Love in a Carry-On Bag (12 page)

Chapter Twenty

Throw Down

W
arren and Erica left
for D.C. early the next morning and, as soon as they arrived in his office, they encountered Blanche, arched over the water cooler with her flirty skirt boldly displaying too much leg.

“You made it,” she said, folding her lips over each syllable like she would a spoonful of sugar. Her eyes were leopard’s hazel and her streaked hair moved as if guided by a fan. She was at least three inches shorter than Erica. She was also two sizes smaller. And when she spoke, the smile on her face never reached her eyes.

“Nice to see you again,” Blanche held out her hand.

“You too.”

Before driving down, Erica had done her best to pull her look together, but standing beside Blanche she knew she had failed. Her curls frizzed from the hot tub, and even though she had brushed her hair into a bun, it had only helped a little. The slacks and shirt she wore groaned under the pressure of having to stand up two days in a row, while the small stain from yesterday’s lunch seemed to have tripled in size.

Warren moved a tattered box out of the extra chair in his cubicle, motioning for Erica to take a seat. Blanche disappeared behind the wall separating their desks, and returned clutching a cup.

“Black coffee. Just like you like it,” she said, handing it to Warren. Erica wondered if this was their daily routine.

“I’ll have a cup,” she injected.

“Oh, the cafeteria is on the eighth floor,” Blanche pointed towards the elevator. Warren offered to get it.

“It’s fine, babe. Just concentrate on your work so we can get back to our weekend.” She smiled like it was a private conversation between them.

But at the elevator, she felt so insecure.

The cafeteria was empty,
except for a few caffeine junkies stealing an extra cup. Erica took her coffee to a corner table and dialed Tess.

“What’s wrong?” Tess’ voice was caked with sleep.

Erica explained the situation. Sparing no details, she started with the surprise trip, Blanche’s call, ending with the coffee comment. “She’s a chickenhead dressed in fox’s clothing. What should I do?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? That’s the best you can do?” Erica’s knee jerked against the table, causing her coffee to tip. She balanced the phone on her shoulder while mopping up the spill with some napkins.

“If Warren wanted Blanche, you wouldn’t be at his office. Don’t give her power, Sugar. You’re holding all the cards.”

Right, thought Erica. Of course Tess was right. She pushed back from the table in search of the ladies’ room. It was time to pull it together.

When she got back to Warren’s cube, there was a note taped to his computer telling her he had gone to a classified area, so she busied with checking emails. Moments later, Blanche appeared.

“Warren sent me to check on you,” she smiled evenly. Erica’s eyes stayed on the computer as she mumbled that she was fine, but Blanche didn’t take the hint and leaned over the cubicle.

“Sorry you missed the ‘Man of Honor’ dinner. It was really something.”

“I’ve been before,” Erica typed without missing a stroke.

Blanche shook her hair. “Warren took his dad’s engagement hard. Good thing I was there, he nearly fell apart.”

A ringing sounded in Erica’s ear and before she realized what she was doing, she was on her feet, her full attention on Blanche.

“Thanks for seat-filling, but I’ve got it from here,” she said as quickly as a one-two punch.

Cosmic forces must have been on their side because just then Warren appeared.

“Ready,” he said, looking from one woman to the other. Erica nodded and allowed him to help her into her coat. Mustering grace, she told Blanche that it had been a pleasure seeing her again, then took Warren’s hand and walked away.

Chapter Twenty-One

Song Cry

In less than 24
hours, Warren had driven from D.C. to New York, to the Poconos and then back to D.C., without more than a few hours sleep. His big weekend had been a waste of time and more money than he wanted to count. But Erica was the one with the attitude. She slouched against the corner of the apartment elevator as if it were her plans that went sour.

“What’s wrong with you?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she replied flatly, but he knew the tone and went through the motion of asking until she answered.

“I just didn’t realize that you sat right next to Blanche,” she said finally.

“We’re on the same team.”

“Mighty familiar preparing your coffee black just like you like it,” mocking the woman’s accent.

Warren shook his head. “Everyone in the department takes turns getting the coffee.”

“Yeah, maybe. But how come she was the only person I saw up your ass?” she eyed him, and as he unlocked the door, he told her she was overreacting as usual.

“Am I?”

They were standing in the kitchen and Warren could smell three bananas rotting in the fruit basket on the countertop.

