War (16 page)

              But here we are again.

              “Yeah,” Marlon says before he downs his Jack and Coke. “Chances are, Nicky hears Roman say it and it kinda just rubbed off on him.”

              I sit back with my Jack and Coke and decide that while I know Jon, I may not know him well enough to offer moral support at this point.

              “You know what my father’s advice was when I left LA for college?” Jon asks as he downs another shot.

              “What?” Marlon asks, picking up a shot of his own.

              “Make sure you have all your kids by one woman.” Jon squints his eyes and looks at Marlon while shaking his head. “Makes the paperwork easier. That’s what the muthafucka told me.’” Jon picks up another shot. “That’s the only thing that clown did right. Have all eight of his kids by one woman. Never mind staying with her to help her feed ‘em, clothe ‘em, train ‘em up. Just have ‘em all by her.” He takes another shot. He’s drunk.

              “Slow down, Jon,” Matt says before taking a sip of his drink. Jon brings his phone out of his pocket and looks at it.

              “Marla,” he says with a wince, as the liquor stings his throat. “Texting me every twenty minutes to check on me.” He takes another shot before slamming the glass down on the table. “She’s a good girl.”

              “Don’t fall for it, Jon,” Marlon warns him while sipping on his second shot. “I fell for a good girl once and look at me.”

              “Marla’s different,” Jon nods his head at no one in particular. “Treats me better than Danny ever did.” He shrugs.

              “Danny’s not so bad,” Matt says.

              “You were never married to her.” Jon takes a sip of his shot. “Or were you? There’s no telling these days with Danny.”

              “Come on, Jon, lay off Danny.”

              “I love that girl.”

              Silence.

              Matt and Marlon look at each other, glasses held in mid-air. They slowly drift their eyes over to Jon.

              “Which one are you talking about?” Matt asks.

              “What the fuck do you mean which one?” Jon says. Marlon and Matt laugh hysterically at the question.

“Just what I asked muthafucka! Which one do you love?” Marlon and Matt continue to laugh as Jon looks past them, his mind in a fog.

              “Both,” he finally says before finishing his shot.

              “I could’ve told you that,” Marlon says. He takes a sip of his shot.

              “But Marla…she’s the one. No matter what I do, what I say, or what I
don’t
do or what I
don’t
say, she’s down for me. She’s there. She’s not looking for me to entertain her. Give her
sparkling
conversation.” He takes a sip of another shot. “All she wants is for me to be there…with her. That’s it. She takes me just like this.” He puts an arm in the air, showing us a shirt rolled up to his elbows and a loosened tie.

              “Don’t trust her,” Marlon says.

              “You’re paranoid for no reason,” Matt says to Marlon.

              “I’m not,” Marlon takes a shot. “She’s fucking Jacob Blair. Probably right now at this very moment while our girls are asleep on their bunk beds.”

              “You’re going overboard, Marlon.” Matt gives him a look of exasperation. “You’re not giving Jazz enough credit. And I’m not sure if you remember but Jacob has a wife and four kids.” He looks at me. “And he’s not trying to lose them.” Matt and I share a look before I take a sip of my drink. Something’s going on with this Matt character. I decided that a half hour ago when he was sipping on the same drink he had since we sat down, all while his heartbroken friends were getting hammered. I noticed that every time Marlon mentioned Jasmine and Jacob, Matt gave some excuse as to why Jacob wouldn’t want Jasmine.

He has a family.

He has a lot to lose.

He’s already been divorced once.

His wife is crazy…too risky.

              The lawyer in me wonders one thing: Why, if Matt and his wife are Marlon and Jasmine’s friends, is he providing excuses for
Jacob
? I watch Matt take another sip of his drink, which surely tastes like a puddle of muddy water by know. The lawyer in me believes that Matt is nursing his drink for one reason: he wants to be in charge of all his faculties. That includes his speech. The lawyer in me wonders what Matt would say if he, like Marlon and Jon, were on his third or fourth shot by now.

              “You know,” Jon continues, “recently I’ve actually been afraid that Marla will leave me.”

              “You mean once she finds out that you’ve been clipped?” Matt asks.

              “Yeah.”

              “Good,” Marlon says as he takes a sip of his shot. “You don’t need her anyway. She’s not as good as you probably think she is.”

I kick Marlon under the table. He looks over at me in confusion at first. I give him a near imperceptible shake of my head. The last thing Jon needs to hear right now is that Marlon used to fuck the only woman he believes ever loved him. Marlon clears his throat and puts his shot glass down.

              “Nah,” Jon says. “Marla’s a good girl. If I didn’t marry Danny, I’d be married to her right now.”

