A Special Relationship (29 page)

 
“You can come in,” she said to him as she made her way to the front door.

 
“Let’s go, Carrie,” he said.

 
“Go?
 
Go where?”

 
“Yeah,” Mona said as she sat down on the living room sofa and pulled a cigarette out of a crumpled pack.
 
“Where she going?
 
She ain’t going no-where with you.
 
This her
home.
 
I’m her family.”

 
“Popena, that’s enough,” Carrie said to her phony sister.
 
Then she looked at Robert.
 
“I’m staying here,” she said.

 
“Why?
 
Because of what happened this morning?
 
That was nothing, Carrie.”

 
“What happened this morning?” Mona asked in the background.

 
“It’s not that,” Carrie said to Robert, although that was a major part of it.
 
“I just would rather stay here until I decide what to do.
 
My sister’s right.
 
This is my home.”

 
Robert looked at her, at the dispirited look in her large eyes, and he knew there would be no talking her out of it.
 
This was a cross she had to bear alone.
 
She was probably already beating herself up over what she allowed him to do to her this morning when it was really no big deal and was
all his
fault.
 
But that was Carrie.

 
He opened his suit coat, revealing a silk-green shirt tucked into a pair of tailored, pleated pants, and he placed his hands in the pockets of those pants.
 
He exhaled.
 
Decided to try one more time.
 
“It’s not safe here, Carrie.”

 
“I know.
 
But I’m under God’s protection.
 
Nobody can harm me.”

 
“I just don’t want anything to happen to you.”

 
“It won’t, Robert, really.
 
It’s not as bad it
seem
.”
        

 
“For real,” Mona said in the background.
 
“He must think
we
livin’ in Iraq somewhere!”

 
“Call me if you need me.”

 
“I will.”

 
“And I don’t want you hanging out around that stoop.”

 
“I know.”

 
“Seems to me that bullet that got your friend was probably meant for one of those young men.”

 
“I don’t hang around there, Robert.
 
I just come and go without even saying anything to any of them.”

 
Robert nodded, looked down the length of her, and then tried to smile.
 
“I guess I don’t know your size after all.”

 
Carrie looked down at the tight clothes she wore and smiled too.
 
“I guess not.”

 
“Sorry about that.”

 
“No, thanks for getting them.”

 
Robert nodded again and they both stared into the other’s eyes.
 
They both knew departing was best.
 
For Carrie she wouldn’t have to deal with temptation.
 
For Robert he wouldn’t have to deal with risking his heart.
 
But knowing what was best and doing it were two different things.

 
That was why they lingered.
 
First with small talk and then with no talk at all until Robert finally said goodbye.
 
To both their shock, however, he leaned in before he left and kissed Carrie on the lips.
 
It was a peck, nothing passionate at all, but it still raced her heart.
 
But when she closed the door and had to listen to Mona go on and on about how that white man was using her and disrespecting her and up to no good with her, reality set back in and her once racing heart calmed back down.

Two nights later, when Carrie was still just trying to pray her way through her depressing state, Mona was at it again.
 
Dooney still had a spot for her at Simms, she said, and Carrie
need
to reconsider it. But Carrie wasn’t about to reconsider.
 
She sat quietly on the sofa while Mona kept on talking, until Mona got tired of talking and left.

 
Mona slammed the door when she left because she was tired of Carrie too.
 
That moralistic, holy rolling sister of hers was getting on her last nerve.
 
All she wanted to do was sit around the house and read that Bible of hers as if living in this world was beneath her.
 
Mona began walking down the stairs still fussing, still so filled with rage that she didn’t realize Willie Charles had entered the building and was heading up.
 

 
“What’s wrong with you, girl?” he asked her as they met on the walk-up.

 
“That crazy behind Carrie, that’s what.
 
Dooney got a slot for her butt, he’s been bugging me about it every night, but she too good to work at Simms.”

 
“I thought she was working at Simms.”

 
“You thought wrong.
 
Some uptown white man she’s foolin’ with won’t let her.”

 
“What white man?
 
Robert Kincaid?”

 
“Yeah.
 
How did you know?”

 
“I know that sucker from Dyson.
 
