Not a Day Goes By (2 page)

She found Basil a sensitive man who had survived a dysfunctional childhood somewhat similar to her own. Yancey had been raised by her grandmother, while her mother, Ava, traveled the world in search of a career as an entertainer. She had never laid eyes on her father. Yancey had followed in her mother’s footsteps and, after her grandmother died, mother and daughter had forged a tentative friendship that was more like a difficult sibling relationship than a mother-daughter bond. Ava had never been there for Yancey when she really needed her for emotional support, and it seemed that whenever Yancey had a little problem she needed to talk over with her mother, Ava had a bigger one. So Yancey had come to accept that all she could really expect from her mother was lively and entertaining conversation and occasional monetary support in the form of a check sent via overnight mail whenever Yancey was between jobs. When Basil asked Yancey if that bothered her, she replied, with a hint of Southern lushness in a voice that she had tried to rid herself of, “It’s all I’ve ever known.” She always felt the toughness developed in her childhood served her well in her show business aspirations, as well as her outlook on love and life. When it came to show business, Yancey often told herself she was looking for awards, not friends.

Years ago, after her first adult relationship with Derrick, her college sweetheart, had ended badly, she promised herself to never fall in love too deeply. So Yancey loved Basil in her own way. Whenever they kissed, she told Basil how much she loved him, but there was always a little voice whispering inside her head that it’s okay to love, but never too hard, or too much.

1

SO WHERE you headed this weekend?” I asked as I dried my hair with a plush white towel.

“I’m going to Gainesville for the Florida-Tennessee game. What about yourself?” Nico Benson asked as he wiped his tall and broad-shouldered body. As business partners, we often checked in with each other on who had the crazier schedule.

“I’m doing Arkansas-Alabama. Should be a great game,” I said. I reached into my gym locker and pulled out the new pair of black underwear I had bought on Fifth Avenue the day before.

“What players are you looking at?” Nico asked, putting on some light-blue cotton boxers.

“Lucus from Arkansas and Alexander from ’Bama,” I said.

It was the third Wednesday in September. Once a month, my partners and I would take the entire office for a free day to release the tensions in the competitive world of sports management. This month we had decided on a day at the Chelsea Piers Sports Center. We had started the morning with breakfast, played basketball, and then had individual spa treatments like facials and massages. Our senior partner and president, Brison Tucker, had already showered and headed to the office for work. There was no way for Brison, a chronic workaholic, to fully understand the meaning of what a free day meant. After lunch, Nico and I had played a couple of games of racquetball.

Nico, a peanut-brown brother who talked more smack than a gum-chewing truck stop waitress, was drying his body from his shower as I put on my sexy see-through underwear. Nico had played basketball at Duke and for a couple of years in the NBA in Vancouver and Houston. He was only twenty-seven and was a great asset to our firm because he was smart and could still relate on a personal basis to the young athletes we were pursuing. In a lot of ways Nico reminded me of my former self.

I was pulling my slacks out of my locker when suddenly Nico’s dark brown eyes swept sideways. “Dude,” he whispered, “do you know that guy? He’s sweatin’ you big time.”

I turned in the direction of Nico’s eyes and ended up looking dead in the face of a squash-yellow, overweight dude with his tongue hanging out, his eyes bulging in disbelief. This was no big shock to me. I was used to people staring at me longer than what was socially acceptable. Especially when I was naked. My ass was perfect and my jimmie was both long and thick. It had been known to make both women and grown men weep. I’m not arrogant, just honest. Even when I was only semi-hard, my jimmie hung perfectly still. Sometimes I enjoyed the attention, but not in locker rooms and not when I was with a Mister Macho-Macho like Nico. So with a stern face I looked at the dumpy-looking brother and asked, “Do I know you?”

A blank expression covered his face before he mumbled, “No.” He looked like he was frozen with fear.

“Then why in the fuck are you all in my grill, or should I say in my draws?” I demanded. I felt my anger rising. Why couldn’t these gay mofos leave me alone? Didn’t they know I wasn’t playing on
their
team anymore?

After a few uncomfortable seconds he asked awkwardly, “I was wondering where you got that underwear from.” I looked down at the tight-fitting black silk underwear that felt like a breath caressing my ass and then at my admirer. “Don’t worry about it. They don’t make them in your size, you faggot mutherfucker.” I turned around and looked at Nico, who smiled, and we gave each other a tap with our hands balled.

