Sinful (13 page)

Back in the produce jungle, Kim held her daughter tightly, beginning to have second thoughts about stepping out on a limb for Marvin. In a matter of days, his wife had run out on him, he'd found himself unemployed, and she aptly recognized what was invisible to Marvin and Chandelle—they were still madly in love with each other but didn't know what to do about it.

F
riday night at eight o'clock, a herd of wadded tissue paper huddled on the angular beveled glass coffee table in Chandelle's second living room. Dior listened attentively, taking mental notes, as her cousin recounted the past twenty-six hours and how they seemed to pile on one another to build a monstrous hedge around what used to be love. Chandelle drew both sock-covered feet up from the floor and tucked them under her housecoat like a teenager turning inward for comfort. “Yeah, it was just like you said, Dior. I searched every aisle in that grocery store until running upon them in the produce section. I got so angry it was hard not to march up and knock Marvin upside his head. If I hadn't promised not to, I'd hate to think how I might have played myself.”

“And they were actually together, I mean, when you caught them…together?” Dior prodded.

“Uhhh-huh,” Chandelle answered, wiping her nose with another fistful of tissues. “Just like you said they'd be. Marvin was pushing a shopping cart, with Kim's daughter in it. That hurt me, too, but I refused to let them know. It was bad enough seeing him with that chick and playing Unca' Marvin on the side. There's no telling how long they've been hooking up. It didn't seem brand new because the little girl was so attached to Marvin. You should have seen the way she threw herself into him when I cracked the case.”

Ooh, this is better than I'd hoped for,
Dior thought.
That lady was probably using her daughter to snag Marvin, knowing men are such suckers for baby girls. Good move, if I have to say so myself.
“Chandelle, do you really think Marvin's been creeping on you with her?” she asked, doubting that he could have pulled that off while she'd been tailing him during the daytime. Although Dior couldn't be sure because her late-night moneymaking enterprises kept her tired after dark. “I mean, she don't strike me as the type he'd try to get at. I mean, she's even older than him.”

Chandelle sniffled again and nodded her agreement. “Kim is old, probably thirty-five. She is fly, though in a midthirty-something sort of way, but come on, you saw her. I can't figure out what she has on me or what she's doing to my husband that I wasn't doing.”

Chandelle stared into space for the longest time. She didn't want to believe that Marvin was the kind of man to put up an extra piece on the side, but nothing seemed clear. “Want to hear the strangest thing, cuz?” Chandelle said, after a lengthy stream of silence. “A week ago, I would have killed for my man. And I'm talking about digging a hole to hide the body. Now, I'm not so sure I'd cross the street to save his life. I know how it looks, but I thought Marvin was better than this.”

Dior was presented with another opportunity to cast further confusion, so she took it. “Listen to me, Chandelle, Marvin had me fooled too. I always thought the best of him because of how good he treated you, but now he's moved on to sampling some dark meat.” When Chandelle's chest began to swell with grief at the thought of him sampling anything Kim had to offer, Dior tried to backpedal as quickly as possible to appear neutral. “Wait a minute, I didn't mean to imply that Marvin's been freaking, I mean, slapping skins with someone else. No, that's not what I meant either. Okay, look, you are a married woman who's got to figure some things out for herself, that's all I'm saying. There is a lot of cool in Marvin, let's not forget that.”

“That is true,” Chandelle whined softly, as a single tear ran from her face. “Before all the drama started, he would have breathed for me if I asked him to. He's probably breathing for Kim now.”

He'd better not be,
Dior thought.
If anyone's gonna be sharing his
breath, It'll be me.
“Now that's hard to imagine,” she said resentfully. “I can't see it going down like that. Uh-uh, not even a little bit.”

“Wow, Dee, that's sweet of you to stick up for Marvin. Maybe I should believe in him as strongly as you do?”

