You're the One I Want (24 page)

“If he wants to talk to me, he will call me. Ma Bell runs both ways.”

I kept myself occupied with work and doing some things around the house I kept putting off because I was lazy, like organizing the kitchen pantry and color-coordinating my wardrobe. But no matter how much I busied myself with work, it wasn't enough to take my mind off of Dante Fine-As-All-Hell Sullivan. So instead of blowing his phone up, I thought it better to go to his office and surprise him with a picnic lunch. It was a beautiful Thursday afternoon for it with the rain finally letting up after days of a heavy downpour. I packed the basket with one hell of a spread: fried chicken, spiral ham slices, potato salad, buttered rolls, cold slaw, crinkled season fries, and Hershey's Chocolate Cheesecake for dessert. I couldn't wait to see the look on Dante's gorgeous face when he saw all the food. It's like my mama always told me: the way to a man's heart is through his stomach.

When I entered the eight-story, red-brick building, I was mesmerized
by its beauty. The marble flooring, the solid oak tables, and plush lobby chairs. I made my way up to the receptionist desk, armed with enough food to feed a small village. This brown-skinned chick who looked to be in her early twenties was sitting behind the black-and-white marble desk. Her hair was long and straight down her back. She had split ends and it was obvious to me that she was frying it with a flat-iron. I could see the bumps on her forehead behind caked-on makeup. She gawked at me with a kind of grimace expression on her flawed face, looking at me like I'd just crawled from under a rock.

“Can I help you?”

It's “may I help you,” dumb bitch. Read a book, why don't you?

Her gold-plated name tag read
Lakrecia Courland
in black emblazoned letters.

Shit, with all those blackheads on her forehead, she warranted being called
Lacreature.

“Good afternoon, Lakrecia. How are you? My name is Tangela Michaels.” I gave her a false last name. “I'm here to see Mr. Sullivan.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“I don't. He did some pro-bono work for me, and I thought I would come by and surprise him with lunch.”

This bitch twisted her top lip up slightly. Not even five minutes in the building and she was already starting to piss me off. I wanted to jump behind that desk and rip out the rest of her damn split ends. The picnic basket was heavy and was starting to put a strain on my arms with all the food inside, so I plopped it on the end of the receptionist desk. The ripe odor of eggs from the potato salad began to waft through the lobby. Just as she was about to call Dante, he entered the lobby with a woman who had pound cake-yellow skin, a head of thick curls, and brown eyes. Lakrecia gave me this sinister look like I was in for it.

“Here's Mr. and
Mrs.
Sullivan now,” Petri Dish Face emphasized.

A cold, stoic expression formed on Dante's mug when he saw me standing at the receptionist desk. I had to quickly pull an excuse out of my ass to get out of there.

“Sorry. I think I have the wrong building.” I grabbed the picnic basket of food and hauled ass before they could make their way to where I was standing. I was beyond pissed.

Once I put some distance between me and Dante's law office, I noticed a homeless bum sitting on the corner with a piece of white cardboard that read,
Homeless vet, please help.
He looked like he hadn't seen a decent meal or soup and water for days.

I set the basket of food next to him and said, “You look like you could use this. There's some fried chicken in there, some potato salad, some pie; help yourself.”

When I got to my SUV, I locked myself inside and could do nothing but scream as loud as any angry black woman could, banging balled-up fists against the steering wheel. I wanted to hit Dante, rip his guts out with my newly manicured bare hands, but he wasn't there, so I had to take my anger out on something. I screamed until I felt myself going hoarse. I slapped myself until the left side of my face started to go numb. I had allowed this man to make a fool out of me, to use me like I was some cheap piece of Frenchtown ass.

“You're just like all the rest of these niggas out here. It's that kind of shit that makes us want to date white men.” I was not
the
woman, but the
other
woman. I swore that I would never be any man's mistress. My eyes were hot with betrayal but cold with revenge.

Dante had phoned me several times the next day, but I refused to answer my phone.

“Now your ass knows how it feels.”

