The Glamorous Life (11 page)

“Thank you so much. I can’t stop looking in the mirror,” she said.

“I know, you look so good! You are so pretty, Ruby.” “Thank you,” she kept saying to Bambi. Even days later she continued to thank Bambi.

Though the clothes may have changed her appearance, all in all, she was still the same person inside: a true thoroughbred.

T
he next day when Paul got to the shop and discovered the Corvette missing, he reported it stolen. A few days later, he got a call from the police: “Mr. Waxx, we found your car.”

“Where?” he asked.

“We found it across town at the junkyard.”

“At the junkyard?” Paul said, puzzled.

“Yes, you can go pick it up any time.”

Paul slammed the phone down after getting the address from the police. He went to the junkyard, saw that smashed-up red Corvette, and wanted to break down and cry. But he didn’t. He sucked it up as a loss and tried to look at the bright side. He remembered all the other females that he had hustled out of their cars and felt it was just karma…. What goes around comes around. There was no need to try to get back at Bambi. He simply charged it to the game.

CHAPTER 10

When You Least
Expect It

O
ver the next couple weeks, Bambi continued to string Smooth along, meeting him for dinner and at the movies on a regular basis, but always making sure she had another appointment set up so he never managed to get any meaningful time alone with her. She was determined that none of their dates would end in a manner that could possibly lead to sex. She knew Smooth was intrigued with her and attracted to her, but before he got the chance to make any type of sexual advances, she would nip his move in the bud.

One evening when they were having dinner at Ruth’s Chris Steak House, Smooth reached under the table, pulled her feet onto his lap, and gently rubbed them. Had it been anyone else she would have loved the gesture.

“Look, Smooth,” she said, taking her feet back down. “You know I just came out of a relationship not long ago, and I’m feeling deeply hurt. So if sex is something you need right now, then maybe I am not the one for you. Truthfully, it’s going to
take me a minute to trust again. I want to get to know you, and I want to be courted and romanced by a real man like back in the day.”

Smiling, he said, “I hear you, Boo, and I’ll work on being patient with you. Just don’t make me wait too long.”

“I promise, Boo, I won’t, but you can believe it’ll be worth the wait.”

Glancing at her Movado watch, Bambi thought,
It’s 7:05 and I told Ruby to call me at 7:00, damn it. I can’t believe she’s late, and she knows time is of the essence.

Bambi was surprised, because until then Ruby had never been late for anything. Just when the thought crossed her mind, her cell phone began to ring. “Excuse me one second, darling. Let me get this.”

“Go ahead, baby. I know you’s a businesswoman.” Smooth settled back with his glass of Dewar’s.

“Hello,” she said after hitting the
talk
button on her cell phone. Smooth looked deep into her eyes, studying each word coming out of her mouth.

“Oh, for real? Girl, that is so messed up. Dag, I wish it was something I could do.”

Smooth kicked her leg under the table, trying to get her attention, and then whispered to her in a low tone, so the person on the phone would not hear, “What’s wrong?”

Ignoring him, she pretended to be deeply involved in her phone conversation and commented, “I wish I could go, girl, but I don’t have any money for that and I definitely don’t have my shit together to go anywhere. I really can’t go, as bad as I want to. I don’t even have any summer clothes to take, since I put on weight during that time I was laying around depressed.”

Smooth looked at her face waiting for an answer, but she avoided direct eye contact with him, instead focusing on the
design of wood grain in the table as she continued talking on the phone.

“Charge it? Girl, charge it on what? Every last one of my credit cards is through the roof. I’m looking for a li’l part-time job now to help me get through these hard times. You know that without ole boy my thing ain’t the way it used to be and not to mention that nigga left me with a stack of bills.”

Smooth whispered, “Hell nah, ain’t no girl of mines gonna be working no two jobs.”

She smiled at him, and just then the waitress brought them the alligator bites appetizers. She told the caller, “Look, our food just came, so I am going to call you back later. But keep trying to call around and see if you can find someone to go with you.”

She hung up the phone, and just as she predicted, Smooth asked, “What happened?”

“Nothing really. My girlfriend had planned a cruise with another one of her friends. They were supposed to leave the day after tomorrow, but the other girl backed out at the last minute. With it being so late, my friend can’t get any of her money back. She was trying to get me to come, but I told her I can’t stand it right now.”

“Well, baby, I think with everything you been through you deserve it.”

“You ain’t lying.”

“How much is it?” he asked, putting a hand on hers.

“I don’t know. But I know it’s expensive because it’s a Mediterranean cruise.”

“I mean, what’s expensive? Two, three, four G’s? I mean what? Call her back and see and check on what it’ll cost.”

“No, because I don’t have the wardrobe for a cruise.”

“Well, I had planned to take you to Atlantic City in the next two weeks or so to let you do some shopping anyway, so why
not now? I’ll give you the money and you can buy yo’self what you need, pay for the trip, and have a little sumthin’, sumthin’ in your pockets to play with.”

“Fo real? You’ll look out like that for me?”

“Yup, I told you I play for keeps, and I want you to know just how deep I want to carry it wit you. Now, go ahead and call your girl so she can stop worrying.” Smooth picked up a juicy alligator bite and took a bite.

