I signaled the waitress for another round.
“Just so you know, I don’t take too kindly to being laughed at. By you or anybody else for that matter.”
“I wasn’t laughing at you. Never that. I thought about you often over the years.”
“You didn’t pick up the phone. Hell, my number ain’t changed, just my disposition.” She was coming back with the one-liners and it was truly comical to hear.
“I thought about calling but I wasn’t ready for you.” Once again, I was being honest with her.
“You might have been worth something if you wasn’t running up behind that other bitch who had your nose wide open.” She was referring to Tilo, so I wasn’t about to tell her that she was still in the picture. Tilo was running me even back in the day, much the same as I ran Nancy. But Tilo was like a drug to me and I just couldn’t say no to her. She even had me asking Nancy for money and giving it to her. I should have had a problem with asking her but I didn’t, and that was one of the reasons we stopped kicking it. That and Tilo’s threat to kick my ass to the curb if she even thought I was dishing out her dick to someone else. She didn’t mind my getting money from Nancy, but she drew the line at sharing the dick.
“Like I said, I couldn’t give you what you wanted.” It made no sense to sit there and lie to her about my involvement with Tilo. She knew I loved her back then, and I assumed she wanted to know the deal now.
“I guess that shit didn’t work out too well for you, did it?” She started laughing as if she’d said some kind of funny.
“Nah, it didn’t work out.” I wasn’t really lying when I said it didn’t work because, physically, Tilo wasn’t around, we rarely saw each other, but she still resided in my heart.
“So what’s in Baltimore?” She cocked her head to the side as if she genuinely wanted to know.
“I have family there, but actually I’m ready for a new beginning.” We sat in silence for a few moments. I was trying to think of a way to bring the conversation around to the real reason I was sitting inside the airport with her in the first place.
“Humph, if I hadn’t put in so many years at this airport, I’d leave too. I’m sick of Atlanta. I’m sick of the traffic, wages, and most of all, the men.”
I knew better than to tackle the subject of men, especially since I knew that last part was directed at me. “You could transfer to another hub if you really wanted to leave.”
“And get the shit end of the totem pole when it came to my schedule? Oh, hell no, I don’t think so. I’m gonna stick it out here until I can hang it up for good.”
“I hear ya. I didn’t think about what it would do to your tenure here.” I nodded my head in agreement. I admired the fact that she had a job she could retire from, and I was still flipping from spot to spot with very little stability to my income. That’s another reason why I continued to fuck with Tilo. She was offering a means to get out of the rat race and live in the lifestyle I’d only dreamed about. Throw in some good pussy, it’s a wrap. “Hey, did you know the dude who shot his ex-wife and her boyfriend?”
“Yeah, I knew him. It’s messed up. They got shit all twisted around here.” She finished her drink and looked at me expectantly.
I signaled the waitress. So much for the one-drink limit Nancy had imposed. I was grateful the liquor loosened her tongue and lightened her attitude with me. “What’s his domestic battle have to do with you and your job? I don’t get it.”
“You know the drill, because of his clearance, everybody is on alert. See the media didn’t tell the whole story. She filed for divorce and he wouldn’t agree to it. So she turned things ugly on his job by telling the bosses that he was smuggling contraband through the airport. Now they looking at all of us all crazy when we come through.”
“Got it. That’s fucked up. Is there any truth to her claims?”
“I’m not sure about that. I knew the guy, but I wasn’t all up in his business and shit.” Her words were beginning to slur. I didn’t know how much longer her spirit of cooperation would last.
“So I still don’t understand why this presented complications for you unless you’re doing a lot of traveling.”
“Damn, nigga, do I have to spell it out for you?”
I wanted to choke the bitch and tell her yeah, but I just looked at her.
“Okay, it has nothing to do with travel. Seniority has its privileges, and one of those privileges is the ability to forego going through TSA screening. On a good day, screening can make the difference of being late for work, so it’s definitely something I enjoy. Now this motherfucker done messed it up for all of us, and now we have to go through the line just like everybody else.”
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