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  “Just working hard. Nothing new, same old thing.”

  “Ah, you sure?”

  I looked at the phone. Neville was perceptive, but this was ridiculous.

  “Yes, of course. Why, did you have a dream about me or something?”

  “Gal, I’m always dreaming about you.”

  “Oh, Neville,” I gushed.

  “When are you coming back down to see me?”

  I wanted to say I’ll be right there, today, the last flight in. But I had to be realistic: my life, my real life, was right here in New York.

  “Oh, I hope I can get down there in the next few months or so. I just need for things at work to calm down.”

  Beep.

  The tone sounded, advising us that our call was about to come to an end.

  “Hey, Crystal, I only had a few dollars left on this phone card. I’ll give you a call again—”

  Your call has come to an end. Thank you for using Caribbean Way Phone Cards.

  I listened to the computerized voice, and then when it was done I listened to the dial tone.

  Geneva

  the apartment was clean. Spic and Span clean.

  Charlie was fast asleep in her bed, a bottle of champagne was chilling in the fridge, and Teddy Pendergrass was crooning from my boom box.

  Everything was perfect.

  Deeka and Eric were flying in tonight. Their plane was due to land at eight-fifteen, and it was just past nine. Deeka was coming straight here; Eric was shooting over to the apartment he shared with his girlfriend.

  Deeka and I would have all night to get reacquainted.

  I’d changed my lingerie six times, starting with a red teddy that had the crotch cut out and moving to an all-over ivory-colored piece that had the tits cut out. Then I’d changed my mind yet again and donned a scallop-laced emerald green number that showed all that God has blessed me with, but I didn’t think that Deeka could handle all those blessings on his first night back.

  So I finally decided on a simple white silk spaghetti-strapped nightie.

  At ten o’clock he still hadn’t arrived. I tried his cell phone, but it went straight to voice mail. Stretching out on the couch, I decided I would channel surf to pass the time.

  When I found my eyelids were beginning to droop from sleep, I sat up and turned on some bumping music—that would keep me awake—but after ten minutes of Mobb Deep, all I had was a headache.

  I would call Crystal. Yeah, that’s what I’d do, and we’d talk until Deeka got there. But when I dialed her number all I got was her answering machine.

  It was almost eleven o’clock at night. Where the hell was she?

  Shit, where was my man?

  …Were they together?

  When I opened my eyes the sun was up. The clock on the cable box told me it was just after seven in the morning. I’d spent the entire night on the couch…alone. Deeka had never shown up, and he hadn’t even called.

  I turned my head. Ah, just great, my neck was stiff! Slowly I eased myself erect and rolled my head on my neck—a lot of help that was. All it did was make the pain worse.

  “Good morning, sleepyhead.” The familiar voice came from across the room. I slowly turned my head to see Deeka seated in the old recliner, wrapped in the patchwork quilt I’d owned for ages.

  I blinked; surely my eyes were playing tricks on me.

  “Deeka?”

  “Yeah, ’Neva, it’s me.”

  Stiff neck forgotten, I was up and on him in a flash.

  “Oh, baby, I missed you so much, when did you get in, why didn’t you wake me…” I spoke a mile a minute while covering his face in kisses.

  “Slow down, babe, slow down.” Deeka laughed, pulling me into his lap. “I got here about four this morning, I tried to wake you, but you were out cold.”

  “Oh, baby, baby, I’m sorry. Why didn’t you go and get in the bed?”

  “I haven’t seen you in a month, babe, I just wanted to sit here and watch you sleep.”

  I blushed. Was this a man, or was this a man!

  He reached up and touched my hair. “You cut it,” he said.

  My heart seized up. He hated it.

  “I like it, baby. It really suits you.”

  Like I said, what a man!

  “You wanna go, um, lay down together?” Deeka’s tone dropped to a seductive level as he nodded toward the bedroom.

  I giggled but didn’t move.

  “C’mon,” he urged, his penis already growing hard beneath my thigh.

  We had to act quickly—I had a six-year-old that would be up in a few minutes!

