1All Work—No Play
“Miss Taylor, you have a call,” the receptionist’s voice said over the intercom. Klarke hated when she got a phone call while someone was at her desk. It just so happened that her boss, Evan, was standing over her with a rush print order.
Opalescent Press had just placed a print order for one of their best-selling author’s books. They needed seven hundred thousand copies of his latest, Dollar Bill, in one week. Apparently the author was scheduled to appear on Oprah, so bookstores from all over were putting in orders. With Klarke being the executive accounts representative and company liaison, she was put in charge of the project.
Klarke was honored to be handling this account. Opalescent Press was a major publishing house and one of the company’s largest clients. They housed some of the top authors in the United States. Klarke had just seen the author of Dollar Bill on a late-night television talk show. Klarke recalled that he was single and not bad looking at all. She had even imagined how nice it would be to be the woman by his side to help catch the windfall of dollar bills that he was about to come upon. On top of that, she could say the hell with her job.
She had been working for the company a little over a year and a half, ever since her divorce from Rawling. With no man and no money, Klarke had been forced to get a job.
“Can you put the call to my voicemail, please?” Klarke asked.
“Oh, go ahead and take it,” Evan said.
Klarke could tell he wanted to be nosy. Not only that, but catching her on a personal call would give Evan a rise. It had only been a month since she got off probation for excess personal phone usage. Evan seemed to find personal enjoyment in reprimanding Klarke ever since she had turned down his dinner invitation.
Klarke had already pledged not to let her business relationships and her personal life mix. She knew from the moment she stepped into Evan’s office for her second interview with him that he was going to test her conviction.
Instead of him coming to meet her in the lobby and interviewing her in the conference room, as he had done on the first interview, she had been instructed to go directly to his office.
Evan couldn’t stop licking his lips once he laid his ocean-blue eyes on Klarke’s five-feet-five-inch banging silhouette as she stood outside of his office door. He had been so excited and caught up as to the treat on the other side that he couldn’t distinguish Klarke’s faint knock from his own heartbeat.
He had been looking forward to Klarke’s Friday afternoon appointment. Never had a black woman made this all-American white boy cream his Hanes.
Behind closed doors a cunt was a cunt, be it chocolate or vanilla (hell, strawberry and banana too, for that matter). Evan could have cared less about not being able to take Klarke home to meet his upper-class suburban family. He only cared about satisfying his curious chocolate craving.
Klarke was a very sensual woman. It was the way she looked at a man, the shape of her lips when she spoke, the way her bronzetinted puffy locks rested softly on the nape of her neck. It was the way her Cimmerian skin looked as if gold glitter had been dusted over it.
She made love to herself when she rubbed her legs and arms, or grazed her chin and cheek with the back of her hand. She suspected she was beautiful, yet she wasn’t entirely sure. She wore a deliberate, smile that said, If I’m not beautiful, at least I’m happy. Klarke felt that a person had to possess at least one of three things in order to get by in life: money, beauty, or happiness.
As Klarke patiently waited outside the frosted glass door to Evan’s sky-rise office, Evan ran his fingers through his moussed blond hair. He loosened his silk tie and undid the top button of his crisp white shirt before clearing his throat to grant Klarke permission to enter.
Since her first interview two weeks prior, Evan had fantasized about throwing Klarke on his desk, lifting her tight miniskirt, pulling her thong to the side, and fucking the shit out of her. Or pinning her up against his glass window and pumping her so hard that her sweaty ass cheeks left their imprint behind. He fantasized about her sucking his erect penis until cum exploded down her throat and dripped from between those almond lips of hers. It was no wonder he hired her and gave her an annual salary of five thousand-dollars more than the white girl she had replaced, who had been there almost seven years.
Normally the administrative assistant, Renée did all the training, but Evan had trained Klarke himself. The standard one-week training lasted almost three weeks and included five lunch sessions. Klarke always made sure to carry a pencil and pad to lunch as a corroboration of her business-only stance. She knew her boss was feeling her and didn’t want to lead him on in any way.
