Chapter 5

 

After treating his staff to a celebratory lunch earlier that day, Drew passed the country club he was a member of but rarely used. Since it was Friday, he considered stopping for a round of golf, but changed his mind as he slowed for a red light. And then he noticed a navy convertible BMW driven by the attorney he had seen earlier in Murphy, Renfro and Collins, headed in the opposite direction. As he watched her taillights diminish in his rearview mirror, his fingers found the radio’s volume knob and turned up the sound to block out the memory of Felicia. And then he looked across the street and noticed Harper and Sons Appliances. The spot held a special place for him because it was his first sale after opening his firm.

Drew had started his company with little cash. In college he hadn’t known what he wanted to do when he graduated, but he’d always known it would not entail employment by someone else. So after he’d graduated, he’d worked for E.F. Hutton and then Prudential for a brief period of time to learn as much as he could about the investment and insurance arena. After he’d put together a program for a wealthy photographer in Boca Raton, he’d taken his profits and invested them in his dream. Andrew Patrick Staley and Associates. When he’d done so, there had been no Associates. Just him, a 386 computer, a coffeemaker, and a dream. His dark, dank studio office had had a single desk and a bad echo, and he’d done everything from vacuuming the carpet to designing the pension programs for his clients. But since he met most of his prospects in their offices, it had never posed a problem.

Feeling drained after the Renfro debacle, Drew did not feel up to returning to the office. So as the light turned green, he turned in to the mall parking lot, went inside the cinemaplex, and watched a matinee for the first time in years, alone.

Arriving home with his dinner in a Boston Market bag, Drew turned on the television and, after surfing the channels, called Peggy.

“Hello?”

“Hey, what are you up to?”

“Sweet pea, how you doing!” Peggy asked. “Thanks for lunch. That was nice of you.”

“Is Walt there?”

“Yes, sweetie my husband is here. You hying to flirt, Mr. Staaaley?” she asked with a laugh.

“You better let him know it wasn’t just me and you.”

“Ah, I don’t know if we can do that, Mr. Staley. I do happen to be married, you know.”

“Listen at you. Always instigating something.”

“You know me,” she said. “He knows I’m crazy about him. So are you feeling better about the deal?”

Drew relaxed on his couch with his head on the armrest and toes buried between the thick cushions. “What do you mean?”

“I know something went down in there today. I just haven’t figured out what happened. I mean that was the biggest sale you ever made. By far. And you would hardly talk to us during lunch.”

Drew clicked off the TV and laid the remote on the oak table, never taking his eyes off a graduation portrait of Felicia on his mantel. Since he could not imagine another woman entering his home or his life at this juncture, it looked perfectly in place. Their love was tender and sweet. He would never forget the day or the time she first told him that she loved him. Because after she uttered the words, she added softly, “Drew, I must admit that I am a little selfish. You see, I know in my heart that I would like to die before you. Because I could never imagine being in a world without you here.” After her death the irony of those words settled over his mind like a dark cloud that would not blow away and would always produce a tear.

He and Peggy had known each other for more than ten years, and since she was a few years older than he, she was the big sister he’d never had.

“Hello? Drew, are you there?”

As he cleared his throat Drew said, “I had to sell out to make the damn deal.”

“What do you mean?”

With a deep breath Drew replied, “Renfro is the most racist person I have ever met, and I wanted to set him straight a couple of times, but I didn’t. I should have . . . but I didn’t.”

“What do you mean, racist? Did he call you a name or something?”

“No. Of course not. But the man has these rebel flags displayed all over his office and even has, get this, a letter framed on his wall from Jerry Falwell. I’m not kidding.”

“Well, actually, Drew, a letter from Falwell does not exactly make one a racist.”

“Yeah, and neither does wearing a white sheet. What I mean is this. Things like that show no respect for black people. What if he was Jewish and walked into my office and I had German swastikas all over the place.”

“Tell me something, Drew. Did you get the check?”

“Yeah, I know where you’re going with—”

“Then you did a good job. Sleep well tonight. It’s none of your business what he has in his office or his heart. There are people like him out there. They are nasty, crazy, stupid, dumb, whatever you wanna call them. But they are out there and we know it. Now that we know it, what do we do? Is it your job to educate him? Do we pitch our tents, give up, and not do business with them? Hell no! We deal with it. We get over it. We move on.”

“I know, but I think I should have said something. You didn’t see his office. I should have shown a little backbone in there.”

“Yeah, losing the sale would have taught him a lot. Don’t get me wrong Andrew, I understand where you are coming from. But I—”

“Exactly! I mean, there are hardly any blacks employed in that place. I looked at the portraits of the partners and there’s not one black face. Outside of the sister I saw who is an attorney there and a couple of custodians, I bet there aren’t any blacks at all. I should have let him know he was talking to his worst nightmare. A black man with an education.”

