Love Won't Let Me Wait Page 7

  I don’t like surprises and this pregnancy was the biggest surprise of my life. I was still engrossed in thought as I pulled into the parking garage of my office building.

  I paused outside of my office to gather myself before entering. I scurried through the reception area. Debbie studied me with suspicion as I hurried pass her into my office, quickly closing the door behind me. Exhaling deeply, I leaned my back against the door. Then I took the long, slow walk of a convicted killer being led to the gas chamber, from the door over to my desk, and flopped down in my chair.

  I thought about confronting Shannon with my newly acquired information. I reasoned it would be somewhat of a relief to discuss it with her and hopefully come to some conclusion regarding a course of action. I imagined Shannon would want to get it off her chest as well. I needed to talk to someone. I felt like I was going to explode. I was desperate and needed to release.

  I picked up the phone and called Raoul’s office. His secretary informed me that Raoul was not there. I tried his cellular phone, no answer. I was about to give up and try calling Josh when I was interrupted by a knock at my office door.

  “Come in,” I muttered. Debbie peered into my office from behind the door.

  “Excuse me sir; I have a couple of messages for you.”

  “Thank you, Debbie, come in.” Debbie walked over to my desk and handed me three messages, then she turned and started walking towards the door. About halfway there, Debbie stopped in her tracks and turned around to face me.

  “Mr. Kingsley.”

  “Yes, Debbie,” I answered while sorting through the address book on my cell phone for Josh’s office number.

  “Is everything okay?” I looked up at Debbie. Her face had the concerned look of a mother.

  I forced a smile. “Debbie, everything is fine, I’m just a little tired.” She nodded and turned towards the door.

  “I’ll hold your calls,” Debbie called out as she closed the door behind her. Thinking about Debbie brought a smile to my face. A mother’s intuition I reasoned. Debbie wasn’t my mother, but she definitely had that sixth sense mothers have that alerts them when things aren’t quite right.

  I began to sort through the messages Debbie had brought in. Calango called with some information on Intellica, Rob Ellis from Technosync, and Raoul. I read through the message from Raoul.

  Raoul had taken off work early and wanted me to meet him at his house at three-thirty. I picked up the phone and started dialing. It rang once, twice, three times and then:

  “Hello.”

  “Toya?”

  “Hey, Booby what’s up?” I exhaled deeply.

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “What is it?” Toya asked with obvious concern. “Something serious? Are you and Shannon having problems?” Goddamn, am I that easy to read? I am not one who wears his emotions on his sleeve. I pride myself on self-control. But lately my forehead has been as transparent as a display window at a department store. My innermost thoughts have been on naked display for all to see. I hesitated.

  “Booby,” Toya again inquired. I struggled to muster a guarded response.

  “I’m not sure. I can’t really talk about it right now. What are you doing later?”

  “Nothing, I’ll be here.”

  “What are you doing at home this early anyway?”

  “I left work early. I’m finishing up my brief for tomorrow here at home.”

  “Leaving work early seems to be the theme of the day. I guess I might as well join the club and call it a day myself.”

  “What?” Toya asked obviously confused by my statement. “Booby, what are you talking about?

  “Nothing, I’ll call you later alright.”

  “Okay. Make sure you call me.”

  “I will.”

  “I’m serious, Booby.”

  “Okay.”

  “Promise?”

  “Yeah, I promise,” I answered as if bullied into submission.

  “Bye, Booby.”

  “Later.”

  I spent another fifteen minutes at the office tying up loose ends. I called Calango and set up a meeting for the following week and left a couple of papers for Debbie to file and have mailed before heading out of the office.