              “I’m lost,” Matt says. “What does one have to do with the other?”

              “After you’ve been divorced and get hit up for more child support in one year than most people bring home, your passion for marriage kinda fades.”

              “Oh God, child support,” Marlon says. He takes another shot of his drink.

              “I mean, just think about it. I give my son $150,000 a year in child support.” Damn!

“Oh,
buddy
,” Matt says before he shakes his head and takes a sip of his drink. Everyone knows that Jon makes money with that IT firm of his, but $150,000 a year? Shit!

“A hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year,” Jon reiterates.

              “No, no more.” Marlon says as he shakes his head and puts his hand up for Jon to stop talking. “Because I have two kids. I can only imagine how much I’ll be giving.” He looks at me for reassurance.

              “Well,” I say, “your trust fund was in the double digit millions-”

              “
Low
double digits.”

              “Shiiit,” Matt says. “A double digit is a double digit!” He and Jon laugh.

              “Then you factor in investments, yearly salary-”

              “Jesus!” Marlon screams out. Matt and Jon break out in uncontrollable laughter. “I’ll be living on the goddamn side of the road once she’s done with me.”

              “You sure will,” I warn. “Because child support, my friend, is not all you’ll be paying.” I take a sip of my drink. Marlon looks at me confused.

              “I don’t get it,” he says. “What else will I be paying?”

              “ALIMONY, MUTHAFUCKA!” Jon and Matt scream out at the same time. This sends them into a round of applause and laughter so loud, most of the bar turns around to look at us. Even I can’t help but laugh.

              “Aww
shit
,” Marlon says before downing a shot. “This is
horrible
!” That makes Jon and Matt laugh louder. Yeah, Marlon didn’t think about that. You marry a woman with no job, you support her, you have kids with her…you’re paying her when you’re ready to leave.

              “And there you have it,” Jon says after he recovers. “That the reason why I won’t marry Marla.” He takes a sip of his drink. “No way in hell I’m paying for Nicky
and
Marla. I mean, just think about it. Nicky gets $150,000 from me a year. My son is a One Percenter! He’s fucking nine years old! He makes $150,000 a year. Tax free! Just for being born.” We all bend over the table, laughing at Jon’s ass. Jon takes another shot.

              “So you’re not marrying Marla because she doesn’t have a job and you make too much money?” Matt asks after he finishes laughing.

              “That’s exactly why.”

              “Sign a pre-nup then.”

              “Not good enough for me. Didn’t the news say Jacob had a pre-nup when Winnie divorced him? And she still got, what, forty million or some crazy shit like that?”

              “Hey Marlon,” Matt says with a smile on his face, “what does your pre-nup say?”

              “Fuck you,” Marlon says. Matt and Jon start laughing. Marlon never signed a pre-nup. He married for love, he told me. But besides that, did you notice how Matt glossed over the Jacob and Winnie question? Did you see how he redirected the conversation? You didn’t catch that, did you? The lawyer in me believes that he wants Jacob’s name off the table altogether. He doesn’t want to mention him at all. I watch Matt take a sip of his watered down drink before placing it back on the table.

              “So, what’s the plan?” Jon says. “Because let’s face it, Jasmine’s fucking Jacob all over Boston.”

             “Thanks, Jon,” Marlon says.

             “He’s not fucking her,” Matt says.

Did you see that? The correct rebuttal would have been to keep the order of the nouns in the sentence.
She’s
 not fucking 
him
. Instead he put Jacob first:
 He’s 
not fucking 
her
. I’ve argued cases in court martial for a while. I’ve seen this strategy: Matt’s not defending Jasmine, he’s defending 
Jacob
.

              I watch Matt take a sip of his water, avoiding all eye contact.

              “I say we hit Jacob where it hurts,” Marlon says. “Right in the gut. Right in the fucking jugular.” He takes a long swallow of his drink before pounding the glass down on the table, splashing Scotch everywhere. “What can I touch that will crush his entire 
life
.”

              “His wife. His kid,” Jon says before downing a shot of Jack.

              “Come on, Marlon,” Matt says. “You planning on destroying a man’s entire 
life
 over speculation?”

              “Listen, I know for a 
fact
 that Jasmine’s sleeping with Jacob,” Marlon says.

              “He’s. Not. Sleeping with her.” And Matt’s done it again. He’s changed the order. Now, he looks around the table at all of us. “You can’t destroy a man’s family over bullshit.”

