Dark Waters, page 3
Keenan mouths OH SHIT when he looks at his daughter’s name and the word RECITAL on Wednesday’s date on his desk calendar. He feels awful when he realizes he missed her concert. He’s been doing that a lot lately. “I’m sorry I missed Kennedy’s recital Wednesday. I’ll make it up to her, though. You know I will.”
Now Taylor is back to whiny/pouty, missing Keenan Jr. like crazy. “I know you will, babe, but you making up for what you’ve already missed does not make up for us not being able to spend as much time with you as we used to. With you being a busy attorney, your hours can sometimes be extreme; we’re used to that part, okay, but you’re missing so many important moments with your daughter and morning blowjobs from me.”
Keenan Jr. is now serious, proud, and hopeful without responding to Taylor’s morning blowjob comment. “I’m not just a busy attorney, Taylor; at the election in November, I plan on winning and being appointed the next Mayor of Philadelphia.” His tone softens. “Come on now, baby; we’ll get through this time crunch. My schedule won’t always be as hectic as it is now.”
As Keenan Jr. listens to his wife continue on in his ear, he picks up a photo from his desk of her and their daughter, Kennedy Marie. She’s an adorable seven-year-old girl with golden skin and sandy brown hair.
As Taylor goes on and on about missing him, the guy that promised Keenan Jr. his cut of 70k yesterday appears in his doorway in a cheap-ass gray suit with a basic pair of cheap back loafers to match.
Taylor assures, “Keenan, I’m not trying to put any extra pressure on you.” She takes a quick breath. “I know you’re stressed with work and preparing for the next election, but it’s just that we miss you so much and . . . I miss us.”
“Honey, I miss us too, but I’ll make it up to you and Kennedy. I promise. I’ll be home a little earlier this evening to head to my parent’s house for their anniversary dinner tonight. Then, after dinner, it’ll just be you, me, and Kennedy the whole weekend.” Keenan Jr. signals for the man standing in his doorway to come in. “Taylor, one of my colleagues is at my office door staring right at me, so I have to go, okay? I love you. I’ll see you and Kennedy Marie tonight.”
While Keenan Jr. is wrapping up his call with Taylor, his eyes go up to Arthur Guglielmelli, the sloppy Italian from the text messages. He’s a fifty-one-year-old ex-politician that always did horribly at the polls. He now works in consumer protection at the DOJ. Guglielemelli is a shyster. An embezzler—a greedy son of a bitch that would steal from his dead mother if he thought he could get away with it. His hands are even dirtier than Keenan Jr.’s since most of the criminal shit Keenan Jr. does funnel through Guglielmelli.
Taylor says, “I love you, Keenan. Have a good day.”
“I love you too, babe. Tonight. Okay... bye.”
As Keenan Jr. is hanging up the phone, Arthur walks into his office. When he comes in, he starts talking in a mocking tone, trying to sound/be black. His arms swing as an 80s rapper wearing gold dookie chains with his first line. “Keenan, my man, my main man. My soul brotha.”
Keenan Jr. is all business. No smile. No pleasantries. “Close the door.”
Arthur sits in front of Keenan Jr.’s desk after he closes his office door.
Keenan Jr. is short with him. “You got my money?”
Arthur laughs. Keenan Jr. doesn’t. “Hey, brotha, can I get a hello, Guglielmelli? Kiss my ass, Guglielmelli. Thanks for bringing me over seventy-five thousand dollars today, Guglielmelli.” He laughs harder when he says, “Well, seventy-five thousand minus my twenty percent fee.”
Keenan Jr. jumps to his feet, speaking in an angry hushed hood tone. “Are you fuckin’ crazy, muthafucka? Where the fuck is my money?”
“I gotcha covered, my man; chill out.” When Arthur pulls out three wads of money from his jacket, Keenan Jr. snatches the stacks.
While Keenan Jr. is thumbing through the hundreds in the strap, Guglimelli reminds him, “Don’t forget about Faith’s guy, Mack Papadopoulos. He really wants to be appointed Special Advisor in the district. So you make that happen, and he’ll give just about anything, including those airline tickets to the Virgin Islands you’ve been hinting at.”
