Fly on the Wall (17 page)

I
t was an overcast, rainy Sunday afternoon. The sky was dark and dreary like one you'd come across in Seattle and not South Florida. Toni spent the day at my house. Marcus came up with the idea of taking the boys to see a movie, and Toni and I eagerly encouraged him. It would mean that after two months, she and I would finally have two or three child-free hours together.

“Find something for us to watch,” Toni said and threw the remote control at me. For ten minutes, I gave every channel fifteen seconds to impress me. The winner was the Lifetime Movie Network. Those gullible, crying, whining-ass women in those movies always made me feel like I was the strongest and most emotionally stable woman alive.

“All right.” Toni sat up in her chair during a commercial break and stared at me. “Out with it.”

“Huh?” I was shocked. “Out with what?”

“It's evident that you're not gonna volunteer information, so I'll just beg for it.” She groveled, “Please tell me what's going on.”

“Tell you what?” I looked at her with the best confused look I had.

Toni raised her voice. “I've been holding this in for three weeks.”

“Holding what in?”

“Knowing about him.” She rolled her eyes. “Or not knowing the truth about him.”

“About who?” I grimaced.

“C'mon, you know whom.” She giggled.

“I told you what happened with Doran.”

“Forget Doran!” She continued in a whisper like we weren't truly alone. “You know who I'm talkin' 'bout.”

“Okay, for real, no, I don't.”

Toni grabbed the bag of Doritos on the coffee table and stuffed a few in her mouth. “My babies tell me everything.” She laughed. “They don't mean to. It just runs in their blood. They can't hold shit. Their daddy is a lawyer.”

What in the hell?
I said to myself and prayed that Theo's name wasn't about to come out of her mouth. I was trying hard not to look like a deer caught in the headlights. “Well, what exactly did your babies have to say?”

“First of all, don't be upset with my boys.” She grinned. “They meant no harm.”

“I'm sure,” I said while my heart sank deeper into paranoia.

“I heard about Theo.”

“Who?” Did I give her my best astonished face?

“Don't
who
me.” She smiled. “Theo.”

Ignorance is bliss. “What about Theo?” Pretending to be ignorant is just plain stupid.

“He was at your house all day that Saturday when the boys were there.”

I lied. “He was fixing something. And?”

“And he spent the night on Friday?”

“Where did you get all of that from?”

“Devin.”

I reached for words and when none reached back, I resorted to first grade vocabulary. “Devin's a liar.”

She threw a pillow at me. “My kids don't lie.”

“Yes, they do.” I threw the pillow back, and for a full minute, I recalled a story that Devin, the master liar, had fabricated as a cunning ploy to blame someone else for something he actually did. Toni wasn't paying me any mind.

“Devin said that he opened the door and Mr. Theo was lying in your bed, under the covers, watching a basketball game,” she added on to her opening statement, “and I know that it was before noon because Kevin mentioned that he was in the living room watching
Recess
, his favorite cartoon, which comes on at eleven.”

“You believed them?” I tried a final time to be acquitted of the charge.

“Yes,” she said. “What in the hell was that boy doing in your bed, Paige?”

“Shit.” I sighed, which was my surrender and a weak closing argument. Toni was my best friend; sooner or later I'd have to come to her for advice or just to vent. This secret was eating me alive from the inside out. “Yeah, he slept over.”

“Shut the hell up,” she shouted.

“What?”

As though she didn't expect me to tell the truth, Toni stared at me with her mouth gaped open. “You're fuckin' kiddin' me.”

I couldn't look at her. “We've been seeing each other for the past two months.”

“Shut up! Are you crazy?” She laughed. “I mean, I know that he's tall, handsome, and fine as hell, but isn't he like sixteen or something?”

“He's eighteen.”

“That's insane.”

“Thanks.” I was somewhat ashamed. “Thanks a lot.”

“Tell me that you're not screwing him.” I knew that was the last thing Toni wanted to hear, and when I didn't answer, she shrieked, “You're fucking him?”

“Shh.” I looked around like someone might hear.

“You're shittin' me.”

“I shit you not.” I thought my answer over. “We've slept together, but it's more than just that.”

“Then what is it?” she asked sarcastically.

“We're trying to see where it can go.”

“Where it can go?” By this time, Toni was standing up. “Paige, you can't be serious.” Her voice echoed through the large gray room, traveling from the high vaulted ceiling to the black-and-red-art deco leather furniture, then bounced from the elegant coffee table to my ear.

“I was just kidding. I thought Devin was exaggerating like always.” She disappeared into the kitchen, giving me a minute to wish that I had denied the charge a little longer.

Toni resurfaced with her expensive scotch and two glasses with a few ice cubes sliding around in them. “I was fuckin' around. Never for a minute did I think that something was really going on. I know how my kids make shit up.” She stared at me with a smile. “But it seems like we really do have something to drink, think, and talk about now.”

“So what
did
Devin tell you?”

She mimicked her son's voice perfectly. “Mommy, Theo played Crazy Taxi with us all day. He can drive, too.” She paused to get another annoying nasal statement together. “Theo was in Auntie Paige's bed, but he wasn't asleep. I didn't wake him up.”

“You think I'm stupid, don't you?”

“I'm thinking he's eighteen and he's your student. Why not at least wait until graduation?”

“It just happened,” I tried to explain. “I mean, I didn't set out for any of this to happen. It just happened.”

“When?”

“After the party.”

“So,” she was shocked, “y'all just had sex, no questions asked?”

“No.” I took a deep breath. “He had been flirting with me since the beginning of the school year.”

“Were you flirting back?”

