Bougie Black Girl : A Novella (One)

“It’s Philly’s Hottest hitting you with the best in hip-hop and R&B. The Heat 95 and your boy—“ Click! I hit the “OFF” button on alarm clock on the nightstand beside my bed.  My eyes attempt to focus on the indeterminable red numbers as my ears begin to adjust to the traffic outside.  Somewhere nearby a phone is ringing.  I locate it under the bed, to the right of my left hello kitty slipper next to the vulgarly-priced stilettos, still unworn, and push Greyson off of it to answer.

               “Hello,” I drowsily mutter.

               “Good Morning, Sydney.  I called to confirm your three appointments for today, your dinner reservations in New York, and your 7 AM flight for Washington tomorrow morning,” intones the monotonous voice of Denise, my new assistant, “Will you be meeting the representatives at the airport, or later for lunch?”

               “Well, good morning to you too.  Yes, Yes, No; Mr. Forrester will not be having his appointment, he has given his contract to another research facility, yes; table for two instead of three, you know where, yes, no, lunch will be fine at the hotel.”  An all too familiar routine for which I do not care, I regret being so impersonal with those around me, especially because I cannot remember where the ever-present stress in my voice originated.

               After a quick shower, I was downstairs waiting for Isaac to bring my car from the garage.  I live only twenty minutes from our main office building near Broad St., but in the traffic of the morning, it takes me forty-five minutes to get anywhere and parked.  When I left the little city of Douglassville, an area northwest of Atlanta, I thought I would become a great and dedicated scientist, and I’d be in a lab searching for the perfect specimens to discover a cure for everything…now, I hardly research anything but what my latest stock is doing.  Sometimes I wonder if my life was supposed to end up like this.

               The world is filled with dead people.  Those that walk around with no inner light, who can’t repair what’s wrong with them, and in the worst cases, who don’t know that there is something wrong at all.  My hands started getting cold and stiff in high school, and a toe tag was attached at my Howard graduation ceremonies.  I had severe cases of being blind, and I find myself reverting back to old habits even now.   

               My office is visible from the glass and marble elevator as soon as you hit the third floor.  Graduate students, other professors, and “tourists” from other departments love to wander through my territory, touching, prodding, and leaving in disarray thousands of hours of work in documentation.  The phone rings literally seconds before I enter my own personal brushed steel-bordered and sound-proofed portal of hell and yet my retreat from the insanity of the rest of the world, my office.

               “Dr. Taylor, University Research.”

“Good Morning Sydney.”  

Eric is a corporate attorney in Philadelphia and Washington, and New York, and God knows where else.  We met quite a few years ago, just as I was graduating from high school and he was entering his last year in undergrad at the University of Pennsylvania. We were completely oblivious to each other for months, until my supposed best friend decided to try to date him and break his heart…supposedly as a favor to me because I had such a crush on him and neither of us were aggressive enough to her liking.

Eric is everything I once thought would make me completely happy in a relationship: Financially stable almost at birth (rather, upon his mother’s marriage to his step-father when he was 6), articulate, overwhelmingly arrogant, and reminiscent of the first guys I dated from the summer camps I’d attended on scholarship.  He was the epitome of the Ivy Leaguer—exactly like the guys with whom I grew up and attended private schools: soccer/lacrosse/polo players living off of a trust fund left by their grotesquely wealthy grandfathers, exquisitely groomed for success, except he has black ancestry. 

I lost all sanity in my pursuit of him, disregarding scholarships to spend my first year attending Drexel just to leave for Howard University.  My weakness has always been confidant men, even when I find out they have no real reason to feel special.  I portrayed myself as having the same background as he did, sending gifts like cuff links from Tiffany’s for a birthday and a Breitling for Christmas.  I couldn’t even afford the watch batteries working three jobs and living as a paid Resident Assistant in Tubman.  One of my closest companions, Cheryl, thought the clincher was that I had to rise early to ready myself for him, which meant pre-dawn to wash my face and apply makeup.  She thought I was completely crazy, but she was a part of my past; and I wanted to forget the past.

               “Hi, I was going to call you about dinner, but I just got in the office. What’s going on?” I ask, hoping that he would become bogged down in something legal and I wouldn’t have to ride for two hours just to eat overpriced crab.

               “Nothing much really, I still have a lot of work on this shipping deal, you know, no details being disclosed during the transmission of this call, I’m swamped with the minor stuff.  I’m just reminding you about  I know it’s a lot to ask of you, driving two hours for dinner and all, but I’ve had these reservations for nearly four months, and I’m sure you’ll like it, even if you’re leaving for the airport immediately after.  I was hoping for a little desert at the Four Seasons.”

“Sure Darling, I know that whatever you have planned will be worth driving any distance, and I’m looking forward to spending time with you tonight, but I have a call coming in from the CDC so I will call you later, okay?”

               “Actually, I can’t talk until tonight.  There’s something important I have to ask you Syd, and I’ll be at your place around six okay?  Love you.”

