Between Lovers (26 page)

“I was married, for one. In love with my hubby for two. Thought people would find out and start throwing stones. Thought I was gonna be shoveling coal in hell. It's nerve-racking. Thinking about doing it is stressful enough. You hem, you haw, you struggle, you lead her on, you back away, do this emotional cha-cha over and over, drive yourself crazy, then you decide you're going for it.”

She laughs a little.

I laugh too. I ask, “Sounds like what a man goes through getting a woman to give up her virginity.”

“Yep. Same struggle, same fear, because in that way you are a virgin. But this is much deeper. Causes confusion. When I got up the nerve to go there, I was liking it, but was thinking about all kinds of stuff when I was having an orgasm.”

“Stuff like what?”

“Heaven. Hell. My husband. My parents. Looked down at her and wondered why she liked doing that so much and she was a woman. Shouldn't her tongue be swollen by now. If she's gonna go run and tell everybody. If she's gonna get attached and go psycho. My mind was all over the place.”

I rub my hands together. “Was that first time eight years ago with Nicole?”

“You're trying to lay out a chronological map.”

“I guess. Yeah.”

She gives me half a smile. “Can you handle the truth?”

I nod. “I've been pretty good at it so far.”

“I met Nicole first. But she wasn't in this zone yet. Curious, but scared.” She laughs and hand-combs her hair. She does that a lot. “But my first time was with a Latina I met on-line.”

“Wait a minute. Thought you said Nicole was—”

“Nicole was the first that
I
made love to. The only one. I let others
make love to me.
Get it?”

It takes me a moment, a few blinks, but in the end I say, “Got it.”

“Good. The short yellow bus is catching up.”

I repeat, “Latina?”

“Pretty exotic woman. Ten years older. Professor at Berkeley. She was married.”

“Your own south-of-the-border Mrs. Robinson.”

“With two children. Don't let a wedding ring and a baby carriage fool you.”

“You're lying.”

“I can go on-line right now and show you things at
www.gayblackfemale.com
that'll blow you away. I can pull up a zillion personal ads out at YAHOO! by married women. All ages. All races.”

“No thanks. This is ... wild. I'm ... learning. Why didn't you get with a sister? You crossed over.”

“In more ways than one.” She laughs a little. “This is how it goes; lots of ‘curious' women get their carnal knowledge on with a woman of another race. Especially my sisters. Black people and sexuality. Sex is so taboo with us, that's why half us are walking around with fucked-up heads.”

I listen to the hum coming from near the window facing Jack London Square.

She talks on, “When we were done, she left the Hyatt, went back to her crib in Berkeley and fed her kids oatmeal and turkey bacon; I went back to folding socks in East Oaktown.”

“With lotion on your back.”

“With lotion on my back.”

I ask, “Why the game?”

“I was scared. Curious, scared. In the end, it works out better that way. That way your secret doesn't have to come back home with you. You don't get embarrassed. You try it, see if it's your thing. You don't get judged. You don't get the stares. It's almost like interracial dating.”

“Don't get it.”

“You know how some sisters go out with white guys, or brothers hang out with white girls, but you never see them because they go kick it in European places, hang out where they won't get busted? Same thing. You're ashamed to be different, so you don't bring the drama to your space, you invade theirs.”

“I see. I think.”

“She spoiled me rotten. She taught me a lot of things. Things I've taught Nicole.”

Ayanna talks and talks, each word sweeter than the last; she drags her fingernails down my back, arouses me from the inside out, gets my full attention, then she touches her breasts in a hypnotic way, her fingers circling the dark parts. My mouth waters. Without speaking, she offers them to me. I swallow and know that I have the eyes of a starving man. I tingle. Nature makes me tingle for her.

Ayanna puts her face close to mine, whispers, “Mange moi? A real man would jump to it.”

I ignore her street-level psychology, whisper, “Tell me about your marriage first.”

“My marriage? What's up with that?”

“I want to understand you. Might want to find out what makes you so special.”

“I know you do. I saw the way you looked at me last night.”

She sits in a pool of pictures, tells me about her tumultuous marriage. In a soft, matter-of-fact tone, she tells me about arguments that she can't remember. But that's the way relationships go. And when she told him about her curiosity, he flipped out. Slapped her and she ran to some friend's house.

I say, “Why didn't you call the police?”

“Call the police on the police? Get real. OPD takes care of their own.”

She tells me that she made sure he was at work before she went back home, and when she got there all of her clothes and shoes and law school books were piled in the bathtub and soaked in bleach.

She says, “That night was when he was shot.”

I don't say anything for a moment. Then I ask, “You didn't have any kids?”

I ask because, well just because I haven't seen any, doesn't mean she didn't have any and ship them back to Detroit. She doesn't have stretch marks, but that doesn't mean anything.

She lets out a sad chuckle. “Heck no. Glad we didn't have any kids. That would've been horrible. I know women who have had their kids turn against them. Lose respect. Call them names. Kids shouldn't be involved. It's complicated and draining. Regular divorces are ugly. When you're dealing with a woman leaving her husband for another woman, male ego is shattered, manhood is ruptured, somebody's little feelings get hurt and it turns mega-ugly. Much better when no kids are involved.”

“Sounds like you have strong emotions. The kids thing, I mean.”

“I've represented a few. Everybody loses when you have rug rats. That's a fact.”

I rub my palms together, think so many thoughts, each a firecracker going off inside my skull.

Ayanna says, “I hate Nicole. God, I hate that one-foot-in-the-closet, one-foot-out-of-the-closet bitch. Nicole lives inside her own little cunt. That's her world.”

I pull my lips in. I would say something, but at times I've felt the same way.

