Basketball Jones (27 page)
Authors: E. Lynn Harris
“Naw, it couldn’t be,” I muttered in disbelief.
“What?” Cisco asked.
Before answering I shook my head. Did I just see who I thought?
“Do you know that dude?” Cisco asked, gesturing to the Mercedes flying down the road away from us.
I didn’t know how to answer his simple question.
I watched the Mercedes disappear. “I think that’s the man I thought was my best friend.”
“Word,” Cisco mumbled as he sped onto the freeway and back toward my hotel.
A few hours later, I was boarding a Delta flight to Atlanta. As Mama would say, I was spent. Being blackmailed by my boyfriend’s wife was hard enough, but seeing my best friend involved both hurt me deeply and left me enraged. I knew Maurice could be an underhanded and low-down bitch when he chose to be, but never would I have imagined he’d turn on me. This realization also left me horribly confused, asking myself not only what I’d done to deserve this betrayal but how Maurice knew Judi. He lived outside Atlanta and it wasn’t like he would ever show up for a game. No, this was some major shit that made no sense.
I was more pissed off than I’d ever been in my life, and my thoughts were spinning like a circus ride gone wild. When we’d gotten back to the hotel, I had thrown my clothes into my suitcase and Cisco drove me to the airport in silence. Although he’d repeatedly asked what was going on, I chose to wait to explain the story to him.
We shared a tender moment at the airport. Well, tender for a guy like Cisco. I had stepped a few feet from his car when I
heard him call out my name. I turned around to find Cisco leaning his head out the window. With a huge smile, he said, “AJ, everything will be fine. I will make sure of that. I got you, man.” He let out a little laugh, waved, and was gone.
My only thought was to get to Atlanta before Maurice did. I was going to pack all my shit and take whatever money he’d left in the closet. Money that belonged to me.
On arrival in Atlanta, I took a cab to Maurice’s house and was relieved that it looked like I had beaten him back. Knowing Maurice, he was probably stopping at every small town between New Orleans and Atlanta, trolling the streets in his shiny new sports car looking for boys. He hadn’t a clue I knew his deal, and so had no idea what awaited his return. As I pushed the code into the keypad of the garage, I tried to wrap my head around the day’s events.
Although I hadn’t figured how Maurice and Judi met, suddenly everything made sense. Maurice was the real blackmailer. Some of the information Judi knew about me was in my journals. The journals I’d left in Maurice’s care when I moved to New Orleans. That evil sissy had warned me that he could be deceitful and crafty. Why hadn’t I been smart enough to see he’d eventually turn his tricks on me?
How could I have been so stupid? Not only with my choice of friends, but about my love life as well? I made up my mind to call Dray and tell him what a fool he was. I was going to tell him that he’d let a good thing get away and nobody would love him like I did. And if he was happy with Judi, well, I was going to tell him they deserved each other.
My battle wasn’t with Judi and her nasty ass. It was with the man I had put my trust in, given my love, and more important given my life up for. I decided at that moment, in the empty
house I wanted to set ablaze, that revenge wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted my own life back and I wanted it now, even if it didn’t include Dray.
But first I had to get past something that had happened to me long before I met Dray, something that dated back to my childhood. I located the boxes that held journals I’d started keeping while in high school. Journals that held secrets I thought I’d kept to myself for so long. Journals so valuable to me that I always kept them close by, with the exception of my lapse in judgment when I’d first moved to New Orleans. I immediately found the first one I’d ever had. It was black leather, with yellow pages and blue lines. I turned the pages until I found the entry I was looking for, sat in the middle of the floor, and began reading it for the first time in many years. The memory of that night was now as fresh as a new layer of snow.
It was a winter night, cold and clear, when he showed up. I had just turned fifteen and Bella was two. I was babysitting as my mother worked her part-time job as a sales clerk at the Belk near our house.
His name was Eddie Wilson and I called him Mr. Eddie. He was a tall man, about six-six, light-skinned, with hazel-brown eyes and a five-inch Afro. He took my mother out to the local club a couple of times after meeting her when he came to install a phone line at our home.
I remember Mama telling one of her girlfriends how much she liked Mr. Eddie because he made her laugh, but she was concerned that he was a couple of years younger than her.
On that night I looked out the window and saw Mr. Eddie standing on the porch. I was a little surprised, since he and Mama only had dates on the weekend. I opened the door with
hesitation. He asked for Mama and I told him she was working. He asked if he could come in and wait. I let him in.
He flipped through a magazine as I finished up my homework. Every now and then I would glance up at him when I thought he wasn’t looking, admiring his handsome face. After about thirty minutes, he looked at me and asked what I was doing. I told him math problems and he walked over to the table where I was studying, saying he wanted to see what math was like these days and wondering out loud if he could do the assignment.
Moments later he was standing behind my chair, peering over me into my math book. I could feel the heat of his body because he was so close to me, and then I felt his breath on the back of my neck.
“Turn around,” he instructed me. When I did my face was directly in front of his crotch area and it was bulging. He removed my pencil from my hand. Mr. Eddie then took my hand and placed it on his groin and with his hand on top of mine moved it up and down as he moaned. After a few minutes, he took out his dick and asked me to kiss it. I’d never done that, but strangely it seemed like the most natural thing in the world.
