The Sordid Promise (2 page)

A black tattoo sleeve of illustrative shaded angel wings extended from his forearm all the way up, partially hidden by the short sleeve of his T-shirt. I made out the name in the center of the tattoo: Howard Lemon, Jr. Thick black chains surrounded the wings. The wings were bare, as if they had been torn, at various points where the chain hooks dug into the illustrated flesh.

As he smiled earnestly at me, it reached his deep set light brown eyes. His face and eyes served to confuse me, because I couldn’t gauge how old he was. He could’ve been in his early twenties for all I knew.

“Sorry, I couldn’t save your coffee. New to the neighborhood. Think I saw a coffee shop about a block up. I’ll buy you another cup while we get acquainted.”

I moved forward to retrieve my phone from his hands, but he quickly withdrew, holding it just above my reach with a steady smile.

“A thank you would be nice.”

“You know what would be nice? If you gave me back my fucking phone and stopped talking to me.”

He didn’t stop smiling, but his moderately thick brow raised underneath the brim of his blue baseball cap. “Bad morning?”

“Seriously. Give me back my phone.” I tried to keep my voice level, but I was near to throwing a tantrum. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I hated it when strange men bothered me. He didn’t fall under the one-percent category.

He folded his arms and tossed out a foot. “First a thank you, then your name.”

I walked off and shoved my hands in the pockets of my jeans as I not so quietly fumed.

“Shit,” he muttered at his failed attempt to get me to do—whatever he wanted me to do. “You’re just going to walk away and leave your four-hundred dollar phone with a stranger?” He walked by my side, easily keeping up with my brisk pace.

“Three hundred. I didn’t get the sixty-four.” Not sure why he was bothering me. I looked like hell. I felt like hell. I had the permanent, unfriendly scowl of someone you wouldn't
want
to chat up.

“Can you slow down, so I can give you back your phone? You don’t want to be bothered? Fine. I get it. But if you leave your phone with me, I’m going to have more than one excuse to see you again.”

“Why? You don’t know me. A guy like you can walk into a bar and get a girl on his arm within seconds. I get that maybe you like conquests or something. I hear humans do that—“

“Humans? Are you trying to infer that you’re an alien?”

“God!” I shrilled. “You’re not funny.”

He stepped in front of me and stopped my stride. When I tried to walk around him, he moved again.

“Would you move?”

“Hold out your hand.”

“Why?”

He stepped forward, squinting his eyes with a temperate, twitching sneer. “Hold out your fucking hand.” His tone transformed into one that bothered me enough to do what he told me to do. He almost slid my phone into my hand, but abruptly changed his mind. With my phone firmly in his hand, he put both arms behind his head. Staring me down, he pressed at my stone wall with an overt dominance. “Your name. Then, I want you to thank me.”

I glared back, unrelenting.

“I may just…happen to lose my grip, and let your screen shatter like I should’ve the first time. Never know. Do you want to test how nimble my fingers are? Are you
really
comfortable enough with me to trust me?”

I said nothing.

He dangled my phone in the air.

The thought of having to go to the Apple store, because I would need a new phone right away, was enough to make me bristle. “Nikki,” I forced through my teeth.

He stepped forward, making me step backward. “And?”

“Thank you,” I said insincerely.

He slid my phone in my hand and jogged down the path without another word.

Well…that was odd. I halfway expected him to call me a bitch, or some other derogatory term. I’d been there so many times before. I expected retaliation in the form of pejoratives when I rejected someone who couldn't take a hint.

I made it back home, hoping I had enough time to make another cup of coffee before I headed to the hospital. By the time I unclogged the pod from the brewer, my mother had sent a total of four dozen texts. I poured my coffee into a new travel mug and headed to the door. I picked up the prospectus from the round table in the foyer, delivered by messenger from my mother’s investment firm yesterday, and took the keys for my mother’s Land Rover off the wall mounted hook.

I glanced over at the moving van as I moved down the driveway. When I saw Mrs. Hobbins cross the street in her pink kerchief with her mean little Chihuahua under her arm, I cursed under my breath.

“Did you meet the new neighbor?” she shouted at me as she waltzed up the driveway.

“No, Mrs. Hobbins. Nice seeing you—“

“He’s a looker that one. Single, too, I think. Nice and quiet. You two should meet. He’s been here for a couple of weeks, but he said there was some mix up with the storage place in Ohio. He’s from Texas, you know. I’ve been there a time or two, but—”

“I have to go, Mrs. Hobbins.” I slipped inside the SUV.

I made the mistake of indulging her once. My politeness cost me two hours in which she went on about her ungrateful kids, and how much she hated the way things were progressing with the government.

From what she said about her kids, I completely understood why they avoided her. She was a busybody who loved to create disastrous situations with her ability to make her lies seem like facts. She claimed she did it for her children’s own good. In the end, it cost her a relationship with them.

I put the SUV in reverse, leaving Mrs. Hobbins with a dumbfounded look on her face as she stood in the driveway.

“I don’t understand why so many social media entrepreneurs are filing for IPO’s. The disadvantages are too great. I’ll tell you this much; what they’re hoping to recoup, they won’t receive. Did you bring me anything else?” My mother removed her reading glasses, placing them on top of the open prospectus in her lap. Her colorful scarf adorned her head, fashioned in a way that hid her baldness. She looked as though she’d lost a few more pounds since we last saw each other—that was yesterday. “Commodities. So volatile, but really where the ROI is. The price of organic milk is skyrocketing with the production costs. If I could get my hands on that…” She tapped her lips as she slipped into her thoughts.

