Between Lovers (25 page)

She stood there forever, which in reality was no more than thirty seconds, then turned and looked over the congregation, over all of our friends and families, then told the church that we had to talk before we went any further.

A different tone of ooos and
ahhs
filled the sanctuary.

She walked away, hands holding the sides of her dress so she wouldn't misstep and fall on her face, her train separating us by almost ten feet.

I followed her into a side room, and before I could close and lock the door, she was crying, talking with her hands, rambling incomplete sentences, words coming out as fast as her tears were falling.

My voice trembled when I told her, “You're just scared. The jitters have you confused.”

“No. I'm clear.”

“Let's ... all the people here ... your sorors ... the presents ...”

“Damn the presents,” she snapped. Now she was angry. “You never listen to me, do you?”

I backed off, tried to compose myself. “I'm listening, I'm listening.”

Sweat gathered under my collar, in my armpits.

I pinched my nostrils, adjusted my bow tie, waited for her to pull herself together and vocalize her burdens.

“I love you,” she said, her voice spent. “I want to be your wife. I want to have your babies. Just not today. I need to work things out.”

“All you have to say are two words: I do.”

“I can't.”

By then, people were yelling and tapping on the door. We ignored them.

I lowered my head, ran my fingers through my short hair, wished that it was long enough to grip and yank out at the roots.

Outside, the pianist was playing an instrumental version of “Amazing Grace,” no doubt doing that because he had no idea what to do in a moment like that, because an Anita Baker or a Luther Vandross song just didn't fit the bill.

Nicole rocked and hummed the old-time spiritual, closed her eyes, joined in on, “How sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me ...”

Her eyes opened, came to mine. She smiled.

“Okay,” I said. “I can deal with whatever you're going through.”

“I can't. That's the problem. I can't deal with this”—with that she gestured at herself, at her heart, at the church itself, then toward heaven, before she motioned toward me and said—“and you.”

She slid the engagement ring from her finger, laid it on the table. A 2.5 carat emerald solitaire cut in platinum. Out there, resting in my best man's pocket, was a pinpoint diamond eternity band.

She said, “There are things I want to do, things I think I have to experience to be sure, and being married and doing them won't be right. Being married and not being able to experience them won't be right either.”

Nicole leaned forward and kissed me. Held me for a few minutes. Held me until people began knocking on the door, asking if we were okay.

She pulled her lips inward, messed up her lipstick, smeared it all over her white teeth, said, “So this is what happens when Sleeping Beauty wakes up.”

It took her over an hour to apologize to her bridesmaids, women who had taken sabbaticals, used up vacation time, a couple who were more concerned with who was going to reimburse them for all the money they had spent on plane fare and the useless dresses they had bought.

In the midst of all the turmoil, Nicole blew her nose, pulled her hair back into a ponytail and changed from silk and chiffon to ripped jeans and a Memphis in May T-shirt.

She had to have a word with her mother, a stem woman who gave me harsh eyes and extreme silence, posture that accused me of manly wrongdoings. So stereotypical. Nicole was forthright with her mom. Right there in church, she spoke her piece. Her mother's blood pressure went up so high she had to be taken to the hospital, prayer on her tongue and a Bible clutched to her chest. I do believe that was the last day they had words. Nicole left us all at the altar.

She tells me that with ten American dollars and a two-minute dance, I eased her to the edge and she woke up on the other side. A side of her that she needed to explore.

When I'm done showering, it's quiet. Too damn quiet. I wonder if the enemy has gone to lick her wounds. With reluctance, I call her name. No answer. No sounds. As I dry off, I open the bathroom door; steam wafts out into the cooler air and evaporates like hope does for those whose faith is weak.

Ayanna sits naked in the middle of the bed, the darkness on her breasts creating two midnight bull‘s-eyes. Her body faces east, eyes closed, palms to the heavens, either meditating or drying her nails.

My pictures of Nicole are spread around her in a perfect circle. A shrine for her black Madonna.

I go to the table. To my laptop. Try to think and type.

Ayanna comes to life and hurries to the bathroom. She takes a short shower, then comes back in the room with a white towel around her body, sits on the bed and rubs lotion on her flesh.

She whispers, “I want to know what she feels with you. I need to feel what she feels so I can understand what's going on inside her head.”

I stop typing for a moment, breathing halts, my soul both jarred and stimulated by her words. Heat flourishes in my stomach, right between my navel and my groin, in that dangerous area.

She asks, “Don't you want to know what it is about my tongue that made her leave you and move in with me?”

Finally, I breathe.

Ayanna speaks in a soft voice. “She told me that the first time she kissed me, she felt like a virgin all over again. And when I touched her, when she touched me, we both exploded. All the other sex I had ever experienced just fell away. No other love compares.”

I type more words, use this computer as I always use it, to escape from the real world, to create my world where I control everything that everyone does, every word they say, every motion they make, a place where women do what I say, give me what I want without reservation.

“So much about her I admire. Haven't you noticed? I do my hair like hers. Looks better on her, though, don't you think? My bracelets, Mexican silver, just like hers. We bought them for each other when were in Puerto Vallarta. We went to the jazz festival down there, you know that?”

I inhale a smell that mimics Nicole's fragrance as well. The sounds. The aroma. Even certain inflections of Ayanna's voice ring of Nicole.

“The first time we made love, she laughed and told me it was like honeymoon sex.”

That stuns me. Honeymoon sex has always been our phrase. Our pillow talk. My anger rises.

Ayanna goes on, “I'd never felt anything like that before in my life. She was my first too. That night I felt like a virgin all over again. All the other times I'd made love, they didn't compare, couldn't even be remembered. Every other lover became faceless. Went away in a poof. Just ceased to exist.”

