Chapter Seven

Black-on-Black Crime

When I travel to New York, I hire a big, black, British driver named Sylvan. I call him Chocolate Chunk. At the end of my trip, he always buys me a little gift and gives it to me when he drops me off at the airport. Last time I left New York, he handed me a small brown paper bag, and once I boarded the plane and was comfortably seated, I opened the paper bag to find a note that read, This is so that you’ll have me with you wherever you’re driving. XO, Sylvan. Attached to it was a key chain that held a minature hairy black gorilla.

Sylvan is a single father who worked his whole life to raise two children in the Bronx and then send them off to college. He is close to three hundred pounds, with a belly that looks like he’s in his twelfth month of pregnancy and an ass the size of a Smart Car. After much evaluation I had concluded it was time to get Sylvan some penetration. Since I was not willing to volunteer my own coslopus, I decided to bring him on vacation to Turks and Caicos.

Ted was thrown for a little loop-de-loop when I listed the people who would be accompanying us on our journey to the Caribbean: our gay friend Brian, Paul, Steph, my brother Ray, and Sylvan.

“Sylvan isn’t coming.”

“Yes, Sylvan is coming.”

“Are you being serious?”

“That’s correct, and if you bring forth any more questions regarding the matter, I’ll also bring Chuy.”

“But why?”

“Because Sylvan is one big chocolate chunk nugget, and he needs a vacation.”

“If Sylvan were a hundred pounds thinner, you wouldn’t ever even have given him the time of day.”

“What’s your point, Ted? Am I only supposed to give the time of day to people who have their weight under control? If someone asks me what time it is, I’m going to give it to them. Are you asking if I’d be more likely to give it to a fat person? The answer is yes.”

He shoved a Ruffles Light potato chip into his mouth. “So let me get this straight. Because of his unregulated diet of Cheetos, apple fritters, and Hawaiian Punch, Sylvan is going to be rewarded with a trip to Turks and Caicos?”

“Now you’re catching on. Good work, Detective.”

“Well, why don’t you charter him a private plane while you’re at it?”

“Because that would be ridiculous.”

“Chelsea, why do you always have to bring random people on vacation with us? This is my vacation, too, remember?”

“Oh, please!” I wailed. I had hit a wall and was weary of being persecuted for trying to do something nice for a fat friend. “You are living the high life! You whole life is a vacation. I toil my blood, sweat, and tears every day on this silly TV show for your silly network, and then I get on a plane every weekend to fly to some godforsaken city to perform stand-up, and on top of that I have to write another one of these stupid books!” By this point I was clutching my chest like Scarlett in a scene out of Gone with the Wind. “And what do you do? You sit around in an office all day, and the biggest decision you have to make is deciding whether or not one of the Kardashians should go full term on one of their pregnancies!”

“All right, Chelsea, would you just calm down already?” he said with a flutter of his chip, walking out of the room. “Go take a laxative or something.”

“I’ll go away with Sylvan by myself!” I bellowed.

He reappeared in the living room. “You would go away with Sylvan alone by yourself. You would do it just to be funny. You would think that’s hilarious.”

“You’re absolutely right, Ted,” I told him, contemplating the idea. “If I were you, I’d watch yourself.”

“Can I just ask you one thing? Why can’t we ever go on vacation alone for once, Chelsea? You, me, and Eva?”

“Don’t worry. Eva’s coming too. I forgot to mention her.”

Eva is basically my consigliere and travels with me everywhere I go, because she has her shit together and I do not. I prefer to travel like a white rapper, with many people in tow, and Eva makes this possible. Eva thinks of things no one who wasn’t a little insane would think of. She carries a plastic rolling travel bag that holds everything from Q-tips to fat-free cooking spray in three-ounce mini-containers. Once, when Eva, Ted, and I were on a plane from Los Angeles to Miami, I spilled a Bloody Mary, and Eva pulled out some sort of giant paper towel that was absorbent enough to clean up a miscarriage.

“Is that a ShamWow?” Ted exclaimed, spitting his own drink into the seat back ahead of him. “Eva, this is why you’re a genius. I just ordered one of those off DR last night.”

“Okay, calm down, Ted. What the hell is DR?”

“It’s Direct Response, genius. You call 1-800 and they send you stuff.”

