But now she suspected that her date had had a little too much to drink.
“Hold on, girl. The room is just down the street, and it’s already paid for.”
Already paid for—already paid for—already paid for. She didn’t like the sound of that. It was the first time Luella realized how cheap she must look to this man. “I’ll give you your money back, Randy. Just take me to my car and let’s call it a night.”
Randy’s face distorted into an angry smile. She was positive now that he’d had too much to drink. “I don’t want your money,” he said, squeezing her arm, his thick nails leaving a lasting impression. “I want sumpin’ else.” He left a tip on the table, took her arm, and damn near pushed her outside.
She wore a skin-tight devil-red catsuit. A matching long sheer sheath showed off every inch of her voluptuous curves and highlighted her ravishing red hair. She knew she looked fine, but tonight it was the wrong choice of clothing for all the wrong reasons.
The Dorcheshire Motel in Redford was just eight blocks down, and they were there in five minutes. The Dorcheshire was an establishment that had a Jacuzzi with blue mood lights imbedded on the sides. They also offered king-sized water beds and free adult movies. But most people frequented the motel because of its “short stay” policy: four hours for a mere forty-five dollars.
Luella had always wanted to go there, but not under these circumstances. The moment they stepped inside the room, Randy began stripping off her clothes, not even bothering to take off his. He merely let his pants drop to his knees when he pushed her nude body down on the bed.
Randy didn’t screw her; he abused her. He didn’t want oral sex or regular sex. He wanted it from the rear. Luella loved sex, but she’d never done it that way before. He hurt her so bad she screamed in agony. She prayed that someone heard her. He didn’t even bother to use lubrication. When they left the room, tears streamed down her face. She could barely walk. Without even looking, she knew that he had left bruises on her. How would she explain bruises to Omar when he came home next week?
They’d only used two hours. And “used” was exactly how Luella felt.
Just as she opened the door to his car, she heard voices from the motel’s upper level and turned toward the noise.
“Bitch! You come back here!” the scantily dressed man hollered.
Then she saw another man bolting down the corridor a few feet away, sprinting down the steps. His clothing was ripped in spots, and when he reached the lower level Luella could see that blood oozed from his mouth. She could also see that the man was Valentino.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” she asked as he headed in her direction.
“Luella, let’s go,” Randy said impatiently.
She could see that Valentino was trembling, anxiously looking at the man upstairs, who appeared ready to run after him. Tino’s eyes were wide with horror. A tear trembled down his face. “He tried to—” He clasped his hand over his mouth, muffling a cry. “Nothing.” He didn’t bother to look back as he ran down the street.
When she turned back around, Randy was frowning. “What was that shit all about?”
“Take me to my car, Randy,” Luella demanded, not bothering to answer him.
All weekend she soaked her bruises in Epsom salts, rubbing down her body afterwards with cool cotton balls saturated with witch hazel. She’d never felt so violated before. In all her years of sleeping around, nothing like this incident with Randy had ever happened. Was this a sign for her to stop and settle down? What was she getting out of the sex if she came home battered?
On Monday, Luella went to work calmly. She avoided eye contact with everyone and went straight to her station. At one point, on her way to the break room, Luella bumped into Tino, who was packing the Rouge Build Cooley carts with Remington luxury seat cushions. She could smell the aromatic sweat gleaming against his muscled arms.
“Tino? How are you?” Luella realized she sounded a bit nasty.
Tino gave her a hard look. “Luella, stay out of my face. My life is none of your business. I’m warning you: Don’t fuck with me.”
Luella decided to change her tack. “The thought of the three of us in bed together is turning me on.”
“You couldn’t pay me enough money to fuck you, Luella.” Tino flipped five front backs onto the top shelf.
“I love it when you talk to me like that,” she said, handing him the rear cushion that completed the set. “I’ll give you one more chance to prove you’re a man. And if you don’t, I’m going to have to resort to different tactics. You know, like tell your wife you been giving up more ass than you been getting.”
“You low-down bitch. You don’t stop fucking with me, I’m going to the man for some protection against your crazy ass. I’m warning you, bitch—back off. I mean it, Luella.”
