it could have all been an act.
From the little he’d observed about her so far, she was somewhat aloof but radiated a quiet confidence. She seemed less like a gold digger and more like the type who wrote letters to the editor or maybe even the President of the United States.
Chicka-bow, chicka-bow, chicka-bow-wow. The Commodores “Brick House” broke through the silence in all its polyphonic glory, courtesy of his cell phone.
Kiki. He swore under his breath and saw Cara jerk the newspaper forward, but she still didn’t lower it.
Since he couldn’t read the address book, Tommy had programmed a different ringtone for every person in his phone. The man had quite a knack for choosing just the right tone for the individual.
Steeling himself for an argument, he retrieved the phone from his bag and flipped it open.
The first few seconds of the conversation were pleasant, until he broke their date for that evening. When there was a break in Kiki’s angry tirade, he gave her his standard line and hung up.
Leaning his head against the seat, Alex exhaled in relief. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Cara lower the paper, her full lips turned up in a smile.
“What?” he scowled.
“I’ll call you, baby,” she said in a mock gruff voice, then burst out giggling. “I guess she’s pretty upset, huh? I think the tourists in Times Square could hear her yelling.”
Alex shrugged. “She’ll get over it.” They all do, he thought as he watched Cara refold the newspaper. When she finished, it looked like she’d never opened it.
“I hadn’t heard of her. Kiki, wasn’t it? She must be new in your scene.”
His forehead crinkled in mild annoyance, although her curiosity pleased him at the same time.
“What do you do, follow my social life?”
She gave a little laugh, stowed the paper in her briefcase, then cocked her head toward him.
“It’s not difficult. You’re in the press a lot.” She curved the index and middle fingers of both hands for emphasis. “The Bad Boy of Jazz, always dating the latest ‘it’ girl.”
It wasn’t his fault he was popular with the ladies, but for reasons he didn’t understand, he wished Cara wasn’t aware of the celebrity gossip that dogged him like a vulture. He shouldn’t care what she thought about him, but he did.
“So I like to have a good time,” he snapped. “So what?”
She held up a hand. “I’m not hating on your lifestyle. I was just trying to get you to smile. Or at least talk to me. You haven’t said a word since we got in here.”
Alex arched a brow, surprised and inwardly happy she’d noticed. “You were busy reading, so I figured, you know, that we’d each do our own thing.”
Her smile in response lit up the inside of the limo, and his heart. The knot in his stomach loosened a bit, and left him confused and tongue-tied. This woman was riding hard on his emotions and didn’t even know it.
His eyes drifted down to the briefcase by her feet, and he managed to clear his throat. “What paper are you reading?”
She hesitated a moment and it was all he could do to keep from tearing his eyes away from her warm gaze.
“The Harlem Gazette.”
Alex noted her slender arms as she reached for her water bottle. Her wrists were small and he imagined a pearl bracelet would look nice encircled around them. But other than small silver hoops in her ears, she wore no jewelry.
“It’s an independent newspaper that’s been around for over fifty years and one of the first black-owned newspapers in the country,” she added. “I also read the New York Times and the New York Post.”
His heart sank, for he knew those papers all too well. The reviews of his music hadn’t been so glowing lately, but the tabloids were more than willing to publish his picture with a woman hanging off his arm claiming him as her “man.”
None of those women understood that he wasn’t interested in a serious relationship. He was married to his music and his career. No one got in the way. Until now.
He gripped his beer tighter. “I recognized the word Harlem but that’s about it.”
She clapped her hands together. “Good!” Her face lit up like a thousand stars and she leaned toward him. “What other words do you know?”
He opened his mouth to run down the short list, but for some reason didn’t want to risk offending her. She seemed so straitlaced, but not in a nerdy way. On the contrary, the conservative getup was appealing. He wondered if it was real or just for show.
That hair. Those legs. All wrapped up in a very pretty package he didn’t dare touch.
He hedged an innocent smile. “Not too many. A little bit of this, a little bit of that.”
“I see. That’s perfectly normal. It’s not uncommon for adult non-readers to be able to recognize some words.”
“Adult non-reader? Is that what I’m called now?”
“It’s a little awkward-sounding, I know,” she acknowledged with a wan smile.
“It’s better than some of the things I’ve been called.” With a grimace, he faced her and memories flowed into words.
“You know, I used to ride the subway to school and I’d see men and women in suits reading the newspaper. They all looked so smart and so important.”
He swallowed hard, looked past her at the countryside rolling by. Suddenly aware of what he was about to say, he hoped she would stop him from making a fool of himself. But Cara remained silent, patient, waiting for him to continue.
He met her eyes. “Sometimes I’d sneak a peek at what they were reading, and even though the words always looked jumbled up, I couldn’t keep my eyes away. Those letters were like a drug.”
A band of dread, mixed with anger, tightened around his chest as he thought about all the times in his life when he tried to make sense of a word, or a group of words, and failed miserably.
“One morning, I was standing next to this man reading the sports section and I couldn’t stand it anymore. Before I knew what I was doing, I pointed to the caption underneath the picture and asked him what it said.”
Alex felt his spine go rigid and he downed the rest of his beer before continuing.
“He gave me a funny look and said real loud, ‘That’s the guy from the Yanks who struck out last night and lost the game, bottom of the ninth, you can’t read that?’”
Shame hooked its claws and dug into him like it had happened yesterday, and he bowed his head and traced his finger along the top of the beer bottle.
Her voice snuck past the pain. “How old were you?”
“Fourteen,”
