Imogene Hampton looked at her date and wished she had her sister Doris stretched out over a sacrificial altar. Dennis was a supervisor at a regional bank. Divorced, with two kids approaching young adulthood, just as sane as one would want your offspring to be. Still attended the same church on Latvia and Upton he'd been baptized at as a young boy. Spoke well and with no false notes of 'hood informality that been long suppressed since graduating from college. Ran a mile each morning. Was as fun to be with as a hemorrhoid!
Contrary to rumors and expectations, Imogene wasn't, nor felt, in the thrall of loneliness nor desperate, or was going lesbian. That thought had entered her older sister Doris's murky mind, because of Gina, Imogene's friend from work, a gay woman who had told Doris so at the graduation party for Doris's daughter and Imogene's niece, Stephanie. Doris exchanged a look of panic between the two of them and rushed from the dining room! "I found the writings of Shelby Steele, Armstrong Williams, and Bishop Jakes to be inspirational, in particular in my dealings with a much wider world. The Demoncrats have compartmentalized our people..." Ooh! She was going to cuss Doris out! What did Dusty call them of that persuasion? Constipated ReNegroes. Dusty had been a cynic about politicians and politics in general. But he held those Blacks who added the adjective conservative and the pejorative republican together on the same level as pedophiles.
It was two years tomorrow since his death in that car wreck. They had been a couple only four. She took a sip of the wine in her glass and closed her eyes. A dinner out for Dusty had been to Creighton's Fish Hut or The Blue World's diner over on Petty. He would have sent back this dinner and demanded a refund for serving him such petite portions at such a high price. "Shit! I coulda fed five hungry motherfuckas at the Blue World a healthy ass meal." She spewed the wine on Dennis's shirt. Across from her, at another table with a white couple totally oblivious to him, sat Dusty, smiling and with a plate of chicken wings, Cole slaw,Sweet Potato Pie and a bottle of beer! "Now I know I'm one of a kind baby, but you don't have to settle for 2,000th best. Ditch this bougie and I'll tell you all about this fellow Harper I've scoped out. I think you two will click. He'll even sit and watch Bette Davis movies with ya. And not just 'Hush,Hush, Sweet Charlotte either."
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