Maurice picked up the basting brush and lathered up those ears of corn real good.
“Man! That smells good,” Curtis said as he cut the end of his cigar and ran it under his nose. “I’ve been waiting to try one of these.”
“Me, too” was all Maurice said. “Been saving them for the two of us.”
“Where did you get these?”
“Charles Robinson,” Maurice told him. “Charles wanted to thank me for putting in a good word for him with Veronica Washington.”
“Robert Washington’s ex-wife?”
“One and the same,” Maurice answered and cut off the tip of his cigar.
“But why would a big-time player like Charmayne Robinson’s brother, Charles, need you to put in a good word for him with any single woman in Durham County? Rumor has it that he has all of the free booty in the Triangle on lockdown,” Curtis said and lit up his cigar. “Plus, isn’t Veronica real serious about her relationship with the Lord? Wouldn’t think she’d be all that appealing to Charles.”
“Well, think again,” Maurice said and lit his own cigar. “Old boy has it bad for Veronica. He has been checking her out ever since Robert left Veronica for his woman, Tracey Parsons.”
“But, Maurice, Charles owns Rumpshakers Strip Club.”
“Gentlemen’s Club,” Maurice corrected. “It’s Rumpshakers Hip-Hop Gentlemen’s Club.”
“Okay, Gentlemen’s Club,” Curtis said. “But every time I’ve gone there, I always see women strutting their stuff in some stilettos to get some extra tips. And Veronica, on the other hand, owns a public relations firm and represents only Christian writers, actors, and musicians. So Charles doesn’t foresee a conflict with those two businesses being at opposite ends of the lightness-and-darkness scale?”
“I don’t know what he foresees, Curtis. All I know is that he has it bad for Veronica Washington and is glad that her divorce from her knucklehead husband Robert is almost final.”
“Well, it seems to me,” Curtis said, “that Charles doesn’t have it bad enough to crack open a Bible and look for the Sinner’s Prayer in Romans.”
“Now, is this a case of the pot calling the kettle black?” Maurice chided Curtis before taking a puff on his cigar.
Curtis frowned. Maurice didn’t have to go there. Maurice knew that he had said the Sinner’s Prayer many years ago.
As if reading his mind, Maurice said, “You said the Sinner’s Prayer and have been on milk ever since.” He didn’t care one bit that Curtis didn’t want to hear this—too bad. But Curtis had yet to be weaned off of spiritual milk long enough to have a hunger for the bread of Heaven.
“Okay,” Curtis conceded, when it was clear that Maurice was not going to back down on this one. “I could do better about reading my Bible.”
“Just your Bible, dawg?” Maurice asked him. “Seems to me like you need a complete overhaul where your relationship with the Lord is concerned.”
“Charles Robinson and me, too, huh?”
“Well, actually, Curtis, you are a couple of steps ahead of Charles Robinson. You may be on some milk but that boy can only take a few ounces of formula right now.”
Curtis started laughing. Maurice was right. Charles owned the premier exotic-dancers establishment in the Triangle. He was making money like it really was growing on trees. That was a lot of money because trees and forest land were plentiful in Durham County—dense, uncultivated land was everywhere, even in the hood. He imagined that it would take a miracle to convince somebody like Charles Robinson to let go of all of his worldly goods to go off and follow Jesus. Because truth was, running Rumpshakers Gentlemen’s Club and living boldly for Christ was not going to work.
But then again, maybe someone who was as anchored in Christ as Veronica Washington, was the perfect incentive to make Charles think long and hard about the benefits of serving the Lord. There was nothing like a saved, Holy Ghost–filled woman (who was also fine) to get a brother to thinking about the potential benefits of turning his life over to Christ. Some folks might not think that was the best way to find your way to Jesus. But for men like Charles Robinson and himself, it could possibly be one of the most compelling reasons.
Curtis almost stopped breathing when it occurred to him the path this kind of thinking was leading him down. Because like it or not, he was only a few yards shy of his very own prototype of a Veronica Washington. There was no denying it, both Yvonne and Veronica were some seriously fo’ sho’ Proverbs 31 sisters—a brother couldn’t find anything more old school than a woman replete with virtues that were outlined in the Old Testament.
Yvonne opened the refrigerator and took out a bowl of olive-green scuppernong grapes. She loved these wild grapes, which were native to North Carolina and tasted like you were getting a squirt of some homemade wine when you took a bite out of one. She tried her best to sneak a peek on the deck to see what Curtis was doing without being noticed by Trina, who rarely missed a thing. When she caught Trina watching her intently, Yvonne popped a grape into her mouth and then mumbled, “I’ll be glad when dinner is ready ’cause I’m hungry.”
Trina just looked at Yvonne trying to be slick and on the low, trying to watch Curtis and act like he wasn’t getting next to her. Humph, Trina thought and then whispered to herself, “Rochelle was right when she said that there ain’t nothin’ like a new negro to inspire you in all the right ways to get over and done with the old negro.”
“You say something, Trina?”
“Not really—just thinking out loud. And speaking of thoughts, I didn’t miss that little sniff-and-inhale number you were doing when Curtis walked past you.”
Yvonne couldn’t believe Trina had seen that. She was almost as bad as Rochelle. But she couldn’t help it—Curtis was wearing Chanel for Men and it smelled good on him.
“Awww snap,” Trina said, grinning. “Miss Thangy-Thang got a little crushy-crush on the coach. Who woulda thunk it? Sweet lil’ Yvonne Fountain sniffin’ and inhalin’ on the big, bad Curtis Parker.”
“Shut up, Trina,” Yvonne hissed, hoping she wasn’t blushing, even though her cheeks were warm and getting warmer by the second. She hoped that Curtis would stay outside for a few more minutes, and wished that he’d bring his butt back in the house. Last thing she needed was for a skilled player like Curtis to discover that she was blushing and sniffing up on his cologne.
