17
STANDING IN the kitchen next to our conference room, I was stirring some cream into my second cup of coffee and thinking about Yancey. I was wondering what time she was going to be rolling out of bed before I called her. I pictured her in an oversized sweatshirt and some of the silk thong underwear we both loved. I must have been in deep thought because I didn’t hear Brison walk into the small space, more like a closet than an actual kitchen. He had a smile on his face and was carrying a canned protein drink.
“Whassup, dude?” he asked.
“Cool, everything is cool,” I said.
“How was Chicago?”
“It was alright. I didn’t stay that long. Just met with Zurich and caught a flight back.”
“No extra time to spend with the ladies?”
“You know I don’t do that anymore. You got me confused with your other partner, Nico,” I teased.
“I guess you’re right. Sometimes I don’t know how that boy ever gets any work done. Didn’t you used to date some lady there?”
“Yeah, but I haven’t talked to her in a while and she’s probably married or some shit,” I said. I opened the refrigerator and placed the cream back on the top shelf.
“Well?” Brison asked with a quizzical look on his face. He had dropped his can in the wastebasket, and his large hands were cupped and dangling by his waist. It was like he thought I could read his mind or something, knowing the answer to his unposed question. His body language looked like a question mark.
“Well what?” I asked.
“What did you think of Zurich Robinson?”
“Oh, he was cool. I actually played against him, and talked to him a couple of times after games,” I said. I didn’t look in Brison’s eyes. Instead I looked around the counter area like I was in search of some sweetener for my coffee. I was starting to worry every time I heard his name.
“Do you think he’s partner material?”
I took a deep breath. “Could be,” I said, trying to sound positive.
“With all the black quarterbacks coming out of college, it sure would be nice to have a former one in our camp,” Brison said.
“Yeah, I hadn’t thought of that. What does Nico think?”
“He’s meeting with him later this week. Then I thought we’d bring him in for some sort of final interview and make an offer or keep looking,” Brison said. “All of his financial information checked out, and he’s really a great guy.”
“Sounds like a plan. Just let me know, but make sure it’s not next Monday because it’s Yancey’s first show in Las Vegas. I’ve gotta be there front and center,” I said.
“No problem. Man, do you know how your eyes just light up when you mention her name? When are you guys going to make it legal?”
“Sooner than you think, dude,” I said as I winked at Brison and headed back to my office.
When I got back to my office, I asked Kendra to make plans for my trip to Las Vegas. Just before I opened the door to my office, I turned and said, “Kendra, find out who’s the stage manager and producer for
Chicago
in Las Vegas. Also, call Robert, my jeweler at Tiffany’s, and tell him to bring over his good stuff.”
18
A NUMBING FEAR engulfed Yancey as she prepared to step forward and take her bow during her first night in
Chicago
as tabloid-crazed murderess Velma Kelly. After giving the chorus, principals, and her costar thunderous ovations, the audience had become eerily silent. The silence seemed as pure as a deep sleep. Yancey’s eyes became as large as Christmas ornaments. Amanda, a tall, slim redhead with olive-green eyes, encouraged her to step forward. Yancey looked down toward the orchestra pit and eyed the conductor, who avoided her glance with a smirk.
Why had the audience suddenly become silent, Yancey wondered. Was she in the middle of some strange Vegas opening night tradition? Spook the star? Or had she been so awesome in her singing and dancing that she had mesmerized the audience into silent submission? Or was the mostly white audience not used to seeing a beautiful black diva play a role made famous by white actresses such as Gwen Verdon and Bebe Neuwirth? Had she missed some verses to her songs or not been as spectacular at dancing as Jasmine Guy the night before? Although Yancey had purposely avoided watching Jasmine before stepping into the role, she would put her talents as a singer and dancer on a level with anyone’s.
A few seconds passed before Yancey finally stepped forward. Her whole body began to tremble as she started to eye the nearest exit. The stage manager whirled on stage and presented her with an opening night bouquet of pink roses, and a simple kiss on her cheeks, as he whispered, “You were wonderful.” But still the audience was silent.
The last time Yancey had felt so unnatural after a performance was back in Memphis, Tennessee, when a high school rival had shouted out obscenities while Yancey was performing in
Dreamgirls
. A permanent restraining order had erased the fear of Nicey ever showing up in a theater where Yancey was performing.
As Yancey was forcing her best fake diva smile, she suddenly heard a male voice call out her name from the third row.
“Yancey Harrington Braxton,” the voice boomed. Yancey recognized Basil’s baritone voice immediately. She wanted to cry with joy when she heard him say her name. Suddenly there were houselights hovering over him, producing an almost angelic glow around his body. Dressed in a black suit, with a black shirt and silk silver tie, Basil was holding more pink roses and an aqua-blue box.
