BACK AT SQUARE ONE
The phone rings four hours before Precious wants to wake up.
“Hello,” she croaks.
“Aleve. Aleve. I need Aleve.”
“Oh God, spare me. I bleed too, you know. What time is it anyway?” Precious groans, groping for the bedside clock. “Bella, it’s eight-thirty. Fuck, it’s Sunday.”
“Did I wake you?” Bella asks without remorse.
“Yes. Now I’m hanging up.”
“I’m having one of my migraines, Precious. I’m dying,” Bella whines.
“Oh please, I know you. ‘Migraine’ means ‘hangover.’” Precious flops back on the pillow. “Either way, sounds more like you’re having melodrama, and there’s no cure for that.”
“Honesty is overrated, Precious. Does it matter why? I’d help you.” Bella sighs melodramatically. “Plus I walked into my desk last night and I think I broke my toe. I can’t even get downstairs to the bodega.”
Precious leans over, picks up the cat from the bed, and deposits him onto her stomach. “Bella, you don’t want me to come over, right?” she says hopefully.
Silence.
“Don’t you have a housekeeper?”
“Not today.”
“Bell, it’s eight-thirty, in the morning.”
“It’s eight-forty.”
She ignores her. “To bring you aspirin.”
“Aleve, Precious, Aleve—pills of the gods—and coffee. I’m all out and you know how you’ll be if you get here and there’s no coffee. And you should stop at Katz’s and get some bagels and whitefish salad, ’cause you’ll be hungry and if you get some oranges I’ll squeeze some juice. . . .” She rambles on but Precious doesn’t hear because she’s staring incredulously at the phone.
Bella lights her third cigarette of the morning and switches tactics. “You’re beautiful, tall, and graceful.”
Precious pushes back the covers. “You’re getting warm.”
“A Nubian princess with charm and poise.”
“Smart too,” Precious adds.
“To be sure, and a big butt.”
“Watch it,” she cautions.
“Men like big butts. And you’re the envy of your peers, a soon-to-be-famous writer,” Bella finishes with a flourish. Before Precious can respond, she hurries her off the phone.
“Please, I’m dying, and of course I’ll pay, plus I’ve got some great things from Barneys that don’t work for me, so we’ll have a fashion show. And get the paper while you’re at it.” Then she hangs up.
Precious pushes Demon off her belly and flips over, burying her head under the pillow. Just a few more minutes and I’ll get up, she thinks. . . .
An hour later her cell wakes her. It’s Bella, who’s lighting another cigarette.
“Let me guess, you thought you’d take a ten-minute snooze and now it’s an hour later and you won’t have time for a shower . . .”
Precious hangs up on her. Pushing back the duvet, she gets out of bed and pads into the bathroom, shading her eyes from the blinding beams of light coming in from the window. She looks in the mirror. Her eyes are puffy, accented by dark circles. She has a pimple—no, two. Her skin has the greasy sheen of someone who didn’t wash her face before dropping drunkenly into bed and then falling onto the floor and staying there until six-thirty in the morning. We won’t even talk about her hair, which is standing up around her head. She doesn’t know why she bothers to try to keep up with Bella when they go out drinking. She always loses.
Precious brushes her teeth, splashes water on her face, and then picks at the pimples. She makes her way back to the bedroom and slips on her favorite tattered sweatpants, sneakers, and her zippered hoodie to keep out the crisp September morning. Raking her hair back with her fingers, she pulls the hood over her head and grabs her wallet and cell, praying she won’t run into anyone she knows. Only people on the walk of shame or gym freaks would be out so early on a Sunday morning, she figures.
Stepping out of her building, Precious walks smack into her ex. Damn, why don’t they just move to another country when you break up? Precious wonders. Three months later and she still isn’t over Darius. He is her deep-chocolate dream: fat, sexy lips; body of death—all her favorite things. Damn him to hell for continuing to breathe, she silently curses him.
After running into each other about twice a week, they’ve progressed from screaming matches to stony silence with murderous looks, then finally to “How’s it going?” with fake smiles. She’s been gearing up to move to full-fledged sentences to show him that she’s moved on, and she’ll be gorgeously decked out when it happens—and now this. Fuck!
Darius is walking his dog and clutching a plastic container of fruit salad from the Korean grocery store around the corner. He is, of course, freshly showered and wearing baggy sweatpants that look sexy on him. Precious’s sweats just look baggy on her.
“Hey,” he says, kicking some trash with his sneaker.
“Hey,” she mumbles, looking everywhere but at him.
“Ahm . . . how’s it going?” he asks.
“How’s it going?” Is he kidding? she thinks. I look like I’m sneaking out of my own apartment with toothpaste probably dried on my face.
“Good, good. It’s good. Good, good,” Precious answers. Good grief, she thinks, I can’t even form sentences.
As they both stand there smiling awkwardly in the evil patch of early-morning sun, his dog starts to pee on her garbage cans. Great.
“Hey, stop it, Miles—cut it out,” Darius chides the pit bull.
This is disingenuous and entirely for her benefit, as it’s probably why Darius has stopped here in the first place.
“Look,” he says, dramatically flipping his locks out of his face. “I know this is awkward. I’ve been meaning to stop by to get my stuff.”
“The stuff I threw out?” she asks.
He looks at her. When she smiles, he laughs. “You always had a funny sense of humor, Precious.”
She doesn’t bother deconstructing the sentence; brains aren’t his selling point.
“Yeah, I’m just kidding. It’s upstairs. I’ve put most of it in a shopping bag.”
“Can I get it? It would just take a minute. Are you on the way out?” he asks, not really caring that he ran into her walking out of the building. He certainly hasn’t changed, she thinks. He’s still selfish, and self-centered—and he’s still the hotness. Her panties are soaking wet.