“No, Ted, you call 1-800 and they send you stuff. You, Suzanne Somers, and Ralph Macchio.” I put my hand over his mouth and turned to Eva. “Eva, what is that thing?”

“It is a ShamWow,” she roared, winking at Ted as if he had just put the finishing touches on a Mr. Potato Head. “It’s really good for cleaning up messes.” Then she got down on her knees and started patting my lap.

“Thank you,” I said, grabbing it from her hands. I looked around to see if any other passengers were staring. “You do not have to wipe my lap. Please get up.” The problem with Eva is that she insists on doing all the little menial things for me, and when you tell her she doesn’t need to, it becomes a discussion, so it’s easier to let her just do it in the first place.

Ted loves Eva and thinks her doing things like unpacking my underwear or carrying around five different types of Lean Pockets in her purse is acceptable. He has been a CEO for years and is used to people fawning all over him. He sees nothing wrong with calling his assistant at nine o’clock on a Saturday morning in L.A. to ask her what the weather is like in Rio de Janeiro. Between Eva and Ted, my uselessness had hit an all-time high; there’s a strong chance that at this point in my life I wouldn’t be able to defrost an ice cube.

“The problem, Ted,” I would tell him, “is that I think she might hide a body if I asked her to.”

“That’s the kind of person you want working for you, Chelsea.”

I met Eva in Denver at a comedy club and harassed her until she agreed to move to Los Angeles and work on my show. When she first came, she stayed with Ted and me for a couple of months until she found her own place, at which point Ted attempted to convince her to move in with us permanently.

“No fucking way,” I told him. “I’m already living through this hell—there’s no way I am going to allow another person to give up her freedom, too.”

Eva and Sylvan have always had a special bond, and it grew even more special on our first day on Turks and Caicos, when, during a boat charter, the group jumped into the water and Eva was the first person to realize that Sylvan couldn’t swim. Paul, who stayed on board like me, was focused on photographing Stephanie trying to avoid getting her cigarettes wet.

“Aw, fuck!” I said, looking at Sylvan sinking in the water. I ran and got a life ring and threw it at him. Eva swam over to him and grabbed his bear claw of a hand to try to drag him the three feet to the boat’s stepladder, but he was flailing his arms and, in a panic, tossed the life ring away from him. I hadn’t seen a look of fear this intense since I tried to squeeze Chuy into my compost bin.

“Sylvan, swim!” Steph yelled from a few feet away, waving one hand while the other held her lit American Spirit.

“Don’t panic, Sylvan,” Eva said calmly as she struggled to keep one side of her face afloat while the other side was being submerged under Sylvan’s head, which can weigh eleven to thirteen pounds, depending on how many times he’s gone to the bathroom that week.

With Eva’s help, Sylvan was able to clutch the bottom of the ladder, where he sat panting. Ted was putting on his flippers and snorkel mask, unaware of the entire episode because his earphones were in.

We had stopped the boat right there when the captain had spotted a dolphin. Luckily for Chocolate Chunk, instead of acting impulsively, I grabbed the dolphin net I’d brought from California and was able to secure it around Sylvan’s head.

Paul handed Sylvan a Pellegrino and took a picture of him drinking it. “Sylvan, can you swim?” Paul screamed two inches from Sylvan’s face. My friend Paul is obsessed with pictures and is constantly documenting anything that takes place, whether people are cooperating or not.

I elbowed Paul in the ribs and whispered for him to shut his trap. The truth was that it was a good question. But the answer was obviously no. If at some point Sylvan had known how to swim, he certainly wasn’t able to connect the dots now. Why he would jump into the middle of the ocean and all of a sudden start swimming was a little questionable. It was possilble that Sylvan had spent so much time driving on land that maybe he forgot there was a different format for the ocean. In any case, he was clearly embarrassed, and I just wanted him safely back on deck, or in the shallow end of any pool.

This turn of events was a huge blow to me, as I saw this trip as the perfect opportunity to capture some uncommon sea life for our new aquarium. My original idea was to fill it with Maine lobsters and some Chilean sea bass; when we had people over for dinner, they could just spear what they wanted from the tank and everything would be fresh like at Red Lobster. Ted vetoed this idea for some Health Department code that I’m sure he made up, and that’s when I came up with my airtight plan to house a single dolphin. The very mention of dolphin fostering sparked a huge debate between Ted and me about the difference between a fish and a water mammal. His argument was that there was no point in lodging a fish if it was something that could survive on land.

