Sinful Read online

  Chandelle began to hyperventilate. There was no possible way she’d remain calm under the pressure of motoring her good friend and employer to a hospital several blocks away. “Grace, Grace, Grace,” she gasped. “I can’t…can’t drive you.” The loud noises coming from outside of Grace’s office sounded as if they were slow-pitched into Chandelle’s ears. She was halfway to the floor when a stocky paramedic caught her.

  “Bring her with us,” Grace barked assertively when the other emergency medic struggled to bring Chandelle back around. “What’s this world coming to, grown folks acting like they’ve never seen a baby trying to push its way into the world? This baby doesn’t have the patience to stick around here fooling with her. Go ahead on and snatch her up.”

  The men followed Grace’s instructions to the letter. Chandelle sat in the back of the ambulance with a capsule of smelling salts in her face, while Grace complained about waiting fourteen years to do what she said she’d never do again in a million. Grace was acting a fool when they reached the hospital ambulance dock. “I’m not letting that man talk me into anything else, Chandelle. Tell Wallace this is all his fault!” she screamed, as they wheeled her inside the emergency department doors for admittance.

  Chandelle followed in close step, grinning like a schoolgirl with a brand-new secret. I’ll bet you were not complaining when your fine husband was doing more than talking, she wanted to say. And I’ll also bet this isn’t all his fault. She waved good-bye holding Grace’s purse and wishing her a safe delivery.

  Later that evening, Chandelle scrubbed a perfectly clean shower and recapped the afternoon’s activities as Dior painted her toenails nearby on the floor. “Yeah, it was something to see. Grace, as tough as nails, clutching the gurney rails with her uterus about to pop,” Chandelle chuckled. “She had the cutest little girl on the maternity wing, you hear me, the cutest. Nicole Andrea Peters is off to a good start. It’s like the song says, ‘Her daddy’s rich and her ma is good looking.’”

  “Whuut, I’m on time for that,” Dior agreed. “Nowadays I’d settle for the rich daddy and make out the rest on my own.”

  “Huh, money ain’t never hurt nobody,” said Chandelle, snapping off an oversized pair of yellow rubber gloves. “At least not this body,” she added, with stiff slap on her faded jeans.

  “Hey, uh…You heard from Marvin?” Dior asked, changing the subject to suit her itching ears. “I’ve been here ’bout an hour and you haven’t brought him up once.” Dior was bursting at the seams. She could barely contain the dirt she thought might be a nail in Chandelle’s matrimonial coffin. Besides, it would be only a matter of seconds before she broke out her book, chapter and verse, after taking copious notes about what went on in Marvin’s day.

  “I talked to him briefly,” Chandelle replied while blushing. “We’re not back together, together, but he’s coming around.”

  “You think so?” Dior said, baiting her cousin to bite the hook.

  “Well, I did get a sweet phone call and that flower arrangement,” she answered, pointing at the extravagant assortment of daisies, daffodils, and peonies in the tall indigo vase on the bathroom counter.

  “Yes, they’re very pretty, Chandelle.” Good for you, she thought. “Once again, there’s this thing I been fighting with. See, it would be easier if you knew where you stood with Marvin. If you thought y’all were on the mend, well…” she said, letting the end of her sentence trail off like she wouldn’t dream of getting any deeper involved in married folks’ business.

  “I’ve got no other reason to think any different. Why? And don’t tell me you’ve lucked up on another bit of information you think I should know?”

  Dior blew on her nails before answering, knowing how that would infuriate Chandelle’s well-documented shortage of patience. “Whew, I like this color. Mango, it’s tight.”

  “Dior, don’t play with me. Unless you want me to shove that bottle of polish…”

  “Okay, shoot. I was just admiring the color,” Dior stalled. “Look, just like the last time. I’m not telling you if Marvin is going to be mad at me.”

  “I didn’t tell him then, and I won’t this time either,” Chandelle proclaimed.

