Tastes Like Chicken Page 6

  “You too, big guy. Tomorrow’s another day. Remember that.”

  Dandre stopped and looked at him.

  “My girl always says that.”

  “That’s because it’s true,” said the bartender, taking the check. “Sounds like you’ve got a smart woman. Consider yourself lucky.”

  Dandre made his way out of the bar before the waterworks could start. He crossed the lobby and pushed the elevator buttons. He waited, dabbing at his face with the handkerchief he’d been clutching since his dad had given it to him. He took a few deep breaths and tried to shake off the anguish. He turned around, for no reason other than he felt like it.

  His vision was blurry and one eye was damn near shut. He stared, unsure of what he saw, then dismissed it altogether as the ding of the opening elevator doors stole his attention. He stepped in.

  As the doors hung open for a moment, he thought he saw the hazy image of what looked to be his dad—and Tyrene—coming around the corner. They stopped and looked around, then hugged.

  That’s nice, he thought. At least they had made peace.

  The doors dinged, then began to close on Dandre’s drunken, cockeyed take of Hill and Tyrene in a passionate lip lock.

  He laughed, realizing how bad he needed sleep.

  “I must be going crazy,” he said.

  Rick was out, his arms wrapped tight around his wife. They’d made desperate love that night. Rick’s sex drive was high anyway, but he seemed extra pressed after the events of the day. What had happened between Dandre and Reesy had put the fear of losing Misty in him.

  He’d already had one major loss in his life and the effect, for him, had been catastrophic. He and his old girlfriend Keisha had been inseparable. Their relationship was challenging, exciting, comfortable, and contentious—things he couldn’t appreciate at the time. Keisha had been very much in love. Rick had been unsure and afraid, even though they had been living together for more than two years and dating even longer. He felt tremendous pressure from her to get married. The more she’d pressed, the more resistant he’d become. He did come to see how much he loved her. Unfortunately, it had proved too late for both of them.

  He was so grateful for Misty, and the most accessible way he could think of to show it was to mount her the second they were in their hotel room.

  He was at peace now, on his fifth dream, far removed from the horror and trauma.

  Misty stared at the ceiling, recapping everything that had happened, sick to her stomach from all she had seen. She had been too exhausted for sex when they’d got to the Parker Meridien, but Rick was insistent, and her mother had told her many years before that she should never turn her man away.

  “All it takes is a time or two,” she’d said. “Then he’ll turn to somebody else. Always make sure you take care of home.”

  Misty had taken those words as her marital credo, so whenever Rick pressed, she accommodated him. She didn’t feel like a martyr for it. Making love with him was always an enjoyable, passionate, intense experience.

  But the passion had stripped her of any shred of remaining energy. All she had left was nausea and a madcap assortment of thoughts, the most vivid of which was the scene in the hospital vending room.

  She could still feel the sting of Tyrene’s hand on her cheek.

  Dandre was the first person at the hospital the next morning. The doctor told him that Reesy was ready to be released.

  “I don’t want him to be the one to take me home,” Reesy said when the nurse came in and told her she was being checked out.

  “It’s okay,” said Misty, rushing into the room, out of breath.

  “I’m here. As soon as you’re ready, you’re leaving with me.”

  After the Morning After

  “I think we should stay. Who’s going to take care of you until you get better?”

  “I’m here, Mrs. Snowden,” Misty said, staring into her cup of tea. “I’ll stay with her as long as she needs me.”

  Tyrene didn’t respond.

  The four of them—Tyrone, Tyrene, Reesy, and Misty—were together in the living room of Reesy’s Harlem apartment. The wedding party had all dispersed to their various domains. Rick was back at home in Greenwich, Connecticut, and Hill and Alyssa were headed back to D.C. Dandre was at his place, just a phone call away, hoping, praying, that he’d be summoned.

  Even though Reesy had been spending most of the past few months at his Upper West Side brownstone, she hadn’t give up her Harlem walk-up. She was relieved now that she’d had the instinct not to.

