The Company We Keep by Mary Monroe Read Free Book Online Page A

her sharpest looks. “I decided that if I couldn’t beat ’em, I’d join ’em. I hooked up with a couple of…uh…on-call maintenance men, as you like to call them, and I’ve been happy ever since. I want you to be happy, too,” Nicole concluded with a pleading look on her face.
    “I am happy,” Teri insisted, dismissing Nicole with a wave as they both moved toward the steps.
    Teri decided to locate Harrison and wish him luck in the New Year. She decided that that was the least she could do. But by the time she and Nicole got back downstairs, where she had summoned enough nerve to locate and approach Harrison, it was too late. Teri spotted him walking out the door with the same bitch who had rolled her eyes at Teri when she saw her gobbling up those chicken wings a little while ago.
    Teri looked at Nicole and blinked. Nicole saw what Teri had just seen. She looked at Teri, shook her head, then gently rubbed her arm. Teri felt as stiff as a board and was hot to Nicole’s touch.“We’ll talk tomorrow,” Nicole offered. “Right now, I’ve got a man waiting for me outside. But if you need me, I can send him on his way.” Teri gave Nicole a sorrowful look and shook her head. “All right then. Listen, you drive carefully,” Nicole told her before she left.

CHAPTER 9
    T he afternoon after the rapper’s party, still slightly hung over, Teri attended service at the same church with her beloved grandparents. The predominantly black congregation spilled out of the old white building with its tall steeple.
    It was warm for January, even for L.A. The rays from the sun stung Teri’s eyes. She was sorry that she didn’t have her sunglasses with her. Some of the two hundred members looked and behaved like they couldn’t get off the premises fast enough.
    “Baby, we know you probably want to spend the rest of the day with the other young folks,” Teri’s grandfather said, knowing the reaction he would get from Teri. He said the same thing every time they left church together. He knew her response was always going to be the same, but he liked hearing her say it anyway.
    “Don’t you start that,” Teri scolded, brushing lint, ravels, and fuzz off the lapels and arms of the blue serge suit he wore, which he should have disposed of thirty years ago. “I am with the folks I want to be with today,” she said, shaking her head in mock exasperation. “Now let’s get to the house and do some serious kicking back and some serious eating. We want to start the New Year off right.”
    The elder Stewarts had raised Teri after her parents died in an automobile accident when she was eight. And as far as they wereconcerned, they were still “raising” her. Despite their advanced years, their minds were still fairly sharp and they still applied a lot of good old-fashion common sense when it came to most things. But Grandma Stewart would have still been spoon-feeding Teri if she had her way.
    The light green adobe house with the neat lawn and cobblestone walkway that the Stewarts owned was nowhere near as opulent as the mansion that Teri had partied in the night before. But given a choice, she would have chosen the modest single-family home in a middle-class black neighborhood over anybody’s mansion any day. It was one of the few places where she felt totally at peace. It was also the one place she could go where she didn’t have to do a damn thing to gain anybody’s approval. She could eat greasy chicken wings here all day and all night and not worry about some uppity so-and-so looking at her as if she had brought down the whole black race.
    “What are you thinking about, girl?” Grandma Stewart asked Teri as soon as they parked in the driveway and got out of the Lincoln that Teri had cosigned for them the year before. Teri had also made an ample down payment and paid the first six notes. Financially, the Stewarts could afford to manage on their own. With their combined pensions after forty years’ service, each