CHAPTER ONE: Who's House, is It?
Featuring: Mrs. Gilbert
I was working up a decent sweat running at a clip around the track that bordered the football field at the park I used every other day to work out, primarily on increasing my stamina. I was usually the only one outside this early in the morning, but today just off in the distance I found myself looking several feet ahead at a sight most welcome. I'd been coming to this park to run and do basic calisthenics for a few months now. This park was special to me in that it appeared in my dreams sometimes as a harbinger of things to come.
Earlier at four in the morning I was awakened from a deep sleep after experiencing that repeating prophetic dream once again. I was always conflicted upon waking up, but this morning left me shook enough to get out early. The dream concerned the time I'd been lured to the park by my lady love Vickie Stone only to be sucker punched and left laying as she ran off heartbroken. She didn't know I'd been framed and made to look like a dog by her mortal enemy, a recent development at the time. In less than twenty-four hours we'd made up occupying a bed right before the whole thing blew up in our faces.
Today at barely six in the morning I was jogging around that field looking at one hell of an ass.
Whoever she was, this woman was some sort of athlete moving comfortable way ahead of me while my chest was full of fire. I was at a distinct disadvantage because I couldn't tear my eyes away from a huge, massive heart-shaped butt and shapely gams that caused a tent in my sweatpants making it hard to keep up. A pair of white running yoga styled shorts were skintight across the expanse of her derriere with way more bulging cheekage than any woman should've been comfortable with. She was really moving at a decent clip leaving me happily behind.
Her upper half was covered in a matching white, short sleeved hoodie leaving her head and face completely covered and out of view. She had to be around five four, maybe a little taller, but not by much as I struggled to speed up. This woman seemed to have an hourglass figure in the extreme matching a few women I'd been lucky enough to have sex with I the past year. This mystery woman fit right in the middle between a certain baby mama number two of my cousin Jaquan and my coworker and sometimes antagonist, Zoya Berhan.
The charcoal blackened skin tone of her bare legs told me she was a sister, bar none.
I couldn't help thinking business doing the math in my head about this unknown woman's moneymaking potential to my "side hustle" website. There was no way I'd run up on a stranger and try to make the hard sell for an online adult website. It would look particularly bad and creepy, not to mention dangerous to my immediate freedom if I were to be reported to the police. So, I had to be content with just enjoying the view as that big dark chocolate butt appeared to slow down a bit. I drew closer curious to a fault about what this woman's face would look like.
Then she sped off running at a sprint like someone lit a fire under her butt. She rounded the bend but ran up an incline disappearing over a short hill as I barely made the curve stopping on a dime nearly falling over. I wanted to run up the hill but thought better of it not knowing if she would be standing there. There was a parking lot on that side of the hill next door to this closed skating rink that was undergoing renovations. I hung back walking my racing heartrate down with my hands at the small of my back. My curiosity got the better of me just as I reached the point where the woman disappeared.
An old '86 Monte Carlo was sitting in the middle of the small parking lot in the park with the windows down. I could see the shadow or outline of a person for an instant before it slowly pulled off picking up speed as it burned rubber turning the corner. I stood at the top of the short hill perplexed.
"Maybe I was supposed to chase her?" I reasoned feeling like the mystery woman had been waiting for me. I lingered behind working it out in my head figuring maybe I'd missed an opportunity for another notch on my belt at best although it was more feasible that I would have caught a police case instead.
I finished up a few laps after that until I was sure I'd made up the time before driving back over to the house I was renting from Mr. Gilbert and his new wife by now, Tressie Fisher. Their relationship had blossomed out of desperate need, mutual desire, and pure unfiltered love. The twenty-year age difference between a man in his early fifties and a woman barely reaching thirty would've been the talk of the church they met in courtesy of yours truly, but neither of them were having it.
The newly minted couple pulled up stakes for a southern state and a track house with more than enough room for her cousins, the siblings of my lost lady love, Vickie Stone. This fortuitously left me with a place to live, albeit with certain rules in place to assure no sexual shenanigans on my part. Knowing I had a series of flings with his only daughter Charity made the formerly stern parent leery of renting out the place to me, but I'd brought him back together with Tressie leaving the man with a perceived moral debt to pay.
