Chapter Nine #2
Pam Pam’s Doo Shoppe was the hottest black-owned beauty parlor in the city. It wasn’t flashy with lots of mirrors or smart decor. But if you wanted your hair fried and dyed correctly, Pam Pam’s was the place to go.
I decided on a red suede dress that hugged my hips and dipped low in the back.
Since I had offered to take him to dinner, I figured I would take him to Jezebel or maybe Bamboo, my favorite restaurants.
Pam blew my shoulder-length hair bone straight and arranged it around my face so that it had a slightly wild, unkempt sexy look about it. I sprayed Passion in all the right places and applied just enough makeup. I was ready at seven forty-five.
I had just enough time to decide which coat I was going to wear when the phone rang. It was the doorman. “Ms.Atkins, Mr.Reme is here to see you. Shall I send him up?”
I froze. I had totally forgotten about Steven.
Steven was the man I had been seeing off and on for nearly a year.
At first he seemed like he could be the one.
He was okay-looking, intelligent, and funny, and he held down a job as a high-powered attorney.
But after six months I realized that his hair was receding and his stomach was growing.
He began to look like my Uncle Herbert. Not that I’m shallow—I would have been able to overlook the physical if he wasn’t so clingy and whiny and if he didn’t worship me more than I deserved.
I was still seeing him because I hadn’t been able to summon the courage to break up with him, and, besides, I hadn’t really had any other suitors.
But Kendrick Greene was in my life now!
“Yes, please send him up.”
Steven was short and light-skinned—the complete opposite of what I usually went for in a man. When he came to the door he was dressed in a gray jogging suit that did nothing for him.
“You look fabulous. All of this for me?” he said as he stepped through the door, and the smell of sweat almost knocked me over. He looked at me, his tongue dangling from his mouth like a thirsty dog’s.
“I thought we were staying in tonight. Maybe watch a movie, order some pizza, and then, well, you know…” he trailed off and reached for me. Oh yeah: he was always, always in the mood.
“Actually, Steven, I forgot we had plans,” I said. Well, it wasn’t a lie. He reached for me again; I could see his penis growing inside his sweatpants. I was disgusted.
His face changed a bit. “What the hell is wrong with you?” He had good instincts.
“I’m going out.”
“Where? With whom?”
“A friend, and I’m leaving right now.” I clicked the lights off and gently pushed him back into the hall.
“But we have plans,” he whined.
“Yes…yes, we did, and I’m sorry. I completely forgot, and this thing came up—”
“Oh, really.” Steven watched me carefully. “This thing—it got a name?” he asked.
“Steven, I really don’t have time to play this game with you right now—”
“Game?” He cut me off in midsentence. He was beginning to get upset. I heard myself speaking to him in the same manner I spoke to young children—a tone he thoroughly enjoyed in the bedroom but found frustrating now.
“What game am I playing? I think you’re the one playing a game.”
“Whatever” was all I could think to say. I turned my back to him and slipped the key into the lock. I could hear the ringing on the other side of the door, and I realized that I didn’t have my coat. I knew it was the doorman calling to let me know that Kendrick was downstairs.
“Damn, I forgot my coat,” I said and pushed the door back open. I ran into my bedroom and settled on a long black Andrew Marc leather coat I’d bought myself for Christmas the year before.
When I got back out to the hallway, Steven was still standing there, sulking. He was done with asking me where, why, and what for the moment, but he would badger me for the next thirty days.
We stepped into the elevator together and rode in silence down to the lobby. Kendrick was standing in front of the building, his back to us.
My feet wouldn’t move past the lobby desk. “Well, c’mon,” Steven said and gently took my elbow. Kendrick turned around at the same moment. I could see him smiling through the thick glass doors, and then his smile vanished.
I looked over at Steven, and he looked as if someone had just driven a stake through his heart.
I can’t remember walking across the lobby floor and out the doors, but there we were, the three of us, standing in a cluster in the cold November night.
“Crystal?” Steven said, shooting me a disapproving look.
“Oh, Kendrick Greene, Steven Reme,” I said. The two men shook hands. I could tell that Steven was holding his stomach in and poking his chest out.
“Sir. It’s a pleasure,” Kendrick said in his silky voice. Steven mumbled what I assumed was a greeting.
