After The Dance (35 page)

So we searched for a couple of hours on end one night, only to come up with absolutely zilch. I’m talking no illegal drug paraphernalia or semiautomatic weapons; no filled or unfilled prescriptions for Viagra, Levitra, Cialis, or Prozac; no women’s lingerie, girlie magazines, homoerotic literature, or even so much as one lewd snapshot of ol’ Ms. Nasty Butt Tina.

The only thing of any real interest that we stumbled upon in our snoop-filled trek through Scoobie’s place was that I had free access to every room except for one—homeboy’s study. Not only did we find the double doors to the study sealed shut, but on closer inspection we discovered that the lock was equipped with an electronic keypad.

Nora said, “Uh-huh, how much you wanna bet the smoking gun we’ve been looking for is stashed somewhere on the other side of these doors?”

At the time I’d shrugged it off and told her it wasn’t like I was a complete stranger to the room. I knew it was where Scoobie went to write up his menu and recipe ideas, finish paperwork, pay bills, and the like. I told her besides a safe, a couple of locked file cabinets, some books, and a bunch of office-related equipment and supplies, about the only thing of any real interest we were liable to uncover in there was the urn housing Scoobie’s dead mama’s ashes.

I remember Nora shaking her head, laughing, and talking about, “Girl, you trying to tell me homeboy still feels the need to keep his poor mama locked up somewhere and her nutty butt’s been dead how many years now?”

But as I stood there punching in the numerical sequence that released the study’s electronic lock, I started wondering if Nora might have been on to something. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I first walked in, but the anticipation had my poor heart skipping to a double Dutch beat.

A quick visual survey of the room turned up little that I hadn’t already seen. There was a huge desk, built out of what looked like real mahogany wood and equipped with a phone, a lamp, and a laptop. On one wall there were some nice built-in bookshelves and, on the other, a large series of built-in cabinets and drawers, both apparently constructed out of the same dark, rich wood as the desk. I was walking past the cabinetry on my way to the desk when I heard a distinctive hum. I stopped and eased open the door of the cabinet where the noise seemed to be coming from.

What I found inside the cabinet surprised me, but by all rights really shouldn’t have. It was a monitor, you know, the kind that’s generally attached to a camera of some sort and used for security and surveillance purposes.

Before he’d left, Scoobie had shown me the camera he had trained on the front entrance of the home as well as its corresponding monitor, which he kept in an area off the kitchen. He’d even shown me how to work them and had told me that he was still in the process of setting up additional surveillance elsewhere on the property. That was the main reason I’d had Carl drive his car around to the rear of the house. I’d even tinkered with the angle of the camera that Scoobie had set up to capture the comings and goings of the cars and people who visited his house and had double-checked the monitor’s view, just as an added precaution.

What I hadn’t counted on was the existence of yet another electronic eye, mainly because I’d taken Scoobie at his word that the one was all he’d had time to set up thus far. But there it was—what looked to me like a fully functioning
monitor and on it a tight shot of what else but the back side of Scoobie’s property.

I pushed a couple of buttons on the monitor’s control panel until I got the machine to stop and the tape to rewind. And sure enough, on pressing Play my worst fears were confirmed. Carl’s arrival at the house, my inviting him inside, and even our brief exchange of words on the back porch had all been recorded.

I was standing there biting my lip and trying to decide if I wanted to attempt to erase the incriminating evidence or remove the tape from the machine altogether, when the phone on Scoobie’s desk started ringing. Of course it was him, wanting to know if I’d managed to get into the study all right and if I’d been able to locate the work-related information he’d previously called about.

It didn’t take me but a few seconds’ worth of shuffling through the basket on his desk to find the particular set of papers he needed. I’d hoped after I’d finished reading him the info, he’d thank me and let me get off the phone so I could hurry up and figure myself a way out of the mess I’d gone and made. Instead, Scoobie up and started telling me about his durn plans for the day.

But after a few minutes of rambling with little if any response from me, he stopped and said, “Hey, babe, you feeling all right?”

I was quick to tell him, “Yeah, I’m fine.”

He said, “You sure? ’Cause if you need me to come home sooner rather than later, it can easily be arranged.”

