Excerpt: The Fixer

Chapter One
Monday, June 1

When the phone rang at two in the morning, I didn’t say, “Shit.” I didn’t kick my feet or curse God for allowing someone to invent the cell phone.

I simply lifted my hand toward my nightstand, picked up my cell phone, and mumbled, “Talk to me.”

“Could you do me a favor?”

I rubbed my face and replied, “Mm hm, what is it?”

I turned on the lamp on the nightstand and winced at its brightness. The two and double-zeroes that blazed red at me from the alarm clock made my stomach churn. I had an early morning and knew that once I got out of my bed, there would be no more sleep for me.

I stretched and knocked over books that littered the other half of my bed.

I cradled the phone between my ear and shoulder while I stacked the notebooks and books and pictures and loose pages on my bed into some semblance of normalcy.

When I heard sniffling, I realized Yvonne hadn’t said one word to me since she asked for a favor.

“Vonne,” I said, “what’s wrong? I hear you crying.”

“I need you to check Barry’s e-mail.”

“Again?”

Yvonne coughed, sniffed, and sighed.

I swiveled out the bed and trudged out the bedroom and down the hall to my office.

For the last month, I had been playing Genesis Anne Baxter, P.I. My mission?
To help Yvonne learn as much information about her well-traveled boyfriend as possible. She didn’t mind that he had to travel so much for his job. What she did mind was his reluctance to be around her, to show her love on those initial days after his return.

To Yvonne, something was amiss. She didn’t like computers too much, and she thought herself too godly to ever snoop into her boyfriend’s e-mail account, so it was up to me – the heathen – to do her dirty work.

I sat before my laptop and opened the web browser.

“So,” I said, “what makes you think something’s wrong this time?”

“Okay,” Yvonne said before taking a breath, “I talked to him last night, and he was tired and tried to get me off the phone.”

I bit my bottom lip. “Okay, and?”

“And why would he be trying to get me off the phone, Gen?” She huffed. “I’m his girlfriend. Have been his girlfriend for a year now. Been waiting on him to pop the question so we can get married, finally have sex, and start having some babies.”

I had to laugh. Sometimes, I thought the only reason Yvonne stayed with Barry this long was to get a ring and get some sex. When she hit the big 3-0 three years ago, she complained, “I don’t know what it is, but hitting thirty made me so daggone horny. Don’t know how I can keep myself saved for the right man with all this need building up in me.”

And every time she said it, I laughed and wondered two things: one, if she was the only thirty-something virgin left on the planet; and two, if my ten-year sex drought made me a virgin again.

“You know the man is on business, Vonne,” I tried to remind her as I surfed to Yahoo. “He’s trying to build his clientele so he can buy that big house he knows you want.”

The silence told me that Yvonne was smiling. For year, I knew about the two-story brick house she saw in her dreams, the one she knew was her future home, where she would have a husband, children, maybe a dog, and a whole lot of love and God. On their fifth date, she shared her dream house story with Barry, and I knew he knew that if he had any plans of getting Yvonne’s heart, her finger, and her most-prized possession, he had to produce that house and the nice furnishings to go with it.

“I know he loves me,” Yvonne said. “God showed me the end. I told you.”

“You did.”

“My house was there. Barry was there. I’ve seen our children.”

“You did.”

And I sat, quietly, waiting for her next statement. The statement that always followed in this conversation: “And I saw the women.”

And she did. In her dreams, Yvonne has seen women chasing Barry, trying to steal him away from her, and each and every time, he managed to return to Yvonne and their home. She saw him watching porno. She saw him jacking off, and prayed fervently that the dick she saw wasn’t truly his.

“It was so small,” she told me the first time she had the dream. “I mean I haven’t seen any before, but surely some guys have more than that.”

I remember holding in my laughter to reply, “Yes, some do have nice-sized appendages.”

“Why would God show me these women, show me all these sexual dreams if not to tell me something?” she asked.

“I don’t know, Sis.”

I typed in Barry’s username and password and logged in to his account.

“Do you need Barry’s info?” Yvonne asked.

“What you think?”

“How do you even remember it?”

I shrugged. “I remember a lot of mundane, unnecessary shit.” I smirked. “Sorry.”

“Girl, please. Just because I gave up cursing doesn’t mean I hold your cursing against you.” She laughed. “Besides, I get to live vicariously through your pouty mouth.”

“Gee, thanks.”

