Naughtier than Nice (12 page)

I pulled up in front of my home and my wayward thoughts went back to my fiancé. To my family. I smiled at our home, but it was a heavy smile. I sat in the car for a few minutes. I was disappointed with myself, guilty for enjoying myself without them. Felt bad for not wanting to come back to this home tonight. I had been with Blue awhile. We talked a lot, but it was for the sake of talking; there was no new information, so the conversations with Beale felt different, felt inspired. With Blue, most talk had become about the business of the relationship, the business of caring for Mo, the business of dealing with her mother, the business of trying to survive from week to week. How this started with Beale had been through simple words, through chat, and it had been refreshing having a light conversation with a stranger. That spark created a flame. It had felt wonderful to be away from all the things I carried.

I showered, then checked on Monica, saw she was out cold, before I eased into bed with Blue.

He asked, “How was World Stage tonight?”

I jumped. “You're awake.”

“Was up writing. Worked on my screenplay about an hour. Was tempted to go over to Vince's and Dana's and see if their daughter Kwanzaa could stay here with Mo while I went to watch you perform.”

“That would have been a nice surprise, to look in the crowd and see your face.”

“Was writing and waiting on you. Never saw you dress up like that for poetry in the hood.”

“Can't be sweats and trainers all the time. Have to represent my family when I leave the house.”

“I watched you get ready to leave. You changed clothes a half dozen times, put your hair in just as many styles, then put on a brand of perfume I'd never smelled on you before.”

“I knew Livvy was going to be dressed up.”

“You were nervous before you hurried out of here, kept redoing your hair. I saw you putting on makeup. You were being so persnickety. Your energy was so different before you left. Mo noticed it too.”

I said, “I ran into your friend Tanya Obayomi tonight.”

“My friend?”

“She made a point to tell me that y'all kick it and work out together. What's that all about?”

“She doesn't work out with me. Me and the homies were pushing weights and she joined in. I asked her a few questions about Beale Streets. His background is very interesting, that's all.”

“She sees it differently. She makes it sound like you were on a hot date.”

“Come work out with me, if you want. You have a membership. I have nothing to hide.”

He asked me if I was sleepy. I wanted to say I was exhausted, but I shook my head no and once again became an eccedentesiast—a master at hiding my misery and pain behind a fake smile.

He pulled my
Walking Dead
T-shirt over my head, pulled my bottoms away from me. He was ravenous, wanted to go down on me, but I took a deep breath, felt the pain from my heart being torn, being broken and rebroken, and told myself that I never knew when the last time we touched, the last time we made love, would be the last time. I felt the clock counting down between us. His soldiers had no weapons. Each time we were intimate began to feel
like it might be the last time. As I had done to Beale, I masturbated Blue, didn't want to play the Honey to his Mr. Marcus and fellate, just wanted to use the rhythm of my hand, discharge his angst in two or three moments, and relieve myself of what felt like a burden, but he wanted more. He moved my hand away. He was a man and wanted to make love like adults, not like randy teenagers parked on the side of the road. I tried to go down on Blue, changed my mind about playing the role of Honey, didn't want him inside of me, but he pulled my mouth to his.

He asked, “Have I been neglecting you?”

I didn't reply. We kissed, a shallow kiss, a kind kiss, a kiss that checked the reservoir of love, then stopped and stared at each other in uncertainty, wide awake, inhaling, exhaling, pondering.

He said, “Put on a pair of heels. Put on the ones you wore tonight.”

I eased my feet back into my shoes, then searched for music on my phone, Sampha on my mind, played the song “Without,” danced the erotic way the girl in the British singer's video danced, danced with emotion, feeling myself. I danced feeling Beale. I couldn't deny the place I existed, the between, this dimly lit place in between here and there. I had created my own purgatory.

Blue had enough of being teased and pulled me to him, kissed up and down my legs, made me tingle. I pulled his mouth to mine, sucked his tongue, opened my legs, and encouraged him to rest between my heated thighs. I pulled his T-shirt away from him. He stood and pulled his boxers off, his power strong, then eased the door closed before he came back to the bed and found his place between my thighs. He licked the curve of my lips. He sucked my bottom lip gently. He sucked my tongue.

There was no way to avoid what was next, what was inevitable on this night.

We kissed and he wiggled until he was on my opening, until he was on my slickness, until that part of him was wiggling and sliding inside of me. It hurt. It felt like my vagina refused him, had closed.
Blue moistened his fingers, moistened me, found the right angle, made me open up, and went deep.

He whispered, “Something wrong?”

“I'm fine.”

“This is like the first time we made love. You're closing up on me. You're tense.”

Blue handled me, increased the depth, and increased the frequency of his thrusts. I wondered how many people had affairs and had to go home and make love once again to keep the peace.

Outside of myself I sat across the room and watched Blue and the version of me that was more complex than any person I had ever encountered, watched a damaged woman who was struggling not to come unhinged, not to yell for Blue to stop making her feel so good so she could break down and confess her moral dilemma. I wrote in pristine handwriting, turned page after page, stayed outside of myself and analyzed myself on a profound level, until orgasm tickled me once again, until it made it hard to write.

