Playing Hard To Get Read online

  Now this was something that even the most discerning eye couldn’t see. For 150 years, First Baptist had been the church home to uptown’s most distinguished and dignified stakeholders. While other members came and went, the inner circle was a small conglomerate of “I’s”—inheritors, investors, and insiders. Going all the way back before worshippers at Convent and Abyssinia, and even those blacks with more bourgeois aspirations who’d traveled downtown to find their God in the pews at the Methodist and Catholic churches, First Baptist’s original members were some of New York’s first Ivy League graduates, lawyers, doctors, stockbrokers, politicians, and big-business proprietors. Slick and savvy, they believed in and portrayed an image that was far from reproach and close to godliness.

  More than two centuries later, the Virtuous Women were a stagnant emblem of this persona. Only, like their predecessors, it was more pomp than particularly true.

  “I told Richard that no Christian man would ask his wife to do such a thing,” Sister Oliver went on. She was in the middle of a tearful testimony about her husband’s recent desire for oral pleasure.

  “No,” a chorus of condemnation surfaced around the table of twenty-three women.

  “It’s just not right. It’s not pure. That…thing shouldn’t be anywhere near my mouth!” She struck the table and fell back in her seat dramatically. The sisters on either side of her leaned in to provide comfort.

  “When did it start?” another sister asked after Sister Oliver gathered herself. Her voice held high a focus on disdain, but still there was a hint of sheer nosiness. “I mean, when did Deacon Oliver start asking you to…you know”—dagger eyes from around the table stopped her midsentence—“do that?”

  “It was last month,” Sister Oliver started. “He went away on his business trip to Jamaica and came back asking me to…do it. He tried to pull the car over on the highway on the way back from the airport. We were on the Long Island Expressway! I couldn’t do that! Not on the expressway!”

  While a solemn hush of shame eased about the room, across the table from Sister Oliver was one member whose snickering at the thought of the roadside romp could not be contained.

  Troy was trying so hard to focus. She held her hands on her Bible and bit the inside of her upper lip whenever her mind drifted away from Christian thought. But just as it had when she had gone to church with her Grandma Lucy as a child, this technique was failing her now. Her upper lip was already numb and the thought of Sister Oliver playing headmistress7 on the side of the expressway was…well…sinfully hilarious.

  The latest Sister Oliver was the second Mrs. Oliver to a sixty-year-old widower who’d spent more time enjoying his newfound sexual freedom than mourning his wife’s death before he settled on courting Mamie, the short and plump middle-age daughter of an older, well-respected deacon. Never married and ridiculously prudish, Mamie wasn’t exactly the best fit for Deacon Oliver, but she was the only single woman in the church in his age group who didn’t have children and grandchildren he’d have to worry about.

  Sister Oliver seemed to come to each meeting with some new complaint about Deacon Oliver’s bed acumen and at each meeting Troy was forced to shake her head and bite her upper lip until it bled.

  “I tried it for my husband once,” another sister started, “but it made my jaw hurt and I bit my tongue.”

  Troy’s snicker blossomed into a giggle that could be heard by her neighbor, the president of the Virtuous Women, Sister Myrtle Glover.

  “Now, now,” Myrtle said, rolling her eyes at Troy. “We won’t hear of that. We all know that such behaviors are hedonistic and we must protect our husbands from falling to these worldly desires. The penis is meant for two things—the toilet and the vagina during sex.” She looked at Troy. “And that’s it.”

  “I know, Sister Glover, and we’ve talked about this before, but it’s easier said than done,” one of the younger sisters comforting Sister Oliver declared. “How am I supposed to keep my husband from cheating on me, if I can’t even keep him happy in the bedroom?”

  “And what about us single sisters? What are we supposed to do?” asked Kiona, a younger member who’d, on account of her outspokenness, long been on Myrtle’s list of people to vote out of the organization. “I’m a proud Virtuous Woman and I know we don’t have sex before marriage or masturbate, but it’s hard. I have needs.”

  “Sisters in Christ, let us not confuse worldly desires with Christian needs,” Myrtle warned sternly. “These vile and deviant behaviors of which you speak are proof of the weakness of the flesh.”

