Diamond Life Read online

  “Wait, Josephine!” Ras yelled out as she half-ran toward the back entrance, where their driver was waiting.

  “Go to hell, Ras!” Josephine yelled out. “Stay away from me!”

  Ras turned around to Alex and Birdie. He pointed a finger in Alex’s direction.

  “Why did she say you would know where to find her?”

  “I have no idea, Ras,” Alex said. “I swear I don’t.”

  Ras’s eyes went from Birdie’s to Alex’s. Then he dashed off to catch up to his wife.

  “Josephine! Would you just stop for a second so we can talk about this?!”

  Ras’s wife continued tossing clothes from her bureau into one of several suitcases opened on her bed.

  “You keep talking,” Josephine said. “I’m leaving.”

  Ras grabbed his wife’s wrist and pulled her close to him.

  “Please. Sit down.”

  Josephine flopped down on the bed and dropped her head into her hands. Ras rubbed her back.

  “We are not going to let this woman run us off this island,” Ras said.

  “We? There is no ‘we,’ Ras.” Josephine spat. “There is me. There is you. And there is her.”

  “You are my wife,” said Ras.

  “Tell that to Cleo.”

  “She knows.”

  “Yes, she does. And guess what? She doesn’t care. She will fly to Jamaica, find out where we’re having dinner, and torture us just for sport. I’m supposed to stay with you and deal with that? We moved here to get away from her. And she’s just taken me back to day one.”

  “That’s exactly what she wants to do,” Ras said. “I have not seen her in a year, Josephine. She’s pissed that I walked away forever and she doesn’t want to see us happy.”

  “I’ve tried . . .” Josephine said, her eyes on the floor. “I’ve tried to put all of this behind us. But seeing her tonight . . .”

  Josephine stopped talking. She looked as if she were suddenly gasping for breath. Ras eased her back on the bed and lay with her, holding her as she struggled to speak.

  “I am so sorry I hurt you,” Ras said. “I am so so sorry.”

  “She came to my office, Ras!” Josephine sobbed. “Don’t you remember?”

  Ras nodded, a lump in his throat.

  “And you—you did such awful things with her. Dirty, nasty . . .”

  “You said you were not going to read that book.”

  Josephine stood and lifted her suitcase to the floor.

  “Can we get a restraining order?” she asked Ras.

  “First thing in the morning.”

  “What if she comes here? What if she wants to hurt me or Reina?”

  Ras shook his head.

  “We have two full-time security guards here. No one is coming on this property unless we’ve invited them.”

  “I’m not always here. I go to the market. I take Reina out . . .” Josephine shook her head. “This bitch is going to have me be a prisoner in my own home.”

  “I will not let that happen.”

  “You’re the one who brought this on us in the first place. If you could keep your dick in your pants, we wouldn’t have to deal with this shit.”

  Ras kept his mouth shut. He wanted to protest. But there was nothing he could say.

  “We’re not just dealing with a random groupie here,” Josephine said.

  “I know.”

  “You were in a relationship with her. You were in love with her.” Josephine looked away and shrugged her shoulders. “Sometimes I think you still are.”

  “I told you I haven’t spoken to her in over a year.”

  “What does that mean? That your feelings for her magically evaporated? That’s not how that works. God knows, if it did work that way, I would have left you a long time ago. Nothing’s changed. Moving five hundred miles away doesn’t end a relationship with someone.”

  Ras sighed heavily.

  “Then what does?”

  Josephine leaned against their bedroom door.

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  Ras watched his wife turn the knob and go out into the hall to check on the baby. He realized his jaw was throbbing from clenching his teeth so hard. He’d worked on his wife for a year. He’d catered to her every whim. He traveled rarely without her and the baby. He showered her with attention and affection, checked in with her hourly when he was in the studio. And now a five-minute visit from Cleo was threatening to ruin it all. Ras relived the scene in the restaurant and two things were going to bother him until he dealt with them. First, he needed to know why Cleo really came to Jamaica. And then he needed to figure out why on God’s green earth he still desperately wanted to fuck her.

