Between Lovers (22 page)

Paramedics. A body bag. Death is out on the concrete, dancing the cabbage patch.

For a moment, I hope that dead body is Ayanna. In my mind I see myself standing next to Nicole, holding her hand while she howls over a fresh grave on a rainy day. Then I have another fear, a fear that there will be another Ayanna, another beautiful flower in Nicole's life, someone who steps in to pacify a desire that Nicole has, one that I can't control. Wonder if there will be Ayanna after Ayanna.

Then I feel ashamed of what I just felt, of that selfishness. Then I'm afraid of myself.

Nicole grips my left hand with her right, holds the steering wheel just as tight with her left. I grip her hand just as tight. All traces of alcohol have gone away. I'm feeling sober. Nicole has been in sober mode ever since we started this chase.

A black Mercedes has overturned. A single car accident. I can't remember what Ayanna drives.

Nicole whispers, “She owns an SUV. A black SUV.”

“Not her?”

“Not her. Not her.”

A moment passes.

She says, “Thanks.”

“For what?”

“I wasn't talking to you.”

“Okay.”

“But thank you too.”

“For what?”

“For holding my hand. For caring. For putting up with me once again.”

I hold her hand again. She holds mine. Seven years of history. Seven quality years.

We leave the freeway. Get caught at a red light. She pulls out her c-phone, pages Ayanna.

She puts her hand on mine. “Do you see what I'm doing?”

“What?”

“What you did to me. What you taught me. Encouraging her to another level.”

“You're pushing her and you need to stop it.”

“Too late. And why would you want me to stop? I've become what you wanted me to be.”

“Look in your rearview mirror; that's me way behind you, waving. You've passed me up.”

“Yeah, I guess I have. Hold my hand, let me take you with me.”

I nod, swallow, run my hands over my hair, yank on a single twist. “I said that to you one night.”

“When you seduced me inside your Jeep.”

I almost snap again, but I sit back and rub my temples, decide not to beat that dead horse. She always says she was seduced. That evening I'd cooked her dinner, made salmon, saffron rice, salad with strawberry and wine dressing, ate that as we sipped white zinfandel. And we kissed while we did the dishes. Kissed until our lips were raw, pressed up against each other and did a slow grind for hours. When we got in my Jeep so I could take her home, we didn't plan it, but we started kissing, and I pulled her to me, touched her here, kissed her there, and we went all the way. After that we ended up in my tub, her back to me, while we sipped more wine. If that's seduction, then so be it.

I don't snap, but I do say, “It always goes back to the Jeep. Light's green.”

She pulls away. “Now I want you to work with me on this, let me show you new things.”

“So,” I say with a thin smile, “the student becomes the teacher.”

“Yes, you could say that. I'm studying my sexuality, trying to find the boundaries of my own desires. I'm not ashamed. Love me for who I am, not who you want me to be.”

“What are your boundaries?”

“Don't know. Really don't know.” She runs her hand over her locks, sighs her way back to the land of the calm. “Afraid because I don't know. Excited because I don't know. Because I feel so free. All my life I've been taught that sex is taboo, that my body is dirty, now I'm questioning it all.”

“Do you move from watching the girls inside a bathroom stall to becoming one of them?”

“Are you insane? Hell, no. I'd never do anything like that.”

“But you tried an ecstasy. You popped a forty-dollar pill.”

“Didn't you used to get high? You never tried anything a couple of times?”

Again she pages Ayanna. Then I let her talk, let her calm for a while, don't want to be accused of not being attentive.

Finally I ask, “Why are you with Ayanna?”

“The same reason you're with me.”

“Because?”

“She loves me too much to leave.”

“But you left me.”

“Then I invited you to see some of my world. And you came.”

“Yeah, I came running. That makes me stupid.”

“No, it shows how much you care for me.”

