Love in a Carry-On Bag Read online

  But when she pushed the revolving door of B&B Publishing’s building Number 416, those feelings were checked at the curb. Erica morphed from a red-nosed girlfriend into a powerhouse publicist who lunched with top television producers, influenced booksellers, and persuaded the opinions of erudite editors with the same fervor as a storefront preacher.

  “’Morning, Iris,” she waved to the receptionist who buzzed her in.

  B&B Publishing had started as a family business before being sold to a British media company a year after Erica was hired. It was now first in producing the most New York Times bestselling fiction titles, and as Erica stepped over a box of books into the publicity department, she knew she had a lot to do with their success.

  Erica had always loved books. Every Saturday morning, she would slip into a pleated skirt and soft leather shoes, and walk the three short blocks and two avenues to the Newark, New Jersey, branch of the library where all the librarians knew her by name. She’d check out five new titles, reading them whenever she could. During class, she had a library book tucked between the pages of a textbook. In the schoolyard she read while the other girls jumped Double-Dutch, chased boys, and played hand games. At night she wouldn’t put the book down until she finished the last page, even if it meant reading by flashlight.

  Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf affirmed her black-girl struggle. Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings made her salivate for poetry. Then Terry McMillan wrote Mama, and it was the first time Erica had ever read a book twice. Her voracious appetite for reading was what drew her to publishing, and her passion for words is what made her successful.

  Erica P. Shaw, Associate Director of Publicity, was stenciled in gold script in a black plaque fastened in the center of her door. Erica ran her manicured finger across it like she did every morning for luck. Inside of her closet-like office books were shelved in every possible corner and since there was no window, she hung a black-and-white framed photo of a pebble being tossed in a calm lake. It served as her daily reminder that the director’s office with the view was within reach.

  “’Morning,” a watery voice called from behind her. Erica’s shoulders tensed when she turned and saw Goldie Gardner, newly appointed senior editor of B&B’s literary imprint, standing in her doorway. Work did not officially begin for another full hour and only Goldie would think this impromptu drop-in was appropriate. Erica hadn’t removed her coat, checked her voice messages, or pressed play on her get-the-morning-started CD. Hell, she hadn’t even poured a cup of coffee. But there stood Goldie with her limp hair, clutching a file folder to her chest, asking, “Do you have a review list ready for Arranged Proposals?”

  She was referring to a debut memoir by Bollywood actress Chitra Jotwani. Karrington Press had published a similar memoir last year and the media hadn’t been interested in the runner-up, but Erica couldn’t say that to Goldie even though she longed to.

  “I need to do another round of calls. I can have an update to you by the end of the day,” Erica answered, opening her spiral notebook and writing it down.

  “Well, if you’re swamped, I can have my assistant make the calls,” Goldie flicked her bangs out of her narrow face, and as she did Erica caught a whiff of her grassy shampoo, making her sneeze.

  Goldie had only been with the company a few months, and after working on two other titles together, she was on Erica’s “avoid-this-editor list.” Publisher Genève Meyers-Sheppard had wooed Goldie from a competing house with a reportedly large salary. The deal had been “hot news” in all of the trade magazines and, as Grandma Queeny used to say, “The child is smelling her piss.” Goldie knew damn well that Erica wouldn’t let her editorial assistant make publicity calls, just as Goldie wouldn’t let Erica’s edit one of her books.

  “We’ll handle it,” she smiled tartly.

  “We really don’t mind.” Goldie leaned into the door frame. “This book is really important to me.”

  Every book was important to the editor who acquired it, and Erica’s job as the publicist was to sell it to the media as the next best thing, whether it was or not. The telephone rang.

  “I’ll have the list sent down to you later,” Erica replied. But when Goldie still didn’t move, Erica answered the call on speaker, in a final dismissive gesture.

  “Erica Shaw.”

  “HELLO, YOU HAVE A COLLECT CALL FROM ESSEX COUNTY FACILITY JAIL…” Erica clamored for the receiver.