  Everyone, including a salty-mouthed Troy, nodded in dreaded agreement. Troy looked at Myrtle and it seemed as if steam was billowing from her ears.

  “The Bible tells us that the flesh is lustful and if you live after it, you shall die!” Myrtle added.

  “That’s in the Word,” another sister said, opening Troy’s Bible to a verse in the Book of Romans and pointing to it for Troy.

  Troy nodded along and sank farther into her seat. She’d been struggling with all of these ideas, these rules of religious order and sainthood, since she’d accepted Kyle’s offer of love and realized that being with a leader of men of God also meant loving his church and living that life. More often than not, she’d failed, fallen super short of what the people around her said she needed to be to wear the First Lady crown. And what made it worse was that it seemed that no matter how she went about the thing, no matter what she did, she still couldn’t seem to get saved—to hear the voice of God in the way the other people in the congregation claimed she would when and if she’d been chosen. This distinction, while small in any other circle, and in a few other churches, was the ax splitting Troy from really being accepted in the church. Sadly, it allowed members to question the pastor’s choice in selecting an “unsaved” mate who wasn’t “equally yoked” in the Lord.

  “And if you should fall, my sisters, there are demons waiting to fall with you,” Myrtle went on.

  “The incubus and the succubus!” cried Sister Oliver. “Demons!”

  Troy’s ears perked up and her eyes widened. She’d been listening to Myrtle’s weekly warnings at each prayer meeting.

  “That’s right,” confirmed Myrtle, “the demons of sexual perversion that will come into your bed and have sex with you…and your spouse! Sisters in Christ, you’d better beware.”

  Something in Troy’s stomach twisted and gave way. She felt full and then ill, like something rotten was growing in her gut. She kept imagining Kyle standing naked, oiled and with the little silver ring around his penis. Had the demons been in her bedroom? Were they having sex with her and her husband? It sounded unreal, ridiculous, crazy to consider, but the women before her knew the Word, and one was sitting beside her thumping on pages of the Bible, confirming what they were saying was real.

  “I need to use the bathroom,” Troy said, jumping up from the table in the middle of Myrtle’s continuing tirade. She saw the woman roll her eyes exaggeratedly. She felt pressure pushing through her pelvis and leaning on her bladder.

  “But I was about to start the closing prayer,” Myrtle warned. Everyone looked at Troy expectantly. She couldn’t leave and miss the prayer.

  “Okay,” Troy said, squeezing her thighs tightly like a schoolgirl and getting back into her seat. She sat back and heard, at length, what remained of Myrtle’s speech about the incubus and the succubus. The prayer wouldn’t come for ten more minutes.

  

  The Virtuous Women of First Baptist weren’t the only residents of the Big Apple facing the presence of demons. Tamia was in the middle of a professional death match with a demon of her own.

  After Tamia sat in a team meeting for two hours and took more notes than anyone else—simply to prove that she was paying the most attention—Phaedra requested a private meeting in her office. Once Tamia made it inside and was instructed to close the door, she was informed that she was no longer a part of the team and was being reassigned.

  “But I’ve do
ne most of the work on the Lucas case. I’ve had the most contact with the client,” Tamia pleaded. She didn’t want to be moved. It was such a big case and it would look good on her list of achievements when she was up for partner in a few months.

  “So you’re saying it’s your case?” Phaedra asked, her voice pregnant with accusation. Her blond hair was blown straight and cut blunt above the shoulders. It was a conservative cut, yet her beauty made its hardness sexy. She wore a fitted black skirt suit that left little wiggle room, and no stockings.

  “No, you’re the lead,” Tamia said apologetically. “Look, I’m not trying to step on your toes here. It’s just a big case and I want in.”

  Tamia was correct. The Lucas case was the biggest civil rights case on the firm’s list. Frederick Lucas was a former porn star who’d been dropped from his agency when word of his erectile dysfunction had been leaked to the media. The agent claimed Lucas couldn’t do the work. Lucas claimed he simply needed better work conditions. It was one of those quirky cases that was sure to keep the firm’s name in the news and the client list growing.

