Destiny Lingers (16 page)

Why would I wonder about that boy on my wedding
day?

While my parents were still not happy about my marrying Garrett, they pretended to be elated as they floated through the wedding crowd, accepting praise and congratulations. The champagne reception was held at the Little Theater, where years ago as a child, I had performed in my first play. It took more than an hour for everybody to get through the receiving line. Garrett and I cut the cake. I fed him a piece as we posed for the cameras. We laughed at how much our jaw muscles ached after all of that smiling. We could barely flex our faces for the photographers.

Back at my parents’ home, company came from all over the southern region just to gawk at my high-falootin’ wedding and our hundreds and hundreds of exquisite gifts. Mother’s helpers—women from her bridge and social clubs—had erected long folding tables along the walls of our basement, covered them with the family’s finest linen tablecloths (handed down over the generations), and placed each wedding gift on display with a name card noting the giver. Everyone could see who was invited and what gift they gave the happy couple. Mother designed this to be the wedding of the decade. You would have thought it was hers.

We received a sterling silver serving tray from Dr. Maya Angelou, with an elaborate “N” for Nelson engraved in the middle. The president of Duke University gave us a beautiful porcelain Swiss clock, and we received so many place settings of Wedgewood china (thirty-six to be exact) that we had to take some back to the store in exchange for the practical things a young couple needs—like a toaster, a blender, a frying pan, and wooden spoons.

“Look at all of those gifts.” Garrett stood wide-eyed and open-armed in the middle of my family’s basement. He was grinning from ear to ear at the expensive wares. Garrett never again complained about Mother having invited a thousand mostly unknown guests to our wedding. As far as Garrett was concerned, her involvement finally paid off.

We made
Jet
magazine—a huge honor in the black community, as the historic magazine sits on just about every black family’s coffee table around the world. Our wedding news also hit our hometown newspapers, the
New York Times
, and some of the tabloids as well.

I have not thought about periwinkle blue since our wedding day. Have not even considered the color—until now, as I stare down at this piece of periwinkle lingerie that my husband has lovingly selected and laid out on a rose-petaled bed for his girlfriend—his lover—my so-called “best friend.” He clearly knows what periwinkle blue is today.

I stand here, once again, seeing red.

Chapter
Twenty

“I
think you should put that damn thing on and lie across the bed and surprise his ass when he walks in here,” Kat hisses as Hope and I huddle around her. We all stare down at the lingerie as if it’s some kind of strange fish that washed ashore.

“That would sure surprise him all right,” Hope adds with a squinched-up face as she imagines the sordid scene.

“Fuck that!” I spit, not even sounding like myself. “I’m not stooping that low.”

“No, you’re right.” Hope waffles back to my side. “But what are we going to do?”

“I don’t know,” I confess. “But Eve could be downstairs right now, telling that man behind the desk that
she
is Mrs. Nelson.”

“Okay, okay, just hold up.” Kat begins pacing the plush carpet like a panther. “Let me think.”

“Well, we better do something fast,” Hope urges. “If Eve is coming, she’ll be here any minute. We’re running out of time.”

“And ideas,” I interject. I am really scared now. At any moment, anything could happen. And whatever does is probably not going to be pretty.

Kat snaps her finger. “Okay, here’s the deal.”

Hope and I huddle back around her, eagerly anticipating our next game plan.

“Remember my fat friend downstairs at the curb?”

“Yeah,
your boyfriend
?” Hope rolls her eyes to the heavens.

“Yeah, well, I’m about to ask Big Boy for a little favor.” Kat flashes a sly smile.

Hope and I lean in closer.

“I say we ask the nice gentleman if he would be so kind as to ask ‘Mrs. Nelson’ to go directly to her husband’s suite instead of stopping at the front desk as planned. I’ll put the key in an envelope, leave it with the fat guy, and have him give it to her as soon as she steps out of the cab.”

Hope sighs heavily, losing patience and faith. “What? And what are we supposed to do then, Kat? Let her in?”

“How will he even know it’s her?” I ask, not completely sold on her plan.

“Oh, he’ll know,” Kat says. “Who could miss all that red hair?”

Of course. The red hair is what started this whole thing in the first place.

“I know that doorman will be all over that girl
and
her booty with his big ol’ fish eyes.” Hope exaggerates the man’s lusty look and bulging eyes.

“Okay, then what?” I ask, getting back down to business.

“Hope and I will wait around the corner just down the hallway, and you …”

“Yeah?” I ask.

“We’re putting you in the closet,” Kat says matter-of-factly. “We came here to catch a cheat, and that’s just what we’re going to do. Proof, plus two witnesses!”

“What?” I am about to explode. “You have
got
to be kidding me! Have you lost your damn mind?”

