lot of work to do today,” Yvonne answered.
Trina blew air out of her mouth, exasperated. “You know something, Yvonne? It’s high time you got a life, so that you can
be out where the right man will be able to find you. He’ll find you out there working and having a full life.”
“Well, I am trying to have a full life. But I really don’t know what there is that I can do about the man. I mean, if the
brother is going to find me, it shouldn’t matter what I’m doing. God will help him find me, don’t you think?”
Trina was quiet a moment. Yvonne did have a point. God could do anything. If the Lord decided the man He had for Yvonne was
supposed to find her while she was walking through her neighborhood in those old ratty-looking sneakers she loved to wear,
that is exactly how the brother would find her. Nonetheless, Yvonne really did need to schedule more time to have fun and
be in the mix of things a bit more. As far as Trina could tell, the poor thing didn’t even know the art of light flirting.
A brother approaching Yvonne better be prepared to get looked at like he was crazy, or figure out a way to draw her out into
some conversation.
But then, she really couldn’t fault Yvonne too much on that account. How could she know how to flirt when she’d been married
most of her adult life to an old stick-in-the-mud? Plus, the girl had met very few brothers worth her time. And lately, she
had been approached by some interesting
specimens
.
Why did the brothers who needed to keep walking always have to be the first ones to get in a sister’s face when they discovered
that she had been dumped by a man? Did they really think she was so desperate for a man that she was
game
for an encounter with them? To date, poor Yvonne had been hit on by a permanent part-time security guard at Durham Regional
Hospital, who kept his wife safely hidden in South Carolina, a preacher who called her house late in the midnight hour on
his way home to his wife, and a broken-down curmudgeon twenty-nine years her senior, who was what Yvonne referred to as “just
a boll weevil lookin’ for a home.”
“So you’re still coming to the house, by yourself, without the girls, to hang out with me and Maurice, right?”
Yvonne didn’t answer Trina, because right now she was absorbed with watching Tangie Bonner and Rico Sneed. That girl was still
hanging over in the window of his car. And were they kissing on campus in the daytime in front of the Athletic Center of all
places? That had to be one of the busiest spots on campus.
“YVONNE!” Trina yelled into the phone. “Are you even listening to me?”
“YES!!! It’s just that I am standing at this window watching Tangie Bonner and Rico Sneed acting like they go together.”
“Because they go together,” Trina told her. “I thought you knew that. Tangie’s building is very close to yours, and she and
Rico haven’t been all that discreet. About the only person who doesn’t know is poor Marquita. I know I shouldn’t say this
but what did she ever see in that dumb, think-he-got-game negro?”
Yvonne shrugged and then said, “I dunno” when she remembered that Trina couldn’t see her. “Girl, do you know that this trick
has some tissue paper hanging right out of her shoes? What kind of bama mess is that?”
“Are those some yellow pumps?” Trina asked.
Yvonne pulled the blinds up so she could get a better look at the shoes from her office window. Thank goodness she was on
the first floor. “Yeah, she does. How’d you know that?”
“’Cause she had those things on when me and Maurice ran into her trying to act like she wasn’t out with Rico, when we went
to that Jill Scott concert over in Raleigh. I could not believe she was all dressed up on a date with another woman’s husband,
with some ugly yellow patent leather pumps from the Big Lots clearance bin on her feet. And if that weren’t bad enough, the
trick had some