Not a Day Goes By
Table of Contents
DEDICATED IN LOVING MEMORY TO TIMOTHY BERNARD DOUGLAS 8/31/67–3/13/2000
Thank you, my sweet prince, for the
friendship, the love, and for giving my life
meaning, memories, and magic. It’s over,
Tim, enjoy your rewards. Enjoy your rest.
We love you. We will miss you. But God
needed another magnificent spirit. And God
knows best.
IN MEMORY
A. C. Crater, Jr.
Tony Printup
Hugh P. Watson, Sr.
Dr. Walter Shervington
Stuart Matis
Michael Richman
Acclaim for E. Lynn Harris and
NOT A DAY GOES BY
“
Not a Day Goes By
offers sweet, guilty thrills that leave you longing for more.” —Salon
“Harris scores again. . . . His patented knack for a wry, uproarious resolution is in full flower in this sexual
War of the Roses.
” —
Publishers Weekly
(starred review)
“What’s got audiences hooked? Harris’s unique spin on the ever-fascinating topics of identity, class, intimacy, sexuality, and friendship.” —Vibe
“Harris is a wonderful writer. His romantic scenes, whether between men and women or men and men, are always touching.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“A great deal of zany mayhem, soul searching, and theatrical standoffs. . . . A rich comic parable full of laughter and insights.” —Bookpage
“Harris’s books are hot, in more ways than one.” —
The Philadelphia Inquirer
THE AUTHOR THANKS...
THIS AUTHOR is grateful for my personal savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, for his daily blessing and the knowledge that I could not do this alone.
This author thanks his family, all of them, but most especially my mother, Etta W. Harris, my aunt, Jessie L. Phillips, and Rodrick L. Smith for being my rock and source of inspiration.
This author thanks his friends, both old and new . . . Lencola Sullivan, Vanessa Gilmore, Robin Walters, Cindy Barnes, Debra Martin Chase, Troy Danato, Dyanna Williams, Anthony Bell, Bruce Fuller, Carlton Brown, Kevin Edwards, Martha K. Levin, Yolanda Starks, Sybil Wilkes, Brent Zachery, Anderson Phillips, Tavis Smiley, Regina Daniels, Rose Crater Hamilton, Tracey and David Huntley, Christopher Martin, Derrick Thompson, Deborah Crable, and Brian Chandler.
This author thanks Doubleday (which has the best suits in the business) for being a company that not only publishes great books but also cares about the people who write them . . . Steve Rubin, Michael Palgon, Jackie Everly, Mario Pulice, Roberta Spivak, Suzanne Herz, Alison Rich, and Bill Thomas. Special thanks to Eleanor Branch and Jenny Frost at Random House Audio.
This author thanks his support team (manager, agents, lawyers, and accountant) . . . Laura Gilmore, John Haw-kins, Moses Cardona, Irv Schwartz, Amy Goldsend, and Bob Braunschweig.
This author thanks his editors, who all happen to be talented writers and great friends as well . . . Charles Flowers, Dellanor Young, and Rosalind Oliphant.
This author thanks all the booksellers and the ones who are wonderful friends as well . . . Blanche Richardson, Desiree Sanders, Garbo Hearne, Emma Rodgers, Clara Villarosa, Michelle Lewis, Antoine and Theresa Coffer, and Sherry McGee.
This author thanks some special people and organizations that make him always look good . . . Jen Marshall, Shannon Jones, Tarus Sorrells, Janis Murray, Sherri Steinfield, Matthew Jordan Smith, Lloyd Boston,
Code
magazine,
Essence Magazine, The Tom Joyner Morning Show,
The Doug Banks Show, The Mod Squad,
Frank Ski and his morning team, Ryan Cameron and his team, the NAACP, Delta Sigma Theta, Alpha Kappa Alpha, Zeta Phi Beta, The Links,
The Donnie Simpson Show,
and
SBC Magazine.
This author thanks the staff of Trump International Hotel for making it a dream place to write. Thanks also to the colleges and universities which extended kind invitations followed by very warm receptions.
