Dead Broke - Softcover

"We all have our time machines. Some take us back,
they're called memories. Some take us forward, they're
called dreams."
-- Jeremy Irons

Tremel
Withdrawal Slip #1
Ending Balance: $827.76

You always taste so damn good," I whispered as I trailed soft kisses from her lower lips up to her eyes.

Sarai blushed. "You say the sweetest things, Mel."

"That's because you are the sweetest thing, baby." My tongue entered her mouth, and with soft suction she pulled me into her welcoming heat. The enticing wetness and her soft moaning caused a pulsation all over my body.

We were in Bimini, Bahamas, on a private stretch of beach behind a house we rented for the week. The plan was to watch the sun go down, but the moment I looked over at the way her pale pink sundress wrapped around her brown body, I knew exactly who I wanted to "go down." The pink fabric was very thin and I could see that she had on no panties or bra. Her nipples hardened from the cool ocean breeze.

When our kiss was done, the sky had lost its candle and the pink-and-orange heaven was slowly penetrated by darkness. I laid my bare back onto the sand as Sarai knelt between my legs. She pulled her dress over her head quickly and reached for my anxiously awaiting stiff dick.

She moved her face closer to it and opened her mouth. With tiny licks around the very tip she teased me, and then ran her tongue from shaft to tip until there wasn't a dry spot in sight. Her eyes never left mine as her soft wet lips took me in. She squeezed her lips around me and moved up and down. As she came up again I fell out and Sarai said, with the sweetest grin, "I won't even remember this."

"What?" I assumed that the sound of the waves had interrupted what she had said because it didn't make sense to me.

"I won't remember this," she repeated, with the same sexy smile.

"Remember what?" I was now up on my elbows. "You won't remember what?"

She burst into uncontained and almost possessed laughter. "Sarai." I called her name, hoping to get her to snap out of this playful stint and back down to the blow job that I was in desperate need of. "Sarai." The more I called out to her the farther away she moved, until she was waist-deep in the dark ocean water.

From thirty feet away she spoke but I heard her as though she was nibbling on my earlobe. "Tremel, if I don't remember, you remember for me." The noise from the large wave coming up behind her slowly melted into the sound of a police siren on the movie I fell asleep watching.

I slid my hand over the far side of the bed, checking my surroundings. I hoped that something had changed and my sad reality was just a nightmare. But just like the last time I dreamed about Sarai, she was still nowhere to be found. However, this time I was happy to be in her bed instead of a jail cell. That's right...I said jail.

On the night Sarai was shot it turns out that I did all of the wrong things in front of the wrong ­people the night I selected to reenter Sarai's life. Around ten o'clock that evening two hundred ­people witnessed my angry poetry performance onstage at Vocalize, which was dedicated to her. Five minutes later fifteen of those ­people also saw Sarai rush out crying. Two of which were in the ladies' room when she screamed that I was trying to ruin her life. To make matters worse, at midnight I also slipped the security guard in her building $300 to open her apartment and allow me to wait for her. And last, but certainly not least, because Damian was wearing gloves, my fingerprints were the only ones on the gun, and the gun just happened to have been stolen a week before from someone in Boston, my new hometown. Ain't that a bitch?

So as far as the Miami PD was concerned, they could get back to Dunkin' Donuts, their work was done. I was an angry black man with a gun and a motive: a cheating ex-girlfriend. I couldn't win for losing, and no one even pretended to want to hear my explanation.

Luckily, I've been out for two weeks now, thanks to Damian's drunken confession to a stripper in Texas two days before he set out to Guadalajara. Now the closest he'd ever get to Mexico is through the smell of the breakfast burrito one of the federal agents ate while waiting for him to show up at the border...

Those weeks in jail killed everything for me. As a newly signed artist, my CD sales not only stopped, but my shit did a U-turn when news of me shooting my ex-girlfriend and being arrested surfaced. Stores sent my CDs back to the warehouses in droves. I hired the best attorneys the $26,000 in my bank account could afford. And since the only person in my family with $75,000 to post as bail money was my uncle Norman, I just got comfortable in my cell. After the fistfight he and I had during my Christmas visit, my mom knew not to even ask him for air on my behalf.

