Naughtier than Nice (6 page)

One hour later. Manhattan Beach, California. Crisp late-night air came off the Pacific Ocean. After Livvy had kissed her sisters and left Frankie's home, instead of heading toward her own, she had driven to Highland Avenue. She had returned to her own never-ending memory. She had done that many nights, driven to Manhattan Beach and parked where it had happened, searched for him—for her too.

She remembered the rented apartment that used to be their love nest. Near the sand dunes, two minutes from the ocean. The asking price for the rental had been $1,120 a month back then, long ago yet like yesterday, when Cliff and Janine ruled mornings on KJLH. It had been leased for six months. She closed her eyes, remembered kiwis and mangoes, colorful pillows, remembered Norah Jones and Sarah Vaughan CDs. She remembered being Bird. She remembered flying. She remembered Carpe. She remembered Panther. Her senses flooded with memories. The slow, heavy breathing. The feel of her skin while her lover was inside her. Then the girl he brought. Two mouths on her. In that small apartment.

Her cellular rang. It was Tony. She answered. He was back home, asked her where she was.

“I'm on Sepulveda, Tony. I stopped by my business.”

She told him she loved him and hung up the phone. She didn't want to leave. She wanted to go up to the door, knock, have it open, and be back in time. She put her hand on the car door, was going to
go knock on that door, wanted to see who lived there, if he was there, if Panther was still his lover.

Livvy's phone buzzed and she cursed.

Now it was a text message from Tony.

She rubbed her temples, touched the right side of her head where she had just shaved away her hair. Drastic change. She started her SUV and made a U-turn, headed toward home. She drove slower than the flow of traffic, ignored all who sped around her, horns blowing, middle fingers extended.

When she made it home she pulled into her driveway, turned the engine off. She sat in silence. She remembered what she could not forget. She remembered the worst of times, the best of times.

After Frankie's, I didn't want to go back to my world. Feeling a little lightheaded from the wine, I went back to Beale's home. I wanted him to see me. Maybe I wanted to make sure Tanya Obayomi wasn't there. I was being careless. I didn't check to see if I was being followed. I felt entitled to his space.

He said, “Your hair. Wow. You shaved one side of your head.”

“My older sister cut most of hers off, so I let her cut down the left side of mine.”

“Looks awesome. Funky. When a woman changes her hair, she's going through some things. She's crying out for help. She wants to change her life. You know I'm here for you, Tommie.”

“Wanted you to see it before I went home. Wanted you to see it first. Now I'm leaving.”

“Come in.”

“No sex.”

“No problem.”

“Promise?”

We held hands, talked, strolled to his gourmet kitchen, took fruits and vegetables from his Sub-Zero refrigerator: apples, cucumbers, carrots, celery, kale, oranges, parsley, and lemon. He washed the fruit. I chopped up the vegetables before I went to his pantry and took out honey while he opened a cabinet to get his Jack LaLanne juicer. We did juice shots. Sat on bar stools. I had come back this time not out of anger but out of desire and curiosity. This had been an act of foolishness and free will. I was in love
with Beale. In that moment, with wine in my blood and residual orgasm in my system, I felt like I was madly in love with him. I wished I had met him first. I could walk away from Blue. I could do this. But I had to shake it off. Then we cleaned up the kitchen, washed the juicer, held hands, and went to the basement, the man cave filled with neon lights, a popcorn machine, a treadmill, a Bowflex TreadClimber, a pool table, a half dozen big-screen televisions, pinball machines, and a weight room that had both machine and free weights. One of the televisions was on. A commercial for Franklin's car restoration businesses. That was a big deal in Southern Cali. Rebuilding homes and restoring cars, and Frankie and Franklin were killing it in both fields, raking in money hand over fist. You had to have a new car to get the girl to come to your crib in Cali. The only thing sexier than a brand-new car was one from back in the day that had been restored with all of the original parts. A restored car cost more than a new car, made no economic sense, but that was the thing in car country. People shipped their cars to Franklin from all over the United States. That's how big his business had gotten in the last two years. He'd restored a car for Hollywood actress Regina Baptiste's husband. It was publicized when she did an interview on
The Tonight Show
, and due to the Baptiste Bump, as they called it, his local business took off. Franklin appeared in all of his commercials the same way Frankie was on billboards. Frankie's ads were humble; Franklin's were full of braggadocio. I could see now what I hadn't seen back then, that grandiose sense of self-importance, his excessive self-admiration, his sense of power and arrogant behavior. It all came off as if he were making fun of himself, but that was the real him. Frankie's Auto Restorations, shops from the Bay to San Diego, and he had a half dozen car washes and repair shops that worked with all major insurance companies. He was becoming a local celebrity, like car salesman Cal Worthington had done back in the eighties. All he had to do was eat a bug as a gimmick and get some adorable pet as
a mascot and continue with his 'Bama shtick. I picked up the remote and turned the television off, gave my tipsy attention to Beale Streets's pretty eyes. We played a game of Ms. Pac-Man. We were both competitive. I won, and then we rode the elevator to the top. My eyes went to the bed. He had changed the come-stained sheets, made the bed with fresh linen that had a thread count higher than my SAT score, and sprayed the room with a fresh scent. My aroma was gone, as was all evidence. It was as if I'd never been there that evening. I didn't say anything. We climbed on his freshly made bed. I played with his kinky hair for a while; he gave me a smooth back rub. I'd been there thirty-seven minutes. That was thirty-seven minutes too long.

