A Special Relationship (9 page)

 
Carrie was just trying to hold onto her brand new job, a job she decided last night was desperately needed if she ever expected to get away from her sister’s house.
 
Her reunion with Mona hadn’t been anything like she had hoped it would be.
 
She wasn’t about to mess this up too.
 
“You can go on to the next room,” she said smilingly to her co-worker.
 
“I won’t take long.”

 
“Uh-uh,” Gail said decisively.
 
“That ain’t happening.
 
I go to the next spot and do all the work while you back here trying to impress the boss?
 
No ma’am.
 
You can forget that.
 
You gonna put that mop back in that cart and come on with me.”
 

 
When Carrie wouldn’t make any kind of move, Gail took control.
 
She snatched the mop from Carrie, who couldn’t exactly fight back since she was nearly four inches shorter and sixty pounds lighter than Gail. Gail then placed the mop in the cart and began pushing the cart, and Carrie, out of the bathroom.
 
As soon as they made it out into the hall, however, they saw Willie Charles.

 
“What y’all still doing in there?” he asked angrily, hurrying toward them.
 
“I leave y’all alone for two minutes and y’all messin’ up.”

 
“Ain’t no y’all,” Gail quickly pointed out.
 
“It’s Miss
Aim
To
Please
here.
 
She scrubbin’ down walls—”

 
“Scrubbing down walls?”

 
“She scrubbin’ down walls and was about to mop the floor too before I snatched that mop out of her hands.”

 
Willie Charles shook his head.
 
“You go on and finish up, Gail.
 
Let me have a little talk with Carrie.
 
She’ll be right behind you.”

 
Gail gladly nodded and pushed the cart into the office across the hall.
 

 
Willie Charles motioned for Carrie to follow him back into the bathroom.
 
When the door closed, he forced her back against it and stood in front of her, his hand resting just above her head.
 
“You trying to embarrass your co-worker, girl?” he asked her.

 
“Embarrass her?”

 
“
You trying
to show her up?”

 
“No, of course not.”

 
Willie Charles smiled a crooked, gap-tooth smile, as if he was amused by her distress.
 
“You just like to do a good job, don’t you?”

 
“Yes, sir.
 
That’s all I was trying to do.
 
I wasn’t trying to embarrass anybody.”

 
“You
was
trying to please me.”

 
“I just don’t wanna lose my job.”

 
Willie Charles nodded.
 
“I can understand that.”
 
He said this as he removed a strand of hair out of Carrie’s face.
 
Carrie was uncomfortable with his touch and closeness, but she wasn’t quite sure how to react to it.
 
But as soon as he took the back of his hand and began to rub her cheek, she figured it out.
 
She tried to slide her body away from the door, but Willie Charles wouldn’t let her.
 
“What’s the matter, sweetheart?” he asked, his heavy-lidded gaze unnerving Carrie.
 
“You know you want this.”

 
Carrie suddenly couldn’t breathe.
 
She struggled to get away from her boss, insisting that she still had so much work to do, but he grabbed her by the wrists and kept her against the door.
  
He tried to kiss her, to put his foul lips on hers, but she kept turning her face away.
 
When he removed one of his hands from her wrist to grab hold of her face, to undoubtedly steady her for his
kiss, that
was when she was able to kick him in the groin and make her getaway.
 
As soon as he bent over in pain, she slung open the door of the bathroom and ran.
 
Although she had on a bulky
Myers Cleaning Service
sweatshirt and those oversized latex gloves they made her wear, she also had on her jeans and tennis shoes, which gave her great mobility.
 
She tossed off the gloves, to free up her hands, and sprinted as fast as her tennis shoes could take her.
 
  
Her heart pounded ferociously, however, when the bathroom door swung open and she looked back and saw Willie Charles, cursing bitterly, as he began to run behind her.
 
She was horrified.
 
Everything she had hoped for - a job, a place of her own, college finally - was crumbling before her very eyes.
 
And it was too much.
 
Everything about this
promised land
called Florida was already becoming way too much.

 
But she didn’t have time to worry about that either.
 
All she worried about right now was getting away from Willie Charles, praying that he didn’t catch up to her.
 
She knew the deal.
 
She knew that kicking her boss in the groin almost certainly meant that she was fired.

 
She ran around the corner so fast that she skidded across the floor.
 
Then she saw the elevator and made a mad dash for it.
 
To her amazement, and a testament, she felt, to how hard she was
praying,
the bell of the elevator sounded and the doors miraculously flung open as soon as she approached them.
 
So relieved she could hardly contain herself, she ran full speed ahead onto that elevator just as Robert Kincaid, who happened to be a passenger, was about to step off.
 
Her small body collided violently into his big
body,
and with such a force that she ended up in his arms as they both hurled backwards against the wall of the shaft.
 