               After faxing the documents Atlanta needed, I actually had two seconds to breathe before Carmen called. She and I were best friends in middle and high school, then roommates at Howard for a couple of years. We still keep in touch more than with other people from DHS, though we have grown apart with age.  Attending American University for law school, she has been a marketing consultant with a few of the Fortune 500 companies, but is currently based with Ford in New Jersey.  She is also the same best friend who dated Eric while interning at his firm, only to dump him as an L2 a year before he and I rekindled our acquaintance at a charity gala at Temple, where I was entering my Doctoral Program.

             “ Sydney! I have fantastic news…Remember David Hathaway? He called me...” We both know that I remember him.  David is plastered on ESPN from Spring Training through to the World Series annually just on the buzz that one day he may leave The Capitols for the Yankees, so she continues with no need of response from me, “…but don’t get it twisted, because I know about you two… he called about you anyway.  He’s been asking around for you. My mom called the other day—”

               “Oh, how is your mother?  Tell I her said hello”

               “She’s fine, I will, but as I was saying:  My mom called the other day and said that David asked her if she had your number.  She of course said no, and that I did, and he called me yesterday.  We had the regular “How are you” and “Oh Great, yada yada yada” and the usual, “Oh, how’s your season going?” and whatever and he asked “SO, how’s Sydney? Do you two still keep in touch?”  I told him you were fabulous and considering marriage finally--         ”

“Why would you tell him something like that?”

“You can’t be serious Sydney Elise Taylor!”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re thinking about him aren’t you? It took you over a year to get over him, and now ten years later you’re doing it again! I knew I shouldn’t have told you anything!  You’re supposed to flash in his face that you’re with someone who makes just as much as he does and yet has a career averaging decades longer, and who is a strong candidate for FOREVER once he gets you a ring!”

“Whatever you say, Carmen, but I’m not considering marriage until I have at least 200 saved, or menopause…whichever comes later… But, call me later on my work cell.”

“You didn’t let me finish!  I almost forgot to tell you, David has your personal cell number now. He gave Jonathan his number to give to you, and he gave him yours and he’ll probably be calling you as soon as he gets in from his flight to Washington tomorrow.” Jonathan is her husband of 3 years, and the man with whom she’d been cheating on Eric before eventually leaving to continue dating and subsequently marrying weeks after passing the bar in Maryland.

“David Hathaway has my actual cell number…what were you thinking? I KNOW Jon consulted you before doing such a thing, and you probably told him it would be a perfect opportunity for me to brag about my life a decade later…What if he calls?  How would I explain to Eric that my high school crush is a baseball player on HIS fan team and it’s nothing serious…he’s the only man in the world to mean anything without sounding cheesy? Really Carm?

I quickly ended our call as the In-House Chemical Engineering guru, Michael Braxton, came in during my conversation unannounced and now sat on the couch facing my desk.  In front of him were a few files I had acquired from the CDC on a Vitamin A Assay study involving HIV strains.

“Hello Michael.  What have you gotten from the data sent in last night?”

               “Morning Syd, Atlanta is up to their ass in funding but they don’t know where to start.  We’re dealing with a minimum of 40 variations of nucleotide patterns, and a more aggressive cytophagic cycle.”

“Who’s on the team?”

               “Twelve specialists, the 2 we sent back to Howard U, 2 from Georgia Tech, 4 from Hopkins, and the four Tokyo members you recruited last April.  They’ll all be here when you get back from D.C.”

I’d forgotten he’d been in the room during part of my conversation with Carmen until he turned slowly towards me and whispered, “Let Barracuda call you.  Eric doesn’t fit you…he’s too stiff. Plus, Hathaway gave me a bonus last week, I bet three hundred in the office pool…” He overestimates my respect for him, knowing he is the only person in the entire university who I consider close enough to friendship because of our time together that his comments don’t instantly get him beheaded.  He earned my loyalty during his stint as a Teaching Assistant in 3 of my classes during my Master’s studies at the University of North Carolina, and accepted my offer to join my team as soon as I left for Philadelphia.  I would not have survived the MD/PhD program without him.

“…I know I’m stiff and just an old man and all (We’d just celebrated his 34^th birthday) but I haven’t yet forgotten how bright and happy you were coming into the lab at 5 AM and cracking jokes until whenever.  You’ve always had a spark, but now you’re so serious, especially around Rick, you’re growing rather dull, my child,” he says with a smirk.

“Well, thank you for the insight Michael.  You’ve always told me that I should grow up.  I guess I’ve matured a lot, I’m trying to catch up to your old ass…6 years is such a large gap and I’m so far behind you” I retorted in playful sarcasm, “ I’ll see if I can have some fun.”  Then, he was off.

               I have had six calls since he left and yet I still can’t shake my thoughts about what Carmen was saying about David.  I feel my high school days coming back to me, and not with a content nostalgia.  I have a lot to think about...