Bad Girls Finish First (22 page)

“A little over three weeks before the election? I can't imagine Michael letting you go anywhere.”

“He'll do okay without me for a couple of days,” Raven said. After the Smotes incident, Michael had marginalized Raven to the point where she had to snoop around to find out what was going on. “While we're there I can get a few donors to send checks in. Michael will be happy with that.”

Raven looked at her watch. “It's later than I thought. I'd better get on the road.” She stood.

“Don't be in such a hurry,” David said as he got to his feet. “We have to finish talking about my birthday.” He looked around the courtyard and up at the hotel windows, then kissed Raven. “Let's go to my room.”

Raven was putty in David's hands. “We shouldn't,” she said, sounding as though there was nothing she'd like better. “I spent the night with you two nights ago, David. If we keep this up, we're going to get caught.”

“I didn't say anything about spending the night,” he said as his hands moved down her body and pulled her closer. He was grateful for the darkness.

“I just want to talk,” David whispered.

By now, Michael, followed by the New Word gospel choir, could have walked into the courtyard and the couple wouldn't have noticed.

“Okay. But just for a minute,” Raven said.

 

 

The next morning, David asked, “What did we have to discuss that was so important we had to sleep on it? We'd better think of something good.”

Raven stretched but she didn't open her eyes. She lay next to David, with her head just below his chin. “I could tell Michael that we had to decide where we're running off to for your birthday, but he might want to come with us.”

David chuckled. “Why not tell Michael the truth, or at least half of it. The other ministers wanted to know what's going on with the faith-based initiative, and you needed to stay over to brief me on it.”

Raven opened her eyes and pushed back from David. “What? I thought we were playing a game.”

“We are, honey, but hey, as an alibi, it's hard to beat. This afternoon I'm scheduled to speak and I would like to touch on the subject. Why don't you give me a primer on it?”

Raven frowned. “Now?”

“Sure, why not?”

Raven rolled onto her back. “For one thing, you haven't wanted to talk about it in weeks. I assumed that's because you know I'm going to be fair to New Word. You've attended all the faith-based presentations that I've put on for Michael's campaign and at least half the ones done by Sweeney. I should know—we always end up in your hotel room afterward.”

Raven was only partly right. David had attended not half, but every one of Sweeney's hearings. She was in the dark about how frequently David was in Austin because if he wasn't going to be with Raven, he didn't let her know he was in town. On the trips Raven didn't know about, David spent the night with Erika.

“There are things I still don't know,” he said.

“Such as what?”

“Well, like how effective is this thing really going to be? I understand that the money needs to be spread around, but if it's divided up too much, all the state will have done is create a lot of underfunded programs. It's hard to have an impact when things are done that way.”

“If Michael wins this election, the initiative is going to be more successful than you think. Let me tell you why,” Raven said. She sat up, and David saw that she was all business, which made her sexy in a completely different, yet equally stimulating way. He listened to Raven explain the way the initiative would work, and although he knew she was responsible for implementing the plan he was nonetheless impressed by Raven's perfect grasp of how religious organizations operated. She instantly answered questions that he'd put to Sweeney's people weeks earlier and for which he was still awaiting a response. David and Raven became so engrossed in their conversation they lost track of time.

“I hear what you're saying—the plan is workable just as it is—but I'm not so sure you're right. Let's finish this conversation the next time we get together,” David said as he tucked his sweater into his slacks.

“What's left to say? You didn't come up with a single reason not to distribute the money evenly that I wasn't able to knock down.” Raven was still in bed. Her habit was to let David get dressed and leave the room first, and she told him she did it to stay out of his way. Raven's real reason was that kissing David good-bye just as he stepped over the threshold made her feel like she was his wife, sending him off into the world while she stayed behind and kept the home fires burning. It was very un-Raven of her, and she couldn't have cared less.

David strode to the bed and kissed the top of Raven's head. “Don't get up. Drive safely, baby. I'll call you later.”

