Tastes Like Chicken Read online

  The woman closed it posthaste and departed, the other two paralegals taking off with her. They listened outside for a moment. They could hear glass breaking and things being trashed. It sounded like wild animals had been loosed inside. Something hit the door with a thwock and the women scattered.

  Tyrone was wearing a listening device and had been tracking his wife’s calls all morning. He heard the conversation between her and the man, some stranger his wife seemed far too familiar with. The man had even called back with his room number—1102.

  “I’ll kill him,” he said, his breath bordering on steam. “I’ll kill the both of them.”

  Tyrone racked his mind about who the guy could be. The voice sounded like that of someone he’d spoken to before, but he couldn’t connect it with any particular person. He wondered if it was someone they used to know years back. Or maybe it was a client or a city official.

  “I need to talk to my daughter,” he said.

  Perhaps Teresa’s voice would calm him, he thought. He needed something, either real or divine, to intercede on Tyrene’s behalf; otherwise she was a dead woman.

  He picked up the receiver of his office phone and dialed Reesy’s cell. It went straight to voice mail after the first ring. He didn’t leave a message.

  Perhaps she’s at home, he thought, forgetting about her trip to the Poconos. He dialed the number.

  It was disconnected. Tyrone stared at the phone, then began smashing the receiver against the side of his desk.

  Tyrene was on top of Hill, gazing into his eyes as he gripped her waist.

  “You made me fly to this pussy,” he said. “I’ve never gone anywhere for ass. It always comes to me.”

  He flipped her over and pushed her face into the pillows. He rammed himself hard inside her.

  “Oh my goodness,” she said, her voice muffled. “Oh, oh, oh.”

  He smacked her backside with the strong force of his palm. It made a stinging sound that echoed through the room.

  “Don’t leave a print,” Tyrene said, turning her face so he could understand her words. “There’s no way I’ll be able to explain it.”

  He smacked her ass again and she let out a scream.

  “Don’t tell me what to do.”

  He thrust harder, jamming her head and neck up against the wall.

  “Damn you, George Hilliard,” she said. “Damn you and all this good-ass dick.”

  It was almost ten A.M., but Misty and Rick were still at home.

  “Tell them we won’t be in,” Rick said into the phone.

  “Is everything okay?” his assistant, Mary, asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “We’re both just a little under the weather.”

  “Of course,” she said with a smile. “You must have a case of still-newlywed flu.”

  “See you tomorrow,” he said and hung up.

  Misty was in the bathroom vomiting. She’d been in there for more than twenty minutes and he hadn’t been able to do anything to help.

  “Are you pregnant?”

  “No, I’m not pregnant,” she screamed. “I wish you would just stop asking me that.” She was crying.

  Rick stood over his wife, watching her hang on to the rim of the toilet.

  “Want me to go get a pregnancy test?”

  “Could you just leave me alone, Rick? Could you do that? Just give me five minutes, okay? Something I ate last night didn’t sit right.”

  “Fine,” he said. “I’m going to run out for a minute. You want some breakfast?”

  She had her head down on her forearm as she leaned against the bowl.

  “Nothing, please. I just need to be alone.”

  “Alright, babe,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

  * * *

  When Tyrone opened his office door, a small crowd was gathered around it. His all-African-American staff parted like a brown sea to let him pass. No one would make eye contact with him or dared to utter a sound.

  He was holding some sort of contraption that looked like a radar. He banged the elevator button with his fist. The doors opened at once. Everyone was staring at him as the doors shut, but Tyrone only had eyes for the thing in his hand. It beeped as he gazed down at the thing. A little while before, it had relayed to him the location of his wife in her car, headed toward her foul tryst.

  One of the attorneys stuck his head in Tyrone’s office.

  “Shit,” he said.

  The others gathered around the doorway.

  The desk was destroyed and legal documents were everywhere. In addition to the pitcher, all the other crystal was broken. The armoire that held the TV where he watched the news was facedown on the carpet. Shards of wiring and scattered glass hinted that the TV was history.