  Be aware of your breathing,” said the yoga instructor, her voice a whisper.

  Z did a headstand and balanced himself in the air. It had taken months to get his body to adjust to being upside down. Now it was simple. He felt every breath as if it were both his first and his last. When he felt a burning sensation in his forearms, he envisioned his children, their faces flashing before him like patterns in a kaleidoscope.

  “Z, you can come down any time you’re ready,” the instructor whispered.

  Z brought his legs down gracefully and the class clapped softly.

  “This is exactly what we want to accomplish,” said the instructor. “Your body will do what you ask of it.”

  On his mat, Z lay flat on his back, in the Savasana pose. The instructor lit incense and turned the lights down.

  “Feel every part of your body,” the instructor said. “Be aware of your toes, your ankles, knees, and thighs. Feel the top of your head, the tips of your fingertips. If you focus, you can feel your own vibration.”

  Z’s breath came in shallow. The corpse pose was his favorite part of yoga class. It was the only time he felt completely relaxed.

  Z, a former crackhead and recovering alcoholic who once wore the same underwear for two weeks, wasn’t the yoga type. But two months of inpatient rehab, followed by months of outpatient meetings, had changed his world.

  Soon after his daughter was born, his faith and sobriety were tested: Cleo had called him.

  Z had cheated on his wife from the moment they married and long before. And Cleo was one of his repeat customers. He barely hid his affair with Cleo from his wife. They were photographed together often, and he regularly took her shopping and out to eat. Cleo knew two core things: how to get Z to come and how to get him high. Sometimes she did both at the same time.

  Just the sound of Cleo’s voice through the phone made Z forget all the tenets he’d been learning in AA. He was at her new home, in a gated community in central New Jersey, an hour after she told him to come over.

  But something was different about Cleo that night. Z saw the coke ready on the table. The blunt was freshly rolled. But Z felt like he couldn’t see her clearly. It was as if a haze covered her.

  He stood in her living room and watched her slowly strip down to her bra and panties. She took the blunt, put it inside her, and then took it out. She lit it. Blew a smoke ring. And passed it over to Z.

  Z took the blunt, looked at it for a long moment, and then pressed it out in the ashtray next to her sofa. He walked up to Cleo, held her shoulders, and kissed her forehead.

  “You take care of yourself,” he said.

  He walked out of Cleo’s house, closing the door softly behind him. And he got in the car and drove off without looking back. He went home to his wife Beth and their five children. And he stayed there.

  Z had been introduced to yoga by one of his sponsors in AA. He thought it was New Age and hokey and absolutely ridiculous for a hard-core rapper from the Bronx who had sold millions of records. But he agreed to try it. And he immediately appreciated what yoga did for him. He came up with rhymes in the Downward Facing Dog position and beats came to him whenever he put the sole of one foot on his thigh and clasped his hands in front of him.

  He tried to get everyone he knew to try yoga with him. Ther
e were no takers. His oldest son, Zander, was too busy in the studio. His boy Jake, head of the record label Z was signed to, told him in no uncertain terms that it would never happen. The look on his wife Beth’s face was priceless. She didn’t have to say a word.

  It ended up working out better this way. He chose a studio far from his house, where he knew that no one would know that he was on their kid’s iPods.

  When the lights came up, Z stayed in place. He could hear the other students in the background begin to stand up and whisper “namaste.” The instructor knelt down next to Z.

  “What are you thinking about?”

  Z opened his eyes and blinked.

  “I once smoked crack in front of my infant son.”

  “How long ago was this?” the instructor asked, her eyebrows wrinkled.

  “He’s nineteen now.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “He’s perfect.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m working on it.”

  The instructor smiled and patted his shoulder, leaving him on the floor.

