Authors: Rochelle Alers
After Hours
ALERS
After Hours
With gratitude to Noemi Victoria who saw the vision
for
After Hours.
Thank you for Dina, Karla, Sybil
and the men who love them.
I
nserting the key card into the slot, Adina waited for the green signal and pushed open the door. The motel room was small, clean and functional. It wasn't a four-star Four Seasons or Ritz-Carlton, but it would serve her well until she found permanent lodging. The modest motel would become her sanctuary and temporary home.
She wasn't certain why she'd gotten off the bus in Irvington, New Jersey, but there was something about Irving that called to her. Perhaps it had something to do with the boy who'd sat next to her in third grade. He was the kindest boy she'd ever met or known. There wasn't anything Irving Gordon wouldn't do for her, and that included sharing his lunch and letting her cheat off his paper during a test.
The neighboring state of New Jersey was far enough away from Brooklyn that she wouldn't have to keep looking over her shoulder or duck out of sight when spotting someone who could possibly recognize her.
Dropping her bag on the floor near the closet, Adina hung the Do Not Disturb sign outside the door, closed it, then slid the security latch into place. She hadn't slipped the backpack off her shoulders when the telephone rang. Going completely still, she stared at the instrument, her heart pounding painfully against her ribs. Had someone followed her from Brooklyn to Irvington?
The backpack hit the carpeted floor with a soft thud. Moving over to the bedside table, she picked up the receiver. “Yes?” Her query was a whisper.
“Ms. Jenkins, this is Ravi at the front desk. Do you find the room to your liking?”
An audible sigh escaped her as she sat on the side of the bed. “Yesâyes. It's very nice.”
“Remember, if you need anything, just call the front desk.”
“Thank you. Good night, Ravi.” She hung up, smiling.
The woman covering the front desk when she'd arrived had refused to rent her a room because she didn't have a credit card. Short of making a scene, Adina had asked to speak to the night supervisor. She became the consummate actress when she told Ravi that she was running from an abusive boyfriend, that she hadn't taken her credit cards because he would've been able to trace her whereabouts and that she'd left everything behind except money she'd hidden from him and a week's change of clothes.
It was only after she offered to show him the burns on her thighs where the abusive monster had put out his cigarettes that the manager took over and checked her in. She paid a weekly single-room rateâin cash. Of course, there were no burns or boyfriend, but she'd counted on not having to substantiate her passionate lie with physical proof.
She'd spent the bus ride from New York to New Jersey reinventing Adina Jenkins and rehearsing her script: she was a battered woman who'd finally gathered enough courage to flee her abusive drug-addicted boyfriend after he kicked her in the belly and she miscarried. She'd told the police and emergency room doctor that she'd fallen down a flight of stairs because he'd threatened to kill her. After leaving the hospital she knew she had to leave because the beatings were becoming more frequent and brutal.
Lying came easy to Adina. Most times the lies rolled off her tongue without thought or hesitation. After a while she'd acknowledged that she was a pathological liar, but it was quick thinking and falsehoods that'd kept her alive for the past decade and she knew she would tell more lies before she achieved her lifelong dream.
She didn't need a psychologist to tell her why she'd taken to hustling men with the ease of a duck taking to water: every man she hustled became her father, and it gave her extreme pleasure to set him up to be stripped of his worldly goods.
Adina had envied the girls who held the hands of their fathers when walking along the sidewalks, those who escorted their children to the ice cream trucks and paid for whatever they wanted. She'd hated Father's Day because if she made a handmade card with her favorite crayon colors, she had no one to give it to. The men who'd come to
visit
her mother and who'd occasionally spent the night were always Uncle So-and-So but never Daddy.
Even when she'd sought to seduce flamboyant hustler Terence Yancey she'd known he eclipsed her tender age of thirteen by fifteen years. At twenty-eight, he would've been charged with statutory rape for sleeping with her, but Adina had refused to tell her mother or grandmother his name.