This author thanks Robert Bass, former football great from the University of Miami, for friendship and inside information on agents and football, which helped this novel greatly.
This author thanks the University of Arkansas football team for winning the 2000 Cotton Bowl (with apologies to all the Texas Longhorn fans), the track team for winning the National Championship . . . again, and the
puppies
aka the Razorback Basketball team for winning the SEC tournament.
I can’t wait till next year, Mr. Nolan Richardson!
This author thanks all his writer friends who make me proud to be a writer and those who have offered wonderful advice and friendship . . . Iyanla Vanzant, Terry McMillan, R. M. Johnson, Yolanda Joe, Eric Jerome Dickey, Bebe Moore Campbell, Nathan McCall, LaJoyce Warlick, Tina McElroy Ansa, Tananarive Due, Brian Keith Jackson, and Walter Mosley.
This author thanks and is grateful daily for my senior editor at Doubleday, the amazing Janet Hill.
And finally, this author thanks you, the reader, for all your continued love and support.
Until next time . . . e. lynn harris . . . Chicago, Illinois
PART ONE
DECEMBER 26, 1999
11:19 A.M.
BASIL WAS certain. After a couple of sleepless nights, he was more certain than he had been about anything in his life. There was nothing more for him to do but to inform the person most affected by his decision, his bride to be, Broadway star Yancey Harrington Braxton.
It was the last Sunday of the century. A perfect day for a winter wedding. New York City was bone-chillingly cold, with a new coat of snow. The fierceness of winter had arrived and the city looked white and felt gray.
John Basil Henderson gazed at the phone on the massive, leather-topped desk in his midtown hotel suite and then at the gold monogrammed cuff links Yancey had presented to him after their engagement party. His eyes glanced at the large gold ring on his right hand, a treasured token from his football days. He was only half dressed, wearing black pants, socks, and an eggshell-white silk T-shirt.
Basil moved a few steps, heaved a deep sigh and picked up the phone, pressed the button labeled operator, and when the chirpy young female voice said, “How can I help you, Mr. Henderson?” Basil paused for a moment and responded, “Can you ring 2619, Ms. Braxton’s suite?”
“I’ll be happy to,” she replied. Before she put the call through she added, “Congratulations, Mr. Henderson.”
Basil was startled for a moment. “Congratulations? For what?”
“You are the Mr. Henderson who’s getting married today, right? I saw your name on the ballroom schedule. The room looks beautiful. Decorated like a winter wonderland.”
“Yeah. Thank you.”
After a few computerized beeps, Yancey answered the phone with a voice filled with joy.
“Yancey,” Basil said.
“Baby! I thought it would be Oscar. You know, the guy who’s going to do my hair, or maybe Sam, who’s doing my makeup. Are you ready? Can you believe we’ll be married before the evening is over? I’ve waited so long for this day,” Yancey rambled as she played with her hair in front of a full-length mirror in her flower-filled suite.
A few seconds of silence passed before Basil said, “I can’t do it.”
“Can’t do what? Basil, baby . . . what are you talking about? What can’t you do?”
“I can’t marry you,” he said calmly. His voice was cool and controlled.
“What!” she screamed. This was not happening, Yancey told herself as she pressed her hand to her forehead. Wearing an off-white satin slip, she sat down on the bed in a state of shock, her mind closing down, refusing to comprehend Basil’s words.
“Yancey, calm down,” Basil advised.
“ ‘Calm down,’ mutherfucker, have you lost your mind? Well, of course you have. What other kind of fool would do this to somebody?” Yancey said without taking a breath.
“Yancey, this kind of talk isn’t going to solve anything. I’ve made up my mind and that’s that.”
“ ‘That’s that?’ That’s all you got to say to me? All my guests are getting ready to come to
my
wedding, the wedding my mother has been planning since the time you asked me to marry you, and you give me some ‘that’s that’ bullshit? I don’t think so!” Yancey said as she lifted her body from the bed. Her sable-brown eyes flooded instantly with tears of rage and humiliation.
“What about all the press that’s going to be here? I’ll be the laughingstock of New York,” she added.
“Yancey, I’m going to say this for the last time and then I’m going to hang up. I can’t marry you.”
