Games Women Play Read online

  In her bedroom Tuesday slipped into a lacy black bra and matching thong. She chose the sexy underwear because she was going to visit A.D. tonight and when he asked about her panties, as he always did, she wouldn’t have to lie to him. She shimmied into another snug pair of jeans and a form-fitting V-neck top that showed enough cleavage to tantalize but not so much to get the visit denied—she learned early into his bit that she had to carefully select her outfits because Tuesday had once tried to surprise A.D. by wearing his favorite minidress but was turned away at the front desk. She then went into her closet and from her extensive shoe gallery selected a pair of Jimmy Choos that she felt complemented the look. While she applied her makeup, Nicholas scampered out of the room, deciding there was nothing more to see.

  For the next three hours she gave her condo a thorough cleaning that it didn’t really need. She went from room to room sweeping up imaginary granules, mopping spotless floors, and wiping surfaces that already looked to be sterile. Even casual acquaintances knew that Tuesday had a penchant for neatness but Tushie was the only one she’d told about actually being diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

  OCD had countless faces and degrees; it could be as little as a meticulous grooming ritual that almost escaped notice, or take shape as a crippling phobia and neurotic behavior that required a person to be institutionalized. Tuesday had a mild form that manifested as the uncontrollable desire to clean and organize her space. She was not a full-fledged germaphobe like Howard Hughes but could potentially become one. A one-time visit with a psychologist had taught her that the excessive cleaning was her attempt to organize a life that she felt was chaotic in what the doctor had termed “transference.”

  Tuesday would clean a window or mirror, imagine that she saw streaks then clean it again; and this might happen half a dozen times. She remade her bed five times before she was satisfied that the spread hung an equal distance from the floor on all sides. She spent an hour checking the canned and dry goods in her cupboard to make certain they were stored away according to her orderly system, then spent another one checking the dates on the perishables in her freezer. Sometimes Tuesday would open and close the refrigerator door nine or ten times in a row convinced that the items would shuffle themselves out of place the moment she looked away.

  What gave Tuesday hope was that her OCD wasn’t as pronounced at the club as it was at home. At work she had a high standard for cleanliness that some called excessive, but at home it was cranked up times one thousand. The psychosis was centered around her living space and, since it didn’t intrude too heavily into the other areas of her life, she was hopeful that she might one day conquer it.

  She was leaving for the prison at five o’clock. As the hour approached, she took a final tour of the condo, checking the lights in each room. She had to flick the light switch on and off three times while counting the number aloud. Regardless of the urgency, she could not leave until she completed this ritual, and when she thought she missed one, she had to start over.

  Tuesday reached the Ryan Road Correctional Facility within fifteen minutes of starting her car. As much as she hated to see A.D. locked up, she loved the convenience of having him close by. Tuesday knew people who had loved ones imprisoned so far upstate that visits had to be planned like vacations. As long as it was his assigned day, she could drop in on A.D. whenever the thought crossed her mind. It was as simple as running an errand.

  More than once he told her about the stresses of being incarcerated in a prison that was built in the middle of the hood. According to him, the worst part were the summers: children at play, cars riding by with speakers pounding, the barbecue on the grills, all these sounds and scents reached the gated inmates reminding them that they were home but still a world away. Tuesday had never done time so she didn’t insult him by pretending that she could fully relate, but she could vaguely imagine how torturous that had to be for them.

  Since she was a regular, the officer working the reception desk was familiar with her. She was a thin blonde with short, spiky hair who always kidded Tuesday about her name. She said, “Your parents must’ve really had a sense of humor to name you Tuesday Knight.”

  There was something in her eyes and smile that Tuesday recognized as subtle flirtation; since she’d already pegged the CO as a dyke, she accepted her visitor’s pass with a comment that was friendly but not encouraging.

  After changing twenty dollars for quarters to pump into the vending machines, she took a seat in the lobby and waited. A.D. was expecting her so it usually didn’t take long for him to get ready. Waiting a few chairs down was a woman close to her age wearing open-toed heels that Tuesday admired, and seated next to her was a hyperactive little girl wildly swinging her legs, struggling to obey her mother’s unrealistic command to sit still.