  “What’s the hurry, Geneva?” Deeka cried as I ripped at his clothes like a wild woman. We needed to get naked, and fast.

  “Charlie,” I said, pulling my nightgown over my head.

  “Oh yeah,” Deeka said, and dove into the bed.

  Tossing the nightgown to the floor, I dove in beside him. We turned toward each other, our foreheads bumping loudly.

  “Ow!”

  “Sorry, baby.”

  “Me too.”

  We kissed, hungrily, and our hands moved over each other’s body, stroking, massaging, pulling.

  “I want to be on top,” I said breathlessly, already moving into position.

  “O-okay.”

  I dropped one breast into Deeka’s open mouth. He sucked happily on my nipple, while I twirled his nipples between my thumb and forefinger.

  I was propped up on his belly; I could feel his cock throbbing between my legs.

  “Put it in,” he begged. “Put it in now.”

  I eased up, grabbed his meat, and slipped it inside of me. It had been so long, I almost exploded on contact, but I controlled myself and grabbed hold of the headboard and began to ride.

  “I’m going to fuck the shit out of you!” I warned, as I bit down on my bottom lip.

  “Fuck me, baby, fuck me!” Deeka cried, his hands gripping my hips.

  The bed bucked wildly up and down with our frenzied rhythm. The headboard banged loudly against the wall and I felt the pleasure begin to swell in the pit of my stomach. Deeka’s eyes were tightly shut and his mouth hung open as if he were in the middle of a forgotten statement.

  The pleasure, hot and prickly, moved through my entire body, bringing me to the most fucking fantastic orgasm I’d ever had!

  “I’m ccccccccccooooooooooooommmmmmmmmmmmming!” I screamed as all my womanly juices exploded inside me and drained down onto Deeka’s dick.

  Deeka shuddered, his teeth clamping together as the muscles of his face strained beneath his skin.

  “Whoooooooooooooooh,” he breathed, after shooting his load. “Damn, baby, that shit was bananas.”

  I rolled off him and onto the bed. We were both soaking wet with perspiration.

  “Yeah, it was,” I said, still trying to catch my breath.

  “Mommy?” Charlie’s voice floated over to me from the doorway.

  Horrified, Deeka and I scrambled to cover ourselves with the sheet.

  “Hey, hey, baby—go on back to your room. Mommy’s coming,” I said, smiling and shooing her with my hand.

  Charlie rubbed one eye while she peered at us with the other and said, “Why did Deeka have his pee-pee in your kitty-cat, Mommy?”

  Noah

  it felt damn good being back home again!

  Brooklyn, New York, had a vibe that London just did not have.

  When the yellow cab came to a stop in front of my beautiful brownstone, I felt my heart leap in my chest.

  “What the hell?” I shouted. The front steps were littered with supermarket circulars, making my home sweet home look like an abandoned dwelling.

  Furious, I tossed a ten and a twenty at the driver, snatched my Louis Vuitton luggage from the trunk, and marched up the stone steps.

  I’d been nice enough to allow my friend—soon to be ex-friend—Chevy to live in my home while I cohabited with my partner in London. And as meager as the rent I charged her was, most of the time I had to
hunt her down for it.

  No telling how many times the light and telephone had been cut off since she’d been living here. Chevy had her priorities all fucked up.

  I set my luggage down in front of the mahogany double doors. I would pick up the circulars first and then head inside to see what damage had been done there.

  There had to be at least thirty circulars on my steps. I couldn’t believe Chevy had allowed them to pile up so!

  “Is that Noah!”

  I froze for a moment, wishing that I had left the step cleaning till later, because now I was going to have to answer the million and one questions my nosy neighbor was going to sling my way.

  I took a deep breath, put a smile on my face, and slowly turned around.

  “Yeah, it’s me, Sharon.”

  Sharon was a tall, lanky seventy-year-old woman who had lived on Stuyvesant Avenue her entire life. Literally. She was born in the brownstone she still lived in. She’d seen the neighborhood go from good to bad and back to good again.

