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  Then it began to feel hot, hotter than it was supposed to with a condom on, and extra wet.

  Queen panicked. “Oh, shit. Wait a minute. Wait a minute, the condom. Is it still onnn? Did it pop?” she wailed, looking up at him with wide eyes.

  Stanley ignored her. It was just starting to feel the way he wanted it to. He didn’t give a fuck about the condom.

  I’m not stopping, he thought, selfishly. Whatever happens happens. I told her that condom was too small anyway.

  There was no way she could stop him at that point. She even thought of leaning up to bite his ear off, but his thrusting was so violent she couldn’t hold her head steady enough to do it. So she reached up to rake his back with her nails instead, only for him to release his hands from her ass just in time to catch her arms.

  “I’ll buy you a morning after pill,” he told her, still pumping while pinning her arms to her side.

  Queen closed her eyes and prayed again.

  Pleeease help me get through this. I can take it, God. I can take it! she insisted.

  That’s when Stanley lost control of his stroke and exploded inside of her.

  “UUNNNNNNGGHHHH!” he groaned like a wild beast.

  Queen could feel the heat of his ejaculation as it skirted and poured inside of her.

  This too shall pass, she prayed. I’m a survivor!

  FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

  When the hulking man finally rolled off of her, spent from his urgent humping, Queen wasted no time jumping up from the bed to take a shower. She wanted to wash her body clean immediately. But Stanley rolled on his back and didn’t budge. He smiled up at the ceiling and chuckled, like a madman. It was all funny to him.

  “After all these years,” he commented. “The girl got some good ass. Shit!”

  He was so worn out that he momentarily dozed off, only to find Queen standing overtop of him, fully dressed when he awoke.

  “Hey, I really need to go,” she told him.

  Stan opened his eyes and looked up at her.

  “Hunh? Yo, chill, man. Calm down,” he said, groggily.

  “No, I need to get home to my kids. Now come on.”

  “Come on, what? I ain’t going nowhere,” he snapped.

  Queen stared down at him, fuming, while holding her purse tightly in her right arm.

  “Are you gonna get that?” she asked him.

  Her nagging was irritating him and his nonchalance was irritating her.

  He said, “Yeah, I told you I’ma get it. I said that earlier.”

  She looked at him in apprehension. “I mean, you have it with you, right?”

  Stan thought the question was ridiculous. The pockets of his dress pants were hardly big enough to carry twenty thousand dollars in cash, unless he had twenty one-thousand dollar bills on him. Even in hundreds, two hundred of them would be a lot of bills to fold. And he surely wasn’t giving her a check like he had stated earlier. He didn’t want the seedy transaction being traced back to him. He was a legitimate businessman. His personal training shops and real estate business in a hard American economy were both booming. Americans still had to buy or rent houses, and they were still concerned about their health and body weight. So he considered himself to be too blessed to make any mistakes in his personal life.

  “Naw, I gotta give you cash. But I only got about . . . half of it out in the car. I’ll give you the rest after I go to the bank in the morning.”

  He was already giving the woman a gift. He understood her hard times and family needs. Plenty of American families were going through it. And he knew that she would eventually need more. That’s when he planned to get more of what he needed from her.

  Queen continued to eye his dark skin, stretched out naked across the bed. It would be a shame to pop a few bullet holes into him, but if he didn’t get her money and soon . . .

  She immediately wiped the thoughts from her mind and forced herself to smile. She clapped her hands and cheered, “Okay, God, I have faith in you. I’m your child and servant.”

  Stan had never known Queen to be a religious woman. She wasn’t the type. Queen Tillis had been a calculating, math and science woman in a man-made world. So her sudden religious zeal threw him for a loop.

  “What did you say?”

  She clasped her hands together and repeated herself. “I have faith in my God, and I will do right by Him.”

  Stan sat up in bed, concerned. Yeah, let me get this money for this girl. And where am I gonna meet her tomorrow for the rest of it? I don’t think I want her following me nowhere.