  Z stayed in place, eyes closed, for ten more minutes. He thought about the last time he saw Kipenzi, his wife’s closest friend and his boy Jake’s wife. Kipenzi had come to visit him in rehab in Anguilla and begged him to get it together for Beth and the kids. She physically got down on her knees and begged him. She even booked a photo shoot for Anguilla so that she could check on him. She was on her way to see him when her plane crashed just a mile away from his rehab center. No one could convince Z that it was not his fault that Kipenzi was dead. No one.

  Z and Beth had named their last child, a girl, after Kipenzi. Beth had just given birth when they got the news of her death.

  Z rolled over onto his stomach, lifted himself up, and did twenty-five push-ups in rapid secession. He felt better, as always. He jogged to the car.

  The reentry into the real world after yoga always stunned Z. If it was just a bit sunny, it felt as if the sun were boring into his skull. If it was drizzling, it felt like a monsoon. Today, a mild winter chill felt like subzero temperatures to Z. He clomped through the crunchy gravel mixed with snow and walked to the front door of the house. He punched in the security code, opened the door slowly, and was instantly hit in the face by the smell of soiled diapers. In the distance of the home, a seven-bedroom on four levels, he could hear his daughter screaming, two of his sons fighting over a toy, and his oldest son working on music in the basement.

  His wife Beth came down the steps, a garbage can in her hand.

  “Just in time,” she said, handing the garbage can over to Z.

  The stench overpowered Z and he gagged.

  “What the hell is this?”

  “The baby threw up, she’s got some kind of virus.”

  Z looked closely at his wife’s face. There was dried mucus in the corner of one eye. Her dirty blond hair sat heavy and oily. A large angry pimple sat in the crevice of her nose.

  “Did you get a chance to take a shower today?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “Just asking,” Z said. “Let me throw this out, then I’ll check on the baby.”

  “Don’t go in Zeke’s room; he’s in time-out.”

  “When is he not in time-out?”

  Z held the trash can out in front of him and took it to the garage to hose it out. Z had first met Beth when he was nine years old while visiting family in West Virginia. He’d fallen in love with her immediately and swore he’d marry her one day. He did. And after all they’d been through together, she’d stuck by him. He was in awe of her support. But after rehab, everyone—including Beth—started to look different. All the tiny flaws and tics he’d been too high to notice were now in sharp focus.

  At the dinner table, Z noticed that Beth ate with her mouth open. She’d catch him looking at her and ask, “What?” And Z would go back to his food, using a fork and knife to cut his steak into small pieces. Even with full-time help, the house was always a mess. There was clean laundry in piles and dirty laundry in piles. The dishes piled up faster than the housekeeper could wash them.

  Z finished with the hose and went back to the house. First stop: Zeke’s room. His youngest son was on his back in bed, his tiny feet propped on the wall.

  “Hi, Daddy.”

  “Why are you in time-out?”

  “’Cause I said dammit.”

  “And why did you say dammit?”

  “’Cause I hurt my toe. Mommy always says dammit when she hurts something.”

  “Mommy shouldn’t say it either.”

  “So how come she’s never in time-out?”

  Z tried unsuccessfully not to laugh. Zeke rolled over and went to his father to be picked up and as Z obliged, the boy put his head on his dad’s shoulder and his thumb in his mouth.

  “You know you’re too big to be sucking your thumb,” Z said.

  “I know,” said Zeke, his words jumbled.

  Z hugged his son tight against his chest. And he felt that familiar pull of intense guilt and shame. He’d barely spoken to his youngest son when he was high. And the idea that this little boy would forgive him and not seem to harbor any ill feelings was almost too much to take. Z wanted Zeke to hate him. He wanted to be forced to win him over, like he had to do with Beth and his oldest son Zander. But Zeke just wasn’t that way. He barely remembered the old version of Z. And he was perfectly content to be held by his father all day.

  The sound of something crashing and breaking sent Z hustling into the hallway, still holding Zeke. He went into Zakee’s room, where he and Zach were standing over a broken lamp with wide eyes.

