Chapter Five
Five
“Thank you for calling Thomas Cook Travel Group, Mr.Matsumi, and have a nice day,” I said in my brightest voice as I ended the call and pressed the red release button on the telephone console.
Mr.Matsumi’s PNR glared at me from my computer screen. The dollar amount it was costing him glowed bright green at the bottom of the PNR, and below that his platinum American Express credit card number mocked me.
Mr.Matsumi, a managing director of one of the largest investment banking companies in the country, had just confirmed an African safari trip for him and some of his business associates.
They were flying first class from New York to England on British Airways, staying two nights at the Ritz in London and then hopping a Kenyan Airways flight to Kenya, East Africa, where they would spend one night in Nairobi at the famed Nairobi Serena Hotel before chartering a private plane to take them to Nanyuki, where they would spend ten glorious days at the Mount Kenya Safari Club, which straddled the second highest mountain in Africa.
The entire trip was costing him sixty thousand dollars!
All I could do was shake my head at the type of money some people had. Shake my head and try not to stare too long at or think too hard about what I could do with Mr.Matsumi’s American Express card number that was just sitting there, seemingly at my disposal.
“Stop it, Chevy girl,” I whispered to myself and quickly hit the Enter button on my keyboard, sending Mr.Matsumi’s itinerary hurtling through cyberspace and out of my sight.
Lucky for me, I could see the world for next to nothing. Being a senior travel expert had its perks even though the pay was crap.
I yawned and looked around at my coworkers, who were busy at their computers.
I peeked over my monitor and could see that my manager was engaged in an intense telephone conversation, so I hit the red “away” button on my telephone but made sure to keep nodding my head and uttering, “Yes, I understand,” into my headset as I typed gibberish into my computer.
I was exhausted. Last night I spent three hours at the very high-end Cipriani bar. A cosmopolitan there cost twenty bucks a glass, so you can imagine the clientele: mostly white people with money.
But to my surprise there was a black man sitting at the bar last night.
After the color of his skin, I homed right in on the diamond-studded gold Rolex clamped around his left wrist. My eyes scurried up his hand and saw that there was no ring on his fourth finger.
Not that that meant anything these days.
He wasn’t good-looking at all, which was fine for me. I prefer a man who’s not going to spend as much time looking in the mirror as I do, and besides, a not-so-good-looking man always overcompensates when he has a gorgeous woman on his arm.
You know what you generally do when you see a beautiful woman on the arm of a dog? You double look so quickly you give yourself whiplash, and then as you walk away rubbing your neck you wonder how it is a man like that was able to snag a woman like her.
He didn’t—she snagged him!
Think about it now…
Anyway, this man was blue-black, with thick lips and a nose that spread east to west across his face. Bulging eyes, big pink lips, and a row of scars that looked like teardrops beneath his eyes.
He caught me checking him out and smiled at me.
I returned the smile and then turned my attention back to the drink menu, but before I could decide what it was I wanted to order, the bartender set a bubbling glass of champagne down in front of me.
“From the gentleman,” he said and nodded in brother-man’s direction.
I mouthed, “Thank you,” lifted the flute, and began to sip daintily from it.
No sooner than I could swallow, he was beside me.
“Hello, my name is Abimbola,” he said in a thick Nigerian accent.
“Chevy,” I said as I presented my hand.
“A pleasure,” he said and bent and kissed the back of my hand. “May I join you?”
I checked out the suit, the shoes, and the platinum link chain around his neck. If he had the cash and good credit to back up the bling, I might be able to forget about how visually unappealing he was.
“Of course, please do.”
A bottle of champagne later and he was putting me into a taxi and shoving a hundred-dollar bill into my hand, along with his business card.
“Call me,” he said after kissing my hand again.
“Sure,” I said.
I sat there staring at the money. My God, this was the easiest hundred I’d ever made. I grinned myself stupid for two blocks and then told the cabdriver to pull over.
I threw a crumpled five-dollar bill at him, got out, and caught the train home.
Shoot, I had other plans for that “found” money!
My personal line began to ring.
I eyed the blinking red light. It could be a friend. But then again, it could be my manager checking to see if I was working. She was a sneaky little bitch.
“Thomas Cook Travel Group, this is Chevy, how may I help you?” I answered with my most professional voice.
“Hey, Chevy girl, this is Noah.”
“Hey, Noah, what’s up.”
“Well,” he started, but I had to cut him off.
“If you’re calling about the money, I don’t have it yet.”
“Do you ever?” He laughed. He knew me very well. “No, girl, I’m going to London for two weeks and need you to come by and feed my fish.”
“Fish? When did you get fish?”
“A month ago. I told you that, if you would listen to what I was saying and stop cutting me off when I’m trying to—”
“Noah, I met this Nigerian last night, and—”
“You see what I mean?”
“What?”
“It’s not always about you.”
“Yes it is.” I laughed.
“You still have the key and you know the security code, right?”
“Is it still sixty-nine, sixty-nine?”
“Yeah, my favorite sex position in overdrive!”
“Uh-huh. Going back over there to see your man?”
“You know it.”
“How’s the weather?”
I didn’t get an immediate response, and then he said, “Who?” and his voice sounded a little uneven.
“Not a who, a what , Noah. The weather. How’s the weather?”
“Oh, oh, I got some static going on on my end of the line.” He laughed nervously. “The weather is fine.”
“You got it bad, boy. That man is plugging you so hard you don’t know whether you’re going or coming.”
“He’s definitely got me coming!” Noah laughed, still not quite sounding like himself.
“Well, better you than me.”
“Yeah, well, make sure you water the plants and pick up the mail.”
“Pick up the mail? Doesn’t the postman put the mail through the slot in the front door?”
“Yes.”
“So what do you mean by pick up the mail?”
“Just that. Pick it up off the floor, Chevy.”
“And put it where?”
“On the glass console in the foyer. Damn, you having a dumb blonde day or something?”
“Fuck you.”
“You kiss your mama with that mouth?”
I hung the phone right up on his smart-aleck, queen ass.