“Is organic milk publicly traded?”

She peered at me with scrutiny, having full knowledge that I was joking, because she knew that I knew; it was one of the top trading commodities. She glanced up at the television, focusing on the market watch report. “Did you get my dress?” Disrupted by the alert chime on her phone, she retrieved her phone from the bed table. I peered over her lap, noting that she received a new text. She seemed dismayed. The text was sent from a Dr. C. It read:

Didn’t work. Don’t worry. Never giving up.

When she saw that I read her text, she weakly swatted me away. “Don’t you worry about that, just a former client seeking advice. My dress?”

I rolled my neck, remembering the tiff we had pertaining to her funeral dress. She wanted me to get something from her favorite boutique, knowing how much I hated shopping at brick and mortars. If I had to shop, I preferred to do it online. “It’s on backorder in your size. I should probably order a size down. Twenty—fifteen pounds equals a downgrade in dress size.”

“They can pin it underneath me in the coffin. Contact my tailor to do it. He works wonders with a needle. The way he made my work dresses flow over my form like silk….I made many a man weep from the moment I walked in the room.” She weakly pinched my side. “We’re very lucky we won the genetic lottery and received our shapes; the shape of a woman. The shape you’re bent on losing. You nearly have. Eat something, daughter. Please. You look thinner than the size you were when you came back here. What about your dress? Have you gotten it yet?”

I shook my head.

“Are you still refraining from venturing out?”

I looked at my short stubby nails, hoping she’d forget my answer.

“Diouana?”

I sighed deeply. “I hate it when you call me that.”

“You hate it when I call you by your given birth name? What should I call you? Dominique? Nikki? Gah! Your father’s choice for your middle name. Absolutely hated it back then, and I truly hate it now.” She smiled with her eyes. “The things you do for love. Allowing a man who knows nothing about naming a child to give your first, and only, born a middle name.” She waved off the thought before growing quiet. Pausing shortly, she looked at me. “Unfortunately, the fuel in this economy doesn’t run on love. It runs on finance. Have someone who looks the part and whose bank account behaves the part—I don’t want you to ever compromise your position, or who you are to survive in this world. Not like I have. There are many things I’m not proud of.”

“Did you ever stop to think that I like being referred to as Nikki, because it sounds so close to Nicole?” I asked a rhetorical and redundant question to stray her off the topic of my nonexistent love life, and the even darker subject of the sacrifice she made for me.

“If I wasn’t already dying…” She tossed her head from side to side as she delicately chuckled. “Don’t wear black. I always loved turquoise on you.”

“Wearing a bright color to your funeral will call too much attention to me for the wrong reasons.”

“Tell them it was my wish.”

“I don’t
want
to wear turquoise.”

“You wear black on a daily basis. You’re attending a funeral nearly every day.”

“I’m wearing a white shirt, and my jeans are barely black.”

She flourished her hand at me and sunk into her hospital bed with a slight grimace. She tried and failed to be discreet as she pushed the dispense button on her PICC line.

“Did they up your dosage?”

“They say it will kill me. What I wouldn’t give for that. You should see about taking me home, Nikki. Maybe we can find a down on her luck home health aide, who will put me out of my misery.”

I switched off the television, knowing that she held off on her meds to see me, and would soon be asleep for the remainder of the day.

The reason her texts were so persistent rang clear; she couldn’t endure the brunt of the pain much longer. The thought made it difficult to keep my emotion down.

I didn’t want to leave. I had nothing else to do with my day other than tweak a website for a candle company that was done a week before the given delivery date. I put my earbuds in and set my digital radio to melancholy.

As I looked out the window, The Smiths popped up on my playlist. I glanced at my mother, watching her fight to stay awake. Eventually, she succumbed to sleep.

Janet, her day nurse, came in. I didn’t mind her too much, because she never woke my mother when she took her vitals, like the others insisted on doing. The others either spoke too loud, or handled her too roughly. Janet’s desire to befriend me was her only downfall.

“How’s her pain scale today, Nikki?” Janet asked with a grim smile.

I couldn’t hear her, but could read her lips. I took my earbuds out and shook my head at her. “Why can’t she up her meds?”

“I’ll ask Dr. Grant, but she’s already at 440 milligrams.”

“Will he change the dosage?”

“I don’t know.” She suddenly upped her mood, giving me a smile and a wink. “I know someone. He’s new around here. He’s really cute and doesn’t wear a wedding ring. He’s a doctor—”

I put my earbuds back in.

She marched over and removed an earbud from my ear. “Nikki, you’re young—too young to waste away like this.”

“I’m not wasting away, because I’m single.”

“Your mother talks to me.”

I rolled my eyes. “Of course she does. I’m sure she told you that I’m on antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication, too.”

“She’s just worried no one will be around to look after you when she’s gone. With your conditions,” she pointedly eyed the thick leather cuffs that I wore religiously around my wrists, “you need someone in your life to take care of you.”

Suddenly, I didn’t care what was waiting for me at home. I didn’t wait for the doctor. I left before I got a chance to meet with him.