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“Hi, Mike, it’s Felicia.”
“How was work?”
“It was slow.”
“I know that makes the time pass slowly.”
“It did.” Felicia paused. “Were you busy?”
“No. What’s up?” I asked even though I knew what she was calling for. And here again, who was I to deny her?
“Can I come and see you?”
“See you when you get here,” I said and hung up.
And that is how I spent my first week in The Bahamas. Between fuckin’ Cortisha and Felicia, I barely left the suite.
Chapter Ten
As much as I enjoyed my first week in The Bahamas, I did want to do something, other than have sex with Felicia and Cortisha, I mean. It wasn’t like I had any intention of stopping; the two of them were excellent company.
“Ain’t you worried about fuckin’ one, while the others at work?” Bobby asked when I talked to him on the phone.
“Nope.”
And it wasn’t like I didn’t leave the room at all. I ate the majority of my meals in the hotel’s restaurants and I did my drinking in the bars, but what surprised me was how much time I spent on the beach.
Just standing there.
Looking out at the water.
What surprised me more was that I wasn’t consumed with thoughts of Vickie. It was easy not to think about it while I was consuming Felicia and Cortisha, but alone on the beach was something different.
In the months since it happened, I had gone through my own stages of grief. The shock of seeing her lying there, dropping to my knees and shaking her, hoping desperately that she was alive. The guilt and the anger I felt because of what I had let happen. I had worked my way through it by killing people. Now, I was just trying to accept that it happened and move forward because I don’t ever think I’ll be able to let it go. I knew I had to move forward because when you get right down to it, killing was bad for business. So, it was time to move forward. I just wasn’t ready to go home yet.
So, when I wasn’t fuckin’ Cortisha or Felicia, I spent quite a bit of time alone on the beach.
As I stood there, I felt at peace, at peace with myself for maybe the first time in my life. Right here, in this space, there was no place that I needed to be, nobody I was responsible to, or for. Nobody to kill, and no need to worry about being killed.
Peace.
The longer I stood there, the more I got caught up; not only in the relaxing calm and peace of the water, but in its power. And in that moment, it occurred to me that it is the personification of strong and powerful, peaceful and calm, all at the same time. That’s what I needed to be, strong and powerful but calm and in control at all times. No more of this being controlled by bouts of anger and rage.
“That’s how dumb sons-of-bitches make stupid mistakes that gets people killed,” I remembered Uncle Tony telling me.
I had let Vickie’s death control me; gladly allowed it to make me do things that I knew I shouldn’t, but did anyway.
Why?
Because I was mad.
For a minute, I wondered how many other bad decisions I had made, but then I thought about Wanda and knew that even if I did make a bad decision, she would have my back. Unless, of course, her judgment had been just as impaired as mine. I laughed as I thought that we would have to depend on Bobby to be our voice of reason.
Knowing that I could always depend on both of them as I always have, I resolved myself that I was going to put the matter of guilt in a box and pack it away someplace where I would never feel them again.
“Man up,” I said aloud. “And put this shit behind you.” I turned to go back to the room. “But I still ain’t ready to go home yet.”
Since I had paid him in advance, Super called me every day to see if I wanted to go anywhere. He told me since I didn’t go anywhere that first week, that this week was on the house.
