A Sticky Situation (25 page)

Before I dropped Samantha off at the halfway house, she asked me to take her by her mom’s crib since we had about thirty minutes to waste. It seemed like everybody, including her aunts and uncles, were there. The house was packed with every family member that lived in the area. As soon as I walked into the front door, I greeted everybody, hugged her mother, and eased my way into the living room. I got bombarded by Sam’s uncle Reggie. He was the family crackhead and always wanted to borrow money, knowing good and well he wasn’t gonna be able to pay you back.

He sat on the seat beside me, smiled and said, “Let me hold something.”

“Reggie, I ain’t working with nothing right now,” I replied.

“Come on now, nephew, I know you got at least ten dollars.” At this point, he usually began to beg.

“I told you I wasn’t working with nothing.”

“Nigga, who you think you talking to? I see that brand new whip you pushing outside, and I know my niece ain’t gon’ fuck with you unless you got something in your pockets, so you can tell somebody else that lie.”

“Listen, man, I told you I ain’t have no dough. Now, if I had some, I’d slide you about twenty dollars. But right now, I’m fucked up.”

“A’ight, well let me wash your car for you.”

“Reggie, didn’t I say I didn’t have shit?”

“Yeah, but I know I’d probably find some change or something inside your cup holders.”

I laughed and shook my head. This nigga wasn’t hearing me at all. But, I couldn’t knock his hustle. Instead of sitting there and continuing to listen to his bullshit, I got up and walked into the kitchen to where Sam was. On my way, I happened to pass right by Samantha’s sister, Tammy. As soon as she saw me, her eyes locked onto mine. I guessed she was shocked to see me. It had been a few years since the last time we saw each other, so I did the polite thing by speaking. After she spoke back, she strutted her pretty ass right by me. When I turned around to take a look to see if her ass was still fat, Samantha came from out of nowhere and smacked me right in the back of my head.

“You are so fucking disrespectful,” she snapped.

Caught off guard, I rubbed my head, trying to ease the sting from the blow and then turned around toward Samantha with a stupid expression on my face. “Whatchu talking about?” I asked her.

“Don’t act stupid, Seth! I saw you looking at Tammy’s ass!” she yelled. “What, you want to fuck her again?”

“Hell, nah! Are you crazy?” I snapped back.

“I couldn’t tell, especially after the way you were all up on her.” I tried to reach for her but she knocked my hands out of the way. “Don’t touch me, because you know you are wrong.” I looked around the living room and everybody and their mother was watching us. I tried to defuse the situation by grabbing Sam’s arm and escorting her into a nearby bedroom.

“Why you had to make a big-ass scene in front of your family?” I asked her as soon as I closed the door behind us.

“Why the fuck you got to be so damn disrespectful?”

“Sam, all I did was turn around and look at her.”

“No, liar, you turned around and looked down at her ass!”

“OK, I did and so what? I mean, why you gotta make a big fuss about it! All I was doing was looking. There ain’t no harm in that, is it?”

Sam punched me in the arm. “Fuck you, Seth!” she said. “Take me to the halfway house right now.” She walked out of the bedroom and slammed the door behind her. I walked out of the room a few minutes later so it wouldn’t look like we were still beefing. It didn’t work because she was running her mouth to everybody on her way to the front door. But before she got there, her uncle Reggie stopped her in her tracks.

“Hey Sam, somebody is on the phone for you.”

“Who is it?” she sounded irritated as she reached for the cordless phone.

“He didn’t give me his name,” Reggie told her.

Now I’m standing there in front of her wondering to myself who in the hell could be calling her? And to know it was a nigga really threw me for a loop. But what was really messing my head up was the fact that he knew she was here. I waited to hear what she had to say.

“Hello,” she said with an attitude. And then she frowned her face up and said, “How did you get this number?” And when she said that, a red flag went up in my head and I flipped out.

“Who the fuck is that?” I asked her, my veins on the verge of popping out of my forehead.

But Samantha ignored me and continued with her conversation. “Don’t worry about who that was,” she yelled.

“Tell that mutherfucker I’m your man!” I demanded.

