Lover Man Read online

  “Ya’ll fucking each other?” Claude felt the room begin to spin. He stepped up to Pryor, who had leaped from the bed, and grabbed her roughly by the throat. “You’re a fucking lesbo?”

  Before he knew it, Megan had come from behind Pryor and punched him hard on the side of his head.

  Jake was at the door, barking and butting his head against the closed door like he’d gone mad.

  Claude grabbed his head and stumbled sideways—that’s when Megan hit him again, this time two quick assaults to his midsection and then the knock-out punch, a sharp uppercut to his chin.

  When Claude came to, Pryor, Jake and Megan were gone. She’d taken most of her wardrobe, but had left the BMW and the jewelry he’d bought her over the years. And there was a note:

  Claude,

  Sorry you had to find out this way.

  Pryor

  Claude eased himself down onto the edge of the king-size bed and stared at the note. After a long moment he began to laugh. He shook his finger first at the note and then at the heavens.

  It was at that moment that Claude realized he was getting a spiritual whoop-ass. His life was slowly unraveling. It made perfect sense; he’d become greedy and sloppy in his affairs. This was all bound to happen.

  Claude rose from the bed and started down the corridor toward the front door. He would take a break. Maybe spend a month or two in one of his five beach homes around the world. All he needed was a little time to recoup, reevaluate and reenergize himself. He’d come back stronger, smarter and richer.

  Karma wasn’t going to have his balls for dinner, he thought as he walked out into the sunlit morning, not even for an appetizer.

  42

  Crystal rubbed the heels of her hands together Her stomach was queasy and she felt like she was going to keel over at any moment.

  It had been three days since she’d heard from Claude. That wasn’t like him. When he traveled he called at least twice a day to check up on them.

  She paced the house. Not sure exactly what it was she should do.

  All types of horrors passed through her mind. She’d been watching the news and hadn’t heard about any air disasters, but maybe he’d been killed in a car accident, maybe he’d been kidnapped!

  Crystal rushed to the front door and flung it wide open on its hinges and dashed across the street, barely missing getting hit by an oncoming Volkswagen bug.

  “Shelly!” she yelled as she pounded on the front door. “Shelly!”

  Shelly came out of the garage. “Crystal?”

  Babbling incoherently, Crystal rushed to her and grabbed hold of her wrist, frantically jerking her toward her house.

  Shelly jerked back. “What’s wrong, what’s happening?”

  Crystal was inconsolable and the only word Shelly was able to make out was “Claude.”

  “Something happened to Claude?”

  Crystal nodded her head and composed herself long enough to say, “I don’t know what to do.”

  Shelly followed her to the house and took a hesitant step over the door’s threshold. Crystal turned pleading eyes on her; Shelly took a deep breath and followed her inside.

  In the living room, they sat alongside each other, thighs pressed together as Shelly calmed Crystal down to a level where she could understand exactly what was upsetting her.

  Crystal brushed at her tears and explained to Shelly that she hadn’t heard from Claude in three days and she knew in her gut that something was terribly wrong, because this behavior was unlike him.

  Shelly listened intently.

  “If I report him missing, they’ll want a snapshot, but I don’t have one because …”

  And the flood of tears came on again.

  After Crystal had explained why it was she had no pictures of Claude, Shelly just stared at her.

  “Shelly?”

  Shelly let out a long, exasperated sigh. Claude had come a long way; his snow jobs had grown into full-scale blizzards.

  “Crystal,” Shelly began as she squeezed her knee, “don’t worry. I have a picture of him.”

  Crystal’s head snapped up.

  “What? How …”

  Shelly rose from the sofa. “I have an entire album of pictures of him. Albeit, they’re about eighteen years old, but he still looks pretty much the same,” she said as she started toward the door.

  “Call the police and I’ll tell you the whole story when I get back.”

  Crystal watched Shelly’s retreat in quiet amazement. “I must be dreaming,” she muttered, and then took hold of the fatty part of her arm and pinched, hard.

  The pain cut through her.

  Yep, she was awake.

  43

  Karma set her plate of sushi on the coffee table, reached for the remote and turned on the television.

  She was surfing through channels when her cell phone began to vibrate. She looked at the number; it was Geneva, again.

  “Get a fucking life,” she murmured, and flung the phone to the other end of the couch.

  Geneva had called her a total of six times since Monday. She’d left three messages, and with each message her tone became more and more severe.

  Karma thought about just calling her, waiting for her hello and then screaming, “Yes, I fucked your friend’s boyfriend!” and being done with the whole sordid mess.

  But she hadn’t summoned the nerve to do so yet.

  She had, however, broken down and called Claude. Karma had tossed “CJ” aside, now that she knew his full name.

  She felt like a fool every time she dialed his number, and couldn’t believe that the whiney, pleading, tearful messages she left on his voice mail were actually coming out of her mouth.

  It had slowly dawned on her that Mildred Johnson wasn’t dead at all; she was alive, well and pulsating right beneath her skin.

  Karma settled on the evening news, dropped the remote, and was about to reach for her chopsticks when a photograph of Claude flashed across her plasma screen.

