Close Quarters: A Novel (Zane Presents) (16 page)

I was engrossed in the novel when the limo exited the Beltway. We were five minutes from my parents’ house. I closed the book and then stroked Ellis’s arm, rousing him from his nap. He stretched, then straightened up in the seat. Ellis stared out the window at the neighborhood where I grew up. We passed block after block of modestly sized single-family homes with manicured lawns and two cars parked in the driveway. I missed the tree-lined streets that were wide enough for kids to play football, basketball or jump rope on a hot summer day.

The limo stopped in front of my parents’ home. My mother was out on the porch, coming down the steps before we had a chance to exit the limousine. She was an older version of me—slender with a splash of freckles and reddish-brown hair. Except her hair was cut short and sprinkled with traces of salt and pepper. She seemed so vibrant in her skinny jeans and fitted sweater. I opened the door and met her in the middle of the lawn with a big hug. She screamed when she saw my engagement ring, then grabbed me up in her arms again. Apparently my father heard the ruckus and came outside. He was shaking Ellis’s hand when I pried myself from my mother’s hug. Ellis and I switched. I went over and kissed my father and Ellis went to greet my mother. My daddy was a big bear, tall and solid. He was close to sixty years old and still muscular and strong. There was no sign of him getting soft in the middle.

After standing around for a few minutes, talking about our drive to Maryland and how happy we were to see one another, we moved our reunion inside.

Ellis stayed behind to instruct Stanley about our return trip on Sunday. He came in trying to balance our bags and the red velvet cake I forgot in the car. I took the cake carrier and my father helped
Ellis with the bags. They went upstairs to take our luggage to my old bedroom while my mother and I headed to the kitchen. The house smelled of roasting turkey and spices. I walked to the stove and peeked into my mother’s pots—collard greens, black-eyed peas and rice, candied yams and string beans. Sitting on the counter was the macaroni and cheese, baked ham, roast beef, extra stuffing and sweet potato pies. She shooed me away from the food before I had a chance to sample anything.

“Everything looks delicious, Mom. I can’t wait to eat. We didn’t have any breakfast.”

“Your father bought fresh bagels this morning. They’re on the dining room table.”

Ellis and my father had returned downstairs to the living room. I prepared a bagel with a tiny bit of cream cheese for Ellis and took it to him.

“Baby girl, maybe Ellis wants a cup of coffee with his bagel. I just made a pot.”

“Ellis doesn’t drink coffee, Daddy.”

“Then get the man a glass of orange juice.”

I went to get the juice and handed the glass to Ellis.

“I like your style, Mr. Bradford,” Ellis said.

“Baby girl, I know you better be taking care of this man up in New York.”

“Of course, I do, Daddy. Ellis is pulling your leg.”

Ellis laughed. “Lina’s right, sir. She’s the best thing that has ever happened to me. I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

I pecked Ellis on the lips. “Now stop trying to start trouble, Daddy, before I call Mom in here.”

“You let your mother finish cooking our dinner. I don’t need her getting on my case. Why don’t you go on in there and help her.”

“Mom doesn’t like anyone in her kitchen, not even me. She sent me in here with you two.”

“Are you going to get territorial about our kitchen when you move in with me?” Ellis asked.

“It’s about time you moved my baby out of Brooklyn,” my father said to Ellis.

I shot Ellis a cautionary look. “Daddy, there’s nothing wrong with Brooklyn.”

“Maybe, but I’d feel better if you were with Ellis.”

“I have been trying to convince your daughter of that for quite some time.”

“Melina can be stubborn like her mother.”

“I heard that,” my mother shouted from the kitchen.

“I’m not being stubborn.”

“Another thing she got from her mother—she disagrees with everything I say.”

“That’s not true, Daddy.”

“See what I mean? You sure you want marry this girl?” he said, laughing.

I leaned my head on Ellis’s shoulder. “He’s sure. I have the ring to prove it.” I held my hand out for my father to see.

My father looked at my ring and then up at Ellis. He reached his hand out and held mine in his. “This is my one and only baby, Ellis. You better treat her right.”

“Mr. Bradford, I will take care of your daughter to the best of my ability. Lina will want for nothing.”

“That’s all a father can ask for.”

