Hold Me in Contempt (18 page)

“Stay outta there,” Kent said after taking a long, mannish gulp of his beer. “Ain't shit for you in there.”

“Jesus, Kent. You make it sound like I'm still sixteen and you can forbid me from dating that guy on the football team again.”

“Nigga was a thug.”

“He's a congressman now,” I said.

“Exactly. And he's still a thug.” Kent finished his beer and moved on to the next.

“A married thug. With two kids,” I quipped, laughing. “And I'm still freaking single. Listening to you.”

“So, you don't need that nigga. You don't need no niggas. Just one nigga . . .  ​your bro. And I need you.”

“Here we go again,” I said. “You can stop your speech right now, because I'm not trying to meet your Brazilian girlfriend, and I damn sure am not helping you bring her into the country. So let it go.”

“I already have,” Kent replied unexpectedly.

“Like days ago you were madly in love. Lydia was everything. What happened?”

“Man, fucking Keisha and shit.” Kent sat back heatedly like he was back in high school and arguing with Keisha about smoking his weed.

I had to stop myself from laughing. I could tell by the quick anger in his eyes and his furrowed brow that he knew about the butch-lover gossip.

“I thought you two were done. Why do you care about Keisha?”

“Man, she out in them streets, Sis. Fucking up,” he said. “I ain't want to say nothing, but I'll tell you, I think she playing for the other team. Got turned out and shit.”

“No,” I said, trying to sound surprised. “Not Keisha.”

“Yeah, man. Shit's like a virus right about now. Mad bitches fucking bitches. Fuck niggas. Nobody want a nigga no more. Just get a nigga bitch.”

“Right,” I said, trying to make sense of Kent's puzzle of logic. I decided to point something out that was pretty clear, something most women had been wanting to ask men for a minute: “Why do you think that's happening?”

“Motherfucking gay indoctrination. Shit on television. Obama. Everywhere.”

I let out my laugh then. I had to. “So what about before all of that? Why were women gay then?”

“Maybe they was bored. I don't know. And we ain't talking about all women. We talking about Keisha. My baby mama. Your niece's mother.” He looked at me, and I promise a little tear was floating on the rim of his eye.

I pulled my laughter back in by biting the tip of my tongue. “Deep and contemplative Kent” was even more comical than “in-love Kent.”

“I know what you're thinking,” Kent went on. “It's me. That's why she riding plastic dicks. I fucked her up. Ain't never treat her right. Go on and say it.” Kent looked at me.

“Okay. Yeah. You aren't the best choice of mate,” I said with all of the attitude I could just for Keisha.

“I know! I know! I ain't shit. I need to get my shit together. I done fucked too many hoes on Keisha. And I lied about Brazil. I did fuck mad hoes in Brazil.”

“Not a surprise.”

“That's why I have to call this thing off with Lydia. Got to let her know I can't marry her,” Kent said soberly. “I love Keisha and I want to get myself right for her.”

I couldn't hold my laugh in anymore again. “Make-a-change Kent” was more funny than any other version. Like that time he decided to join me at Morgan State and tried to move into the dorm. Within a week he was selling weed out of his dorm room window and fucking half the senior class—that was his freshman year.

“What? Come on! Don't laugh at me,” Kent said. “I'm being serious.”

“Serious about what?” I asked. “I've heard this before. You get all upset about something Keisha did to get back at you for something you did, which usually involves a girl, and you promise to do right, and that works . . .  ​right up until you meet the next girl. Then you sleep with her and it starts again.”

“That's what I'm saying. I have a problem. A sex problem,” Kent said. “I have an addiction. I'm a sex addict.”

“I'm done,” I announced, standing up and looking for my purse. “You've lost your mind.”

“No, don't go.” Kent stood too. “Don't. I'm serious. I have a problem. And I'm getting help.”

“So, now you're Tiger Woods and that's why you can't keep your dick to yourself?”

“No,” Kent said, stepping to me. “I'm the son of two addicts, and so I recognize that there's a strong chance I might have a problem, too.”

