Gerri marched away; Jefferson rubbed his neck, mumbled, and followed. Even with those big feet and long legs, his pace was half of hers.
I moved the stray braids from my face, pulled my hair behind each ear, went back to the balcony, and watched a world of lesser chaos.
Giving Claudio my biz card was a bad move. He’s sent flowers to my job—roses, tulips, carnations—three days in a row. Every delivery came with I’LL ALWAYS LOVE YOU messages. Can’t count the messages he’s left on my service. Or count the e-mail. WE COULD STILL MAKE A GREAT TEAM.
And he’d FedExed me two tickets to the comedy show tonight.
Tickets that were wiggling in my purse right now.
Gerri’s voice calmed down a bit. So did Jefferson’s.
Gerri, Gerri, Gerri. Girl, what kinda mess have you gone and gotten yourself into? Her life looks so together. Very nice condo. Kids in private school. Doing it without getting her C.S. Hardworking, determined woman. I wondered how much spare change she was pulling down at Blondies.
I jumped when the doorbell ding-donged three quick times.
Jefferson rushed out of the back room, bumped into a wall, and almost stumbled over nothing. Gerri was right on his heels, closer than his cute little mustache. He looked through the peephole and exhaled, “Shit.”
“Open the door,” Gerri declared firmly. “Since she insisted on paging me every other minute, I called her and told her to bring her lies on over here so we could straighten this out. That was the guard down at the gate on Manchester who just called and told me she was here.”
Jefferson gave up a distraught breath and opened the door.
A thick, mustard-colored girl was outside. I remembered her from the night I’d seen them perform at the Townhouse. Butter Pecan. She had on tan capri pants, three-inch black sandals, a sleeveless cotton blouse that showed off her boulders. The only thing that was tacky was the fluorescent pager clipped to her front pocket, and I wasn’t too fond of hooped nose rings. I don’t think people should draw attention to the place where stalactites originate.
Jefferson sighed, “Butter? How you know where my woman live?”
Butter’s swollen eyes were almost the color of ketchup. Her tone feather soft when she spoke, “You tell me, Jefferson.”
Gerri maneuvered around Jefferson’s huge body, opened the black screen door, and let Butter in. The girl’s posture and movements didn’t have any real femininity. She had that manufactured hardness that was attractive to certain type of peeps.
Butter said, “I write the songs. Everything was fine before you hooked up with Gerri. Now you want to control everything—”
Gerri snapped, “I’m not trying to control. You need to learn to lis—”
“Butter,” Jefferson said, “don’t do this. After all I’ve done for the group, don’t playa hate because I switched lead singers on a few cuts. Okay, you know this here my woman, and I don’t know why you tripping.”
“I write all the songs, put the group together, and now you trying to make me sit in the back of the bus.”
Butter had a deranged scowl that didn’t quite go with her pretty face. I had a feeling that something wasn’t right about this girl. Her eyes told me that.
Jefferson stood as close to Gerri as he could.
I asked, “How old are you, Butter?”
She hesitated. “Nineteen.”
Startled, I asked, “Then, you’re in school?”
“Uh-huh,” she said. Her tone was a lot nicer when she talked to me, maybe because my tone was a lot nicer when I talked to her. She added, “I go to LACC.”
“Well, good for you,” Gerri said with undisguised sarcasm. Then she cut to the chase and moved the meeting forward. “You sticking to the same story and telling me Jefferson screwed you on a regular basis?”
“Yeah.” Butter paused. “We got busy a lot.”
“Whoa, whoa, hold up here,” Jefferson was shouting. “Why you up in my crib sweatin’ me? Stop lying, Butter.”
Gerri asked Butter, “Without a condom?”
“He didn’t like the way they felt. Said one of them, I think the one with the suicide stuff—”
I corrected her, “Spermicide. I think you mean spermicide.”
“Yeah, that stuff. He said it made his thing itch or something.”
Jefferson laughed and threw his hands up. “She’s lying.”
“We can settle this real quick.” Gerri opened a Ralph’s grocery sack on the kitchen table. “EPT time, sweetheart. If you’re pregnant, you won’t mind taking this pop quiz.”
My heart was a rock. Butter’s shaky hands took the box from Gerri. Jefferson’s mouth opened, eyes bugged out like the slaves on the two-hundred-year-old