The Company We Keep. Mary Monroe

Eve. It was hard enough for most people to come to work on the rest of the days in the year. But work was where Teri Stewart was tonight (she’d also worked well into the night on Christmas Eve, too). Not because she wanted to be, but because she had to be.

      Teri didn’t give a damn what everybody else in L.A. was doing. If nothing else, she was disciplined and considerate. To her, every commitment she made was important. Last year on a much-needed vacation to Puerto Vallarta, she had offered to take her friendly hotel maid and her kids to dinner. She didn’t think to ask the woman how many kids she had, but she expected at least two. When the maid showed up with all nine of her kids in tow, including the eldest boy’s wife and their two kids, Teri didn’t back out. Now here she was on New Year’s Eve trying to finish a monthly media report that was late because one of her sources had dropped the ball.

      The building that was home to Eclectic Records was almost empty. But that didn’t bother Teri. There was a pit bull of a security guard at the front desk on the first floor at all times. The sixteen-story building was located on a busy street near downtown L.A. Even though there had been a few muggings in the area recently, it was still fairly safe compared to other parts of the city.

      Holiday lights were still in place, inside and out. The soulful R. Kelly jam emanating from a CD player in the center of Teri’s cluttered desk in a corner office on the sixth floor didn’t do a whole lot to make her feel more at ease. Her mood was dark, and she was more frustrated than usual. The impatient frown on her face and her pouting bottom lip, which would have made a less fortunate woman look like a hag, made her look even younger than her twenty-nine years. She mumbled profanities as she searched for a document that contained information she needed to complete her report. “Shit!” she hissed as she thumped the button on the speakerphone next to the CD player, speed-dialing her secretary at home.

      “Nicole, you didn’t put a copy of Reverend Bullard’s report on my desk,” she insisted, glaring at the telephone as if it were the source of her frustration. There was no answer. “Nicole, are you there?”

      “Uh-huh, I’m here,” Nicole finally replied with a mighty hiccup. Somebody had popped open a bottle of champagne in the company break room to jump-start the New Year’s Eve festivities. Like a fish with a long swallow, Nicole had guzzled two glasses before she left the office two hours ago.

      By the time Teri had concluded a tense conference call with two long-winded clients on the East Coast and made it to the break room, all the champagne was gone. If she ever needed a liquid crutch, it was now. She appeased herself with the reminder that she would make up for it in a couple of hours.

      “I thought I told you to put a copy of the Bullard report on my desk. You know we can’t afford to not get our artists mentioned in the tabloids and the music rags whenever they do something good.” Teri was convinced that a story about an ex-con preacher making gospel CDs for troubled teenagers would be good press for the preacher and for Eclectic Records. “I thought I told you twice.”

      “Well, I thought I did,” Nicole said with a burp. “I meant to…”

      “You thought you did and you meant to, but you didn’t,” Teri snapped.

      “Will you please calm down? You’re making me nervous.”

      “Calm down, my ass. I’ve got a job to do and I can’t do mine if you don’t do yours.” Teri paused and let out a loud breath. “I’m sorry. You know I don’t like to take out my frustrations on you. I just want to finish what I started and get the hell up out of this place.” Teri let out another loud breath, inspected her silk-wrapped nails, and glanced around the spacious office that she spent as much time in as she did her condo near Hollywood.

      “That’s better,” Nicole mouthed.

      Nicole Mason sat on the edge of her bed in the apartment she shared with her son. With a heavy sigh, she rose and wiggled her plump but firm ass into a pair of black lace panties. “Try the file cabinet behind my desk. The report should be in the top drawer in a green folder,” she said. The panties felt a little too tight, just like almost everything else she owned. Especially the black slip she had on now. She made a mental note to curtail her ongoing relationships with Roscoe’s House of Chicken ’n Waffles, Popeye’s, Marie Callender, and Sara Lee or else she’d have to introduce herself to Jenny Craig and Richard Simmons. “Teri, you know you are my girl, so I know you won’t take this the wrong way…”

      Teri responded with an exasperated snort.

      “Girlfriend, you need to get a life,” Nicole told her. “You know it and I know it. Everybody else knows it, too.”

      “I have a life, thank you. I am on my grind,” Teri reported, as she continued her search. She entered Nicole’s work area, which was right outside her office. She fought her way through an assortment of large, live green plants on the floor that decorated the area like a rain forest. She found the green folder right where Nicole said it would be. With another frown, she returned to her office with the folder and leaned over her desk, glaring at the phone. She sucked in her breath so hard her chest ached, but before she could speak again Nicole’s voice cut into her muddled thoughts.

      “Miss Girl, I thought we were supposed to be hanging out tonight. Come on, this is New Year’s Eve and we happen to be in one of the most exciting cities on this planet. And, in case you forgot, Lincoln freed the slaves.”

      “I have a job to do, Nicole,” Teri reminded her.

      “We all do. But we all have lives outside of our jobs, too,” Nicole said firmly.

      “I know, I know. I just need to tweak a few more sentences on this damn report. It won’t take that long. And why are you rushing me? You are not even dressed yet.”

      “How would you know that?” Nicole quipped, tugging on the waistband of her panties.

      “Because I know you,” Teri remarked. Flipping through the green folder, her eyes got big and a smile formed on her lips. “I found it!” she exclaimed, clutching the missing document to her bosom as if it contained the secrets of the universe. She breathed a sigh of relief and flopped down into her chair, which was so comfortable with its soft black leather and adjustable seat that she didn’t want to move again. “Let the games begin!”

      Nicole rose and stood by the side of her bed, which was just as cluttered as the rest of the bedroom. She ignored the clothing and music magazines that she had tossed to the foot of her bed. “Uh-huh. So, now you can—” She was cut off by the annoying buzz of a dial tone. “Hang up on me then, bitch.” She laughed, shaking her head. “I’m too scared of you.”

      CHAPTER 2

      As soon as Nicole hung up the telephone, she rolled her large, inky black eyes and let out a deep breath. Then she raked her fingers through her thick, shoulder-length, charcoal black hair—a weave that only her hairdresser knew about.

      She would never admit that she wore a weave. Why should she when it was the same shade and texture as her real hair? All pure black women weren’t as bald-headed or hair and scalp challenged as some people implied. Half of her female cousins had thick hair halfway down their backs and it wasn’t because of an Indian ancestor or the result of a fling with an Irishman or whatnot.

      Before her weave-wearing days, she’d possessed a beautiful head of hair. Now she had more bald spots on her head than a dried-out cornfield. She blamed the permanent hair loss on the stress of once being married to a violent asshole. The hair that the stress didn’t destroy had been pulled out in clumps by the violent asshole during some of their many battles. But she’d survived somewhat intact. At least physically. But like a lot of abused women, she wore her scars on the inside. Now, thanks to the hair that had once belonged to some female in Ethiopia, she still looked good. She lifted a hand mirror and gazed at her reflection. “Call a fire truck because I am so hot,” she said, mimicking Paris Hilton.

      But she wasn’t a Paris Hilton; she had to work for a living. She had to work in an office and deal with workaholics like Teri Stewart five days a week—then get calls from her after