Playing Hard To Get (16 page)

3. Play frenemy if there’s nothing to be gained. If the relationship is truly worthless, it isn’t worth your time.



While most men relished the idea of coming home to a freshly prepared dinner, before he even got married Kyle realized that a home-cooked meal by Troy came with a price tag—she’d usually done something wrong and after she finished crying he would have to order takeout and dispose of the garbage to get rid of the smell of whatever cut of expensive meat Troy had charred to a dry mess.

After smelling the now familiar scent of what he identified as burning beef when he walked into the house, he immediately asked his wife what the matter was and thwarted her phony half smile with an eye roll. He insisted it was something and she insisted it was nothing.

“Why can’t I just do something nice for you? For my husband?” Troy asked, standing beside Kyle at the kitchen table.

“You call this nice?” He pointed to what looked like a mass of tar at the center of a silver platter.

At least the platter looked nice, Troy thought. She’d actually put fresh parsley sprigs and baby carrots on the side to dress it up.

“It’s for you.”

“Look, just tell me what’s wrong, baby, so we can go get something to eat—”

“So you’re not going to eat it? It took all day to cook that.”

“Yeah, it looks like it’s been cooking all day. And what is it? What
was
it?”

Troy pouted and went to the sink. How did he know something was wrong? The plan was to get him full and butter him up before she told him about what happened at the meeting. The last thing she needed was to stall and let Sister Glover get to him first. Even in her un-right mind, Troy knew that wasn’t quite the right thing to do. She stared into the empty sink and tried to find the right thing to say. There was no way Kyle was going to eat that steak, or roast beef, or London broil, or whatever it was supposed to be. She might as well get on with it.

“I need you to ban Sister Glover from the Virtuous Women.”

“What?” Kyle was half listening as he looked through his cell phone for the number to the Chinese restaurant. Troy hadn’t left the sink.

She turned to him.

“I need you to ban her…from the Virtuous Women.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. It’s a church, Troy. We don’t ban anyone from anything and she’s the president, isn’t she? Wait.” He looked at her. “What happened? Did something happen at the church, with Sister Glover?”

“No. Nothing happened. I just, I just kind of kicked her out of the group. That’s all.” Troy smiled composedly, plucked a bowl of rice from the counter, and sat it on the table as if they were going to eat the meal.

“You kind of did what? Troy, what happened? What did you do to her?”

“What do you mean ‘what did I do to her?’ I’m your wife. Don’t you mean, what did she do to me?” Troy looked at Kyle hard.

“Just tell me what happened.” He sat down beside the burnt meat and tried to relax his shoulders.

“She’s crazy. She’s just crazy,” Troy blurted out. “And I told her it was time for me to take over the group and she said I couldn’t, so I kicked her out of the meeting and told her she’s banned. Now I just need you to agree. We’re supposed to stick together. Right? ’Til death us do part. That’s what you said. Right?”

Kyle looked at the dark cherry cabinet he’d drilled crooked into the wall.

“I can’t believe this. Troy, I was just trying not to have any drama at the church. I can’t have all this crazy stuff going on. You know folks are already acting funny about me marrying you because you didn’t belong to the church…or any church…and you’re not saved. This is just going to give them more wood to stoke the fire.”

“Are you kidding me? I’m helping them stoke the fire?” Troy sat down angrily in the chair beside Kyle and the two were silent for a while.

“Look, I’m doing the best I can,” Troy started again. “For two years I’ve been running around here playing Little Miss Perfect Christian First Lady Bride Saint for you and for them and for us. And you know what? It’s hard. It’s fucking hard to be perfect. It’s so fucking hard. They make it hard on fucking purpose.” Troy hadn’t cursed in so long, the f-bombs were dropping all around the table like pelts of rain. It felt good and she wasn’t even thinking about pulling out her new prayer pad.

“I never asked you to be perfect,” Kyle said.

“No, but you and everyone else makes it clear that I should be. I mean, that’s what this is all about. Being saved? Sanctified? Right? Just say it.”

“Say what?”

“That you want me to be saved. That you want me to be like her.”

“I didn’t marry her. I married you, just the way you are. And of course I want you to be saved. Of course. Why wouldn’t I want that for you?”

“It’s impossible. It’s just impossible. I can’t do it. Just can’t.”