“Where's my purse?” I tried to leave Kent in the kitchen to go into the living room, but he grabbed me and held me tight. “Let me go,” I said, feeling tears welling up from nowhere. I didn't know what they were for.

“Stop it, Kim!” Kent ordered. “Listen to me.”

“No! I'm going home.”

“I'm getting help. And I want you to support me.”

“Let me go!” I hollered.

“No.” Kent kept his tight grip. “I need you.”

“No. You need an excuse,” I argued. “Mommy and Daddy have nothing to do with your fucking up. That's bullshit. And I'm tired of you saying that every time something is wrong in your life. So what they were addicts. That has nothing to do with us. I'm fine. I went to school. I'm successful. You chose what you are. You choose what you do every day.”

“It ain't that simple and you know it,” Kent barked back. “No I ain't about to put no pipe in my mouth or no needle in my arm, but I still chose my drug of choice. We both have.”

“Fuck off, Kent,” I said, peeling him off my arm by scratching the top of his hand with my nails.

“Fuck!” He flinched when I drew blood. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“I'm out!” I ran out of the kitchen and found my purse on the couch in the living room.

“Kiki!” Kent came out after me. “I need to talk to you.”

“No! Don't touch me again!” I grabbed the purse and ran out of the house, down the steps and onto the street. Kent was screaming my name from the front porch, but I kept running. I had to get away from him and his excuses. I couldn't be party to the lies he told himself to make up for all of his “am nots.” He always tried to do that to me. To pull me into his feelings and make them mine. There was nothing wrong with him or us or me. We were fine. We were what we wanted to be.

“Miss! Miss! You need a ride?”

In the street beside me were the bright lights from the dollar cab that had dropped me off.

“What?” I looked at the driver. “Why are you still here?” I hadn't told him to wait for me. He even refused to take my money when I got out.

“I take you home. Right? Make sure you safe,” he said in an Arab accent.

I got into the car after looking behind me to discover that Kent had gone back into the house.

“Where you live?” the cabbie asked. “Where you go?”

“I don't know,” I said, remembering King's orders when I got into the back of that cab in Brooklyn.

“Hello?” King answered the phone on the first ring.

I tried to answer but I was crying too hard. All I got out was “I need . . . ” and then my voice went weak.

“It's you, Queen?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“You all right?”

“No.”

“You don't have to say anything else. Tell Baboo to bring you to the spot. Everything's going to be okay. I got you.”

I cried most of the way from Harlem to Brooklyn. Laid my head against my purse on the back window and cried at the day, the long, long day. All of the losses. The pain coming back at me and how powerless I felt under it all.

I looked out into the street and imagined every shadow was my mother: hunched over, black, and alone with no home.

My worry ushered me into a deep sleep that wasn't broken until I felt the driver pulling me out of the car.

“Come on, lady. You wake up. We here. See? We here?”

I muttered something I was saying to Kent in my dream because the driver's words had become Kent's. But then he pushed me to open my eyes.

“You look. You see. See? Open your eyes. See! Please see!”

“Wha? What?” Though I could feel that I was standing then, I knew I was leaning over too. I could smell the cabbie's curry dinner. I opened my eyes one at a time and saw a concrete block and above it the familiar behemoth of a clock, aqua-colored, with Roman numerals.

“The Clocktower?” I slurred sleepily, lifting my head off the cabbie's shoulder. “Why am I here?”

“It's where he lives. His home.”

“Who? Who lives here?”

Just then King came rushing out the front door with the two guys from the bar.

The guys took me from the driver and I nearly fell over into someone's arms.

“Thanks, Baboo,” I heard someone say.

King came in close to look at me. He was wearing black slacks and a wifebeater that lay transparent over a maze of black tattoos on his chest.

King turned and the men holding me up under each arm followed him into the Clocktower Building.

“Everything okay, Mr. McDonnell?” the doorman asked, rushing to meet us at the elevator.