  Queen started to pace the room, all happy-looking.

  She quoted, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.”

  Stan became more anxious by the minute. Her scripture preaching was spooking him. He told her, “Aw’ight, let me go get you this money,” as he climbed out of bed to redress.

  “Thank you,” she told him. “It’s already after two o’clock in the morning, and I don’t like being out this late in the neighborhood we live in now. It’s gonna take me thirty-five minutes to get back as it is. That’s why I don’t even like driving out here to six ninety five. But when and where do we need to meet for the rest of the money?”

  She was keeping it all in faith. She even held her hands together and looked up to the ceiling. “I’ll do whatever you need for my children, God.”

  Stanley frowned at her as he buttoned up his shirt. “Since, when you start praising the Lord and whatnot?” he asked her.

  Queen clapped her hands once more and told him, “Ever since I’ve had my revelation and healing.”

  “Yeah, okay,” he mumbled as he headed toward the door.

  Queen followed him with her purse in hand.

  Stan stopped at the doorway and looked back at her. “Yo, I’m coming right back to sleep here tonight. So I don’t need you following me out to the car. What, you don’t trust me? We still gotta meet up tomorrow to get the rest of it. ”

  She thought fast and said, “Well, leave your wallet here. And how come you didn’t bring all of the money tonight? I can still take a check.”

  She was ready to say anything, while trying her best to maintain her poise. The money was that urgently needed.

  Stan frowned at her. “I’m not leaving you my damn wallet. And I didn’t bring all the money because I didn’t know how serious you were.”

  “Well, you should have at least brought it with you if you were serious,” she barked at him. She was still ready to follow him out.

  He said, “I thought you had faith in your God? Well, have faith that I’m coming back then. I know what we agreed to. And I know what I owe you.”

  Again, Queen hesitated. Stan was calling her out on her faith and forcing her to use a tremendous amount of patience with him. Patience was definitely not her strength, not for a woman who had been used to getting whatever she wanted when she wanted it. However, Queen’s immediate gratification days were over, and she had to learn to accept it. So she backed down and raised her palms and her head skyward in compliance.

  “Okay. Faith. I’m right here, God. And I believe in you. I believe that you will see me through this.”

  Stan shook his head and walked out into the hallway. “That girl acting fucking crazy,” he mumbled on his way to the elevator. He conceived a devilish thought and snickered.

  “What if I just left her ass here and never came back with the money?”

  He had a good laugh about it as he rode the elevator down to the lobby. But by the time he made it out of the hotel and into the parking lot, he knew better.

  Naw, she’s in a bind for real, like a thousand other people nowadays. Folks are losing everything. So I can’t do that to her.

  “Besides,” he told himself as he reached his car, “she sucked a mean dick and swallowed it.”

  FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

  By the time Stan opened his black Cadillac Escalade, nearby by Queen’s Toyota Camry, she was forcing herself not to stare out of the fifth floor window to watch
him. To make things worse, she had a perfect view of the parking lot and the 695 Beltway. She decided to call home to her kid’s babysitter to ease the tension instead.

  She paced the room with her cell phone, awaiting an answer from her babysitter, while avoiding the view from the window.

  “Hello, Amanda, is anyone still up?”

  She tried to sound as normal as any mother could.

  “Oh, hi, yeah, Little Ray’s still up, but the girls are both asleep,” her babysitter reported. “I had dozed off with him for a second, but he’s keeping me up,” she added. It was her way of hinting at how late it was. Her voice dragged as she continued. “He says he’s not going to sleep until his mommy gets home.”

  “Awwww, let me talk to him,” Queen cooed.

  “Okay, hold on.”

  While she awaited her youngest child to answer the phone, Queen walked too close to the window and heard a vehicle driving out of the parking lot toward the beltway. She panicked and rushed over to look with a racing heart.

  “Oh, God, I know you told me to have faith, and I know you’re testing me, but please,” she begged.

  When he looked down into the parking lot and toward the beltway, she could see the tail-end of a dark truck, disappearing down the ramp that led to 695.

