Tears on a Sunday Afternoon

I
an’s fist slammed into my ribs, making a crackling sound as my rib bones were shattered. I held my fists over my forehead to protect my face from Al’s fist, which had found its mark on the right side of my head. I was no boxer, but I knew the basics as I doubled over in pain on my way to the ground. Larry’s twelve-inch, red and white Air Jordans found my stomach, lifting me off the ground with the force of a hurricane. Gravity and agony pitched me back down; I was a painful, bloody mess.

“Donald Watson, you pretty motherfucker. You think you can fuck any woman you want? Aisha’s my girl. I’m going to kill you for fucking her.” Ian’s fist drove me deeper into the concrete foundation of our high school.

“Somebody call security! They’re going to kill him!” I heard a female voice scream.

Al surprised me with a left punch, leaving my mouth filled with blood.

“Let’s stab the motherfucker,” Larry said.

I was staring at about twenty different feet, all different sizes and shapes. I couldn’t lift my head high enough to see their faces.

“Naw, I want this motherfucker to suffer. I want his dick to go soft every time he tries to fuck,” Ian responded.

Pain created a small blanket of darkness as someone’s shoes dug into my back.

“I say let’s kill the motherfucker, Ian. He fucked your girl on the steps during third period. Look around; the entire school knows about this shit.” Larry had this deceptive, whiny voice. At six feet five inches and close to two hundred and eighty pounds, his grip on my neck prevented the slight amount of oxygen that was left in my system from circulating.

“Give me the knife, Larry. I’m going to cut this motherfucker’s balls off.”

My body was about to shut down as my pants were being pulled from under me.

“Donald, you’ve got to pray to God for help,” my grandmother’s voice rang out in my head.

I prayed like I never had before as I lay on the cold ground; about to lose my manhood.

“Al, hold down his leg,” Ian demanded.

“Somebody stop them! They’re out of control!” an unknown boy’s voice shouted.

“You stop them! They’ve got knives and guns.” another voice answered.

With the last bit of senses in my body quickly fading, I felt the knife dig into my scrotum. My eyes fluttered to Grandma’s God, asking Him for help.

“They’re cutting his balls off! Somebody do something!” a young girl screamed.

Her voice was my last recollection as I woke up in St. Mary’s. I was hospitalized for three weeks and on bed rest for another six. I learned that Ian and his friends were doing a stint in Juvie when I returned to school. Aisha tried to get with me again, but I wouldn’t go for it. Her pussy wasn’t worth it and quite honestly, I had bigger fish to fry. Within the following three months, I fucked Al’s sister, Ian’s sister and Larry’s mother, who was fine for her age. What? Did you think I would stop fucking? Michael Jordan plays basketball like I play women. Getting pussy is the only damn thing I do well. Unlike him, I won’t embarrass myself and try to do anything else.

I
was pushed through the revolving exit door of the office building by two ladies rushing to leave. They stared at me as if I had interrupted their flight into the streets. I smiled, knowing that I could make them walk right back into the building and forget about the kids and the husbands at home. Another day, I would have done exactly that, but today I already had plans. As I walked through the corridor, I was constantly bumped by hordes of people heading to the revolving doors. I glanced at my gold Movado; it was ten after five. I navigated to the line of elevators that carried the workers up and down every day. I stepped aside as more than a dozen business people in suits pushed out of one of them. I had been in the building earlier to set up a project with a group of engineers from our office. It was an extensive project that would require long, tedious hours. It was similar to one we had done on Staten Island a few weeks ago. During that visit, I had met one of the secretaries, Donna August, who had been with the company for five years. Brian Louis, a tall, dark coworker from Brooklyn, had made the introduction. He had spent at least forty-five minutes of the first hour trying to talk to Donna. I paid very little attention to them. Brian was single and the world was his oyster. Marriage somewhat limits the playing field so I had to take a different path with women, a path that denoted understanding. Admitting being married to women who interested me didn’t make a damn difference in determining whether or not we fucked. My pretty face was all they needed to see and it was on.

Brian and I had eaten lunch together almost every day since I had come on board at Reason Consulting, the largest black engineering firm in New York. Engineers at Reason were not hired based on their résumés, but from recommendations by one of the company’s board members. My father-in-law had gotten me employment within a few months after the wedding. Over lunch at Au Bon Pain, Brian told me that Donna was dripping for me. She was “dripping for me” after a brief hello but this was not extraordinary. Numerous women had yanked off their panties the first time I had ever walked into their apartments. That’s the life of a pretty boy.