“Basil,” Yancey said as she moved closer to the edge of the stage, using her free hand to protect her eyes from the harsh stage lighting. “Is that really you?” Hours before her performance, Basil had phoned Yancey in her dressing room with bad news. He had missed his flight from New York and wouldn’t reach Las Vegas until the following morning. This was going to be the first opening night he would miss since they had started dating. Yancey, though disappointed, was understanding, and told him everything would be just fine. She was relieved when Ava had also called to cancel because her husband, sick with flu symptoms, wanted Ava by his side. Yancey was so accustomed to Ava’s last-minute cancellations that the only thing that caused her anxiety was when Ava didn’t call and actually showed up. On those rare occasions, Ava would then spend the evening recalling her own opening nights in Europe and Japan, eclipsing Yancey’s moment.
“Yes, baby, it’s me. I have something I need to ask you,” Basil said. He moved from his seat and walked down the aisle with a spotlight trailing him until he was a few steps behind the orchestra pit and the now smiling conductor. His face beamed brighter than the houselights, and from the way his voice was projecting, Yancey assumed he was miked.
“Will you do me the honor of spending the rest of your life with me? Will you marry me?” he asked. The question came easily, tumbling softly from his lips. Basil’s handsome face looked gallant and peaceful.
Tears began to brim from Yancey’s eyes as she covered her mouth in shock and slight amusement. As the tears continued to flow, Yancey began shaking her head back and forth as she shouted in her best high drama voice, “Yes, I’ll marry you!” As Basil blew her a kiss and started toward the stage, the audience and Yancey’s new castmates broke out in cheers of “brava diva” and gave her a thunderous standing ovation. It was the loudest and sweetest applause Yancey had ever heard, for a role she longed to play: Mrs. John Basil Henderson.
19
YANCEY WAS standing naked as the day she was born, with the exception of the three-carat platinum diamond ring I had given her the night before. As I gazed at her beautiful body, with her breasts like ripe summer peaches, small waist, and upside-down-heart-shaped ass, I knew I had made the right move in asking her to be my wife. She was standing by the desk, with the phone in her right hand, just after we had finished making love for the third time. We had spent the first part of the evening drinking champagne, and I was smoking cigars, with several of her castmates in a private room at the casino. Then we returned to her hotel suite and made love. First in the foyer, then the living room, and finally, we reached the bedroom right before sunrise.
“Do you want some fruit on top of your waffle, baby?” she asked, looking at me with a huge smile while twirling her ring finger in the air as if it were a magical baton.
“Sure, tell them to put on some strawberries, with a little whipped cream on the side,” I said.
When she finished ordering breakfast, Yancey looked at me with a sexy smile and asked, “Do you think we got time for another ride before they deliver breakfast?” I loved being with a woman who enjoyed sex as much as I did, and hoped her sexual appetite didn’t change once we were married.
“I thought you wanted bacon,” I teased.
“I can get bacon anytime,” she smiled.
“You can get me anytime, but I think I’m out of raincoats. But we can do some other things,” I said as I moved my tongue slowly from side to side on my bottom lip, letting my bride-to-be know the tongue was ready for work.
“I love it when you talk nasty, big daddy,” Yancey said. She bounced on the king-size bed as if she were at a teenage slumber party. “So, when are we going to do it?” Yancey asked and laid her head on my chest.
“Right now,” I said.
She lifted her head and looked at me and said, “Not that, silly. When are we going to get married?”
“When do you want to? I mean, we can do it today. We are in Sin City and I’m certain we can find one of those wedding chapels people like Dennis Rodman always seem to find,” I teased.
“No, I want to get married in New York, and I want to do it before the new millennium,” Yancey said firmly. “I’ve always dreamed of a winter wedding. And if we get married before the end of the year, it will mean I’ll be married to you for two centuries.”
“But that’s only about a month and a half away. You think you can pull together a wedding by then?” I asked. I had always assumed Yancey would want a big Broadway production–type of wedding, complete with a big opening dance number.
“I want a small, intimate wedding, and I can always hire someone to pull it together. Windsor will help and Ava also. I just have to make sure Ava realizes it’s my day and keep her from turning it into some big production. Maybe we should get married at a nice hotel in midtown or a fancy restaurant like Tavern on the Green or that place where Puffy Combs had his birthday party. I can’t remember the name of it, but I tore the page out of
Vanity
Fair
. I’ll make sure all we have to do is show up on time,” Yancey said as she pulled the sheet up around her shoulders.
“Cool by me. It’s going to be your day and I want you to be happy,” I said. I pushed her hair back over her shoulders and kissed her lips.
“Are you sure? Because it’s your day also. I just want to enter the new century as Mrs. John Basil Henderson,” she said. She gave me a small peck on the cheeks and then my lips. Yancey began to kiss my neck and my chest and was heading for my growing manhood when the doorbell rang.
