Again (12 page)

He missed her, missed touching her in his dreams. That was just how weird this was. He was missing someone he barely knew. Why Tyne instead of the many other women he’d dated? Why was she so embedded in his psyche that she now seemed an integral part of him? Standing at the stove, he let his mind wander back to the kiss, let himself remember how soft her lips had been, how warm and liquid, how sweet she had tasted. A sexual surge went through him, and he felt himself growing hard. He turned off the stove, left the kitchen. He took the stairs two at a time, wondering at his urgency.

He had placed the original fax copy in a folder and brought it home. Even then, he told himself there was no reason to keep it, to just toss it. He never did. The folder was on his nightstand.

The phone rang four times with no answer and he nearly hung up.

“Hello?” her voice came over the phone. She sounded breathless, and so near, as though she were standing next to him. As though he could just reach out and touch her. His throat constricted, and suddenly he was back in grammar school, hands sweating, calling his first crush, wanting to hear her voice, fearing what he might hear in it.

“I hear congratulations are in order,” he said finally.

“Oh…thanks.” Her hesitation caused his stomach to flinch. Suddenly, the ambivalence was gone. He wanted her. Had wanted her before they ever met. Most of all he wanted her to want him, wanted to know how it felt to touch her, to hear her moan, bury himself inside her so deep that he’d lose himself and never find his way back out. Already his body was crying out for her.

“If you’re not busy today, I thought we might celebrate, maybe a picnic in Grant Park. I’ll supply the food and wine. It’d be a shame to waste such a beautiful day.” He tried to sound casual but he heard the plea beneath the words, was afraid that she would hear it too and that she would bolt again. Much as she had done at the wedding.

But instead she said, “A picnic? Funny. I don’t picture you as the picnic type.”

“Oh? And how exactly do you picture me?” He didn’t want to admit to himself just how important her answer was.

“I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought about it. I guess I picture you as the active type, you know flying around in your plane, maybe waterskiing, but not exactly lolling around on the grass eating pâté. Anyway, thanks for the invitation, but I have some errands to do today.”

He swallowed the disappointment, thought of something else. “Well, don’t underestimate the pleasure of grass lolling and pâté eating, especially if it’s at—oh let’s say, a Ravinia concert, maybe listening to Wynton Marsalis or Tony Bennett?”

“So, are you inviting me to Ravinia?” she asked.

“If you’re game. Ravinia’s on Friday nights, but I can check the schedule, see who’s playing this Friday. What kind of music do you listen to?”

“Usually smooth jazz, some R & B, a little classical, especially Handel.”

He wasn’t much into classical, but he would leave himself open to the experience. “Then, let’s do Ravinia. I’ll pack us a basket. What do you like?”

“Surprise me. I’ll take a chance on the food and the music.”

He liked the idea of surprising her, of guessing her tastes, her desires.

“Friday, then. They usually start around eight, but traffic to Ravinia is heavy, so I’ll pick you up at around six-thirty. That’ll give us time to get there and find a spot.”

“OK, let me give you my address.”

He didn’t remind her that he already had it from the resume.

“Or better yet, let’s meet outside my office,” she said. “I start the job Thursday.”

He heard the lilt in her voice as she said “my office,” felt good knowing he’d had a part in putting that lilt there.

“It’ll be more convenient since I live far south in Hyde Park, and it doesn’t make sense for you to drive all that way south when we’ll just have to drive north again. Do you know the office address?”

“Yeah, I know it. I’ve been there before. It’s on Erie. I’ll pick you up at six-thirty then.”

“OK.” She said good-bye and was gone.

But with that one word, he felt the hell of the last few weeks ebb away. He was determined to hold on to that feeling. He picked up the phone and dialed another number. Five rings and her machine picked up. He left the message, knowing that she would be disappointed that he wouldn’t be able to make it on Friday. But his mother would just have to understand. Besides, there was probably a reasonable explanation for why she knew the things that she did. There had to be.