  “I saw them together again today,” Dior answered finally. “Marvin and that dark sistah.” When Chandelle’s eyes drifted toward the floor, Dior predicted that her story filled with half truths and outright lies would sink in like a rattlesnake’s fangs. All she had to do then was supply the venom. “Marvin rode with her to this post office place, the kind you rent by the month. Chandelle, look, it’s not easy for me to be telling you this, but I don’t feel good letting it ride. I probably would have left it alone, but when I saw them leaving the movies,” she lied, “and then tiptoe into Boscoe’s after that for some dinner, I had to come here and blab it all.”

  Chandelle bit on the inside of her bottom lip. The report she’d received from Dior was incriminating and hard to argue with, so Chandelle did the only thing she could, she turned her anger on the messenger. “What did you do, follow them?” she asked boldly.

  “Well, yeah. I had to give you a full report. Somebody has to look out for their favorite cousin. You know I love you fam’, too much to let Marvin make a fool of you all out in the open.” Dior studied Chandelle’s face, searching for signs of acceptance. A long sigh confirmed her calculations in a well-formulated scheme to defraud a woman she cared about of the husband she wanted for herself.

  With nothing else to clean, Chandelle lifted the bucket from the floor. “Thanks, girl. What would I do without you?”

  “We need each other,” Dior asserted quickly. “You’ve always looked out for me. Now it’s my turn to put time in for you. I’ll always be around to lift you up.” Dior’s sentiment flowed so smoothly she partially believed it herself. “I’ll say this and then mind my own business. The little girl they had with them looked to be mighty attached to Marvin. I’d hate to think she might even be his daughter seeing as how we can’t tell how long they’ve been close.”

  Chandelle pushed the shower door closed and scanned the spotless bathroom. There were numerous thoughts multiplying in her head, all of them too hurtful to voice. Instead, she stared at her down-trodden reflection in the mirror and frowned sorrowfully. “Nothing would surprise me anymore, nothing.”

  23

  No More Surprises

  Chandelle sat at her desk for the umpteenth day in a row, sneering at the telephone. At quitting time, she poked her tongue out at it. “Traitor!” she heckled, while waggling her finger. “You used to come through for a sistah.” When one of her female coworkers asked if she was talking to the telephone, Chandelle offered three cold words to ward off any discussion, “Mind your business.” She had begun to build a hedge around her private life, afraid others would see into her potpourri of despair and pity her—or worse, laugh.

  With Grace out on maternity leave for who knew how long, Chandelle’s workload increased immediately. In for a long night, she collected a stack of files and headed to the house. Hoards of motorists edged along the freeway with her. There were no magic words to make all of them disappear, or Chandelle would have been screaming at them at the top of her lungs. “Come on,” she grunted when the woman in front of her slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting the car farther ahead. She craned her neck to see if there had actually been an accident, which she’d immediately refuse to get involved with. Next time, stay off the cell phone, lady. Have you ever heard of Bluetooth? They even sell them at Wal-Mart, and there’s one of those on every corner, she thought. When Chandelle’s stomach growled, she rubbed on it as if that would sooth her hunger somehow. Good grief, I shouldn’t have pushed paper all through lunch. I’ll never get anything done at home running on empty, and this traffic isn’t going anywhere. Come on, people, you can’t go any faster than the person in the front of you; it’s simple physics. Just as she ragged on other drivers for potentially dangerous maneuvers, Chandelle observed the one next to her punching numbers into his c
ell. She watched the brake lights on the car before her and gunned the motor. Her Volvo surged forward as she wrestled the steering wheel to the right, then to the right again. Two lanes in under two seconds, she thought. That wasn’t bad. Now, if I can make it in front of this truck, I can take the next exit. Chandelle put on her right blinker, assuming she’d find at least one friendly driver, if not another one slipping enough to get by. She made eye contact with five people in a row, all blowing her off. The last guy flipped her off to boot. Chandelle grimaced at him and would probably have done something she’d have to repent of later, but there was a task at hand, a hazardous task at that. She stopped the vehicle until cars began piling up behind her. Horns blared endlessly, but she was relentless. Eventually, someone pulled beside her to offer assistance. When the flirty white man idled his Porsche and lowered his window, Chandelle winked at him and then mashed the gas pedal to shoot over in his lane, then off the highway she went. “Sorry, but I need to get at some nutrients to feed me, preferably extra greasy,” she sang along with the hip-hop beat cranked up a notch on her stereo. “Louder…turn it up. Louder…turn it up. Louder…oh yeah. Don’t stop, I’m almost there.”

