What Came Before He Shot Her

            “That’s  blackmail.”

            “Di’n’t I tell her,” Isis intoned.

            “It c’n be whatever it want to be,” Cordie said. “Fac is, I don’t want dat mon leavin or looking nowhere else. I love the blood. He good to me and he good to our girls. He the bes’ dad I know and all’s he asking is one more chance at a son. So I give it him. Dis here’s the result.” She as yet had no bump—wouldn’t have for months—but she gestured to her stomach. “All’s I c’n say’s I hope dis time it’s got a dick. Cos nuffink else will satisfy Gerald, lemme tell you.”

            In that way in which misery loves company, Cordie’s pregnancy suggested to Kendra that she should in some way give in to her desire to have Dix back in her life. It also gave her permission to speak of this desire, which she did in short order. Cordie listened—as did Isis, unashamedly—and at the end of Kendra’s story of her last encounter with Dix and how she’d filled the time since then, the other two women weighed in with identical advice, albeit voiced differently.

Cordie said, “You, girl, jus’ need to get laid and dat’ll put an end to the matter.”

            Isis said, somewhat more colourfully, “Someone needs to see to your plumbing straightaway.”

            “Le’s have a girls’ night out,” Cordie said. “We ain’t done that in months, and we’re both due. Now I’ve done wha’ Gerald want, he be happy to mind the girls for an evening. You name the day, we put our dancin shoes on. We find you some nice fresh man flesh, Ken. Dat take your mind off Dix D’Court.”

            So that was what they did. They chose the gastropub on Great Western Road, sitting along the side of the canal. This was a cut above their usual choice for an outing, and they had their dinner on an Indian summer night, on the patio next to the water. During their meal, they were entertained by a classical guitarist whom Cordie earmarked as up for the job that needed doing. But to Kendra he looked like a student, and she declared herself 100 percent through with younger men.

This left the young man for Cordie, who had no compunction whatsoever about reeling him in. When he took his break, she bought him a drink. Walking her fingers up his arm was enough to telegraph the message about her interests, which were not musical. As Kendra watched from the outdoor table at which she was having the last of the bottle of wine they’d ordered—when it came to her habits and her lifestyle, it must be said that Cordie had never been overly concerned about altering either when she was pregnant—Cordie and the guitarist sauntered out the front door of the pub and round the corner. This street led to Paddington Arts and Paddington Hospital. Cordie, obviously, was intent upon neither. Just a dark spot for a little snog.

Left alone, Kendra looked around to see if there were any pickings. As luck or fate would have it, at that same moment a middle-aged white man—later revealing his name as “just Geoff”—was checking out the pickings himself. He was of the ilk who harboured what he liked to call secret fantasies about sex with black women, having the notion that they were inherently more sexual—not to mention more sexually active and consequently more willing to bed a perfect stranger—than their white counterparts. He’d been encouraged in this fantasy by certain pornographic Web sites dedicated to men with such notions, and on this evening he’d spent a few hours entertaining himself with these sites in the basement of his home before finally deciding the time was right to make his dreams a reality.

            Going for a woman on the job would have made sense at this point, but just Geoff was not a man who would ever consider paying. He had looks, he had money, he had the moves, he had conversation. He believed in mutual pleasure for both parties. He was married, but that was a minor detail. The wife traveled for her architectural work. They were a modern couple. They had an understanding.

            He revealed most of this to Kendra—with a few variations here and there—when he came out of the pub to join her on the patio. They’d locked eyes. Neither had broken the gaze. She’d picked up her wineglass and touched her tongue to its rim. Message received. He wasted no time.

            He said nothing out of the norm for the situation: She was a beautiful woman, so what was she doing here alone? (This, naturally, was a question requiring him to overlook the second wineglass out of which Cordie had been drinking before she bunked off with her guitarist.) Was she a regular here? He’d been watching her for a while and he’d finally thought, What the hell? when he’d caught her eye. It wasn’t, she was to understand, the kind of thing he generally did. But his wife was out of town and he’d been at loose ends for the evening and . . . Did she want to go some place quiet for a drink?

