Some Came Desperate: A Love Saga (36 page)

TWENTY-NINE

The only reason Delia Perry allowed the woman anywhere near the inside of her home wasn’t because she insisted; that meant nothing to Delia.  She allowed the maid to let her in because she had stated that she was the person who, years ago, had told her about Nick and her sister.  For some reason the sister part struck a chord with Delia.  The night of her accident, when she became paralyzed for life, she was going to meet a female who was going to lead her to her sister’s apartment.  An apartment, according to this female, Nick practically lived in.

       Delia arrived in the parlor unescorted. Her nurse had traveled on the elevator with Delia, she had been in Delia’s room with her when the maid announced the arrival of what the maid called a “rather obnoxious” guest, but once Delia guided her wheelchair off of the elevator, she told her nurse that she would call her when she was finished.  Now Delia was looking into the face of a barely familiar face, and for a moment she wondered if this was a con.

       “May I help you?” she said in a cautious tone. 

       Shay looked at Delia and smiled.  A wheelchair?  The woman was in a wheelchair?  This, Shay thought, was going to be so easy!

       “You remember me, don’t you?” Shay said, not interested in beating around any bush. 

       “Vaguely,” Delia replied truthfully.

       “It’s been a while ago, for real, but it was a big deal.  We met in a restaurant, when I told you about your husband fooling around with my sister.  Only he wasn’t your husband then.  And I called you the night he was at my sister’s house and you was supposed to come over.  Only you didn’t come over but called him and told him something.  But whatever it was you told him he high-tailed it out of my sister’s apartment.  And you never paid me for my information.  Now you remember?”

       Delia remembered it well.  How could she forget that night that her life changed forever?  “Is that what this is about?  Money?”

    Shay laughed.  “It’s always about money, honey.  But don’t worry.  I ain’t trying to shake nobody down.  I got some new info for you.”

       Delia guided her wheelchair further into the parlor.  Shay was standing near the sofa, but seemed to be too antsy to sit down.  “It seems to me the information you had before didn’t do me much good.”

       “Yeah, it did, don’t even sweat that.  You called Nick Perry and got him out of my sister’s house so you wouldn’t have to pay me.  That’s what happened that night.”

       “That is absolutely not what happened that night,” Delia stated.

       “Whatever.  Do you want my info or don’t you?”

        Delia exhaled and sat upright.  Her back was killing her.  “What does this information concern?”

       “My sister and your husband.  What else?”

       Delia paused.  “What about my husband and your sister?”

       “Nall now. My mama didn’t raise no fool.  In fact she didn’t raise me at all, but that ain’t your business.  I need some money first.  I just got out of jail—”

       “Jail?” Delia said as if she figured it.

       “Yeah, jail.  Thanks to your husband.  Simone, that’s my sister, got him to come to the jail and take care of things.  And I don’t know what that white boy did but they dropped the charges and let me go.  Insufficient evidence, the prosecutor said.  Only I just think the prosecutor is a friend of your husband’s and that’s why they released me.  But hey, I’ll take it.”

       “Did you say your sister’s name is Simone?” Delia asked, looking a little stricken, it seemed to Shay.

       “Yeah.  That’s her name.  Simone Rivers.  Why?”

       Delia remembered that name.  Simone.  She remembered that name.  “Would she happen to be a friend of Ethan Graham’s?”

       Shay smiled.  “Yeah, they friends, why?”

       She was here, that’s why, Delia thought.  She was here in my home.  My home!  Nick brought his slut to her home?  Delia could hardly contain her anger.  When she accused Nick of this very thing, he had denied it.  She was just fishing anyway, and accepted his denial.  But it was true?  Simone was the same woman he had been fooling with all those years ago?  Delia exhaled and looked at Shay.  “What is it you want?” she asked her.

       “I told you.  Money.”

       “Give me the information and I’ll pay you what it’s worth.”

       Shay laughed.  “You’re good, you know that?  No, Miss
Thang
, you ain’t paying me what nothing’s worth.  I set my own price.  You pay me five hundred bucks, that’s what I need, and I’ll tell you all I know about that naughty husband of yours.”

       Delia hesitated.  She started to give an excuse, such as she didn’t have that kind of money lying around, but she didn’t bother.  The sooner she was done with this trash masquerading as a human being the better.  She called Bellamy.

       Bellamy was her assistant who stayed in the guest house on the grounds.  She notified Bellamy by phone to bring her five hundred dollars and, within ten minutes, he did just that.  It was all Nick’s money.  Delia didn’t have any more of her own, but the thing Delia loved about Bellamy was that he knew how to keep his mouth shut.  Nick, she knew, would never know.

