Between Lovers (15 page)

She takes Ayanna's hand with her left, mine with her right, sending both of us a subtle message. Then she lets our hands go, adjusts her purse, and folds her arms across her chest.

With the magic of Nicole's momentary touch, Ayanna's sashay livens up. “Maybe all of those stupid -isms that have held so many people in psychological bondage will go the fuck away.”

I ask, “Okay, people, is this an exercise in existentialism or what?”

We laugh, Ayanna too.

Nicole says, “People are always searching for new ways of being racist. Hair, complexion, religion, height, weight.”

“Sexuality,” I toss in.

“That's a given,” Ayanna says.

Nicole's vibe is different tonight, shows me another side of her being. Shows me that she is developing into a whole new being; her words glow in hues of reds, yellows, and blues. New colors, new energy I've seen corners of, but never in full throttle. She's found a new center for herself.

I look toward the moon, look at the stars that have become diamonds resting on an endless black canvas, and I feel so small. That makes me wonder about the big picture. About other life, other things, other possibilities. Makes me wonder if this rotating rock has the oldest life.

“So, Ayanna,” I ask as we cross Embarcadero, a very rugged street, trying to avoid the rises in the two sets of train tracks and the countless imperfections in the road, “are you an atheist?”

“I'm part of a society that accepts you as long as you don't ask certain questions.”

“What do you mean?”

Ayanna says, “Being a preacher's daughter—”

“You're a preacher's kid?”

Nicole says, “Her dad has a small church.”

“Like I was saying,” Ayanna says stiffly, “When I was a kid, one Sunday at Sunday school they were telling us that God made everything.”

I make an
uh huh
sound.

“Had to be about seven, maybe eight years old. Anyway, they assured me He makes the air I breathe, the food I eat, the clothes I wear. I asked Daddy if God made everything, then who made God?”

Nicole says to me, “That question has never been answered, not to my knowledge.”

I say, “It can't be answered. That's the definition of faith.”

“Maybe that was why my old man put his hands over his ears and told me to shut up.” Pain is in her voice, but she steadies her tone and goes on, “And of course, me being me, I didn't shut up.”

I say, “I'm not surprised.”

Ayanna actually chuckles that time. She says. “I reminded him that he taught me to ask questions about things that I didn't understand, things like the letters to the Philippines and the letter to Bernadette. Guess that million-dollar question was different.”

I ask, “What happened?”

“My pops turned red, slapped me so hard I saw Africa.”

“Damn.”

“Then had me on my knees praying so long my skin was raw and bleeding. Excommunicated me from the rest of the family and sent me to bed without dinner.”

All I can say is, “Wow. Your old man beat you down.”

“Yep.”

“What did your mom do?”

“What all weak women do. Cried. Nothing really.”

Nicole says, “Maybe we should change—”

“It's okay, Nicole,” Ayanna maintains her cool pace. “My old man let me know where women stood in his house. He let me know what value my opinion had. I was to be seen and not be heard.”

Nicole is squeezing Ayanna's hand, consoling her.

Ayanna says, “It's cool though. That's just what men do when their true weaknesses are exposed.”

I say, “Sounds like you've had a few experiences.”

“A few.” She clears her throat before she goes on. “Enough to know that when men are proven intellectually impotent, when they realize they have no power, they turn Cro-Magnon and resort to violence.”

Ayanna smiles at Nicole. Nicole returns that smile. They look like teacher and student.

Ayanna folds her arms tight as she walks.

I say, “So you are an atheist.”

“And if I am?”

“You could end up on the express train to West Hell talking like that.”

“Well, my fax machine is working, pager is on my hip, cell phone is turned on, and my home number is listed. I'm not hiding from anybody. If I'm doing wrong, all He has to do is call. Until then, I'm telling it like I see it.”

“Yes or no, are you an atheist?”

“Is it any of your fucking business?”

Nicole butts in, “Hold up, hold up, hold up.”

We stop. She takes a deep breath, faces us, and smiles.

