A Special Relationship (18 page)

 
Carrie hurried to keep stride with him as they walked to his Cadillac Escalade that sat near the back of the parking lot.
 
She felt comfortable walking with Robert, as his suit coat flapped briskly in the wind, as his every step down seemed deliberate and self-assured.
 
But when he opened the passenger door of his big SUV for her, and she was standing beside him ready to step in, she froze.
 
It was one thing to talk to a man in a parking lot, or to even sit in that man’s office.
 
It was another thing entirely to get in his car.
 
With him as the driver.
 
With doors that locked.
 
In a vehicle capable of going well in excess of a hundred miles per hour.
 

 
She looked at the big, beautiful, jet black SUV with its wide gold trim, and then she looked at Robert.

 
“What is it now?” he asked her.

 
Carrie began biting her lower lip.
 
Robert frowned.
 
“What is it?” he asked again.

 
Carrie hated herself for being so cautious, but she couldn’t help it.
 
“What if you’re a maniac?” she asked him.

 
Robert smiled, and then he laughed out loud.
 
Why does he even bother?
 
“Suit
yourself
,” he said as he closed his passenger door.
 
Then he gestured toward the street.
 
“Your bus stop awaits you,” he said, and then began walking away from her to the driver’s side of his SUV, shaking his head and still smiling as he went.

 
By the time he got into his truck, however, Carrie had already climbed inside, placed her purse on the floor, put her house keys in her hand, and was just about to put on her seatbelt.
 
Robert wanted to ask why she suddenly had her house keys out, of all things, but he already knew the answer.
 
If he tried anything, she aimed to scratch his eyes out.

ELEVEN

His car smelled like him, Carrie thought, as she leaned back on the large leather seat of his big SUV and tried not to worry so much.
 
It had that same fresh, clean, sweet cologne smell that was all over him every time he came near her.
 
She looked at him, as he backed out of the parking lot and, based on her directions, began heading east of downtown.
 
She didn’t believe in chance.
 
She didn’t believe that she just so happened to run into him twice in two weeks by accident.
 
Could God have sent this hunk of a human being to her, she wondered.
 
Could God have decided that it was her time to get a good turn for a change?
 
Then she smiled at her fanciful thinking.
 
The man just had dinner with his girlfriend for crying out loud!
 
His very tall, very gorgeous girlfriend.
 
Get a grip, she thought with a smile and leaned her head back against the headrest.

 
Robert glanced at Carrie as he stopped at a red light on Forsythe.
 
She looked so young, he thought, as her head tilted back and her gorgeous thin neck revealed no lines whatsoever.
 
He’d guess she was barely twenty-two, if that old.
 
So young and so green.
 
He could have laid any line on her tonight and she would have believed him and gotten in this truck with him to be carted off to her doom.
 
Didn’t she read the papers?
 
Didn’t she watch the news?
 
Weirdoes didn’t have to look weird.
 
They were, in fact, usually the boy next door.
 
He could have been a maniac just as she suggested, for all she knew.
 
But she got right on in this truck just the same.
 
And just the thought of it angered him.
 
Then he became angry with himself.
 
He didn’t even know this woman, knew, in fact, next to nothing about her, and he was already worried sick about her.
 
He didn’t need this aggravation, he thought, as he pulled away from the now green light and absently but angrily hit his hand against the steering wheel.
 

 
Carrie, who heard the thump, looked at him.
 
“Is something wrong?” she asked.

 
“No, I was just. . . No.
 
You said I keep up Forsythe?”

 
“Until you get to Liberty, yes, sir.
 
Make a left on Liberty and then you have a long way to go, all the way down to 8
^th
Street, where you’ll make a right.”
 

 
Robert nodded.
 
Carrie smiled.
 
“You remembered my name,” she said.

 
Robert glanced at her.
 
“What’s that?”

 
“You called me Carrie in the parking lot.
 
I didn’t think you remembered me.”

 
How could he forget her, he wanted to say.
 
“You aren’t easily forgotten, young lady,” he said instead.

 
Carrie smiled even greater, although she wondered why he felt a need to keep referring to her as
young
.
 
She didn’t feel all that young, not with the kind of hard life she’d had to live.
 
She wasn’t as old as he was, she reasoned, but she wasn’t some child either.

 
Robert looked at her again.
 
“I’m surprised you remembered me,” he said, testing her.

 
Carrie took the bait and laughed.
 
“How could I forget you?
 
