Tears on a Sunday Afternoon - Michael Presley [3]
“Wait for me,” she said. “I have to clean up this mess and make one phone call.” She started straightening the desk. “I think this is yours.” She wrapped the used condom in tissues and handed it to me.
“I nearly forgot that.” I placed it in my pocket. “A slip-up on my part.”
Donna grinned mischievously. “If you were an NBA player, I might have kept it.”
“In that case, it could either make you rich or dead.”
“Yeah, I forgot it’s not the sixties.” She picked up the phone and dialed a number quickly. She spoke briefly in a language I didn’t understand. “My husband is from South Africa.”
“Speaking in tongues,” I said, and sat down on the couch. It was 6:30.
She glanced down at the floor and bent down. “Damn! This is the third time this week this has happened.” She threw the bits of broken glass from the picture frame into the small garbage pail and placed it back under her desk. “These ninety-nine cent stores are getting rich off me replacing frames.”
I waited for her to finish and we took the elevator down to the first floor. I didn’t know why she had wanted me to wait for her nor did I care.
“Good night, Mrs. August,” a potbellied security guard with a heavy Grenadian accent said as we exited the building. When we got outside, there was a tall, attractive, blonde waiting for us. From the look they gave each other, I surmised that Donna wasn’t finished for the evening.
“Thank you,” Donna said and waved to me as she went to join the white lady, who eyed me up and down before she and Donna slipped into a black limousine waiting at the curb.
I walked two blocks south, then one east, which took me to the entrance of the Carton Bar. I went inside and, as usual, there was a combination of suits and casuals. I sat at the bar and the bartender came over.
“Hennessy on the rocks,” I said.
I swiveled the chair around so that I could gaze at the rest of the people who, like me, found themselves needing a drink at seven in the evening. To my left was a white man about fifty-five years old in a postal uniform, sipping on a drink that was as clear as water. I didn’t think it was water because that would mean he had to drink a lot of those little glasses before he satisfied his thirst. As if on cue, he tapped his glass and the bartender gave him a refill of what turned out to be vodka on the way to bringing my drink. A little bit farther down from him were two white boys who barely looked to be of legal drinking age. They had a pitcher of beer and about six shot glasses in front of them. They seemed to be having a good time. I looked over at the tables away from the bar and noticed a couple lost in each other’s eyes or possibly simply lost in New York. Farther left from them were two young black women? my guess, neither was a day over twenty-five. They both had identical hairstyles, long golden weaves that the singer Beyonce had made so popular lately. They kept looking at me and giggling. I wondered if they were working girls. Maybe I would break a promise to myself and pay for the warmth. I could have easily made a phone call, but tonight I was in the mood for something new. I watched as one of them held what I thought was a mozzarella cheese stick, which she twirled around like a baton. I turned back and took a long sip of my drink.
I had recently turned thirty-five and had been married for four years. I had a four-year-old son and I was one of the few Blacks living in the exclusive Mill Basin section of Brooklyn. Neither the money nor