New York—July 1879

“See here, Luce, what Trenton brought back from London.” Barrett smirked as he leafed through a gazette with a nude woman of Raphaelite proportions on its cover. They were sitting in their usual room at Delmonico’s, having just finished a three-course lunch that included an appetizer of smoked salmon with fennel followed by a main course of roasted leg of lamb, broiled potatoes, a large garden salad along with a magnum of Veuve Clicquot champagne. They had topped it off with chef Ranhofer’s luscious creation, Baked Alaska, served with a bottle of port. The lunch was in celebration of Reese Trenton’s return from his four-month European tour. Among the gifts he had brought back was one particular item of prurient interest. Barrett’s fixed stare was matched by a wide grin as he turned another page.

“How can I see anything, Barrett, if you refuse to unhand the thing?” Joseph said sourly.

Barrett raised an eyebrow. “Why the foul mood, Luce? Lose at cards again?” alluding to Joseph’s infamous predilection for gambling. And not always in the finer places.

“As a matter of fact, no. I won a couple of thousand last night.”

“You’d better be careful, Luce,” Trenton warned. “There’re unsavory characters in the Tenderloin who would be all too willing to unencumber you of your monetary burden.”

“I am well aware of the perils, Trent. Which is why I always carry a little something with me.” Without flourish, Joseph retrieved a switchblade from his coat pocket and placed it squarely on the table next to his plate. “I don’t take needless chances,” he said, finishing off his glass of port. “And I’ve had occasion to use this to its full extent. Needless to say, that ‘gentleman’ will no longer be bothering myself or anyone else for that matter.”

An awkward silence followed. “Still…” Trenton started.

Joseph gave Trenton a look that said he didn’t want to pursue the subject any further. “Still what, friend?” Then, turning to Barrett, “I
still
haven’t seen what all the fuss is about,” Joseph said, tearing the gazette from Barrett’s unresisting hand. “So, what do we have here?” The cover read simply
THE PEARL, A Journal of Facetive and Voluptuous Reading
.

“It’s amazing the things you can find in Old Europe,” Barrett said, leaning to peer over Joseph’s shoulder as Joseph turned the pages. “It seems our boy made good use of his time on the other side of the Atlantic. No Tower of London for you, hey, Trent?”

Trenton smiled. “Just came out this month. As good as the pictures are, the prose is even better. Quite extraordinary, really. A great resource for lonely nights, if you know what I mean. Nothing like it here on these American shores.” His smile broadened. “I can tell you boys approve.”

In the pages, Joseph found a collection of limericks and stories, the language blue and uninhibited, accompanied by pictures of couples in stages of undress and copulation. He read several passages from one story of two randy cousins, the words deliberately chosen to elicit a sexual response. He was embarrassed to feel himself stiffening a little.

Trenton nodded as though he was privy to Joseph’s bodily reaction. “Puts you in a certain way, doesn’t it? Think I might head on over to one of the houses after lunch, get me some good ole American cunny.”

“What American?” Barrett sneered. “Since most of the whores are either Irish or Italian, it’s more like good ole immigrant cunny.”

“Whatever, Barrett. A whore is a whore, as far as I’m concerned,” Trenton said, draining another glass of port. “Just as long as I don’t pick up any those foreign diseases. Half these girls don’t know what a bar of soap looks like.”

Joseph listened halfheartedly to the exchange. He hadn’t made a visit to a whorehouse in over a month. This past week, his thoughts had been elsewhere. Ever since the evening of the Negro cotillion. But this was not a fact he could divulge to his friends.

They would never understand.

Oh, they might understand patronizing a Negro whore, which they had done on occasion. But this plethora of feelings for a Negro woman who wasn’t in the business of selling her body would not go over well. The thought of a Negro woman being considered of decent society would be amusing to them. They would not understand his growing need beyond a mere call of the flesh. A call pulling him to someone far removed from his world.

Because he couldn’t understand it himself.

Couldn’t fathom the desire to talk with her again or to see her smiling up at him once more.

As it were, he had already taken measures to find her.

Barrett’s voice cut in. “From the look on his face, I think Luce here is planning a similar rendezvous, wouldn’t you say, Trent?”