“No,” Peggy replied. “See, you already did that because he bought the program. What you should have done was to ask that redneck for ten references and sold plans to ten of his Klan friends. That’s what you should have done. Listen to me. Don’t get mad Drew; get everything. See, you’re talking to a child of the sixties. I graduated from old Lincoln High. I remember when they made us leave our school and sent the troops in and everything. I even remember my cousin Pam being brought home with her eyes swollen shut from the tear gas. But what a lot of us misunderstand in business today is that it’s not our job to be martyrs. Okay? Your job was accomplished today and we got the draft to prove it. Murphy, Renfro and Collins, done deal, case dosed. Next.”

After finishing his conversation with Peggy, Drew noticed the time and put on his Topsiders and Knicks cap to do something he had done the previous weekend. He decided that he would do this on Friday nights because that was their date night. Each week they would alternate doing something special for each other. One time it had been as simple as when she’d made up words to “Song Bird,” by Kenny G; another time, as elaborate as the surprise trip Drew had arranged to Paradise Island for the weekend.

As he got closer to his destination, rain started to fall, and Drew remembered he did not have a jacket or umbrella. Damn, I wonder if Momma’s okay tonight, he thought as he drove down the highway. Drew’s father had died four years earlier from plain old age. He’d been a good-natured gentleman who’d spent what little free time he’d had helping in his community with political campaigns. Drew could remember him pulling his red Chevy truck off the road and spending as much as an hour assisting a stranded driver. To Drew, his father was the definition of a man. His mother was in her late seventies and continued to chain-smoke, play cards every week, drink hard, and cry loudly about the death of her husband. They had been married more than fifty years and had lived in the same area in Gainesville for most of that time.

Drew, who was an only child, thought back to when he would come home from school and see his mother in the yard with their next-door neighbor, Mr. Douglass. His father had been an auto parts salesman and would at times be on the road for over a month. Drew had never noticed Mr. Douglass at the house when his dad was home, only when he was away. Far away. Mr. Douglass never came over for cookouts, to watch baseball, or anything else. But as soon as the coast was clear, he would appear.

One night after his father’s retirement party, Drew had asked his mom point-blank for the real story in regards to her neighbor. Her answer was, “Oscar Douglass and I are just friends. And even if that was not true, I would tell you that anyway.” Drew had never felt the need to ask her again.

One day shortly after his father passed, Drew, who was at this point a well-respected businessman in the community, drove up to the house and noticed Mr. Douglass sitting on their front step alone. He looked at Drew with fear in his eyes since he knew Drew’s mother had in essence told her son of their bond. Drew glared at the slender dark man and wondered why he sat outside.

“She’s inside, son. She does this every day almost, nowadays. At lease three, fo’ times a week.”

“Does what?”

“Starts talking foolishness. Listen at her.”

Drew walked closer, turned the knob, and noticed she had locked the bottom and likely the top lock as well. But he could hear her grievous rants inside.

“Oh my God, Jerry. Why did you have to leave me like this? Why did you have to go? You know I can’t raise that boy on my own. How am I gonna send him to college, Jerry? How am I gonna pay for this big ole house? Jerry, you know I don’t know how to work. You shouldn’a did me like this, Jerry. Jerry, I’m sorry for what I did to you all those years. I’m so sorry, Jerry,” she wailed with a voice full of remorse and pain. “Just please come back.”

Drew glanced at Mr. Douglass as he rubbed his trembling callused hands together like a raccoon and looked at the ground.

“How long has she been doing this?”

“Almost every day since your dad died. I always come by here to see if she needs me to run by the store or anything, and sometimes she’ll let me in and everything is fine. And then other times . . . well, she is like this,” he whispered, and looked up at Drew.

Time and a bimonthly visit with a counselor had dampened the loss of Jerry Staley. Time and the bimonthly visit had made it bearable for Judith to learn to live without him and get over the guilt. She had not married for love. She had married for security. Once, as a teenager, Drew had walked in and heard her say on the phone, “How do you leave a good man? If a man is sorry, it’s easy. But what do you do when he’s good?” Drew had never fully understood what she was talking about until as an adult he saw how she looked at Mr. Douglass.

At her advanced age, Judith Staley took a driving course to learn how to drive her husband’s emerald Buick Electra and also put together a card-playing group, which rotated houses each Thursday and Saturday night. And every afternoon, after she watched “General Hospital” and “All My Children” back to back she and Mr. Douglass would drive, sing old Motown hits, and talk about yesterday. While she felt guilty because she had never been true to Jerry Staley, the pain lessened when she learned for the first time in her life it was all right to be true to herself.