  “Noah!” she screamed, rushing me and throwing her wiry arms around my neck. For being close to a century old, she sure was quick on her feet. “It’s so good to see you!”

  “You too.”

  “Let me help you with that, baby,” Sharon said as she reached for some of the circulars and started toward the garbage can that sat alongside the steps.

  “I just hate these things. They make such a mess of the block,” she slurred through her gums. Sharon had a habit of forgetting to put her partial plates in her mouth. Sometimes she’d remember to slip in the upper plate and not the lower one, or vice versa. Today she’d forgotten the lower partial, so her bottom lip had rolled in over the bare gum, making her look ten years older than she was.

  “So how you been?” she asked, folding her arms across her sagging breasts. She’d stopped wearing bras back in the sixties, when they were burning them.

  Now, I knew that she didn’t really care how I was doing but was just being polite to ask, and I started to answer because I knew that as soon as I got started she was just going to cut me off.

  “Well, I’m doing—”

  “That’s good—now let me tell you about this new family that done moved in next door to you.” Sharon leaned in and began whispering in a conspiratorial tone. “Gotta be about fifty of them.”

  “Fifty? That many?” I teased; Sharon had a habit of speaking in hyperbole.

  “Yeah, big house, four stories, like mine. Not like yours, only three,” she huffed. I felt myself stiffen. There was some type of weird hierarchy where brownstones were concerned: if you had a four-story brownstone, you were in a higher class than the three-story brownstoners.

  “White?”

  I had to ask, the neighborhood seemed to be getting lighter with each passing day.

  “Colored,” Miss Sharon said.

  I started to ask her how many colors they were, but it would have gone right over her head. She was born during the time when we were considered colored. She’d never moved beyond that to black, or the most recent term, African American.

  “Oh, really,” I murmured, and shook my head. “Okay, Miss Sharon—look, I got to get on in the house and unpack,” I said, already starting up the steps. “It was nice seeing you again,” I threw over my shoulder.

  “Yeah, okay then,” Miss Sharon said, and started out of the gate before turning around and asking, “Noah, you still a faggot?”

  I had corrected Miss Sharon on that term more times than I could count. She’d used it on me so much that I had become desensitized to it. And really and truly, she didn’t mean any harm.

  I turned around, offered her my warmest smile, and said, “Yes, Miss Sharon, I am still gay.”

  She nodded her head thoughtfully before offering me her best piece of advice: “Take it to the Lord, Noah. He can fix it.”

  “I will remember that, Miss Sharon. Thank you,” I said before pushing the key into the lock.

  The inside of my house looked like who did it and why! The garbage can in the kitchen was running over with trash. There were dishes in my stainless-steel sink and dried egg stuck on the grates of my Amana stovetop.

  My hardwood floors didn’t look like they’d had a damp mop dragged across them in months, there was dust on everything, and all of my tropical fish were floating belly-up in the tank!

  I just stood in the middle of the living room, staring openmouthed at the disorder and dirt. I wanted to scream, but it caught in my throat. I want to move, but my feet were cement blocks.

  I couldn’t imagine what it looked like upstairs.

  How could one person be so irresponsible? So filthy? So fucking inconsiderate with another person’s home?

  Well, I tell you this right now, that bitch was out of my house. Out, out, out!

  After standing there for a few minutes I finally felt the feeling coming back to my feet. Before I would do anything, I needed to calm myself down—shake off the jet lag and talk myself out of killing Chevy. Turning toward the kitchen, I tried my best to avert my eyes from the floating fish. Once in the kitchen, I forced myself not to puke as I donned my rubber gloves and opened the dishwasher. I would simply put all of the filthy dishes in the dishwasher. That’s what it was there for, right? Well, to my surprise, there were already dishes inside. I pulled the rack out, intent on putting the clean dishes away, but to my further surprise and mounting disgust, the dishes inside were dirty. Not just dirty, but grimy. There was mold growing on the fucking dishes! Do you hear what I’m saying? MOLD!

