Corey’s friend, she thought with a spark of recognition. The one from the gas station this morning. Leon.
For some reason, Corey had been reluctant to talk about his friendship with this man, and had rebuked Jada for asking questions. Simone had found his reaction strange, but clearly Corey and this Leon had not left off their friendship on the best of terms. You didn’t have to be a licensed psychologist to read Corey.
As if by psychic osmosis with her husband, Simone felt tension twisting like a corkscrew in her own stomach, too. What was this guy doing there?
Leon smiled at her, showing a wide gap in his front teeth. He sauntered to her table.
Without asking permission, he took the seat across from her.
“I’m Leon,” he said in a surprisingly soft falsetto. He extended his hand across the table. “Your hubby C-Note and I were thick as thieves back in the day.”
She didn’t want to shake his hand-something about him looked dirty-but she didn’t want to be rude, either. She briefly shook his hand. His touch was damp and hot, as if he were cooking inside his own flesh.
And what was that C-Note nickname all about?
She cleared her throat. “I saw you outside the gas station this morning. Corey told me he knew you back in Detroit.”
“We go back like rockin’ chairs,” Leon said. He slid a salt shaker toward him and batted it like a hockey puck between his hands across the table. “It damn near blew my cerebellum to run into him this morning. Like, whoa, my main man! All grown up now with the wife and kid, a captain of his industry, I’m so proud of him, ’cause where we came from, no one expected us to amount to shit. We were given the old heave-ho into the streets like malnourished puppies from a mutt’s litter, every man for himself, look out for number one and don’t step in number two, and now Corey’s living the life of Riley. It gives me hope, it does, it’s marvelous, beautiful, a stupendously beautiful thing.”
Snickering, he rocked back in the seat, juggling the salt shaker.
Simone stared at him. She had met some colorful characters in her day, but was this guy for real?
As a long-standing rule, she resisted putting on her therapist’s hat outside of her counseling practice, but Leon was so unusual that she inadvertently found herself doing an assessment of him. He was definitely hyperactive. She noted the hands in ceaseless motion. The lightning-swift, jittery speech pattern. Did he display poor impulse control and dramatic mood swings, too?
She wished he would remove those sunglasses so she could get a good look at his eyes. They would help her formulate a clearer read on him.
Stop it, she cautioned herself.
But it startled her that Corey had been friends with this man. Best friends, he’d admitted. Corey was solid and stable as the proverbial rock. If Leon had always behaved like this, she couldn’t imagine him and Corey as anything more than casual acquaintances.
Why hadn’t Corey ever told her about this unusual guy? Why was he so reluctant to talk about him?
She was intrigued. . but Leon showing up in this restaurant, at this time, troubled her above all else.
“Do you eat here often?” she asked.
He bobbed his head, dreadlocks swaying. “Oh, yeah, yeah, uh-huh, I rip through this little restaurante all the time, daily. See Julio, the pint-sized wetback working the counter? Mi amigo hooks me up nice with the burritos.”
She frowned. “Well, he’s very friendly, but I don’t think he’d appreciate being referred to by the word you used. It’s not exactly a politically correct term.”
He shrugged and scooped up the pepper shaker, too. Juggling them both, he said, “How do you make your pesos, baby girl? The way you’re dressed, the snazzy pantsuit, the understated jewelry, the French manicure, the makeup tight and just right, I know you’re not holding down a minimum wage gig greeting welfare moms and their broods of Bebe kids at Wal-Mart. You’re involved in a high falutin’ profession that requires a spiffy edumucation, what is it that you do, huh, do tell, darling.”
“I’m a psychologist,” she said. Out of habit, she braced for a shrink joke.
“A psychologist, no shit, uh-huh, that’s cool. Can I have some Ritalin?” He giggled.
“A psychologist isn’t licensed to prescribe medication. Psychiatrists do that. They have medical degrees. My background is clinical psychology.”
“Do you deliver a diagnosis from your high and mighty shrink throne, append a certifiable label on a hapless patient, and summon the men in the white coats to haul him off to the funny farm to live the rest of his pathetic little Walter Mitty life in a rubber room strapped in a straitjacket and sucking applesauce through a straw?”
She blinked at his torrent of words. “No, no. I’ve never had to commit anyone, thank goodness.”
He dropped the shakers onto the table and leaned forward, thick veins rising to the surface of his tattooed forearms.
“So you sit around on that lovely, bodacious ass of yours gabbing to half-wits all day, is that right? Listening and nodding uh-huh, uh-huh, asking asinine open-ended questions to fill the allotted time, nail the poor suckers between their dumb bovine eyes with an inflated bill when the buzzer goes off, usher them into the great outdoors with a Coke and a smile?”
Her jaw clenched. “Excuse me?”
“If you were my lady, I wouldn’t let you leave mi casa. You’re too traffic-stopping fine to lift a finger.” He adjusted the sunglasses on his nose, then whistled and pantomimed a voluptuous shape with his hands. “Brick house all day and night, it’s hard for me to peep the package in that high-priced chic suit you’re wearing, but I’ll hazard a guess, you’ve gotta be thirty-six C, twenty-four, thirty-six, perfect pole dancer coordinates, no doubt provoking wet dreams and blue balls and sweaty palms every time you strut your sexy chocolate ass into a room. Corey’s a lucky, lucky dog, I tell you that, take that check to a bank and cash it ’cause it’s good.”
She blushed, speechless.
His wraparound mirror shades offered a distorted reflection of only her own bewildered face, but she could feel his lecherous gaze crawling all over her.
Hands clenched into fists, she crossed her arms over her chest, covering her cleavage.
“Quiet now, huh?” His voice had lowered several octaves, and a predatory smile danced across his lips. “Are you quiet like that in the sack, too, or are you a screamer, a lady in the streets but a freak in the sheets?”
Her face burned. Enough. She’d had enough of this nonsense.
Trembling, she gathered her things, grabbed the edges of the tray, and slid out of the booth.
“Excuse me,” she said. “I have to get back to work. I’ll. . I’ll tell Corey I ran into you.”
“You do that, senorita bonita, yeah, you make sure you tell him. Shalom.”
He blew a kiss at her, and laughed in his strange, giggly manner.
She hadn’t touched her food, but she dumped the entire meal into the wastebasket near the exit. She no longer had an appetite.
Without looking back, she hurried across the parking lot and to her car, feeling watched all the way.
7
Corey spent the rest of the day at the office, determined to stay focused on business.
He returned all of the messages that he’d received earlier. Sat in on a conference call with a current customer, a local electronics store, about installing enhancements to their surveillance system. Interviewed a candidate for a new sales rep position. Had a meeting with a vendor who wanted Corey to upgrade to the latest and greatest customer relations management software.
It was, all in all, shaping up to be a busy weekday, for which he was grateful. It allowed him to delay making a decision about his Leon problem. He promised himself he would think about this issue later, when his mind was uncluttered.