* * *
Luella noticed that Tino didn’t show up for work Tuesday. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, the same thing.
After receiving her paycheck, she left to go shopping at Northland Mall. It was the twenty-first day of August, and every store in the mall had summer sales. When she returned home, there was a process server on her doorstep who handed her a restraining order. It instructed her to stay at least fifty feet from Valentino, and the same distance from his property.
“That sucker don’t know who he’s fooling with.”
No one ever refused this pussy and I ain’t about to let a two-way bastard be the first. The son of a bitch will be begging to suck this pussy when I get through with him.
Luella was genuinely hurt. All the thoughts about her being laughed at when she was in grade school—all the ridicule she had suffered for being fat, bald-headed, and gap-toothed—surfaced. Her pituitary gland had been fucked up, though doctors didn’t know why. She hadn’t cared why; she had just wanted to look normal.
She sat alone in her bedroom and removed a picture from her wallet. It was a photo of her at age sixteen. It wasn’t a sweet-sixteen kind of picture. This was a reminder of how she’d looked before she spent thousands getting her stomach clamped—had a section of her intestines cut out in order to make her stomach smaller. In twenty-eight months she’d lost a hundred and twenty-eight pounds. That’s when she met and married Omar. When she later gave birth to their two sons, she gained and lost eighty more pounds. But her quest for beauty hadn’t ended there. The dentist bills to fix the gap in her teeth and get them capped was next. In two more years she would have all the bills paid off. She put the picture back in her wallet, then smiled. Ron would never know how much they truly had in common.
That same night, she called on one of her old acquaintances. She promised him an evening of sex games after he gave her the information she needed about Valentino. She learned from the weak fool that Valentino repaired televisions on the side. She also learned that on each and every Saturday and Sunday evening, around seven o’clock, he delivered those repaired sets to his customers. This is when, Luella decided, she would pay a call on his wife.
__________
“Hello, Cy,” Sydney said, hugging him. “I’m so glad you stopped by before you left on your trip. There’s so much we need to discuss. The courts have granted Jarrod joint custody of Graham. That means he’ll be spending three months at a time with Jarrod in London. What am I going to do?”
Cy could tell she was holding back tears. They were in Sydney’s main office, located in her biggest Champion dealership. Outfitted in sumptuous brown leather, the office looked more like an English drawing room than a place of work. “I think the only thing you can do for now is not make it difficult for Graham and then appeal the case. I’m sure a good lawyer will be able to convince the judge that spending that kind of time in England would be disruptive for Graham.”
“It appears not.” Sydney went to the wet bar and poured them both a drink. “I hope this isn’t too strong,” she said, handing him a double shot of Chivas on the rocks.
“Fine,” he said, downing the drink in a single gulp.
“Are things that bad at home?” Sydney’s voice was edged with sarcasm rather than concern.
Cy took a seat on one of the armchairs. “Things are bad everywhere. They’re screwing me over at Champion.” He sighed. “And I’m disgusted with myself for not apologizing to my wife before I left to go on this business trip.”
“Cy, I don’t know why you keep resisting going into partnership with me. Things are all set to go.” She downed her drink and refilled both of their glasses. Sydney took a seat opposite Cy and crossed her legs. She stared at him. And continued to stare until Cy looked away.
“I told you, Sydney, I’m not ready for that move yet. And I don’t know if I’ll ever be.”
Sydney’s smile stretched across her face before she spoke. “Circumstances might work out better than you expect, Cy.” Her expression changed to a wicked half-smile. “Thyme might not pose a problem by then.”
She made him so uncomfortable he wanted to leave. Instead, he shook the ice cubes nervously in his glass before taking a long swallow. Maybe he was imagining things. “Sydney, are you suggesting something? I’ve told you before; stay out of my personal affairs. Thyme and I have loved each other as sweethearts. We even loved each other as baby sweethearts. We share something I’m sure you can’t possibly understand,” he added bitterly.
“Is it her black skin that turns you on and makes you so obsessive about her?” She swirled the brown liquid around in her glass and leaned toward him. “Maybe you haven’t met the right white woman yet.”
