Flirt, page 8
The Latino officer felt sorry for Rachel, but his hands were tied. He couldn’t file a missing persons report for anyone over the age of eighteen until the twenty-four-hour period had passed. But as a father, he could understand Rachel’s anguish. “She probably spent the night with her boyfriend and turned her phone off for privacy.”
Rachel shook her head. “Chloe never turns her phone off. She texts more than she talks.”
The officer sighed. He had a soft spot for mothers whose children had gone astray. “Tell me about her boyfriend. Where does he live?”
“On St. Marks Place,” Willow said.
“Which building?”
Willow shrugged and looked at Rachel. She shrugged, too, and shook her head. “I don’t know?”
“Do you know where he works?”
Rachel nodded. “He’s a track worker for the MTA.”
The officer wrote that down. “And you said his name is Trey. Do you know his last name?”
Both ladies shook their heads.
“What kind of car does he drive?”
Rachel wasn’t sure. She hadn’t noticed that. “It’s a white car,” she said. “That’s all I know.”
The officer looked at Rachel and shook his head. “There’s not much here to go on. There’s probably a million white cars in New York City, ma’am.”
Willow was getting pissed. “I wasn’t investigating him, so I don’t know those things. But I can tell you that I had a strange feeling about my sister’s boyfriend from the beginning. And I know that if she was alright right now she would be answering her cell phone. She would answer my text messages. She’s not answering any of us, not her friends, not me or my mom and that’s not like her. The last time we saw her, she was leaving with him.” Willow fought back tears. “If he hurt my sister, we should be out there trying to find him.”
The officer rose to leave. “Then we’ll need more information than this, unfortunately. See if you can look around her room for more clues about this guy. You said he’s a black guy, six feet tall, short haircut, slim build. That’s too broad of a description.”
“He has a mustache,” Rachel offered.
The officer shook his head. “Still—” He put his memo pad back in his pocket. “—we’re going to need more than that.”
Frustrated, Rachel walked the officer out, promising to call him if she learned any new information about Chloe’s mystery boyfriend.
When he was gone, Willow began to cry. “I told you he was crazy!” she yelled. “I told you I saw him on the boat and he ignored me. I knew he was too good to be true.”
Rachel hugged her daughter and took a deep breath. “We don’t know that she’s hurt, Willow. Maybe she’s okay. We can’t assume the worst.” She comforted her daughter until Willow stopped crying. Then Rachel began calling the local hospitals and explaining the situation. She asked if anyone fitting Chloe’s description had been admitted and was told that Chloe hadn’t been brought into Staten Island University Hospital. Finally, she called the Richmond University Medical Center and was told that an unidentified black female had been brought in that morning with no identification and no clothes.
Rachel’s heart galloped in her chest. “What?” she asked in disbelief.
“Ma’am,” the woman on the phone said gently. “This young lady is in grave condition. Her face has been terribly disfigured, and she has nothing on her to identify her. You should get here as soon as you possibly can. I’m sorry.”
Rachel hung up with tears streaming down her face. She and Willow rushed out the door, praying to God for a miracle.
Trey got off the 1 train at South Ferry after his session with Dr. Hollister, feeling worse than ever. He had told the therapist about the past few months he’d spent courting Chloe. He had explained the way she’d flirted with him, enticed him, and teased him until he was eating out of the palm of her hand.
“I didn’t push,” he said. “I didn’t try to rush her into settling down like I’ve done in the past. I just let her take her time. I went at her pace. But she played me. She was cheating on me.”
Dr. Hollister wrote something down then. Trey wondered what it was.
“Did you confront her about the cheating?” Dr. Hollister asked.
Trey shook his head. “Nope. I didn’t. I just ignored it, and I never even mentioned it to her.”
“How did it make you feel, knowing that she was giving herself to another man while she held out on you physically?”
Trey stared at the therapist for a while, unsure of how he should answer her. “It made me feel small.”
