“Hey, hon.” Unique smiled, kissed her on the cheek. “Thanks so much for getting me in here. Girl, you have no idea, I so need this,” she said. “Oh, and this is Rambo.” She pointed to him as he grabbed a magazine and took a seat.
Maggie smiled, acknowledging Rambo and said to Unique, “No problem. You know anything I can do, I will. I just feel bad that Raphael isn’t here yet. He just called and said he’s running about twenty minutes behind schedule.”
“No problem, I’m just grateful that he’s on his way,” Unique said, not disappointed that she had to wait. Raphael was well worth it. Though he didn’t speak much English, his hands did all the talking. They were like butter and knew all the right pressure points.
“Well, I’m going to get you set up in a room.”
“Perfect,” Unique said with a smile.
Maggie was waiting for her after Unique got undressed and came out of the locker room. She led her to the peaceful, tranquil room where she would be serviced. She told her, “Make yourself comfortable and Raphael should be here any minute. In the meantime I hate to run, but I have a facial I need to get started.”
“Thanks,” Unique said. “I’ll talk to you later.”
Unique lay on the bed, enjoying the moments of solace. Finally, the door opened and the masseuse walked in.
Not a second too soon,
Unique thought.
The soft jazz music the parlor used to relax its clients was soothing, but nothing put her in a better mood than a well-executed massage. Well, maybe a few things, but a pair of strong, well-trained hands were right at the top of the list.
Unique was already lying on her stomach, her face inside one of those padded, donut-shaped headrests. The masseuse removed the thick terry cloth towel from the back of her neck. Then he brushed on a generous amount of warm massage oil. Unique exhaled a sigh of relief in anticipation of the masseuse’s touch.
However, out of nowhere the masseuse grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked her head back painfully. Before Unique could protest, his left hand came around and clamped over her mouth, holding her
and
her words where they were.
Unique panicked.
The hand on her mouth was too big and too strong to belong to Raphael. She tried to lift up, but the person holding her down was too strong.
The man assaulting her said, “It’s me, bitch, and I wish you would try to scream or act stupid.” He spoke without malice as if he attacked women in the private rooms of upscale spas all the time. “Do you recognize my voice?” he asked.
Did she? How could she ever forget it? she thought.
She had heard the same voice in her dreams, every single night until she was finally able to fall asleep, in Mexico, where the owner of the voice had left her with no passport, to work off a debt in a whorehouse.
“Stop scrumming,” he said firmly.
His voice wasn’t a dream. It was real. All she could wonder was how in the hell did he get past Rambo and when the fuck would Rambo come through that door and put two to this nigga’s head? She never really wished death on anybody, but right now, she wanted Took dead as a dead dick dog.
She did what he said, and stopped moving. She wondered what she could use in the room to kill him.
“I’m not going to rape you and beat you like Fat Tee did. No, I want you to feel something other than hard dick. I want you to feel hard times, bitch, and I’m going to make sure you do, or I’m going to die trying.”
Unique had no idea what Took intended to do to her, but to say she was scared shitless was the understatement of the year. She knew him well and if she didn’t know anything else, she knew he meant every word he said.
Still in a calm, cool and collected voice, he said, “I just want to deliver a message in person, so that there won’t be any surprises.”
What the fuck did he call this?
Then as quickly as he had appeared, she was free, the door opened again, closed and he was gone. The altercation had lasted less than five minutes and had almost caused Unique to piss her drawers. Then she remembered that she wasn’t wearing any.
SPEAKING OF THE DEVIL
Since she had spoken to Unique last night on the jack, Tyeedah couldn’t get the eerie words out of her mind. Regardless of how she tried to push them away, the same pieces from the conversation kept returning like an irritating itch. No. More like a nasty rash, she thought, that wouldn’t go away.
You are not going to believe who I saw at the party.
