“Don’t be a bitch, Jerome,” Billie said, holding out her hand for me to be quiet. “I told you he was gonna be here. All you were supposed to do was to be cute and shut your damn mouth. No one told you to kiss me.”
“You said to act! I’m an actor, and I felt like that was what my character was supposed to do at the moment !”
“Act? What the hell?” I tried again.
“Oh, please, negro. You ain’t been in a damn thing, past your best friend’s wedding video, and you managed to mess that up, too,” Billie said. “You know what?” She reached into her purse and pulled out a thick envelope. “As a matter of fact, you can take your damn money. And go somewhere and take some acting classes or something.” She threw the envelope at him and he caught it just before it hit the ground in front of him.
“What’s that?” I asked and Billie grabbed my arm.
“Let’s go,” she said, pulling me.
As we searched for the car and Mr. Green, Billie explained the intricate and ridiculous plot she’d organized to somehow make the exchange between her and Mustafa possible, who she’d confirmed was actually Jerome Jenkins from Jasper, Georgia. Apparently, Billie had grown so desperate to get back at Clyde for dating Ms. Lindsey that she’d hired some help. In an attempt to get over Clyde, she did try Internet dating for a while, but that didn’t work and somehow she stumbled onto a male escort Web site. Jerome was listed as an escort for hire, who happened to have acting experience. His “ad,” Billie said, which featured shots of him in a tuxedo and in a thong, actually said he was the perfect, discreet accompaniment for high-class, high-powered single ladies not wishing to attend another business function, family dinner, or class reunion alone. He could play a long-lost love or boyfriend and leave a lasting impression on every person he encountered. His talents included international accents, dancing, and massage. Assuring me that she didn’t sleep with him, Billie said after looking at Jerome’s ad a few dozen nights in a row, it came to her that she could use his services to make her own lasting impression on Clyde. In all the years that they’d been breaking up and making up, never once had Clyde been forced to suffer seeing Billie in the arms of another man. And she thought Jerome/Mustafa would be the reality check he’d need. Handsome, smart, and international, he was sure to make Clyde rethink his decision and, she’d hoped, come crawling back to Billie’s door. She just needed to make sure Clyde saw the two of them together. She paid Jerome to stay in Tuscaloosa for a few days and after that he just drove back and forth from Atlanta. But there was no success. Not until another teacher told her Clyde and Ms. Lindsey were going to the very same show in Atlanta she’d agreed to attend with me.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I pleaded when we were in the car and already headed home.
“There’s no way I could’ve told you,” she said. “You had to go along with everything for it to be real. You would’ve stopped me.”
“Exactly. And I would’ve stopped you because none of this makes any sense,” I said, searching for sanity in my friend’s eyes. “I love you to death and I’ve been through a lot with you, but this is just ... it’s past crazy. It’s the type of stuff people do in movies. It’s not real. It’s not ... it’s not what people do in real life.” I was ranting, but this, even for Billie with her ways and love for Clyde, was beyond being a bit too much.
“I know it doesn’t make any sense,” Billie said. “But I was tired.”
“Tired of what? Clyde? I’m your best friend. You could’ve come to me.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Understand what?” I asked.
“I’m thirty-three and single in a town where everyone expects you to get married right out of college,” she said. “Late is thirty. Thirty-three ... I may as well be a senior citizen.”
“I got married at thirty-two!”
“Everyone knew you were going to marry Evan. And he’s been begging you to get married since high school. I don’t have anyone but Clyde. You don’t know what that’s like.”
“So the answer to that is hiring some actor to come to town to pretend he was your boyfriend?” I asked and I didn’t mean for it to sound that simple, but it just was. “Don’t you think that’s a stretch? Pretty soon, you were going to run out of money ... or someone would find out. And why get everyone else involved?”
“When it all came out that Clyde was with Karen it was just like everyone was laughing at me... . Like I was a fool. Everybody knows how long I’ve been with Clyde and everything we’ve been through ... all the crap I’ve put up with. Everyone knows,” she said, and I could do nothing but nod along in agreement. “And when everything came out—that he was really dating some little girl that’s more than ten years younger than me—I know everyone was laughing.”
“No, they’re not,” I said.
“Yes they are. And you know why? Because he’s probably going to marry her,” she said so sadly that I began to cry at the thought. Not because I wanted Clyde and Billie to be together, but really because I knew if that happened, Billie simply wouldn’t survive it. “Men never marry the women they go through all the crap me and Clyde went through. They just look for the next one in line. And here she is.” Billie began to sob on my shoulder, and I looked out the window of the car at the empty highway. “I just wanted him to feel as hurt as I do. Even if it’s a lie.”
“You don’t know that he’s going to marry her,” I tried. And there was nothing left to say. It would have been easy to tell her to just get over it. But she had to get past it first. We just sat there for a while crying.
“What happened with Dame?” Billie asked weakly, still resting her head on my shoulder. “Did you talk to him?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Are you over him now? Did it work?”
“Yes,” I said. “I think it did.”
Chapter Seventeen
The impulse for forcing myself out of bed and getting into my car to get to school only hours after I returned home was “damage control.” I suffered through all of Evan’s questions about the night over breakfast, making up careful yet interesting lies that I was sure I’d be able to recall should he bring them up again, thinking in the back of my mind that I had to get to school to somehow intercept Ms. Lindsey before she intrigued the school with her story about Billie and seeing me at the club. I knew I didn’t have to worry about Clyde or Billie telling anyone, but Ms. Lindsey probably went straight to the school from the club to share the news. I had no idea how I’d stop her, but I had to try. If Evan found out about Dame and the club and me being on stage, he’d never understand why I went. And even with the situation with my father and the money still keeping me at odds with Evan, I didn’t want him to lose trust in me. While I could honestly look back at the events at the club and admit that my attendance was completely suspect and had more to do with me wanting to see him than needing to get over him, it was my hope to work through both of these complicated desires alone and without damaging my marriage or Evan.
While Ms. Lindsey and I hadn’t spoken much since she joined the staff at the beginning of the school year, and even less after she was caught in the janitor’s closet with my best friend?
??s boyfriend, I ran into her twice each day. Along with most of the other teachers at school, her first stop in the morning was in the teachers’ lounge where there was always hot coffee and mailers for special announcements. There, I’d usually see her looking over her lesson plan or chatting over coffee with some of the other rookie teachers. And the second time we normally found each other was at the copy machine after lunch. Along with a group of five or so teachers, Ms. Lindsey and I discovered that the copy machine in the main office was usually free right after lunch. To avoid the long lines and fights over paper and toner replacement that occurred in the morning, it was best to hold any copies to this hour in the day when most teachers were still out trying to forget the morning’s drama and prepare for what was ahead.