Authors: Dwayne S. Joseph
Eye for an Eye (13 page)
26
“So how are things going?”
I wiped sweat away from my forehead. I'd just finished running a few of the gym's employees through a hard kickboxing workout. I don't usually run the class for the employees, but the regular instructorâa Billy Blanks wannabe with half the size and double the amount of hairâhad been robbed and broke his ankle in the process. The manager called me, since I was the only other kickboxing instructor the gym had, and begged me to run the class. I had nothing going on for the evening, so I agreed to do it.
I push the gym members hard during every one of my classes. They were there to get results and I took my job of helping to produce those results very seriously. I pushed the employees ten times harder because it was all about setting the example. As far as I was concerned, you shouldn't work at the gym if you weren't in shape or weren't determined to be.
I wiped away sweat again and stepped outside. It was nighttime. Approaching nine o'clock. For the first time in four days, the humidity wasn't suffocating. It was still warm though at about eighty degrees.
Walking to my Mercedes-Benz E-Class coupe, I said, “Things are going fine.”
I was going to call Shante Hunt with my update when I got home, but changed my mind and called as I left. Home was for a hot shower, some Pinot Noir, and Pink Martini on repeat. Home was about pleasure.
Shante said, “I guess you've made contact with the son-of-a-bitch?”
I thought about the nights out with Ryan. The nights of sex.
Contact.
Yes. There had been plenty.
I said, “Yes.”
“He's an arrogant asshole, isn't he?” Shante asked, her tone biting, laced with disgust.
I paused as a car slowly turned in front of me and headed down an aisle to the right of where I was parked. A woman was driving the car. Didn't know why, but it almost seemed as though she'd been staring at me.
“Thinks he's God's gift to women,” Shante added.
I nodded as I approached my Benz. “He is sure of himself,” I said.
“I can't wait for this to happen. I can't wait for him to get his.”
“Have you and your sister spoken yet?”
Shante sighed. “No. She still won't talk to me.”
“The plan is for you to take her out and then bring her home so that she can walk in on Ryan and me correct?”
“Yes.”
“Well if she's not talking to you, how are you going to make that happen?”
“My sister is just being stubborn for the sake of being stubborn. Trust me, all I have to do is show up at her house. She won't say no to going out.”
“OK.”
“Has . . . has he come on to you?” Shante asked, her tone indicating that she didn't want to know the answer.
I said, “Yes, he has.”
“Have you . . . have you responded?”
I was at my Benz now, opening the door. “I've done what's necessary to ensure that you get what you're paying for.”
Shante scoffed. “What I'm paying for. I still can't believe I've had to resort to this just to open my sister's eyes.”
“Sometimes people need to be forced to accept reality.”
“Yes, they do,” Shante said.
“Are you sure this is something you want to go through with?”
“I'm very sure,” Shante replied. “I wish I were home to make it happen now. I hate having to wait. Piece of shit. Pathetic joke, pathetic excuse for a man.” Shante paused and exhaled heavily into the phone. “Sorry,” she said, her voice softer, but the edge still there. “I . . . I tend to lose it when it comes to him. He just gets under my skin. Have you ever dealt with someone like that? Someone who just makes you lose your center, lose your control?”
I thought about Kyra for a moment. Thought about the control I'd lost. Thought about the way she'd gotten under my skin. The way she'd almost won before I found my center again.
I said, “No.”
“Guess you choose the right people to deal with.”
I wiped my forehead again. Update given, it was time to end the call. “OK, the day after this is finished we'll meet at Starbucks. Make sure you have the check for the other half with you. You won't hear from me again after that. And I don't expect to hear from you.”
“OK.”
I ended the call before she could say anything else.
I got why she was irritated and pissed off about Ryan, but something about her and her outburst bothered me. As much as Ryan's attitude and dick intrigued me, I was looking forward to not having to deal with Shante Hunt anymore.
I threw my gym bag onto the passenger seat and was about to get in when I sensed someone behind me. I spun around, my hands balled into tight fists, the muscles in my legs taut and ready to swing out at whoever was there.
But I froze.
