13
Bianca arrived in Atlanta in just under four hours. As she parked in front of Mimi’s mini-mansion in the exclusive gated community where she had once owned a home, she struggled to get her words together. Climbing out of the car, she grabbed her overnight bag.
Because the guards at the gate had alerted Mimi to her presence, she already stood in the open doorway. She was dressed in pale pink slacks and a silk shirt. Her face was like stone as she looked at Bianca as if she were a stranger.
“Are you going to let me in, or did I just drive from Holtsville for nothing?” said Bianca.
“I love your father, Bianca,” Mimi said in a hard voice.
“I know you do,” Bianca answered honestly.
“I wouldn’t do anything to hurt him,” said Mimi, with tears rising in her eyes.
Bianca stepped up and squeezed her hand. “Mimi, do we have to do this in your doorway? Can I come in?”
Mimi looked anything but happy about stepping back and allowing Bianca to walk into her home. “You really hurt my feelings, Bianca,” she said before Bianca even reached the stark white leather and mink living room. “And only people I care about can hurt me.”
“I’m sorry. I love you to death, but to be honest, with my father’s drinking problem and your drinking problem, I worried it was like adding kerosene to a fire.”
Mimi sauntered across the floor in her heels and moved over to the bar. “My drinking problem?” she asked as she dropped ice cubes in a glass.
Bianca fell back against the white leather sofa in exasperation. “Mimi, are you fixing . . . a . . . drink?”
“For you, because you do still drink, don’t you?” Mimi walked over and handed the glass to Bianca.
Bianca accepted it but sat it on the white leather ottoman. “Mimi—”
Mimi moved to the foyer and came back with a pale pink Gucci purse. She reached over the back of the sofa to give it to Bianca. “Hold on to that. I’ll be right back,” she said over her shoulder as she climbed the gold circular staircase.
“Mimi—”
“Be right back,” Mimi sang down to Bianca.
For the next ten minutes, Bianca walked every inch of the living room. She even played around on the white baby grand piano in the corner.
“Bianca, meet Beulah Cooley.”
Bianca looked up, and her fingers hit the wrong piano keys when she beheld Mimi sans make-up and high hair, and with the normal voice . . . like she was at the cookout.
“Mimi, what the hell is going on with you, and who the hell is Beulah?” Bianca eyed her warily. “Am I going to have to knock you out with a two-by-four and run for my life? ’Cause you got my ass scared right now.”
Mimi rolled her eyes before she turned and scooped up her purse, from which she removed her silver monogrammed flask. She walked back over to Bianca and handed the flask to her. “Have some?”
Bianca shook her head. “No thanks. I would tell you to sip away, but I think you’ve had enough—”
“It’s sweet tea.”
Bianca snorted. “Yeah, right.”
Mimi stuck it under her nose.
Bianca sniffed and then snatched the flask to taste its contents. “Oh my God, it is tea!”
Mimi’s face was all “I told you so.”
“Mimi, okay. What is your point?” Bianca asked.
Mimi sat on the sofa as she waved her hand at her lavish home. “This is all I’ve known. Since I was a child actor, everything about me and my life has been over the top. And the only thing I know how to do is act. Can you imagine being fresh in your twenties and realizing no one in Hollywood cares anymore? But this is the only life I know how to live, and it’s not me. Well, it’s not all me. I mean, who wouldn’t love Manolos?”
Bianca walked over to the ottoman and picked up her drink. “Lucy, you gots some explaining to do,” she told Mimi in a bad Ricky Ricardo accent before she tossed the drink back.
“I thought I just explained,” Mimi said calmly.
“So the drinking, the makeup, the Diahann Carroll wardrobe, that damned accent . . . it’s all been what? An act?”
“Self entertainment. Fun. I mean, come on. Everyone loves Mimi. Mimi can say what she wants and do what she wants, and nobody lifts a brow. I loved it. I thrived on this grand act, but now I’m real interested in life on a ranch in Holtsville, South Carolina, and I know all of this can’t fit there.”
