Love Me or Leave Me. Gwynne Forster

for the soul food.

      “I’m having fried catfish,” Pamela told the waitress.

      “With or without?”

      “Definitely with. I haven’t had anything to eat today,” she said, savoring the thought of catfish with corn bread and stewed collards.

      “I’ll have the same,” Rhoda said, “but hold those hot peppers.”

      “Not to worry. We only give you those if you ask for ’em.”

      “What’s Lawrence up to these days, Pam? If I turn my back, he’s in your office. Is there… I mean…do you want to see him?”

      “Me? Want to see Lawrence? That man affects me exactly the way a swarm of mosquitoes would, and he’s got the hide of a rhinoceros.”

      “I wouldn’t like to be the object of his affection. He’s too devious. I’d better tell you he’s boasting that you and he are an item.”

      She nearly spilled her ice water. “In his dreams. Put a note on every bulletin board in this building to the effect that Lawrence Parker is lying, that he’s never been anywhere with me outside of the building and that I want him to stay out of my office.”

      Rhoda struggled without success to keep the grin off her round brown face. “That will give me more pleasure than this catfish. And girl, I do love me some catfish.”

      “Sure would quicken my steps, but I guess we’d better not do that. I’ll find another way to make him grow up.”

      She had treated the matter lightly, but the man worried her. A normal man over thirty-five years of age—she was certain of that much—didn’t behave as Lawrence Parker did.

      “I sure hope I’m around when you blow him over. Say, how was your date Friday night?”

      “My date? Oh, you mean… Disaster, girl. I had not one flat tire, but two, and by the time I got to the restaurant, almost two hours late, he’d left.”

      “You didn’t call him? I mean, doesn’t he have a cell phone?”

      “He does, but mine was at the station on my desk.” She stopped eating, lost in thoughts of what might have been.

      Rhoda rested her knife and fork and leaned back in the chair. “But you patched it up later, right?”

      Pamela lifted her right shoulder in a quick shrug. “I phoned his house and left a message. But if he got it, he didn’t return my call.”

      “I see. You sound crestfallen. What’s this guy like?”

      “A tan-colored Adonis. Mesmerizing good looks. A grin that will make you cross your knees, and sweet as sugar. He’s too good to be true.”

      “If what you say is right, he sure is. I’d be scared as hell of him.”

      Pamela ate the remainder of the catfish and pushed her plate aside. “He knows he’s great-looking, but when women fawn over him, it gets on his nerves.”

      “You’re kidding. You mean, he’s not a stud?”

      “Good Lord, no. If he was, I wouldn’t have gone out the door to meet him.”

      Rhoda looked into the distance, her expression suggesting a sense of wonder. “I wish you luck, but I’d stay away from that brother.”

      It was much too late for that advice, but she didn’t tell Rhoda that. Lecturing herself about Drake Harrington had gotten her nowhere. She knew him well enough to be certain that he was far more than what he looked like—six feet and four inches of male perfection—that he was a serious-minded, hardworking and caring person who loved his family and was generous with his friends.

      “I’m no slouch,” she said to herself, “but what makes me think Drake Harrington is going to settle for me when he can have just about any woman he wants?”

      “I don’t give advice,” Rhoda said, “and especially not to you, since you’ve done far more with your life than I have with mine. Still—”

      “Out with it,” Pamela said. “Who knows? It might be just what I need to hear.”

      Rhoda savored the last morsel of catfish, placed her knife and fork across her clean plate, and leaned back in her chair. “I was going to retract what I said a minute ago. If he’s all that nice, and he’s interested, go for it and enjoy it for as long as it lasts, but don’t fall too deeply in love.”

      Pamela leaned forward as if to be certain Rhoda heard her. “I’d like to see the woman who could bask in that man’s attention and, when his interest cooled, walk away unscathed as if she’d merely said ‘hi’ to him.”

      Rhoda’s eyebrows shot up. “That bad, huh?”

      They barely spoke as they walked down Linden Avenue to Monument Street, each in her own mental realm. “I’ll tell you one thing,” Rhoda said as they entered the building that housed the TV station, “I’d watch my back. Half the women you know will be trying to get close to you, hoping to catch his eye.”

      “Not me. My dad says that if a man wants to go, buy him a ticket. The sooner he’s gone, the better, because eventually, he will leave. You won’t catch me clinging to anyone, male or female. My friends have the freedom to do as they please.” She waved at the desk officer, who checked entrance badges.

      “You two are looking great there,” he said. “Nothing like a couple of fine-looking sisters to brighten a man’s day.” They smiled and kept walking. Ben enjoyed complimenting them.

      Back in her office, Pamela checked her desk phone and her cell phone, saw that she didn’t have any messages, pulled off her jacket and went to work. Twice that morning, she’d changed her lead story for the local evening news, and now this. A woman was shopping in the supermarket, turned her back to select a head of lettuce, and when she looked around her three-year-old daughter had disappeared and had not been seen since. She got busy trying to piece together the bits of information floating in and, once more, rearranged the order of her news item. By five o’clock, she had what she considered a first-class report, but Lawrence cracked the door and handed her a sheet of paper.

      “Sorry, pal. Your producer gave me this a little while ago, but I swear I forgot it. No hard feelings?” She didn’t answer him. His smile, brilliant and false, nearly sickened her. He had deliberately withheld one of the most important items of the day: Station WRLR had just joined the NBC family of stations. She pushed the button on her intercom and got the producer.

      “Jack, when did you tell Lawrence to give me this merger notice?”

      “Around eleven this morning. Why?”

      “Because he gave it to me less than a minute before I paged you, and he knows I’m going on the air in ten minutes.”

      “Okay. Read it straight. I’ll take care of Parker.”

      On her way home, she stopped at a garden center and bought a rubber garden snake. The next morning, she got to work early and glued the serpent to Lawrence’s door. Even if he took it off, the perfect outline of a snake would be there until the door was painted. She dusted her hand as if she were getting rid of something unwanted, went to her office and left it to Lawrence to discover the identity of the donor. She understood now that Lawrence would be even more of a problem as she continued to reject him.

      “I’ve fought worse battles,” she said aloud. She gathered her notebook and headed for the station’s library, wondering why Drake didn’t call her.

      As the big British Airways plane neared Kotoka International Airport in Accra, Ghana, Drake began to wonder what he would find. He disliked such tropical pests as mosquitoes, flies, sandflies and especially snakes. And he didn’t know whether he was going to a thatched roof in a rural area or a skyscraper in Accra. He knew that Ladd belonged to the Fanti tribe—historically the elite of Ghana, not that it mattered what status his friend had—and that meant