The Deal, the Dance, and the Devil by Victoria Christopher Murray Page A

thousand feet in the air, she was looking the part of the corporate executive she suddenly longed to be.
    “Hey, girl!” I said when I got to the table.
    “What’s up?”
    “Just you.” I gave her a hug, then slid into the booth across from her. Glancing down at what she was reading, I said, “Howard University? Really?”
    “Well, I decided that it might be difficult for me to justwalk into corporate America without any experience. I was thinking maybe I should get my MBA.” I nodded because I wanted to be the supportive friend. I kept my mouth shut because I didn’t want to be the honest friend.
    “Howard has a great program.” Tamica flipped through the brochure. “And since it’s right here, and I’m a D.C. resident, it should be easy to get in.”
    “So, Howard, huh?” That was all I was going to say. I thought about adding that even if she did follow through, and even if she did get in, did she really want to compete with all of those twenty-something-year-old bodies and brains while she was trying to find herself?
    “To Howard.” She raised her glass, giving herself a toast. “This is gonna be it. I can feel it this time.”
    The short-skirted waitress joined us and jotted down my request for an iced tea. Then she asked, “Do you want to order now or wait for the rest of your party?”
    “If we had good sense,” Tamica started, “we’d order now. No tellin’ what time Brooklyn will show up.”
    The waitress stood still, frozen, trying to figure out if she should stay or walk away.
    I directed, “Just bring my tea. We’ll wait to order.”
    “So, what’s new in your life?” Tamica asked. Before the question was fully out of her mouth, she had directed her attention back to the brochure. As if she already knew that whatever I had going on was boring, because out of the three of us, I was the most stable, the most dependable … the most boring.
    But that was before I’d been offered five million dollars. I’m sure that trumped anything going on in Tamica’s and Brooklyn’s lives combined.
    Still, my response to Tamica was, “Absolutely nothing’s new.”
    Tamica didn’t even look up. If I wanted conversation, I was going to have to turn the subject away from me. “So, how was Paris?”
    She shrugged. “It’s my route, it’s my job, it’s Paris.” She sighed, as if I not only had a boring life, but I also asked boring questions. “Are you sure you want to wait for Brooklyn?” Tamica asked before she downed the rest of her wine. “Ain’t no telling how long that’s gonna be, ’cause you know how the first lady do. She’s so important”—Tamica rolled her eyes, completely unimpressed—“that only her time matters.”
    “Talking ’bout me?”
    Tamica and I looked up at the same time. Brooklyn was at least seven steps away, so I wasn’t sure how she’d heard Tamica. But that was Brooklyn—she never missed a thing or a beat.
    Her six-foot frame swept toward us like a hurricane wrapped in fur. She looked more like a Hollywood starlet, overdone in her diamonds and platinum, than a pastor’s wife.
    Leaning over, she sent a couple of air kisses Tamica’s way, then slid into the booth next to me.
    “Hey, girl!” She wrapped me inside her fur-covered arms. “Whew!” She shrugged off her snow white fox and fanned herself. “I think I’m suffering from early menopause.”
    Tamica said, “Or you could be hot because it’s forty degrees outside and that fur coat is microwaving your behind.”
    Brooklyn puckered her lips as if she was blowing Tamica a kiss. “Why you hatin’ ’cause I’m beautiful? You know I do what I do.” Still fanning herself, she asked, “So, what’s going on, my heifers?”
    Tamica sucked her teeth as she looked down at her brochure. “She must be talking to you, Evia, ’cause I’m nobody’s heifer.” Then, she added to Brooklyn, “That’s why you always having problems at church. ’Cause you don’t know how to talk to