  Tuesday was staring in their direction at nothing in particular when the little girl locked eyes with her and smiled.

  The little girl favored Tuesday so much that she was momentarily stunned because it was like gazing into some magic mirror and seeing herself as a child. At first she was sure that the girl was a hallucination, some new symptom of her OCD starting to manifest.

  The girl waved. “Hi.”

  “Hi!” Tuesday said, using that same friendly tone and phony enthusiasm that all adults use when speaking to a stranger’s child.

  “I’m here to see my daddy!” the girl volunteered happily.

  “That’s nice,” Tuesday said, unable to think of anything better.

  The girl was admonished by her mother. “Kyra, quit bothering that lady!” she said in a voice that was friendly but firm. To Tuesday she said, “I’m sorry, she’s not exactly the shy type.”

  After a better look Tuesday realized that the child’s resemblance to her was not as close as she thought. It was mostly superficial. They were the same complexion and did have the same gray-green eyes but the rest of their features, such as nose, lips, ears, and facial structure, were cast from totally different molds. She was a beautiful child but not Tuesday’s clone.

  “Oh she’s not bothering me,” Tuesday assured her mother. She asked the girl, “So your name is Kyra?”

  She bobbed her head emphatically.

  “How old are you, Kyra?”

  The green-eyed darling held up three fingers and when her mother corrected her she added a fourth.

  Tuesday said, “Well, Kyra, you are just about the cutest li’l girl I’ve ever seen.”

  Blushing, she covered her face, embarrassed, beaming a smile that just melted Tuesday.

  “Kyra, what do you say back when somebody says something nice to you?” her mother urged.

  She pulled her tiny hands away from her face and giggled a “thank you.” It was then that Tuesday noticed the indescribable something in her green eyes, the same thing she noticed was missing from her own at the motel.

  For another ten minutes Tuesday sat having a delightful discussion with Kyra about friends, video games, and a pet hamster named Fathead. Tuesday was telling her about Nicholas the cat when the mother was informed that it was time for their visit. While little Kyra was being led away by the arm, she spent the whole time smiling and waving back to Tuesday until she disappeared through the door.

  Tuesday found herself still smiling a full minute after she was gone but it slowly faded away as she began to think.

  Tuesday had decided a long time ago that motherhood was not for her. When she was younger, the reason was that her own mother had failed so miserably at the job. Tuesday feared she inherited her faults—her mother had jumped from man to man her entire life, always choosing the thrill of a new relationship over the needs of her child, and this made Tuesday feel more like a burden than a blessing. As she grew older it was her lifestyle that made her a poor candidate; she was playing a dangerous game with some really bad characters and knew that at any moment she might have to pay for all the dirt she’d done. Then as her OCD progressed, it was the illness that made her feel she was unfit to raise a
child because a screaming, puking, pooping baby had no place in her meticulously clean and organized world. In the past, carelessness had led to two pregnancies—at eighteen and twenty-three—and Tuesday had terminated each one as soon as she learned of conception.

  Up until now she had been comfortable with those choices, but seeing the little girl with the eyes like hers made her reconsider. She thought about the two lives she aborted. Her oldest would already be nineteen with a sibling five years younger. Tuesday didn’t regret not bringing children into that life; she regretted living a life that was too unstable to bring children into.

  She was thinking about that, Dresden, Sebastian Caine, and a thousand other things when she was called.

  “Are you the visitor for Hollister?” asked a fat, bald corrections officer who came from behind a sliding glass security door. Tuesday thought it was a stupid question since no one else waited in the lobby.

  She got up and approached him. “Yes.”

  He said, “I just need his inmate number for verification.” Tuesday recounted those six digits as easily as her birthdate.

  Beyond the sliding door one officer held her driver’s license while a female frisked her in a way that always made Tuesday uncomfortable. After being wanded by one of the small handheld metal detectors, she was asked to walk through one of the large arch-type ones. As much as Tuesday hated this, it still wasn’t as bad as going to the airport.

