Down On My Knees (16 page)

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Authors: Victor McGlothin

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“Afternoon, Miss Hilliard,” Wallace bid her reluctantly as she walked away.
There was something different about Grace compared to all the countless other women who had made it a point to put their faces up in Wallace's. Of course, Grace was polished, attractive, smart as a whip, fun, and feisty. He liked those qualities almost as much as he enjoyed observing the way she'd drawn attention from a host of other men in the coffee bar when she broke out in a slow, wickedly manufactured Caribbean saunter as she exited the small coffee shop. Of course he was looking, Grace knew it. She wanted to see him again, he was sure of that. The long conversation over warm beverages had begun with a great deal of uncertainty on both their parts and had ended with even more as a result of it. Wallace was resolved to get another shot at making a lasting first impression. He'd see to it.
Having her first free afternoon since the last Friday she had spent with Tyson, next to the noisy ice machine, Grace stopped by Miss Pearl's to see how her latest project was panning out. When she drove up to the old house, she saw two enormous utility trucks rested against the curb. Constructionworkers ripped and plastered, while an assortment of handymen primed and painted. Progress was a good thing. The speed in which Ms. Pearl's home had come alive overnight was simply beautiful.
Grace stood on the sidewalk, marveling at how quickly half a dozen handymen revitalized a house that probably should have been demolished years ago. “No, no,” Grace instructeda man with two hands full of rosebushes. “They belongon the other side. The shrubs are supposed to be planted over here, near the porch.” After hearing recommendations from the woman paying the bill, a seasoned supervisor climbed down from his rusty pickup to appease her.
“Yes, yes. We will do it to your liking, ma'am,” the man in charge promised. “This will be
muy bonita
when we finish,maybe as pretty as Señora Graciela. Don't worry.”
“I won't, Franco. Your crew does a wonderful job with the office building, so I know it's in good hands, but this project is for a very special friend, so please take care of it.” Grace had no doubt that the facelift would ultimately transform the home into a showplace befitting a
Better Homes and Gardens
layout. “Why don't I get out of your way and let you do what you do best?” She shook his hand and stepped through the wrought-iron gate that had been erected the day before.
“Miss Pearl,” Grace called out from the porch. “Miss Pearl, are you in there?”
“Hold on!” the old woman shouted back. “Where else would I be with all these foreigners climbing up and down my house?” Miss Pearl unlatched the new screen door and waved her visitor inside. “Hey, chile. That Mr. Franco you sent down here is pleasant as punch, but I can't understand what the rest of them are saying half the time.”
“That doesn't matter as long as you're happy about the results,”Grace told her, well aware that a storm had been brewing since the team of workers showed up at dawn, unannounced,two days ago. Miss Pearl hadn't called to complain,but Grace knew it was merely the quiet before the storm. “So, how do you think your home improvements are turning out?” Grace queried, bracing herself.
“Humph, I can't rightly say. Ain't been outside since the hammering started on Wednesday,” she answered, her head hanging low.
“Is there a problem, Miss Pearl? I could have more men here tomorrow to get it done faster if that's your concern.”
Miss Pearl shook her head while refusing to make eye contact. “Naw, Gracie, the only problem is me taking advantageof you. I ain't ever taken a handout from nobody, and it hurts me to my heart to do such a thing now.”
“Oh, I get it,” Grace said, reaching into her purse. She whipped out a long list, including costs of materials, labor, and additional charges to have the items Franco's crew had replaced hauled away. Grace snapped the paper out and held the list up for the lady of the house to see.
After Miss Pearl understood that it was something important,she patted down her housecoat until she found her readingglasses. “What's that?” she asked, stretching her neck to get a better look.
“This is your bill for the work I ordered,” Grace informed her, straight faced and confident.
“The which?”
“The bill. Remember that misunderstanding you had with the electric company? It seems that we're having the same kind of misunderstanding now.” Grace could sense that Miss Pearl was stunned, so she let her in on a little secret she'd kept under wraps. “You weren't ready to give up on this house, and I'm not ready to give up on you.” Still lost in Grace's implications,Ms. Pearl scratched her head and frowned.
