Chapter Six
Six
I stood staring at the large white paper that screamed notice of eviction for a long moment before I finally snatched it off the door and pushed my key into the lock.
Well, it really couldn’t have come at a better time. Noah would be gone for a whole two weeks, so I could crash there and I was sure that after he got back he’d let me stay until I got back on my feet again.
That shouldn’t be too long, I thought as my mind skipped back to the Nigerian. He could probably be good for at least a couple grand.
The three men that I had been stringing along for the past six months were slowly but surely starting to catch on to my scheme, and each one was either pulling back or stepping off altogether.
Arthur Friedman, early sixties, a stony-faced, balding, blue-eyed Jewish corporate attorney originally from Riverhead, Long Island. We met last year on an American Airlines flight from Puerto Rico.
We were about twenty minutes into the flight, and I was sitting in coach and not happy at all about that. The flesh of the woman next to me was spilling over the armrest, slowly taking over my space, and to top it off she smelled like mangoes and rum, a sickly combination.
I hit my flight attendant call button and an attractive young brother began his quick approach. He was all smiles, not like the old hens they usually have working those short Caribbean flights.
You’ve seen them, the flight attendants who look as if they’ve been flying just as long as there’s been flight.
They have so much time on the books that they only have to do one flight a week and that flight is usually three hours or less.
They don’t smile anymore, don’t even try, but still insist on wearing that pink lipstick that was made popular by Maybelline back in 1960.
They don’t ask you what you’d like to drink, they tell you, and God forbid if you ask for a pillow or a blanket; that’s when you get chastised for not wearing the proper “flight attire.”
So the brother approaching was a breath of fresh air, and I felt my own face break into a smile.
“Yes, ma’am?” he asked in a cavernous voice that was laced with an unmistakable southern drawl. I felt the hairs on my arms stand at attention. I wasn’t sure, but I thought the brother was straight. Not one of the usual flying fairies the airlines employed in droves.
I quickly crossed my legs and tugged my skirt up so as to expose as much of my tan toasted thigh as I could.
“Um,” I whispered, and beckoned him closer with my index finger.
He was more than happy to get closer to my exposed thigh and my Miracle Bra–cradled breasts, which were busting out of my close-fitting knit top.
“I was wondering if there was any room in first class?” I whispered and then looked at his name tag and purred, “Derek.”
Derek’s smile broadened, and I think he was about to laugh out loud when I opened my purse and slipped my IATA (International Association of Travel Agents) card out of the inside pocket and presented it to him.
Derek’s eyes swung from the card to me and then back to the card.
“I know you’ve got at least one little ole seat up there for me,” I said and seductively licked my lips and dragged my free hand up my thigh.
Derek—he couldn’t have been older than twenty-two—broke out in a sweat, and I swear I saw some movement in the crotch of his little uniform pants.
“Give me a minute,” he croaked and rushed off.
I waited, confident that I would get my way. That’s how you have to think—positive!
The mango/rum-smelling orca shifted, and three more inches of her flesh spilled onto me.
Derek came back, composed now and smiling confidently.
Looks like good news, I thought and readied myself to retrieve my Versace knockoff travel case from the overhead.
“Miss Cambridge,” he said.
“Yes?” I said hopefully.
“Please gather your belongings and follow me.”
BINGO!
Derek placed me in the only available seat in first class, which happened to be a window seat right next to a snoring, balding man.
I was about to jab the man with my fingernail and wake him up, but then I spotted the watch and the diamond-studded pinky rings—yes, plural—one on each hand, and that made me think better of my action.
“Hello,” I whispered softly into his ear as I gently shook his shoulder.
His lids fluttered and before me appeared the bluest eyes I’d ever seen.
“Sorry to wake you, but I’m just going to slip into the seat beside you.
” The man started to unbuckle his seat belt, but I said, “Oh, no, please don’t.
I can get in. I’ll just slide by.” I then began the most seductive “slide-through” ever performed, thirty thousand feet in the air!
That’s how I met and bagged Arthur Friedman.
Up until recently, we’ve had a standing Thursday night date.
He would always show up at my job in his long black limousine, greet me with a kiss (on the cheek), and present me with two dozen white roses.
Sometimes if he’d had a really good day or thought that that was the night he was going to get some of my goodies, he’d bring along a little trinket.
To date I’ve received two tennis bracelets, a sapphire anklet, and a bottle of Clive Christian’s No.
1 perfume, which retails for eight hundred dollars!
