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By Root 232 0

have done exactly that, but today I already had plans. As I walked through the corridor, I was constantly bumped by hordes of people heading to the revolving doors. I glanced at my gold Movado; it was ten after five. I navigated to the line of elevators that carried the workers up and down every day. I stepped aside as more than a dozen business people in suits pushed out of one of them. I had been in the building earlier to set up a project with a group of engineers from our office. It was an extensive project that would require long, tedious hours. It was similar to one we had done on Staten Island a few weeks ago. During that visit, I had met one of the secretaries, Donna August, who had been with the company for five years. Brian Louis, a tall, dark coworker from Brooklyn, had made the introduction. He had spent at least forty-five minutes of the first hour trying to talk to Donna. I paid very little attention to them. Brian was single and the world was his oyster. Marriage somewhat limits the playing field so I had to take a different path with women, a path that denoted understanding. Admitting being married to women who interested me didn’t make a damn difference in determining whether or not we fucked. My pretty face was all they needed to see and it was on.

Brian and I had eaten lunch together almost every day since I had come on board at Reason Consulting, the largest black engineering firm in New York. Engineers at Reason were not hired based on their résumés, but from recommendations by one of the company’s board members. My father-in-law had gotten me employment within a few months after the wedding. Over lunch at Au Bon Pain, Brian told me that Donna was dripping for me. She was “dripping for me” after a brief hello but this was not extraordinary. Numerous women had yanked off their panties the first time I had ever walked into their apartments. That’s the life of a pretty boy.

Brian was cool. There wasn’t a jealous bone in his body. He had been feeling her but she was feeling only me. She jumped up and shook my hand after I walked into her office and over to her desk. I must tell you that I was very impressed. She was around five-nine with a dark complexion and a body almost any man would crawl on his knees after. Almost any man, but not me; I don’t get down like that. I had fucked women that men would have killed themselves over. During our conversation, she told me to hold on. She needed to file an important document. When she turned around, she was a black man’s butter; all a man wanted to do was spread it.

I showed the security guard my temporary ID to gain easy access back into the building. I had left the building at 2:00 P. M. to go and pick up my son, Emerald, from school. I didn’t have to do that, but whenever I got a break at work, I tried to spend as much time with him as possible. My grandmother and my son were my only true loves.

I stepped into the empty elevator and pressed the button for the 25th floor; anxious to pick up where we had left off.

It was approximately five-fifteen when I knocked on the office door. Donna opened the door, led me to a couch in front of her desk, and asked me to wait. A few minutes passed and a man I hadn’t seen before came in and spoke to her briefly. He had a large Kenneth Cole briefcase in his right hand and, upon further inspection, I noticed a gold handcuff was keeping the briefcase in place. Then he left.

“I’m so wound up,” Donna said as she slumped down in her chair.

“That’s work. Five days a week, two days to think about it, then five days back at work,” I replied.

“You’re very beautiful,” she said with an edge of seduction in her voice.

That comment had gotten me into and out of trouble from the time I was old enough to remember. Sometimes it seemed like I could get away with murder. My looks were the result of a crime perpetrated on my mother when she was incarcerated at the Delvin Correctional Facility in upstate New York. Three white corrections officers had raped her. My mother took her own life shortly after my birth.

“I know,” I said, smiling.