Playing Hard To Get Page 7

  Charleston’s eyes narrowed on his friend. Nathaniel knew better than to do that. It was against every man code they’d ever learned. Even mentioning the idea of marriage to another man’s woman was grounds for dismissal. But Charleston knew what his old friend was up to. It was simple. If Nathaniel was going to take the chain and walk into the boneyard, he didn’t want to do it alone. He wanted to take Charleston with him.

  “Married? You know I don’t believe in that. It just doesn’t work today. It can’t…I mean, not for me,” Charleston said to burn Nathaniel’s bridge. Really, he knew it was coming. He’d been a player for a long time, but it couldn’t last much longer or he would risk being labeled gay or gauche.

  “Ah, you know what they say—a man isn’t taken seriously until he’s married,” Nathaniel said. “You have to do it to stay on the right side of that staircase. Or people will start to question you.” He held out his hand all limp to imitate a stereotypical gay gesture.

  “Please. No one will question my manhood. If they even think they should, they need only ask their wives how I’m rolling.” Charleston gave a stiff punch toward the center of the table and he and Nathaniel laughed.

  “Really?” Tamia asked, surprised at his brashness.

  “Oh, don’t get all serious,” Charleston said. “We’re just playing around.”

  “What about you, Tamia,” Ava started, “do you want to get married?”

  The question stung like a hot comb at the nape of Tamia’s neck. While Ava wasn’t her girlfriend, she had to know that in addition to the man law about questions concerning marriage, no woman should ever ask another woman how she feels about marriage in front of the man she’s dating. It could and would only cause conflict. Because no matter how he felt about the topic, he’d immediately think the woman was a tramp if she said she didn’t believe in marriage or was trying to manipulate him down the aisle if she said yes. Tamia couldn’t win.

  “Well…I…uh.” She looked at her wineglass and then the champagne glass. Both were empty, so she couldn’t take a sip and use the time to think. “I do want to get married,” she said finally and immediately felt Charleston tense up beside her, “but not right now.” She played both sides—law school was paying off.

  Charleston’s exhale was audible. His body seemed to melt in relief at the clause. He even put his arm around Tamia in approval. And while this was supposed to give her comfort, really she looked at the arm like the alien shelter it was. It meant so many things she hadn’t wanted to think about. To consider.

  Ten minutes later, Charleston’s arm was still around Tamia as they rode up Sixth Avenue in the back of the Bentley. Charleston had been talking about Nathaniel and Ava since they’d gotten in the car, but Tamia was doing little more than nodding and agreeing. She was still thinking about the conversation in the restaurant. Charleston didn’t want to get married. Not ever. Charleston was happy and he didn’t want to get married. Not ever. It was becoming a poem.

  “I’m doing that Negro’s prenup,” Charleston said. “It’s gonna be airtight—like a virgin’s legs in a fat man’s bed. She won’t get a dime.”

  “Why can’t you just be happy for them?” Tamia asked.

  “I am happy my man is getting married. One less hand in the pie. I’m very happy. And I’ll be even happier when I finish writing that prenup.”

  “Oh, Lord.” Tamia moved away from Charleston.

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “I’m just like, how could you talk about ending a marriage that hasn’t even started? They’re in love. That’s what’s important. Not when and if they split up—and who’s to say that will even happen?” Tamia knew she sounded ridiculous (a betting woman would give Nathaniel and Ava three years tops—five if she had a baby once she realized he was cheating), but something in her needed to hear and believe what she was saying. Sometimes it seemed like everyone she knew who was getting married seemed more concerned about the end than the beginning.

  “What is this? Are you still upset about that case?”

  “The case?” Tamia looked at him. “No, it’s not about the case. It’s just…I didn’t know you didn’t believe in marriage. That you didn’t want to get married.”

  “I was trying to get Nathaniel off of me. Of course I believe in marriage.” Charleston’s cell phone vibrated and he took it out and dismissed the call before texting a message. “I just don’t see it for myself. Especially not right now. I have a lot going on. I would think you would understand that. We’re in the same position.”

  “Yeah, I think that’s something I should’ve known. That you should’ve told me.” She kept thinking about all those foolish women who sat around for years with the man who was never going to pop the question.

