Mr. High Maintenance

by Nishawnda Ellis

Genres: African American; African American Urban

Synopsis

Meet Jerome, Lamant, and Marcus. These single men are strangers to each other, but share one thing in common: their high-maintenance needs drive women away.

Jerome Hart’s ideal relationship is not to be in one. He has no intention of slowing down his bed-hopping, fast-lane ways. He enjoys his single life.

Twenty-eight-year-old Lamant James is busy as usual, figuring out how to balance working sixty hours a week as an investment banker, searching for his ideal mate, and fulfilling his dream of becoming a writer. Women have to meet twenty-nine essentials for mating to fit into his rigid dating inbox. And not surprisingly, he hasn’t found the right one yet.

Recently divorced forty-year-old Marcus Hill would prefer a not-so-desperate housewife mail-ordered and shipped from the 1950s. He never saw his divorce coming, due to his belief that he was a super-duper husband.

Why their ideal women are so hard to find is beyond any of them. The possibility of changing themselves is unthinkable. Can they evolve, or face ending up alone?

Release date: September 1, 2010

Publisher: Urban Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

Sheri slammed down another heavily packed suitcase on the check-in scale at the Baltimore/Washington International Airport. Either she was moving too fast for the skycap, or he was moving too slow for her. She was so full of rage that cold, wintry Friday night, she could have moved earth with the flick of her fingertips. She “turbo-walked” back to the car and plucked another suitcase out of the trunk of Marcus’s SUV, a heavy, overstuffed Spiderman suitcase.

She waited for the skycap to process her two suitcases and Marquise’s two suitcases, and give her their gate and seat information in hand. Her freshly done French-manicured fingernails tapped anxiously as she hummed a familiar tune, “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor. She stroked her ten-year-old son’s S-Curl Wave fade haircut. He was heavily engrossed in his PSP, watching the movie Kicking & Screaming, starring Will Ferrell, to even notice his mother’s attitude.

This has been a long time coming, she thought, saddened by what she had to do.

The skycap told her it would be a thirty-dollar charge for each of the two suitcases that were fifty pounds overweight. Sheri whipped out her husband’s American Express card without hesitation, and gestured for the skycap to use that.

He frowned after looking at the card. “Sorry, ma’am, but I cannot take this card. I’m going to need one with your name on it.”

No time for the bullshit, Sheri barked, “But I’m Mrs. Hill. I use his card all the time. This is ludicrous.” She snapped her neck and rolled her eyes.

“Sorry, but I can’t accept it, unless the cardholder presents it to me and signs it.”

Sheri realized this would only be the beginning of a long road of problems for her. She rolled her eyes for the second time at the rule-abiding skycap, mumbling under her breath, “There goes your tip, asshole.” She turned around and signaled for her husband.

Marcus was like a watchdog, looking out for airport security because he was parked illegally. He saw his wife telling him to come over but was reluctant to leave his post. Finally after Sheri gave him the “get-yo’-black-ass-over-here” frown, he decided a one-hundred-and-fifty-dollar fine was less painful than a dose of his wife’s Royal Rumble smackdowns.

Marcus’s six-foot three-inch muscular build scurried along the pavement. He knew he was handsome. His dark skin resembled black raspberries, and the texture was as silky as chamomile oil. His Gucci sunglasses hid his dark brown, almond-shaped eyes. He walked over to her and asked, “What’s the problem?” as if there should never be one as long as she was with him.

“My bags are overweight. He needs you to sign the charge slip for your card,” she said, a few degrees from her boiling point.

“Well, why didn’t you pack lighter?” he said, aggravated he could be getting a ticket because of her nonsense. “Can’t we put some stuff in one of the lighter bags?”

Temperatures rising. Sheri yelled at him, “Do you want the whole world to see your wife’s thongs and bras? Or how about my special toy?”

“You packed that?” He still didn’t get it. “Why?”

Sheri didn’t respond. She cut her eyes so hard, Marcus didn’t know if he would see her iris again. Trying to avoid another lengthy “getting told” session with the wife, he dropped the conversation and said to the skycap, “Charge it. Where do I sign?”

Marcus lifted his wife’s stuffed suitcase off the scale. “Damn! You packed like you’re never coming back.” He wondered why his wife packed so much of her and their son’s stuff.

