Angie couldn’t tell if the servants didn’t speak English or if they were too afraid to talk. Like all the other times she had visited LaDonna before, the woman who opened the door didn’t say a word. She just tilted her head, indicating that Angie should follow her down a long hallway.
The decor gave a nod to LaDonna’s Greek heritage—statues and fountains and lots and lots of Greek keys up and down the walls. Just about everything was plated in gold. The faucets in the sinks were giant swans with wings for hot and cold. The chandeliers down the hallway were gold. Angie looked up at the fixtures. The arms were Rippy’s logo, curled Rs dripping with crystals that the sun hit like a laser. She had to look away to keep her retinas from burning. By the time the maid showed Angie into the nail salon, she was seeing spots.
‘That you, girl?’ LaDonna waved Angie over. Her fingernails were being painted bright red by a slim Asian woman. Four wives were soaking their feet in bath salts, four more Asian women doing their nails. Usher played on the radio. The TV was muted, tuned to ESPN.
LaDonna offered, ‘Grab a soak. My girl does a great pedicure.’
‘No thanks.’ Angie would rip out her nails before she let a stranger touch her feet. She didn’t understand the lives these women were living. LaDonna wasn’t book smart, but she was smart enough to know that she could be doing more than getting her nails buffed at one in the afternoon. Chantal Gordon had been a professional tennis player before she hung up her racket to have babies. Angelique Jones had been a doctor. Santee Chadwick had been her husband’s private banker, a vice president with Wells Fargo. Tisha Dupree was an idiot. This was the best she would ever do.
LaDonna said, ‘You got some papers for me to sign?’
‘I need to ask you some questions.’
‘This about that bitch in Vegas? That shit’s been handled.’
Angie waited for the laughter to die down. ‘No, it’s something else.’
‘Sit down, girl. You look beat.’
Angie sat down. She let her purse drop to the floor. She felt beat. She didn’t know why. Basically all she’d done all day was sit in one place or another. She asked, ‘Why isn’t Fig’s wife here?’
Chantal snorted. ‘Girl got her nose too high in the air to slum with us bitches.’
Tisha said, ‘She’s gonna trip if she doesn’t look down at some point.’
There was the inevitable awkward pause.
Angelique asked, ‘Is Jo in trouble?’
‘I don’t know.’ Angie studied LaDonna. The woman was waiting for something. If she’d been a cat, her tail would’ve been twitching. ‘Jo seems to keep to herself. Kip is worried that something is wrong. He wants her to be happy.’
‘I’ve never had more than two words with her,’ Santee said. ‘She’s too stuck-up for me.’
Angelique said, ‘It’s hard to interpret shyness in other people. They tend to come across as aloof.’
‘She is aloof,’ Chantal countered. ‘I asked her for coffee. I asked her to go shopping. Each time she says, “Let me check with Fig and I’ll get back to you.” ’ She shook her head. ‘That was six months ago. I’m still waiting.’
Tisha said, ‘I’ll go shopping with you.’
Chantal studied the job being done on her fingernails.
‘She’s too thin.’ Angelique was a doctor. She noticed these things. ‘I assumed she was stressed out because of the move, putting Anthony into a new school. It’s a lot of responsibility moving a household that size.’
‘Especially when your man won’t lift a finger,’ Chantal said. ‘When Jameel and I moved here, that man packed one suitcase, and all he put in it was his shit. I asked him what I was supposed to do with his kid’s clothes and toys and the kitchen and the bathrooms and he just said, “I’m set, baby. You handle it.” ’
There were noises of sympathy around the room. Angie didn’t see Chantal loading boxes into a rented U-Haul. She had probably paid Jameel back by hiring the most expensive movers she could find.
Santee said, ‘Jo married Fig young.’
‘Who didn’t?’ Chantal countered. ‘I was nineteen. La D was eighteen. Seems to me she married late.’