Keenan Jr. says, “I got it.” He then looks up and out to the short distance once he throws the money Gugliemelli just gave him in his briefcase. That’s when he says, “My father can’t know about any of this.”
“Keenan, come on, man, no one can ever know, and what does your father have to do with this?”
Keenan Jr. pounds his fist on his desk when he says, “You heard what I said!” Then, he quickly quietens his voice. “My father can never get even a whiff of this, or I’m dead. So seal this shit up and keep your goddamn mouth closed. You got it?”
“I got it, man . . . I got it.”
“Good.” Now that the don’t let my father find out talk they have every time they do illegal business has been reinforced, Keenan Jr.’s mind was back on all the money in his briefcase with a devilish smirk on his face . . .
4
Naomi
At the Waters mansion, in the bathroom mirror is the Waters’ middle child, Naomi—she’s thirty, brown-skinned, very nice looking, rough, and tough as steel. Naomi has long nails, short hair under her long lace front, and she’s wearing all designer clothes as usual. She’s the middle child, the brat, the smart law school dropout that still lives at home. Like Keenan Jr. and Saint, Naomi attended Temple University too, but she was the one that needed extra help. Although she was doing well in her criminal law class, she just wouldn’t attend any of the lectures, review notes, or create outlines the way she was supposed to. Naomi didn’t want to study or learn the same discipline as her brothers. For her, it was still all about dudes, money, and shitting on bitches she thought she was better than. Not school.
She loved her brothers, but secretly, she hated on their accomplishments. Their dad, the judge, doesn’t come down on her as hard as she expected him to, but she can tell he’s not happy with her and the fact that she didn’t pass the bar the first time as her brothers did. So Naomi always says, “Fuck them! So what? Who cares?” whenever she thinks about it. They’ve never rubbed their law degrees in her face, but that doesn’t stop Naomi from dogging them out when no one is around. She even called Saint Kenny the F-word when he graduated because she was so mad. And it wasn’t because of the Ferrari Judge Waters bought Saint when he passed the bar—it was how he looked at him with so much love and admiration like, that’s my boy! Shit, Naomi wondered when he was going to look at her like that. Until he does, she’ll keep secretly cursing out her dad and brothers like last week when she called Keenan Jr. the T-word, which stands for thief. Up under all that fancy law shit, she knows he’s shady; Naomi felt everyone knew except Taylor.
Besides holding back on her family, Naomi doesn’t take any shit from anybody. She’s a real bully with an extremely vulnerable side that she rarely lets show because of everything she’s been through. She’s been lied to, lied on, cheated on, and embarrassed. She once was even in a verbally abusive relationship with a guy she really liked until she kicked him in the balls for calling her a childish bitch. Since then, she’s been super guarded. That is until she met Jayceon from Chicago.
Naomi takes a deep breath as she talks to herself in the mirror. “When I get there, the wedding can start.” She then rolls her eyes as she continues with her hair.
Lillian walks up to the bathroom door, admiring her daughter. “Oooh, Naomi, you smell good. Look good, too! Girl, where are you going all dressed up this early on a Friday?”
Naomi and Lillian have a good relationship when Naomi listens to everything Lillian says and dares not test her. Lillian thinks her daughter can be a delusional airhead sometimes, and Naomi thinks her mother is a pushover for her father and brothers. And in Naomi’s world, pushover equates to weakness, and she promised herself weak would never be an adjective used to describe her. Especially when it comes to a man, regardless of who the fuck it is. However, Naomi may pop off at the mouth, but she doesn’t take it too far with her mother because she feels terrible at how stupid her dad makes her look. Plus, she’s afraid of her.
Naomi’s body language, voice, and demeanor are casual as she finishes up in the mirror. She’s smiling when she says, “Hey, Ma. I’m going to a wedding.”
“A wedding? On a Friday evening? You didn’t mention a Friday wedding to me; who’s getting married?”
Naomi’s eyes go back to herself in the mirror. “Just a friend of a friend; nothing worth mentioning, Ma.”
“Okay, well, make sure you’re back in enough time to have dinner with the family.”
“Oh yeah, I’ll be back in more than enough time.”
When Naomi is finished getting dressed, she heads out of the bathroom with her mother behind her. She’s pretty and ready to go with her phone in her hand.
