The Choir Director Page 4

  “He’s dying, Simone. The cancer is eating him up. I don’t think he’s going to be around much longer. You should go and see him.”

  “I can’t,” she snapped.

  “Can’t or won’t?” She still hadn’t looked at me.

  “Both!” She finally looked up at me with her eyes filled with tears. I felt bad for her. “I hate that man more than I hate anyone in this world, but the last thing I want to see or hear is that my beautiful James Black is dying.”

  Wow! Now that’s what I call love. I handed her a tissue and she wiped her eyes.

  “You mind if we talk about something else?”

  “Not at all. You going to be okay?”

  “Eventually, I hope. That man put me through the wringer, but I can’t help but to still care for him.”

  “You should go see him.”

  “Anyhow, didn’t you want to know what happened at the meeting?”

  “Yes, I sure did.”

  “Well, most of the meeting was spent talking about this new choir director your husband wants to hire. A few of the more conservative members are against it. They want to promote someone from within the congregation so they don’t have to pay out so much money.”

  I cut her off. “You don’t have to worry about that. Bishop called a few hours ago and told me the director rejected his offer.”

  “Really? So what’s he going to do now?”

  “I don’t know. He sounded mighty depressed when I spoke to him last. I think he was really shocked the man turned down his offer.”

  “I’m sure he was. It’s not often that someone says no to Bishop T. K. Wilson and First Jamaica Ministries. I’m a little insulted myself.”

  “I know, right? We’ve been rejected by a country bumpkin.” I shook my head.

  “Look, things are going to work out. You’ll see.” She glanced down at her BlackBerry, shook her head, then quickly typed something in response. “Girl, I got to go.”

  “Everything all right?”

  She gave me a huge grin. “Sure is. Lamar just texted that he’s got my mortgage money. I guess he’s gonna get some goodies after all.”

  I laughed. “You go, girl. Don’t let me hold you back.” I knew that as the first lady, I probably shouldn’t have been encouraging her, but the truth was that no matter what I said to her about the sin of fornicating, nothing was going to stop Simone Wilcox from getting her money.

  “Listen, about James …” She hesitated. It looked like she was trying to keep her emotions in check. “Tell him I said hello next time you see him.”

  I nodded. “Don’t worry. I will do just that.”

  Aaron

  4

  As I walked down the hall toward my bedroom to finish what I’d started with Sandra, I studied the business card Bishop Wilson had given me. I slapped the card against my hand three times, biting my lip in frustration. Had I just made the biggest mistake of my life by turning down the bishop’s offer? I wasn’t quite sure, but I was definitely starting to second-guess myself. It was times like these that I wished Pastor Simmons were around to give me counsel. He always seemed to know the right thing to do. There was no denying I had a good life here in South Virginia: a decent place to live and more women at my disposal than any man had a right to. Hell, I even had a little local fame, but it wasn’t anything in comparison to the life I’d dreamed of living—the life the bishop was offering. Just the idea of having a choir with a hundred or so members was intoxicating. When I closed my eyes, I could almost see my name outside the church: AARON MACKIE AND THE FIRST JAMAICA MINISTRIES CHOIR. Man, would that be a dream come true.

  I opened the bedroom door and stuck my head in. I was greeted by Sandra’s soft lips pressing against mine. Like before, she was completely naked. Instinctively, my arms wrapped around her waist, my hands roaming the bare flesh of her round buttocks as we kissed passionately.

  “I took off my clothes again as soon as I heard them leave. Who was that man with the pastor, and what did they want?” She helped unbutton my shirt, kissing my neck and chest as she questioned me.

  “His name is Bishop T. K. Wilson, and he’s the pastor of one of those megachurches up in New York. He offered me a lot of money to move to New York and be his choir director.” I smiled; she didn’t. She actually looked upset.

  “You didn’t take it, did you? New York’s a nice place to visit, but you don’t want to live there, Aaron.”

  “You’re just saying that because you finally got me to lie down with you and now you don’t want me to leave.” I laughed.

