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  “Little Rudy and Theo,” Tamia said, laughing at Troy’s unconcealed dream of the perfect Cosby life she would have shared with the man who broke her heart.

  If Tasha was the ballsy 3T, Troy was the ball-less one. She was the spacey dreamer whose silliness was easily marked by the mass of natural curls that shook every time she laughed. While she’d discovered the falsehoods in much of the shady, superior social practices her grandmother had taught her, Troy still tended to measure people and situations based on a black-and-white ruler of class and order. Thus, when she met and fell in love with her father’s business partner and became a preacher’s wife, her role went from being a future Clare Huxtable to a present-day church lady—hat and gloves included.

  “Speaking of Rudy and Theo, when are you and Kyle going to start having children? Shouldn’t you be pregnant already?” Tasha asked. “Y’all have been married for two years. You can’t be using protection. Christians can’t do that.”

  “That’s just the Catholics,” Tamia explained. “And it’s not really practiced anymore.”

  “We’re waiting,” Troy managed nervously, imagining Kyle’s loose head rolling from her lap and into the sand.

  “Waiting for what?” Tamia asked.

  “Just time and things.” Troy exhaled and tried to ignore Kyle’s praying head.

  “Well, take all the time you want,” Tasha said, “because this is not a party. Mommy hasn’t been laid in two weeks.” She looked from Toni to Tiara and smiled patronizingly to hide any trace of meaning from the girls. Only Toni pushed her shovel into the sand and flicked a scoop at her mother’s feet.

  “Toni, no!” Tasha ordered the toddler. “Don’t you throw sand at Mommy. No!”

  Troy laughed and took the shovel from Toni, who was smiling.

  “Lord, I swear that girl is too smart for her own good,” Tasha said. “The terrible twos!”

  “Something tells me she’s going to have more than terrible twos,” Tamia added.

  “Don’t be mean to my little Toni.” Troy defended the little girl, kissing her on the cheek. “She’s a blessing and an angel. All of God’s children are angels—from the baby Jesus in the manger, all the way to baby Noah being left at the steps of the king.”

  “What?” Tasha said. “Noah had an ark. And don’t start talking all that crazy Christian stuff out here. You’ll make the white people nervous.”

  “Please, they need Jesus too,” Troy said passionately. “Everybody needs Jesus.”

  Tamia and Tasha traded looks on the bench. Ever since Troy and Kyle had gotten married, they’d noticed that it was hard for Troy to be in a conversation for more than ten minutes without professing her love for the Lord. It was comical at first, but now, two years later and confident that she wasn’t changing, it had become annoying. But once a T, always a T, and instead of trying to kick her out, they mostly ignored her.

  “Anywho,” Tasha raised her voice in an attempt to shift the conversation, “what’s up with you, lawyer girl? I’m surprised you could even come out here to see me. I thought you’d be somewhere in your office, having sex with your boss.”

  “He isn’t my boss,” Tamia said tensely. “Charleston works with an entirely different team. And there’s nothing new. Just us…same as always.” She rolled her eyes.

  “‘Just us’?” Tasha looked at Tamia sideways. “That man is worth eight figures. He’s one of the most sought-after brothers in the city. You can’t tell me you haven’t been on someone’s overnight trip to Paris in a private jet and reinvented some rules for the mile-high club.”

  “I’ve done all of that. That’s not the problem.”

  “What is it?” Tamia asked.

  “Well, between the trips and plans and sex, Charleston isn’t saying anything about us settling down—not a peep.”

  “Settling down is overrated,” Tasha whispered sinisterly and Troy nodded along, but Tamia shook her head.

  “You two can say that because you’re both married already.”

  “Please, do you even want to settle down with Charleston?” Tasha asked. “I haven’t heard you mention this before, and you just stopped seeing that white boy—what’s-his-face.”

  “Alex,” Troy confirmed.