• • •

We sat around the dining room table after dinner, nibbling on dessert. I pushed a piece of pie from one side of the plate to the other. As tasty as it was I couldn’t manage another bite.

“Dinner was delicious, Mrs. Bradford. I haven’t had a meal like that in years.”

“What does your mother make on Thanksgiving?”

Ellis and I shared a laugh. My mother waited with slight confusion registered on her face.

“Mother doesn’t cook. I can’t remember a time when she did. She’ll have her chef serve a turkey, but she stays away from Southern fare. Now when my father was living, occasionally he would demand a plate of soul food. But it was rare, and Mother resisted when she could.”

“Well, anytime you want some down-home Southern cooking I’ll fix it up for you.”

“Thank you, I appreciate that.”

“I’m just sorry we never had the opportunity to meet your father.”

“You would have loved him, Mom. Dr. Harlow was a good man.”

Ellis nodded his agreement. “I would like to have you and Mr. Bradford come to New York to meet my mother. I know Lina wants her mother, and her mother-in-law-to-be, to help plan the wedding.”

“I was just telling my husband that we haven’t been to visit Melina in a long time.”

“Why don’t we arrange for you to come up in a few weeks? Don’t concern yourself with a hotel; you can stay at my house. I’ll have Mother come in from the city and we can make a weekend of it.”

Ellis called Bebe after we finished dessert to inquire about her availability. I spoke to her briefly and she was actually quite civil. By the time we hung up the phone with his mother, my parents had confirmed that they would definitely be visiting us in New York in a few weeks. I was excited that my parents would get to see my future home; I wasn’t so sure I felt the same about my future mother-in-law.

I
heaved the cooler full of beer from the back of Terrence’s truck. Lex poured charcoal into the barbeque grill while Amir and Terrence set up the table. We were at the Jets game at the Meadowlands Arena in New Jersey, getting ready to set off our after-Thanksgiving tailgate party.

The sun was shining, but it was cold outside. I was layered in a thermal shirt, turtleneck, T-shirt, a Jets sweatshirt and a scarf. I also had on gloves with the fingertips cut out. No sooner than I released the cooler did Lex open the lid and plunge his hands down in the ice in search of a Corona.

“Damn, man, it’s only nine-thirty in the morning. You’re starting already?” I said.

“If I wanted a sermon I would’ve taken my ass to church. Stop sweatin’ me and hand me the bottle opener.”

I tossed Lex the opener. “Don’t go burning up our food because your ass is too drunk to man the grill.”

We started every tailgate party off with a breakfast of steak and eggs. By game time we were on to the burgers, dogs, chicken and ribs.

“I’ll cook the food before I let this fool ruin my T-bone,” Terrence said.

Amir shook his head. “Yo, y’all brothers eat too much. You
stuffed your faces on Thanksgiving, ate leftovers all day Friday and Saturday, and now y’all are about to pig out on barbeque.”

“Man, go blow that hot air in your horn,” I said, laughing.

Lex gave me a pound. “I hear that. If Amir don’t want his T-bone I’ll eat it.”

“Y’all Negroes are just greedy. Make my steak medium rare and my eggs over easy. Lex, you can have whatever scraps are left when I’m done,” Amir said.

“Keep talking shit and you’re going to be using your steak to cover your black eye.”

We rolled off of that one. The digs were already underway and we had the whole day ahead of us. I hooked up the portable television to check the reception. Lex brought his TV to the last tailgate party and the picture had so much snow, we thought there was a blizzard inside the stadium. I purchased a new one because I sure as hell wasn’t going to struggle to see the game on Lex’s snowstorm in a box again.

The lot was filled with fellow tailgaters, grilling and setting up sterno racks filled with trays of food, laying out six-foot subs, salads, you name it. Ticketholders think they’re living the life inside the stadium, sitting in their box seats, but there’s nothing like the energy at a tailgate party. The real party isn’t in the stadium; it’s out in the parking lot.

The smell from our steaks hit me as Lex turned them over. He put a cast iron frying pan on the other side of the grill to make the eggs. Lex was our official grill master—and not just at games. At any of our barbeques or picnics you would find Lex behind the grill. He piled the sizzling meat into an aluminum pan and finished with the eggs. We lined up at the table, grabbing paper plates and plastic forks and knives for our breakfast.

