Player Haters (19 page)

I was pretty much an emotional wreck the entire ride over to the clinic the next morning. I barely slept at all the night before and the little bit I did was filled with nightmares. Plus, I had Trent pulling over every ten minutes because I felt like was gonna puke my guts out, even though nothing came out. And if that wasn’t enough, I was having a damn nicotine fit like you’d never believe. Trent offered me a cigarette but I declined. I was about to have an abortion, yet the mothering instinct in me wouldn’t allow me to smoke while the baby was inside me. Like I said, I was a wreck.

Trent circled the block, then pulled the car up in front of Choices and turned to me. “Why don’t you get out here while I park the car? It doesn’t look like I’m gonna find a spot on this block.”

“All right, I’ll wait out here for you.” I stepped out the car.

“Hey, Mel?” Trent called as he rolled down the window.

“Yeah?” I stuck my head in the car.

“You sure about this? ’Cause me, Momma and Wil, we can help you with the baby if you want.”

“I know that, Trent, but I can’t see myself having a baby right now.”

“Aw’ight. I just wanted to make sure.”

I watched him pull away, feeling a little woozy but happy to know my brother cared. Two minutes later I heard a familiar male voice call my name. A very familiar voice that made me feel even woozier.

“What are you doing here, Prince?” I hadn’t even turned around when I started my question, but when I did my eyes were given a treat. Lord, he was the last person I wanted to see, but that man was fine.

“Your brother told me you were coming here.”

“Damn it, why the hell couldn’t he just keep his mouth shut?”

“He was trying to help,” Prince said as he approached.

“Help how? By telling you I’m pregnant, so you can harass me. What do you want, Prince?” I used a nasty tone to mask the fact that I was actually a little happy to see him.

“I came to ask you not to kill my baby.” He looked so sad I could barely take it.

“Who said it was your baby?” I glanced down the block to see where Trent was, then tried to step around Prince and walk into the clinic. I didn’t think I was ready to handle this conversation right now. Prince didn’t touch me, but he blocked my path with his body.

“Come on, Melanie. Let’s stop playing games.” His sad face became stern.

“This is not a game, Prince. This is my life. I can’t have a baby now. I’m not married. I haven’t even finished school. I can barely take care of myself. How the hell am I gonna take care of a child?” I was starting to get emotional. “So no, this is not a game.”

“I understand that, and if you really wanna have an abortion there’s nothing I can do about it. Sure, I could try to stop you today by acting the fool but if you’re serious you’re just gonna be right back here tomorrow. All I’m asking is that you hear me out. Let me tell you how I feel. And what I’m willing to do to help you if you keep the baby.”

“And what’s that?” I placed my hand on my hip. I had to keep reminding myself that I was really mad at this man for what he did to Desiree. He was not the kind of person I wanted to be connected to by a child for the next eighteen years. I was not about to change my mind, but he was right. The least I could do was listen to what he had to say.

“Well, first of all, I love you, Melanie and…” He reached out and put a hand gently on my shoulder. I shook him off with a look.

“Don’t, Prince,” I snapped. “It’s not helping your cause. One bit.”

He backed off. “Look, I know it’s hard being a single mother. And I don’t want you to be a single mother. I want us to be a team and raise this baby whether we’re together or not. I’m willing to take responsibility.”

“Responsibility, huh? How the hell do you expect me to believe that, Prince? I’ve heard so many guys tell girls that same bull when they was pregnant. But when the baby came? Sure, they stuck around for a while, but when they realized they wasn’t getting no ass,
poof,
they were gone with the wind. No phone calls, no child support, not even a damn Christmas card.”

“Look, Melanie, I’m not gonna pretend I don’t want you. I do. But I want this baby just as much. I’m twenty-eight and I ain’t got no kids and my moms ain’t got no grandkids. I ain’t gonna run out on my kid and neither is my mom. And I’m willing to give you this to prove it.” He reached into his coat and handed me a thick brown envelope.

“What’s this for?” I looked down at his hand but didn’t take the envelope from him.

“That’s my guarantee that I’m willing to be a good father if you have this baby.” He put it into my hand and his eyes pleaded with me to open it. “That’s a copy of my birth certificate, my driver’s license, my social security card, my pension plan, my last three W-2s, and a $100,000 life insurance policy I took out on myself with you as the beneficiary. Everything you need to collect seventeen percent of what I make for the next twenty-one years of my life, or a little more if I die. You tell me what man who’s not willing to be a father would give you that?”

“Prince…” I didn’t know what to say as I thumbed through the contents of the envelope. As emotional as I already was this morning, I wasn’t prepared for this. It was so hard for me to comprehend that the same man who could try to get with my best friend was now making such a heartfelt plea to do the right thing by me and my baby. He was starting to melt some of my defenses.

“Melanie, please don’t kill our baby.” His voice was so gentle and so sad. “I’ll stay out your way. I promise.”

“I can’t have a baby, Prince.” I fought to hold back my tears. I was crying for the decision I had to make, I was crying for this unborn baby, and I was crying for the relationship Prince and I had lost.