I thought about Monica. Imagined her waking up without my being there.

I said, “I need to leave before I get too comfortable.”

“Tell me the real reason you came back.”

“You don't tell a woman you bought her a present and expect her to be able to sleep, do you?”

“You still have to wait.”

“Five more minutes.”

“Ten.”

He pulled my sweats down to my ankles, put a pillow underneath my butt, and went down on me again. I shouldn't have let him do that, like this was his, but I did let him do that like he was mine. Why I felt the way I felt at this moment, this sensation, was an enigma, a mystery as deep as the Atlantic.

His cellular rang, a ringtone that made his tongue stroke falter, pulled me out of heaven.

I opened my eyes. “Tanya Obayomi is calling you. That Drake song is her ringtone. She's not coming over, is she?”

He pushed me back down. “I'm only sleeping with you, Tommie.”

“I'm more concerned with who you're staying awake with than whom you're sleeping with.”

His tongue hit a new rhythm, a strong beat, like the drumbeat to “High on the Ceiling.”

First there were lights behind my eyes, then gradually colors returned, deep variations in and subtle gradations of light and shade, as if the world had become a chiaroscuro painted by Rembrandt.

When I was done, as I twitched and came down from the high, he rested his face on my thighs.

I looked around. This lifestyle, this silence, this level of tranquility, could become addictive.

Monica would love it here. I imagined her running up the stairs from the basement to the bedroom, then riding the elevator back down and playing the pinball and video games until I yelled for her to quit.

Five precocious children could live in this home and rarely be in the same room.

I sat up, tugged my sweats up, but he pulled me back to the bed, made me chill out a moment.

I asked, “You've been all over the world. What's your favorite place?”

“You're my favorite place. You're the place I want to be. Right here.”

“How many girls have you been with?”

“Many girls, but you are the first woman.”

“You're my third adventure into premarital sex.”

“Do you feel as if you've lost part of yourself by being with me?”

“I haven't gained anything.”

“But? Feels like there is a
but
to that statement.”

“I knew that if we kept being alone, with this energy between us, this chemistry, it might happen.”

“When did you start to feel that way?”

“At Eso Won. That night. You invited me to Starbucks after your event. I actually went with you. I followed your driver and
went to Starbucks on Crenshaw and Thirty-Ninth. You had a very sexy female driver.”

“She had an amazing smile. The chauffeur named Panther was driving me that night.”

“She waited in the town car for you. She saw the engagement ring on my finger. She smiled. Women know these things. She knew that it was more than us just getting coffee. I sat out in public with you like it was no big deal. It was a big deal. Since I had been with Blue, I'd never been anywhere with a man in a way that could be misconstrued as being a date. We were a half mile from my home. Was terrified I'd see one of Blue's and my friends.”

“I couldn't tell. You were talking in a very distant way, were very professional.”

His phone rang again. Tanya Obayomi. He ignored the summons, then moved closer to me.

Beale asked, “What are you thinking?”

“Asking myself what it is I like about you, what attracted me to you.”

“And the answer is?”

“Same as everyone else. I love your work, respect your artistry, and you have told me time and time again that you love and respect my poetry. You give me inspiration as only another artist can.”

“You have become my muse as much as I have been your muse.”

“That's part of the reason this sort of thing became possible.”

“I still wonder how this happened, Tommie McBroom.”

“You needed someone you could trust as a beta reader with your unpublished work.”

“I'm just as surprised as you at what has transpired. For me, this was a miracle.”

“I told you I could do both, edit and read.”

“I needed to be able to trust you. People have betrayed me, backstabbed me before.”

“And I had no problem signing a confidentiality agreement. You
asked me my fee and I told you it was standard rate but negotiable. I thought you would lowball me, tell me I should be happy to work for you. I needed the money but didn't want to admit how badly we needed that money in our household.”

