Up to No Good (24 page)

“Mr. Black, I’m going to call security,” Bonita said.

I nodded my approval. Keisha turned toward her, looking evil, and Bonita bolted back to her desk to make the phone call.

“Call security on him, bitch!” Keisha yelled after her. “He’s the one who’s crazy.” Then she turned back to me and hissed, “I hate you, Darnel. I fucking hate you.”

“So I guess that means we’re not having dinner tonight, huh?” I said with a smirk.

“Dinner? You gotta be fuckin’ kidding me!” She threw her hands in the air, and that’s when I noticed she was holding copies of her nude photos. She had actually printed that shit out!

I laughed out loud, and she marched over and slapped me hard across the face. That’s when the security guard raced into the room and grabbed her.

“He’s stalking me! He’s stalking me!” she yelled as she was being led away.

Mission accomplished.

Sandra and I were parked near the entrance ramp to the Long Island Expressway, waiting for Louis to pass by. He was supposedly going on another one of his business trips out of town, but I needed to see with my own eyes where he was really heading. As we sat in the compact car I ’d rented from Budget, I half expected that we’d end up following him to the airport. He told me he was driving to Pennsylvania, but maybe all these trips were excuses to travel to Detroit to see the mystery woman I ’d talked to on the phone.

I still wasn’t sure what to think about that woman, though. She hadn’t seemed upset when I ’d told her I was Louis’s woman, and after the call, I saw no change in Louis. If he was screwing this woman, I would have expected her to call him and go off, and then he would have started acting funny around me. But he seemed like himself, so either he was a damn good actor, or there was some other explanation for the Detroit connection. Either way, I needed to gather more information before I confronted him, which was why Sandra and I were sitting here like two secret agents, me in a
big hat and sunglasses, and Sandra with her long hair pulled back tight and hidden under her Lakers cap.

When I asked Sandra if she wanted to come along on my mission, I wasn’t quite sure why I was doing it. I normally didn’t like to share my issues with other women, because I didn’t want to become the subject of anyone else’s gossip. But depending on what I found out after following Louis, having Sandra with me might turn out to be helpful. If he tried to deny that it was him I saw, like he did when Darnel said he saw him in the city, then Sandra would be my witness. If I lost my mind and tried to beat his ass, she could stop me so I wouldn’t end up in jail like my brother did. And if, God forbid, I broke down and got all emotional in front of her, she could be my shoulder to cry on. I didn’t want that to happen, because I usually only shared my true feelings with my loved ones. But this spy mission was not exactly the kind of thing I could have convinced Daddy or Darnel to participate in, so Sandra would have to do.

“I really appreciate you doing this with me,” I told her as we sat and waited.

“No problem. I didn’t have nothing to do until I see my man later tonight anyway.”

“Oh yeah, your mystery lover. How’s that going?”

“We’re good.” She blushed.

“That’s it? Just good? I mean, you get this sappy look on your face whenever you mention this brother. You really look like you’re in love.”

She turned to me with a big smile on her face, almost like she looked relieved to be saying, “I am in love.” I had no idea why this was such a big deal for her to tell me. It wasn’t like she’d never told me before that she was into somebody.

“Well, that’s nice. So, do you think he might be the one?”

“I don’t know. We’re not at that point. I haven’t even met his kids yet.”

“He has kids? How many?”

“Two.”

“And an ex-wife?”

“No. He’s never been married.”

“Two kids and never been married? That don’t sound too good. Is he at least a part of the kids’ lives? You don’t need to be dating a deadbeat dad or nothing.”

“Oh no,” she said, looking at me seriously. “He takes good care of his kids. He loves them very much.”

“How come he hasn’t introduced you to them yet?”

“Um, it’s complicated.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

“Just that it’s complicated.”

She was starting to look uncomfortable, so I dropped it. I didn’t know who this man was, but he sure had my girl acting all funny. One minute she’s smiling, gushing about Mr. Wonderful, and the next minute she’s looking kinda nervous.

“He’s taking me to church this weekend and planning on introducing me to his family soon,” she said after a long silence.