You gave me water, let me sit in your office and rest for a while.
 
You’re the kindest person I’ve ever met.”

 
“Come on.”

 
“You are.”

 
“Because I gave you water and a place to sit?
 
I hope that’s not true, Carrie.
 
I hope those two little common courtesy acts
does
not make me the kindest person you’ve ever met.”

 
“Not just because of that.”

 
“Then what?”

 
“It’s just, I don’t know
,
I can’t put it into words.”
 
Carrie said this and looked at him.
 
He smiled.
 
He understood.

 
He took a right onto Liberty Street and kept his eyes on the road.
 
He thought about all of the women he’d known who had that same look in their eyes Carrie now had in hers.
 
They thought they loved him too.
 
And some did.
 
Some loved him, some eventually despised him, and some, like Gloria, despitefully used him.
 
She even admitted it, after the divorce, when the judge decided that, although he was not Ashley’s biological father, he had taken care of her for seventeen years and was therefore entitled to visitation.
 
He drove up to Silver Springs, Maryland to see Ashley within weeks of the divorce.
 
He also wanted to check on Gloria too, she was still in his system bad, and that was when she admitted it.
 
She was using him, because she knew he was close to Paul and would therefore keep her close to Paul too.
 
She never loved him, she’d told him, not ever, because she loved Paul so much.
 
And Paul was right there.
 
Dr. Paul Michael Hathaway.
 
His longtime friend.
 
Holding her hand and gloating in his triumph.
 
They were going to be married
themselves
soon, they told him, and they didn’t need him coming around disrupting their lives by pretending to love Ashley.
 

 
Robert remembered just standing there unable to say a word.
 
They actually believed he could stop loving his child, or at least the child he thought for seventeen years was his.
 
They actually believed he could be cold and callous like them.
 
But he couldn’t. He even still cared for Gloria, the woman who admitted she never cared a day for him, that was how pathetic he was.
 
He looked out of his side window, to hide the disgust that had to be on his face.
 
How do you come back from that kind of deception? How do you trust somebody again when a wife you loved for twenty years wasn’t even trustworthy?
 

 
Now Tyler and some of his other ladies and even this young Carrie Banks expected him to see the wonderful uniqueness in them and trust his own judgment again.
 
When it came to acquisitions and other business dealings, yes, he’d trust his judgment over any other human being’s.
 
When it came to women, forget it.
 
He’d trust a child’s judgment first.

 
“I hope Popena’s home,” Carrie said mainly to herself but Robert heard her.

 
“What’s that?” he asked.

 
“I said I hope my sister’s home.
 
Popena,
or Mona as she likes to be called now.
 
She works at night but she might not have left yet.
 
Her boss offered me a job and I wanted to let her know that I’m gonna take it.”
 
This pronouncement brought a frown to Carrie’s face.
 
But she was unemployed again.
 
She had to tell Popena something.

 
“Why didn’t you take it before?” he asked her.
 
“Different kind of work?

 
“Not really.
 
I’ll be waiting tables there too.
 
But it won’t be at
no
fancy restaurant like Jetson’s.

 
“I see.”

 
“But hopefully
me
and Popena will be able to work the same hours.
 
That’ll make it a lot easier for me.”

 
Robert exhaled.
 
Getting her on at Dyson would be as simple as putting in a call to the director of human resources and telling him to hire her, but that wasn’t the problem.
 
He needed to move this woman out of his life, not find reasons to keep her in it.
     

 
As instructed by Carrie, he made a right onto 8
^th
Street and then a left onto Phoenix and within a few blocks they were on Dresel Street.
 
When they arrived at Carrie’s apartment building, Robert saw a large assortment of shirtless young men hanging out on the stoop gambling and playing loud rap music.
 
They were also drinking and laughing and getting fresh with the hookers and having a big old time in front of Carrie’s building.
  
Robert looked amazed, she thought, when his big, shiny SUV stopped at the curb and her less than shiny surroundings hit him like a jolt of reality in the face.
 
Where did he expect her to live on a waitress salary, she wanted to know.
 
In one of those fancy condominiums downtown?

 
He stepped out of his truck slowly, as if he wanted to prove to her that he wasn’t stunned by what he was seeing, but Carrie knew better than that.
 
This was like a culture shock to a man like Robert Kincaid, who probably never knew a day of poverty in his life.
 
He also probably never knew a woman who could live in a place like this.
 
Which only depressed Carrie.
 
They were just too different, she decided.