Liar's Game (36 page)

Rosa Lee asked, “Lemon or Sock It to Me?”

“Lemon.”

She slid the lemon across the table.

I said, “I was beginning to think that you’d fallen into the toilet or something.”

She laughed. Her laugh was different from the throaty one she usually had, was the kind of shallow laugh that needed some accompaniment, so I threw in a chuckle or two to make a nice melody of uneasiness.

Eyes were heating up our space, and I looked around. A brother near the doorway had his eyes stuck on her. Sized him up. About five ten. Short dreads. An Eric Benet kinda look. In jeans and a jean shirt. Rosa Lee glanced at him, at me, then turned her head toward the musicians. My eyes went to the brother. His eyes were pointing this way. On Rosa. On me. He wasn’t smiling. Not at all. I nodded to let him know I saw him. He turned away.

I asked, “Who’s that?”

“Who’s who?”

“The ni—the brother in the door who looks pissed off.”

After my what-is-he-to-you question, she shrugged, sipped her tea, sorta whispered, “Don’t know. Men look at me all the time.”

“You got it like that.”

“With every man except my husband.”

“He looks at you.”

“Like I’m the mother of his children, not like I’m a woman.”

“I see.” I sipped my tea, stirred up the honey, sipped again, added more honey. “Your husband’s concerned about you. About your relationship.”

“How so?”

I told her that he didn’t think that she’d been going to the gym as often as she claimed. She was accumulating unaccounted-for hours away from home. “What about those nights you were AWOL?”

She shrugged. “I went to book signings at Zhara’s or Eso Won. Poetry at World Stage. Depends on what is happening, depends on my mood. It was my free time, so I did whatever I felt like doing. Problem?”

“Why didn’t you tell Womack?”

“Because sometimes I like going places on my own. I’m married. I have four beautiful children, but I also have individual needs. My husband and kids can’t be one hundred percent of my life. I have to have something just for me. I have to create my own corner, have to not lose the last piece of Rosa Lee I have left, or I’ll lose my mind.”

My eyes told her that I thought she was full of shit.

“Vince, I love you. If I hadn’t married Womack, I’d’ve been scratching at your door from noon to midnight.”

We laughed a bit.

She said, “Now, get out of my Kool-Aid.”

The brother finally stopped gawking at Rosa Lee, then strolled deeper into the room and mixed with the crowd at the counter.

Rosa Lee’s eyes went his way for a moment. Her face lost its distance and innocence. She saw me watching her watch him. She sipped her tea, gazed straight ahead at nothing.

Light sweat on her nose. Slight shake of her hand.

I asked her, “When did you start liking poetry?”

“Guess you forgot that I used to write poetry in high school. Some of it made it to the school newspaper.”

“That’s right, that’s right.”

We had to speak up so we could hear each other because the table next to us was loud, speaking in so much new and improved slang that it sounded like they were talking in Morse code. A couple at another table was holding hands and flirting in between talking about the post-riot rebuilding of the black community. Somebody else mentioned a slow-moving project to clean up Baldwin Village.

I asked, “So, what’s really going on with you and Womack?”

“Don’t get pushy.”

“I care about you guys. You’re all the family I have left.”

“Don’t get sentimental either.”

She sighed. Peeped at her watch. Looked rattled.

I offered, “Wanna talk about it?”

“No. Hush. They’re starting.”

The band played while the M.C. threw down something that rang out like strong pro-black poetry. Very political, social. It voiced a lot of the same concerns that our forefathers had, so it let me know that even though we could now get haircuts in Westwood and enroll in UCLA, not much had changed. He finished to a strong applause, then humbly introduced a short sister who looked like a chubby Erykah Badu. Her words were satiny, soulful, like the lyrics to a song, but the message crossed the line of political correctness, was closer to antiwhite slogans that rhymed.