“Dru needs to learn how to make a steak from you,” Terrence said.

Lex threw a piece of meat in his mouth. “You mean to tell me you’re marrying a woman that can’t cook?”

“Don’t start talking about my girl,” Terrence said, pointing his plastic knife at Lex. “She does all right. But sometimes the food is a little bland.”

“You better introduce Dru to Adobo—the all-purpose seasoning,” I said laughing, almost choking on my steak.

“And when was the last time you had a woman cook for your ass?” Terrence said.

“I have two women cooking for me.”

Amir set his plate down. “What two women do you have?”

“That just goes to show you that I don’t need no horn to seduce a woman into making me a meal.”

“I don’t
need
it either, but my sax gets me a hell of a lot of perks that you ain’t getting.”

Lex leaned forward in his chair. “I want you to get back to your brother’s question. What two chicks you got?”

I grabbed a beer from the cooler and took my time opening it. I took a long swallow, making them wait. “I told you all about Kai. Baby doll is doing everything in her power to get Big Daddy to keep her company, including cooking.”

“So a brother is getting a little nookie and a hot meal to go with it,” Lex said.

They cracked up laughing.

“I always gets mine. That ain’t nothing new.”

“You’re stalling, brotha,” Terrence said. “Who’s the other woman?”

“Mel,” I said. “Mel cooks for me all the time.”

“Awwwww man,” they yelled in unison.

“You ain’t hittin’ that,” Lex said.

“I didn’t say I was. I said I have two women cooking for me—and I do.”

“But you wish you were getting a piece of that sweetness, don’t you?” Amir said.

“C’mon, man. Mel and I don’t get down like that.”

“You’ve never pushed up on that?”

“No.”

“Malik, we got the same mother. You can’t lie to me.” Amir was in hysterics. “I’ve known you your entire life. I remember when you were hitting on girls in kindergarten. You can’t help yourself. Tell the truth. You’ve never peeped shorty coming out the shower or peeked through her keyhole while she was getting dressed?”

“Nah, man. I respect Mel.”

Lex shook his head in disbelief. “I know your ass is lying. Your roommate is too fine for you to be frontin’ on the booty.”

“Mel’s fine, but she’s not my type. I like ’em wild like Kai. No inhibitions and always willing to please.”

“Kai’s all that?”

I nodded. “And some.”

Kai was a bad specimen. I usually flaunted my women around the crew, we all did, sort of like a who-has-the-baddest-chick competition. For some reason, I didn’t want to bring Kai around—probably because I worked with her. I wanted to keep my personal life private from my colleagues. I lived one way and worked another. It was a way to guarantee that a person never really got to know me. They saw the “me” that I wanted to portray, not the “me” that I really was. At this point, Kai had limited access to a brother. The last thing I needed was for her to see me clowning with my boys, then go back to the office with a negative impression of me, thinking I wasn’t serious enough to perform my job. If she had showed up to go to Terrence and Dru’s engagement party it would have been all right because my boys were all on their best behavior. But for her to be with us when were just sitting around
shooting the shit, that would’ve been another story. I had already disregarded some of my basic rules by hanging out with Kai and her friends on Thanksgiving night.

After I had the obligatory turkey dinner with my family, I scooped Kai up and drove her to Justine and Ira’s home in Scarsdale. Justine met us at the door in a low-cut shirt with cleavage spilling out the top. I moved to shake her hand and she pulled me into a hug, rubbing her breasts against my chest. I pulled away and she winked at me. Kai didn’t catch the exchange because she had already gone into the house. Ira was in their living room in a smoking jacket with a cigar clenched between his teeth. He sat in his chair ensconced in a cloud of smoke. He explained that he was only allowed to enjoy his Cubans on special occasions and intended to smoke all night long. Kai told me that Ira was a successful television producer—somehow Justine managed to slip his pants off and start wearing them herself. Kai and I stayed a few hours and had a couple of drinks. We consumed Ira’s good scotch and talked about advertising and product placement in television and movies. Ira was an all right guy. He was content as long as he had his cigars and, if allowed, some food. I felt sorry for him, though, as his wife salaciously eyed me throughout the evening. When Kai and I were leaving, Justine hugged me a little too long and a little too tight. Later that night, I found her cell phone number in my blazer pocket.