“Huh, well, uh, I was only saying how it would be hard for me to accept him putting it to another woman is all,” she replied uneasily, careful not to push Chandelle back over the hedge dividing them. “I'm not feeling that.” Instinctively, Dior's jaws clenched against the backdrop of mere discussions of Marvin's infidelity, considering how it didn't involve her like she wanted. The game she'd initiated with other people's lives was in full swing despite the next move by an unsuspected player. A knock at the door sent her reeling. “Who—who's that?” Dior stammered.

“It's probably just Dooney,” she answered, getting up to answer the door.

“Dooney?” Dior repeated anxiously, as if he were the black plague wanting to get in. “Why is he here?”

“I asked him to come by for a man's perspective. He might act like he doesn't know better, but I know different. Dooney's here to help, and Lord knows I could use all I can get.”

That's what I'm afraid of,
Dior admitted silently.
That's just what I need, a meddling know-it-all, and Dooney's the worst.
Dior sank deeper against the sofa cushion, wishing she could disappear altogether. She and her fraternal twin brother were separated by a few minutes at birth, but he'd been locked on and looking into her soul since she could remember. Dior felt sick to her stomach with mounting apprehensions that Dooney would gaze into her eyes and somehow see that she had been working her scheming and conniving angle like a part-time job. If Chandelle said too much, he'd throw two and two together and then quickly throw her under that bus of hers. More often than not, he knew her better than she knew herself.

“Nice house you got here, Chandelle,” Dooney said, while offering a warm, brotherly embrace. He surveyed the foyer, porcelain tile, Chandelle's exquisite taste in furniture, and then her dubious choice in houseguests. The moment his eyes landed on Dior, he shook his head. “Yeah, nice place, except for the ornery smudge on your couch. You'd better get to scrubbing now or it might not ever come out. What's up, Gemini?” he said to his sister, using the two-faced nickname he felt best suited her.

“Dooney,” said Dior dismissively. She pouted and avoided eye contact as best she could without making it obvious.

“It's a mighty fine palace, cuz,” Dooney reiterated to set the bait. “Funny, it looks kinda empty, though. Yeah, the word is out on you, stunting and whatnot. Before you dialed me up, I'd already heard you done ran your husband off.” Dooney assumed the same paternal role she had always counted on in the past. Somewhere down the line, Dooney developed an unrivaled ability to grasp a situation and hammer out the details in no time flat. Dior found his talent unnerving when unsolicited, but valuable when called upon. This was a good time to keep her mouth shut before saying something Dooney could rip apart and turn inside out until shaking the truth from it. It worked when they were younger and even though he'd spent two years in prison his skills were sharp as ever. The power of discernment is the term their mother pinned to it. Spotting a lie wrapped around the truth is what Dior reasoned. Looking beyond the deception, that was Dooney's gift.

After Chandelle returned to her perch beside Dior, she cleared her throat. “I don't care what the word on the street is,” she spat irritably. “I didn't run him off.”

“What the…” he shouted, before sliding both hands inside front pockets of his starched jeans. “Okay, hold on, y'all. I said I was gonna stop cussing.” The ladies observed as he counted backward from ten to five slowly per the instructions in the last anger management self-help book he read. “There…That's much better, Dooney,” he said, speaking to himself. “Now then, Chandelle, your man is gone, agreed?” Reluctantly, she nodded her head. “Can I get a word up?” he asked, to elicit genuine emotion from Chandelle.

“Aghhh, Dooney, I hate when you do it this way,” she fussed. “Why can't I just tell you what happened and you tell me what you think about it?”

“Because this is the ‘Dooney Show',” he told her, “and I, like Oprah–Dr. Phil-and-'em, get to run things as I see fit. I could come right out and ask you what you did to the dude to make him bolt, but then I'd only get your side of the story. What has that gotten you so far?” He raised his brow to ward off any unwarranted comments from Dior, who despised this form of relationship interrogation more than Chandelle did.

“I'll start by telling you what I know about the situation, and then you can lay your hands on it,” he finished.

“Why should you go first?” Chandelle complained.