For the rest of the day David mulled over his conversation with Raven. As much as he wanted to get a huge chunk of the faith-based money, he had to admit that she was right: The current plan to divvy up the money was fair. And as she had talked about the program, she'd looked completely guileless, so devoid of the slyness that usually marked every word she said that David felt a little bit ashamed. Although he told her that they would take up the subject later, David decided that he'd never again mention the faith-based money to Raven.

21

C
hristopher took Grace to a movie, then asked where she'd like to go for dinner. She surprised him by offering to cook.

“Mom, this is a new side of you. I didn't know you liked to cook,” Christopher said. He sat at the bar and watched his mother dice tomatoes.

Grace's eyes glowed as she recalled good times. “When your father and I first married, I cooked all the time. Dinner was our time together. He'd come in from his job at the district attorney's office, and make a beeline for the kitchen.”

“Starved after a long day, huh?”

“Not really. Back then I was the big attraction, and I could be found in the kitchen.” Grace smiled at Christopher.
She's beautiful,
he thought. He'd never noticed her as a woman before; she'd always been just Mom. But sitting there, watching Grace prepare a simple, elegant meal, Christopher saw his mother through his father's eyes. Grace was as magnificent to her son as she'd been to his father when Michael was in his early twenties. Grace Joseph was a sweet heartbreaker.

“We planned his entire career, sitting much the same way you and I are sitting here now. Michael would watch me cook and he'd talk—dream, really—and I'd tell him he could do whatever he set his mind to.”

“Why'd you stop?” He watched as Grace expertly diced vegetables: onions, celery, bell pepper, and garlic. Now she browned flour as Christopher kept talking. “From the look of things, you know your way around a kitchen.”

“After you were born, I didn't have time,” Grace said after a while. She looked up again, and this time she wasn't smiling, but she didn't look hurt or slightly unhinged the way she had been. She sighed and said, “Even with you running around the house—Evan too, when he was born—I could prepare a five-course meal in no time. Truth is, once your father got his first elected position, when you were about three, he lost interest in spending that quiet time with me. So I stopped doing it.” Grace took fresh shrimp from the refrigerator and added them to a skillet that already contained vegetables and a half-dozen spices.

“I know I shouldn't tell you this, but I started being afraid of losing him back then, when you were a toddler. From my first date with Michael, I was crazy about him, and I thought he was crazy for wanting to be with me.”

“Why would you—”

Grace held up her hand. “I know, I know, it sounds stupid. After all, I've got all this.” She moved her hands across her body with a flourish, but the gesture seemed insincere. “Or I had it, back then.” Grace wiped her hands on a dish towel and said, “I'm sorry, Chris, I shouldn't be saying these things to you.”

“Mom, all I know is you need to talk to somebody, get all the crap out of your system and walk away. I'm your son, but I'm also a grown man and your best friend. You can tell me anything.”

“What if I told you I got pregnant with Evan on purpose, to save my marriage?”

“You what?” Christopher was so surprised he forgot what he'd just said about no subject being taboo. His personal code said that good women—be they wife, girlfriend, or one-night stand—did not trap a man by getting pregnant.

“I know what you're thinking, Chris. But you'd be surprised how many babies are conceived for their glue power. Sometimes the couple makes the decision together, sometimes it's just the woman, and sometimes, just the man.”

Christopher thought about how much he wanted to marry Genie and start a family, how desperate he'd been to get her attention. “Is it a mistake, making a baby like that?” he asked.

“Yes and no. The baby's not a mistake, but using a baby to cement a relationship? Making a decision that affects another person without their permission? Those things are wrong.” Grace turned back to her cooking. “In my case, I realized, too late, that I should've talked to Michael. He would've been ecstatic at the thought of another child, I know that now. But the way I went about it made things worse, not better.”

She prepared their plates. “Let's eat.”

Christopher was accustomed to banquet meals and the unimaginative dishes cooked by the cafeteria in his father's office building. He savored Grace's dish, for the flavor and for the normalcy that preparing it brought out in her.