Kat crosses her arms and looks at me. “Well, do you have a better idea?”

I stand, mouth open, looking back and forth at my two best girlfriends. But the truth is—I don’t have a better idea, and I have to know the truth. Leaving is not an option. We have to do something fast.

“But what if he opens the closet door, Kat? What then?” I ask.

Kat swoops over to the double closet doors and swings them open by their elegant brass handles. Inside, Garrett’s garment bag hangs down to the floor. Next to it hangs a plush terry cloth robe, compliments of the Ritz. He has a couple of suit jackets lined up—the green one his folks brought him back from Paris two years ago and the one his eldest brother handed down to him. It’s his favorite—chocolate brown and green tweed with leather buttons and suede elbow patches. It smells like Garrett.

“Here. Stand behind the asshole’s garment bag,” Kat firmly directs as she pulls it back. I dutifully step behind it. “He’s already emptied it, so chances are he won’t even come over here. Just don’t move anything. You don’t want him getting suspicious by seeing something out of whack.”

I stand still, stuffed in the back of the closet. I can’t believe we’re doing this. My mind is twirling around so fast, I can’t even think. I’m becoming claustrophobic for the first time in my life. I have to get out of here.

“How about I get under the bed instead?” I plead. “They wouldn’t think to look there, would they?”

“I already checked under there,” Hope chimes in. “Not enough room.”

“Dear God,” I say, slowly shaking my head. “Has my life really come to this?”

“We don’t have time to talk about that right now,” Kat says as she slams the closet doors shut in my face, leaving me in the dark. “C’mon, Hope,
let’s move
,” she orders. “Wait down the hall around the corner. I’m going downstairs to talk to Big Boy.”

“Kat …” I hear Hope’s voice crack. “Are you sure about this?”

“No,” she snaps. “But it’s the best stuff I got right now, and I don’t hear nobody else coming up with any ideas. So let’s
go
.”

I’m left in the closet behind Garrett’s garment bag, in sudden and deafening silence and fear. I can smell Garrett’s cologne. It’s that new one he bought himself just a few weeks ago. I loved it—until now. Tonight, it is the stench of my husband’s illicit love den.

I feel sick at the thought of all that Garrett has planned for this room—not for me but exclusively for my best friend who is literally playing me. I’m dizzy at the thought of all the special things my husband has planned to do with and to Eve tonight. I think of how she lied to get out of dinner with us girls, just so she could instead have dinner and “dessert” with my scheming-ass husband behind my stupid-ass back.

That skan
k ho!

I want to jump out of this closet and annihilate this room, throw those roses out this twelfth-floor window, and rip that goddamned periwinkle teddy to shreds. I want to shove that cold bottle of Moet up Eve’s ass and all of these fucking red petals down her throat. How dare she make fools of us like this? How dare she use our sacred friendship to deceive us all? And how dare my husband let her?

I suddenly jump at the sound of two loud pounding thuds on the door.

“Heads up!” Kat calls, breathing heavily. “We’re all set. Red should arrive at any moment.
Stay
cool!”

I hear Kat scuttle down the hallway where Hope is waiting. The two will stand by for whatever is bound to happen next.

I am counting on my legs to hold up; it’s as if I’m covering another long, grueling hostage situation. If I suddenly have to jump out at somebody, I don’t want to do it from down on the floor, so I continue standing behind the big garment bag, happy that I am only five foot four, so if I bend my legs a bit, the top of my head won’t show above the bag, and I can easily spring into action. I see a dirty towel thrown on the closet floor. I stick out my foot to pull it in closer, forming a high pile underneath the garment bag to hide my feet.

I am ready. So now, I wait. I take a few really deep breaths, fearing I may not get to breathe very much when they get here, as I might be heard. I wait and I wait. I hold my breath and release. Hold. Release.

Suddenly, my whirling thoughts are chased away by a sound at the door. I hear a key slowly sliding in the lock and then the hushed click of the door opening. I freeze. I tremble. I am scared.

I hear someone entering the suite as quiet as a cat. I hold my breath, carefully straining to hear every move. Whoever it is now fumbles for the light switch. Is it Garrett? Or is it Eve? I hear a soft gasp.

“
Oh my gawd!”
It’s a woman’s breathy voice. “Aww … how
sweet
!” I hear her purr.

I know it’s
her.

She giggles uncontrollably, and then I hear her inhale deeply, apparently tickled pink by the sweet smell of her red roses. I hear her now moving toward the kitchenette. She pulls open the refrigerator door with a jerk.

“What? No champagne?” she says in a pouty voice. “Tsk-tsk-tsk. Ba-ad boy,” she scolds an imaginary Garrett.

