Always Unique (11 page)

Kennard got the words out. “I don’t know what happened. She was attacked, brutally beaten and left for dead. I came back to the room to try to get a little time with her before y’all showed up and found her lying on the bathroom floor with no pulse or anything.”

Tyeedah believed him. Fire, hurt, pain, and anger were written all over his face.

The elevator seemed to fly down to the lobby, as if it could also sense the urgency. As soon as the door popped opened, the wheels of the gurney were gliding across the marble floor of the lobby of the Tabby Hotel, then out the door to the waiting ambulance.

With Kennard on one side and Tyeedah on the other, they were there every step of the way until Unique was put into the back of the ambulance and Kennard got in with her. When the doors were about to shut, Tyeedah asked, “What hospital y’all taking her to?”

“Mount Sinai.”

The trained driver of the emergency vehicle was no slouch. He pulled that ambulance into New York City traffic and peeled out like he was a NASCAR driver.

KEYLESS IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

In the coffee shop across the street from the hotel, Fat Tee sat nervously sipping on an espresso, looking out the window at the front entrance of the Tabby Hotel. He couldn’t stop replaying how he had finagled his way into the hotel’s Presidential Suite less than an hour ago when he posed as Kennard.

He had to admit he was a genius and deserved a pat on his back to be able to pull that stunt off. It went to show that any hotel can be broken into. His momma always told him, if he believed, he would achieve.

By luck Fat Tee saw that a room service attendant had left the service elevator unattended and while no one was looking, he hopped on and took it straight to the penthouse floor.

“Excuse me, miss,” he said to the housekeeper who was vacuuming with her headphones on.

The housekeeper never looked up from her work. Her mind seemed to be a thousand miles away, oblivious to her surroundings.

Fat Tee spoke up and said again, “Excuse me, miss!” He waved his hand in her line of vision. Her hand snapped up and her eyes showed embarrassment and guilt that she was not being attentive to one of her valued guests. She quickly cut off the vacuum cleaner and said, “Pardon me. Me no see you here, sir.” Fat Tee could see the nervousness in her eyes. He could tell that she thought she may be in trouble, and he used that weakness against her.

“Not a problem at all,” said Fat Tee, in an attempt to ease her mind and relax her more. “You don’t know how glad I am that you’re here.” As he spoke, he looted his pockets, in search of a key that was never there in the first place.

Lola, the housekeeper, gave him a slight smile and asked, “How may I help you?” The interruption was delaying her from finishing her work but she was glad that he was a nice man and that she wasn’t in any trouble.

Fat Tee said, “I’m trying to get into my room. But I must have left my keycard inside.”

Lola seemed to ponder his request and she knew it was against the rules for housekeepers to use their master keys to let guests into rooms. After a brief pause, she dropped her head, wishing she could help. “Me so sorry, sir.” Not the answer Fat Tee was hoping for. “No allowed to do this.”

Fat Tee told her that he understood. “However,” he said, not willing to give up that easily, “I really have to use the bathroom.” He made faces as if the insides of his stomach were at war. “Very bad.”

Lola looked around, unsure of what she should do, hoping someone else would show up to help her decision.

Taking advantage of her indecisiveness, Fat Tee said, “There’s no way I can make it to the desk for a replacement key without overloading my drawers.” He squeezed his legs as if he was really trying to hold his bowels. Then he lowered his tone as if the two of them were sharing a secret. He leaned in closer and said to her, using his best Southern charm, “I have the runs.” By the look on her face, Fat Tee figured that the housekeeper didn’t understand what he was saying. He had an idea. “Vroom! Vroom!” With both hands on his butt, he made a squatting motion. “Runs,” he said again. “Vroom! I have the runs.”

Lola’s eyes brightened with recognition of what Fat Tee had been trying to say. Then her normally sand-colored cheeks reddened with embarrassment.

“You sick,” she said.

“Me so sick,” Fat Tee assured her, nodding his head and somehow he made his eyes water a little like he was so anxious to go. “So you need to let me into my room, or give me a roll of toilet paper so that I can shit right here, because I have no intentions of dumping my load in my drawers.” He paced back and forth three times, then he stopped and crossed his ankles like he was desperate to hold it in. “And I don’t think management will appreciate you telling their guest to shit in the hallway.” Unsure of how much of what he said the housekeeper understood, Fat Tee started unbuckling his belt as if he was more than prepared to follow through on his threat.

