Chardonnay: A Novel (23 page)

I stared at her as she spoke. Although the chile was model
material, she had a full blown ass on her, so I inquired,

“Exactly what kind of modeling have you done?”

“XXL, Maxim—”

“NO. No thank you.” I said with a wave of the hand.

“Well, don’t be so biased. I have done runway shows.”

“With that ass?
For who?”

It seemed I had made my point. She shut up. In fact she pulled
some money out and dropped it on the table as she stood. I didn’t bother asking
where she was going, I didn’t chase
dick
when it ran. So she paused for
a moment and said,

“There’s a wide open field out there for models. Yeah I wear a
size ten but oh well, somebody will hire me. You’re a beautiful
girl,
I only wish I had your features. You could make a
career out of it.”

“I ain’t gone be nobody’s plus size model!”

“I’m not either!”

“You a ten!
You think I haven’t looked into modeling? Girl
I been there done that!”

“Just to let you know, I’ve done work for Lane Bryant and Monif
C., Baby Phat to name a few.”

“All by how?”

“Jase.
He’s a business man. I know you’re into
writing, but girl—your striking! You could make some major cash flow.”

I had enough cash flow as it seemed. I did know Jase had
connections, but not like that. I guess I would have to go crawl back.

Then with that thought, I decided no on it.

“Syndclaire—”
“Please, call me Syndi. Hate that name.” she mumbled off.

“Your brother and I aren’t seeing eye to eye. I’ve made things
complicated for us to even work together.”

She laughed.

“Girl—that man doesn’t let anything come in between his books or
his work!
Everyone calls him by Mr. Vonseigneur in that office and he doesn’t
take shit off anyone—you included. But as long as you’re working he could care
less what you two do outside the office. He’s a genius at that—I give it to
him!”

“Are you signed by them?”

“No, most people think I am since I’m family. I do freelance and I
don’t use my last name. Jase manages things though.”

“Freelance is hard isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but I’m doing it while keeping my day job.”

“Will you be up at the hospital for the rest of th—
”

“Yes. I’m in Kansas City until I find what I’m looking for here.”
she said pausing and staring at me.

“Then you in the wrong place.” I said as I stood.

She chuckled at me and then we grabbed our cups to go.

Hump, if I wouldn’t find it, modeling would find me I guess.

*
 
*
 
*
 
*

When I got
back to the hospital the next day, Slim was sitting on the edge of his bed
looking out the window with his back towards me. I knocked on the door and he
turned his head to me. The stern look in his eyes told me he was thinking hard
about something.

“Oh, hey baby, come on in.”

I smiled at his straight speech and how he adjusted his self on
the bed; just the day before he was incapable of doing anything to this extent.
I came around the bed and saw that his face was still a bit swollen and that he
had bandages wrapped around his upper body. He had no shirt on. He held his
arms out, but I flinched back from embracing him in fear that I would harm him.

“Slim
your
still healing.”

“Girl
come
here. Ain’t no bullet gone
keep me from you.”

“Yeah.
How you feeling?”

“Better since I’ve seen your face. Why’d you leave yesterday?”

“I was told you needed your rest. Plus I had been here since last
week and I needed some fresh air.”

“I hear you. I been aware for just one day but, I’m ready to go.”
He pulled me to him and kissed my lips. I pulled back just a bit and pulled up
my purse that rested at my side. I unbuckled it and pulled the necklace out.
Once I did that, all rekindling, all joking, all bullshit aside, the look on
Slim’s face told me more than I needed to know. This necklace had a story of
its own.

He stood and struggled with the shuffling of his feet. He nearly
fell to the floor, but with my help, he continued to the window. A knocked came
at the door and Syndclaire peeked in. She gasped and said,

“I knew it!”

“What?” I asked.

“These are his first steps since being in the hospital!” she
shrieked.

Yeah, go figure. His first steps would be to get away from me,
I thought.
I smiled gently, but Syndclaire may have known my facial expressions from the
last few days of knowing each other. She went to go get the doctor after
sighing at me. Slim looked at me and said,

“So what Myron
tell
you?”