  “Y’all were wrestling in here, weren’t you?” Z asked.

  The boys looked at the floor.

  “Get this cleaned up. And make up the beds in here.”

  “Yes, Dad,” they said in unison.

  Z carried Zeke down the opposite end of the hallway, toward the bedroom he shared with his wife. She was on the bed, rocking their daughter back and forth, trying to quiet her cries.

  “She just won’t stop fucking crying,” Beth whined.

  Zeke looked up at his father. “See, she just cursed again,” he whispered.

  “Where’s the sling?” Z asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t feel like dealing with that thing.”

  When their daughter was inconsolable, wrapping her up in a sling so that she was close to your chest was the only thing that calmed her. But Beth refused to use it. She said it made her feel claustrophobic. Z put Zeke down and started to dig through a pile of dirty laundry at the foot of the bed to find the sling. He jumped back when he saw a pair of panties inside out with a bloody pad still attached. He clenched his teeth and picked around the underwear until he found the sling.

  He stood up, his eyes on his wife, who was still rocking the baby with a look of sheer fatigue on her face. He wrapped the fabric around his waist, over his shoulders, and back around his waist. Beth stood up and put the baby inside the sling. The little girl, brown like her father but with dirty blond hair like her mom, snuggled against her father’s chest and stopped crying immediately.

  “See, Beth? This works.”

  “Doesn’t work when I use it.”

  “You never use it.”

  “How do you know what I do?”

  “I know you don’t use the sling. And it would help you.”

  “I need a lot more help than a goddamn sling.”

  Z felt a flash of something. Anger. And as fast as it came, it was gone. Ten years ago, he’d punched her in the mouth because she yelled at him when she caught him smoking crack in the nursery. Now Beth cursed him out nearly every day, and he just sighed and walked away.

  Z took Zeke’s hand and, with the baby on his chest in the sling, he made his way back to Zakee and Zachary’s room. The boys were done cleaning up and followed their father downstairs. Z led them into the basement, where his oldest son Zander was sitting at a mixing board listening to a playback of himself sin
ging.

  “You ready for your party?” Z asked his oldest son.

  “Yeah.” Zander grinned. “You’re coming, right?”

  “Look, don’t let yourself get gassed up,” said Z, as he moved to sit on the floor, his knees in the air. He managed to cradle the baby and Zeke at the same time. Zach and Zakee put their chins in their hands, listening to their big brother’s voice. Z leaned his head back and closed his eyes, losing himself in his son’s strong voice as the song played.

  “I heard this on the radio at least three times this morning,” said Z. “You’re doing well at pop radio. Not an easy thing to do with R&B.”

  Zander puffed up with pride.

  “I still don’t like the song,” Z said, shrugging his shoulders. “But I guess it’s working.”

  Zander’s shoulders slumped. Z didn’t want to be so hard on his oldest son. But he didn’t know any other way to be. His son definitely had talent. He had just enough to either make it big or get his heart broken. Or both.

  “Uncle Jake won’t tell me how many albums they’re gonna ship,” said Zander. “That’s the only way I’ll know how I’m really going to do first week it’s out.”

  “Why are you worrying about that?” asked Z. “You did your job. You handed in a good album. The rest is out of your hands.”

  “I know, but I can’t help but think—”

  “Don’t think. And don’t bet that this is going to last. Because it probably won’t.”

  “You saying my music isn’t good?”

  “It’s okay,” said Z. “Not that much different from whatever else is on the radio right now.” Zander winced, but Z continued. “I’m just saying you need more than that. You need luck and a lot of hard work. Do you hear me?”

  “Yes, sir,” Zander mumbled under his breath.

  Z continued to rock Zeke on his lap while rubbing the baby’s back. They both were minutes from falling asleep.

  “It’s not too late to go to Rutgers. You could start this semester or in the fall.”

  “I already told you I’m not going,” Zander said softly.

  “You got a full academic scholarship and you won’t even consider it?” Z asked.