  “What do you think is wrong?” someone asked.

  “I dunno,” said the guy. “I guess the Hernandez case is out of control.”

  “Suck it hard,” he said.

  She did. She took him all the way inside her mouth, the way she used to do Tyrone years before. Hill’s penis had a provocative shape and thickness. He even tasted virile. Every time she thought she was close to being satiated by him, he would do something else bordering on brutal—pull her hair, push her hard against the wall—that excited her to the challenge of yet another round.

  She was almost out of the bathroom before she had the urge to hurl again. She dropped to her knees and leaned over the wastebasket. She had a series of dry heaves, but nothing came up.

  “I can’t take this,” she said, her eyes squinched tight.

  She opened them as she tried to stand. She was looking into the heart of the wastebasket. There were at least seven condom wrappers balled up inside.

  “No wonder,” she said. “I can’t breathe for him fucking me every chance he gets.”

  She reached in and grabbed one of the offending things. She sat on the floor holding it. She could see the pinholes in it, but it took a second for the image to register. She smoothed the packet out. More pinholes. She reached in for another. Pinholes. Another wrapper revealed even more.

  Misty rushed from the floor, her stomach lurching with her, and raced out of the bathroom to Rick’s side of the bed. She opened the nightstand.

  All the condoms had visible holes poked in them.

  Emotions—too many to make sense—overcame her at once. She sat on the side of the bed and began to cry.

  Rick walked into the bedroom holding a First Response pregnancy kit. Misty was sitting on the bed staring at him.

  His nightstand drawer was open and all the punctured condoms were hanging out.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know, man, I don’t know. I’ve got my gun. I think I’m going to kill them,” he said.

  Trini was on 826—the Palmetto Expressway—headed toward Hialeah. After hearing Tyrone’s comment, he got off at the last exit in Miami Lakes before the Big Curve, went under the overpass, then got back on 826, headed the other way.

  “Stop, Tyrone. Don’t do it. I’m coming to where you are right now.”

  “It’s too late, Trini,” Tyrone said to the hands-free phone, his voice thick with anger as tears of disbelief streaked down his face. “I have to do it. I can’t tolerate this situation. I’ve given my whole life to this woman and this is what she does in return? Hell, no.” He slammed the steering wheel. “The bitch has to die.”

  “Pull over,” said Trini.

  “They’re in room 1102 at Pier 66. If you see it on the news, you’ll know it’s me.”

  “Tyrone, man, c’mon now, stop.” Trini hit the gas as he tried to calm his friend. He maneuvered his way toward I-95, hoping to avoid the lunch rush. It was just 11:20. He could still miss the bulk of the traffic. He wondered if he should take the turnpike and pick up 595, then realized that might be worse.

  “Pull over and take a deep breath, Tyrone. Remember what you told me? You said I could lose my entire career, my whole future, my kids, everything, over some stupid shit my wife was doin
g. You said it wasn’t worth it. You wouldn’t let me be stupid. I can’t let you be stupid either, man. You’re my role model, c’mon.”

  Tyrone banged the steering wheel with the heel of his right hand. He was on Federal Highway headed for the Seventeenth Street Causeway and Pier 66. Drivers in passing cars stared in surprise at the giant of a man pounding the wheel of his Mercedes.

  Trini was still talking when Tyrone went into the New River Tunnel. The call grew staticky, then dropped.

  “Oh shit,” Trini said. He hit “redial,” but Tyrone wouldn’t answer. Trini was in the fast lane, pressing hard to get to the Golden Glades Interchange, where several major thoroughfares—441, I-95, the Florida Turnpike, and 826—all converged. He zipped around cars as he knifed his Mercedes SL forward.

  She was lying in his arms, hungry, waiting for room service. Her body was a study in blacks and blues.

  “There’s no way I can explain this to my husband,” she said. “How in the world am I going to hide this from Tyrone?”

  “So leave him,” Hill said.

