Free Sweet Bye-Bye by Denise Michelle Harris

And oh, by the way, he’s an idiot. I don’t think so! I took the heat. I said that Skyway decided against going with the Sunday Disk Drive project. But of course, to them it looked like once I got involved, the deal went sour.
    You were only as good as your last deal in this business. If things kept up this way, I was going to be looking in the paper for a new job.

12
    A Better Time
    M y California king-size bed was my place of solitude and comfort. It had three high mattresses and a stepstool next to it that I used to climb up into it. I lay under my goosedown comforter, which was encased in a cream-and-yellow satin duvet cover with little pink and yellow flowers on it. I looked over at the nightstand to check the time. It was 10:54 p.m.
    I lay in bed and thought about the massive to-do list that I’d left on my desk. Even then as I lay in my bed, Mr. Strautimeyer’s comments made me feel uneasy. He was truly a businessman’s businessman, and if he thought I was trying to manipulate him into that deal, I could lose his business.
    Two crystal picture frames sat next to my alarm clock on the nightstand, illuminated by the moon’s light that came through my window and hit them just so. One was of Eric and me together; we’d taken it in a photo booth at a carnival. The other was of just myself in a little black dress, at a nightclub in the city.
    I’d tossed and turned so much over my awful day that my head wrap slipped off again. I rewrapped my hair and tied it up again. When I had told Canun what had happened on the phone with Mr. Strautimeyer, he had said he was shocked that Skyway didn’t sign the deal. The little rat even had the nerve to try and look at me like I’d done something to mess it up!
    I sighed and put my hands under my head and tried to go to sleep, but I tossed and turned and was up again. Work was a mess, and my romantic life was a mess. I wanted Eric there with me, to hold me, to comfort me. But I knew that if he were here, that would only lead us to areas that I was trying to stay away from. I was convinced that we needed to get married, and even my new copy of
Glamour
magazine confirmed that the best way to get married was to not have sex with the guy. I twisted and turned in my feelings of emptiness and loneliness. I was on my back, then on my side, then my scarf came off again. I put it back on. I had to remember to write out my checks in the morning. Water, cable, garbage, phone. I’d get to them.
    I closed my eyes again and dreamed, or I remembered, I don’t know which. I was somewhere between dreamland and the place where your memories are stored. With my eyes closed, I remembered a better time for me. I must have been five or six years old. We were upstairs in the balcony at church. I wore a white ruffled dress that coordinated with my socks and the bows in my hair. I never liked dressing that way, but it gave my Grandmother Hattie such satisfaction to see me so proper-looking. I preferred my Big Ben jeans with the yellow patch on the back pocket. But Grandma said that I was a little lady and that I should dress as such. My ponytails were neatly combed and perfectly parted with barrettes that hit my neck as I ran. My bangs curled down and bumped under on my forehead. My caramel skin and almond eyes caused people who didn’t know me to make comments.
    “Mrs. Brumwick,” the neighbor watering her grass from across the street would yell over, “your grandbaby is just precious! She looks like a dolly!”
    My grandmother would beam with pride as I stood there with my best shy-coy look.
    But at church, this look never worked. There, my appearance fooled no one. I could kick a kickball from here to Timbuktu and the congregation knew it. There, all of the members’ children knew to stay out of my way because I was bossy as all get out. My personality was strong and even my demeanor said “Follow me.” And that’s exactly what lots of the children used to do.
    But not asthmatic little