Hold Me in Contempt (23 page)

King helped me to his bedroom and laid me on the bed with a neck roll under my stomach to lift my lower torso.

“I'll be right back,” he said, walking out of the room.

The pain didn't go away, but I immediately felt some relief in the position.

He returned with a cool cloth he placed on my neck before sitting in the chair beside the bed with a new bottle of water in his right hand.

“Here. Take these,” he said, his left hand displaying two little white pills with
V
's etched into them.

“Vicodin? What are you doing with these?”

“What are you, the police?” He laughed, handing me the pills.

“No. I'm just saying, I'm not supposed to take strange pills from strange men,” I said. “And most people don't just have these things hanging around.”

“Well, Ms. Detective,” he opened. “First, it's not strange—you just said it was Vicodin, and I'm not a strange man—you're in my home. And I told you my family owns clinics. Mostly pain-management clinics. I keep the pills in the house in case something happens. Basketball injury. Whatever. You never know. Hope you don't turn me in.”

“I won't,” I answered, laughing and swallowing the pills down with the water. “Well, tell me,” I went on. “Since you seem to know so much, what's up with this cloth on my neck? How does that help my pain, doctor?”

“Oh, that's something my
maimeó
—my grandma—taught me,” he said. “It's just to keep your mind off the pain. That's all. See, you're not even thinking about the pain right now. Are you?”

I thought about it and confirmed, “You know, your grandmother is right. I'm not thinking about the pain. I'm really not. Smart lady.”

We laughed, and King got up to get a blanket to put over my bare back. He spread it out over me and kissed me on the cheek like he was saying good night.

He sat back in the chair, where I could see him looking at me.

I told him a little bit about the car accident, leaving out the parts about Kim 2 and Ronald at the hospital. The new dreams that were beginning to feel truer than my actual memories. He asked about my doctor and what kinds of painkillers I'd been taking. I shared parts of the story about Dr. Davis and his crush stopping my prescription and that I needed to find a new doctor.

As the Vicodin set in and every one of my muscles sagged into a relaxation that made me slur my words, I kept insisting that I get up and head home, but King wouldn't hear any of it.

“You're stuck here with me,” he said. “Face it. You're not going anywhere. Not tonight.”

I remember trying to disagree and roll off the bed to get to my feet, but my eyelids were so heavy. I just wanted to close them for a little while. The last thing I said was that I'd take a nap and wake up in a minute to be on my way.

My minute-long nap turned into ten hours of deep sleep that only ended due to the unmistakable sound and scent of bacon frying in the kitchen.

I opened my eyes on the chair next to the bed, empty except for a folded white T-shirt. The room was made bright by the morning sun.

“Good morning,” I said, walking into the kitchen.

King was standing at the stove in basketball shorts and no top. He turned around and smiled. “Good morning.” He walked over to me holding a greasy spatula, the bacon sputtering in the frying pan behind him. “I see you found the shirt I left out for you,” he added. He looked so different in the sunlight coming in from the east. Maybe more striking than handsome. His cheekbones were tight. His eyes digging. I considered that this was maybe the first time I was seeing him so clearly and up close. I wondered what I looked like to him and thought that maybe I should've stopped in the bathroom to fix my hair before I came out to the kitchen.

I stood on my tiptoes and kissed him on the lips anyway. “Perfect fit,” I said. “You made breakfast?” I nodded toward the stove.

King ran back over to the stove, grimacing. “Just some bacon,” he said, making it in time to interrupt a growing cloud of black smoke. He removed the frying pan from the stove and sat it right on the granite countertop before turning back to me. “It's all I know how to make. I'm not much of a cook, but I figured you'd be hungry.”

“Thoughtful.” I couldn't help but grin at his gesture. I climbed up on a stool at the island in the middle of the kitchen.

“No.” King laid the spatula down and came over to me again. “Not at all. Thoughtful would've been getting up early enough to have this ready to surprise you in bed. But I didn't want to move. You looked so beautiful when you were sleeping.” He cupped the side of my face with a big, solid hand. “I didn't want to wake you. You were so peaceful.”