The spoiled bitch hasn’t even looked in the bedroom, where her bedside bottle of bubbly is wai
ting.

She starts humming a happy little la-de-da-de-da tune as I hear her making her way toward the bedroom, through the opened doors, and then—
“Ahhhh!”
—she squeals like a surprised little girl on Christmas morning. “
Oh my God!”
I suppose all of those rose petals glimmering in the soft yellow lamplight and the periwinkle blue lingerie has caught the bitch’s eye.

“How beautiful,” she purrs. “Oh, oh baby.”

She is still. I cannot hear her movements anymore. This scares me, because I don’t know where she is or what she might be doing. I pray she isn’t coming toward the closet to hang her coat or something.

I cautiously move my head out from behind the garment bag, straining my neck out so I can hear clearer. I try peeking through the shuttered door and catch a slight glimpse of her through the slats. I watch intently as Eve gets up from the bed, holding her new lingerie against her body. She is smiling, clearly adoring her lover’s outpouring of gifts. She gently lays the sexy piece on the bed and begins peeling off her clothes—first her short trench coat and then her blouse, loosening the garment from around her perfectly round breasts, button by button, revealing a bright red bra. The seductress appears to be in a mental waltz with herself.

She is beautiful, and while I hate to reveal my own gross insecurities, I can see why Garrett craves her. Her supple brown skin looks soft and flawless, her muscles lithe and toned. She unhooks her bra and carelessly lets it fall to the floor. She has big dark brown nipples that are standing erect upon her voluptuous breasts. She kicks off her four-inch pumps and unzips her skirt. Her waist is slender. Her hips are shapely and round.

She carefully slides off her skirt, steps out of it, and then slips out of her red panties, wiggling them down over her hips. It seems she’s anticipating all the imagined sweetness to come. She picks up the teddy and stands there, completely naked. I am surprised that even the tufts of curls between the tops of her long, muscular thighs are as red as those on her head. I have never seen anything like it. She looks like a black-Irish bitch goddess.

Eve slips on the teddy and admires herself in the mirror. She runs her fingers all over her body, feeling her smooth curves comforted in the coolness of the fine silk. She turns around in front of the mirror, admiring every angle of herself and her brand-new lingerie. Her fingers move down, down to her sacred place. She touches herself in a slow, deep, and sensuous way and then suddenly giggles like a little girl caught sneaking. She licks her fingers as if to erase her own sins. She leaves a naughty smile in the mirror, spins around, and belly flops on top of her lover’s—my husband’s—bed.

I squeeze my eyes tightly shut in hope of stopping this sordid scene. There is no denying the growing rage inside my gut or the wrenching pain inside my heart. Still, I can’t stop watching. I want to finally witness for myself everything I have needed to know—and probably already did.

Suddenly, I am startled by the sound of the champagne cork popping. I can’t believe she is pouring herself a glass without Garrett.
That selfish b
itch.

I hear her pick up the phone and begin to dial. I wait.

“Hey, girl! It’s me,” she squeals through the receiver. “I finally made it. And, honey, you are not going to believe what my baby did for me this time.”

This time?
I wonder. How many of these expensive little trysts have these motherfuckers enjoyed? And who the hell is Eve talking to anyway?

“Uh-uh-huh.” She is beside herself with pleasure. “Girl, he gave me roses, and I mean a
bunch
of them, all over the bed and everything. My baby got me champagne and chocolates and …” She giggles again as she rolls over on her back and kicks her legs up in the air, like a giddy teenager. “Oh, Maxine!” she squeals.

Maxine!
I am stunned.

“He gave me the most beautiful little light purple teddy.”

It’s periwinkle, you stupid
slut.

“And he left me the sweetest little note asking me to have it on when his fine ass walks in here.” She seems thrilled beyond her own belief. “He’s still at work. Uh-huh … Yeah, I’m just going to lie right here and pretend that I am already Mrs. Nelson. Girl, I
know
he’s already married! I know his wife, remember?”

Oh, no, she didn’t!
I feel Eve’s dagger digging deeper.

“I know you don’t like what I am doing, Maxine, but I love him. I really do love Garrett.”

I think I am going to pass out. I cannot believe I am listening to my best friend carrying on with my other friend about my husband and how much she loves him. I want to run out of here like my hair is on fire.

“Yes, yes, you know I’ll be careful, even though I may just forget my diaphragm tonight. Oh, c’mon, calm down, Maxie, I’m just kidding. Honest. No, no, I said, I’m
kidding
!” I can see that coy grin on her face as she twirls the telephone cord around her perfectly manicured fingers. “Look, better go, sweetie. My man is on his way, and I want to be wet and ready when he gets here. Love you. Mwah” She blows a kiss through the receiver and hangs up.