  “Is that an author?” Goldie’s thin fingers hugged the floating heart necklace around her neck.

  “I’ll see you later,” Erica stared schoolyard style until Goldie backpedaled out of her office.

  “PRESS ONE TO ACCEPT THIS CALL.”

  The line clicked several times before she heard her mother’s voice crack. “Er-ri-ca. It’s Mom-ee.”

  “Where’re you?” she whispered, though it was painstakingly obvious.

  “The county. They ’rested us for shoplifting, but I ain’t do nothing.”

  A numbing sensation brushed over Erica. Experience told her that the “us” was her mother and her longtime friend Bonnie, and that they had absolutely been stealing. Bonnie had been the canker sore in their lives ever since Erica could remember and was always leading her mother into a pile of manure.

  “What do you want me to do?” she asked crossly.

  “Bail me out,” her mother cried, calling out a telephone number. “God as my witness, I’ma pay you back.”

  Her mother’s fingers were as sticky as a wad of chewing gum. Most of the time what she took was worthless: trinkets such as crossword puzzles, pot holders and key chains from the Dollar store. Sometimes, she’d tuck greeting cards, spatulas and hair magazines between the pages of the supermarket circular. When she had the nerve to lift from department stores, it was earrings, pantyhose and sunglasses wrapped in her neck scarf and then pressed into the folds of her rubbery arms. Erica had warned her mother that these sins would catch up with her and now jail was her penance. Molten lava had spread through Erica’s stomach and was bubbling up flesh.

  Just a year ago, she had played the concerned daughter when her mother and Bonnie ventured on a casino bus trip to Atlantic City. The two of them had consumed too much of everything and like most drunks started fighting. Fed up, Bonnie took the bus home and Erica’s mother staggered around the boardwalk looking for her, stoned and confused. The police finally picked her up, and dropped her off at the psychiatric ward of the General Hospital.

  Erica received the humiliating call then and although she hadn’t known Warren long, he rented a car and insisted on driving her to Atlantic City. When they got there, Erica had to sit next to her new boyfriend in a conference room filled with white-lab coats telling her that her mother had a substance and alcohol problem. She thought that Warren would bolt after that, but somehow the situation brought them closer.

  She dialed Warren’s number, but when his voicemail picked up, she remembered that he was in meetings. She called the bondsman.

  “Bail bonds.”

  “I need to get someone out of jail,” her voice thinned as she recounted the arrest story. The bondsman asked for her mother’s date of birth, location and charges, and put Erica on hold.

  “Her bail is set at ten grand,” he came back to the line, “I’ll need one thousand to get her out tonight, plus a thirty dollar filing fee.”

  As much as she loved her job, publishing wasn’t Wall Street and she didn’t sit on savings. Most of her expendable cash was spent on rent and general living. A small portion went into her 401k and an even tinier portion was stashed in an IRA that she wasn’t risking for her mother.

  “Thanks, I’ll have to check my funds and give you a call back.”

  Erica moved robotically down the hall towards the ladies’ room, her mind too warped to speak to the few early birds in their cubicles. But as soon as she rounded the bend, she ran into Edie Butnick, her very pregnant Director, wearing a screaming pink
paisley headband. The morning couldn’t get any better.

  “Erica, just the girl I wanted to see.”

  “’Morning, Edie,” she forced a smile.

  “How did it go with Brandon this weekend? I’m not feeling plugged in.”

  “There were a few hiccups, but I took notes and we should be able to iron them out before he starts the tour.”

  “Can you email me his schedule, budget, and a quick recap before the eleven a.m.?” Edie’s hand drifted over her protruding belly.

  Erica said that she would, and then continued quickly to the ladies’ room before her boss could add to the list. She rushed past the double vanity and into the last stall, where in a matter of seconds her entire morning came loose.

  Chapter Four

  Daddy’s Girl

  It was always her stomach that shut down first.