  After checking her driver’s license to make sure she had no outstanding warrants, she was permitted through a second security door and escorted through the facility’s control center to the visiting room.

  On a Monday the visiting room was not as lively as it was on the weekends. There were only three groups in huddled conversation in separate corners. Kyra was chatting animatedly to a brown-skinned nigga in prison blues who she favored more than her mother, another Muslim brother in a kufi was reading the Quran to a white girl who was almost fat enough to need two chairs, and then there was a frail white boy sitting with his elderly parents trying to comfort his mother as she quietly wept into her palms.

  At the rear there was a large rounded podium where the officer sat to monitor the visits; A.D. was seated on a bench next to it in a no-name golf shirt and jeans that he wouldn’t have been caught dead in on the street. He and Tuesday met with a hug and kiss.

  She said, “Nice fit!”

  A.D. didn’t miss the sarcasm. “Fuck you.”

  He led her to a table that allowed him to be as far as he could from the officer while putting equal distance between them and the other visitors. They took seats next to each other.

  Even though she came to visit at least once a week, Tuesday still couldn’t believe how much he’d changed. When she met him he had been six foot five, thin, dark-skinned with thick eyebrows that she found sexy, but twelve years of weightlifting had added a hundred pounds of muscle to his lean frame. He used to wear his hair in long French braids but now he kept it cut short with deep spiraling waves. His perpetually yellow eyes were now bright white without alcohol and weed, as were his teeth, and Tuesday figured he must’ve brushed them as diligently as his hair. He looked so damn good to her that she cursed Michigan for not having conjugal visits.

  “Did you get that?” she asked in relation to a three hundred dollar money order she just sent him.

  He nodded. “Yeah, good lookin’. That came last week.”

  “If you need it, I can shoot you somethin’ else.”

  He waved her off. “Naw, baby, I’m straight. That plus what I already had gone keep me tight for a while.”

  “Ebony said, ‘What up!’ ” Tuesday said, remembering their conversation. “Me and her was talkin’ ’bout you earlier.”

  A.D. didn’t respond. He made a face to suggest that he didn’t care one way or another about the bartender’s well wishes.

  Tuesday could tell by the look in his eye and overall demeanor that something was bothering him, but she also knew A.D. well enough to be sure that if she were to ask he would just dismiss it. Since she didn’t want to spoil their time by constantly pressing him to open up, Tuesday just smiled and hoped it was contagious.

  “Damn, Debo! You shopping at Baby Gap now?” She felt one of his huge biceps. “You look like you ’bout to Incredible Hulk out that tight-ass shirt.”

  This earned a smirk but not the smile she wanted. “Just like all that ass look like it’s ’bout to explode out them tight jeans.”

  “I wanted to give you somethin’ to think about later while you raped some li’l white boy in the shower!”

  “Oh, you got jokes today,” he said, finally favoring her with a smile. “You got me fucked up, all I need is magazines and Vaseline. Plus the memories of all the times I pounded you to death!”

  It worked because at least on the surface A.D. appeared to be in a better mood. They ate chicken wings, chips, and drank pop from the vending machines while talking about old times and actual acquaintances. Tuesday wasn’t used to having to cheer him up; he was usually a rock for her. She figured it to be just a minor funk because over the next three hours he was back to his normal self.

  She talked about her condo, her cat, the club, and how slow things had gotten. She told him how close she came to beating Brianna’s ass but when she talked about the Tank lick, his mood seemed to darken again even though she didn’t mention Dresden or what he’d done.

  Recapping, she said, “So basically we walked away with about thirteen stacks apiece, which ain’t shit when you consider how much work we put in.”

  A.D. leaned back in his chair and made a sound that was a combination of a sigh and snort. Tuesday didn’t necessarily know what it was but knew that it meant he disapproved.

  “What’s wrong with you today?” she asked in a 1ow voice filled with concern.

  After a long pause he turned to her and said, “Baby, I’m sorry.”

