Chardonnay: A Novel (30 page)

“The...tape...oh my—” I said.

“I promised you to Miscogey when he saw you at that football
charity banquet...he was going to kill my family or else Chardonnay. I tried to
stop it...you were so scared!” Myron said as he balled the sheet from the king
sized bed he was sitting on the edge of.

“How come I can’t remember?”

“Miscogey found us at my penthouse down town and stormed the
place. They held me at gun point...” Myron’s worlds trailed off as he hit his
head with his hands...I was sure he was trying to banish the memories.

“Made me sit and watch...eve-ver-ry fuckin’ thing. From him making
all his men fuck you....to him placing his...” Myron couldn’t finish the
sentence. Instead he went on to tell me Slim’s role in it.

“Micogey went to the bottom source, Slim, and made a deal with him
that if he joined his ring he would spare his life. So Slim joined on the
notion, unbeknownst to Micogey to be a watching eye for my pops which is why he
got shot. Slim came down to the penthouse after they broke in and I made Slim
slip you some drugs—drugs that would make you forget and...”

 
“Miscogey made you watch
him and I have sex.” I said remembering as Myron’s story became familiar.
Before I knew it I was walking over to the small foyer table. I picked up his
keys calmly off the table and then picked up the table, throwing it at his
head.
 
I unlocked the door as he jumped
from the floor and ran after me. I took the stairs of the fire escape and ran
through the quiet lobby. From where I was standing I could see Myron’s SUV was
sitting in the valet parking lot. He was right on my heels. I saw a security
guard and yelled,

“He’s after me—
help
!”

The guard stopped Myron, allowing me enough time to get over into
the lot and unlock his doors so I could take off before Myron could prove it
was his Escalade. I rammed the Hemi engine back slamming into some unknown Benz
and full throttled out the lot over a curve. The security guard and Myron was
Maurice Greening it towards the big body SUV once all was realized. By then I
was half way out the lot and contended on running both of them over if they
were stupid enough to not move out the way. Invisible tears were all I had. I
drove to my parents’ home to get
my
car. My daddy had bought it for me
when I was twenty but I never bothered to get my license, after all I had so
many friends with cars. I pushed the garage door opener with my keys and jumped
out the car when a red corvette that belonged to Mystro pulled up.
 
I ran to my car and tried to unlock the door
when I dropped the keys. Myron caught up to me.

His arms hovered over my shoulders and pressed firmly against the
hood of my Lexus, making a trap cage. He looked in my face and tried to whisper
sorry and I wish I hadn’t...it was beyond late. I forced Myron’s body back with
the sharp point of my elbows and reached down for my keys and unlocked my door.
Myron tried to get in my passenger side door, but by the time he got around to
the other
side,
I had my foot on the gas.

27

...Will
Eventually Come To Light

In the
frenzy of my rush, I hadn’t realized that Myron was following me in his SUV. I
was driving recklessly to get to a place that didn’t consist of any human life.
I wanted to be alone. When I looked in my rear view mirror and saw bright
headlights riding my ass and a license plate that read the name
MR KENT
,
I began to speed faster towards a destination I wasn’t sure of. He pulled
around to the side honking his horn for me to pull over, but I kept looking
straight.

“CHARDONNAY!
Pull over—PLEASE! I need you to
listen to me. Let me explain.”

Tears streamed down my face like a flooded drain on a residential
street. I didn’t need him to explain. It was all coming back to me.
Everything.
As I drove down the steep hill and turned on to
a side street, the open curtain of lost breezes blew. I twitched my eyes and
began palpitating. And if my memory served me correct, what Myron had done to
me...the devil wouldn’t have even contemplated. Jase
..
I
knew it seemed weird when I saw him on that elevator, it felt as if we knew
each other in another life, and somehow we had. But as open as my memory was, I
still couldn’t remember his significance. How we actually first met did not
come clear at all. But I now knew the man in the dream...the man in the shower
with me was him. Jase took my virginity...not Myron or Slim or Miscogey’s boys.
I now knew why he didn’t tell me who he was. I dialed his number as Myron
chased me down the street. No answer. Myron kept honking trying to get me to
pull over but I couldn’t. The deceit wouldn’t let me. I
 
remembered
 
three
 
guys grabbing me and
dragging my naked body into the living room like I was a piece of freshly cut
grade A beef in a meat factory, as I screamed and hollered for my life like a
Tutsi in the genocide of Rwanda. I recalled my clothes being ripped from me
as...they raped me. One by fucking one as Myron squirmed around in two big
dudes’ arms, holding him back and me watching him cry like a new born child
only out of pure nature.