“Small.”
“Yeah.”
Dr. Hollister wrote something down again. “Like a child?”
Trey didn’t answer.
“Tell me what happened yesterday,” the counselor asked.
Trey took a deep breath. In his mind, he could hear Chloe laughing at him. He could see her trying to leave him. He rubbed his hands across his face. “She tried to leave me, tried to break up with me.”
“And?”
“I hit her. But not too hard.”
“How did she react?” asked the therapist.
A slow, sinister smile spread across Trey’s face. “She hit me back. And she laughed at me again. And then she walked out. She left me.”
The counselor was writing like crazy now. Trey knew he wasn’t telling the whole story, but he wondered if Dr. Hollister could tell.
Finally, she stopped writing and looked up at Trey. “In the past, whenever women have tried to leave you, you’ve lashed out. You’ve hit, kicked, punched, and even bound and gagged women who tried to abandon you. We’ve established that when you are abandoned in relationships, it conjures up memories of your mother abandoning you.”
Trey nodded. That was true.
“What made you allow this one to leave?”
Trey didn’t answer that question either.
He hadn’t known what to say. Instead, he pictured Chloe’s lifeless beaten body lying still on his bedroom floor, and he began to cry. Right there in front of Dr. Hollister, he had cried his eyes out until the psychologist announced that his session was over. Dr. Hollister made Trey to swear that he would come back for another session the next day and asked him to pick up a refill prescription of his Prozac. Trey had agreed, left the doctor’s office, stopped at a pharmacy nearby, and was now headed back to the scene of the crime. He picked up the Staten Island Advance as he entered the ferry terminal and was shocked by the headline on the front page.
Unidentified Woman Clings to Life
after Brutal Beating
Trey’s heart skipped a beat, and he froze. Standing there in the terminal, he read the story. Chloe hadn’t died. She was barely alive and in the hospital. They hadn’t identified her. But when they did, she would surely tell what he’d done. Panicked, he looked around the terminal. He wondered if the police were searching for him right now. He had been careful to clean up all the bloody evidence in his apartment, but he had watched enough Forensic Files to know that one could never get rid of all the blood. There were tons of videotapes of Chloe in his apartment, too—proof he’d followed her relentlessly. And Dr. Hollister knew all about the violent episodes with women in his past. Trey faced the fact that he could never go home again.
He walked to the ATM in the terminal and withdrew enough cash from his account to last him a few days. Then he strolled back out onto the streets of Manhattan and joined the throngs of New Yorkers, fading anonymously into the crowd without looking back.
At the hospital, Chloe lay hooked up to a ventilator, her face wrapped in so many bandages that she looked like a mummy. They’d had to identify Chloe by her jewelry and birthmarks because her face and body were so swollen and disfigured. Willow cried softly at her sister’s bedside as Rachel talked to the doctors.
“She’s going to make it, Ms. Webster. But she will need plastic surgery to fix the damage done to her face. She hadn’t been sexually assaulted,” the physician explained, at which point Rachel breathed a sigh of relief. At least that bastard hadn’t raped Chloe.
“But she did suffer some broken ribs and numerous facial fractures. Her road to recovery will be long, but she seems like a tough young lady. Many people couldn’t have survived a beating that severe, let alone being dumped in the water and left for dead. She’s a fighter. I think she’s going to be fine.”
Rachel was so relieved to hear that, she hugged the doctor. “Thank you,” she said, finally pulling away and letting the tears fall for the first time since she’d arrived at the hospital.
The doctor gently touched Rachel’s shoulder. “The police have some questions to ask you, and I’m sure they’ll also want to question Chloe when she’s able to talk again. That could take a while, since her facial injuries are extensive. But soon she’ll be able to assist with the investigation, I’m sure.” The doctor walked away, leaving Rachel to talk with the police.
Willow sat at her sister’s bedside, stroking Chloe’s hand. She whispered to Chloe, “It’s gonna be all right. You’ll be all right.”
