For the Love of Money

  Since it was a last-minute reservation, I had a double occupancy with twin beds instead of a king-size. I walked over and sat down on the bed closest to the window.

  He walked in, looked around, and said, “Nice room.” He sat on the bed opposite mine in front of me.

  I sighed, feeling useless. “Well, where do we start?” I asked. I had all kinds of things running through my mind, and I was a grown-ass woman so I could think whatever the hell I wanted to think!

  He looked at me and smiled before ignoring my question.

  “That’s a nice dress that you’re wearing,” he said.

  “Thank you,” I responded. Not that his compliment meant anything.

  “That dress could turn on many men.”

  I stopped and asked, “Does it turn you on?”

  He said, “Of course it does. That’s what you wanted to do, right, turn me on tonight?”

  He made me sound like a flirt, but I was flirting. How could I deny it? I wanted to do much more than that. After all, he was my man first, and he was my first love. I considered his wife secondary. She was the thief. Or at least that was what I was willing to tell myself if push came to shove, and I definitely wanted him to push inside of me.

  So I answered, “Yes. I do want to turn you on.”

  He nodded, and I paid him my full attention. What would he ask me next?

  “You want to make love to me?”

  That was my Victor all right. He was straight to the point and confident about it, with no shame to his game. I didn’t have any shame in mine either.

  “Yes I do. Badly.”

  He looked at me and smiled again. Was he bullshitting, or was he serious? The Victor that I knew was not a bullshit artist. Was Qadeer?

  “We can’t make love with our clothes on,” he said to me.

  I looked and read his eyes again, those beautiful dark and steady things that saw so much of so many women.

  “Are we really making love at all?” I asked him. I didn’t know if I wanted all of the man, or just the sex. I just wanted something, something real again, to feel his flesh against mine, and to dig my fingers into him. The rest would come after the satisfaction of the moment. I wanted the moment first. I couldn’t even think about the future until the moment had been taken.

  “I could no longer touch a woman that I didn’t love, Tracy,” he told me.

  That caught me off guard.

  “Are you saying that you love me then?” My heart was skipping like a happy horse in soft grass. Maybe we could have a future together again. I didn’t even think about how. I just figured that true love would find a way.

  Victor looked into my eyes and said, “Of course I do. But I also love my wife and my sons. Can you understand that?”

  How could I not? I nodded to him. “Yeah, I understand.” It was just between us, and for the moment we were silent.

  “So, you would still make love to me then?” I asked him. He had asked me that question, and I was still confused about it. What exactly were we saying to each other? What were we about to do with each other? It was all a crazy predicament.

  He said, “Yes, if that’s what you want.”

  “What do you want?” I had to know what was on his mind.

  “Does it really matter what I want? This is your hotel room.”

  “So, what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that this is all on you.”

  He was still Victor Hinson all right. Mind control. He made it seem as if I was making my own deal with the devil. Was I? . . . Honestly, I was, but that didn’t mean I wanted to be reminded of that.

  “If you love me like you say you do, then you would want the same thing that I want,” I rationalized. I was beginning to get defensive.

  Victor grinned in response. He said, “That doesn’t make it right.”

  “How could it be right at all, Victor? You’re married,” I snapped at him.

  “And you met my wife.”

  His point was well taken. I would be at fault just as much as he would.

  “So, what do we do then?” I asked, starting back from point A. I really wanted to jump on him, kiss him hard on the lips, and tell him to do me anyway, if just for old-times’ sake, so that I could move on with a new lasting memory of him, and of us together.

  I guess he could still read my mind because he began to smile with those moon white teeth of his.

  “Would you be able to live with yourself, Tracy?”

  He was teasing me.

  “Would you be able to live with yourself?” I asked him back.

  He said, “No question.”

  “You really don’t have any shame about it then.”

  “Shame about what, making love to a sister who I love?”

  “Well, how come I’m not Mrs. Muhammad then?” I asked him.

  “That’s not your world, TracFy. It never could be. You know that as well as I do.”

  He was telling me the truth. I couldn’t be a Muslim woman. No way in the world! What more could I say?

  “So, do we take our clothes off now?” I asked him. I wanted to see if he would back down from it.

  To my surprise, he stood up from the bed and pulled his T-shirt from his pants and began to undo his belt buckle. He pulled his sweater and T-shirt off, dropped his pants to the floor, and started undoing his shoes. When he was done, he stood before me black and naked, and cut like a strong pharaoh.

  Oh my God! I was ready to faint I wanted him so badly! I slipped out of that dress and my bra and panties faster than a hurricane to join him in nakedness and get on with the boning.

  I walked over to him expecting him to push me away. I expected the dream to just stop right in the middle of it, but it didn’t. When I tasted his lips and his tongue for the first time in too many damn years, I could already feel the readiness to my private parts as I reached to caress his.

  “I missed you so much,” I whispered to him. Was I talking to Victor or to his thing? I wasn’t so sure.

  Victor didn’t respond to me. His tongue wet my neck and tickled down to my shoulder. I wanted to feel him inside of me yesterday. Last week. Last year. Five years ago! I couldn’t wait anymore!