  Karma sat transfixed; the chopsticks slipped from her hand and clattered down onto the table.

  “Girl, I just saw the news!” Geneva screamed from her duplex in Brooklyn. “What the hell is going on?”

  Crystal’s voice was hoarse.

  When Shelly came back with not one but two photo albums filled with pictures of her and Claude, Crystal almost fainted.

  Calmly, methodically, Shelly unraveled a very normal boy-meets-girl story that slowly transformed into a horror show.

  Crystal kept shaking her head no. But Shelly ripped a Polaroid picture from one of the albums and shoved it in her face. “It’s true!”

  There’d been yelling, screaming, fits of sobbing, and Crystal had even broken a few decorative figurines.

  By the time the police arrived, reality had hit her like a jack-hammer, numbing every molecule of her body, and Crystal, dazed and limp, slumped down onto the couch.

  “I know just as much as you do. Which is practically nothing,” Crystal whispered hoarsely into the phone to Geneva.

  44

  Have you seen this man?

  Millionaire businessman A. Claude Justine has been missing for three days. He was last seen leaving his home in Plain-field, New Jersey.

  Mr. Justine told his live-in girlfriend, Crystal Atkins, that he was going to attend a business conference in Chicago.

  Channel Seven news contacted the conference organizer and spokesperson, who advised us that no one by the name of Claude Justine ever registered for the conference.

  Foul play has not been ruled out. If you have any information on this man, please contact the Plainfield Police Department.

  More at 11 o’clock.

  Crystal opened the door and tried to read the faces of the two police officers who stood facing her.

  “Ma’am, can we come in, please?”

  Crystal almost screamed, “Do you have to come in to tell me he’s dead!”

  She stepped aside.

  Shelly was in the kitchen with Elvie pr
eparing dinner for the children.

  Shelly had promised that she would remain by Crystal’s side, no matter how long it took to locate Claude.

  “Please sit down,” Crystal said.

  The officers sat. They looked almost identical; both had close-cropped blond hair and bright blue eyes. The shorter of the two peeled open the manila envelope he carried and pulled out six photographs.

  “Do you know any of these women?” he asked as he handed the photos over to Crystal.

  Crystal flipped through the photos. She noted that they were all beautiful. “No,” she said, and handed the photos back to the officer. “What do these women have to do with Claude?”

  The officers exchanged a cautious glance. “Well,” the other officer started, “these women all claim to be Claude Justine’s wives.”

  “What?” Shelly screeched from the corner of the room.

  Crystal’s eyes popped. “All of them?”

  “Yes, ma’am, every single last one,” he stated emphatically. “They live all around the country. One in New Hampshire, another in Los Angeles, and—”

  Crystal pushed her fist into her mouth and raised her free hand. She just couldn’t hear any more. How could this nightmare get any worse?

  45

  Karma didn’t go to work the next day or the day after that. She seriously doubted that she would ever return to Lieberman and Lieberman, or to the outside world for that matter.

  She lay in bed wondering what exactly was wrong with her. Whatever it was, men like Tony and Claude had the exceptional ability to see it and then take advantage of it.

  And even now as she tried to escape him, she couldn’t; his picture was everywhere, on the television, in the newspaper. God-dammit, he’d even made the back of the milk carton!

  Her girl was in trouble, so Geneva paid eighty dollars to a gypsy cabbie to drive her from Brooklyn to Plainfield.

  “You know you my girl!” she said when Crystal fell into her arms.

  • • •

  Was there no end to the humiliation?

  When Crystal was unable to provide any information, other than Claude’s physical attributes, the police officers used a battering ram on Claude’s office door.

  What they found was a computer devoid of its innards and a desk that was empty except for a blank envelope that contained one thin slip of paper.

  The officer read the letter, shook his head and then passed it on to his commander, who frowned before handing it to Crystal.

  Shelly and Geneva crowded around her.

  Crystal, if you’re reading this that means that you’re not obedient,

  nor are you trustworthy.

  Claude

  For a long time Crystal just stared at the words on the paper. Shelly and Geneva braced themselves for the hurricane of emotion that they were sure would come, but instead, Crystal let go a tiny yelp, more like a hiccup really. And then a string of giggles spilled from her and before any of them knew it, Crystal was clutching her side, roaring with laughter.

  All over the country the doors to Claude’s private home offices were being battered down and searched. The findings were always the same.

  • • •

  Claude’s wives were making the talk-show rounds Ellen, Oprah, The View.

  Their faces were splashed across hundreds of rag-mags around the world. Other women even began to come forward claiming to be wives of A. Claude Justine, and the list of baby mamas grew longer every day.

  The Claude Justine saga even overshadowed Britney Spears and her outlandish escapades and, as when any spoiled child realizes that the world has stopped paying them any mind, Britney finally pulled herself together and began acting like she had some goddamn sense.

  46

  Crystal refused to have any part of the media circus swirling around her.

  Television and radio producers called her day and night, attempting to lure her with promises of money and expensive gifts. When she couldn’t take it anymore, she packed up and high-tailed it to Brooklyn, hiding out at Geneva’s place until the media’s attention shifted elsewhere.