Christopher ate seconds and thirds. “Mom, would you cook this again the next time I'm in town?”

Grace laughed. “If you want me to. But, Chris, I've got dozens of recipes.” She began clearing the table. “Whatever you have a taste for, I'll cook.”

Christopher leaned back in his seat and watched his mother as she cleaned the kitchen. He'd offered to do it, but she insisted. As she worked, Grace sang along to the CD that she'd put on during dinner. Evan got his amazing voice from his mother.

When Grace brought in coffee for each of them and sat across from him, Christopher said, “You look happy.”

She reached across and covered Christopher's hand with her own. “Getting there. Because of you.”

“Mom?”

Grace waited.

“Mom, why did you let us go?”

Grace stirred her coffee, took a sip. She held her mug with both hands, grateful for its weight. She didn't want Christopher to notice that she was trembling. When she trusted her voice to sound normal, Grace said, “There were a lot of reasons why, but it came down to the fact that Raven knew our schedules.”

“I don't get it,” Christopher said.

“Your father . . . I was accustomed to . . . his ways. I figured it was just the price I paid for being married to a politician.” Grace shook her head and peered into her mug as she spoke. “I see young girls doing the same thing today—accepting disrespect just to hold on to their men. Used to be only high-profile men got away with cheating right out in the open. Now even sorry, broke, ugly men have two and three women.”

Grace hadn't meant it to come out sounding funny, but it did, so they both laughed.

Grace shifted her gaze to Christopher, “Looking the other way back then was so stupid, and it's damn sure stupid now.” She shook her head again, remembering.

Christopher had never seen this side of her personality. She was always so appropriate; he couldn't believe she'd just said
damn.
He liked it.

“I wish Genie were stupid enough to forget about seeing me at Monica's, but . . .” He shrugged. “You were saying.”

Grace resumed her story. “I knew there were other women, but there was something different about this one, I could tell from the start,” Grace said. “So I went to see her.”

“How did that go?” Christopher asked, but he already knew. Even if Grace were twenty times more self-assured than he'd ever realized, she was no match for Raven.

“Not good. That's when I found out she knew our schedules. I didn't mind so much about mine, but for her to know your baseball coach's name and what time I dropped Evan off at choir practice.” Grace hesitated, then said, “She knew what Evan had worn to a birthday party the Saturday before. That shook me,” Grace said.

“I can understand that,” Christopher said, although he couldn't. So Raven was a stalker, so what? That should have given Grace even more reason to keep her children away from Raven. Christopher knew that he should let it go, but his scars from the divorce demanded answers. If pressing Grace meant taking a chance that she'd dive back into her shell, then so be it.

As though she could read Christopher's mind, Grace said, “I know it sounds like a poor excuse, but my mother's intuition kicked in and told me not to take Raven for granted. When your father said he wanted you boys to live with him, I knew Raven was behind it.” As Grace talked, Christopher noticed fear creep into her eyes. “I wasn't sure what she'd do if she didn't get her way.”

Grace abruptly stood, took both their mugs, and headed for the kitchen. “So I let you and Evan go rather than see you hurt.”

 

 

Raven and David sat at the bar of a San Diego nightspot. The music was good—old school, like Johnny Gill and Anita Baker, mixed with neo-soul and the latest hip-hop. They danced until they got thirsty, went to the bar for drinks, and then danced some more.

“How'd you find a place like this in San Diego?” David asked.

“My parents live near here. This is my escape when I visit them.”

“Speaking of which—”

“I haven't changed my mind, David. Maybe if my father were home, but he's out of town. I have no desire to see Jacqueline,” Raven snapped.