  “I’m better now,” said Reesy. “It was just a fall.”

  She was stretched out on the sofa with her head resting in her father’s lap. He’d been hovering over her since she got home. She’d never seen him so protective.

  “The doctor said that, other than me losing the baby”—she felt Tyrone’s thigh flinch beneath her—“I’m perfectly fine. I’m just tired, but that’s because of all the chaos from planning the ceremony.”

  She thought of the photos of Dandre and the two women and her throat felt thick. She reached for her tea on the coffee table, took a sip, and put it back.

  “Plus I was laid up in that hospital, being pumped full of antibiotics, so that drained me even more. But I’m in good shape. I take care of myself, so I don’t break too easily. Besides, they wouldn’t have let me out of the hospital if I wasn’t okay.”

  Tyrone stroked his daughter’s head. “Those hospitals don’t give a damn about people,” he said. “They let you out to make room for someone they can rape for more money. If something happens to you as a result of being released too soon, I’m going to sue them.”

  Reesy sat up and looked into her father’s face. It was riddled with panic and concern.

  “I’ll be okay, Tyrone,” touching his arm.

  The thought of what she’d gone through was too much for him. He wanted to take her back to Florida, but he knew that wouldn’t happen. Reesy was far too independent. His nerves were jittery. For once, the powerhouse caretaker was at sixes and sevens about how to fix things.

  “I’m going outside for a minute,” he said, getting up. “Is there a drugstore around here anywhere?”

  “There’s a Duane Reade on the corner,” Reesy said. “You feeling alright?”

  “Oh yeah,” he said with a forced smile. “I’m just fine, daughter. I figured I’d go get me a paper.”

  “There’s a bodega downstairs if you don’t want to go too far.”

  “No,” he said. “I think the cold air will do me some good. Don’t get much of this down in Fort Lauderdale, so I kind of appreciate it.” He took his coat from the arm of the couch and slipped it on. “When I was a boy in Chicago, I couldn’t stand the winter. The damn thing was like my archenemy. But this is nice.

  A little bit of cool is good for the soul. Helps you get your mind together. Put things in perspective.”

  The three women stared at him without a response. He seemed to be speaking more to himself than to them. The silence was palpable. Tyrone cleared his throat.

  “Any of you need anything?” he said, walking to the door.

  “Not me,” Misty said. “But don’t eat. I’m going to be cooking lunch in a little bit.”

  “I’m okay, Daddy,” said Reesy.

  Tyrone felt as though his heart would burst. She didn’t call him Daddy often. He could count on one hand the number of times he’d heard it come from her lips in her thirty-two years of existence. Even if she referred to Tyrene and him as Mom and Dad when she talked to her friends, she kept her formality in their presence. It was one of the last vestiges of her childhood rebelliousness.

  “You going to smoke?” asked Tyrene. “Because this is the worst possible time for you to—”

  He held up his big paw of a hand.

  “Please, Tyrene. Not now, okay? Could you let me have just one second of peace?”

  Reesy glanced at her father, then her mother. This exchange was something new. It had always been th
e two of them pitted against a common adversary. She’d never seen them be adversarial to each other.

  Tyrone was out the door.

  “When are you guys going back?” Reesy asked.

  “I don’t know,” Tyrene said. “I figured we’d stay here with you a few days and make sure everything’s okay. We can afford to leave the office for a while.”

  Reesy’s legs were stretched out long on the sofa. She wore cozy one-piece pink fleece pajamas with feet. Dandre had bought them for her a couple of months back. They would have taken her clear through at least the fifth month of pregnancy. She was still attached to the damn things. They were the warmest, most comfortable pajamas she had.

  “You don’t have to stay,” she said. “I’m really okay, right, Misty? Tell Tyrene that she and Tyrone can leave.”

  Misty was in the kitchen making a pot of chicken and dumplings. She was rolling out the dough on a floured sheet of wax paper. She looked up, right into Tyrene’s face.

