Chapter Four
Yvette’s head was spinning with thoughts of the Slim Brothers. It had been two weeks and she still remembered with vivid clarity the lingering taste of their lips. She tried to make sense of how she was feeling about the two men. It wasn’t like she had any reference for something as insane as wanting to experience what it was like between the sheets with each of them.
The slight breeze coming through the window had given her a wakeup call. She had enough time to take a quick shower and have a piece of fruit on the way out the door. It was fortuitous she had the forethought to grab a few things at a local market down the street. Her cupboards were bare. She did have an interest in trying out some recipes.
She recalled her cell phone ringing at 5:00 AM. It was again making that incessant noise. Her hand went to her forehead and she began to massage her temples, readying herself for the dreaded conversation with her mother.
She felt it was necessary to get it over with. She wasn’t going to stop calling. The more time elapsed, the better chance she was going to be fuming mad with her voice rising in tempo, enough to make her feel uncomfortable.
She hit the speaker of her cell phone and waited for the grating tone of her voice. She could hear her mother on the other end taking a deep breath. She knew this was how she bolstered her courage to say what was on her mind.
“Yvette, I know you have been screening your calls. I don’t think you understand what you do does reflect on me. I thought you were going to give him a chance to make up for his past misdeeds. Imagine my surprise when I got a phone call from his family telling me the divorce has gone through. This better be some sort of sick joke.” Lupe was mad and it had nothing to do with Yvette’s situation. This was a religious matter.
“The only thing you’re worried about is how the public is going to look at you. I’ve always said it was your imagination when you claimed they were staring at you. They have better things to do with their lives than to scrutinize every little thing about our family.” She was trying to keep her tone civil. It wasn’t easy with how her mother could easily touch on the sore spots when it came to her disaster of a marriage.
“I’m embarrassed and I can’t even bear to let anybody see my face outside of this home. His family is beside themselves. How could you do this to me?” Lupe was holding the phone with one hand and the cross burned into her palm of the other. Jesus was looking down at her from a charcoal drawing she had gotten for Christmas one year.
“As much as this might surprise you, everything I do doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with you. It wasn’t working, and he continued to see some young thing on the side. I don’t want to disparage his name, but you have to know this decision wasn’t made lightly.” Yvette didn’t want to say the name of his mistress. It was bad enough they were together.
“Vengeance is not God’s way. Mrs. Garcia told me how you leveraged the penthouse in the divorce agreement. You should be ashamed of yourself.” Lupe was down on her knees saying a silent prayer to the man above to help her daughter find her way back into the light.
“I really don’t have time for this. I’m working at the New York Times and I have an assignment.” She heard her mother’s deep breath of contempt and knew what she was going to say before she said it.
“I can’t believe you would want to be working nine-to-five when you had a good man looking after you. This is not how I raised you. I don’t know where I went wrong. The next time you’re home, we’re going to go see Father Michaels to save your soul from eternal damnation.” She was still wearing her ratty old bathrobe with her hair in curlers. There was a mask over her eyes to make her look younger than her sixty years.
“I do appreciate the concern, but this is my life and what I do with it is none of your business. I have no interest in going back to Tony. You have no idea what I went through and you don’t even care. Don’t call me and I will call you at my earliest convenience.” The boost in her confidence was evident by her unwillingness to let her mother get the last word.
“I don’t know who this is, but this isn’t my daughter. Call me back when you can talk to me without screaming my ear off. I have a good mind to wash my hands of the whole thing. You have to realize men make mistakes and as women, we have to forgive. It’s called a marriage and maybe you’ve heard of it.” She was irate and felt like she had to apologize to Mrs. Garcia for her daughter’s behavior.
“I’m glad you’re not here to judge me. Going away was the best decision of my life. I didn’t realize what kind of influence you had on me until I finally broke away from your apron strings.” She had found the strength to carry on without a man to depend on.
“If you have any good sense, you’ll get down on your knees and beg the Lord above for his forgiveness. Put the phone down and we will do this together.” Lupe was waiting for her daughter’s response and got a shrill dial tone instead. Calling her back was met with the answering service. She had a few choice words to share with her daughter.
