Sinful Read online

  Dooney wiped his boots on the welcome mat. “High on life and what else?” he queried, eyeing his cousin peculiarly.

  Chandelle took his wool peacoat and hung it in the hall closet. “You want some tea, Dooney Bug?” she hollered from the kitchen.

  He dug around through a pile of empty candy wrappers in a virtually empty candy box that was resting on the coffee table. “Naw, I’ll pass, but did you have to eat all the darn chocolates?”

  She stepped into the living room, wishing she’d hidden the evidence. “Oh, that. I was hungry, skipped lunch and now you see the result. If you want me to put something on, I could thaw out a brisket.”

  “Thaw?” he objected. “I ain’t got the time to be sitting around waiting on something to thaw out.” He began to reel off perfectly edible items in his new house that did not need to be de-iced before sharing what he actually came for. “Yeah, Marvin talked me into getting a real place to lay my head. I’m glad he did too. It’s not as nice as this, but it’s mine. I got a chimney and everything, a room for my music, and a bathroom so big I can invite a special lady in the bathtub with me, know what I’m saying?”

  “That’s great, Dooney, but you shouldn’t be having hussies running all up and through your house.”

  “And why not?” he asked, pretending to be alarmed that she’d ever suggest such a thing.

  “Because it’s not right,” Chandelle said playfully, waving her finger in his face. “You need to pick one and settle down.”

  “Okay, it’s time to go,” he said, jumping up from the sofa.

  “Dooney, sit your tail down. I’m not one to judge. I would like some nieces and nephews, though.”

  “Now I know it’s time to bounce!” he shouted comically. “You want me to marry up and then conjure up some kids so you can play with them when you get ready?”

  “Well, yeah,” Chandelle laughed. “You know what the holidays do to me. Last year Marvin had a fit when I told him I had gone out and bought a dog.”

  “What dog?”

  “Exactly,” she replied on cue. “Marvin and I both knew we didn’t need no dog.”

  Dooney glanced at Chandelle from the corner of his eyes. “It turns out you getting him fired was a good thing. He’s got a great head for the real-estate business. Just thought you’d want to know.”

  “Yeah, I heard he was into that now. He’s making it work with Kim Hightower,” she sighed, feigning indifference. “I’ve seen the billboards with his name on them. I’m really proud of him.” Dooney could tell that Chandelle wanted more than updates on his career, but he made her sweat it out for a minute. “Uh, how…how’s he, Marvin…doing?”

  “Who?” Dooney whooped with a straight face.

  Chandelle tossed a throw pillow at his head. “Dooney, don’t make me hurt you!”

  “All right, all right, Marvin’s good,” he answered, ducking playfully, guessing other details she’d want insight on but assumed she wouldn’t kick up the nerve to ask. “He’s taking care of himself, working out and all that. He helped me paint my front room,” Dooney informed her. “Uh-uh, he stayed with it all day and didn’t even charge me a cent for labor. Look, cuz, a brotha like Marvin ain’t gonna be out there single too much longer.”

  “What, did he say he was seeing somebody?” she asked with a nervous rise in her voice. If he’d stop avoiding her like she’d been avoiding Dior, Chandelle would have been up on a lot of what’s going on in Marvin’s world.

  “Naw, nothing like that,” Dooney replied. “He’s a real rare dude, Chandelle. Marvin’s the marrying kind. Don’t ask me why, but that lifestyle suits him. He’s the type to grow old with and all that other stuff white people usually do together, trips to the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone Park and such…boring stuff that women fall for.”

  On a whim, Dooney inquired about the details surrounding the night Marvin came over and found Tony opening a door to the house in his name. Chandelle mentioned that Dior had to have been behind it from the start whether she meant for it to go that far or not. Dior was the entity that put her and Tony in the same room, brought in the champagne, and then played Houdini until time came for the big finish. The event was too ugly to discuss any deeper than that so she let it go, demanding Dooney not bring it up to Marvin. He readily complied with Chandelle’s wishes. However, she didn’t say a word about going to Dior or Tony with a heavy hand and malice in mind.

