Playing Hard To Get

After feeding, clothing, and forcing to sleep her two little daughters, who seemed to want to have nothing to do with her and everything to do with their father, Tasha slid on her cutest boy shorts and sauntered, ever so casually, between her husband and his laser focus on Sportscenter. After the fight in the car, and a wordless dinner, she didn’t want to come on too strong, but certainly wanted to get it on. The little shorts, hot pink and so tight they almost looked like swimming bottoms, were the perfect mix of “I’m just walking around doing housework” and “come and get it!” She really just wanted his attention, and even if he was still upset about the fight earlier, she knew he had to be missing her attention just the same.

She was hoping for a night of mind-erasing sex that could release her from the tension that was burying her, and decided that maybe it would be better not to tell Lionel, who began palming her backside as soon as she walked by, about the little platinum hair she’d plucked. There was no sense talking about getting old with the one person she wanted to see her as young, vivacious, and supple. Yes, he’d seen the stretch marks and hardened nipples that were delivered with the babies, and lifted without a word the little sack that formed atop her once taut abs, which, contrary to what any personal trainer told her, wouldn’t return with any amount of crunches or sit-ups. But even with all of this, he was still grabbing at her and whispering things like “You trying to walk past Big Daddy with those shorts on?” as if they weren’t married and two children in. And Tasha never wanted that to change.

Sucking in her sack and poking out her back, she responded nonchalantly, “Who, me? I’m just cleaning up.” She giggled but still found her way to bend over his knee. It wasn’t the most appropriate position to send up a prayer of thanks, but she did, and vowed to hide away what she was thinking, so she could feel something better. And she might have been able to keep this up had Lionel been able to keep himself up. Five minutes into the lovemaking, Big Daddy wasn’t so big anymore.

?

Tasha wasn’t the only 3T who was hiding something. On the fourth floor of her Harlem habitat, Troy was on her knees, stacking a brand-new pair of $1,500 silver Jimmy Choo water-snake pumps behind an older brand-new pair of $1,500 black Jimmy Choo water-snake pumps. Natural black curls sticking to her sweaty forehead, she was moving fast like she was hiding someone else’s Christmas present, but Kyle was the only someone else who lived in the brownstone, and he had no clue who Jimmy Choo was or that his wife had over $50K worth of his shoes. And that wasn’t the only thing stuffed in the back of Troy’s closet.

“What are you doing?” Kyle asked, walking into the room and seeing Troy’s backside and feet poking out of the closet. He’d heard rustling, what sounded like little squirrels burrowing in the walls, as he walked up the stairs.

“What?” Troy’s response was fast and breathy. Something slammed and in a second she was on her feet with the closet door closed.

Kyle bent toward her to look at the door before repeating his question.

“I was just praying.”

“In the closet?”

“Yeah…” Troy turned and looked at the closet coyly. “Praying for my clothes.” She was trying to sound confident to stop Kyle from going over and opening the closet door. She felt bad, though, and reminded herself that she would need to say two prayers before bed now—one for buying the shoes (and the scarf and purse she’d already hid) and another for lying to her husband. Nervous, Troy laughed and went over to kiss Kyle on the cheek. She wouldn’t and couldn’t tell him all she had within that covered sliver of space. In fact, she didn’t know how. The pretty little things she’d been pushing and pressing in there had come from so many places she’d loved long before she even met Kyle and she wouldn’t know where to start. There was only “why?” And even that escaped Troy’s knowledge.

“Oh, you’re kissing me now?” Kyle said, his voice quickly turning from concern to passion. He slid his arms around Troy’s waist, grabbing her buttocks. After they’d gotten married and Troy stopped working, she’d put on an extra ten pounds that he loved. A Southern gent, he liked the feeling of really holding his woman and knowing she wouldn’t back away. But she did.

When Troy felt Kyle’s penis hardening on her navel, she remembered the silver ring, the incubus, and the succubus, and jumped back.

“What did you come up here for? I thought you were in your study, memorizing your sermon for next week.” Troy wasn’t really sure about this, but that was usually where Kyle was, and that was usually what he was doing. The sturdy penis and thoughts of the sex demons who Troy believed were no doubt running free in her bedroom at that very moment made her want to be alone again so she could look at her pretty things.