Bianca leaned back against the chair as she looked over at Mimi. “And you would give all of this up for my father?” she asked as she waved her hand around the house and then at Mimi, from head to foot.
“In a heartbeat.”
Bianca rose to her feet and opened her arms. “Then welcome to the family, you nut case,” she said lovingly as she embraced Mimi tightly.
Zorrie hated that Kade wasn’t answering her calls. And then his sister had given her all that attitude on the phone. She just felt like something was wrong. She had to talk to Kade.
She hopped into her Benz and headed to South Carolina. She didn’t pack a bag. She didn’t notice that her fuel light had come on until she reached Florence, South Carolina. She fueled up and hopped back onto Interstate 95.
The entire time she drove, she alternated between calling Kade’s cell phone and his house phone. She received no answer on either. She had nearly bitten her nails down to the nub by the time she pulled into Kade’s yard.
His vehicle wasn’t there, and he never parked in the garage. Besides, all the lights were off, so she knew he wasn’t home. “I’ll just wait,” she said as she shut her car off.
Although they had spent the entire weekend together, Garcelle still felt disappointed when they made the turn down the unpaved road leading to his house. She had driven her car to Kade’s and had left it in his garage before they headed to Charleston.
“Are you going to pick up Kadina today, or should I pick her up in the morning, on my way to work?” Garcelle asked as she turned her head on the headrest to look at him.
“I’ll get her. They’re probably just getting out of church,” he said, picking up their entwined hands to kiss hers.
Garcelle smiled at him before she turned her head back as his house came into sight. She looked confused at the sight of a car parked there. “Is that Zorrie’s car? Is she back in town?”
Kade frowned as he released Garcelle’s hand and steered the vehicle to a stop next to the Benz. “Is she in there?” he asked incredulously.
Garcelle rose up in her seat and could hardly believe the sight of Zorrie, who was sleeping on her side on the car seat, reclined all the way back. “That puta is muy loca,” Garcelle said as she looked at Kade.
“Has she been there all night?”
“Kade, please wake up. Please,” Garcelle said, with emphasis, as she made a fist and lightly knocked on his head. “She has been calling you like crazy all weekend and wouldn’t leave a voice mail, because she knows she didn’t want a dang thing. You said your sister called and said Zorrie was phone stalking you via your parents’ phone line. Now here she is. She likes you. She wants you. She wants to make nasty with you and bad.”
“We’re just friends. . . .”
Garcelle threw her hands up and let out a string of Spanish expletives as she climbed from the SUV. “Kade, handle it. Your wife’s best friend just slept outside your house all night. Shit, man. Handle it.”
She slammed the passenger door and quickly strode toward the back of the house. She had to fight the urge to shake the car and rattle Zorrie from her sleep. She didn’t give Kade another look as she walked around the back of the house to the garage.
Garcelle laid on her horn as she passed Zorrie’s car. She laughed when the woman sat straight up in the seat and got tangled in the seat belt. That gave her a good laugh all the way home.
At first I thought Aunt Zorrie was here to see me, but I think she just wants to see you.
If a man and a woman go out to eat, to the movies, and all that good stuff . . . they are dating, baby . . . That woman is a barracuda in disguise. . . .
Look here, big brother. Take it from a woman. Zorrie got an agenda. Sleep on her if you want to.
Kade, please wake up. Please.
Kade climbed from the SUV as all the phrases came floating back to him. Was he naïve to think Zorrie wanted nothing but the friendship he had to offer her? She was Reema’s best friend. She wouldn’t want to betray Reema like that and certainly didn’t think he would ever consider doing such a thing. Did she?
He walked around to open her car door. “Zorrie, what are you doing here?” he asked.
She wiped the dried drool from the corners of her mouth as she climbed out of the car, clearly disheveled and wrinkled from sleeping in a car all night.
“Was that Garcelle that just left here?” she asked.
He released a heavy breath. “Zorrie, why are you sleeping outside my house, ringing my parents’ phone off the hook, and damn near making my cell phone battery go dead from calling me?”