Trenton laughed, then poured another glass of sherry. “I’d definitely say there’s something…or someone…on the boy’s mind. So, Luce, do you have a particular wench you’re planning to see?”

Joseph smiled, but said nothing. Instead he poured himself a glass, thought about soft caramel skin ensheathed in green. Thought about what it might feel like to touch that skin, kiss those full lips.

Unexpectedly, he stiffened more. Took a swig to waylay the direction his thoughts were taking. To take an edge off the acute anticipation of what he would do once he saw her again.

T
yne’s feet hurt. It was her first day out “in the field” and she should have known better than to wear two-inch slingbacks, but she had opted for style over comfort. A pain stabbed through her little toe as she climbed the stairs to the graystone. This would be the last time she would make this mistake. Even with her car, she still had to pound pavement, pound it good and hard. As hard and sore as the small corn emerging on her toe. But this was where she wanted to be—where all her work and years, and hopes and disappointments had finally brought her.

Tyne rang the doorbell, then warily looked back at a group of three or four teenage boys loudly talking outside a corner liquor store. If ever a nuclear apocalypse were to erupt and wipe out ninety percent of the world’s population, one could rest assured that there would be someone who would open up a liquor store amidst the devastation. And there would be those, only breaths away from death, who would reach for a bottle to drown away their last few seconds of sorrow and horror.

The air smelled of sulfur or something as toxic, which was why she was here.

“Yeah?” a voice said from behind the door.

Tyne turned back and smiled. “Regina Stewart?”

A head of curlers appeared and a pair of eyes peeked from around the door.

“Who wants to know?”

“My name’s Tyne Jensen. We spoke yesterday on the phone about my interviewing you for a magazine article.” Tyne tried to keep her face and tone neutral. Overfriendliness in the situation might come off as patronizing.

The woman edged a little more from behind the door. Tyne’s immediate impression was of purple—dark purple shirt and lilac sweat pants. A sparkle of amethyst in a silver teardrop dangled from an ear. The woman was petite and thin, her features molded by the hardness of someone who had to deal with the streets on a daily basis, and who had probably lost more than her share of battles. The eyes relayed an old woman’s cynicism, yet Regina Stewart was twenty-eight according to the notes Sherry had given her.

Regina peered at Tyne for a few seconds, then emerged in whole from behind the door. “I dunno. I don’t want no trouble with the city.”

Tyne heard fear. She understood. Distrust of authority ran deep in some neighborhoods, especially where the struggling, the have-nots, and the never-would-haves lived. Paranoia was passed along like a virus through murmurs and rumors. Tyne had only a few seconds to overcome this distrust or she would get nothing. Already the woman was backing off from her initial interest in getting the truth told and her name immortalized—at least for this issue. Yet Tyne couldn’t promise her that there wouldn’t be retaliation. All she could promise was that she would be heard.

“Are you still interested in getting rid of the dump site? Because it’s not going to go away on its own. It’s going to take people speaking up, telling their stories. You can help make things better or you can remain silent and let things stay the way they are. It’s up to you.”

An eternity of silence ticked away as the woman gazed past Tyne’s shoulder, looking toward the group of boys. Tyne felt her body stiffening with the tension. So much depended on this interview, this one chance to prove herself. She also had a chance with this story to make a difference in her own way. She needed to get inside that house, past the invisible barriers Regina Stewart was quickly erecting.

After a few seconds, Regina made her decision. “OK, I’ll tell you what I know.” She sounded tired and defeated already, but she opened the screen door and stepped aside to let Tyne enter. “Not that it’s gonna mean much of a damn. They still gonna dump their shit out back ’cause it ain’t their kids what’s got to play around here.”

Tyne followed the woman through a wide foyer.

“You can have a seat over there,” she said, pointing to a chair.

