Ladies Listen Up (23 page)

“Of course. I’ve been here with Diego a few times.”

“No, I mean since you’ve been sending the e-mails…I’m confused. Where is all this coming from? You know that Diego is my best friend.”

“To hell with him. Diego can kiss my ass. He doesn’t love anyone
except himself. After what he did to me, do you think I care? You know he doesn’t deserve me. He never did.”

“Well, Alicia. I understand why you would feel this way, but I can’t do that to him.” His mind was reeling. The whole time, deep down, he’d believed it was Anna who’d sent the e-mails, and then maybe even Elise. Not in a million years had he imagined that it was Alicia. “If it makes you feel any better, he was really sorry about what happened between you two. In fact, I think he still loves you.”

“Jacob, I couldn’t care less. I don’t want to talk about him. I want you to sing to me, the way you did at my wedding and the way you do at your shows. Did you know I come to all your shows?”

“I’ve never seen you at one.”

“I always stay in the back and out of sight. Especially when Diego is there.”

Something about her didn’t seem right. She wasn’t the Alicia that Jacob remembered. “So, Alicia, I think we should just forget this whole thing happened and…”

“What?” She raised her voice and asked, “Are you kidding? I put it all on the line and finally tell you how I feel, and this is what I get?”

“Alicia, I can’t get involved with you. Diego is my—”

At the top of her lungs she yelled, “Fuck him. He ruined my life.”

Jacob was shocked. He feared that she was having a breakdown. “It’s okay. I understand that you’re angry with him.”

“No, I’m not angry. I hate him. But he’s going to get his.”

“Don’t be like that. He has suffered…” Jacob leaned in and touched her arm.

Alicia jerked away and said, “Jacob, are you going to fuck me or not? I want you. I need you and you need me, too.”

Jacob shook his head no. “Alicia, that’s not true.”

“Oh yeah? Then why are you fucking your students?” Jacob was stunned and his face showed it. “That’s right. I know all about you and the little girl I saw you with at Starbucks. All about it.”

Jacob was silent.

“Jacob, you don’t need a little girl. You need a woman.” With that, she reached behind her neck and pulled the string that held up her dress. She then stepped out of her dress and stood before him naked, except for the small bit of material that composed her panties. “Please, Jacob. Give me what I want, and I’ll give you what you want.”

It had been
four months almost, since he’d seen her last. It didn’t matter; he still felt the same way about her. So many times he’d seen her face, until the dreams were starting to seem real. The moment the students had left for the day, he began to gather up the last of his things. There were only three days of school left in the year, and because he wasn’t returning, Jacob had packed all of his belongings. He was donating most of what he’d acquired over the years to other teachers, but he was still responsible for gathering it.

When Jacob saw her emerge from behind the boxes and storage bins that were stacked near the door of his classroom, he didn’t believe his eyes. But this time it was no dream. “Hello,” she said as she walked in and closed the door behind her.

Jacob’s eyes filled with water and he nearly broke down in
tears. He couldn’t move. Elise walked toward him. He reached out for her. He couldn’t believe she was there in front of him. “I love you,” he said.

“I love you, too.”

He looked down at her stomach and she was bulging. “So…we’re having a baby?” he asked.

She looked into his eyes and tried to read him. “Is that okay?”

Jacob nodded. “It will be if you marry me.”

The tears then belonged to Elise as she nodded. “I missed you so much.” They hugged. “I always loved you. I just didn’t want you to get into trouble. She was going to get you locked up,” she said over the tears.

“I know. I know. It’s okay. You’re here now.”

“Can we leave? Can we go to your place?” she asked.

“Yeah, of course.”

Jacob grabbed his things and they left the building. “Where’s your car?”

“Indianapolis. I flew out here.”

They got into Jacob’s car unnoticed and drove off. Elise recounted the whole situation from the day Alicia had come to her job and questioned her about her involvement with Jacob up to where she’d begun fishing for information about Diego. Elise hadn’t known much other than that he was writing a column for
Girl Talk
. Soon came the threats as Alicia claimed to want Jacob for herself.

As they cruised along Elise turned to Jacob and asked, “So what did you do to get her to change her mind? She seemed to want you so bad. She was like a psycho.”

“She didn’t want me so much as she wanted to hurt Diego.”

“So what did you do?”

Jacob’s face twisted. “Will you accept the answer that I give and leave it at that? Can you do that?”

“Yes, I can.”

They drove farther and she asked again, “So what did you do?”

“I did what I had to do. I’m not happy about it, but she had me in a bad position. It was one that I couldn’t get out of, and Diego
had
done her wrong.”

Elise nodded and said, “Okay.”

Two days later,
on the last day of school, I stepped out of my classroom and heard a huge commotion in the hallway. Then I saw Lisa come bolting down the hallway. Huffing and puffing, she said, “Diego, there’s like twenty police down that motherfucker.”

