Tastes Like Chicken Read online

  Sleazy pulled up to the back house. He could hear the dogs as he got out of the car.

  “Yeah, yeah, you little slap-happy rats. You know I’m coming with grub, don’t you?”

  He grabbed the bags from the car and walked to the front door. He lifted the mat and got the key, put it into the lock, and went inside.

  Dante’s wailing drowned out the minor yips from Harlem and Peanut.

  “Goodness,” he said.

  He opened the kitchen door. They burst past him, almost knocking him over.

  “Come back in here,” he said. “I’ve got your food.”

  They raced back into the kitchen, leaping at the bags.

  “Sit,” he said, “or you’re not getting anything.”

  The dogs lined up in a perfect row.

  “Nice.”

  He took out one of the roasted hens and began tearing pieces off it to put in their bowl. He ate some first.

  “Shit,” he said to the dogs. “This is pretty damn good.”

  He shredded half of the chicken and put it into the bowl. He mixed the bones in and set it on the floor.

  The puppies waited for his command.

  “Good,” he said. “I see I trained you well.”

  They didn’t move as they eyed him and eyed the food.

  “Go,” he said.

  They mobbed the bowl of chicken.

  He watched them for a moment, then went over and uncovered the doggie door. He pulled at the doorknob to get out, but the side door was swollen shut again. He put his foot against it and pulled. It flew open under the pressure of his weight. He banged his back against the counter behind him.

  He headed into the backyard. His two-way beeped. He removed it from the holster and checked. It was a promoter he worked with who booked comedy shows around the country. The message was urgent.

  His cell phone was in the car. He looked at the side door that led to the kitchen, but didn’t feel like struggling with it again. He went up the garden path to the gate that led to where the car was parked. He unlocked it and left it ajar as he got his cell phone. He sat in the driver’s seat with the door open.

  “Yo, T, what’s up? It’s Sleazy.”

  He listened as T told him about a major gig in Chicago that was paying ten grand if the man who was backing the event could speak with Sleazy, just to establish a comfort level. The job had boiled down to him and another comedian.

  “I’m pushing for you,” T said.

  “Good lookin’-out, bro. I appreciate it.”

  “He’s with me right now and we need to make a decision in the next five minutes about what we’re going to do. He’s already talked to the other dude, but I told him you’re better at working a crowd.”

  Sleazy nodded as he listened.

  “Cool.”

  “So I just need to know if you’re down to do it, then I’ll put him on the phone so he can get a feel for you.”

  The dogs ran past Sleazy as he said yes. It took a second for him to register what he’d just seen. He jumped out of the car, calling after them.

  “Hey. Hey. Heyyyyyyyyyyyy.”

  “Who you talking to?” T asked.

  “Oh…my…God,” Sleazy said, watching the pack of dogs haul fur down the driveway, hit the sidewalk, take a right, then disappear.

  “They’re headed for Sepulveda. T, man, shit. Shit, shit, shit. I gotta go. I’m about to be in some deep-ass trouble.”

  He clicked the phone off and stuffed it in his pocket as he ran toward the street in search of the pups.

  Tyrone’s Mercedes passed Dandre’s rental car, but neither man noticed the other. Dandre slowed as he neared the house. He pulled into the driveway and got out of the car.

  “What do you mean, you couldn’t stop him?” Tyrene asked. “You were supposed to help. At least he was still living here. Did you tell him to leave? That didn’t enter his mind until you went in there to talk to him.”

  “Are you having an affair?”

  Reesy studied her mother’s face for a sign of something that would make everything make sense. Tyrene’s cheek twitched.

  “What did you ask me?”

  “Are you having an affair?”

  Misty must have gotten to her, Tyrene decided. Well, she thought, I’ll just deny, deny, deny.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Daddy says you are. He says he has proof.”

  Tyrene’s heart skipped.

  “He told you that?” she asked, her voice shaky. “Oh Lord,” she said, looking around, as if expecting to be arrested. “So he knows. He knows about me and Hill.”

  Before Reesy could react to the sucker punch of her mother’s words, her cell phone rang. She looked at the number. It was Sleazy. She had to take the call.

  She held a finger up for her mother to wait. She pressed the “talk” button. “Hello.”

  Tyrene saw her chance and took off in a mad dash upstairs. She locked herself in the master bedroom.

  The doorbell rang at the same time. Reesy walked to it as she talked on the phone.

  “Reesy.” The voice on the phone was several octaves higher than its natural pitch.

  “What’s up, Sleazy?” Reesy said. “Can I call you back? I’m kind of in a moment.”

  She opened the front door. Dandre was standing on the step. Sleazy spoke before she had a chance to react.

  “I lost your dogs,” he said in a panic.

  “What?” she screamed, staring into Dandre’s eyes.

  “I’ll call you back.” Sleazy sounded as hysterical as she felt.

  “I’m trying to find them now.”

  He hung up without saying good-bye. Reesy stood on the doorstep, unable to speak. She was overwhelmed with too many emotions at once. She was trembling. Dandre could tell something awful had just transpired. He reached out for her. She fell into his arms and began to sob.