“Man, a straight brother ain’t safe nowhere with all these faggots around,” Nico said.

“True . . . true. But I let ’em know right up front I’m the wrong one to fuck with,” I said as I grabbed my gym bag and shut my locker.

LATER that evening, I was killing time reviewing tapes of some of the players I was hoping to sign with the firm. I was going to meet Yancey at a restaurant in the theater district after her show. This was the last week for Yancey in
Fosse
and I felt she needed me there for moral support. But after about ten times I was
Fosseed
out, so meeting her right after her performance was the next best thing.

I went to the kitchen to get a beer when the incident at the gym popped into my head. I try not to act uptight around gay guys, but they seemed to be getting more forward than I can
ever
remember. Now some of them will just come up and ask for the beef. With Yancey being in the theater, where she is surrounded by gay men, I always have my guard up.

One time I came close to getting busted about my past. The producers of
Fosse
threw a party for Yancey when she joined the cast. Yancey and I were front and center enjoying the attention, when who walks in but this dude I used to pump, Monty Johnson. He was a has-been R&B singer who was now doing background vocals and trying to break into Broadway. We made eye contact and while Yancey was accepting praise from her new castmates, I went over to shake Monty’s hand and say whassup to ole boy. I knew I needed to get to him before he bounced over to speak to me in front of Yancey. I didn’t need any
how do you know him
questions from Yancey. She wasn’t like a lot of sistahs who never thought of dudes kickin’ it with each other. She knew threats could come in both the male and female form.

After saying hello, I realized Monty was acting real cool, too cool, like I was just somebody he spoke to at the gym or walking down the street. I guess he had forgotten how good the dick used to be. He quickly introduced me to his buddy, a tall and lean guy sporting a pierced tongue and his hair styled in jailhouse cornrows. They were giggling with each other like two teenage girls at the stage door of their favorite boy group. When ole boy left to get Monty a drink, Monty told me he was in love and was sorry about any misunderstanding our last visit had caused me. When I told him I was in love, and who the lucky lady was, he smiled and whispered, “You always did like the ladies more. But from what I’ve heard about Miss Diva Deluxe Yancey, you might have met your match.” Before I could ask him what he meant, I caught a glimpse of Yancey looking in my direction, so I hauled ass over toward her.

Monty was the culprit who had ended my last serious relationship with a woman. I was dating a sister named Yolanda, who walked in on us while I had Monty ass up across my sofa. After that fiasco and a few other missteps, I came up with my own little list of rules to keep me from courting temptation.

I call them “Basil’s Rules to Keep the Knuckleheads Away from the Family Jewels.” Some of the do’s and don’ts are obvious, like not going to gay bars, cruising parks, or smiling at male flight attendants, but those don’t apply to me since I never did any of those things. The rules are: Avoid men who try to make eye contact with you or men who can’t because they’re looking at your crotch. Don’t go to the gym during rush hour, which could mean early morning or right after work. This is hard to follow since gay men are at the gym when the door opens and when it closes. I don’t know where they come from. Sometimes it seems as though they are dropping from the ceiling butt-ass naked, shaving, pissing, and trying to strike up a conversation. Don’t let anybody spot you while lifting weights unless you’re paying them. Keep away from men who have complete sets of designer luggage. Avoid mofos with colored contacts, especially yellow boys with green contacts and dark guys with sky-blue contacts. Stay out of churches with large choirs. Avoid dudes who wear shirts that look more like maternity dresses or men with extended music (usually Diana Ross or Patti LaBelle) on their answering machines; mofos who wear their sweaters or jackets around the waist; men who, in their conversations, use the word “lover” when discussing their significant other; men with cats or small dogs, especially any type of fluffy Asian dog; men who frown at the suggestion of two hunnies making love and letting you watch; and finally, any woman, no matter how beautiful, who has hands bigger than yours.

2

FOR YANCEY, the prestige of things took precedence over her own preference. The address of her Upper East Side brownstone was really false advertising that she was an entertainer well paid for her talents. The furnishings and appointments she chose for her “diva domain” (as she liked to call her spacious living quarters) were more than a step above the budget of a Broadway actress. They were a kangaroo leap.