The
fickleness in my heart for these two was just about old. Now I wondered who was
being played and why or how.

“Does he need to tell me something or do you need to tell me
something?” Slim sucked in his mouth and continued looking out the window.
After about three minutes he turned to me and said,

“It’s me.”

“And?”

He paused and asked,

“What do you remember about the night you stripped for me?”

“I told you...you know.”

Slim ran his hand over his face and shook his head saying,

“You never questioned why or how you ending up doing that? Why you
can’t remember a damned thing?”

“I—I just thought...shit I don’t know, you know?”

He looked at me, contemplating whether what he had to tell me
should be said for the sake of his chance to be with me. “Chardonnay...you...you
were, um, drugged.”

The words could have surpassed me if I didn’t listen straight
enough. But knowing that I heard correctly and looking at Slim, knowing Slim,
there was no way in hell he just said that he had drugged me. But he did.
Before I could tune in on what he meant the doctor busted into the room with
five other doctors. They were saying something about Slim’s recovery being a
miracle, but as I walked out the room, somehow...I wished he had died that
night.

*
 
*
 
*
 
*

I had been
up all night, trying to figure out how Slim could do such a thing. Hell, why he
would do such a thing with me programed to thinking that he did it with my full
consent. My cell phone rung instead of my room phone and I knew to look at it.

Most of my peeps called me at the home number first whenever I was
home from college. So who ever this was didn’t know me too well to know the
program. It was Jase. I passed answering his call pushing the end button to
shut the damned thing up. When I heard my voice mail ring go off, I checked it
to see what he had to say.

“Hello, Miss Houston, I was calling to touch base with you since I
heard there was a shooting at the party the other night after I left. I wanted
to know if you were okay...and since I actually know you was on the Plaza with
Syndi the other day, I know you are.
Anyway, try not
to be so sweet, get at me. And it’s Jase if you didn’t know.
One.”

Like I thought, he didn’t want anything. I placed my phone back in
my night stand and laughed that he had spoken with his sister about me. There
was something to that guy for him to just all of a sudden be calling me now.
Maybe he was tired of being played to the left. I
was
giving him the
step-child treatment.

19

Cold
World

Slim kept
calling. But that was crap shoot to me. To stand by a guy that could have been
the reason for the tail spin on your life was beyond me. Maybe Myron wasn’t as
much of a jerk after all. After dealing with Slim, I was sure there was worse.
The first thing I found out about life was that you had to be a good talker.
Good talkers were the beginning stages for go getters. I dialed Micah but got
his answering service on the second ring—he was busy fucking. At least that’s
what he told me he would be doing if I ever called and his machine came on
almost immediately. And since I was making calls, I thought I would call Myron’s
little hoe’s number, I had a rep to keep...fuck
him.
And would you know for the first time someone answered the phone.
But it was a dude. I told him I had the wrong number. That only fueled my
energy in talking to the
chick,
I knew it was a
working number. After I’d done that I went down stairs. My mother was out
shopping as usual and the house was silent as a mouse with my daddy away on
business and Jersey and King at camp still. I could hear the mail man putting
the mail through the mail slot. I watched it fall to the marble foyer floor
before I picked it up. It was mostly junk mail, all except one envelope
addressed to me. I took the other mail and put it on the island in the kitchen
and then I went to the den to open my mail. The outside looked normal. There
wasn’t anything suspicious about it. When I went to open it I saw that it held
a few items.
Pieces rather.
There was also a folded
white sheet of 8 X 10
paper
. When I opened it I nearly
laughed.

Someone watch too many movies. But the laughter never came as I looked
at the cut out letters from either magazines or newspapers with my whole name
pasted out. The rest of the letter read:

Mirror,
mirror on the wall. Who’s the fairest girl of all?

With no King’s horses and
TWO
King’s men...

Neither one
of them could put her back together again.