It was their final lunch date when Evan grabbed hold of his balls and asked Klarke out for dinner. Klarke answered him with a simple no. She didn’t even give him an explanation. She didn’t smile or pretend to be flattered. She simply said no, then took a bite of her turkey club and a sip of her Shirley Temple. From that point on she was no longer the house nigger as far as Evan was concerned. She was back in the field with all the rest of the black folk.
“Kemble and Steiner Printing,” Klarke said in her white voice. “Klarke Taylor speaking.”
She could feel Evan’s eyes on her tongue as he listened.
It was the finance company for her Rodeo, calling to inquire as to whether or not she would be making her monthly payment.
Evan didn’t even try to pretend that he wasn’t paying undivided attention to Klarke’s conversation. He’s probably got nut running down his legs, Klarke thought. At least I finally made the fucker cum.
After a shitty day at the office Klarke hopped into her shitty vehicle and drove her regular route home. There had been an accident on 1-75, so the traffic on the freeway was at a complete standstill. Klarke’s seven-minute drive turned into forty-five minutes.
While sitting in traffic Klarke just happened to look over into the burgundy Nissan Maxima on her right-hand side. The gentleman driving was very nice looking. He was a bald-headed, deep-chocolate brotha. He looked to be the clean-cut type, sporting a short-sleeved, cream-colored henley. He had a thick gold rope chain around his neck with a diamond cross. Everything about him said class and money. He smiled at Klarke. His pearly whites sparkled like he was on a Colgate commercial. Klarke smiled back. He winked. Klarke blushed.
Klarke looked ahead to make sure traffic hadn’t inched any. She just knew the guy was going to say, “Excuse me Miss, what’s your name?” But he said nothing.
Why wont he holla? Klarke thought to herself. Hell, it’s the new millennium. Why am I waiting on him to make the first move?
Klarke straightened up in her seat, cleared her throat, then turned to look at the gentleman. As she opened her mouth to speak nothing came out. Staring back at her was a young thugged-out looking dude with a wave cap on his head. His vehicle, a huge black Lincoln Navigator with spinners, had taken the place of the bald-headed deep-chocolate brotha’s. The young man was bouncing to the song “Get Low” by Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz blazing from a huge speaker in the tailgate of his vehicle. The young man was singing along with the song word for word. All Klarke could hear was bitch this and ho that.
When the young fella caught Klarke looking at him he smiled, then licked his lips as if he could have eaten her right up. His grill had been invaded by silver. He probably received radio signals in that mouth. Other than that, he was kind of cute, in a thugged-out sort of way. It was obvious he had a nice hunk of change. If the oversized SUV didn’t scream out money, then those two-carat diamond earrings did.
Klarke cracked a crooked smile at him. Maybe he wasn’t so bad. Besides, she hadn’t had a good dick between her legs since Rawling. Perhaps Nelly over there could show her a thing or two. Maybe a thug in her life was exactly what she needed.
Klarke imagined being in the backseat of his Navigator, riding his young ass like a mechanical bull. He’d probably be ordering her around with words like “shake that ass, bitch” or “fuck that dick, ho.” A little dirty talk never hurt nobody. Maybe Stella had something going with that getting-your-groove-back shit.
The driver in the car behind Klarke laying on her horn broke Klarke’s thoughts. Traffic had begun to move again. Now even the young thug had proceeded down the highway. Klarke had just lost her chance at two men in less than five minutes. She gritted her teeth in frustration.
“From now on I am not waiting around on any man to make the first move,” Klarke said out loud. “From this point on, I’m calling the shots. I’m making all of the rules to the game. Never again will I let a man have control of my destiny.”
Klarke thought back to how she had been robbed of the lifestyle she had been accustomed to when she and Harris divorced. She got ill thinking about her interlude with Rawling, another man who didn’t know what the fuck he wanted in a woman. Although unfortunate for him, the next man in Klarke’s life would have to pay for the sins of the others.
The more Klarke thought about it, the more motivated she was to change the current course of her life’s path. “Let the games begin.”
And Klarke had just the game in mind. She put the pedal to the metal so that she could get home and begin executing her plan.