  “You can leave,” she said, making her first real eye contact with Reesy’s mother since the pimp slap. “Rick and I will make sure she’s taken care of.”

  Tyrene’s lips quivered like she wanted to say something, but she knew it’d be best to tread light, given the circumstances.

  “Fine,” she said after a moment. “Since you want us out of here so bad, we’ll leave first thing in the morning. The office is probably a madhouse without us anyway.”

  “So you never told me what was wrong with you,” Reesy whispered.

  Tyrene was in the second bedroom taking a prelunch nap. Tyrone hadn’t returned yet. The words startled Misty. She dropped the spoon she’d been stirring with.

  “Are you crazy?” she asked Reesy, who was standing close behind her. Misty picked up the spoon and walked over to the sink to rinse it off. “What are you doing up? You should be laying down. Get out of here.”

  “I’m tired of laying down. That’s all I’ve done for the past twenty-some hours. Shit.” Reesy sat on one of the stools by the counter. “So what was up with you yesterday at the hospital?”

  “What?” Misty asked. “Other than the fact that my best friend’s wedding was turned upside down and she had a miscarriage? You don’t think that was enough to stress me the fuck out?”

  “Relax, Miss Divine, relax. Yesterday was crazy. But I’m not talking about just that.”

  “Then what are you talking about?” Misty said, turning back to the stove.

  “Your cheek was all flushed, like you’d been slapped.”

  Misty dropped the spoon again.

  “Aaaah,” Reesy said. “So you thought I didn’t notice that print on your cheek. So what happened? I already know it came from Tyrene.”

  Misty’s heart thumped. She didn’t want to have to tell Reesy about what she’d seen. Her stomach hadn’t been right since. It was gurgling and hissing even now.

  “My mother’s prone to slapping. Some people have an itchy trigger finger. Tyrene’s got an itchy trigger wrist.”

  “Emotions were high yesterday,” answered Misty, tossing the spoon in the sink. “I said something flip to her, she said something back to me. I was keyed up, she was keyed up. Everything’s straight now.”

  Reesy swung her legs about, staring at the pink material enclosing her feet.

  “Yeah. I could tell there was some kind of tension between y’all. Tyrone must have been in on it, because he seems like he’s ticked at her too.”

  “I don’t know anything about that.” Misty adjusted the temperature of the oven. “Stop swinging your legs like that before you do yourself more harm.”

  “It was about Dandre, wasn’t it?”

  “Wasn’t everything yesterday?” Misty lied, taking a stack of plates over to the dining room table. “Get out,” she said when she returned. “Get back on that couch and rest yourself.”

  “I’m getting out,” Reesy said with a laugh.

  She trudged off into the living room and eased back onto the sofa. She listened to the sounds of Misty cooking. The house was filled with the warm, wonderful scent of comfort food. Light from the window hit the diamond on her left hand. It glimmered. Reesy lifted her feet up onto the cushions and lay her head down.

  “He’s the first person who ever made me believe in love,” she said, gazing at the ring. “I felt like I could do anything with him next to me. I can’t believe it all turned out to be a fucking fraud.”

  Misty stood motionless at the stove.

  “This is my karma, isn’t it?” said Reesy. “This is my punishment for doing what I did to hurt him. That whole thing with Helmut is going to haunt me forever.”

  Helmut Wagner was a German financier who had wanted to take the play she was starring in, Black Barry’s Pie, from off-Broadway to the big time. He was also very attracted to Reesy. She didn’t find anything about him attractive, but she had found his interest in her fascinating. She’d never been with a white man, and when she got drunk one night while out with him, the unexpected happened. It was just sex, she had reasoned, but then it happened again.

  She was dating Dandre at the time, and he was very much in love. He’d given her a car, a key to his place, and the key to his heart. It was a first for him, but for her it was all about revenge—a way to pay him back for getting her fired from her corporate job. The plan was to get him to fall for her, then dump him without ceremony.

  But Dandre causing her to lose her job had been an accident. So was the fact that she found herself falling for him. Once Dandre had discovered what was up between her and Helmut, it was too late. By then she’d realized just how much she cared for Dandre, but it had taken everything to get him to open up to her again.