I didn't want to answer. “Somewhat.”

“Well, were you or not?”

I confessed, “I guess I contributed. I didn't think anything would come of it, but that night, we started drinking, talking, and laughing, and before I knew what hit me, we were naked.” I sighed. “Damn, I wish I could rewind everything.”

“I guess you really didn't want to tell me.”

I looked at her. “It's not like I was never going to. I just wanted to keep it to myself a while until I could make sense out of what I'm doing.” Though I felt odd, I continued. “I just feel so fuckin' desperate.”

I expected her to agree with me, but she didn't. “What is life if you don't do what makes you happy?” She smiled. “Does he make you happy?”

“Yeah, but he's still in high school, for Christ's sake.”

She approached me, sat down on the sofa, and poured the scotch. “C'mon, people think back to their high school days all the time. Do you think that they're thinking about classes, books, and teachers? No way. They're thinking about high school sex. When you did it wherever you could, were almost always getting caught, and most of all how that sweaty, sexy, tight-bodied seventeen- or eighteen-year-old boy could fuck for hours at a time.” We toasted to that. “To answer your question, no, I don't think you're a freak.” She paused and giggled. “His momma might, though.”

“Don't remind me.”

“She's gonna beat your ass,” Toni joked. “Hang your grown ass out to dry.”

“Shut up.” I went on for close to ten minutes about Theo and the way he made me feel. I felt the need to justify my situation.

“If it makes you feel better,” Toni's eyes were eager, “you are not completely alone.”

I placed my glass on a coaster. “What do you mean?”

“I have this twenty-one-year-old in my microbiology class who sits right behind me.” She smiled. “He has one more time to mistakenly rub my butt before I rape his ass.”

“What?”

“He's too much.”

I couldn't believe my ears. The difference in our situations was that I wasn't married with kids. “You're not serious?”

“I am.” She continued jokingly. “I would consider disregarding my husband and kids for a few hours to be with him.”

“Did you?”

“No,” she looked away shyly, “I said I would.”

“Whoa.” Last I heard, Marcus was the best thing since the invention of the telephone. “What does he look like?”

“Tall, slim but not skinny, brown skin and brown eyes.” She smiled. “He's just handsome. I think he's mixed with a little bit of something because of the texture of his goatee, and he has no naps in his new growth.”

“What else?”

“His name is Derek.” She blushed. “He's so much of everything.”

“Like?” I wasn't about to be left hanging.

“He's one of those thugged-out looking ones, which you know I really don't go for.”

“Yeah?” I was interested. “Tell me more.”

“He lives in Sean John, FUBU, Rocawear, sneakers, boots, and all that type of stuff.” She paused. “But when he opens his mouth, he makes more sense than the professor.” She continued. “The university had a talent show to raise money for the tsunami victims last week, and he was in it.”

“Doing what?” I chuckled.

“He rapped.” She got excited. “He was so damn good.”

“Really?”

She spoke intensely. “It turned me on so much.”

“Him rapping?” I asked.

“Yeah, it's hard to explain.”

“Well, try, because I have to hear this.”

“It was the way he held the mic, the way he pronounced words, his flow, and his message.”

“What was the message?” I asked.

“The song was called ‘Father Figure
.
' It was basically about how black men should raise the bar on their own, by striving to expect more from themselves. Not just black men with kids, but all of them should work at becoming someone a child could follow. The other part of it was for women, mainly black women. When choosing a mate, she should measure more than the inches between his legs. She should measure his manhood; the qualities that would make him a good father to her children.”

“All of this and I bet he has an itsy bitsy teeny weeny.”

She said, “You've missed the whole damn point.”

“I got the whole damn point.” I laughed. “I'm just messing with you.”

“What's the message then?” she asked.

“Derek doesn't have much in the meat department. However, he'll make a wonderful father.” I laughed. “I'm just kidding. I got the message, Toni.”

“Don't talk about my friend like that.” She pretended to frown. “Apologize for that teeny weeny shit.”

“Who's to say that it's not true?” I pulled her toward me. “I'm sure that your friend is working with something.”

“I hope so because—”

“Excuse me?” I butted in. “You're a married woman, ma'am.”

“I know this.” Then she added, “But on Friday, Derek and I started working on a project together.”

“Alone?”

“Yeah.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Well, we were supposed to be working in groups of threes, but he and I teamed up and no one else came over, so we're the only ones in our group.”

“Wow.” I didn't like the sound of it. “I know that he's supposed to be good-looking and all, but I don't know if this is a good idea. You're inviting trouble to your front door.”

“Relax,” Toni hurried to explain. “I just need someone to talk to.” She swirled her drink around and the ice clinked against the glass.

“Talk to
me.
” I giggled. “What am I, chopped liver?”

“I'm not forgetting about talking to you, but I'm not talking about talking like that,” she finished in a cheerless tone. “I need male companionship, a guy to talk to.”

“Marcus,” I reminded her. “What about Marcus?”

“Please.” She swallowed what was left in her glass. “We can't agree on anything. The only times we get along is in front of folks.” Toni turned to face me head-on. “Plus nowadays, all he talks about is how much he wants us to get into the swinging scene.”

“What?” My mouth dropped. “I thought you all were through thinking about that.”

“I thought so, too, but apparently I was wrong.” She grimaced and rolled her eyes. “How in the hell is that supposed to make me feel? It's like he's not satisfied with me.”

“I cannot believe him.” I was truly astonished. “Why?”

“No clue.”

“Well, Toni, you were wrong for entertaining the thought to begin with,” I said. “He spoon fed you this bullshit, and now you're considering eating the whole enchilada.”