“We work together. What do you expect me to do?” He reached for a beer.

Erica rolled her eyes. “You are way too naïve.”

Her spoiled demeanor pricked at his skin like porcupine quills, but he didn’t feel like arguing. All Warren wanted was to drink a beer and zone out with his feet up in front of the tube. But as he claimed his spot on the sofa, it was clear that Erica had other plans. She stood blocking his view in what he liked to call her war pose; feet four inches apart, fingers stretched across the back of her hips, chest thrust forward and lips pursed into an upside down u.

“I know her type,” she countered.

“What the fuck do you want from me?” He picked up the remote control and tossed it across the room as the thick vein in his forehead stretched to the size of an asparagus stalk.

“For you to stop being so stupid. First you take the whore to your father’s dinner without telling me and now the bitch is bringing you coffee like you two are a damn married couple,” she answered. “Get with the program.”

“There isn’t a program, except for the imaginary one in your head,” he said. “Now move, so I can find the Wizard’s game.”

Erica didn’t budge and her defiance further annoyed him.

“She can’t be trusted,” she raised her voice, remembering the unused condom she found in Warren’s car.

“Fine,” Warren stood. “I won’t trust her. I’ll even tell her to stop bringing me coffee if that makes you feel better. Now move.” He stepped closer.

“You care more about the stupid game than my feelings,” she spat, popping the thin lid holding his anger. Warren didn’t plan to hurt her. He just wanted her out of the way, so he grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her away from the television until she was falling backwards into the lazy chair.

“Sit down and shut up,” he yelled. “Damn you talk too much.”

“Don’t you put your hands on me,” she jumped back up and into his face fearlessly. They stood glaring at each other when the telephone rang. Warren broke the eye contact and moved to answer it, and before he could say hello he heard her mumble, “It had better not be Blanche.”

Warren hoped for all their sakes that it wasn’t.

“Hello.”

“Son, what are you doing home?”

Just the sound of his father’s voice made his stomach feel like he had been caught playing hooky in grade school.

“I took the day off, Sir,” he answered, and without giving Erica another look, continued down the hall to his bedroom. He was gone for over ten minutes and when he returned, she was sitting on the sofa with her legs folded under her Indian style. A manuscript was opened in her lap. The television was tuned to a sitcom, but as Warren moved toward it, all he could hear was his heart beating against his chest like a tom-tom drum. Hidden in a wooden box beneath the VCR was the last of the weed, and after his conversation with his father the joint was exactly what he needed.

“What did he say?” Erica broke the silence between them.

“He asked me to be the best man at his wedding,” Warren opened the box.

“What did you say?”

Pinched between his lips, the white boy bounced like a pogo stick. “He’s my father. What you think I said?” he found his lighter. “The rehearsal dinner is next weekend. It would be nice if you were there.”

He was being nasty and she decided not to fan his fire. With only two nights left of their “special weekend” she wanted to go back to loving each other, so she made her voice like peach fuzz and told him she would be there. Then she surprised them both by reaching for his joint. Warren hesitated, but then passed it to her. After two hits she coughed like something was caught in her throat.

Warren tapped her back. “What are you doing?”

“What are you doing?”

They looked at each other, and Warren sipped on the joint twice more.

Erica scooted from the sofa and went to the kitchen for some water. It didn’t take much to get her high and she soon felt a cloudy confusion that made her light-headed. She had only smoked to deaden the fight, and as the drug took over, a barrage of thoughts flickered through her head like a child’s 3D viewmaster.

The argument hadn’t really been about Blanche; it was more that Warren wouldn’t admit that the girl had a thing for him, and his unassuming blindness made her want to choke him. If he couldn’t see through Blanche then he was easy prey, and she would beat a bitch down before she let some heifer gobble up her man. Erica laughed to herself. The weed had her feeling brazen. But then the viewmaster clicked, and in strutted fear.

Warren reached for the
heavy brass latching and unhooked the case containing his horn. He moved through the first notes as if rediscovering a lost lover, plunging but restraining at the same time.

Perspiration pressed around his forehead, crept down his cheeks, settling in a pool on his neck, soaking his shirt. He felt it all—death, disappointment, the longing, the loving—and it all weighed on him with a heaviness that was becoming too regular to stomach. Then out of nowhere, he heard Jay-Z rhyming in his ear.
I can’t see ’em coming down my eyes, so I gotta make this song cry
.

