Love in a Carry-On Bag (4 page)

Chapter Four

Daddy’s Girl

I
t was always her
stomach that shut down first.

After her father moved out, Erica’s mother changed her name. Not legally, but men started calling the house asking to speak to Jackie. In the beginning, Erica was confused, insisting that they had the wrong number. But they would keep calling until her mother picked up the telephone. Shortly after each call, her mother would burst into her bedroom tucking herself into her Gloria Vanderbilt jeans and smoothing her soft hair into an up do twist.

“Watch ya sista while I run to the store,” she’d say, brushing a tube of dollar-store lipstick across her mouth, and then using it for blush on her cheeks. She was a pretty woman with a firm body and pleasing features, but it was her eyes that gave away her pain.

“When’re you coming back?” Erica would ask, throwing up a little bit in her mouth.

“Right back, and don’t answer the telephone. If it’s me, I’ll let the phone ring once, hang up and then call again,” she’d say, bolting the thick wooden door behind her.

It was always the store and even though the bodega was a block away, the run could take her mother hours to complete. From the moment she walked out, Erica would feel her stomach spin, as if she were on a carousel ride that had suddenly lost control. To cope, she medicated herself with back-to-back reruns of
Welcome Back Kotter
,
Good Times
,
The Jeffersons
, and
Alice
.

Sometimes her mother would return with a greasy bag of fried chicken wings and soggy fries from the Chinese store, but most times she came home empty-handed, jeans soaked in urine and smelling like she had bathed in a bottle of Bacardi. Erica couldn’t stand to see her mother liquored up and each night before bed, she knelt against her canopy bed with her bare knees pressed into the cold wooden floor, begging God to send her father back. She would seal her plea with The Lord’s Prayer and two Hail Mary’s, but as the seasons passed, he never came.

Then one day when she was in her mid-twenties she received a Thanksgiving card from him with a fifty-dollar bill Scotch-taped to the left side. It was simply addressed to E-Bird, his pet name for her with no return address. A few weeks later, he sent her a Christmas card with another fifty and a photo of his new family.

There were four people in the photo, clustered in shades of green like sprigs from a mistletoe: a thick-skinned woman with a gap between her teeth and tits the size of Texas, a young boy with crescent-shaped eyes and a smile that mirrored her own, a little girl with braids and rainbow beads. Her father’s wavy temples had grayed, but his face held the same handsome sheen. Just looking at him conjured his waxy scent into her living room. The little girl sat in Erica’s father’s lap, sucking her index finger with eyes that screamed into the camera, “My Daddy.”

The fifty-dollar bills came almost monthly after the first one but Erica never responded, choosing to forget about the bills collecting in the drawer of her nightstand. One day she planned to stuff the money in a big envelope with pictures of her missed dance recital, basketball games and graduations.

On the bad days, she wished that she could send him snaps of her terrified self; when the electricity had been shut off, and their spoiled food invited every rodent in Newark to camp out in their home. Or when her mother stole her elementary school’s candy-drive money, and the principal scolded her daily in front of her classmates. Or when Ms. Frances, her babysitter’s mother, refused to let her daughter watch Erica and her sister, and was kind enough to yell her reason from her screened-in-porch, just in time for Erica’s business to reach the neighbors’ table with dessert.

“’Cause that woman ain’t never coming back,” Ms. Frances puffed on her Marlboro Red, “and the Daddy ain’t shit either.”

The assistants had long
finished their water cooler talk about their weekend hangovers and Erica’s half-sipped coffee was stone cold. Peering at her online banking, she calculated her remaining bills for the month. Rent and cable were due at the end of the week. The company was late again with the check for her expenses, so she would have to pay AmEx and wait to be reimbursed. With a phone call, she could delay paying her student loans and her dry cleaning would have to stay put. But even with this, she was still short. Her sister, Jazmine, was away at Clark Atlanta University and Erica put a small allowance into her account every month. So when she picked up the telephone to call Jaz, it was more out of need to share information than to expect real help.

“Sha-low.”

“Is that how you answer the telephone?”

“Girl, I knew it was you. Caller-ID, duh.”

“Your mother’s in jail.”

“Shut-up,” Jazmine said, and Erica could hear the lollipop she was sucking pop from her painted red lips. She could picture her sister’s bleach blonde fro, feathered and free, while she recounted the arrest story and how much they needed to get her out.

“She’s so stupid,” Erica finished.

“And you know she’s in there freakin’ out. Probably peed her pants.”

“I hope not.”

“Well I only have twenty dollars to last me ’til the end of the week. I would say call Daddy, but he doesn’t have a cell phone and his wife cock blocks like a mug.”

“You talk to Daddy?” Erica asked, stunned.

“Sometimes. He asks about you.”

