Going Down (10 page)

“Yeah, reception in this joint is suspect.”

“Let me go see what my baby’s talking about.”

“Let me ask you a question, Zack.”

“What’s that, Tee?”

“You’re supposed to be with Lana now, right?” Tee asked.

“Walking through Piedmont Park.”

“Now Angelique just called you.”

“I know where you’re going with this.” And I did.

“So what do you do?”

“I call Angelique.” No questions asked. Angelique rules.

“So what do you say when she starts with, where are you? What are you doing? When are you coming home?”

“I tell her where I am and what I’m doing. I’ll talk to her for a while. We got tickets for a play tomorrow, we’ll talk about that. And I’ll tell her that I’ll see her when I get home.”

“And that’s that?” Tavarus said, in a tone that highlighted his disbelief.
  

“Like I said, it’s different with Angelique. I can get by with that because I put in the time with her. I was with her yesterday, we’re going out tomorrow. She understands that a marriage needs space sometimes.”

“And if she did?”

“I’d go home.”

“What about Lana?”

“What about her? Hey, man, Lana knows Angelique always comes first.”

I got up and went outside to call Angelique, but my mind was on Lana. I was actually looking forward to doing something, other than have sex, with Lana. I asked myself,
What if Lana had time, could she?
The fact that I had to think about it said something in and of itself. I didn’t want to think about it, so I shook it off and dialed Angelique’s number at work, but there was no hiding from the fact that I really liked Lana. Angelique answered.

“This is Angelique.”

“Hey, baby.”

“I was just getting ready to leave. I didn’t think you were going to call. Where are you?” Angelique asked.

“At the Double Tree, talking to Tee. You know him and Carmen are talking about breaking up.”

“Oh, that’s why you didn’t answer. Tavarus venting?”

“Like it’s going out of style. That and the fact that the reception is bad in here.”

“How long y’all gonna be there.”

“I don’t know. Why, you wanna do something?”

“Yes.”

“I should make it to the house”—I looked at my watch—“at about eighty thirty. I’ll change and we’ll go do something. Have a drink, see a movie, something like that.”

“I’ll see you when you get here.”

After I hung up with Angelique, I tried to call Lana but she didn’t answer. I had a couple more drinks with Tee and headed for the house. I made it there at eight forty, which made Angelique very happy. Usually when I give her a time, I show up about an hour, sometimes two hours, later.

We had a nice quiet evening. Angelique had cooked dinner and waited to eat with me. After dinner we talked about the
Bandexx
deal and watched a little television, before heading for the bedroom. Angelique took a shower and then I took mine. When I got out of the shower and got in the bed, I kissed her goodnight and was surprised when Angelique took it a step further.

I love kissing her. Like I said, Angelique is a phenomenal kisser. There was so much passion in her kiss. More than I had ever experienced before or since. If only the rest of our sex was as intense as that, I would be in heaven.

Angelique turned off the TV, which is always the first step before we do it. She has to have complete darkness in the room when we have sex, so doin’ it at any time during the day is out of the question. Angelique sat up in the bed and took off her nightgown, and we begin to make love. She opened her legs and I crawled in between them and eased myself inside her slowly.

Angelique and I kiss the entire time that I’m inside her. Our tongues glide effortlessly in and out of each other’s mouths. Despite it being quick and unadventurous, Angelique has the best pussy. It is always dipping wet and it feels like it was contoured perfectly for my dick. That fact alone makes making love to my beautiful wife so good, each time we do it. If only it could last longer.

I’ve tried to condition my mind to focus on the fact that it feels so good and be satisfied with that, but it only makes me want more. While we make love, I try not to watch the clock, but I always seem to. Ten minutes is normal and anything that approaches fifteen is great. That night, our lovemaking lasted all of twelve minutes before Angelique pushed me off of her and rolled over. I held her tightly, with my dick rock hard, and pressed up against her luscious ass. Ten minutes later, Angelique was fast asleep, but once again I was wide-awake and thoroughly unsatisfied.

I walked out of Technical Management Group bringing closure to a day I would never forget, but I would damn sure try to. It began first thing that morning when I woke up, late. It was eight thirty and the morning meeting began at nine. While getting dressed, I banged my knee against the bed. “That shit hurt like a muthafucka.” But thirteen minutes later I was in the car and away. Traffic was heavier than usual that late in rush hour. Partly because I-20 was thick with the Georgia State Patrol and the rubberneckers were out in force, slowing down to look every time they saw blue lights flashing. Since exploiting the
HOV
lane was out of the question, I arrived in time to catch everyone coming out of the meeting.

The job had been one disaster after another almost since the first day I signed the contract. I remember how optimistic I was when I first got the contract. I was riding with Tavarus the Sunday afternoon before the job started. “So what’s up with this new gig you got, Chris?”

