Liar's Game (6 page)

She stalled, didn’t answer, just laughed an uncomfortable laugh that told me she didn’t really want to say, and switched the subject. “Gerri said I was smiling and glowing today.”

“Guess she knows our little secret.”

“She’s been smiling and glowing for about a month now.”

“Jefferson?”

“You better believe it. Her hubby has the kids, so Jefferson took her to Catalina Island this weekend. Stella getting her groove back big-time.”

I made a sound and replied, “I’m not surprised.”

“Why not?”

He was young, but he drove an expensive ride, wore designer threads, carried himself like he had power and position, things that attract certain mentalities, probably got him a special breed of poontang by the pound.

Me, I’m just an average, hardworking Bubba, one of the real men that make the world go round. My smile was rueful as I responded to Dana’s question. “No reason.”

She moved a bit, made her eyes stay open.
Sex and the City
was on HBO, volume down low. Every time they showed something outside, Dana told me exactly where in New York that was, what avenue and street.

She was struggling with her eyelids, her voice fading. “This is a trip. I’d given up feeling this good for working long hours and months of celibacy. Geesh. What the hell was I thinking?”

“You sound extreme.”

“I am extreme, I guess.” She jerked, made herself wake up. “I’ve lived hard. When I love, I love hard. Know how to hate hard too.”

Then she was asleep. I changed the channel when her show went off, switched over to Fox and checked out the last half of
The X-Files
. While that fiction played, I kept her warm body close, touched all the soft parts I’d missed touching for so long.

That’s the way it always starts out.

We were moving so fast. And it wasn’t just me. It’s never just the man pushing the envelope. Yes, we have an agenda, and mine extends beyond the desires in my loins. But women help propel a relationship where they want it to go as well, they strip away their clothes, put down their defenses, slap on blinders, and race toward their own Fantasy Islands at warp speed. No, we don’t live in the times of my folks, where dating was a slow-burning candle. Now we move faster than technology.

I was in Manhattan at the Moonstruck Diner. Dishes clattering, cash register cha-ching-ing, heels clicking across the gray tile floors. At a table by myself. A little uneasy, but I didn’t know why.

A sweaty Italian waiter dressed in a white shirt and black pants, thick arms, and a big belly yelled, “Gimme a mash to go.”

Pancakes, sausages, eggs, hash browns, all of that was sizzling on the grill. I saw it, but I couldn’t smell a damn thing. I inhaled to see if I was catching a summer cold, but my sinuses were clear as the sky outside.

I stared at the Italian man. I was about to get pissed off because of the way he winked and leered at me, but then I looked down and saw that all I had on were dark panties and a satin bra.

“Dana?” My name came from everywhere at the same time. “What are you looking at? Don’t stare at people.”

I blinked and turned around: “Momma?”

Momma and Daddy were on the other side of the table, laughing and touching. Momma had on a satin housecoat; Daddy was dressed in khakis and a bright polo shirt, chewing on a bagel the size of a loaf of bread, like the ones I used to get from Joe’s Bagels on Fourteenth Street and Tenth Avenue.

Daddy said, “Dana, you know what the secret to the bagels are?”

I was confused. “What do you mean, the sec—”

“The water. The New York water is what makes the bagels so damn good.”

Momma was eating Homegirls Potato Chips. I know because of the four spunky sisters dressed in four different colorful styles on the bright pink package. Momma was crunching. My mouth watered, my stomach growled, and I wanted to taste what I was missing.

Humidity and smiles were all over my parents’ faces. Everybody who came in had sweat on their faces, dank under their arms, across their dark suits. Momma and Daddy kissed, touched each other like nobody in the room could see them. My mouth wouldn’t open. I want to yell out, You two aren’t together anymore. Daddy has another wife, Momma. Another life.

Momma grimaced at me, read my mind—I could tell by the way her brows raised up. She didn’t like the pissed-off expression on my flesh. She opened her mouth to snap at me, and her voice rang like a telephone.

My eyes went to a yellow clock, it started melting.

