CHAPTER NINE #2
“Just like you couldn’t tell that trucker no?”
She didn’t expect him to come back at her in that combative tone. He seemed so heartless. “Yes.”
“Did you not realize that man wasn’t doing you any favors?”
“I needed a ride to Milton.”
“Then figure it out for yourself!” He seemed unusually upset. “Anything could have happened to you in that rig. Rape. Murder. Anything. But that didn’t matter to you.”
“It did matter to me.”
“Then why was your ass willing to go with him if you knew the risk?!” He was practically yelling.
“Because my car broke down, I’ve got nine dollars to my name, and I’ve got to be in Milton before four p.m. today.” She was angry too. “That’s why!”
Nine dollars to her name? Vince knew she was in desperate straits, but damn. Nine dollars?
But still. “That’s not an excuse,” he said. “You could have figured out a better way.”
“Oh yeah? Like what?” She folded her arms and turned as far as she could facing him.
“Where is this better way? How do I get to it? Show me this better way because I’ve never seen it in my life!
It’s so easy to sit up in this fancy car in your fancy suit and proclaim how I should just find another way like it’s as easy as just doing it.
I don’t know if you noticed this or not, but people like you don’t go out of their way to help people like me. ”
“Here we go with the race card,” Vince said contemptuously.
Ricki’s look turned from frustration to irritation.
“What race card? I wasn’t talking about race.
I’m talking about class. I’m talking about people like me, who can barely make ends meet, and people like you, who don’t even understand the concept.
So don’t even act like I’m just making shit up. Because I’m not!”
Vince was stunned by the bitterness he heard in her voice. “Watch your language,” he said.
But she wasn’t done reading his ass. “Have you ever lived paycheck to paycheck and sometimes ran so low that you wasn’t even sure where your next meal was coming from?
Have you ever had to rely on strangers that couldn’t stand the sight of you?
Have you ever been so poor and powerless that people looked at you as if you were lower than trash?
Well if you don’t know what I’m talking about, and you don’t get it, then why don’t you just shut the fuck up! ”
Vince looked at her as if she’d lost her mind.
Then he angrily pulled over to the side of the highway, slammed on brakes, causing both of them to jerk forward, and then he looked at her again.
This time he was pointing directly at her small, anguished face.
“I said it once, and I’ll say it again. This time for the last time. Watch. Your. Mouth.”
Ricki was stunned. He pulled all the way over to tell her that? Who did he think he was? She turned her small body all the way toward his big body. “Let’s get one thing straight, Mister,” she said to him. “Just because you’re giving me this ride doesn’t make you ruler over me.”
“Yes it does,” he shot back, to her disbelief.
“When you’re in my presence, yes it does!
And you will be respectful in my presence.
You will not be cursing like some gotdamn sailor.
Now watch yourself,” he added. When she didn’t say anything further, mainly because she seemed stunned by his response, then he exhaled again, pulled back onto the highway, and continued the drive. That child was working his last nerve!
Ricki sat there stumped. She didn’t know what to make of him.
What man would declare, as if it was his God-given right, that he was the boss of a grown-ass woman?
And he could cuss his head off, but she was being disrespectful when she cussed?
What kind of white-privilege-control-freak shit was this?
What was she getting herself into? She held onto the door handle and continued to stare at Vince. Any false move and she was jumping out.
Vince could see her staring from his side view, but he let her stare. He felt disappointed in his behavior. He was being too hard on her as if he needed to toughen her up when she was already more than tough enough.
But there was something else about her, something he saw within her that was so vulnerable to him, that he felt an irrational sense of responsibility for her.
It didn’t compute on any level with who he was, but it was there as plain as the nose on his face.
She needed him. Somehow he knew it. And it was angering the hell out of him that he knew it.
Because the last person on earth he needed was her.
He looked at her. “Do you have a question,” he asked her, “or is staring at me your thing?”
“Why are you so mean?” she asked him, since he brought it up.
Vince smiled. “Me? Mean? Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!”
He had a point, she thought. She even had a glimmer of a smile on her stern face too. She decided to move on. “What do you do for a living to be able to afford a car like this?”
He caught that faint smile on her face. Although brief and weak, it made her look so much prettier when she smiled.
Then he caught himself. Why in the world would he care about how she looked?
He looked back at the road ahead of them.
“I’m a lobbyist out of D.C.,” he said, “and I own a major PR firm.”
Ricki noticed how he emphasized major. As if he liked being on top. But it was the other part that was of more note to her. “You’re a lobbyist?”
“That’s correct.”
“So you pay off congress people to keep passing bills for Fortune 500 companies so that they can continue to rip off the American people?”
He inwardly smiled. This child! “Those aren’t the words I would use.”
“But it captures the essence of what you actually do?”
He glanced at her. She was as sharp as she was beautiful.
And those alluring eyes. If she wasn’t so damn mean, he thought, and then quickly caught himself.
He had literally just gotten rid of Cynthia.
And to go from that bat to this bat? There was no way he was picking up this particular bat out of hell ever.
He didn’t care how cute she was. “Something like that,” he said.
“Let me put it this way,” she said. “Are your clients mostly Democrats or Republicans?”
“Republicans by far,” said Vince.
“Are you a Republican?”
“Yes I am.”
She looked at him. “Wow. You voted for Trump?”
“Not that that’s any of your business,” he said, “but no, I did not.”
“Why not? He’s a Republican.”
“Not my kind of Republican he’s not,” Vince said. Then he decided to turn the tables. “What do you do for a living?”