  Tyrene raised up and looked at Hill.

  “Oh, you’re a foolish one. Do you think I’d leave my husband just for some dick? We’ve been together since I was a teenager.”

  “Then why are you in my arms right now?” he said.

  She rested her head against his shoulder.

  “I don’t know. I guess I’m going through some sort of a midlife crisis. Women have them too, you know. One of my girlfriends has had a lover for the past five years, and she’s older than I am.” She stared off, her voice growing soft. “Her husband runs the biggest PR firm in the city, and he doesn’t have the slightest clue that he’s got her dick-on-the-side on the payroll.”

  The two lay in silence as Hill stroked her hair. He gazed up at the ceiling, angry at himself. This crass bitch, he thought. He could very well be in love with her, and there she was talking about what was happening between them being just an emotional blip. He was the dick-on-the-side in this scenario. He’d been an entrée his entire life, and she was reducing him to an extraneous side dish. Baked potato, fries, or mashed. Didn’t matter, as long as it was a starch.

  “So I guess that would make Tyrone the steak,” Hill said.

  “What are you talking about?” said Tyrene with a yawn.

  “Speaking of steak, where’s our food?”

  He looked into her eyes.

  “So what would you think if I was in love with you?”

  Tyrene laughed.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “You don’t love me and I don’t love you. This is chaos, confusion. Both of us are going through a phase.” She stretched. “You’ll be back to white girls in no time and I’ll be but a memory. A good one, a damn good one, but a memory nonetheless.”

  “I am in love with you.” He was serious. Tyrene scrunched her face up as she studied him.

  “Look, Hill,” she began, “I don’t know anything about you. All those women. That girl you brought to the wedding. How do I know you haven’t given me some kind of disease?” She shook her head. “I can’t believe I’ve been so reckless with this.”

  “Raise up,” said Hill.

  “What?”

  “I said lift that big yellow head of yours.”

  Tyrene sat up in the bed. Hill slid from beneath the covers and walked over to his garment bag. She watched his strong, lean body as he reached inside. He was beautiful from both the front and the back, with taut, intricate muscles that rippled when he moved. He’s a god, she thought. Tyrone was but lumps of fatted meat compared to what was bending over on the other side of the room.

  Hill pulled out some papers, walked back to the bed, and handed them to her.

  “What’s this?” She examined the papers, but couldn’t make them out. “Hand me those glasses inside my purse,” she said.

  “Good grief.” He reached inside her bag and retrieved them.

  “You aren’t just an old bird. You’re a blind one too. Haven’t you ever heard of Lasik surgery?” he said.

  “Haven’t you ever heard of ‘shut up’?” she replied as she put the glasses on.

  She shook the papers once so that they were straight, a habit that came from years of handling legal documents. She read in silence, then glanced up at him, peering over the tops of the frames.

  “So you carry the results of your AIDS test everywhere you go?”

  “No,” he said, getting back in the bed. “But I wanted you to see them. You’re a shrewd, lawyerly bitch, and I knew this would come up sooner or later. I’m a doctor, you know. I always make sure my health is up to par.” He raised his arms and leaned his head back into his palms. “If anything, I’m at risk messing around with you. You could be the town whore, for all I know.”

  Tyrene threw the papers at him.

  “Why, you son of a bitch,” she said with a snarl, taking off the glasses and sitting them beside the bed.

  “Get to work, you prune,” Hill replied as he shoved her head into his crotch.

  “What were you thinking? Were you thinking at all?”

  Misty was on the other side of the bed now. She tried to get away from him, but he was in front of her, kneeling.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know…I guess I wasn’t.”

  “This wasn’t what we agreed to,” she said. “We said we would wait. We said we’d spend some time with each other first. I can’t believe you’ve been going behind my back all along, doing something as horrible as this.” She held up one of the pierced condom packets. Rick looked away in embarrassment.

  “What’s wrong with me?” she said. “Why do I keep hooking up with the wrong man?”

