For the Love of Money (32 page)

“We don't need those,” he told me.

I said, “Yes we do,” and I meant it. It was my policy as a mature, single woman. No condoms, no sex. Period!

Victor said, “If you really want this like you
think
you do, then you wouldn't
use
protection. You would want to feel everything.”

I stared at him for a second to see if he was serious, and he was.

I shook my head and grunted, “Unt unh, that ain't gon' work.”

After I said that, he moved toward his clothes on the floor.

“What are you doing?” I asked him, panicking. I was as wet as the ocean.

“I'm protecting us.”

I said, “Wait a minute.” I was so damn
weak
! I couldn't get
that
close and let him walk away from me again.

He paused with his purple silk boxers in hand. His black behind was shining from his shapely curvature, and I wanted so badly to hold him there while he thrust into my velvet. I could halfway feel it already.

I asked him, “What about your wife? Isn't that, you know . . . kind of foul? I mean, it
all
is really, but going without a condom, that just seems . . . nasty. And then you go back home to your wife and . . .” I couldn't even imagine it. It made me feel queasy.

He smiled. “You don't want me to take anything home to my wife and kids. That's honorable. So why do this in the first place then?”

He had another good point, but I still wanted it. I wanted
him.
I wanted
us.

I said, “Could you stop playing the head games with me, please. I'm serious.” I was whining like a baby.
Damn
I hated him! He was the only man in my
life
who made me whine like that.

He said, “Tracy, this is all
your
head game. You wanted me here, now you deal with it.”

I walked over and grabbed onto his waist, afraid to let him go and put his clothes back on. I leaned my head against his chest. “You'll take it out then?” I asked him. I was even willing to break my own rules for him. That's how weak I was.

He said, “Maybe I will, maybe I won't.”

I leaned away from him and said, “WHAT?” He couldn't have been serious, but when I searched his eyes again, they remained steady and unnerved. He
meant
that shit!

I broke away from him and said, “That's crazy! What if I get pregnant? Do you know how ridiculous we would look?”

“That's the price you pay for love,” he told me. “Do you love me that much,to look ridiculous with me?”

I shook my head violently. “No. I don't love
no man
that much. Not even my
father.
And if
you
really loved
me,
you wouldn't ask me to
do
no crazy shit like that.”

He looked at me and said, “Tracy, I
do
love you. That's why this had to happen this way, because love can't always be bent and twisted out of shape like so many people do with it. That's cheating everyone. So if you
really
want this to happen, then you either act crazy with it, or you grow up and let it go, like I did with you.”

“Oh, yeah, that's easy for
you
to say,
you
had somebody else to run to!” I shouted. “
You
wrote those fucking letters from jail talking all that shit,
I
didn't! And I was crazy enough back then to wait for your ass, but
you
weren't crazy enough to wait for me! So don't give me that shit now!”

He began to put his clothes on again.

“What are you doing?” I asked him a second time.

“I'm protecting us,” he repeated.

“Oh, so in other words, you were
expecting
all of this to happen?”

Victor ignored me. He was calling my bluff.

I said, “Well, you know what? Don't put your clothes back on then. I want to
be
that crazy! Now you show me that
you
can be that crazy!” I dared him. “You're gonna come up in here and call
my
bluff, well let me see what
you're
willing to do!”

I grabbed his pants and pulled them back down like a lunatic. I was actually tearing up I was so damn angry.

“Come on then,
Qadeer.
Let's do it. Let's make a baby. Let's see how crazy
you
are.”

By then, tears were running down my face like a faucet. I didn't even notice it until I felt how wet my neck was. I had waited so long for him just to be bullshitted, and my feelings were hurt.

Victor wiped away my tears with his thumbs and kissed my lips.

“Would you be my second wife?” he asked me. “We can meet with Malika and ask for her permission.”

I looked at him and shouted, “WHAT?! HELL NO!
SHE
SHOULD BE THE SECOND WIFE IF ANYTHING!
I
WAS WITH YOU
FIRST!
”

He tried to cuddle me in his arms to calm me down, but I pushed him away from me.

“You got some god-damned nerve coming in here asking me something like that. How dare you?! HOW DARE YOU?!”

He started pulling up his pants again, and I didn't care anymore.

“
Leave
then!” I yelled at him with a shove. If it wasn't for the twin beds, he would have fallen flat on the floor.

He smiled at me and shook his head. It was all a damn game to him.

“I don't see what's so fuckin' funny,
Victor!
” I mocked him.

He finished getting dressed and looked at me with pity in his eyes.

He said, “This is why you're not
Mrs.
Muhammad. You think a sane man wants to go through drama like this? Think about it. I made the right decision, and now I'm going home.”

“Well,
stay
your ass home next time, with your little
house mouse
! I don't need her damn
permission
!”

With that, he grabbed my arms before I started to whale on him.

I broke down and screamed, “I fucking hate you! I HATE YOU!” If I was really trifling, I would have spit in his face, but I wasn't, so I didn't, but I thought about it.

Victor held my arms right up until he grabbed the front door handle and slipped out of the room on me. When he was gone, I fell to pieces. I felt so hurt and foolish that it didn't make any sense. I cried and cried and curled up in the bed like a snail.