Over there was a pleasant surprise, and Tyne inwardly berated her elitism. She had expected something different, something more pedestrian than the antique oak furniture, buffed to brilliance, and a fireplace that served as the centerpiece of the large airy living room. A few brown dhurrie rugs were thrown around the hardwood floor. A sun room extended the length of the living area, and sheer beige curtains blew with a breeze, catching onto an oak table on which sat a vase of wildflowers. The smell outside was tempered by their scent.

Tyne took the seat offered just opposite the fireplace. Regina sat down in an upholstered wing chair. Regina must have noticed Tyne’s surprise because she said, “This was my mama’s furniture. My mama and her mama lived here for a long time, long before things got bad. They always had good stuff and took pride in this home. I guess I musta inherited that pride, too. Things are bad out there; I won’t let them get that way in here.”

“Want something to drink?” Regina offered and Tyne shook her head. Instead she pulled out her tape recorder and placed it on a nearby table. “Like I told you on the phone, I’ll be recording this so that I make sure I get the story as accurate as possible.” Then she began with her notes. “How long has the dump been behind this block?”

Regina was already shaking her head. “That’s just it. It’s not supposed to be a dump. It was a vacant lot next to a building the city was supposed to tear down a long time ago. Now, the building’s overrun with people selling and buying drugs. As if that wasn’t bad enough, last year sometime—I think it was summer—all these trucks started pulling up in the middle of the night and dumping all sorts of garbage on the lot, mainly old tires and batteries and God knows what else. And the kids being the fools they are sometimes get up in there and start setting fire to the tires. That’s why I make sure my kids stay away from there, especially Cassandra ’cause she already got an asthma problem.”

“And you reported this to the city?” Tyne asked.

Regina looked insulted. “Of course I did, and not just me, either. There’s a group of us who’ve been calling downtown as well as to that good-for-nothing-but-collecting-our-votes alderman for the past year, and still nothing. Even just a couple of nights ago, them trucks were out there. Like we can’t hear them! You should see that mess they left behind!”

Tyne knew she would have to in order to relay the devastation fully. She would ask Sherry about getting a photographer to take a few shots of the dump. “Has anyone found out who the dumpers are?”

Regina nodded. “Mrs. Calhoun waited up one night and stood on the corner, which was a pretty foolhardy thing for her to do with these gangs running up and down the street selling their shit, but she waited for the trucks, and she saw the name on one of them. It’s that tire plant about twenty blocks down, Webber Tires. It’s bad enough we can smell the smoke all this way. Now, they’re dumping their old tires over here and anything else they got no more use for. See they know they can’t go to just any place and do that, because someone would get after them about not having permits. Besides, it’s probably a longer trip to where they should be dumping. So the lazy asses just come here, figuring nobody’s gonna say nothin’ ’cause who gives a shit about a bunch of poor folks? You know the city doesn’t and especially not the cops, otherwise they would be trying to clear out these gangs.”

She continued. “We already got folks around here getting sick from the stink in the air, and now we have to deal with this. My daughter’s asthma is much worse than what it used to be, and Jeneva Trainor’s daughter was just diagnosed with some sorta blood cancer. This keeps up, it’s gonna get as bad as Altgeld Gardens.”

Tyne knew Altgeld Gardens. A housing development on the far southeast side of Chicago, the name was synoymous with toxic waste dumping. Unfortunately for the residents, the dumping by local steel mills had contaminated the soil and waters around the community, and coincidentally the rates of cancer and birth deformities had gone up. The residents cried racism because everyone knew that this would not happen on the north side of town. Especially not near neighborhoods like the Gold Coast, Lincoln Park, or Wrigleysville.

“That’s why when that other woman called, I thought that maybe now we can take it to the press, maybe put pressure on the city to do something. But I don’t want no more trouble than what I already got. None of us can afford that.”

Tyne steadily took notes that would supplement the tape. “You said a group of you have been calling downtown. Do you think the others would be willing to tell their stories, especially…um…what was her name again, Ms. Trainor?”

“Yeah, that’s it. It’s spelled T-R-A-I-N-O-R. As for them talking, I don’t know. You’d have to ask them. Jeneva lives a couple of doors down. As for Mrs. Calhoun, she’s a widow who lives across the street. This used to be a nice area, and it might be again if people would care and do something about the crime and the dumping.”

