Homecoming Weekend (17 page)

“I wish I could go back to college now, with the knowledge I have,” Warren said.

“It wouldn't even be fair,” Jack said. “People think I was a terror back then. Let me go back to college now, with all the knowledge on how to deal with women. I'd bang every bad honey on campus.”

“So you get to go back to college as a forty-something man in a teenager's body—and that's what you'd use that gift for? To bang every bad honey?”

“Damn, right,” Jack said. “What would you use it for?”

“That's exactly what I would do,” Earl said, and the groups of men laughed loudly.

As they did, he checked his watch.

“What, you have somewhere to be?' Bruce asked. “He's been checking his watch the whole time we've been here.”

“Actually, I do,” Earl said.

“He's all in love,” Jack said. “Sending text messages during the whole round.”

“And still beat all of you,” Earl said.

“To who?” Bruce asked. “Who you in love with?”

That was the question that Earl could not pass on. He loved Catherine unashamedly, and this was his moment to say so.

“Catherine,” he said. “Catherine Harmon.”

Bruce sat up in his seat. “I told you two years ago to step to Catherine,” he said. “That girl looks great.”

“I know; I remember,” Earl said. “But that wasn't our time. Now is our time.”

“Are you serious?” Bruce asked. “How? What happened?”

“She sent me an e-mail in June and that was the beginning,” Earl answered. He was humble in his remarks, but inside he was bubbling.

“She's my girl now, Bruce,” he said. “We've built something.”

“I'll be damned. Y'all know she was about the baddest honey at Norfolk State when we were there,” said Bruce, whose wife, Holly, was also a prime catch. “I haven't seen her in a while, Earl. She still looking good?”

“Awesome,” Earl said, smiling. “You'll see. She's coming with me to the Best of Friends party tomorrow night.”

“Oh, this I gotta see,” Bruce said. “No wonder you looking at the time. I understand now.”

Jimmy, Carter and Barbara

W
hen Friday evening wore down, Barbara expected Carter to invite her to his room, as he had the previous five years. He didn't. And that angered and hurt Barbara—and made her regret taking the cross-country trip to homecoming.

“I can't believe you're not going to see me tonight,”
she said to Carter in a text message.
“We talked about this for a whole year. Now you change your mind? Why?”

She knew, but she wanted him to tell her. Carter and Jimmy sat at their hotel bar, sipping on water to hydrate after a day of drinking. They chatted with more classmates they came across and caught up more on each other's lives. But Barbara's message altered the lighthearted tone of the evening. Carter turned to Jimmy, who was reading a text of his own from his wife, Monica, who remained pissed off about not being at homecoming with her husband.

“We need to have a serious talk when you get back,”
she wrote to him.
“I have some decisions to make.”

Carter and Jimmy looked at each other with quizzical expressions. They needed each other's advice.

“Go ahead,” Jimmy said. “You first. What is it?”

“So, Barbara wants to know why we're not spending the night together,” Carter said. “And I don't know what to tell her.”

“Well, what would you tell me?” Jimmy asked.

“That I'm not feeling this move to New York,” Carter said.

“Well, maybe you should talk to her about it,” Jimmy surmised. “It seems like something is missing to me, so it has to feel that way to her, too. You told me earlier today that you all are in love. That was this morning. Now, tonight, you don't want to be bothered with her. That's a big switch. You owe her an explanation.”

Carter nodded his head. He knew that answer before Jimmy gave it. He was hoping for something creative that would ease his mind, and Barbara's, too, without having to express his dissatisfaction with her move. But the reality was iron-clad: She and her kids
were
moving to New York and he had to deal with it.

“Yeah, I know,” he said to Jimmy. “And I will have a heart-to-heart with her. Tonight. This won't be easy . . . So what's up with you?”

Jimmy shook his head. “The wife is tripping,” he said. “She hit me with ‘we have to talk' and she ‘has some decisions to make.' What does that sound like to you?”