“Okay,” David said, realizing that he needed to tread carefully. He and Raven had been in southern California since Thursday night, celebrating David's birthday, and they were in the middle of having the time of their lives. Even on her best behavior, Raven was self-centered and easily upset, but David accepted that about her.
The good with the bad,
he thought whenever she got an attitude. The good times were Raven's brief moments of naked vulnerability. David was convinced that Raven was essentially a decent person and that, since she showed her true, sensitive nature only to him, it was his mission to take that goodness and cultivate it.

Since they'd landed at the San Diego airport, everything had been perfect. David didn't get to see only glimpses of the good Raven; she gave him one hundred percent of the best inside her, without even being aware that she did. They laughed until they cried, made love until they fell away from each other utterly exhausted, and sat quietly together on the beach, listening to the roar of the Pacific, until their souls were united and at peace.

They'd discussed Raven's relationship with her mother many times, and although David wanted her to get past her hurt, he knew better than to push. He swiveled in his seat and looked around the club.

“There was a time you couldn't get me into a place like this.”

“Partying and pastoring don't mix, I suppose.”

David hoisted his drink, “The drinking, having a good time, I can deal with. It's who's doing the partying that would've bothered me.”

Raven surveyed the room. It was filled with the people she felt most comfortable around—they were good-looking, mostly middle class, and mostly black.

“You have a problem with your people?” Raven jokingly asked. She patted her hand against her thigh, keeping time to the music.

David surprised her, and himself, by admitting, “Yeah, I do.”

He swiveled back around so that he faced Raven. “I know I give you a hard time about your mother, but actually, I know where you're coming from.” David screwed up his face. “I grew up with two loud . . . mean, ignorant women. The way my grandmother looked, and the way my mother carried herself—I couldn't bring friends home. They were a disgrace. Once I got out of that house, I made up my mind not to spend more than five minutes with people like them.” He asked the bartender for another drink.

“I thought you forgave your mother?”

“I forgave her, but then I started blaming other women.”

David didn't want to keep looking at Raven, but he felt compelled to. “In the back of my mind I began thinking that women who were the total opposite of my grandmother and mother were better.”

“White women?” Raven asked softly.

David looked into his glass. “Yeah. When I first started dating them, my excuse was that I needed to date women who couldn't possibly know any of my church members. But I really did it because I wanted to. Because I thought they were somehow better than black women.” He started to drain his glass, changed his mind and set it on the bar.

David looked embarrassed. “I can imagine what you must think of me. I hope you're not offended.”

“No, I'm not offended. I can hold my own against any woman. As for what I think of you, I figured you had issues with white women when I ran into you with that Lufkin waitress,” she said. “My daddy would say it like this: Issues are like ears; everybody's got them. It's nothing to make a big deal about.”

“I've never told any of my friends why I'm attracted to white women—who would understand?” David made a sad little smile. “Michael knows. I think that's why he trusts me around you.”

David wanted to be in the here and now with Raven, so he stopped thinking about Michael. “But I can tell you my secret, because you've cured me. Laverne would be impressed.”

Laverne?
The name seemed familiar to Raven. She tried to figure out where she'd heard the name before, but she couldn't.

“Who's Laverne?”

“Nobody you know,” David said.

Raven took David's hand. “I know about being judged and misunderstood. A lot has been said about me.” Raven started to say more, then thought better of it. “You've heard the rumors, right?”

David had and he'd spent hours trying to reconcile the Raven people gossiped about with the Raven he knew. He decided that his Raven was the real one.

“I know you,” he told her, “so I know that what they say are lies.”

Raven kept her eyes on the dance floor. “Would it matter if they weren't?”

While the lovers talked, the DJ slid into slow songs. “Love,” the song Evan sang at the Reeses' wedding, had just begun.
Love, there are so many things I've got to tell you, but I'm afraid I don't know how, 'cause there's a possibility that you'll look at me differently.

David grabbed Raven and pulled her off her bar stool. “Let's dance.”

 

 

“Hey, please don't hang up,” Michael said.

Grace wasn't going to hang up. She'd waited for Michael to call her again. Every time the phone rang, she hoped (and berated herself for hoping) that Michael was on the other end.