She felt a pang of jealousy over her sister forgiving their father and not keeping her side. Although she should have known Jazmine would talk to anyone who gave her money, she was still pissed. He left them for Christ sakes, and was raising a brand new family like they never existed.

“So what should I do?”

“Borrow it from Warren.”

“I’m not a leech.”

“You’re fucking him aren’t you?”

“Jaz.”

“I’m just saying, what’s his is...”

“I’m not Mommy. I don’t ask men for money.”

“Excuse the hell out of me,” Jazmine shot back.

Erica hadn’t intended for her words to sound so harsh. After all, Jazmine was the love of her life. It was Erica who raised her when her mother couldn’t. Teaching her sister how to skate, use tampons, and helping her change her sheets when she wet the bed in the middle of the night. But watching her mother wait on Sugar Daddys, and still come up empty had made Erica fiercely independent, probably to a fault.

“You can’t borrow it from anyone?” Erica pushed.

“Girl, I have robbed every Peter I know to pay Paul. But we can’t leave Mommy in there overnight. She’ll have a nervous breakdown.”

“All right, don’t worry. I’ll figure something out.”

Erica ended the call just as Prudence entered the office, her long brown hair pulled in a tight ponytail.

“Sorry to bother you, but Edie wants the follow up email on Brandon Sykes, it’s almost eleven.”

Erica minimized her online banking screen. “Tell her I got caught up on a call and it’s coming now.”

“Anything I can do to help?” Prudence asked, rolling up her long hair.

“Can you make another round of calls on
Arranged Proposals
? Goldie’s breathing down my neck. Try and get a few definites.”

“Absolutely.” Prudence left.

Erica pulled together the information for Edie, and then called the bondsman and set the appointment. She knew where
to get the extra money from, even though it crushed her.

Chapter Five

P
lay Something Nice

W
a
rren sat in a
corner conference room, stuck in his second operations’ meeting of the morning, and although he was trying to concentrate on his manager’s review of the monthly metrics, his mind kept reminiscing over Erica. When they were apart it was her scent that he missed most. Erica never doused herself in perfume but her skin was naturally fragrant with a mix of sprigs, water, something wild and bloomy. Tonight he would trace her fragrance on the pillow, trapped between the threaded sheets. But by Wednesday it would be lost. It had been only twelve hours since Erica departed yet Warren was yearning for her with a lump in his gut like it was the middle of the week. If not for the distraction of his weekly jazz gig, Mondays would be murky and mundane, and just knowing that later he would be on stage playing at Sweet Melodies made the day more bearable.

Warren loved Sweet Melodies. It was a well-known jazz club in the heart of Adams Morgan in D.C. and had been in the same corner location since the “Era of Bebop.” Though the owners changed several times, the essence of the club remained the same: don’t take the stage unless you’re ready to jam. And every Monday night, Warren’s band played house to these sessions. Once in a while, a musical giant blessed the stage and tonight it was the legendary saxophonist Bobby Watson. Warren was such a fan of Bobby’s that as a broke college student, he traveled all the way to Charlotte, North Carolina in the back of his friend’s rusty Ford to see Bobby perform. The trip was the pinnacle of his junior year at Howard and since then he had collected all twenty-six of Bobby’s albums.

Warren admired Bobby because he could move from soprano to alto to tenor, with the same blind precision that his late mother used in squirting mustard, pinching relish, and tossing mayonnaise in a bowl of homemade potato salad. Bobby had played with jazz legends Art Blakey, Wynton Marsalis, Max Roach, and Victor Lewis. Warren believed that when you shared the stage with a musician, you took a piece of them with you. He couldn’t wait to earn his piece of Bobby.

“We’re over budget,” said Brett McDaniels, manager of software. “Alan, you’ll have to cut back on overtime.”

The five-person team was assembled around an oval-shaped table long enough to accommodate ten with Brett at the head, Warren and Blanche on the right, and Carl and Alan to the left. Everyone had their notepads opened and Warren could see Blanche doodling sunflowers instead of taking notes. An intercom telephone sat in the middle of the table along with built-in plug-ins for the engineers’ laptops. The smart board hanging from the ceiling displayed Brett’s power point presentation on the defects of last year’s work.

Alan whined. “Why me?” He was middle-aged, thick-bellied and balding.

“Well, because last month you put in an additional fifty hours.”

“I wasn’t the only one,” Alan retorted, pointing his finger over at Warren like a tattle-telling pre-schooler.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Warren leaned forward in his seat, but Alan sat across the table unfazed, chewing his stubby finger.

Since Warren joined the team, he tried to foster a relationship
with Alan but was met with a cold shoulder and back-stabbing remarks. Most software engineers were antisocial outcasts, the nerds who were picked on in school. Warren was the exception, which made people either love him or hate him. Alan fit the “geek” mold to a tee, down to his oily hair, constant sweat and the circulating rumor that he was a forty-year old virgin. Warren was jaw-breaking smooth, well-dressed and moved through the building with a blustering swank that Alan couldn’t muster, not even on his birthday. Alan fell squarely in the “hate Warren” camp.