“Yeah, you can. You already have one inside you.” His eyes went to my still-flat stomach, and he looked like he wanted to reach out and stroke it to be close to our child. “You’re not concerned about having a baby, Melanie. You’re concerned about raising it.”

“I don’t know if I’m ready to give up my life yet, Prince.”

“Then just give up nine months. Me and my moms will raise the baby. You can come get the baby on the weekends if you want.”

That snapped me out of the fog I felt like I was in. Did he really believe I would have a baby and just hand it over to him? At the time, my pride made that seem worse than an abortion. How would I look, not able to mother my own child, giving it to the man who tried to get with my best friend? Oh, no. Oh, hell no, that was not gonna happen.

“Look, Prince. I’m getting rid of it.” My voice was flat as I got my emotions under control.

“Hey, Prince. Funny seeing you here,” Trent announced as he came around the corner. He’d probably been lurking around there, waiting for us to finish.

“Cut the shit, Trent,” I told him angrily. “I already know you told him I was coming.”

“All righty, then. Y’all getting anything straight?” Trent asked.

“Yeah, we got things straight. She’s gonna kill my baby.” Prince turned around and started walking, but then he stopped. He turned to look at me, and the sadness was gone from his eyes. Now he looked as angry as I was. “Melanie, you don’t have to worry about me calling anymore.”

I didn’t answer him. What else was there to say?

“Well, you gonna do this or what?” Trent asked as he opened the door to the clinic.

“Yeah, I’m gonna do it,” I told him as I watched Prince disappear around a corner.

Twenty minutes later I was in an examination room thumbing through the contents of the envelope Prince had given me. Before I started to look through the envelope I’d been daydreaming about what our child would look like. I know Prince told me once that he wanted a little girl. But me, I’d always wanted a boy. The door opened and a petite Asian woman in a nurse’s uniform came in, interrupting my thoughts.

“Hi, Ms. Duncan.” She smiled. “My name’s Donna Lee and I’m the clinic’s social worker. I hope you don’t mind but before you have this procedure I have to ask you a few questions.”

“Ask away,” I told her.

“Okay.” She gave me a comforting smile. “I know you’ve probably been asked this quite a few times already but are you sure you want this procedure?”

I shifted the envelope Prince had given me from hand to hand, then glanced at her with a weak frown. “Miss Lee, I’m not sure of anything right now.”

“Have you thought about some of the other options? There is always adoption or you could keep the baby.”

“Yeah, I guess I could, couldn’t I?” I replied more serious than I wanted to admit.

“We can help you put together a support system if you’d like.” I thought about Trent who was sitting in the lobby waiting for me and then my mom and Wil and Diane. Then I glanced down at the envelope again.

“No, I have a mother and some great brothers. Not to mention a baby’s father who’s willing to do the right thing. No, I think I have a support system.”

The woman smiled. “So does that mean you changed your mind?”

“No, it just means I need to give this whole thing some more thought. Can you hand me my clothes?”

She smiled at me. “I sure can.”

“Wil,” my new secretary Linda called.

It had been almost three weeks since Jeanie Brown’s death and things had finally started to calm down around the building, although they were nowhere near back to normal in the sales department. Mimi was now in another building working in shipping and receiving, while Linda was trying to fill her absence the best she could. To be honest, she wasn’t a very good secretary, and even less attractive to the eye, which was part of the reason I hired her but it made me miss Mimi all the more. It didn’t help that Mimi stopped by almost every day during lunch to say hi, wearing those low cut blouses and tight skirts of hers. To make things even worse, she’d always end up sticking around her entire lunch break doing some of incompetent Linda’s work.

“Yes, Linda,” I replied, looking up from my paperwork.

“There’s a Keisha Smith waiting out here to see you. She says it’s important.”

“Keisha Smith?” I scratched my head. “I don’t think I know a Keisha Smith. Does she have an appointment? What company is she from?”

“She’s not with a company. She said to tell you she’s Maxine Graves’s sister.”

“Oh, Mimi’s sister Keisha. Yeah, send her in.” I stood, smiling as Keisha walked into my office. God, she really was just a darker version of her sister. Fine as hell with an outrageous body. “Hey, Keisha, how you doing?”

Keisha skipped the pleasantries and got right to the point. “Where’s my sister?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know. I spoke to her yesterday but I haven’t seen her today. Have you checked shipping? She usually doesn’t stop by here until around lunchtime.”

“What do you mean stop by? I thought she was your secretary.” She looked confused and was obviously out of the loop when it came to her sister’s business.

“No, Maxine hasn’t been my secretary in almost a month,” I explained. “She’s working in shipping.”

“What? But, but I thought.” She hesitated. “Oh, dear God. Where’s shipping?”

“It’s in the building next door. Hey, is something wrong?”

She sighed, “I sure as hell hope not. Can you call shipping and find out if my sister’s over there?”

“Sure.” I reached down and dialed Maxine’s desk, letting it ring on speakerphone.

“Shipping and receiving, this is Joyce. How can I help you?”

“Hi, Joyce, this is Wil Duncan in sales. Is Maxine Graves around today?”

