War (42 page)

              “Little Muffin is upsetting her mom’s tum again,” he says as he smiles at Jake and me and hurries to Lola.

              “I’ve got a feeling he’s gonna drive us crazy with this baby of his,” Jacob says.

              “Thank goodness he’ll be living with your parents,” I tell Jake.

              “Or else he’d be at our doors every day, thinking every sneeze or hiccup is a sign of death.”

              “Oh, he’s definitely going to be one of those parents who think their kids are always dying of something.”

              “A couple of days ago, Jaden sneezed four times in a row. Cadence would have called the Center for Disease Control. I went ahead and bought him a hat.”

              “Please don’t mention hats, my mother is driving me crazy about them.”

              Jake and I walk up to Red, Winnie, Lola and Cadence as Lola recounts her awful night’s sleep. Cadence twists the cap off the ginger ale bottle for her. As soon as Winnie catches Jake’s eyes, they stare at each other for a moment, looking like shy teenagers.

“I see your girlfriend over there,” Winnie says to him.

“Winnie…” Red says, giving her a reprimanding look.

“I’m just saying, since her family lives over there, it seems like I’m going to have to see that bitch every day of my life.”

“Winnie.”

“Then we’ll move,” Jake says, his eyes locked on Winnie. “We’ll start looking next week.” He and Winnie stare at each other. Winnie’s the first to look down and wrap her scarf tighter around her neck.

              “Cold?” Jake asks. “We can wait inside.” He nods towards the condo building. Winnie looks to the building and then back at Jake.

              “I guess I’m a little cold,” she says as she puts her hands in her coat pockets.

              “Come on. I’ll have valet come get us when the limo gets here.” Winnie hesitates a moment before walking towards the building. Jake quickly follows.
I look over at Jasmine and see that she’s now giving Tiffany and Pearls kisses on the forehead
before
giving a
light wave to every
one
as she turns to leave.
V
alet is holding the back door of a taxi open for her.
Tiffany and Pearl wave goodbye
,
with smiles on their faces, before turning to
wards
Gertrude
and resuming their patty cake game
.
Marlon’s face is drained
now
.
Jasmine gives a last goodbye wave to everyone before she slides into the back of the cab. She didn’t look at Marlon once. And now he watches her as
the taxi
pulls away. Damn. I turn to my wife and rub a hand over her back.

              “Where are the kids?” I ask her.

              “Oh, they’re all inside the building with Nat. Rusty’s showing them Ground Zero.” I look at her, confused. “The security room.”

              “Ah.”

              “Danielle!” Red, Cadence, Lola and I look up towards Rena’s voice. She’s coming out of her building with Matt and her two sons. Matt looks across the street and waves. I give him a wave back. I like Matt. That’s a good guy there. He heads over to Marlon, Gertrude, Tiffany and Pearl, his boys in tow.

              “What!” Red screams across the street.

              “Do you have a point of contact near Colonial Williamsburg, just in case all the white people there-”

              “You’ll be fine!”

              “Fine.” She heads over to
Marlon
.

              “She is so stupid,” Red says with a smile and a shake of her head. Red’s smile. It took me a while to see it and at times I thought I never would, but now it’s an everyday occurrence. There are times when I see her, when I actually look at her and I think:
I was almost married to Laura
. Damn, I dodged a bullet. I reach out and pull her closer to me. She looks up at me and winks. Damn, she looks good. While Lola grabs Cadence’s hand to feel the baby kick and they both start acting like they’ve never felt it before, I lean over Red to whisper in her ear.

              “Did you get on…you know?”

              “What?”

              “Red.”

              “Why should birth control be all on me? The woman. As though children are a
woman’s
problem.”

              “Listen, I don’t have a problem with you and I having twenty kids back-to-back. I’m trying to help you out.”

              “Well, thanks for your concern and no, I’m not on the pill. But I’m breastfeeding, so we’re good.”

              “Are you sure?”

              “Yeah. So I say we go wild.”

              “Deal.” She raises her fist up for a pound. I give her one. There’s nothing like sex with no possible outcome of procreating. Nice. (But I do make a mental note to check on that fact later. Hopefully I won’t forget.)