All her family members were standing around waiting to see how she was going to handle this, but she ignored me once again. “Look, don’t call my damn house anymore and I mean it!” she told him and then she pressed down on the end button and disconnected the call.

Immediately after she hung up with homeboy, I stood there and waited for her to tell me who the fuck he was but she didn’t. Instead, she handed the phone back to her uncle and walked out of the house, so you know I followed behind her like a pimp who walks down on the heels of his hoes. And when I got outside I let her ass have it.

“Who the fuck was that nigga you were on the phone with?”

“Why the fuck you worrying about it? I’m sure you’ve got your share of hoes out here.”

“Sam, don’t play with me!” I warned her as we both got into my car.

She closed the passenger side door and looked straight head. “I’m not playing with you,” she replied sarcastically.

“I think you are. And I am not taking you to the halfway house until you tell me who the fuck you was on the phone with.”

Samantha hesitated and then she said, “It was some nigga named Mendez.”

My patience was about to run out. “Who the fuck is he?” I screamed.

“Somebody I use to know back in the day.”

“Well, how the fuck he knew you were home? What, you were writing that nigga when you were locked up?”

“Hell nah!”

“Well, how he knew you were home?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, that nigga better not call you again,” I warned her and then I started my whip up and squealed my tires as I pulled off.

Instead of responding, Samantha folded her arms and turned her face toward the window. We rode to the halfway house in complete silence. But, I knew we would be all right by tomorrow. That’s how shit was with us. We’d fight one day, and then we’re cool the next. Besides, she couldn’t get enough of me. Nor could Maxine, which was why they were gonna always come back, no matter how much I fucked up.

MAXINE

Back In The Office

I didn’t know what Karen’s problem was, but she had been riding my ass about my caseload. Since I had been away from the office she had been all in my files and shit, and checking behind me to see if I was doing all the follow-up meetings with my second-time-loser clients.

“What’s up with this guy? When is the last time you scheduled a home visit with him?” she asked, showing me the file that belonged to a Mr. Omar Clarke.

“Lately he hasn’t complied with any of my letters to come in and do a urine screen, and when I tried to pay him a surprise visit at his residence about three weeks ago, he was nowhere to be found.”

“Does he work?”

“No. His former employer told me he fired him over a month ago.”

“I am going to take his file with me because he needs Form 21-B filed on him immediately. I’ve got to have him off the streets in the next forty-eight hours, because this guy is hazardous to society.”

“I would’ve filed the paperwork a long time ago, but you forced me to take leave right after I had those two incidents back-to-back, remember?”

“Yeah, I realize that, but this individual should not have been overlooked. If you were having problems locating him before you took off, you should’ve taken the file home and worked on it from there. You could have attached an urgent memo and stuck it on my desk or emailed me so I could’ve dealt with it. There’s no reason why this individual should still be walking the streets.”

“You’re right, but—”

“No, Maxine, there’s no room for the word
but
in this situation,” she interjected. She went on to say that she had noticed by the reports in my files that I had become a little slack with my clients. Of course I tried to refute that, but again, she cut me off. Karen had me cornered in my office for at least two hours, going over my client’s files. After she indicated the cases she wanted me to take immediate action on, she gave me a forty-eight hour deadline to have all eleven of the men and women back behind bars. But that wasn’t it, because as soon as she began to put the files back into the cabinet, she stumbled across Seth’s file again. Once more, she had my heart about to burst right out of my chest.

“I swear, every time I see this man, he looks just like the guy posing in the picture with you at your apartment.”

I chuckled again, but I was fearful as hell. “You know what? He does kind of look like him, now that you’ve mentioned it.” I agreed, hoping it would throw her off.

Guess what? My magic worked. Karen nodded her head in agreement and stuck his file right in the cabinet with the others. Boy, I’ll tell you that was a heart attack just waiting to happen.

“Keep me abreast of what’s going on, and have a full report on my desk by morning, OK.”

“OK,” I said and watched her leave my office.