              “Oh no?” Jon says with a drunken smile. He glares at Matt. Matt says nothing. “So you think it’s fair that right now Malcolm’s in his condo with my wife and my son, playing house? Do you think it’s fair that Jacob’s been fucking Jasmine 
and
 Winnie and yet right now he’s at his place, with his wife, tucking his kids in, happy? And Marlon and I are sitting at a fucking bar keeping this muthafucka in business? You think that shit is fair?” Jon stares at Matt, waiting for an answer.

              “I’m not saying that,” Matt says slowly. “What I’m saying is that we don’t know if Jasmine is having an affair.” Notice how he just placed guilt on Jasmine and not Jacob? According to Matt, if anyone’s guilty, it’s Marlon’s wife.

              “She is,” Marlon says before downing his drink. “And now I’m about to do something about it.”

              Matt looks at me.

              “And you’ve come in to help?” he asks me.

              “Nope,” I say with a smile before I take a sip of my drink. “I’ve come to have a drink.”

JACOB

“Attorney Blair?”

              “Yes, Sandi.”

              “There’s been an urgent message sent to you by messenger.” I look up from my case files and see my admin standing in the doorway with a letter in her hand. Sandi’s a pretty black woman in her early twenties. Right now she’s wearing a tight blue dress, her hair in one of these Dena buns that’s pinned up in the back, a pair of navy blue heels on, and bright red lips. Mac, Nat and my clients have unanimously voted my admin the best looking out of the bunch. In fact, my clients sometimes come to the office just to loiter near her desk, before asking me a legal question.
How serious are those red light tickets?
Sandi smiles at them as she types up my schedule for the next day. She’s married to a captain in the Navy, and has no time for old ass white men who’ve been caught with their pants down and therefore need my services. She’s all about business.

              My father vetted and hired her.

              “The sender has told him to wait for a response,” Sandi says as she nods towards the messenger. I get up from my chair to look out into the hallway at the messenger—a young blond guy with a brown bag fixed across one shoulder, his bike leaning against the wall. His eyes keep darting back and forth over to my door. He’s trying not to get caught looking at Sandi.

              “Thank you,” I say as I slide the letter out of Sandi’s hand. She turns and heads back to her own office. The messenger’s eyes are glued to her as she leaves. I turn back towards my desk and ease open the envelope that just has my name and address on it, not the sender:

Blair & Associates

Attorney Jacob Blair

Beacon Hill

888 Tremont Street

              J,

I’m being watched now. I can feel it.

Demetrius Westlake is in town. He’s a hired gun. Word is you’ve been fucking another man’s wife. Yours is now fair game.

It can all happen in a matter of hours or days. I have no idea.

Just a warning. Destroy this.

M

I write a response:

Gold & Trust Financial

Matthew Beauvais

Financial District

121 State Street

War is coming. It’s imminent. Stay neutral, my friend.

I feel Marlon. His anger is justified. But I’ll spare you the details. He’s seeking retribution. He’s practicing the law of eye-for-an-eye. That happens to be the same law I live by. But Marlon has misinterpreted it. If he were practicing eye-for-an-eye, he would find my wife. Seduce her. Fuck her into obsession. He wouldn’t send another man in to do his dirty work.

So now all bets are off.

I’ll be going for blood.

Now let me explain to you what’s going on in my camp. Mac is about to have his ginger. His only babygirl. Danielle is due in a matter of days. Last night Danielle was up all night with Braxton-Hicks. Today, Mac started his eight-week leave from the firm. He’s home with Danielle as we speak, doing what he can to make her happy. She’s in pain. He feels helpless. He doesn’t like for Danielle to be unhappy.

This is a bad time to fuck with Mac.

And if you fuck with me, you fuck with Mac. And if you fuck with Mac, you’re fucking with Danielle. So I’ll make an executive decision to speak on behalf of Malcolm and release an official statement. Please warn Marlon, Demetrius and Jon of this:

Don’t fuck with Red.

-Jacob Gabriel Blair

THURSDAY

FRIDAY

SATURDAY

MALCOLM

Danielle: Shiiiit!

Malcolm: Red,
breathe
, baby.

Danielle: Oh God!

Malcolm: Baby, just breathe…come on, breathe with me.

Danielle: I need a fucking epidural!

Dr. Zara Harlow: I’m sorry, Danny, but it’s too late for us to give you one. You’re going to have to push this one out
au naturel
. And here I thought you were tough.”

Danielle: Aunt Zara, I can’t do it.

Dr. Zara Harlow: The longer you fight it, the lower your baby’s heart rate is going to get. If it gets too low we’ll have to cut her out of you. Now, she’s stuck in your passage so this
will
get tricky. I really need you to push.

Malcolm: Danielle, just
push
. Come on.