Orgasm rose and I rejoined myself, became his fiancée, his future wife, a childless woman.

We found a good rhythm.

Blue rose up on his knees. He was over me, on all fours, and I held on to him, was suspended, hanging down from his body as I moved against him. Our bed rocked, squeaked. He massaged my spot. I pulled my lips in as I always do, tried to bite my arm to muffle my sounds, but it was overwhelming, at an enormous level, and I became vocal. So did Blue. He moaned like an old man singing an ancient hymn during vacation Bible school. He put it on me good, stroked Beale out of my head, and when I surrendered to his loving, it was so damn wonderful. A thousand times Blue told me he loved me. I wondered if love would be enough. I wanted a future, not promises. I cried. I cried a thousand tears. Tears had a purpose; they were designed to force a body to cool down when emotions became extreme, be it happiness or sadness. I cried. I cried. I cried.
So much guilt rose. So much sadness. Part of me wished I had stayed in that SUV with Beale, had gone to Hollywood, and had turned my back on this world. I could've followed him and had all the things that I wished for. It hurt to love Blue, but I did love him. Blue was on me, his weight like that of the world, a man whose great-great-grandfather was a slave while my great-great-great-grandfather suffered the same at the hands of European-born Christians. We had a connection deeper than I would ever be able to understand. I cried guilt and passion and love and desire, I cried for all the foolish, maybe archaic things I wanted for me in this life. His hunger for me was out of hibernation. Blue reignited my hunger for him. I was starved to have what we used to have.

In the beginning I had only wanted him. I wanted us to be a family. I wanted to have his children.

Then my mind completed that circle of thoughts, took me back to the start.

That was no longer possible. We could not share DNA and create a new branch.

I returned to the source of our problem, to the moment I had felt betrayed. He would orgasm and it would have power, would leave his body at twenty miles per hour, but would not be strong enough to crack a soft and fertile egg. I held him, put my fingernails in his flesh, almost told him to stop, stop, stop. In that moaning moment, I detached myself from myself again and studied myself once again. I was here with Blue, but I was also seated across the room, dressed in a business suit, hair pulled back, low heels on my feet, glasses on the bridge of my nose, as I held a legal pad and wrote notes, scrutinized what was in front of me. I watched her experience the weakness that penetration brings. Mouth opened, she gazed toward me. As the small bedroom heated from passion, I analyzed the good girl forced to turn bad.

I said, “Blue is filled with envy that has manifested itself as passion and creativity tonight.”

She panted, “Okay. Okay. Okay.”

“He is giving it to you the way a jealous man fucks his most prized possession.”

“Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.”

“Do you think he knows? I think he does. His expression says he feels things are different.”

“About to come.”

“Don't come for him. Only come for Beale. Only for Beale. We only come for Beale.”

Soon I had to squeeze my legs together. The heat spread and desire awakened between my thighs. I watched them in a seductive war, one both physical and of the wills. So much determination on both parts. So much desperation. He held her hair, forced her to kiss him while he stroked. I scribbled as fast as I could, my handwriting rapidly becoming illegible, scribbled notes until I had to drop the pen and pull my glasses away, until I had to forcefully open my blouse, until I could no longer breathe. I squeezed my thighs and slid from the chair to the floor, trembled as I crawled back to the bed, moaned as I crawled and rejoined the version of me on the bed, was unable to remain separated from the version of me with Blue. He lifted me, carried me across the room, sat me on the dresser, took me that way, made the dresser tap into the wall, made things tumble to the floor. Borrowed shoes fell from my feet as he carried me back to the bed. He put me on all fours. Again I fought the overwhelming need to orgasm, the need Blue had created. Coming would make me feel unfaithful to the man I was cheating with. Still, as he gave me measured strokes, as he danced inside of me, my reluctance to orgasm was weakened by his conviction, and I surrendered. It was an orgasm that put light where there had been darkness. I felt intoxicated and enamored and my orgasm created rainbows as I danced with stardust.

I said his name over and over. “Blue, Blue, oh, Blue. Oh Blue, Blue, Blue.”

Blue grunted. Grunted. He grew inside of me. He was at the point where he needed to come. He was powerful. It was one of those sessions where you weren't sure what was going to break first, the bed or someone's back. What surrendered first was the footboard. The bed came loose and slid forward. We slid that way, but Blue didn't stop, didn't pause, just took me missionary, found his position and kept on doing the damn thing. That angle made him go that much deeper, surprisingly deeper, and made his madness feel so damn sweet. The footboard had detached from the bed and he kept going until the headboard collapsed. Inhaling and exhaling heat, I clamped my hand over my mouth, but I had already waked the sleeping gods and shook all devils. He was trying to give me death by orgasm. I said his name over and over, as if that was the only word left in my vocabulary. There were three faint taps on the door. There was a pause. There were three more distant taps.
Mommy.
Daddy.
There was the voice of an angel tickling my ears while I was drunk on the sense of infinity.
Mommy.
The cherub sounded like she was a thousand million bazillion gazillion miles away.

