A Special Relationship (11 page)

 
Robert shook his head.
 
“I don’t believe I have.”

 
“Don’t feel bad, nobody has.
 
But that’s where I’m from and the day I got to be head cashier at that diner was the second greatest day of my life.
 
But Mama, like I said, didn’t think it was a big deal at all.
 
She hated the idea.
 
I had graduated third in my class and was supposed to go to college, you see, but I didn’t quite make it—”

 
“Why not?”
Robert asked, his interest suddenly peaked.

 
“Why not what?”

 
“Why didn’t you make it to college?”

 
Carrie hesitated.
 
Too long a story, she decided.
 
“I just didn’t,” she said.

 
“That’s no answer either, young lady.
 
You can’t let life’s circumstances deter you from taking care of your business, you should know better than that.”
 
Robert said this harsher than he had intended, but for some reason the idea that she had squandered a chance to make her dreams come true upset him. “If you would have
went
on to college as you should have done,” he went on to say, “then you wouldn’t have to scrub floors for a living, or put up with clowns like Willie Charles.”

 
Carrie didn’t know how to respond.
  
“Scrubbing floors is an honest living too,” was the best she could finally think to say.
 

 
“I would never suggest that scrubbing floors wasn’t an honest living.
 
That’s not the point I’m trying to make here.”

 
“I don’t see where there’s a point to be made.
 
It’s my life, my decision.”

 
“I didn’t say it wasn’t your life or your decision.
 
Did I ever once say that it wasn’t your life?”

 
Carrie smiled.
 
“Why are you so upset?” she asked him, amazed by his reaction.

 
“I’m not upset,” Robert said in such an exasperated way that it only highlighted the fact that he was highly upset.
 
“I’m just saying that if you, somebody who graduated third in your class, had the opportunity to go to college, to take care of your business, and you squandered it—”

 
“My mama got sick,” Carrie said and looked at Robert, her eyes loaded with the anguish of what those few words really meant.
 

 
“Sick?”

 
“She had a stroke two days after I graduated high school.
 
Everything was set.
 
I had a full scholarship to Georgia Southern, I had a dorm room already assigned to me,
I
had my entire professional career mapped out like a life plan.
 
But what was I supposed to do?
 
Leave my mama in a coma in the hospital and go on and, as you put it, take care of my business?
 
My mama nearly died and she had nobody to care for her.
 
She
was my business.”

 
“Of course,” Robert said, feeling like a jerk for coming down so hard on her in the first place.
 
“I’m sorry.”

 
“No, it’s okay.
 
You didn’t know.
 
But that’s why it just wasn’t meant for me to go to college.
 
Not then anyway.
 
And after a while it just wasn’t practical for me to go.
 
Mama still expected me to do certain things for her, she’s a very demanding lady, and I had to work and earn a living.
 
So I did what I had to do.”

 
Robert stared at her.
 
Life was never simple, he thought.
 
People look at Carrie and see nothing more than a black woman scrubbing floors, somebody who was a living monument to what happens when you don’t take advantage of the American dream.
 
When, in truth, she couldn’t wait to take advantage of it, had it all mapped out and everything, but that terrible teaser called Fate got in the way.
 
“Any regrets?” he asked her.

 
Carrie quickly nodded.
 
She couldn’t lie.
 
“Yes,” she said.
 
“Plenty.
 
But there’s nothing I can do about that now.
 
That’s why it was so special to me when I became head cashier.
 
Not just cashier.
 
But
head
cashier.
 
Like I’d finally accomplished something, despite my setbacks.
 
It was the second greatest day of my life.
 
So when you say you’re CEO and all, I know how you feel.”

 
Robert wanted to shake his head, not at the absurdity of Carrie’s comparison, but at the fact that he was sitting here listening to her at all.
 
He had work to
do,
he didn’t come by the office just for the hell of it.
 
He came to pick up that budget analysis on Dyson’s mall proposal the accounting department had worked so hard at completing.
 
His
plan was to grab it, go home and review
every detail before tomorrow’s board meeting, and then get to bed.
 
But something about this woman glued him to his seat.
 
Most females her age bored him to tears with all of their eagerness to please him and chitchat about silliness, but this one was different.
 
She was undoubtedly young, but she had an aura of wisdom about her that fascinated him.
 
And although she seemed eager to please him too, she also seemed principled, and courageous, and innocent as a dove.
 
