Saint's Sacrament - Sins of the Father Read online

  “Yes, Sinclair! I haven’t spoken to you in ages. Where have you been, darling?”

  He moseyed around the question like an orange-coned obstacle course for Driver’s Ed.

  “Here and there…” was all he offered as he shuffled his weight around on the couch.

  “I was just leaving the set. How are you, dear?” He could almost picture the older redhead vixen laughing, her plastic surgery laden face tight and drawn, as if invisible tape gave her the notorious sky blue stretched cat eyes she was known for.

  “I am well.” He forced a lighthearted laugh. “How are you?”

  “Perfect, just perfect! What did I do to gain this great pleasure?” He heard her infamous silver kitten heels beating the floor with each step and people speaking softly around her.

  Liz always had a crowd gathering just by her mere presence.

  “Well, Liz, I will just jump right to the point.” Sinclair cleared his throat. “I understand that the show, ‘Morning Tea’, is under new management, is that correct?”

  “Yes it is, and oh boy.” She sighed, her voice dropping low. “Sinclair, we are under new management but there is some confusion as to where the show should go, the direction. It’s a mess. I cannot tell you the countless arguments going on in the boardroom. Now, look, it is a beautiful concept, but without the right initiation and follow-through, no one will give a damn. The time slot is the first battle, but we’ve built the audience. At this time, it is a matter of maintaining them or the show is no more. This is our last chance. People have signed an online petition to keep the show afloat. So, we’re giving it another shot. I hope our new host … oh, well, let me take a step back. I am getting ahead of myself.” He heard a door close and what sounded like her taking a seat.

  “I don’t know if you heard, but we’ve hired a replacement for JoAnn, a sprightly African American radio host.”

  Sinclair grinded his teeth back and forth like skies on a snowy slope. If he did it any harder, he’d be on apple sauce and mashed potatoes for the remainder of his life.

  I hadn’t heard of her, but apparently,” she sighed again, “she is pretty important in the black community and has carved a niche for herself, a real go-getter. That’s what we were missing, the African American audience. I think this may save the show and I know she looks the part...pretty as a daisy. Have you heard of her? Her name is Xenia. Oh goodness, I am certain I am going to mispronounce her last name, but I believe it is, Aknaten.”

  “Hmm, it’s possible,” he grunted through the lie. “I am not certain if I know her or not.” He caught a glimpse of himself in the reflection of his living room window, but quickly turned away from it.

  “Well, based on what you have shared, I am even more certain that I am in fact doing the right thing by contacting you. Here is what I need. I want to offer my services, Liz. I want to see the show thrive.”

  “I’m not quite following you, Sinclair.”

  “Look, I have never worked with a morning show, and quite frankly, this will give me some much needed experience.”

  “Oh dear, Sinclair, that is a lovely gesture but this doesn’t hone your skills! I mean, you are a musical maestro; you’ve created so many masterpieces for our dramas. People love your music and it is the first thing they hear when two of our top shows start but this would be elevator music, blasé, blah! I mean, it’s an early morning show, after all. Now that you mention it, however, maybe something jazzier would be in order...wait a minute, are you pulling my leg?” She laughed.

  “No, I am serious...I know.” He laughed again, forcing himself to swallow his own sugar-coated deceit. “What you have been doing isn’t working, Liz. Maybe you need some new blood around there.” He shoved his hand in his pants pocket. “I know it is huge, and I know this is not my typical shtick, but I’m talking about more than music. I’m talking the cameras, everything. I will make time for you guys so here is my proposal if you’d like to hear my pitch.”

  “I’m willing to hear what you have to say...”

  “I know we need everyone on board and to get approvals from all the big guys, Steve Burke, everyone, but I’d like to help produce the show in its entirety, Liz, for this new season. Matter of fact, I want to produce the show completely, and hire my own staff. I can make the ‘Morning Tea’ one of your best rated shows, Liz. You say you want the African American viewers, right? What better way than to hire someone who knows what African Americans want to see? I’ve spent the bulk of my career working with big name Rap and R&B stars, Liz. Their videos are staples in their marketing, rendering them millions of dollars. I can do the exact same thing for you. Advertisers will come out of the woodwork trying to buy time once I get finished with that show.”