Momma’s lips moved, the sound of a phone ringing again.

All around, clocks started melting, the numbers falling to the floor in silence. The room started to get blurry, was going away.

My good old telephone was ringing me right out of New York.

 

I jerked awake, pulled my head out of my pillow, tried to get my head right and answer like I was wide awake: “Good morning.”

“Dana!”

“Who’s call—” I tried to focus my eyes and make out the number on my caller ID box. It was a 212 area code. In bold letters, her name was shouting at me from the digital display. One of the last people on this earth I wanted to talk to. I said, “Renee, that you?”

“This is a trip! I actually found your butt!”

Renee lived in the city I had left behind. Hearing her squeaky voice surprised the hell out of me.

“Your brother’s not there, I hope.”

“Claudio is out traveling. You know he’s blowing up.”

She’s my ex-heartbreak’s half-sister. When my relationship with Claudio went into a death spiral, I made some hard choices and divorced myself from that whole bunch. That was the hard thing about breaking up with somebody that you’d been with for five years. Not only did you have to break up with him, but you had to kick his momma, daddy, the dog, had to kick the whole family to the curb.

I asked her, “How did you get my number?”

“Grrl, I went out on AOL, was playing around doing this search thing, just having fun and acting like Eye Spy. I put your name in a search engine and whoop, there your number was. Damn, that was easy.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that. You live on Summertime Lane in Culver City, right?”

That chilled me. “All that info on me is out there?”

I peeped out my bedroom window, gazed down at Jefferson Boulevard. A few people were jogging, traffic was getting crazy.

“Yep. Dana, I don’t know nothing about computers, and I found you in five minutes. Hmm. Maybe I can find KFC’s secret recipe out here too. I could sell that to the Russians and make a grip.”

Shit. That meant anybody with a funky Internet account could find me. Bill collectors I left behind. Exboyfriends I left behind. Relatives I don’t want to talk to until the day after never.

She sort of snapped, “Why haven’t you called?”

“I haven’t called anybody.”

Renee is my age, twelve years younger than Claudio.

She said, “If that’s the case, Claudio was spreading rumors. He said that a few months back, you were talking about getting back together, had him packing and borrowing money to get his plane ticket. Then you just vanished and changed your number on him.”

Right before I met Vince, I’d called Claudio just to see how he was doing. Shame on me for trying to be mature about the breakup, for still caring. We talked. He wanted to see me. So many I-love-yous came from his mouth. The next thing I knew, I was debating whether I should let him swoop out to L.A., thought maybe starting over in a new spot would do us some good. Besides, I’m not the type of girl who wants to meet every dick in town. But the reality of the situation was that, well, even before the police came knocking, things had been up and down with us, I mean for a long while. Then I asked him, hypothetically, what kind of relationship we were gonna have when he got here. Wanted to know if his intentions went beyond that weekend. He slowed his verbal stroll, put the seriousness aside, said we’d talk when he got here, face-to-face.

So, I told him I’d get back to him when I’d made up my mind. My heart and mind had an all-out brawl over what I should do.

That was the same night I met Vince down at the good old Townhouse. I’d been crying on Gerri’s shoulder all day long, and she wanted to hang out as therapy. I walked in and saw Vince. Most L.A. brothers talked too damn much about nothing, like they have all of these extra words they have to get out of their mouths before their faces exploded. Vince’s baritone voice was cool and smooth, like Eric Benet and Maxwell combined.

And, of course, Claudio started calling every day. He had rung my phone the night Vince came over to fix the hard drive on my computer. Called and wouldn’t let me get off the phone when I told him I had company.

I cared about Vince, he was cool, but after that night when I was so rude, and he didn’t get an attitude, stayed so mature about the whole deal, I started seeing him in a different light. Smart enough, tall enough, cute enough, so damn nice, always there for me, always lifting me up when I was feeling down.

And, of course, I felt him pulling away from my wish-washy ways.

Renee went on, “Momma asks about you. Claudio’s momma asks about you, still calls you her daughter. She cares more about you than she does her own son. You just don’t know how upset she was when she heard you had to file bankruptcy because of all those bills.”