The fact that his malevolently beloved, overachieving daughter was away at college probably factored into his decision. I doubt he would've allowed me to cohabitate with Charity considering we couldn't seem to keep our hands off one another. We communicated frequently at first, but it predictably tapered off as she got more acclimated to her new life sort of drifting away. I missed her, sometimes.
I picked up some breakfast takeout from a local café in the area before driving home in the car formerly used by Charity added as an incentive for renting out the former Gilbert homestead. I was tasked with keeping the place in tip top shape including the lawn and backyard for a discounted rate as he gave me the garage clicker. I was considering using his garage as a sort of studio but hadn't got around to it.
It was a weekend where I had nothing to do other than editing some footage from my surplus of material as I pulled into the garage to the strains of "Take Away" by Missy Elliot. My cousin Jaquan always had an open door, but I was taking a break after a blow up with Rashida who was still living in his home. The three of us had this symbiotic friendship that ebbed and flowed depending on whatever was going on in each other's lives; and he still had to coparent with a woman I hated, Rashida's former best friend.
Even my muse and sometimes FWB would sometimes disappear from the house when it was known that she would appear. I honestly didn't know how my cousin managed it. I sat in the car eating my breakfast which consisted of a croissant stuffed with eggs, cheese, and three different meats lightly seasoned. It was a specialty at the café I frequented after workouts. A healthy mixed juice malted enhanced my meal as I considered pulling back out of the garage to hang out at the lake. It was going to be a nice sunny day.
"Huh?" I turned down the music, hearing some loud incessant knocking coming from the front of the house.
I figured it might be some particularly aggressive Jehovah Witness's who'd been showing up since finding out the Gilbert's moved out. My landlord had a subscription to their Watchtower magazine out of courtesy, but now I was on their radar after answering the door one morning without thinking. That interaction turned into a near hour long conversation that ended when I insinuated that I might appear at a service or two. Two more visits made it necessary for me to use the back door to come and go.
"Excuse me?!" I found a woman knocking frantically intermittently pushing the doorbell standing way too close to the locked screen door. She didn't seem to notice as I walked around the outside of my hedges trying to figure out what was going on.
She was probably five eleven in height, tall and slender looking with a nice, packed butt that was just below big. She was wearing this tight mint green dress that hugged her curvy derriere with a visible panty line that sent jolts to my tumescence. There was a matching pocketbook, a priceless Michael Kors in one hand that she was using to beat on the door.
"EXCUSE ME!!" I shouted, getting her attention.
As soon as she turned around, I got a shock to the system.
I was looking at Mrs. Gilbert, Charity's mother who was had some facial similarities but reminded me of this actress, Samira Wiley albeit with these puffed-up bags under her eyes. Her shoulder length hair had strips of grey in it framing her narrow elegant features. There was an air of importance gleaned just from her looking in my direction. She waved me off with a flick of the wrist which was accessorized with a chain link Dior bracelet looking briefly annoyed. Mrs. Gilbert continued knocking and ringing the bell.
"HELLO, I LIVE HERE MA'AM!!" She was the spitting image of the large portrait I'd seen in the former Brownstone home she formerly shared with her estranged daughter. This woman tossed her only child out after a fiasco created by the way too entitled former princess which cost her a ton of money to rug sweep. I was looking at the only woman Charity deferred to on the face of the planet. She'd forced Charity to apologize against her will to Tressie Fisher which left her daughter devastated.
The artist who'd painted that portrait was incredibly talented. I recalled Mr. Gilbert being left out of it.
"No, you don't; now toddle along." I did a doubletake as she spoke staring daggers, into my eyes.
"Toddle along?"
She turned back around, fishing an expensive phone out of her purse, presumably calling Mr. Gilbert but I decided not to wait getting out my keys, walking up the stairs which made her flinch like I was a thug or something.
"Don't you dare; I know the chief of police, buddy!" She clutched her purse to her chest like I would snatch it almost dropping her phone in the process. I recalled that she was this high-powered attorney who left her blue collar husband in the dust of her rising career as she became a partner at a prestigious law firm.
I unlocked the screen door with my keys and then followed up with the heavy oak door stepping inside.