Drew parked in front of the fresh-cut headstone with Felicia’s name as the rain blew sideways. He turned off his motor and thought back to the first time he saw her. There was no magic. Not even a spark. He had walked downstairs from an appointment with an accountant on Valentine’s Day. It was a few minutes before five, and as he’d walked through the secretarial pool toward the door, he’d noticed that every woman had a bouquet of flowers or a box of candy from her lover—except for the lady in the thigh-high yellow skirt. She’d had a picture of her man, but no gifts. “Child, you all know how Zack is. I bet you anything he sent them to my old department. He’s so absentminded.” Drew could hear her from across the room, and as he passed her desk he could see the hurt in her eyes as he and the accountant headed out the door.

Shaking his head to dust away the memory, Drew noticed the rain was falling in thick splats and he reached in the backseat to pull out the weekly gift to his beloved. Gazing at it, he was again pulled back to that fateful Valentine’s Day. He’d decided that night that he would not spend the evening alone, so he’d gone out and by chance he’d seen Felicia again. That night had proven to be their first date. After they’d left the club, Drew had parked in front of her home and they had talked about everything imaginable deep into the night. And then the topic of the conversation had switched to eternal love and she’d mentioned how Paul and Linda McCartney had never slept in separate beds in over twenty years of marriage. She also mentioned how Joe Di Maggio had continued to have flowers sent to the tomb of Marilyn Monroe years after her death.

“Can you imagine loving someone that much? So much you want to give them flowers every day . . . forever?” And then she’d looked at him and said, “Drew, that’s how much I want to be in love with someone one day. For just once, I’d like to be in love so much it hurt. Until it didn’t make any sense. Know what I mean?”

It was then that he’d said, “This may sound crazy, and I can’t believe I’m even saying it myself. I have never said this in my life to anyone, but one day I’m going to marry you.”

That cold and wet February night seemed so long ago as Drew opened his car door and sloshed through the mud to her headstone. After stopping for a moment, he bent down and left that week’s single unopened white rose.

Drew arrived home and, instead of turning on the TV, sat down at his computer. Several months earlier he’d been given a copy of Compu-Line, which allowed him to access the information superhighway. Drew had been on-line for several months, but mostly used Compu-Line for business, although every now and then he did give in to the urge to explore the chat areas. In the chat rooms, he could enter into conversations with individuals from all over the country on a variety of topics, from the comfort of his own home, via computer. There was a Whitepower room and a White-Males-Seek-Straight-Black-Males room. Drew could enter political debates or the Jean-Claude Van Damn-I-Can’t-Act room, where anti-fans would come together to trash the actor’s most recent work.

When he just wanted to relax on the Net, most of Drew’s time was spent in the Ebony Over Thirty room. In this area he would chat with African-Americans from all over the world. He could discuss social issues with brothers and sisters in Miami and Mali simultaneously.

Everyone on the Net had a moniker. Each individual’s name was in a way an extension of his or her personality. Drew’s name was DLastRomeo. He’d been given the name Romeo in college by several of the guys he played football with. While at Florida A&M, he’d left a letter to his girlfriend on his dresser. After his roommate read it, he asked Drew to write one for him, and within months he was writing love letters for half the team. After the news had spread all over the small campus, he’d become the university’s resident Romeo.

The chat on-line that night got deep, as usual.

TRICKDADDY: Well if you are looking for a GOOD black man I think you should consider some of us brothers who don’t make a zillion dollars per year. We all can’t be doctors.

RUDIEPOO2: Why sisters gotta always lower their standards? I get so tired of hearing that tired excuse. When do brothers ever lower their standards? (with a black woman that is) Why can’t we have it all? Most of the brothers I deal with are intimidated because I refuse to dummy down. Now I’m aware that when I’m seventy years old, it may be just me and my dog, but believe me, me and Fido will be chilling on the south of France.

DELTADREAM: What do you mean when you say lowering standards, Rudie? Are you referring solely to a man that makes less money?

RUDIEPOO2: Well I hope it does not ostracize me but . . . YES! That’s exactly what I mean. I want a man I can be proud to walk into hospital functions with or take to social gatherings and he not be intimidated.

DELTADREAM: Then answer one question for me. Would you be happier as a millionaire alone with no man in your life or in section eight housing with a man who loved you more than anything else in this world?

RUDIEPOO2: See for me that’s a stupid question, Delta, so I’ll give someone else a crack at it.

DIBOYZ: Well, fellas, we may not all agree with the sister, but Rudie is just saying what a lot of other females are thinking.