My bankruptcy was the last thing I wanted to talk about. I never talked about it. Humiliation ain’t nothing but a word.

Even after all that, when I was out here, I was so lonely that I’d wake up crying. Wanting him, wanting to go back home, and crying like a baby in day care. I didn’t want to be with anybody else, wanted to be healed and whole. I’d close my eyes, bring Claudio’s face to my mind, and touch myself and squirm and feel good and be mad while tears rolled from my face to my pillow.

That first time that I spent the night with Vince, when he slipped inside my body wearing condoms left over from that New York relationship, Claudio whispered his way into my mind. His name was on the tip of my tongue while I held Vince and moan-gasmed. Thank God I was saying “Oooh baby” instead of calling out a name.

Something that Vince will never, ever know.

Thinking about that, remembering that moment, made me ache.

That was then, six months ago.

Now palm trees and an ocean breeze lived outside my window. I didn’t feel like having a conversation that would cause me another good morning heartache, and I didn’t want to just up and diss my old friend, so I did a switch-eroo with the subject. “You still slaving at Random House?”

“Yep. But I’m about to bounce to a bigger pot of cabbage.”

“Where you going?”

“To Penguin. I’m bumping my head against a low glass ceiling. You know how the corporate game goes. You leave to get respect, show them how capable you are, then they bend over and beg you to come back.”

“Just like in relationships.”

“There you go.”

“Tell me I’m lying. Niggas don’t respect you until you step off.”

My paranoia went down a notch. A little a.m. conversation wasn’t gonna kill me, and we drifted into chitchat mode. I’d been working hard getting educated in this real estate game, and she’d been playing like there was no tomorrow. She let me know that Freaknic was weak this year, then told me she’d gone to the Essence Fest.

Ten minutes of gossip, my eyes moving on the clock.

Then came the real reason she had hunted me down. This was a search and recovery mission. Every time I’ve broken up with Claudio, somebody in his family has called and tried to put some glue on that shattered vase.

She said, “Claudio is missing you like crazy.”

I was in front of my mirror, taking off my short cotton Tweety Bird pj’s, getting ready to hit the shower. Diet and exercise, living where I could work out year-round has been too good to be true.

I told Renee, “Don’t waste your ten cents a minute.”

“I was just saying. He misses you, that’s all I was saying.”

“No, you were recruiting. I’m seeing somebody.”

Naked in front of a mirror that was getting pretty steamed up, I peeped at my backside and thought of how Vince always called me En Vogue. That made me smile on the inside and let out a soft laugh. Somehow I doubt if Terry, Cindy, or Maxine have pimples on their butts.

“So, how long you been with this new boo?”

“Long enough.”

She stalled, then bounced back with “I’m so happy for you.”

“Stop lying.”

“What makes you think I’m lying.”

“You hesitated and didn’t squeal.”

She went right back to talking about Claudio, told me that he was promoting comics and was out in Dallas and St. Louis, then was heading to Atlanta to meet up with Chris Tucker and a few other comics.

She told me, “He’ll be in L.A. soon. Supposed to be out there for a while.”

No reply from me, not a single breath was taken.

She sounded hurt. “Dana, he’s doing good. I’m telling you, you should call ’im, get back in the groove, because he’s gonna blow up.”

“Remind him about how much money he owes me when he does.”

“Dana, give him a call. His number is 674—”

“Didn’t you hear me say I’ve met somebody and I’m happy?”

“You didn’t say nothing about being happy.”

Jealousy mixed with my curiosity, and I asked, “What happened to Tia?”

“Hell if I know. After you got out of jail—”

“Wrong way up a one-way street. I don’t want to hear all of that.”

“Sorry, didn’t mean to upset you,” Renee responded softly. Then she perked up. “So, this guy you seeing, is he cute?”

“Yep. And not afraid of commitment.”

“You sure he’s heterosexual?”

We laughed, my chuckle faker than Diana Ross’s hair. My light brown eyes were on the red glow from the digital clock.