Can’t stand him either.
 
He
think
he’s so superior to everybody.”

 
“Just like Carrie.
 
I tell her to get some rent money from him then, that’s what sugar daddies are for, but she just look at me like I’m crazy.
 
I tell you that witch makes me crazy sometimes!
 
But I got to go,” Mona said as she continued her walk down the stairs.
 
“What you doing this way tonight?”

 
“I wanted to holler at Carrie.”

 
Mona laughed.
 
“Yeah, I’ll bet you did.”

 
“Hey, Mo, why don’t you unlock the door for a
brother.
 
She ain’t gonna let me in otherwise.”

 
Mona stopped walking and looked at Willie Charles.
 
“For how much?” she asked.

 
“How much?”

 
“Yeah, niggar, how much.
 
How bad you wanna get up in there?”

 
“You cold, Mo.”

 
“How much, Willie Charles, I ain’t got all night.”

 
“Ten.”

 
“Twenty and you got a deal.”

 
“Twenty?”

 
“That’s right.”

 
Willie Charles shook his head.
 
Mona Banks could hustle a hustler.
 
But he reached in his pocket and handed her a twenty just the same.
 
Mona grabbed it and then continued her walk downstairs.
 

 
“What you doin’?”
Willie Charles asked, stunned.
 
“You got to unlock the door!”

 
“It’s already unlocked!” Mona said with a laugh as she hurried out of the door of the building.

 
Willie Charles frowned at that hustler but then hurried upstairs.
 
He listened at the door only for a second before opening it and going inside.

 
Carrie, who had been getting a glass of water in the kitchen, saw Willie Charles’ sudden appearance in the apartment and dropped her glass.
 

 
“What are you doing in here?”

 
“What you think I’m doing in here bitch,” he said, coming upon her.
 
“You get me fired from my job and think I’m not gonna get something back from you?”

 
Carrie immediately tried to run away but Willie Charles, running after her and smiling that crooked, gap-tooth smile of his, tried to pin her against the wall just beyond the kitchen arch.

 
But she fought, with everything she had.
 
She kicked and hit and gave as
good
as she got.
 
She broke away and even managed to pick up a piece of broken glass and threatened Willie Charles with it, insisting that he leave now or he’d be sorry.
 
But Willie Charles found that funny too.
 
“You’re cute when you’re mad,” he said and kept progressing on her.
 
When she reached out and cut him on his arm, however, and he realized how deep the gash was, his smile vanished.
 
He cussed at her, hit her with his fist across the face, grabbed her by the hair and rammed her into the refrigerator.
 
But instead of falling, instead of rendering herself just helpless enough for that maniac to do whatever he wanted with her, she ran.
 
She took his blows and then she ran so fast out of that apartment that she nearly flew down the stairs.
 
Her head was throbbing, and her face was stinging in pain, but she ran all the way up Dresel Street, to Phoenix, to the only place she knew to go: the storefront church Millie used to attend.
 
Unfortunately for her, however, it was closed.

 
She slumped down at the door and cried out to God.
 
She was tired of this.
 
She was tired of all of this turmoil in her life.
 
She leaned her body against the door and cried as loud as she could.
 
All she wanted was peace.
 
Just a little peace and quiet in her life.
 
And then she thought about Millie.
 
God is
able,
she used to love to say.
 
So Carrie said it too.

The light on the table next to Robert’s big bed clicked on and Robert picked up the ringing phone.
 
He was still so groggy that he forgot to say hello, prompting the female voice on the other end to say it instead.

 
“Yes?” he said, his eyes closed, his basic instinct telling him that nothing could be so important that it required disturbing him at midnight.

 
“This is Gwen Curtis with Dyson’s answering service, Mr. Kincaid.”

 
“Hello, Gwen.”

 
“Hello, sir.
 
I’m very sorry to bother you like this but a police officer just called on your private line asking for you.”

 
Robert frowned.
 
“A police officer?”

 
“Yes, sir.
 
He said it involves someone named Carrie.”

 
Robert’s heart dropped.
 
“Carrie?”

 
“Yes, sir.
 
He didn’t have a last name, and he said it couldn’t wait until morning.”