“Well, Steven, goodbye,” I said and gave him the “please go away” look. Kendrick nodded goodbye and we both started toward the car.
The last thing I saw as we pulled away from the curb was Steven standing in front of my building, giving me the finger.
—
The night went well. We had drinks at Bamboo and dinner at Jezebel. He told me about his real estate business, making sure to throw in that he’d never been married, although he did have a fifteen-year-old son who was living in San Francisco with his Asian mother.
“It was just one of those things,” he said with a boyish grin when I made a face at the fact that the woman was something other than black.
He worked hard but he played just as hard. Racquetball, tennis, basketball. He loved to fish and owned a small yacht at the family residence in Florida.
“Enough about me. Tell me about you,” he said and flashed that million-dollar smile. I grinned like a twelve-year-old finally being noticed by the school hunk.
I told him a little bit about my job and he seemed to find it very interesting.
“It must be depressing dealing with so many people and their addictions on a daily basis,” he said as he picked over his salmon. His face was solemn, and I felt my heart skip a beat. He was sensitive too!
I had to explain to him that I no longer worked one-on-one with the addicts.
I was an administrator and in charge of all the counselors nationwide.
I studied other treatment programs and altered them to fit the Ain’t I A Woman system.
I told him that I also put together grant proposals and wooed the Fortune 500 companies for donations.
“I kind of miss being a counselor,” I said. “At the end of the day I really felt like I had accomplished something.”
“Yes, that sounds like very fulfilling work. And now is it still fulfilling?” he asked, arching his dark bushy eyebrows.
“Well, now I beg, shuffle numbers, attend parties, and beg some more. No, I guess it’s not as fulfilling.” It was the first time I’d openly admitted that to anyone.
Kendrick gave me a soft look and then reached over and patted my hand. “Excuse me for a minute, will you?” he said and stood up and did a little bow. “I need to go to the men’s room.”
I watched him walk away. I wanted to look away—check out the dessert menu or maybe get the waiter’s attention for another glass of wine—but my eyes wouldn’t let go of Kendrick Greene until he disappeared into the bathroom.
His stride exuded confidence, and I wasn’t the only person to notice; quite a few women shot approving glances his way as he swaggered past them.
That just made me want him all the more.
When he returned, his eyes seemed a bit glazed.
He must have noticed that I noticed. “I know, I have a sinus problem and I popped a pill. It makes me look like I smoked a spliff,” he said with a laugh.
I laughed too and resisted the urge to ask him why he couldn’t take the pill right there at the table.
“So listen, pretty lady, can I interest you in shaking your groove thang?” he said in a playful voice.
“Dancing?” I said. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gone out dancing. Could I still do it? I pondered the question for a moment, thinking out every embarrassing scenario that could possibly happen to me on a dance floor.
“Well, I don’t know…”
“What don’t you know? Are you tired?”
“No.”
“Do you want this evening to end right now?” he asked. He seemed to be daring me to say yes.
“N-no?” I said, not quite understanding his game.
“Well, then, that must mean you want to go dancing. Right?”
“I guess that’s what it means.” I didn’t know if I appreciated the way he’d just handled that.
We ended up at a club called the Pulse on the East Side.
The line of people stretched down the block and around the corner.
People stood chatting and rubbing their hands together, trying to keep warm while they waited.
They were all black except for the standard sprinkling of whites and Asians sporting locs and nipple rings.
We moved past the people and walked right up to the front door.
“Hey, Mr.Greene, how have you been?” the bouncer, a tall black man with a bald head and two diamond studs in his nose, greeted him. As they shook hands, he threw me an approving glance and then smiled.
“Fine, Jim, just fine,” Kendrick replied as Jim stepped aside and opened the door for us.
“Who the hell are they?” someone yelled out from the pack of people behind us.
We checked our coats with a woman and then squeezed our way through the bumping and grinding mass of people.
“Is this a Jamaican club?” I yelled above the music to Kendrick.
“This is a Caribbean club—they play music from all the islands,” he yelled back over the noise. “In fact, it’s white-owned,” he added as he raised his hand to get the bartender’s attention.
“What’s this?” I asked as he handed me a brown bottle.
“Banks Beer, the national beer of Barbados.” He tilted his bottle to his lips and drained it in less than thirty seconds. I looked at him and then the bottle. I didn’t drink beer and felt I had had too much alcohol that evening already.