Dirty Old Men [And Other Stories] (Zane Presents) (35 page)

“Well, there’s no
fish
over here, baby,” Carol huffed at him.

“But there’s a couple of
breasts
over there.”

“And there’s a
dick
over there, in more ways than
one,
” she snapped back at him.

“As long as you know it’s over here,” he countered.

“Hey, hey, hey, what the hell is all that?” Catherine finally asked them both.

Their back-and-forth volley had taken off so quickly that I didn’t have a chance to respond to it.

“You sure have a way of words with women, my friend,” I commented with sarcasm. Then I looked at Carol and asked, “You want me to change my fish to pasta?”

I was joking. She caught on to my humor and lightened up with a grin.

“I’m just saying, your guy’s over there
insinuating
shit.”

“Yeah, as long as you know what I got over here. And it’s on
this
side of the table,” he cracked.

“Wait a minute, what are you trying to say now?” I asked him.

“I already
said
what I’m trying to say. She
know
what I got over here.” He was obviously pulling out the dick-size game.

I said, “Yeah, well, like they say, the ones who talk the most feel that they
have
to. But I’m packing mine without all the extra fucking noise.”

“Well,
excuuuse me,
” Catherine growled. We all had a good laugh about it, but I wasn’t trying to go there. Alonzo had forced my hand in the situation.

“So, what we gotta do, measure ’em out on the table?”

“Oh, shit,” Catherine responded, instigating.

I couldn’t believe we were even talking about that at a jazz club over dinner with two new women. But I could tell that L was loving that shit.

“Man, we’re about to eat up in here,” I told him.

He looked at Carol again. “Oh yeah, fish or chicken?”

Carol stopped and stared at him.

I caressed her by her arm. “He’s tripping. This is why I like to go
solo.
”

“Tell me about it,” Carol grumbled.

I looked into her eyes. “All right, I will. Now if me and you were out together alone, I’d take you down to the waterfront, go dancing, look out at the moon, sip the finest wines, and say what was
really
on my mind.”

L cut me off. “Aww, you corny-ass nigga. Listen to you.”

“
Corny?
” I grilled. “Well, what the hell do you call ‘A.B.C. you at the show’? Because I have to listen to
that
corny shit every other
week.
”

“I call it a fucking moneymaker,” he responded.

“On corny-ass events,” I shot back.

“Oh, so now my events are
corny?
”

“If people respond to that corny-ass line, they
have
to be.”

“Well, what about your corny-ass
columns
sometimes?”

“Look, it is what it is,” I told him.

“And so is
my
shit.”

“Ahh, boys, the drinks are here,” Catherine told us as the waitress set down our four drinks with a grin.

Carol was all smiles as if she liked it all.

“Hey, I’m sorry about all that,” I told her. L had me acting out of character.

But Carol shook it off. “No, you gotta say what you gotta say when you gotta say it.”

Alonzo looked across the table and grunted, “Mmmph.” Then he looked at me as if to say,
You better handle that shit, partner, before I do.

I guess she must have turned him on with that line, because he took one sip of his drink and asked, “So, how do we all like our sex at this table, from the front or from the back? Because I hear that the back gets it in a lot deeper.”

What could I do but shake my head and chuckle after he asked some shit like that?

Catherine said, “Damn, can I eat my
food
first? What’s
wrong
with you?”

He had even gone too far for
her
now.

“Just two drinks is all you need tonight, man,
Seriously,
” I told my friend.

Alonzo ignored me and looked at Carol. “How many drinks are
you
gonna have?”

“As many as I
want,
” she told him, and took a sip of hers. “I’m not driving,
Catherine
is.”

Again, Alonzo looked at me and shook his head. I could read his mind.
This girl is hot, S.
And maybe she was. But you could never read all of a woman’s intentions in just one night. Some women liked to test you and turn you down, once you jumped out too far in the wrong direction. So I continued to play it smart and patiently.

“I gotta go to the restroom,” Catherine announced.