  “Look, if it makes you feel any better, Tamia, I’m not going to say that I’m never going to get married. I’m just not getting married right now.”

  “Hmph.” Tamia shrugged her shoulders. She wasn’t sure what kind of response she was supposed to give to this revelation. Really, Charleston was saying nothing new that he hadn’t already said at the table. He was just saying it in a different way to a different audience. He was speaking to his jury. It was an old trick she’d learned in law school.

  The phone was vibrating again when the car pulled around the drive at Trump Towers. There was another dismissal and text message.

  When Curtis opened Tamia’s door, she thought she felt Charleston moving along out of the car behind her, but he only pulled her arm and kissed her on the cheek.

  “What’s that for?” she asked, confused.

  “I’m not coming up.” His phone was in his hand and he was typing another message. “I have to go back to the office. Looks like it’s going to be a late night.”

  “But it’s already after nine and we’re both a little tipsy,” Tamia tried. “You should just come up.”

  “What’s all this from a woman who needed her space just hours ago?” Charleston chuckled. “Look, just do your thing and I’ll see you in the ’morrows. Okay? I’ll send the car in the morning.”

  The “okay” was more of a send-off than a question. It neither needed nor required conversation. Charleston just kissed Tamia on the cheek again and she got up and out of the car and within seconds the luxurious tank was merging into the yellow ribbon of taxi cabs in front of the building.

  Tamia stood there, icy. Her mind was a Dumpster and everything from the car, the dinner, the job was being tossed around in it like month-old Chinese food. Something was rotten and the smell was growing stronger by the second.

  “Shall we call the elevator for you, Ms. Dinkins?” Bancroft questioned, standing beside her in his night coat and hat.

  “Yes—no,” Tamia answered. “Let’s try a cab. I need to go by my office.”

  

  “So?” Tasha posed. She was sitting beside Tamia at the 3Ts’ latest New York find, Azya. A swanky bar that specialized in fine wine and decadent chocolate, it was a depressed woman’s dream. The only thing missing was an ice cream station and male strippers.

  “So, he wasn’t there,” Tamia revealed. “I waited at the office for an hour. He never came. He lied.”

  “So, he lied. All men lie. You know that.” Tasha forged a diabolical laugh but really her mind wasn’t on Tamia’s lying man, but rather the man she’d left lying in bed to come meet Tamia.

  “I guess you’re right.” Tamia sighed. In addition to the wine she’d had earlier at the Blue Note, she was sipping on her third glass of Malbec. It was dark, peppery, complicated, all of the things she’d felt when she’d gone back to the office to see if Charleston was really returning to do work, as he’d said. “I don’t know why he would lie to me…about something so small. He could’ve just kicked me out of the car and left. That would’ve been fine.”

  “Whatever, Tamia. You can cash that bad check at someone else’s bank, because I know you better than that,” Tasha teased. “There’s no way that man would’ve gotten you out of that ca
r without either hurting your feelings or getting his own feelings hurt. Two reasons men lie—to avoid tears or an argument.”

  As an unsteady Tamia considered this, Tasha looked over at a svelte twenty-something strawberry blonde, dressed in an all-black bodysuit, who was being hit on by a man who had to be twice her age and half as attractive. While the woman seemed disinterested at first, the man whispered something in her ear that made her perk up and giggle girlishly. The man stepped in and leered at her knowingly, like a baby pig he was about to dissect. He’d gotten in. Just that fast.

  “Anyway, the real problem isn’t that he lied or what he was lying about. It’s what made you carry your drunk ass over to your office to spy on him,” Tasha said, still watching the new couple as the man leaned his wineglass to the woman’s lips so she could have a sip. “Weren’t you the one saying you wanted space? What happened to you giving him space anyway?”

  “I know. I know. And I do want space. I did want space.”

  “So why the sudden change? How do you go from wanting space one minute to stalking the office at nine o’clock at night and dragging me out of my bed at ten?”

  “I know, girl, and thanks for coming,” Tamia said. Her voice was so heavy it seemed to draw her head toward the bar top. “You didn’t have to drive an hour out here, but you did it for your girl!”