       She thanked Bellamy, a big, strapping, dark-skinned man, and then dismissed him.  When he left, Delia handed Shay the money.  “Now talk,” she demanded.

       And Shay did just that.  Telling her everything and making a point to emphasize how much Nick and Simone supposedly loved each other.  “She committed suicide over him,” Shay said at one point.  Delia rolled her eyes.  This girl was either dumb or just plain stupid.

       “So she’s dead then?” Delia said.

       “What?  Who?”

       “This sister of yours.  You claim she committed suicide over Nick.”

       “No, she tried to kill herself,” Shay said.  “That’s what I meant.  Because she loved him so much.  And now that she’s back in town, they’re hanging out again.  And I don’t mean just hanging around either.”

       This person, this so-called human being, annoyed Delia. “Where does this sister of yours  live?” she asked Shay.

       Shay smiled.  Now we’ll talking, she thought.  “Well, I’ll tell ya, Mrs. Perry, that kind of information, and I mean it is some explosive info, especially when I tell you where they are, will cost you a lil’ bit more than some five hundred dollars.  That is,” Shay added, relishing in her power, “if you really want to know.”

Jules was in her kitchen, still clearing away dishes and cups and cans, and all of the other remains of her not-so-joyous party, when Jeremy came home.  He walked into the kitchen, grabbed a beer out of the frig, and took a seat, his long legs spread out, his body slouched down in the chair.  He stared at Jules with what could only be described as disdain, but Jules wasn’t having it tonight.  Her so-called birthday party had turned horribly wrong when police officers showed up at her door and escorted her very own sister away.  This in front of all of Jules friends and many of her clients.  It was too much.  So Jeremy, she thought, could put on his stare-down all he wanted.  She wasn’t going along.  

       Jeremy, however, being Jeremy, didn’t care.  He continued to stare so venomously that Jules threw a final can into the trash bag and looked at him.

       “What?” she said with venom in her own voice.

       “Where’s that stupid sister of yours?”

       Jules exhaled.  “I have no idea.”

       “Yeah, you do, stop lying.  She’s in jail, that’s where she is.  I heard about her little scene here tonight.”

       “You heard about it?”

       “Yes, I heard about it. I had colleagues here, you know.  David and his old lady.  Carlton and his.  They’re our friends and they wanted to celebrate your birthday with you.”

       “More than I can say for one of us in this room.”

       “They called me afterwards and told me what happened.  I couldn’t believe it.   Right in my house.  The police came and everything.  I’ll be the laughingstock of the entire hospital if this gets out.”

       “If they’re such friends, then it won’t get out.”

       Jeremy gave Jules a foul look.  “Are you trying to get smart with me?”

       “I just don’t see the big deal.  So Shay got arrested.  That’s nothing new for Shay.”

       “But not in my house!” Jeremy thundered and stood to his feet, his hand batting his chest.  “Do you hear me?  Your sister will not bring her ghetto-fied nonsense to my house!  I can’t believe you allowed that to happen.”

       Jules was stunned.  “Me?  I didn’t allow anything to happen.  Those police officers–”

       “–would not have come anywhere near my house if that dumb-behind sister of yours wasn’t here.  I told you not to invite her or Simone either.”

       “Jeremy that’s nonsense.  It was my birthday party.  Why wouldn’t I want my own sisters at my birthday party?”

       “Because I don’t want them in my house,” Jeremy said, by now standing directly in Jules face.  “How about that, Jules?  I can’t stand neither one of them and they can’t stand me.  But nooo.  You had to have them here.  They’re your precious sisters.  Yeah, right. Now look what’s happened.  Bringing that ghetto-fabulous, sister-girl street crap to my house!”

       “Man, get out of my face,” Jules said, brushing past Jeremy.  “There is nothing ghetto-fabulous about Simone.”

       Jeremy turned and looked at Jules as if he couldn’t believe what had just transpired.  “What did you just say to me?”

       Jules knew that tone.  She knew it just as sure as she knew the back of her own hand.  She swallowed hard.  “I said there is nothing ghetto-fabulous about Simone, and there isn’t.  She’s a hard-working, honest salon owner who— ”

       But her explanation didn’t matter.  Because that wasn’t the part of Jules response that had Jeremy so angry.  He was upon her the way a panther would be upon his prey.  And he slapped her so hard that saliva went flying from her mouth.  Her mother, who was the victim of many of these beatings herself, would say he knocked the taste out of her mouth.  And he did.  Jules was on the floor, begging for her life, when one of Jeremy’s feet came crashing into her rib cage.  And all she could wonder about was what in the world had she done.  What in the world was her sin?