Lola’s arm shot out like a traffic monitor trying to cut short an eight-year-old from running into a busy street. “No! No!” she said, begging. “Please. No do that.” Digging out the master keycard from her workpants she said, “No vroom-vroom in hall. Come, come. Me let you in room.” She was afraid that she would have to clean up the mess and probably get fired for letting someone of caliber use the bathroom on himself. After all, since he was staying in the Presidential Suite, he must be a rich man, but more important, a VIP! Lola swiftly fed the keycard into the lock, unknowingly allowing an intruder into Unique’s room.

Inside the room, Fat Tee’s intentions, at first, were to tighten Unique up a little for pulling the pistol out on him the previous day. It never dawned on Fat Tee that if he hadn’t cornered Unique, demanding that she set Kennard up to be robbed, that she never would have had to threaten him with the gun in the first place.

To him, it didn’t matter that he was the one that had cornered her.
Fuck, she thought she was Jessica James or somebody?

Honestly, once inside the room, Fat Tee hadn’t intended for events to unfold the way they did or the shit to go as far as it did. While she was in the shower, he snuck in and cut the lights to scare her and catch her off guard. He yanked her out of the shower and hit her with a blow to the head. At first Unique was off balance, but she was a tough cookie, though, and the whore could take a punch better than some men could. Although the blow took the wind out of her, it didn’t take long for her to bounce back. Once Unique bit off his earlobe and snapped her knee up into his crotch like she was trying to place gold in the Tae-Bo Olympics, Fat Tee lost it. At first the pain immobilized him. Writhing in pain, he thought she had gotten out on him again.

He hated that she was still able to inflict pain upon him. Mentally, it was more than he could handle. The way she had played with his emotions so many years ago, the way she not only set him up to be robbed blind, not once but twice. Kicking a man in his private parts was a treacherous pain but killing a man’s ego and pride was even worse. No way in this lifetime was he going to let a bitch, a worthless, nothingless, trick-ass-whore-turned-housewife, whip him. With that being said, rage set in and caused him to black out. All he wanted was to make this bitch suffer until her dying breath.

When he set out for New York City a couple of months ago, all Fat Tee had wanted was to be properly compensated for what Unique and her ex-boyfriend, Took, had taken from him. But then as soon as Fat Tee saw that she was living larger than anyone from Virginia had ever expected her to, that quickly changed. He had spent so much energy hating her and blaming her for his misfortunes that he could never focus on trying to pick up the pieces and get money like he always had. His hate for Unique had taken over his life for the past seven years.

He felt she deserved everything he could squeeze out of that raunchy bitch. How did she think she was going to be living the life of luxury in New York City, not thinking twice about him, after he was left in Virginia scrambling? He had never recovered mentally or emotionally from when Took and her had gotten him—and left him for broke. He simply couldn’t help or control himself from snapping out on Unique.

When Fat Tee finally came out of his maniac fugue, gaining control of his faculties for the first time, he saw Unique lying on the floor in a crimson pool. She wasn’t moving. He kicked her. “Bitch, get up!” he said.

She was nonresponsive, and for a minute he thought he lying killed her and he was happy if he did. In his eyes, the bitch deserved to die.

“That’s what you get, beyatch, for fucking my life up the way you did!” he said as if she could hear him and then he spit on her. But seeing her lying there so helpless and lifeless, for a moment, he sobered up quickly.

“I gotta get the hell outta here,” he said out loud. Fat Tee went into the closet and got out a suit that probably belonged to Kennard. He grabbed a plastic hotel-issued laundry bag off another rack and put his bloody clothes inside it. He wiped everything down that he had touched, besides Unique. His eyes scanned the bathroom to be sure he hadn’t missed anything. He thought how it looked like a bad scene from a horror movie.

Sneaking out the door in Kennard’s suit, Fat Tee thought,
There’s always one survivor in those movies, and that’s me.