“Can’t do what?”

“Because I’ve been doing good and acting right for so long.” Troy kept talking as if she hadn’t heard Kyle’s question. “I walked away from my entire life to do this and nothing is happening.”

“What is supposed to be happening?”

“I’m all this on the outside, but inside I’m just…I’m still me. I’m still me but I’m drowning and waiting for this fucking light to shine down from heaven to say, ‘Hey, Troy Helene Hall, you’re saved.’ Is that how it happens?”

“I don’t know.”

“What?”

“I don’t know if anyone knows,” Kyle said carefully. “And the ones that claim they do are lying. God is just a voice and salvation is a whisper. And it doesn’t come to people just because they act good or right. Salvation can come to a killer, to anyone.”

“So it’s me.” Troy wiped a tear from her cheek. “It’s me. I can’t get saved.”

“You, Troy,” Kyle said, reaching to cup Troy’s face in his hands, “are one of the most genuine, funny, loving, and just real people I know. You have a good heart and whenever I see you, I hear God whisper in my ear that you’re the woman that was assigned to me. And I don’t want anyone else.”

Troy looked at her husband, into his serious, honest eyes, and felt the whole, true weight of his love. A love she never requested, a love she never truly felt she deserved, and began, very softly, to weep.



“Sorry I’m late, Ms. Lovestrong,” Tamia said, tapping Tasha on the shoulder after sneaking up on her at the party.

“Damn, I thought you weren’t coming.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t leave you alone to endure looking at all of these beautiful men…not after what happened last year,” Tamia said, referring to last year’s body issue party, where a perfectly chiseled twenty-three-year-old football player decided to share his perfectly chiseled ass with the entire party. Luckily, Tasha had her camera phone out and was ready to record full video footage. “I was in Harlem,” Tamia added, “and would you believe that none of the cabs I stopped would bring me all the way downtown? I had to get two cabs.”

“Yes, I would believe that, but the really crazy part was that you were uptown.”

“What? I’m always in Harlem.”

“Since when? Since Troy’s last dinner party?”

“Okay, maybe I never go to Harlem. It’s a new client,” Tamia admitted, feeling then that “client” was such an odd word to put next to Malik’s name. Nothing they’d done or discussed was like anything she’d ever experienced with a client. “So how are you holding up? Any streaks yet?”

“No streaks; just freaks,” Tasha said. “I ran into Venus.”

“Oh no.” Tamia frowned and plucked a glass of wine from a tray passing by. “The original Cruella DeVil with fifteen last names? God, I hate that woman. Now, there’s one I will never understand. How can that witch find, like, thirty husbands and I can’t get one?”

“The law of opposites. Men love everything they hate. They say they need a nice girl, but they really want a bad girl.”

There was laughter, loud, bold, and female, coming from the center of the room. All eyes shifted from drinks and faces that pretended to be listening to overused bar stories to discover the commotion, the party within the party, that was evidently more exciting.

“Lynn Hudson,” Tasha said in two gruff words after the shoulders before her peeled back so she could see the source of fun. “The team’s new publicist. The child is hardly out of elementary school and she’s already head of the class.”

Tasha and Tamia looked on openmouthed at Lynn, who was sipping on a glass of champagne as the handsome streaker from the year before whispered in her ear. Pretty as a honeysuckle and as sexy as a rose, she giggled and giggled like whatever he was saying was the best-kept secret in the room. Three girls at her side had the same kind of attention from other football players whose asses were probably just as nice as the one Tamia saw in the picture on Tasha’s phone. They giggled too and sometimes went to share what was being whispered to another girl in the pack.

“What is this, high school?” Tasha said, annoyed. “The cheerleaders and the dumb jocks? Spare me. Wait until reality hits and the bullshit those men whisper in their ears leads to sloppy titties and tiger prints
¹²
on their guts.”

“Oh, don’t be so negative, Tasha,” Tamia said. “They’re just the new crop. We were them once. Right?” Tamia looked at Lynn’s wispy, happily bouncy hair, her thin, slender hands, and new skin and suddenly couldn’t remember ever looking like that. “You act like we’re ancient or something,” she tried to remind herself more than Tasha. “We’re just thirty…and that’s the new twenty…so we’re them and they’re—”

“Ten?” Tasha watched beside Tamia as a song prompted the girls to start dancing. And when their fists pumped into the air, the entire room seemed to want to join in.

