Authors: Sherrod Story
Andrea was practically frothing at the mouth. She and Cleo were glued to their phones. The only time either stopped talking was to shout some instruc
tion at Fiona or to each other.
Netty and Sugar treated her like a mannequin, turning her this way and that and talking over her head as though she wasn’t there. They were determined that she would look more beautiful than ever before. Fiona quickly grew numb from their endless attention. She was secretly glad to relinquish most of the control into their skilled hands, but even more happy to escape their clutches and slip into the comfortable arms of her musicians. Men like Natty who loved her a little, whether hypnotized by the beauty of her voice, her body or her spirit
, but sought to change nothing.
Lani had finally stopped tweaking Fiona’s choreography and had turned her laser on the backup dancers, all of which she’d hand-picked for “The Journey” video and culled down to the best of the best for Oprah. They were firmly under her thumb, a flock of beautifully built does, big eyes bugged in perpetual
headlights.
The performance was fabulous. Her
voice was strong and pure, sucking up and spitting out the soulful, seductive lyrics like she’d never been away from the stage. Members of the audience hooted and hollered and some even jumped to their feet clapping as her vibrato tossed and tumbled love words into their eager ears. They watched, lapping up every expression, every twist of her full lips, every sultry lift of her lashes and every sensuous movement of her hips and hands as she strutted around the stage.
She knew without vanity that h
er body was near flawless in a tiny LBD missing its back and most of the front. Her skin appeared gilded, shining with color like the long chain dangling a gold medallion that read ‘Feef’ over the crack of her ass. Her hair was a crown of shiny natural curls, pushed high to reveal the long, delicate curve of her neck.
The interview was perfect. La O tried to initiate some love talk, but Fiona was about nothing but music and movies, and her lively personality stretched both into a veritable fountain of quip
s, jokes and full belly laughs.
To an innocent,
‘How’ve you been?’ she replied,
“Girl, I’m hungry,” and she shook her head pitifully, blinking mink lashes to grand effect as she cast an imperiled look on the queen of TV. “You have no idea. I ain’t had more than a serving of food, carefully screened and prepared far more often than I’d like, raw, at one time, or drank more than water or sugarless tea, in weeks! Soon as I leave here I’m goin’ somewhere and stuff my
damn face. I’m talkin’ murder some filet mignon, and I dare anybody, Cleo, Lani and Netty,” she leaned closer and closer off stage with every name, “To stop me.” The audience cracked up.
La O told her she looked wonderful, which began a detailed discussion of her di
et and exercise post-baby.
“Thank you. I earned this body, child. Believe me! I feel absolutely wonderful, and I’m strong too. I’ve lost all the little weight I gained pregnant. Most of it came off almost immediately after momma’s angel got here, but after dancing and training for the album and my movie almost every day for the last two months, I could probably kick a hole through a wall! My boy Peter kicked it off, roping me into doing his lingerie show and ordering Liani Cambridge to whip me into shape!” she said, imitating Peter’s recogni
zable southern accent to great effect. “But lately I can’t stop thinking about ice cream. Butter pecan, black walnut, cookies n’ cream, my dairy-kissed fantasies are endless. And I ain’t been near enough to even sniff any in so long, all I can do is miss it.”
Natty came to pick her up for dinner right after taping. When pictures of her getting into his black
Benz hit the news Daney grimly read the latest gossip, and threw himself even more firmly into his work.
He smiled until he thought his face would crack and reveal the unrelenting anger he felt when he allowed himself to remember Fiona was giving her love to someone else. It wouldn’t have made him feel any better if he knew that she was
missing him too.
Fiona was busy enough to hold most thoughts of Daney at bay, but sometimes at night, when it was quiet, and her cell phone had been banished for the day, she thought of him wh
ile she was in bed with Natty.
She loathed this so much she
’d make love to Natty in a fury, sweeping him helplessly along until one night, as he lay on his back trying to catch his breath, he said, “If I didn’t already love you, I’d love you.”
She froze then shifte
d restlessly, ready to get up, but his hands clamped down on her ass, holding her in place on top of him.
“I said I loved you, no
t that I was in love with you.”