  After her father moved out, Erica’s mother changed her name. Not legally, but men started calling the house asking to speak to Jackie. In the beginning, Erica was confused, insisting that they had the wrong number. But they would keep calling until her mother picked up the telephone. Shortly after each call, her mother would burst into her bedroom tucking herself into her Gloria Vanderbilt jeans and smoothing her soft hair into an up do twist.

  “Watch ya sista while I run to the store,” she’d say, brushing a tube of dollar-store lipstick across her mouth, and then using it for blush on her cheeks. She was a pretty woman with a firm body and pleasing features, but it was her eyes that gave away her pain.

  “When’re you coming back?” Erica would ask, throwing up a little bit in her mouth.

  “Right back, and don’t answer the telephone. If it’s me, I’ll let the phone ring once, hang up and then call again,” she’d say, bolting the thick wooden door behind her.

  It was always the store and even though the bodega was a block away, the run could take her mother hours to complete. From the moment she walked out, Erica would feel her stomach spin, as if she were on a carousel ride that had suddenly lost control. To cope, she medicated herself with back-to-back reruns of Welcome Back Kotter, Good Times, The Jeffersons, and Alice.

  Sometimes her mother would return with a greasy bag of fried chicken wings and soggy fries from the Chinese store, but most times she came home empty-handed, jeans soaked in urine and smelling like she had bathed in a bottle of Bacardi. Erica couldn’t stand to see her mother liquored up and each night before bed, she knelt against her canopy bed with her bare knees pressed into the cold wooden floor, begging God to send her father back. She would seal her plea with The Lord’s Prayer and two Hail Mary’s, but as the seasons passed, he never came.

  Then one day when she was in her mid-twenties she received a Thanksgiving card from him with a fifty-dollar bill Scotch-taped to the left side. It was simply addressed to E-Bird, his pet name for her with no return address. A few weeks later, he sent her a Christmas card with another fifty and a photo of his new family.

  There were four people in the photo, clustered in shades of green like sprigs from a mistletoe: a thick-skinned woman with a gap between her teeth and tits the size of Texas, a young boy with crescent-shaped eyes and a smile that mirrored her own, a little girl with braids and rainbow beads. Her father’s wavy temples had grayed, but his face held the same handsome sheen. Just looking at him conjured his waxy scent into her living room. The little girl sat in Erica’s father’s lap, sucking her index finger with eyes that screamed into the camera, “My Daddy.”

  The fifty-dollar bills came almost monthly after the first one but Erica never responded, choosing to forget about the bills collecting in the drawer of her nightstand. One day she planned to stuff the money in a big envelope with pictures of her missed dance recital, basketball games and graduations.

  On the bad days, she wished that she could send him snaps of her terrified self; when the electricity had been shut off, and their spoiled food invited every rodent in Newark to camp out in their home. Or when her mother stole her elementary school’s candy-drive money, and the principal scolded her daily in front of her classmates. Or when Ms. Frances, her babysitter’s mother, refused to let her daughter watch Erica and her sister, and was kind enough to yell her reason from her screened-in-porch, just in time for Erica’s business to reach the neighbors’ table with dessert.

  “’Cause that woman ain’t never coming back,” Ms. Frances puffed on her Marlboro Red, “and the Daddy ain’t shit either.”

  The assistants had long finished their water cooler talk about their weekend hangovers and Erica’s half-sipped coffee was stone cold. Peering at her online banking, she calculated her remaining bills for the month. Rent and cable were due at the end of the week. The company was late again with the check for her expenses, so she would have to pay AmEx and wait to be reimbursed. With a phone call, she could delay paying her student loans and her dry cleaning would have to stay put. But even with this, she was still short. Her sister, Jazmine, was away at Clark Atlanta University and Erica put a small allowance into her account every month. So when she picked up the telephone to call Jaz, it was more out of need to share information than to expect real help.

  “Sha-low.”

  “Is that how you answer the telephone?”

  “Girl, I knew it was you. Caller-ID, duh.”