“Just fine, Frantz,” King said. “In fact, I'll take it from here.” He reached out to take me from the two guys, and I was scared I'd fall over on top of him, but when his arm went under my arm and around my back I felt more support than I had with two men. His muscles seemed to expand. His body was steady and planted. I let my whole weight fall to test him and closed my eyes again.

King helped me into the small glass elevator where the ding of the doors closing startled me, so I pressed my head into his chest.

“You okay?” he asked, looking down into my eyes with worry.

“I'm tired,” I said. “Very tired.”

The elevator doors opened, and King led me into a space that looked like an art gallery. There were some couches and chairs, a television, and tables scattered in different settings around a huge, open space, and on every wall there was a work of art that was big, colorful, and, no doubt, very, very expensive. But that wasn't what was stealing my vision, what had me wondering if I was still in the dollar cab and dreaming. It was the clocks. Four fourteen-foot clocks, one in the center of each wall, drawing my eyes to windows that let in a breathtaking 360-degree view of Brooklyn, the East River, Manhattan, and the Manhattan Bridge. I was in the Clocktower, in DUMBO's most expensive apartment, the one that real estate tycoons had been bidding on for years until some private buyer outbid the likes of Jay-Z and Ralph Lauren. It had been a front-page real estate story in the
New York Times
for months.

“You live here?” I asked King.

“Most of the time,” he said, leading me to the nearest couch. He made sure I was standing up on my own and quickly cleared the pillows from the couch by pitching them to the floor. On his back there was a huge black and gold jester's hat I could see through his wifebeater.

“Who are you?” I asked.

He stood and looked at me. “I'm your king,” he proclaimed. “Any more questions?”

“No.” I fell into King on purpose that time. I wanted to feel his lips against mine and taste his tongue in my mouth. To smell him.

My nose brushed against his as I slid his top lip into my mouth. He slid my bottom lip into his mouth, and we tasted each other's newness through bated breath, and everything in my past dissipated. And we weren't even touching.

King's mouth on mine set a hungry pace that promised my body so many things.

I sighed and let him take control.

I opened my eyes to watch him kiss. To see us kiss each other. The bright lights from the big city peeked in at us. We were shadows. Not black and white. Just hungry shadows.

My pussy quivered, and I reached for King's hand to put it there and let him feel its begging.

All time stopped when he pulled away from me. Withdrew his hand from my hold. His lips from mine.

“What is it?” I asked.

“You sure you want me there, Queen?” he asked, and I discovered just then looking into his eyes that they were glittering azure blue and looked like captured birthstones. He looked down at my pussy.

“I just want to feel better. Can you make me feel better?”

King answered with a soft kiss on my lips.

“No,” I said. “Not like that. Not soft. I want to feel something. I want to feel it.”

King took my desire as a command and moved fast.

This time his hand found my vagina on its own. His full palm cradled the heat emanating from inside of me. He caressed my right shoulder with a voracious mouth, teasing sighs out of me.

I was about to reach to pull my skirt up and my panties down, but he snatched his touch away again.

“Wha—” I started, thinking he was done with me, but I couldn't finish my one syllable before this near stranger had me up in his arms, wrapping my legs around his torso, my brain wondering how he'd moved so quickly to get me into that position.

When he started walking, I thought he was carrying me to the bedroom, so I was surprised when I felt my ass being set on a cold, hard surface. King left me to turn on a light, revealing a bathroom shining in bright white tile and metal trimming everywhere.

“Why are we in here?” I asked as he came back over to me, pulling off his undershirt. “You want to see?”

“No,” he said, picking me up from the counter beside the sink and spinning me around to a colossal floor-to-ceiling mirror. “I want
you
to see
you
.”

He started kissing my shoulders again as he removed my skirt and then my shirt and underwear with near-perfect precision, hardly requiring me to take a step.

I watched him in the mirror. He watched me watch him. But never once did those blue eyes look at their own reflection.

“You see you?” King said. “I'm going to make sure you see you, Queen.”