Unconditionally Single (7 page)

T
here was so much that had gone wrong this morning, a nigga had to figure shit out before sundown. Rolling up on Onyx and Red Velvet at Lace’s office was no guarantee I’d get more than what was in their purses. Neither one of them was worth holding hostage. Who’d pay more than a grand for the two of them combined? And both might have a gun.

“I’m getting off the freeway here. We gon’ park this bitch in the woods, then walk back to that upscale restaurant right there off the Chattahoochee River,” I said, pointing. “Our timing is perfect. It’s too late for lunch and too early for dinner and I know they’re open.”

Benito shook his head. “I’m not hungry, V. Last time we ate at a fancy restaurant you treated me like I’d ordered from the fucking side of the menu.”

“You did, nigga,” I said, smiling.

“I’ll wait in the car, V.”

Smack!

“Damn, cut that shit out,” Benito complained.

“Get out the car before I slap your ig’nant ass again,” I said, turning off the engine. “We have what, a few more minutes or so before your brother calls you? Let’s go get new transpo before we meet up with Grant.”

Atlanta had hundreds of wooded areas. I wondered how many tricks were left for dead but hoped like hell we didn’t discover any stiff bitches on our way out. Tramping out of the woods, we made it to the service road. Had about the equivalence of a block to walk.

“B, you ever think about finding your real parents?”

Benito was quiet.

I respected his silence. What if Summer’s dad hadn’t kept my seed away from me? What kind of dad would I have been to Anthony? Sunny would be alive. They’d be my new family and we’d be happy. One person’s fucked up decision could ruin another person’s life.

“B, what will you do with your life, nigga, after I break you off?”

“Get back with Lace,” he said. “She’ll take me back. But you’ve gotta promise not to fuck my girl again.”

Nigga was in denial. Some niggas could get rejected a thousand times by a woman and ask to be with her again. That was straight dumb shit. Tell me once, I’m out for good. But given the opportunity, I’d fuck Lace again.

Making our way into the restaurant’s parking lot, I motioned for Benito to stay beside me. I stood next to a parked silver Mercedes. “Talk to me, nigga, like this is my car and we’re getting ready to leave or something.” Our timing was perfect. Two cars entered the lot, both drove to the valet stand, waited for the one attendant who was doing it all—parking and fetching cars. The recession had rich motherfuckers cutting back on staff, filing bankruptcy and shit.

I observed the valet attendant getting out of the car he’d parked, watched him race back to the stand. We waited until he handed the woman a ticket. He handed the man dressed in beige slacks with a lavender shirt a ticket too, took his key, placed it on the podium.

I told Benito, “Let’s move closer, nigga. This is our chance.”

We waited until the man and woman walked inside the restaurant. The valet hopped inside the car, then drove toward the side lot.

“Follow his ass in that car, wait for him to park, then cut him off on his way back. Start a conversation—”

“About what?”

“I don’t care, nigga. Get him to turn his back toward me, then you keep talking until I get in the car. When I drive toward the exit, he’s going to panic. I’ma keep driving. When he runs inside the restaurant for help, you run to the car, nigga, and get your ass in. Can you handle that part without fucking it up?”

“You know me, I do my best work under pressure,” Benito said.

“Like when your remedial ass took Sunny’s dead body back to her apartment?” I got mad all over again. I felt like punching that clown in his nose. Benito was the reason I had been falsely charged with Sunny’s death. I’d swear on my parents’ graves that I did not shoot Sunny. I placed the gun to her head. She pulled the trigger. Maybe I should move out of the country. Go to Paris. Travel the world. Find me some international bitches. My best chance of getting the charges dropped was to marry Sunny’s twin sister, Summer, and have Summer testify on my behalf. That was if the law caught up to me.

I waited for Benito to distract the valet, then rushed to the podium, picked up the keys, hopped my ass in the red convertible, and made my way toward the exit.

The valet looked at the car I was in, looked back at the podium, then yelled, “Hey, stop the car!”

Benito surprised the shit outta me. When dude turned to run toward the restaurant, Benito punched his ass in the back of the head so hard he fell on the ground and stayed there. Benito bent over.

No, nigga, no. What the fuck are you doing?

Benito shoved something in his pocket, then raced to the car, got in. I closed the top and we drove the fuck off.

There was a reason I gravitated to Benito. A reason bigger than the fact that we were friends while he played college football, that he was my only friend, that both of my parents were deceased, and although I had a son and twins on the way by Summer, a nigga felt empty inside when I was with her. How could I have no feelings for my wife, my seeds? I think it was because the few days I’d lived with Summer after she’d bailed me out of prison, I witnessed my son Anthony was a fucking mama’s boy. He needed to man the fuck up but his mommy kept babying his ass. Made my son soft and shit, like he was a bitch. “Yes, mommy. No, mommy. Mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy.” I hated that shit. Benito was all I had.