  Dooney left Chandelle’s en route to Dior’s apartment. Two blocks away, he saw her in the Big Cluck’s fried chicken drive-thru. He hit a U-turn, swerved to miss a pothole, and then maneuvered around the back of the restaurant to ease up beside her.

  “Hey!” he shouted with his window rolled down. Dior didn’t notice him trying to get her attention right off so he honked his horn. With an annoyed expression, she waved him off. Dooney backed his Silverado pickup into a parking lane.

  Seeing her brother upset was never one of her best memories of their childhood and adulthood wasn’t any different. Dior banged on the small sliding window to hurry the cashier along. The young girl sneered at her as if watching the good-looking man stride toward her was more important. Dooney opened the car door before his sister managed to reach across and lock it manually. “Get out!” he ordered. “Get out right now!”

  “Oh, you mean now?” she replied hastily, when he went to unfasten his leather belt. “I was just gon’ get some wings first.”

  Dooney wasn’t in the mood to watch her do anything other than get out of the car. His countenance suggested that he would carry out the perceived threat of whipping her behind right there in the Big Cluck’s drive-thru.

  “I’m out! I’m out!” Dior screamed from the cold concrete. Dooney slid in from the passenger side and crammed his legs over the console to get behind the wheel. Then he yelled for her to go over and stand near his pickup. As she backed out of the way, the young cashier tapped on the car window to summon Dooney. He rolled the window down to see what she wanted.

  “Here you go. This is yo’ girlfriend’s order,” she said, with a flatter Southern drawl than his. “Hey, was you really gon’ whoop her?” she asked excitedly.

  “Why, you want me to whoop you next?”

  “Huh, I get off at seven,” she said with a seductive smile.

  “How old are you, the truth?” he demanded, with an authoritative voice so she wouldn’t likely try to front.

  She leaned in closer to answer. “I’m legal…eighteen.”

  Dooney frowned. “I don’t usually start whooping ’em until they’re at least twenty-one. How old is your mama?”

  “Oomph, she already got a man to do that for her on the regular. You’re a trip,” she said, sucking her gold teeth. “My boss is calling me. I gotta go.” The upset cashier closed the sliding window and reluctantly returned to her duties.

  Dior was shivering near Dooney’s truck. “Heeello, I’m over here freezing and you’re over there playing Sesame Street with high schoolers. Dooney, I want my wings,” she ranted.

  Wheeling the car to the right, Dooney parked it with the doors opened. He hopped out, staring at Dior the entire time. “Here, I’ma give you this, Gemini, and I’ma give you something else to take with you. I just came from Chandelle’s. Uh-huh, and she’s all jacked up about you bringing in her old dude on a deal to get her drunk. I heard she stood up in church and told all of those nosy heffas her business too. From now on, you are gonna do all that you can to get her and Marvin back together, all that you can.” Dior scowled with her hip cocked to the side defiantly. “Show out again if you want to. I’ma tell mama!”

  “What? Nah, you ain’t gonna tell Billie nothing because there’s nothing to tell. Chandelle invited that man back to her spot on her own.”

  “That may be so, but it shouldn’t have ever happened,” Dooney charged. “Keep thinking I don’t know about you ditching Chandelle and that other thing, the one you don’t want her to know about.” He didn’t have additional dirt on her, but his bluff was solid. Dior promi
sed to go above and beyond to square things between Chandelle and her Marvin, whatever it took at whatever cost.

  29

  Yesterdays and Whatnots

  When Marvin woke up on Tuesday morning, he yawned and grinned. It was the first time since hearing Chandelle broadcast their marital woes in front of God and 1,700 other people that he wasn’t shackled to a grueling headache banging the insides of his head. He couldn’t believe she’d make a shameless public plea for prayers, but he secretly applauded her, after sneaking out of the service before the last amen. It was as if the words that went from Chandelle’s mouth to God’s ears had put a hex on him. The travel-size bottle of Excedrin he’d kept in his pocket served as a constant reminder when it rattled with every painful stride. Marvin had no clue what caused the block-party speakers in his brain to cease, but he thanked God regardless for seeing to it that someone pulled the plug.