“What’s going on?”

“I don’t know, but they have your boy on the ground out in front. They said something about a robbery nearby. Ms. Knight wants everyone to keep the kids that are here inside the rooms.”

“What?” I said, in shock. “Hold up. Watch my kids for a second.” The sixth graders had graduated the week before, leaving Lisa with nothing to do. I left her there and headed up the hall. At the end of the walkway I looked out the window and saw all the police cars. It looked like a drug-zone raid.

I walked down the steps and out the door. I was stopped by an officer and forced to identify myself. I looked over and saw that the exterior door to the boiler room was being guarded by two officers.

Ms. Knight was now standing next to me. She looked as if she
was about to have a heart attack. “Diego, I don’t believe this. How could this happen? How could he do this and involve our school, put our students at risk in such a way?”

She was talking so fast I had to slow her down. “What’s going on—”

Before I could even get the question out she blurted, “He’s the one who’s been robbing all the stores and banks around here, during lunch hour. He was going out robbing places and running back here. Right under our noses.”

I couldn’t believe it. “Are you serious?” I asked. Then I saw four officers emerge from the boiler room with a duffel bag, carrying it as if it contained a bomb.

We walked outside and I figured that the “he” she was referring to was Grump and that I should never have put it past him. I thought about all the times he’d come back into the school after a lunch break sweating like a hog. I asked, “Didn’t we have a background search done on him before he came here?”

“Diego, he’s been here for almost twenty years,” she said as we walked. “I don’t even think they were doing background checks when he started.”

“Twenty years?” I was puzzled. Then, as we made our way to the edge of the parking lot, I saw
him.
Mr. Waverly was in handcuffs as he was being lifted into the rear of a SWAT van. I couldn’t believe it. “Mr. Waverly?”

“Yeah. He’s been robbing stores for the last five months. They found a gun and some money in the boiler room. This is going to be a mess. Lord, I have a huge migraine coming.” She then turned around and left me standing there watching the man who’d been
like a distant uncle, a mentor at times, being hauled off to jail. I couldn’t believe it. It was like watching a movie. Instantly, I thought of Jacob and what I’d done.

Alicia had come
between him and me. She called me from his house phone and left me a message that he’d fucked her. According to her, better than I ever had. I found it hard to believe—both parts. But she promised that she could deliver proof, via her camera phone. And when I called Jacob, he denied it, but then tried to explain why he hadn’t mentioned her coming to his house.

He called me later and tried to convince me that it was a lie, but I didn’t want to hear the story. I was too hurt. He got tired of me cursing him out and began to curse back. He was my best friend in the world, but no matter how many times I tried to figure it out, I couldn’t understand how he’d break code like that. He, more than anyone else on the planet, knew how I felt about Alicia. I had nothing else to say to him, yet I wasn’t finished with him.

The news cameras
were there for the arrest. When they hauled him off, a few students watched in shock. He tried to keep his face down as the cameramen moved in closer, but it didn’t work. The image was clear, and when the four o’clock news rolled, everyone who knew him was shocked to hear the headline:
Jacob Marsh, band instructor and teacher at Lyndon Johnson High School, in Greenbelt was arrested today for an alleged sexual relationship with a former student
.

I watched with bated breath and the whole thing seemed surreal. In a fit of anger, I had turned in my best friend. Now that I’d watched the whole thing as it unfolded in front of the world’s eyes and my own, the feeling in my stomach told me that perhaps I’d gone too far.

A week after
I turned my best friend in to the police, it’d seemed I’d jumped out of the frying pan and directly into the fire. Some
thing as routine as getting a piece of ass had turned into a disaster. There didn’t seem to be any getting out of this situation without either getting killed or going to jail.

My life or his?
I pondered. This man had crashed down my door and had a shiny, silver revolver in his hand. I wondered if the brother was prepared to kill as he’d promised.

Just then he peered up the stairs and spotted me. As he asked the words in a deep James Earl Jones voice, my whole life passed in front of my eyes.

“Where is my wife?”

I stood there silent. I asked myself
how
. How did it come down to this? I thought about everything that I’d done from the beginning to get here. A chain of events began to play out right there as I traded stares with my lover’s husband in the middle of the night.

I thought about all the things that had made me act the way I did. My upbringing, my selfish desires to have it all, right or wrong. It might have been the fact that I was so good at hiding who I really was most of the time that women were always falling in love with an illusion. From the time I was eight, women, my teachers and aunts, had all called me charming.

I was light-skinned when it was the shit to be just that. I grew into a handsome and confident brother. I was intellectually inclined, with a strong sense of street savvy. Women loved me, not only because I knew what to say to them, but because sometimes I even knew how to listen.

