Page 111 of Pride and Protest
“Yeah. Gigi, I think this is it. She’sit.”
Gigi rolled her eyes. “Yeah, welcome to the moment, Dorsey. I’ve known this for, like, a year.”
“I don’t want to leave any open loops or questions about how I feel about her.”
“How are you going to do that?”
“I plan to go big.”
It was a full twenty minutes later by the time Liza got to the hotel. She was remarkably calm about what she knew she had to do. She tried to channel more of Dorsey’s cool energy. What would he do? He would have called ahead and reserved a room so he didn’t waste time shooting the breeze with the concierge. He would scope out the exits and have a quick way to leave.
“I can pay you extra in cash if you can wait here for an hour,” she told the cab driver. He nodded and turned up the basketballgame. When she got out of the cab, she walked right in and reserved a room on the fifth floor, just in case they needed to get lost really quick. Now, how was she going to get close enough to Maurice and LeDeya without WIC seeing her? She didn’t know yet, but she was damn sure she’d figure it out. She pressed three in the empty elevator, and suddenly she didn’t have to figure it out. WIC stood in front of the elevator doors as they opened to the third floor.
“Greetings, future entrepreneurs—”
Liza pulled him in by both arms and forced the elevator doors closed. His phone bounced and cracked on the elevator floor.
“What the fuck?”
Impatiently she pressed the button for the fifth floor. She needed to buy enough time for Janae to move the money. “We’re going to my hotel room.”
WIC’s eyes twinkled. “Well, Liza, I’m flattered but—”
“Don’t be. Tell me where LeDeya is.”
The elevator doors chimed open.
WIC made no move to get out of the elevator. “What is wrong with y’all? Swooping in one by one. Deya is a grown woman and she can do what she wants.”
Liza pressed the elevator hold button. Holy shit. Liza blinked. WIC was an idiot. A plan unfurled in her mind. “I have a cop waiting in my room upstairs. Deya is sixteen and traveled across state lines.”
WIC froze. “Fuck no, she’s not. Her ID says she’s twenty-one.”
“The scar on Beverly Bennett’s abdomen says different.”
“Liza. Please. This ain’t my style. I don’t fuck with children. I make money. That’s all I do.”
“You use young women and only care about how useful theyare to you. Do these women know about your wives in Idaho?” Liza’s voice shook with emotion.
The stupid look of shock on his face collapsed into pleading. He was going through the five stages of grief in ten minutes. “Liza, look, I have a problem. I started picking my mother’s lottery numbers at six years old. When I’m hot, I’ve won hundreds of thousands of dollars. I could live like your boy Dorsey for a day. But it takes so much to keep up.”
“WIC, mybabysister? You stole money from a child. You’re the worst kind of user.”
WIC’s nostrils flared. He was cycling through emotions wildly. Liza suddenly wished she had packed a weapon. He sneered, “And what are you, a saint? You’re the worst kind of wannabe. Wannabe an activist, you got memed. Wannabe a voice in the community, you got fired. Wanna snatch Dorsey fucking Fitzgerald—impossible even for a much better-looking woman—and you got side-chicked.”
Liza blinked back in astonishment. It was everything she had told herself—everything Bev had ever told her, right here in her face. She had to decide whether she would always believe that small, mean voice inside her head. Men like him were experts at exploiting vulnerabilities. It was precisely how they kept their partners docile and dependent.Thatwas the thing he had seen in her before and what he saw in Deya now—a desperation to be seen and heard.
“I got memed. I got fired. Maybe I even got side-chicked. But I can’t go to jail for life for any of that. Harboring an underage girl across state lines, however... different story.”
His voice wobbled. It was his turn to feel panic and uncertainty. “I am telling you I did not know.”
Liza let go of the hold button. “That’s not my problem.”
“Liza, you can ruin me forever with this kind of charge. And you know it’s not true.”
“I don’t knowwhat’strue. I never have with you.” Her voice had taken on a Bev quality that she quite liked. She felt like Angela Bassett setting fire to her husband’s car inWaiting to Exhale.
“Liza. Anything. I will give you anything,” WIC pleaded. Spit collected at the corners of his mouth. Liza shuddered at the fact that she used to find him attractive.