“But why?” Yancey asked faintly. The tone of her voice had changed in seconds from forceful to pleading.
“Yancey, you know why,” Basil said firmly.
While dabbing away her tears, somewhere in Yancey’s heart she knew exactly why her dream wedding could never take place.
SEPTEMBER 1999
MY LADY, Yancey, changed my life. Sometimes I think she saved my life. My name is John Basil Henderson and I guess I’m what you call a former bad boy. I was the kind of dude who was getting so much play, I needed to buy condoms by the barrel. About two years ago, all that changed when I met Yancey Harrington Braxton the day before Christmas at Rockefeller Center while skating with my five-year-old nephew, Cade. Yancey walked right up and started a conversation while flirting with both Cade and myself. I loved her confidence. We were both smitten at her first hello. Yancey is, as the young dudes would say, a “dime piece” . . . a perfect ten.
When I met Yancey I was in the midst of a pre-midlife crisis. I had just turned thirty-three and my childhood dream of playing pro football was already over. Wasn’t shit going right for me. I was actually seeing a shrink, trying to figure out why I had such disdain for both men and women while, at times, being sexually attracted to both. I was spending too much time trying to get even with this mofo, Raymond Tyler, who didn’t even know how strongly I felt about him. For me, Raymond stood on that thin line between love and hate. There were so many things I liked—no,
loved
—about him, but I also hated feeling that way toward any man. It just wasn’t right.
I had gone to the doctor to face my past—a past that included my sexual molestation by a much beloved uncle. I wrote that no good mofo a letter telling him how he had screwed up my life with his sick ass, but the mofo died before I could mail it. I was surprised at how writing shit down and talking out loud about how I was feeling helped me. But the good doctor wasn’t excited about my relationship with Yancey, and when I disagreed, we parted ways. It wasn’t as if he said, “If you continue in the relationship I can no longer see you, Mr. Henderson.” I just stopped going and he never called to see if I was okay. I guess he didn’t need the money.
There have been times in my life that were so painful that I didn’t think I could share them with another living soul, but then that person walks into your life, and you don’t know whether to be afraid or feel relief. You don’t know whether to run or stand still. That was the way I felt about meeting Yancey. When I told her how my father had raised me to believe that my mother was dead, which I later found out was a total lie, Yancey held me tight and I felt her tears on my naked shoulder. At times I feel as though I could tell her anything, and then I remember she is a woman and wouldn’t understand some of the things I have been through and done. So, despite my bone-deep love for Yancey, I’ve kept some secrets about myself she just wouldn’t understand.
My love for Yancey hit me hard. I guess that’s the way real love works. I love the way she makes me feel like I’m the only man in a roomful of thousands. I love the way other men and women look at us when we walk hand in hand into some of New York’s finest restaurants and nightclubs, or during our simple walks through Central Park. I love watching her perform on the Broadway stage and in cabarets, where Yancey charms both owners and patrons. I love the sound of her singing, not only on stage but in the bathroom, while she sits at her vanity and brushes her hair.
But one of the things I love the most about Yancey is she reminds me of myself. I guess both of us have taken so much shit from our families that we don’t take too kindly to outsiders. We are each other’s best friend. To the outside world we’re the diva and the dawg, but not with each other. Once I took her to Athens, Georgia, for a college football game. After the game we went to a sports bar for beer and chicken wings. The redheaded waitress with colossal breasts was diggin’ me. When she served us, ole girl bent down so low I could smell her deodorant. Yancey definitely took note. So when the waitress did one more dip and looked me directly in the eyes and asked, “Can I git anything else for y’all?” Yancey stood up and said, “Yes, you can git them fake titties out of my man’s face.” That’s my Yancey. Another time, shortly after we first started dating and I was still keeping a few freaks on the side, Yancey came over to spend the night. I came out of the shower expecting to see her lying in my bed wearing something sexy, but she was fully dressed. When I asked her what was up, she told me, “I don’t sleep in no bed where I can smell another woman’s perfume or pussy.” I got the message.