  “Do you have any protection?” I asked him.

  “No.”

  I had my own, so I broke away momentarily to go and get it from my bag. It was supposed to be for Mike, just in case he forgot his protection or brought some that I didn’t like, but when I brought the condoms to Victor, he pushed them away.

  “We don’t need those,” he told me.

  I said, “Yes we do,” and I meant it. It was my policy as a mature, single woman. No condoms, no sex. Period!

  Victor said, “If you really want this like you think you do, then you wouldn’t use protection. You would want to feel everything.”

  I stared at him for a second to see if he was serious, and he was.

  I shook my head and grunted, “Unt unh, that ain’t gon’ work.”

  After I said that, he moved toward his clothes on the floor.

  “What are you doing?” I asked him, panicking. I was as wet as the ocean.

  “I’m protecting us.”

  I said, “Wait a minute.” I was so damn weak! I couldn’t get that close and let him walk away from me again.

  He paused with his purple silk boxers in hand. His black behind was shining from his shapely curvature, and I wanted so badly to hold him there while he thrust into my velvet. I could halfway feel it already.

  I asked him, “What about your wife? Isn’t that, you know . . . kind of foul? I mean, it all is really, but going without a condom, that just seems . . . nasty. And then you go back home to your wife and . . .” I couldn’t even imagine it. It made me feel queasy.

  He smiled. “You don’t want me to take anything home to my wife and kids. That’s honorable. So why do this in the first place then?”

  He had another good point, but I still wanted it. I wanted him. I wanted us.

  I said, “Cou
ld you stop playing the head games with me, please. I’m serious.” I was whining like a baby. Damn I hated him! He was the only man in my life who made me whine like that.

  He said, “Tracy, this is all your head game. You wanted me here, now you deal with it.”

  I walked over and grabbed onto his waist, afraid to let him go and put his clothes back on. I leaned my head against his chest. “You’ll take it out then?” I asked him. I was even willing to break my own rules for him. That’s how weak I was.

  He said, “Maybe I will, maybe I won’t.”

  I leaned away from him and said, “WHAT?” He couldn’t have been serious, but when I searched his eyes again, they remained steady and unnerved. He meant that shit!

  I broke away from him and said, “That’s crazy! What if I get pregnant? Do you know how ridiculous we would look?”

  “That’s the price you pay for love,” he told me. “Do you love me that much,to look ridiculous with me?”

  I shook my head violently. “No. I don’t love no man that much. Not even my father. And if you really loved me, you wouldn’t ask me to do no crazy shit like that.”

  He looked at me and said, “Tracy, I do love you. That’s why this had to happen this way, because love can’t always be bent and twisted out of shape like so many people do with it. That’s cheating everyone. So if you really want this to happen, then you either act crazy with it, or you grow up and let it go, like I did with you.”

  “Oh, yeah, that’s easy for you to say, you had somebody else to run to!” I shouted. “You wrote those fucking letters from jail talking all that shit, I didn’t! And I was crazy enough back then to wait for your ass, but you weren’t crazy enough to wait for me! So don’t give me that shit now!”

  He began to put his clothes on again.

  “What are you doing?” I asked him a second time.

  “I’m protecting us,” he repeated.

  “Oh, so in other words, you were expecting all of this to happen?”

  Victor ignored me. He was calling my bluff.

  I said, “Well, you know what? Don’t put your clothes back on then. I want to be that crazy! Now you show me that you can be that crazy!” I dared him. “You’re gonna come up in here and call my bluff, well let me see what you’re willing to do!”

  I grabbed his pants and pulled them back down like a lunatic. I was actually tearing up I was so damn angry.

  “Come on then, Qadeer. Let’s do it. Let’s make a baby. Let’s see how crazy you are.”

  By then, tears were running down my face like a faucet. I didn’t even notice it until I felt how wet my neck was. I had waited so long for him just to be bullshitted, and my feelings were hurt.

  Victor wiped away my tears with his thumbs and kissed my lips.

  “Would you be my second wife?” he asked me. “We can meet with Malika and ask for her permission.”

  I looked at him and shouted, “WHAT?! HELL NO! SHE SHOULD BE THE SECOND WIFE IF ANYTHING! I WAS WITH YOU FIRST!”

  He tried to cuddle me in his arms to calm me down, but I pushed him away from me.

  “You got some god-damned nerve coming in here asking me something like that. How dare you?! HOW DARE YOU?!”

  He started pulling up his pants again, and I didn’t care anymore.

  “Leave then!” I yelled at him with a shove. If it wasn’t for the twin beds, he would have fallen flat on the floor.

  He smiled at me and shook his head. It was all a damn game to him.

  “I don’t see what’s so fuckin’ funny, Victor!” I mocked him.

  He finished getting dressed and looked at me with pity in his eyes.

  He said, “This is why you’re not Mrs. Muhammad. You think a sane man wants to go through drama like this? Think about it. I made the right decision, and now I’m going home.”

  “Well, stay your ass home next time, with your little house mouse! I don’t need her damn permission!”

  With that, he grabbed my arms before I started to whale on him.