It was the first time he asked her anything at all about herself. “I’m a hairstylist.”
He glanced at her hair. She had plenty of it, but it was hardly a style. “A hairstylist who wears a ponytail?” He smiled. “Not exactly a ringing endorsement for your skillset, is it?”
Another blow to her ego. And she was tired of the hits. “I can’t do anything right in your eyes, can I?”
He looked at her. “As of right now? No,” he said bluntly.
She started to tell him to kiss her ass the way she usually would when somebody would hit a nerve with her. But she couldn’t bring herself to say that to him. She just couldn’t do it. She, instead, looked out the window again, and said nothing.
Vince exhaled again. Why was he so hard on her? What was his problem? He decided to ease up. “I’m sorry, alright?”
“No you aren’t.”
“No, I’m not. But I could have been more diplomatic.”
She looked at him. “You could have lied, in other words?”
“Yes. But since I’m not a very good liar, I didn’t.”
She stared at him a few moments longer. Because somehow she respected him more for being honest with her. “Apology accepted,” she said.
He smiled. “Thank you.” Then he decided to go there. “Since you know my name,” he said, “what’s yours?”
“Now you ask me that question?” she said, turning the tables on him.
He smiled. She was sharp, he’d give her that.
“My name is Rasheda Richardson. But everybody calls me Ricki.”
“Which do you prefer? Rasheda?”
“Ricki.”
He smiled. It was his guess that if he had called her Ricki, she would have preferred Rasheda.
She smiled too as she looked back out of the window and he returned his attention back to the highway. But the more she thought about her sister, that smile was gone.
Several more minutes passed. But he couldn’t get her off his mind. He glanced at her again. “Why is it so important for you to be in Milton before four this afternoon?”
It was going to be another strike against her in his eyes. But she didn’t care at this point. “I need to attend my sister’s bail hearing,” she said honestly.
He didn’t expect to hear that. He looked at her. “A bail hearing? Why? What did she do?”
“She didn’t do anything.”
He looked away from her as if he knew she knew better than that.
“They claim she killed Dr. Proctor,” she continued, “but that’s impossible.”
He quickly looked at her. “She killed him?”
“That’s what they’re claiming. But it’s not true.”
“And how would you know that, Rasheda?” Doubtfulness spewed from his voice. “Were you there when it happened?”
Ricki frowned. “Why you always got to be so rough about everything I say?”
“Because you need to face facts and stop living in this fantasy world you’ve created! They don’t arrest people for murder for the hell of it.”
But Ricki was offended. “Fantasy world? Who’s living in a fantasy world?”
“In my opinion you.”
“Man, get up out of here! You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Then how would you know what your sister did or didn’t do if you weren’t there?”
“Because I know my baby sister! And I’m not fantasizing about it either. I know she has her issues. Lord knows she has her issues. But she would never hurt anybody ever. And I know everybody says that about their loved ones I know that. But in this case it’s the truth.”
What struck Vince the most wasn’t what she was saying about her sister’s innocence.
She was right: everybody said that. But what got to him was the fact that she had to bear the burden of her sister’s sins too.
Because he could tell right away that she was that kind of caring person.
She wasn’t going to rest until her sister was okay.
She’d go through the fire for her loved ones.
Although, for some reason, he was surprised she had any loved ones at all.
He didn’t know why, but his impression of her was that she was all alone in this world.
“You and your sister are close then?” he asked her.
“Not really, no.”
He frowned. “What do you mean not really?”
“Just what I said. We aren’t close.”
“Where are you from?”
“Brooklyn.”
“Why would you travel from Brooklyn all the way to Milton if you and your sister weren’t close?”
“Because she needs me.”
Vince looked at her. “But do you need her?”
Ricki shook her head. “It don’t work like that, Mister. You don’t just help the people that can help you. You help the people that can’t help you. That’s how it works.”
Vince looked away from her and at the road ahead of them. And he exhaled. She touched him in ways unfathomable to him. Because he got her. For some reason he got her. And felt her too. He understood exactly what she meant.
Ricki just wanted to move on. “Where are you headed after you drop me off?”
“Home.”
“I thought you said you was a lobbyist in D.C. I thought you was from Washington.”
“My other home here in Connecticut.”
“Oh okay. Where? Don’t tell me Milton too. That’ll be a crazy coincidence.”
“I own a home on the outskirts of New Haven.”
Ricki was confused. “New Haven? But we passed New Haven already.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Milton is like a full hour past New Haven.”
“I know that too.”
“But . . .” People didn’t do her favors. She did people favors all the time. But they never did any for her. It felt unnatural to her. “You could have dropped me off in New Haven and I could have . . .”
Vince looked at her. “You could have what?” Her stubbornness was upsetting him. She’d vote against her own best interest because of that stubborn streak within her. “You could have what?” he said again when she didn’t respond. “With nine dollars to your name, what could you have done, Rasheda?”
Ricki was a realist, even though he thought she was a fantasizer. “Very little,” she admitted.
Vince nodded. He was pleased she didn’t try to sugarcoat it. “So let’s just get you where you need to be,” he said. “If that’s okay with you.”
Ricki almost lashed out again, but she held her tongue. “Thank you,” she said.
Vince laughed. “That was the harshest thank you I’ve ever heard,” he said, and she couldn’t help but smile too.
They settled down to total silence as they made their way to Milton.
But as soon as he hit the city limits, he noticed Ricki began to withdraw into herself. This town, he realized immediately, was ground zero for all the trauma he was feeling within her, and sometimes could see on her face.
He wondered why.