Brian was cool. There wasn’t a jealous bone in his body. He had been feeling her but she was feeling only me. She jumped up and shook my hand after I walked into her office and over to her desk. I must tell you that I was very impressed. She was around five-nine with a dark complexion and a body almost any man would crawl on his knees after. Almost any man, but not me; I don’t get down like that. I had fucked women that men would have killed themselves over. During our conversation, she told me to hold on. She needed to file an important document. When she turned around, she was a black man’s butter; all a man wanted to do was spread it.

I showed the security guard my temporary ID to gain easy access back into the building. I had left the building at 2:00
P. M.
to go and pick up my son, Emerald, from school. I didn’t have to do that, but whenever I got a break at work, I tried to spend as much time with him as possible. My grandmother and my son were my only true loves.

I stepped into the empty elevator and pressed the button for the 25th floor; anxious to pick up where we had left off.

It was approximately five-fifteen when I knocked on the office door. Donna opened the door, led me to a couch in front of her desk, and asked me to wait. A few minutes passed and a man I hadn’t seen before came in and spoke to her briefly. He had a large Kenneth Cole briefcase in his right hand and, upon further inspection, I noticed a gold handcuff was keeping the briefcase in place. Then he left.

“I’m so wound up,” Donna said as she slumped down in her chair.

“That’s work. Five days a week, two days to think about it, then five days back at work,” I replied.

“You’re very beautiful,” she said with an edge of seduction in her voice.

That comment had gotten me into and out of trouble from the time I was old enough to remember. Sometimes it seemed like I could get away with murder. My looks were the result of a crime perpetrated on my mother when she was incarcerated at the Delvin Correctional Facility in upstate New York. Three white corrections officers had raped her. My mother took her own life shortly after my birth.

“I know,” I said, smiling. “But thanks for the compliment anyway.”

“You’re mixed, aren’t you?” she asked. “With that curly hair and those blue eyes, you’ve got to be.”

“Yeah, my father was white and my mother was a Southern girl.”

“So, who did you inherit that six-foot slender frame from? Your mother or father?”

“I don’t know.” I was being honest. Since nobody had wanted to set up DNA tests for three white men, his identity had remained a mystery.

Donna stood and walked to the front of the desk. “Come over here. Let me see how much taller you are than me.”

It was a bullshit line, but the games had begun. I would not have been there unless I was willing to play.

I stood in front of her, with her hard nipples pushing against my shirt. Her skin smelled like fresh-picked apricots. She looked up at me, her luscious red lips glistening against the dark pigmentation of her face.

“I…”

It was all she got out of her mouth as my lips joined hers. She should have slapped me then. Maybe I should have slapped myself for making such assumptions, but neither of us did. Instead, her mouth feasted on mine as my hand went to the front of her blouse. The snaps came apart, like dryrotted steel wool, the kind my grandmother used to give me to scrub the burnt pots. I pulled her blouse off her shoulders and it cascaded onto her desk. She pulled me toward her, her breasts rubbing against my white Guess T-shirt. Her hand traveled down my chest toward my dick and she started to rub it through my pants.

“I had a feeling you were packing. Looks and a big dick. What more can a girl ask for?”

I helped her pull my T-shirt over my head. She started to make her way down my chest, leaving a trail of red lip marks. She unbuckled my pants and slid them down. She gently brushed the outsides of my legs with her fingertips as she reached up to pull off my Calvin Klein boxers. I stepped to the side as she gathered my clothes and put them on the couch. I stood naked on the 25th floor of an office building in the heart of Manhattan.

“You have what I want in a husband,” she said as I started to remove her clothes.

I started playing with her breasts and slowly made my way down to her skirt. I lifted it up and worked my way between her legs. My right hand moved over the front of her panties. They were moist. I moved them to the side and slipped my finger inside of her. I guess my friend Brian had been right. Girlfriend was “dripping wet.” I played with her for a few seconds more before I moved my hand to her butt. No disappointments there! It was perfectly rounded as advertised. She was wearing a thong. An old song played in my head, but it quickly faded, like the career of the artist who had performed it.

We continued to kiss until I flipped her around. In doing so, her hands pushed aside the things she had on her desk. I took her hand away from my dick and slid on one of the condoms that I had bought from Duane Reade earlier. I grabbed her by the hair, her weave feeling like that same steel wool, but it shredded much more. I pushed her head down in front of the desk. Her two hands held onto the desk for support. I entered her with the force and the vengeance of a man lost to both himself and the world. She screamed and rocked the desk as she spread her legs even wider for more support; pushing her butt back to meet my thrusts. As she did that, a picture fell off the desk and shattered. She was in the picture with a man and two young boys. I glanced at it and then at her butt. I slammed into her a few more times until I sent a million of my kids to their death against the walls of the rubber. She fell to the floor as I gave one last push.