 
She looked up at him, at this strange white man who now cradled her in his arms, and her heart literally pounded against her chest.
 
It was the oddest reaction she’d ever had to anyone, not to mention a stranger. But he was such a kind looking stranger, she thought, as she stared into his sincere gray eyes.
 
He was somebody who didn’t even have to smile to make her feel at ease.
 
Which astounded her.

 
Robert’s feelings, however, weren’t nearly as astounded.
 
He was upset by this display.
  
She obviously was a member of the cleaning crew, her sweatshirt bore that out, and he wanted to know why it was that she could find all this time to play around when she obviously had work to do.
 
But as he looked into her eyes, her light green eyes that were as large as her pretty face was small, eyes that looked so pitiful and sad that they suddenly tugged at his heart, he softened.
 
She was breathing heavily as she stood against him, her sizable breasts lifting up and down as if she’d been running a marathon, and he quickly realized that her demeanor was not indicative of playfulness at all, but terror.
 

 
The source of that terror, Willie Charles, slid around the corner and up to the elevator too, ready to jump on board and trap her inside.
 
But as soon as he wedged his body in between the doors as they attempted to close, he stopped where he stood.
 
And he couldn’t believe his eyes.
 
The boss himself, the one man in this whole wide world Willie Charles just could not stand, was holding that witch of a woman in his arms.
 
“
Mr. Kincaid
?” he asked, astonished.

 
As soon as Robert heard Willie Charles’ voice, he stopped staring into Carrie’s eyes and released her from his grasp.
 
Her heart dropped when he released her.
 
“Hello, Willie,” he said.

 
“Good evening, sir,” Willie Charles replied, now smiling.
 
“I didn’t expect to see you tonight.”

 
“Obviously not,” Robert said as he pulled out a handkerchief and began to wipe his big hands.
 
That reaction by Robert reminded Willie Charles of just why he hated Kincaid so much. He was always so smug, Willie Charles felt.
 
He was always looking at him and talking to him and treating him as if he was the scum of the earth.
 
Willie Charles had seen his kind all his life.
 
White boys who wore their fancy suits and drove their fancy rides and acted like the world owed them respect.

 
“What’s the problem here?” Robert asked him.

 
“No problem at all, sir.
 
None at all.
 
We
was
just horsing around.
 
But it won’t happen again, I promise you that.”

 
Robert glanced at the young lady who now stood so close beside him that she was actually brushing against him.
 
He knew Willie Charles was lying, he knew this girl wasn’t horsing around with anybody.
 
But Robert also knew that he wasn’t about to get involved.
 
“See that it doesn’t happen again,” he said sternly and walked off of the elevator.
 

 
“No, sir, it definitely won’t,” Willie Charles said as he quickly pressed the elevator’s hold button to make sure Carrie didn’t try to make another one of her getaways.
 
“You know me, Mister K.,” Willie Charles continued, putting on his best phony smile.
 
“I’m all about getting that work done.
 
And that’s exactly what we’re gonna do: get that work done.”

 
Robert was about to walk away, to just forget about Willie Charles and everything else associated with him, but he looked at Carrie again.
 
She stood in the elevator looking so confused, as if she didn’t know why she was even there, as if she was fighting back tears with everything she had.
 
And for some unfathomable reason he couldn’t begin to understand, she tugged at his heart again.
 
He exhaled.
 
“You okay?” he asked her.

 
The compassion in his eyes made her want to tell him the truth and say
no,
nothing about her life lately has been okay.
 
But why should he care?
 
It was obvious to her by the way he released her, by the way he couldn’t wait to get away from her, by the way he so quickly believed Willie Charles,
that
the last thing he wanted was to be bothered with her.
 
He had even wiped his hands, as if touching her had somehow contaminated him
.
 
I’m fine
, she wished she was strong enough to say, just to prove to the world that they weren’t about to get the best of her.
 
But she wasn’t fine, and that was the problem.
 
“No,” she said to Robert, and Willie Charles shot her a look so terrifying that it made her skin crawl.
 
He was petrified
.
  
Didn’t she know what she was saying
?
he
wondered.
 
Didn’t she realize that she could cause him to lose his job, not to mention Myers to lose that entire Dyson contract, if she fessed up to Kincaid?
 
Didn’t she realize who she was about to spill the beans
to
?

 
Apparently she realized something, Willie Charles decided
,
 
because
instead of busting him for his nothing short of sexual harassing behavior, she asked Robert if she could have a drink of water.
 
Willie Charles nearly
sighed
relief.
 
Robert frowned.
 
       
“Water?” he asked her.

 
“Yes.”

 
Robert looked deep into her eyes as if he was studying them, and he understood.
 
She was such a pretty young woman, he thought, with that vulnerable,
who me
look about her that a joker like Willie Charles wouldn’t hesitate to try and exploit.
 
If he hadn’t already.