Across The Tracks (7 page)

She turned her brown eyes on him and he held her hips as he fucked her hard. “You like it hard, don’t you?”

“Yess,” she moaned.

“I knew you did,” he gritted out through his teeth.

“Faster,” she panted.

He went faster for her, then he started to feel a cramp starting to grow on his bad leg, so he slowed down, slapped her on the ass and said, “Bring it home, darling.”

Lisa smiled at him and put her hands on his chest and started to ride him hard. Slamming down on his hips, twirling in the process while trying to drive him up the wall with her thrusts. At first Rich was moaning, then he started to growl. She thought he was close, but he said, “Keep riding that cock, baby.”

Once she started thrusting into him, he started slapping her ass and chanting, “Take it. Fuck it.”

When she knew he was close, she started just sliding up and down on him. He grabbed her titties and held on while she fucked him. When she turned her head, he growled, “Eyes!”

Lisa turned right back around to look in his beautiful gray eyes. She felt like he could see her soul. Sex was already an intimate connection, but to stare at one another while you had sex, was on another level. She did not want to allow him that access, but he was taking it with or without her permission. This was another reason why she liked him. He knew what he wanted, went after it and made no apologies for it. She didn’t agree with everything he wanted, but she gave him credit. Rich got results and her riding him against her better judgment was proof.

“Fuuck,” he roared. “Baby, I’m about to cum in that tight little pussy.”

“Yes.” Lisa kept rocking. “Yeesss,” she chanted.

“Cum all over my cock baby. Finish on me.”

Lisa lifted up and started rubbing her clit in rhythm with her twirling hips. She was close too. “That’s my girl, rub that beautiful pussy for me.”

When he said that, she started to cum causing her movements to become erratic. Rich grabbed her hips and began to thrust until he came inside of her. She fell down on top of him, face planted in the pillow and she stayed connected to him until he rolled them to the side. Lisa was thoroughly exhausted and on her way to dreamland when she thought she heard Rich say, “I could fall in love with you.”

******

It was dusk outside when Lisa woke up. Rich was sound asleep, so she grabbed her clothes and snuck out of the bed to go to the restroom. After she cleaned up and redressed, she went to make her exit, but someone clearing their throat stopped her. Lisa had just reached the bottom of the stairs when Tilda came from the hallway.

“Leaving so soon?” she asked with her accent, which sounded like, ‘leavin tso tsoon.’

“Yes, I have to go,” Lisa replied

“Does Mr. Wells need anything?”

“No, he’s sleeping. I’m sure he’ll contact you when he does.”

“I’m sure,” she said with a knowing smile, “he’s very fond of tu.”

“Is that so?” Lisa asked, not really looking for an answer, but searching for her keys in her purse.

“Yes, it tis so, he cares what tu tink of him.”

“Hmm, he’s told you this?” Lisa asked, now looking at the older woman.

“He don’t have to, I can tell by ta look on his face when your name is mentioned or he’s talking about tu. He’s been smitten awhile now, but ta poor boy is till figurin out what to do wit tose feelings versus ta life tat was prepared for him.”

“Sounds like the story of my life,” Lisa muttered and rolled her eyes. She turned towards the older woman and said, “Tilda, take care of him, please. I’m glad he has you. He needs some color in his life.”

Lisa smiled and left.

6 Months after the Accident (RICH)

After Rich had broken his leg, the doctor told him he would, for the most part, be out of commission for 4-6 months. His father came to get him from the hospital, never to visit or even send some damn flowers. He received a letter from Grace saying that she was ‘weary’ of hospitals, but she’d make it up to him later. Rich laid in that hospital bed for a week and a half because there were other injuries that were not healing at the pace the doctors thought they should have been.