I quickly turned off Barry’s instant messenger; the last thing I needed was one of his friends popping up to say hello. I systematically went through all his folders and saw the ordinary things – plane ticket confirmations, rental car confirmations, invoices, the random e-mails Yvonne sent him. Nothing that screamed, I’m screwing a lot of women.

“Nope,” I said. “Nothing.”

“Really?”

“You know, I find it unlikely that Barry would have incriminating e-mails.”

“Why’s that?”

“Well, for one, he gave you his login information. Why would he do that if he didn’t trust you? If he had something to hide?”

“Maybe that’s why he gave it to me,” Yvonne countered. “He thinks I’m going to think he’s trustworthy because he gave me the info.”

I laughed. “Wow. OK, Miss Sanctified. Why are you letting your mind get this corrupted by negative thoughts?”

“Kill the sanctified crap before I kill you. Anyway, I’m not letting my mind do anything. It’s these dreams, girl.”

“And maybe these dreams aren’t from God, Vonne. I know that’s your spiritual gift, but I also know that not every dream is from God. Sometimes, they’re from your anxiety, from your wishes, hopes, dreams, and fears. Maybe you’re not admitting your insecurities with this relationship, and your dreams are making you think about them.”

“OK, Dr. Phil.”

“Hey,” I said, laughing, “when you call me at two in the morning, expect help and my advice. Or nothing at all.”

“So, what should I do?”

“About what?” I asked.

“About Barry, about these dreams, about all of it?”

“Do what you always tell me to do. Ask God to close the doors that need to be closed in your life and to open the doors that need to be opened. Ask Him for clarity so that you can see the truth.”

“You right.” After a quiet moment, she added, “Thank you, Gen. You know you my rock, right?”

I grinned. “Yes, I do.”

“You know Beth and Makayla would kick my butt all over this city if I called them this time of night.”

“Yes,” I said, laughing, “I know that, too.”

“I always know that if something needs fixed, call on you. And if you can’t fix it, you at least make me feel okay about having something broken in my life.”

“Okay.” I felt the tickle in my chest, the twitch of my right eye, signaling a welling of emotion. “Don’t have me cry this time of night. I’ll have swollen red eyes all morning long.”

We both chuckled.

“Love you, sis,” Yvonne said. “Thanks for having my back.”

“It’s what I do.”

:::

At six in the morning, my alarm went off, and I raced from my office to my bedroom to turn it off.

I was right. I didn’t go back to sleep.

Instead, I sat on the laptop and continued my investigation. I finished pilfering Barry’s e-mail account and then did quickie searches for him on the Net. We already knew he had several accounts on social networking sites – all of them were clean, normal, and respectable of a man who was seriously dating one of my best friends.

I thought back to the few times I had met Barry. He was attractive, as only a man who dated Yvonne would be. He had a good job that kept him…and Yvonne in the lifestyle she wanted. He was relatively nice – quiet, too quiet for my taste, but Yvonne liked it. Craved it, actually, because she was such a crazy, insane extrovert, she needed someone to balance her out.

If I had to gauge him on my Man-O-Meter, he would receive a 75 out of 100. If Yvonne knew, she would hit the roof. To her, Barry was definitely a 90, if not a 95, but the quiet thing, the traveling thing…didn’t settle with me, and I would never tell her that. I didn’t want to add to her anxiety unless I had facts to back up my concerns.

I grabbed my soccer shorts and T-shirt from atop my dresser and pulled my sneakers from under the bed. I might as well get my run in while nervous energy coursed through my veins.

I walked down the hall to the bathroom and was too pissed to find the door closed and the shower running.

“Chaya?” I asked.

“No.”

It was Jeremiah, my baby brother, if you called twenty-one a baby.

I rolled my eyes. “What are you doing up this early?” I asked. He knew, he and Chaya knew I started every morning around five or six, so I needed the bathroom. Besides, neither of them managed to get out of bed before eight, so I never had to worry. Now, I regretted having a home with only one bathroom.

“Didn’t shower when I got in from work last night,” he replied.

I crossed my arms. “So you decided to do it at six, knowing I had to use the bathroom.”

“Sorry.”

And from the tone of his voice, I knew the sentiment of that sorry was non-existent.

I mumbled, “Damn” as I walked back to my bedroom and dressed. I would just have to pop some gum in my mouth to mask the funky breath and tell my bladder it had nothing to release until I got back from my run.

After dressing, I went into the living room to the foyer and opened the front door.

I sneered and shook my head.

“That’s why that little negro’s taking a shower,” I said.

Dancy, Jeremiah’s girlfriend of two years, stepped out of her car and ambled toward me.