“The name of the company is
TMG
, Technical Management Group; Angelique turned me on to them. It’s a data center facility used to house computer systems and associated components like telecommunications and storage systems,” I said to him and explained what they do.

“You know about that?”

“Enough to be dangerous. I can run some diagnostic tests, but CJ works with the system every day at her job. So, I figured I could go out there, run some tests, and call her. If things got too thick, CJ could come out there. Now, when I get there, everybody’s in panic mode—running around like chickens with their heads cut off. So, after they give me the sob story about the consultant, I sit down at the console and reboot. The system comes right back up.”

“Just like that.”

“Yeah, but they don’t know anything about the system, so they didn’t know it was backed up. So I ran the diagnostics and called CJ just to be sure everything was cool. She said to take the system down, then bring it back up. Easiest thousand I ever made.”

“So how’d you turn it into a job?”

“A week later, a guy named Ivan
DeVito
, leaves me a message, ‘Let’s talk. Come by any time, I’m always here.’ So I call Angelique to get the scoop. Seems their consultant was in Jamaica for the week. Didn’t tell them he was going. He didn’t have an emergency contact person, much less a backup. He was hardly ever there; had them doing all the reporting themselves, and basically getting cold paid for nothing. When he showed up that Monday, they wouldn’t even let him in the building. They’re suing him for breach of contract. Here’s the best part, Tee: they were paying him a hundred and twenty grand.”

“No shit.”

“I go to work on a proposal right away. I figure for that kind of money, I could bring in two people and give them onsite coverage from eight
am
until midnight. I’d pay CJ to do two weeks of training. Then put her on a retainer to be on-call, and still make thirty grand profit. It’s the biggest contract I’ve ever had.
DeVito
kept me waiting for an hour, then we talked for three more hours, but when I left, I had a deal.”

“Now that’s a motivated Black man at work. You saw an opportunity, fell up in there with a plan, and capitalized on it. You know I admire you for that. I think about goin’ solo, starting my own business, but not knowing where your money’s gonna come from is scary. It takes heart to step out there alone the way you did. I respect you for that.”

“The security of that regular pay check is keeping you in check. Tavarus, you got a marketable skill and a very lucrative one at that, but you allow somebody else to get paid for it. Only thing that keeps you showing up every Monday is fear. Always be willing to face your fears, Tee.”

 
Tavarus thought about it. He knew I was right. Me and Tee have been having this conversation since I went out on my own. It always ends the same way. “You’re right, Chris. I know it. As a matter of fact, I was talking to Linda about taking that step.”

“It wasn’t easy, you know that.” I thought back to those days. “You and Zack used to feed me damn near every day.”

“I remember those days. We used to call you a bum and yell, ‘GET A JOB! GET A JOB!’”

“Thought about getting a job many, many, many times. Almost lost my house. But I stuck. I know I just got lucky with this one. Angelique looked out. But when I walked in there, I was ready.”

“That’s ’cause you the man.”

On this particular day, twenty minutes later, their main server went down. Which didn’t really present a problem for me since the server my system is housed on, was still up and running. I’ve offered to help them out when they’ve had problems, but it was never excepted. However, just to show what a team player I was, I stopped by to offer my assistance. “That’s okay, Chris. We got it.”

“Call me before you reconnect to the system,” I said, as I gladly left the area. Cisco’s Unified Computing System Manager or
UCS
, provides unified, embedded management of all software and hardware components. It controls multiple chassis for all of their virtual machines.

I went into my office across the hall and asked Kim, one of the woman I hired to run some diagnostics, just to be sure everything was fine.

And it was.

So I went for my second cup of coffee and relaxed with the paper. A half-hour later we received a call from James, the director of information systems. “Hey, Chris! What’s going on over there?” James asked in a panic.

“Everything’s fine here. Y’all back up?”

“Hell yeah! We’ve been up for damn near twenty minutes. But the system is still off-line.”

“I thought you were gonna call me before you tried to reconnect to the system. Hold on.” I jumped out of my chair. “Kim, are we still up?”

Kim rolled her chair around to the console. “Yeah, why?”

“James said the system is still off-line and they been up for twenty minutes,” I said, practically pulling Kim out of her chair and out of my way. I picked up the extension. “James! Everything looks good here. I don’t know why it’s still down. I’ll call you back.”

“I’ll be over there.” James slammed down the phone.

“This is the last thing I need today,” I said, feverishly typing commands. “He needs to stay his ass over there. I don’t need him standing over my shoulder, breathing down my neck.”

I tried everything I knew to get the system back online to no avail. Everything still read fine. When rebooting, the system failed. I called CJ, left her a message, and continued to work. After waiting fifteen minutes for CJ to call back, I called for her at her job. “Jackie, this is Chris. How you doing? Is CJ there?”

“She’s here, but she’s not at her desk.”

“I called her, but she hasn’t called back.”

“That might have something to do with the fact that her cell phone is on her desk.”