In prison the two girls had built a strong bond. Once they’d lowered their guards and started to trust one another, Tyeedah and Unique shared everything, from conversation to camaraderie. The two dreamed big as they planned for the future while they also laughed and cried about the things they did pre-prison. Unique never really felt any kind of remorse or shame for any of the shiesty things that she had done in her past to the many men who she had stolen from or had manipulated. The only thing she wished would have turned out different was about the love of her early life, long before Kennard. She often carried on about how she had treated Took, one of her exes. She talked about the dude in such detail—the good times and how she fucked him over after he got knocked—Tyeedah had felt like she knew Took, even though she never actually met him.
Tyeedah gave the door, which she exited not even six hours ago, three quick raps. The door swung open before her arm made the short trip to her side. Seymour was shirtless, waves orbiting his head, wet from an apparent shower. “I hope you don’t have company,” she said jokingly.
With the casual dimpled smile that showed even, white teeth, Seymour pulled her into the room by the arm, and closed the door. “You know I have no company,” he said, kissing her on the mouth and smearing her “Oh Baby” MAC tinted lipglass. “Until now.” He grabbed her hands, looked into her eyes, and then kissed her on the forehead. “What’s all this?” he asked, wanting to know what she had in all the rolling bags and tote bags she was carrying.
“It’s your dinner,” she said.
“Packed up like that?” he asked with a raised eyebrow, while trying to snoop in the bags.
“Get back, babe, let me get everything set up,” she said as she started pulling out a tablecloth and covered the small table in the room. She set up the candles on it.
Took looked on, as she sat the containers of food on the table. “Where did you get food from?”
“I cooked it,” she said with a smile.
“You cooked?” he said, surprised.
“Yes, I cooked for you, honey. I figured you been away from home and living out of a suitcase—eating out from restaurant to diner. I wondered when was the last time that you actually had a home-cooked meal. So, while you were out handling your business I decided that I’d prepare a real dinner for you.”
Having a woman cook for him was nothing new. Most of the chicken heads he ran across couldn’t boil an egg and the ones who could thought that if they cooked for him it was to the way to his pockets, and did it for points. However, he felt that Tyeedah went through all of this trouble because she genuinely wanted to for him, no strings or ulterior motives, only to make his life a little more comfortable.
Tyeedah was what he needed in his life. Time and time again, over the past few days she constantly showed it—that he needed her in his life.
“I would’ve invited you over for dinner, but with my lil brother there there’s literally no privacy and I didn’t know how you would feel about him being in our mix so soon.”
Took didn’t say anything because he was still digging the thought behind her unexpected gift.
“Anyways, like I said, I know you got to be tired of eating out.”
“Thank you baby,” he said and took her into his arms. “You make me so happy, and I want to work things out so that I can make you happy and that we could really be together—and build something. Real talk.”
Took meant it, but knew that the odds of them really making it were slim to none. But she had him wondering how he could adjust his plan so that things could work out between the two of them. He couldn’t help but wonder if Tyeedah had any idea that he was Took and that he was there to harm her best friend. He hated that he had fallen for Tyeedah and that he was now second guessing what he came there for—to make Unique’s life a living hell. But if he went through with it, then he would most likely lose the one thing that he wanted to be his.
“Let me finish getting this set up for you. I know you gotta be hungry.”
“It smells good.”
He couldn’t help but to think to himself,
Why she gotta be so right? So kind? So thorough? So sexy? So sexual? So considerate? Loyal? So everything I need and want? Why? Yo GOD, you got jokes. Your sense of humor is crazy!
While she continued to set up the spread, he made his way back across the room to move his papers off of the desk where he had been sitting. But his butterfingers caused him to drop one of the folders and papers scattered across the floor. He couldn’t get them all up quick enough, and she ran over to help him pick up the papers. Though Took tried to get them up fast, it was too late.
Tyeedah was shocked when she saw an old school picture of Unique wearing that red leather suit and some tall riding boots. It was the same photo that Unique had had when she was in jail. He also had the wedding photo of Unique and Kennard that had run in the newspaper.
Tyeedah wasn’t dumb by a long shot. She knew what time it was.
She offered a silent prayer to God that her
new
friend, Seymour, wasn’t Unique’s
old
friend, Took.