  I was joking, but from her facial expression, I could tell that she didn’t feel this was a laughing matter. “You damn right I don’t want you leaving. Not after today, after waiting all this time to be with you. Aaron, you have no idea how it felt listening to those choir bitches brag about what you’d done to them in bed, knowing I wanted you too.”

  She gave me an annoyed look as my shirt came off. I was busy wondering which women from the choir were talking. I had better start choosing my women more carefully to weed out the ones who were prone to gossip about it afterward.

  “And you made it even worse because you wouldn’t pay me no mind. We probably would have never slept together today if I hadn’t taken matters into my own hands,” she said as she caressed my abdomen and then reached for my belt.

  “Well, yeah, breaking into my house and waiting for me naked definitely got my attention.”

  She slid to her knees, opening my pants. “I’ve got something else that’s going to get your attention.” She reached into my boxers and pulled out my Johnson, slurping it into her mouth before I could respond.

  A wave of pleasure quickly took over my body and I moaned. “Great googamooga.” Now, if she was trying to give me incentive to stay in town, it was working like a charm, because I was a sucker for a good blow job. Although many tried, not every woman gave good head. Truth of the matter was, most women didn’t know what the hell they were doing, but Sandra Jenkins knew how to give a good blow job.

  “Like that, don’t you?” she asked.

  Did I like it? She had me with my back against the door, squirming around like Spider-Man trying to climb a wall, and she wanted to know if I liked it. My only response was an enthusiastic “Uh-huh.”

  She stopped for a second, smiling as she tied her hair in a bun. “Well, honey, you ain’t seen nothing yet. I’m about to give you your wings and take you to heaven.”

  I liked the thought of that. But before she could get started, my doorbell rang again.

  “Damn, this place is busier than Union Station up there in D.C. Who is that?” she bellowed.

  “I don’t know. It could be Reverend Jenkins or the bishop. Maybe the bishop wants to try and convince me to move to New York without Reverend Jenkins around. Just sit tight and I’ll get rid of whoever it is.”

  She held on to my stuff, refusing to let me go. “Maybe we should have gone to a hotel. At least then I’d get your full attention.”

  “Just relax. I’ll be right back.”

  She gave my manhood one last kiss, then pulled up my boxers and pants, zipping me up.

  “Go, but hurry up and get rid of them.” She stood up and kissed me.

  I slapped her on the ass playfully and then headed to the front door. I peeked out the window and saw that I was right. It was the pastor again, but this time he was alone. I really didn’t want to open the door, but he already knew I was home, so I had no choice. I figured he’d doubled back to thank me for not accepting the bishop’s offer. That would have been all right, but Reverend Jenkins was a long-winded son of a gun who could talk to you about nothing all day.

  “What’s up, Rev? You forget something?” I opened the door, hoping I could hold him at bay right there, but he stepped past me, almost knocking me over as he barged into my house. He didn’t say a word until I closed the door.

  “No,” he growled angrily. “I’m not here for what I forgot. I’m here for what belongs to me, you dir
ty son of a bitch.”

  “Huh?” I was taken aback by his attitude.

  He looked like he wanted to hit me. What the hell was his problem? It wasn’t like I was leaving his ass high and dry to go to New York and follow my dream. Did he somehow not realize that I’d just thrown away seventy-five thousand dollars a year to help his ass?

  “What’s wrong with you? What, I didn’t defend you well enough when the bishop was here or something? What the heck is your problem?” I got right up in his face. I liked him, but sometimes this guy could be so ungrateful.

  “My problem is you! You think you pulled the wool over the fat man’s eyes, don’t you? You think I’m stupid? Well, guess again, pretty boy. I ain’t blind, and I ain’t stupid. Both of you are going to pay for trying to make a fool outta me. You can bet your pretty ass on that.”

  “Rev, what are you talking about? I didn’t accept his offer. I’m not going to New York. I’m staying, okay?” He was starting to make me angry with his paranoid rambling.

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass about you going to New York. I wanna know where she is.”