“Let me get this right. You took it on yourself to call all these fellas over here to fix what you thought needed fixing, without even asking me what I thought, and now you're ready to hand me the bill?”
“Uh-huh,” Grace answered without hesitation.
Ms. Pearl's eyes narrowed into thin slits. “Yeah, we sho do have us one heck of a predicament,” she contended. “Gracie,I can see that you care for Skyler and me, but you sho have a funny way of showing it. I'd like nothing better than to pay you back every cent, but they done cut back again on my hours. I can't eat, can't sleep, and done lost ten pounds in the meantime.” When Grace burst out laughing, the woman jerked her head back. “The whole world done gone crazy, and you're leading the pack.”
“Please forgive me, Miss Pearl. I haven't filled you in completely. I asked you to let me take care of things, and I meant everything. Hold on, my cell phone is ringing,” Grace said when the call she'd been waiting for came through.
“You ask me, your head is ringing too,” smarted one very perplexed homeowner.
Rambling out into the backyard to escape the noise, and itching ears, Grace was glad that Ted returned her call when he did. It was the perfect chance to have that high-priority special circumstances meeting she'd been anxious about facilitatingwith the so-called powers-that-be. “Yes, Ted, the message I sent you was correct,” she confirmed calmly.
“I thought I was hearing things, Grace. You're asking me to sign off on company-sponsored home improvements on a home neither of us owns, you've hired an additional employeewe don't need, and the company is supposed to take one hundred dollars from each of her paychecks to reimburseus for the work you're having done on her house?”
“That's exactly what I'm asking you to do, Ted. Just think of it as a company-sponsored neighborhood revitalization program.”Again, Grace braced herself for an unfavorable outcome.
“You must think I'm insane to present me with such a ridiculous business deal,” Ted replied, and then paused to collecthis thoughts. “And I'd have to be insane to pass on such a good idea. I hope it works out like you want it to.”
“Oh, thank you, Ted. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.” Graced danced around in the backyard as Miss Pearl peeped at her from the kitchen curtains.
“That chile really done lost her mind,” the old lady reasoned.
“I owe you, Ted,” Grace cooed into her cell phone. “You're no crazier than I am, but this deal isn't business, it's personal.”
“I'll tell you about personal. Tell me why I have three of my wife's cousins on the payroll, and neither of them have a clue what we actually do for our clients.”
“That's not personal, Ted, that's sad,” chuckled Grace.
“I gotta go, partner. I think one of my relatives just got his necktie caught in the paper shredder. Now I have another decisionto make. Whether to save him or not is going to be a toughie.”
As Graced closed her eyes to give thanks for the miracle she'd prayed for, Miss Pearl motored back to her recliner beforebeing discovered. Grace returned and sat down on the plastic-covered sofa with so much exuberance. She said, “Whew! That would have been hysterical if I'd fallen off.”
“Oh, I'd have laughed, too. I'd have dusted you off first, then I'd have laughed.”
“Okay, back to our predicament. I knew that you could use a pick-me-up but you were much too proud to let someonehelp you. So I've arranged a partnership like the boys have. It seems that a position has opened up within the custodialcrew that services my building. Here's the deal.” The woman sat on the edge of her seat while Grace caught her breath. “We've offering you a job to work between ten and three o'clock so you can be here when Skyler gets home from school. We're also offering to withhold one hundred dollars from each paycheck until the improvements on your house are paid for. In addition, you have to accept our employee-fitness package and spend at least one hour a day with our gym staff.”
“With Jim, is he good looking?” Miss Pearl whooped, hoping her new deal also included a man to help her pass the time.
“No, Miss Pearl,
at
the gym. That's our workout facility. You've allowed your weight to get away from you and I'm not going to let hypertension or high blood pressure take you away from us before it's your time to go.”
“I ain't stud'n neither one of them,” the woman teased. “We's old friends, they been with me for years.” She began to rock back and forth, mulling the proposition over in her head. “Hmm, all that sounds like a mess of blessings before God, and I don't want to seem ungrateful, but I do have one question of my own.”