She raised her head and gently licked his kiss swollen li
ps. “I love you too, you know.”
“You’re beautiful,” he told
her.
“So are you.”
“Does it bother you?”
Fiona cocked her head to the side as she considered his question. “It gets in my way,” she said after a while. “People are always trying their luck. Like I’ll be tryna have a conversation with a man, and I might be stoned and just gettin’ around to the point. He’ll latch on to the conversation but veer it int
o some comment about my looks.”
“Gimme an example.”
She thought for a minute and reached into her nightstand drawer for a joint. The doctor had come by and pronounced himself fairly pleased with her condition, and Natty relented when she begged to be allowed to smoke. She bargained successfully for a full day’s indulgence providing she consumed no more than two joints. Now he watched as she lit up, inhaled, exhaled.
“This cat I knew back in the day stopped by. He called before he came, but I wasn’t expecting him. I had these raggedy ass lavender sweat pants on, and the elastic at the waist was shot. Before he arrived I was just lettin’ ‘em hang off my ass, but I had ‘em hitched up while he was there.” She inhaled again, and passed, watching him take a hit, while he watched her.
“After a while I fold the waistband over twice and tuck it like we used to do our pants hems in junior high, remember?”
He laughed, spewin
g smoke like a dragon. “Right!”
“And I point to it, like, ‘hey, look what I did. Ain’t I smart?” She hit the joint. “This fool says, ‘I already told you
you’re gorgeous. Whaddya want?”
Natty’s eyes squinted as he shook his head
. “Whatchu’ do?”
“I just looked at him. I think I hit the joint,” she said, and he laughed softly and pulled her into his arms. “Then I explained, and he felt stupid.” Fiona propped her chin on her hands on his chest. “I told myself that was the last time I’d ever apologize for or explain my behavior. That would be the last time a man would make me feel bad for looking like I do. And for the most part I’ve kept my word.
”
She
smoked silently for a moment. “That ugly, skinny bitch swore up and down he loved me. He even got on momma’s good side! She ran her fuckin’ mouth and ran it and ran it. Come to find out he was a pathological liar, and he tricked her into telling him some really personal shit about me. I snapped. I’d warned her about all that loose ass conversation. I begged her, shut up telling people every fuckin’ thing you know, every fuckin’ little thing from my past. That’s my business. Let me tell it if I want to. Stop using real shit, my shit, to make a fuckin’ point.”
Natty pinched the joint from her fingers and took a hit, exhaled a few smoke rings. “You
don’t talk to her much.”
Fiona shook her head. “Can’t trust her. I can trust he
r with Flora, but not with me. Not anymore. Now, when people do stupid shit, or say stupid things, I give ’em the business in a real sweet, sexy voice. A voice so low, they have to lean forward to hear it. I set ‘em up with their own shit, and I watch ‘em snap back when I flip their compliments that sound like insults back in their faces. I like the smart ones. The ones who realize they’ve been played, that the beauty they can’t keep their filthy mouths shut about ain’t all there is. That I can be as ugly as they do and still look good.”
Fiona laughed softly. “People would have you believe
that beauty is a gift. I suppose it can be, but no one talks as much about the abuse you have to take. Either people are jealous and want to make you ugly, or they want to fuck you over, or use you, and then make you ugly.”
“No one can make you
anything unless you let them.”
Fiona laughed again, louder, and Natty wanted to shut his eyes to block out the cruel glitter tha
t appeared in his lover’s eyes.
“You right! Ain’t nobody gon’ make me ugly. They tried, but I ain’t weak. A weak woman would do like they say. She’d get fat and slovenly, hunch her shoulders and walk with her head down, eyes averted. She’d wear drab clothes so she could escape notice and blend in. A strong woman will take all that shit, every smudge, every smear, every semi-literate judgment and use it as fuel to make thin
gs work in her favor.”
Natty gave her a
chaste kiss on the lips, a small but noticeable squeeze, then sighed lustily and pouted.
He’d quickly discovered the childish maneuver w
orked wonders to soften her in his favor. Sure enough, she cooed at him like any woman who liked to see a man’s vulnerability. She nipped gleefully at the full curve of his poked out bottom lip.