  Things were suddenly clear, and the situation was not good. This man wasn’t paranoid or rambling; it appeared he knew exactly what he was talking about, and his next sentence proved it.

  “Motherfucker, where’s my wife?”

  As my stomach clenched into a ball of lead, I tried to play dumb, lying with a straight face. “Your wife? Rev, I have no idea what you’re talking about. You haven’t been drinking, have you?”

  “Oh, you don’t know where she is, huh? Well, maybe this will jar your memory.”

  That’s when I saw the black .45 he always carried pointed in my face. I raised my hands in a nonthreatening manner, trying to gauge whether he was serious about shooting me. He may have been a man of God, but he was still a man, and right about then he was a very angry, jealous man. “Don’t make me kill you, Mackie. I know she’s here.”

  “What would make you think that, Rev?” Yes, he had a gun in my face, but I was not about to admit anything until I knew exactly how much he knew. That old cliché “The truth will set you free” was a bunch of BS when a man had a gun pointed in your face, accusing you of having an affair with his wife. In the situation I was in, the cliché should have been “The truth will get you dead, so lie your ass off.”

  “You’re a piece of work, you know that, Mackie? Okay, you wanna know how I know? Sit your ass down and I’ll make it very clear.” He motioned with his gun for me to sit in the same armchair the bishop had sat in earlier. I did what I was told, making sure the palms of my hands were visible to him. I was careful not to make any sudden moves, because he was starting to breathe heavy and get that crazy, I-don’t-give-a-shit look in his eyes.

  He looked so intense I was actually surprised when he sat down on the sofa across from me—that is, until he switched the gun from his right hand to his left. He then reached down on the right side of the sofa with his free hand. When his hand reappeared, he was holding a pink-and-white woman’s hat. Once again, my stomach did a flip.

  “Uh-huh, just what I thought.” His knuckles were turning white as he wrenched the hat in his hands. “You know, Mackie, you son of a bitch, I wasn’t one hundred percent sure this belonged to my wife until now, but I’d know this brim anywhere,” he said in angry certainty.

  And he was right; the hat did belong to Sandra. If you haven’t already figured it out, she was his wife. It must have been thrown on the side of the sofa during the heat of our passion when I’d first arrived home.

  As we sat there in silence for a few seconds, I could see Rev brooding as he studied the hat. It wasn’t going to take much at all for him to completely lose it. I had to say something to defuse the situation before he went on a rampage and we all ended up on the six o’clock news.

  “Rev, you got it all wrong, man. That’s not your wife’s hat. That’s LaDawn Williams’s hat. She left it over here last week.” I tried to laugh it off.

  For a brief second, his face seemed to soften and he took a long breath. Man, if he buys this, I’m never messing with another man’s wife as long as I live, I promised myself.

  “Oh, really, it’s LaDawn’s, huh? You know, Mackie, I can’t tell you how happy that would make me if it were true. Only, I bought my wife this hat about two weeks ago when I was down in Charlotte. Coincidently, she was wearing hers this afternoon when she went down to Rocky Mount to a woman’s retreat.” He scrunched up his face, breathing hard. He looked about as upset as a man could get without breaking down. “Funny thing is, I had it monogrammed with her initials right here.” He pointed at the monogram, then threw the hat in my lap for good measure. “Now, tell me again how this ain’t my wife’s hat and she isn’t here, so I can blow your ass away like the piece of shit you are.”

  He lifted the gun, pointing it directly at my head. Lord help me, I did not want to die, especially not because I slept with Sandra Jenkins, that’s for sure.

  I sat there in silence, trying to deal with the situation like a man, but inside I felt like a little bitch. If he flinched, I probably would have peed on myself, because I believed every word he said when he threatened to blow me away. Rev had always been a nice man, a big, jolly, happy-go-lucky guy, but everyone close to him knew he was obsessively jealous when it came to his wife. Most people were under the opinion, myself included, that his jealousy was based on his insecurity about his weight and the fact that his wife was a good fifteen years younger than him. She wasn’t the finest woman in the face, but she had a body like nothing I’d ever seen before.