Every curse word I knew wanted to fly from my mouth, but instead of going off completely, I asked, “What are you doing here?”

Dancy slipped her hair behind her ears, showing me all of her round, high-yellow face. “Well, good morning to you, too.”

She stood just on the other side of the screen door, the door I still kept closed.

“Again,” I said, “what are you doing here?”

“I’m here to see Jeremiah.”

“At six-thirty?”

She nodded like I was the one with a problem.

“You know,” I said, “I would appreciate it if you didn’t come here so early. You have a home.”

She sucked her teeth, and I fought the urge to come through the door and tackle her into the dewy grass.

“I know that, Miss Genesis. Dang. Can’t I see my boyfriend before I go to school?”

I didn’t wait for her to move. I pushed the door open, allowing it to brush against her.

“Go ahead in,” I said. “But I don’t want to see you here like this anymore. Besides, how over will your life be if you don’t see Jeremiah before class? I mean it’s not like you won’t be here immediately after school lets out, spending hours upon hours here, like you don’t have a home to go to.”

Dancy just stared at me, her big brown eyes wide, her mouth opened.

I slipped on my headphones, slipped my iPod band up my arm, and trotted off. I didn’t have a problem with Dancy – not really. She was a bit overbearing, a bit overdramatic, and a bit too dependent on Jeremiah, and those things irked me to no end. Even more so considering Jeremiah lived me with, which meant that Dancy practically lived with me, too.

I sighed and let my music soothe the savage beast that threatened to unleash itself so early in the morning.

:::

Running is the one thing I do religiously. Well, that, and go to church on Sunday.

When I run, I release a lot of built-up anxiety and inhale a lot of good ideas for the freelance work I do.

My neighborhood is interesting enough where I feel safe running early, just before the sun rises. Having said that, I still carried a switchblade on me just in case someone wanted to play stupid with me. Either way, I was safe because if someone decided to engage in some early-morning crime, I was ready to show Stupid why some women didn’t need a man to take care of problems for them.

I could handle my own damn self.

I had been handling my own damn self for most of my thirty-six years thanks to a well-meaning but misguided mother and a father who never met a drink he didn’t like.

My mother, God bless her, was old school; she believed in marriage and the whole “’til death do us part.” She would kill my father before she would leave him.

And her staying damn-near killed her kids. All of us – me, Jeremiah, Chaya, and Chaim – had our issues to deal with because of the dysfunction we witnessed between our parents.

The plus for my siblings is they had me. I was the oldest. I was the mother. And sometimes, I was the father. The one who made the dinners, who read them to sleep, who made sure homework was done, who tried to bring laughter into a fucked-up situation so that we all might have a chance at an almost-normal adult life.

I’d like to think I succeeded in that.

Deep down, I knew I didn’t.

And it fucked with me every day.

Forty-five minutes in to my run, I stopped. A sour taste formed in my mouth. A held my stomach and felt the warmth that resided within.

My ulcer.

I swallowed hard, but the taste wouldn’t go away. Neither would the churning in my belly. I leaned forward, hands resting on my knees as I took deep breaths.

I tried to think about the positive things – I had a nice inflow of money from my freelance and editing work. I had a nice home that I was able to buy when I was twenty-six. Of course, then I went in on it with two friends I went to grad school with. After they met the loves of their lives and decided to get married and create families, I bought their shares of the home and prided myself in having a three-bedroom home that no one could kick me out of.

It didn’t take long in me seeing the negative of owning a three-bedroom house: there was space. And where that was space, there was opportunity for others to need space, and then the sanctity of your quiet home would be gone. Like mine.

Jeremiah couldn’t keep a job, which meant he couldn’t keep an apartment and that left him with me.

Chaya couldn’t figure out what she wanted to do, so she dropped out of college and couldn’t stay in the dorms and that left her with me.

I thanked God that Chaim took the reins of his life and tried to steer it correctly.
I didn’t have any more bedrooms to give.

I was a good friend – that had to count for something. I never turned them down for anything, and I always worked to encourage them.

But then that led to phone calls at two in the morning and advice-giving conversations that could last three, four hours.

“Stop it, Genesis,” I whispered. I took a breath. “Think positive. Be positive. Receive positive.”

I took another breath and felt the tightening of my chest loosen.

“That’s a good girl, Gen,” I said. “Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.”

I swallowed and no longer had the sour metal taste in my mouth.

I smiled. Another event thwarted.