“Make sure you put yourself on your best behavior. You know how family can be, especially kids. I mean, look at me with my father. Lord knows I never made it easy for any of the women he brought around.”

She let out something that sounded like laughter, but there was no smile on her face. In fact, she looked kinda tense.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you or nothing. I’m sure it will be fine. You know how to carry yourself. They’ll love you.”

“I hope so. I’m still nervous, though.”

“Girl, you have no reason to be nervous. Anybody would be glad to have you in their family. If my knuckle-head brother had any sense, he would have dated you himself.”

“There he go, there he go!” Sandra suddenly squealed, pointing out the window at Louis’s car as it sped by, then stopped at a red light up ahead.

I started my car, put my foot to the pedal, and pulled into traffic a few cars behind Louis. My adrenaline was pumping, and my heart was racing. I was scared that Louis would spot me tailing him, but I was equally nervous that he wouldn’t, and then I would find out something about him that would break my heart.

As the light turned green, Sandra reminded me to stay two or three cars behind Louis. She didn’t need to tell me. It wasn’t hard to stay far back, since Louis accelerated to damn near eighty miles an hour once he entered the expressway. He was weaving in and out of lanes like it was nothing, and I had to struggle to keep him in sight. Damn, I always knew he drove fast, but this was ridiculous!

At one point, he was far enough ahead that I lost sight of him as he went around the bend. By the time we reached the curve, I was so excited to see his car up ahead again that I didn’t notice the police car sitting on the side of the road, pointing a radar gun at all the cars passing by.

“Oh damn!” I said, tapping my brakes to slow down but knowing that it was already too late. Apparently Louis had managed to slow down enough to make it past the cop without getting pulled over. But when I looked down at my speedometer, I realized I had only managed to slow down to seventy by the time I passed
the radar gun. That was definitely fast enough to earn me a hefty speeding fine.

In my rearview mirror, I watched the officer get into his car, and within seconds, he was behind me, his flashing lights signaling me to pull over. I had no choice. I wanted to know where the hell Louis was going, but not enough to risk a high-speed chase with the cops. Turning on my signal and moving over to park on the shoulder, I turned to Sandra and said, “Well, girl, get ready to get your flirt on and see if we can talk this guy out of giving me a ticket.”

She gave me a nod. I looked out my windshield at the cars passing by, knowing that Louis was miles away by now. All I could think was there had to be a better way.

A couple of days after my confrontation with Crystal, Sandra and I stayed up all night talking. She let me get a lot of the past off my chest, and I didn’t sense any judgment or distance from her. I told her things about myself that I had never told any other woman. I’m not just talking about the number or kinds of women I ’d been with. I mean, I talked about everything, starting with Crystal and the birth of my son, and working my way forward and back. And all that talking led to a conversation about the one person who had impacted my life more than anyone else—my mother.

Sandra helped me open up about the day my mother walked out of my life for good, something I had spent forty years trying to forget. She had always been a little flaky, dropping me with my grandparents, coming home late, forgetting parent-teacher days, but she had always shown up eventually. If she had a boyfriend, she’d get caught out there for the first few weeks and forget she had a son, but sooner or later she’d come back to my grandparents’ house, always reminding me that I was the only man in her life who mattered.

Shortly before my seventh birthday, the new guy she
was seeing told her he wanted to marry her. For a while I thought that was great news; I ’d have a dad soon. But then I overheard my grandparents talking about what a shame it was that this man didn’t want to raise another man’s kid. It hurt to know that he didn’t want me, but I figured Mom would just leave him alone and come back to get me from Grandma and Grandpa soon.

She promised to come by on the day of my seventh birthday, so I packed my bags, certain that she was taking me with her this time. I waited up way past the hour my grandparents sent me to bed, but she didn’t show. She never came back.

My grandparents raised me from that point on, and we never discussed my mother or what she’d done to me. It was like she’d never existed. I know they thought they were doing the right thing by avoiding the subject, but not dealing with my feelings helped turn me into the man I had become. I shut myself off emotionally, vowing never to love another woman. It was the only way I knew how to protect myself. And until Sandra came along, I’d done a pretty good job of keeping up the wall around my heart.