  “Mom-meeee,” her son cheered into the cell phone.

  “Hunh?” Queen responded, startled by his voice as her heart continued to race at her assumptions.

  I KNOW he just didn’t LEAVE me here! GOD, I need this MONEY! What are we gonna DOOO?

  Tears swelled in her eyes as she was unable to focus on her son’s conversation.

  “What, baby? What did you say?”

  “Mommy, are you okay?”

  Her five-year-old could hear the unsteady vibrato in his mother’s voice as she continued to search the parking lot with no sign of Stanley or his truck.

  “Umm, umm, baby, mommy’s gonna call you back. Okay? Mommy has to make another phone call.”

  “Hunnnh?” her son protested.

  Queen hung up the cell phone on him and immediately ran toward the doorway. In a swoop, she grabbed her purse from the bed in her left hand and felt for the small gun inside, while reaching for the door knob with her right.

  “How could you DO THIS to me, GOD!” she pouted as she moved quickly to exit the room. “I trusted YOUUU!”

  But as she opened the door into the hallway, she found Stanley reaching with his key card to open it from the other side.

  “What the hell? What are you doing?” he asked her, shocked by her panic. He had a small black carry bag in his left hand. He said, “I told you I was coming back with it. What’s wrong with you?”

  Queen was losing all of her civility and acting skittish like a crackhead, However, she had good reason to be. She was distraught from thinking he had left her there without the money. She then grabbed her head to stall an imminent headache. But it was too late. The piercing migraine was so strong that she couldn’t respond to him.

  “Aahhh,” she moaned, with her temples throbbing. She squeezed her forehead to massage them with the fingers of her right hand, as her left continued to secure her purse and her concealed weapon.

  Stanley pushed her back into the room with the force of the linebacker, the football strength that he used right up through his college years at Virginia State.

  “Shit, girl, you’re embarrassing me in here,” he snapped at her. “And you ain’t even holy, so stop that shit!”

  The force of his shove sent her tumbling backwards. She stumbled over her feet and fell to the floor on the far side of the room, hitting the back of her head on the edge of the coffee table. That’s when the gun fell out of her purse and unto the floor in plain view.

  Stanley stared at it and didn’t move. But a spark in his eyes suggested violent reaction. Queen could read it in him.

  “Oh, shit, you got a gun,” he finally mentioned.

  Queen had no idea what he planned to do to her, but she imagined it wouldn’t be anything good. He had already pushed her down. So she ignored the pain of her injured and throbbing head as she grabbed the gun from the floor and aimed it in both hands.

  Stanley raised his palms to surrender, with the bag of money still in his left hand.

  “Hey, girl, chill! CHILL!”

  Despite his submission, all that Queen could imagine was this hulking football player crashing down on her overmatched body, while attempting to strangle her to death.

  “NOOOOO, MY KIDS!” she wailed, hallucinating a death that hadn’t happened yet.

  Before she could pull the trigger in her obvious state of paranoia, Stanley made an errant move to throw his bag of money toward the gun. It was the final sign of proof she needed to believe that he would try and kill her if she didn’t shoot him first.

  So she fired the gun recklessly in his direction, and straight through the bag of money.

  POP! POP! POP! POP! POP! POP!

  “FUUCCCKK!” Stanley hollered as he lunged at her.

  Queen pulled her knees up to her chest before he could land on her. She was certain that she was in a fight for her life. She caught his massive body on the soles of her shoes, and with the force of her powerful, cheerleader legs, she kicked him straight up into the television cabinet before he could reach her feminine neck with his masculine hands.

  BLOOMM!

  She hopped to her feet before he could recover and charge her again.

  “You fucking crazy!” he spat and slobbered at her. Fresh blood from several bullet holes soiled his clean white dress shirt. But Queen was not to be strangled by him as she aimed the gun to fire it at him again.

  CLICK! CLICK! CLICK!