  Marvin whistled a happy tune as he showered, then hit the door to meet the day straight on. He didn’t have to examine his daily planner for the first conference of the morning. It had been on his schedule for a week. Although he couldn’t have guessed it then, breakfast at his favorite establishment promised to be one of the best ever.

  The hostess at Java Hut greeted him with a cordial smile. She stated that someone was waiting at the corner booth. Marvin searched the busy breakfast den with an eager eye. “Yes, I see,” he told her. “Thank you.” His excitement grew as he approached an extremely familiar scene. “Super Dave,” Marvin announced gleefully. “I see you still can’t keep your nose out of the newspaper?”

  “Morning, Marvin,” the older man said, glancing at Marvin’s charcoal-colored designer business suit. “I’ve got to keep track of who to be scared of next. I can’t watch the TV news. It’s way too violent for me.”

  Laughing, Marvin removed his coat. “Sorry I’m running late.”

  “Nonsense, I’m just running early,” Dave answered, as he folded his periodical in half and then again. “You’re starting to look more like your daddy every day. He wore his pants high on his waist too. Uh-huh, before his gut got in the way.”

  “Hmmm, you’ve never told me that before, Dave,” said Marvin, glancing down to see just how he was wearing his slacks.

  “That’s because I ain’t ever seen you in a suit of clothes since you’ve been fully grown. You’ve been smartly casual or in that rusty blue shirt they had you selling stoves in.” Dave took a measured sip from his coffee cup.

  Marvin snickered, sensing his friend was picking at him for a reason. “You know I sold more than stoves at Appliance World.”

  “But that was the only thing worth a plug nickel in that whole store,” he replied. “I ought to know. My renters busted up all of the other appliances excepting for the stoves. I’m glad you got canned from that gig, or else I would still have too many irons in the fire, no pun intended.”

  “You sure?” Marvin asked, with his brow raised. He was waiting for the other shoe to fall.

  “I’m just being ornery because it’s my day off and I’m looking into the face of change but don’t recognize too much nowadays,” Dave went on to say while the waitress made her rounds and took Marvin’s food order. “You might not know this, but I don’t usually do business with black folk. Don’t laugh now,” he warned, as Marvin chuckled at his remark. “See, it used to mean something to give your money to one of your own. Back then, you knew they’d work until the job was done and, in turn, pass the money along to another fella’s operation in the same neighborhood. Shoot, it’s hard to find a Negro nowadays who stands behind his work. All they seem to do these days is get the money and pass the buck to the next fella, who wants twice as much to fix what the last knucklehead tore up trying to.”

  After Marvin studied Dave’s demeanor a while longer, he came out with a burning question. “Are you sorry I helped you sell four of your rental properties and now you’re feeling like a man with too little on his plate instead of too much?”

  “Everybody hates a smart butt,” was his answer. “You might want to remember that, Marvin.”

  “Dave, you’ve got more money than you need from the bar proceeds alone. Don’t forget, I’ve seen your books. We’ve made the best use of your mutual funds, haven’t we?”

  “Yeah, but that’s beside the point,” he grunted like a stubborn child.

  “What point?”

  “The point that I’ve been avoiding since you sat down to this here table. Marvin, I’m afraid of having nothing to do. I’m supposed to take a vacation, one of them cruises where you pay up-front, then eat and drink all you want.” Dave watched him raise his hands as if to ask what was wrong with that. “You’re young still so I won’t hold it against you. Ignorance, boy, it’ll hide and then spring up like ragweed when you least expect it.” Dave flagged for the waitress to come over. “Miss, could you please check around in the back to see if y’all got one of them dunce hats, the real tall kind, for my young friend here.” She tossed a glance at Marvin, then humored Dave.

  “That’s why he’s hanging around with you. I’m sure you can smarten him up a mite,” she teased.

  Marvin agreed with her wholeheartedly. “No doubt that’s what he has in mind, ma’am.” She moved on to genuine customer needs and left the fellows to themselves.