  “I know…I mean, I don’t know,” Tamia tried. “Look, I do want to settle down. And Charleston is a great guy. We’re together and he’s in my space…drinking the milk and I’m too old to give it away for free. I feel like something should be happening. You know? Like I shouldn’t be standing still. He acts like all he has to do is just show up and be Lord of the Rings and that’s all. I can’t let him use me.”

  “Well, use him,” Tasha snapped. “Let that fucker pay your mortgage and fly you all around and keep it moving. What’s wrong with that? Have fun. Get your hair did…and please do something about those nails…scratching my baby.” She wearily looked at Tamia’s three-day-old manicure as they all laughed.

  “Tasha,” Tamia said, “I’m serious. I need to put some fire under him.”

  “Look, if you really want to get him thinking, get his testicles a little tighter, you need to do some love politricking.”6

  “What’s that?” Troy asked.

  “If you really feel like Charleston is only monopolizing your time and not investing, you’ve got to find a way to control the situation before it controls you and you lose him,” Tasha started, readjusting the black mink shawl she insisted on wearing to the playground, “which I cannot let you do, because I happen to know two women in this very neighborhood who are waiting for you to step down so they can step up. Charleston may not be a young Denzel, but he has old-Denzel money. And that makes him prime real estate for the thirty and up crowd. This type of man is as uncommon as good weaves.”

  Tamia and Troy nodded in agreement.

  “But what can I do?” Tamia asked. “How do I get control?”

  Tasha handed Troy a tissue to wipe Toni’s nose as she thought.

  “How long has it been?” Tasha asked.

  “Six months.”

  “Damn, this is worse than I thought…. You’re actually at the breaking point. After six months, a man his age gets lazy. He thinks he doesn’t have to invest and looks at you crazy if you insist. We need to move fast. Swift. You’re gonna have to back up. Get some space. Give some space.”

  “True, true, and very true. I’ll have to do that,” Tamia agreed, taking the hat Tiara had pulled from her head. She ran her hand over Tiara’s smooth, nude scalp and smiled.

  “Oh, please put that hat back on her head,” Troy insisted. “That poor baby doesn’t have a single curl. She’ll get H1N1 in three seconds.”

  They all laughed as Tiara wrestled with Tamia for the hat.

  “When is little mama’s hair coming in?” Tamia asked. “Toni had a head of hair by now.”

  “Please, I don’t know,” Tasha answered, rolling her eyes playfully. “I’m about to get her a little baby weave or something. Like a bang.”

  “You will not!” Troy said, nearly falling over in the sand with Toni, she was laughing so hard.

  “It’s cold out here. I can’t have my baby’s scalp all naked.” Tasha snatched the hat and put it on Tiara’s head. “Maybe I could get my hands on one of Aunty Mia’s tracks.”

  “Whatever!” Tamia snapped. “You put a hand on one of my tracks and I’ll put my hands on both you and Tiara!…And this is Indian hair too!” She flipped her hair over her shoulder as Tasha and Troy giggled. “It costs half of my mortgage.”

  2

  Perfection is easy to plan for, but impossible to achieve.

  A consummate planner, Tamia had yet to admit the latter part of this statement to herself or anyone else. She loved plans, lists, steps, details, earmarks, and fine points—objectives she could use to achieve any goal she set for herself. Sometimes those steps were easy, like vowing to beat Lydia Walker, the great-grandniece of Madame C.J. Walker, in a rowing competition when the girls attended camp together one summer at Cape Cod. And so
metimes those steps were difficult, like vying for the number-one spot in her law school class at NYU. Paradoxically, Tamia was usually successful in achieving her plan, but the results were often far from perfect. After Tamia won the rowing competition, Lydia, who was once one of her closest friends, never spoke to her again. And her drive to be ranked number one in her law school class led to an abuse of sleep deprivation drugs and a weeklong stay in a hospital. Big and small, these imperfections faded quickly into the back of Tamia’s memory as she placed out front the success of her planning. Sure, there were some bumps, but she always emerged victorious.

  On a more recent list of perfect plans, Tamia had made a few promises to herself.