Warren’s song howled.

And Erica heard it, because she was crying too.

What was happening to them?

When the music ceased, she went to him. With care she removed the trumpet from his hand and took it apart piece by piece the way she had seen him do so many times, and placed each part carefully into the case. Lifting him to his feet, she held his hand and led him back to the bedroom. The shades were down and the room was pitch black, but Erica knew her way to the place that always made things better.

Between the satiny sheets, they held, clung, rocked and trembled, apologized, kissed, begged and promised, eventually falling asleep with their bodies drenched in the weightiness of their long distance world.

It rained all day
Saturday so they took it easy, ordering take-out and watching movies. On Sunday Erica led them into their end of the weekend routine, by frying some eggs and buttering the toast. Warren handed her the book section of the Post and spread the business section for himself. Gospel music floated from the stereo on the kitchen shelf. They seemed relaxed and comfortable with each other once again, but as Erica nursed her coffee, she knew there was still too much left unsaid. A bandage had been put on the wound. But the wound really needed flushing and to be stitched. At the rate they were going the slightest bruise was bound to make the gash open and bleed. Unfortunately for her, the news she would receive the next morning at work was going to be that bump.

Chapter Twenty-Two

New Assignments

T
here was an unspoken
hierarchy when it came to the seating in Claire’s office. Edie, the director, claimed the pillow-stuffed chair at the right of Claire’s desk. Even when she was absent, no one dared to venture into her seat. Publicists sat on the beige woven sofa and the assistants folded themselves against the carpeted floor. Claire always stood behind her vanity-sized desk, making her small frame seem larger. Today she wore a tan suit with her hair styled back, showing off emerald studs. It was nine in the morning, and despite having three children at home and an hour-and-twenty-minute commute from the suburbs, Claire’s face was fresh and ready for the start of her ten-hour day.

“Edie had the baby. A girl, seven pounds six ounces,” she announced, pausing briefly for the room’s reaction.

“Wow.”

“That’s awesome.”

“It is great,” she said, and with the wave of her hand silenced the side conversations. Erica sat speechless. She hadn’t expected it to happen so soon.

“I’ve had to make a few assignment changes to compensate for Edie being out of the office. Amy, take the Barnes’ campaign. We’ve just added Dallas/Fort Worth to the tour. Erica, LaVal Jarvis is in town lecturing at Hunter College this Saturday. I know you’ve expressed interest in this early on, and now it’s been bumped from midlist to top priority. Go to the lecture and find something we can sink into. We need him to feel like we are rolling out the red carpet for him.”

Erica dropped her head, pretending to take notes, but she was really cursing under her breath. How could this happen to her again? This Saturday was Warren’s father’s rehearsal dinner and once again she had to be the carrier of crappy news.

Warren took it better
than she had hoped over the phone, but what Erica didn’t realize was how much the upcoming nuptials had Warren tripping. James had given him another bundle of weed and he had been puffing hard every night. It was the only way he could fall asleep, and even then his mother kept coming to him in his dreams, sitting in the drawing room at her piano with her fingers poised, but the music never came. Someone was sobbing.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Going to the Chapel

W
arren hurried through the
parking lot of Tabernacle Baptist Church. Tabernacle was Warren’s family’s home church. His mother had been on the Board of Willing Workers, and served as choir director for more than twenty-five years. Warren used to attend church in spurts, but he hadn’t been since his mother’s funeral seven months ago. Returning for his father’s upcoming nuptial was odd, but as he walked through the heavy church doors and was greeted by the strong fragrance of lemony wood polish, he buried his feelings under the smile he offered his dad.

“Son,” they met in the drafty foyer and his father pulled him into a hearty embrace.

“Sorry I’m late. I hit a little traffic,” Warren offered as he straightened from the hug.

“Shar’s late too and your sister’s not going to make it back. Said she couldn’t stop filming.” He looked disappointed. Warren’s older sister Billie was a filmmaker working in the Sahara Desert on a documentary.

“Where’s Erica?” his father looked past him.

“Working.”

“Again?” he gave him a questioning look, but Warren didn’t meet his gaze.

“Why is rehearsal a week before the wedding? Isn’t it usually done the night before?”

