Pleasure Seekers Read Free Page A

restaurant. “Go through the park at Sixty-fifth, then head north to Ninety-second Street,” she told the driver. The directions were barely out of her mouth when the cabbie took off with a burst of speed.
    “Damn,” Alana whispered, holding on to the edge of the seat. “We’re not in that much of a hurry to get home.” It was apparent the driver heard her because he slowed down considerably.
    When the taxi stopped across the street from Alana’s building she leaned over and kissed Faye’s cheek, while pushing a bill into her hand. “Thanks for dinner.”
    Faye smiled at her. “Anytime.”
    The driver got out and opened the door for Alana; he stared as she strutted across the street in a pair of pumps that added three inches to her statuesque figure. Her one hundred eighty-five pounds, evenly distributed over a five-foot-nine-inch frame competed with her face and thick raven-black hair for attention.
    Faye had met Alana two years before during Fashion Week. The two women had bonded quickly. Alana hadcovered the event as the American-based lifestyles editor for British Vogue.
    Alana had become her sister, confidante and, at times, her conscience. She was artistic, generous, honest, unpretentious, and there wasn’t anything Faye wouldn’t do for Alana Gardner.
    “Where to, miss?” the cabbie asked Faye after Alana disappeared into her building.
    “Ninety-fourth and First.” She braced herself as he accelerated recklessly into the flow of traffic, sped northward, then reversed direction and drove back to the east side in record time.
    Faye paid the fare on the meter, along with a generous tip, smiling at her building’s doorman as he opened the rear car door for her. She exited the cab with an audible sigh of relief. She had survived another wild New York City taxi ride.
    The doorman touched the shiny brim of his maroon hat. “Good evening, Miss Ogden.”
    She nodded at the elderly black man who always had a friendly smile and warm greeting for the building’s tenants. “Good evening, Mr. Bennett.”

CHAPTER 7
    F aye walked into the richly appointed lobby of the prewar high-rise apartment building and removed the day’s mail from her mailbox.
    Everything would have been close to perfect if not for her brother’s incarceration. Craig Jr., or CJ as he was affectionately called, had been found guilty of raping a married woman who purportedly had slept with a number of men in their Queens neighborhood.
    CJ’s conviction coincided with her divorce, so Faye had to grieve twice—for the loss of her brother’s freedom and a union she’d gone into believing it would last forever.
    The incident had caused a rift in her family. Craig Sr. had insisted on retaining the legal services of a friend to defend his son; within days of the arraignment the defense attorney accepted a plea rather than go to trial.
    Against the vehement wishes of Faye and her mother, Craig Sr. convinced his son to accept a sentence of five to eight years in prison in lieu of a possible fifteen to twenty if found guilty by a jury. Another downside of the plea was CJ had to serve five years before he was eligible for a parole hearing. He had just completed his second year.
    Faye stopped talking to her father or visiting the house where she’d grown up in the Springfield Gardens, Queens, neighborhood. She only called her mother when she knew Craig Sr. wouldn’t be there.
    The last time she’d shared dinner with Shirley Ogden, she informed her mother that she’d begun an exhaustive search for an attorney willing to appeal the case. What she did not tell her mother was that she’d found one, but his fees were exorbitant. She’d completed the application to secure a loan against the equity in her cooperative apartment, but it still wasn’t enough to cover his fee; her long-term goal to use her property as collateral once she set up her own advertising agency for black-owned businesses had become very, very long-term.
    The doors opened and