Get Somebody New (32 page)

I hated it
but I was going to say anything I had to in order to get out of that suitcase.
He pulled me out of the suitcase carefully.

“I ran you a
nice hot bath because I knew you’d need it after being folded up in there.”

The fact that
he was so calm and nice as if nothing had happened made me want to punch him in
his smiling face. He’d successfully gained my compliance at least temporarily.
Ingrid was the last thing on my mind at the moment. I was trying to figure out
a way to get away from him and he was intent on making me stay. I felt like I
was in prison. He wouldn’t let me get a job and he started working from home in
order to keep an eye on me.

He watched my
every move. I could be in the kitchen and I would look around and see an eye
looking at me from behind a wall. I woke up in the middle of the night with him
staring at me. For the first time in my life I was actually afraid of a man. I
was constantly on pins and needles because his moods and quirks were so erratic
I didn’t know what he would do next.

He
effectively cut off all communication with the outside world. He took my cell
phone. I had no money or access to any and he kept me in the house like I was
fucking Rapunzel! I wasn’t free at all and I was going absolutely crazy. One day
he had to leave to meet a client I used the time to do some snooping. I
directed my search at his office. My eye caught something of interest. A brown
envelope stood out among the white papers so I picked it up. It contained a
police report and some other papers along with photos. As I read the police
report, I learned some very interesting things about my new husband that he’d
neglected to mention to me.

As I read, I
understood why he was so adamant about us not discussing our exes. The police
report detailed how he’d beat his previous wife so badly she had to be
hospitalized. If it wasn’t for the intervention of a man who came to her aid he
could have very well killed her. Of course he had enough money to avoid jail
and ended up only having to attend anger management classes. On the report I
saw his whole name listed as Anthony Elias Richards. I knew him as Anthony and
he’d told me he didn’t have a middle name.

My eyes
shifted to the photos of him with various injuries to his head and face. His
eyes were blackened, his nose bloody, his lip split, various bruises on his
face and neck. I returned to the police report and flipped it over. What I read
shocked me beyond belief. The good Samaritan stranger that had come into the
house and saved his wife was none other than Alton Eugene Allen, my ex-husband.
Alton beat Anthony so severely he had to have medical attention before the
police took him to jail.

This new
information was just too much for me to believe. It was hard for me to believe
that calm, sweet, harmless Alton could do that much damage to someone. This was
the same man that I used to push around and he never did anything back to me.
He had beaten big, muscle bound Anthony to a pulp. I could attest from
experience that Anthony had the strength of 2 men. Alton is tall and slim but
managed to do all that damage and didn’t have a scratch on him. I would have
seen it if he’d been bruised or banged up.

Alton didn’t
hit me because he couldn’t bring himself to hurt me. It obviously wasn’t
because he couldn’t defend himself against me, he just chose not to. When he
saw a woman in trouble being beaten by her husband, this was his reaction. In
that moment I realized how blind I’d been. I was with someone who wanted to
love me and give me the world, and I threw it all away. Now I was with someone
who wouldn’t think twice about beating the crap out of me if I as much as spoke
to him in the wrong tone. God was definitely punishing me because he’d given me
a blessing and I took it for granted. Alton told me I needed to go to God,
maybe he was right.

Quickly I put
everything back in its place. Anthony was so anal about every single item in
that house and would have a fit if anything was out of place. As I ran around
the room like a chicken with my damned head cut off I thought about what I was
doing.

“Why am I
running around like a scared puppy about to get scolded by my master? This is
not me.” I said to myself.

I took
everything out of the envelope and spread it all over the sofa in the living
room so he would see it when he got home. I had some questions and he was going
to answer them.

Alton

  Rachel
and I settled in to married life well. We each considered ourselves lucky and
showed it in the way we treated each other. I don’t ever remember smiling as
much in my life as I did after Rachel came into my life. After Jazz flipped out
and left Zeke I wanted to really do damage to him for hurting my cousin like
that. I took his showing up at just the right time as a sign. When he mentioned
Zeke I saw the misery in his face.

