Playing Hard To Get Read online

  Charleston said Ava was a model, but Tamia thought she hadn’t even sounded that smart. Not a day over twenty-three, she mostly agreed with what Nathaniel had to say and laughed at his jokes before he’d reached the punch line.

  “I told that white boy he can keep my check. Shit, set them on fire if he wants,” Nathaniel went on.

  “Man, you’re just talking shit now, just like at school when we pledged K-A-Psi. You know you didn’t say that,” Charleston insisted. “And if you don’t want the $50 you’re gonna make selling iTunes to me and your mama, you can send it to me. I can use it to get a haircut.” Charleston rolled his hand over his head and shimmied dapperly.

  “How about I cut out the middleman and just send the check directly to your mama? Pay my child support,” Nathaniel jabbed and they all laughed. Unlike Charleston, he’d come from big money. His great-grandfather once sold insurance in Brooklyn, and when the business went belly up during the Depression, he spent his life savings on a dilapidated building in Greenwich Village. Only it was the ’30s then and everyone thought he was crazy. The Village wasn’t the big hot spot just yet. Drugs were everywhere and in just thirty years hippies would be sleeping in the streets. However, after fixing up and renting out units in the property for five decades, his son sold it and purchased another dilapidated building in midtown during the recession in the ’80s. The salesman said he would need at least $5 million to fix it up in order to make any profit from renting office space. Nathaniel’s grandfather spent $1 million and turned it into an indoor parking facility. Now Nathaniel’s father was selling the spots for $275K a piece. The family would keep 50 percent to stay in control.

  Tamia was adding up how much Nathaniel’s family was making off of all the spots when she felt the table vibrating beneath her right elbow. She looked down to see that Charleston’s phone was aglow and before he snatched it from the table and excused himself, she saw as clear as black lettering on a white sheet of paper the word “Phae.” Before it made any sense and registered in her head in a way that would make it possible to recall when she later realized that he’d stopped paying her mortgage, Charleston was gone from the table and Tamia was looking over her shoulder.

  As she listened to more about the CD and even more about Nathaniel’s pending fame, time seemed to be standing still and moving fast as hell at the same time. Forever, that’s how long it felt that Charleston had been away from the table. And Tamia was fighting hard with herself not to care when Ava came up with a thought of her own.

  “Where’s Charleston?” Ava asked. “He’s been gone for a long time.”

  Tamia took the last sip of the third glass of wine she’d ordered to escape tasting the leathery scotch and was about to get up to see what was taking Charleston so long when he suddenly reappeared and slid back into his seat. As poised as a politician, he put his hand on Tamia’s knee and kissed her on the cheek.

  “Sorry that took so long. It was the office,” he said in a way that left absolutely no space for Tamia to ever quiz him about what she’d seen on the phone.

  

  “Why am I in Harlem, Troy Helene?” Lucy asked.

  Troy stared at her grandmother from across the mahogany table in the center of her sitting room. She didn’t know why Lucy had ended up in Harlem, in her sitting room, in the Queen Anne armchair she’d purchased as a wedding gift. Ms. Pearl, Lucy’s blind, deaf, and toothless bichon frise, whose once puffy white coat was now a thin, dull silver, was being stroked on Lucy’s lap as she looked on with equal disgust at Troy. A two-time Westminster Best in Show, Lucy’d had the dog for as long as Troy had been alive and the two went everywhere together. Now there was a family joke that the next destination might be the pearly gates. Lucy had already purchased a plot beside hers for the dog; on the other side was Lucy’s dead, rich, white husband.

  Troy wanted to break the stare but had no clue as to how to answer the question. Lucy never came to Harlem—rarely crossed any of the bridges to leave Manhattan, for that matter—so even a visit to her granddaughter’s home had to come with great reason.