He would leave messages, expressing his
deepest
apologies, but I wasn't trying to hear nothing this deceiver had to say.

In one message, he said,
“I want to see you. Call me back at this private number. Let's have dinner.”

Even though I missed him and his deep-dick long strokes, anger had gotten the best of me. “No one makes a fool out of me, goddamn it.”

I thought about Dante's last message, and a plan started to brew in my head. I had decided to give Dante a call three days after I saw him at his office with his wife. The phone rang twice before he answered.

“Hello?”

“Come over to my place.”

“Tangela, is that you?”

“I want to see you, baby. All is forgiven. Come over here and fuck me.”

I didn't say another word and ended the call. I changed into some sexy lingerie, something to get his dick hard, and poured us two glasses of red wine. I took a sip before setting both glasses on the coffee table. Twenty minutes after I had gotten off the phone with Dante, my doorbell rang. I checked my hair and tits in the mirror that hung above my scarlet-red leather sofa.

“Right. On. Time.” When I answered, Dante was breathing heavy like he had run to my house. “Good evening.”

“Hey,” Dante said, his eyes scanning over my bountiful breasts pushed into a black, lace brassiere. “I'm glad you called.”

“Come on in.”

Dante couldn't keep his hungry eyes off my titties. I led him into the dimly lit living room. We made ourselves comfortable. I handed him his glass of wine.

“I want to explain about—”

“Shhh.” I pressed my index finger against his lips. “Let's make a toast. To forgiveness.”

We clinked our glasses together. I watched Dante as he drank.

“I'm truly sorry about—”

Dante started to shake profusely.

“Oh, this would be you having a seizure.”

Spit began to run from his mouth, trickling down his chin. Dante gawked at me with the realization that he had been poisoned.

I grabbed him hard at the chin. “Did you really think that I was going to let you make a fool out of me, that I was going to let you what…hit this and simply go back to your diamonds and pearls lifestyle with the wife? If your lawyer brain thought for a second that I would just become another notch on your bedpost, you were sadly mistaken.”

Dante grabbed at his chest like he wanted to reach in and rip his heart out.

“Now this right here would be you going into cardiac arrest.” I looked into his brown eyes, glazed over with tears as the cyanide worked its magic. “You see, Dante, I'm not one of these club hoochies whose legs you think are easy to spread like peanut butter. You should know that this is all your fault. Had you been straightforward with me from jump, you wouldn't be sitting here on my sofa, dying right now.” I watched the last speck of life leave his body as the poison did Dante in. His body fell still, lifeless finally. I pried his lids open to see if he was gone. “Yep, dead as a door nail.”

I went to my bedroom and got dressed, cloaking myself in a pair of Fendi shades and a black Michael Kors trench. I plucked a pair of black Chanel gloves out of one of the dresser drawers and slid them over my hands. “Might as well commit murder in style.”

I had to move Dante's Beamer out of the driveway and under my garage. He parked next to my Escalade. I searched his body for his car keys, which were in one of the front pockets of his khakis. My neighbors Charmaine and her husband, Jamaal, were in Cancun
for the weekend and weren't due back until Tuesday, so I didn't have to worry about them seeing anything. I let the door of the garage up and parked Dante's vanilla-scented car in the garage. With all the junk I had stored under it, I was surprised there was room. I quickly let down the garage door, grabbed two large trash bags, some rope, and sprinted upstairs to the living room where I'd left Dante's dead body.

“Good thing I didn't go with my initial idea to stab your ass. All that blood would have ruined my rug.”

I shook one of the garbage bags open and eased it over Dante's head. I crossed his arms over his chest. I took another bag and worked it over his legs, up to his waist. I then took some rope and tied his legs first and then the upper part of his body.

“That oughta do it, nice and tight.”

I pulled the coffee table back to avoid any accidents while trying to get Dante's body to the garage. I dragged him by his legs off the sofa. His head made a loud thud when it hit the floor. The heels of my black Jimmy Choos clattered as I pulled Dante across the living room. I was pouring with sweat when I got to the garage. It took all the strength I had to work the heavier part of Dante into the trunk of his car first.