It was funny, he thought, looking at his sister’s bone-dry face. When had she lost her capacity for tears? “Passion comes in all colors. My wife happened to be the one that made me feel that one’s color doesn’t matter. And what about you, Sydney? Did you ever feel that kind of passion for Jarrod?”
Sydney laughed. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about sex. It’s a waste of my energy when I could be doing more productive things. All I care about is my son and money.”
Cy set his glass down. “I never knew you were so cold, Sydney.” Everything Thyme had said about his sister was true. Why hadn’t he listened?
No wonder Jarrod had tired of her so quickly. Sydney’s first husband had left her five Champion dealerships when he died. Now she was worth seventy to eighty million dollars. All that money and she was still miserable.
Throughout the twenty years he and Thyme had been married, he’d never been able to bridge the gap between his sister and his wife. Thyme’s hatred had fueled Sydney’s prejudice. But he had tried hard not to take sides, not wanting to alienate either woman he loved. Maybe now it was time to make a stand. And he had to side with his wife.
“I’ve got to go, Sydney. I’ll talk with you when I get back.” He set down his glass and rose to leave. He kissed Sydney on her eyebrow and headed out of the room. “Give Graham a kiss for me and tell him maybe I’ll even visit him in London.” He wanted to get the hell out of there.
“Cy?” Sydney said. She was following him out to the parking lot of the dealership.
He was anxious to leave. “What is it, Sydney?”
She approached him with her dry, passionless smile. When she kissed him softly on his forehead, Cy cringed. He pushed her back. “Good-bye, Sydney.”
Sydney smiled and leaned against the door. “One more thing, Cy. I wanted to ask if you were going to see Graciella and the kids while you’re in Mexico.”
“No. It’s over.”
“I’m not your wife, Cy. I know what’s best for you. I would never hurt you.” She crossed her arms at her waist and followed him down the steps to his car. “I’ve known you for nearly fifty years—I knew you in the womb. I know you as well as you know yourself. Believe me, Thyme isn’t for you. She’s not PLU—people like us.”
Cy’s eyes narrowed before he put on his sunglasses. “Sydney, stay out of my life. We’re not children anymore, and I can fight my own fights.” He started his car, but before speeding away her final words echoed ominously. “As I said earlier, Cy, things might turn out better than you expect.”
To his further disgust, when he was cleaning up the last of his work before leaving for Mexico, a familiar face peeped inside.
“Hello, Cyrus.” It was Audrey, giving him her special smile. Cy figured Audrey had been upstairs visiting her aunt Candice-Marie, or maybe that was a ruse. “Aren’t you leaving for Mexico today?”
He picked up the phone and began dialing his wife. He didn’t care how rude it was. “Mm-hm. In a couple of hours. I had a few things to do here first.”
Get off my back, Audrey. You’re wasting your time.
“Is your new pager working out okay? We’ve updated the global feature a bit.”
“Perfect.” Thyme’s phone was ringing. His heart began beating faster as he put the words together that would make everything right again. When the machine came on, he left a message.
Looking up at Audrey, he thought about how he’d been wearing blinders. He was beginning to recognize that the white women working in corporate America totally understood that white privilege exists. Audrey was a perfect example. She had few skills and even less drive. The main reason she held her position with Champion was because of who she was related to. And it wasn’t even a prestigious job—working in the electronics division, it was a joke, just something that enabled her to say “I work at World Headquarters.”
Suddenly Cy saw Thyme and her case in a whole new light. Thyme was right, she had more education than most of the people he worked with. She deserved to win the case against Champion, even if it cost him his job. If upper management was ever put in the spotlight, the company would look ridiculous based on the bimbos they promoted and continued to promote over those who deserved it.
After Audrey finally got the hint and left, he shut down his computer, then gathered up his additional paperwork. As he did so, his mind stayed on his wife.
Just as he was about to leave, Sandler filled his doorway.
“I see you’re all packed and ready to go.” His cockiness and high-pitched voice were unnerving. “We have complete faith in you, Cyrus. You know how much this Mexican facility means to the company.”
“What do you really want, Sandler?” Cy no longer had the energy to force politeness. Right now he hated everything about Champion.