              “Hey Dan!” She and I both turn to see Marla hurrying towards us, Jon dragging slowly behind.

              “So I see you’re going to LA,” Red says to her.

              “I am! And Bryan is so nice. I mean, he was so understanding of me needing this week off. I’ll admit, I was kinda worried because it was such short notice. But he told me it was cool because it was Easter break and he always hires volunteers from the old folks’ home to help during holiday weeks. I just think that’s so sweet. It just shows how big his heart is.”

              “It does. Hi Jon,” Red says with a smirk.

              “What’s going on…” he says without looking at her.

              “Hey Jon,” Lola says.

              “You doing okay, Lola?” he looks at her stomach and gives her a light smile.

              “Almost there!” she says as she rests her hand on her stomach.

              “Good.”

              “Okay,” Marla says, “so I’m going to have so many questions when we bring the baby back, so you two better help me.” She has a huge smile on her face.

              “Baby?” Lola says.

              “Oh! Jon is adopting his brother’s baby! Long story but he’s not even a week old. His name is Alexandre, or that’s what we’re naming him when we go get him.”

              “Oh my God! Cadence! Our baby is going to have so many friends! Sunny, Jaden, Alexandre! And they’ll all be the same age!”

              “There’s own little crew,” Cadence says with a wide smile.

              “I know I’m super excited!” Marla says. “I love babies, which is why I’m so glad that Bryan gave me this time off. I really want to have the whole experience of bringing Alexandre home. Ya know? I just may have to do something nice for Bryan when I get back.”

“That would be nice,” Red says with a smile. “Think big.” I see Jon shift his eyes over to her.

“I know he loves Drake. Isn’t there a concert coming up? Oh, well, I’ll look it up on the plane. Malcolm, thank you so much again for getting this job for me.” And now Jon slowly shifts his eyes over to Marla.

“I thought you said Danielle got that job for you?” he says.

“Oh, well her parents were the ones who got me the interview. But Malcolm is the one who referred me to Mr. and Dr. Rouge. So if it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have the job at all. And it’s so funny because Bryan…”

And Jon slowly shift
s
his eyes over to me, as Marla continues.

Let’s see, two months ago, when Rena asked me to leave the hospital room, and the door closed behind me, I caught only one sentence from Rena: So Jon is going for full custody…

Red left that evening, saying she had business to attend to. When I asked what business, she told me not to ask about her business. Fair enough. But I already knew that she, Rena and Winnie were on their way to Jon. When she came back, she never mentioned what happened or that she went to see him. I never asked her. She never brought up the custody issue to me.

When Mr. and Mrs. Fulton called me about Marla, I figured that was my shot to stick it to Jon. I wasn’t sure what Red had done. I wasn’t sure if Jon would drag her through a custody battle. What I did figure was that it’s hard for a man to win custody of a child if he runs his own business, works twelve hours a day and is single.

Being single was the key point. Marla has always been Jon’s errand girl. What would happen when he didn’t have help? What would a judge say to that? I already knew: Mr. St. James, you don’t have the time nor the lifestyle to take on the sole responsibility of a child.

I know Bryan. Know him well. He once needed my services at one point in time, but that’s confidential. (That ex-wife of his is a handful.) I thought about Marla, Jon and Bryan and said ‘hey, why not?’ It was a long shot. Bryan’s a professional, Marla’s his employee and plus, she’s in love with Jon. If anything were to happen at all, it would take a while for a spark to flicker…

But I’m a patient man.

“So Malcolm’s a lifesaver,” Marla says as she smiles at me. “I was just telling Bryan that the other day. I said, ‘Bryan, if only I would have spoken to Malcolm sooner about me working in a museum, I could have been here years ago.’” Jon continues to stare at me. I give him a smirk back.

“And what did he say?” Red asks. She’s being a smartass.

Jon continues to stare at me.

“Bryan said, ‘I think you came to the museum at exactly the right time.’ Wasn’t that nice of him! So Malcolm, thank you. Thank you so much for referring me to the museum.
”

I continue to look directly at Jon. “You’re welcome.”

Nobody fucks with Red.

THE END