Angie looked at LaDonna. She was still watching, but she still wasn’t talking.
Santee said, ‘Jo has to be happy that Fig’s doing well. Marcus has really coached him up.’
Chantal said, ‘Jo doesn’t care much about basketball.’
There were not-so-fake gasps around the room.
‘What does she care about?’ Angie asked.
Tisha said, ‘She loves Anthony. Her life revolves around him.’
‘And her mother,’ Angelique said. ‘Unfortunately she’s in the early stages of congestive heart failure.’
‘Maybe that’s why she keeps to herself,’ Tisha said. ‘I lost my mother a few years ago. You don’t get over something like that. It just stays with you.’
Angelique told Angie, ‘Jo and Fig will be at the party Sunday night. La D and Marcus are hosting a blowout before the season starts. I can talk to her then if you want.’
‘I’d appreciate that.’ Angie looked at LaDonna again. Nothing good ever came out of the woman’s silence. Angie told her, ‘I heard you threw a nice party for Jo when she moved here.’
LaDonna blew on her freshly painted nails. She had a glint in her eye.
‘You knew Jo before?’ Angie tried to tread carefully. ‘Back in high school?’
LaDonna waved away the manicurist. ‘We didn’t go to the same school. She lived in the next town.’
Tisha said, ‘I didn’t know that.’
‘How about church?’
‘Yeah, I think she went to my church.’
Tisha opened her mouth, then closed it.
Angie waited. LaDonna never made anything easy. What she didn’t understand was that Angie didn’t care about her future at 110 Sports Management. All she cared about was Jo. She said, ‘Are we going to talk around the fact that Marcus used to date Jo Figaroa, or are you going to get real with me and tell me what’s going on?’
LaDonna’s lips were still pursed from blowing her nails. ‘I wouldn’t call holding hands and talking about Bible class dating.’
‘What would you call it?’
‘None of your God damm business.’
Santee said, ‘You want us to boot, girl?’
‘Nah, we’re gonna take a walk to the pool.’ LaDonna stood up. She shoved her feet into a pair of fuchsia stilettos. ‘Ostrich skin,’ she told Angie. ‘My house heels. Custom-made in Milan.’
‘Take some sunblock,’ Tisha said. ‘The sun’ll burn you up.’
LaDonna pinned the girl with her steely gaze. She told Angie, ‘This way.’
Angie wasn’t the type to follow. She walked shoulder-to-shoulder with LaDonna down the corridor. She looked down at the woman’s Italian shoes. Gold Rs were embroidered on the tips. Some threads had started to pull away. There was a tiny stain on the toe. The sight of the defects gave Angie the only sense of pleasure she’d had all day. LaDonna had always reminded her of what pimps called the bottom girl, or the mama in charge—an older whore who kept the girls in line through force or manipulation. She would comfort you or cut you, depending on what it took to keep you earning on the street.
LaDonna slipped on a pair of sunglasses. She pushed open the door. Outside was even hotter and brighter than Angie remembered. She took a breath of humid air. The smell from the nail polish was still in her nose.
LaDonna said, ‘Bitch, what’re you up to?’
Angie smiled, but only to piss her off. ‘I told you. Kip is worried about Jo.’
‘She ain’t my man’s type, if that’s what you’re getting at.’ LaDonna shook her head to make her point. ‘Marcus likes a woman with some fight in her. Jo wouldn’t say boo to a ghost.’
‘She’s under Fig’s thumb.’
‘She’s under his fist.’ LaDonna snorted at Angie’s surprise. ‘You think I don’t know what that looks like?’ She laughed. ‘Marcus wouldn’t raise a hand to me, but my daddy, he’d get his belt and whoop the skin off my ass.’ She pointed to Angie. ‘Jo’s got the same look my mama did every time she got beat down. Hell, not even when she was beat. He’d just look at her and she’d . . .’ LaDonna hunched down and threw up her hands, but she didn’t have it in her to look afraid.