She hits the outskirts of downtown Oaktown, goes over to 11th, cruises the side street in front of the Bench and Bar, a multiethnic bar where a hundred average-looking men in all shapes and sizes are out front hugging other men the same way I hug Nicole. A couple walks out of the club, both looking like hip-hop Beach Boys, laughing, smiling, sweat on their faces, sharing a cigarette.

I say, “You're not going in that fucking place, are you?”

“Don't worry.”

“I've heard about places like this. Damn. Never knew they were real.”

“That's because you tune out everything that fucks with your manhood.”

I choose not to comment on that. I could, should, but I don't. Too tired to fight right now. And her driving is already bad enough. If we make it through the night, I'll debate her charge on solid ground.

She slows down long enough to check the cars, passes by two men flirting, another in the parking lot creating his own steam by taking a hot leak on cold pavement. Nicole doesn't see anyone she knows. She drives through downtown and zooms over to Telegraph, heads into what looks like Tupacville, drives around the block to a dim and dark club that reminds me of a bodega in New York. The club has closed, but when we follow the jovial hip-hop crowd, we see at least one hundred people are in the back parking lot, mostly men, all black. Looks like a FUBU and Tommy Hilfiger convention. I expect to see a crop of Little Richards and Liberaces at a place like this, but they look like rappers, most are hardcore and hip-hop to the bone. An LL Cool J-looking brother in ripped shorts and a long leather coat is exchanging saliva and rubbing testicles with a brother who is larger than Suge Knight.

A grossed-out sound comes out of me so fast it scares me.

Nicole jerks, as if she's just realizing I'm still in the car, swallows, takes a hard breath, says an uncomfortable, “You okay?”

“This looks like prom night at Folsom State Prison.”

“Too close for comfort?”

“Too.”

She pulls over, stops right in the thick of things, takes out her c-phone and dials Ayanna's c-phone, gets no answer, then she pages Ayanna again. While we sit with the streetlight brightening our faces, the crowd shifts, the way a private culture does when they sense an outsider. Eyes come to the car. A woman in a long red dress passes by and looks down at our faces without shame.

Nicole rolls down the passenger side window, asks, “Have you seen Ayanna down here?”

“Not tonight.”

The woman in red smiles. The alcohol on her breath is sweet, mixes with the heat and tropical aroma inside this car. She looks at me and asks, “Tops, bottoms, or are you versatile?”

I respond, “What?”

“ ‘Cause I can go with the flow. Know what I mean?”

Nicole jumps in, “Not your type, Perri. He's mine.”

“What's up with you and Ayanna? Heard y‘all went up to the Russian River and had—”

“Just back off.”

“Well, excuse me.” The woman in red stares me down. “He sure looks familiar.”

Her Adam's apple is larger than mine. She laughs, shakes her moneymaker as she goes back to the crowd, hugs up with a brother who looks like a steroid factory with reddish cornrows.

Nicole says, “Why does this bother you and watching women doesn't?”

“This isn't part of my world, not my reality.”

Nicole says, “This is the real world. Not a subset. It's part of the whole she-bang.”

I ask, “You and Ayanna hang out here?”

She doesn't answer. She knows that wasn't a question.

“There are a couple more spots down in Berkeley—”

“Hell, no. Take me to my room.”

She nods, sighs. “Sweetie, no, that is not one of my hangouts. I'd rather go hiking than clubbing, you know that. And regardless of what you think, I'm tolerant, but I still don't care for certain clicks.”

“What do you mean you don't care for certain clits?”

“Clicks. C-l-i-c-k-s. Not clits; clicks.”

“Yeah, whatever. Take me to my room.”

I'm silent as she drives up Telegraph to Broadway, then through downtown, the edges of Chinatown, back toward the Waterfront. She wants me to go with her, to go deeper into her secret world, but I can't. It's best for me to go back to my own nest tonight.

A thousand police are out, patrolling the crowd of people who are leaving Oak Tree, a club across the street. A lot of women are together, some are with men, some not, and vice versa, and now I'm questioning every relationship I see. Nicole drives the cobblestone road at Jack London Square and parks in front of the hotel.