Once downstairs, she goes to the island in the eat-in kitchen. She grabs her Chanel sunglasses and puts the chain of her Chanel bag on her shoulder. She then takes her keys and the big elegant pink gift box from the counter. Smiling, she hugs her mother before leaving the house and walks to her car in the driveway.
***
In a big church on North Broad Street, several women buzz around the bride Tia Armstrong in a medium-sized room. Tia is thirty-six, petite, short, feisty, educated, uppity, and in love with a wounded man whose heart does not belong to her. She is standing on a pedestal in the middle of the room in a beautiful white wedding gown. Her mother, Sherry, a middle-aged well-put-together black woman, is on one side of her, with her soon-to-be mother-in-law Eve McCall on the other.
Tia looks in the mirror across the room with a nervous look on her face. “A wedding . . . on a Friday?” Her worried eyes look up at her mother first and then at Eve. Tia then fidgets with her hair; she grabs her stomach, nearly freaking out from nerves. “Why am I so nervous, and both of you are so calm?”
Her mother’s voice is soothing. “Because honey, we both know you will be fine, that’s why.” Sherry smiles. “Me and your father married on a Friday evening at five o’clock because his parents married on a Friday evening at five o’clock. When Dean died, we’d been married thirty-eight years, and his parents were married for fifty, so I don’t think you want to break that tradition, honey.”
It is Eve’s turn to try and soothe Tia. “And Jayceon loves you, Tia. You two will have such a good life together, and it starts today on a Friday evening at five o’clock. Now, leave any doubts you may have in that pretty little head of yours on that pedestal and go out there to my son and become his wife at the golden hour.”
When the clock on the wall reads 4:55, Eve reaches her hand out and helps Tia off the pedestal. Tia then goes over to the mirror and looks at her beautifully beat face. Sherry and Eve are behind her—her mother on the right and Eve on the left. Tia slowly pulls down her veil when she whispers, “I’m ready.” She and the two mothers then share a warm moment in front of the full-length mirror.
Outside the church, Naomi drives up with the gift box on the floor behind her seat. She gradually turns her music down so she doesn’t seem disrespectful to the people outside. Then, after she illegally double-parks right out front, she gets out in a cute black dress, hugging her body just right.
Inside the church, the vestibule is semi-crowded. People are walking and talking about with Tia and a skinny, trendy-dressed male stylist coming out of a side door. He’s holding her train as she slowly walks. Once Tia gets in front of the double wooden doors, the stylist fixes the bottom of her dress, making sure it’s perfect—it is.
As Tia stands there, Naomi walks up the stairs of the church. When she enters, there is angelic music playing. Naomi smiles, nods, and even takes a program from one of the ushers. She then quickly drops the program when she’s a foot away from the bride. It lands faceup, showing Jayceon McCall and Tia Armstrong’s names above their pictures.
After a few seconds, when the bride turns and notices her, Naomi holds onto the gift box but forcefully flings the top half of the box at Tia. When she does, the turquoise paint from inside the one-gallon paint can lodged in the box is now splattered all over Tia’s wedding dress.
The second the paint hit Tia’s dress, the light, angelic music that was playing seemed to shriek off like a needle pulled off a spinning vinyl record.
Naomi then drops the paint can, with Tia standing a few feet away, screaming as turquoise paint runs down the front of her beautiful white gown.
Naomi instantly starts talking with her pointed finger darting back and forth at Tia. “Bitch, tell Jace he better be hittin’ me back when I call his stupid-ass! I don’t care what he’s doing or who he’s doing it with. You got that, bitch?!”
When Eve, Sherry, and others run out to the vestibule, Sherry shouts out at Naomi in a shaky angry voice as her daughter stands there still in shock. As Sherry tries to get Naomi together, Tia glares at her. She knows who she is. She also knows Jace is still having sex with her.
Standing right next to her trembling daughter, Sherry shouts, “Naomi Waters, answer me! What have you done?!”
Naomi doesn’t bat an eye as she curses Tia’s mother out. “What? Bitch, don’t ‘Naomi Waters’ me; you and your daughter don’t know me like that! The fuck!”
The groom, Jayceon McCall from She’s Obsessed, is thirty-four. He’s tall, has a nice build, light brown skin, with a body full of tattoos. When he appears at the doorway from the sanctuary, he just stands there looking at Naomi.
