Lookin' For Luv (43 page)
Authors: Carl Weber
She sat in her parked car, finishing her cigarette, until she calmed down and decided exactly what she would do. Tyrone had given her the key only hours earlier, and here she was, preparing to use it under such horrible circumstances. But her only other choice was to go to a hotel, and she couldn’t bear the thought of being alone after the ordeal she had just endured.
She entered Tyrone’s building and slowly made her way to his apartment. Before taking the key from around her neck, she took a deep breath. Once she went in and explained everything to Tyrone, she knew there was no turning back. She opened the door and quietly called his name.
In the darkened room she heard him stirring as he awoke and switched on the lamp by his bed. He focused his eyes and looked stunned when he saw Sylvia standing in his doorway in her fur. Still too groggy to be sure, he thought she looked like she was shivering.
“A little warm for a mink coat, isn’t it, baby?”
He walked across the room to hold her. He felt her body trembling as she burst into tears. Leading her to the bed, he helped her sit down. When he tried to help her take off the coat, she grabbed it and wrapped it more tightly around her.
“What is it, Sylvia? What happened, baby?” He held her tightly and rocked her.
“M-m-m-my husband ... tried to rape me.” She burst into tears again. Tyrone held her tight, and between her sobs Sylvia recounted the attack.
“What?” Tyrone shouted, standing up. “That’s it, you’re staying with me from now on.”
Sylvia nodded her head sadly in agreement. “Tyrone? There’s something else I need to tell you. Something I should have told you a long time ago.”
“You can tell me anything, Syl. I love you.” Tyrone sat back down and rubbed her back to calm her trembling body.
“I don’t know how to tell you this.” She was no longer worried about Maurice but about her relationship with Tyrone.
“Don’t worry, just say it.”
“My husband is Maurice Johnson.”
“Maurice Johnson? As in my boss?” Tyrone stared at her in shock.
“Yes.” Sylvia lowered her head.
“Damn, that guy’s got a file on me two inches thick. You sure know how to complicate things, don’t you?” He smiled at her. “It’s okay.”
“You’re not mad that I didn’t tell you sooner?”
“Mad? If I really cared about who your husband was, I would have asked you a long time ago.” He looked into her eyes. “All I need to know is, do you still love him?”
“No, Tyrone, I don’t love him. I love you. I love you so much.” She kissed him.
He held her all night, soothing her each time her tears started again. They told each other repeatedly how much they loved one another, and Tyrone knew that he would never let her go back to her home.
“Sylvia,” he whispered as he saw the first signs of day-break through his window. She rolled over to face him. “Sylvia, where do we go from here, baby?”
“Divorce court.” She wrapped her arms around him, and they fell asleep peacefully.
34
KEVIN AND ALICIA
Kevin reached his apartment building, winded from the effort. He had parked his car several blocks away and crept through a few backyards so that he would not be visible on the street. In the two weeks since he had broken up with Denise, she had literally been stalking him. Nearly every night she had been waiting in her car in front of his house when he came home. He had tried to avoid speaking to her, but one night she sat outside and blew her horn until he agreed to come out and talk to her. The conversation was mostly repetitive, with Denise pleading with him for another chance to prove herself and Kevin refusing. Finally she drove off in anger but vowed to be back to change his mind.
Since that night Kevin had been staying at Antoine’s place, sneaking back only occasionally for clothes. The harassment had gotten to such a point that he hated going back to the apartment, even just to get his clothes. When school closed for Easter vacation in a few weeks, he planned to visit Mama for a week, hoping that by the time he returned to New York, Denise would have given up on her little crusade to win him back.
In spite of the inconvenience the arrangement with Antoine had worked out well, since Antoine spent most nights at Keisha’s apartment. Kevin’s only complaint was that his bookish friend didn’t have cable television. This wasn’t really a problem, but tonight Kevin wanted to see the big fight on Pay-Per-View. Normally he would have just called Tyrone and asked to watch the fight at his place, but with Tyrone moving Sylvia in, that was no longer an option. So he had snuck through the neighborhood to get back to his own place to watch the fight.
As he reached his door, he was grateful once again that his entrance was on the side. He didn’t even bother to peek around the comer of the house to look for Denise’s car. As he quickly closed the door behind him, he turned to see that his answering machine message light was blinking furiously. Fifteen messages. This woman was not letting up.
He pressed the erase button without bothering to listen to one message. In the past week he had received a minimum of twenty calls a day from her so he was certain he knew what these would say.
During the preliminary fights Kevin heard a car horn blaring outside and froze, cursing under his breath. He was certain it was Denise and walked to the window, expecting to see her white BMW in front of the building. Fortunately it was just a cab waiting for one of his neighbors. He breathed a sigh of relief and returned to watching the fight. After a while he fell asleep and missed most of the main event fight. He didn’t wake again until the phone startled him at midnight.
“Hello,” he answered, still half asleep. He bolted upright when he came to his senses and realized what a mistake he had made by picking up the phone.
“Kevin, honey, please don’t hang up,” Denise pleaded. “All I want is ten minutes of your time. I promise, after that I’ll leave you alone.”
Kevin didn’t answer her right away. Instead, he walked over to his window and glanced out. Spotting Denise’s car across the street from his building, he felt as if he were ready to explode.
“Denise, I can see your car parked outside. Why don’t you just go home?”
“Kevin, unless you want me to start blowing my horn, you’ll come out here.” Denise’s tone was dead serious.
Angered by her threat, he dropped his phone and stormed out of his apartment. He walked across the street to her car and glared at her as she rolled down the window.