Another sister did a spoken word about the sins of the black man dating the white woman. She called them “blue-eyed cave bitches.” The eight or so white people in the room shifted, but didn’t get up and run out. They were in the thick of the crowd, no way to leave. An interracial couple near the door left without finishing their cake or coffee. Somebody claimed their table before they made it out the door.

I said, “She’s kinda raw.”

“Lighten up. Freedom of speech.”

“So you say. When white people speak that freely—”

“Hush.”

The sister finished her poem to a stupendous applause. I sipped my tea, tasted my cake, loved the way it melted in my mouth because that reminded me of the first time I kissed Dana. It would take a lot of kisses to dilute the flavor she’d left in my mouth.

I asked Rosa Lee, “How did you find out about this place?”

“The night all of us were at Fifth Street Dick’s I picked up a lot of fliers. A few of the handouts advertised the local jazz bands. Some of them were for poetry. One mentioned this place.”

I shut up for a while. Checked out the lyrical flow.

One beautiful, bald, brown-skinned sister in a bright sarong acted out a sexy piece praising her “good pussy.” It turned the room out. Women were high-fiving each other, and before it was over, brothers were licking their lips and drinking boiling coffee to cool off the lust she’d built.

Rosa Lee leaned forward on her elbows, smiling just enough to show her teeth, making sounds like “ummm” and “yes, God, yes,” mumbling “whew, tell it like it is.” She wrote a couple of things down on her yellow legal pad.

I asked, “What’re you doing?”

“That inspired me.”

From the counter, the brother was staring at Rosa Lee.

She put her pen down. Smiled. I did the same.

I asked, “How are the kids at school treating you?”

“They’re thieves, liars, promiscuous. They get caught smoking on the way to school. They drink like alcoholics, won’t do their homework. If I give them the exact questions in the same order that they will be on a test, and give them the correct answers to study, ninety percent will still fail. So damn lazy.” She blew out some air. “What more can I say?”

“Just like we were.”

She nodded. “Outside of MTV and the Internet, nothing’s changed.”

For a moment I thought about our problems now. I said, “Most of us are just kids with decent jobs and better clothes.”

She became animated. “Let me tell you what happened today. This kid was caught having sex in the classroom. My student aide. In my classroom, of all places. During first period. The same girl who had the condom. I called myself giving her a chance and letting her be my aide.”

“No shit?”

Rosa Lee looked sad for a moment. Heartbroken. That kind of look that a person gets when they’ve tried their best and made it nowhere fast.

She said, “I had a parent-teacher conference with her and her mother. Mom’s under thirty, has four more kids—a single parent, works two jobs, and she’s crying and telling me and the principal how her child has been smoking since she was five, was caught sexing after she turned eleven.”

“That’s scary.”

“They drop those kids in our laps and expect us to work a miracle.”

I thought about my own child. Wondered how she’d turn out. Rosa Lee’s brows were tight. I bet she was thinking about her little girl, Ramona, having the same fears. Parents are always afraid that their children will do the same shit they did.

When it was all said and done, Rosa Lee checked her watch, said it was time for her to hit the road. We walked out together.

She asked, “So, you gonna tell Womack where I was?”

“Nope. I’ll leave that up to you.”

“Vince, you’re paranoid. Both you and Womack are paranoid.”

She said that like she meant it. I ached because it might be true.

Rosa Lee kissed me on my lips, hopped in her SUV, and pulled out of the lot first, turned right, headed toward Highland. Back toward Ladera. I followed her as far as the 7-Eleven, then slowed and pulled in the inconvenience store parking lot. I went in, bought a bottle of Sharps. I asked the man behind the counter, “This a twist-off cap?”

“Yeah.”

I paid for it. Headed outside. Stopped at a pay phone. Dialed Womack’s number.

Harmonica answered, then yelled for Womack to come get the phone. They were at home playing the parts of Two Men and Four Babies. Womack answered, sounding winded, like he’d raced to get the receiver.

I said, “The mother of your children went and checked out some poetry.”

“Who she with?”

“Nobody.”