  “Baby,” he said, “that’s not true. I’m not the wrong man. You love me and I love you. We never agreed that we would wait to have children. We just talked about it, but you decided things for me. That’s not right either.”

  “But going behind my back is? The right man wouldn’t do that.”

  “No,” he said. “That was wrong and I’m sorry.”

  “You’re only sorry that you got caught,” Misty said, her eyes red. “If I’d never found out, I’d just be pregnant thinking it was some kind of accident. Or, stupid me, that maybe nature stepped in because this was ‘supposed’ to happen.”

  “Are you pregnant?” he asked, his voice hesitant. “Is that why you were throwing up?”

  She slapped him, Tyrene-style.

  “Yeah, Rick,” she said. “I’m pregnant. You got what you wanted. I guess that’s just the way this marriage is gonna be, huh?” She dropped her head in her hands. “You get what you want whenever you want it. Fuck what I want. I just get to follow along.”

  * * *

  Tyrone didn’t answer his cell phone after he lost the connection with Trini. He raced onward to the hotel, his mind riddled with images of his wife doing all the things she’d done to him in their more than forty years together. Reason told him there was no way she could fit all her clever little tricks into one afternoon, but he imagined her doing so.

  Tyrene was a gifted freak with a genuine talent for the art of lovemaking, and he’d help groom her to be that way. She had a voracious appetite—sometimes too vast for him—but she never gave any intimation of straying.

  They went through a brief period in the late eighties where they contemplated swinging again, but nothing ever came of it. After one trip to a place called Deenie’s Hideaway in unincorporated Deerfield Beach—a den where guests could either watch or participate in sex with strangers—they changed their minds. Tyrone spotted a high-ranking official from the Broward County mayor’s office. The person didn’t see him. The last thing Tyrone knew he and his wife needed was for someone to have something on them and be able to leverage away a piece of their hard-won position within the tricounty social strata. Deenie’s Hideaway was never discussed again.

  Tyrone’s eyes were as blurry as the windshield in front of him. He turned the wipers on, and while that worked for the
glass, it couldn’t get his eyes to clear.

  He tried Reesy’s cell phone again. She didn’t answer. Everything was coming down on him at once. He was concerned that her home phone was disconnected. He wondered if it had something to do with her avoiding Dandre.

  He’d investigate that situation after handling her mother, he decided. He was at the intersection of Federal and Davie Boulevard. The gun was on the seat beside him. He’d been angry before, but had never known the kind of rage he was experiencing now. The light lingered a little too long. He ran it, rushing on to get to Pier 66.

  * * *

  He pulled up to the front of the hotel with a screech and stepped out of the car.

  “Excuse me, sir. Excuse me.”

  It was the valet, chasing after him with a ticket stub.

  “Thanks.”

  He ran into the hotel past startled guests and employees rushing to get out of his way, making a straight path for the bank of elevators.

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Finally, some food,” Tyrene said, getting out of bed and slipping into a robe. “It took them long enough to bring their asses here.”

  The second knock was even harsher.

  “Good grief,” Hill said. “We’re coming, hold on.”

  Tyrene went to the door and opened it.

  Trini stood a few doors away, watching what was transpiring at room 1102.

  He heard the elevator doors opening behind him.

  “Why are you just standing there?” boomed Tyrone as he stepped out.

  Trini threw his arm around the big man’s chest as he tried to rush past. Trini was a lineman and was used to tackling. He was prepared to take Tyrone down in the hallway if he had to.

  The door opened at 1102 and the waiter pushed the emptied cart back into the hallway. He glanced toward them, then shoved the cart in the opposite direction.

  Trini shoved Tyrone back toward the elevator before the doors could close. When the doors shut, Trini opened Tyrone’s suit jacket. The gun was sticking inside the waist of his pants. Trini took it.

  “How’d you beat me here?” Tyrone asked.

  “I did 120 on I-95. It’s by the grace of God I didn’t get a ticket and made it here before you.”