Standing in front of me was a ghost. A devil. A figment of my imagination, which must have certainly gone fucking wild.
I stared.
Didn't want to believe what I was seeing. Couldn't believe it. Refused to believe it.
I stared.
Blinked. Barely breathed. My heart beat heavily. Thudded beneath my chest. Echoed in the caverns of my ears. Nothing around me moved. Sounds disappeared.
I stared.
Felt myself teeter off center.
Standing in front of me was a person I never expected to see again. A person who had ceased to exist a lifetime ago.
My mother.
I stared at her.
Her hair was still long and curly, brown, though peppered with slender streaks of gray. Her eyes were still almond shaped, still sad, with crow's-feet at the corners. Her mouth hadn't changed. Her lips were still full, still succulent, despite the deep frown she wore. She wasn't overweight, but she'd put on size with age. Her waistline and hips were wider. Her legs and arms thicker. She'd probably put on a good twenty-five to thirty pounds.
My mother.
Still attractive after all these years.
Years.
All of them.
I said, “What are you doing here?”
“I . . .” she paused, fidgeted with the bottom of a yellow top she had on. Yellow had always been her favorite color. I didn't own any yellow clothing. She opened her mouth. Struggled to find her words again, before letting out a sigh and saying, “Hello, Lisette. It good to see you again.”
I closed my fists tighter. Wished she was an assailant that I could hit. I said again, “What are you doing here?” My throat was raw, dry.
“It's been so long, Lisette.”
“Goddamn it. What the hell are you doing here?”
My mother opened her mouth to say something else, but then frowned and reached into her purse, hanging over her shoulder. She removed a white piece of paper and what looked like a newspaper clipping. She extended the papers toward me. “I received these in the mail two days ago.”
I looked at her skeptically with a raised eyebrow for a long moment, before taking the papers from her.
I looked at the newspaper clipping first.
“What the . . .”
What I was holding didn't make sense to me. I looked at it for a long, tense couple of seconds. I said again, “What the . . .”
Kyra Rogers. In black and white with a smile spread across her face. She stared up at me. Above her head a caption in black letters read:
WOMAN MISSING. WHEREABOUTS UNKNOWN.
Below her picture, handwritten sloppily in red marker diagonally across the words of the article, was:
Your daughter knows what happened to her.
I went from the clipping to the folded piece of paper. I unfolded it. On it, in the same red ink, written in the same unkempt handwriting, was my home address, along with the address for the gym with the date and time of the kickboxing class I'd just finished instructing. I looked at the piece of paper for a lingering second, then looked back to the clipping.
Kyra.
Fucking Kyra.
I looked over my mother's shoulder, then turned my head left and right, and then looked behind me. I ran my eyes over every fucking car, every fucking shadow, before focusing back on my mother. “Who sent you this?”
My mother shook her head. “I . . . I don't know.”
“Don't bullshit me!” I snapped. I was trying to remain calm, trying to keep my composure, but it was hard. Damn near impossible. Someone said I knew what had happened to Kyra. Who?
There were only three people besides myself who knew what had happened to her: Three thugs, all paid more than enough to keep their mouths closed. I didn't worry about them talking about Kyra's last night of existence. A night in which I'd given her my regards before she'd taken her last breath.
“Who sent this to you?” I demanded again.
“I don't know,” my mother insisted again. “What does it mean? Who is that woman?”
I crumbled the papers in my hand and looked around the brightly illuminated parking lot again. Various people walked from the gym to their cars, or went in the opposite direction to get their workouts in.
I looked from one person to the next. Wondered if any of them had sent the papers. I studied them with a scrutinizing eye. Tried to X-ray vision my way through car windows and windshields, tinted or not.
Someone knew and they knew about my mother. Knew how to get in touch with her. Had told her how to get in touch with me.
“Lisette, what's going on?”
I turned and looked at my mother. She'd abandoned me. Left me with my pervert of a father. Left me to fend for myself. She stood in front of me, saying my name and asking me questions as if she had a fucking right to.
“When did you say this came?”
“Two days ago. Lisetteâ”
“And you don't know who sent it?”
