Page 3 of His Third Wife

“Fine. Well, where’s your mother? Where’s Tyrian?”

“Mama said she’ll meet us at the courthouse,” Jamison explained. “She didn’t want to risk blowing my cover.”

Val smiled at this lie. She knew Jamison’s mother didn’t like her. His mother actually told Val herself just days after Val started working as Jamison’s assistant. She’d caught Val and Jamison having sex in the bathroom at his office. She didn’t even leave. Didn’t blink at the scene of blushing flesh and scattered office attire. She stood there like a pillar, glowering until Jamison had run away like a little boy. Val tried to be more defiant. It wasn’t her mother. She excused herself out of the stall and went to the mirror to fix her lipstick. Mama Taylor walked up behind her and said two short sentences to Val’s reflection in the mirror: “I smell your shit. More like diarrhea.”

“What about Tyrian?” Val asked Jamison again.

“My son’s with his mother.”

“He’s not coming to the wedding?”

“No.”

You give a man everything. All of you. Out on a table. Everything. Appetizers. Sides. Drinks. An entrée. And dessert. Just everything you have to give.

For this, you ask for something. A small thing.

You get nothing.

I was tired of getting nothing. Nothing from every man. I’d bend like this. I’d turn like that. They’d notice and smile. Follow me for a little while. And then, I was alone again. Back and broken. Worse off than I was before. Poor. And black. And a woman. And I don’t need to have gone to college to know that shit ain’t fair.

So, you’re damn right, when I met Jamison I was tired of getting nothing. But I gave him everything anyway. I wore high leopard-print heels and shit. I dusted my nipples in Ecstasy. I fried chicken in my thong in the middle of the night. Whatever he wanted. He noticed. He smiled.

Then I asked for something.

He got real quiet. That man-not-answering-the-phone-or-email quiet.

That’s when I realized I wasn’t being left with nothing this time. I was taking what I wanted.

It’s funny what a man will do to keep what he has. When I told Jamison I was pregnant, his first question was how far along I was. I knew what that meant. I lied. Fifteen weeks. Too late for an abortion. He told me to take his credit card and pick out an engagement ring. Mr. Mayor had to marry me to keep everything he has. And that’s no trouble for me. I wanted to marry him because of everything he has. Because now I have it, too.

The bride and groom took the long drive to downtown Forsyth in separate cars.

Mama Fee sat beside Val in the Jaguar trying to decide how to say what she needed to say and ask what she needed to know. What she wanted to say was, “This is crazy! This is ridiculous!” What she wanted to ask was, “Why are we in separate cars? Why hasn’t your fiancé spoken to me?” But seemingly having her thoughts read, at every peak of possibility of internal eruption, Val would offer statements that made any claims or interrogations irrelevant in her new world: “Jamison likes to think in the car. He likes to ride alone.... I love driving my new car. . . . I don’t mind driving myself around.... Soon, I’ll have a driver anyway. . . . He can’t wait to meet you. . . . Don’t worry, Mama.... This ain’t Memphis. . . . This is Atlanta. . . . Things are done differently here. . . .”

Jamison’s new assistant, a white boy with strawberry-blond hair and emeralds for eyes, met the two cars in the parking lot at the courthouse, whisked Jamison into the back of the building one way and Val and Mama Fee into the back of the building another way nearly thirty minutes later.

So much rushing. So little talking. Mama Fee pretended she was having trouble walking just so Val would have to hold her hand.

“I love you, Val Denise. I want the best for you. Always have,” Mama Fee said softly to Val just before the assistant pulled them into a holding room where Jamison was waiting on his cell phone.

Val smiled, kissed her mother on the cheek and let go of her hand.

Jamison was barking commands at the someone on the phone and signaling for his assistant to seat Val and her mother. He forced his free hand into his pocket and stood tall with his shoulders perfectly squared. The stance announced that he was a man handling business.

“Tell Darth the contract isn’t negotiable. He can bring anyone he wants to the table,” Jamison said. “I won’t move. The people of this city won’t move. That park isn’t going anywhere. Darth will have to speak to me first.”

Val took a glass of water the assistant was holding and handed it to Jamison herself. She was grinning at his display. Something in his tone, his force, vibrated to her ankles and made her head feel cloudy.

Jamison hung up the phone and slid the precious thing into his pocket.

“Work,” he said to Val before turning to his assistant. “Leaf, call Senator Green. Tell him I’ll take him up on his offer for drinks tonight. Tell him I’ll expect one of his top cigars. None of that cheap shit.”

“Of course, Mayor Taylor,” Leaf said, clicking out of the room with his phone already in his hand.

“I’m so sorry,” Jamison said, suddenly focusing his attention on Mama Fee. “All this work this morning and I haven’t had a chance to make your acquaintance.”

“Oh, you had a chance at the house, but you were in such a rush that—” Mama Fee tried before Val cut off what was sure to be some tongue lashing.

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