  “Look, Dinkins, we just don’t need so many hands on this. A paralegal could handle some of the work you’re doing.”

  Yeah, that was an insult.

  “Is this about sharing the spotlight?”

  “Sharing?” Phaedra smiled pleasantly. “I don’t share anything. I’m a taker. You know that.” She winked. “Look, I’m giving you something with a little buzz. It’ll be enough to get you some notice.”

  She slid a blue folder from beneath her keyboard and handed it to Tamia.

  “Richard Holder,” Tamia read the name on the folder. “Who is he?” She opened the folder and fingered the pages. She wanted to put up more of a fight about the Lucas thing but knew it would only end in disaster if she made a big stink. Phaedra had the ears and eyes (literally) of the senior partners and Tamia was only the new black girl on the block.

  “He’s some kind of organizer in Harlem—a community leader. The police played bang-bang in his apartment one night, looking for a boy they suspected in a robbery case. Turns out the boy was an illegal from Nigeria. He was working with Holder.”

  “They killed him?”

  “No. No one died—hence the lack of news coverage.” Tamia almost heard Phaedra’s sigh. “And the boy was nowhere near the robbery.”

  “So, what’s the case?”

  “Well, Holder tried to get the cops fired, citing that they had no right to enter his home. And then, all of a sudden, the state is trying to slap him with this slave labor charge. He wasn’t paying the boy.”

  Phaedra went on to explain that Holder had a hearing coming up and that he needed a strong lead to prepare him.

  “This kind of man,” she kept saying, needed someone who could “understand him…work with him.” She then pointed out that he’d probably work better with someone who was more like him…someone “cultural.”

  “You are cultural?” Phaedra asked before standing to suggest the meeting was over. “Keep me posted,” she added before Tamia could answer.

  

  “That bitch,” Tamia growled in a way that scared her usually hardened assistant. Still holding the blue folder, Tamia was walking into her office.

  Seeing the red in her boss’s eyes, Naudia knew to follow Tamia into the office and close the door.

  “Pelst?” Naudia quizzed, looking at the foreign folder Tamia was holding. An aspiring lawyer who prided herself on her Brooklyn hustle and go-getter mentality, Naudia was the perfect fit for Tamia. She was eager and unflappable—what any assistant would need to be to keep up with Tamia’s ambitious work ethic.

  “Of course. She took me off the Lucas case and gave me this piece of crap…and it’s pro bono. A slop fest. That won’t get me any news.” Tamia handed Naudia the file.

  “What is it?”

  “My new burden,” Tamia said. “Hey, after you file that, set up a mani-pedi with Juan.”

  Tamia waved her hand to excuse Naudia from the office and picked up the phone to call Tasha. She wanted to vent and after-work drinks with the 3Ts was just what she needed to keep from completely losing her mind.

  “I’m sorry to hear she took you off the case,” Naudia said before exiting. “You worked really hard on it and Lucas was lucky to have someone like you on his team. He wasn’t just a big joke to you.”

  Even in her anger, Tamia heard the sincerity in her voice.

  “Thanks,” Tamia said, lowering the phone from her ear. “Look, forget about Juan…. Just start a new file and contact Holder to set up a meeting. I’ll need to see him as soon as possible.”

  “No problem, Counselor,” Naudia said brightly.

  Tamia was about to leave a message on Tasha’s voice mail when Naudia finally walked out.

  “Hey, girl!” Tamia heard a loud and familiar voice from just outside the door. “Your boss lady in there?”

  In poked the head of another demon Tamia dreaded. Only this one was that of a peer.

  “Hey, Tamia. You free?”

  “Yes, Jones,” Tamia answered wryly. “Come in.”

  

  Tasha couldn’t answer Tamia’s phone call because she was busy thinking about maybe holding one of her daughters in her arms. But they were getting so heavy now, even little Tiara, and she didn’t want to wrinkle the silk shirt she was wearing before Lionel had a chance to see how good she looked.