The first things visitors would notice were the foyer’s marble floor, the glittering chandelier hanging above, and the antique coffee table with a tarnished silver top accented with an expensive-looking Chinese vase. But on guided tours, Yancey would first take her guests to the dance studio, her absolute favorite place to show. The studio and her bedroom were the only two rooms where she banished her decorator and let her soul dictate the design rather than her desire to impress.

In the studio, the overhead track lighting bounced off two mirrored walls, making the room appear much larger than it was. The shining maple wood floors and ballet barre enhanced a room that Yancey had always dreamed of since she took her first dance class back in Jackson. Hours seemed like minutes when she was in the room singing and dancing to music generated by her state-of-the-art sound system.
It is simply magical,
Yancey thought.

The room had been a library for the previous owner. When the contractor came to make a bid for the renovation, he convinced Yancey to keep at least one of the walls’ splendidly built bookshelves. She agreed only after considering that one day there would be books written about her to fill the shelves. Until then, her collection of coffee table books on music and the theater filled the shelves. Yancey added a little texture to the shelves with memorabilia like dried flowers from her opening nights, and scented candles. In the corner of the room was a StairMaster and a pair of ten-pound free weights for those rainy days when Yancey didn’t leave the house, not even for her gym time.

The living room was beautifully decorated with matching plum sofas and a coffee table covered with
Harper’s
Bazaar, Essence,
and her favorite,
Vanity Fair
. She had limited the amount of furniture in the room in order to create a warm and inviting space.

As far as Yancey was concerned, her bedroom was off limits to everyone but Basil. She was proud of its elegance and reveled in seeing the faces of the rare visitors she allowed to partake of its beauty. Once she had invited some young girls she had met at the Broadway Dance Center over for tea. Besides asking for her autograph and photos, they had impressed Yancey by telling her they had seen every show she had appeared in. One of the young ladies, a talented ballet dancer from the Bronx, had broken into tears when she wandered into Yancey’s bedroom. She placed her hand over her mouth and whispered to Yancey, “This is the bedroom I see in my dreams.” The rich cherrywood antiques may have been too formal for some, but for Yancey it was an opportunity to live out one of her
I am a princess
fantasies.

The queenly bed boasted four regal high posts. The armoire, vanity, and chest of drawers were carefully arranged, adding to the splendor of the room. Because the furniture’s color and bulk were so heavy, Yancey chose soft pastel fabrics to give the room balance. Her duvet, bed ruffle, and drapes were ivory damask. Filling her linen closet were 350-thread-count cotton sheets in beautiful colors of lavender, peach, mint green, and sky blue. Four big lace-edged pillows were propped in front of the two small pillows dressed in the colored linen of the day.

A nightstand graced each side of the bed. Fragrant candles, fabric-covered boxes, and crystal bowls of potpourri sat atop each table. The table on the side where she slept held a telephone and a silver-framed photograph of Basil, looking handsome as usual. On the wall that greeted her each morning was an ode to Yancey. She had carefully arranged photos of herself in various shows and framed magazine covers from
In Theater, Playbill, The Paper,
and
Interview,
when Yancey had adorned each magazine as cover girl. There were spaces anxiously awaiting the covers from
People, Ebony,
and of course,
Vanity Fair
.

The room itself was painted in a soft gold. There was a corn-yellow leather chaise lounge covered with several dolls and stuffed animals. The hallway between the master bedroom, living room, and servant’s quarters was a sea of chocolate walls covered with
Playbills
from Broadway shows and beautiful paintings by Deborah Roberts and Paul Goodnight. Yancey’s penchant for tidiness, as well as the maid’s biweekly visits, ensured her domain sparkled brighter than any star in the heavens.

For over a year, Yancey had had a roommate to help with the cost of her townhouse and expensive tastes. She had run an ad in
Backstage
and
New York,
but the applicants were beautiful up-and-coming divas and a couple of gay men. Yancey wasn’t having any part of that, so she was happy when someone she vaguely knew came back into her life.