“I needed that. You have a cell phone?” she asked, putting her clothes on.

Donna realized how the game was to be played. I admired that. This was not reality TV; it was the script of life.

“It’s 917-777-7777.”

“All those sevens?”

“It’s better than three sixes.”

I followed her cue and started to get dressed. She quickly put my phone number in her Palm organizer. She didn’t offer hers nor did I ask for it. If any communication was going to take place, it would have to come from her. I finished dressing and headed to the door, having accomplished the job that I had set out to do. It was time for my quick exit. Hopefully both parties were satisfied but, if not,
that’s life
. This wasn’t going to be a long, drawn-out affair and I understood that. I didn’t care to hear about her lousy life and she didn’t care to hear about mine. I didn’t even care if she had a happy life with her husband and kids. Even though I had just had an orgasm, my dick instantly missed the warmth of her pussy. I definitely couldn’t go straight home to my wife.

“Wait for me,” she said. “I have to clean up this mess and make one phone call.” She started straightening the desk. “I think this is yours.” She wrapped the used condom in tissues and handed it to me.

“I nearly forgot that.” I placed it in my pocket. “A slip-up on my part.”

Donna grinned mischievously. “If you were an NBA player, I might have kept it.”

“In that case, it could either make you rich or dead.”

“Yeah, I forgot it’s not the sixties.” She picked up the phone and dialed a number quickly. She spoke briefly in a language I didn’t understand. “My husband is from South Africa.”

“Speaking in tongues,” I said, and sat down on the couch. It was 6:30.

She glanced down at the floor and bent down. “Damn! This is the third time this week this has happened.” She threw the bits of broken glass from the picture frame into the small garbage pail and placed it back under her desk. “These ninety-nine cent stores are getting rich off me replacing frames.”

I waited for her to finish and we took the elevator down to the first floor. I didn’t know why she had wanted me to wait for her nor did I care.

“Good night, Mrs. August,” a potbellied security guard with a heavy Grenadian accent said as we exited the building. When we got outside, there was a tall, attractive, blonde waiting for us. From the look they gave each other, I surmised that Donna wasn’t finished for the evening.

“Thank you,” Donna said and waved to me as she went to join the white lady, who eyed me up and down before she and Donna slipped into a black limousine waiting at the curb.

I walked two blocks south, then one east, which took me to the entrance of the Carton Bar. I went inside and, as usual, there was a combination of suits and casuals. I sat at the bar and the bartender came over.

“Hennessy on the rocks,” I said.

I swiveled the chair around so that I could gaze at the rest of the people who, like me, found themselves needing a drink at seven in the evening. To my left was a white man about fifty-five years old in a postal uniform, sipping on a drink that was as clear as water. I didn’t think it was water because that would mean he had to drink a lot of those little glasses before he satisfied his thirst. As if on cue, he tapped his glass and the bartender gave him a refill of what turned out to be vodka on the way to bringing my drink. A little bit farther down from him were two white boys who barely looked to be of legal drinking age. They had a pitcher of beer and about six shot glasses in front of them. They seemed to be having a good time. I looked over at the tables away from the bar and noticed a couple lost in each other’s eyes or possibly simply lost in New York. Farther left from them were two young black women? my guess, neither was a day over twenty-five. They both had identical hairstyles, long golden weaves that the singer Beyonce had made so popular lately. They kept looking at me and giggling. I wondered if they were working girls. Maybe I would break a promise to myself and pay for the warmth. I could have easily made a phone call, but tonight I was in the mood for something new. I watched as one of them held what I thought was a mozzarella cheese stick, which she twirled around like a baton. I turned back and took a long sip of my drink.

I had recently turned thirty-five and had been married for four years. I had a four-year-old son and I was one of the few Blacks living in the exclusive Mill Basin section of Brooklyn. Neither the money nor the home, valued at well over three million, kept me in Mill Basin. It was my son. I loved my son with every drop of blood that circulated through my system. He kept me alive.

“Excuse me?” I felt the slight tap on my shoulder. I put my drink down and once more swiveled in my chair. It was one of the girls I had noticed earlier. She was the bigger of the two. I guessed she was five-eight and weighed about one hundred forty-five pounds.