“No fish can survive on land,” I informed him. “They’re called fish because they live in the fucking sea. Unless a lobster hops out of the Long Island Sound and porks a chimpanzee at a zoo in Florida, there is never going to be a fish that survives on land. You got that, Captain Stubing?”

After many vigorous debates and much lengthy consideration, I emerged victorious when Ted finally agreed to a single dolphin on the condition that I do not get it from a vendor but have to capture it myself.

I knew that Ted thought he had put one over on me by making such a demand, but not one to ever under-estimate myself, I made contact with several employees at the Atlantis in Bahamas, as well as the VP of marketing at StarKist and was piece by piece putting together a dolphin-abduction strategy.

Once we got to the beach where we were having our lunch, the captain of the boat pulled up nice and close to the shore so Sylvan could walk out. Eva and Steph spent the next three hours giving Sylvan swimming lessons while Paul forked over the $150 he bet me that Sylvan was never coming to Turks and Caicos in the first place.

“Is this one of her jokes?” Paul asked Ted when we all got to the island. “Is Sylvan really coming?”

“I don’t know, maybe. I think he’s coming, but I don’t even know what’s real and what isn’t anymore. Three weeks ago she convinced me that it was legal to have an alligator dwell with you as long as you create a swamplike environment in a spare bedroom.”

“Well, Ted, that is a little ridiculous. Why would you believe that?”

“Because she had the story so perfectly ironed out and she had convinced me there were alligator animal shelters, which I still think might be true.”

“I think that might actually be true,” my brother Ray said.

“Neither is true, you idiots,” I chimed in.

By this point Ted’s reality had become so warped he didn’t even know what was reality and what was fantasy. I felt good about my position in the world, and I felt even better that I had developed so much mistrust among my close friends that they were constantly confused and disoriented.

The truth of the matter was this: I wanted Sylvan to experience the kind of vacation that in recent years I had become lucky enough to afford. Of course penetration was at the forefront of my mind, but I’ve learned through previous experiences that while trying to get someone else penetrated is ultimately an altruistic endeavor, it can be exhausting and, more often than not, fruitless. By the end of the week, I had given up my sexual aspirations for him and focused on enjoying our time together and, more important, enjoying the splendor of watching his Chocolate Chunk mess of a body wade around like a rhinoceros in a one-piece.

“I love you, Sylvan,” I’d tell him as I swam into his arms and held on to his tits.

“I love you, too, Chels.”

On our very last day on the island, we were all sitting in the lounge area of the pool when Steph noticed two Mocha Mamas sipping on mai tais. They were a little drunk, and Stephanie was very drunk, seeing as she hadn’t left the pool bar for seven hours and was now chain-smoking while simultaneously making arrangements to move in with the Filipino bartender, who had casually mentioned that he always wanted to visit Los Angeles, more specifically, the La Brea Tar Pits.

Steph and I swam over and said hello to her new friends Feliqua and Wendy.

“You look familiar,” Feliqua told me, and Wendy nodded in agreement. “Are you that lady on the TV? Tracy Lately?”

“That’s right,” I said, and then took Stephanie’s lit cigarette from her hand and put it out in her drink while she was focusing her attention on our new friends. “Steph, did you tell the ladies about the dolphin we saw snorkeling and how you were unable to submerge your head underwater because you refused to put out your American Spirit?”

Paul swam up right behind me. “Stephanie! I didn’t know you smoked!”

Stephanie ignored Paul and started looking for her cigarette. Feliqua announced that it was her fortieth-birthday celebration. She then led us in a very special rendition of “Happy Birthday” to herself, and afterward, Steph and Brian interrogated both of the ladies about what kind of men they were into. By this time the women had nicknamed Brian “Delicious” because he’s gay, from the South, and has two basketballs for an ass that sit about a half inch under his shoulders.

Brian is originally from Atlanta and enjoys nothing more than black people from the South, but his true passion lies in the old sitcom Designing Women. He’s an author who’s very handsome and athletic, and he once spent an afternoon trying to convince me to executive-produce an updated, modern-day version of Designing Women, but with four gay guys. When I reminded him that someone already did that show and it was called Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, he guffawed. “What about with four black women?”

“That was 227.”