If you never had a panic attack, the kind that had your ulcer flaring, your acid reflux flexing, your mind spinning, and your breath taken…consider yourself lucky.

I looked up and saw a bicyclist a block up the street.

I continued my run and moved out of his path despite the fact that his ass should have been on the road and not the sidewalk.

“What the hell?” I said when he swerved his bike before me. I moved again. He did, too.

I muttered a “Fuck” and retrieved my switchblade from a pocket in my shorts.

He must’ve seen me trying to open the blade because he pedaled faster, aiming right at me.

I moved again, and again he followed. I tried to step down from the sidewalk, but the toe of my right sneaker caught the lip of the sidewalk and had me falling into the street.

The bicyclist, a brother at that, sped past me laughing. For a split second, I thought of throwing my blade at him. I knew I could easily connect it with his back or better yet, the back of his head.

The pain in my left ankle won out, however.

I crawled to the sidewalk, sat, and peeled my sock down. Already, my ankle was swelling. I groaned and pulled my cell phone from my pocket.

As I dialed the house phone, I watched as seven cars passed me by, all of them slowing down, but none of the drivers asking if I was okay or needed help.

The call went to voice mail.

I called Jeremiah’s phone. Straight to voice mail.

I called Chaya’s phone. Straight to voice mail.

“This would be fucking funny if my ankle didn’t hurt,” I said.

Of course, when I needed their crusty asses, no one could pick up a phone. God forbid I ignored their calls, however.

I stood and cried out when I applied pressure to my left foot. I took a few deep breaths and asked God to guide my footsteps because I knew if it were up to me, I’d be lying on the sidewalk until someone finally decided to help the short brown girl off the curb.

My phone rang as I hobbled up the street. Chaya.

Before I could say hello, she said, “Saw you called. Can you pick up some eggs
on the way back?”

I looked at the phone as if I were about to pitch it into someone’s yard.

“Did you happen to notice the car still in the driveway?”

She sighed, and I knew her big eyes were rolling. “Yeah, but still. There’s that little grocer on the corner where you turn on your way back home.”

I stood, my left foot off the ground, a scowl on my face.

“You still there?” Chaya asked.

Still, I remained silent.

“Please,” she whined. “I have a need for eggs this morning.”

“Go get them then.”

“Please.” She held the word out for so long, I wanted to be home so I could snatch the letter e from her use.

“I’ll think about it.”

“OK, cool. See you when you get back.” I was about to end the call when she added, “Oh, what did you call for?”

I looked at the phone and groaned. “Nothing.”

:::

Most people who come to Lake Summit do so to retire. They have lived their lives. They have seen things. Done things. Experienced things. They are ready to leave their jobs, the busyness of daily goings on, and sit and be one with the one they love.

I came to Lake Summit, all the way down to a small town in Louisiana, to escape. I can admit that now, especially after three years of counseling and medication.

I have ran all my life – to Chicago, to New Jersey, to New York, to Boston – to places big enough where I would be insignificant, invisible. Where I wouldn’t be expected to be there for anyone.

But my foundation, the DNA that makes me, me can’t help fixing, making things right, so every time I ran, something brought me back to my hometown of Baltimore, back to those who needed me most.

And then Lake Summit came, out of the blue, via an e-mail to a writing group I belonged to. Lake Summit University offered the opportunity to write and teach, and I jumped at the chance to do it – to run again.

And I ran, and I enjoyed the small, quiet living of the town. What I didn’t enjoy, however, was how that quiet gave me opportunity to think about things I didn’t talk about – the things that shaped me.

It took five years for my nervous breakdown to arrive – one night while I sat in my home, alone, celebrating my thirty-first birthday in the dark. My girls wanted to throw me a big party, but I found a way to dodge them. They couldn’t understand the issues etched in my mind. In the end, I didn’t think they cared about them, really. They had too many issues of their own to read through the archives of mine.

Counseling came soon after, three years of talking one-on-one with a woman who took notes about the things that kept me awake at night. Who offered me Christian-based books to read. Who had no problem in telling me that I needed to take a hard look at myself because there were things that needed to be fixed.

A week after my counselor deemed me “OK” to go out into the world without her and medication as a net, my mother informed me that she was finally leaving my father.
She was tired of him and tired of being tired.

And I was happy. She should have been gone, should have been happy.

She wanted to start her new life, and she wanted to start it in Lake Summit.

And so did my siblings.

And all of them came to my small, quiet town of Lake Summit to start their new lives, to run away from which they came – like me.