“It’s only that beauty that keeps me with you at all, you know. And it’s causing me quite a bit of trouble, these constant crying fits when I leave you during the day. The way you insist on clinging to my arm when we part on the street has led to no end of embarrassment,” he said in a prissy faux English accent, and sh
e laughed as he’d meant her to.
“I’m sorry, Natty, my love,” she whispered, voice husky from the smoke and from singing her heart out all day. She took a deep, audible breath. “It’s just that I love you so. I think of you,” she said softly, reaching down to squeeze his sensitive male flesh roughly and make him gasp, “Here, naked in my arms, and I melt with longing.” She shifted, thrusting her hips gently as she felt his dick begin to grow. “
I can’t keep my hands off you.’
He turned, maneuvering her easily until she lay beneath him. He meandered his way between her legs and into her body. “Thank God,”
he whispered against her lips.
Chapter fou
rteen
“We gotta go to New York,” Cleo told her the next morning.
Fiona rolled over and blinked sleepily at her cousin. “What?” she rasped. “Letterman’s not for – Is that for me?”
Cleo handed her a mug of gently steaming tea and shook her head. “It’s not Letterman. I got the fucking perfume meeting set up,” she said, grinning proudly. “I was talking to France at 2 o’clock in the morning!”
She didn’t look like it. Cleo was practically vibrating energy in a black silk robe that elegantly swallowed her petite figure.
“We got flights?”
“Yep. We leave at 2.”
“We need Sugar and Netty.”
“They’re in a row right next to us. I even got them upgraded to first class for free when they found out i
t was you. Security, you know.”
“Yeah?”
“Okay, Andrea did that part, but it was my suggestion.”
“My girl.”
Cleo’s eyes narrowed as she looked at her cousin. “Are you sick? You look puffy.”
Fiona’s face was a little puffy. She was bloated everywhere in fact. And no sooner than the word puffy left her cousin’s lips, she got her period. Netty, in an absolute panic, decided to do an all black wardrobe, a la
Parisian, she said. This would guard against any accidents, disguise the bloating, and, she reasoned, impress the chic French man Fiona was meeting with.
The black decided, Netty contented her usually brightly colored taste with rich accessories. She pa
cked chunky necklaces, the ever present hoops, large stones in two knuckleduster rings, one on each hand. Then there were the snake skin pumps and distressed leather handbags, all heavily accented by something, patches, fringe, even a zipper on a long, patent leather clutch.
“You look great,” Cleo told her visibly sweating cousin in the airport lounge and meant it. Fiona appeared dewy at best and vulnerably solemn i
n her black velvet lounge suit.
“Yeah? I feel like shit.”
“Oh, fuck,” Cleo hissed, eyeing her cousin who was shifting gingerly in her seat. “You’re having a bad one aren’t you?”
Yes. Fiona was having a bad period. She’d thought after giving birth to Flora the bad periods would stop. Her mother said that’s what happened with her, though they had come back two years after Fiona was born. Not as bad though
, that lady had said. Flora wasn’t even a year old yet. Surely she had a little more reprieve left? But she didn’t. By the time they were on the plane she was quietly suffering.
Sugar, who was completely unfamiliar with the sight, seemed to feel the pain a little herself, wincing as she watched Fiona riding it out. She misted her boss with an atomizer of chamomile and aloe she’d whipped up with a few other things to sooth travel-irritated skin. It felt good, and Fiona leaned into the spray with a moan, but when Sugar began to dab her
damp face she swatted her away.
“I can’t take it!”
“Be quiet,” Cleo hissed. “We’re in first class, but this is still a commercial flight.”
Fiona just shook her hea
d, hands gripping the arm rest.
“Jesus,” Cleo muttered, scrabbling around in her purse. She extracted three pills from a small, label-less white bottle. “Take t
hese. Pain killers and Ambien.”
Fiona took the pills and forty minutes
later actually smiled. She even joined in their conversation, not saying much, just nodding or laughing. When she fell asleep, they all breathed a big sigh of relief, and spent the rest of the flight mute and glaring at other passengers to avoid waking her.
They made it to Boomer’s crib by dinner time, and Cleo ordered Chinese fro
m one of the menu’s he kept in a drawer.
