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“I love you too. And I’ve enjoyed you too. You don’t have to thank me. It ain’t like it’s a big sacrifice to be with you. ’Cause I love you.”
“Sometimes I wonder about that.”
“What’d you wonder, if I love you?”
“No silly, I know you love me. Or you’ve been giving an academy winning performance all these years. What I wonder about is that sacrifice thing. You always got something to do or some place you gotta be or something. I can’t remember the last time we spent this much time together. And I like it.”
“It has been a minute. Maybe we’re just hitti
ng our stride.”
“No, baby, you’re just hitting your stride. I’ve been in this groove waiting for you for years now. So what did you have to tell me?”
“I’m probably gonna have to go to San Diego sometime next week. I was hoping you’d come with me. I know you got the time; you never take off.”
“That’s why I got time, ’cause I don’t just take off. I’m saving my time ’cause I wanna take one or two weeks for us to go to Rio or wherever.”
“So you are thinking about Rio, huh. I knew it.”
“All right, all right, so I have been thinking about it. But that don’t mean I made up my mind.”
“But you are thinking about it. That’s what’s important. That you’re thinking about it.”
“Whatever. I haven’t been home for Christmas in years. I miss Christmas with my family. We’ve had some nice Christmas’s the last few years. I had burned out on the whole Christmas thing. And ”
“You and your sister fell out that last time. That’s what you burned out on, was Connie all up in your face.”
“Yeah, that’s what started it; that and some other things. But I started feeling like it was just a yearend clearance sale so the stores can reduce their inventory before the year ends.”
“You’ve been talking to Tee, haven’t you?”
“But he’s right, at least about that. Christmas ain’t about God or religion or any of that. It’s just about spending money. But that ain’t it. Christmas is about the family. Getting together, having fun just enjoying each other. It’s laughing at old pictures and telling old stories and listening to my Uncle Willie get drunk and tell us all about how that woman did him wrong.”
“Back in ’69, the year she did me wrong. I kinda miss his ‘Have you seen her, tell me have you seen her’ routine, too.”
“See, you miss it, too.”
“Yeah, your family is my family.” I lost both my parents to cancer. My father died when I was sixteen and my mother eight years ago. After my mother died, I gravitated toward Angelique’s family. Growing up, we never had a big family Christmas like Angelique’s family does. My mother was an only child and my father’s brothers were spread out all over the country. They only got together once or twice when I was very young. Me and my sister called each other for Christmas, but neither of us were that big on the whole thing, either. Maybe this year I would invite her to spend Christmas with Angelique’s family. “I’m glad you changed your mind.”
“Yeah, me, too. It’s time me and Connie made peace, anyway. So, I thought we’d get there Christmas Eve, and I’d stay there until New Year’s Eve. You don’t have to stay; you can go back after Christmas. I know you’d be bored there.”
But it would keep me out of trouble, I thought.
“But I would come back and we could spend New Year’s together. That sound good to you?”
“Sounds like a real plan to me.”
Chapter Four
Chris
By the time I opened my eyes and looked over at the clock, it was after three in the afternoon. The sun was already coming up by the time I got here with Ebony, one of the dancers we had at the poker game the night before. She didn’t have a ride because the dancer she came with left with Jack. I told her if she didn’t mind waiting I would take her home. On the way, she said she was hungry and I offered to cook her breakfast; and to my surprise, she accepted my invitation.
When we got here, I made breakfast for us. While we ate, she told me that last night was her first, and probably last, night as a stripper. She thought that it would be an easy way for her to make money. “Which it was. But that just ain’t me. I mean, most of your friends were nice, but there were a few that I practically had to fight off. And one that I did have to wrestle with. He was waiting for me when I came out of the bathroom. He dragged me back in there and tried to rape me,” Ebony told me.
“How you get away from him?”
“I kicked him in the nuts and ran out of there.”