  In my truck on the way to Raoul’s house I continued to ponder my situation with Shannon. The more I thought about it the more at ease I felt. Maybe her pregnancy isn’t such a bad thing; after all Shannon is the woman I love. I had no doubt that Shannon would make an excellent mother. This could be a blessing in disguise. I couldn’t think of anyone that I would prefer as the mother of my child, well except Toya. Damn, Toya. Where was this going to leave Toya and me? What am I thinking; Toya and I are just friends. This has nothing to do with her. This is about me and Shannon. Yeah, I can get through this. Shannon and I can definitely make this work. I didn’t see much of a downside to being a father. I’m old enough and financially secure. Why not? I mustered a smile. The drive out to Raoul’s provided some much needed alone time. The solitude of the open road can bring clarity to the most congested and muddled thought processes. The drive out to Raoul’s place was exactly what I needed.

  I pulled into the open garage at Raoul’s house and parked next to his car. I lingered in the driver seat taking an opportunity to assess my state of mind. The open door provided consent to escape and the running board beneath my feet supported my weighty emotional state. At that point I felt as composed as could be expected given the day’s events; and a whole lot better than I had just a few hours prior.

  I got out of the truck and headed for the front door. I rang the doorbell, exhaled whatever stress remained and breathed in an easiness regarding Shannon and her pregnancy. Raoul came to the door wearing an old, college jersey that was way too small for him. The sleeves came to about the midpoint of his forearm. The jersey was so short it looked like he had on a half-shirt. The black letters spelling UCF on the front of the jersey were bunched together. The U and C read like two zeros and the F looked like something that resembled a square. He wore the same gold fishing hat he would wear whenever we would throw a house party. He referred to it as his drinking hat. I laughed to myself as I reminisced on the good old days at UCF. Raoul had two glasses of cognac, one in each hand and a cigar in his mouth.

  “I hope one of those glasses is for me,” I said extending my hand to take one of the drinks.

  “Of course my brother.”

  “Good, I damn sure could use one right now!”

  “Another rough day huh?” Raoul asked as he threw his arm around my shoulder and led me through the living room, kitchen, and back towards the recreation room in the rear of his house. I wiped my hand across the glass partition that served as my forehead.

  “If you only knew. It’s been a hell of a day but I think it’s about to get better.” Raoul paused at the door to the rec room. He pulled another cigar out of his pocket and handed it to me. I stuck it in my mouth.

  He had a look on his face that recalled Bob Barker, the host of The Price is Right, just before he announced to one of the contestants that they were playing for a new car.

  Raoul gulped the dregs of his drink and handed me the empty glass. I took a swig of my own. I had to admit he was doing a hell of a job of creating suspense. He definitely had my attention. I was dying to know what Raoul had up his sleeve. He turned to face me and began to rub his hands together while smiling at me.

  “My brother,” he started in. “I know you’ve been having a tough time these last couple of weeks. I know you’ve been having some problems.” Raoul deepened his voice. He delivered his words with the animation and inflection of a Baptist preacher on Sunday morning, somewhere down in the Louisiana Bayou.

  “I know times has been a little tough ha! Raoul continued. “Your journey been kinda hard ha! But I’m here to tell ya ha! Everything ha! I say everything ha…everything’s gonna be all right. There is a light at the end of that tunnel. And if you—

  “Raoul!”
I interrupted. “Just open the damn door!”

  “Aight, aight,” he relented, his frown relaying feigned annoyance at my interruption of his sermon. The frown quickly disappeared as he asked, “Ya ready, dog?”

  “Open the fucking door, Raoul,” I yelled elbowing him in the shoulder. Raoul turned towards the door. He reached down and slowly turned the doorknob. Again he paused.

  “My brother…welcome to my throwback hangout.” Raoul pushed open the door and slid through the doorway. I followed him into the rec room. It took my eyes a few seconds to adjust to the dim lighting. The room slowly came into focus, and I was greeted by several familiar faces.

  There was Greg Harris, who had pledged our fraternity on the same pledge line as Raoul and I, and my roommate throughout college. Greg and I are the same height and build. In school people always asked us if we were twins, even though his complexion is deep chocolate and mine honey brown, not to mention our facial features are in no way similar. Most of the time we just passed it off as White folks thinking we all look alike, but when Black folks started asking the same question it kind of threw us for a loop. We eventually started claiming to be brothers, same father different mothers. We might as well have some fun with it we reasoned.

