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Authors: Tony Lindsay

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BOOK: One Dead Lawyer
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And then she squeezed my thigh and let her hand fall to the inside of it. Her hand was less than a quarter of an inch away from my jones. I had held myself for Regina close to four months. I was not a man to be played with. I told myself that if Daphne kept that up I was going to take her upstairs to get something I needed very badly. She'd better leave me alone, I told myself, but I didn't say a thing to her. I checked to see if the boy could see her hand under the table; he couldn't.
“Mr. Price, do you know what I thought about this morning?”
“Uh-uh, Stanley. Tell me.”
I had a mouth full of grits and a fork full of eggs waiting to go in, and to my surprise Daphne's hand had gone under my shorts. She was maneuvering for a hand full on my jones. I flinched, but I didn't get out of the chair.
There was no doubt in my mind about the inappropriateness of what was going on. Daphne was Regina's friend. Regina was my ex-wife. Her friend's hand should not have been on my jones, but I did nothing to correct the inappropriate behavior because four months was a long time without the needed touch of a woman.
“That little treasure chest you made me when I was a shorty. You know I still got it. I use it for a jewelry box.”
“You kidding me, Stanley, you still got that box?”
She was stroking me now and her touch was ever so soft. My jones responded respectively but I didn't stop eating. When I looked over at her she nodded her head yes and smiled.
“Yes sir, I do, but like I said, I don't keep nails and bones and stuff in it now. Mostly I use it for my gold and silver chains.”
“You wear a lot of chains?”
“Well, you know I got a little bling bling,” he said, grinning. A portion of last night's wannabe thug was starting to show.
“I don't wear chains anymore, Stanley. Would you like to know why?”
“Sure.” He humped his shoulders slightly.
I put the fork down, drained my glass of red Kool-Aid and began. “I had a dream—no it wasn't a dream, it was more like a thought. I wondered what our slave ancestors would think if they came back and saw so many African American people in chains. Would they think we were still burdened? Would they think that the white man still has us bound? Would they understand that the chains they died to have removed, we choose to wear? How could I explain to an ancestor that might have died in chains that I wanted a chain around my neck? Our ancestors chopped off limbs not to be chained. I don't even chain down my dogs, but I was wearing a chain around my neck. Think about that, young brother. I did.”
Daphne's hand went from my jones to the gold chain around her neck. Now that wasn't my intention when I decided to spread a little knowledge. I was trying to put some fat on the boy's head, not stop his mama's hand from playing with my other head.
“That's deep, D. I never thought about my chains that way.”
I picked my fork up and went back to eating. Without really planning to I nudged Daphne's thigh with mine.
She giggled and said, “You are full of surprises. We are really going to have to get to know one another. I would have never guessed you where such a conscious brother.”
I don't believe sharing one thought qualified me as a conscious bother, but I do enjoy sharing my revelations. She placed her hand back on my jones and I was pleased.
“Mr. Price, I try to run a couple of miles every morning. I don't know if you know it, but I'm an all-state distance runner.” He looked to me to see if I approved. I beamed him a smile.
“I've been running on a team since sixth grade. I kinda want to go for a run this morning, but . . . um you know... I ain't never been down this way without a ride. I mean I know a couple of guys, but just to be out running, I don't know . . . what do you think?”
“Are you asking me if it's safe for you to go running?”
“It ain't like I'm scared or nothing. I just don't know.”
He was a wannabe gangster the night before, but by the morning light he was a cautious state runner.
“Yes, Stanley, it would be fine to run. There is a park four blocks up. You'll see a lot of folks out running. I suggest you leave that long chain, though. No sense in attracting attention. And go out the back door. It's closer to the park.”
After talking to the boy the previous night, I figured he was in no real danger. The thugs wanted money to fix the car, not his death.
Stanley peeled off his Sean John jacket and long gold chain. He tightened up his elf-like gym shoes and left out the back door. It was just his mama and me. I looked at the stove clock. It read seven forty-five. My brother wasn't in the office, and I didn't know a lawyer who started work before nine. The time was there.
“D, last night over Regina's I watched you with Chester. I watched how you held and cared for your son.” She reached under my shorts with no hesitation and grabbed hold. “It made me remember all the time you used to spend with Stanley and the rest of the kids on the block. But mostly I thought about the time you spent with my son, fixing his bikes, showing him how to fly a kite, teaching him how to swim. You're the one who got him into running track. Remember? He would try and jog with you on Saturday mornings.” Gripping it, she moved her hand up and down its length.