“No, Maxine won’t be in until around one o’clock today, Mr. Duncan.”

“Okay, thanks.” I hung up the phone and looked up at Keisha. If I didn’t know something was wrong before, I knew it now. I could see it all over Keisha’s face. “What’s wrong?”

“Look, I don’t mean to be personal, but are you really divorcing your wife?”

“Divorcing my wife? No! I’m happily married. Who told you that?” I gave her a strange look, then realized I probably knew the answer to my own question. “Mimi told you that, didn’t she?”

“Yeah, she told me. But what I wanna know is, why the hell are you fooling around with my sister if you’re so happily married?”

“I’m not fooling around with your sister.” I gave her an insulted look. I was gonna have to have a talk with Mimi. She’d taken that one kiss way out of context.

“Yeah, right. You weren’t over her house last night watching the game when I called?”

“No. I talked to her on the phone but that’s about it. I was at the hospital with my wife yesterday. We didn’t get home until close to midnight. Do you wanna call her?” I picked up the phone. This whole conversation was taking a terrible turn and I was starting to become annoyed.

“So you and my sister aren’t having an affair?” Keisha asked. This sounded like it was news to her.

“Look, Keisha, I know your sister likes me and I think the world of her, but I’m a married man. I’ve explained that to her. That’s why she was transferred to shipping.”

“Well, then we’ve got a problem.” Her brow was furrowed. She looked truly worried.

“What do you mean
we’ve
got a problem? How do I have a problem?”

“Does Maxine know where you live?”

“Yeah, why? What’s that have to do with our problem?’”

“I think you better sit down, ’cause I have a few things to tell you about my sister that I doubt she put on her résumé.”

I did as she asked and sat down. She sat down in the chair in front of me looking real serious. From that point on I started to get a real bad feeling about this.

“Look, you’ve gotta promise me that this stays between you and me. If I’m wrong and Maxine’s just at the dentist or something, I don’t want her to lose her job by telling her personal business.”

“You don’t have to worry about that. She’s not in my department anymore. Besides, I like Maxine. I would never do anything to hurt her.”

“I sure hope you feel that way after I tell you this,” she said, leaning forward. “Wil, my sister is manic depressive. She’s been seeing psychiatrists ever since she was a teenager—”

I cut her off. “What are you trying to say, that Mimi’s crazy?”

“Delusional is more like it.”

“Delusional? She seems fine to me.” I gave her a look of disbelief. I was starting to think Keisha was the crazy one.

“And around you, I would expect her to appear fine.”

“Well, what’s she delusional about?”

“You.” She pointed at me.

“Me?” I sat back in my chair, making a face as I pointed to myself. “Why is she delusional about me? I’ve always been nice to her.”

“Exactly,” Keisha began to explain. “That’s her delusion. She takes your kindness for love. She thinks you’re in love with her, Wil. That you’re having a relationship. She told me y’all were getting married.”

“Married! But I’m already married and I’m not leaving my wife. She knows that.”

“That’s the problem. That’s always the problem with Maxine, Wil. She has these amazing fantasies about nice men like you sweeping her off her feet. I’m no doctor but I think married men are even attractive to her because you’re more of a challenge. Then when you stupid asses end up sleeping with her, you just make things worse.”

“I didn’t sleep with her,” I reiterated.

Keisha gave me a skeptical glance. “Well, you’ll be the first.”

I didn’t bother to respond to her, although I did want to know more about Maxine. “So, is she dangerous?”

Keisha was silent for a while before she spoke. “Let’s put it this way. The last guy she thought she was in love with was this guy named Philip. His wife fell off the platform of the Long Island Rail Road into an oncoming train.” I closed my eyes at the image. Then a thought flashed in my head. Marge had fallen and reinjured her arm right when she was supposed to come back and replace Mimi. Did Mimi have something to do with it?

“Did Mimi do that? Did she hurt that man’s wife?”

“Nobody seems to know for sure. The district attorney deemed it an accident because there were no witnesses. But Maxine was there, and what she was doing in Hempstead at that time of morning when she lived in Queens is beyond me.”

“Look, Keisha, what about my wife? Is she in danger?”

“I hope not but that’s why I’m here.”

“What do you mean you hope not? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m not sure but I think Mimi took a gun I keep for protection out of my beauty shop this morning.”

I picked up the phone immediately and dialed my house. The phone kept ringing until I got my answering machine. “Diane, as soon as you get this message, call me right away. It’s important. Call me right away. And don’t open the door for anyone.” I hung up the phone and dialed her cell phone. Again I got no answer, so I left the same message.

“Wil, I think you need to call the police.”

I dialed 911.

“Nine-one-one emergency. Please state the emergency.”

“Can you send a car to 176 234th Street?”

“We’d be glad to, sir. What’s the emergency?”

“I think someone is going to my house to hurt my wife.”

“Are they there already?”

“I’m not sure. My wife’s not answering the phone.”

“Sir, we can send a car over to your address but the officers will not enter the house unless they find a disturbance.”

“Fine, just send a car.” I hung up the phone, staring at Keisha. “I’m going home, you wanna come?” She nodded and the two of us ran out of my office.