But deep down inside, Tyeedah knew that God would probably wash his hands of this one. She probably wasn’t going to be that lucky. Just when she thought that things might be finally falling in place for her with her love life, she had to be reminded that things are not always what they seem.
She took a deep breath. “I don’t remember you saying who invited you to the party. Was it Kennard?” she asked.
Without hesitation or detectable deception, he answered, “Neither. Keeping it one hundred with you, because I truly fucks with you, baby, I purchased my invite off the Net and invited myself.”
He stared into her eyes, as if he knew that the questions had only begun. Questions he didn’t seem the slightest bit afraid to answer … but was she willing to ask and hear the real honest answers? Sometimes it felt better to accept a lie because the truth often hurt too much.
“How long have you known Unique?” she asked, straight to the point. “And please, don’t lie to me.”
He reached out for her hand; she pulled away, bracing herself for what she knew was going to most likely be some bullshit.
“Maybe you should have a seat,” he said.
“Maybe you should answer the damn question,” she responded, standing her ground and not wanting any of the fluff or the cow for the bull he was preparing for her.
Holding her glare with his own gaze, he said, “I’ve known Nique a while. The first time we had sex … she was sixteen and I was eighteen.”
At that moment Tyeedah felt like rocks were grinding up in her stomach. The already small room started to close in on her. She sucked in a breath of stale air as artificial as their so-called chance meeting. “So why the fuck am I here?” she spazzed out on him. “Unique told me about that foul-ass shit you did to her about getting her out on that appeal bond, then taking her on the get-money spree and ultimately leaving her in Mexico. That was some foul ass shit.”
“Hold on, baby,” he said calmly.
“Hold on, my ass,” she said. “You must think I’m crazy or some shit.” She chuckled a bit and then asked, “So you thought that by you putting your hocus-pocus on me that you would seduce me into turning on my girl somehow. Yo, playboy, you got me fucked up. Ain’t no dick that good that I would betray a friend, and especially Unique.”
He listened to everything she had to say and now it was his turn to suck in a pocket of the sour air that filled the room. His lungs seemed to rock with it a lot better than hers. When he exhaled he said, “I had no idea you and Nique were as close as you are.” With the casualness in which he referred to Unique’s name, she couldn’t believe she’d actually fucked this dude and had fallen for him. She knew there was an undeniable attraction but she still felt rotten.
“At first,” he continued, “I thought I’d just met a pretty girl at an ex-girlfriend’s party.”
Tyeedah wasn’t buying it, not even a little bit. “Who the hell do I look like to you? Suzy Sausagehead, huh? If you were keeping it so on the up and up then how come you didn’t bother to tell me your
real
name?”
“I did tell you my
real
name. My mother named me Seymour. Took is my street name.”
Tyeedah rolled her eyes. “Nigga, please. I don’t believe in coincidence,” she said, flipping. “There are no chance meetings or encounters.”
“Well, I don’t believe in coincidences, either, but,” he added, “how come it’s impossible to buy into the fact that maybe it was in the cards for us to hook up?”
“Easy,” said Tyeedah. “Because you either stacked the deck or dealt from the bottom. That’s why.”
Took tossed his hands up, like the matter was hopeless.
She continued, “You could have given Denzel a run for his money with the acting. Yo, Unique was right about you. You got all your shit down pat, boy.”
In his eyes, he wanted to explain it all to her and to make her feel comfortable. “What is it you want me to tell you?”
She shot back, “Try the truth, if that’s even possible. I’m not even sure if the truth is even in you.”
The thing that hurt Tyeedah the most was that she was genuinely feeling the dude—she thought they had chemistry—only to find out that she was more like his science project. She was likely a pawn in some Machiavellian scheme. She knew she should just put on her Air Jordans and take flight out of his life, but for some reason she just couldn’t cut loose.
Took sounded contrite when he asked, “Where do you want me to start?”
Tyeedah remembered how skilled of a thespian Unique had said he was. “Why were you at the party on Saturday night?” she asked. “Start there.”