Two hours later, Fat Tee sat with a bird’s-eye view of everything coming and going in and out of the Tabby Hotel. He pretended to read
The New York Times
while sipping on his coffee and watching the fire department arrive first, then the paramedics, and finally the police. From the top speed in which the paramedics were moving, Tee guessed that the damage he had done to Unique wasn’t fatal. He smiled to himself, thinking how tough Unique really was—that was the thing he always loved about her, her tenacity.

He sat in in his booth dumbfounded and before he had even realized it, he had mumbled under his breath, “Damn, the beyatch ain’t dead after all!”

THE CIRCUS

Tyeedah arrived at the hospital a few minutes after the ambulance. She gave the cabbie a hundred dollars and ran inside, just in time to see two nurses prying Kennard’s hands away from Unique to take her into surgery.

Once Unique was taken behind the double doors for the doctors to work wonders on their friend, she hugged Kennard. “She’s a fighter. You gotta know she’s going to pull through this.” She tried to console him though she had tears in her eyes. Tyeedah truly believed what she was saying; she just hoped that God did, too.

It was hard for her, but she knew she had to be strong for her best friend’s man. She knew firsthand how much the two of them loved each other.

Together they waited in the designated area for family and friends. It damn near broke Tyeedah’s heart when she saw the doctors have to pry Kennard’s hands away from Unique’s. Though she had heard about Kennard’s reputation with the girls around town long before Unique had even stepped foot in the city, having a front-row seat to witness firsthand their relationship develop from the very second it started could only lead to one question in Tyeedah’s head.

Tyeedah’s mind went back to the one-in-a-million encounter.

The party was in the Hamptons. A rapper who Tyeedah had become pen pals with in prison, invited her. Once they both returned to society, every now and again he came through and hit it. Though there was nothing serious between the two of them, he didn’t let the fact that his name was in lights affect anything between them. He still kept it real with her and made sure that Tyeedah’s name was on the list.

At first, Unique didn’t believe Tyeedah when she informed them of their trip to the Hamptons and claimed that Diddy was throwing the party. But to be honest, she didn’t care if that bad boy was being catered by Osama bin Laden, Unique wasn’t turning down the opportunity to flaunt her stuff in the Hamptons practically since she arrived in New York. In her eyes it was a hell of a welcoming party.

On that Friday, they got there early to make sure everything was in order. They didn’t want to be embarrassed if God forbid their names weren’t on the guest list. But not only were they on the guest list as promised, Tyeedah’s friend had set them up in VIP.

Standing by the poolside and admiring all the famous guests, Unique had told Tyeedah, “There must not be a concert anywhere in the country tonight, because everybody and their cousin is up in here.” Everywhere they looked there was a celebrity.

Chicks were eyeballing the two of them down like they were purple martinis with green boogers. Tyeedah and Unique could never figure out why some girls had a problem complimenting other women since this was so not the case for either of them. In their minds, they may not have had the money or fame that a lot of these chicks had, but they could hold their own in the body and looks department. Giving others their just due was easy when one didn’t have insecurities of oneself.

Tyeedah was bothered by how chicks were gritting on them, but Unique was enjoying herself to the fullest. The deejay was spinning on the wheels of steel and Unique started moving her shoulders, swaying her hips and snapping her fingers.

Unique said, “Oh, that’s my jam right there!”

Feeling the beat of the music, Unique started shaking what her momma gave her and drawing attention to herself. Just when she was just about ready to show them how to drop it like it was hot, VA style, someone bumped her, spilling some of the drink he was holding in his hand onto her dress.

“What the hell?” She whipped around on five-and-a-half-inch heels, ready to curse out a clumsy, ditsy bitch. The sexy number she was wearing cost a grip and she had not even gotten a good wear out of it.

Unique couldn’t believe her eyes. To her surprise, the culprit standing in front of her wasn’t at all what she was expecting. To say the least, she was pleasantly surprised. Boy, the big city had her dreaming even bigger.

The hating chick turned out to be a six-foot-three man with the whitest teeth and the darkest, smoothest skin that looked tastier than Godiva chocolate. He had wavy hair, a killer smile, and black diamonds for eyes.