Windsor Louisa Adams was a broadly built woman, about five seven and 165 pounds, with reddish-brown medium dreads framing her plain nut-brown face. Windsor had met her when Yancey transferred from Vanderbilt University to Howard University and moved onto the same dorm floor. The two weren’t close friends, because Yancey didn’t let other women get too close, but they had been in a couple of university theater productions and had once organized a Christmas party for an old folks’ home near the campus. But the only thing it seemed they had in common was that each had legally changed their middle names. Yancey changed her middle name from Elizabeth to Harrington after her favorite character from the movie
All About Eve
. Windsor just made a small alteration to her birth middle name of Louise, changing it to Louisa.

Windsor was not considered beautiful by most standards, but she ruled Howard University with her mesmerizing personality. She was president of the dorm, the number-one tennis player, and Homecoming Queen her junior year. The last time Yancey had seen Windsor was at a Greek show after she had pledged Delta Sigma Theta. She had even tried to get Yancey to pledge, but Yancey said she wasn’t interested in joining a sorority because she thought sisterhood would go right out the window the first time some soror’s boyfriend looked at Yancey longer than a minute. Windsor didn’t know Yancey had been turned down for membership in another sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha. Yancey was so crushed that she moved off campus with her boyfriend, Derrick.

When Windsor greeted her at the stage door when she was performing in
Chicago,
Yancey assumed she was just another fan. She startled Yancey when she raced up and gave her a big hug and said, “Honey, you worked that stage! You were the best one and this is a long way from some of our HU productions.”

Windsor had put on a little weight since college, and she no longer sported the long, layered hairstyle with hazel contacts. She realized Yancey didn’t remember her, so Windsor reminded Yancey of the night they had sung a duet at the annual spring talent show. “Remember? We sang ‘Enough Is Enough’ and wore them out!”

“You’re from Detroit, right?” Yancey asked, finally remembering the overly friendly dorm mate.

“Yeah, that’s right. Remember, my mother used to send me fried chicken and coconut cakes in the mail and I used to share them with the floor?”

“Oh yeah,” Yancey said as she looked Windsor up and down, thinking her mother must still be sending her food through the mail.

After a few minutes, Windsor suggested they go for a cup of coffee and talk about their days at Howard. When Yancey resisted, saying she needed her rest, Windsor simply locked her arms in Yancey’s, gave her a big smile, and said, “I won’t keep you out that long.”

Over coffee and deli sandwiches, she told Yancey how she had moved to New York about a year earlier from Wilmington, Delaware, where she had taught school after graduation.

“What made you move to New York?” Yancey asked. She remembered Windsor had a set of lungs on her and used to lead most of the songs for the gospel choir. Yancey figured she had come to New York to pursue music and sought out Yancey for advice. Yancey was prepared to tell her to get rid of her dreads and about forty pounds when Windsor announced she had moved to New York to get married, but quickly realized she was about to make the biggest mistake of her life.

“So you’re not getting married?”

“Not now and probably not ever,” Windsor said.

“So, do you still sing?” Yancey asked.

“Oh sometimes, but mostly I just sing for the Lord in my church choir.”

“What are you doing to make ends meet? New York is an expensive city.”

“I teach at a wonderful alternative school in the Village, the Harvey Milk School, and I do some volunteer work.”

“What part of town do you live in?”

“I live in the Bronx, in Riverdale, but I’m looking for something a little closer to my job. My ex-boyfriend was nice enough to let me keep the place we had picked out, but I can’t afford it without working two or three jobs.”

While Windsor asked Yancey questions about how exciting it was to be on Broadway and television, Yancey was thinking how harmless Windsor might be for a roommate, and how the rent could help with making ends meet when she was unemployed.

“I think I might be able to help you out,” Yancey said.

“How?”

“I have servant’s quarters in my house. You come by and see it,” Yancey said as she pulled the check from the black leather binder and reached in her wallet for a credit card. She looked at the bill and saw it was under twenty dollars, so she put the card back and pulled out a twenty-dollar bill.

“Oh, I would love to see it,” Windsor said.

“How much are you paying for rent right now?” Yancey asked.

“Fifteen hundred.”

“Well, if you like it, I could let you have it for a thousand,” Yancey said.

“That sounds great. When can I come by?”

“Tomorrow. But in the afternoon. I’m a late sleeper,” Yancey said. She wrote her address on the back of the bill.

“I’ll come by after work.”

“Great.”

Windsor moved in a week later.