  Out of bullets, she jumped across the bed to avoid his reach. But the injured man pursued her like a zombie in a horror movie. And as he continued over the bed after her, he could no longer form his words, grunting and falling with a loss of balance.

  “HNNNNNHHH!”

  Determined to finish him off and live to return home to her children, Queen threw the gun across the bed at him and made her way to the closet for the iron. And by the time she had turned around with her new weapon of choice, Stanley had crawled off of the bed and was reaching for her legs.

  Wrong move. The top of his massive head was fully exposed and indefensible. The first blow from the iron alone could have been fatal. But then she hit him again, and again, and again, all with the pointy head of the iron, making a bloody mess of Stanley, herself, and of the hotel room floor.

  When she had finished the bludgeoning of her attacker, like a focused mother who would stop at nothing to feed her children, she hustled across the room to grab the bag of money, with some of it damaged from the bullets that she had fired.

  Noticing the wasted cash, she screamed out loud at God again, “NOOO, GODDD!”

  With no time to sit there and pout at the Lord, Queen rushed to the door and ran out into the hallway, bloodied and raging to get back home to her kids. She paid no mind to the frenzied guests who scrambled for cover and dodged back into their rooms for dear life, as if she was coming after them. But Queen had already taken care of her business, and it was time to leave.

  Avoiding the elevator, she made her way to the red EXIT door and staircase at the end of the hall, running, jumping, and falling down ten flights of stairs.

  Amazingly, as the Baltimore police began to arrive at the hotel from the emergency phone calls about gun shots, the officers rushed into the front doors and missed the traumatized mother, who made it out to her used Toyota in the parking lot from the side FIRE EXIT.

  She clumsily climbed into the car with her keys and screamed at it as if it was human. “Now, don’t you act up on me car! Don’t do it!”

  The car started up right away, as the police ran out of the building, with frightened hotel guests helping to point her out.

  “THERE SHE GOES!”

  Too late. Queen pulled the Toyota out of the parking lot and wheeled it down the ramp for I-695 W
est with no traffic in the way to stop her. Unfortunately, more Baltimore police cruisers were on the way, not to mention three cars in hot pursuit from the hotel parking lot. So as the escaping mother gassed onto the beltway in a used car that barely did eighty-five miles an hour without shaking and rattling, in a matter of minutes, six police cars were on her tail with urgency, lights flashing and sirens blazing . . .

  WHHRRRLLL!

  WHHRRRLLL!

  WHHRRRLLL!

  WHHRRRLLL!

  WHHRRRLLL!

  WHHRRRLLL!

  All the while, Queen Tillis-Thompson continued to search the Heavens for the reason for all of her recent misfortunes.

  Crying hysterically, while driving and screaming at the top of her lungs, she continued to shout, “WHY, GOD? WHYYYEEE? What did I DOOO? What did I do WRONNNG? Oh, God, WHHYYYEEEEE? Why MEEEE? Why my FAAMM-LEEEE? NOOOOOOO . . .!”

  A Perfect Husband

  March 1998

  Queen rushed through the traffic on Guilford Avenue, heading South for downtown Baltimore. She dangerously jetted her black Nissan in and out of the gaps between the larger and slower vehicles. It was slightly after eight o’clock, and she was running late for her seven-thirty date down at the Baltimore Harbor. She planned to be tardy on purpose. It was good to keep a man waiting to see how badly he wanted a woman’s company. But to keep him waiting for more than thirty minutes was a bit much.

  “Shit! Every light is catching me now,” she shouted over her steering wheel. “I should have jumped on eighty-three.”

  At the next intersection, she came to a violent stop and nearly rear-ended a light blue Oldsmobile in front of her. The older driver braked early to stop at the approaching red light instead of speeding through the yellow caution.

  “Damn it! Make the light!” Queen cursed him. At an impulsive twenty-four, she had somewhere to go, and the turtle-driving man was in her way. When the light turned green, she jumped into the right lane and gave the older man her middle finger as she sped on by him.

  “Old ass need to stay in the slow lane,” she huffed.