“Yeah. That's funny. I've been having a lot of nightmares lately,” I said, noting that I'd slept at King's place for the second time and those were among the few times lately when I hadn't dreamt of the car accident. In fact, I couldn't remember dreaming of anything. I was floating.

“You were knocked out.”

“I'm happy I got any sleep after my back went out on your couch.” I frowned, remembering how crazy I must've looked contorting my body to get rid of my pain and then lying stomach down on King's bed in nothing but a jean skirt and a blanket thrown over my body. “I'm so embarrassed that happened. Like I'm some kind of old lady. I'm sorry for ruining the night.”

King went and picked up the frying pan and brought it over to the island, setting it down on the counter in front of me.

“You really did ruin the night,” he said sarcastically. “I had to work hard to help you into bed and keep watch over you all night. Do you know you snore? I normally charge top dollar for my nursing services. I don't come cheap, sister.”

I laughed. “Really? Well, I'm pretty broke, but I can make it up to you in other ways. You have any ideas?”

“Hum . . . ” He leaned into me and I couldn't help but slide my hand up his chest. “I do have some ideas,” he said.

“Like what?” I felt his hardening nipple.

King fell back, laughing. “Whoa, girl. Get your mind out the gutter. See how y'all harass us male nurses? I was actually thinking of something a little less steamy.” He paused. “I want you to spend the day with me. Here. Let's play hooky.”

“Hooky?” I giggled, thinking he had to be joking.

“Yes. I already canceled all of my meetings and told Terra not to come today. I'm all yours. I don't know. I just was thinking, I want to just do some plain shit. You know? Sit in the house and watch daytime television. I don't even know what comes on anymore.
Maury
? What the fuck. We can order in and keep on our nightclothes. And”—he took my hand and placed it back on my chest— “see what happens after that.”

“You're actually serious?” I asked.

“Okay. Maybe it is a dumb idea. Forget—” He was about to step back from my hand but I grabbed him.

“No—I was just confirming that you weren't playing with me,” I said, remembering my lonely couch at home. My peaceful resting at his place. “I think it sounds pretty cool. I'm yours too.”

I moved my hand from King's chest to his cheek and pulled him to me for a long, wet, and hot kiss that might've led to us skipping some of the steps in his plan for hooky day had there not been a skillet of pig meat on the counter between us.

“So, where are our plates?” I asked King after letting his lips go.

“No plates,” he said, plucking a piece of oily bacon directly from the skillet. “I eat my pork right out the frying pan. Tastes better that way.”

“What? You're supposed to drain it on a paper towel or something. You can't eat that right out of the pan. You'll die of heart disease. Hypertension,” I protested.

“Oh, I'm not a brother,” he joked, before picking out another piece and teasing me with it. “I'm good. I may burn in the sun, but it takes a lot more than some pig fat to knock an Irishman down. Remember that.”

So, people still go on Maury Povich's show to let all of America know that they have no idea who their baby daddy is, and apparently it's pretty easy for your best friend to sleep with your girlfriend. King and I snuggled under the covers in his bed and tried to act like we were above watching this silliness unfold between trailer-park drama queens and project papas, but it was too good to turn away. We lay there enjoying the TV antics and eating bacon out of the frying pan like it was popcorn—and I admit, it did taste better right out of the grease. For a long time our conversation never went deeper than disgust at a wrongfully accused father or tears at a toothless dad reunited with his daughter after twenty-five years—all in front of Maury Povich. Still, I felt like something was going on between us. Yes, I could tell he was trying to keep up this hard persona, but his laugh was becoming the most honest thing about him. Even if I didn't find something funny, if he laughed, I laughed at him laughing. And he laughed a lot.