If you closed your eyes when Delicious laughed, he sounded exactly like Mrs. Garrett. The ladies loved him. Their laughs were just as loud as Delicious’s and turned into a booming din as they kept high-fiving each other and screeching with their mouths wide open. The girls worked together as hospital administrators in Nashville, and both were at least at a 1.5 blood-alcohol level.

“You got an ass like a sister,” Feliqua kept telling Delicious. Then he’d snuggle up closer to them and squeal, “I found my two Cocoa Sisters! Ahahahahahahh!”

Feliqua looked a lot like Whoopi Goldberg and kept asking us if we saw the resemblance. It was clear that she was not happy about this comparison, so we all shook our heads in unison and said, “No fucking way,” every time she asked.

“I’ve met Whoopi,” I reassured her. “Unless you’re wearing Crocs under that water, you have very little in common.”

Their nachos and conch fritters were delivered to the swim-up bar, along with the food the rest of us had ordered. When I sat down next to Feliqua, she looked at my salad and then looked at me. “What’s the matter, Tracy Lately? You one of those skinny bitches can’t eat no french fries, can’t eat no grits?”

“I can eat,” I told her. “I could probably eat your ass under the table, but I prefer to drink my nourishment when I’m on vacation, and this right here’s a blended passion-fruit margarita, no salt. Would you like to try it, Fatwa?”

“If it’s free, you bet your ass I’m gonna try it,” she declared, right before she grabbed it out of my hand and captured my straw with her tongue.

“Tracy Lately! Ahahhahahahh! I love it!” Delicious was now screaming and started jumping up and down in the water, splashing himself. “The Tasty Cocoa Sisters are ready to part-ee with Tracy Lately!”

Stephanie splashed water on the back of my head, and when I turned around, she exhaled a billow of smoke into my face. “They’re single… and horny! Where is Chocolate Chunk?”

“Where is Sylvan?” I turned to Paul, who was busy taking pictures of Wendy and Feliqua making a sandwich with Delicious.

“I don’t know where Sylvan is, Tracy,” Paul answered, “but I hope he’s not in the fucking ocean.”

I looked over to find Eva arranging all of our flip-flops by the edge of the pool. “Eva.” I jerked my head in the direction of the ladies. “Get Sylvan.”

“Ray is giving him a swimming lesson on the beach! Why don’t we all go down to the ocean?” She winked at me. My brother Ray was in no position to be giving anyone a swimming lesson, considering he had nearly drowned swimming up to the pool bar earlier, but I was more alarmed that Eva couldn’t control her winking. I thought I had clarified with her that winking was for rappers and cougars, but for some reason it was her go-to move, and our conversations to the contrary didn’t seem to be having an effect.

“That’s a great idea,” Stephanie said, grabbing her cigarettes. “Ladies, would you like to meet Sylvan? He’s a real cutie, but he’s very shy.”

“Shit, can we bring our drinks?” asked Wendy.

“You bet,” Paul told them. “I’ll carry them—and I’ll bring your food.”

There was excitement in the air, and it was impossible not to feel the energy. I ran ahead of the group to tell the others that the ocean was about to get some new company. Ray was giving very specific instructions to Sylvan on how to float facedown, while Ted was fifty feet out swimming back and forth with his usual snorkel equipment. I quickly briefed Sylvan and told him to stand up, stand tall, and act proud. We turned to face the resort when we heard raucous laughter and felt what seemed like tectonic plates shifting. Wendy and Feliqua were running full steam ahead into the ocean with their drinks still in their hands and spilling all over the beach. Paul was doing the same with nachos and conch fritters while simultaneously taking action shots.

“Holy shit,” Ray said, backing into the ocean. “Are they coming for us?”

After I watched Wendy and Feliqua barrel into the surf like two bulldozers, it became apparent that Sylvan wasn’t the only black person who couldn’t swim.

“Oh, my God!” Paul screamed, running in after them with two water noodles in his hand. “Why can’t anyone swim?”

The women were screaming and laughing and swallowing water. They kept trying to regain their footing but continually fell down until Delicious and Sylvan were able to balance each one. Sylvan made it over to Wendy to lend her a hand, but when she felt a touch, she turned around and spit in his face.

“Aaaaaahhhahahahahahhahahh!!!” was the only sound anyone heard from Delicious.