“Damn, you heavy.”

Surprisingly, he slid in easily, but his long legs were another matter. The bottom half of him hung out across the trunk. I pushed and stuffed as hard as I could, but with the strong elastic of the plastic, his beanstalks were not budging.

“Okay, Tangela, think, bitch, think.” I looked around the garage to see what I could find. “Damn, it's hot out here.”

I noticed a sledgehammer that was sitting in one of the corners. I figured the plumber from last week must have left it behind.

“Perfect.”

I dragged the heavy instrument across the garage floor. I lifted it over my head and brought the steel end of the hammer down on Dante's knees as hard as my little muscles would allow. I heard one of his kneecaps snap like a tree limb to the blow. I lifted the sledgehammer again and, with a second mighty wallop, came down on Dante's other leg. I stuffed his broken limbs in with the rest of him and shut the trunk.

I headed back to the main part of the house where I made sure there wasn't a thing out of place as I wiped away any prints. I took Dante's glass of wine and poured it down the kitchen sink before I scrubbed it with bleach. As much as I didn't want to get rid of my gloves, I threw them in the fireplace and burned them.

“It's just material things.”

I sipped the rest of my wine when I heard a cell phone ring. It wasn't mine, but Dante's. I searched everywhere until I found it hunched down in one of the sofa cushions. I studied the flat-screen on his iPhone.
Tarisha
, it read.

“It's probably your wife wondering where your cheatin' ass is at.” I tossed the phone in the fire with my gloves and watched it burn. “I want nothing less than respect.”

W
hen I got the news that Bree had been arrested, I jumped up out of bed and got dressed. Ma and Yvonne were sitting in the kitchen, running their mouths about Bree, I was sure.

“Kashawn, what's the matter?”

I was about out of breath, sprinting down the stairs. “It's Bree. She's been arrested.”

“For what?” Ma and Yvonne asked simultaneously.

“Murder.”

“Oh, Lord. I'm going with you. Let me get my purse.”

“Me, too,” said Yvonne.

“It's late. You all don't need to—”

“I'm going. End of discussion,” Ma said.

I grabbed the car keys off of one of the end tables in the living room and drove as fast as the Escalade could take me.

On my way to the police station, I kept racking my brain, wondering what Bree had gotten herself into. My heart was still beating triple time from her telling me that she had been arrested for killing somebody. I knew, without a doubt, that there must have been some mistake. I wanted to say that Bree didn't have a killing bone in her body, but honestly, I didn't really know what Bree was capable of doing. When Ma and I got to the police station, all I wanted to do was see Bree, to know that she was all right.

Ma, Yvonne, and I waited patiently in the lobby of the Tallahassee
Police Department. I sat rocking on my elbows on my thighs, staring quietly down at my black Dearform slippers that Ma got me as a Christmas gift last year.

“I've always thought you could do better, cousin.”

“Yvonne, seriously, not now.”

“You see what she does? She's nothing but trouble.”

“Don't start. I'm nowhere near in the mood for a lecture right now.”

“The day I laid my eyes on Bree, I knew she wasn't any good,” Ma said.

I let loose a long sigh like it was a fart I had been forced to hold in. “Ma.”

“If it isn't one thing, it's another with her, bringing all these shysty people into your lives. She used Deanthony and she's using you, baby.”

“Ma, can you do me a favor?”

“Anything, son, what is it?”

“Will you please shut up?”

Ma gawked at me with her hair done up in jumbo, pink rollers, like I had asked her a dirty question. “What did you say to me?”

“I love you, but I need you to…sit here right now and be quiet.”

“That's not what you said to me. What did you say to me?”

The fat, blond cop stared at us annoyed.

“Why do you have to make everything about you? Not everything is about you.”

“You can be real coldhearted sometimes, you know that?”

“Says the woman who's lied to me for thirty years of my life.”

“What are you talking about, Kashawn?”

“It's so convenient for you, isn't it?”