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“Already did,” he said, his back to me.
“Don’t you have someone who cleans for you?”
He nodded. “Three times a week. She’s off today.”
I had basically inhaled my food and was done by the time he sat across from me. “You enjoyed it?” he asked.
“Yes, it was delicious. Thank you again, Lorenzo.”
“Zo.”
“Baby steps.”
He chuckled. “Fair enough.”
“Lorenzo, what do you do for a living? I mean, how can you afford…all of this?”
“Hmm, if I answer that, you have to answer a question for me.”
I shrugged. “Okay.”
“I’m a writer.”
“A writer? What do you write? I mean, I love reading when I have the time, but I don’t recall ever hearing your name before, and to be able to afford this place and a driver, you’d have to be very successful.”
With raised eyebrows, he said, “I am.”
“Well, what have you written?”
“Uh-uh. I answered yours. My turn. Why were you crying?”
I was actually a little blindsided by that question, though I shouldn’t have been. “Um, there’s a lot going on in my life right now. I guess I just felt…overwhelmed.”
“With your divorce?”
“My turn again. What have you written?”
He smiled. “You catch on fast, Ms. Strickland. Give me a second. I’ll be right back.”
“All right…”
He left the table, returning a minute or so later with a book in one hand and a Sharpie in the other. Reclaiming his seat at the table, he opened the book, wrote something in it, and then slid it across the table to me. “My first book. A gift from me to you.”
I stared down at the cover image of a spent bullet lying on the pavement with smoke rising from it. Next to the bullet was someone’s booted foot splattered with bright red blood. The title read: Bulletproof. The author’s name splashed across the front in big, bold white letters was simply Street. I’d heard of Street, had seen many of my patients reading his books in the waiting area of Genesis, though I’d never read any of his work myself. My reading life ebbed and flowed in phases, and I had abandoned my street lit phase years ago. Back then, I was a good teenage girl living a boring life who found excitement within gritty tales spun by Donald Goines and Iceberg Slim. In college, I discovered Omar Tyree and Eric Jerome Dickey, eventually shifting to romances penned by the likes of Brenda Jackson and Francis Ray. Life interrupted my reading up until recently, when I began delving into Iyanla Vanzant’s catalog in search of some peace and clarity.
“You’re Street?” I finally asked.
He nodded. “Yes, and that’s two questions, which means I get to ask two.”
I gave him half of a smile as I slid a finger under the cover of the thick paperback book.
“Is your divorce overwhelming you?” he asked.
“You could say that. My husband doesn’t want one.”
“But you do?”
“I need one. My turn. How long have you been writing?”