“Are you sure?” L asked her. He acted as if he didn’t want to move to let her by.

“Yeah, I’m sure. I gotta go to the fuckin’ bathroom,” she snapped.

L shrugged and moved to stand up. “All right.” When she walked by him, he pulled her back into him playfully. Catherine looked back at him with an evil eye.

L let her go and raised up both his palms to surrender. “My bad, I just had to test the Charmin for a minute.”

He was really fucking up, man! And he wasn’t even drunk yet.

Then he sat back down with Carol and me at the table.

“So, ah…y’all two like each other?” he asked us out of the blue.

Now he was putting us on the spot.

I looked at Carol. “You introduced me to a good girl. I give her two thumbs up and a high-five.” I wasn’t gonna wait to comment on that at all.

She smiled at me. “Thank you.” Then she squeezed my arm.

Alonzo shook his head across the table again. “Man…” He started to say something and stopped. “Let me get another drink in here.” He stood up from the table and walked back toward the bar area. Carol and I both watched him.

“He didn’t want to order another drink from here?” she asked me.

I shrugged. “I guess not.” And I guessed that Alonzo wasn’t having as much fun anymore. He seemed to be more preoccupied with Carol now than with Catherine. But Carol was with me. Or
was
she?

“So, what do you, ah…think about what he asked us?” I questioned.

Carol smiled at me. “What, about us liking each other?”

“Yeah.” I had already said
my
part. She was a lady worth the effort.

Carol continued to grin. “We get along.”

For the life of me, I didn’t quite like how that sounded. But I decided to leave it alone. I had just met the woman. What more could I expect her to say in only a few hours?

“Okay. I can take that…I guess.”

I just
had
to add that last
part,
didn’t I? And I knew it was a mistake as soon as I said it. It sounded unsatisfied and whiny.

Carol jumped right on it. “You
guess?
”

“Well, it just doesn’t sound like, ah…too committed of an answer, that’s all.”

She frowned. “
Committed?
I mean, I’m just now
meeting
you. How do you expect me to commit to something already?”

I was sorry I had even asked her. L had influenced me in the wrong way. So I shook it off and grumbled, “All right.”

“All right, what?” she pressed me.

“All right, I’ll leave it alone,” I snapped. I didn’t want to talk about the shit anymore. It was the wrong line of questioning.

Catherine joined us at the table and spotted Alonzo over at the bar with a second drink in his hand. “Why is he over there? He wanted to get a closer look at the band?”

No, he just doesn’t like your ass anymore,
I thought of telling her.
He likes your girlfriend now. And I’m starting NOT to like her.

As a grown man about to reach my thirties, I could sense when a woman was a hard catch and a possible tease. So once I heard her bullshit answer, I had that vibe about Carol. She wanted things on
her
terms, and I didn’t like the prospect of that. She seemed spoiled by her options, like a lot of D.C./Maryland women. They made it seem like the world revolved around
them instead of the sun. I didn’t realize that until I started dating women from other places.

“Why are you all quiet over there?” Catherine asked me.

“Oh, I’m just listening to the music,” I lied.

Carol grinned. “Whatever. He’s mad now because I won’t
commit
to liking him yet.” She was egging me on now.

“Well, we just hanging out, kicking it,” Catherine stated. “Guys get too fucking
serious
out here.”

That was
it
for me. I was ready to leave those ungrateful bitches with the
check
and see how serious
they
got. Then the food arrived.

“It’s about
time,
” Catherine stated.

“Well, we wanted to bring it all out together,” our waitress explained.

“
Why?
We didn’t
order
together. They ordered
way
later than we did,” Catherine reminded her.

“Um, well, you know, we figured it’d be
easier
to bring it all out on one tray.”

“Yeah, and now my damn steak and potato is probably
cold,
while their shit is
hot,
” Catherine continued whining.

“Ahh, no, we kept it pretty hot, actually,” our waitress countered.