  “No biggie. I couldn’t leave my girl hanging. You sounded like you were on your way to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge and I knew Troy couldn’t get out of her prayer closet long enough to save you,” Tasha said dutifully. “There wasn’t a whole bunch going on at the house anyway…nothing really.”

  “You know what he said at dinner? He said he doesn’t want to get married. That he doesn’t even believe in it. What in the hell is that?” Tamia wasn’t looking at Tasha. Her mind was somewhere in space, churning around in her disbelief. In the cab on the way to the office, she’d kept thinking about Ava and how snuggly and happy she seemed.

  “So, you hardly like Charleston. Why do you even care?”

  The numbing mix of French techno and hip-hop was replaced by a disco track, and the man and woman began to sway side to side together, just a few beats slower than the song. The woman’s torso snaked into his. He slid his hand around her neck forcefully. In a second her neck went from pale to pink.

  “Damn!” Tasha purred, feeling tingles at the back of her own neck.

  “I know! Damn!” Ignorant to the tango beside them at the bar, Tamia thought Tasha was talking to her. “I don’t know what happened. I do like Charleston. He’s all right. He can be demanding. He’s definitely a snob. But he’s also sophisticated and successful. He has everything a woman could want.”

  “Yeah, but is that the everything this woman wants?” Turned on a bit, Tasha was swaying back and forth with the couple. Tamia felt her motion and she was swaying too.

  “I’m thirty-two!” Tamia hollered suddenly, snapping herself and Tasha out of the bop. Tasha looked at her. “I know I shouldn’t think about it like this, but I’m thirty-two. And I’m not married, you know?”

  Tasha was silent.

  “No, you don’t. You’re married. You’ve been, like, married forever, so you don’t understand what it’s like….”

  “What what’s like?”

  “This! This!” Tamia held her open hands out over the bar like a map of her life was on her palms. “My life. I try so hard not to care. Not to think about it. Just to focus on my career. On my goals. And I’m almost there. Almost where I want to be. But I’m getting old and I guess I just don’t want to lose track and wake up one day at forty and be successful…and single.” She paused and looked at Tasha. “What if all the good men are already gone by then? What if they’re already gone now?”

  “So, you thought Charleston was that good man?” Tasha rolled her eyes. Charleston was no devil, but he was no angel. She’d seen him in the box at most of the Knicks games before he and Tamia started dating. Models and video vixens climbed all over him like ants on a picnic blanket dipped in sugar water. They laughed easily at his corny jokes, happily lit his cigars, and squealed pleasantly when he tapped them on their bulbous backsides to show his appreciation. Usually this kind of treatment was reserved for visiting players and owners, but the inquiring gold diggers had long ago appraised his worth. They knew what he was, and he knew what they wanted. The champagne flutes remained filled and Tasha never once saw him walk out of the box, not even to the bathroom, alone.

  “No, Charleston is who he is,” Tamia said. “And I know there’s a barrel of women waiting for me to kick the bucket so they can be with him.”

  “You got that right.”

  “But I know he loves me. And I guess I was thinking in the back of my mind that maybe once I got to where I wanted to be and he was ready, we’d get married. But hearing that he doesn’t even want that!—I just feel like maybe I’ve been wasting my time.”

  “Ms. Lovebird, stop being your neurotic self. You think too much,” Tasha said, using the 3T name Tamia was given in college. “You haven’t wasted your time. The fool hooked you up with that spot at the Towers and the sex is good.” She looked at Tamia for approval on her last point.

  “Yeah.” Tamia nodded, noticing that her wine was wearing off. “It’s good.”

  “Right. So, beggars can’t be choosers. If that was the case we’d all be happy at home.” Tasha sighed. “Just get what you got and keep it moving.”

  “That’s the whole thing,” Tamia said. “There aren’t a whole bunch of black, single millionaires running around Manhattan, if you haven’t noticed. Not any that want to get married.”

  “Good point.”

  “What?” Tamia frowned. “You’re not supposed to agree with me. You’re supposed to be cheering me up!”

  “I’m just saying, beyond the ball players, businessmen, bad rappers, and trust-fund babies, all of which I already know, you’re left with gay dudes, grandpas, and guilty divorcés.”