The drive from the hospital was silent as his father said nothing to him. He only wheeled him into his two-story apartment where he was met by a round, old, black lady. He turned towards his father who, ‘you make your bed and lie in it’. Rich knew this was one of his punishments. She would be the live-in nurse home aid for the next six to eight months. The first two months, he tried to ignore her as much as possible. He did not do the rehab, ate his own food, which he mostly had delivered via Seamless every day because he didn’t want her cooking goat for him. He was short with her and made racially inappropriate comments all the time, even to the point of mocking her accent. The woman was resilient when he woke up in the morning, she was still there and had not smothered him in his sleep. It did not help that he was drunk most of this time. In his right mind, at least, he had the good sense not to be so offensive, but this woman stayed for the abuse and Rich kept it coming.

During that time, Grace visited him a total of three times in the first month. She was ruder to Tilda than he ever was, which was saying something. She kept trying to have sex with Rich, but he did not want to be bothered with her, so he told Tilda not to let her to his room. Tilda did just that and after all the names, including the ‘N’ word Grace called her, Tilda still had not smacked her. The next time Grace stopped by, he told Tilda it was alright to send her up because he was sloppy drunk and did not really care. She came in with her homemaker Susie attitude and Rich cut her down by telling her the only thing she was good for was a good suck. She threw her purse at him, which went crashing against the wall because he swatted it and out came the truth. White powder all over the floor, along with her cosmetics. Grace turned a dark shade of red and at first Rich did not know what was going on, but when he saw Grace trying to put the powder back in its vile, it hit him. She was hooked on that shit.

Grace tried to come one last time, but Rich told her the day her secret was exposed that she was no longer welcome in his house, his life, his bed or in his immediate vicinity. He’d said all of that in front of Tilda because she ran upstairs to make sure everything was alright and witnessed Grace trying to save the white powder. Therefore, when Grace returned, Tilda told her the next time she came, she’d call the cops and have her arrested for harassment. Grace stopped coming, stopped calling and emailing. She was weak and Rich could not settle for weak-minded people.

His job was still available to him because he was on long-term disability. Out of the entire catastrophe, Rich felt that was one plus. On some level, he missed the law and its finality, but there was something else missing. At the end of the two months, Rich had a doctor’s appointment. The doctor pretty much scared him and told him that if he did not start doing rehabilitation, he would walk with a limp for the rest of his life and possibly have more permanent damage to his leg. Hearing that jarred him a bit, which made him have Tilda take him to the gym to start his routine. Tilda was more than happy to take him, he clearly saw that on her face. He hated having to depend on her, but she was always so gracious, even when he was a first class asshole. As they were leaving the gym, these two black guys were walking and bumped him on purpose. He almost fell, if he was not so close to the wall. Tilda was right behind him and looked up from digging in her purse. Rich, being the man he was said, “What the fuck?”

“You got a problem, cracker?”

“Yeah, you bumped me, what the fuck is your problem?”

The next thing Rich heard was a knife come down out of its chamber and Tilda yelling. The biggest issues at that point were that Rich was on two crutches could not put weight on one of his legs and Tilda started swinging her purse at the guy with the knife. The guy dropped the knife and he tried to push her, but she didn’t budge. Rich looked on in shock because the woman had balls. She stood between him and the guy who pulled the knife and yelled, “What ta blood clot is wrong wit tu?” She sucked her teeth and shook her head at the man.

“Bitch, move the fuck out of the way!” the guy yelled as the other stood back.

“You see ta man on crutches. What tu want money or someting. Look at tem,” she waved her hand towards Rich, “he don’t have no money?”

“No, he got a problem, though.”

“Yeah, he do got a problem, but it ain’t tur problem. Get ton tur way. There’s noting here.” She waved him on.

The guy picked up the knife and started walking away and said, “Whatever, crazy ass bitch.”

“Come ton, Mr. Wells.” She pulled out the keys to her car.

At that moment, Rich didn’t know whether to kiss her or run away. She was definitely crazy, but she did just save his life. From that day forward, Rich started to trust her more and more. He went to physical therapy, abstained from drinking any alcohol, and gradually progressed to eating dinner with Tilda. At first, she would make food for herself, and Rich would smell it, then make a comment on the aroma. Then he tried some. Then she started making extra food for him and he would take it back to his makeshift room on the first floor because it was hard to go up and down the stairs without help. Then Tilda started setting the dinner table for the both of them and they would eat there or just relax on the kitchen island.