THIRTY

They laid in bed like two exhausted strangers, both on their backs, both staring at the crown-molding of the high-slung ceiling.    Simone was astounded.  She still couldn’t believe that she had allowed things to get so far out of hand.  Here she was, a woman professing Christ, lying naked in bed with a married man.  A married man!  Nick could talk all day and night about how terrible that marriage was; about how awful his wife treated him; about how unfair it all was.  But the fact remained, he was married.  How in the world, she wondered, did she expect this to end?  God wasn’t going to bless this mess! There was no way.  She felt doomed.  So regretful that it hurt  her to her core.

       Nick was loaded with regret, too.  He lay there nearly catatonic.  Unlike Simone, however, his regret stemmed less from the act that they’d committed, and more from the fact that after the act, nothing was changed.  He was still married to Delia and Simone was still going to high-tail it back to Atlanta.  And that pain, the thought of losing Simone again, was what was really driving his regret. 

       He looked over at Simone.  She was so beautiful to him.  Not just on the outside, which was gorgeous, but on the inside, too.  She was the single most remarkable woman he’d ever met.  And he wanted her more than life itself.  In fact, just looking at her made him consider, for the first time ever, divorcing Delia once and for all.

       Then he looked back at the uninteresting ceiling.  He couldn’t divorce Delia.  That was the problem of his life.  Delia was crippled, in a wheelchair for crying out loud.  He couldn’t just walk away from her.  Despite her hatred; despite her annoying insinuations; he still loved her.  And always would.  He remembered her in the days of her youth, when she could have had any man she wanted, but she chose him.  And gave him the best years of her life.  Now that she was old and crippled and bitter with anything and everything, how could he leave her now?  Tears began to stain his eyes.  What a mess he was in, he thought.

       Simone didn’t know what to think.  She was still reeling from the fact that she had just had sex with a married man.  She closed her eyes, disgusted with herself.  And the fact that she loved this married man, and still wanted to be with this married man was tearing her apart.  There were a hundred million men in America. But she acted as if she just had to have the one man she couldn’t have.  Why, she wondered, did she keep punishing herself?

       Before she could answer her question, however, knocks were heard on the door of her hotel suite.  Both she and Nick jumped.  What now, they wondered.  And Nick, still naked, hurried for the living area. 

       Simone got up too and put on one of the hotel’s terry cloth robes.  She could hear Nick hurriedly dressing in the other room, as the knocks continued.  In fact, when she went into the living area she saw him, now dressed in his slacks and shirt, grab up her strewn clothing too.  But when he grabbed her panties, he sniffed them and then, oddly, placed them in his pants pocket.  Why he would do such a thing baffled Simone.  But he had done it.  She’d just witnessed it.  He then placed her remaining clothing behind one of the big, fluffy pillows on the hotel’s sofa, just in case it was that blabbermouth Shay, whom both of them suspected it probably was.

       They both, however, were wrong.  It wasn’t Shay at all, but Delia, complete with wheelchair, nurse, and Bellamy.  Nick was stunned.  He stood at the door stupefied.  Delia had come all this way, to this hotel, in her condition?  He immediately felt a tinge of sorrow for his wife, and pulled her wheelchair inside of the room.

       “What are you doing here?” he asked her in an accusatory tone, but Delia was already looking beyond him, at Simone.  If Simone thought she felt bad, everything changed when she saw Delia in that wheelchair. She couldn’t have felt worse. 

       Nick looked at Delia’s assistant.  “Bellamy, what is the meaning of this?”

       “I tried to discourage her, sir,” Bellamy said nervously, “but she was insistent.”

       “Hello there,” Delia said to Simone.  “You look awfully comfortable.”

       Simone immediately began to gather her robe around her.  “Hello, Mrs. Perry.”

       “Oh, Delia, please.  That’s how I feel right now.  Like plain old Delia.”

       “Dell, come on,” Nick said but Delia would not be sidelined.

       “No, you come on,” she said, looking at her husband for the first time.  “Really, Nicky, is this the best you can do?  I mean she’s pretty, I’ll give you that, but she’s hardly quality.  In fact, she looks rather dime-a-dozen-nish to me.”

       “That’s enough, Delia.”

       “So common.  Like a hooker masquerading as a lady.”

       “I said that’s enough, Delia!”

       “It’s all right, Nick,” Simone said quietly.  “It’s not like she’s lying.”

       Nick looked at Simone.  “Don’t you dare blame yourself for this, Simone,” he warned her.

       “It’s not like you aren’t her husband and you’re in my hotel room and she’s just making the whole thing up.”