  “Brunch, Troy Helene. We were to have brunch at the Friars’ Club,” Lucy said sharply. As she stroked the dog, the dim light in the sitting room picked up all of the cuts in the seven-carat canary diamond she wore on her ring finger. Big and beautiful, the ring made Lucy’s hand look smaller than it already was, which was why she loved it so. Lucy was a frail woman, whose white skin was as fair as fresh farm milk. Up close, the blue veins on her wrists and hands could be seen. And while anyone sitting in that living room would swear she was white, Lucy’s mother and grandmother were each a shade darker than she—each, like Lucy, had married and had children with white men. The last in this line of tradition was Lucy’s only daughter, Mary Elizabeth—Troy’s mother—whose conception marked the end of Lucy’s passing. But years ago, it came out that the white man Troy knew as her grandfather all of her life was no kin to her. Mary Elizabeth’s father was a jazz musician. This revelation sent all three of the Smith women to therapy.

  “Oh, brunch,” Troy remembered, falling back on the couch. She saw Kyle standing in the hallway beside the chair where Lucy was sitting. He jokingly shook his hand at Troy and she sat back up. She was supposed to meet Lucy for brunch after her meeting with the Virtuous Women—well, it was really lunch, but Lucy hated that word, said it made her sound too middle American. “I totally forgot. My meeting ran over and then I…” Troy remembered that Kyle was standing in the hallway and thought it was best not to finish the rundown of where she’d been.

  “Water, son. Can you please get my Pearl some water?” Lucy said so softly it was clear she knew Kyle was standing on the other side of the wall beside her.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Kyle answered quickly, walking into the room and getting the dog before disappearing into the kitchen.

  “Good, they’ll be gone for a while,” Lucy said. “There’s no way Ms. Pearl will drink a teaspoon of water in this…this”—she looked around at what Troy had thought was a nicely decorated room like it was a jail cell before finishing—“this place.”

  “I’m sorry I forgot about brunch,” Troy went on. “I really wanted to go, but I had a bad day and just lost track of time, I guess.”

  “What happened?” Lucy got up from the Queen Anne and went to sit beside her granddaughter on the couch. The air in the room was interrupted by Chanel No. 5 as she moved.

  “Nothing…everything.” Troy tried to relax. Lucy’s haughty disposition really wasn’t as scary to Troy as it was to everyone else. For a long time in Troy’s life, this woman, with all of her flaws, had been her best friend, her only confidante, who took care of her as any crazy and loving grandmother would. “I don’t know, Lucy.”

  “I had Paul drive by that church, saw those women there,” Lucy said. Her voice was plump with controversy. A retired socialite who now witnessed a new kind of drama as she sat on philanthropic boards of anything popular in the city, Lucy knew how to seek and savor a matter in need of attention. “That…that Myrtle Glover character…she was looking quite sour.”

  “Oh, don’t mind Sister Glover. She just has her way. She always has.” Troy remembered the near lap dance Myrtle had given Kyle when she got the Holy Ghost the first time Troy visited the church.

  “A way?” Lucy repeated. “Isn’t that the one who put on like a madwoman before you and Kyle got married? The one who broke the vase during your wedding ceremony and wore red nail polish?” Here, shining like a star, was one of Lucy’s best qualities—no matter how small, she never forgot the dirty details.

  “Now, that was a mistake. She apologized. And, yes, she did have a thing for Kyle before I came into his life, but who wouldn’t? My husband is perfect.”

  “Ma cherie.” Lucy stroked Troy’s hair like she was a hopeless puppy. “No woman in the history of womankind has ever only had a thing for a man in the past. Either she has a thing for him or not. Women don’t get over good men. Too few of them to go around. I tried to t
ell your mother about that before she left your father…again,” she added, referring to Troy’s parents, who were in the middle of their second bitter divorce. Troy hadn’t seen either of them much since she’d gotten married. When they were together, they were alive and unhappy; when they were apart, they were near dead, but fair.