  “This isn’t your karma,” Misty said, coming into the living room and sitting beside her. “This is just life working itself out. You still love him. He loves you. None of that has changed.”

  “Everything’s changed.” Reesy was crying into the pillow.

  “How can I be with him now, after a fiasco like that? All those people looking at those pictures of him. That woman in black at the church. Who was she anyway?”

  Misty rubbed her friend’s back.

  “Does it really matter?”

  Reesy sniffled, her shoulders shaking.

  “I lost our baby. He made a fool out of me.”

  “That man loves you.”

  “It’s over,” she said.

  Reesy sobbed into the pillow, trying to smother the sound. Her motions were so intense, she seemed to be choking.

  “Oh honey,” said Misty. “It’s not, it’s not.” She kept rubbing Reesy’s back. “You two have weathered so much. This is just another obstacle. It ain’t over till it’s over.”

  Reesy looked up at her with a wet face, the sobs coming in a wave of hiccups.

  “This isn’t a song, Misty. This is real life. My life. He and I are finished. There’s nothing left. Me having a miscarriage was just the universe’s way of making sure we were totally disconnected.”

  “Don’t say that, Reesy. Neither you nor I know what God and the universe have in store for us. Don’t try to predict it on your own.”

  Reesy sat up. “I don’t need to,” she said. “What’s done is done.”

  Misty wrapped her arms around her friend.

  “Don’t speak so soon,” she said. “Hold off a few days. Just wait and see how you feel. Life is full of mystery. You don’t know what kind of plan is unfolding for you.”

  “Could you cancel my appointments for tomorrow?” Hill said into his cell. “I’m extending my trip an extra day.”

  He had dropped Alyssa off and was heading home. She hadn’t talked much on the return trip, which was a relief to him. He’d been too mired in thought to entertain any extraneous input.

  Hill needed some time to regroup and consider all that had transpired that weekend. He figured he’d stay home and get his head and emotions straight.

  He was worried about Dandre and his state of mind. His son had taken a b
low, and Hill knew he needed to be there for Dandre to help him get through it. But he kept flashing back to thoughts of the things he and Tyrene had done. He couldn’t turn his mind off. It was rampant with images of wanton lust and bad behavior, and for that he was feeling ashamed. Not remorseful, just embarrassed.

  Hill had never been with a married woman before. He respected the sanctity of that institution and what his own marriage had meant to him. There’d always been such a bumper crop of available young women for him to pull from, so there’d never been any need for him to wade in marital waters. When Eileen was alive, the idea of her with another man was enough to make his knees buckle. Yet here he was, guilty of that very sacrilege himself.

  The fact that she was his son’s fiancée’s mother made an already complicated situation seem even more absurd.

  Tyrene, as it turned out, was a dynamo, with the stamina of a twenty-year-old. She had shifted his entire frame of reference. His feminine paradigm was forever changed.

  Older women weren’t sexy. They were problematic, dried-out sacs of skin that required constant support from the likes of K-Y and poor lighting. At least, that’s what they were supposed to be.

  Not Tyrene Snowden. Nothing about her was dried out, from her firm, supple, resilient flesh to what he’d found to be the most irresistible zone—her lush, shaven loins. He’d wanted to lose himself in her valley of darkness, and told her so again and again as he sank into it. He replaced his old name for her—bitch—with a new one that night: the Liquidator. Not only was she a gusher, but she had drained him dry.

  After she’d left, he lay in bed thinking of her, touching himself. It’d burned him to know she was just a few floors above him, inaccessible, cozied up with her colossus of a husband. Hill didn’t sleep that night. Before dawn had a chance to break, he had gone up, roused Alyssa from her postsexual stupor, and checked them out of the hotel.

  He couldn’t bear the thought of seeing Tyrene with Tyrone, so he’d abandoned ship as quick as he could. He was back in Washington before Tyrene was even awake.