  It took him more than twenty minutes to calm Reesy down.

  They were on the couch in the family room. Anushka had prepared dinner and put it in the fridge. She made tea before she left. It was sitting on the coffee table in front of them.

  Reesy couldn’t drink it. She was much too upset.

  She cried for her father, out there driving around some where, feeling betrayed by a woman he had trusted for most of his life. She cried for her mother for not being woman enough to admit she was as wrong as he was. She cried for the puppies as she imagined them lost and helpless, wandering up and down the streets. Or worse.

  She cried for herself, in Dandre’s arms, relieved to see him, but confused and frightened. She wanted to be happy, but she was feeling too many things to be able to separate that emotion from the rest. She wanted to be angry at him for showing up at her home—how did he know she was there?—but she wasn’t. She needed him. She needed the strength of his arms to shield her from all the pandemonium whirling around her.

  Her cell phone rang. It was Sleazy. She handed the phone to Dandre. She was much too shaky to try to speak.

  “Hello.”

  “Hey…” Sleazy started, confused. “Is this…is this Dandre?”

  “Yeah, man. What’s up with the dogs?”

  “I got ’em,” Sleazy said, his breath coming fast. “They were halfway to Hermosa, but I caught up with ’em. Some people pulled over and helped me.”

  “Thank God,” Dandre said.

  Reesy glanced up at him, her eyes drenched.

  “Are they okay?” she asked.

  “They’re fine,” he said.

  She collapsed onto his chest and cried fresh tears of relief.

  Thirty minutes later and she was still in his arms.

  Dandre held her without any pressure. She rested her head against his chest, her arms around his waist. Neither said a word about being with each other. Tyrene was still upstairs, locked in her room.

  “Our parents are fucking,” Reesy said into his chest.

  “What?”

  She didn’t look up.

  “Tyrene and your f
ather have been having an affair.”

  He put his finger under her chin and lifted her face. Her eyes met his.

  “Are you shitting me?”

  “No.”

  “Is that what’s going on here?”

  “Apparently.”

  He leaned back against the couch.

  “Oh my God,” he said under his breath.

  “Exactly,” Reesy said under hers.

  Tyrene was in her bedroom, facedown on the bed, crying. Her life was over, as far as she knew it. She didn’t think she could show her face in town again.

  She forced herself to sit up. She walked to the sink in the vanity area and turned on the faucet. She splashed cold water on her face, then looked up at herself in the mirror.

  “Buck up, woman,” she said. “When the going gets tough…”

  Her eyes were red and puffy and her face was flushed. She was in great shape, but the fact remained that she was almost sixty. She wondered what had come over her to make her behave the way she had. It was too late for her to be destroying everything she had worked so hard to build.

  “Who’ll want me?” she asked her reflection. “I don’t know how to be alone.”

  Her reflection seemed to answer her back.

  Tyrene took a few deep breaths, then walked over to the phone. She dialed the number and prayed for an answer.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi,” she said.

  There was a pause.

  “I didn’t think you were going to call.”

  “Well, I did. Do you still want me?” she asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Then I’m coming tonight,” was all she said.

  Reesy and Dandre were still holding each other when Tyrene came down the stairs with a bag. She walked into the family room. She gasped when she saw Dandre.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “I came to make sure Reesy was okay,” he said.

  He waited for her to attack him, but she didn’t. Tyrene wasn’t in a position to throw stones at anyone, and all three of them knew it.

  “Where are you going with that bag?” Reesy asked. “Have you talked to Tyrone? Are you going to him?”

  “I’m going to Washington,” Tyrene said in a calm tone.

  “What?” Reesy said, standing. “Are you out of your mind?” She walked over to her mother. “You’re not leaving here. This is insane. You and Tyrone have both gone mad.”

  “I’m leaving, Teresa. Your father left me, so I’m going too.”

  Dandre’s head was in his hands. He wondered what his father was thinking. Hill hadn’t mentioned a word of this to him.

  “What about the firm?” asked Reesy. “The two of you just can’t abandon everything.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “We’ll sort that out. I’ll talk to the partners. Everything will be fine.” Tyrene was amazed by her own composure.

  “So you’re going…just like that.”

  “Yes. I’ll be back in a few days.”

  “Well, I won’t be here,” Reesy replied. “This is madness. I’m going back to California.”

  “Yes,” Tyrene said, her lips pursed together. “Thank you for letting me know you had moved.”

  “Thank you for letting me know you were an adulteress,” Reesy said.

  Tyrene slapped her.

  Reesy slapped her back.

  Dandre rushed over and stood between the two women.

  “This isn’t solving anything,” he said. “You both are upset. Why don’t we all just calm down.”

  The doorbell rang.

  “That’s my car,” Tyrene said. She went to the coat closet and slipped on her mink. She picked up her bag and stood with her hand on the doorknob.

  “You know where to reach me,” she said.

  Reesy turned her back to Tyrene so she wouldn’t have to watch her leave.

  “Well then,” said Tyrene.