“Okay, shoot,” Grace replied excitedly.
“Y'all got an elevator over at that office building?”
“Yes, ma'am, we got a whole bunch of elevators,” Grace answered her.
“Then you got a deal.”
Grace jumped off the slick plastic and onto the elderly woman's lap. “Yea! Miss Pearl, you've made me so happy.”
“And you' making my legs hurt! Grace, get off me!” Miss Pearl hollered, with a load of merriment mixed in. “You're gonna fool around and wreck my good knee, and my chances of keeping my new job.”
17
Shameless
O
n Thursday evening, Shelia called Grace from her car. She and Linda were on a shopping excursion on her side of town and were feeling a serious disconnect from the third part of their girlfriend triad. “Grace, are you going to be home for a minute?” Shelia hollered into the phone, over Linda's cackling in the background.
“Tell her she'd better hide all of her nasty videos because we're coming to loot 'em,” Linda bellowed. “We know you've been stocking up, Grace. Give up the goods.”
“You can tell Linda I'm holding on to my stash for cold and lonely nights, hot-and-bothered afternoons and wheneverI get more than five minutes alone.” Grace couldn't believeshe was showing out right along with them, as if it hadn't been a rough go on the virtuous side of life. “Yeah, girl, come on over. Dré is at a varsity basketball game, and won't be home until around ten. I'll break out some wine.”
Grace was still bubbling over when the ladies rang her doorbell like she'd answer it if they kept their fingers on it. “Move, I gotta pee,” Linda urged, as she darted through the door. “Don't y'all start gossiping without me!” she shouted from the downstairs powder room.
“Shelia, I swear I smell rum,” Grace said, eying her suspiciously.“Have you two been back to that Jamaican spot on lower Greenville?”
Shelia tried to lie, but it didn't hold up. When she shook her head no, the opposite rolled out of her mouth. “Yeah, but I wasn't supposed to say, because that fine Rasta they call Delmar was asking about you and puffing on some ganja. We musta caught a contact high because we haven't stopped giggling since.”
“Ooh, you do look lifted!” Grace noticed, leaning in closer to Shelia and sniffing like André had done to her when he smelled hotel soap on her skin. “Shelia, listen to me. Focus. What else weren't you supposed to tell me?”
Standing there with her mouth and eyes shut, Shelia shook her head again. And, for the second consecutive time, out came the truth. “I cannot tell a lie. Linda smoked a fat spliff with Rasta-man and I ... I did too.”
“How are y'all gonna be getting high and showing up over here with a fresh buzz?” Grace's parental stance had Shelia caught in a quandary after having been reprimanded.
Linda returned, wearing a fake frown. “And how is Shelia standing there, ratting us out, when we pinky-swore to keep it secret?”
“For the same reason you're both too old to pinky-swear,” Grace fussed. “Linda. Shelia. How irresponsible. I don't know what to say.” Grace folded her arms and patted her foot like she was waiting for answers, and for both of them to repent of their wayward transgressions.
“Well, Linda hit the weed first,” Shelia pouted. “Then Delmar held that fat thing in my face, and you know I can't resist a man waving anything long and hot anywhere near my mouth.”
Linda held her hand over her mouth, when Shelia's best attempt at coming clean made her look considerably more scandalous. “That's why I can't take her anywhere. She hogged the blunt, started flirting with every man in the joint who had most of his teeth, and then couldn't wait to get here so she could tell you all about it.”
Shelia tried to defend herself. “Look who's talking. Shoot, if I told Grace everything, you wouldn't have the nerve to show your face at that bar again. What about the restroom, Linda? Bet you won't tell Grace about that.”
Linda's face cracked. She was terrified that Shelia just might spill the beans about her most embarrassing calamity. “Shelia, if you say another word, I'll cancel our friendship card right here, right now.” Grace looked on, pondering what Shelia was going to do, and what Linda had done that was so repugnant she wanted it kept quiet.