  She was standing in the lobby at Newark Airport, awaiting Lionel’s return from Miami. Around her stood an eager crowd of drivers holding pickup cards with secret names the players had selected, in-the-know fans, a few mistresses (whom she’d identified by their ridiculously long hair weaves), and some of the other wives of Knicks players who’d also made the move to New Jersey in search of suburban sprawl and a small chance of marital bliss.

  While Tasha had long separated herself from the drama and backbiting that provided the unstable backbone of the NBA wives’ club, she still knew many of the faces of these women and when she’d arrived at the airport had smiled sociably at them and chatted just long enough to hear the latest gossip.

  Naturally short tempered, she hated the fakeness associated with carrying on long conversations with women she considered less than associates, but knew that she had to know what they knew in order to remain an educated NBA wife. An uneducated NBA wife was sure to become a former NBA wife as an ambitious groupie with a ridiculous weave became a mistress with a more ridiculous weave, waiting for another woman’s husband at the airport. There was a long list of critical rules in surviving this hoop dream universe, and something as trivial as not knowing where and how to await the arrival of one’s husband at the airport could lead to a drawn-out and embarrassing demise.

  “Look at my girls!” Lionel was the picture of pride, his long, lanky frame crouched down before his family. He kissed a gurgling Tiara, pinched Toni’s cheek, and should’ve stood up to hug his wife, but instead he handed Tasha his shoulder bag and pulled Toni from the twin-seater stroller to play.

  To this, Tasha smiled pleasantly. The other husbands were doing the same thing as Lionel, and their wives were looking on adoringly as the men inspected the little ones for boo-boos and gave out kisses. There was no reason to vie for attention. No reason at all. But still, behind the most pleasant of smiles, Tasha was thinking, Do you not see me standing here? Look at my shirt. Hell, just look at me! She’d stuffed herself into Spanx so she could fit into Lionel’s favorite jeans, lifted up her sighing breasts and put them into an armorlike bra, and pushed the heavy stroller through the airport in a pair of red devils.8 Someone had better look at her!

  “You look nice, baby,” she heard Lionel say. She batted her eyes and looked at him to see that he was speaking to Toni. The little girl couldn’t talk yet, but intelligently responded to her daddy with the one word she’d been practicing: “Dada.”

  “You want me to drive?” Lionel asked when they’d finished walking to the car. Tasha was quiet. Her feet
were burning from pushing the stroller back across the lot as Lionel carried and played with Toni and she still held the shoulder bag. “What?” Oblivious to her condition, Lionel looked at Tasha’s screwed-up face. “Why are you so quiet?”

  Tasha was about to either spit or curse, but the pot of her anger wasn’t fully to a boil yet. While she was annoyed, she still had missed Lionel and a tiny part of her was just happy to be reunited with his scent, a masculine mix of woodsy shaving cream and spicy cologne that never left him but dissipated to nothing whenever he went away.

  Lionel stood there looking at her for a second and then put the girls into the car and got behind the steering wheel.

  Halfway to the house, he tried speaking again.

  “Why do you come meet me, if you know you don’t like it? I can get a driver like some of the other guys.”

  Request a driver? Like the other guys? None of those guys were happily married. Not one of them. Their wives were either too busy being too busy for their husbands or too angry being angry about their upcoming divorces. The good, happy wives were team players, pictures of perfection, the trophies the players retrieved happily upon their return home like soldiers back from war. They weren’t too busy or too angry, they were just there—at the airport, at the game, waiting with open arms, their cups running over.

  But no one had cared about Tasha’s open arms, and now her pot was boiling over.

  “You want to request a driver? Look, I came to the airport because I’m your damn wife, but it seems you forgot that, seeing as how you haven’t paid me any attention.” Tasha turned to look out the window. She was too angry to put on her seat belt. “You hand me your damn bag like I’m some kind of groupie…and then you have the nerve to—”

  “Jesus, this is exactly what I didn’t want to happen. When you said you were coming to get me, I knew—” Lionel stopped and looked at his sleeping daughters in the rearview mirror.

  “What? You knew what?”

  “That you’d get all touchy. You always do this when you come get me from the airport.”