Fiona took two more painkillers while Netty and the girls organized the house. Then she ate dinner, took a quick shower and went to bed with one of Sugar’s nighttime concoctions on her face to ward off any period pimples. She slept deeply on the towels she’d put under herself to protect Boomer’s 1,000 thread count bachelor sheets. But in t
he morning she woke up on fire.
“Rise and shine,” Netty sang, only to find Fiona already sitting up silently. She got her the same winning combination of pills they’d given her on the flight,
tea, and a few crackers to stave off nausea. “Why didn’t you call out for me?” she asked when the tears had stopped rolling.
“Too much press
ure on my belly.”
Netty sighed. She wondere
d how many pills Cleo had left.
“If she keeps this u
p, I got enough for two more doses, and then two more painkillers after that. I didn’t get that shit prescription. I only had a few somebody gave me when I got drunk and fell and hurt my shoulder that time.”
“You know a doctor out here?”
“I got no connects out here at all. Fiona used to know this shrink, but we had to put him out the tip one night, and he probably still got an attitude.”
“Another one?”
Cleo humpphhed. “Why you think I keep Barney’s big head ass around? This screwball saw Fiona twice when she was rehearsing for that thriller. What was the name? The Bootman. Then he tells her he has to confess a crush. He was hot and so they make out. He gives her a fuckin’ purse full of Xanax and then thought it was cool to show up unannounced drunk at 2 in the morning, batting his big brown eyes and expecting to get laid. Only our girl checks his ass and politely calls him a cab.”
“What is it about these fools the
y think a wink or a nudge equals a fuck?” Netty asked, shaking her head in disgust. “Nobody even pretends to try to get to know you. They just want to rush to the nut and get the hell out. I think half of ‘em give you some funky ass little gift just so they’ll have something to hold over you. What we gon’ do when we run out?”
Cleo shrugged. “Give her Tylenol, I g
uess. What choice have we got?”
The next morning was the perfume meeting.
They managed to get Fiona dressed without incident, and she looked gorgeous in a black boucle knit wrap dress. Netty hung a gold chain with a lion’s head pendant on her, and it nestled atop a discreet but noteworthy patch of bosom.
“I can’t face those tight ass stockings,” Fiona told Netty, who f
rowned but nodded.
Sugar had planned to visit a beauty store after she did her boss’s makeup. She wanted to cancel but Fiona convinced her to go ahead. Once into the city, Netty removed the black slippers they’d let her wear out of the house then put her friend’s heels on and strapped them in place. It wasn’t immediately apparent the way they were walking, but
Fiona was leaning on Netty hard by the time they made it to the elevator. She began to sweat as they ascended to the 36
th
floor.
“Christ,” Cleo hissed, whipping out a hand
kerchief to blot Fiona’s face.
Netty picked up the clutch when Fiona dropped it and began to slide down the elevator wall. “No, Feef! Just hold on ‘til we get you to a chair, all
right?” she begged.
The elevator doors opened, and a smiling receptionist met them. The woman’s grin faded as she eyed them, and her eyes widened comically when Cleo said, “Shit!” because she knew that look. Fiona’s face always seemed waxy and dry right before
– “She’s gonna puke! Where’s the john?”
“This is the executive suite,” the woman cried. “The emplo
yee bathroom is down the hall!”
“We’re not gon
na make it,” Netty said grimly.
A door opened ahead of them and a man motioned them over. “In here, ple
ase. Hurry.”
They made it just in time. Fiona collapsed in front of a very smart-looking white Kohler toilet and wretched as though the world were ending. Netty cursed even as she knelt beside her friend doing what she could to help Fiona upchuck two crustless pieces of toast with jam, no but
ter, and the last of the pills.
“I’m so sorry, Monsieur,” Cleo was apologizing in the next room. “Fiona isn’t feeling well, I’m afraid. It came upon her suddenly yesterday, but she really thought she could make the meeting. She wanted to speak with you so badly.”