“How I forgot all that I don't know, but it came back to me last night and made me want you. For the first time in years I was attracted to the man and not the man's money. I want you, D, in a country kind a way. Like my country grandmamma used to want my granddaddy.
“My grandmamma used to tell me it turned her on watching my granddaddy put a log on the fire, it turned her on watching him play with their kids, it turned her own watching him eat the food she cooked and it turned her on watching him put on a shirt she washed.
“When you walked in this kitchen grinning at the breakfast I fixed, you turned me on; when you covered me with that sheet last night, you turned me on; and when you said you would help my son, you turned me on. You turned me on in a country sort of way.
“I want you to hold me like we was in the country. Hold me like we was in a one-room shack with a busted screen door, on a slack board bed with a burlap sack mattress. I want to smell the fields and hear the chickens scratching. I want you to make me want some buttermilk and hot water cornbread. Send me to the country with this thang right here.” She was pulling with one hand and caressing with the other.
“Last night me and Regina was drinking and she started talking. She told me how you thought she was calling you over for sex. I listened to her like a good friend should, but all the time I was thinking ‘Lord, I wish he would have come over my house looking for some.'
“I told her I had to go home, but she kept pouring the wine and talking about the way, ohhh baby, the way you used to open her up, aaalllll the way up inside. She made it sound so good. And I ain't been opened in so long. When I left my friend's house wild horses couldn't stop me from coming to you.
“I was drunk off her wine and a bit of my own cognac, and yes all the talking she did about you got me horny. I wanted you last night because I was drunk and horny. But I'm not drunk now, and I still want you.”
That was all a brother could take. Regina bragged on me, but didn't want me, and there a woman sat who came to me because of what another woman said. I scooped her thin self up out of that chair and carried her upstairs to my California king-sized bed. When I got her to the bed I grabbed the top of her sweatpants and pulled them down while she was unzipping her jacket.
The sight of her breasts stunned me, and I sincerely hoped the image of them was forged in my mind forever. Remembering breasts like hers is one of the things that makes an old man smile while rocking away his last days on a porch.
“I bought these eighteen months ago,” she said looking at me, “and a real man hasn't touched them yet.”
They stood up like a porn star's. I reached for them but she moved out of my reach and lay back against one of my overstuffed feather pillows.
In my past experience big breasts were never perky and they hardly ever had long nipples attached. Slightly stuck and uncertain of whether to caress them, suck them or lay my head upon them, I allowed my open mouth to lead me.
Minutes later she whispered, “What you're doing feels good, D, but I'm in need something else. Right now, baby, I want you to bring the country on.”
I wanted to bring it on. A brother was hard as a block of government cheese. I wasn't hesitating due to a lack of readiness. What was needed, however, was some calming time.
Premature ejaculation was knocking at my door. After four months with no sex, a brother could have easily gotten over stimulated. After I took a few deep, controlled breaths, I got between her open thighs. Soft, subtle resistance is what I found. It was easy enough to enter the head and a little more, but after that her warm softness encompassed me.
When I was a child, my grandmother would stew me apples, and with just the slightest push of my finger, the skin of the apple would open and my finger would be in the tender meat of the fruit. Sunken into the flesh of Daphne, I wanted to go deeper into delicateness so I pushed and pushed until I thought I heard her whimper.
I tried to pull back, but she grabbed hold of my butt and said, “No, no, don't you dare. Keep it there, slow and easy,
D. Real slow, real easy, slow and easy, push it easy just like you doing.” She pulled me into her.
After a while I realized it wasn't whimpering I heard. She was humming. She began rotating her hips beneath me and her humming got louder and her grip on my backside got tighter. The deeper I went, the more she rolled her hips. I wanted to pull out and stroke but she wouldn't allow me to retreat. When all I had to offer was in her, she stopped humming and locked her legs around the small of my back and humped. All I could do was stay in deep and that seemed to be all she wanted.
Beneath me I felt her quiver, What was tight and moist moments ago became slippery, wet and loose. The restraining grip that held my butt left. Her arms lay listless at her sides. Free to move, I did.
Her humming began again with my strokes, faint and barely audible, the looseness of her tightened. She dug nails into the top of my shoulders. I grunted in pain, but her humming wouldn't let it be heard.
Exactly what it was I don't know. Men call it, “hitting the back of it.” Women refer to it as their “spot.” With Daphne it was a patch of pleasure that I felt rising, no, more like swelling up inside her. When I repeatedly stroked over the rising mound and buried my head into what men call the back of it, she went electric. Her thighs wrapped around me tight and her nails peeled down my back and I became a “nasty, big-dick motherfucker.”