  It hadn’t occurred to Chandelle as she parked the car next to the curb down the street from Boscoe’s that it was the restaurant Dior said she’d seen Marvin and Kim having dinner in after a trip to the movies. Nor did it come to mind when she entered, but the second she bumped into Kim coming out of the ladies’ room, it hit her like a sneaky right cross.

  “Oh, you again,” Chandelle huffed.

  “Hello, Chandelle,” Kim replied cordially. “We could stand a conversation, you and me, woman to woman.”

  “I’m in and out, Kim, and much too busy to waste time talking about something that doesn’t matter anymore. Marvin’s…” she began saying until her eyes landed on him at the bar with a whole slew of people she didn’t recognize, save one, the brunette from Kim’s office. “I see, I assumed it was over between you and him. This isn’t the first time I’ve been wrong today and I’m sure it won’t be the last.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you that Marvin isn’t with me, well, not like that,” Kim clarified, because of the way things might have appeared.

  When Chandelle and Marvin’s eyes met, he froze, froze like a man who’d seen his wife and his other woman chatting. “Right, and I’m Debbie Donut with a hole in my head?” Chandelle remarked, choosing to believe her eyes over Kim’s adamant denial. Hastily, Chandelle ended the conversation with a stern revelation from her vantage point before ducking into the women’s room. “If you ask me, it looks like you’re with him, just like that.”

  Inside the restroom, she strutted around with both hands over her eyes until she heard Marvin standing at the door pleading for her to come out and talk it over. “In my mind, he’d only have me to love him,” she whispered to herself. “He’d only let me inside. Silly of me, I know, so silly.” Positive that Marvin had moved on whether or not Kim was willing to admit it to her face, Chandelle tried to outrun a complicated situation by fleeing the scene. She pushed past Marvin and kept right on stepping. He took out after her, tugging at her coat on the sidewalk out front.

  “Chandelle, wait up! Wait! The least you could do is let me explain.”

  “Explain what?” she asked. “Why you’re cocked up at the bar with ol’ girl, drinking and having one big party? I’ve seen too much to be trying to hear all about it.”

  “No, I mean slow down. I want to talk, but you just bolted right by me. What’s up with that? Where is all this hostility coming from?”

  “Oh, so now you want me to explain? Negro, please! All I did was cruise into the spot to get some dinner to go and what do I find, you and the very source of our problems schmoozing over fruity drinks? I was not and am not going to sit up in Boscoe’s with you and your lady like nothing’s wrong with that. You should know me better.”

  “Let’s clear this up once and for all. Kim is not my lady. She’s my boss. I needed work, and we don’t have to go into why because everybody is well aware of the dynamics leading to my termination. Kim owns an agency and various other companies. She agreed to take me under her wing.”

  “And then under what else?” Chandelle quipped curtly.

  “Nothing else. She’s mentoring me,” he answered proudly. “Kim’s good people, Chandelle.”

  “By the way you’re sticking up for her, I can tell she’s good at something. Kim’s mentoring you, humph! I see, so that’s what they’re calling it now?”

  “I’m getting real bent on begging you to believe me,” Marvin said, his tone low and hardened. “For the very last time, my relationship with her is strictly professional. Read my lips, baby: Kim is my employer. If that’s not a good enough answer, then we do have a major problem, and you can’t put it on her.” Chandelle twisted her lips in opposition, but she remained quiet to check his next move. “Tell you what, stay right here. I’m going back in for a minute to tell the fellas I’m leaving with you.”