He played me like a fool,
I thought to myself.
He knew everything I was gonna do, and he
proved
that I would do it.

Once I realized his game plan, I broke down and cried some more. Victor was the sharpest man I ever knew. As smart as I
thought
I was, I couldn't do a damn thing with that man but love and hate him. I couldn't even call him a dog, because he was going back home to his wife without penetrating me. I sat up naked and alone in that hotel room and thought about it, coming up with a poem, “When the Sweet Turns Sour.” I didn't even have my
notepad with me, so I wrote it out on the hotel stationery. And every time I read it, I grew stronger.

As far as Raheema's wedding for the next day was concerned, she was my girl and all, but I was a damn zombie through the entire ceremony. I just couldn't wait to get back out to California and restart my life with full dedication to my new career. Thanks again to Victor, the inspiration for my first poem, “King Victorious,” I came up with my first full television script for
Conditions of Mentality
called “The Seduction.”

Is like the birds
who fly south for the winter
only to return each spring
and build new nests for their young.

Or the setting of the sun,
the rising of the moon,
and the heavy rains falling
to quench the thirst of new flowers.

We grow green with progress,
radiant in orange and red with passion,
blossoming in yellows
and then turn blue.

With the joy and pain
of finding, loving, hurting, and losing
humans who you care for,
AND who care for you.

But as the world turns
and the climate changes,
we stay down like gravity,
together, forever.
Friends.

Copyright © 1992 by Tracy Ellison

S
aturday morning, I sat up in my old, twin-size bed in my old room and daydreamed. I needed some peace and quiet time. I was exhausted from everything and thanking God for the weekend.

My agent had sent me three screenplays to look over, so I grabbed them and thumbed through them while I relaxed. To her credit, all three of them were different. She knew that I liked to look at different types of projects, and since I was a writer myself, I knew how to separate the quality scripts from the trash.

The first screenplay I read through was a love story,
Never Let Him Go:
a lovely wife does everything in her power to keep her flirtatious husband from cheating on her. They wanted me to play the lovely wife, but the script was rather boring and typical of a man-pleasing woman. It would be a bit too mundane after my breakout bitch role in
Led Astray. Never Let Him Go
also asked for plenty of hot sex scenes, which I wanted to shy away from. Sharon Stone may have started off with the seduction roles, but she damn sure didn't stay with that shit. I didn't plan on being typecast that way either, so I passed on it.

The second screenplay was a science fiction comedy,
Babes from Space:
a group of beautiful alien women seduce the men from a well-to-do suburban town until the women of the town strike back to reclaim their mates. The script was cute and I laughed through it, but I didn't have much of a role to play. They wanted me to play the lone black girl, and of course, I would match up with the only black man in the town. I figured it would do okay with teenagers at the box office and people who watched the television show
3rd Rock from the Sun,
but it was too juvenile for
my
taste. It was like some video girl script from MTV. They didn't really need actresses, they just needed pretty faces and attractive bodies, and the head alien was a blond chick. I didn't like that idea so much either. Blame it on my ego as a black woman, but I passed on that script too.

The third screenplay was an action-packed thriller called
Road Kill:
a female Special Units agent hunts down a gang of psycho killers who prey on pretty women on U.S. highways and roads. I liked that script immediately. I even liked the title; it sounded edgy and serious. I saw flashes of myself becoming the next Pam Grier, or even Angela Bassett in
Strange Days,
kicking ass for a change instead of just screaming, fucking, and looking pretty. I thought about Geena Davis in
The Long Kiss Goodnight
and Sigourney Weaver in her
Alien
movies. I could become a black woman James Bond and keep it going, but I didn't like the character's name. “Jill” sounded too plain to me, as if they wanted to downplay her fierceness with an average tag. It was also a white woman's role, but my girl had gotten her hands on the script and sent it to me, probably because she knew that I would like it and fight for it. I guess she had saved the best for last.

I looked at my East Coast clock, and it was only after ten, which meant that it was after seven in California, but I couldn't wait to discuss the script, so I jumped up, got the cordless phone, and called my girl at home.

“I was just about to use the phone, Tracy,” my mother told me.

“Hold on, Mom, this is business.”

I passed her the script to thumb through it herself.

Mom looked at it and said, “
Road Kill?
Hmm, sounds like another controversial movie. You'll have people scared to even drive.”

My girl answered the phone and I jammed my excitement down her eardrum.

“What's up with this
Road Kill
movie? They haven't signed anyone for it yet? Did you tell them that I worked on the writing staff of
Conditions of Mentality
for cable? I know
exactly
how to play this role. This is right up my alley. Of course I would
change
that name though. I would be ‘Alexis.' That gives the character more edge, don't you think?”

She just laughed, overwhelmed by my excitement for the role.

“I knew you would like that one,” she said. She was barely awake, I could hear it in her voice, but not by the time
I
got through with her.

“So what do you think about our chances?” I asked her. “I don't want to get my hopes up for nothing.”

She said, “The producer actually likes you.”

I said, “But?” She was holding something back from me.

“The director is a pain in the ass, one of those real creative control freaks,” she told me. “He wrote the script, and he'll be tough to convince. He wants a blonde.”