  “I’ll give you a heads-up on how it is to be an aging mature man,” Dave said, to get Marvin’s ear. “Most of my friends are dead and buried. Most of my teeth have been installed. Most of my body parts act up for the sake of it. Loving a pretty woman usually cost about a hundred bucks, that’s in advance,” he clarified, “and when you’ve got more money than time, Marvin, it just don’t feel no kinda right. I’ve saved, made sound investments, and watched my bankers retire, one right after the other. I’ve seen their sons grow fat raising their kids. And I’ve seen a few other things, too, but you’re not quite old enough for me to get into those with you. I will say that it cost a whole lot more than one hundred bucks, though.” That brought a grin to his lips he didn’t mind sharing before continuing. “Yeah, boy, good times. Then you wake up one day, and if you’re lucky, you can start crossing off the things you wrote down on your list so long ago you forgot where you put it. I’ll say this and move on, take a man’s woman away, you break his heart, but if he loses his drive to get up in the morning, you’ve broken his spirit. Getting that new job didn’t affect only you, I didn’t plan on getting this far in life and watching the sunset all by my lonesome. All of a sudden, I’m getting tired of standing behind that bar six days a week and going home to a microwave and television reruns. I want to do a lot more, just not by myself.”

  Marvin looked into Dave’s eyes, seeing something he hadn’t before. The man was scared, scared of growing old and alone. “I’m sorry, Dave. I didn’t know how much it meant for a man to stay busy. I’m spending all of my time trying to build something and that’s all I know. Nobody told me what to do after it all pays off.”

  Dave rolled his eyes in utter embarrassment. “That’s because you already had the other part figured out. I told your daddy I was gonna look after you as much as you’d let me. Don’t make me out to be no liar, son.”

  “Okay, I’m listening. I’ve been listening, but you’ve been talking about your life, not mine,” Marvin said, missing the point yet again.

  Pretending to search frantically under the table for something heavy to hit Marvin with, Dave pounded his fist on the table. “Where’s the lady I sent for that dunce hat? Marvin, I’ve been flapping my gums tryna tell you the best way I know how not to end up like me. Sure, I’ve got money, hand over fist, and I’m doubly blessed because I’ve still got my looks. But neither of them will do me a bit of good without the right woman to be glad about both of them with me.”

  Finally, Marvin understood Dave’s roundabout way of warning him against making a dreadful mistake, having no one to witness his life with and his successes. He leaned back in the booth, staring into space. “I wasn’t going to bring this up, b
ut I almost killed a man, the one I caught coming out of Chandelle’s about three in the morning.” His eyes glassed over just as they did the night he decked Tony. The pain had resurfaced.

  “I’m sho’ sorry to hear that,” Dave said matter-of-factly, seemingly not that shocked at the news. “What’d Chandelle have to say about it?”

  “What could she say?” Marvin grunted. “The dude was buttoning up his shirt when I knocked on the door.”

  “See, there’s two things wrong with that scene. You had to knock on the door of a house that belongs to you, and you didn’t stick around to get the whole story when you should have. I know it looks bad, but things aren’t always what they appear to be.”

  Marvin thought back to the hoax Dior ran on him. “You can say that again,” he sighed wearily.

  “Okay, you know I will,” Dave said, to add levity to a tense situation. “If you can’t come and go as you please in your own home, what were you doing on her lawn at all times of the night? Did she put you out for this other fella?”

  “Naw, Dave, ain’t nobody put me out of nothing,” he insisted adamantly.

  “Uh-oh, look at your chest swelling up. Did you get all ugly in the face when you had it out with the other cat? Don’t tell me he came to the door wearing your clothes? I heard of stories like that before.”

  “Dave, you make it impossible for me to tell you how it is,” Marvin fussed. “I didn’t jump in your pot when you were cooking, did I?”

  “You better not have either,” Dave quipped. “I’ll cut you.” He went to checking his pockets for something sharp, since he couldn’t find anything heavy earlier. “I’m old. I ain’t got much to lose.”

  Marvin’s entrée arrived but he’d lost his appetite. “Ma’am, could you put that in a to-go box please. Thank you.” He pursed his lips and peered across the table. “Impossible” was the only word he could think of to describe how he felt about coming out of this conversation without wanting to strangle Dave.