  First, when she made it—when she graduated from law school, passed the bar exam, and was recruited by a top New York law firm, she’d never, ever set foot on a subway again.

  While, like most perfect plans, this was nearly impossible in a city as populated as New York, for Tamia, it was still worth the promise. To her, it was a matter of taste and principles. Tamia loved nice things. Clean things. Crisp Bloomingdale’s catalogs in the mail. A new Hermès scarf, folded and tucked into perfumed tissue paper. The opening hours at the Museum of Modern Art when the floors were freshly waxed and the halls were empty of echoes.

  To her, these things had promise and class. Beauty and elegance, all of the things she wanted and expected of herself—when she made it. Perfection.

  Now the subway, the aged underground railroad system that veined the city together, seemed the opposite of everything Tamia wanted in her perfect world. The onion man, who felt a need to keep his arm held high in the middle of the subway car, his hairy underarm exposed to everyone on a ride in the breezeless chamber. The toothless obese woman, begging for change to get something to eat. The wannabe rapper, who felt a need to rap louder than his already loud earphones. The near-dead snoring man leaning on her shoulder. The panty-free, transgender prostitute. Sudden stops. Dirty floors. Graffiti. Grit. Grime. Crime. Perfection—not.

  If Tamia worked hard, she rationalized, she shouldn’t have to be exposed to this cornucopia of bad scents and bad taste. Like the rest of her friends, who traipsed around the city in taxis and chauffeured town cars, she should be able to enjoy the life she’d worked so hard for. But unlike her friends, her hard work didn’t come with Manhattan or Hollywood inheritances. Her family had money. But not that kind of money, so she’d have to work a little bit harder. Which she, being Tamia, certainly did. And so far, the perfectly planned subway promise had been kept.

  However, on the third day of her new life far and away from her new beau, when she’d done little in the way of finding space from Charleston other than not accepting his calls, she realized that she had a problem. How was she going to get to work?

  In addition to her freed-up bank account, one of the other awesome luxuries she enjoyed as Charleston’s girlfriend was the chauffeured Bentley that waited at the front of her residence to whisk her (well, him) to work each morning. It was a beautiful treat that she loved to remind herself of when she was in the shower or curling her hair—“the car is waiting downstairs.” It sounded like something she deserved. Something better than the subway, which was what she could afford.

  But on day three…Charleston wasn’t in her other bathroom, meticulously coiffing himself as she meticulously inspected her clothing. So when the sweet thought of the car downstairs came to mind, she realized the separation wasn’t going to be as perfect as she’d planned. Her car was in a rented parking garage two blocks away and even if she bothered to take the walk to the garage, it would take her an hour to maneuver through traffic and she’d never find a parking space in midtown.

  “Shit,” she scoffed, knowing there was no way her new leather Prada heels would survive a minute in the packed rush hour subway. Her Tahari suit would be wrinkled and thus out of place at her afternoon team meeting.

  These complaints would sound ridiculous and spoiled to anyone else, but to Tamia it was a point of recognition, of realization. She’d busted her behind to get her things, to get to this place. She deserved better. She just needed a new plan.

  “Bancroft,” she said into the phone when the concierge downstairs answered her call.

  “Madame Dinkins, how may I be of service?”

  “I’ll need a taxi waiting. I’ll be down in ten minutes.” She counted two twenties in her purse and thought it would certainly be enough to get to the office.

  “A taxi?” Bancroft’s voice was as English and distinguished as his name.

  “Yes.”

  “But we assumed you’d be taking your customary mode of transportation,” he said with his voice lowered to a whisper. He always referred to himself in the manner of his entire staff, saying “we” instead of “I.” “Shall we tell your driver to leave?”

  “He’s down there?” Tamia ran to the window before she remembered her view was of the side street.

  “Present, Madame.”

  “Oh.” Tamia would’ve blushed had she not been so perturbed by the news.

  “Will you still be needing a taxi, Madame?”

  “No. Tell the driver I’ll be down in ten minutes.”