No fairytale can make her better

And that’s all it said. However what else was in the envelope
would tell me more than enough. I went up to my room and locked the door just
in case my mother came home. I sat in the middle of my room floor and poured
the rest of the contents out. It was obvious at first glance I was looking at
torn pictures. There was also a DVD CD. I took it out its crystal case and
walked over to my DVD player. I turned it on and pushed the power button on my
television.

A few seconds later after I put the CD in, fast movement played
across the screen. Zoomed in I couldn’t tell what was happening...but then the
camera guy zoomed out. I nearly died. There I was with my hands tied together,
my legs pressed back, and my titties popped out the top of my baby-t as some
random guy was pumping in and out of me. A guy I’d never saw before a day in my
life. My body was naked, glossed with baby oil, and my ass was being smacked as
the wet sounds of sex and my humming of pleasure was the score. He had me doing
things to myself like licking my titties and I was laughing about it...
laughing.
From the voice level in the room I could tell there were other men in the room—and
then my moans became louder and the man slid out of me only to let a familiar
face get his turn...Slim.

 
I was shaking beyond belief
as I watched what was happening before me. Derogatory names being slandered at
me as each, man, took, his, turn. Two of which were Rason and Jalen.
 
The title of the tape: Ghetto Big Tittie
Black Sluts. I was belligerent. I hurriedly stopped the DVD player and sat
there momentarily shocked. I tried to remember if I recalled doing any of that,
and the answer was no. Slim said I was drugged when I stripped—but he said
nothing about a train being ran on me.

I knew Slim and I had sex but I had no way of proving it, until
now. But why would he lie...why would anyone make a foul tape like this? I
wondered how many more where out there. I jumped up from that floor and nearly
forgot my head as I rushed out that house to run down to Konstance’s house. But
with my luck the girl was standing at my front door with her hand up to the
doorbell button ready to push it.

“Whoa!
Where were you going?!”

I could hardly talk. I was out of breath and the words would not
fly out my mouth. I pulled Konstance by her hand and quickly took her up to my
room to show her the DVD. When I pressed play she stood there silent, watching
with her hand over her mouth.

“You see that shit?!” I screamed.

“How—how, when?” she asked.

“I don’t know! I don’t even remember doing it!”

She shook her head and then turned to me.

“Are you okay?”

“What kind of question is that Konstance?!”

And then my loud moan crept out my mouth on the DVD player making
us both turn to look and see Slim getting on top of me. I broke down crying.
Konstance looked as if she didn’t know what to do.

“You can’t remember a thing,” she asked me.

“Because if we take this tape to the police and they see it...Nay
it would look consensual to them.” she finished.

“It looks like I wanted that?!” I hollered.

“To me it does, and you do have witnesses that have heard you say
you gave your virginity to Slim.”

“From the look of it I gave my virginity to more than just
Slim
! Those are the guys that they found killed—in this tape
fucking me!”

 
“Are you serious?” she said
turning to look at the raw performance as my body was being flipped over and
some guy began hitting it from the back.

“Chardonnay, look,” Konstance began as the tape played longer than
it did before.

“There’s blood in the bed.”

“I wonder if Myron knew this...if this is why he raped me.”

“
Who,
raped you?” Konstance asked
authoritatively as I cried.

“Myron, he raped me when I told him about Slim. He—he said that I
make him look stupid and that people are laughing at him. I feel so disgusting.
I don’t know what I’ve done to him.”

“You can’t blame this on yourself. It happened and if you don’t
recall this shit then something else had to of happened, something that you
couldn’t control.”

I looked at her and shrugged my shoulders.

“I took away something so precious to him. The most precious
gift...a woman can give her husband.”

“But, baby girl, he’s not your husband. He can’t control you.”

I looked up at Konstance and thought the worse.

“Myron killed them boys...I know he did.”

“Who?”

“Rason and Jalen.
He knows somehow. He’s seen the
tape.”

As the tape played on I hear fumbling and then an outbreak of
sorts and a loud protesting stop and then it cut out. I snapped my neck over
and so did Konstance.

