Excerpt: How Do I Go On? by Lonnie Spry

 

Prologue

 The day is starting off beautifully, Elbee thought. The sun was shining bright, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and the smell of freshly cut grass was in the air. For a Friday morning in August, it wasn’t too hot and the breeze was just perfect. In the Washington, DC Metropolitan area, it was either too hot or too cold. Very rarely was the weather just right but today was one of those days.

Elbee was headed to work. It was 7:15 a.m. when he hopped into his most prized possession: a black 1999 customized Yukon Denali with twenty-inch chrome rims, Coach leather seats, TVs in the head rest, a DVD player and top of the line Bose stereo system. He was feeling quite light on his feet this morning as he left Tasha’s house after making love all night to the woman of his dreams.

He had been kicking it with Tasha since he met her at his Mother’s birthday cookout. She had come to the cookout with one of his mother’s co-workers and she was looking rather fine. Tasha stood five foot, three inches tall with a luscious brown complexion and short hairdo like Anita Baker’s. Elbee was not a fan of short haircuts, but at a first glance she resembled Wendy Raquel Robinson, the babe who played Regina Grier on the Steve Harvey Show; so he was willing to make an exception. After the problems he had with his last girlfriend, Aisha, he wouldn’t have asked her out if it wasn’t for DB pressing him.

Deante’ Barnes was Elbee’s best friend and had been since they were in the seventh grade. They met when Elbee moved to Maryland from Georgia when he was twelve years old. DB, which he preferred to be called, was six feet one, two hundred pounds and bowlegged. He was brown-skinned with a head full of curly hair. During his football playing days, he starred at Suitland High School in Forestville, Maryland and the University of Maryland before he blew his knee out. After receiving his degree in telecommunications, he married his high school sweetheart and though he was happily married, he liked living the single life vicariously through Elbee.

Elbee was on the 95/495 Beltway headed towards Rockville, Maryland, where both he and DB worked at Telecom Technologies. After six months with the company, he was promoted to Outside Plant (OSP) Engineering Manager, while DB was the Inside Plant Engineering Manager.

Every weekday morning on his drive to work, Elbee listened to the Russ Parr morning show with Olivia Foxx. He was laughing so hard at the show, he almost had an accident. Russ and Olivia were doing one of their skits where they talked to a character named Incomplete. He was called incomplete because he never finished his sentences. Elbee was so into the show he didn’t even notice he was almost at the office. There was very little traffic on the beltway, which was unusual because there was always bumper to bumper traffic going into Montgomery County. Traffic was so light that Elbee started wondering whether it was a holiday he had forgotten about.

Elbee walked into the office to find everyone laughing. He knew he was the butt of the joke when everyone saw him and they laughed even harder. He asked what was so funny when he noticed his boy, DB, in the middle of everything. Elbee walked up to DB and gave him a pound and asked what was up.

DB said, “I was just telling them about the bushes incident that you had about eight months ago.”

Elbee started to laugh as he thought about the incident.

It was the middle of January and very cold. The weatherman said it was 15 degrees and 10 degrees below 0 with the wind chill factor. For it to be so cold it was still a gorgeous night. The moon was full and the stars were shining brightly. Elbee was on a date with a young lady named Monique. Monique was five feet four and black as the midnight sky with extremely smooth skin. She had long straight jet-black hair, which Elbee loved. She had a body that would make a brother scream. They met when Elbee was at the grocery store with his mother. Elbee had talked to her on the phone for about two weeks and she constantly tried to get him to come over, but he didn’t want to see her unless it was guaranteed that he was going to smash. On this particular Friday night, Elbee was bored and decided to take Monique out to eat.

To ensure he would not be seen by any of his other women, he took her to the Outback Steak House in Waldorf, Maryland. Elbee asked to be seated in a booth in the back of the restaurant. He liked the lights dimmed and they could talk without any interruptions. Elbee knew he was in and had hit a home run when Monique said how much she liked the restaurant and that she had never been there before. To him and his boys, going there was some short shit they did for Happy Hour on a regular basis.

Elbee noticed Monique’s cell phone kept ringing, so he told her it was okay to answer it. Monique became quite agitated once she realized it was her son’s father trying to find out where she was and whom she was with. Elbee didn’t think anything of the conversation. He figured the guy was like a lot of guys who didn’t want to be with their child’s mother, but didn’t want them to be with anyone else. The evening progressed without any other incidents. Elbee was sure everything was cool.

Elbee was walking Monique to her door and the two of them were doing a lot of kissing and touching. As Monique went to unlock the door, her son’s father jumped out of the bushes and scared the hell out of Elbee. The baby daddy’s high yellow complexion was now beet red, because he had been hiding in the bushes waiting for her for hours. Monique and the baby daddy started arguing and fussing, but Elbee was so shocked, all he could do was tell Monique to unlock the door. When Monique finally opened the door and went inside, Elbee turned and quickly headed for his car. The only thing Elbee could think on the way home was what if that fool was really crazy. He could have stabbed or shot him. At that moment, Elbee told himself he would take his 9mm with him on all first dates. Monique called a couple of days later but Elbee was not interested in anything she had to offer.

Before everyone left the office for the day, Steve the Engineering Director came into the office and asked everyone not to leave. Elbee was in a hurry to get uptown to Mazza Gallery. He wanted to hit Saks Fifth Avenue to get the Gucci loafers he had the sexy little sales lady hold for him. He wanted to have a slick pair of shoes to wear to Tyler Perry’s play, “Diary of a Mad Black Woman.” But his Gucci loafers had to wait. Elbee shook his head as he sat in his car. How could a day that started so beautifully, end so badly? Steve saw to that—he informed Elbee he had been laid off and now faced unemployment. As he rode home and started dialing his Mother on his cell, he just wondered, “How do I go on?”