“No. Please, Lisette, what's going on?”
I closed my hand tighter around the papers. Looked around the parking lot again.
Who?
I shook my head.
My mother called my name again. “Lisette . . . are you in some kind of trouble? Who is that woman? What does the message mean?”
I clenched my jaw. Her voice was like fingernails on a chalkboard. “Shut . . . the . . . fuck up,” I said my voice tight with anger.
My mother frowned as her eyes welled with tears. “You're angry, and you have every right to be. I know I owe you an explanation for what I did, the way I left.”
“I don't want to hear this bullshit,” I said.
“Please, Lisette. Just let me explain. I've missed you. I'veâ”
“Missed me? Bitch, you abandoned me.”
“I know. I swear to you, I regret that decision. I was young. And you were so . . .so . . . manipulative.”
“I was a fucking child.”
“I know. I just didn't know how to deal with you. I made a bad decision.”
“A bad . . .” I closed my mouth and shook my head again. I didn't need this shit.
Someone knew.
They knew my address.
They knew I'd be instructing the class that night, which meant the other instructor's robbery hadn't been random.
I looked around again. At people. At cars. At darkness, and shadows in the light.
Someone knew and they'd sent my mother. The woman who didn't mean shit to me.
I looked back at her. Closed my eyes to slits, and in a voice as tight as a wire on the verge of snapping, said, “Thank you for bringing these to me. Now stay the fuck out of my life.”
Without another word, I climbed into my car, slammed the door shut, started the engine, and pulled away.
I never looked in my rearview mirror.
My sights were focused intensely straight ahead.
The white piece of paper with my home address and the newspaper clipping were still crumbled in my hand.
Kyra Rogers.
Someone had brought her back from the grave.
I had to find out who.
27
I'm laughing.
I can barely contain myself. She looks like a fucking bobblehead doll the way she keeps looking all around her.
Feeling paranoid, bitch? Are you racking your brain trying to figure out what the fuck is going on? Are you trying to figure out why the hell your mother is there? Well, I did some investigating. I spoke to some of the people from your past. People you went to school with. Surprise, surprise, you weren't very well liked. It didn't take much money to get just enough information of your background from them to use to my advantage. I found out all about your screwed, up family life. The people I spoke to all called your father a pervert. The females all claimed that he looked at them in inappropriate ways. Some said he tried to touch them once or twice. I bet he did some nasty things to you. I tried to reach him, but he's been dead for five years. Heard you didn't go to his funeral.
And then there's your mother. Heard she left one morning and just never came back. Some said there were rumors of physical abuse from dear old Daddy. Others said you drove her away just so you could have your father to yourself. Sick, bitch. Really sick. She was easy to find. She lives literally three hours away. Remarried now with two twin daughters, three years younger than you.
Keep looking.
“Nah nah nah nah nah.”
You'll never find me, you cunt. But I found you. And I'm under your skin, eating away at you slowly.
I'm laughing so hard my sides hurt. Good thing I parked far enough away so that she can't hear me. I wish I didn't have to though. I wish I could have pulled right into the parking spot beside her car instead of passing by slowly.
Better yet, “I should have run your ass over, you whore. I should have put an end to you. But I would have been cheating myself, and after all of the plotting, preparation, and execution I've done to snuff out your pathetic life right now, it just wouldn't have been fair to me, and it wouldn't have been fair to Kyra. Kyra,” I say.
Shit.
I'm fucking crying now. I shouldn't have said her name. It's hard enough hearing her voice and seeing her in my dreams and thoughts every fucking day. I haven't spoken her name in months. Saying it is just a painful reminder that, for as long as I live, saying her name out loud would forever go unanswered.
Kyra. My sweet, loving, tender, soft Kyra. My tears are flowing now. I miss her so damned much. It's not fair. She was everything to me. She was my beginning, and she was supposed to be my fucking ending.
I wipe tears away with the back of my hand, then slap my open palm down on my thigh and squeeze. I need to stop. I need to put my focus back on that bitch. The one responsible for Kyra never returning my calls, or coming home.
“Focus.”
But it's so hard.