DLASTROMEO: Sup room.

NOIRLAZE: Hi , Romeo!

SHADIYA117: Romeo, Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo!

DELTADREAM: DiBoyz, some ladies think Like that. Not all. My man ain’t hardly loaded, but it’s not about all that.

DLASTROMEO: Hi, Rudie, Shadiya. What’s the conversation about tonight?

The conversation continued on about African-American male and female relationships, and after a few minutes of the discussion, Drew got bored. He decided to review the list of names in the room and noticed one that was new to him. Drew typed her a note and sent it via an instant message, which was a way for him to chat with her in private.

DLASTROMEO: Hello. I am not trying to hit on you. I just noticed the new name. Are you new to Compu-Line?

DELTADREAM: Basically.

DLASTROMEO: So what do you think of this twenty-first-century technology?

DELTADREAM: It’s okay. But I do believe it’s redefining the word perverse for the new millennium.

DLASTROMEO: LOL I guess that’s true. I guess we men as a whole can be a little perverse. I guess it kinda comes naturally to us on Mars. But also remember we have not evolved as much as women. We’re a little closer to primates I guess. LOL

LOL was the Internet shorthand for “laughing out loud.”

DELTADREAM: That’s funny, but I wouldn’t go that far. I don’t bash men. So why did you say you were not trying to hit on me? With such an interesting screen name, are you sure you are not using reverse psychology?

DLASTROMEO: No. not hardly. I don’t like to use the service for that sorta thing and I’ve never believed in long distance relationships. With this screen name, I know, women often expect it and people often use the service for that, but to me it’s just a way to meet people. And remember, Romeo had only one Love.

DELTADREAM: Well that’s a relief. I’m presently in a relationship and I am very happy. I get so tired of men—and women no less—sending me instant messages and asking me how large my breasts are or what size dress I wear. LOL

DLASTROMEO: Yeah I guess it can get a little raw. Well if I ever ask you anything you feel uncomfortable answering, just tell me, “none of your business,” okay?

DELTADREAM: Thanks. You know what they say about you people on the Internet.

DLASTROMEO: So I have heard. May I ask you about the relationship?

DELTADREAM: None of your business! Just joking. To call him the man of my dreams is an understatement. I mean he is so considerate, so gentle, so kind, so good-looking, so fine, so sweet, so manly . . . do you need any more so’s? LOL

DLASTROMEO: No, no. I think I get the picture.

DELTADREAM: Seriously. I feel fortunate to have him in my life right now.

DLASTROMEO: That’s important and I’m glad to hear it. You always hear about people who are not happy with their relationship. I must say that I don’t have a person in my life like that at this time and I really miss it. I just lost someone very dear and there is definitely a void there.

DELTADREAM: What do you miss the most about being in a relationship?

DLASTROMEO: I miss having someone in my life who knows how to make me smile. Sounds simple, huh? I’m not looking for fireworks. I’m not looking for magic. At this point in my life, a nice body is great. A touch would be nice as well. But to have someone who could find my smile. I can’t think of words to describe how that would feel.

DELTADREAM: I can relate to it. I was single (not in a relationship) for the past five years. It seemed I worked my butt off to be the best, and then I looked around at my material possessions and realized I had no one to share them with, and I confess, it hurt.

DLASTROMEO: Damn, love. You making me feel bad. LOL Sounds too much like me.

DELTADREAM: I’m sorry. That’s not my intention. I just want you to know that she’s out there somewhere.

DLASTROMEO: Thank you. So tell me. What does this prince of yours do to make you smile?

DELTADREAM: It’ll only make you feel worse. Let’s not go there. LOL

DLASTROMEO: I agree . . . but give me a shot anyway.

DELTADREAM: Well, where do I start? A couple of weeks ago I was working on this huge project at work. I worked on it for more than two years in fact. Well. the results from my work were positive and when I called him to tell him about it. he had this incredible date planned for me. First he invited me to his house and welcomed me with seventeen yellow long-stemmed roses. One for each week we had been a couple.

DLASTROMEO: Now that was suave. You like yellow roses, huh?

DELTADREAM: Are you kidding? They’re my favorite. No offense, but a man who gives cop-out red roses knows nothing about romance or the meaning of flowers.

DLASTROMEO: Interesting.

DELTADREAM: After that he served my favorite dinner, played my favorite CD softly (which I did not even know he knew). and prepared this bath for me. Then, well let’s say I am a lady so we’ll leave the rest to your imagination.

DLASTROMEO: Damn. A brother like that might make me change my screen name.

DELTADREAM: LOL. Maybe you are DLastRomeo . . . on-line.