Both of the ladies, admittedly blazed, were at a standoff, and staring each other down like convicts in a prison yard. “You'd better be glad my high is wearing off, or I'd tell,” Shelia huffed eventually. She didn't have it in her to tattle that Linda had accidentally ripped the condom machine off the wall when she was about to get busy with a bothersome barfly named Hedley in the filthy men's room. Shelia had walked in on her jiggling the release knob like her life dependedon it.
“Maybe both of you need to settle down and have some coffee,” Grace recommended sternly. “I'll break out the wine another time.” Linda smacked her lips defiantly and then mumbled something about having a moment of weaknessand being held in judgment by somebody who wasn't in any position to chastise her. Shelia heard her but let it go becausethey not only knew, in full detail, about the other's skeletons, they also knew where the bones were buried.
Grace set up the coffeemaker, then poured in three cups of water to get it going. “Now that we've seen why drugs are a bad idea at any age, let's talk about what y'all bought at the mall.”
“Macy's had a sale, so I copped two pairs of boots,” Linda said, shaking off the short melee between old friends. Shelia wasn't quite over it, so she continued to stew silently. “What about you, Grace? We haven't heard from you in a while. Anything juicy happen since the last time we talked? Have any new prospects trying to knock the cobwebs off?”
“How did the discussion go from shopping to who might be trying to get me to go astray?” Grace argued.
Suddenly, Shelia cut her eyes at Grace. “You know that's the real reason we stopped by. Usually, when you're hard to catch up with, it's because you've been up to something we can't wait to hear about.”
“She's right, Grace,” Linda agreed. “You get all reclusive when you've been getting down and dirty, so spill it.”
So many things had transpired since their last hen party, but not the kind of sneaky-freaky they lived to talk about. Grace leaned against the cooking island and exhaled deeply. She had mixed emotions about seeing Tyson again, almost jumping back into a retarded relationship with Greg and meeting Wallace on semifriendly terms, but she wasn't ready to talk about any of that yet. Her mind was a jumbled jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces, so she put together the pieces she didn't mind revealing. “I'm in a good place mentally. My faith has been renewed. I'm proud to say that I am still celibate,”she shared in a somewhat subdued tone.
When Shelia suspected there was more to the story, she urged Grace on. “And, come out with it, get to the good part.”
“And I am fortified with the Holy Spirit, thank you very much,” Grace added, casting a shadow on her girlfriend's expectationsof sordid sexual confessions.
Now, it was Linda's turn to prime the pump. “Then why are you biting a hole in your bottom lip?” she asked, her interestpiquing.
“Because ... I am so horny it hurts!” Grace blurted out loud. “It's got me all jacked up, testy, and on edge. Just the other day, my boss called me into his office for a closed-door chat. He said that I needed to work on playing well with others.”
“Ooh, Grace got herself thrown in detention.” Linda laughed because Grace had been the poster girl for appropriateoffice etiquette.
“That's not all I got,” Grace admitted. “I also got sent home to work on my attitude. And if that weren't bad enough, I stomped onto a crowded elevator going down. Awkward Bob was pressed up against my back, and out of the blue I got so hot.”
Shelia's eyes popped out of her head. “Awkward Bob—I thought you said he was gonna have a sex change.”
“Well, obviously he hasn't had his man region done yet, because it was rubbing up against my behind. I'm not sure who was more confused, him for aiming that thing in my direction, or me for getting so turned on by it. Humph, AwkwardBob has a lot to think about if he's willing to have all of that cut off. He might want to reconsider that gender-reorientationthing. Believe me, he was
meant
to be a man.”
Out of sorts, Shelia shook her head. “Uh-uh-uh. What a mess. How the mighty have fallen. You done tripped and fell over your high-minded morals, Grace. Look at you, huffing and twitching like a crackhead the very first time you came too close to an active pleasure zone. It hurts me to see you like this,” she added, as if repulsed all the way down to her core. “Linda, didn't we tell her this would happen?”
“We told her,” Linda chimed in on cue. “But did she listen?Nahhh.”
“Okay, so you told me,” Grace fired back at them. “Now tell me what to do about it.”
