A Cold Piece of Work (13 page)

“Mine, too,” Solomon said, in between chomping down on his steak.

Michele took a few more bites and then completed her thought.

“I was saying that when I saw you walk up there at that banquet, I almost swallowed my tongue,” she said. “I've never felt like that before: excited, angry, uncertain, happy, relieved, shocked—all at the same time. I was hoping all that wasn't showing up on my face. If it did, I looked like some creature.”

“Oh, you played it off well,” Solomon said. “All I saw was one emotion on your face: hostility. You were steaming. At the same time, I was like you, with all kinds of emotions running through me: shock, excitement, fear, surprise, regret.

“I was shocked not only to see you but to learn you were Gerald's mom; scared because I didn't know how you'd react to me; surprised at being excited to see you. I guess, in that very moment, all the denying went away and I admitted that I regretted leaving you like I did.”

They stared at each other for a few seconds and then continued to eat.

“This is great, but from what I remember, you can create dishes like this—or better,” Solomon said.

“I definitely think I've improved from when you last had something I prepared.”

“Me, too,” Solomon said. “I've improved my skills in the kitchen. And if you'll hang out with me again, I'd like to cook for you. Let you sit back and be served.

“I see you're still the same.”

“The same?”

“The same. Charming.”

T
hat dinner date with drinks afterward turned into their routine. For almost two months, they took on Atlanta's restaurant scene and grew closer and closer. Michele still had a trust issue with Solomon, but that sheath came down bit-by-bit.

Solomon, meanwhile, was catching heat from the rotation of four women he juggled before rediscovering Michele. He could not find it in himself to tell them he wanted nothing to do with them anymore. Instead, he used work and travel as an excuse to be unavailable.

Springtime came and his romance with Michele blossomed. However, they had not been intimate. One night, Solomon tried, but Michele rebuffed him.

“I remember how we were together,” she said. “And please don't think I'm trying to tease you. But I think we should wait. For what, I don't know. But when the time is right, it will happen. It will feel right.”

She was honest, but she also was imposing a test. If Solomon really wanted her, sex would not matter. Well, not that much. Besides, if he left her again, it would be easier to deal with without missing his intimate touch.

Still, her attraction to him was bubbling like volcano lava. It wasn't just the physical. It was more about how he made her feel in their talks and his manners and, significantly, how much he seemed to genuinely adore her son, Gerald.

He talked to Gerald several times a week, took him to movies and taught him basketball while Michele worked events she catered. He even picked up Gerald from school for her a couple of times.

“Coach Money, do you like my mommy?” he said one day as they sat in the square at Atlantic Station. Michele's business picked up and she was working a wedding reception.

“I do like your mom.”

“Are you going to marry her?” Gerald asked.

“Marry her? Well, Gerald, I don't know about that. But I know this: I'm going to be around to hang out with you all the time. You're my buddy, right?”

Gerald nodded his head. “I like you, Coach Money.”

“Give it up,” Solomon said, holding out a clenched fist. Gerald tapped it with his tiny fist. “I like you, too, Gerald. A lot.”

Gerald spent that night with Sonya. Michelle was tired from an afternoon wedding reception, but she summoned the energy to go out for drinks with Solomon at Café Circa on Edgewood Avenue, behind famed Ebenezer Baptist Church.

He was surprised to run into his boy, Ray, there. “Yo, what's up?” he said as they embraced. “Who you here with? Your wife?”

“Nah, one of my boys came in from out of town, so we swung through here,” Ray said. “I'm about to take him back to his hotel now.”

“Oh, cool. Listen,” Solomon said, “this is Michele Williams.”

“Oh, my goodness. So you really do exist? Nice to meet you,” he said while shaking Michele's hand.

The three of them chatted for a while before Ray excused himself. “That's my boy right there, headed out the door,” he said. “Chasing a woman, no doubt. Let me grab him so you can meet him. Be right back.”

Ray headed for the door and Solomon and Michele headed for a table near the back, before the restrooms.

“What's it going to be tonight?” Solomon asked.

“I'm thinking something simple, but strong—those people worked my nerves today,” she said. “I'm glad it was a noon wedding. Anyway, I'll have Grey Goose and cranberry. Can't get more simple than that.”

It was so simple that Michele had three of them in an hour. “You okay?” Solomon asked. “That's a lot for you.”

“I'm good. They are kinda weak, but good,” she said.

“Your son, he's something else,” Solomon said.

“Oh, boy, what did he do?”

“He didn't do anything,” he said, “but he asked me today if I was going to marry you.”

“No, he didn't. I guess he likes you, huh?”

“He told me that, too,” Solomon said. “I've spent a lot of time with him and he's a special kid. Always a great attitude. A little spoiled—I wonder why—but not rotten.”

“What was your answer to him?”

“I told him that until your mom gives me some booty, I'm not marrying her,” he said, laughing.

Michele reached across the table and hit him on the arm. “Very funny,” she said, laughing. “You'd better not talk to him like that.”

“Nah, I told him that I wasn't sure about that,” Solomon said. “But I told him that I'll be there for him. That's when he said, ‘I like you, Coach Money.' We did a fist-bump and moved on.”

Michele smiled for a moment and then a different look came over her.

“What's wrong?” he asked.

“I don't know,” she said. “Well, I do know… Can I have one more drink?”

“Sure. You okay?”

The server made her way to their table and Solomon ordered one more round.

“Michele, you all right?”

“I'm really emotional about my son,” she said, using the napkin under her glass to wipe away a tear. “I want him to be alright and I'm really glad you've been there for him like you have. He needs that in his life.”

“You don't have to cry about that; I love that kid, so I'm going to be around—as long as you allow me to,” Solomon said.