I scream out, punch my thigh, hit my steering wheel, grab handfuls of my hair and pull. I try to make the stinging in my scalp keep my mind from going back to the past. Back to a time when life was good, with promises to only get better.
“Focus,” I say again as I pull. “Goddammit . . . focus!”
But I can't. My eyes are staring at that bitch through my salty waterfall, but my mind has already drifted. I'm no longer in the car. I'm back in the past, in the club where Kyra and I first met. I'm back smelling smoke and sweat mixed with layers of cologne and perfume. Music is blasting. The DJ's on some shit. He's like a fucking aerobics instructor, playing shit that's guaranteed to make us lose weight.
I'm alone, walking around, watching people dance to the techno hip-hop that's thumping. The club's on fire in a blaze of dark red lighting. Strobe lights flash every couple of seconds like lightning, giving glimpses of the people who are packed like sardines on the dance floor. Each flash shows a different face. A new pair of eyes closed and lost to the rhythm. I've seen the faces before. They're the same goddamn faces I always see.
I'm sipping a Corona, watching them, and while I do, I think about moving to a new place so that I don't have to see the same goddamned people anymore.
And then I see her.
She's not dressed weird or differently. Her hairstyle or color doesn't separate her from the rest. She's the same average height as everyone else. She's in the middle of the floor, alone, moving to the music just like everyone else, but she sticks out. There's just something about her. Something as entrancing as the thumping bass and electronic chords in the music.
I'm glued where I'm standing, unable to take my eyes off of her. I'm a fucking voyeur enjoying the show that she has no idea she's putting on. Goddamn she's sexy. Great curves, great ass, nice, full breasts. Shit, I'd like to get my hands on them. I was already sweating from the temperature in the club, but I'm sweating even more now. I haven't been turned on like this in a long time. Not since my ex, who'd broken my fucking heart.
What's her story? Which way does she roll?
I'm wondering that as I stare at her. I take another sip of my Corona. I want to step to her. Want to ask what her name is. I think about it.
Be bold and walk right up to her
, I say to myself.
Don't think.
Be bold and walk right up to her
, I say to myself.
Don't think.
I take another sip of my beer and then nod. I'm going to do it. I'm going to make the move. But just as I lift my heel, someone steps in front of her.
A fucking man. And he's holding two drinks in his hand.
“Fuck.”
I put my heel back down, close my hands tight around my beer, and just watch as she takes the drink from him and smiles. The man leans forward and plants a kiss on her lips. It shouldn't, but that shit pisses me off. It doesn't make any sense, but I feel like those are my lips that asshole is kissing.
But they're not.
I take an angry swallow of my Corona and am about to say, “Fuck it,” and keep it moving when I notice something. When he'd kissed her on her lips, his mouth had lingered there for a few seconds, but there'd been no emotional reaction from her.
“Shit!”
I watch her intensely. I pay attention to her body language as her date wraps his arms around her and pulls her body against his. He kisses her on her neck, whispers in her ear. She smiles as if what he'd said had been pleasing to her.
But she's faking it.
No one else can see it, but I can. She's not into him. And it's not that she's not into him, it's that she's not into
him
. She's not into his kind.
him
. She's not into his kind.
The untrained eye would never have caught it, but I'm not untrained. I can see it in her eyes. She might be doing the “right” thing by being with him, but she clearly wants to be with someone who understands her. Someone who feels what she feels. Someone who desires the things she's longing for.
I sip my beer and stare. The longer I stare, the more I see how uninspired she is. I watch her for three more songs before she excuses herself from her date and heads to the bathroom. Her steps are unbalanced, which means she's feeling nice. They always say that the truth comes out when you're feeling nice. I drink the rest of my Corona, and this time I say, “Fuck it.” I'm going to find out.
I make my way to the bathroom, watching her ass switch as she walks a few feet in front of me. What I'm going to say exactly, I'm not really sure, but I'm going to say something.
We're a few feet away from the bathroom. I don't usually give a damn about people, but I don't want anyone in my business. If I'm going to step, then I need to step now. And that's what I'm about to do when the unexpected happens.