“Well, whenever I heard, ‘we have to talk' or told somebody that, it was about breaking up,” Carter said. “I don't know what she means. But the part about having decisions to make doesn't sound good, either.”

“Yeah, I was thinking the same thing,” Jimmy said. “We've had our issues in the past, but nothing that would threaten the marriage. I never cheated on her. I don't go anywhere, really. For her to trip like this is crazy.”

“Maybe you should do like I'm about to do—have a heart-to-heart,” Carter said. “It can't hurt.”

“You don't know Monica,” Jimmy said. “That girl can make a mountain out of a pimple.”

They laughed. “Excuse me,” Carter said, hailing the bartender. “Can we get a shot of tequila?”

“I don't even want a shot,” Jimmy said. “But I'll take it.”

They tapped glasses of Herradura Reposada and downed the tequila.

“Okay, man, good luck,” Jimmy said as he and Carter walked to the elevators. “I'm going to my room to call my wife. If I'm not too rundown afterward, I might go to the all-black party at the Holiday Inn.”

“Same here,” Carter said. “I'll let you know when I get off the phone.”

The two men went separate ways down the hallway of the eleventh floor. In his room, Jimmy turned on the television and hit the mute button. He always liked the TV on, whether he was watching it or not.

Before he could press the keys to reach Monica, his phone rang. It was Regina Anderson, his college girlfriend that he had seen at The Broadway.

Unfamiliar with the number, he answered anyway. “Hello.”

“Why didn't you come and speak to me at the party?” she said.

“Huh? Who is this?” he asked.

“Regina.”

“Oh, hi, Regina. How are you?” he said. “How did you get my number?”

“Don't worry about that; I did. Why didn't you say hello to me?”

“I planned to; I did,” Jimmy said. “Then some other things happened and when it was time to go, I never saw you again.”

“I was there the whole time, with Sharon Prince, Sharon King and Debra Hall,” Regina said. “You just ignored me. Eventually we went up to the third level, where the lounge is. But I was so disappointed. I know you saw me.”

“Why didn't you just come over to me?”

“I see you're the same old Jimmy.”

“Really? How?”

“You've started an argument in less than a minute, that's how,” she said.

“You called me with an attitude; not the other way around.”

Suddenly, there was a familiar silence and awkwardness for both of them. They'd had an explosive relationship in a good and bad way. Intense passion, intense arguments.

Finally, it hit Jimmy that he had grown and should handle Regina differently.

“So, listen, I'm sorry I didn't get to say hello to you,” he said. “But how are you? I did see you and you looked great.”

“I couldn't have looked that great; you would have come over,” she said.

“Regina, I have apologized and I'm trying to move on,” he said, getting exasperated. “You gonna move on with me or am I gonna get the same old Regina from ten years ago?”

“Okay, Jimmy, I'm sorry,” she said. “I was just so excited to see you and then to not get a hug and a kiss made me mad.”

“That should make you disappointed maybe, but not mad.”

“Well, I'm all right now,” she said. “Where you staying?”

“Why?” Jimmy asked.

“Because I want to come over and see you,” she answered. “Don't you think we should spend some time together? It's been too long.”

“I guess it depends on what you mean by that,” he said. “I'm married and I hear you're married. So we have some limitations.”

“Jim, we have too much history to have limitations,” Regina said.

He knew what that meant. One of the reasons he liked Regina was her boldness. When she wanted sex, she asked for it.

“I'm not messing with you, Regina,” he said. “We can get together for a drink and to catch up, but that's it.”

“Yeah, right; I've heard that before,” she said. “Where are you staying?”

“The Marriott.”

“Waterside?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Are you serious?” Regina said. “Me, too.”

Jimmy closed his eyes and dropped his head. He did not want that kind of access to Regina. As adamant as he was about not giving in to her, he also knew he could be weak to her. They'd had a hot and heavy past that still burned in his mind, all these years later.

“Well, let's meet at the bar on the mezzanine level,” he said. “How's nine o'clock?”