Since my release I've been staying at Sarai's place. Not a day goes by that she isn't in my thoughts, my tears, and my heart. I can't stop feeling that maybe if I hadn't come by that night, she'd be lying here in her bed, full of life. Instead I'm not able to drag myself out of bed. It was the last place I held her, smelled and touched her hair, made love to her, and was good to her. Major parts of me regret coming back that night. Then again, if she was all alone that night...she would've gone through everything alone. Something tells me that my presence made what happened a lot easier for her.

The phone rang. I instantly glanced over at the clock: 3:16 a.m. I cleared my throat and reached for the phone. "Hello."

"Hello, Mr. Colten?"

"Yeah," I said as I rolled over.

"This is Nurse Graham." My heart paused right along with her voice "We need you at the hospital right away."

I sat up as my soul sunk. "Is there something I should know?"

"I am not permitted to say." She continued: "Dr. Bowen just asked me to get you here as soon as possible."

"Okay, thanks." I hung up the phone and remembered the last late-night call from the hospital. It happened on my second night out of jail. They thought that they were losing her. Sarai had flatlined several times, for reasons they couldn't explain. Dr. Bowen was called in from home, the nurses were rushing around getting special equipment, and the PA-system operator was shouting "Code blue, code blue in room 207."

I slowly stepped into room 207 and saw my sleeping beauty lying there like she had been for almost a month. Her bedside was surrounded by the hospital staff but I pushed through them and clutched her hand. "Why you playin' games with these ­people?" I whispered in her ear. "You got everybody earnin' their salaries tonight." I kissed her on her cheek and said, "All right baby, you got me here, so stop it." Blimp, blimp, blimp...the heartbeat monitor suddenly sprang back into action and all of her vital signs slowly fell back into place...but she didn't, wouldn't, and couldn't wake up.

Soon the nurses and Dr. Bowen left us alone. I ran my hand down the side of her face with a smile and asked the same question I asked her the night I knew I would fall in love with her. "Why do I have to push your buttons to get you to act right?" She never answered, but I sat there until morning wishing she would.

***

As I entered the hospital I felt something different this time. I was unsure if I could pull off the same thing I did last week without tearing up, or getting angry when she didn't talk back. The elevator door opened to the second floor and introduced me to scary silence. As I walked by the nurses' station most of them avoided eye contact and others just looked away altogether. Absolutely no one spoke to me. This must be it, the time that I'd have to say good-bye to her...my last visit.

I stopped a few doors away from room 207 when I saw orderlies rolling out some of the machines I was used to seeing Sarai connected to. I couldn't take another step, and suddenly I didn't give a shit about anybody seeing me cry. "Damn," I whispered to myself as my hands rushed to my head. What would I do now if I couldn't just watch her sleep? Where would I visit her? I'm not about to take my conversations to a cemetery.

Somehow I got my feet to start moving again and through my footsteps and tears I could hear Dr. Bowen ask, "Who is the president of the United States?"

There was a faint whisper of an answer, "Unfortunately, George W. Bush."

"Do you know where you are?"

"Come on, after a million nurses, you, and this damn catheter?" She coughed. "Stevie Wonder could tell me that I'm in the hospital." She went on, "My question to you is, 'What am I doing here?'€‰"

"Your question will be answered shortly." Dr. Bowen continued, "What is your name?"

"Sarai Emery." She giggled weakly, "How many times are you going to ask me that?"

He chuckled. "Until I believe that you're actually talking to me." Dr. Bowen watched as I walked through the door in utter amazement. My eyes were wide open and so was my mouth. My body shook and I nearly dropped to the ground. Sarai was sitting up in bed with her back toward me talking...talking. She was sitting up... talking. Something I never expected to see again in life, much less tonight.

"Do you know this man?" Dr. Bowen pointed at me as I approached.

When Sarai turned to look back at me, it was as though she looked right through me and at the bare white wall behind me. "No." She looked back at the doctor. "Should I?" I felt the blood freeze up throughout my entire body and my eyes couldn't leave her, I couldn't even blink. Damn blinking, I couldn't breathe.

Dr. Bowen saw my expression and seemed embarrassed and hurt for me. "Mr. Colten, why don't you wait for me in the hallway?"

I don't remember getting there but I made it to the hallway and sat on the ground outside of the room with my head in my hands and heard him ask, "What is today's date?"

"U...