Too quick. I’d answered too quick.

He waited a moment before he asked, “She see you?”

“Nope.” I paused, waited for him to say something. He didn’t. Listening to him breathe made me anxious. I added, “She sat at a table by herself the whole time, wrote stuff down, sipped tea.”

He was a childhood friend who knew me too well. Some days he knew me better than I knew myself. He released a brief chortle, said, “If it was something else, you’d take care of it, right?”

“You know it.” I shared some of the thin laughter. “She’ll be home any minute. Tuck the rug rats in, then cuddle up.”

“Okay, okay. Talk to you tomorrow or the next day.”

“Womack?”

“Yeah? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Kiss the wife for me.”

“Sure you didn’t already kiss her?”

“I did my best, but she’s hooked on you.”

We laughed, for real this time.

“Thanks,” Womack said. “I mean it. Thanks a lot.”

“No problem. Hey . . .”

“What?”

“Jennifer Lopez or Janet Jackson?”

“My wife. Just my wife.”

The serious way he said that got to me. I hung up, rubbed my eyes. I was tired. From the inside out, I was tired.

I drove back toward the theater, parked a block back on Seward, hoofed it down. Bounced the Sharps against my leg while I treaded in the shadows.

I stood on the corner, eyes trained on the coffee house. The brother who was hawking Rosa Lee was still there. I waited. Rosa Lee hadn’t done like I thought she might and double back. People came and went. Ten minutes passed. The brother who’d been feenin’ for Rosa Lee stepped outside. He’d never said a word to another soul. Never stared at another woman. He wasn’t part of the poetic ensemble, not interested in iambic pentameter or the making of a haiku. He crossed the street, went up the avenue on the side of the Honda dealership.

I was right behind him, moving down a deserted side street, stepping when he stepped so I couldn’t be heard over all the street sounds. I was here, but my mind was swirling in the sands of the Inland Empire, mixing past memories and present fears at the same time.

I had to put an end to this shit.

He slowed and pulled his cellular phone out of his pocket, punched digits, listened.

He started to turn around. I raised the bottle and brought it down across the bridge of his nose. He cursed with the pain. His c-phone twirled back toward me while he wobbled into the fence and bounced away grasping for anything, like a bird that had forgotten how to fly, but touching nothing but air.

His face was covered with blood.

I stood over him. “She’s married.”

“I don’t know what you talking about—”

“Okay, okay, all right already. Whatever you say.”

“She’s married. Remember that. Respect that.”

The fool lay in the night’s shadows, legs kicking like a rebellious toddler, scraping across the asphalt and its debris.

His phone rang. I picked it up. Clicked it on.

“Hello . . . you there?”

I said, “It’s me.”

“Who . . . Glenn?”

“My name is Vincent.”

They hung up.

I envisioned Malaika on that rainy night. Heard her laughing while I was at work trusting the woman I’d married to be what she couldn’t be. Not for me anyway.

I tossed the phone into the street and said, “You understand?”

His head nodded up and down. Sounded like he said, “Whatever you say, man, whatever you say.”

Inside me, past and present were colliding, leaving me light-headed. The beer bottle slipped from between my fingers.

It broke; foamy liquid drained across the sidewalk down into the sewer.

My name lived on the night’s breeze.

I turned around.

Malaika was behind me, hair loose, lipstick the color of my heart, her suntanned skin in a green satin robe. Rain dripping from her body, leaving puddles at her bare feet. I stepped toward her; she scurried a step back.

Malaika’s hand came up, massaged her neck. Her lip trembled.

In the distance, a baby cried, my child calling for its mother’s milk.

I was afraid. Sorry for all the wrong I had done in the name of right, and afraid. I backed off a step or two, stumbled into the fence, blinked.

Malaika’s image vanished.

Nothing was there. Nobody at all. The ground was dry.

With the exception of a bleeding brother and a broken bottle of nonalcoholic beer, the pavement was barren.

I ran like the wind.