I acted as if all those things blew me away—yeah, I ooh’d and I aah’d, and I even let him touch up under my blouse, but not up under my La Perla bra!
I ain’t stupid. These high-powered attorneys get so many things handed to them, who’s to say that he actually spent his ducats on those gifts? And besides, he’s going to have to dig a whole lot deeper if he expects even a sniff of my coochie!
The limo, the flowers, the fancy restaurants, and little gifts may seem spectacular to some chickenhead, but not to me. Chevanese Cambridge is in it for the big payoff, which is my own home, car, and bank account.
But I hadn’t seen or heard from Arthur in over three weeks. He’d changed his cell phone number, and when I called the office, his secretary kept telling me that he was still out of town, but she wouldn’t tell me where or when he’d be back.
Now Frederick Smalls, a restaurant owner, is a good-looking Jamaican brother with a good head on his shoulders—and down between his legs, come to think of it.
Frederick is a cash man. He can’t be bothered with shopping for gifts or sending flowers; he’d rather just peel off a couple hundred and send me to get whatever it is I want.
Now him I’ve slept with, just once. But I made the time unforgettable for him, and now he can’t wait to get a second chance.
But I keep him at bay. Besides, he’s got a steady woman and, from what I’ve heard, a wife and family back in Kingston.
But he’s the kind of brother who likes to think he’s living in Africa, where they can have more than one wife or woman and everybody is fine with it.
Our little thing worked fine because he was so busy running the restaurant, he barely had time to take a piss, so he appreciated a woman who ain’t trying to be up under him all the time.
A woman that ain’t nagging him about spending time together or carrying on about why he didn’t call her when he said he would. I’m that woman!
At least, I was that woman.
The last two visits I made to the restaurant, Frederick didn’t even come out of the kitchen to see me, and after I had a few drinks and something to eat at the bar I actually got a bill!
On top of that, he hadn’t returned my phone calls in about a month. That right there told me his time was done.
The last one was a young boy named Hamil. No last name, just Hamil.
Black, barely thirty, with a bank account that was out of this world.
He was a hustler and had a bit of thug in him.
I have a weakness for thugs. Anyway, he and I met when I had just stepped out of the nail salon and had stopped to admire my reflection in the tinted passenger-side window of this parked Denali, when suddenly the window started to come down and I was met with a beautiful specimen.
A young brown-skinned brother, sporting a baldy and the most beautiful hazel eyes I’d ever seen, leaned over and said, “Can I give you a ride, pretty miss?”
I gotta tell you, it took everything in me to turn that brother down. It didn’t help that it was freezing cold out and it sure did look toasty and warm inside that truck.
But I’m not crazy: this is NYC, and we got some stone-cold lunatics who look normal and drive fly vehicles.
So I just smiled and said, “Are those your eyes?”
He laughed, showing me two rows of exceptionally white teeth.
“Yeah—are those yours?”
I was rocking my blue contacts that day. “Yeah, bought and paid for!” I said, and we laughed together.
To make a long story short, he gave me his business card, I called a week later, and we had dinner soon after that.
Because of Hamil, I’d been front and center at all the hottest concerts that had come through town in the past six months. I’d partied with major celebrities and drunk so much Cristal that it was coming out of my ears.
I ain’t gonna lie: I was living the life I’d always wanted to live.
I was living like a superstar! And so Hamil was the one I elected to be able to tap this ass whenever he wanted to.
And after that I thought I had him in my pocket (or my purse), because Hamil just started paying my rent and utilities, started talking that “we” stuff, and I have to tell you that that kinda talk sounded good, but I know what these men out here are all about, and it ain’t no committed relationship, so when he asked me to stop seeing the other men I was dating, I said, “Yeah, sure,” and kept right on seeing them, which explained this eviction notice I was holding in my hands.
Oh well, fuck him! Fuck all of them!
Summer was right around the corner: new season, new meat.
I crumpled the notice and tossed it into the trash can.
This studio apartment was too damn small for me to begin with. I’d be much more comfortable at Noah’s three-story brownstone. What did a single man need with all that space anyway?
I slipped my little black Anne Klein dress over my head and kicked my pumps off.
I had packing to do.
Nothing really strenuous. I don’t own any pots or pans, plates, or cups. Just my clothes and shoes, two towels, two washcloths, two sets of sheets, a shower curtain, and a sofa that has seen better days many, many years ago.
“I won’t be taking you,” I said to the sofa and patted the tattered arm.
I pulled out the largest of my Louis Vuitton suitcases from beneath the bed and got down to work.