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Marlene Covington hung up the phone, snatched her black leather purse off the sparkling kitchen counter, and rushed into the guest bathroom. Removing her makeup bag from her purse, she opened it and took out her compact. While she applied a creamy foundation to her mahogany brown skin, her dark brown eyes crinkled with laughter as she thought back on her phone conversation. Mrs. Wiley, the widowed senior member of her husband's church, First Tabernacle, had lived a lively eighty-two years and had a sense of humor like no other.
A frown suddenly crossed her features as she examined the dark circles under her eyes. "Girlfriend, you got more bags under your eyes than Ralph's grocery store. We have to fix that. No forty-eight-year-old woman, even one with a full figure like yours, should look sixty-plus. Lord, if you don't bring Jesse Covington out of the darkness of hell, I'm going to look older than this by the time this whole mess is finished."
Marlene stuffed everything back into her purse and went out the door off the kitchen that led to the garage. She then dashed back inside, grabbed an apple and napkin off the round oak table, and disappeared through the door again.
Settled inside her late-model midnight blue Lincoln town car, she carefully backed out of the garage of her upper-middle-class Ladera Heights home. This would be her and Jesse's first time together in over a month. It was a long, hard drive, but she'd find a way to fly to the moon to see her loving husband.
Marlene had met Jesse on the bus one evening in Washington, D.C. Both of them had been government employees during that time. An instant attraction had occurred between them. After dating exclusively for nine months, Jesse had asked her to marry him. Three years into the marriage, Jesse had heeded his call into the ministry. It had been a difficult transition for her, going from career woman to the preacher's wife, but she'd soon learned that the rewards of being in service to the Lord were endless.
But she had no doubt that what was now happening to her and Jesse had been whipped up by the prince of darkness and sent straight up to them from the dark caverns of hell. ***
Inside her inner-city Los Angeles apartment, which was clean and neat but crammed tight with modern furnishings and baby furniture, twenty-three-year-old city-college student and welfare mom Keisha Reed hurried to change the diaper of her one-year-old daughter, Zanari. Grabbing some baby bottles out of the refrigerator, she packed them in the diaper bag. She then grabbed hold of her four-year-old son, Zach. Flinging the diaper bag over her shoulder, she picked up a large sack lunch from the sofa. Eager to get going, she hustled her kids out the door and locked it.
Outside, where the early morning air was cool and crisp, Keisha strapped both kids into their car seats. After waving at a neighbor from across the street, she checked the trunk to make sure she had everything she needed in case the trip to the desert turned into an overnight stay. Before settling herself in the driver's seat, she looked up the street for her carpooling, Hispanic best friend, Rosalinda Morales.
Keisha laughed while watching twenty-four-year-old Rosalinda's long black hair swaying in the breeze as she shot out of the next-door apartment complex and ran down the street. Out of breath, Rosalinda slipped into the passenger seat of the rental car they'd gone half on. The two women exchanged smiles as Keisha looked enviously at Rosalinda's flawless nut-brown complexion. Loud rap music played on the radio, the type of music they both loved.
"I was beginning to think you weren't going to make it." Keisha nervously pushed a strand of her sable hair behind her ear. "Getting ready to make this trip to the high desert is always a stressful time for me. I wish Zach didn't insist on me bringing the kids every time. The long drive is hard on them. I hope I didn't forget anything this time."
The size of saucers, Rosalinda's jet-black eyes twinkled with amusement. "Like the last time, when you forgot the baby's food? The time before that you left the kids' pajamas and we ended up spending the night, as usual. If you think you got it all together, let's rock and roll."
"Yeah, can you believe I did that dumb crap? Zanari sure wasn't too happy about me leaving her food behind."
Rosalinda giggled. "Oh, how well do I remember. Little homey back there let out some screams that would wake the dead. She lets everyone know when she's hungry."
Keisha looked at her daughter in the rearview mirror. She couldn't help smiling. Her kids were the joy of her life even through all her struggles. "But that's the only time she really cries outside of when she's wet."
"And when little bad butt Zach decides to pop her upside her head with one of them dangerous toys you spend your money on."