Sandra was the first woman I wasn’t running away from. To the contrary, I couldn’t get enough of her, and it was scaring me. That was why I was headed into First Jamaica Ministries, to get some advice from Bishop T. K. Wilson.

“Is he in?” I walked into the church offices and smiled at Alison, Bishop Wilson’s secretary, as I approached her desk. Normally she gave people a hard time when they dropped by unannounced to see her boss, but not me, because of my closeness with him and the new First Lady. Bishop Wilson was actually my best friend.

When I entered his office, he was on the phone but
finished his call quickly when I stood in front of his desk.

“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” he said with a grin, getting up from behind his large desk so that we could embrace.

“How you doin’, T. K.? How’s Monique?” I asked, referring to his wife. He had faced some opposition from church members when he chose to marry Monique, but the two of them were truly in love. I could see the depth of his feelings all over his face whenever he talked about her.

“We’re both good. How you doing? How’s your health?” We let go of our embrace and took a seat, him behind his desk and me in the chair in front of it.

“Well, I’m still trying to get rid of that cough, but otherwise I’m okay.”

“Have you been to the doctor?”

“Yeah. He wants to run some tests just to rule out a few things.”

T. K. leaned forward, looking genuinely concerned. “What do they think it is?”

“They’re not sure yet. They did an X-ray and thought it might be a touch of pneumonia, but the antibiotics don’t seem to be working, so the doctor wants to check things out.”

“What kind of tests?”

“It’s called a needle biopsy.”

He cringed at the word
needle,
just like I had when the doctor told me about it at my lasTVisit.

“Is there anything I can do?”

“I’m sure it’s gonna turn out to be nothing, but a few prayers on my behalf couldn’t hurt,” I answered.

“Well, you already knew I was gonna do that, but if you need anything else, just let me know.”

“I will,” I said, suddenly wanting to change the subject. I didn’t exactly enjoy thinking about my upcoming biopsy and the possible diagnosis. “That was a good sermon you gave Sunday.”

He looked surprised. “You were here? ’Cause I sure didn’t see you.”

“I was here. I slipped out the back when the service was over. There are a few of the sisters I’m trying to avoid.”

“I see. Another one of your love triangles gone wrong?” He didn’t try to hide the disapproval in his eyes. He might have been my friend, but T. K. was still a man of God, and he’d always made it Very clear to me that my womanizing was a character flaw that disappointed him.

As I stared at my friend and pastor, I just couldn’t find the words I wanted to say. I wanted to explain how I ’d cut off all the women I ’d been seeing, many of them members of T. K.’s congregation. Part of the reason I had been avoiding the church was because a few of them weren’t so happy about my change. I also wanted to tell him about the catalyst for my actions—about how I felt about Sandra, but the words just wouldn’t come out. I think I was afraid he would laugh at me. He’d known me long enough and watched me juggle enough women that it would be hard for him to believe I was actually falling for someone.

“Is something wrong, James? You okay?”

I stood up. “Look, T. K., never mind. I shouldn’t have come here. I don’t want to bother you with this. You’re a busy man. We can talk another time.”

I took a step toward the door.

“James, sit down.” His voice was deep and commanding.

I turned and did what I was told. Nobody went against Bishop Wilson when he was using his preacher’s voice.

“We’ve been through a lot, you and me. You know you can talk to me about anything. So talk.” He sat back in his chair.

I sighed, knowing there was no turning back now. “I know this is going to sound crazy coming from me, but, T. K…. Bishop, I think I’m in love.” I lowered my head. Speaking the words out loud to another person took more out of me than I ’d expected. Well, I thought, at least I ’d had a chance to practice in front of my friend before I had to tell my kids.

He sat up in his chair. “You think you’re in love?” He looked like he was smirking. I was sure he wanted to laugh.

“I know, crazy, right? James Black love-struck. But it’s true.”

“Wow. Now, that I wasn’t expecting.” He sat back and rested his arms across his stomach. “Although I did always warn you that it would happen to you someday, didn’t I?”