  Now they sat huddled on the couch, clutching their coffee cups and hushing one another as Matt Lauer of the Today show reappeared on the television screen.

  His guests this morning were Denise Justine and her daughter, Kayla.

  Matt leaned back into his chair and crossed his legs. “Before we went to commercial break, you were sharing with the world the life you had with the missing millionaire Claude Justine.”

  “I don’t call it a life, Matt; I refer to it as an ordeal.”

  Matt nodded his head thoughtfully.

  “Your story starts out very similar to the other women in Claude Justine’s life. You meet this wonderful man who wines and dines you, you fall in love, get married, have a baby, acquire the big house, luxury car and dog. For all intents and purposes you were living the American dream, until, of course, you discovered that you were bipolar.”

  Denise looked dead into the camera; the top lid of her right eye twitched continuously. “I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder a year after Claude had me committed.”

  Now it was Matt’s turn to look into the camera.

  “Claude Justine had Denise committed to a psychiatric hospital and assumed sole custody of their daughter, Kayla.” Matt used his pen to point at Kayla, who hadn’t taken her eyes off of the camera.

  Turning his focus back to Denise, he said, “And told Kayla and anybody who asked that you were … well, that you were dead.”

  “Yes, that’s right, Matt.”

  “How was it that you were able to regain custody of Kayla?”

  “Well, we do have televisions in the crazy house,” Denise said with a little laugh. It was a weak attempt at being humorous that failed miserably. “And when I saw that he was missing I knew that this was my chance to finally see my daughter again—”

  “Now wait a minute, you had no idea where your daughter was. You didn’t know if Claude had kept her or given her away, am I right?”

  Denise nodded her head. “I spoke to my psychiatrist and he placed the call to the Plainfield Police Department and—”

  Matt hastily interrupted her, “And they in turn found out that your daughter was indeed living in Plainfield with yet another wife—”

  Denise raised her hand. “No, Matt, Crystal had not married Claude, they were just living together.”

  Matt looked closely at his notes.

  “Because Claude Justine is a high-profile businessman, the FBI became involved and quickly determined that it wasn’t a kidnapping, nor is Claude Justine dead.

  “And why is that?” Matt asked before laying one of his penetrating looks on Denise.

  “Because the mortgages on all the homes the other so-called wives lived in were paid off and the deeds hand-delivered to them.”

  “Claude would have had to order this, no?”

  Denise nodded.

  “But you were in a clinic. Do you have a house?”

  Denise shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “I’m currently fighting his attorney for possession of the Plainfield estate,” she said.

  Crystal laughed. “Estate?”

  “I’m also told that each wife received sizable deposits into their individual bank accounts. Did you receive any money?”

  Denise glowered at him. “Matt, I was locked up in a loony bin for three years, what need did I have for a bank account?” she snapped.

  “I’ll take that as a no,” Matt said, before turning his attention to the little girl.

  “Kayla, I’m sure you’re happy to have your mommy back in your life again, right?”

  Kayla nodded at the camera.

  “Do you miss your daddy?”

  Again Kayla nodded.

  “If he’s watching, is there anything you’d like to say to him?”

  For the first time since the interview began, Kayla tore her eyes from the camera and briefly looked at her mother. “It’s okay, baby,” Denise w
hispered.

  Kayla took a mighty gulp, looked dead into the blooming eye of the camera and said nothing.

  Geneva and Crystal shook their heads sadly. “All of this shit is really going to screw that child up,” Geneva said as she clicked the television off.

  “I think it already has,” Crystal sighed.

  Crystal still found it hard to believe that she had almost become a polygamist’s wife.

  “Girl, for being the most pragmatic of us all, you’ve certainly found yourself in some strange relationships,” Geneva commented one day.

  Crystal had nodded her head in agreement.

  Days later, a hundred grand magically appeared in her bank account. She knew it was from Claude and threatened to give it all away, to donate it to a charity, but Geneva popped her upside the head and asked if she’d lost all the sense God had given her. “You earned that money, girl!”

  For some reason Geneva’s words made her feel cheap. Like she’d been Claude’s personal call girl instead of wife-to-be. She’d loved him, still loved him, and sometimes she cried herself to sleep over him.

  Crystal didn’t want his money, she wanted an apology, or at the very least an explanation.

  Geneva always knew when Crystal was having one of those moments, and when she saw the sadness on her friend’s face, she’d wrap her thick arms around Crystal’s shoulders and say, “It’s going to be all right, girl. God don’t ever close a door without opening a window.”

  Crystal found a sunny two-bedroom apartment just blocks away from Geneva. Geneva was thrilled to pieces that Crystal had decided to remain in Brooklyn.

  One day as they sat Indian-style on the floor of the spacious living room looking at paint swatches, Crystal’s head suddenly popped up and she asked, “So you still haven’t heard from Karma?”

  “Nope, her cell phone is disconnected and her landlord said she just up and left one day. No forwarding address or anything. It’s like the girl just vanished into thin air.”

  47

  It was probably a stupid move on her part. But she had not been in her right mind at the time. Still feeling ashamed and hurt.