“It's a little nippy.” Nicole twists her lips. “I need to change the temperature around here.”

She floats to me and kisses me. Holds me and kisses me as if I were the only one who matters. Ayanna is watching, her bottom teeth clamped down on her top lip.

Then Nicole goes to Ayanna. She kisses her. Holds her ass and kisses her. Ayanna's eyes ease shut, her shoulders relax, and she coos, melts under Nicole's touch.

My heart races. Thump-thumpity-thump- THUMP-THUMP.

When Nicole is done, she turns and looks at me, licking her lips, her eyes taking my temperature, checking out my reaction. My heart slows, downshifts, calms.

I tell myself that it's not so bad. That wasn't so bad. I can deal.

Nicole says, “I did it. I put it out there. Now it's real for both of you, for all of us. Let's not pretend. No more bullshitting.”

She takes a deep breath.

I do the same.

Then Ayanna.

Nicole's voice is sweet, loving. “We're faking like we're hanging out to talk about racism, or sexism, the absence or presence of a supreme being, yada, yada, and tonight, well, you know what this is all about. Love. Both of you know what I want. No secret about that. No hidden agenda is my mantra. I love you both beyond reason.”

She tells us how she is a soul divided, a love divided, and she speaks from her gut. Yes, she is divided. But so am I. And I assume so is Ayanna. Nicole is the knife that has split us so seamlessly; the knife that will cut away all that won't fit in this world of hers.

She says, “I want you both without condition. If anybody can't deal, doesn't want to go into the night with me, doesn't want to experience something beautiful and new, to have our own corner of utopia, you can back away. No harm, no foul.”

I swallow. Nicole jingles her bracelets at Ayanna; Ayanna shifts and pushes her full lips up into a smile. Then she jingles her bracelets back at Nicole.

“And we have rules,” Nicole says, matching Ayanna's cool expression. “Rules. Not a free for all. The rules will keep this from being chaotic, we know what to expect, or not to expect, from each other.”

Nicole touches Ayanna's hair, moves it from her face. Ayanna's hard, attorney eyes are gone.

I ask, “So this is more complicated than a menage à trois?”

“I never told you, but I hate that term, what it implies,” Nicole says. She grins as if she's pleased with my question. She goes on, “I love both of you because both of you are about the heart, and both of you have come in my life for a purpose, a positive purpose, and I want all of our souls to evolve through loving each other. Love is our journey. Not sex. But the wholeness we can get by being open and honest.”

Nicole takes Ayanna's hand in her left hand, mine in her right.

She says, “Before we go on, I don't want to assume. I have to hear two yeses.”

Ayanna's eyes come to mine, and mine go to hers. Two yeses float in air and meet halfway.

Nicole whispers, “Kiss. Seal it with a kiss.”

Her words are simple, intense, wanting, so very hypnotic.

“For me. Kiss. For each other.” She sounds like a spiritual advisor. “We have to tear down one wall at a time. Replace the old with the new. Then we create something wonderful.”

In a daze, I stare at Ayanna, the streetlights brightening up half of her face, giving majesty to her heart-colored mane. She moves toward me, licks her lips over and over. She's nervous. So am I.

We meet halfway and she tiptoes, eyes open, her liberal fragrance easing to dance with my contemporary aroma, and we kiss like Bogey and Bacall in
The Maltese Falcon,
or Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman in
Notorious,
stay eye-to-eye, soul-to-soul, as we press lip-to-lip, no tongue, just her breath mixing with mine, and that breath being blown away by the breeze. No hands touching faces, no groin pressing groin. Her skin is as cool as the night, lips are soft, and like mine, they could use a little moisture, but they are full and soft.

Nicole is beaming. “That was ... sweet. Wow.”

In minutes, she's taken us from being strangers swapping insults at a table to two people pressing lips. Ayanna had said that a dick wasn't more powerful than a pussy; she failed to mention whose pussy had the power.