“Pastor Davis is going out of town and it’s the only time he can run through the ceremony. Shouldn’t take too long.”

“Makes sense.”

“Are you all right son?”

“Yeah,” he looked towards the sanctuary.

His father patted his back. “Well let’s go inside, I want you to come meet Shar’s boys.”

The main sanctuary of Tabernacle Baptist had been built in the early 1900s, but despite the cathedral having undergone restorations a few years back, the church still held onto its original oversized stained-glass windows, high arched ceilings and hand-carved wooden pews that fanned the center aisle like angel’s wings. The floor was carpeted in a bright royal blue that never looked worn. At the front of the church the two boys were huddled in the front row.

“Bernard, Jared, this is Warren,” his father introduced, and the timbre in his voice made the comic book shared between the boys quickly disappear. The organist began to play a recognizable hymn. Pastor Davis entered through the side door chatting with the church’s Treasurer.

“Boys, you’ll have to excuse me. I need to have a word with Pastor Davis before we begin.” His father strolled off, leaving the three alone.

The young boys were the same reddish-brown, dressed in navy slacks, white polo shirts and gray vests that bore the Point Academy school crest. An uneasiness passed through Warren, and as he placed his hands in his pockets, he confirmed that the boys attended the Academy.

“Yes Sir, I’m nine years old and Jared is seven,” answered Bernard, the older one.

“I’m almost eight,” whined Jared.

“Well you’re seven now,” his brother called back.

Jared pushed his foot against Bernard’s knee, and instinctively Bernard popped him hard over the head like a mother would a disruptive child.

“Ow, why’d you do that?” Jared pouted while the tears gathered.

“Boys,” said Shar, pushing past Warren and snatching them both by the collar. “Cut out this foolishness and show the Lord some respect.” She narrowed her eyes and the two sat still with their hands in their lap.

“How’re you, Warren?” she turned, bending her cheek towards him for a kiss.

“Fine, thanks,” replied Warren as Pastor Davis clapped his large hands, beckoning everyone to begin.

Once the rehearsal had
concluded, Pastor Davis sent Warren down to the fellowship hall to make sure that it was empty before he closed for the night. As Warren cranked closed an old kitchen window, he heard voices traveling from the ladies’ lounge just across the narrow hall. He didn’t intend to eavesdrop but the rhythm of their talk lured him in.

“Now, he know he wrong paradin’ them children round, talking about ‘here are my stepsons.’ Everybody this side of South Dakota know them boys his,” said the first voice.

“It’s a crying shame,” said the second. “After all Sister Alma done gave for this church.”

Warren stiffened at his mother’s name.

“Chile, please, dat woman knew what was gon’ on. She just looked the other way. God rest her soul.”

“The older one is the spitting image of Warren when he was that age.”

“And to bring them to this church. Umph, it’s an abomination ’gainst God, praise his holy…” The lounge door swung open and just like that Warren was nose to nose with big-boned, monkey-face Sister Clara. Her counterpart, Miz Bertha, was so close that the two hippy women collided and Warren could smell rosy talcum powder.

“Warren, baby,” cried Sister Clara, holding onto his wrist to steady herself. She looked at Miz Bertha for help, but before either of them could muster up something to say, Warren ran.

It was a crazy
reaction he knew, but once he put one foot in front of the other he couldn’t stop. He tore out of the side door through the church grounds picking up speed on 13th Street. Faster and faster his knees bucked the wind, but he couldn’t outrun the memories that flooded him.

His father always had women.

Warren flew down Pennsylvania Avenue, headed over to 14th Street running in the direction of Southeast Washington. Ten, twelve, twenty blocks he ran without pausing to take a breath as the wind whipped at his flesh, making his skin chapped and raw. The pain felt good until his lungs heaved under the pressure and he was forced to a jog. When he finally stopped, his palms pressed into his knees as he tried to catch his breath, and a forgotten newspaper wrestled with a soda can at his feet. For five minutes he stood under the streetlights in front of James’ five-story brick apartment building before he had enough wind to yell for him. He had left his cell phone in his car back at the church.

A figure moved behind the second-floor curtain, and then the front window rattled open.

“Dawg, what up?” James hung out the window, and when Warren didn’t respond, he threw down the key.

