my depaarture, he acted out because he didn’t want me to go. I was
stern with him and told him he had to behave like a man, but after his mother
came and picked him up, I cried.”
Chauncey’s story
brought back memories of her own father. Nicole was daddy’s little girl and
everything she wanted, he gave her.
Her eyes became misty
as she recalled a business trip her father had to take when she was little. She
had a tantrum and begged him not to go. He left anyway, but she remembered the
tears in his eyes as he walked out the door, and the huge stuffed animal he had
for her when he came back.
Her father was her
first love and his death was the hardest thing she ever had to get over.
She always wanted to
marry a man just like him.
That day, she believed
Chauncey was that man.
Chapter
Six
All day
Janelle Carter listened to women talk about their love lives while she did
their hair. She made them beautiful for their first dates with I-Hope-He’s-Mr.
Right. For He’ll-Probably-Come-By-for-a Booty-Call-Tonight.
And for their weddings
to I-Finally-Found-Mr. Right.
They talked about how
good or bad their men were in bed. How many times
they made them come. How they couldn’t wait to do it again. How they wouldn’t
waste their time.
To them, she was just
the hairdresser who kept their secrets.
What they didn’t know
was she had a secret of her own.
Janelle cruised
LoveMeBlack.com regularly checking out men and taking on the personas of her
clients.
She was never
Janelle Carter, the overweight, divorced mother of two who spent most nights
home alone. That is unless she was in the chat room for overweight women, the
most popular chat room on LoveMeBlack.com on Saturday nights. The topic was
usually “Big Beautiful and Loving It,” and they mostly talked about sex.
Janelle didn’t
have a profile. She emailed men who did. When they asked for a picture, she
sent them the one taken when she was a hundred and twenty-five pounds at her
bachelorette party the night before she married Alvin. When she was cute andsexy. Online she could be anyone she wanted.
Monica, the
five-foot-seven, one hundred twenty-pound probation officer.
Vivian, the sexy
social worker.
Linda, the tough
assistant commonwealth’s attorney.
Her salon was on Bank
Street, near the John Marshall Courts Building so she got a lot of courthouse employees. And their
lives were certainly more exciting than hers.
She never met any of
the men she emailed because she’d be exposed. Whenever it got to that point,
she just disappeared. She got her fun from the attention she received online.
Janelle didn’t like to
go out. Fat women eating alone in restaurants or standing alone in line at the
movies always drew attention, and not the good kind. Pity stares and snickering
behind their backs.
Who needed it? Especially when the
World Wide Web had so much to offer?
One day, as she was
checking out men in the D.C. area, she came across a massage therapist using
his profile as an ad for his business, Touch You Tender. She was mesmerized by
the image of the tall, black stallion.
And her clients would
love what he was selling .
Massage
therapy services provided at reasonable rates. Full or partial body. Egyptian
pedicures, hand and foot reflexology. Willing to travel. All in the privacy and
comfort of your own home or business. Group rates available. Contact Chauncey.
The masseuse sent his
price list and she made the arrangements. He and his partner would provide
their services over two days, Friday and Saturday. She would get a twenty
percent cut, and she figured the publicity would generate more business for the
shop.
They had thirty-minute
and sixty-minute time slots. Janelle booked mostly
Timothy Carter
Eric Samson
Lois Gladys Leppard
Katie Crabapple
Sophie Jordan
Monique Raphel High
Jess Wygle
John Gardner
Bali Rai
Doug Dandridge