  Greg lives out in Salt Lake City with his wife Deena and works as an engineer for a chemical producing company. He was seated at a card table heavy into a game of spades and sipping on his ever-present glass of Jim Beam. Greg was partnered with Mazion Blaze, another one of our fraternity brothers, and also from the Orlando area. Last check he was living somewhere out in Idaho. Everyone referred to Mazion by his last name, Blaze.

  Greg and Blaze had been best friends since elementary school although the vigor of their bond had strained since Blaze went off to college at Southern University in Louisiana and Greg remained at home in Orlando to attend UCF.

  “What’s up, daddy,” Greg shouted out as I walked over to the table. “Mother fucking King’s in the house.”

  Greg had taken to calling me King during our time as college roommates, and the name just stuck. Everyone assumed it was a result of my last name being Kingsley but it wasn’t. The nickname resulted from an incident wherein Greg overheard me and a female friend engaged in an afternoon of exuberant medieval role-play. She was the Greek slave girl, captured in war and forced to be a royal concubine, and I gladly slipped in to character as her voracious Nubian king. It was obvious she got off on referring to me as “her king” and made sure everyone within earshot did as well. I have to admit it was quite an ego-boost.

  Her antics had me convinced of my status as a master layer of the pipe. That was until I dropped by a friend’s dorm room after class the next day and heard a familiar voice screaming, “you’re the king,” through the vent on the bottom of his room door. I quickly realized that my female friend had reprised her role as the captured Greek slave girl, her encore performance set in another kingdom with a different king as her costar. I sat on the sofa in the living room area of his dorm suite and heard her run through the same script she had laid on me at my place the night before. I can still recall the ignominy in her facial expression when she walked out of his room and saw me posted up on the sofa, flipping through the channels on his television. She was the most assiduous of whores. It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours.

  “Nothing, dog,” I answered as we embraced and exchanged the secret handshake members of our fraternity used to greet each other.

  “Man fuck that motherfucker,” Blaze yelled out while arranging his cards in his hand. “Let’s go ahead and whup these fools ass, shit.” I turned to Blaze.

  “You’re always talking shit. Y’all are probably getting your asses kicked anyway.” Blaze placed his cards face down on the table and stood up. We embraced and exchanged the fraternity handshake. “What’s the score?” I asked. Blaze adjusted his colorful designer shirt over his stocky frame, sat down and picked up his cards. He fanned them out in his hand.

  “Now you know good and well we ain’t losing to these amateurs.” I looked at Greg and Blaze’s opponents. Vince another one of our fraternity brothers who had pledged at UNC, was seated to the left of Blaze.

  “What’s up, Vince?”

  “Shit, I have a duck for a partner, that’s about it.” Vince was obviously frustrated with the current course of the game. He was studying his cards like a textbook the night before a final exam. Mark, one of my Fraternity brothers from the Charlotte area and Vince’s partner in the game, interjected to defend himself against being labeled a duck.

  A duck was another way of labeling someone as a sucker. We took the term from the old school Nintendo game, “Duck Hunt,” where wide-eyed confused ducks pop up from behind trees only to be shot with the plastic laser gun attachment and drop spinning helplessly to the ground.

  “Bitch, I’m carrying your ass,” Mark barked at Vince.

  “Whatever, duck!” Vince shot back.

  “What’s up, Mark?” I interrupted.

  “What’s going on, King? Where you been hiding, dog? I ain’t seen you in a minute. Not since the Blue Room a couple of weeks ago.”

  “Working hard, dog, working hard,” I answered.

  “Yeah, like your dumb ass should be doing,” Vince cut in.

  “Nigga, I got a job,” Mark fired back the pitch of his voice climbing a few octaves.

  “C’mon, dog, working as a bouncer two nights a week is not a job,” Greg added. “Fool you have a degree, why don’t you use that shit.”

  “Man fuck y’all,” Mark shouted. “I gets mine.”