The look on
Zeke’s face when Jazz called his name at the airport was priceless. Anyone who
saw the chemistry between them could see they were meant to be together. I knew
Zeke was in a living hell even though he didn’t say anything. Zeke turned
around just as a heard of lawmen rushed forward to arrest Jazz. Jazz didn’t
have a single weapon on him nor did he resist them, so all those officers were
unnecessary. As they dragged him away, Jazz looked so sad as he repeatedly
looked back at Zeke. I’m sure he felt like he’d let Zeke down.

I was
listening to the radio on my way back home when the broadcast was interrupted
with a news bulletin. The producer Marlena Dalton had been found beaten and
murdered in her home. I think everyone in town either knew who she was or had
at least heard her name. They immediately added that Jazz A. Hardaway aka Slade
had been named as a suspect and arrested at an Atlanta Airport in connection
with the murder. It had only been about 15 minutes since I’d left the airport.
I was surprised the information traveled as fast as it did. I knew Zeke was
gonna lose his mind when he finally heard why Jazz was arrested.

I consider
myself a pretty good judge of character and I don’t think that Jazz could rape
or murder someone. Sure he is a thug, but I think it is out of necessity
because of the type of life that he has lived. He couldn’t afford to be soft or
show any type of vulnerability, especially being a drug dealer and being in the
streets. I also think that had he not met Zeke no one would have ever seen that
softer, more caring side of him. The way he cares for Zeke says a lot.

At first I
didn’t like Jazz because I looked at him as nothing more than a common hood,
full of shit, and looking for the next gullible person to take advantage of. He
turned out to be the best thing for Zeke. Once I saw that Jazz was a man of
pretty good character then I warmed up to him.

Zeke called
me when he got to L.A. to let me know he made it. He had also heard about Jazz.
A couple of minutes after I got off the phone with Zeke, Randall called me. He
said that he had Zeke’s phone and there was a message on it that he thought
Zeke needed to hear. He didn’t tell me anything else about the message and I
didn’t ask. I did find it odd that he would fly all the way out to California
just to deliver a cell phone. By that point I had learned not to ask questions.
There was so much going on with those two that it was probably better if I
didn’t ask and I didn’t know.

When Randall
came back from California and told me that he was representing Jazz, I was
confused as hell. If I didn’t know anything else, I knew that those two hated
each other. I knew Randall like I knew myself. I also knew that Randall had too
much of a conscious to agree to represent Jazz so he could lose the case on
purpose and have him sent to prison.

“Randall did
I hear you correctly? You are going to represent Jazz?”

“Yeah, I owe
it to him and Zeke. I was wrong for what I did and I need to get my Karma
right. I can’t live knowing I lied to him like I did, especially now that I
know how much Zeke cares about him. I met with Jazz and actually got a chance
to sit down and talk to him. He -is a pretty good dude actually.”

“That’s a
nice gesture to bury the hatchet.”

“I just hate
that they have announced this shit all in the media about his arrest. Instantly
everybody already thinks he is guilty regardless of whether he is or isn’t.”

“I’ve been
looking into Marlena’s background. Quite frankly, she was a bitch. Nobody’s had
a nice word to say about her yet!”

“Zeke was
concerned when Jazz first mentioned he was working with her. He was aware of
her reputation for using promises of money and stardom to lure young guys into her
web, use them for sex, and drop them from the label.” I informed Randall.

“Well, I’m
gonna go to the hotel and turn in. I have an early day tomorrow. ”

“Keep me
posted and let me know if I can be of any help.”

“Alright,
will do.”

Rachel was
coming home just as Randall was leaving. As I was kissing her to welcome her
home, my cell phone rang. The ringing of the phone was not out of the ordinary
it was the number that was odd. I didn’t recognize the number so I showed it to
Rachel.      

“Honey do you
recognize this number?”