Alonzo popped back over to the table. “I see the food is ready? Right on time, too. I’m ready to eat a
horse
in here. But the cow’ll do for now.”

“As long as it ain’t
fish
and
breasts,
hunh?” Catherine teased him, sparking the conversation back up again.

L shrugged. “Nah, I’d eat some fish and breasts if I
had
to. But I ordered
steak
tonight. So I’m gon’ eat
that.
”

I no longer had anything to say about it. As far as I was concerned, it was a wasted night with wasted money on the table. I didn’t even have an appetite anymore. All I could think about was how women could get a free-ass dinner before leaving a man hanging. I could feel it before the dinner was even finished. The only thing I could do was waste
more
money trying harder to chase the bitch. So I figured that maybe I should take one for the team and let Alonzo have her back. They were both his women anyway.

“Hey, man, what you thinking about over there?” he asked me on cue.

I was considering leaving the place and calling up a few women of my own
before it got too late. One bird in the hand is better than two in a bush, right?

But before I could answer, I could feel Carol staring at me. I turned to face her. “What, you wanna answer that for me?” I was in a grown man’s attitudinal, survival mode. It was the same reason why Alonzo had to step away from the table for a minute. When your ego can’t take the shit, you step away to recuperate.

Carol shook her head and read my emotional manhood. “Guy’s egos are so damn
fragile
sometimes. I can’t
stand
that. I mean, be a fucking
man
about it!”

L and I looked at each other and laughed over our food to break the tension. The woman was really challenging us like suckers. And I thought that she was the
tactful
one.

L asked me, “What the hell happened when I left?”

Carol continued to rub it in on me. “He got his little
feelings
hurt.”

I shook my head and kept grinning. What else could I do? But then I got real frank on her. I said, “You know what, you’re the kind of woman who
really
makes a man wanna…” And I stopped it right there.

Everyone at the table started laughing but me. I was too serious to laugh. Carol was the kind of deceiving woman who made a guy want to fuck her, while standing up against a brick wall in an alleyway somewhere. She made you want to be
violent
with her!

“Well, say what you wanna say then,” she teased me.

Now I could see why Alonzo had walked away from her.

I opened my mouth and said, “You make a man really wanna fuck you
hard.
” She had
asked
me for it, right?

They all broke out laughing again. Even I chuckled. But I didn’t want to go there.

Carol looked at me. “You
wish.
”

“You wish I’d bend your ass over
backwards,
too,” I told her.

I didn’t know what had gotten into me, but it was all coming out in a rush. That cat-eyed woman was like an beautiful
devil,
I
swear
to you.

L joked, “Yo, dog, slow down over there. We just met these girls.”

The joke was all on me now. I was the fool who had lost his cool at the dinner table.

“She asked for me it, man. You heard her.”

I was embarrassed by it, but it felt good, to be honest. You had to say what you had to say sometimes. Then I got back to eating my salmon to ease the edge I felt at the table.

“Now he’s eating the fish again, hunh?” Catherine teased me.

I kept eating my food and ignored them all. And Alonzo was laughing his ass off. That was his kind of “fun”; unadulterated caveman shit. He couldn’t eat his food or drink without laughing more.

“Yeah, I feel you, man,” he uttered through his giggles.

“You feel him
how?
” Catherine asked him. She had long been forgotten about that evening. Not even her cleavage or freeway dress could enhance her lack of allure that night. Her girlfriend had bested her for
both
of us.

“I feel what he’s taking about,” L answered.

Catherine looked across the table at Carol.

Carol was still smiling, seemingly amused by it all.

All of a sudden, Catherine asked her, “Bitch, what’s so damn
funny?
”

Carol paused. She seeemed surprised by her friend’s outburst. Then she snapped, “Whatever the hell I
think
is funny.”

“So, you were obviously out here trying to be all
cute
again,” Catherine presumed.

“Oh, I don’t
have
to try. I
am
cute. It’s
your
bitch-ass who needs all the
attention.
Just look at how you
dress,
” she countered.