Ayanna isn't so bad, not at all. I understand her mood. She wants the same thing I want, and no matter how many degrees she has, she can't intellectualize this situation to be in her favor. She has no power, just as I hold no keys to this prison we share. She wants me to leave, as I want her to leave. We both want to be the last man, or woman, standing.

Nicole jokes, “But don't even think about doing that on your own.”

After that, hand-in-hand, Nicole becomes our cen terpiece, our Dorothy on the first steps of this yellow brick road. We walk at a brisk pace into the breeze, skipping over the litter that is blowing in the street, move in sync without talking. Now everybody seems warm, as if they just had a Shiatsu massage at Glen Ivy. So warm our breath fogs in long streams as we exhale.

I know who Ayanna is. She's a thief. And a thief comes to steal and kill and destroy. She's my competition. Be it in the flesh or of the spirit, competition is about death. I want her spirit dead. If going through with tonight, if giving Nicole what she needs will kill Ayanna, then the ride will be worth the price of the ticket.

We don't rush right into it. Nicole still wants to keep it a nice date night.

I do too.

So we stop at an adult video over on Broadway. Xanadu has glittering neon lights that call us into that cul-de-sac of erotica, that's where we're led.

Nicole and Ayanna stop by the condom rack. I follow, pass by vibrators the size of a Louisville slugger, and stop near a magazine rack, skip over
Out,
not into k.d. lang, and pick up
Clikque
because it has twenty good-looking sisters on the cover. I flip through the pages until I get to an article about beautiful black women loving down in Atlanta, all naked and loving each other in a hot tub.

I close the magazine, put it back, and look at Nicole, then at Ayanna.

Nicole asks, “What's better, Rough Riders or Barebacks?”

Ayanna makes a face. “I never liked that brand. Those irritate me. The Rough Riders with the bumpy things on them feel pretty good.”

Nicole shifts to one foot and raises a brow. “Oh really?”

“From what I remember.”

No one asks me.

Nicole jokes that Lambskins stink, are too messy, then winks at me and proclaims that their lubrication isn't something a person would want to taste, no matter how intoxicated. Without lowering her voice, she announces that another brand steals all the feeling, is less real than a vibrator.

I've never seen this open side of Nicole.

Ayanna picks up a package of Midnight condoms. “What about these?”

Nicole chuckles. “I like it black, but not that damn black.”

Ayanna says, “Obviously you like ‘em high yellow.”

Then in Ayanna's eyes I see her thinking, wrestling with a monstrous, difficult thought. She keeps moving, goes from the section with battery-operated vaginas, to the love creams, the butt plugs, to the XXX CD-ROMS. No matter which way she turns in this den of high-tech fuckology, a small room stocked with a thousand tools for everyone from the novice to the professional fuckologist, she can't escape the carnality.

Then she goes to Nicole. I'm right there, standing next to Nicole, holding her hand.

“What brand do you use with—” Ayanna stops on a dime, then clears her throat in retreat, but it's too late to retract, so she moves forward with her words, “What brand did—do you two use?”

I tell her, “We don't.”

“Oh.”

Nicole says, “It's okay, sweetie. We've been together too long.”

“You live here, and he lives elsewhere, travels a lot. Have—never mind.”

“Do we need a quick sidebar?” Nicole asks.

“Nah. Court is in recess.”

Ayanna blows Nicole a kiss, throws her a wink. Nicole smiles.

Ayanna proclaims, “I want to dance.”

Nicole blinks a few times. That caught her off-guard. “Where?”

“Anywhere in San Francisco that serves a decent cosmopolitan.”

“If we go over the bridge, let's take him to the Crazy Horse.”

“What's that?” I ask.

“Like your favorite hangout in Atlanta,” Nicole answers.

“Medu Bookstore?” I ask.

“Nope. Magic City.”

Ayanna cuts in, “Let's take him down Telegraph to the White Horse instead. That'll blow his mind.”

Nicole laughs. “He's not ready for that. Crazy Horse. He likes strip shows.”

I ask, “Okay, what's up with the White Horse?”

Nicole says, “This ... it's a ... a secret world. Not many can handle it.”