Chloe wished she could answer. She wished she could move her body enough to communicate with her sister in any way possible. But she was helpless to do anything but lie there and blink. She wanted to tell Willow that she had been right all along. Her knight in shining armor had turned out to be a devil in disguise. Instead, she squeezed her sister’s hand limply and thanked God she was still alive. She had cheated death and would live to tell about it. She couldn’t wait to do just that.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Monique Patterson, I am your biggest fan. You’re the greatest editor around and I will sing your praises until I go hoarse.
To libraries across the country, thank you for all that you do in urban communities to promote literacy. You’re wonderful!
To the readers who faithfully read the books, comment online, and come out to events, a million thank-yous are not enough. You give a girl with a vivid imagination room to grow. Love ya!
Wild Cherry
K’WAN
Dedicated to every sista who woke up one day and realized that they didn’t need someone to tell them that they were beautiful for it to be true.
ONE
Gina
Gina, where the hell is my beer?”
The sound of his voice startled me so bad that I dropped the bottle I was holding, shattering it all over my freshly mopped tiles. Beer splashed on my cabinet doors and all over my new Max Studio Frida sandals. The damn things cost too much for me to be lounging around the house in them, but I wanted to represent for Jackie. I always tried to look good when Jackie’s friends came over. Not because I wanted them ogling me—which they did anyhow, whenever they thought Jackie wasn’t looking—but because I was a reflection of my man and liked to carry myself accordingly. To me, there was nothing worse than a clean-cut man with a busted female at his side. The snakeskin exterior of the shoes would survive the drenching, but the interior would end up smelling like mildew from the beer soaking in.
“Two hundred dollars down the damn drain.”
“Gina, what the hell was that!” he barked from the other side of the door.
“Nothing, baby,” I lied.
“Then bring yo ass on, a nigga thirsty!”
“Okay, I’m coming. One mess in the living room and one in here,” I muttered to myself. “Relax, Gina,” I said under my breath. The words sounded convincing enough, but I still didn’t believe them.
I pulled open the right side of my stainless steel refrigerator to get Jackie another beer, and to my dismay we were out—at least out of Heinekens. Apparently the one now pooling on my kitchen floor was the last of the Mohicans. Thankfully, I had a Corona stashed in the vegetable bin. I was saving it for myself, but it looked like I’d be paying the house with it. Trying to ignore the beer drying on my feet and soaking into my instep, I sliced a lime for the lip of Jackie’s beer and put my game face on.
When I stepped through the swinging door and into my living room, my heart sank as I beheld the mess Jackie and his stooges had made of it. The weed and cigarette smoke was so thick that my eyes stung. It would take weeks for me to get the stench out of my furniture. I hadn’t taken two steps when I heard the crackle of a chip that had escaped from the bowl, pulverized beneath my soggy heels. I didn’t even have to see the Cheez Doodles stains in the soft cream carpet to know that I’d have to have it professionally cleaned . . . again. Beer bottles and cups were sitting on everything with a flat surface, including my autographed Best of Patti LaBelle CD box set. For all the hell I went through to get it signed, there wasn’t a court in the land that would convict me if I went postal on those Negroes.
A card table was erected in the middle of my living room, with Jackie and his shiftless-ass friends huddled around it, engaged in a game of poker. If you added all of them together, Jackie’s friends weren’t worth a bucket of piss. They were loud, disrespectful, and just overall pains in the ass. But as the saying went, birds of a feather. In the center of the chaos sat Jackie, my husband and keeper of the last five years.