I wanted to call her something too, but words escaped me as I too went electric. I didn't want any buttermilk and cornbread, but I sho' felt good. I thought I heard her say real quiet, almost under her breath, “sorry, Gina.”
Sorry? I wasn't sorry. It was over between Regina and me. This brother was moving on, and I wanted to tell Daphne that, but the next sound I heard from her was snoring.
Chapter Five
When I woke up, the clock on my night table read TUES 9:04
A.M.
I rolled free from our leg-tangled embrace, lifted the cordless from the cradle and dialed my office. Carol, my partner in the security service, answered on the first ring.
“Epsilon Security Escort Service, how may I help you?”
“Hey, Carol, it's me.”
“Hey there, boss. Are you coming in today?”
I've tried for months to stop Carol from calling me that. We have been full partners for half a year and she continues to refer to me as “boss.”
“Yep. I should be there within the hour. I need you to contact a divorce lawyer for me; a good one, one who is detailed and can go against a firm with political connections. Does anyone come to mind?”
“A couple. By the time you get here I'll have some choices for you. What's up?”
“I'll tell you later. Oh, and call my brother Charlie. Get some suggestions from him as well.”
“Will do. Anything else?”
“Nope, that should do it. See you soon.”
 
 
The morning activity Daphne and I shared put us both back to sleep. It had been a while since I came simultaneously with a woman. When it happens, in my opinion, two are truly equals. All pretenses are set aside when heartbeats match.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, looking over my shoulder at her I noticed she was awake and smiling. My eyes gravitated to her shaven pubic area, neat and inviting. Only a situation as significant as the threat of losing my son could have motivated me out of that bed. I bent to her and kissed a nipple, then rose from the bed. I had work to do. She sighed, pouted a little and sat up.
“D, I wasn't eavesdropping on your conversation, but I couldn't help but hear you need an attorney. I know one who may be able to help you. Interested?”
“Sure, baby. At this point I'm taking all the help I can get. Who are you talking about?” Her fingernail and toe polish matched, I liked that. The woman had a nice style about her. She scooted closer to me and started caressing my thighs while she talked.
“A friend, one who is familiar with how Peal operates.”
“And how does he operate?”
I lowered my hand to her hair and played in it. Slices of sunlight beamed through the slits in the blinds. My jones was getting hard again because my mind went to her giving me some head. I was standing, and she was sitting, and her face was in my crotch area.
“Thorough and fast, and based on Regina's discussion last night she's trusting him to take care of it. What they are doing is wrong and I told her that last night. Something is going on with her, D. She hasn't been herself in a while.
The Regina I know would never think of taking your son away from you. Never.”
I lowered my hand to the nape of her neck and played in her soft, thin hair.
“In her mind they are not taking him away from me. ‘Just a simple name change' is what she told me.”
I didn't want to talk about Regina's threat. I wanted to do something about it. Suddenly I felt as if I had been, and was, wasting time. The morning could have been spent laying out a plan of action rather than laying out Daphne. I pulled my hand away and walked from her stroking fingers toward the bathroom. Guilt is a motherfucker.
“The person you think can help, do you know them well enough to call this morning?”
“I can do better than that. I'll get us a meeting this morning.” A smile rested on her face.
I offered her the shower first. She declined, saying her things were already set in the downstairs bathroom. I excused myself and headed for a quick shower.
 
 
Hiring Daphne's attorney wasn't a certainty in my mind. I needed information that would tell me if what Regina was threatening was legal. I decided to dress in a business suit. A charcoal gray, three-button pinstripe accompanied by a white shirt, light gray tie and baby-soft black Bally loafers.
Last month, my father sent me a custom-made holster from Arizona. It holds both my pistols right above the small of my back, and the loose way my suit jackets are cut makes my weapons undetectable to the untrained eye. On my right ankle I had a slender .22 harnessed. My pistols are part of my dressing; I seldom leave home without them.
As I was coming down the stairs, I heard voices in the back bedroom. Stanley's voice was familiar, but the female's was not. I hesitated at the first-floor bathroom and heard the shower running full blast. If Daphne was in there, who was in with Stanley? I walked up to the bedroom door and boldly pushed it open.
Hugged together, butt-naked in my childhood bed were Stanley and Mitch's daughter, May. Obviously frightened, May tried to roll behind Stanley and hide. He only grinned.
To me he said, “Man, D, don't you knock first?”
“What?”
“Ya heard me, partner! Ya supposed to knock on a closed door!”
The toothpick-thin irritant got out of the bed and slammed my door, in my face.
“We be out in a minute; we wasn't finished. Didn't nobody disturb you and my mama! Why you come down here bustin' doors open? Old people be trippin'.”