She turns around and looks at me and says, “You've been watching me.”
I'm shocked, almost speechless. It takes me a few seconds, but I get myself together. “How do you know?”
She smiles. It's sexy, seductive, naughty. “Because I've been watching you.”
“You have?”
“Yes.”
“I didn't catch that.”
“You weren't supposed to.”
I'm looking at her curiously. “You're not in the closet or confused?”
She shakes her pretty little head. “No.”
“So what are you doing with him?”
She laughs. Up close and personal, the laugh is sexy as hell. “I'm playing him,” she says.
I look at her with a raised eyebrow. “Really?”
She holds up her left hand. A diamond is blinging from her ring finger. “We're getting married next week.”
“You are?”
“Yes. I'll stay with him for about a year and then I'll divorce his ass and take half of his money.”
My eyes snap open. “Are you serious?”
“Very.”
“Damn.”
She laughs.
I say, “So, do you always tell random strangers your business?”
She smiles again. “No.”
“Then why did you tell me? Or are you just bullshitting me?”
She takes a step toward me. There's a look in her eyes that's lustful and dangerous. It gives me the chills, it's so fucking sexy. She's inches away from me. So close I can smell the alcohol on her breath.
“You're sexy,” she says.
“So are you,” I reply. My heart's beating as heavily as the bass in the club. I know what's about to happen, yet can't believe it's about to happen. “Aren't you worried about your fiancé seeing us?”
“He's fifteen years older than me and is as blind as a bat without his glasses. He never wears them when we go to a club because he says he looks old with them on. And he can't wear contact lenses. He's not seeing anything.”
She leans forward and puts her lips against mine and kisses me hard and forceful. Her tongue knocks and I part my lips to let it in. The music and everyone in the club disappears as we kiss as though we'd kissed before. It was natural, familiar and so fucking good. So fucking right. We kiss for a few more intense seconds and then she pulls back. The music, the people inside return.
I put my hand over my mouth. “Wow.”
She smiles. “I'm Kyra.”
“I'm Vivian.”
“I felt something when I saw you Vivian.”
I nod. “I felt it too.”
“I couldn't keep my eyes off of you.”
“You obviously saw me unable to keep my eyes off of you.”
“There's something between us, Vivian. Something that just feels meant to be.”
“I was jealous when I saw you kissing him.”
Kyra smiles. “I like jealousy. It turns me on.”
We talk for a few more minutes and then, after another delicious kiss, go our separate ways. I'm hers and she's mine when we do.
For five years, we loved one another and scammed pitiful, unsuspecting men at the same time. We took turns playing the “good wife.” Those times were always torture for me because we couldn't be together. We would take some time off every now and then to have our time though. I loved those times. I miss them.
Five years.
We were beautiful together. A perfect match. Yin and fucking yang. I did any and everything for Kyra and she did the same for me.
Five fucking years.
I'm back in the present now, tears still running down my face. That bitch is going off on her mother now.
I pull on my hair. “You took her away from me, you cunt. But you're going to get yours.”
Through tears I watch her look for me again before she says something else to her mother, and then gets in her car and pulls away. “I know how you think,” I say with a smile. “I know where you're going next. But I've already beaten you there.”
I look in my rearview mirror and make eye contact with Myles Rogers. He was supposed to have been the big catch for Kyra and me. The husband who was going to take us over the edge. We were going to retire after we got Myles's money. We were going to let our love be free. No more pretending. It was just going to be me and Kyra against the world, living in peace, love, and lesbian bliss.
Myles looks at me, his eyes wide with fear. Duct tape covers his mouth and is wrapped tightly around his wrists and ankles. I used a taser gun on his ass to render him fucking immobile. He never saw it coming. He's sweating like a fucking pig now.
“She's going to try to see you,” I say. “She wants to know if you sent her the article. Too bad you won't be there to answer her questions.”
Myles mumbles defiantly. Sounds like he cursing at me.
I turn around and hit him over and over in his face. “Shut the fuck up!” I hit him again. “Kyra's dead and you're going to pay for it. All of you are. And that bitch is going to pay the worst of all. An eye for an eye.”
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