His studio was warm
and Warren quickly stripped off his suit jacket, removed his tie and parked his shoes in the corner. He could already feel his feet swelling under the pressure of running so many miles in narrow dress shoes. James was a good friend and knew Warren well enough to know that his story would unfold over time, so instead of asking the obvious, he offered him a smoke.

“Pick your poison,” James opened a shoebox for Warren containing rolling papers, Dutch cigars and a smoking pipe.

“Dutchie,” Warren leaned into the folds of the sofa, allowing the piano playing of Thelonious Monk to soothe him.

“Where’d you cop this album?”

James split open the cigar and removed the tobacco, replacing it with marijuana. He was known to have the best vinyl collection in the band and the Monk album he was playing was a rare find. After licking the cigar leaves back together, James sealed the blunt with his lighter and lit.

“If I told you, I’d have to kill you,” he took several hits from the blunt.

“Puff, puff, give,” barked Warren, reminding his friend of the rules. As James passed the blunt, he knew the time was right to ask Warren what happened. Blowing a cloud into the air, Warren sighed heavily, not knowing where to begin. So he started with Erica.

“
What’s the problem?” James dusted a few stray ashes from his “Stop Segregation Now” T-shirt and sat back in his seat.

“She doesn’t want to quit her job to be with me. I can’t quit my job to be with her and all of a sudden the distance isn’t working,” said Warren, catching him up on the foiled trip, her missing the rehearsal and the space that kept growing.

“Erica’s one of the good ones. Just hang in there.”

The blunt traveled back and forth between them and once Warren was good and high, he was able to divulge what he overheard at the church.

James coughed. “How do you know that’s not just gossip? Church women can be catty.”

Warren shook his head, “It’s eerie dude, but I felt that shit, soon as I laid eyes on those cats. You know how hard it is to get into Point Academy? I went there and only because of my father’s connection. Shar’s a fucking secretary. Who’s she connected to?”

“Your daddy,” James tilted his head.

They had smoked the cigar down to a roach and James offered him the last hit. Warren pulled on it from each angle, giving up when his fingertip burned. He readjusted the pillow at his side, feeling good and high. The memories came.

“Yo, when I’m completely honest with myself, and really allow my brain to breathe, I knew this shit was coming.”

James settled back in the armchair opposite Warren. “What you mean?”

“I must have been about ten or eleven. It was an accident really, right after we moved to Chesapeake. By then we had lived in six states in ten years. This was before he was appointed chief of staff, and bought the house on Colorado Avenue. I was always the new kid in school who talked funny, ’cause I picked up accents every time we moved and they were all meshed together. Carrying my horn everywhere didn’t help either.”

“I didn’t have that problem. Anyone who could play the drums at my school was automatically cool.”

“Well, I did. The schoolwork was a breeze, so I skipped class a lot. We never lived on base because my old man was too proud for the subsidized housing. I had only been at the school for about a month when I cut class to check out a new Kung Fu flick that everyone was talking about.”

“Which one?”

“I don’t remember the name but it was a Bruce Lee flick. I didn’t have any money so I was planning to sneak in through the back door. Then I spotted a brown Oldsmobile Delta 88, with the same sandy vinyl top as my father’s. The motor was dead, and it was the only car parked.

“Yo, I remember creeping through the lot pretending to be Spiderman. The dumpster smelled like a week’s worth of sour relish or some shit. It didn’t even dawn on me that it could be my father in the car because he was supposed to be in Florida at a special training. Really, I was just goofing off.”

James reached for the pack of cigarettes on the coffee table and put one to his lip. “Go on.”

“Man, I crept up on the car and when I looked into the window, that fool was sitting in the front seat snaking his tongue inside the mouth of some dark-skinned woman with his hands yanking back her flimsy blouse.”

“Get the hell out of here.”

“I saw her tits and everything. I was too stunned to move, and he was grunting and telling her shit that men say when they’re trying to fuck. Then all of a sudden the woman opened her eyes and stared at me with this look that said, beat it kid. So I did. I made it across the parking lot in time to catch an elderly couple exiting the movies and slipped into the theater between them.”

“Have you ever told that story before?”

“Naw, ’cause I spent the next decade of my life convincing myself that it didn’t happen. How the hell could my father poke a woman in the same car my mom used to pick up the groceries?”

“Shit happens, man,” offered James.

“Yeah, I guess.”