Gilbert Fouberge was a handsome man of about 5’9”, with the typical chocolate brown eyes and hair of the French. A few years shy of 40, but appearing years younger, he was also impossibly chic, a third generation perfumerier. His father had created one of Elizabeth Taylor’s signature scents. Despite his consequence he seemed sympathetic.
“A stomach up
set was it? Something she ate?”
Cleo hesitated. She hated telling lies. You never knew when one would come back and bite you in the ass, but she didn’t want to tell this elegantly turned out European that F
iona’s period had floored her.
“Cramps?” he suggested gently, and she grinned ruefully. “My sister suffers from that, poor thing. It’s a miserable condition. Do not worry. We will meet in a few days wh
en she is feeling better, yes?”
He insisted they take his car home when he found out they had let their driver go. Fiona was a mess. She was sweaty and limp, her makeup long
gone. Her normally pink lips looked pale. She lay with her head back moving restlessly against the seat, digging her bare heels into the floor.
“What
we gon’ do?” Netty asked Cleo.
“We need help. But I can’t think of anybody to go to
here in a crisis. Boomer’s on some fuckin’ island fishing. He’s not answering his cell ‘til like a week from now, and Natty’s got a message on his phone sayin’ he’s locked in the study, leave a message.”
They pondered solutions, running through person after person for one reason or another. After a while Netty shrugged and threw up her hands
. “We gon’ have to call Daney.”
Cleo shook her head
, but she knew Netty was right.
An hour later they had Fiona out of her clothes and in bed. She’d get a respite, sometimes a long one. Then a spate of cramps would hit, and she just seemed to wilt. They’d offered Tylenol but these were thrown away like the last batch of pills, involuntarily into the toilet. They bathed her brow, tried to massage her tense limbs and shoulde
rs, but Fiona pushed them away.
“Don’t fuckin’ touch me,” she cried, her voice hoars
e from upset and choked tears.
Thirty minutes later she gave up trying to fight the pain and just broke down crying. Cleo showered her with kisses, muttering nonsense, anything
to make her cousin feel better.
The do
orbell rang.
“It’s him!” Netty yelled, leaping to her
feet and running from the room.
Daney had arrived, and he’d brought a doctor.
“How is she?” he wanted to know, striding through Boomer’s dining room to the back bedroom where Fiona lay weeping. “Hey, now,” he said, in his low sexy drawl. “My girl’s not feelin’ too good, huh?”
Curled up on her side, Fiona just cried harder, but she clutched his hand to her cheek and allowed
him to gently stroke her side.
“I brought a friend to see you. His name’s Dr. Neill. He has something
to make you feel better, okay?”
Fiona tried to muffl
e her sobs and lifted her head.
Dr. Alfred Neill smiled and moved forward into her line of sight. He wasn’t terribly tall
, only a little taller than Netty who stood near 5’7”, but he was a much sought after physician. His sweetheart bedside manner was his stock in trade, and he had been friends with Daney since they were kids growing up in the neighborhood.
“Hi, Fiona. Call me Fred,” he said, smiling gently at her. He laid his palm against the side of her neck. “You’re a little
warm, huh? Cramps really bad?”
Fresh tears were his answer as Cleo quickly but succinctly ran down their efforts to curtail the pain since it began.
“When was the last time she was sick?” he wanted to know.
“Almost two hours ago,” Net
ty said. “We ran out of pills.”
“Fiona,” he said, gently uncurling her so he could examine her. “Come on, love. That’s your last name too, isn’t it? Straighten for me, okay? I know it hurts, brave girl.” He crooned, and Daney marveled at this side of his friend who’d once been so cruel to anothe
r boy, the kid actually cried.
Dr. Neill banished all of them while he examined Fiona. When he finished he gave her a shot that leeched the tension from her body and put her to sleep in minutes. He took an old-fashioned hot water bottle out of his doctor bag and gave it to Cleo with instructions to fill it and put it on Fiona’s back or belly to
ease the cramps when she woke.
“She shouldn’t snooze long,” he told them. “I gave her a mild sedative with a pain killer. Same thing you did really except my dose was stronger. Her body will nap with relief to get away from the pain. She’ll need to regroup for awhile before she gets back on an even keel. She has a low grade fever. Nothing to worry about. That can happen
with inflammation of any kind.”