  “The fellas?” Chandelle remarked.

  “You could come and join us. You’re already here and you’ve admitted to being hungry.”

  “No, thank you. I’ve suddenly lost my appetite. But there is something I’m starving to know, Marvin,” Chandelle said, noting that he was wearing his wedding ring. “I see you still consider yourself married, but are you still my man?”

  Marvin smiled instead of answering and then hustled inside toward the bar. He apologized for cutting out early and rolled off a few bills for his tab. To a crowd of playful boos and jesting, he excused himself nonetheless. Wearing a reasonable facsimile of the smile he took into the restaurant, Marvin returned to discuss in full detail exactly what he considered himself, but Chandelle was gone. He searched up and down the street to no avail. Confused, he dialed her cell phone to find out what happened.

  Chandelle answered on the first ring and in no uncertain terms blasted him for what she deemed another of his transgressions. “I might not be the woman I want to be yet, but I won’t ever become the kind to stand outside on the sidewalk while my husband asks his mistress for permission to leave.” Before Marvin had a chance to argue the point, Chandelle had hung up in his face.

  “Hello? Chandelle…? Hello?” Marvin hollered into the phone. Further from understanding his wife than ever before, he wandered back into Boscoe’s like a disenfranchised man without a clue. “Bartender, another beer, please,” Marvin ordered, as he stood near Kim and the crew.

  “Back so soon?” Kim asked, with a raised brow. “I sent you out there to patch up things with Chandelle. Lo and behold, you come traipsing back in scratching your head.”

  Kim raised her wineglass for a toast. “Here’s one for the man, our newest associate at Hightower Realty, Marvin Hutchins. He almost single-handedly closed a deal with impossible clients in forty-eight hours. To Marvin’s first!”

  “Marvin’s first!” the crowd applauded in unison.

  “Not a bad way to get your career off the ground either,” Kim whispered softly in his ear. “I’ll have your commission check in a few days. You get to keep the first one all to yourself, no splits,” she informed him.

  After calculating the three percent fee in his mind, Marvin wanted to wrap his arms around her and squeeze. “Nine thousand dollars?” he mouthed in her direction.

  “And you deserve every penny. The McClellans were on their way to another agency. Your ideas and presentation saved the deal. I’ll do all right on the loan side. It pays to run a brokerage firm, too. A girl’s gotta eat.”

  “And you’ve taught me to fish. Thank you, Kim, for everything you’ve done.” Marvin was feeling ambivalent. Accepting a great deal of money from her seemed out of line when she’d shown him the ropes, among several other random acts of kindness. On the other hand, he’d displayed an immense aptitude for the business and an unwavering desire to think outside the box. He reminded himself that Kim was correct, he did deserve his first commission check. />
  On the fifth floor of Presbyterian Hospital, Chandelle stepped off the elevator. She followed the thick green stripe on the floor all the way to the maternity wing. A hefty nurse supervisor greeted her at the reception area.

  “Yes, may I help you?” the older white woman asked, with a small pair of bifocals resting on the end of her nose.

  Chandelle smiled pleasantly at the nurse, who was graying around the temples. “Yes, ma’am, I’m looking for Grace Peters. I believe she’s on this hall.”

  “Ohhh, yes, Mrs. Peters,” she replied, glaring over the top of her glasses. “You’ll find her in Room 568, that’s at the end of the corridor behind you.”

  Snickering, Chandelle thanked the woman. She headed in the other direction wondering what Grace had done to warrant such a cold response from the nurse. After pushing the door open, she had a pretty good idea. Grace had a microwave brought in and a miniature refrigerator, a DVD player, and a personal fax machine. Chandelle laughed at all of Grace’s comforts of home and office. “Wow, Grace, you’re holding it down. I’m guessing that none of this is hospital issue.”