She placed her tousled hair behind her ears. “I was worried about you after the storm, and after I couldn’t reach you, I wanted to make sure you and Kadina were okay.”
“So you drove from North Carolina and slept outside my house?” he asked.
“Kade, I was so worried, and if you had just answered my call . . .”
“Garcelle and I spent the weekend together, and when you didn’t leave a voice mail, I figured whatever you had to tell me could wait until our weekend was over.”
He was surprised by the flash of anger in her eyes.
“Garcelle?” she spat. “So, what? You fucking her?”
He was shocked by the vulgarity of Zorrie’s words. Miss Prim and Proper never cursed. Ever.
“No, I’m dating her,” he responded calmly as he began to feel uncomfortable in Zorrie’s presence.
“So you feel a lazy, wetback nanny is good enough to replace my best friend?”
Distaste filled him. “You know, I would’ve thought you were too smart and too classy to use racial slurs, especially since you’re a minority woman.”
“Don’t you dare stand in my face and judge me!”
He frowned at the intensity of her anger. “What? Garcelle’s not good enough, but you are? Right?”
“You’re damn right I’m good enough. I’m better than good enough. I’m the one you should have chosen in the first damn place—”
She slapped her hands over her own mouth.
Kade leaned against the hood of her car as he crossed his arms over his chest. “Zorrie, I picked Reema because I liked her. I married her because I loved her. And I would never date her best friend, because I respect her.”
Zorrie ran her shaking hands through her hair as she walked away from him. Then she walked back, with tears in her eyes. “Kade, I—”
He held up his hands. “Zorrie, I consider you a good friend. A lot has been said. Some of it can’t be taken back. Let’s not say anything else to make this situation any worse than it is.”
She nodded and released a shaky breath as she crossed her arms over her chest and paced in front of him. She stopped and faced him, with tears and pain in her eyes. “That day when Reema and I sat there together in the cafeteria, side by side, you walked up and your eyes went straight to her. Why didn’t you see me? Why didn’t you look over at me?”
He felt sorry for her. The woman was deeply wounded, and he knew there was more to it than just him. “I don’t know why, Zorrie. And it doesn’t matter, because I wouldn’t change a thing if I had the chance.”
She stared at him a long time before she sniffed back her tears. “I think it would be best if I just go, and maybe I . . . maybe we . . . should give each other some space.”
Kade stood up. “You want me to drive you somewhere?”
She shook her head as she opened her car door. “It’s time I learned to live without you,” she told him before she climbed into the vehicle and reversed out of the yard.
Garcelle was lying across her bed, on her stomach, reading when there was a knock at her door. She looked over her shoulder to see her little brother, Paco, peek his head inside.
“You awake? Uncle Anthony said you had a call on the other line,” said Paco.
“Bring it to me,” she said as she turned over and sat up in bed.
Paco brushed his long bangs out of his eyes as he walked into Garcelle’s room, with the phone outstretched in his hands. “Uncle Anthony said to hurry up. He’s on the other line.”
“Surprise, surprise,” Garcelle said as she pressed the phone to her ear. “Hello?”
“Garcelle. This is me. You busy?” said Kade.
She felt her body go warm at the sound of Kade’s voice. “Hold on one sec.”
She clicked the phone and got the other line. “Anthony said he’ll call you back,” she said, without waiting for an answer. She clicked back over.
Paco was snooping around her dresser. “Tell Uncle Anthony he’ll have to call them back. Now come here,” said Garcelle.
He walked over to her, and she kissed her two fingers before she pressed them to his forehead. “Good night, Paco.”
“Night.”
She waited until he had closed the door behind him before she turned out the light and snuggled down under the sheets on her bed. “Okay. I’m back.”
“Good,” said Kade.
“Where’s Kadina?” she asked as she crossed one leg over the other.
“I just put her to bed. She’s been grilling me all day about my weekend.”
“I don’t think there’s too much about this weekend that was G-rated.”
Kade laughed huskily. “Me either.”
They fell into a comfortable silence just listening to each other breathe.