“I’m sorry,” she slurred, wiping the spit off Sylvan’s face. “I thought you were the beach.” Then she turned in the other direction and hawked another loogie, which the wind blew right back into her face. She quickly fell in the water, but Sylvan grabbed her.

“My weave! My weave!” Wendy yelled when she was done spitting.

“I got you, girl,” Sylvan told her.

“I lost two tracks yesterday when we went swimming. Everyone at church told me not to go in the ocean. You’ll lose your weave in a hot second!” Then she smacked Sylvan on the ass and went flying into one of Stephanie’s lit cigarettes.

“Do you really need to smoke in the ocean?” I asked her for the third time that week.

“Stephanie, I didn’t know you smoked,” Paul said, then started howling along with Delicious, who was still moaning with laughter while holding Feliqua like a baby in the water.

“Aaaahhahahhahahahahahahahh!”

My brother had commandeered one of the water noodles and was using it to defend himself from all the splashing. “Chelsea, can you believe Sylvan went from not knowing how to swim to rescuing people in one week? I should probably look into coaching some sort of black swim team.”

“They’re standing in two feet of water, Ray. Even though a black swim team does seem like an oxymoron at this point, it is definitely something to think about. In the winter you could teach interracial skiing.”

Feliqua, who was definitely more drunk than Wendy, tried to sit in the shallow water, but small waves kept pushing her back on the beach. She had no upper-body control, so Paul helped her to the edge of the beach, where she retrieved her drink and lay down on Paul’s lap.

“We got a Cocoa Sister down. One Cocoa Sister down!” Paul yelled to us as he took a picture of himself smiling with her.

“I didn’t know there were gay traffic controllers that also lifeguarded,” Ray said to Paul after he walked up to have a sip of Feliqua’s cocktail. “It’s okay, Feliqua. We’ll take care of you.”

She announced she needed a nap and fell asleep on Paul’s lap. Two minutes later she was awake again and calling for Wendy.

Wendy stormed over to me and asked me where Sylvan was. “Right behind you,” I told her.

“You shut up, you white skinny TV bitch. You know you need a bodyguard for that non-french-fry-eating ass.” She followed this up with a smack to my ass and asked me to check her weave, which I straightened. Then I took one side of the back of her bathing suit and pulled it into the crack of her ass, where she left it.

“Black don’t crack, you silly bitch!” Then she fell into the water and came back up for another round of apple bobbing.

“Get together for a picture!” Paul screamed to me and Wendy, who had already somehow made her way back to Sylvan and was mounting him.

“Honey, I need you to take care of me. They said you’re a good man and a single father. I can’t really swim. Hold me, Sylvan.”

“Happy birthday, Feliqua!” Paul screamed into Feliqua’s face, and then adjusted her weave. “Is this thing reversible?”

Delicious was now howling so hard he was literally choking on the ocean, but no one seemed to care.

Sylvan and Wendy were drifting farther away from us but managing to keep in water shallow enough to stay afloat. And then I heard him say, “Are you sure we’re not being obvious?”

When I looked over, Sylvan was behind Wendy and moving like a jackrabbit while her head was bobbing back and forth and her weave was whipping him in the face. “Shhhh!” she told him. “For all those white folks know, we snorkeling. Give it to me!”

“I think Daddy’s coming home,” Ray announced as he got back out of the water. “I’m getting my camera.”

“Oh, my God, you should see all the fish out there,” I heard behind me, and turned around to see Ted standing there with his snorkel mask and goggles still on.

“I don’t think so, buddy,” I told him. “I got a couple of bigger fish, and a lot of things have happened while you were discovering marine life.”

Once he surveyed the scene and was able to compute what was taking place, he put his snorkel and mask on again, turned around, and headed back out to sea.

Feliqua got up from her seat in the sand next to Paul and said she needed to go lie down. Delicious and I got out of the ocean and guided her to one of the chaise longues closest to the beach. “Delicious,” she moaned. “Can you get me a ginger ale?”

Brian went to get the ginger ale while I sat down and coached her on how to projectile-vomit into the sand.

“Get it out, Fataqua,” my brother said as he neared us. He had a towel in his hand and leaned over to wipe her mouth and then looked at me. “Who the fuck is Delicious?”

“Brian,” I told him.

“I need ginger ale!”

“It’s coming, Feliqua,” I told her.

“So am I!” she moaned, and threw up again.