“I paid you top rate, plus thirty percent. Will still pay you top rate if you come work for me again.”

“I was really flattered, and nervous, hoped what I did was to your liking and up to your standard. I wanted to impress you with my work. It was a professional relationship. Putting money on the table made fantasies dissipate. It did change the fabric of our friendship. We would text, but not as often as before, and we never talked every day, only when there was an issue. Sometimes a week or two would go by before you had something for me to read and edit. You e-mailed me the work. I e-mailed it back with notes and opinions. If it was needed, after Blue had left for work and I dropped Mo off at school, we met at Starbucks to discuss the work in person. You gave me a check. A handshake. A smile good-bye.”

He took ice in his mouth, kissed me up and down my spine as he asked, “Then what?”

I closed my eyes, arched my back, said, “I took the check to your bank, cashed it, and went home with two bags of food, or paid a bill, or paid some unexpected fee at Mo's school. I was contributing to my household on a higher level that made me proud. So far as you and I, it was an honest relationship.”

“Was it honest? Did Blue know you were working for me part-time?”

“Blue had no idea, but it was honest in the sense that if he found out, it would be no big deal. I have many jobs and would say that was just added to the list. I could look him in his eyes and say there was no affair going on. But it changed. Blue's baby momma went on another rampage regarding custody issues. She hadn't called her child in three months, nor sent a dime to support her child, and she was making demands. It was too much. I was unhappy at home
and just wanted a place to sit and not feel stressed. You told me I could sit in a room at your home. You had plenty of space. You lived in your office. Your televisions, your computers, sofa, and bed were all in that one gigantic room. I could use the rest of the house as if I were at a bed-and-breakfast, or at Barnes and Noble, with the library you had.”

He turned me over, took more ice, sucked my left nipple, said, “Keep talking.”

I moaned. “You were in one room. I was in another wing. This big house. You were so far away I couldn't hear you or tell that you were there. I was happy to be around you, happy being in your space.”

“Why were you hiding on the other side of the house? Felt like you were miles away.”

“You were in one room. I picked another in the far reaches, afraid to be close to you, alone with you in the same room, in your creative space. So close, yet so far, yet able to tell Blue, if needed, we were never in the same area.”

He licked my nipples. “That was professional.”

“I blogged, posted my YouTube videos about hair and being a stepmommy and made my political statements in the form of haikus, worked at the Apple Store with the techno-maniacs, and worked for you. We needed the money. Children are expensive. They never stop growing and never stop eating.”

“You worked. I paid you each time. I didn't 1099 you. Didn't increase your taxes.”

I rubbed his wild hair. “I bought Mo more clothes, used coupons and bought more food.”

“You're the coupon queen.”

“Never pay for what you can get for free or at a discount. Learned that from Momma, and thanks to her I am the queen of coupons and sales; I can make one hundred dollars stretch like two thousand.”

“For a while, while I was working on that project, I was able to see you almost every day.”

“I told myself I was providing for my family while you and I were rooms away from each other, sending text messages, messages that would make anyone who read them think we were miles, cities, states, maybe even countries away. I was alone with a man in a home that had many luxurious beds and I felt like I could trust you. You gave me compliments but never overdid it, knew where the line was drawn.”

He moved down to my belly, more ice kisses on my warm skin. “I know. I had to respect you.”

I clenched the covers, shivered, caught my breath, felt so damn alive.

I whispered, “It made me want to be around you more and more. Each day the line that had been drawn moved. Soon I worked from the bedroom next to your office. I needed to be around positivity. That made me want to find a way to see you on the days I had other obligations.”

“I thought about you night and day, Tommie. Looked forward to you being here.”

“That time I needed to be alone with me, it turned into time I needed to be alone with you. I stopped resting in another part of your home and began lounging on the big chair in your office.”

“It surprised me when you came into my office and chilled out on the big red chair.”

“You would write. I would read. We never disturbed each other.”

He pushed my legs open, said, “In silence. Occasionally making eye contact.”

I shivered again, anticipating. “I would stare and imagine reading naked.”

“I would have written naked if you had asked.”

“I wanted to fellate you while you wrote.”

He said, “And while you read, I wanted to give you cunnilingus like you'd never experienced. I was dying to use my mouth, to taste
you, to know your saccharine flavor and use my tongue with the intent of making you come. I wanted to lick your pussy and suck your cunt until you went mad. I wanted to be more personal than sex, than normal penetration, wanted to hold your ass in the palms of my hands and with this tongue show you just how much you meant to me, show you exactly how I felt. I wanted to penetrate you with my tongue so badly. When you left, I masturbated while imagining I was doing that.”