Playing Hard To Get

“Well, I guess you want to get right to it,” Venus said as a waitress with three teeth and a Bon Jovi bandanna over her greasy and no doubt dirty hair placed a menu on the table before Tasha.

“You can keep the menu.” Tasha handed the menu back. “And don’t bother to bring water.” She looked back at Venus. “Of course I want you to get to the point so I can get up out of here. God forbid someone sees me here or takes a picture. People will think Lionel lost his contract.”

“How ironic you should bring up a picture,” Venus said, sliding a big brown envelope onto the table.

“What’s this, crazy?” Tasha picked it up and opened it. “Some silly pictures of the woman Lionel was…” Tasha’s tongue stopped flapping, but her mind was whirling. Between her thumb and index finger was a hazy, black and white eight-by-ten of her snuggled in Lynn’s arms in a couch at the top of the Roosevelt Hotel.

Not knowing what else to do, she slid the picture back into the envelope and looked at Venus, her eyes tunneling into her frenemy with silver-coated bullets.

“Where did you get this?”

“I knew Lynn would pull some shit like this.”

“What do you want?”

“She can’t just keep it simple—act right.”

“Is it money?”

“Always has to test me.”

“Is it Lionel?”

“Do you even love her?”

“What?” Tasha asked, sure she hadn’t heard Venus. “What kind of dumb-ass question is that? I’m not a freaking lesbo. One of those hawks gave me ex and I was tripping.”

“You expect me to believe that? I have proof right here.” Venus’s voice was strong and scarred like a woman when her heart is being broken.

“I’m sorry, Venus…. I’m thinking right now that maybe I’m living on another planet or realm than you, because I don’t know what the hell is going on. You just gave me some crazy picture that some crazy person must’ve taken while stalking me. I don’t have to stand for this. I should just call my attorney—maybe even David Letterman’s attorney. This is extortion!” Tasha stood up and pulled out her cell phone.

“I didn’t say anything about money,” Venus said quickly. “Just sit down…sit down.”

Tasha stood for a moment and looked at her.

“I can explain,” Venus added. “I can explain everything.”

Tasha sat and pushed the envelope back to Venus.

“Get to talking.”

Venus exhaled and looked up at the cracked ceiling tiles. What she was about to say was the biggest secret of her big New York life—only her husbands and her girlfriends (not friends who are girls) knew.

“She’s my lover.”

?

Kyle smelled it when he walked into the house. It was dinnertime and the scent was burnt pork. Cheap pork. Maybe a canned ham. And he didn’t know what that really meant. But he didn’t really care either. He was tired. A good man beaten down by an all-around bad situation. And he was told it would be this way by so many people he trusted before he married Troy, but always being his own man, he’d felt he had to trust himself first. The woman who burned all the food in his house also had his heart ablaze and he loved that fire. Fever never felt so good as it did with her and it didn’t matter how many easy, great, good, and spiritually equally yoked women who would promise him a life of good times all and everyone were pushed before him. They were fire-retardant to him and he just preferred and longed to sit in the flames with his first love.

But the terror of time quells the power of even the most wicked forest fire. And terrible times were all around. Worse than the bad that was promised. Though Kyle wasn’t ever worried about his heart smoldering, now his mind and soul were chucked into the fire too. While he’d thought Troy was making an effort to get along with Myrtle, now rumors of fighting were everywhere in the church. Every word of gossip and contention, every threat launched against his wife, made him feel like he was fading to ashes. He didn’t know what to believe. He didn’t know what cards were being played. And that was like a shackle on his neck. The church was God’s house, but he’d given many bricks to build it, formed them with the broken rocks of his soul, and, save his heart, Kyle had put everything he ever had inside into glorifying that mission. First Baptist wasn’t going anywhere, but the idea of fracturing even one of the bricks he’d given to God for the glory of that formidable house made him blame himself for playing with fire and then blame his wife for spreading the blaze.

“Is that you?” Troy called, hearing footsteps pad through the garage door and up the stairs toward the top floor of the brownstone.

Kyle didn’t answer. He went into the bedroom, set his bag on the floor, and sat on the bed. Now was the time he was supposed to go into the kitchen to find out why his wife was burning food, what was wrong with her, and patch it all up so he could convince her to order takeout. But he didn’t move. He said he was tired. But really it was because he was the one in need of patching.

“Kyle?” The call was coming from the bottom of the steps.

He didn’t say anything. He looked up toward the ceiling, but even as a little boy he could see through ceilings and right into the center of his praying mind.