"Ms. King", paging "Ms. King". Love heard her name being called over the firm's intercom system. Love sighed, "I can't get a minute to myself around here". Love was in the ladies restroom relaxing in one of the reception area chairs and trying to read the Lawyers Weekly while she ate a twinky. The restroom was the only place she could get a little peace at the office. She was figuring out some financial planning in her head regarding how she was going to spend her most recent bonus.
She was up for partner at the prestigious law firm of Swanson, Herbert and Schoff. It was one of California's largest, wealthiest and oldest firms. Love was a senior associate attorney with the firm. She had been an associate with the firm for about 10 years now and she was the firm's youngest and "only" black female attorney. She knew that any day now all her hard work was about to pay off.
Love was a perfectionist in every way, especially when it came to work. Love graduated from High school at sixteen and received a full scholarship from Harvard, finished up college at twenty and went straight into Harvard Law School. She did two years as a United States Supreme Court Law Clerk after graduation from Law school, and then started working for Swanson, Herbert and Schoff right after her clerkship. Love had many offers from other firms, but she chose Swanson, because simply, "they showed her the money". And Love's hard work spoke for itself. She was highly respected and sought after in her profession. She was one woman that no one could ever say slept her way to the top.
But that's not to say that she didn't do her share of sleeping around, outside of the office. One thing Love made sure of, she kept her professional and personal life, as separate as possible. Once she had a fling with another student at the firm she interned with the summer after her graduation from law school. He saw her kissing another guy at a club one night, and he took it out on her the remainder of their internship. He barely talked to her again. He went around telling the other interns she was a cold hearted slut. The whole thing was just so embarrassing. It didn't seem to matter to the partners at the law firm because they still gave her an offer upon graduation. After all she was hands down the most qualified graduate, but she chose to clerk with the United States Supreme Court instead. It meant less money, but she knew the experience would be invaluable, and empower her to demand top salary in two short years. One thing she learned from that first law firm internship was to never again sleep with anyone she worked with.
To Love, sex was just an extracurricular activity. It was a way to de-stress herself after a long day surrounded by a bunch of uptight attorneys. And, there was never a day when Love had a problem getting it. Any average looking women doesn't usually have a problem getting sex when she wants it, but Love was definitely above average. With her tall, slim stature, long dark hair, dark brown eyes and naturally, soft sun tanned skin, she could have easily passed for one of Hollywood's starlets versus a lawyer. Every man from Rodeo to Compton was infatuated with Love. Regardless of her looks she was still quite interesting. She had studied and could speak fluently in about ten different languages. Even though she was hired to be a Criminal Defense Associate, she also had achieved head of the International Law Department after her first year with the firm, because of her love for languages. She was fluent in all the European languages and the Asian Dialects, where the abundance of the trade negotiations are currently in demand with the U.S. She was the only associate to be heavily relied on by not one, but two departments within the firm. She had made herself irreplaceable to the partners at the firm. She was always using her spare time to learn more in regards to her profession.
Work was definitely Love's first and last priority. If she ever needed to get some more personal needs met, she would go on what she casually referred to as a "date". Most of Love's "dates" always ended up with much more than a good night kiss at the end of the night on the front porch. There probably was not a man from any particular ethnicity that Love had not slept with. Love was definitely and equal opportunity lover. She had never given one day of serious consideration to changing her ways and settling down with one man. Currently, her conquest was a married movie star, whose name shall remain confidential for obvious reasons. Her girlfriends always teased her affectionately by saying, "she was indeed, very appropriately named Love, since she had loved almost every Hollywood heartthrob around town." However, Love always thought the more befitting name for her would have been "Monae", because at this particular time in her life all she cared about was making money, spending money and making more money. Tina Turner sung Love's anthem when it came to men, What's love got to do with it.