This is disturbing.

She whispers, “Ask me when that was. Ask me. Scared? Ask me?”

My breath catches in my throat.

She whispers, “Ask me if I was at your wedding. Ask me to give you the details. Ask me to tell you how pitiful you looked when you came back in and had to tell everybody that there was no wedding.”

I imagine taking piano wire to her neck.

Ayanna is so persistent. So unrelenting.

“I want to be Nicole. Does that make sense?”

Hair the color of broken hearts and a new fire. Fascinating.

“If I have to be her to understand her, yes. If I have to feel you inside me to understand her, yes, I'm willing to go that far.”

We stare.

In perfect French she mimics Nicole,
“Baise moi.”

I'm startled and she knows it.

Ayanna pulls the towel from her body, again showing her flesh, but this time her tight eyes tell me there is a difference. She's serious.

“Show me what makes you special,” she says. “I'll show you the same.”

For a moment, she has the glow of a thousand angels in her catlike eyes, in her sensuous lips. Her smugness remains, and that too has its own brand of attractiveness. I stare at her body. With every breath I inhale her scent. I feel vibrations from her brain working in so many directions, clicking and clacking and clacking and clicking, whirring and searching for deficiencies in me, trying to rip me apart.

“Baise moi,”
she repeats over and over.
“Mange moi,
if you want to.”

She refuses to lose, even when she has lost. This war will never end.

She touches her breasts, pinching the darkest parts. Once again I stare at the most beautiful nipples I've ever seen. Blackberries that stand high, calling out for my tongue, for my hands, for my warm mouth.

I get on my knees, crawl toward the foot of the bed, creep toward her wine country.

She scoots back on the bed until her back touches the pillows, skin moist with oil, moves her legs apart, again showing me how limber she is, turning her body into a capital letter Y, testing my reaction, offering me a full view of her own ayanna, her beautiful flower that sends me the sweet scent of a wanting rose.

She touches herself, opens her beautiful flower for me to see.

I get up on the bed, move toward her.

The phone rings.

I back away, let the phone stop ringing. In French, Ayanna invites me to her mystery again.

She watches me watch her. I watch her watch me.

Then there's a knock at the door. I jump. A very soft, feminine knock. Nicole's cadence and rhythm. Before I can get to the door, it opens. An Asian housekeeper is startled when she sees me naked, more startled when she sees Ayanna on the bed naked, and closes the door real quick. The way Ayanna didn't move or cover herself let me know that she was hoping it was Nicole.

I sit at the foot of the bed, close to Ayanna. I want to fuck her hard, sex her into submission. It's a man thing. It comes with the testosterone.

She says, “Scared?”

“Let's ... let's talk a minute or two.”

I ask Ayanna about her first meeting Nicole, when they were at mile sixteen.

I ask, “What did you say to her?”

“Told her she had beautiful lips. I love lips. Then I asked her which way did she swing.”

“And?”

“She laughed and we kept on running and talking, looking at each other, admiring each other.”

My breathing gets ragged for a moment. I say, “So it went down like a man and a woman.”

“Yep.”

“Who was the man, who was the woman?”

She laughs at me like my words are banal, typical.

I ask, “Your family back in Kalamazoo, or Detroit, or wherever you're from, know about you and Nicole?”

“What is this, an interview with a lesbian?”

“Just trying to understand what I don't understand.”

“Don't you get it? It's a secret world. You're not supposed to understand.”

Her eyes go back to the pictures in her shrine. Another Amtrak whistles outside.

I ask, “This situation between me, you, and Nicole—”

“It's normal.” She clears her throat. “That's what you were going to ask, right?”

“Yeah.”

“There's always one who doesn't know if she's coming out of the closet or going back in.” She shifts like she's disturbed. “A true lesbian wouldn't go behind a man. That's humiliation. An outright violation. A lesbian wouldn't let her woman go somewhere else.”

“But you did.”

“I did.”

“By your definition, you've got one foot in, and one foot out, doing a hokey-pokey yourself.”

She pushes her lips up into a phony smile. Throws in a thin chuckle to make it seem real. When she's done, her eyes settle on the pictures again.

I ask, “What's it like when I leave from up here?”

“When she comes back to our beautiful home and you go back to your shack in Carson?”

“Yep.”

“She says I get in PMS mode. I won't touch her. She's either distant or too polite. We're both uncomfortable because I know where she's been.”

“Fights?”

“Nope. She throws herself into her job, works late, and I pretty much do the same. She's wondering who's making love to her old lady while she's out making love.”

“You creepy-creep-creep to see somebody else while she's with me?”

“Would you blame me?”

I say, “You avoid answering the tough questions.”

“Nope, when she crawls from your fuckhaven to our heaven, she knows that she has to scrub your fingerprints off her skin and clean your smell off her flesh.”

Then she looks down at a photo of me and Nicole at the Book Expo in Chicago, us standing and smiling with other writers and their loved ones. Man, woman, man, woman, Adam, Eve, Adam, Eve.

Ayanna says, “Let me cross-examine you for a change. What are you doing when you know she's with me night after night? I doubt if you're getting a good night's sleep.”

I stop and think. Remember one-night stands with women who, from the first handshake, either sounded like, smelled like, had something about them that took me back to Nicole. They had to remind me of Nicole. A time or two I thought I could replace Nicole with a doppelgänger. No matter how brilliant or how beautiful, sunlight always made them have a different look in the morning. We all look different in the morning.

Ayanna doesn't wait for my answer, maybe she reads my mind, or already knows, before she turns on her side, pulls a pillow in front of her body. “The first time I was with a woman I was so scared.”

“Why?”