Running a finger across her full wine-colored lips and then down the side of her caramel brown cheek, Keisha looked over at Rosalinda. "Speaking of money, how much you got?"
"About a hundred and ten dollars. And you know what I got to do with most of that. My mom is also going to need her medications refilled within the next week."
"I got paid yesterday, so we're in good shape for this trip, but I hope we don't have to stay overnight. I got a lot of extra things to do with my money this month. The kids both need new shoes. Zach's feet are growing like bad weeds."
"Tell me about it, Keisha. I don't know how I'm going to keep my bills current with my present situation. Working two jobs still isn't enough to make ends meet, especially when you consider that I have to take care of my sick mother and all the things I do for that no-account boyfriend of mine."
"Girlfriend, I don't know how we do it, either. But something's gonna have to give real soon. I can't keep this up much longer. I might have to join you in getting a second job."
"All we're doing is talking smack, Keisha. Our guys mean the world to us or we wouldn't be breaking our backs and our banks just to keep them happy. "Cause we both know they don't appreciate anything we do for them. We're just two sorry-ass women in love with two dumb, supersorry-ass men." Both women dissolved into laughter.
While piped-in jazz music played on the stereo in the bedroom of her posh Bel Air home, Alexis Du Boise twirled around in front of the full-length mirror, checking herself out with an extremely critical eye. With a figure to die for and Halle Berry looks, the thirty-three-year-old natural beauty had no problem turning male heads. Still dissatisfied with her appearance, she removed the seductive red dress and tossed it on the king-size bed already piled high with other discarded clothing.
Finally, she settled on a low-cut black blouse and a smart-looking calf-length skirt of the same color. After running fingers through the short waves of her light brown pixie-cut hair, she grabbed her purse and overnighter and went out to the garage, where she got into a late-model Rolls-Royce. While her sexy doe brown eyes smiled at the thought of seeing her husband in just a couple of hours, she backed the expensive car out of the four-car garage.
Slowly, Alexis drove through her grand country-club neighborhood, admiring all its extravagant beauty. While listening to her favorite Los Angeles jazz station,
84.7, she thought about her handsome husband and how she couldn't wait to see his charming smile. Richard James Du Boise was the love of her life, the first man she'd ever gone out with on a real date--and she'd been missing his presence like crazy, especially with his absence from their bed.
Alexis had met R.J. Du Boise at a fraternity party that she and a few of her girlfriends had crashed when she was twenty years old. Before she knew what had hit her, he'd already swept her completely off her feet. They'd eloped three months later, on her twenty-first birthday, much to the dismay of her Christian family. Alexis's family thought R.J. was nothing more than a straight-up heathen. Despite her family's feelings about her husband, being married to the highly successful stockbroker over the past twelve years had been quite a whirlwind for a girl who'd grown up in poverty in a New Orleans ghetto. Now that the whirl had suddenly been taken out of the whirlwind, she found herself all alone and hating every second of it.
Way up in California's high desert, the afternoon sun blazed like a normal day in hell. Situated in what seemed like the middle of nowhere, the multistory, gray, brick, privately run men's correctional facility gleamed under the pounding sun. A few buildings on the seemingly endless desert acres of prison grounds also served as interim housing for inmates when overcrowding occurred at other California facilities. Lines of people, mostly women, wrapped completely around the place like a human bow. Loop after loop of shiny, razor-sharp barbed wire fencing fiercely protected the building's exterior.
Marlene was knocked for a loop by the ominous fencing as she took inventory of the line in front of the correctional facility where her husband lived as an inmate while waiting for an appeal that might overturn his conviction. Amazed by the presence of so many young women, women much younger than her forty-eight years, Marlene couldn't help wondering how many lost souls were in this line. She shielded her eyes from the sun as she zeroed in on a young woman arguing with a six-foot-four black male prison guard wearing a ranger hat and tinted sunshades.
Keisha Reed had a hand on one hip and a baby on the other. She held the hand of her male toddler as she argued over the guard's refusal to allow the women and children inside.
"Just doing my job, ma'am. I can't control the weather."
"I... --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
