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  Marvin grabbed the cart handle with both hands. Kim accompanied him, stopping to make additional selections as he tried to make sense of things in his scrambled mind. Danni, with her little legs swinging from the seat, glared at Marvin with her arms folded. “Kim, you wouldn’t know it, but I do not handle my affairs like this. I can’t take all the credit for the jacked-up state of things, but I wish it would stop.”

  “I can understand how she’d be upset, coming to find out her man has been released on another woman’s dime. You should have predicted at least that.”

  “Maybe so,” he admitted, “but there wasn’t any way to predict getting fired and all of the furniture looted from the apartment. Chandelle has taken things too far.”

  Kim cleared her throat as she placed a liter of grape juice in the cart. “Uh, did you bother talking to her before calling me? Ah-ha, thought not.”

  “I couldn’t get by at being your man either,” he jested. “You’re hard on a brotha.”

  “My man wouldn’t have to call anyone else if he found himself in trouble, and besides, it pays to be hard on occasion. Some women like it rough. Me, I like it hard.” After Kim witnessed Marvin’s mouth pop open, she took one calculated step back. “Now I’m apologizing. That came out wrong and sounded despicable.” Actually, it came out just as I thought it would, with some heat on it, Kim thought to herself. “Okay, let’s pump the brakes. Chandelle’s decision to pack up and move into the house alone is one thing that has nothing to do with me. However, you having no way to pay me back, now that’s a Kim and Marvin problem.”

  While studying the price of dry spaghetti noodles and sauce, Marvin agreed. “Yes, true. I still can’t believe after being the top salesman for four years that the owner of a store just up and let me go after Chandelle complained to him. Mr. Mercer said he didn’t want to but his wife wasn’t having ‘no wife beater’ working at the family business. I wonder what she’d have to say about the cashiers’ kids who look just like him.”

  “She won’t hear it from you because that’s not your concern,” Kim answered near the toiletries. “He lost a valuable employee but the question is, what are you going to do about it?”

  Marvin reached for the bath soap Chandelle liked before it occurred to him that she wouldn’t be around to use it. He picked up a three-pack of Irish Spring instead. “Well, until I figure it out, I’m going to hibernate in my empty cave.”

  Kim found it difficult not to laugh in Marvin’s pitiful face. “She really took everything?”

  “Everything that wasn’t nailed down and a few things that were,” he answered jokingly. “I’ll swing by and pick up a bag of apples and meet you at the register to divvy up the goods if that’s okay with you.”

  “No, I have some produce on my list too,” Kim offered, not ready to part ways just yet. “Who knows, maybe you can make another mess over there. Danni would love that.”

  “Yay, do it again,” the giggling little girl cooed with optimum zeal. “Do it again.”

  Chandelle considered it good fortune that she was a few minutes away from the grocery store when receiving the call from Dior. Her intuition was working overtime yet again. The chance that she would have the perfect vantage point to see Marvin and Kim together was a divine coincidence. On the short drive over, she prepared for one heck of a fight. “I’ma set this right,” she heard herself say, in a tone that reeked with unbridled insolence. “Humph, I’ll see what Marvin has to say about running around with that freak in sheep’s clothing and in public like he’s single. Ain’t nobody gonna shame me like this. Just wait ’til I roll up on ’em. I’ma set it off!”

  Chandelle flew down the streets of Dallas weaving in and out of traffic like a NASCAR driver zooming toward a checkered flag. “Move!” she screamed at an elderly driver teetering down the avenue below the speed limit. “Come on…come on…move!” With reckless abandon, Chandelle cut off a pickup truck to make her turn into the supermarket parking lot. “Whatever!” she howled, when the truck driver cursed at her for putting his life in danger. “Yeah, then you’re another one.” Circling the collection of parked cars, Chandelle spotted Dior waving her hands near the front of the store. “Uh-huh, I see you, cuz. It’s about to be on now. I should have brought my pepper spray.” She rolled into a handicap parking space and hopped out with her pricey handbag dangling from her clenched fist.

  Dior drew in a deep breath as Chandelle stomped in her direction. “Hold on a tick,” Dior said, grabbing the human tornado by the arm. “I said wait!” Dior exhaled slowly, then positioned herself so that Chandelle couldn’t dismiss her grave expression and exacting plea.

  “What, why are you holding me?” Chandelle asked, with her heart beating like a college drum line. “Come on so you can hold my purse.”

  “Uh-uh, Marvin and them ain’t going nowhere, but I need to be straight on something. I don’t want to be in y’all’s mix so you cannot tell Marvin I was the one who ratted on him.”

  Chandelle squinted. Her eyes narrowed into thin slits as she tried to understand why Dior was adamant about being discharged from duty before the confrontation ensued. Something isn’t on the level here, she thought. Dior’s usually up for a fight, especially if she’s the one watching it. “Okay, I’ll keep it to myself, but we’re going to speak on this later,” Chandelle told her, while pulling off her earrings. “It’s time to be about mine.” She left Dior standing alone and determined to ruin a successful marriage.