I had a gig doing sportscasting for a network, and when I became fed up with the way they were treating me, Yancey convinced me that I could do better. As we talked one evening while enjoying a late supper, I realized I wanted a business that combined my love for sports and making money. A couple of weeks later a former teammate called me looking for additional capital to expand his small sports management agency. I hadn’t heard from Brison Tucker since the night the two of us went out and got messed up big time after we were both chosen in the first round of the NFL draft. Brison was injured after four years in the league, and had spent several years working in Canada as a scout. A couple of long dinners and months later, I was no longer a talking head at ESPN doing second-rate college games but a partner of XJI (X Jocks Inc.), one of the fastest-growing sports agencies in the country, with offices in New York, Washington, D.C., and Atlanta, with over thirty employees. The agency is looking to add another partner and open offices in Chicago and Los Angeles.
Joining the XJI was the right move at the right time. I had made some decent money with Internet stocks and was looking for another investment. Instead of just handing over money, I joined the firm as a partner. This year alone, XJI has six potential number-one picks in the upcoming NFL draft as well as four NBA lottery picks. I personally signed three of the players. The agency also has a couple of NBA superstars who left their white agents and signed with us, as well as a couple of WNBA players and some track and field hardheads. I love what I do, and I’ve rekindled some old friendships with my partners and made new friends with some of the players I represent. I feel a certain power when I make big-money deals for my clients, especially since the money is coming from wealthy owners who view the players as possessions. If these rich mofos want to play with my players, then I make sure they pay major benjamins.
As for me, myself, and I? We’re rollin’ like a bowling ball! I recently purchased a penthouse loft on Lafayette Street with twenty-six-foot-high ceilings and wood-burning fireplaces in both the living room and the master bedroom. I got a closetful of finely tailored suits and I could go months without wearing the same pair of draws or socks. Yancey and I take vacations in places like Jamaica, Fisher Island, and Paris whenever New York becomes too much of a grind. I’m doing better than I ever did when I was playing professional football.
Still, the biggest change in my life is the way I feel about women. With the love of Yancey and my sister, Campbell, I have come to view women differently for the very first time. I didn’t know I had a sister until two years ago, just before I met Yancey. Turns out my mom had remarried and on her deathbed told Campbell she had a brother. She tracked me down, and suddenly I had two new women in my life. Before, I’d never have let women get that close to me.
In Campbell I see a woman determined to give her son, Cade, and husband, Hewitt, the best she has to offer. Sometimes I just like to watch her with Cade, feeding him french fries or making sure his coat is buttoned up before he goes out into the cold. I love the way she smiles and hugs him whenever he comes into a room, even when he’s only been gone for a short time.
There was a time in my life when I had a lot of anger toward women. I put them in two categories: whores and sluts. The only difference is, a whore gives up the sex because she wants something material, whereas a slut just loves the sex. I have been with both, but I didn’t like the power pussy had over me. Maybe my anger toward women happened because I grew up without a mother, or because I simply hadn’t met the right woman. Now, thanks to Yancey and Campbell, I no longer view them as a resting place for my manhood but a place where I can rest my heart. Now don’t get me wrong, I ain’t
whipped
and I’m not ready for the choir robe and halo. I still got my tough-guy swagger (when needed). The only difference between two years ago and today is I realize that a tough-guy swagger looks just as dumb as a robe and halo.
YANCEY
Harrington Braxton was as complicated as she was beautiful. A woman from Jackson, Tennessee, who never felt she belonged in a small town, Yancey came to New York when she was twenty-two years old. In less than two years, she had made a name for herself with her triple threat skills of being able to act, sing, and dance with the best of Broadway’s veteran divas. But Yancey wasn’t satisfied with leading roles in several Broadway shows. She perfected her skills by taking private lessons in acting, dance, and voice from the best New York had to offer. When Yancey wasn’t in class, she was in the gym making sure her body remained flawless. It was only a matter of time, Yancey thought, before she would take these talents and body to Hollywood and exceed even her wildest childhood dreams.