Bambi smiled, picked up the phone, called Ruby back, and got the info the way they had already rehearsed.

After dinner was over, Bambi stopped in the restroom. When she came out of the stall, her friend Amy was standing there waiting for her with a big smile written on her face. Amy was gossip box number one, a.k.a. the Connie Chung of Richmond, Virginia, street life. She was into any- and everybody’s business at all costs. It didn’t matter whose or what, her job was to dip and to find out. Though Amy came off as a hater, 95 percent of the news she spread around town was true and looked on as the gospel. She took great pride in what she reported. It never mattered what it was, whose the baby was, who was sleeping in what bed, who got a big dick and who was riding it, who was snitching and who was going to jail, if Amy said it was so, most likely it was true. Her motto was, “I don’t write no checks my behind can’t cash.”

“Hey, girl, what’s going on?” Amy said with a hug.

“Nothing much. What’s going on with you?” Bambi asked, heading to the sink to wash her hands.

“Girl, same ole same ole. Sorry to hear about your boy—or should I say yo girl,” Amy said, trying to make a joke out of the situation.

“Oh, girl, it ain’t no need to be sorry. I’m just glad I found out when I did.”

“Well, I need to tell you something else,” Amy said, looking at her intently. “I saw who you was with tonight, and that nigga Smooth ain’t shit.”

“Fo real?” Bambi said with a puzzled look on her face, but she said to herself,
Trust me you ain’t told me nothing that I don’t already know. I know for a fact the nigga is full of shit.

“Yup, girl, I hope you drove your own car because he is psycho. He is sick fo real. You know I wouldn’t kick no larcenyhearted stuff to you, because you my girl. We go way back to cutting class together, smoking cigarettes and shit in the bathroom back in the day. So I just want to put you down with the real.”

“Let me have it then, instead of talking in circles.”

“I know Smooth seem like he on top of his game, but girl, that nigga is crazy.”

“Why you say that?” Bambi asked.

“Girl, he used to mess with this chick name Nita that I know, and I know her real good. So you can trust me when I tell you that this is from the heart right here—this here ain’t no ghetto gossip. This is what I know for real. I promised that I’d never repeat it, but I gotta give it to you.”

“Come on. I’m ready.”

She had never seen Amy break any kind of gossip down like this. Amy usually couldn’t wait to throw dirt on someone’s name, but for this time Bambi could see that Amy was actually affected emotionally by the bombshell she was about to drop.

“Nita was messing with Smooth for a long time, and he would beat her like you beat an egg. At first he was cool, always throwing money at her, being her personal slot machine. But girl, by no means don’t get it twisted. That nigga is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde fo real. He kept begging her to get pregnant, and after she did he told her he didn’t want no babies.”

“Girl!” Bambi said. “What did she do?”

“She asked him for money for an abortion. And all he did was keep putting her off. After missing four appointments, she found herself ten weeks pregnant. Leaving her with two weeks before it would be too late to terminate the pregnancy. Lying, she told him she only had one week left, so she wouldn’t miss the deadline. He said he was going to make sure he got the abortion done for her. He wasn’t going to pay for no abortion, though. Instead he began to fight her. She said he put the worst whipping she’d ever had on her. He kicked her in the stomach with his Timberland boots, and he didn’t stop until his boots was covered with her blood.”

Bambi just stood there dumbfounded for a minute. All she could say was, “Damn.”

“Look, you do what you want to, but I am telling you the nigga ain’t to be trusted. There’s a few other episodes too that I could tell you about, but I think you get the picture. Now, you better get back out there before you trigger him,” Amy said, trying to make a joke—but the look on her face was dead serious.

They hugged, and Bambi exited the bathroom. Smooth was waiting for her outside of the door, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed.

“I was sort of getting worried. I was wondering if you had fallen in,” he said.

“I saw an old friend from high school, and we were just catching up.”

“Oh, you look like you saw a ghost. You sure everything is okay?” he asked, concerned.

“Yup, I’m fine,” Bambi said with a false smile.

Once they were outside of the restaurant, he gave her a wad of money and promised to see her the next day to give her some spending money for the trip.

“Look, when you get back, add up all your credit card bills and I’ll take care of them, too, a’ight?” he said. He kissed her on the cheek and gave her a big bear hug, after which they went their separate ways.

On the way home, Bambi tried to analyze Smooth. She couldn’t understand how he could be so nice and charitable to her, yet Egypt and Amy’s friend had seen different sides of him for what seemed like no apparent reasons.

I need to get away from this animal. I cannot and will not fall victim to an abuser,
Bambi thought
. It’s only a matter of time before he shows me who he truly is.

Although she’d told Smooth she was going on a Mediterranean cruise, she had actually booked a cruise on Carnival Cruise Lines in the Caribbean for herself and Egypt. The cruise was half the price for the two of them that it would have cost for just her alone on the Mediterranean cruise. When she called Egypt and told her that they were off to paradise, Egypt couldn’t have been happier.

“Girl, how did you pull this off?” Egypt wanted to know.

“I just got a little bonus from my last event and thought we’d splurge,” Bambi told her.