Regina gave more names and addresses, related other illnesses that might or might not be associated with the dumping. Or with the toxins in the air from the plant. Tyne would call to try to schedule an appointment with Webber, but she wouldn’t hold out hope that they would talk to her. Anyway, it wasn’t their story. This story belonged to the victims of what was clearly a case of environmental racism. What was happening here was a travesty.

By the end of the interview, Regina seemed much more relaxed, was even smiling a little. Tyne knew that change wouldn’t come quickly, if it came at all. Still, she was giving them a chance to have their voices heard. Just maybe the city would be embarrassed enough to at least call an investigation.

Tyne thanked Regina as they both stood. Tyne caught a glimpse of two framed pictures on the mantle she hadn’t noticed before. A girl and a boy, around ten or eleven, both with big grins for the camera. They were beautiful children, and they deserved a better life than what they were getting here.

She promised herself she would write the best story she had ever written. She silently promised those two smiling faces that she would try to make things better, if only through the might of her pen.

Tyne checked the artillery for the night: orange-rind-laced chamomile tea, an extra comforter, and the cozy mystery she’d been trying to finish for nearly a month. She set the sound machine for “gentle rainfall” and a soft patter filled the room as she settled in between cool sheets that gave her a momentary chill. Even without the aids, her tired body and aching limbs promised to pull her into a deep slumber.

When she’d first gotten home from the office, she’d been all too glad to kick off her shoes and disrobe. She’d been too tired to do anything but pop a Lean Cuisine into the microwave and settle in front of the television for a few hours. Yet the exhaustion had felt good because it was from doing work she liked. No more mind-numbing rewrites and fact checks that had inundated her days at the
Clarion
. When she’d gotten back to the offices at
Elan
, she had eagerly typed up a first draft for the Stewart story, planning the direction she wanted to take the piece.

Laying aside thoughts of work, she picked up the novel, but after just a few minutes, the words began to blur as she felt herself giving way.

The music played in her head even here in the quiet of her sitting room. Days had passed and still her heartbeat sped, making her have to catch her breath at times.

She tried not to remember the pressure of his hand on her waist. The feel of his breath on her brow. The firm grip of his hand.

She had been dreaming of his smile. It didn’t make sense.

She felt as though she were losing herself.

It was bad enough that she had incurred her brother’s ire, and that, yes, some people had begun to talk. There were whispers now.

But why? What had she really done but flout some unwritten rule? The man had not disrespected her. If anything, for those few moments they had danced, he had treated her with nothing but courtesy.

But it wasn’t the courtesy she was remembering. It was the fire that had been in his eyes when he looked at her. Not a lust, but a burgeoning desire.

And if she was to be truthful with herself, the desire had reached her, had touched her. Was now becoming her own. She had wanted the dance to continue, but had nodded her acquiescence as he took leave of her in the silent room. The music had stopped and no one had said a word as he led her back to the table. Lawrence, still stunned, had not acknowledged the man further, except to turn away.

Unruffled, the stranger had not responded to the slight, but had walked through the berth made by quiet dancers and retrieved his coat and hat at the door.

Only then did the room began to move again. And uncomfortably the eyes had remained focused on her.

Lawrence stood then.

“We have to leave,” he had said with a finality that brooked no resistance. And she gave none. He took her hand, escorted her to the door.

Something had changed that night. Somehow life had become life again and not an endless existence of days to get through. She actually woke with a smile this morning.

She wasn’t foolish enough not to know that there would be consequences for her defiance. But she could live with that. Because now she knew that she could feel again.

If not love, then something else…something she didn’t want to put words to because it wouldn’t be decent. Yet it was this not-too-decent feeling that made her remember she was a woman and had known a man in her life. In the private moments of her bedroom.

Soon the scandal would die down, and she would have nothing more than a memory. And the ordinariness of her life would resume.

But, she also knew that the pain of losing George would eventually loosen its grip, would begin to ebb into something less intrusive, less acute.