Love promised herself one thing when she left Queens, New York, that she would never live poor like her Nana lived, and always accepting hand me downs from other folks. Love always rationalized that if they weren't poor maybe her and her sisters would not have been farmed off into the foster care system. Over the years Love became bitter about her Nana's death and her separation from her sisters. She blamed society, her parents, her Nana, Mary, and of course she blamed God. In fact, she blamed God almost as much as she blamed herself for failing her little sisters. Love convinced herself that Nana relied too much on God, and that she would never be like her Nana. So she decided she would rely on herself, and no one else. To Love that meant she would make herself totally independent; emotionally, physically and most importantly financially. Love had been working towards total self independence, ever since the day she emancipated herself at sixteen, and changed her name to Love E. King. That day Love put away her past and she literally took on a different identity. She decided "King" was a good last name to have, because she promised herself that one day she would be living like a King. And she remembered that her mother had told her once that her ancestors had hailed from "the Kings". Nana was always so proud of their last name "Emmanuel", because she said it meant, "God would always be with them". But Love wanted to change her name to also signify that she didn't need to depend on God being with her like her Nana did, she was fine on her own.
After Love emancipated herself, and changed her name, she pretended to be a spoiled rich girl when she went off to college. She became so good at pretending that was what she was, that eventually she became just that. So, Ms. Love E. King swore she would never be poor again, like her Nana was. She definitely, never wore anymore hand me down items. She didn't even like the word, vintage. Even the underwear she wore was always brand new. She had to keep buying new Victoria Secrets, because she was always leaving them behind, after one of her "dates". One guy she had slept with actually called her a slut because she wouldn't stay the whole night with him. But Love never saw herself as being a slut. She thought, "sluts are stupid and I'm anything but stupid". She considered herself, in control, and doing whatever the heck she wanted to do, just like a man would in her position. She would say she knew she didn't want a relationship, so why pretend like she did. Her girlfriends thought she was a sex addict so they tried to form an intervention dinner party for her one night. They told her that any psycho- analyst would have told her she had a problem, if she would just go and see one. But Love didn't feel like she needed therapy.
She liked her life, and she told anyone who questioned her lifestyle that she was living her life just the way she wanted to live it. Love merely felt that she was just doing what any man would be doing in her shoes, and no one would be trying to plan an intervention for her if she was a man. Yes, Love enjoyed having sex and having money, and she wasn't about to apologize to anyone for enjoying it. In fact, the fear of becoming poor again, is partly what gave Love her extraordinary drive, and competitive nature. When other people were relaxing on the weekends and sleeping at night, Love was up, thinking of new ways to make more money and increase her profitability, as an associate, and hopefully one day, as a partner. She was a master at time management, and managing others.
So that explains why she was currently hiding out in the restroom, finishing up her reading, finishing up the last bite of her twinky, and finishing up figuring out how much extra cash she would be making once she made partner, so that she could buy her new, dream, beach house. She never wasted time.
Every spare moment she filled to forward the completion of her ultimate goal, which was making partner. But, making partner depended on if Love, won all the high profile cases the partners handed off to her. So far in the ten years she had been with the firm, she had yet to lose a case. No doubt that was the reason they were summoning her over the intercom, to assign her another case. Love enjoyed her job, but she sometimes wondered when she would finally be offered partner. She loved the firm she was at, but she was starting to grow impatient. She knew she had not been at the firm as long as others, but she had made the firm a tremendous amount of money, way over any other associate had.
"Love King, paging Love King" Love thought, "there goes that irritating intercom again." The sound of the intercom, rushing Love to finish up in the bathroom, made her remember a time similar to this moment in her childhood with her sisters and her Nana. Love started to think about the time Nana and her sisters were banging on the bathroom door...