Sheri didn’t say anything.

The skycap gave Sheri her boarding pass and Maryland state license back. “Your flight is leaving out of Gate B11.” He circled with his pen the number on her ticket receipt. “Make your way through the doors and take a left to go through security check-in.”

“Thank you.” Sheri ushered Marquise toward the security check-in.

The skycap gave Marcus the okay to tip him now, and Marcus reluctantly gave him two dollars, as if it was breaking the brother.

The skycap took the chump change. Cheap bastard!

Marcus gave him the nod then dashed after his wife, who apparently wasn’t waiting on him for anything. “Baby, wait up! I can’t leave my truck. I’ll get a ticket.” He chased her to the gate.

The ungrateful skycap threw Sheri’s bags on the belt carelessly.

She shot back, “Well, then don’t! I’ve said all I’m going to say to you.”

“What’s up with that?”

Marcus finally noticed his wife’s disposition, something he had missed the entire ride from their five-bedroom mansion in Pasadena, Maryland. For him it seemed like Tuesday, just another day his wife was pissed at him for whatever reason.

Sheri tapped Marquise on his shoulder. He looked up at his mother without hesitation.

“Say good-bye to your father.”

He obeyed and gave his father dap.

Marcus hugged him because something in him wanted him to know his love. Marquise went back to watching his movie, plugging his earphones in his ear.

He attempted to give his wife a hug and kiss, but she blocked it with her hand.

“Good-bye, Marcus.”

He looked even more confused at his wife’s behavior toward him. “What’s the matter? I tipped the guy and paid for your heavy bags. What are you so mad about?”

“See, that’s the saddest thing. You didn’t even notice.” Sheri shook her head. “How could you not know?”

“Know what?”

He looked at his truck through the automatic glass sliding doors. He could feel the flashing lights approaching his car. Impatient as usual, he said, “Call me when you get to your Mom’s.” He snuck a kiss on her forehead and made his way to the truck, to avoid spending more money than necessary.

“Marcus, we’re not coming back!” Sheri shouted to him as she and her son made their way through the security check-in.

Marcus spun around, almost knocking over an elderly woman. “What did you say?”

Sheri looked at her husband one last time. “It’s over!”

She ushered her son through the metal detectors, then herself and never looked back. Marcus thought her frequent visits to Boston were due to the holiday season that winter. Little did he know, she was enrolling Marquise in a new school and house-hunting with her mother. By the beginning of the new year, her plans to leave him were four suitcases and an expensive lawyer away.

Marcus hurried back, trying to get through security check-in.

“Sir, boarding pass and ID,” the female airport attendant said.

He yelled out to his wife, “Sheri! Sheri!”

“Sir, if you’re not boarding an aircraft, I’m going to have to ask you to step out of line.”

He pushed past her, caring less about airport security.

“Sir.”

“Sheri, what are you talking about? Wait!” He shouted.

He got as far as the metal detectors when two airport security guards grabbed him and pushed him back outside the Velcro ropes.

“Identification,” the officer commanded. “I need your identification, sir.” He and his partner had Marcus pinned up against a wall, face-first, his left arm pressed into his lower back.

More security came rushing over to assist and defuse the situation. Onlookers eyed their every move, wondering if he was a terrorist, or what.

“Wait. You don’t understand. My wife . . . she’s leaving.”

“Last time. Identification, sir.”

An onlooker shouted, “Hey, that’s Marcus Hill, all-star running back for the Baltimore Ravens.”

The security guard who was holding his arm let go. “Sir, I’m going to ask you—”

“My wallet is in my back pocket. I’m Marcus—”

“I know who you are.”

The officer took down his Maryland license number and address. Marcus wished he would hurry up. Then he could buy a ticket to Boston and catch Sheri before they boarded.

The officer radioed in to his higher-up and said, “I got the situation under control. There has just been a misunderstanding.”

“Can I go now? I need to catch my wife.”

“Sorry, Mr. Hill, but I’m going to have to ask you to leave. I could charge you a fine, but instead I’m banning you from this airport for a week. We need to run your info through our system for—”

“For what? You said you know who I am.”

“I still have to follow protocol; it’s one or the other.”

“I have to catch a flight now.”

