“More like Door Dash,” said Jayda.
A few of the guests actually gasped.
“And you wait tables at night? Does that mean you’re a . . . awaitress?” asked another one.
“Yes, that’s what waiting tables normally means.”
“Surely you jest.”
Harrison noticed how Jayda batted her eyes the way she did, in his estimation, whenever she was getting upset.
“I’m not jesting, no,” said Jayda.
“But . . . what are you doing here?” asked a shocked Phyllis. “We have no answer for such a lowly person. How did you get this highly-coveted invitation?”
Jayda looked at Harrison, expecting him to explain, but he said nothing. And the guests all looked at him too.
“This is a joke, right?” another guest asked him. “Surely this is some sort of prank, Harrison?”
“I don’t joke,” said Harrison, “and I don’t do pranks.”
They all knew it too. They looked at Jayda again. “Where did you come from?” asked one.
Jayda looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean where did you come from?”
He made it sound as if she was an alien. So she answered him accordingly. “I come from the planet Earth,” she said, which immediately got a chuckle from Carter, although his wife didn’t find it funny.
Harrison wasn’t commenting. He was eating and watching it all unfold. His focus wasn’t on what they were saying to Jayda, but how she was handling what they said. Because his brother and sister-in-law, he was certain, would say much worse. They would be more than happy to push her buttons in front of their father and disqualify Harrison in the process. He stared at Jayda.
“I’ll break it down to your level,” said Phyllis. “I’ll make it plain the way you people do. What hole did Harrison dig you out of?” she asked.
Carter was embarrassed by his wife’s question, but Jayda didn’t skip a beat. “The same one he dug you out of,” she responded.
When she responded so easily, Carter laughed. He couldn’t help it. But he was the only one. All the others were floored.
But Harrison was inwardly very pleased. She was holding her own, which was absolutely required for him to consider the next step.
“It is a fact that Harrison keeps his private life very private,” said another guest, “but I would have never in a million years took you to be his type. Not ever.”
Jayda ignored that putdown.
“And your background has to be . . .” The guest wanted to go there, but constrained himself for fear of Harrison. “What is your background?” he asked instead. “Do you have a criminal record?”
Now Jayda was offended. “Do you?” she shot back.
“Of course not!”
“Then why would I have one?” She batted her large eyes in such an angry but sexy way that Harrison went hard. Carter did too.
“Come now, young lady,” said another male guest. “It’s not a gigantic leap to assume you were raised in a ghetto.”
“Why wouldn’t an assumption like that be a gigantic leap?” Jayda asked.
Another guest intervened. “Because seventeen percent of African-Americans live below the poverty line. That’s why!”
“But by your own figure,” said Jayda,” that would mean that eighty-three percent of African-Americans live above the poverty line. And if that’s the case, why would you automatically assume I was raised in the seventeen percent and not the eighty-three percent?”