“Damn, baby,” I murmured. “Do you have to get that?”
“You don’t want cold food, now, do ya?” Yancey asked with a sensuous smile.
Before jumping from the bed and picking up the robe from the floor, she leaned over me and whispered, “Don’t worry, I’ll still be hungry after we finish breakfast.”
20
WHEN YANCEY called Ava to announce her pending nuptials, she didn’t expect her mother to be jumping for joy. Ava didn’t disappoint.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Ava asked before Yancey could even say how happy she was.
“Yes, and we’re going to do it before the end of the year,” Yancey said.
“Why so soon?”
“I’m ready.”
“What about your career? Just because you’ve done a few Broadway shows and a commercial or two doesn’t make you a star, and while you’re off playing house there will be plenty of divas-in-training ready to take your place,” Ava advised sharply. “And you won’t be young and beautiful forever.”
“I know that, but I don’t plan to miss a beat. Basil supports my career two hundred percent.” Yancey walked over to the window. Her hotel was next to the Las Vegas Airport and as she watched the planes take off and land she felt lonely, especially talking to her mother.
“That’s now. What are you going to do if he changes? Are you sure he has the means to support you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Yancey, now, honey, I know I’ve taught you better than that. You haven’t seen his financial statements?”
“No,” Yancey said as she walked over to the dining table and picked a strawberry from her leftover breakfast plate.
“Then you better—and real soon.”
“How can I do that?”
“Don’t worry. I know a great private investigator in New York. All you need to do is get his Social Security number and date of birth, and we can find out where all the gold is hidden. If there is any gold to be found,” Ava said smugly. Yancey knew her mother was a pro when it came to finding gold. Her current husband, Stanley D. Middlebrooks, didn’t look or carry himself like a multimillionaire. The former computer programmer had sold a software program he had written to Microsoft and become independently wealthy almost overnight. The first person he met on his celebratory vacation was Ava, when the two sat next to each other in the first-class section on a flight to Hawaii. When he told Ava of his recent good fortune, she made sure he didn’t have to dine alone once they reached the island. And even though the fiftysomething, thin, bespectacled man from Battle Creek, Michigan, wasn’t Ava’s type, it didn’t stop her from accepting his proposal and the seven-carat diamond, which Ava picked out herself—seven days later.
“What am I supposed to do? Just ask him for the number?” Yancey asked.
“No. The number is probably on his driver’s license. Just check his wallet when he spends the night and is in the shower. Or just wait until he falls asleep. Fix him a couple of drinks and fuck him real good and he’ll be out for the count.”
“You think that will work?”
“It should, but if that doesn’t, tell him since you guys are getting married, you want to make him the benefactor on your life insurance, and you need his Social,” Ava instructed. “I think I’ll have my guy check medical information as well.”
“Why do we need medical information?”
“Hello! You have heard of AIDS, haven’t you, darling? The gay kids aren’t the only ones getting it, and you can never be too safe when it comes to your health,” Ava said.
“Basil is as healthy as a horse. Besides, he’s not in any of the high-risk groups,” Yancey said confidently.
“I’m going to say this for the last time: You need to be safe, not sorry.”
“Ava, you are too much,” Yancey said.
“And you’ll thank me for it when I’m dead and gone. The money I plan to make off this husband will take care of me in my old age. Even though that’s a couple of decades away.” Ava laughed.
“Then I’ll try and get the information before he leaves,” Yancey said.
“Is he there now?”
“Yeah, he’s here, but he’s in the health club right . . .” Before Yancey finished her sentence she recalled Basil leaving wearing a tank top and some black spandex running pants. There was nowhere to hide a wallet in the tight-fitting garment.
“Hold on just a second, Ava. I might be able to get the information right now.”
Yancey placed the portable phone on mute, raced into her dressing area, and opened the closet door. There was the suit coat, a blue shirt, and some brown jeanlike pants. Yancey felt the back pockets of the pants and checked the inside of the jacket. No wallet. She turned and was facing the bathroom and spotted Basil’s tan leather duffel bag where he keep all his toiletries. Yancey went into the mirrored room and there, lying right on top, was a well-worn black leather wallet. She opened it and saw about five credit cards of various colors, a health club membership, and a Florida driver’s license right behind the red and white card.
What was he still carrying a Florida driver’s licensefor?
Yancey wondered as she looked over the information. Full name, date of birth, and Social Security number.
Instead of going back into the living room, she picked up the wall phone in the bathroom.
“Ava, I got the information.”
“Give it to me.”
Yancey had just finished reading the nine numbers slowly and clearly when she heard the front door open.
“I’ve got to go,” Yancey said. She hurriedly placed the license behind the health club membership card.
“I’ll get on this right away,” Ava said before Yancey hung up.