My cell phone was on the nightstand set to silent, and I looked over at it a few times to see that Paul had called me twice since sunup and left one message. I was about to listen to it, but when I reached for the phone, King reached for my ass cheek and I kind of got tied up with him for an hour. By the time I looked at the phone again, my battery was dead and I just really didn't feel like plugging it up. Why? Paul was the one who'd put me on vacation. Anything he had to say could wait until I was ready to return—wasn't that his advice?

We ordered Thai and pizza. Chicken wings. Closed the blinds. Watched too many gangster movies. Reenacted the scenes. He was an Irish Tony Montana and I was a young Michelle Pfeiffer turned Foxy Brown with a mean walk. We washed each other's backs in the shower. We talked a lot.

King opened up a little more. He wasn't one of
the
McDonnells from the History Channel. But he was
a
McDonnell. His great-grandfather Rig actually was on the second ship to arrive at Ellis Island. He'd come to America a thief who'd originally been denied entry, but he used blood money to get a spot on the ship. When he got to New York, he vowed to leave his past in Ireland behind, but he had little choice and too many opportunities to do the wrong thing. But then he met King's great-grandmother, whom he fell madly in love with and married in secret to stop her parents from sending her to a convent to avoid them hooking up.

King seemed so proud of his long-ago ancestry, but the closer he got to his present, the more vague and tight-lipped he became. He'd look away. Make sudden transitions. He did let on about where he thought his love of black women came from though. His great-grandmother's parents had good reason to try to stop their “true blood” Irish daughter from marrying a white man. They were keeping a big secret. King's great-great-grandmother wasn't Irish at all. She was half black and half white. Had come up to New York from Georgia in the 1870s and used her ivory skin, green eyes, and hair blond from the roots to change her history. She told her husband all of this when she met him at a soup kitchen near Castle Garden days after he'd arrived at New York's original immigration station from Ireland. He didn't care. He was in love and vowed to keep her secret. But nearly twenty years later when their daughter, who they were lucky to have come out with skin and hair just like her mother's, announced that she was in love with an Irishman, they worried about what her children would come out looking like, and then came the threat of the convent.

“So, you have a little black in you?” I laughed, looking at King. I could see it then. I imagined that was what made his skin so beautiful.

“I come from a long line of men who love black women,” he said. “It's funny because they claimed they were passing, but I look at pictures and they both looked black to me. My grandmother had an Afro—she used to iron it on the ironing board though. Never went out in the sun.”

The second morning I awoke in King's bed, I got up and went around the room trying to put together pieces of the outfit I'd been wearing when I got there.

King sleepily called out, “Stay. What do I have to do to make you stay?”

I returned to bed and went back to sleep. We played hooky a second day. Kept the blinds closed so tight it was easy to forget the world outside was still in motion. I forgot to plug in my phone. Maybe I didn't want to plug in my phone.

Morning three, I got up again. King called out again.

“I can't,” I answered before he finished.

“Why not?”

“Because . . .  ​I can't. I have to go. I just have to.”

King got out of bed and met me in the living room, where I was looking for my shoe. “Why?” he asked. “Why can't you just stay here? With me?”

I stopped my search and smiled at him. “You're not tired of me yet?”

He approached me slowly, trying to con me back to bed with his eyes. “I'm definitely tired . . .  ​but not of you. I'm tired because of you.”

He almost pulled me in with his stare, but I walked away. “I have to go.”

Inside, I felt the same way he did. I wanted to stay there in the darkness with him and forget about anything outside. But every once in a while the sunlight would shine through the blinds and I knew I couldn't pretend my world didn't exist. Being with King, I felt like I was safe in a cocoon or a cradle. But even caterpillars and babies have to leave their confines sometime. And though King seemed perfectly content in the high-rise Brooklyn Eden we'd been creating out of Chinese delivery and On Demand movies, I knew his outside world was catching up with him too. His phone was rattling all night. A few times he'd left the room to make a call and returned out of his fun mood. Sometimes I felt like he was running away from something just like I was running away from something. I didn't know what he was running away from. But I didn't know what I was running away from either.