Stanley Bennett Clay, an award-winning playwright, filmmaker, and novelist, has received three NAACP Theater Awards for writing, directing, and coproducing the stage play Ritual, as well as a Pan African Film Festival Jury Award for writing and directing the film adaptation. He wrote the novel Diva; the music and lyrics for the stage version of Why Do Fools Fall in Love; and the book, music, and lyrics for the musical Looking for God. Born in Chicago, Illinois, he is a long-time resident of Los Angeles, California.

Chapter One She had had her taste of men. In fact, she had had her fill of them. She had been married to the same Lamont Lester-Allegro for some twenty odd years. But her stretch, long and checkered, as a stool warmer at too many hedonistic haunts tailor-made for single black Baldwin Hills bourgies was a smoky testament to her dissatisfaction on the home front. Although her outings usually proved anemic they were frequent enough to cause her older best friend and fellow barfly, Elaine, to jokingly snap-read, "You should get out less."She couldn't agree more. But she did truly enjoy her addiction to the candy-store view of pretty young black men at bargain time. This was when sophisticated soul sisters -- stripped of their ladyisms and armored with their charge cards, condoms, and Slauson Arms motel room keys -- pushed and shoved past her to have the dark, fresh, and fleshy goods displayed before them.It was 1989, spring; maybe summer, and every evening, after her NAACP meetings and Links teas and before her bid whist games with Lydia, Arleta, and Elaine, Maggie Lester-Allegro found herself propped up on her favorite stool atNuts 'n' Bolts without any awareness of how she got there and no recollection of any prethought in the matter of the vigil. She only knew that she was in automatic drive.She licked the chilly salt rim of her double margarita and checked out the dim room full of pirates and treasures.The incongruity of her physical presence among these "other" sisters -- baby sisters, pimpled spinsterettes of the happy hour playing in their mothers' high heels, beads, and lipstick, was not lost on her. She smiled in mock deference for she knew that those who filled her immediate surroundings were classes below her in style, looks, and attitude.She was reminiscent of Diana Ross -- all eyes, shoulders, and a hair-weave cascade -- and sometimes she seemed to carry herself like some grand mystic bush queen. But more often than not she would slip loosely from her dark, regal stance, like on this occasion as she licked too desperately at the chilly salt rim of her cocktail.Maggie Lester-Allegro came across like the kind of woman who should have been called by her formal given slave name, Margaret, as in "Oh, Maaaaaahgret daaaaahling!" and she seemed like someone who should have been a heavy frequenter of the old Perino's on Wilshire Boulevard during its heyday back in the 1930s when it was the sacred trough to platinum stars.But the new piss-elegant Nuts 'n' Bolts in the Baldwin Hills Plaza was where she hung. Hung. Hung drunkenly and conspicuously like some antique drape in a neon setting. Hung. Hung as in "hung around," as in, "Is it time for me to die?"You see, Maggie Lester-Allegro had long ago resigned herself to her husband's neglect, knowing that she was merely one of his many trophies acquired seasons ago and left upon a dusty mantel of prominence. After all, Lamont Lester-Allegro had family legacy to live up to and personal demons to live down. Lester-Allegros were known for being the first black everything that could be distinguished by being the first black anything in a world that relished firsts. Doctor Lamont Lester-Allegro, a third-generation Lester-Allegro, was known for only that: being a Lester-Allegro, one of no particular distinction, merely a hanger-on by blood.As Maggie sat at the bar perusing the trade, she recalled with liquor-heavy smirks and moans the night Queen of Outer Space played on the Z channel and Lamont insisted on watching it even though HBO was airing Lady Sings the Blues. Zsa Zsa over Miss Ross? Oh please! Maggie could only credit the choice to her husband's sense of taste when faced with camp, and yet..."Now that's a real woman!" Lamont had said ogling the TV monitor while a young Zsa Zsa broke English and his proper Negro heart.Maggie fluffed it off -- or seemed to -- especially in light of the fact that he had confessed aft