bestselling author Delorys Welch-Tyson

Sometimes a girl just chooses the wrong boyfriend. Or maybe a person’s timing is
just for shit!Muriel McCracken thought as she drove over to visit with her man
Eddie Hayes, who still had 5 years more to serve in Elmira Correctional Institution.
They hadn’t seen one another in over 5 years, since she, herself, had been
locked up in the Women’s Prison for all that time after the unfortunate situation
that occurred after they both walked out on their jobs at that taxi company
and had gotten busted the same day.
Life was a pisser, as Eddie would say.
At the light stop, she took the opportunity to check how she looked by
briefly readjusting her rear view mirror of her brand-new Cadillac convertible.
She wanted to look good for Eddie, since she wouldn’t be making these visits
for a long while, since she had decided to take her new money and get the hell
out of the country for awhile.
She fluffed up her brand new ash-blonde coiffure with her fingers and
quickly freshened up her ‘Ice Lover’s’ pink lipstick, which she had forgotten to
do after having her hamburger…her last from this day forward…when she’d
stopped off for lunch at the “Quick Stop Palace” off the freeway.
She just loved her new make-over look. That Madame Arthuretta Bozell
was a genius! Her new socialite look would definitely give Ivana Trump a run
for her money.
She was sure that Eddie would love it, too.
Poor Eddie.
Poor Muriel.
Muriel loved Eddie and Eddie loved Muriel, but look where it got them.
She would find the best lawyer on earth and get him out of the joint as fast
as big money could buy.
The week after she was released from jail and had settled into her single
room occupancy hotel, as a lark, she filled out one of those Publisher’s Clearing
House contest sweepstakes papers. She hadn’t even subscribed to any of
their magazines. She’d never been much into reading until Madame Bozell
turned her on to those decorating and fancy lifestyle magazines a few months
ago.
The next thing she knew, six months later, there they were, in the lobby of
her hotel…Dick Clark and Ed McMahon…with some balloons, a limo, a bottle
of champagne and a huge check for 20 million dollars!
She fainted.
When she finally soaked it all in, she went to see Eddie and told him. Of
course, he had already heard about it. Seen it on the news. In fact everyone in
his jailhouse and in the world had seemed to have heard about her newly
acquired fortune.
He had seemed happy for her. Even told her to go on with her life…to forget
about him.
That was impossible.
She had fallen in love with him the first day she met him. He would be in
her heart and head for life. Sometimes a woman just doesn’t have a choice in
these matters of love.
Muriel McCracken certainly didn’t. And she told him so.
Someone beeped a horn from behind, jolting her thoughts. She quickly
adjusted the rear view mirror back in place, dropped her lipstick tube in her
purse in the passenger seat next to her, stepped on the accelerator and continued
to drive to her destination.
She’d never forget the day she met Eddie Hayes.
Muriel had been living with her parents in their rented house ever since her
divorce from her ex-husband, Georges Callahan, from Desertville, Nevada,
who had turned out to be a violent, sick and twisted individual.
Well…there had been some problem of some kind with trees or bushes or
something and the neighbors next door. So Eddie, who owned her parents’
property, among several others (Eddie had been quite a successful businessman,
in his day) made an appointment to assess the situation. Her folks had
never met the owner, so when he arrived and started up the walkway, her
father came out with a shotgun yelling, “what are you doing on my property,
boy!” and then shot him.
That’s why Eddie has that limp.
Muriel ran out to help Eddie, found out why he was there and then had her
folks call the ambulance.
She accompanied Eddie to the hospital and after that, she moved away from
her folks’ house and have never seen them since.
They would never have been able to tolerate her relationship with Eddie
Hayes and Muriel had respected that.
So…it was ‘bye bye…so long. Gotta go.’ She slammed the door shut on
them before they had a chance to do it to her. She hadn’t missed them at all.
Why should she?




After all those years in the Penn, Eddie still looked good. Healthy. Although
a bit disorientated. But she could handle it, as long as he still loved her.
And he did.
She smiled at him through the partition that separated them and picked up
the prison phone.
“How are you doing, baby?” she asked breathlessly into the receiver.
His big, brown eyes made her heart melt. She longed to caress, again, those
long, thick dreadlocks and her body tingled at the sheen of his sable colored
skin which she remembered as the warmest and smoothest that she had ever
felt in her life.
“Can’t complain…can I?” he had joked, in his Eddie way.
“You can to me, sugar,” she chuckled into the phone.
After Eddie’s foot healed as much as it could, they had moved into his
house.
Things happen, you know?
So…circumstances demanded that they get out of the town they were in
and they ended up in a really nice co-op apartment in the Bronx, in New York
City.
They had set up their system. She had become a dispatcher at the cab company
and he drove a cab.
Those weird Pakistanis messed up everything!
That day, after his shift, Eddie had brought his cab back to the station.
Those rag heads…forgive me, Lord…she thought making the sign of the cross,