Playing Hard To Get

by.” Tasha stopped Lionel. “Let’s just be in the moment and enjoy our date. I mean, maybe this is what we need. A little more us time, so we can get back…you know? To how things used to be.”

“Get back to what?” Lionel looked past Tasha to see that a woman who was reclined in a chair with only a small towel to cover her body had noticed him and was smiling hello with her eyes.

“Us…like the way we were before we had the girls and moved out here to Jersey. Do you remember how it was? We were so hot and young. We couldn’t keep our hands off of each other. People envied us.”

“But we have a family now, Tasha. It’s what we both wanted. It’s why we got married. Right?”

“Yeah, and I love our life. I love our daughters. But sometimes it’s so heavy. It’s so much. I just want to go back to how we were.”

“So that’s what’s wrong with you.” Lionel looked away from the woman, who moved her towel down to the tips of her nipples and peered at Tasha keenly.

“Wrong?” Tasha shot up. “What do you mean ‘wrong’?”

“I’m not the only one who’s been coming up short. Sometimes the way you touch me isn’t the same either. It’s like it’s good, but you’re tired,” Lionel said, admitting something he hadn’t told anyone else. Sex with Tasha was seldom without surprise and complete seduction, but lately, it seemed her passion had become practiced and ritualistic. She moaned and groaned, hollered and hooted, but sometimes he wondered if she even wanted to be there. If the show was more for him than anything.

“Tired? I’m fine.” Tasha shifted back into her chair and tried to laugh it off, but suddenly she felt as if Tiara and Toni were sitting right on her lap.

“I was thinking,” Lionel started, “maybe we should get a nanny. Like a real one. Someone to move into the house. Hell, we have seven empty bedrooms.” He tried to make this idea sound as spontaneous and lighthearted as possible.

“Why would we need a nanny?” Tasha was trying to be just as lighthearted. “I’m home with the girls.”

“I don’t know, Tash. Sometimes when I come home, you all seem like you’re just tired of each other. They’re hollering. You’re trying to get them to go to sleep. And why is Tiara still in the room with Toni?”

“I don’t need any help, Lionel.” Tasha’s attempt at duplicating lightness evaporated with the last sip of her water. She’d become defensive. She slid her shades back on and crossed her arms. “They’re just at an awkward place. Two babies. We’ll be okay. Besides, I have to pull my own weight.”

?

Out of the spa and in the city, Tamia was struggling with her commitment to behaving badly. Her first Queen Bee goal was to win her big-city corporate brawl by losing her small case. It was a simple plan. Pretend she cared, build an effortless case that any opposing attorney who’d tried more than three cases could pull apart in seconds, sit back and let them bury her in facts and fiction, wave the white flag, and move on with her life. While the dramatic plot was new to her, she knew it was nothing new to top attorneys. People brought and sold cases every day in the Big Apple. Favors were used. Old frat boys from Yale and Harvard leaned on shields and no matter the verdict, both sides would meet up for drinks and jokes as soon as the gavel of judgment fell. The only uninvited party would be the client, in the dark.

Standing in the bathroom at the office, she looked for something in her reflection in the mirror. Something to speak to her and tell her that this was part of the game. How the big boys got to the top. She was a winner, always had been. And if winning this time meant losing, she would have to do what she had to do. It wasn’t her proudest moment, but certainly there would be many prideful moments to follow. But what would her father, the great Judge Dinkins, think? He’d had his own life and no doubt had to make these decisions on his own about what was ethical and what was easy. Now it was her turn.

She buttoned her jacket and stepped back to look at her outfit, a charcoal gray power suit that hugged her thighs just enough.

“Please tell me that’s your brother,” said Maria, another attorney, bursting into the bathroom as if they were at any high school. “Your cousin…your nephew. Anyone but your boyfriend!”

“What? What are you talking about?” Tamia turned to her.

“That man.” Maria’s blush lips quivered. “He is so…rugged.”

“What man are you talking about?”

“The one in your office. He’s sitting at your desk.”

“A man in my office? What?” Tamia threw a tissue she’d sat on the counter into the garbage and hustled out of the bathroom.

Outside, women were gathered in clumps she knew meant new gossip. As she walked past, they looked at her and smirked jealously.

“What?” she murmured, adjusting her jacket as she turned toward her office.

Months later, when she was on her way to becoming homeless, hairless, and wearing only a sari, she’d try to remember how this thing went. How she saw him first. Was it the smell? The sound? The face? Or just him, all of him sitting and waiting for her as if he’d always been there?

By then, with everything that led to that moment, she’d forget what came first, but really, it was the smell.

When Tamia walked into the office, her heart nearly racing with anticipation of nothing she was expecting and everything she didn’t know, there was this aroma, this enveloping scent that wafted so clearly around her that she’d felt suddenly like she was standing in a field of flowers or sitting in a pew at midnight Mass as the priest walked past, shaking an incense ball filled with frankincense and myrrh. It was sugary and fiery, clean and complex. Standing in the doorway, Tamia thought it was everywhere, but there was nothing she could see to connect it to. The office was empty. Her chair was turned and facing the window, as it had been when she’d left for the restroom.

“Naudia,” Tamia called, turning to see if Naudia had returned from lunch and let someone into her office.

“It’s funny how they make these windows. So big and wide. Like they’re daring you to go outside. I say jump.” There was a laugh.