  “Nah, homie, moms gets yours,” Blaze added. “This fool is thirty years old and still living at home with his mom.”

  “That is pretty sad, dog,” I chimed in as the table burst into laughter.

  “Nah, what’s sad is this ass whipping these cats bout to take,” Mark returned as he slammed the ace of diamonds on the table.

  “I hear ya, dog,” I answered. “Do your thing.” I turned and started to walk away from the table. I glanced back to see Blaze cutting Mark’s ace of diamonds with the three of spades. Blaze and Greg burst into laughter. Vince shook his head in disgust. It seemed nothing had changed; Mark was still perpetuating his Bad Luck Schleprock routine. I continued over to the bar where Raoul was pouring himself another drink.

  “Hook me up with one, dog.”

  “Cognac?”

  “You know it.” I leaned on the purple surfaced pool table sitting in the middle of the room. “What are these fools doing here?”

  “Just a little something, something I hooked up, a reunion of sorts. We goin kick it for the weekend. You in right?” I took a sip of my drink.

  “Of course. Damn, this shit brings back some memories.”

  “Some good memories,” Raoul added.

  “Yeah, the best,” I continued. I patted Raoul on the shoulder. “Thanks, dog. I really needed this shit.”

  “Ahh shit, you know I got your back. But this thang ain’t about you though. It’s about somebody’s daughter I’m goin be freaking this weekend.” I laughed at Raoul as we turned to walk back over to the card game. Just like old times.

  I awoke the next morning to Toya bitch slapping me over the phone about not calling the night before like I promised. My head was pounding from one cognac too many with Raoul and the rest of the fellas.

  Toya’s call was a timely interruption of my alcohol induced coma. In my drunken stupor of last night I had forgotten to set my alarm clock. Listening to her incessant whining was a small price to pay for my wake up call.

  “You can be so insensitive sometimes. I stayed up half the night waiting for you to call because I thought you had something important that you wanted to talk to me about.”

  “Toya, I’m sorry. I got carried away with the fellas. I lost track of time and by the time I got home it was late. I didn’t want to wake you.”

  “Please. Your ass probably got drunk and forgot all about me.” Of course she was right, but I wasn’t going to tel
l her that. That’d be issuing an invitation to an ass whipping. “You were drunk weren’t you?” Toya accused.

  “I was drinking, but I wasn’t drunk.” Toya chuckled, her laughter echoing with cynicism.

  “I know how you and those fool friends of yours get down. Y’all were probably drunk out of your minds at the Ladyfoxx or some other strip club.”

  “See, that’s where you’re wrong. We were at Raoul’s house playing cards all night” I countered.

  “Yeah, I bet. Probably had some hoochie-mommas over there.” Toya was probing for information about the events of the previous night, with suggestive questioning or “lawyer talk” as I called it, and unless I was mistaken there was a twinge of jealousy in her voice.

  “Whoa, is there some hating going on somewhere around here?”

  “Boy, please. I’m not hating or whatever you want to call it on you and your friends. I just know how you like hanging around those-“

  “Those what?” I interrupted. I rubbed my temple with my fingers and sat up against my headboard as the throbbing pain in my top piece continued. It felt as if someone had mistaken my head for a Congo drum.

  “Those stripper-type, ghetto-girls you and Raoul seem to be so fond of.”

  “What are you talking about? You know what kind of women I like so don’t even try it.”

  “Yep, I sure do…strippers.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Hoochies.”

  “So according to you Shannon is a stripping, ghetto, hoochie-momma.” Toya burst out laughing.

  “No, actually I think she’s cool. Definitely out of character for one of your women.”

  “Are you finished?”

  “Don’t get fly.” Toya warned. “Yeah, I’m done.” I exhaled loudly.

  “Thank God!”

  “Truth hurts huh?”

  “Anyway, what are you doing for lunch?” I asked, changing the subject.

  “I don’t have anything planned.”

  “Why don’t you meet me at the Olive Garden? I have something I want to run by you.”