When I turned to go back into the water, Sylvan and Wendy were heading toward us, with Wendy very unstable on her feet. The sand was not her friend, and Sylvan was having trouble keeping them both upright at the same time. She stopped halfway to the lounge chairs and turned around to face the ocean. She pulled the back of her bathing suit in between her ass cheeks and started shaking her ass.

“Aaaahhahahahahahahhh,” shrieked Delicious again.

“Oh, my Lord,” Sylvan said, taking a step back and looking at me. “People wonder how the Caribbean was formed, Chels, and now I know. A black woman shook her ass, and a bunch of islands were created as aftershocks.”

Paul instructed them to both bend over for a snapshot.

Wendy lost her footing. She didn’t fall on her ass, which would be the obvious gravitational pull—probably for the entire island—but face-first, a header straight into the sand. Sylvan went down after her but managed to land on his side. Paul was the first on the scene with his camera in tow, and what he captured has been seen only in National Geographic. Two chocolate sand dabs, washed ashore.

There was sand in every crevice of Wendy’s face. Her eyes, her ears, her nose. Brian grabbed one of the ginger ales that he’d brought for Feliqua and poured it over Wendy’s head. “We’re going to need a two-liter, Brian,” Ray told him. “Sorry, I mean Delicious.”

Ted had reappeared from the ocean and was running toward us yelling, “Oh, my God! Is she dead? Wait, keep her alive. I know CPR.”

That was all Wendy needed to get her groove back. She was howling harder than any of us, but the sand was still pissed.

She was attempting to spit out some of the sand when we all played Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board and carried her back into the ocean, where she could properly rinse off. Stephanie, of course, could assist with only one hand.

“Aren’t you out of cigarettes yet?” I asked her.

“Stephanie, I didn’t know you smoked!”

“Paul, shut up!” everyone yelled at the same time.

As luck would have it, the dip in the ocean was exactly what the doctor ordered for Wendy, because after that she was at least able to manage her footsteps in a more reasonable manner. We all sat in the water, exhausted, for a good hour before it started to get dark out, but Feliqua was not anywhere close to moving. She had stopped throwing up, sort of, but was firm about staying where she was. “Don’t fucking touch me!” she yelled. Wendy said she needed help getting Feliqua to her room, and then she would be available to have dinner with us.

Sylvan volunteered to stay with the girls, and Stephanie announced that she had only two cigarettes left.

“It might be time to give it a rest, Steph,” Paul told her. “Your breath is like eighty proof.”

Stephanie walked off in a huff, and Eva followed her. Ray was floating on the noodles, watching everything from the water. Ted nudged me and said he’d like to talk to me privately. “In the ocean, please.”

Once we were back in the water, Ray took two water noodles out from under him and handed them to us. “What an amazing day. I taught a man how to swim, and he took that knowledge and saved another person. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more alive.”

“That’s fantastic, Ray,” Ted told him, and then turned to me. “We need to discuss dinner. Are these women joining us?”

“I don’t think Feliqua is having dinner tonight, Ted, but Wendy doesn’t look like she misses many meals.”

“Oh, my God!” exclaimed Steph. “Oh, my God!”

I looked back and saw Delicious, Paul, and Sylvan wheeling Feliqua on a chaise longue away from the beach up to the pool area. “I’ll be back for dinner!” Wendy yelled over her shoulder as she mounted the steps to the hotel. The three of us ran out of the water and followed them.

“What are you doing?” Ted yelled. “Are you taking her to her room?”

“We’re not fucking staying here. We heard there was a swim-up bar. Our hotel’s down the beach!” Wendy told Ted. “You better put on your dancing shoes. I hear you move like Michael Jackson.”

Boom was the sound the lounge chair made every time it hit a step.

Feliqua would groan a little each time. “Ow.”

“This is some crazy shit,” Wendy announced. “You white people are CUH-razy.”

After getting Feliqua up the stairs, we had to pass the pool area, which to our surprise was holding a screening of Pirates of the Caribbean. Delicious and Sylvan put on their happy faces as they strolled through various couples watching a movie over a candlelight dinner.

“You guys,” I whispered. “We can’t wheel a black woman through a movie screening in a chaise longue. There’s got to be some sort of law against that.”

“We’ve got to get our girl into a taxi, Tracy. Chunky Chocolate is going to ride back with me to drop off my girl, and then I’ll be heading back for that barbecue. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A girl’s gotta eat. I swam the shit out of that ocean today!”