  “Well as much as I’d like to tell you to get your behind down here and start this very instant, Sinclair, we have to go through different channels. The more I think about it, the more I believe you may be on to something, but nevertheless, this could take months. However, the new show doesn’t start for at least three months—JoAnn’s contract is not over until then and that was part of Mrs. Aknaten’s parameters, something about wanting to stay home with her youngest child until she was at least one year of age. I don’t know, but anyway,” she exhaled loudly, “it would entail much more than you are proposing, Sinclair.”

  Children...she has kids now. Interesting.

  “Yes Liz, I understand it doesn’t work that way but I have another proposal that may push this to the forefront, sweeten the deal, make the big wigs want to listen. Whatever you are paying your producer now, and I think I have an idea of how much that is, you can pay me half of that.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

  He grinned as he heard her exuberance over the phone.

  “Yes, I, Sinclair Grayson, of sound mind, am offering my services to you for a fraction of the cost you’d pay someone else. That is how badly I want this, Liz. It may not seem like it, but I actually am qualified. Video production and show production are quite similar. I know how to work with lighting, sound control, all of it. All I ask for in return is for you to ensure that I have my own dressing room.” He laughed heartily, though a nervous lump in his throat wouldn’t let him swallow quite comfortably.

  “You’ve got it! If I can get the guys to approve this, and that surely makes this much easier, my goodness, this could be just what we need! If I get a ‘yes’, don’t you let me down,” she warned, her tone turning serious.

  “You’ve got my word. The timing is perfect. Johnson said he needed help with the production of the show. This way, we can just flip it—I will run the damn thing, and he can work for me, take a load off.” He laughed casually.

  “Let me call an emergency meeting today and I will contact you later this evening. If all goes well, I need you in this office tomorrow, Sinclair. To-mor-row! ”

  “I will be there! Liz, you’ve done so much for me in the past, given me great connections, it is the least I can do. I will be there first thing tomorrow morning, if everything goes well.”

  “Beautiful. You will hear from me soon.”

  “Thank you. Goodbye, Liz.”

  He promptly disconnected the call. A strong sense of satisfaction enveloped him like a heated blanket on a blistery, cold morning. With a new pep in his step, as if a shot of B12 had been given to him intravenously, he moved toward the other side of his residence, passing expensive oil paintings, shiny sculptures and exotic plant life. He walked into his massive bedroom, with baseboard to ceiling windows framed with partially open chocolate curtains, exposing downtown L.A. like the glittering jewel that it was. He made his way to a small drawer in his night chest and removed a silver tray, a rolled one-hundred dollar bill and a small velvety pouch of premium cocaine. Sitting on the side of his bed, he laughed, his giddy breath wafting over the expensive powdery dust, threatening to waste it. He gained his composure, forcefully pushed his index finger on his left nostril, closing it completely while he sniffed a long, skinny trail of the p
owdery poison, his beloved Blow, into his nose, making it disappear as if he were a magician and his schnozzle a Dyson vacuum.

  He fell back onto the bed and looked up out of his diamond shaped skylight, the star dusted night sparkled with constellations, giving his newfangled high more momentum as he took in the glorious moment.

  “Xenia....Xenia...Xenia...it will be a pleasure to see you again, baby. Damn, I’ve missed you. I wish we were reconnecting under better circumstances. But, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do…”

  ~***~

  CHAPTER ONE

  Saint tipped his tinted glass ever so slightly; the ice chunks chimed together making a frosty melody that echoed through the auditorium as he stood close to the wooden podium. The stage was aglow in shades of purple. Hazy smoke rose, setting the mood for his discussion on Chakras, dead relationships and religion. The incense in the air calmed his nerves as the instrumental of “Cutie Pie” by One Way played in the background.