I drove recklessly as I broke down crying and cursing his
name.
 
When the fifth dude got done, it
was Slim’s turn. Suddenly my body came alive. Myron would get his and he did.
For a man to have to watch his precious rib seduce and tantalize his best
friend was beyond painful. Myron was mentally dead. So I became the hoe he
wanted me to be. I became that nasty Lexi he had sexed over and over again. I
became that Shauna he let suck his balls until his eyes popped out. I had
become all those hate stricken money hungry groupies he wanted me to truly be.
I did all the things they had done to him to Slim. The drugs may have had me
gone by then and had made me go that far, but I knew what I was doing. Myron
did too. He bowed his head and tried to look away, but when Miscogey saw the
lust and enjoyment in my eyes and the pain in Myron’s...he got new plans. That’s
when my fear buried me. Miscogey was a tall man with a handsome but rugged
face; clean shaven but had scars from his years in the field. He looked like an
old G with his wife beater on and suspenders attached to Italian silk dress
pants that match his blazer.
 
He
scrunched his face up as he jerked my head back by pulling my long auburn hair
that I had colored back just to make Myron happy. Miscogey smelled me as Myron
and I whimpered, mine sorrowfully asking Myron why and his sobbing that he was
sorry. When Miscogey order me to my knees, I screamed no. He smacked me.

“Ya lil’ dumb bitch can’t take orders. What? You think you too
prissy girl? Don’t be scared of this dick...she was a virgin right?”
he asked
Myron who’s face had tensed up.

He just took heavy breaths in and out.

“I want tight pussy but I don’t want it too tight. Hope Rason and ‘nem
boys did a good job of loosen it up.”

 
He pushed
me back and did things to my inexperienced body that most women wouldn’t
attempt to do until at least their fourth sexual encounter. I was in the bed of
the
devil’s
.

When my memory shut down on me I could see a huge eight teen
wheeler hurling directly in front of me head on. I looked in my rear view
mirror at Myron’s SUV, him arguing with a driver in a Maybach that was side by
side with his; the same Maybach that belonged to Jase. I looked forward as the
truck honked
its
 
horn
beckoning me to moving over on my side of the sleek and thin road. But to me
this was fate. This was meant to be. I didn’t know when or how I had swayed in
the wrong lane, but I did. The next thing I knew Jase speed his car over on the
shoulder of mine and rammed my car over before
the eighteen
wheeler
could run into me head on. It instead nicked Jase’s car and sent
it flipping over. I pressed my foot on the breaks and got out the car screaming
his name. Myron got out his SUV and tried to help get him out along with the
truck driver from the
eighteen
 
wheeler
. His car began to
catch fire
which through me into panic.

“Someone get help! Oh my god! Jase! Jase give me your hands.”

He reached out and Myron unlatched his seat belt. Looking at
Jase...I could see it happing, him giving me the black diamond necklace—our
forbidden love flash backed to me...My hair in its natural gold state as he
bended down on one knee with the five carat ring.

More strangers ran over to help get him out. The truck driver had
Jase’s body half way out but the angle he was struck in made it hard. His neck
was crooked and he began to lose conscience. A no name man with salt and pepper
hair ran fast towards us hollering for us to “get the fuck away from the car”.
The eighteen wheeler was a gas truck...The truck driver picked my body up as I
kicked and screamed for them to get Jase out.

Myron fought as well as two big muscular men dragged him away from
Jase. If I never heard him call him his brother before—now would account for
all the rest.

“Put me down—that’s my brother! Get my brother out that fucking
car!”

I watched the gas leak run along to the Maybach and Jase hang
there half aware with a blacken face from his bruises. Just as the gas leak
caught fire, a fire man rushed on to the scene. Jase had a piece of paper that
he was waving out as the fire man tugged and pulled, but to no avail he couldn’t
get him out. The piece of paper flew out his hand and somehow miraculously
landed at my feet as I watched on in horror at
two
fire man now, trying
to get him out. I cried as I looked at the letter. It was my grandfather’s
words translated. Then I heard someone say,

“It’s gonna blow!”

The fire men began to run off...one of them with Jase’s body over
his
shoulder’s
. A few seconds later a ball of fire
flew into the sky. I ducked as the fire man ran past Myron and
I
. We followed them to the spot where they laid Jase down on
the ground checking his vitals.

“Whats your name, sir?” one of the fire
man
asked.

“Ja—Jasen...Von
..Von.”

“
It’s
okay baby, you’re okay.” I said
touching his face.

“You—you read the letter yet?” he asked altruistically.

I shook my head no.