Danielle: It’s not easy, Malcolm!

Malcolm: Danielle, I get that. Okay? But the baby’s heart rate is dropping.

Dr. Zara Harlow: It’s at 100. Nurse, get the surgery team ready. You hear that, Danny? You’re about to be cut open if you don’t push this little girl out. Or worse, she’s not gonna to make it.

Danielle: Fuck!

Malcolm: Danielle, fucking
push
!

Danielle: Aargh!!

Dr. Zara Harlow: There you go! There’s her head…Come on, Danny, push her out, she’s stuck.

Malcolm: Danielle, please,
please
, push.

Danielle: Aargh!

Dr. Zara Harlow: A little more.

Danielle: Aargh!

Dr. Zara Harlow: Just a
little
bit more.

Malcolm: Come on, baby. Come on. Come on. Almost there, baby. Come on.

Dr. Zara Harlow: One more push, Danny. Let’s go!

Danny: Aaaaaaargh!

Dr. Zara Harlow: Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?

MATT

              “What’s wrong, baby?”

              “I’m all good,” I tell Rena as she rubs a hand over my back.

              “Tired?”

              “Not really. Just…” I let the words drift off as I sit back in the chair in the hospital waiting room. I’m here with the Blairs and the friends of Blairs, waiting for the go ahead to see Danny. This is where we’ve all been camped out for about an hour while Danielle was in labor. And by the sounds of the baby cries we just heard, Danny has delivered.

              War is coming.

              We’re at Boston’s premiere hospital, the only one with enough security detail to handle the deliveries of High Alerts, the name given to certain newborns of the Boston population. The nurses, doctors and staff here are cleared by the US government, sign confidentiality agreements and risk fed time if they choose to renege on their agreements. Boston takes its High Alerts seriously. To be considered a High Alert you really only need to pass one criteria: the murder of one of your parents would be called an assassination. Malcolm’s kids qualify, and that includes Nicky. All the more reason for me to have a weak stomach right now. It’s a bad time for shit to pop off.

“You’ve been really quiet these past few days,” Rena whispers in my ear. “What’s going on, Matt?”

              “Nothing, baby.” I run my hands over my face.

              “Have you been dreaming about being with another woman?”

              “Really, Rena? And I would sit here and admit that today?”

“True. No point in asking if you’ve been cheating on me
here
.” She looks around the hospital waiting room. “I mean, not in a place that has the capacity to assist you in your fight for life.” She smiles and rubs my back again. I try my best to give her a smile but I know it’s coming out weak. I rub my hand over my head again. “Matt.”

              “Rena.” I turn to look at her. She looks at me.

              A silent moment passes between us where I wish my wife could read my mind. I wish she could see the pictures in my head. I wish she could see me reading that letter Jacob sent me. I wish she could see me calling Marlon and ‘suggesting’ that he keep his peace until Danny has her baby
. And I wish she could have heard my earlier conversation with him about it
…

              “Listen, you start shit while Danny’s about to deliver and not only will you have a problem with Jacob but you’ll have one with Malcolm. And it’s sure to run over to Danny. So I know you’re struggling right now and I’m not sure what you’ve got planned but I think you should wait.”

              “Yeah, you’re probably right,” Marlon said to me. “I’m just…” He let out a deep breath. “I’m just struggling with this shit, Matt. I love Jasmine. I love her.”

              “I know you do.” I felt so fucking bad for Marlon, even
I
wanted to grab Jasmine by her damn shoulders and shake the shit out of her.
Snap out of it!
Marlon’s a good dude. He doesn’t fuck around, never has. He takes care of his woman, his girls, his home. He’s a damn good friend. What the hell is Jasmine’s problem?

              “Hold on,” Marlon said. “Let me get Jon on the line.” Seconds later, with the snaps of computer keys clicking and beeping sounds in the background, Jon was on the line.

              “Yeah,” he said, sounding distracted.

              “We need to hold off on Jacob,” Marlon said. “And I’m not sure if you plan on approaching Malcolm about the Nicky incident, but I think you should wait. Matt made a good point. Danny’s having the baby soon and I’m not trying to upset her.”

              “Or is it that you’re not trying to upset Malcolm?” Jon asked.

              “Honestly, Jon, I’m more afraid of Danny than I will
ever
be of Malcolm.” Marlon and I let out a laugh. Jon said nothing. He’s been married to Danny; if anyone knows that statement to be true, it’s him.

              “I’m going for custody of Nicky,” Jon said, out of nowhere. Marlon and I stopped laughing. No…please, no.

              “Jon…” Marlon said. Even he knew that Jon was in over his head.