Jackie, for as much of an ass as he can be, is a prize catch. He had baggage, as most men do these days, but he kept his baby’s mother at a distance, and spent time with his daughter. That turned me on about him. My dad was in and out of my life, so I really can’t respect a man who isn’t doing what he has to for his children. Back in those days, Jackie was working as an associate publicist for a major house during the day and working in the mailroom at another house at night. Considering that he had degrees in law and business management, I thought he was selling himself short. About nine months into our relationship, he made me eat my words. Jackie had taken the contacts he made—and stole—while working at the two houses and opened up his own literary agency. One by one, he started picking off authors and buttering up editors. By the time the industry even realized what was going on, Jackie had signed three of the top authors in urban fiction and was negotiating book and film deals for a former member of the 1925 New York Rens, whom everyone thought was dead. If you wanted talent, you had to see Jackie, and when you sat with him, you had better have your checkbook.
From the money he made off his clients, Jackie started flipping real estate. He bought a block of burnt-down row houses in Newark and opened up a book-distribution center and an hourly motel. If it had value, Jackie would buy and sell it. My man was making serious moves in the world, and he made sure I was at his side.
When he got his businesses up and popping, he made an honest woman out of me and threw a ring on my finger. Jackie went hard for the wedding. The cute little R & B singer with the funny face even came through to sing my wedding song. A bunch of hating-ass broads from the projects where I’d grown up were there, drinking my liquor and shooting me prisons. One of them even ended up throwing up all over one of the Porta-Potties we’d rented for the event. They tried to say it was from her drinking on an empty stomach, but I know the bitch was just sick with envy.
Once I jumped the broom, it was a whole different ball game. Jackie was good to me when I was his girl, and better when I became his fiancée, but when we got married, he made me feel like a queen. I was shopping two to three times a week and getting my hair done twice a week. Me even thinking about getting a job was out of the question: Jackie wasn’t having it. He wanted me to rest, dress, and do away with stress, and I was content to do so. He insisted that if I wanted to work, it would have to be at one of his businesses. I did bookkeeping for the distribution and the agency from home, and time to time I’d act as the manager down at the club. Other than that, I didn’t do much other than daydream and stay fly.
Don’t get me wrong—I’ve been working since I was twelve years old, without missing a day. Like I mentioned, my dad was in and out of our lives between prison terms, so I had to help my mother hold it down for me and my little brother, Randy. My mother always drilled into me the importance of being independent, and until Jackie, I had lived by it. But I can’t front. Being that I had worked for the last fifteen years of my life, nonstop, it kinda felt good to have somebody take care of me for a change.
Jackie was both a blessing and a curse in my life, which is probably true of 99 percent of husbands. He made sure life was good for us, and as his lady, I always stood in his corner, even when I might not have agreed with him. There was something about Jackie’s character that made it hard for you to say no to him. He had that effect on most people. My Jackie is quite the character . . . and did I mention that he is fine as all hell!
Six feet tall, with chocolate skin and a low-cut Caesar, real throwback Harlem. Jackie was sexy, but in a clean-cut sort of way. He carried himself like a businessman but had plenty of thug in him, especially in the bedroom. Jackie knew how to split me just the right way. Damn, I’m getting moist just thinking about it. When his brown eyes land on me, I feel the hunger stirring low in my kitty, wanting to gobble that thick pole he calls a dick. As soon as he opens his mouth, the moment is ruined.
“You gonna just stand there, or you gonna give me my beer?” he asked, with a joint dangling from his mouth.
Jackie was never much of a smoker, but when his friends came around, he felt the need to step into character. From the way the air smelled, I knew they were blowing piff, not that crunchy shit, but that sticky-ass Broadway. I wasn’t much of a smoker either, but I’d take a toke or two off the haze when Jackie brought it home on those rare occasions. There’s something about that Barney that made me wanna get busy. Jackie usually bent me over and fucked me like a project bitch on those nights, but when he smoked heavy with his friends, I’d be lucky if he stayed awake long enough for me to suck him off, let alone bust mine.
“Here you go, baby,” I sat the Corona on the table in front of him. I make sure I lean in a little extra when I do this so he can get an eyeful of the 36C’s under my silk button-up blouse.
