CHAPTER ONE
“This is crazy you know.”
“I know.”
“That man is not going to listen to us.”
“I know, Teddy, I know. Why you keep bringing it up?”
“Because I don’t have time for this bullshit and you don’t either, Nikki. We got cargo coming in by the tons and we’re over here at some swanky restaurant sipping mint juleps and listening to this old-ass music these old-ass rich white folks love to listen to, and we’re sitting up here acting like we got it going on like that too.”
Nikki, who was the only black person in their section of the restaurant, laughed out loud. “Your ass rich and white just like their asses. You should feel right at home.”
“Get out of here,” Teddy said as he started moving around in his booth seat. “Give me some SZA with some Kendric Lamar mixed in and I’m good. But this Neal Sedaka/Neal Diamond/Barry Manilow shit or whatever it is? Don’t even try that.”
Nikki nodded. “I hear you. For real. But Roz asked for our help. The least we can do is try it, Teddy. I know it won’t work. You know it won’t work. But Ma needs to know it won’t work.”
“Roz already knows this ain’t gonna work. She’s just desperate now. Pop’s got her desperate now and that ain’t right.”
Nikki sipped her drink and then exhaled. “What else can we do? It is what it is.”
“It still ain’t right.”
“But here we are, Teddy. She wants us to participate in her intervention. As if we’re in any position to speak on somebody else’s relationship.”
Teddy and Nikki shared an uncomfortable glance. They got into it almost as much as Mick and Roz, but yet they were supposed to be the voices of reason?Them? “It’s a disaster waiting to happen,” he said.
“But what’s her alternative? More of the same? She’s tired of it. That much I know is true. And she’s ready to do just about . . .” Nikki sat erect. “Never mind. Here she comes.”
Teddy, who looked over at the entrance where Nikki was looking, saw her too. Then he started grinning.
Nikki thought he saw something about Roz that she didn’t see. “What?” she asked, confused.
“Listen to what’s playing on the stereo system.”
When Nikki heard what was being played over the restaurant’s stereo system after ignoring it all that time, she laughed too. It was Hall and Oates singingManeater:
“Oh-oh here she comes.
Watch out, boy, she’ll chew you up.
Oh-oh here she comes.
She’s a man-eater!”
“She sure looks like one too,” said Teddy, still grinning, as he and Nikki looked admiringly at Roz Sinatra as she made her way to their booth. With her Prada sunglasses on her flawlessly smooth, high-cheek-boned, dark-brown face, and an elegant, champagne-gold, form-fitting dress on her slenderly-curvaceous body, she came across as a fierce black woman who didn’t take no mess. She was an eye-catching figure to behold.
Although Nikki was a larger, full-figured woman that Teddy felt carried her weight extremely well, nobody carried anything better than his stepmother. She was the walking embodiment of elegance and sophistication. She was in a class all by herself, inside and outside, as far as Teddy was concerned. Which just pissed him off that his father treated her so shabbily.
Nikki had similar feelings, too, as she watched Roz walk their way. “What’s wrong with these men that they can’t appreciate when they strike gold?”
“Because they always feel they deserve platinum,” Teddy said, and Nikki looked at him. “They always want more,” he added. Then Roz walked up and he smiled. “Hey, Maneater,” he said jokingly, and Nikki laughed.
What they liked about Roz was that she got the reference immediately. “Yeah right. Get over,” she ordered Teddy as he scooted over and she sat on the booth seat beside him while he sat across from Nikki. “If I’m some maneater then I must be eating every man except for the one I wanna eat. Cause I’m not getting even a snack out of that particular man.”
Teddy shook his head. “Pop again,” he said.
Roz nodded her head. “Pop again,” she said.