She looks back at him with her eyes asking how could you?
The scene in the vestibule turns chaotic as the stylist and two of the groomsmen try to hold Tia back while trying not to get any of the paint running and dripping down the front of her dress onto them.
Tia is rowdy when she shouts, “I know she just didn’t just call my mama a bitch! Move! Get off me so I can gather her!”
Now Tia’s mother, Jace, and his mother are all trying to hold Tia back, with Naomi standing there laughing. “Let her go so she can see what these hands work like.”
Trying her hardest not to curse again in the church, Tia looks right at Naomi. “How dare you show up here, ruin my wedding day, and think it’s funny, you nasty piece of trash!”
Naomi is taken aback. “Nasty? Girl, ask your new hubby just how nasty I can be.” She raises her voice when she says, “Go on; ask him about the nasty shit we did on y’all tacky u-shaped dining room table while you were upstairs sleeping good under a damn oscillating desk fan!”
Jace and Naomi’s minds simultaneously flash back to when Naomi showed up at their townhouse to check Tia after she swore she had been coming for her from a fake IG account. That night, as Jace tried calming Naomi down before she woke up Tia, she asked for something to drink. When he returned from the kitchen carrying a cup full of ice and Gatorade, Naomi had climbed up on them folk’s dining room table and spread her legs. She said, “Come eat my pussy; she’s asleep,” as they could hear Tia snoring from upstairs.
Jace said, “Hell, naw, I ain’t doing that here,” but before long, he did just as Naomi knew he would and dropped down in front of her.
Smirking at Tia, Naomi said, “Don’t take my word on what we did in y’all house . . .” She then looks at Jace before her eyes are back on Tia. “Ask him!”
If Tia had asked Jace, he would have stood there and lied to her in front of everyone, but luckily for him, Tia doesn’t ask; she’s too busy clawing to get to Naomi, who is now walking away.
On second thought, Tia does ask, “What the hell is she talking about, Jayceon?! She doesn’t know where we live, right?! She’s never been in our house! What is she saying? WHY IS SHE HERE?!”
“She lying, Tia! She just said all that to get to you.” Jace’s eyes are right on Naomi when he says, “You know I wouldn’t do anything like that.”
Tia and Jace’s voices trail off the further Naomi walks away.
As three church security guys run out to the vestibule, rushing in her direction, Naomi is already heading for the door of the now-disarrayed church.
One of the men goes to grab her, shouting, “Miss?! Hey, miss, you can’t—” but quickly pulls his hand back when Naomi starts yelling.
“NO, DON’T FUCKING TOUCH ME! I’M LEAVING! DON’T MAKE ME CALL MY DADDY, JUDGE KEENAN WATERS UP HERE!” Naomi looks back at the men just standing there watching her leave. She says, “Yeah, that’s what I thought!” sticking her middle finger up at them before she pushes open the old wooden church doors. She then quickly leaves and walks back down the stairs and to her car, laughing. But when she gets in, the laughter stops as her mind flashes to earlier in the day. She thinks back to standing in the mirror looking at herself after the pregnancy test on the sink told her she was pregnant. With that heavy on her mind, Naomi looks up at the church before she speeds away . . .
5
Saint Kenny
Saint Kenny is getting ready in his waterfront square condo. He is The Waters’ baby boy. He’s twenty-eight, handsome, with a gorgeous body and long legs. Saint Kenny is a junior associate attorney for a law firm where he got hired without a call from his father. His goal is to work hard and get everything on his own. So right out of law school, he’s been developing his skills to become a senior associate and eventually partner. He has struggled a lot with the legal research part, and preparing a witness for examination has kept him up some nights, but he is determined to be just as good as his dad and better than his big brother.
Saint celebrates his career with his family, but he is secretive as hell regarding his private life. He lies about everything, making it all up as he goes along. He does so because he’s the naïve one, believing everything he’s told. For example, Saint knows his family is all fucked-up as a unit, but individually, he thinks they are who they say they are, which is people living with few problems, which is a lie.
In his bedroom, Saint stands in front of the full-length mirror, wearing a pair of black boxer briefs. He could be a model with his nice abs. Nice chest. Nice lips and dark bedroom eyes.