I was too taken aback to move. The slammed door froze me, but his words wrapped around me like duct tape. When anger finally freed me from my immobile state, I drew up my knee and readied to kick the door down until his mama, wrapped in a towel, jumped between my foot and the door. “Wait! Let me handle it, David, please.”
“No. That's okay, I got this one.”
I moved Daphne aside and opened the door just in time to see May scamper through the window with her blouse halfway down and shorts halfway zipped up.
To her fleeing back I said, “You better tell ya daddy before I do. You don't want him to hear my version!” She landed soundly on the wraparound back porch I had built in the spring. If the porch hadn't been there, she would have had to jump to the sidewalk. I stuck my head out the window and yelled. “I'm not playing, May. Tell your daddy something!”
There was no way I could tell Mitch I saw his daughter's half-naked ass climbing out of my window. However, I wanted to embarrass May enough to be afraid and feel a little shame, because my house is not to be mistaken for The Kiddy Motel.
The boy was standing there in his checkered boxers with an “I can't believe you just did that” look on his face.
“You shouldn't have barked at her like that. You got her all scared and crying. Man! She probably won't come back over. Damn! Why you do that?”
The kid really didn't have a clue. He didn't see a thing wrong with what he did, which made me turn my head to his mama. She avoided my look as she walked into the bedroom. A foot belonged up that boy's disrespectful behind. The thick skin of a leather belt should have met his hind parts. He needed a whipping. His mama should be going to the “country” on his backside, ripping off a tree switch and getting busy.
Deciding they needed some time alone, I was leaving the room until Daphne tightly grabbed hold of my hand and asked, “Will you stay David? I think we need to talk to him together. It was us he saw.”
She was tripping; the terrible teen was hers, not mine. What he saw or heard was his mama getting her swerve on. It was a family incident.
I was intent on leaving until the kid said, “Ain't nothing to really talk about, Ma. We all adults here. I understand needs.”
To that I answered, “Only two adults here, boy; that's me and your mama. You are a child, and you understand nothing of adult needs.”
“I understand enough to know that both of y'all was knocked out, slobbering and snoring all over each other and that didn't happen because y'all got exhausted watching Oprah. Now did it? The trip is, y'all got y'alls and don't want me to get mines. Now what's up with that? From one playa to another playa, Mr. Price, is that right?”
I was about to tell the minor I wasn't a player, but his mother once again had the better words.
“Player! David is no player! To be a player he has to have played on someone. Do you feel he has played on me?”
Right before my eyes Stanley went from an arrogant, disrespectful young punk to a kid stuck between a rock and a hard place. His mother had him squirming in his stance.
“Ma, you trippin'. I ain't say that.”
“You called him a player. That must make me what . . . the same as the young lady who just crawled out the window?”
“I ain't say that, Ma.” His eyes were pleading for her understanding.
“What are you saying? No, what are you calling me? Me, your mother, what are you calling me?”
“Ma, I just said we all adults and I understand adult needs.” He dropped his butt down to the bed. She stood over him with her index finger extended.
“What am I, the type of woman who needs something from a player? What did that young girl need from you?”
I could tell she was running all through his mind with combat boots on, smashing and mixing up emotions and thoughts. The boy didn't want to call his mama a “hottie.”
“I asked you a question, boy. What did that narrow behind heifer want?”
“Nothing, Ma.”
“She wanted something! She snuck her hot tail in here....
Lord have mercy . . . What is this I'm standing on? David, please tell me it's not one of those!”
It was a soiled condom. Her standing on it caused its contents to seep out and adhere to her foot. She lifted her foot to her son. “Pull this disgusting thing off me.”
Stanley peeled it from his mother's foot. Then he jerked as if struck by an epiphany and asked, “What, y'all didn't use one?”
Touché for the kid. We hadn't, and I didn't even think about it. Our expressions must have told on us.
“Mama! You don't know him like that.”
Oh, I could tell she wanted to hit him. She was trembling so hard I thought the floorboards were vibrating. She wanted to hit him bad. Instead she ground her teeth, balled up her little fist, spun around and left. I had to bite down on the inside of my own jaw to stop from smiling in the boy's direction. Sternly, I told him, “Get dressed, boy. Me and your mama are going out. I got some work for you to do while we're gone.”
He cocked his head and looked at me as if he wanted to say, “You ain't my daddy,” but I cut him off at the pass with “And hurry up before I change my mind about helping you.” True, I wasn't his daddy, but I was the man willing to help him.
BOOK: One Dead Lawyer
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