Girl, my conscience was all but begging me to go ahead and confess. Instead of scheming, just tell it all and be done with it. Besides, it wasn’t like Carl and I had really done anything besides kiss. And even if we had, so what? Scoobie and I were neither married nor even officially engaged.

But ultimately the coward in me won out and I told
him, “It is well after 2 in the morning here. Once I get some shut-eye, I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

After Scoobie finally let me go, I got up from behind the desk and had every intention of heading straight to bed when a name on an envelope caught my eye. Dr. Jacob Goldstein.

I picked up the envelope that was sitting atop a small stack of mail on Scoobie’s desk. On turning it over and finding it already open, I didn’t waste any time in removing the letter and sitting back down to read it. Basically, what the good doctor had sent was the list of dates he’d be available to perform the extreme makeover Scoobie had been trying to convince me to have.

But that wasn’t even the stunner, girl. No, what got me durn near hot enough to reach for the phone and cuss Scoobie’s conniving ass was when I came across the portion of the letter that dealt with the coordination of all my nip, lift, and tuck procedures with homeboy’s own pending vasectomy.

I was sitting there mad as all get-out, ranting and raving aloud to myself, when I swear if I didn’t hear what sounded like somebody clearing their throat. Girl, I kid you not, I eased myself up and kind of tipped over to the bookcase, where I thought I’d heard the noise. You know, there wasn’t anything over there besides that durn urn containing Scoobie’s mama’s charred remains and an antique-looking Bible.

Since I wasn’t about to get caught asking Scoobie’s dead mama if she’d said something, I reached for the Bible with the desperate hope of finding a verse upon which I could draw some much-needed strength and solace. But when I opened the Good Book, what I discovered wedged in the middle of Revelations was anything but the peace of mind I’d sought.

The first thing I did when I saw my ex again was apologize and promise that nothing of the sort would happen ever again, at least not in her and the girls’ presence. Let’s face it, man, wasn’t no sense in me coming at her with a whole bunch of lies and excuses when Bet and I both know that had the script been flipped and it been her out there in front of our kids, doing the freak nasty with some joker, I’da straight been ready to jack somebody.

And it’s not like I’m crazy enough to think that me and the ex will ever hook up again. She trashed any notion I might have had about that the day she found out about Benjamin. But even after all the mess I’ve put her through, man, not once has Bet ever dogged me out in front of the twins, made it particularly difficult for me to see them, or asked me for so much as a penny over and beyond what the court ordered me to give her and the girls.

Besides that, man, me and Bet got a history dating all the way back to elementary school. I was her first love and she was mine. Old as I am and as much as we’ve been through together, I’d be a fool not to appreciate the girl. So I’m saying, wasn’t nothing I could do but come correct and give her nothing short of her due.

She accepted the apology, but not without sharing just a few more of her thoughts on the matter. “You know, Carl, that’s all fine and dandy, as far as me and the girls are concerned,” she said. “But what about Faye? Her feelings were probably hurt more than anyone’s. And I sure as hell would have never invited her had I known you were going to be waltzing up in here with Ms. Butterfly.”

The swipe at Victoria didn’t bother me in the least, but the mere mention of ol’ girl’s name got me riled and I said, “I don’t mean no harm, but I wouldn’t waste my time
worrying about Faye or her feelings. Believe me, if she’s not already over it, she will be.”

Rather than drop the ball, Bet snatched it up and ran with it. “Does that mean you’ve talked to her since the night of the party?”

The last thing I wanted to do was share with the ex the full extent to which I’d just been hurt and duped, but knowing better than to attempt an outright dodge, I said, “Look, if you must know I went by Faye’s place after I dropped Victoria off that evening. But as far as the two of us ever hooking up on a regular basis to do some kind of cutesy couples thing, forget it, ’cause I really don’t see that happening.”

Man, had you seen the snarl Bet aimed in my direction, you’da thought my name was Rover and I’d just gotten caught trying to ride all up on her rear. She said, “I guess not, if the best you can do is sneak by the girl’s place late at night and hit her up for some after-the-party boot-knocking.”

