“And your husband?” asked Leslie.
“I’ll take him next week,” Meg said and she and Roz fell against each other laughing. Leslie just shook her head in a kind of superior disgust.
Then Kelly found his way to their table. “Hello ladies.”
All three looked at him. Roz and Meg couldn’t help but notice his thick biceps and his beautiful smile. Leslie couldn’thelp but notice his seemingly well-endowed mid-section. She’d heard how black guys had more than their fair share in that department, but she never tired it herself. She wasn’t into black guys, although she believed every single one of them was into her. But Roz noticed how she was the one checking him out.
“How’s it going, Kelly?” said Meg.
“It’s going,” Kelly said with that killer smile of his. Then he looked at Leslie. Leslie said nothing. So he looked at the one he walked over to see anyway. “Hiya, Roz.”
“What’s up?” asked Roz. “You aren’t calling us back to rehearsal early, are you?”
“No, no, no. Nothing like that.” Then he looked at Meg and Leslie. “But if you don’t mind, ladies, I would like to talk with our leading lady for a sec.”
Meg immediately began getting up. Roz and Kelly could tell that Leslie felt put-upon, but she got up and went to another table as well. And Kelly sat down.
“Was that necessary?” Roz asked him.
“You mean getting rid of them? Not really, no. But if you’re going to have a little power, why not use it?”
Roz smiled. “Better watch that one though,” she said.
“Which one?Leslie?”
“You know it.”
“Why?”
“She’s building a case against your ass. That’s why.”
Kelly was confused. “What kind of case?” Then he was surprised. “You mean sexual harassment?”
“That’s exactly what I mean. I see her on set. Always trying to get the other girls to agree that you’re too flirty. That you invade their personal space. That you’re just a little too touchy-feely. That chick is up to something.”
Kelly laughed. “You’ve been around those gangster family members of yours way too long, Roz.”
“Okay, don’t take it seriously. That Shannon guy fromClub Shay-Shay, or whatever that podcast was called, didn’t take it seriously either. He found himself staring down the barrel of a fifty-million-dollar lawsuit.”
Kelly’s smile left. And a look of recognition came on his face. “I did find it odd that she would act so stuck up around the cast, but yet whenever she was alone with me she was always propositioning me.”
Roz was shocked. “For real?”
“Every time. She’s always asking if I cared to join her at her apartment after rehearsal most every night. I finally asked her to do what. She said ‘fuck, what else?’”
Roz shook her head. “And she’s always Miss Ethical on set. What did you say?”
“I said hell no. I told her I had shoes older than her. I don’t go for the twenty-somethings, and I don’t go for white girls. But some of those girls believe they’re the cat’s meow and every brother in their sight wants them. This brother doesn’t. Most of us educated brothers are trying to keep it in the family. But yeah, she did proposition me. No doubt about it.”
“Good thing you didn’t go to that apartment,” said Roz. “It was probably rigged with so many video cameras and listening devices that you would have been Live on Facebook committing all kinds of unseemly acts and didn’t even know it.” They both laughed.
“But I’ll take your advice under advisement” he said, “and stay clear of her.”
“And anybody else on set. Keep it professional and you can’t go wrong. I just don’t wanna see another brother going through that shit again with these white girls.”
“What you care about us brothers? With your white man.” Kelly looked at her with a smile on his face, but she could tell he was dead serious.
And Roz was dead serious too. “If a brother would have come to me correct and would have snatched me up, I would have been snatched up. Mick came correct and snatched me up. I got snatched up. How he treated me mattered. His race? I didn’t give a shit.”