  Tuesday was confused. “’Bout what?”

  “’Bout everythang!” he said, shaking his head. “But mostly ’bout what I did to you. You on that shit you on right now because of me.”

  It was A.D. who had introduced Tuesday to that game. When they met she was dancing at nineteen and he was a twenty-four-year-old jack boy. After fucking for a couple months, A.D. had the idea to use his pretty little stripper to help him stick niggas.

  Being that she was always an attention-getter, he started off just using her as a distraction. A.D. would convince a nigga to meet him at a motel to either buy or sell dope and while they did business Tuesday would be showering in the adjoining bathroom. Then on cue she would innocently walk out toweling off her naked body, and by the time the mark finished scoping her ass, he would be staring down the barrel of A.D.’s 12-gauge pump.

  Over time her role slowly expanded to where he started using her as bait. From the club Tuesday would lure off-brand niggas back to a room where A.D. would be waiting in a closet.

  Getting a nigga for what he had in his pocket was cool but getting everything he had period was better. So it was Tuesday who ultimately had the idea to play the whole girlfriend role to peep a nigga’s alarm code, stash spots, and safe combinations. Years later, after A.D. got sent up, she brought Tushie in the game the same way.

  He said, “I feel fucked up because I took a young girl who was still at the age where she could’ve done anything with her life and basically corrupted her.”

  Tuesday shook her head to disagree. “I never saw it like you corrupted me, Adrian; if anythang, I felt like you gave me game. While every other nigga I met back then was just tryin’ to use me, you was breaking bread wit me.”

  “Naw, Bright Eyes, I was using you too. I was just doin’ it in a different way.”

  Tuesday always loved that pet name but couldn’t remember the last time he called her Bright Eyes. This scared her as much as it touched her because something told her that this conversation was about to go somewhere unexpected and unpleasant.

  He took her hand and began to play with her finger
s. “As much as I love seein’ you, it break my muthafuckin’ heart to hear that at thirty-seven you still out there on the same bullshit I had you on at nineteen.”

  Tuesday felt that was an insult and tried to pull her hand away but he held it tighter.

  “Naw, baby. I ain’t tryin’ to judge you on how you get yo money. I’m just sayin’ you could’ve done a lot better without a nigga like me in yo life. You could’ve went back to school, even been a model—you fuckin’ over half the bitches I see in these magazines. You could’ve blew up, pimped that shit into an acting career, and be on TV right now getting money.”

  She used her thumb to trace circles on the back of his palm. “Baby, we can’t talk about wouldas and couldas. Life is what it is and we gotta deal with reality.”

  “You damn sure right about that,” A.D. said, nodding. Then he was eerily quiet for a long time.

  When he finally spoke again, there was a despondent tone in his voice that Tuesday didn’t like. “I’m ’bout to ride up out this joint, have ’em transfer me to a different spot up north somewhere. I don’t expect you to drive all that way to see me.”

  She said, “I’ll come see you no matter where you at.”

  “Naw, baby, you don’t get me. I don’t want you to come see me. I’m not gone be calling or writing like that no more either.”

  Tuesday had no comeback. She just stared at him trying to make sense of what he was saying.

  “Tims just came and hollered at me yesterday.” Travis Timmons was his lawyer. Over the years Tuesday had paid that man close to eighteen thousand dollars to take A.D. through the various steps of his appeal.

  “They shot down my sixty-five hundred!” He blew out a weary breath. “It’s a wrap.”

  This wasn’t the first time he’d heard bad news about his appeal and Tuesday didn’t understand why he sounded so defeated. “Well, what do we gotta do next. You the one who told me that there’s always another route, another card you can play.”

  While Tuesday had footed the bills, she never learned the ins and outs of the appellate process. She’d sat with Travis Timmons while he talked about briefs, affidavits, and writs of habeas corpus without really grasping what any of those things were. All Tuesday cared to know was how much would it help A.D.’s case and how much he charged to do it. So she just handed over the money in good faith that he would find a way to get her man home one day.