“Who're you asking? Neither of us have made it this far.” Linda added a helping of French vanilla creamer to the cup Grace handed her. “When you figure it out, be sure to let us in on it. Until then, we'll be hanging around your office, ridingelevators, and waiting for our chance to back that thang up on Awkward Bob.”
Grace laughed so hard she spilled coffee on her jeans. “See, look what you made me do. I knew I should have had tea.”
“Uh-huh, that's not the only thing you should have had.” Shelia cut her eyes at Grace again. “You need to check yourself.”
“You don't have to tell me,” Grace confessed. I've been so flustered that I went online and subscribed to one of those dating services.” Linda choked on her coffee when she heard the shocking news.
“Grace, you didn't?”
“Psshst, the worst mistake I'm willing to cop to was putting my hopes in
SingleButLooking.com
.” Grace talked about her run-in with Tommy, the lying two-ton human garbage disposal; Sly Greenberg, the Jewish pimp, with an identity crisis; her reluctant meeting with an ancient player who showed up at the date dragging an oxygen tank behind him; the hair stylist named Leroy who indicated he had been delivered from his homosexual past; and the last guy she agreed to see before throwing in the towel. “This one brotha wasn't half bad at first. He arrived on time, he was all right in the looks department, the conversation was stimulating, and he managed a successful engineering firm.”
Sitting across the wet bar from her was Shelia, deep in thought as if the last guy's credentials struck a familiar chord, but Linda was about to fall off her stool. “Come on, now, so why aren't you willing to see him again?” inquired Linda.
Grace rolled her eyes. “That was the problem, I saw too much of him on the date. It was going fine, and then it happened.I knocked a fork on the floor and went to pick it up. That's when I saw it.”
“Saw what?” the girls asked in unison.
“It!”
Grace replied emphatically. “He had it out, under the table, and he was playing with it.”
Linda's mouth flew open as Shelia pointed her finger at Grace, still trying to recall something from a distant memory.“That reminds me of an old boyfriend I had in high school. Hollis Williams. That fool couldn't keep his hand out of his pants long enough to put them on me.”
Grace stammered while trying to get out what her surprisehad stymied. “That's the same guy! Hollis Williams, the mad handler!”
“Uhh-uh!” Linda shrieked, in disbelief.
“How do you like them apples,” said Shelia, contemplatingthe chances of Grace having a date with one of her old flames. “So you say that Hollis is an engineer now?” She skillfully dodged the dishrag Grace tossed at her head. “I'm just saying, you wouldn't trade in a Porsche because it had a dent in the fender.”
“But you would if every time you hit the street, the hood kept flying up.” That was Linda making it as plain as plain could be.
“That's what I'm talking about,” agreed Grace wholeheartedly.“I never would have imagined it, it but the most normal interaction I've had with a man in the past month was a quaint little war of wits with André's schoolteacher.”
“A schoolteacher?” Shelia sneered, as if she could talk after pining for an exhibitionist engineer.
Linda was also astounded. She leaned back and cocked her head to the side. “Grace, don't tell me you're pushing up on schoolteachers now?”
“No one said I was pushing up on anybody. I ducked out on a conference because the line of hot mamas waiting to see him was too long. We made arrangements to get together at the Java Hut. It was nothing special, believe me.”
“Then why were there so many single moms in the long serving line?” Linda asked suggestively.
“Who said they were all single?” Grace replied before smacking her lips the way Linda had earlier. “That particular teacher is easy on the eyes and a slick dresser, but he's also a
teacher
. Let's not overlook the obvious.”
Shelia was thumbing through her little black address book when she looked up. “You got a point, Grace. A single, nice-dressing grown man who spends his days with a bunch of bratty kids is probably a pedophile.”
“No, I don't think so,” Grace countered.
Was that Grace defending him?
“I could be wrong, but I doubt it. He didn't strike me as the type of man who's interested in children that way.”
“Your vote doesn't count,” Linda decided. “You've proven, several times tonight might I add, how flawed your decision-makingskills are. You're talking about what strikes you. That's part of what's wrong, you haven't been struck in so long, all of your senses are out of whack.”

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