  She opened the door and walked out. It was cool outside, but some of the Florida humidity still managed to seep in.

  Reesy and Dandre were back on the couch. She was leaning into the crook of his arm.

  “You should eat something,” he said.

  “I can’t.”

  He rubbed her head, his fingers dancing through her short-cropped curls.

  “It’ll be okay, Reesy,” he said. “I don’t know how, but everything is going to be okay.”

  “How do you know that? Everything is fucked up. Rick and Misty, Tyrone and Tyrene, me and—”

  He put his finger on her lips.

  “We’re not fucked up. We just had a situation. Nothing about how I feel has changed. Nothing.”

  “What about that woman? I saw her at your house.”

  “What woman?” he asked, nervous. He didn’t want to confess anything if it wasn’t necessary. “What are you talking about?”

  Reesy pushed away from him.

  “See what I’m saying? You still can’t be honest with me, so what’s the point.”

  He pulled her back. He took a deep breath and looked her in the eye.

  “Rejeana came to my house after you got out of the hospital.”

  “Who’s Rejeana?”

  “Nobody. Well, I mean, not that she’s a nobody, she’s just nobody to me. She’s a girl I used to mess around with back in the day. I hadn’t seen her in a couple of years.”

  Reesy shook her head, trying to figure out a way to get her emotions to disengage.

  “I was wrong,” Dandre said, sensing her withdrawal. “I didn’t handle that situation right when I broke things off, and it never did sit well with her. Rejeana was always dramatic and I knew that about her, but I strung her along anyway. I kept her around knowing I didn’t have any intentions of ever getting with her.”

  Reesy stared at him, wondering why she was having such a hard time hitting the emotional ejector switch.

  “I was a different man then. I’m not too proud of some of the things I did.”

  She blinked back any tears that threatened to erupt, relieved to know that there was no way they could ever go on.

  “I was right,” she said. “See, you and me, we can’t work. Nothing lasts, nothing works. People lie. People hurt each other. Tyrone and Tyrene have been together for decades and look at them.”

  “We’re not Tyrone and Tyrene.”

  “And Misty and Rick. He was punching holes in the condoms.”

  “And they’re seeing a therapist to work things out.”

  Reesy shook her head.

  “It can’t work, Dandre,” she said, moving away. “It doesn’t matter how much I love you. It doesn’t matter how much you love me.”

  “But you do love me,” he replied, pulling her close, his voice a whisper. “Everything else can be worked out.”

  “No. It can’t. There’s no such thing as a perfect relationship. I thought my parents had it, and I was wrong.”

  He turned so that his whole body was facing her.

  “Is that what you wanted? Perfection from me? Because I can’t give you that,” he said. “I would never try to.”

  Her eyes filled up.

  “All I can do is love you, Reesy. Be there for you, be your friend when you need me, and even when you don’t realize you need me. But I’m not perfect. I’m just a man.”

  “I can’t trust you,” she said.

  “You can try. And you can be there for me when I’m feeling weak. I don’t want anybody else, but the world is rough. People are always trying to break couples down. We have to fight for our relationship, not just walk out on it.”

  She listened, searching his eyes for game.

  “I don’t want to do what Tyrone and Tyrene just did,” he said. “I can’t just walk away. I want to know that you’ll come after me if I do. That’s what you did before. And when you left me, I came after you. That’s how you fight for each other. You don’t just quit.”

  He was right. The time that he’d found her naked with Helmut, he did run away. But
she was persistent and did everything she could to make him believe that she cared, even when it was too painful for him to listen.

  She took a deep breath, turning over his words.

  “Reesy, listen to me,” he said. He reached out and touched her hair. “We don’t have to be perfect people. We can’t be. I mean, maybe what we need to learn out of all this is the fact that we’re imperfect to begin with, and we work from there.”

  He outlined her face with his finger. She leaned into his palm.

  “You’re still wearing your ring,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Reesy replied in a soft voice. She held up her finger. “I can’t get it off.”

  “It’s never coming off. It’s not supposed to.”

  He leaned forward and kissed her, his lips gentle and light against hers.

  “I didn’t get a chance to say how much I love what you’ve done to your hair. It’s beautiful. You’re beautiful.” He grabbed the back of her head and pulled her mouth to his.

  She didn’t resist when he pressed her down into the couch. He kissed her eyes, her nose, the point of her chin. His lips trailed down the curve of her neck to the tops of her breasts.

  “I love you,” he said.

  “I love you too.”

  PART 4

  Redux

  Lord of the Ring

  “So you sure you’re ready to do this?” he asked.

  They were back on Southwest, high in the sky, headed to their side of the world.

  “I’m sure,” she said. “But I’m scared. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared.”

  “Why don’t we call your boy Sleazy,” Dandre said.

  Reesy looked at him with surprise.

  “So you know we’re friends.”

  “Yeah. He’s a good guy. He was really looking out for you.”

  Reesy laughed.

  “So now I get it. He’s the one who told you about me going to Lauderdale.” She shook her head. “That dirty dog. He never said a word.”