And quicker than Denzel Washington can make me hot and bothered, Lake Summit seemed even smaller, yet less quiet.

After my counselor, the only person who knew any of this was my editor at Around Town magazine, Jennifer. She didn’t know it, but she was my free counselor, and when I hobbled into AT, I was ready for my next session.

AT was a small cultural publication that published articles about the goings on of Lake Summit and surrounding areas. In the years I had written for AT, I covered everything – concerts, poetry readings, rodeos, best houses to go to for Halloween, the spectacular Christmas lights down Lake Shore Drive, the best crawfish étouffée maker in Lake Summit, and the proper etiquette for tailgating a LSU Bengal football game.

I spotted Jennifer in her small office, her head down, a red pencil in her hand.
I smiled – someone’s article would be awfully bloody by the time Jennifer finished editing.

I could barely see her forehead for the way her long blond curly hair fell forward, shrouding her face.

I knocked on her open door, and she looked up and smiled.

My heart warmed at the sincere sparkle in her blue eyes.

“Hey you,” she said, waving me in. “Get that cute behind in here and give me your latest.”

When I started walking, she jumped from her seat and came to me.

“What the hell happened to your foot?” she asked, looking down. I managed to stuff my foot into a pink Keds, but the unattractive beige bandage around my ankle and foot made for a tight fit.

I shook my head. “Jenn,” I said, “I’m not even sure it’s worth getting into.”

She helped me to the chair across from hers at her desk, then returned to her seat.
I took my article from my backpack and presented it to her. She looked at it, then me.

“I’m not taking that ‘til you talk, Missy,” she said. “What happened?”

I told her about my morning.

“What in the sam hell is wrong with people?” she yelled. “I’m telling you, there are some people ‘round here that aren’t too bright.”

“Really? You think?”

We laughed.

“I’m okay,” I said. “I will be. It hurt like hell this morning, but my doctor gave me some wonderful drugs, and now I’m on Cloud Infinity.”

Jennifer chuckled and took my article. She nodded toward it. “So, does this even make sense?”

“Yes, smarty pants. I finished that last night, sans drugs.”

She sat the article in her To Read bin and returned her gaze to me. I tried not to smile. She went into psychiatrist mode. She sat back in her chair, raised an eyebrow, and stared at me in a way that said, I’m trying to figure you out; help me do that.

“So,” she said, “what else is going on? You look tired.”

“I am,” I replied. I told her about my phone call with Yvonne. “Never made it back to sleep after that, so my body is crying to be horizontal for a couple of hours.”

Jennifer frowned. “How about the next time your phone rings after midnight you don’t pick it up?”

“I can’t do that.”

“Why?”

“What if it’s important? I mean if you’re going to call someone that late at night, don’t think you it’s important to answer?”

“Normally, yes.” Jennifer’s mouth tightened. She did that whenever she tried to wrangle her emotions and keep from saying the wrong thing. “But, really, is playing I Spy at two in the morning important?”

“To me,” I answered, “no.”

“So, if it’s not important to you, why do you lose sleep over it?”

“Because it’s important to her. She’s my friend. She’s going through.”

Jennifer sucked her teeth, picked up her red pencil, and went back to editing.

I smacked her desk and laughed. “Unh unh. Stop. Talk.”

She dropped her pencil and asked, “How long have we known each other? Like five years, right?”

I nodded.

“And for those five years, I have heard a mess of stories about your friends,” she added.

“Yes?”

“Do they even know who you are?”

I couldn’t move. The question stopped me cold. I didn’t have an answer.

“Why you ask?”

“You never say anything about you talking about yourself to them. It’s always you getting up to do x, y, or z for them, helping them, organizing them. You do a lot for them. For everybody, actually.” She shrugged. “I just wonder if any of them know that you’re a person, too, and as a person, you need and deserve your own life.”

I chewed my bottom lip. It was the only thing I could do. I thought hard about
Jennifer’s words. I couldn’t recall the last time I used I in any extended conversation with anyone in my immediate circle – except for Jennifer.

I jumped when she patted my hand, snapping me from my thoughts.

“I didn’t mean to make you sad,” she said, concerned.

I shook my head. “Not sad,” I said. “Thoughtful.”

“I think you are a wonderful person, Genesis,” Jennifer said. “You’re so giving. You literally, any time of the day, can be found ripping and running for everybody, making sure their needs are taken care of.”

I nodded because it was true.

“Maybe it’s time to take care of your own needs,” she added.

I laughed and looked at her with serious eyes. “And those would be what?” I asked.