“Not today. Even if you weren’t banned, we would take you down to holding, have the Baltimore PD arrest you, and then you would be facing up to a one-hundred-thousand-dollar fine, or jail time. That may not be any money to you but . . .”

Marcus’s frugal fanny heard the one hundred thousand loud and clear. Defeated, he left the airport.

He got a one-hundred-fifty-dollar ticket anyway. Heated, he snatched the white ticket off his windshield and flung it in his back seat. His temporal blood vessel beat through his head as if it were going to pop from his skull. WTF. He’d missed the signs.

Losing his family wasn’t an option for him; he needed a wife like he needed air. One couldn’t survive without the other.

Marcus threw another burnt, cooked-too-high piece of fried chicken in the trash, perturbed that ache in his stomach was yet to be handled. Maybe I should have given her another look. He thought about his date with Mary the other night, another one of his blind dates he’d thought he was too good to go on, but his mother, Willie Mae, insisted.

That should have been a clue, but no, he went against the grain, and decided to go out with her. Thought, at best, he could coerce this new friend into making him six meals so he could freeze them and be good until Sunday dinner at his mother’s house. But just like the one before that, and the one before that, he gave them their walking papers due to their lack of interest in being a cook, housekeeper, and do-as-I-say kind of woman he was looking for.

He turned off the burner and flinched when the churning grease popped him in his cheek then his arm. “Dammit! Fucking shit!” He jumped up and down as if he was hit by gunfire. He quickly ran over to the sink as he held his cheek and turned on the faucet iceberg cold to run over his war wounds from cooking. “This is for the birds,” he said, shaking his head. “A man can’t even eat. Damn!” He turned off the faucet and marched over to his living room inside his three-bedroom condo located on Florida Avenue in Washington, D.C.

Still holding a piece of wet paper towel to his cheek, he slouched into his black extra-soft fabric sofa and snatched the cordless from its docking station in frustration. He subconsciously pressed memory three, and the usual voice answered, “Good evening. Thank you for calling Red Dragon. How can I help you?”

“Yes, I would like the orange chicken, no broccoli, chicken teriyaki, shrimp lo mein, crab Rangoon, and chicken wings please.”

“Phone number please?” the woman asked with an Asian accent

“202-555-91—”

The woman cut him off, finishing the rest of his information, saying, “5681 Florida Avenue, bell four.”

“Yeah. How did—”

“Same thing, every Friday night—orange chicken, no broccoli. Tee-hee.” She giggled through the phone. “You are our regular customer.”

Annoyed that his new single-hood cover was blown, he said, “Yeah, yeah. Just make sure I get a regular discount.”

“Tee-hee. Tee-hee. The woman kept laughing. “I will be sure to give you extra sauce, twenty minutes, okay.” She hung up without waiting for a response, or asking whether he was paying cash or credit. She already knew it would be cash, like always.

Marcus was feeling like a Magnum without lubricant before. Now he really felt raw, since the Chinese food restaurant lady was tee-heeing him to death.

Ashamed at where he was in life, he fell back into his comfy soft sofa and reminisced about a time when daily homecooked meals were a given. He missed Sheri and till this day couldn’t understand why she left him. He provided, he was faithful, and outgoing, and very tolerant of her family, who turned out to be nothing but a bunch of gold diggers. Hmm, I wonder if they were the reason why she left and took half of my money with her?

Marcus’s divorce was way more expensive than twelve years of marriage, child-rearing, and half-a-million-dollar wedding combined. Claiming and proving to the divorce judge that Marcus provided this lavish lifestyle for her, and why she should keep it, Sheri walked away with half his money and full custody of his son.

He slumped back and recited out loud, “It was the best of times and the worst of times.” Dickens must have been going through a divorce, he imagined.

Marcus couldn’t fathom how things went from Sheri loving everything about him—down to his sweaty jockstrap—to gutting him and cleaning him out like an endangered white whale. He thought she worshipped what they had. How could she not? “It doesn’t get any better than Marcus Hill,” she’d told him.

He could recall their courtship like it was yesterday. Thirteen years ago, she was what, planning to go to nursing school and wipe butts for a living? And, by chance, she’d met him, a rookie football player for the New England Patriots, at a bar in Marina Bay, about ten miles south of Boston.

