Liar's Game Read Online Free Page A

card facedown on the black pavement. I knew that I’ll-call-ya routine.
    During my three-mile drive, I passed by bus benches. Saw Gerri’s photo plastered on a few. Felt relief. That was why her name and her face were familiar. It had nothing to do with my ex-wife, nothing to do with my past.

2
    Vince
    When I made it home I had a message. It was from my ex-wife. I heard her soft, cultured voice of deception and my blood changed to ice. Her first call in over a year. That was about how often she rang my phone. She’d talk for a hot minute, but she’d never let me talk to my daughter. Never gave me a way to get in contact with them. It was her way or no way.
    No matter what happened between us, I’d still been sending checks. Womack’s daddy, Harmonica, told me to keep up with that because it’d come back to haunt me. So I’d been doing right on my end, hoping she would grow up and come to her senses on hers.
    “It’s Malaika. We’re still in Germany. I just wanted to leave you a message and let you know that Kwanzaa is fine. Getting tall. We’re living on base. She’s speaking a little German.” There was a pause, an emotional stammer. When my ex-wife spoke again, anxiety, maybe guilt, was in her tone. “She’s a smart girl. Too smart for her age. Maybe when we get back to the States, after I’ve talked to Drake and we’ve gotten settled . . .”
    Then there was noise in the background. Maybe her chicken shit husband walked in the room. I don’t know, and when you don’t know you imagine.
    What I do know is that Malaika hung up.
    Disconnected once again.
    Nonstop rain. Anger. Screams. Fighting.
    On that night of thunder and lightning, when I stood under a crying sky and let my temper take control, I did shameful things that have marked me as a criminal in the eyes of my ex-wife’s family. I wished I had done things differently. Wished I hadn’t given my pain to two other people.
     
    Dana called me early the next afternoon. I’d run in the a.m., put in eight miles flat, then came back and tried to decide what I was gonna do with the rest of my weekend. My friends, Womack and his family, lived right over the hill, and I was thinking about going over that way. He has a house full of kids, three little boys and a brand-new little girl, so we’d end up either shooting hoops in his backyard, playing Nintendo, or watching a Disney video that we’d seen a thousand times. That was my plan until Dana called me from a cell phone, a technological device that players use.
    I cut to the chase. “I wanna see you today.”
    She maintained her business tone: “You don’t waste no time.”
    “Nope. Tomorrow’s never promised, have to go for what I know today.”
    “Before we go any further, do you have a girlfriend?”
    “Nope.”
    “I’m not looking for drama. Been there, done that, wrote a postcard.”
    “Same here.”
    There was a pause. In the background I heard her car radio whistling soft jazz, the echo of traffic too. She said, “I’m leaving church.”
    “Want to meet me for lunch at either Aunt Kizzy’s or Dulan’s?”
    “No can do. I have an open house today with Gerri.”
    “Open house can’t last all night. Wanna catch a movie after that?”
    “I’ll call you when I get some free time.”
    “Well, can I get a number where I can reach you?”
    “I’ll call you.”
    Then she was gone again.
    After my wife, I didn’t have a lot of faith in women, not on a romantic level, so I didn’t expect Dana to be a woman of her word.
    Monday evening after work, Dana and I met up in Ladera at Magic Johnson’s buzzing Starbucks, another overcrowded meat market for the twenty-something that’s been disguised as an extravagant coffee house. We talked for about an hour, then she glanced at her watch and said she had to go. Her pager had been blowing up the whole time. I figured she must either be living with somebody or had somebody in her life. Tuesday, on my lunch break, I called her job, had a