“She's acting like a fucking sociopath. Has no conscience. No feeling about how she uses people to get what she wants.”

My mouth opens, but I keep my reaction to myself.

“I hate her lack of acknowledgment. She barely holds my hand when others are around.”

I say, “She's been holding your hand.”

“That's because you're around. She keeps all of us huddled up together, stays next to you so people don't know what to think. Makes you look like a pimp. Dances with me a hot second, then rubs up on you half the night.”

“I thought it was the other way around. Thought she was more comfortable with you.”

She sighs. I look at the clock.

Then Ayanna speaks, sounds sweet sixteen, sounds hopeful and damaged, “I always wanted to be intoxicated with the feeling of love; I just never thought about the hangover.”

I remind myself that she's the enemy. That this is a war. And in war the objective is to win.

Her pager goes off again. I look at it, then at her. My phone rings. She knows it's Nicole looking for both of us. Ayanna knows that and she smiles, moves the pillow away, gives the bed her back. Her legs apart again, so limber and beautiful.
“Baise moi. Mange moi.”

She's done talking. It shows in her face.

She puts her hands under her breasts, raises them until the nipples point at me.

Her nipples, so erect.

My penis rises.

She spreads her legs, shows me her wonderful ayanna.

I move toward her.

CLICK.

She jerks, pulls her legs together, sits up and looks across the room. “What was that noise?”

She looks toward the dining room, sees my computer. Then on that same table she sees my black tape recorder. I walk to the table, push rewind, let it whir back in time; then I push play. She hears her voice. My recorder has been on for the last hour. I've captured all of her taunting, all of her vulgarity, all of her confessions, every word.

She jumps to her feet, comes toward me with slow steps, fear and hostility in her eyes. I hold the tape away from her. We stare each other down.

“Give me the tape.”

“I'll just play it for Nicole.”

I expect her to scream, shout, to double-up her fists and get ready to rumble, but she doesn't. She gives me another look of touché. A nod that says she admires the simplicity.

She says, “That was very Machiavellian of you.”

She deliberates, looks like her mind is flipping through the pages of
The Art of War,
hunting for age-old wisdom on this kind of conflict, searching for how to succeed.

“I know people,” she says with extreme calmness. “I've represented criminals and a lot of them are still my friends. You don't give me that tape, I make one phone call, and you're fucked for life.”

We're back in our own little Tahatchapie, two prisoners staring each other down in the yard.

I don't respond.

She pulls her lips in and nods. I imagine her standing before the judge doing the same thing, the tip of her finger on the edge of her full lower lip, barely touching as she thinks of a new strategy.

She says, “You know what I was going to do? I was going to go to Nicole smelling like you.”

I say nothing. She doesn't sound mad.

“I thought you were weak.” She chuckles, shakes her head, does that hand to hair thing again. “I underestimated you big-time. Maybe you're stronger than I thought.”

I go to the bathroom, floss, brush my teeth. She's right there hounding me.

I spit.

She leans against the doorframe, lets her hair fall free. “Let's be real. She's crossed over. She's never coming back.”

She makes it sound like Nicole has gone through Hell Week, has survived mind games, has been abused and beaten and branded and accepted into an elite organization whose flag is made up of rainbow colors. That once you're in that sorority, you can never give up your membership.

My lips tingle, so many vulgar words right there, but I say nothing.

I go back to the bedroom, take clothes out. She stays close to my right hand, close to the tape.

“She's not coming back to you.”

I look at the clock. More time has gone by than I imagined.

I start getting dressed.

She asks, “Where are you going?”

Ayanna rushes and does the same. She's slipping into panic mode.

She says, “Are you going to Nicole?”

When I leave, she follows me. Follows the tape.

Ayanna is a small woman who drives a monster-size SUV. I see her in my rearview mirror, stalking me from Waterfront to the freeway, reminding me of that creature in
Trilogy of Terror
as she rides my bumper. I head toward the bridge that leads into San Francisco. Ayanna stays no more than two vehicles behind me, sometimes right on my bumper, forcing me to speed up and change lanes.

She gets too close. I tap my brakes. She blinks her high beams in my rearview mirror, then leaves them on. I change lanes and flip her off. She changes lanes and returns the favor.

I push the Memorex deep inside the car's tape player.

Ayanna's voice comes on.

When I stop to pay my two dollars at the tollbooth, I think that moment might give me enough time to speed away from Ayanna, but she pays and catches up before we get close to the Treasure Island exit.

She pulls up next to me. I let my window down, turn the tape up so she can hear her own voice. I crank up the volume and play the part where she asked me to let her be Nicole, when she asked me to lay with her and allow her to feel what Nicole feels to help her understand what makes me special, to show me what makes her so special.

Then I speed away.

A man can go mad if he sees his woman fucking somebody else. The same goes for a woman.

We're both insane.

Ayanna follows me when I exit at Harrison, rides my ass through construction zones and ragged one-way streets that mark Mayor Willie Brown's territory. The tape is off, but I hear her voice inside my head, every rise, every fall.

My c-phone rings. I answer, expect to hear Ayanna's voice. It's Nicole.

She says, “Your father called me.”

“You're joking.”

“Then I got a call from my sister. What the hell have you done?”

I ask her which sister and she tells me. It's a younger one who she hasn't talked to since her revelation. Since her outing; since she kicked the hinges off her closet. A sibling Nicole doesn't feel comfortable talking to because she asks too many hard questions about her life in Oakland.

She asks, “Where are you?”

I tell her that I'm bouncing over potholes and heading to a hot spot on Second Street.

There's a pause, a very emotional pause from Nicole. I'm crossing Turk, trying to lose Ayanna.

Nicole says, “I can't find Ayanna.”

“No shit?”