Mo had come to the door and knocked. Her knocks went unheeded. Monica went away and we assumed she had gone back to her bedroom. Mo hurried to the kitchen and found the keys to the lock on the bedroom door. When I was facedown, butt up, biting pillow, gripping sheets, and Blue was dominating me Froggy style, when I was in a position where his weight made it impossible for me to move, the bedroom door opened. Blue was at his moment, singing his song of orgasm. I called out his name and Blue mistook my saying his name as my urging him to finish. I became a bronco. Blue took it to another level, shocked me, made my love come down hard and fast, made me feel three degrees of glory. Before I could raise my head and sever myself from my unwanted rapture, before I could break from the powerful rapture that held me in bondage, as I trembled and cried, Monica turned on the lights.
Everyone screamed, shrieked, or cursed. Monica witnessed the two-headed beast. The four eyes of the butt-naked, growling, moaning two-headed beast looked up from a bed that had been rocked until it came apart and saw her. Monica fled the room in wide-eyed terror, bumped into the wall, fell down, got back up running, screaming like a child in a Grimm Brothers' fairy tale, one where the beast devoured the grandmother and the child before being killed by being split open with the ax of the huntsman. We scrambled to get to our feet, both of us freaking out. We looked at the room, a room that looked like it had been hit by an isolated earthquake, then engaged in rock-paper-scissors to see who had to check on Mo.

Cutting Franklin's essence out of my hair wasn't enough.

During the days around Valentine's Day, Franklin stopped by my office, left candy, left flowers, and the receptionist made it known he was not welcome on my property and no gifts would be accepted on his behalf. Posting his photo in color and the size of legal paper helped. His face was circled in red with a slash across the center.
SOME THINGS CAN'T BE RESTO
RED, NOT EVEN BY THE
KING OF
RESTORATION
PREVARICATION
was written across the bottom in a bold, large font.

The only Franklin I wanted in my office was on a hundred-dollar bill.

Franklin Carruthers didn't like his photo being on the door, and he ripped it down.

He snapped, told them to tell me that he loathed me for doing that, but he also still loved me and would never stop trying to get me back. He ripped the second down, and when a third photo with the “no Franklin” symbol and the same slogan was put up, he didn't hesitate to rip that one down too.

I had a hundred of those fliers made.

I was tempted to hire people to put them on car windows at his business, to put them on street poles and in the public park near his home, but I didn't go there. I didn't let my anger get the best and make a fool of me. I didn't do anything that could cause a lawsuit against me. My revenge was moving on.

But he refused to move on.

After that, the bastard stopped by my home, rang the doorbell forty-eleven times. I didn't answer. I hid inside of my own damn home, in the dark, armed. I heard him rip the “no Franklin” photo from the front door and ball it up. He cursed under his breath, and then I heard him take out keys. My heart tried to break out of my chest. His key no longer fit the locks. All had been changed the day after I kicked him out.

He went to the garage and punched in the code to open the double doors, but that code had been changed. He checked the windows again. I should've called the police then. In the end I would wish I had dialed 911 two times over. Two hours later, he drove away. Two hours after that he came back.

He called. My phone had only been on ten minutes. I stared at my phone in silent horror, hoping it would stop ringing, shouted when I realized he wasn't going to stop calling, so I answered, panting.

He asked, “Where are you?”

“It's Valentine's Day and I'm at my new boyfriend's phat-ass crib in Bel Air, boo.”

“You have a boyfriend?”

“Look, boo. We were in the middle of doing some serious thangs, and you know Valentine's Day is also known as Mandatory Blow Job Day, so I won't try to talk with my mouth full. Stop disturbing us.”

I hung up on him. He crept to the front of my home, tried to peep in the windows.

All the lights were off and I went from room to room as he moved around my home.

None of my windows were unlocked. That asshole was actually trying to get inside.

One of my neighbor's friends, Billie, passed by rocking her yellow Ducati. She slowed down, then turned around, came back to the front of my house, called out to Franklin, asked him what he
was doing. Franklin marched back to his car. He picked up his cellular, dialed, and my phone rang again. I rejected the call. My house phone rang. I went and unplugged the phone. The girl on the yellow Ducati sat there on her motorcycle, not leaving. Billie took a photo of Franklin's license plates. She yelled at him, her cellular in her hand, threatened to punch in the number to the police. Franklin flipped her off and pulled away. She sat there five more minutes before she left too.

I would have to thank Billie for that. I would have to bake her a cake. Franklin was gone, but I sat for three hours, jumping at every sound, unnerved like I was living in a Stephen King horror novel.

I hoped that telling him I was seeing somebody else would make him back off.

I hoped he'd tell his wife that I had a new man and she would back off as well.

But the calls from Mrs. Carruthers continued.

Franklin kept stopping by my home.

I slept with one eye open, gun by my side, its safety off.