Yvette was tempted to delete her mother’s contact information and block her calls, but couldn’t bring herself to do it. To carry out such a heinous act would be met with a visit. There would be no way for her to ignore her mother if that were to happen.
She got dressed in a hurry, drinking a cup of coffee and using the mirror to put on her makeup at the same time. The phone call with her mother had forced her to skip taking a shower, so she freshened up with some perfume and deodorant.
She got on the elevator with her new black leather briefcase and stared at the button leading to the heaven of two able-bodied young men. She touched her lips and thought of many deviant things she would do to each of their bodies starting from the top and working her way down.
The brisk walk to the office almost made her a victim of some overzealous mother taking her children to school. She slammed her hand down on the hood of the mini-van. The woman behind the wheel looked frazzled. Yvette’s mood, from thinking about the two men, had made it unnecessary to raise her fist in anger.
She smiled at the woman and shrugged off the possibility of lying dead in the street. The woman was slightly alarmed but smiled back, feeling like there were still some good people in the world.
Yvette was wearing a white leather skirt a little above the knees with a red blouse to draw the eyes to her. She wasn’t going to need the appointment with the stylist. She knew how to sex it up. The high heels made her legs look long and slender. There was a confidence in her stride. She gave a smile to everyone in her path until she met the scowling face of Tanner standing in his doorway.
“I was hoping you were going to be early, but at least I can count on you to be punctual. I have approved your story on corruption in the mayor’s office. You will have to go out and interview him. This is your time to improvise. They will be expecting someone else. Call this your next test to see if you have a thick enough skin for this job. I believe you will surprise yourself.” Tanner looked at her and felt a stirring in his pants. It made him smile to see her able to throw off the shackles of her mother’s influence.
“I promise you won’t be disappointed. You already know my work ethic is above reproach. I might be a little rusty in the field, but I am getting back into the swing of things.” She wasn’t looking at her shoes and kept eye contact during the entire conversation.
“The first story you did went national. Don’t get a swelled head. In this business, it’s always about what have you done for me lately. You have to keep up this momentum.” The transformation was drastic from how she had looked the first day sitting across from him at his desk.
“I don’t want to be that girl, but my eyes are up here.” She was teasing and found the flush to his cheeks cute enough to make them both laugh at the same time.
“You’re definitely going to fit in around here. The only time I want to see you at your desk is when you are writing the story. The world is your oyster. Never take no for an answer and always come out swinging.” He was once again resorting to his favorite pastime of dispensing platitudes in the form of advice.
“This is only the beginning.” Her mother was still in her head. She always had this way of making a good day bad.
The taxi driver on her way to the meeting didn’t speak English and she had to run the remaining ten blocks to the mayor’s office. It didn’t matter. She had to wait another hour before being given an audience with the mayor’s aide. The mayor was apparently too busy to take the meeting and most likely avoiding the possibility of making a slip of the tongue.
She was given a prepared press release. It was political jargon and didn’t mean a damn thing. She tried to protest and realized the only way she was going to get the true story was from the horse’s mouth. It wasn’t going to be easy, but she had to find a way to ambush Mayor Tompkins in a compromising position. It wasn’t going to happen without some strategy and planning.
She did manage to befriend the receptionist and cultivated a possible ally to be used when the time was right. They spoke frankly, and she’d easily gotten her talking about her life. She had a boyfriend who had stolen everything, leaving her with nothing but the clothes on her back. It meant she was susceptible to bribery. It was something to think about.
The smug look on the mayor’s aide’s face was galling and made her that much more determined to strike while the iron was hot. She made plans with his secretary to go out for coffee in the morning. Yvette’s idea was to find out if there was any animosity which she could capitalize on with the possibility of financial gain.
The day was harrowing, and she had sprained her ankle getting her shoe caught in a sewer grate. The pain was manageable with a couple of aspirin, though she was ready for a stiff one and not necessarily a drink. She had one toy with multiple settings calling her name.
It was well after 7:00 PM when she was on her way back to her penthouse to slip into something a little more comfortable. The brothers Slim had been absent and she was starting to wonder if it had been something she’d said.