Michele shook her head and wiped her eyes. She looked down at the table, not into his eyes.

“Solomon…” She finally looked up. “Don't hate me for what I'm about to say.”

“Hate you? Why would I hate you?” he asked. Then it hit him— Michele was about to end their courtship. Why else would he “hate” her? Another woman was going to disappoint him. Shit.

“Come on, don't tell me you're seeing someone else?” he said. Normally, Solomon would not even put himself out there like that. But he just didn't care. “I guess I'd deserve it, but please don't tell me that.”

“Solomon, that's not it,” she said. He was visibly relieved.

“Then nothing you can say would make me hate you.”

“That's what you say now,” Michele said.

“What is it?”

“Solomon…you…are…Gerald's…father.”

He stared at her for several seconds without speaking. The expression on his face was blank. It was like he was frozen, like all the noise in the room went silent. Finally, he calmly stood up and went over to her side of the table.

Bending over to get closer to her ear, he said, “What?”

She did not look up at him. She looked straight ahead, across the table, where he had been sitting.

“Michele.”

She looked up.

“Say that again. It's loud in here. Maybe I didn't hear you right,” he said.

“It's true, Solomon.”

He turned and walked to the small nearby bathroom. He was so rattled he had trouble locking the door behind him.

Solomon turned on the cold water, leaned on the vanity and looked into his eyes through the mirror. The thoughts in his head were jumbled. His emotions were crashing against each other.

He put some water in his hands and rubbed it on his face. With some paper towels, he wiped his face dry. With that, he settled some. But he still had a litany of questions.

Composed, at least outwardly, he returned to the table. Michele had broken down to where the server with the drinks and the couple at the adjacent table asked if she was okay.

“Michele,” he said to her, calmly, “this is messing me up. How did this happen—didn't we use condoms? Are you sure he's my…son? Why are you just telling me this?”

“Let's leave—we shouldn't talk about this here,” she said.

Before the server returned, Solomon calculated how much the drinks cost and put the money on the table. He stood up and extended his hand to help Michele from her chair, which gave her at least a little sense that he did not hate her enough to abandon the chivalry that was embedded in him.

He opened the car door for her, closed it behind her and wiped his face as he made his way to the other side. When he got in, he shut the door and looked straight ahead. Neither of them said anything for about a minute.

“Solomon,” Michele said, finally, “you've been living with what happened with us and I've been living with something hanging over me, too. I—”

“But why didn't you tell me?” Solomon said, turning to her.

“How could I tell you? You disappeared. When I found out I was pregnant, it was almost two months later. You hadn't answered my calls, e-mails, text messages. You were gone,” she said. “I'm really not trying to make this about me, but you don't know what it's been like for me to raise him alone, to have people ask, ‘Where's the daddy?' and for me to have to say things like, ‘Girl, he's doing his own thing' or ‘Getting himself together' or just plain ‘I have no idea.' That's what it's been like for me. You know how embarrassing that is, how reckless it makes me appear?

“And think about the fact that I've had to answer my son's— our son's—questions about his father.”

“Well, he told me what your answers were: ‘He's no good,' etc.,” Solomon said.

“I did say that, out of frustration because as much as I'd like to be, I can't be a man for him and that's what he needed,” Michele said. “The few men I dated after I got myself together were not worth whatever they paid for their shoes.”

“Okay, but we used condoms, Michele,” Solomon said.

“Not that night, that last night we were together, the last night I saw you,” she said. “You don't remember? We got caught up in the moment, I guess, which is stupid for mature adults. But I can't even imagine myself without Gerald, so…”

“I'm doing my best to not sound like I'm trying to run away from this, but I have to ask: How do you know it happened that night?” Solomon said.

“Because, for one, as you said, we used condoms every other time,” Michele answered. “Two, I had not been with anyone other than you. Period.”

“Oh, my God,” he said. “I'm a father?”

“To be honest, that's why all those emotions I spoke about a while ago came up when I saw you. Do you know how amazing it was that Gerald was bragging about this ‘Coach Money' and it turns out that ‘Coach Money' is his father? The same man who disappeared on me? My heart practically jumped out of my chest when I saw you that night.

“More than for even myself, I wanted you for Gerald,” she added. “Boys need men to help raise them, if at all possible. After I found out you were in Atlanta, I tried to get contact info for you, but there was none. So I was faced with the reality that I would have to do it alone.

“Okay, so now there you are, his father, at that banquet about three months ago. What was I to do then? I was angrier than I realized; I thought I had let that go after so many years, but seeing you brought it all back up. Then I had a big issue because Gerald liked you and he needed a man in his life. That's why we had to get out of there that night. I could hardly breathe.”

“Unbelievable,” Solomon said. “This is unbelievable. I love the kid, I can tell you that. When I first saw him, I told Ray that he reminded me of myself as a kid. There were even times when we were out together and people would say, ‘You look just like your daddy.' He had to say, ‘He's not my daddy. He's my coach.' Thinking about that now makes my stomach hurt.

“It's like, knowing this now, how could I have not figured it out? He's seven years old, with a birthday coming up. I last saw you eight years ago. And I recall you giving me really vague answers when I asked about his father. I—”

“I didn't know what to say, Solomon,” Michele interjected. “I didn't know if I would
ever
tell you. That was something I've been struggling with for years. I thought, ‘If I ever saw Solomon again, would I tell him he's a father?' Sonya told me that I should.
But I thought that if you were married with kids, I wouldn't want to throw that into your family. But I also thought that's exactly what I should do; you deserved confusion and drama because that's what you caused me.

“In the end, Sonya made me realize that you gave me the most precious gift I could ever have. It wasn't intentional, but you did. So, having Gerald really is the main reason I even gave you a chance to be back in my life. It was more for him than for me.”