“I guess so.”

“Well, if I’m twenty and they’re ten, then their asses should be at home and asleep. Not up in here messing up the party.”

“Well, it doesn’t exactly look like they’re messing up the party,” Tamia said as a couple pushed past her to get a better spot on the dance floor. “It looks like they’re making the party.” Her eyes followed the couple and she watched them encircle one of the girls on either side. She laughed and turned toward Tamia. “That’s Ava.”

“What?” Tasha asked.

“It’s Ava. The one I told you about that’s engaged to Charleston’s friend.” Tamia’s heart was skipping beats. Suddenly, she’d gone from watching to spying.

“Who? Which one?” Tasha looked frantically, as if locating the betrothed beauty would make any difference in her level of disgust.

“Right there—dancing with that couple.”

“The white couple?”

Tamia nodded and shook her head at how freely Ava danced with both the man and woman. It was a freedom she never understood about the younger It Girls. They didn’t seem to notice much the difference between men and women and gyrated on anything beside them. When she was new to partying, it was only white girls hip rolling on each other, but now it was everyone. She looked to see if Ava was wearing her engagement ring. It was there.

“She
is
cute.” Tasha wanted to find something nasty to say to keep her mood, but really admitting to the girl’s beauty was enough to kick it up a few notches. “She looks kind of like me when I was younger.” She looked at Tamia for approval.

“Yeah…and then you woke up.”
¹³



The faithfully entertaining frolics between foes who pretended to be friends provided just the right amount of social familiarity between both parties. Each foe knew what it was and if she was smart, she expected nothing more or less from the opposition. The complete opposite was true when the line between foes and friends was a bit softer and unclear. When a foe really thought she was a friend or a friend had secretly decided to become a foe, things got messy and especially uncomfortable.

Fifteen minutes of spying and frowning later, Tasha and Tamia were heading to the bathroom to retouch their highly unnecessary under-eye concealer when one such line was blurred.

“It’s Lionel LaRoche’s wife…Natasha, right?” Tasha and Tamia heard someone squeal after they’d turned from the scene on the dance floor that now included one of the football players’ ass cheeks.

Tamia turned first, thinking she would help remind the reporter or whoever it was that she was wasting her time trying to chat with Tasha by calling her “Lionel’s wife” or “Natasha.” It was like calling LisaRaye Lisa or Lisa Raye—she hated both titles and anyone who wanted to know her needed to know that.

“I’m sorry, Tasha—I meant to say Tasha,” Lynn said once both Tasha’s and Tamia’s eyes were on her. Free of her entourage, she thrust out her arms for an embrace. Tasha was pulled to her before she had any opportunity to protest. Lynn whispered into Tasha’s ear, “I know you don’t like that. I know a lot about you.”

Tasha smiled her friendly pictures smile and pinched Tamia’s arm.

“Wow, that’s something. That’s really…something.”

“Hello, I’m Tamia Dinkins,” Tamia said, trying to shake Lynn’s hand, but she hugged her too.

“Yes,” Lynn said, “I’ve heard of you. You both went to my alma mater—Howard. You’re on the alumnae Web site in the ‘Who’s Who of New York.’”

“Wonderful,” Tasha said dryly.

“Tasha, I was trying to get in contact with you a few weeks ago. I got last-minute tickets for a tea Michelle Obama was hosting in midtown. It was for influential wives, who also happened to be businesswomen—but then I realized you closed your artist-management firm.”

Had Lynn been looking, she would’ve seen that Tamia was shaking her head for Lynn to stop speaking, but she just kept going. While Tasha had only managed Lionel and two overaged rappers during her brief, yet spirited tenure as a business owner, after having Toni and moving to Jersey, she had little time and lost lots of inner-city connections. So she officially had to shut down what was left of her operation. It was a painful departure from the only career choice or true private life Tasha had ever known, and to make herself feel better, she’d shoveled it beneath piles of silence and denial.

“Yeah, well, that’s in my past.” Tasha’s voice was soft, resolute, everything Tamia hadn’t expected. Tamia turned to be sure it was still Tasha who was standing beside her.