It was all about to blow up in my face, though. It looked like I was headed to jail or to the morgue. I couldn’t hear him talking anymore even though his lips were moving. He moved toward me and I was startled as his wife yelled out from the top of the steps.

“Pleeeease stoooop.” Her voice pierced my state and almost snapped me out of my trance. My hands trembled and I thought about all the letters I’d responded to, all the advice I’d given.

I heard the words that I’d read that day.
One day, Diego. You’ll get yours
.

Then I thought about all that I had to live for. Things were going to be different for me. As the dirt I’d done all began to flash in front of my eyes, it became so clear to me. It had never been worth it. Then just like that, I heard the boom, the echo, and then I lost my balance. It was over just like that.

As I lay on my back and closed my eyes, I thought of her. I thought of Heaven, my daughter. At that point, all the women that I’d used, trying to heal and hide from the pain—they didn’t matter. Early in my life, I’d kept count and treated my conquests as a symbol of who I was. As of late, I’d come to realize that I did this because…like so many men, it’s all we know. And because sex was the first thing that women were usually willing to give.

Now I was simply hoping to have a chance to see another day. I finally realized that I didn’t
need
to be here. On my back, at the mercy of this man.

I opened my eyes when I heard him crying. He was on his knees. The gun was still in his hands, but he was weeping like a baby. He had fired a shot well over my head, with no intention of hitting me. He was simply hurt. As I sat up I looked into Paige’s eyes and her face was filled with shame. She walked down the steps to her man and began to weep with him on the floor. Then I heard her begin to say that she was sorry.

“How could you do this to me?” he asked hysterically over and
over. “I love you. Why, Paige? Whyyyyy?” he cried. It was weird hearing this deep voice sounding so pained.

“I’m so sorry. I am. Please forgive me.”

He was bawling like a baby at the top of his lungs. I was waiting for the snot bubbles.

“Can you forgive me, please?” she begged. Then she said something that I was sure stunned him. In the middle of probably the worst moment of his life, she said, “I forgave you.”

It was like he’d been shot with a tranquilizer gun. He stopped crying and looked into her eyes as if she were no longer his source of pain. Then she said, “We have to go. I’m sure someone called the police.”

He gave me a menacing look as he moved hastily out the door. Less than ten minutes later, I was at my kitchen table helping the police fill out a report and trying to explain what had happened and why this man had burst through my door. They’d seen it all before, and once they’d finished the report, gathered some evidence, and taken a few pictures, they advised me to get a restraining order and promptly left.

Once they were gone, I called my insurance company to report my catastrophe. They told me that they would send someone out within the hour to board up my door until the morning, when I could have it fixed.

I went and sat in my living room, turned on the television, and waited for the employee to arrive. As nervous as I’d been, incredibly I was able to close my eyes and start to drift off. That’s when I heard footsteps and looked up, startled.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“I came to apologize. That was wrong what I did…I called Paige’s husband and told him all about you two. I thought he’d come over here and kill you.”

“How did you know? How did you find him?”

“It’s a small world.”

“Well, he almost did kill me. So you hate me that much?”

“I thought I did, but I don’t. In fact, I still love you.”

When Alicia said those words, my heart melted. “What about all that stuff with Jacob?”

“I lied. He didn’t touch me. At least not in the way that I’d wanted him to. I did want him to fuck me. But not because I loved him. Because I loved you and wanted to hurt you, like you hurt me. I even threatened to turn him in to the police. I did a lot of mean things in the cause of trying to use him. He ended going into a screaming fit, totally unlike Jacob. Then I understood why. He told me that he was having a baby with the girl, Elise, and the look in his eyes told me that he would do anything to protect what he had with her.”

“So what did you do?”

“I decided to leave him the hell alone. He told me that if I wanted to hurt you, then to do it, but to leave him out of it.”

When she said that, I had to take a seat. Jacob was sitting in a jail cell and I’d put him there. I couldn’t believe that this was happening. There she was in front of me again.

“So why did you do all of this?”

“Diego, you made me crazy. Everything you did made me crazy. But through it all, I never stopped loving you.”

I closed my eyes and thought about it all. The entire year went spinning through my head. All the hurt I’d felt and caused. The wedding. Gina and the baby. The column. The show. Lanelle and
Paige. Finally, what I’d done to Jacob. Now that Alicia stood before me, I realized that it was all because of her that I’d done the crazy things I’d done. Then, as I stared into her eyes, I stood and moved toward her. In a low whisper, I said, “So…after all this…you still love
me
?”

“Yes,” she said. My thoughts shifted to my friend. I was going to have to straighten out the whole mess with Jacob; however, it would have to wait until the morning.

With that, I took Alicia by the hand and led her upstairs to my bed.