“Take fifteen.” Brett closed his notebook. “We’ll go over staffing and budget when we return.”

Having a tooth pulled without novacaine would have suited Warren better than sitting through another meeting. This was already the third one on the same topic since Friday. Most of what they were discussing could have been settled in an email, but Brett pulled the team together so that he could caravan as the man in charge and his ego-tripping wore Warren thin.

RSCI was a leading software company that made advanced applications for mobile telephones, the first in the industry to come up with text applications. Being a software engineer came easy to Warren. He had always been good with math and problem solving and his team made product ideas come to life on short deadlines. Stan Greenwood, owner of RSCI, was a close friend of Warren’s father and hired him directly. Stan believed that the company could transform text messaging industry-wide and was pumping a lot of money into their software division. When the finished product hit the market, the company was going public and Warren would receive shares in addition to his income. Certainly a lucrative deal.

“Got a minute?” asked Brett, just as Warren was exiting the room.

“Sure,” he shifted his laptop case. Brett was the same height as Warren with pool-blue eyes and honey slicked hair. The joke around the office was that Brett thought he was a GQ model.

“What’s up?” asked Warren.

“You’re the last to sign. Something wrong?”

Warren could feel the presence of the unsigned contract crammed against his computer. He looked down at the carpet feeling Erica’s disappointment. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt her, and he knew the distance was an obstacle, but he needed to make a living. Growing up, his father stressed how important it was for him to be financially secure. “Ain’t nothing worse than a man who can’t provide for his woman, son. Nothing.”

Moving to New York would feed Warren’s aesthetic soul, and cure the longing for her that had become as much a part of him as his music. He wished he could have it all. Erica was his muse, the reason his skies were painted blue. He wanted to share his whole life with her and the money from the stocks would be a wonderful start.

“I have it right here,” Warren placed his case on the table and pulled the contract from an inside pocket.

“Awesome,” said Brett. “Stan is going to be over the moon. He said that you were the key to moving this project forward.”

Warren placed his case on the table, and before he could think more, he signed and dated the papers. “Looking forward to it.”

Brett shook his hand and Warren tried to smile, but it fell short around his chin. For some, this position was a dream in the making. But Warren’s dream was to sign a contract for a week of gigs at the world famous Blue Note in New York, with a sold out audience, and Erica sitting front row.

A thick fog spread
through Warren and his head felt like a
twenty-pound weight. Scotch would level him out but coffee would have to do. The enormity of what just took place kept knocking against him. So much was on the line. Not only did he have to give this project his all, he had to do it while keeping his music moving, and his weekends free for Erica. He needed to call her. The conference room was just down the hall and as he rounded the corner to his cubicle, he saw Blanche leaning against the felt wall clutching a cup.

“Coffee, black like you like it,” she sang with her melodic accent.

“You don’t have to bring me coffee every day.” Warren reached for his money clip, but she waved his hand away.

“You kidding? If you hadn’t created the framework, I would have never finished my last layout on time. I ought to be doing more.” Her sentence hung. Warren took the coffee.

Most of the guys in the office referred to Blanche as the Brazilian bombshell. Her hypnotizing voice rang in your ears long after the conversation. Her clothes were short and scant and she wore tall skinny heels even on dress down Fridays. But she didn’t do it for Warren. He enjoyed a rounder ass.

“How was your weekend? Did Erica come down or you go up?” She made herself comfortable on the tip of his desk as her school girl skirt rested in the middle of her thigh.

“She came down. It was fun.”

“Erica doesn’t exist,” chided Alan. A dollop of mustard caked his graying beard as he chewed on a sandwich.

“What’s your problem?” Warren cocked his head, not realizing that his fist had balled. Alan was so bitter that Warren could usually ignore his sly comments, but at that moment he was hotter than a steam roller. Deep down he knew this wasn’t the time, but he felt like punching Alan in the throat. Blanche must have
recognized his rising temper, because before Warren knew what was happening she stepped between them, swishing her golden streaked hair, and straightened Alan’s tie.

“Alan is seeing the receptionist on the third floor. I saw them having lunch the other day.” Her blouse was unbuttoned down to her breastbone and she wore a thin gold chain. Leaning closer to Alan, she moved her hand from his neck and patted his cheek. As soon as her fingers left his face, Alan’s shoulders contracted and his skin flushed a fiery red.

“Oh, ooooh,” he said, his mouth puffing into a stream of Os, while his hips contracted forward. Blanche threw Warren a knowing look.

Alan turned his back as Brett walked up, clapping his hands. “Kids, fifteen minutes is over, back to the conference room.”

Alan darted down the hall towards the men’s room and Warren never made his call.