“Hi, handsome” She smiled as if nothing were wrong.
“This is getting really stupid and really old, Denise. Why can’t you leave me alone? Can’t you see I don’t want you?” He raised his hands in exasperation.
“I didn’t come over here to fight, Kevin. I came over here to talk.” Suddenly her tone became quite threatening. “Don’t paint me into a comer, because you won’t like what you see.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Do you really think I’m going to let you go so that you can be with Alicia, or some other bitch? What are you, fucking crazy? If you’re not going to be with me, you’re not going to be with anybody.”
Her threat actually made him take a step back. His expression let her know that her message was being heard loud and clear.
“You’re threatening me?”
“You’re damn right I’m threatening you. If you can’t see we’re meant to be together, then I’m going to make you see it. And if you think I’m a pain in the ass now, I get much worse.”
Kevin looked at her with pure hatred for the first time. Clenching his fists, it took everything inside of him to turn around and walk toward his house instead of slapping the taste out of her mouth.
“Don’t you walk away from me, Kevin! Don’t you dare walk away from me! I made you the man you are today!” she screamed after him, getting out of her car.
“You have got to be kidding.” He turned to face her, standing in the middle of the street. “What are you, my mama?”
“I might as well be! Look at you! Everything about you has Denise written all over it.” She gave him a superior smile as she pointed at what he was wearing. “That sweat suit, those sneakers, that diamond earring. I bought all of it. Not to mention all that furniture in your house. You were living out of boxes before you met me, and you think you don’t need me?”
“You know what, Denise, you can have all this shit back.” He took off both shoes and threw them at her car. “I swear to God, you can have all this shit. Just leave me the fuck alone!” He took the earring out of his lobe and stepped out of the sweat suit so that he was standing in the middle of the street in a pair of boxers and his socks.
“Ahh, that’s much better, now I don’t feel like some cheap gigolo. I’ll make sure to call a mover so you can get your damn furniture back tomorrow.” He suddenly felt very free.
“So, do you want me to take your sister’s life back too?” she asked him viciously. Kevin flinched from the sting of such a cold remark, and she was glad to see she had reached him. She continued to try to inflict pain.
“That’s right, it was I who saved your sister when you and your mama couldn’t do it, remember? I would think you’d at least be grateful for that.”
Kevin lowered his head, unable to look Denise in the eye. She was right, she did help save his sister’s life, and he did owe her his gratitude.
Suddenly her tone softened. “And I’d do it again, Kevin, because I love you.”
“But, Denise, I don’t love you,” Kevin pleaded with her to understand.
“You don’t mean that, Kevin,” she told him with certainty. “And even if you do, I’ll tell everyone you raped me before I let you be with someone else.”
He gasped at her as the impact of her threat hit him.
“I mean it, Kevin. I’ve got enough panties with your sperm in them to make a convincing case, and we’ve had our share of public arguments.” She got back into her car and offered him one final threat.
“Just so we understand each other, Kevin. I may love you, but I’ll visit you behind bars before I’ll let you be with someone else. I’ll be talking to you real soon.” She blew him a kiss as she sped away in her BMW
Kevin picked up his clothes and walked back into his apartment. He was worried about the threat of rape charges. There was no guarantee she could even do it, or make any charges stick, but the prospect of it was frightening. A wealthy white woman still received the benefit of the doubt over a young black man, for the most part, in this country. As he sat in his living room, contemplating the possibility of Denise acting on her threat, his phone rang. It jolted him.
He grabbed the phone angrily. “What is it now, Denise? More threats?”
“Unc-uncle Kevin? I need your help.” Kevin heard a child’s voice through the sobs but couldn’t make out who it was.
“Michael? Is that you, Michael?”
Kevin was surprised to hear from the boy. They hadn’t seen each other since the breakup, and Michael had never called him on the phone. Some residual feelings of anger at Michael still lingered, so Kevin assumed the boy once again did not have the best intentions. He figured the boy was probably having a disagreement with his mother and needed someone to bail him out.
“I need your help, Uncle Kevin.” The boy was crying as he spoke and sounded genuinely scared. Kevin began to wonder if maybe he wasn’t crying wolf this time.
“Just relax, Michael. Try to stop crying. What’s going on, little man? And what’s all that noise I hear?” Kevin knew that his voice was calming the boy, because the sobs on the other end diminished slightly.
“My daddy’s beating my mommy up. She’s locked in the bathroom. Daddy said he’s gonna kill her. He already hit her with a baseball bat.”
Kevin could hear the commotion in the background. It sounded as if Trevor was trying to break everything in the apartment, shouting every obscenity in the book as he did it.
Immediately Kevin assumed Trevor was drunk. He wasn’t sure if this was something he should get involved in. After all, Alicia was the one who had let Trevor back into her life, so in some respects Kevin thought this was her own fault. He considered just telling Michael to call the police, and staying out of it himself. But even as he thought this, he realized it was time to grow up and put his own hurt feelings aside. This woman was the victim of violence. In his heart he knew no woman deserved that, even if it was a woman who had broken his own heart. He still loved Alicia after all that had happened. He became enraged at the image of her on the receiving end of Trevor’s baseball bat. Anger rose in him as his protective instincts took over. He knew he had to help her.
“Please, Uncle Kevin, you’re the only one I know who is strong enough to beat up my daddy,” Michael begged.
“I’ll be there in a few minutes, Michael. Just go make sure the door is unlocked so that I can get in. Then get yourself right back in your room and put a chair under the doorknob. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Uncle Kevin. Just hurry, please! My mommy really needs you.”
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