  While stalking the grocery store aisles, Chandelle was fuelled by what Dior had put in her mind. What she did discover in the produce section made her nauseous. Marvin was pushing a grocery cart with a little girl aboard. Chandelle couldn’t believe it. Has he already jumped into a fling and started playing baby-daddy? she feared, before staring up at the ceiling. “Lord, please forgive me for what I might say in front of this child, but I’m about to go slap off on her momma,” she said. Her life was spiraling downward and nothing on earth could stop it, including her desire to save face.

  “I knew it!” Chandelle spat as she hurled herself toward them. “I knew you were up to some mess when I carried my behind downtown to see about getting you out of jail. So, how long you’ve been tapping her, Marvin? Huh, tell me how long you and this Single-Momma Barbie been getting all chummy like this? Okay, I can admit to jamming you up. That was on me, but this, this is unacceptable. Imagine me losing sleep over you in the county. Now that you got street cred’ for being locked up, yellow women ain’t good enough for you no more, Marvin?” Chandelle was talking so fast and furiously that she didn’t notice how her tirade drew attention from other shoppers. Danni covered both ears with her tiny hands, then buried her face in Marvin’s chest. He laid his hand over her head and glanced down.

  “As for you,” Chandelle said, sneering at Kim from head to toe as if sickened by every inch of her, “you thought you were slick, smiling in my face while creeping around my back door.”

  “Chandelle, you need to lower your voice and calm yourself,” Marvin asserted, while heeding his own advice. “You don’t have any reason showing up and talking about what is and isn’t acceptable. I’m the one with a felony charge hanging over me. Me, not you! I’m the one who went in to work to find out my wife had a hand in getting that twisted too.” When he realized his voice had elevated, Marvin backed down for the sake of the Danni. “The only thing between me and Kim is her generosity. Yeah, I called her and she came through. Whatever crazy ideas you got in that hard head of yours have nothing to do with me.”

  Kim was poised while taking in the spectacle. She’d been involved in a scene like this one previously, although it caught her on the other end as her ex-husband’s mistress confronted her for messing up an extramarital affair when the rent was due. Kim saw through Chandelle’s paper-thin bravado for what it truly was, a desperate plea to be heard. As her eyes darted back and forth from Danni to Chandelle’s finger pointing, she decided it was more prudent not to offer an opinion since she hadn’t been ask
ed for any.

  “You need to back off and go back to your new house,” Marvin huffed. “At least you have something to sit on while you give some thought on how we got crossways.”

  “Shows just how little you know about me,” Chandelle debated smugly. “I’m sure your girlfriend told you about my early move-in arrangements, but here’s something you didn’t know. I put our furniture out on the street for the Salvation Army to swoop up. And another thing, I’m living all to the good with a whole ‘slew of new.’ Uh-huh, that’s what’s up. I pimped out the house and still have the tags hanging off every piece of furniture I ordered. That’s right, I’m upscale now and digging it.”

  “You didn’t?” was Marvin startled reply. “While I’m dealing with all this, you threw out our stuff and went on a shopping spree?”

  “Why not?” Chandelle fired back. “I’m living single just like you.”

  “Forget that nonsense,” he countered, “where’s all this new money of yours coming from? I’m scrappin’ and you’re buying out the mall?” Marvin raised Danni out of the shopping cart and gingerly passed her to Kim before directing his utter shock toward his wife. “Chandelle, keep playing games like this…you’re gonna fool around and get yourself hurt.”

  “Well, you already took care of that by nuzzling up to her,” she snarled viciously. “So, I decided to get even.” Chandelle cast a nasty scowl at Kim, who hadn’t seemed all that concerned over the woman’s rants.

  “You’d better check your step, Chandelle,” Kim warned finally, as the store manager came tramping up behind their war of words.

  “Too bad you’re in my step,” Chandelle answered hastily. “You don’t have anything on me. I’m his first love, his first!”

  “Whoa, hold on!” the manager shouted. He approached the scene like a crossing guard who had taken his small amount of authority with a bit of overexuberance. With his hands spread apart, he wedged himself in the middle. “Ma’am, sir, I don’t know anything about who’s first or last, but I don’t want it discussed further in here. Please figure out a way to settle this or somebody’s got to go.”

  “No stress,” Chandelle sighed. “I’m already gone.” She turned to walk away, mad at herself, mad at Marvin, and mad at the world in general. She exited the supermarket with less than she entered with, her shortage of self-respect was only the half of it. Chandelle predicted Marvin had no choice other than to outright hate her when he did attempt to use his debit card for the groceries. She’d cleaned out both bank accounts and their savings the day before.

  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.

  16

  Good Move, Wrong Game

  Friday 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 hisbreath, 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 lock
ed 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.”