  “Sister Glover let go of the idea of getting with Kyle, Lucy,” Troy said confidently. “She’s a good Christian woman. She even taught me how to be a better Christian woman…a better Christian wife.” After Troy and Kyle had gotten engaged and Troy officially joined First Baptist, Myrtle volunteered to be her spiritual advisor and mentor in the church. Nervous about being attacked by other women for snagging the pastor, Troy thought it was the sweetest suggestion. While she’d been raised in the church, she wasn’t exactly of any church. For her, church was more of a social occasion where she got to meet the right people and sit in the right pews. It was more of a lesson in power and privilege than piety and prayer. Myrtle had changed all of that for her. Showed her the right way to Jesus. And Troy was grateful.

  As if she was reading her dippy granddaughter’s thoughts, Lucy puckered her brow and plucked Troy upside her forehead.

  “Ouch, Lucy!”

  “How is someone who isn’t a wife going to teach you to be a better wife?” Lucy asked. “Seems she has enough on her plate, trying to find what you have…unless she still wants what you have.”

  “Oh, Lucy.” Troy laughed like she hadn’t heard a word her grandmother said. “Look at you! You know God doesn’t tolerate a gossip.” She shook her finger as a warning.

  “He also doesn’t like fools.”

  “Who said anything about Sister Glover being a fool?”

  “I didn’t say anything about that woman. I don’t even know that woman. I can only speak about my own.”

  “Lucy, did you just imply that I’m a fool?”

  “I’m just saying, watch yourself, ma cherie. I know you think that because you’re in the church, you left the devil outside, but he knows how to open doors, too. I should know. You watch what those people are putting in your head, and you watch that woman.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Troy said as Kyle came back into the sitting room with Ms. Pearl in his arms. “See”—Troy got up and stood next to Kyle—“my man is right here.” She kissed Kyle on the cheek and he leaned into her.

  “The dog wouldn’t drink a thing,” Kyle admitted, handing Ms. Pearl back to Lucy.

  “I know, darling.”

  “You staying for dinner?” Kyle asked. “I made some pork chops…mashed potatoes.” He was the assigned cook of the house. Troy had tried, without success, to find her way in the kitchen after they’d gotten married, but mostly things had gotten burned.

  After Lucy turned down the chops and retrieved her purse, Troy insisted on walking her to the car. While Lucy was nosy and calculating, Troy felt like she was exhaling the entire time she was talking to the old woman with old ways. Troy complained that she doubted everything Lucy was saying, but what she was hiding from herself was that what Lucy said was what Troy actually felt.

  “There was another matter,” Lucy started as Paul opened her car door, “I hoped to chat about.”

  “What is it?” Troy asked.

  “Nothing big. Just that Mr. Hamilton expressed that he had to put more money into your account.”

  “Oh, Lucy, I—”

  “No matter.” Lucy grabbed Troy’s arm to stop her. “I don’t need you to explain. We don’t talk about money. It was just a matter of me signing off. See, after you got married, you said you didn’t want any more money put into your account, so I told Mr. Hamilton to leave just a bit of change in case of an emergency. Well, as the emergency money, which he said was $50K, ran out last month, he put in another amount, and now there’s only $5K left. You need some more?”

  “I—”

  “If you need money, just tell me. That’s what it’s for.” She handed Ms. Pearl to Paul. “That’s what all of my sacrificing was for. There’s no sense in you living…on a budget.”

  “There’s no budget. Kyle has money.” Troy was ashamed. Yes, Kyle had money, but her habit had gone past anything that he wouldn’t notice or would allow. And as his wife, she’d agreed to living within the means he could provide. She didn’t want Kyle to feel intimidated by her family’s money and as Myrtle insisted, she wanted him to feel like a man. “I don’t need any money, Lucy. You can tell Mr. Hamilton to stop the deposits.”

  “Are you sure, dear?”

  Troy kissed her grandmother on the cheek and helped her into the car.

  “I love you, Grandma,” she said.

  “Lucy,” the old woman said, full of dignity and humor. “The name is Lucy.”

  

  Someone had paid the bill. The only thing Tamia was sure of and glad about was that it hadn’t been her. And judging from the fact that Ava only seemed to have lip gloss and a mirror (which she reached for whenever Nathaniel looked away) in her sparkling Judith Leiber disco-ball clutch, it hadn’t been her either.