He almost reached out and touched her beautiful, silky black hair, to comfort her, as he couldn’t seem to help but get caught up in the rapture of that innocence.
 

 
But then he caught himself.
 
He fell for Gloria’s dove-like routine once too, and what did that get him?
 
A woman who never loved him, who deceived him mercilessly for nearly twenty years, who gave him nothing but a broken heart, a loss of faith, and enough regret to last a lifetime.
 
He exhaled and kept his hands to himself.
 
He was fooled once.
  
Never again.

 
Carrie, however, felt so comfortable, so relaxed around this kind stranger that she couldn’t seem to keep her mouth shut.
 
Willie Charles and his nonsense seemed a million miles away.
 
And even her own life, where she was unemployed once again without one single prospect on the horizon, seemed unimportant.
 
What was important to her right here and now was being with this man, this strange man who had a way, by his presence alone, of putting butterflies in her stomach and an odd, caressing sensation in her heart.

 
She looked around the office that had a window as large as a wall, a window that overlooked the beautiful Jacksonville skyline and made Carrie feel as if she was on top of the world.
 
Then she looked at Robert, who seemed to be studying her.
 
“So what exactly does a CEO do?” she asked him nervously, as she wondered if he liked what he couldn’t seem to stop looking at.
 
“No, let me guess.
 
A CEO does anything he wants to do, right?”

 
Robert laughed.
 
Again he couldn’t help it.
 
This young woman had a way of cutting to the chase in such an honest, sincere way that some in his profession would find threatening.
 
“Yes,” he said.
 
“That’s exactly it.”

 
“I didn’t have to serve.”

 
Robert hesitated.
 
“Pardon?”

 
“As head cashier at that diner I told you about, I didn’t have to serve the food to the customers.
 
All the other cashiers had to pull double duty like that.
 
But as the head person I didn’t have to.
 
But the manager, he was like our CEO, he didn’t have to ring up or serve or do any of that.
 
He just had to tell us what to do.”

 
“There you go,” Robert said, suddenly feeling too relaxed to make a move.
 
But when Carrie leaned back on the sofa to where her small arm accidentally pressed against his big arm, as if, in her naive seductiveness, she missed that closeness they shared in the elevator, he knew he had to get away from that.
 
But he couldn’t.
 
To his own astonishment, and to everybody else’s who knew what kind of dour mood he’d been in lately, he seemed to enjoy being close to her too.
 

 
“What was your greatest day?” he asked her.

 
She looked at him with those soulful eyes ready to ask him what did he mean, but they were too close, causing her to suddenly feel queasy and to almost swallow her words. “My greatest day?” she finally asked in response to his question, although she said it nearly breathless.

 
Her reaction was not lost on Robert, either, who tempered his own response by looking away from her.
 
“You said becoming head cashier was the second greatest day of your life,” he said.
 
“What day had that day
beat
?”

 
“Oh,” she said with a smile, relaxing again.
 
“Getting saved, of course.
 
Accepting Christ as my personal Savior.
 
Now that day beat all.”
 
She paused.
 
“What about you?” she asked him.

 
“What about me?”

 
“Are you saved?”

 
There was a hesitation in Robert’s response.
 
Carrie didn’t know if it was because the answer was no, or because he just preferred to keep such matters private.
 
Either way, she was very concerned about his hesitation.
 

 
“Yes,” he finally said, although he knew he was a long way from where he used to be in the faith.
 
Sometimes he even wondered if he was still there at all.
  
        

 
“What’s your name?” she asked him, and then looked at him once again.
 
She knew they were too close.
 
She knew she was practically sitting on the man’s lap as if she was some hot mama from way back, but the way he held her in that elevator still gripped her.
 
She was starved for affection.
 
She was dying to find somebody in this world who would be on her side.
 
She needed kindness in her life right now, and somebody who cared.
 
She didn’t believe for a second, however, that this stranger was that person.
 
 
   
        

 
“Robert,” he said.

 
“Robert Kincaid, right?”

 
He looked at her.
 
They were so close that their mouths were mere inches away.
 
And hers was a beautiful mouth, he thought.
 
“That’s right,” he said as he looked from that mouth to her chest.
 
“How did you know my last name?”

 
“Willie Charles called you Mr. Kincaid in the elevator.
 
Remember?”

 
He nodded.
 
He remembered.

 
“My name is Carrie.”

 
“Yeah, you told me.”

 
“Not exactly.”

 
Robert looked at her.
 
“Excuse me?”