Now that my whores were no longer loyal to me, Benito made me feel not so alone in this fucked up world. He gave me someone I could control. I’d come to the realization that after my mother died, a part of me hated every woman except Lace. What I didn’t know was why I hated women so much. Maybe I was attracted to Lace because that bitch was the epitome of womanhood but exemplified the strength of a man.

My mother wasn’t hard but she was a good mom, a loving and nurturing mom. I thought she’d live to see my kids, see me walk the stage in high school and get my diploma and shit. Why’d she have to die so soon? My dad, he was cool with me but he wasn’t a man. Not a real G. He’d done whatever my mother told him to do. When she died, he died until I buried him beside my mom. I had to get off this sob shit that was making a nigga soft.

Benito reached into his pocket, pulled out a lot of ones and fives. “Yeah, boyie.”

“You done good, nigga, count that shit. See if it’s enough to get us a cheap motel room. We need to take these tags off this bitch-ass car and lay low until Grant calls.”

“One hundred and thirty-seven dollars and sixty-two cents,” Benito said.

“Good job, my nigga. You keep the sixty-two cents,” I said, taking the dollar bills from him while driving down Piedmont Avenue.

We passed the botanical gardens. I tried to see that fuckin’ area where that bridge had collapsed and killed a worker. What a fucked up way to die, on the job. I kept going, stopped at the light at Monroe Drive, made a left, made my way into the Ansley Mall parking lot.

“Where we going, V?”

“Publix, nigga. Where we’re staying, there won’t be no room service.” I parked in the middle of a long lane near Pier 1 Imports. We got out of the only red fucking convertible in the entire lot. “Check the remaining minutes on this prepaid bitch.” I handed the phone to B. I should’ve gone to Ansley Wine Merchants and loaded up on alcohol but we were so fucking broke, we couldn’t afford it.

“We have twelve minutes left on the phone. Let me have a ten,” Benito said, holding open his hand. “I’ma go to Starbucks and get me one of those ice cold frappuccinos.”

I grabbed his shirt. “No, nigga, no. You need to stay with me.” I couldn’t risk letting that nigga out of my sight for one second.

W
as I my sister’s keeper?

The last time I’d been that close to a dead body was at my sister’s funeral. The woman in the back of the van was naked. Stiff. Eyes wide open. Mouth taped shut. What was her story? Every woman had one. Some didn’t live long enough to say. Others lived a century but refused to tell. Did men make women mutes? Beside her precious body, a muddy shovel, a slate tombstone, artificial red roses with long green plastic stems in a white plastic vase.

Two for one? A package deal? Was Ken planning to bury us together? Make me dig my own grave? Why should I care about her? Too late to save her. Maybe she was better off. Who was I to say? Didn’t want to get involved. Have the cops questioning me, considering me a suspect. Best to keep quiet. I had my own plethora of problems.

“Ken, who the hell is that in your van?” I asked, slamming the door. My stomach churned. I almost puked. I swallowed bile, focused on Ken.

He stayed on the ground. “What difference does it make? She should’ve shut her mouth. Crazy chick kept screaming, so I shut her up. She deserved to die.”

Crazy men like Ken could on the surface appear normal. A wolf in sheep’s clothing so to speak. Men who didn’t value women weren’t always easy to spot. Men who’d murder women like that man in California who shot his wife and five kids in the head because he and his wife were laid off their jobs. He didn’t want anyone else to take care of his. So he killed them?

“You’re not God, Ken.” Neither was that man in California. “You can’t decide when other people deserve to die,” I said, pointing my gun at Ken’s dick.

Killing Reynolds was self-defense. What I was getting ready to do to Ken was considered an eye for an eye. Too often women were too generous, too forgiving at inappropriate times.

Ken covered his genitals with both hands, pleading, “No, don’t. I didn’t mean to kill her. It was an accident.”

“So you think you deserve to live?” I asked him, staring at his wig on the ground beside him. “You go around disguising yourself as a woman to deceive women, then you rape and kill them.”

“If it helps, I didn’t rape her,” he pleaded.

“You only killed her. Yeah, I can see how that was a better alternative.” I stood over Ken, aimed closer to his hands.

“I swear it was an accident.” His hands clamped tighter together.

Was his ass crying? Yes, indeed.
“Well, Ken, this is no accident. This is intentional,” I said, pulling the trigger.