A statuesque five feet eight, 115 pounds, with a twenty-two-inch waist, Yancey walked with the grace of a haughty runway model. Actually she didn’t just walk into a room, she sauntered. Shoulders back, chest out, Miss America smile. And always, as if preparing to take a bow, she would carefully pan a room, sizing up her audience’s impression of her.
Yancey imagined herself a beige princess, but through the eyes of others, she was a brilliant bronze. A century ago, she would have been considered just brown enough for the big house, but much too brown to pass. You could tell she was black. No cream in the coffee going on there.
Yancey was one of those women who still believed women with long tresses had an advantage, so she kept her hair long and had extensions added. Her lush, chemically treated and colored hair was a dusky auburn that fell just below her shoulders. She loved the versatility of her hair—ponytails (which she loved), french rolls (when she wanted to look regal), upsweeps, and ringlets. Yancey loved to experiment with the styles in fashion magazines. One of her most striking features was her thick eyebrows, which were always seductively and precisely arched.
In high school, she was the kind of person who wrote long, elaborate passages in the yearbooks of her classmates, but wouldn’t remember their names a week later when she would bump into them in the mall or class. Instead of attending her ten-year class reunion, Yancey had sent press packets with her full-color head shots and “Best wishes” scribbled under her signature, a well-studied signature she had practiced since the moment she learned to write her name at age six.
Yancey lived on the Upper East Side in an exclusive 2700-square-foot townhouse, which included a studio/library and servant’s quarters. She had bought the plush home with funds inherited from her grandmother’s life insurance policy and from the sale of her Jackson, Tennessee, home and some land her grandmother owned in Mississippi. There were times between jobs when Yancey had a tough time paying the mortgage, yet somehow she always managed. Just when things were getting tight with the pocketbook, Yancey would land a national commercial or get a gig singing backup for major pop acts. She liked the recording jobs, since she was not only making a little extra cash but also picking up tips for the day someone would be singing backup for her.
Even though her financial situation sometimes became very dire, Yancey was a diva’s diva and refused to waitress or do temp work like many of her Broadway peers. And above all, she could not bring herself to file for unemployment when a show or job ended.
In the close-knit world of New York entertainment, Yancey was known as the replacement queen. She had stepped into many leading roles on Broadway when established actresses took vacation or suddenly fell ill. Yancey had performed in
The Lion King, Rent, Chicago,
Smokey Joe’s Café,
and was currently appearing in
Fosse
.
These shows added not only to her bank account but also to her reputation as a talented performer who could play the virginal beauty and belt out a soul-stirring gospel tune as well. Still, Yancey was not satisfied. She hated the fact that the only time a call came was to replace an actress of color, and she was pressing not only her agent but producers as well to consider her for roles with nontraditional casting. If it happened for Vanessa L. Williams and Audra MacDonald, then it could happen for her.
Often she would scour the pages of
Backstage
and
Variety
looking for roles that didn’t match any of her characteristics. Burdened with the fear of being labeled racist, flustered directors and producers had no choice but to allow the talented beauty to at least audition for the roles. Once, when she had the chance to replace a Hispanic actress on a soap opera in a recurring role, Yancey quit before she signed a contract because she thought the work was not only beneath her but too little for too much in terms of compensation. The only thing Yancey day-dreamed of constantly was a starring role either on Broadway or in a film, or a recording contract that she could put her mark on, and if a Tony, Grammy, Emmy, or Oscar followed, well, that would be just the way things were supposed to be.
And now Yancey figured she had hit the jackpot in the man department. When she met Basil, she thought at the very least he would be a good roll in the sheets, especially when she caught a glimpse of him bending over to help his nephew at the Rockefeller Center skating rink. Basil was a wall of muscle: a strong-shouldered man, with a barrel chest, a six-pack stomach, all spread like Italian silk over a six-foot-four frame. When he turned around and smiled in her direction, Yancey thought he was so achingly handsome with his catlike gray eyes, she couldn’t help but think of him completely naked with his huge arms wrapped around her. His was a body she wanted to see up close and personal. Yet she made him wait almost six months for that pleasure when she discovered there was more to Basil than an amazing body. Yancey found him to be a brother with expensive taste and a wallet to back up her desire for the finer things in life.