  Believe me, when he first showed up at the church with her, there was plenty of whispering amongst the congregation about the two of them. Most of it was about what she saw in him, other than his five-bedroom house, fifty-thousand-dollar-a-year job at Phillip Morris, and his preaching salary.

  “You know, Mackie, there’s only one thing I wanna know.” He stared at me with these pitiful, teary eyes. I knew what he was going to ask before he asked it. “Why? I just want to know why. With all these women at your disposal, why you got to go and mess with my wife? You had to know if I ever caught you that I’d end up killing you. I just wanna know why.” He really did sound like he wanted to understand.

  I couldn’t even look him in the eye anymore because I couldn’t say what I wanted to say. Telling him the truth would have just made things worse.

  I mean, it wasn’t as if I’d pursued her. She was the one who pursued me. Hell, for the past three years, I’d avoided Sandra like the plague, while she, on the other hand, had done everything but throw her stuff on a table in front of me. I hadn’t wanted to go down that road. I had a hard and fast rule about committing adultery—that is, until today. I mean, I’m only human, and when a man comes home and there’s a naked woman sitting on his sofa, and the woman has a body like Sandra’s, well, can he honestly be held responsible for his actions? Hell, as much as I liked Reverend Jenkins, if it wasn’t me, it damn sure was going to be someone else, so I figured I might as well take what was being offered.

  “Answer me, dammit!”

  “Rev, I know this may get me shot, but I really don’t have any answers for you right now. At least not any that are going to make sense. I messed up. This should have never happened.”

  “Well, maybe your fuck buddy has some answers. Why don’t we call her in here so I can ask her? Go on. Call her, Mackie.”

  I took a long breath. I really didn’t want her out here. The best thing for me and her was that we remained separated. “Look, that’s not gonna help anything.”

  “Did I ask for your opinion? Matter of fact, get up.” I didn’t move fast enough and he cocked the gun, sliding a bullet in the chamber. I closed my eyes briefly. I honestly felt that this was it; I was about to die. “I said get up,” he repeated.

  This time, I didn’t hesitate. I stood up quickly, and he gestured for me to walk down the hall. I did what I was told, stopping in front of my bedroom door.


  “Open it,” he whispered. I glanced at him, and he said, “Don’t play with me, Mackie,” then pressed the gun against the back of my head. I turned the knob and pushed open the door.

  A part of me wished she had climbed out the window or something, but when I opened the door, there she lay, as naked as a jaybird. She had her eyes closed, posing like a centerfold girl, her bosoms pushed out and, believe it or not, her beaver propped open for the world to see. By my calculations, I had about ten minutes to live, because there was no way Reverend Jenkins wasn’t going to kill me after this.

  Don’t ask me how, but Sandra didn’t even realize her husband was standing at the door. “It’s about time. I was getting so horny I was about to start without—” She opened her eyes and went into panic mode.

  “Oh my God, Alfred!” she shouted as she scrambled to cover her nakedness.

  “You better call God, because right now He’s the only one who’s gonna save your ass!” Rev screamed.

  Sandra’s beautiful almond skin was now a pale tan at best. Her eyes were stretched wide with fear. “Alfred, baby, it’s not what it seems,” she babbled. “You know how much I love you. I’m just glad you’re here to take me home.”

  The rev glared at her as tears fell from his eyes, but he still kept the gun pointed at my head.

  “Get in the room,” he barked at me, gesturing with the gun to where he wanted me to sit.

  In my mind, there was only one way out now. I was going to have to take the chance of getting shot and go for the gun. The more I thought about it, the better I felt my chances were. Here I was, six foot two, thirty-one years old, in the best shape of my life, while he was short, in his forties, and almost a hundred and fifty pounds overweight. The odds were overwhelmingly in my favor—until you considered the fact that he was an expert marksman and he’d already slid a bullet in the chamber. That, of course, placed the odds in his favor, but if I was going to do anything, I had best do it quick.