Ken screamed as the bullet penetrated his hands.

I was beginning to hate the woman men had made me become. There was satisfaction in shooting Ken but no joy. Somebody’s daughter was in the back of his van. She could’ve been a mother, or a wife, an honor student, or a teacher, a community activist, or a first lady of a church. Tears streamed down my cheeks. I kicked Ken in his ass. “Bastard!”

Reaching inside his van—not that Ken was going anywhere but to make sure—I took his keys, his cell phone. Opened his wallet. His name really was Ken. Ken Draper. I removed the cash, a hundred-dollar bill, then headed on foot back toward Virginia Avenue.

I stopped at a fast food restaurant, ordered a chicken wrap. “Can you spare a roll of quarters, please?” I asked the cashier, who looked barely sixteen. “Thanks,” I said, taking the roll from her hand along with four twenties and a five.

“Miss, your food?”

“Keep it.” I left her holding the bag. I wasn’t hungry for fast food. I needed the change. Change to make a phone call. Change for a taxi. Change to ride MARTA. I stood in a secluded space on the asphalt beside the restaurant, thankful the temperature had dropped at least ten degrees.

Ken’s phone rang.
Mommy Dearest
appeared on his caller ID. His mother would find out if her son was dead or alive but not from me. I declined the call. Make a call, risk having the number traced, risk being associated with the murder of a woman I didn’t know. Have Ken lie, if he survived to testify, that he was innocent. Hear him tell a judge I was the one who’d shot him, killed her. Should’ve left his useless phone in his van.

I walked back inside the restaurant, entered the women’s restroom. Went into the stall, dropped Ken’s phone into the toilet, covered it with toilet tissue, then flushed. Who’d think or want to surf through a sewer of shit for a phone? I washed my face, tucked my blouse, straightened my hair, then left.

Made my way to the nearest corner in search of a pay phone. No luck. Went inside an office building. Held twenty dollars in front of the receptionist, then asked, “Is there a phone where I can make a call in private?”

She looked at the money, looked at me. “Sure, follow me.”

A short distance from her desk was a small conference room. I closed the door, dialed Sapphire’s number.

“Hello.”

“Hey, Sapphire. It’s Honey.”

“Honey, oh my lord! Thank God you’re alive! Where are you?”

I couldn’t lie. The relief in her voice warmed my cold heart. “I’m safe. Where are you?” I asked, right before hearing a boarding announcement for a flight to New Orleans. Maybe that’s where I’d go and chill for a moment. Get away from the madness. At some junction, I had to stop running from life. I was a one-woman show, chasing, never catching myself.

“Just arrived at Hartsfield. Getting ready to pick up a rental, then I’m coming to wherever you are,” she said.

Happy and sad at the same time, I smiled a half smile. That was a good idea. I didn’t have to take the MARTA train or a taxi. Finally someone I could trust was coming to get me. How did my life go from great to tragic in less than one day? Sapphire would navigate my safe landing. I told her to meet me at the fast food restaurant, then asked, “Have you spoken with”—I paused, wanting to say Grant, but asked—“Onyx?”

“Yes. We’re meeting Valentino and Benito at Stilettos tonight at eight. I don’t want you there. Can you believe those fools are trying to convince us they still have you held hostage? I’m ready to wrap this case up. Put Valentino and Benito on a plane in handcuffs and shackles, send both of them straight to the Nevada pen.”

Unless Benito had prior charges in Nevada, he’d have to be tried in Georgia. Benito could survive without Valentino. I doubted Valentino could make it without Benito.

“Yeah, let everybody believe that I’m missing. Let them believe I’m missing until I know for sure Valentino and Benito are behind bars.” How long would it take Sapphire to find them? I thought about Grant. I missed him so much it hurt. Did he miss me the same? Did he know what I’d been through? Did he care?

“Including Grant?” Sapphire asked as though reading my mind. “He’s here too. Got in a few hours before me.”

Tears flowed down my face. I cried and laughed in the phone. “Including Grant?” Had to hear her say his name again.

Sapphire reiterated, “Yes, baby. Including Grant. He came right away. He loves you, Honey. Don’t mess it up this time. Promise?”

“Promise,” I said, ending our call. I hugged myself. Cried aloud, then shouted to heaven, “Somebody loves me.”

The receptionist opened the door. “Miss, are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m better than all right. I’m blessed.” I left her office, made my way back to the fast food restaurant, sat inside and waited for Sapphire.

Brain? Courage? Heart? Heart. For the first time in my life, I was sure even if my parents didn’t, people truly loved me.