“I—I think you need to read it...now.” he said as they put him on
the stretcher. I kissed his face before they took him off and turned to see
Myron bending over near his SUV. He put one hand up on the side of it as he
breathed in and out heavily from the dreaded evening that unfolded. I took the
letter in my hands and closed my eyes as I folded it up and put it in my
pocket. I couldn’t read it alone. I knew looking at a letter my grandfather had
left for me beyond the grave would call for moral support, and Myron wasn’t it.

Jase peered off his bed looking down at me on the floor, growling
from his aching body. I blinked away induced sleep and looked at him as his
piercing eyes focus in on my worn face.

“Why are you down there...come
get
in bed
with me.”

“You know I can’t do that—too much hooked up to you.”

I stood from the chilled wood floors of his loft and leaned over
on the bed and into his face. He pulled me down and hugged me tightly.

“You are stubborn.” I said pulling away and scuffing up his waxed
wood with my fluffy pink Hello Kitty house shoes over to his small refrigerator
that sat in the corner of this makeshift hospital room. Jase refused to spend
the night in a hospital; he hated them. Hence
him
just
sending flowers when I was in the hospital. He had a personal doctor come make
visits every four hours and staying overnight until his recovery. The most
outrageously expensive thing I’ve seen him do thus far.

“Would you stay in a place that has convened the deaths of
thousands in it for months at a time?”

“I wouldn’t want to but I would do it for my life.” I said pouring
the thick half and half cream I took out the refrigerator into a brown domed
mug. I took the espresso container off its brewer that sat atop the
refrigerator and poured it slowly into the chilled cream.
 
I stirred it twice like I once watched Jase
do and dropped one cube of sugar into the marbled drink.

 
He sat up growling and
heaving as I walked over to him with his morning dose of caffeine.

“Wait—I’ll help you.”

“
It’s
coo...hand me that candy dish over
there though.” he said nodding his head in the direction of a sparkling crystal
bowl filled with elegantly wrapped treats. I handed it to him and he plucked
two out of it, passing one to me.

“Thanks.” I smiled giving him a genuine smile, watching him
unravel the golden wrapper from around a silky chocolate ball. He looked at me
as if I was supposed to do the same.

 
“You ready?” he asked.

“For what?”

“To eat the chocolate together...I wanna share this with you...it’s
the closets we’re getting to sex with each other for a while. I’m tired of
looking at you in your tidy widy’s.”

I laughed at his humor and kissed him on his cheek. He chuckled
popping the Belgian chocolate truffle in his mouth. I went ahead and opened
mine staring at it as I thought of what today was.

“This is bad you know, eating sweets in the morning.”

He washed down his chocolate with the huge mug of espresso and
took a moment to smack his lips, savoring the mixture of the tart combination.

“Nothings as bad as your mind may phantom...I don’t listen to any
of these health gurus.”

He looked at me and asked the dreaded question.

“You read the letter yet?”

“Today is supposed to be my wedding day. Jase, I can’t deal.”

“The best way to deal is to heal.”

“I take it you read it. You tell me.”

He gave a gruff laugh and shook his head no,

“Whats in that letter can only be told through that wise man’s
voice I read it through. All I can say is some things aren’t always what they
seem.” he ran his bandaged hand through my bone straight hair.

“I respect that you won’t read it until you’re ready, though.”

I nodded my head.

“Did I tell you what Myron told me?”

His jaw line tensed, he looked off at the mute running television
that sat in his Italian entertainment system.

 
“Jase...you hear me?”

“Yeah,” he adjusted himself to the wind of the fan that I sat
beside his bed the night before. I shook my head,

“You...knew.”

I turned his face to mine, his eyes distant and glazed.

“I’ve tried to get over what was done to you time and time again.
I was told to get over you, anyway. Some things aren’t always meant for you
if....they don’t come back to you.”

In my mind those words came into focus. His face became familiar.
And my body felt numb. Words I had heard Myron say to me before and now to hear
them pour out Jase’s mouth. He sucked in air and blinked back tears.

“And you still don’t remember me...” he sighed out.

I looked down at the five carat ring on my right hand finger that
Myron told me he had given to me.

I looked back up at
him,
standing up
quickly, my mind was playing tricks on me.

“No,” I cried.

Jase struggled from the bed and reached out for me, crying my
name.

“I’ve known you more than four months. May t-two thous-”

“—No, stop it!” I yelled.

“Five...Paris, France...the Atlantic Channels—”

“STOP!”
I couldn’t take it...me forgetting made it
easier to love Myron. A love I was programmed
to have.

I looked at him head on shaking and pacing my breath. What my mind
read could not have been true. Jase nodded his head bowing to my knees,