  “And that’s the problem, men, with digging back in the trash, in the dirt, so to speak. It’s a trap! Caught in a web, a net of craziness…” Just then, one song ended, and a new one began. Morris Day’s ditty blared, “Fishnet Black Pantyhose.” Saint stood in brief confusion, then his facial muscles relaxed and a light, airy laugh escaped from his smirking lips, causing others in the audience to follow suit.

  “That’s funny.” He waved his finger in the general direction of the music speakers. “I love that song, too…but let me not get off track.” The music died down to a whisper, waving the delightful 1980’s tune like a delicate, almost undetectable fragrance while he continued to pour forth his words.

  “We’ve all been guilty of it. You get lonely, you know? Or, her sex was so fucking amazing that when she calls you, you ask if you can hit or she might even say the shit first. It doesn’t matter who brings it up, it takes you down a notch or two, makes you a bit lesser than you were before.” He took a sip of the water and moved away from the podium, commanding attention as his long legs slowly spanned the stage with steady pacing.

  “Our relationships are similar to life and death.” He paused, stared at the glossy floorboards and looked out into the audience filled with Rainbeau men, silently anticipating his next words imbued with life-changing information. “When we begin a new relationship, that is the conception. We have put ourselves inside of another’s life. Intercourse means communication. Thus, we have intercourse with them, before we have actual sexual intercourse. We are investing time and energy. Each thrust is a word spoken, a truth given, and in some cases, a lie told. Vulnerability acknowledged. Once we commit, that is our ejaculation—we have cum, full circle, so to speak. Now, we must nurture that relationship,” He held up his hand. “So that it gives birth to something positive, we start something but don’t finish rendering it stillborn, or it never develops at all. Those are the three options,” he said, holding up three fingers.

  “We can abort a relationship with lies, being an untrue form of ourselves, running from true commitment or other devious acts that will essentially annihilate the connection. Or, we can chase it—a relationship that is already on life support soon after we’ve invested. The thing is brain dead, but we are still giving it mouth to mouth resuscitation because we want that woman to want us back.” He looked out into the sea of men, many of them nodding their heads in agreement as his words struck a chord, and hit home.

  “Some hold on after years of investment. It is easier to stay with the known, the tried and true, though we may be miserable. Starting over for so many is frightening, so we make a choice—wallowing in misery or being afraid. We choose based on which we find to be a more livable circumstance. We feel it is unnatural to be alone, and though most of us have a mate that is designed for us, this being alone is essential for our own personal development at periods of time during our life.” He shook his head. “We were born into the world alone, brethren. We didn’t have a girlfriend, a mate, a partner. It was just us, and our mother pushing us out of her womb. The uterus we dwelled in sustained us. That was it. We took a breath, not our first breath, but our first breath out into the world, and we were declared alive. Now, when we look at our relationship, the one that was stillborn, we try to declare it alive when that baby never cried. The relationship was never two-sided or fair, and there was a loss of a sense of reciprocity.” He cased the other side of the stage, looking into so many pairs of eyes, his heart breaking a bit on their behalf because so many of them clearly recognized the words as being all too true.

  “So, you have to cut the cord. The reason being is, we need chapters and growth in our relationships but when a relationship is sucking your essence, and it is over, you must severe the ties. It can hurt you. Even if it doesn’t right at that moment, it will hurt someone eventually. You may love that woman, you may not, but it is only fair, to both of you, to go your separate ways if you know that she is not the one. Now, here is the problem when you have a sexual chemistry connection with your ex. After you cut it off and you make a half-hearted attempt to try and walk away, you start thinking about the sex, and how much you miss it, right?”

  So many men nodded their heads.

  “You don’t miss the drama and arguing, but you miss being inside of her pussy—you crave it still! You hate that you do, but you do! For some of us, this lasts only a few weeks; for others, it can go on for years! That’s the spiritual connection. Once you connect spiritually with someone, you have truly connected, you have become one. When you disengage from them abruptly, that means you severed the connection. And do you know what that means? It means loose ends are just flying about!” He waved his hands in the air as if they were kite strings.

