Page 31 of His Last Wife

“What, girl? You’re looking at me like I’m a dead man walking,” Chuck said, looking perplexed, but entertained, by Val’s reaction.

Val wasn’t exactly looking at a dead man walking: It was the DA walking, as in the district attorney walking, as in Charles Brown, who was sitting beside her, calling himself Chuck.

Her eyes were wide as she tried to figure out why he was talking to her. Surely, he knew who she was. They’d been in each other’s company on too many occasions for him not to—when she was married to the mayor and after. She was about to smile and call him by his proper name to make it clear that they both knew who they were running into at the bar, in a hidden lounge when folks their age were at home avoiding sex with their spouses and praying their children didn’t wake up before their favorite reality show went off, but then Chuck grinned and looked into her eyes like he was meeting someone new.

“I’m not trying to scare you. I only want to make you smile. Maybe we should begin again.” He held out his hand and Val noticed him kind of step back on one heel a bit, almost falling. “I’m Chuck,” he slurred out that time.

Val shook his hand and felt a wobbly grip. She glanced at his empty drink glass on the bar.

“And you are?” he pushed. He wouldn’t let go of Val’s hand and peered down at it like he was about to lick it.

“I’m—” Val looked into his eyes and searched for any recognition. There was nothing there. Just drunken commotion. “I’m Cinnamon,” she let out, though she wasn’t yet sure why she was lying or where she’d go with the lie. What she did know was that the man leering down at her through glassy eyes was a known drunk and skirt chaser, who’d divorced his first black wife after she gained a limp following a stroke and then married the state attorney general’s blond, blue-eyed daughter to secure his selection for district attorney. All of that and he was the main man behind the machine keeping Kerry behind bars. And, together, that made Val mad as hell. She felt something wicked needling her thoughts.

“Cinnamon?” Chuck laughed a little too loud and the bartender came over to gather his empty glass from the bar. “That’s not a name, baby; that’s a flavor.”

“Actually, it’s a spice,” Val said.

“Okay! So, you’re telling me your mama named you after a spice? Like that’s your real name? ’Cause if it is, I love it.” He whispered his last line in Val’s ear and his breath reeked of cheap cognac and maybe a little marijuana.

“She sure did,” Val said confidently. She looked at the table of white women and they seemed to be following their exchange and whispered to each other as they guessed at what was happening.

“Hmm . . . I think I need to see some ID to prove that.” He shot Val a sharp, accusatory side eye.

“ID? Why would I show you my ID? You could be a secret agent, working for the government, or just a thief,” Val said. “You a thief?”

“No, Cinnamon. I’m just a hardworking brother out here looking for a queen to spoil.”

“Really? What a coincidence. I’m out here looking for a king to spoil me. Can you spoil me, Chuck?” Val licked her lips and looked right into Chuck’s eyes without saying a word for fifteen seconds. She saw the blood flush out of his face as it flooded down to his private parts.

She knew his type well. Probably came from an upper-middle-class family. Grew up in a neighborhood where azaleas framed manicured lawns and bikes cluttered the sidewalks. She could look at his thick neck and tell he was likely chubby then. The scars on his cheeks were from bad teenage acne. Those straight teeth were the result of years in thick, complicated braces. Nothing had been cute about him. But he was smart. Always smart. Maybe too smart and in his head, because he couldn’t get any girls and only had two good friends who were just as unattractive and nerdy as he. He masturbated right through high school. Went to Morehouse. Lost a little weight. Got the braces off and hormones took care of the acne. And then he became the man—the ladies’ man. He probably only went to law school to keep the attention coming. To get the girls. And when he got the one he married, she was so beautiful he felt lucky. Then she had a stroke at thirty-five and a limp that reminded him of his past.

An hour or so later and Val had used this catalog of inklings to draw her male suitor to a cozy, make-out couch at the back of the lounge. It was after one AM and the place was clearing out, as the reality of work in the morning made ghosts of the would-be partygoers who’d long ago accepted defeat and willingly walked to their cars to head home. The only folks left in corners and tucked-away in the place were either new couples who were negotiating an evening of casual sex or drunks waiting for their alcohol to wear off. The DJ had switched the nineties hip-hop music to techno drivel that sent inebriated minds swirling.

Chuck was whispering every bad line Val had ever heard in her ear. It was actually laughable. He’d mentioned wanting to get married. And planning his “next” trip to Dubai. He’d dropped some hints at his salary and even threw in how “Magnum Trojan condoms were too small” for him. These were all things that were supposed to matter to Val. She was supposed to imagine that she was the wife he was seeking, dream of her trip with him to Dubai, imagine what he could buy her with that salary, and what he could do to her with his big old penis.

All of this wore Val out psychologically, as she wondered how he’d ever gotten any women with his weak games, but still, she smiled at him, played with the fat at the back of his neck seductively, and let her spandex dress inch up a little bit more each time she crossed, uncrossed, and re-crossed her legs.

He placed his hand on her thigh and licked her ear.

At one point Chuck laughed and said he knew who Val was. He’d seen her somewhere. He knew who she was. Her name “wasn’t no Cinnamon!” He took a sip from a new cup of alcohol that promised there was no way he’d be driving himself home that night.

Val couldn’t tell if he was serious, playing, or just drunk.

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nbsp; She was ready to come clean and curse him out for feeling her up, but then he said, “You used to work at the Pink Pony. Baddest sister in the strip club. Knew I recognized you.” He looked at her waistline. “Got those butterflies tattooed around your waist. I’ll never forget that shit. I remember you.”

Val laughed and nodded along, though she’d never danced at the Pink Pony and despised the contradictions in butterfly tattoos.

Chuck leaned into her. “Can you show me those tattoos?” he asked softly.

Sitting there with his hot breath and sweaty hands on her, Val just couldn’t believe this was the man who was in charge of prosecuting the city’s criminals. He was just a man. Fragile like any other. Stupid. Blind. Troubled. Maybe like her.

Val put her head back on the couch and let him slide his hand between her thighs. Her drinks were wearing off. She wondered what time it was. If Mama Fee was up in the window, waiting for her to come home. Then Val remembered why she was there. What drove her out of the house, same as it had on so many other nights.

Chuck was saying something stupid, so she looked at him and smiled again.

She wondered what had driven him out that night too. And how in the world God saw fit for the two of them to be out that night together. What were the odds that this drunken man—of all of the drunken men in the city—would come chirping in her ear? Mama Fee would call it àyànmô, saying it was both of their destinies or fate to be there at that exact time and in that place together. But why? The drunk and high DA who was so wasted he couldn’t recognize the dead mayor’s ex-wife as he tried to fondle her vagina? And who was Val? What was her role? The dead mayor’s ex-wife, who was trying to get his first wife out of jail and had the DA’s hand locked between her thighs . . . literally?

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