I looked down at my watch and noticed that it was a little after four. My heart rate increased because my gut feeling was telling me that I needed to call the halfway house and see if Ms. Samantha had already checked in, and if she had, I wanted to know who dropped her off. I picked up line two on my office phone and dialed the direct line to the halfway house. On the third ring, a woman picked up.

“Thanks for calling Rehabilitation Services. This is Sonya. How can I help you?”

“Hi Sonya, my name is Maxine, and I am a United States Federal Probation Officer. I was calling to check on the arrival of a Samantha Mitchell, who should have been admitted into your facility by now.”

“Yes, as a matter-of-fact she has,” Sonya said. “I checked her in myself about an hour ago.”

“Oh, OK, good. By any chance would you know who dropped her off?”

“No ma’am. I’m sorry, but we don’t ask the residents those kind of questions unless they have been restricted from being around certain individuals.”

“I’m sorry if you hadn’t been informed, but she has certain restrictions.”

“Is this information in her file?”

“My duty officer said that she faxed over a photo and an F-17 form about three weeks ago, so it should be there.”

“OK, hold on a minute and let me check,” she said and then I heard her lay the phone down.

I listened to complete silence for about three minutes and then I heard her pick the phone up again. “I have her file here,” she informed me. “Let me take a look while I have you on the phone.”

After a few seconds passed Sonya said, “OK, I see the F-17 form and the photo of a black male by the name of Seth Richardson.”

“Yes, that’s it.”

“I will let Ms. Mitchell’s case manager and the house monitors know what’s going on, so everyone will be aware of the situation.”

I sighed with relief. “Thank you so much, Sonya.”

“You are so welcome,” she said.

“Hey, Sonya, can I ask you one more thing?”

“Sure.”

“What is normal protocol for the new residents?”

“What do you mean?”

“I was wondering about the rules and regulations for earning passes and how long they get to go out?”

“Well, in Ms. Mitchell’s case, she won’t be able to leave this building for weekend passes until she has secured a job and has been working for at least two weeks. Once she can pay her housing fee, she’ll earn passes weekly.”

“How is she able to find a job?”

“After she goes through orientation, which will be tomorrow, she will be given a pass to go out every day from eight
AM
to three
PM
to submit applications to employers who hire ex-offenders.”

“Will she be monitored while she’s out and about?”

“No ma’am, I’m afraid not.”

“So, she could just go anywhere she wants and be with whomever, and y’all won’t know about it?”

“Technically, she could because we don’t have the manpower to follow every one of our residents. All we can do is monitor her while she is on or around our property.”

Not at all happy by her response, I quickly thanked her for her time and patience and got the hell off the phone. I pulled out my cell phone and dialed Seth’s number.

“Hello,” he said.

“How are you doing?” I asked him as nicely as I could.

“I’m cool. What about you?”

“I’m OK now that I’m finally getting ready to leave out of these doors, so I can see you.”

“Whatchu trying to get into?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we can go to dinner or a movie or something. I mean, it really doesn’t matter to me.”

“A’ight. Well, let’s see a movie because I just ate a plate of leftovers I found in my mom’s refrigerator.”

“Did you take care of all of your business?”

“Yep.”

“How long have you been back at her house?”

“Probably about two hours. Why?”

“Oh nothing, really. I was just being curious.”

“Well, what time do you want me to meet you at your place?”

“Go there now, because you know it’s gonna take me twenty minutes to get there.”

“A’ight, so I’ll see you there.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too,” he told me and then we hung up.

Hearing him tell me he had been at his mother’s house for over two hours and that he loved me put a huge smile on my face. Nothing in the world could upset me right now. After I shut my computer down and grabbed my handbag and car keys, I walked out of my office and didn’t look back. I didn’t have to look back because my stalker friend and colleague, Mr. Marcus Finley, was having a heavy conversation with my hating-ass colleague, Carolyn Granger, right at the exit. As badly as I wanted to turn around to avoid running into both of these idiots, I psyched myself into believing that this was only a dream and that it would be over as soon as I got out of the building. As I approached them I said, “Excuse me. Coming through.” That wasn’t enough for Marcus. He had to turn all the way around and give me his undivided attention.