Chapter 1:
I tried my best to not allow the
drama unfolding in front of me spoil my warm memories of Mom and Dad.
“Bitch, I’ma kill you!”
I blinked, shook my head, told
myself that that drama couldn’t possibly be real. While my eyes were clenched,
I heard a crash that vibrated the floor beneath my feet.
Before that fight had broken out, I’d
been cruising memory lane.
I’d imagined my parents, saw them clear
as day. I’d watched them, felt the warm memories, remembered the love they had
for each other, a love so strong that I always felt it too. I’d recalled the
advice they’d both given me:
Sean,
aspire to be the kind of man your father is.
Sean,
if you find a girl like your mother, hold on to her, son.
It felt as if they were in the room amongst
us. They were glorious visions, snapshots from yesteryear, two silhouettes
dancing, smiling, laughing, re-living the love they once shared, a union that thrived
until the ground opened beneath them, leaving them standing on opposite sides
of eternity.
Now, here they were, together
again, together but very different from each other. Dad was in full focus,
dressed in a black tuxedo, looking very much as he did when I saw him earlier
that day.
Mama was ethereal, glowing, like a
manifestation of Dad’s love reflecting back at his smiling face. She was young, beautiful, and perfect, how I’d
imagined her back when they first met, just like he always told me she was.
Then a woman screamed as she crashed
atop a banquet table. Then the women seated at that table screamed as well.
My nostalgic memories wobbled and
disappeared like an old movie on an even older TV set that had just been pre-empted
by the business end of a sledgehammer.
“My dress! You fucking whore!”
The partiers looked back and forth, alternating
their open-mouthed expressions between the warring hellcats in the dark at the
back of the room, and me, under the spotlight, at the front of it, as if that public
scene was somehow my private issue. I
jumped on the stage and tried to take command of the situation. My requests
over the microphone for someone to break up the fight were met with shrugs. I
adjusted my tie, then offered nervous reassurances to the room as I watched the
other men roll their eyes and shove their empty hands deep into their deeper
pockets.
I climbed back down from the stage
and asked Janet, my date, to stay put, out of harm's way. Then I bumped my way
through the crowd, towards the commotion.
At first, I’d assumed that Jackie, Sandra and Monique, my three
loud-mouthed friends with whom Janet was chatting before she came to dance with
me, had started a fight, but I couldn’t quite tell.
Those three were signed to the guest
list under my name. If any one of them was mixed up in this mess, it would be a
problem, an embarrassment which could have long consequences. There’s a saying
that goes, one monkey don’t stop no show,
but three monkeys is a show.
Most of the radio station’s staff
and management were in the room, as were many of the company’s corporate big
wigs. Fate followed me through the crowd, twisting through that throng,
slithering along behind me, her voice in my ear, delightfully mocking me,
whispering condemnation in a voice dripping with condescension.
Don’t
these types of things always happen to you, Sean?
Don’t
you just wish you never even bothered, Sean?
I ignored the voices in my head when
I saw my three guests. Jackie, wearing a dress which draped her thick curves in
thin, form-fitting red material, stood to my left; Monique stood next to her
wearing a greedy expression, with a drinking straw connecting her large,
puckering lips to the bottom of a large margarita glass as she slurped loudly. Sandra
stood behind them, wearing a gray pantsuit, the creases in her slacks matching
the creases in her brow.
Jackie smacked her lips. “See, Sean?
Can’t take some Negroes nowhere.”
Then I heard another crash, and
another scream.
The crowd parted and allowed me to
finally reach that cat fight. Fate spoke again, whispered questions I couldn’t
answer, made accusations I couldn’t defend. I did what I always did. I ignored fate.
Then I
saw two beautiful women grappling like a pair of sumo wrestlers, each trying to
out-maneuver the other, each trying to flip the other, pin her down and make
her cry for her mama. These two women
had no doubt started the evening off as stunning as most of the rest of the
dressed-to-impress crowd had, but now there was weave, broken high heels, large
fake eyelashes, and contents of purses strewn about while they tried to
dismantle each other.
“Oww! Bitch let go of my gattdamn
hair!”
“Bitch, I’ma snatch yo trifling,’
cheap weave-wearin’ ass bald!”
In moments, I watched a furious
volley of windmills, expletives and feminine bravado go back and forth, along
with a record-setting number of times the word bitch was used to sign their insults to each other, as if they were
auditioning a new line of Fuck You
greetings from Hallmark.
Never understood how it is that
women are so deeply offended at being called bitches, yet it’s always the first thing they like to call each
other in anger.
Women.
One of the two hellcats glared in my
direction. I knew her. The other one raised her head to see what had caught her
enemy’s attention. I knew her too.
The two women were familiar because
I’d met them each, each when my best friend Eric paraded her around me like a
hunter showing off a prized pelt that he’d nailed, then nailed to the wall
above the fireplace of some log cabin man cave.
Eric had told me earlier that they
were both going to show up looking to party with him, each knowing about the
other, but each unaware the other would be there. He’d asked me to keep them on
separate ends of the party until he could get there, said that it was the least
his best friend could do for him. I declined to be his referee. I told him that it was a corporate event, and
that we station employees had all been told that the actions of anyone on the
guest list under our names would reflect upon us directly. Fair or not, that was
the company’s mandate, to absolve themselves of any liability in the event of
drama just like this.
Eric expressed his disappointment,
said I was right, said that the company policy was something he could
understand, said that even though their names remained on the final guest list,
that he would see to it that their invitations would be rescinded.
Apparently, he changed his mind.
Predictably, both women arrived,
each setting her sights on the other, each resolving to give ugly memories to
her beautiful competitor.
Fate whispered her mocking
recommendations. I cursed fate.
I scanned the crowd of folks who
stood around just watching. They were mostly good looking, good intentioned,
well dressed, well-to-do social climbers whose sunny, Sunday morning
resplendence belied a suddenly dreary Friday night fight scene. Their ranks varied;
there were those who were enthralled at being there, and those who felt
entitled. Most were social butterflies
whose drunken revelry had devolved into smirking, gossiping, opportunistic,
camera phone-assisted voyeurism.
As lights flashed and shutters
clicked, I cursed my best friend. I cursed Eric for being a living, breathing,
walking, selfish, chauvinistic caricature.
I cursed Eric for his philandering, for his nonchalant attitude about
it. I cursed him for inviting his drama to my doorstep, to my job, to my night
with Janet.
Then my phone vibrated in my
pocket. I pulled it out, checked the display. The light from the image of a
cocky, shit-eating grin invaded the space around me like bad music and the
smell of piss in a broken MARTA station elevator. The name under the image read ERIC.
I answered and snapped, “Where the
hell are you, man?”
The two women stopped grappling.
Somehow, they had heard my words, then in unison, they projected their angry reaction
to those words back at me.
Yeah,
Sean, where is that motherfucker?
Fate laughed in my ear, her fiery
breath crawled across my flesh, mocked my ill-fated flights of romantic fancy.
Happy memories dissipated like morning haze under a sweltering, noonday Georgia
sun.