A wry smile twisted her mouth as she stared up at the swirling designs on the stucco ceiling. Unknowingly Terence had given her life
and
had saved her life. She lay across the bed until her breathing deepened and her eyelids fluttered as she struggled not to fall asleep. Reluctantly she sat up and prepared herself for bed.
Tomorrow was another dayâthe first day of her new life.
A
dina stared out the train window each time it made a different stop before reaching her destination. Before boarding the train, she'd dropped the PDA down a sewer, severing all communication with Payne Jefferson.
It had taken only three days of hiding out in Irvington for her to devise a plan that would eliminate Adina Jenkinsâforever. The idea had come to her after countless hours of television viewing. Aside from taking her meals at a diner half a mile from the motel, she'd spent all of her time dozing and half watching late-night infomercials, news and talk shows, soap operas, documentaries and cartoons.
A documentary on the History Channel chronicling American gangsters captured her undivided attention. It was footage of a mobster who'd cooperated with federal authorities where he'd identified members of his syndicate, giving up names and dates of robberies, murders and contract hits. His reward for selling out his former cohorts was a new identity in the Witness Protection Program. The government relocated him to an undisclosed location and set him up with a new name, birth certificate, driver's license and social security number.
It had taken hours to search through telephone books to find a law firm willing to give her an appointment to talk to an attorney about a “personal matter.” The one willing to grant her a consultation was based in Trenton. The only thing she knew about the Jersey capital was that it wasn't far from Philadelphia, a city she'd visited several times as mistress to a man who operated a prostitution ring in Atlantic City and Philadelphia.
Adina got off the train in Trenton and took a taxi to the address she'd programmed into her BlackBerry. When the driver pulled up outside the law offices of Siddell, Kane, Merrill and King, housed in a two-story stucco building painted a soft sand color with black shutters, she was prepared for the performance of her life. She'd rehearsed what she intended to say over and over until she could repeat it verbatim.
The building was one of several along a bucolic tree-lined street claiming a post office, a florist, a sweet shop, a bank, a dry cleaner, a mom-and-pop-type luncheonette and a gift shop. There was no litter in the gutters, abandoned cars, boarded-up storefronts or vagrants sitting on parked cars, lounging against buildings or loitering on street corners. Those wishing to linger sat at tables shaded by umbrellas outside awning-covered businesses.
And what affected Adina more than seeing young mothers pushing baby strollers and elderly couples greeting each other was the dearth of loud noise. There were no honking horns from passing vehicles or raised voices. Even the dogs on leashes walking along the immaculate sidewalks stopped frequently to sniff at a tree or shrub. She noted from the smiling faces and serene expressions on those who either lived or worked in the hamlet that the lack of noise, dirt and pollutionâand, no doubt, a low crime rateâattributed to a comfortable existence.
She hadn't been living but existing; an existence that included ear-shattering decibels of loud voices and music, dirt, grime and the stench of rotting garbage, weed, crack, discarded baby diapers and unwashed human bodies. Most times she prayed for colder weather so she wouldn't have to navigate the residents hanging out in and around the projects where she lived. It was only during the frigid weather that most of them stayed indoors. The exception was the dealers selling their illegal shit to addicts who believed they couldn't survive without their drugs.
Adina walked up to the gleaming black door and opened it. An attractive brunette sitting behind a cherrywood workstation smiled at her. “Good morning. I'm Adina Jenkins and I have an appointment to see Mrs. King.”
The receptionist glanced at a telephone console on her desk. “Mrs. King is on a call, but I'll let her know you're here as soon as she hangs up. Please have a seat, Ms. Jenkins.”
She sat and glanced around the reception area. Recessed lighting cast a soft glow on walls covered with a wheat-colored fabric. The black leather love seat on which she sat was like butter. The rosewood table cradling a large bouquet of fresh flowers was exquisite. The furnishings in the law office's reception area were more tasteful than what she'd seen in some living rooms.
The receptionist had addressed her as
Ms. Jenkins.
Adina couldn't remember the last time someone had referred her as Ms. or Miss. But, if luck was with her, then she wouldn't be Adina Jenkins much longer.