“Okay,” she said. “I'll be the one at the bar in the sexy dress. The short, sexy dress. Don't be late.”

Jimmy disconnected the call and dismissed thoughts of Regina. His thoughts shifted quickly to Monica, although he did not know exactly what he would say to her. They'd had conversations in the past about one thing or another that put him on the edge. Not the edge of leaving, but the edge of
thinking
about leaving. It was that kind of marriage. They loved hard, but dealt with myriad hard times because of Monica's sensitivity regarding fidelity—or the idea of infidelity. Growing up, she lay awake in bed and listened to her mother and father argue about his late-nights out with “women not good enough to have their own men,” as her mother called them.

She never understood how her mom accepted her dad's philandering—they remained married, going on their thirty-fourth year. Still, Regina vowed to never let a man treat her as her father had her mother. That position was paramount in her developing what Jimmy called a “psychosis” that made her question anything that seemed out of sorts to her.

More than twice Jimmy underwent a battery of questions and
drama over his actions, questions and drama he found unwarranted. “All men have something to hide,” Monica had said. “It's just a matter of where they hide it.”

Once, they did not speak for three days because Jimmy arrived home after midnight one Monday night. When he told her he had been at a sports bar with his friends watching a Monday Night Football game, just as he had told her he would, she told him he was “a liar. Men do not hang out this late unless women are involved.”

Another time she refused him sex because she read one of his e-mails from a female that said:
“Thanks for walking me to my car.”
Monica's position was he walked her to the car after a date with her. His position was she was a co-worker who left the building after dark and he did the gentlemanly thing to make sure she was safe.

Arguments Monica initiated that questioned his commitment and morals ate at Jimmy like acid. He loved his wife but hated some of her positions. And here they were again, at a relationship crossroads for what he deemed a logical choice.

“So, I received your text,” he said when Monica answered the phone. “What are you so upset about? And you have some decisions to make? What does that mean?”

“It means, Jimmy, that I'm tired of feeling like I should sit at home while you gallivant all over the place, chasing women,” she said. “I just can't—”

“What, Monica?” Jimmy interrupted. “You can't what? You can't trust me? That's a real problem. Let's just put it out there because I'm tired of it. You're one of those women who cannot stand prosperity. I have not cheated on you. Period. And yet all I get from you is doubts. I can't take it anymore. You're going to have to do something or we really are going to have some problems.”

In that one tirade, Jimmy put the onus on Monica, who could not get a word in because Jimmy was in a rage.

“There are men who do whatever they like, married or not,” he said. “They cheat just because they can. There are men who consider being with other women a sport, as if it's a game. I know these men. I'm not one of them. And here's the crazy part: They get no grief from their wives because their wives trust them. And here I am, being faithful, and I catch hell from you almost every day about one thing or another. Well, I'm sick of it. It's stupid, but mostly it's wrong and I don't deserve it.”

“You talking all loud and with conviction doesn't convince me of anything, James,” Monica said. “I know what I feel, and I feel like you'd rather be out there among a bunch of women than with your wife. And I don't deserve that.”

Both of them were seething, and Jimmy knew that was a conflict that was combustible. But he didn't care.

“Do you like drama or are you just dumb?” he went on.

“You calling me ‘dumb'?” she said.

“I didn't,” Jimmy said. “I asked if you were ‘dumb.' You have to be
something
to ignore what I said to you. But I'm going to take my time and repeat it so maybe you feel me on it: I have not cheated on you. Period. If you don't believe me, if that is not good enough for you, then I don't know what else to say.”

Monica did not know where to go with that one. Jimmy had effectively put her in defensive mode. But that did not stop her from firing right back at him.

“I heard what you said, but that doesn't mean it's the truth,” she said. “Any man who is proud of his wife would take her to his homecoming. Any man who wouldn't must not be proud of her or must have a reason for not wanting her around. And with a man, that reason is usually another woman.”