Rich found out that Tilda was the only child because all of her brothers and sisters had died either in Jamaica or in the states. Tilda had a daughter who was diagnosed with cancer at a young age, so she cared for her until she passed away. Tilda also had a son in jail, doing life for murder. Rich was so moved by the tenacity of the woman, he asked if she wanted him to look into the case. She said no because if he were not in that jail, he would be in another. She described how he got hooked on drugs at an early age, even though she provided him with a roof over his head and encouraged him to go to school. She explained how the drugs overtook him, but where they grew up in Brooklyn, NY, there were not many options for a young black boy. The school put him out for threatening a teacher, then he refused to go back to school. Later he started getting locked up for petty theft, to grand larceny, and eventually murder. She visits him three times a year, writes him every two weeks and prays for him every day. The truth was she did not want him to look into it because she didn’t mean to give him false hope. Rich could understand that.

Rich never talked about himself to her because his sad little story was insignificant, so he thought. Then the conversation started to turn into political and racial debates between them. For an old black woman, she knew a lot about a lot. He actually told her this. Then she clarified, that for a rich white boy, he didn’t know a lot about much. From then on, Tilda and Rich engaged in debates and usually he would be the one to concede because he simply didn’t know enough about the other side. He could only talk about what he heard or saw. Most of this was on TV, what his father taught him and what he experienced in his job, which actually dealt with people and their situations at their lowest point. Tilda took it upon herself to take him on a few field trips to North and South Philadelphia. They went to nursing homes, the YMCA, Freedom Theatre, community centers, state representative’s and senator’s offices in the inner city, and even schools. She began to slowly expose him to people that were not like him so that he could see there was nothing to fear and all humans the same struggle with the same issues, they just look different.

Before Rich realized it, Tilda had become some sort of surrogate mom. He started to open up to her, share things about his childhood that he thought were insignificant, but Tilda was able to immediately decipher why he acted the way he did. He was physically and emotionally abused by someone in authority, so he craved to please that person out of some misplaced loyalty that what they did, he deserved. What he was taught was to hate and fear what he didn’t understand. This made him a bigot and he displayed racist behavior, thus keeping himself around people just like him. Tilda surmised that he despised weak people because he was weak. Therefore he, like many of his clients, was trapped in a never-ending cycle until they decided to make intentional moves to stop. He had to break a leg and be placed with a crazy black woman, who risked her life for his before he could possibly open his mind to even hear her. However, she charged him. “Who will stand up for those other people like you, who happen to be a different color, have fewer options and are despised not among just their family or fathers, but by society?”

At that, Tilda got up and went to bed, leaving Rich to his thoughts.

The first person he thought of was Lisa. She stood up for her students at whatever the price, even her job, which he’d learned she lost. He tried to keep tabs by subscribing to her writing if she was ever on the news or any sort of media. He did not reach out just yet because he wanted to have something to bring to the table when he did. He had not followed up with her proposal, but she didn’t seem to be looking for him or trying to ruin his career anymore. Rich was not mentioned in any one of her articles. He figured she had moved on to bigger fish, like the school board who had fired her.

After Tilda’s acute and accurate observation, Rich went back to work. Not actually to work, but he got access to all the files in the district attorney’s office and started making lists, phone calls and inquiring about various cases. He could have gone back to work, but they would give him a caseload, so he stayed at home to work all of his old cases. He was on the phone constantly, talking to parents, inmates, police officers and community organizations that helped people transition out of jail. He was even able to get a few cases expunged from some of his client’s records. He connected some of them with mentors to help keep track and even took a couple of them on as his students. Rich had never felt so good in his life. Tilda kept him hydrated and fed. The woman even helped with the cause and was extremely efficient and thorough. She kept him organized and filtered what he needed to cover for the day. The last four months of his hiatus had been the most productive and fulfilling he’d ever experienced. Now he could call Lisa, not only because he wanted her to know what he did, but because he wanted her to know that he finally understood now.

He got it what she was trying to tell him six months ago.