Summary
It takes a night out with Malcolm and his jazzmen for Angela to live again.
Then, he left her car, disappearing up the steps. There wasn’t even a goodnight kiss.
The moment she got back to her apartment, Angela called her Auntie Vee on the speakerphone in the kitchen. She told her Auntie—as always—everything before asking, “What do you think his last words meant?”
“Forget all that. Are y’all still a couple?”
Angela’s hands started shaking. She could only continue after balling them into fists. “Maybe. I don’t know. There’s a dozen women easy from church that’d love t’see him single again. And, worse, my nightmares are back. Affecting my sleep and everything. Him having whatever self-discovery now is the last thing I need.”
Their talk dried up into an uncomfortably long pause before Auntie Vee said her piece. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m pleased as punch yer dating after all you’ve been through. But, at the risk of wearing you out, I’ll say it again: ‘Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away.’ Between the ladies that hiss and the clueless men, the whole lot of them are dead branches. You need to get yer hands dirty with a good ol’ fashioned church plant. I’m thinking somewhere past the Tollway, like Celina. Anyway, my flight’s boarding. Lord willing, we’ll catch up in Vancouver later in the week as planned. Let’s pray each other through.”
The call ended. Angela, alone in a kitchen with more dust than grease, had only the reverberations of Auntie Vee’s what-for to keep her company. She picked up her cell phone and checked its logs until reaching Mike’s last call. Her hands started shaking again, to the point of uselessness. Angela tossed the cell phone onto the kitchen bench, saying out loud, “Lord, help me beat this!” before starting up her nighttime routine.
But, sadly, the routine of late had Angela tossing and turning against sleep for hours. She gave up around four o’clock in the morning and got busy—lots of laundry, shadow kickboxing, and a five-mile jog. After a shower, hair wash, and hair dry, she checked both phones—no missed calls. Angela then dressed for the worker bee, including skinny jeans and indoor soccer shoes, before heading out the door. She left her cell phone charging on the kitchen bench.
By ten thirty in the morning, Angela was working through her first headache for the day. In her best Spanglish, she tried explaining to her local car wash dryers that she wanted the interior detailed three separate times and nothing else. They had no problem understanding her when she added, “Two hundred dollar tip.” Next, it was the expected headache of guy customers ogling at her. One even tried his luck with the line ‘Do I know you from church’ as she walked through. The worst of her headaches came from gal customers. With her getting all the male attention, their eyes cut into her with anger and competition. Angela, understandably, sat alone, crossing her legs and arms, and waited. Her signature cat-eyed sunglasses concealed any attention or expression as an uneaten muesli bar dangled from her fingertips.