Sheri sang along to Mary J. Blige and Method Man’s hit single, “I’ll Be There for You/You’re All I Need to Get By.”

Marcus stared at her from across the room. It was karaoke night, and for all the tipsy, silly-willy “mofos” who took the stage and belted their fifteen minutes into patrons’ ears, who would need another round of drinks and earplugs, Sheri could really sing, blowing an impressionable country boy from Harrisville, North Carolina farther and farther away.

He rehearsed as he got closer to her, thinking about a way to get her attention. After all, he was just a rookie, being roped and broken in by some of the finest athletes this side of the northern hemisphere. She, on the other hand, seemed untouchable. Another Yankee girl his mother warned him about from the North.

He got up the nerve and stood in front of the small 10x10 stage and stared her down.

She was the least bit uncomfortable. She watched him as he watched her, and it almost seemed as if he was “all she needed to get by.”

After she finished her song, Marcus held out his hand to help her off the stage. “Hi. I’m Marcus Hill.” He smiled at her, and she smiled at him.

“I’m Sheri.”

“Listen, your voice is incredible. I noticed it from the first hmm.” He innocently tried to hum. “On my way over here, I’ve thought of a million plays from my playbook to throw at you to get your number.”

“Oh, really?” Sheri twisted her lips, prepared to initiate a letdown.

“But you’re too good for that bullshit. You’re a gem, rare and impossible to find. I am flawed and expendable. Would it be wrong if I just wanted to get a glare of your shine?”

Sheri heard a lot of smooth talkers run the best lines on her, but Marcus was straight-up, no chaser, something she could appreciate. “I see no harm in letting you shine a little.”

“Dinner tomorrow?” Marcus eagerly asked.

“How about now?” Sheri was feeling his flow from hello.

“Works for me.” Marcus smiled.

“Then let’s go,” she said with confidence.

That date led to them seeing each other every day for a year until Marcus proposed.

Marcus wasn’t kidding either. With her, he did shine. He played his way out of the rookie shadow and into the lucrative contracts and championship rings and endorsements.

Sheri gave up her nursing dreams to be her husband’s full-time personal cheerleader, coach, agent, and manager. You name it, she was there for her man. “Ride or die,” she used to say to him. Always, played the perfect housewife role, cooking, cleaning, entertaining, and doting on Marcus’s every need.

Then Marquise came along, and she had two guys to devote her life to. This went on for years, from the New England Patriots, to the Atlanta Falcons, the Cincinnati Bengals, and finally the Baltimore Ravens.

Marcus didn’t notice the more he shined, the less Sheri did or even felt like she did. The years piled on, and she was no longer that gem. He treated her like a dime a dozen. The marriage was always about him, his career, what he needed and what he wanted. Sheri’s input didn’t matter.

When Marcus finally retired, he thought Sheri would stay the same, catering to his every need, until that one day he thought he was taking her to the airport for a short visit with her family, only to find out she was leaving him and taking their only son with her.

Marcus sipped his Heineken Light and rubbed his head. He still couldn’t understand why Sheri up and left, and treated him the way she did during their divorce, like she never loved him. As if he was a stranger.

“What was so hard about being married to Marcus Hill anyway?” he shouted out loud. As a retired forty-somethingyear-old football player, he found himself back on the market, a place he fantasized about, but never really wanted to travel.

He toasted to himself and said out loud, “Here’s to the best of times and the worst of times ahead of me.”

Marcus didn’t know what to do without a wife, and he damn sure wouldn’t be happy until he remarried again. Back on the market. He reminded himself, It doesn’t get any better than Marcus Hill. He was a catch and could hook any fish in the sea. There were plenty of women out there dying to be the next Mrs. Marcus Hill.

Marcus, as arrogant as he was, assumed he would have no problem meeting someone to take Sheri’s place. But after ten months of dating, he couldn’t find anyone who fit the description of a good old-fashioned housewife: cook, housekeeper, nanny, penny-saver, and freak.

Meeting women was never a problem for him on or off the football field. In his early days, hot young girls practically begged him to take their virginity. The vibrant young horny boy in him had no problem granting their every wish. The older, more mature man with a kung fu grip on his wallet, however, knew all too well how to spot a ho from a housewife. He never got them confused.

Well, that was until he met. . .