  I broke down and screamed, “I fucking hate you! I HATE YOU!” If I was really trifling, I would have spit in his face, but I wasn’t, so I didn’t, but I thought about it.

  Victor held my arms right up until he grabbed the front door handle and slipped out of the room on me. When he was gone, I fell to pieces. I felt so hurt and foolish that it didn’t make any sense. I cried and cried and curled up in the bed like a snail.

  He played me like a fool, I thought to myself. He knew everything I was gonna do, and he proved that I would do it.

  Once I realized his game plan, I broke down and cried some more. Victor was the sharpest man I ever knew. As smart as I thought I was, I couldn’t do a damn thing with that man but love and hate him. I couldn’t even call him a dog, because he was going back home to his wife without penetrating me. I sat up naked and alone in that hotel room and thought about it, coming up with a poem, “When the Sweet Turns Sour.” I didn’t even have my notepad with me, so I wrote it out on the hotel stationery. And every time I read it, I grew stronger.

  As far as Raheema’s wedding for the next day was concerned, she was my girl and all, but I was a damn zombie through the entire ceremony. I just couldn’t wait to get back out to California and restart my life with full dedication to my new career. Thanks again to Victor, the inspiration for my first poem, “King Victorious,” I came up with my first full television script for Conditions of Mentality called “The Seduction.”

  Everlasting Friendship

  Is like the birds

  who fly south for the winter

  only to return each spring

  and build new nests for their young.

  Or the setting of the sun,

  the rising of the moon,

  and the heavy rains falling

  to quench the thirst of new flowers.

  We grow green with progress,

  radiant in orange and red with passion,

  blossoming in yellows

  and then turn blue.

  With the joy and pain

  of finding, loving, hurting, and losing

  humans who you care for,

  AND who care for you.

  But as the world turns

  and the climate changes,

  we stay down like gravity,

  together, forever.

  Friends.

  Copyright © 1992 by Tracy Ellison

  April 2000

  Saturday morning, I sat up in my old, twin-size bed in my old room and daydreamed. I needed some peace and quiet time. I was exhausted from everything and thanking God for the weekend.

  My agent had sent me three screenplays to look over, so I grabbed them and thumbed through them while I relaxed. To her credit, all three of them were different. She knew that I liked to look at different types of projects, and since I was a writer myself, I knew how to separate the quality scripts from the trash.

  The first screenplay I read through was a love story, Never Let Him Go: a lovely wife does everything in her power to keep her flirtatious husband from cheating on her. They wanted me to play the lovely wife, but the script was rather boring and typical of a man-pleasing woman. It would be a bit too mundane after my breakout bitch role in Led Astray. Never Let Him Go also asked for plenty of hot sex scenes, which I wanted to shy away from. Sharon Stone may have started off with the seduction roles, but she damn sure didn’t stay with that shit. I didn’t plan on being typecast that way either, so I passed on it.

  The second screenplay was a science fiction comedy, Babes from Space: a group of beautiful alien women seduce the men from a well-to-do suburban town until the women of the town strike back to reclaim their mates. The script was cute and I laughed through it, but I didn’t have much of a role to play. They wanted me to play the lone black girl, and of course, I would match up with the only black man in the town. I figured it would do okay with teenagers at the box office and people who watched the television show 3rd Rock from the Sun, but it was too juvenile for my taste. It was
like some video girl script from MTV. They didn’t really need actresses, they just needed pretty faces and attractive bodies, and the head alien was a blond chick. I didn’t like that idea so much either. Blame it on my ego as a black woman, but I passed on that script too.

  The third screenplay was an action-packed thriller called Road Kill: a female Special Units agent hunts down a gang of psycho killers who prey on pretty women on U.S. highways and roads. I liked that script immediately. I even liked the title; it sounded edgy and serious. I saw flashes of myself becoming the next Pam Grier, or even Angela Bassett in Strange Days, kicking ass for a change instead of just screaming, fucking, and looking pretty. I thought about Geena Davis in The Long Kiss Goodnight and Sigourney Weaver in her Alien movies. I could become a black woman James Bond and keep it going, but I didn’t like the character’s name. “Jill” sounded too plain to me, as if they wanted to downplay her fierceness with an average tag. It was also a white woman’s role, but my girl had gotten her hands on the script and sent it to me, probably because she knew that I would like it and fight for it. I guess she had saved the best for last.

  I looked at my East Coast clock, and it was only after ten, which meant that it was after seven in California, but I couldn’t wait to discuss the script, so I jumped up, got the cordless phone, and called my girl at home.

  “I was just about to use the phone, Tracy,” my mother told me.

  “Hold on, Mom, this is business.”

  I passed her the script to thumb through it herself.

  Mom looked at it and said, “Road Kill? Hmm, sounds like another controversial movie. You’ll have people scared to even drive.”

  My girl answered the phone and I jammed my excitement down her eardrum.

  “What’s up with this Road Kill movie? They haven’t signed anyone for it yet? Did you tell them that I worked on the writing staff of Conditions of Mentality for cable? I know exactly how to play this role. This is right up my alley. Of course I would change that name though. I would be ‘Alexis.’ That gives the character more edge, don’t you think?”