2You’ve Got Mail
“What a day.” Reo sighed as he collapsed onto the king-size bed in his suite at the Omni Hotel in downtown Chicago. He wished that for just once his publicist would get her ass on a plane and hit up two or three bookstores. A brother appreciated the seven-figure contract, but damn. After a three-month spell, his body was pleading for a break. Reo wasn’t used to all the travel his five-book deal would entail. He had never been on a plane in his life and now, after thirty-three years, here he was committing infidelities on his hometown of Columbus, Ohio’s, modest skyline.
Reo’s complaints were short lived, however. Every time he thought about his dedicated following of readers that awaited his arrival to their town, Reo’s dick got hard. He had finally done it. He had gone from a $40,000-a-year teaching salary to that of a two-time best-selling author’s. Up until a year ago Reo had only dreamed of arriving at the independent African American bookstores with a line of people waiting to buy autographed copies of his books. It didn’t bother him one bit that over three-fourths of them were beautiful women.
Being a bestselling author had always been Reo’s dream. Tales seemed to spill out of him. He had a vivid imagination, and initially he wrote for his own personal pleasure or just to get stuff off of his chest. Then he had shared his writings with his father, who also thought that Reo had true talent.
Reo’s father, who taught college English comp and was considered a respected authority in the community, helped him put together his first book, which was a compilation of short stories. In a strictly advisory role, of course. Reo laughed to himself as he remembered an incident in grade school.
Reo’s sixth-grade teacher, Miss Willoughby, had accused him of plagiarism on a paper he wrote on the march on Washington, which was worth 50 percent of his grade. The teacher knew Reo’s father’s profession, which had been high school English teacher at the time, and had accused Reo of having his father complete the paper for him.
The teacher rejected the paper and gave Reo a week’s extension to complete another one. Reo had been crushed. One word of dispute would have caused him to erupt into tears in front of the whole class. He simply took the paper back from Miss Willoughby and placed it in his book bag.
When he got home from school he fell into his mother’s arms. Reo had held his tears in for two hours, twenty-three minutes, and eighteen seconds. His head was throbbing and his eyes were stinging. He could barely relay the tragedy to his mother.
Mrs. Laroque couldn’t sleep that night. She must have rehearsed in the mirror a thousand times what she was going to say to that teacher. How dare someone, anyone, send her baby home in tears!
The next morning, when Reo’s mother, who was still fresh with anger, had finished ranting and raving, he begged her to just allow him to write another paper. He didn’t know what was worse, being accused of plagiarism or his mother being handcuffed and taken off to the jail for laying Miss Willoughby out.
Mr. Laroque convinced his wife to allow him to handle the situation. Reo was relieved. He knew how his mother could be. He remembered his mother clobbering the neighborhood bully’s mother for cheering on her son to fight Reo. That was the first time Reo had heard the adage the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. But after the way his momma beat that poor woman’s tail, he wasn’t too sure who the tree was, his mother or the bully’s.
Reo was amazed and proud at how his father handled Miss Willoughby. Mr. Laroque turned the table and told her how insulted he was to be accused of having the writing skills of a sixth grader. He then told her how proud she must be as a teacher for producing pupils who could turn out such well-written pieces of writing and how wonderful it must be to brag to her colleagues.
By the time Mr. Laroque finished swelling Miss Willoughby’s head, she was inviting the family over for dinner. Reo was permitted to resubmit the same paper. He received an A+ and the chance to read it to the sixth-grade student body during an honors assembly. He had never felt more proud than to be the fruit of his father’s tree.
After numerous rejections of Reo’s short stories from publishing houses, Reo decided to self-publish his book. Every dime he earned was put toward the writing, editing, printing, distribution, and promotion of his book. He gave his two-year-old, fully loaded Nissan Altima back to the bank and bought a fifteen-year-old Chevrolet Chevette that didn’t even have AC. He gave up his suburban German Village studio and moved back home with his mom and dad. He sold his furniture, pawned his jewelry, and even borrowed against his 40IK plan.
Reo called in to radio stations to discuss his book. He wrote fill-in articles for newspapers and magazines, which helped to promote his book. He beat the pavement, visiting beauty and barber shops to spread the word about his book. He visited parking lots where conferences were taking place and put fliers about his book on all the car windshields. He drove from city to city and neighboring states doing this. He sold the book from out of his trunk and out of his briefcase. He even gave it away for free.