“Cause this fool loves to hear himself philosophize, that's why.” answered Dior.

“Okay, your first mistake, Chandelle, was eliciting the advice of a woman concerning how to keep a man, when she is chronically without one to call her own.”

Chandelle hadn't thought of that.

“Next, I am certain that Marvin was chased away against his will because I have never, ever, met such a sappy brotha so in love with his woman,” Dooney continued. “Chandelle, Marvin is driving an old SUV that I wouldn't be caught dead in so that he could save for a house that he doesn't have keys to, he's pulled double shifts so that y'all wouldn't be broke and hungry when you moved in here, and he loves you so much that he went to work on time day after day. Now, if that ain't love, you can cancel my program and pull my sponsorship.”

Chandelle smiled for the first time all day. “I'll admit it, that makes me feel a smidge better,” she said, with her lips tightening after that. “But, what about Marvin letting another woman bail him out of jail? Huh? What about that?”

“Uh-huh! What about that?” Dior chimed in.

“Listen to my answer to that. So?” he blasted them. “If a three-ton transvestite wanted to spring for my freedom papers, I'd let him, depending on how it was dressed at the time, you understand. Marvin was in jail. Jail! His wife gave the cops the go-ahead to take him, although it was a mistake. And then, when his feet did hit the concrete, his woman done called the job and got him eliminated.”

“Terminated,” Chandelle corrected him.

“Yeah, just making sure you're paying attention,” he joked, behind a straight face. “And now, for the coup de grâce with the cherry on top. From what I understand, Marvin came home after sleeping off his time in the clink to a house full of nothing. All that is very odd because I don't see one thing I recognize but somebody sprinkling discontentment around somebody else's back door.”

Dior leaped from the sofa in a heated fury. “You can't be talking about me, Dooney. I only reported to Chandelle what I saw, Marvin and that Kim Hightower chick when she dropped him by the apartment in her fancy whip,” she explained before he interrupted her.

“Hightower, did you say Kim Hightower?”

“Yeah, why?” Dior hissed.

“See, 'cause she's something special. I used to be sprung on her. She taught at the school when she finished college, and boy I can't tell you what she used to do to me by just coming into the room.”

“Well, now she's doing it to Marvin?” Chandelle heckled.

Dooney began pacing back and forth before resuming his role as a shade-tree swami. “Dior, you told Chandelle that Marvin was kicking it with Kim Hightower?”

“Yes!”

“How do you know that for a fact?” he challenged.

“I, saw her dropping him off at the apartment and then later at the grocery store,” she boasted proudly.

“You saw them doing what at the store, shopping for groceries?”

“Wait a minute, Dooney,” Chandelle spoke up. “Dior called me and I went into the store and caught them.”

“Hmm, this is interesting. You caught them doing what exactly?” he asked, preparing to start picking at the lie he was then certain had come from the dramatic stylings of Dior Wicker.

Chandelle wrinkled her nose as she played back the scenario in her head. “Since you think you know everything,
Dr. Dooney
, I shouldn't tell you jack, but I will. They were in a close-faced discussion when I
caught
them,” she said, recounting the scene.

“Okay, let's see, Kim's baby was in the shopping basket and Marvin was behind it.”

“Was he kissing on Kim?”

“No, but…”

“Was he kissing on Kim's baby like he'd been spending a lot of time around her?”

“No, but I got you there,” Chandelle hollered. “The little girl placed her hands over her ears and shoved her head into Marvin's chest when I…went…smooth…off and probably scared the daylight out of her.” Suddenly, Chandelle didn't feel so good. It occurred to her that she might have taken everything too far too fast.

“I'm amazed at you, Chandelle. I never would have expected to see you working so hard to prove Marvin doesn't love you. If you ask me, he's better off where he is. I'm not so sure you still deserve a man like him. Maybe you ought to go on over to the apartment and see for yourself. Oh, and a few words of wisdom, don't take Dior with you.”

“Forget you, Dooney!” Dior groaned. “You make me sick.”