  “Well, frat, I have to be honest,” Nathaniel started, leaning into the table. “I didn’t just call you about the CD.” He reached for Ava’s hand and suddenly the girl felt little cold fish jumping around in her veins.

  While Tamia was still thinking about the name on Charleston’s phone and how long he’d been away from the table, she noticed how quickly Ava’s disposition changed. She was glowing like nothing from her past mattered that second.

  “What’s up?” Charleston asked.

  “I…Ava and I…we’re about to get married.”

  “What?!” Simultaneously, Tamia and Charleston’s attention went from how to ask about the phone call and how to avoid answering anything about it to Nathaniel and Ava, who were now entangled like a lopsided pretzel.

  “Yes.” Ava smiled big and clicked the disco-ball clutch open again.

  “Yeah, baby, you can show them the ring now,” Nathaniel advised. “Man, I made her take the thing off so we could surprise you. It was like taking a credit card away from my mother.”

  “Married?” Charleston asked, looking at his friend.

  From the gleaming, gem-covered sphere, Ava pulled the most perfect and precious emerald-cut diamond ring Tamia had ever seen. It was so big, so bright, Ava didn’t even have to push her hand across the table once she’d put it on. Tamia could see the entire thing. No need for questions. It was a Harry Winston. Baguettes on either side of the stone. A platinum band. Flawless on every surface. The kind of ring little girls dreamed of and big boys were proud to purchase. It said something about both of them.

  Ava was dancing in her seat, moving the ring from Tamia to Charleston and then back again.

  “Yeah, man,” Nathaniel said proudly. “I figured I’m a grown man—time for grown-up things.”

  “Guess so.” Charleston’s voice was stacked with trepidation for his friend’s decision and everyone at the table, except for Ava and the dancing fish in her veins, could hear it.

  While Tamia shared Charleston’s anxiety, her uneasiness came from a different perspective. Knowing everything she did about Nathaniel made the announcement more than predictable. He was rich, successful, and entitled, and all the men she knew like him, including her own father, married at a certain time in their lives and married certain kinds of women. Her father, like his father and most of the men in her family, married right after law school. He’d met her mother two weeks after getting news that he’d passed the bar exam. She was celebrating the same achievement, had a similar background, knew all of the same people, and came from a good family. They were engaged in less than a year.

  Tamia had seen this story repeated so many times that it seemed that if any woman with the same credentials as her mother stuck around longer than that, either she was a fool for waiting or he was a fool who was never getting married. Those kinds of men made fast, studied decisions based on high-society law and the necessity to remain a part of it. Now Ava
, who seemed to have nothing in common with Nathaniel and his upbringing, and knew nothing about any of the circles Charleston and Nathaniel chatted about over dinner, presented a different kind of woman, whom more of the men in Nathaniel’s position were now marrying. She was beautiful. Not just pretty. Not just lovely. Beautiful. Model beautiful. Who cares what she has to say beautiful. Having given up on competing with the women in their circles they now labeled “independent” like it was a curse, the men cared little about where these new breathtaking beauties were from or where they were going. They simply drew up prenuptial agreements and put a ring on it. He’d have an attractive wife, and thus attractive children, and by the time she’d gotten tired of his cheating or had an affair of her own, her looks would be fading and he would need a replacement anyway.

  Tamia hated to believe this circle of selfish, predictable decision making, but she knew it was more true than false. And while she knew that Nathaniel’s decision had nothing to do with her, she had to consider what it would mean for her in the future.

  More out of duty than desire, Charleston ordered the best bottle of champagne for his friend and his new fiancée. They toasted and, a true sport, Charleston gave a speech as if he’d been practicing it for years. Ava was in tears, smiling and shaking her head in awe at Charleston’s well wishes before she returned to her mirror for a lip-gloss retouch. This was everything she’d always wanted, and she had the face in the mirror to thank for it all. She was never going back to Memphis, not ever.

  “So, what about you guys?” Nathaniel asked, putting his arm around Ava like they’d been married for twenty years. “When are you two going to get married?”