There was no point in trying to make less of a scene than we were already making, as we were in full view of all the moviegoers. We just kept our heads down while we pushed a person in a chaise longue along the path in our bathing suits. I volunteered for Feliqua to sleep in Sylvan’s room until I looked at Sylvan, who wasn’t smiling. At least it looked like he wasn’t smiling; it might have been too dark to tell.

A security guard came running over to us and handed me a bathrobe. “Mrs. Handler? Can we be of some help?” That’s when Ted decided to make a quick left and go up to our room.

“We’re good, thanks,” I reassured him. “We’re playing hide-and-seek. She’s just pretending to be asleep.” Wendy and I walked on either side of the chaise longue in order to stop Feliqua from falling onto the concrete. Paul was following closely behind, vacillating between picture mode and video mode. There was clearly too much footage to capture for any documentarian. We had to make sudden, corrective moves every time we hit a set of stairs or a proverbial speed bump, which would result in more grunts from Feliqua.

“This is the best fucking night of my life,” Wendy shouted. “I think I might pee myself. Sylvan, you’re gonna come with us in the taxi, right, motherfucker?”

“Aahhahahahahahhhh!”

“Brian, do you need me to give you the Heimlich?” I asked him.

“It’s fucking Delicious, Tracy!” Wendy corrected me.

“Baby, I ain’t gonna let nothing happen to you or Feliqua,” Sylvan told her. “I’ll come back to your hotel and make sure you are safe.”

“Damn, you motherfuckers know how to party!” Wendy screamed. “Especially you, white bitch! I’m ’bout ready to piss myself!”

“You think you’re going to pee yourself?” I snapped back at her. “Do you have any idea what condition I’m dealing with? I can’t take much more of this. We just wheeled a person in a wheelbarrow off a beach, through a movie screening, and on our way to a lobby.”

Feliqua grumbled again, and Delicious asked if she was okay. “It’s too bumpy,” she slurred.

Wendy was Feliqua’s closest kin and had made it clear she would be speaking for her until Feliqua came back to life. “She’s gonna be fine if this little anorexic bitch would stop her bitchin’ and enjoy the beautiful night.” I guess Wendy wanted to show me some affection, because her next move was to shoulder-check me into the bushes, which turned out to be a fitting place to relieve myself. When I was done, I rolled over and lay on the sidewalk while Paul took pictures of me in my own puddle.

Once he got the shot he needed, he moved on to the matter at hand or, as he described it, “to see the girls out.”

“Bye!” I yelled after them. “Bye, girls!”

“Oh, I’ll be back, shitface!” Wendy hollered.

The next day Sylvan had an early flight, so I didn’t get to see him before he left, but he sent me a text saying that he wanted me to know he never had sex with Wendy and that he only got dry-humped by her: “please trust that she was the aggressor, chelz. I did get to see her booty which was nice and big, like a full moon.”

I showed the text to Ted after I stopped convulsing.

“Oh, my God. He’s worried you’re upset? Little does he know, this is what you live for. That’s the main difference between you and me, Chelsea. I consider last night a mockery. You consider last night one of the best nights of your life and a huge success.”

“Maybe I do.”

“I’ve never seen anything like that in all my life.”

“Well, you’ve obviously been running with the wrong crowd. It was like God came down from the sky and handed me an Easter basket. An Easter basket with three chocolate bunnies.”

I turned sideways in bed to face Ted. “Did I ever tell you that my favorite holiday used to be Black Friday?” Since I have one African-American friend, when I found out about this holiday, I thought: It’s about time. I was psyched that she would have a day just to relax and celebrate herself for being black. I also thought it was really nice that Black Friday took place the day after Thanksgiving; if my friend worked for someone who didn’t take advantage and give her a four-day weekend, she could still get off work by telling her boss that she’s black and Friday was her day. I had forgotten to get my friend Loni a gift for Black Friday a couple of years ago, so I ran to the mall to get her a new weave. The place was a disaster; all the stores were having sales and there were people everywhere. That’s when I found out what Black Friday was. I’ve since turned my attention to Flag Day, primarily because I’m a fan of June.

“That’s a pretty dumb story,” Ted declared, when I was done.

“Thank you,” I replied. “I appreciate you taking the time to listen.”