  “You see this? Me waving? That is the connection! The life! The cords! Trying to reconnect like damaged nerve endings! You don’t see them with your naked eye, but trust and believe, they are there! This is what happens to impaired nerve endings; they run toward each other, trying to make a go of it, trying to become one, trying to be whole again. There is no such number as two, three and four, and so forth. There is only the number one.” He held up one finger. “When we make a family, we consider it one unit! When we fall in love, we are a couple. A couple means two, but we act like one entity! When you make love, you push your body inside of hers, you look like one person! It is in the programming! Now, I’m not saying to forget that person completely. I am saying that more times than not, an ex is an ex for a legitimate reason, and that is what they need to remain. You were supposed to learn from that person, from that relationship. You were supposed to learn things about yourself, gentlemen. Your weaknesses, your strengths, your faith, your frailties! You were supposed to learn more about what it takes to make a relationship successful and what you will and will not put up with!” he stomped his foot.

  “It’s never a waste, Rainbeaus! Never. Each second a person is in your life, whether good or bad, you can take something from that but understand,” he said, pointing out into the audience, “if you keep those nerve endings away from each other long enough, the pain will stop. They won’t reconnect or grow back together unless you decide years later to reunite with the person. As human beings, we are made of energy. That’s all we are. We are attracted to one another because we are magnetic. Energy, friends, is magnetic. It likes to connect with others. Even if you seek to avoid a person, believe it or not, that is still a form of attraction because you are using energy, to avoid their energy, by creating polarization. This puts them in your thoughts, and draws them closer in some sense, so that you may push them away. Sounds confusing? It’s not. Let me help you. These are the rules for enemy annihilation. This is what our militia uses all the time, to combat an enemy that has threatened our livelihood. You must get close to the opponent, create a sense of trust, to make sure you don’t miss when you shoot—that is drawing toward them, drawing near in order to draw away, seek and destroy!” He witnessed some nods of understanding.

  “Now, let’s talk about healing after a rel
ationship is over. We are energy, as I stated, and we give off energy, men. I tell people to not mess with others on the rebound. Don’t fuck with a woman that just got out of a relationship! If you know that that woman was in love with someone else, and you just met her a week after the break up—you put that shit on ice!” He pointed out at the audience. “Let me tell you why. That Queen is hurt, bruised, and that energy of hers is all over the damn place. It doesn’t matter what the reason was, when you snap energy chords, it leaves a gaping wound, even if she was the one that called off the shit. Her damaged wires are waving all around, trying to connect, with or without her permission. When we lose a limb, our body doesn’t know it is gone initially.” He patted his shoulder.

  “This is a medical fact. Our bodies try to get us to use a limb that is no longer there. The nerve endings from the stump are pulsating, trying to get it back to what it once was. That is how we are fresh out of a relationship. Stay away from her. She is not herself. She is injured, just as we are when we are in love with someone and we come out of the relationship. It takes time to heal. Some cat a long time ago got all upset at me when I said this during his therapy session.” Saint smirked and ran his fingers through his hair as he stood in the middle of the stage, the light bearing down on him.

  “I told him he was taking advantage of the woman he was with. He could smell her a mile away. She was damaged goods and he knew she was an easy hit because of that. What happens is, damaged people often attract damaged people!

  “Yes,” he said amid murmurs and clusters of applause. “Let me say it again so that it sinks the hell in! Damaged people attract damaged people. So what happens when you get two rusty energies? They tangle together, hurting one another, short circuiting each other, draining the little bit of battery life they have left. In the rare cases where a damaged person attracts a healthy person, that damaged person drains the shit out of the healthy person! We’ve seen it! That guy friend of ours, he has a heart made of mothafuckin’ gold, and he gets caught up with some woman who takes him for all he is worth. The next woman does the same shit. There are people like that, women and men, and the reason they attract the predators, gentlemen, is because they are insecure.”