  

  It was one thing to ride to work in a chauffeured luxury automobile with her affluent boyfriend beside her, wheeling and dealing on his cell phone as the car cut through traffic. It was a big, brand-new kind of thing to ride in that kind of luxury car alone. Steamy latte in hand and seat belt free, Tamia sat like she was the Queen of Kings County. She flipped her hair over her shoulder and ordered the driver to lower and raise the windows so many times they both laughed at her indecision. And when it was all over and she was at the office, she thought to ask him to go around the block just one more time. And then she did.

  

  “Curtis says you enjoyed your ride to work,” Charleston said, walking into Tamia’s office. His navy blue suit was as impeccably tailored as his timing. A periwinkle shirt and tie picked up the shine in his platinum cuff links.

  Tamia was sitting at her desk, reading through a set of comments the lead counsel on a case she was working on had left on a briefing she’d approved. She’d just thought to send Charleston a text, thanking him for thinking of her that morning.

  “Charleston,” she said, looking up from the red ink everywhere. “I was just thinking about you.”

  “Moi? I’m surprised you remember who I am.”

  “Please.” She smiled. “Have a seat.”

  “Oh, I get a seat, too?” Charleston looked around as if he hadn’t been in there just days ago, making love to her during a late work session.

  “Don’t be so silly,” Tamia said.

  “You don’t return a brother’s calls for two days and I’m silly? I think most people call that observant.”

  “I’ve just been busy. I told you I need to get more serious about work and focus. You’ve been where I’m at. Why can’t you understand?”

  “I do understand. But I’m a man of action. I want what I want and right now I want you.”

  He leaned into the desk and looked down Tamia’s torso.

  “Do you ever take a day off?” Tamia laughed at his flirting. While his directness could turn to pushiness in seconds, it was Charleston’s fire that added to his attraction. He wasn’t shy about his desires and that only multiplied his power over people.

  “Look,” Tamia started, unconsciously stroking her earlobe, “I need to get back to this briefing before my meeting with the Lucas team. You know how Pelst can be.”

  Mrs. Phaedra Pelst was another partner at the firm. She headed most of the low-maintenance, high-profile civil rights cases. The six-foot blonde was known throughout the city for her bombshell beauty and killer courtroom antics. What wasn’t known was her uncontrollable craving for bedding bald black men—one of whom was Charleston, who’d stopped sleeping with her when she implied she might want to leave her non-bald and non-black husband for him.

  “Good old Phaedra
and her briefing notes. Let me have a look,” Charleston suggested. He’d yet to tell Tamia or anyone else about his bedroom business with Phaedra.

  “No,” Tamia insisted. “I can’t let you do that. Pelst is my problem and I have to deal with her all on my own.”

  “So you’re kicking me out?” Charleston winked and grinned at Tamia, changing the mood.

  “See, do I come to your office with all of this drama?”

  “Hell, no,” he said, getting up unflappably and straightening his tie. “You’d never get past my assistant.”

  Tamia playfully averted her eyes as he made his way to the door.

  “I’ll see you after work?” Charleston asked.

  “Yes,” Tamia agreed. “And thanks for thinking of me this morning.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I couldn’t leave you to your own devices in the big city. It’s a jungle out there, baby.”

  

  The Empire City, Gotham, the City that Never Sleeps, the Capital of the World, the City So Nice They Named It Twice…

  It didn’t matter what the rest of the world chose to call New York City. To the Virtuous Women of First Baptist it would always be known as the Big Apple. For these “serious sisters in Christ,” the moniker had nothing to do with its innocent 1920s African American origins in the Chicago Defender, and everything to do with its most obvious connections to the sinful temptations they were trying to escape outside the doors of their Harlem sanctuary. For, like Tamia, they too were trying to shore up perfection in this lifetime.

  And while the crossed legs and pursed lips around the table at the weekly Bible study would imply that their agreed avoidance of all things sinful in the city was to protect their own innocence, they’d all been there. They’d all done that. And most had their “I Love NY” T-shirts to prove it.