“Yes, that’s
Elias’s number.”

“Elias? Your
Ex-Husband Elias?”

“Yep.”

“Why in the
hell would he be calling me? How would he even know my number?”

“Now that is
a mystery.”

The phone
stopped ringing. Rachel and I were both still dumbfounded. I was not about to
call back since I certainly had no desire to talk to Elias. About 2 minutes
later my phone rang again and it was a number I recognized. I didn’t want to
see that number either. It was Nadiah’s cell phone.

“Why are you
looking like that?” Rachel asked.

“It’s
Nadiah’s cell phone.”

“I wonder
what she wants.”

“Who knows?”
I responded equally confused.

“Hello,
Nadiah?”

“Hey Alton,
listen.”

“Why are you
whispering?”

“I need your
help.”

“My help?
What kind of help?”

“My husband
and I had a fight. He just went crazy. He is talking all off the wall and I
think he is seriously going to try to do something to me.”

“Did you just
call me a couple of minutes ago?”

“Yeah.”

“Wait that
was Elias’s number. What are you doing there?” I asked still confused.

“That’s my
husband.”

“You are
married to Elias? How in the hell…”

“I don’t have
time to explain that.”

“You need to
call the police. I can’t come over there. We had a run in before.”

“That’s why we
are fighting. I found an envelope with the police report and pictures and shit.
I just found out. He didn’t tell me anything about beating that girl up or you
coming over here.”

“If I see him
I just might whip his ass again.”

“That’s fine
by me. That bastard hit me and busted my lip.”

“Certainly
you know I can’t come over there to defend you?”

“So you’re
gonna sit there and do nothing and just let this fool do something to me after
you saw what he did to Rachel?”

“But when you
got married, you remember calling me and telling me how the grass was greener
on the other side? How you’d finally gotten a real man? What happened to all of
that?”

“I’m sorry
OK. I shouldn’t have said that. I was mad because you moved on to somebody
else.”

“Yeah you
went chasing the green grass and found out it was weeds huh?”

“Fuck you
Alton Allen. What was I thinking calling you in the first place?”

“I really
don’t know. You should be calling the police!” I said before she ended the
call.

Ezekiel

  After
Randall went back to Atlanta I was not as worried about Jazz, still worried,
just not as worried. I didn’t even need to ask Jazz whether or not he did it,
because I knew he didn’t. Randall was a competent lawyer and I felt comfortable
that he would represent Jazz well.

After about 3
weeks of filming I couldn’t concentrate anymore no matter how hard I tried. The
thought of Jazz was becoming too much of a distraction. I knew I needed to put
my best foot forward because the opportunity I had was huge. My mental
distraction must have been apparent because the director pulled me to the side
to discuss it.

“Zeke, what’s
going on? You seem to keep zoning out. I know you know your lines. Something
must be on your mind.”

I didn’t want
to tell him all of my business but I needed to tell him something.

“I’m sorry. I
just… my ah….”

“Is this
about the trouble in Atlanta with Slade?”

“Yes. How did
you know about…?”

“Hollywood is
a small world. Gay Hollywood is even smaller. We have a way of keeping up with
our own.”

“We?”

“Yes. I
understand your worry. Those are some serious charges.”

“I am trying
to stay focused, I am so worried. I know he is innocent and we just sorta made
up.”

“I’ll tell
you what, go on back to Atlanta and tend to your “personal issues” or at least
that’s what I’ll tell anyone who asks. There are quite a few scenes without you
that need to be filmed. We’ll just do those scenes to give you a chance to take
care of things, but when I call you to come back you will need to be here.
Those scenes will take about 3 weeks at least so you think that will be enough
time?”

“Yes. Thank
you so much. I really do appreciate it.”

“You’re
welcome, now go and support your man with his FINE ass!”

“You think?”

“I’m certain
and I know he is packing too!”

“Huh? How do
you know that?”

“Cause he got
the big package walk!”