“You heard that?” I asked.

“Yeah—I wonder what that was about.”

I shrugged my shoulders and went to rewind it. Konstance and I
couldn’t figure it out. We sat silent for a moment and then Konstance said as
an afterthought,

“But
Nay
, for what he has done to
you...it still doesn’t make up for it.”

“Konnie, Pal pal told me before he died that love goes deeper than
the surface. Deeper than any flaw or forgiveness and that it’s not how much a
person can run over you, but how much you can take head on. It’s really about
not giving up on each other.”

She held my hand and giggled as tears fell down her face.
Squeezing my hand she said, “You’re not really happy with him,”

She had a point.

“I mean think about it.
Jase.
Why are you
so in love with him?”

“I never told you I was in love with him.”

“You didn’t have to. I see it in your eyes. Sometimes we either
want what we can’t have or what we used to have.”

“Nah, he’s in a different world honey.”

“From who?
You?
Nay, pu-leeze.
He would be in any world you’d want him to
be. And I know you feelin’ him ‘cause yo’ big ass smile ova there.”

“And how you know? A smile is a smile.”

“You’re just that got-his-dick-wrapped-around-my-finger type of
bitch he wants.
Could see it in his eyes.
You need to
leave these little fishes alone and get at him.”

“Yeah but are you forgetting Myron’s got this pussy branded?”

“And you’ve got his heart branded too.”

Silence.

“Damn you’re a lucky heifer. Myron the Seductionist stuck on your
pussy.
Jase the Billionaire in your back pocket.
Slim
the Body guard on redial.”

We were laughing hard and tears began running out our eyes hard.

“Love you Konnie.
You my heart girl.”
I
said leaning over and kissed her on the cheek.

“I love you too girl. But you need to figure it all out.
Jase
 
sounds
like a
keeper.”

“If it’s meant to be Konnie.
If it’s
meant to be.”

*
 
*
 
*
 
*

“I can’t
cash this.” the Caucasian, brunette bank teller said sliding the over half a
million dollar check back to me. I stood in that line for thirty minutes for
her to tell me she couldn’t cash the check my grandfather had given me.

“Why?” I asked and a disgusted tone.

“I called the account officer to verify and he states there is a
clause on it that says you can only have it in increments of twenty grand a
year.”

“What? No-no this has got to be a joke...” I said with a half
hysterical laugh. This money was my salvation right now. I didn’t need payments—I
needed the whole amount in cash in my hand now.

“Next.” she called out as to say my time was up at her lane and
took the next person’s I.D. and check along with deposit slip.
 
I was appalled. I got on the phone with my
mother, who calmly explained to me,

“Yes that’s true.”

“Well why you didn’t tell me.” I said tracking out of the bank
walking towards the parking garage Konstance parked in. She wasn’t anywhere in
sight. I had spent the night at her house to try and get away from everyone. It
worked thus far.

“If you would have asked—”

“That’s bull, so you mean to tell me that for the next
approximately twenty eight years I will be getting twenty grand a year?!”

“Actually one thousand six hundred and sixty six a month...he
wanted you to have a steady income without being spoiled.”

 
“I—I can’t believe this.
For some reason I don’t believe you!”

She huffed and spat out,

“Chardonnay
stop
being a brat about this!”

“I want to see the estate papers!
Immediately!”

“Call your Aunt Marjorie.” and she hung up.

To know that your inherited that much money and denied it for
small sums is redundant. Ten minutes later my mother called back, which was not
her style.

“Chardonnay, will you please come back home?”

“I’m not sure I want to...” I said leaning up against Konstance
car under the hot parking garage.
 

“Well, I’m doing something I haven’t done in a while. Cooking, I’ve
been doing that a lot lately. Darling, please.”

She never begged my mercy or company for anything and it may have
been the last she would do so. This may have been my chance at getting her to
change me getting small payments instead of a lump sum of money. Konstance came
around the block with five shopping bags—all obtained in an hour.

“Alright, I’ll be there.”