"Love, come out of the bad room!" yelled little "no front teeth", Faith. Faith could not pronounce the "th" sound to save her life. Love could hear Hope repeating Faith's pleas, through the bathroom door. Love was about twelve years old and she had locked herself in Nana's bathroom because the neighborhood boys had taunted her for three blocks on the way home from school. The boys taunted Love, saying things like, "yeah, Love stands for loves to eat", said the skinny boy with the two buck teeth. Then the boy who always wore the beanie on his head, like Malcom X, said, "no man, Love stands for only your mama ever gonna love someone as big as you". Childish, corny jokes they were, but for a teenage girl those jokes hurt Love deeply. Yes, you wouldn't believe it to see her now, but Love Emmanuel use to have a serious weight problem and along with that an even more serious self esteem complex back when she was a young girl. Love was always smart, but for a long time she was also very shy, quiet, and lacked even the smallest amount of self esteem. But the new and improved, Love E. King, at least on the outside, was truly a totally different person.
"Tap, tap, tap". "Love, baby what you doing in there?", said Nana.
"She done locked herself in the bad room with a box of twinkys Nana, and she keeps saying I'm fat and ugly, and no one loves me and why they have to go and give me a dumb name like, Love, anyways?"
"Love, I gave you your name, and "Love" is a beautiful name and fits you well". Nana's voice was soft and calming. "For now you see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known. And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is Love" Then Nana started praising Jesus. "Thank you, Jesus, thank you Jesus". Nana always use to do that.
"What are you talking about Nana?" Love was use to Nana spouting off scriptures all the time, but half the time she had no idea what she was talking about. Sometimes the girls really thought their Nana was a little bit crazy, the way she would just start spouting out scriptures and spontaneously start praising all loud or speaking in tongues. The girls were use to it mostly at home, but it did embarrass them when they were out in public or in church. Nana was the loudest, most dramatic person in the church. The girls always wondered to themselves, "can't Nana tone it down just a little?" And even when Nana got sick, the sickness hadn't seemed to slow her scripture spouting down, not even a little bit.
Although the girls may have been embarrassed, secretly about Nana's passion for God and praising him, they never were disrespectful enough to let her know about their embarrassment. So when Nana spoke the girls were quiet and everyone else was too. As a matter a fact it seemed like the whole universe paused to listen to Nana. I mean she was usually so loud you didn't have a choice, but when she spoke, when she spoke "The Word" it did give all who heard it, a strange sense of a moment of pure peace, and calmness. Even if you had no idea what the heck she was talking about.
So Nana knew exactly how to establish quietness and peace in her household again, and how to get Love's attention from the other side of the bathroom door. "Now Love come on out of that bathroom girl, don't you know "your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own", so God don't want you abusing his temple with a bunch of junk food and sugar, hold up in the bathroom."
Love didn't know why, but at that moment she swore to herself she'd stop overeating and she would never be fat again. It took Love a long time to lose all the extra pounds, but by the time she went away to college she was already tall but she was also as slim as a run-way model. Outside she had transformed into a perfectly posed picture of a model, but her insides were more like an abstract Picasso. Although Love took Nana's advice about not abusing her body by eating too much junk food, she had swore off all that Nana had taught her about God and the bible.
Nana had been dead for over twenty years now but however hard as she tried to forget, Love could not get Nana's words out of her head. Those Words, that Nana quoted, always came back to her at the strangest moments. Like now while she sat hiding out in the cushy sofa chair in the ladies restroom at Swanson, Herber and Schoff. She had come a long way from that fat little girl in Queens, New York. Now-a-days Love buried her self-esteem issues way down deep where no one could ever see them. Love worked out, obsessively, counted calories, yet she still treated herself to one delicious, golden sweet twinky, every time she won a case, and she made sure she savored every bite slowly. Twinky's were always her favorite sweets growing up. The sweet twinky she ate reminded her of the past and what a mess she use to be. It reinforced in her mind that now she had control over herself, control over her body, and over her future. Now she was a successful attorney, beautiful, and most importantly, rich. No one in her current world knew of the old, Love Emmanuel, and by this world's standards, putting aside how her friends were concerned about her promiscuity, anyone who knew the new and improved, Love E. King, would say one thing about her, "that sista has got it going on!", and it would take an act of God for Love to admit she thought anything different than just that about herself.