That’s when I jerked off the kid gloves and hit her with, “For your information, sweetheart, if getting sexed up and slobbed down is all I’d wanted, I’da capped off my evening snuggled beneath the sheets with the woman I came to the party with in the first damn place, rather than drive way out in the boonies somewhere only to get rained on and chumped by a woman who’s repeatedly made it clear that she ain’t hardly trying to hook up for more than a couple of nights with the likes of somebody like me.”

I fully expected Bet to come flying back at me with some wild combination of flurries. But her counter, when it finally came, struck me as more of a rub than a blow. “So help me out here,” she said. “Should I take that little outburst to mean that you really do care about Faye, or would that just be another bad assumption on my part?”

I gave it to her straight, man. I said, “Let me put it to you like this—had I known about the party and that you had invited Faye, I wouldn’t have needed a Ms. Vic, a cake,
or even any doggone presents, ’cause just Faye’s presence alone would have been gift enough. Hell, yeah, I’ve got feelings for the girl—most nights, I’m up to my neck in ’em.”

Yeah, man, so I’m a wuss, all right? ’Bout the only thing I didn’t do was come right out and commence to weeping on the woman’s shoulder. But I ain’t gon’ lie, it was straight-up touch-and-go there for a few seconds.

Extending me more sympathy than I would have ever previously thought possible, my ex said, “She probably just needs some time, Carl. I mean, what sensible woman wouldn’t be somewhat apprehensive about letting herself fall in too deep with a self-confessed knucklehead who’s saddled with three kids, an ex-wife, a baby’s mama, and a long history of infidelity? You want me to talk to her?”

“No, no, and hell no!” is what I told her. “I think you and Nora both have done enough instigating as it is, don’t you?”

And speaking of Nora, man, I’ll be dog if her ass ain’t about to make me lose my mind. Ever since the party, she’s been hounding me something awful. I’m saying, if she’s not blowing up my pager, she’s leaving multiple messages on my answering machine at home for me to stop tripping and call her.

What she needs to do is take that mess on somewhere else, ’cause I’m through. That’s right, I’m through letting her and ol’ girl play me like some kinda sucker who’s too hard up to know any better. Like that old blues song says, “I can do bad, all by my damn self.”

Oh yeah, girl, wait until I tell you what I found locked up in Scoobie’s study, tucked in the pages of his Bible and
being guarded by his dead mama’s ashes. It looked like something a child in one of those classes for slow kids had put together. So imagine this if you will: a notebook-size piece of paper with four photocopied head shots of yours truly, plastered onto four different emaciated women’s bodies—and two of them white!

I’m saying, bad as it was, girl, I might not have been quite as outraged had the body types Scoobie chosen for me been more realistically within my reach. You know, had he gone the big-hip, thick-thighed, Serena Williams or Beyoncé route? But no, apparently this brother was out to mold and shape my big butt into some anorexic, right-sickly looking type of heifer.

Dying to see just who the bodies belonged to, I peeped under the first head shot only to find the songstress Whitney Houston’s hollow-cheeked mug grinning back at me. And don’t get me wrong, ’cause I don’t have a thing against my girl Whitney. I think she’s both talented and beautiful. I just ain’t trying to look like her skinny ass, is all. And that goes double for the actress Calista Flockhart, who’s pasty, pinched face was the next one to peer up at me when I snatched off the photocopied cover. Hell yeah, girl, horrible barely even comes close to describing what I was feeling and it only got worse from there. I don’t know if it was Mary Kate or Ashley, but one of those durn Olsen twins popped out from under the third version of me. And the fourth one! Girl, don’t you know I was too through when I peeled back that last piece of paper and discovered that Scoobie had taken it upon himself to paste my face on top of that wench Tina’s yak-headed, flat-chested, no-butt body!

I was so worked up, rather than do any more snooping, I gathered together the bits and pieces of Scoobie’s paper-doll project, stormed out of the study, and took my frazzled nerves to bed. But the very first thing I did upon rising that next morning was to call Nora, who, like me, wasn’t scheduled to be at work until later that afternoon.

After listening to all I had to say about my venture into Scoobie’s study and having herself a good, long laugh behind it, homegirl didn’t waste any time in coming out to join me. Though she claimed all she wanted to do was take a peek at all the incriminating evidence, I think what she really wanted was to help me edit some of the less than flattering surveillance footage.