I reach for the handle to get out, but she asks me to wait. Her voice struggles, as if Ayanna's leaving on a sour note and my leaving on a similar tune will wreck her to the core.

I see her brain working, hear it clicking and whirring, her logical side busy trying to solve problems.

Nicole says, “When I'm with you I think about babies. I still want to have a daughter and give her all the love that I didn't get as a child. I want to be a better mother than the one I have.”

“Well, without a trip to the jerk-off bank, you can't have that with another woman.”

“You're the only man I want. The only one I've ever wanted.”

“Why can't I be the only one you want, dammit?”

“I'm attracted to you and her. I feel that both of you are my soul mates.”

“Adam and Eve.”

“Well, it's not like Eve had a helluva lotta choices.”

She looks at me, crosses her eyes, sticks out her tongue.

I don't see shit funny. On her hands, I smell Ayanna's dried nectar.

Nicole is watching me, her lips pulled in tight, trying to read my mind; she has to go find Ayanna, her fidgeting tells me that, but she's reaching, trying to not lose me. She stalls some more.

She says, “This morning, when I started crying, you want to know why?”

“I already know. Emotional overflow. Because of Ayanna.”

“I knew you thought that. I didn't want to say it then because, it seemed perverted or something. Us naked, in the shower, you all up inside of me, and I start thinking about somebody else.”

I repeat, “Somebody else.”

“Your gray eyes are turning green.” She wipes her eyes, maybe anticipating tears, but there are no tears. “My daddy. I think his spirit ran through me or something. One minute I was feeling as good as a woman can feel, then the next second I was thinking about that 4 a.m. call I got, when momma told me that daddy was gone. Don't know why I thought about him then, of all times, but that was why I started boo-hooing like a baby.”

That hurt slows me down.

I speak just above a whisper. “You miss him.”

“Always. He understood me. He'd love me no matter what. We were so close. Pops knew he looked good in that blue suit. I knew he was gone before I picked up the phone. Felt it. We had that connection. His asthma had been acting up and the night before when I talked to him and he said he was okay, I didn't believe him, no matter how much he laughed. I was crying before I answered the phone.”

“I know. I was in the bed next to you.”

“I'm glad you were. So glad you were.”

“Held you for hours.”

“That 4 a.m. phone call that everybody gets. It's inevitable. Sometimes I wonder who's gonna make that call for me. You know, all of us are gonna have someone calling for us, telling everybody who cares that we're no longer available for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. I wonder who is gonna call for me. Who will cry? I know my mother won't.”

“She'll cry the hardest.”

Nicole disagrees. “She'll sell tickets so people can spit on my grave.”

I pause to let that moment go away before I say, “Let's live forever.”

“Are you nucking futs? Can you imagine how bad my skin will look after a hundred years? I'll look like Cicely Tyson did in that Jane Pittman movie.”

We both laugh.

She makes an ugly face and twists her lips to one side, “Varicose veins and skin that sags like ... like your balls do when you get out of the shower. Talk about a scary sight.”

“Oh, you got jokes.”

“I got jokes.” She hums out the sweetest sound. “You know what I miss the most about my dad?”

“What?”

“When we used to go hunt rabbit. I was a straight-up tomboy. He took me down to Olive Branch, Mississippi, sometimes over to Pine Bluff, Arkansas, taught me how to use a gun, let me skin Bugs Bunny, let me be Elmer Fudd and cook rabbit too. He did everything for me. I was his baby. Momma and I never had that kind of bond. He let me be me, never told me I had to be who he wanted me to be. Never told me I had to be a doctor or an engineer, that was momma. Always so concerned about image. Always concerned about what her friends think. What her sorority members think. What the people at her church think.”

“I know.”

“Not like my daddy was. Daddy said if they don't like it, screw ‘em. He was so funny.”

“I know.”

“You remind me of him. All the good things I found in him, I see in you too.”