  “Your mother’s in jail.”

  “Shut-up,” Jazmine said, and Erica could hear the lollipop she was sucking pop from her painted red lips. She could picture her sister’s bleach blonde fro, feathered and free, while she recounted the arrest story and how much they needed to get her out.

  “She’s so stupid,” Erica finished.

  “And you know she’s in there freakin’ out. Probably peed her pants.”

  “I hope not.”

  “Well I only have twenty dollars to last me ’til the end of the week. I would say call Daddy, but he doesn’t have a cell phone and his wife cock blocks like a mug.”

  “You talk to Daddy?” Erica asked, stunned.

  “Sometimes. He asks about you.”

  She felt a pang of jealousy over her sister forgiving their father and not keeping her side. Although she should have known Jazmine would talk to anyone who gave her money, she was still pissed. He left them for Christ sakes, and was raising a brand new family like they never existed.

  “So what should I do?”

  “Borrow it from Warren.”

  “I’m not a leech.”

  “You’re fucking him aren’t you?”

  “Jaz.”

  “I’m just saying, what’s his is...”

  “I’m not Mommy. I don’t ask men for money.”

  “Excuse the hell out of me,” Jazmine shot back.

  Erica hadn’t intended for her words to sound so harsh. After all, Jazmine was the love of her life. It was Erica who raised her when her mother couldn’t. Teaching her sister how to skate, use tampons, and helping her change her sheets when she wet the bed in the middle of the night. But watching her mother wait on Sugar Daddys, and still come up empty had made Erica fiercely independent, probably to a fault.

  “You can’t borrow it from anyone?” Erica pushed.

  “Girl, I have robbed every Peter I know to pay Paul. But we can’t leave Mommy in there overnight. She’ll have a nervous breakdown.”

  “All right, don’t worry. I’ll figure something out.”

  Erica ended the call just as Prudence entered the office, her long brown hair pulled in a tight ponytail.

  “Sorry to bother you, but Edie wants the follow up email on Brandon Sykes, it’s almost eleven.”

  Erica minimized her online banking screen. “Tell her I got caught up on a call and it’s coming now.”

  “Anything I can do to help?” Prudence asked, rolling up her long hair.

  “Can you make another round of calls on Arranged Proposals? Goldie’s breathing down my neck. Try and get a few definites.”

  “Absolutely.” Prudence left.

  Erica pulled together the information for
Edie, and then called the bondsman and set the appointment. She knew where to get the extra money from, even though it crushed her.

  Chapter Five

  Play Something Nice

  Warren sat in a corner conference room, stuck in his second operations’ meeting of the morning, and although he was trying to concentrate on his manager’s review of the monthly metrics, his mind kept reminiscing over Erica. When they were apart it was her scent that he missed most. Erica never doused herself in perfume but her skin was naturally fragrant with a mix of sprigs, water, something wild and bloomy. Tonight he would trace her fragrance on the pillow, trapped between the threaded sheets. But by Wednesday it would be lost. It had been only twelve hours since Erica departed yet Warren was yearning for her with a lump in his gut like it was the middle of the week. If not for the distraction of his weekly jazz gig, Mondays would be murky and mundane, and just knowing that later he would be on stage playing at Sweet Melodies made the day more bearable.

  Warren loved Sweet Melodies. It was a well-known jazz club in the heart of Adams Morgan in D.C. and had been in the same corner location since the “Era of Bebop.” Though the owners changed several times, the essence of the club remained the same: don’t take the stage unless you’re ready to jam. And every Monday night, Warren’s band played house to these sessions. Once in a while, a musical giant blessed the stage and tonight it was the legendary saxophonist Bobby Watson. Warren was such a fan of Bobby’s that as a broke college student, he traveled all the way to Charlotte, North Carolina in the back of his friend’s rusty Ford to see Bobby perform. The trip was the pinnacle of his junior year at Howard and since then he had collected all twenty-six of Bobby’s albums.