            This last was all form. Both of them knew it since the patio of the gastropub was perfectly quiet, romantically lit, and licenced to serve alcoholic beverages. But she agreed. She liked the look of him, all squeaky clean with nice teeth, well-cut hair, and fingernails looking as if they’d been buffed. He wore a signet ring and a white shirt and tie. He had slip-on shoes with tassels, and his socks did not droop. She knew he wouldn’t be able to hold a match to Dix in the breathtaking body department, but she needed a man. He would do.

            Outside she made the suggestion that both of them knew she would make. She lived close by and it was quiet, she said. She had kids there, but they’d be in bed.

            She didn’t know this about Ness, but she hoped for the best. Even if Ness were still up, there was no need to see her as they climbed the stairs to the second floor. They could pass the doorway to the sitting room and keep climbing. There would be no problem. The idea of kids gave just Geoff pause. Kendra could see his dilemma: what he thought and what he clearly did not want. She said,

            “They’re not mine and I’m not on the game. This, tonight. It’s just what I want. It’s not what I do regularly.”

            Just Geoff allowed this to be sufficient reassurance. He had only one rationale for doing this: She was a gorgeous woman with a gorgeous body. He didn’t want her, but he wanted it. He put his hand on the small of her back and said, “Then let’s go,” with a smile. The walk was a short one, but just Geoff knew the importance of build-up, so it took them a while to cross Meanwhile Gardens. He was very good at the business of making women ready for him, so by the time they reached her front door, a walk of five minutes that took twenty-five, Kendra was throbbing in all the right places and thanking her stars she’d chosen him.

            She was glad she’d worn a clingy dress that evening, held in place with a simple sash tied at the side. Aside from wisps of underwear and a pair of strappy high heels, she had nothing else on. And she had nothing on at all by the time they reached the top of the stairs.

She worked on just Geoff’s clothes while he worked on her body, all hands and tongue and mouth. She got him naked in a trail of clothes leading from the stairs to her bed, whereupon they fell upon it and coupled ferociously. Just Geoff did the job he’d set out to do on her before he positioned her legs over his shoulders, which was the way he liked to have his women in his own final moments. He then carried his fantasy to its logical conclusion. He withdrew at once and collapsed next to her.

            He said, “Christ, what a fuck. I was actually seeing stars,” and he laughed weakly in the direction of the ceiling. He was panting, and his body was slick with sweat.

            Kendra said nothing. She’d had pleasure from him. Truth be told, she’d had more pleasure from him than she’d ever had with anyone else, Dix included. She, too, was breathless, dripping sweat and fl uid, and by any other definition she was a woman fulfilled. But it had been the wrong prescription for the state she’d been in, and it didn’t take long for her to work that out from the emptiness she felt, beyond the lovely contractions she was still experiencing from her orgasm.

She wanted him to leave and in this she was lucky, as just Geoff had no intention of staying. He scooped up his clothing and came to the side of the bed, where he rested the tips of his fingers on her nipple.

            “Good for you?” he asked.

            Good depended on the definition, but she accommodated him saying, “Jesus, yeah,” and rolling on her side to reach for her cigarettes.

She didn’t see his look of distaste—women who smoked after sex were not part of his fantasy—as he turned his back to put his clothes on. She watched him dress and he asked if she had a comb or brush. She said, “The bathroom,” and still watched him as he opened the door.

            He walked directly into Ness.

            There were no lights on, but lights weren’t needed, as Kendra’s bedroom curtains were open. The tableau was an unmistakable one: Kendra on the bed, naked and uncovered in the warm night, lazily smoking, with the bedcovers in wild disarray around her and the man still not entirely dressed but carrying his shoes and his jacket with the clear intention of decamping at the conclusion of a successful conquest. And the scent in the air—clinging to him, to her, to the very walls, it seemed— was one that Ness could not fail to recognise.

            Startled, just Geoff said, “Holy shit!” He retreated back into Kendra’s room and shut the door. Kendra