It was a long, hard sacrifice, but in the end it paid off. In the beginning though, it was a struggle. He lost Meka, his high school sweetheart and fiancee at the time.
Meka and Reo held the record for the longest engagement ever. It was a well-known fact that the engagement ring Reo had presented to Meka, Christmas of 1999, was really a hush ring. That year, every other word out of Meka’s mouth had pertained to marriage. It had gotten so bad she had been holding out on sex. She claimed that she felt guilty having sex under the Lord’s watch without even the possibility of marriage on the horizon. Reo had to do something to shut her up so he pretty much proposed under duress.
Meka was from a well-to-do family. Her mother was a doctor and her father was a lobbyist for telephone companies. Meka was a dental hygienist studying to become a dentist. She planned to open her own practice. She was the eldest of three daughters, and each of her sisters had married men who were also from well-to-do families.
Meka wholeheartedly supported Reo’s publishing efforts. She wanted to see him succeed. Nothing thrilled her more than the idea of being the wife of a successful writer. She had begged him to let her give him money toward the production of his book, but he declined the offer. He had seen Judge Mathis one too many times and knew that a gift from a current girlfriend met amor phosed into a loan with interest upon breakup. There was no way some woman, or anybody else for that matter, was going to be able to stake a claim on his talent and success.
Meka went as far as suggesting Reo move into her loft rent-free. There was no way Reo was going to give her the pleasure of being able to put him out of her house every time they got into an argument. Lord knows that was a woman’s favorite declaration: “This is my house, muthafucker.”
Eventually, it became too unpleasant for Meka to roll in a Chevette, and shameful for her to tell people her fiance lived with his parents. Reo’s sacrifices were more than Meka was willing to make. She could not continue subjecting herself to such humiliation.
Of course, once Reo’s book dominated the number-one spot on the national bestseller lists for a record fifteen weeks straight, Meka was back on his dick again, literally. As soon as she caught wind of his accomplishment she called to congratulate him.
A simple phone call wasn’t adequate for Meka. She invited him to her loft for a celebration dinner with a guest list including only the two of them. With slight trepidation, Reo accepted her invitation.
When he arrived at Meka’s loft he was escorted to a candlelit dining table, where he was greeted by a small feast. Meka had never made him a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich before, and yet here she had managed to whip up a meatloaf, twice-baked mashed potatoes, mac’n’cheese, some collard greens, and buttered rolls.
Reo gobbled down the spread as if it were the Last Supper. They conversed while intoxicating themselves on shots of Hennessy. This was surprising to Reo, as he had only known Meka to sip on cutesy drinks such as fuzzy navels and wine coolers. As a special congratulatory token Meka decided that she would be dessert, so she excused herself from the table in order to begin her preparations.
Reo got reacquainted with the leather sofa in the den that he had made himself comfortable on many times before. He managed to flick through a few channels on the big-screen television until Meka entered the den modeling a Frederick’s of Hollywood black chemise. Before Reo could even compliment her appearance, she was feeding him her tongue, nipples, and fingertips that bore the color of Cherries Jubilee polish on the nails.
Departing from their regular sexual encounters, Meka did things to him that he had only fantasized about or had seen on a porno tape. Their acts ventured on the verge of obscene. He screwed her in every position they could think of and invented a few new ones as well. He beat up her pussy like it had done him wrong. She fanatically sucked his dick, licked his balls, and allowed him to give her a pearl necklace. In other words, she let him jerk in her face. She grazed the crack of his ass back and forth with her tongue as if she was licking the ice cream from in between an ice-cream sandwich. What tripped him out was the fact that the glossy crimson lipstick on her lips seemed unaffected. He now understood why she had spent excessive amounts of money on those damn Mary Kay cosmetics. They were everlasting.
Reo had cum more in that one night than he had in his whole life. At least that’s what it felt like anyway. He was almost certain that his last climax, like a twelve-year-old boy jacking off for the first time, had been dry.
Copyright © 2004 by Joylynn M. Jossel