  I slammed the door to the dishwasher and decided that this was as good a time as any to venture upstairs and see what damage had been done there.

  Before I even hit the top landing, I could hear the toilet running. I barged into the bathroom and shook the silver handle, then turned to see that the faucet was dripping. I tightened the hot water handle and then the cold and the dripping stopped. The tub itself had a ring so dark around it that I knew I was going to have to use a power hose to get it clean again.

  Steaming, I moved from the bathroom into the back bedroom that was supposed to be Chevy’s room. There were mountains of clothes thrown across the bed, burying it from view. Shoes lay strewn across the floor, covering the once glistening hardwood the way moss covers a sidewalk. The smaller room beside it doubled as a walk-in closet and a place to store the ironing board. The closet doors were open, and inside there were dozens more of Chevy’s clothes and shoes. Across the ironing board were crumpled towels, towels that I suspected had been used and then thrown carelessly across the board instead of being deposited in the hamper.

  I turned on my Birkenstock heels and moved down the narrow hall toward my bedroom. I braced myself and closed my eyes before I stepped inside. I stood there for a minute before opening one eye and then the next. It was as I thought it would be. A mess!

  That bitch had been sleeping in my bed. From where I was standing I could see coffee stains on my ecru-colored raw silk duvet. The fucking coffee cup, still filled with coffee, was sitting on the nightstand. Fashion magazines everywhere—some open and dog-eared, others stacked in haphazard piles along the wall.

  My head was spinning and then my eyes fell on the pièce de résistance—a lime green thong that Ms. Chevy had just apparently stepped her stank ass out of and left in the middle of the floor.

  That nasty heifer!

  Chevy

  geneva, if you call me one more time to tell me about your fucking dinner, I ain’t coming!” I said, and snapped my cell phone closed.

  I leaned back into my office chair and cussed softly under my breath. That damn Geneva had called and e-mailed me about a hundred times about the party she had planned for Saturday, which was tomorrow.

  How many times does a sister need to be reminded?

  Besides, I had other shit on my mind. Shit like LaTangie.

  I saw her in the dining room today, sitting at Anja’s special table. I’ve been working for Anja for more than a year now and I have never
seen her in the dining room.

  Her table was like a damn shrine—separated off by red velvet ropes. The kitchen staff changed the flowers and tablecloth on a daily basis. And those employees who had never met Anja, or who were so infatuated with her that they thought of her as a goddess, could often be found standing near the velvet ropes, their eyes glazed as they used their cell phones to snap pictures of the table Anja never used.

  I didn’t frequent the dining room—shit, I couldn’t afford it—but I popped in to get a five-dollar cup of yogurt and was caught off guard by the sound of Anja’s husky laughter.

  When I looked up, LaTangie and Anja were clinking champagne glasses.

  I stood there in a daze for a long moment. I was fucking Anja and had never been invited to the “table.”

  Now, I wasn’t in love or no shit like that, but I had become accustomed to the fucking, and as I watched the two of them carrying on as if they’d known each other for years, I began to feel as if the arrival of LaTangie somehow meant the departure of Chevy.

  The sight of them ate at me all day long, and when I left work it was all I could do not to pull out my cell phone, call Miss Anja up, and cuss her out.

  But that would be the actions of a strung-out bitch, and I am not one.

  So I just let it be for the weekend. I would tackle Ms. Anja on Monday.

  For now, I had to get in back to Brooklyn and get Noah’s house in order. Geneva slipped up and told me that he was flying in from London in the morning, so I still had plenty of time.

  I knew something was wrong as soon as I pushed the door open, because the scent that hit me was the fragrant bouquet of red currant candles.

  Damn, I thought to myself as I began to pull the door shut again, Noah’s home.

  Noah

  the last time I hit a woman I was fifteen years old and Sheniqua Jenkins had mushed me in the face because I was sporting a Wave Nouveau and she was still walking around with that tired, drippy-ass Jheri curl that had eaten her hairline to nothing.