“Oh,” Kyle said, slapping himself on the forehead playfully. “I almost forgot. Lucy’s downstairs.”

“Lucy?” Troy repeated, with the ridiculous prospect of Kyle’s claim laced in her tone.

“Yeah, your crazy grandmother, with her crazy dog.” Kyle didn’t usually label people in such a way, but Lucy and her toothless dog kept his temperance teetering.

“She’s downstairs?” Troy jetted to the window and there it was, Lucy’s antique white Rolls stopped in front of the brownstone, taking up half the street. Paul, her driver, was leaning against the door. “But she never comes here. She never comes to…Harlem.”

Troy was pushing her hair back and pulling off her clothes. A new top and jeans; no, a dress; no, a purple silken lounge set was on the bed and then on her—that quickly.

“Is the house clean?” she asked.

“Clean?” Kyle replied. “It’s always clean. You know we—”

“Is it really clean? You know what I mean!”

The newlyweds looked at each other to find understanding. As they grew older, this would turn into a telepathic ability to know what the other was thinking, but now the new groom was just too slow. Before he could remind his wife that they hadn’t dusted in a few weeks, there was a call from the bottom of the steps. It was purposefully weak and highly dramatic, little more than a whisper with a Southern drawl, from a woman who hadn’t lived a day in the South.

“Troy Helene, darling, you really must dust this…home. Ms. Pearl is liable to get a sickness in here…typhoid…or…swine flu.” Her voice dragged and it was clear she was looking at things, frowning and certainly not touching. “Hell, I might get a sickness in here.”

?

Throughout dinner, Charleston and Nathaniel kept the women laughing and the stories coming. Leaning back carefree and as pompous as princes, they’d loosened their Zenga ties and shoved platinum and mother-of-pearl cuff links into their pockets.

They’d commandeered the most expensive bottle of scotch from the bar and took turns demanding ownership of the tab. How important they were and how much money they had was apparent to anyone walking past the table. It was black yuppie heaven and these two were singing like angels in the choir.

“Honestly, though, I told him, and I swear this is what I told that white boy, ‘I don’t care how many units this shit moves, I have the money,’” Nathaniel said coolly as he continued a rant about how he was about to be the next big thing in jazz and the world had better watch out for him. According to Charleston, Nathaniel, who was apparently a saxophone player, hadn’t even played in the band in college. But this was his new thing. He was an artist, a jazz musician, and he’d poured his entire self into it—even picking up a few drug habits to prove his dedication. “I want the fame,” he went on. “Just get me on the networks!” Nathaniel laughed a little louder than his joke called for. He was drunk and Tamia had noticed two dinner dates ago that when he got drunk he got louder and more obnoxious. While Nathaniel was what the 3Ts called a beach ball,9 he had the nerve to be handsome anyway. His brown skin was without defect. And like Charleston, he had perfect teeth and his grooming was impeccable. When Tamia met him at some rapper’s film premiere in Chelsea, and the two shook hands for the first and last time (it was more traditional to hug and trade dry kisses), she’d noticed how soft and moist his palms were. Like a newborn baby’s, they felt as if he’d just walked right out of a hospital nursery that very day. He then whispered in her ear that she should only call him by his full name—not Nate or Nathan. He claimed he was the fifth Nathaniel Cecil in a line of Burris men that predated the Civil War and it would be a shame to dishonor this history, but really it was just because he liked the way the formal version sounded. “Nathaniel” was the perfect accessory. It matched his ascots, argyle sweaters, and penny loafers.

“You’re so funny, sweetie,” chimed Ava, who was smiling beside Nathaniel. Thus far, Tamia had met three of his women, but Ava seemed to be sticking around. She was as skinny and dainty as a dove feather. Her skin was the color of the inside of a banana peel and there was not a trace of a crinkle in a strand of her shoulder-length auburn hair. It took Tamia hours of painstaking pressing and perming to get hers right, and she envied just looking at Ava’s slick roots. She must be mixed, Tamia thought, mixed with something somewhere in her family.

Charleston said Ava was a model, but Tamia thought she hadn’t even sounded that smart. Not a day over twenty-three, she mostly agreed with what Nathaniel had to say and laughed at his jokes before he’d reached the punch line.