“Girl, take a chill pill,” Trina told her, hoping that the men would hurry up and finish with those cigars to come back in and hang out with them. Curtis of all people needed to relax with some good company—especially the company of a good woman like Yvonne.
As far as Trina was concerned, Curtis spent too much of his precious time boo-boo kittying with the wrong kind of women. And maybe they weren’t just the wrong kind of women. Perhaps they were the worst kind of women.
Ironically, not a one of Curtis’s women could technically be branded as a skank, hoochie, skoochie, or even a skeezer. If only it were that easy. No, these sisters were those well-dressed, educated, stuck-up old sticks-in-the-mud who thought more highly of themselves than they should. They were like those dry clouds Jesus accused the Pharisees of being—so many promises, so little action, so empty and dry and useless, their very presence a sin and a shame.
Trina believed that Yvonne was a blessing waiting to happen as far as Curtis was concerned. It was pretty clear that Curtis thought the girl was fine. Not to mention the way he smiled and chuckled at just about everything that little negro had said so far this evening. Every time Miss Yvonne said a little quip about something, all she heard from Coach was “Ha … ha … hahahaha, ha … ha … hahahaha.” Yvonne was funny. But that negro wasn’t that funny.
Curtis Parker wasn’t the only one who was thunderstruck. Yvonne was just as taken with him as he with her. But Yvonne was in the hole with regard to cool points, so she was working overtime to try and hide her attraction to him. Trina knew the girl would rather die a thousand horrible deaths in consecutive order than have Curtis discover he was getting next to her. Yet, the best thing that could happen to Yvonne was for Curtis to be an eyewitness to the beautiful ruby blush that spread across her cocoa-colored cheeks, lighting up those sparkling chocolate-diamond-colored eyes, simply because of the sparks bouncing back and forth between the two of them.
It was time for Yvonne to have a good, handsome, and decent man to take notice of and appreciate her. When Yvonne was married to Darrell, she worked overtime to get along with that boy and keep the marriage intact. It was amazing. Darrell had earned a PhD in biology from Stanford University, and yet he acted as if he were mentally challenged whenever Yvonne tried to talk to him about the problems in their marriage. No matter what she said and how she said it, Darrell just didn’t get it.
Darrell didn’t want to understand that it was inappropriate for a woman from his department to call his house and hang up whenever Yvonne answered the phone. He didn’t get it when Yvonne told him that Bettina was rude and nasty whenever she came to the house, and that perhaps he needed to get her straight.
Yvonne had tried and tried to explain, petition, and help Darrell understand the problem—but always to no avail. It was as if she had been speaking a remote foreign language. But once Yvonne rededicated her life to the Lord, went back to her home church—Fayetteville Street Gospel United Church—and dived headfirst into the Word of God, she told Trina that the Lord blessed her with an answer to that problem.
It had been on one of those hard nights, the ones when the reality of being divorced got to you. Yvonne was on her knees doing a bang-up job with the divorce thing—crying uncontrollably, hollering, flinging snot, hanging all on the bedpost, calling out, “Whyyyyyy, God, whyyyyyy” in that raspy, gravelly, annoying pity-party, crying voice. She was on a roll with that thing and threw in some real good, desperate, and pitiful-sounding “Why me,” “What’s wrong with me, Jesus,” “Why You let this happen, Lawwwwddd, You da’ Alpha and da Omega,” “Why come he gets to have all the fun, Lawd,” “Jesus, what is taking You so long” and “Why, Lawd, why.”
That night Yvonne ranted and raved as if she’d lost all of her brain cells. And the good Lord let Yvonne cut the monkey fool until she was exhausted, her eyes were swollen shut, and her voice was gone. At that point, while she was lying on the floor too tired to move, face wet and practically plastered to the rug, a calm came over her, warming her heart and giving Yvonne a peace that transcended her ability to understand how the Lord had calmed her completely down after all of that craziness.
When Yvonne was calmed down enough to get still enough to hear the Lord speak, she felt the words from 1 John 4:4–6 being whispered deep in her heart.
“But you belong to God, my dear children. You have already won your fight with these false prophets, because the Spirit who lives in you is greater than the spirit who lives in the world. These people belong to this world, so they speak from the world’s viewpoint, and the world listens to them. But we belong to God; that is why those who know God listen to us. If they do not belong to God, they do not listen to us. That is how we know if someone has the Spirit of truth or the spirit of deception.”
Those words came home to Yvonne with such force that she hopped up off of that floor and starting shouting, her voice returning with each increase of praise. God had let her know that there was no way that anybody, Darrell included, could hear and receive a word of wisdom if they didn’t know the Lord, didn’t care if they knew the Lord, and weren’t trying to know Him, if their very lives depended on it. The Darrells of this world couldn’t and wouldn’t hear a thing because the spirit of deception that operated through them made it impossible for them to do anything but do their best to scheme, trick, plot, and contrive.
Trina believed that Yvonne wasn’t the only one in need of attention from somebody with some sense. Curtis, in spite of his reputation as a playah, was long overdue to meet somebody like Yvonne—a woman who would make him laugh, be his best friend, pray for him, pray with him, have his back, understand him, jack his tail up when he needed to tighten up on a few things, and love him the way God called a woman to love a man. But most important, Curtis needed a woman for whom Jesus was Lord of her life. A woman who loved the Lord like that knew how to love her man right. Because she would do what the Lord told her to do where he was concerned.
Trina peeped through the blinds at Curtis and Maurice puffing on those expensive cigars. It always tickled her to no end to watch Maurice lean back and take a real long puff, then ease back up while blowing the cigar smoke out of his mouth like he was really doing something.