A Love of My Own by E. Lynn Harris Page B

can,” Raymond said as he stood and walked over to his desk and picked up a photo. He came back and sat down and asked me to look at the picture. It was a sepia-toned picture of two African American boys and two girls on the back of a truck. It looked like a photo taken in the fifties or early sixties.
    â€œWho is this?” I asked as I studied the photograph closely.
    â€œI don’t know. I thought you might know. I found it in my desk, mixed in with some letterheads,” Raymond said.
    â€œDid you ask Bristol?” I noticed the names Norman and Scooter printed in a child’s handwriting.
    â€œNo, these people look black,” Raymond said.
    I looked at the picture again and said, “Yeah, they’re light but not white. Even though sometimes I think Bristol might be an undercover brotha. You know, passing,” I said, laughing.
    â€œYou’re crazy. But Bristol does have a sense of what’s right about our culture. He picked up all these great CDs for me. Maxwell, Joe, Angie Stone. I guess he reads your magazine.” Raymond laughed.
    â€œYeah, Bristol is cool people. I talk to him every now and then. Did he tell you he used to work at
Vibe
and
Vanity Fair
?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œI’m pretty sure Davis stole him from over there by offering him a lot of money and making a lot of promises,” I said.
    â€œDo you think it belongs to Seth?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œThe photograph,” Raymond said.
    â€œI doubt it. Seth was very dark, blue-black,” I said. “I personally love every shade we come in. From light-bright to blue-black.”
    â€œI hear you. Are you sure it’s not a family photo that belonged to Seth?”
    â€œBesides, he was an only child like Davis. The two of them started off really tight. I think they went to college together. You should have seen the two of them together when they had a couple of drinks. Styling and profiling, smoking big cigars, talking about the good old days at prep school and Harvard,” I said.
    â€œWhat happened to them?”
    â€œJust between you and me, I think Seth resented Davis’s success. I think he wanted to be just like him, but Seth wasn’t as confident or aggressive as Davis and gradually got annoyed by that. He knew Davis was looking to replace him because people in their social circles were talking about it. His job was so important to him he couldn’t take the pressure. I guess that’s why old Seth lost it. I wasn’t here when it happened, but office lore has it that when Seth cleaned out his office he did it in a yellowed T-shirt stained with coffee, a tie around his neck, and plaid boxer shorts,” I said.
    â€œThat’s sad,” Raymond said.
    â€œYes, sad would be the word. Just make sure you don’t leave here that way,” I said.
    â€œThanks for the warning,” Raymond said.
    â€œThanks for the ribs,” I said as I got up to go back to my office.
----
    From
Bling Bling
Confidential
    People often spent so much time looking at how beautiful Raymond’s green eyes were that they never noticed they were stained with loneliness.
----

10
__________________
    I located the gothic brownstone on Eighty-eighth Street between Columbus and Amsterdam avenues. I pulled a yellow piece of paper from my suit jacket pocket and looked at the number 105 and then the number on the building. I walked up slowly, like I was getting ready to enter a haunted house, took a deep breath, and rang the bell.
    After a couple of weeks of restless nights, I decided I should get some help before I quietly had a nervous breakdown. At first I thought I was having trouble sleeping because I missed having Trent’s warm body next to mine, but I realized I had some anger brewing inside. Many of those nights it took everything I had not to pick up the phone and call Trent and yell at him about what he’d done to our relationship, what he’d done to