As Bella slept in the room we shared, Mr. Eddie took me to my mother’s room and laid me on the bed on my stomach. He was careful not to disturb the bedspread or pillows as he pulled my pajama bottoms down.
“Have you ever done this before?” he asked.
I turned my head around and looked at him. He had removed his pants and his tantalizing thick dick was hard.
“No,” I said.
“I’m going to try not to hurt you,” he said as he gently
pushed my head into the bed with his strong hands. When he entered me, his delivery was painful but slow and careful. His body shook and he let out a primal scream as he came, pulling his dick out of me, part of his cum in his hand and the rest on my back and legs.
Mr. Eddie went into my mama’s bathroom and minutes later returned with a warm washcloth and instructed me to wipe myself off. Then he left, and never returned to see my mother or me.
Reading the entry after all these years made me both sad and angry. Sad because I realized my boyhood innocence had been taken away from me prematurely and mad because the person who’d taken it, like my good friend Maurice, didn’t give a damn about me.
My bags were packed and sitting by the front door as I surveyed the room. I wanted to be sure I had everything because I didn’t want to have any reason to ever set foot in this house again. All was quiet for a second and in that moment I remembered all the laughter Maurice and I had shared here. The Christmas party suddenly felt like a lifetime ago. Now my mind wanted to bury those moments forever.
The place never felt more silent. I don’t know if it was just me feeling especially lonesome after losing Dray and Maurice or whether I just wanted to get out of there badly, but the silence was pronounced.
I walked down the hallway into the living area when I heard the front door open. Maurice’s voice shattered my solitude.
“I’m back,” he sang out.
A bag of luggage hung from his shoulder and he had on a silly hat with a red-and-green pom-pom dangling from it. He wore a smile that I wanted to slap from his face.
“Did you miss me, hon?”
I stood there in a fury, unable to articulate my rage and deep, deep feelings of betrayal. I held so much resentment at that moment that I thought once I started going off on him, I might end up beating Maurice to the ground.
“Child, did you go deaf-mute while I was gone? I asked you if you missed me.”
Coldly I walked passed Maurice and opened the side door that led to the garage. There parked was all the proof I needed: the shiny red sports car with the temporary license plate. I blinked back tears I was determined to suppress and went back inside the house.
Maurice still had on that smile and asked if I liked his new toy.
“How could you do this to me, Maurice?” I snapped. “You of all people. How could you do this to me? What have I ever done to deserve your trying to ruin me?”
“AJ, child, what are you talking about?” Maurice asked in wide-eyed innocence.
“You know damn well what I’m talking about,” I shot back. “You and that bitch in New Orleans blackmailed Dray and me. And don’t you lie to me. Don’t you fucking lie to me! I know it was you. I saw you leave his house today.”
He had been busted and it showed on his face. He couldn’t conceal his look of surprise. If I had any doubts about him at all, those doubts were gone.
I reached for one of my bags. I’d never been so disgusted by
anyone in my life. “I hope you’re happy with yourself, but I hope you know what goes around comes around. So sorry I won’t be around to see you get yours.”
He snatched the hat from his head and yelled, “Don’t you come in here all high and mighty with me, mister. You’ll get yours too. It’s one thing to be a faggot, but it’s another thing to be with a woman’s husband and let him take care of you like you’re some beautiful white woman. Who in the fuck do you think you are? What makes you think you’re so special?”
Maurice moved closer to me, as if he were about to hit me.
“You better move the fuck back,” I said.
“Or what? You gonna hit me? Go ahead. I’ll call the police so fast you won’t have to worry about a place to stay because your ass will be in jail.”
“Then get out of my way,” I ordered. I didn’t know anymore what he was capable of, but I knew Maurice well enough to know that he would follow through on his threat. I had to get out of there before I did something I’d never done in my life: spit in someone’s face. He stepped to the side to let me pass and I bent down and grabbed one of my bags.
“Have a nice life, bitch,” I said, picking up the second bag. Oh, I would have given anything to slap his ass so hard his head would spin, but I knew violence wasn’t the answer. He’d hurt me so badly that I didn’t know what could satisfy my fury.
“Oh, I will, thanks to you,” he said with bitter sarcasm. “The cash that Ms. Judi gave me for all the information I supplied her with will keep me happy for a long time.” He stepped around to my left. “Can you imagine how happy she was to give me some ends when I told her about you? Do you know how much fun I had reading about your little affair and how you couldn’t wait
until your boyfriend and you were together always? Well, it’s not gonna happen, hon. Not now, not ever. Just think of the heartache I saved you.”
I was beyond rage by this point. It was obvious I was talking to a madman. “You’re sick, Maurice, and I should feel sorry and sad for your pathetic existence.”
“Don’t feel sorry for me, bitch, because I know who I am. It’s you who’s got the problem,” he said, thrusting an accusing finger at me. “I feel sorry for
your
sick ass. I guess it all started for you when you took your mama’s boyfriend. You had the gall to go around thinking you’re better than everybody because you got some NBA player to fall in love with you? Just because you don’t have to worry about shit, always talking about the charity work you’re doing and how you were helping your mama and sister while my ass, like most of the sissies in Atlanta, was out here struggling, trying to keep the bank from taking back my villa.”