  Tamia didn’t know if she should nod or shake her head in agreement, so she just sat there, feeling the weight of her friend’s words.

  “The worst thing,” Tamia said, remembering the heavy jewel hanging from Ava’s finger, “is that the ones that are getting married are looking for models and girls that are half their age. How am I supposed to compete with that? And work on my career? Doesn’t that count for something? Why can’t a man who wants to get married just look for something sturdy and dependable and sweet?”

  “Because they call those women grandmothers.” Tasha looked toward the end of the bar again to see that the couple was gone now and only the man’s empty wineglass remained on the bar. She chucked a piece of chocolate into her mouth, considering what they must be doing wherever they’d gone.

  “So, what’s up with you? How were you able to get out of Jersey so late at—”

  “Troy?” Tasha happily cut Tamia off. She’d always been the kind of friend who preferred hearing rather than sharing dish. And she’d just seen a woman who looked like Troy walking toward the front door, only she thought it couldn’t be her, because they weren’t at a church and the woman wasn’t carrying a pail of holy water.

  “Troy?” Tamia repeated when the woman walked inside and they both saw that it was indeed her.

  Before Troy could get out her prayer shawl, prayer list, prayer oil, and prayer handbook to head to her prayer closet to loosen the grip of the day’s sins, a determined Kyle had been standing in the doorway of their bedroom holding her shoes, purse, and cell phone. He’d seen Tamia’s frantic text inviting his wife into the city for a drink, and while it just might have been the first time in the history of all of mankind that a husband insisted that his wife get out of the house and have some fun, there he was, shuffling Troy and all of her reasons not to meet her girls to the front door. “It sounds pretty serious. They need you,” he was saying as he stuffed Troy into a cab, but really he was thinking that she (and, in a way, he) needed them. Maybe Troy would come back tipsy and forget her Bib
le at the door. Maybe. He’d be sure to shower and get out his coconut body oil…just in case.

  “Well, for someone who didn’t expect to come out, your ass sure looks fabsie,”10 Tasha said after Troy told the other Ts of her forced departure. “Is that a Tory Burch?”

  Tamia and Tasha looked hard at the navy blue silk blouse Troy was wearing. Every woman in the city had been admiring the whimsical peasant chemise for days as an ivory mannequin donned it in the window at the midtown Bloomingdale’s.

  Troy nodded sheepishly and thanked the bartender for her glass of Diet Coke but when she looked back at Tasha and Tamia, they were still studying the blouse.

  She started, “So, Tamia, what’s going—”

  “Now, that damn blouse is $795.” Tasha flicked one of the perfectly tailored sleeves.

  Tamia nodded.

  “So, it’s not a big deal. Just a T. Burch. We all gotta have it. Right?” Troy tried to chuckle the attention off, but she felt like their eyes were digging into her, asking questions and forcing answers in the way that only friends’ knowing eyes can. Kyle saw her clothes every day, but to him they were just articles of fabric. He had no clue as to the value or volume. But these two bystanders were runway connoisseurs. They studied fashion shows the way other humans watched football on Sunday afternoons.

  “Yeah, I gotta have it, and Tamia gotta have it, and even the old Troy I used to know had to have it.” Tasha paused and looked to Tamia for a cosign.

  “Sure did,” Tamia confirmed.

  “But not,” Tasha went on, “the newly saved and sanctified First Lady of First Baptist, Troy Helene Hall. I thought you were supposed to be on some kind of new Christian wife budget, cutting your parents’ money off and only living on what your husband could afford—Payless and Pay-what-nots. Now, I know he’s got a little bank, but Burch? Come on. And I know that Kors skirt anywhere. It’s a spring favo!”11

  Troy was trying so hard to come up with a lie to tell her friends, but while she could keep her secrets, which seemed to be tripling these days, from the rest of the world, she couldn’t keep anything from the women sitting beside her. The pressure she’d felt in her gut earlier in the day at the meeting was twisting itself in tight knots in her mind now. The pressure was big, was growing so strong, she knew she had to let it out. Troy closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and started letting those knots loosen.