Zora and Nicky: A Novel in Black and White (43 page)

“What was that?”

I don’t want to deal with
my
feelings like we’re in freakin’ therapy. Frankly
I want her to tell
me
something that will be about as close to her talking dirty
to me as she’s going to get, and I know that won’t be very far. “What did
you
feel?”

“Do you remember that part in the Song of Solomon, when her beloved
comes to her and she’s sleeping? And he knocks. It says, ‘I sleep, but my heart
waketh.’ That’s what I felt. Like my whole life I’d lived inside of a strange
dream, and with that kiss you awakened me. It was like being a princess. In
the best way. In the ‘my prince has finally come and kissed me’ way.”

“I’m no prince.”

“Yes, you are.”

“You think too much of me. I’m going to disappoint you.”

“No, you won’t.”

“I will. I suck.”

“Kiss me again.”

“I told you I don’t want to play
the
prince
for you.”

“Then kiss me like a cowboy.”

Ah. I see. She may have asked to see where I write, but she’s not in my
bedroom to sample my rhymes. And the thing is, I know she doesn’t really
know what she’s asking for.

I go to her. Sit on the bed. Everything inside of me screams,
Nicky, don’t
do it
. But I’m not an engineer. I don’t have the
stuff
Miles does. She wants
to see where I write? I’ll put my signature on her body. Let my hands create
a language meant only for her. I’ll make a poem of effleurage, starting with
light touches with the pads of my fingers on her face.

We begin. I stroke her cheeks, eyes, nose, lips until she sighs with pleasure
and relaxes into my hands. She trusts me completely.

My, my, my. Zora is magnificent. So soft. I lean in for the kiss that will
elevate us to another realm of possibilities. A place where neither of us is
thinking. There are no first kiss questions. Just feeling. She touches my face
in turn, giving herself to me.

We could stay here in this little empty room and fill it with whatever we
have right now. Let that be enough. Never leave this room again.

Then God speaks.

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not
charity—

Not now. That sounds like the apostle Paul. You let a little Paul in, and
the next thing you know, you’ll be fleeing fornication and marrying rather
than burning. I’m better at burning.

I am become as sounding brass
—

I take a breath. God is asking me to love her. He wants real love, not my
cheap horizontal imitation.

She stops. I assume God is speaking to her, too. I don’t even bother to
ask. I just push away from her and wait for her to tell me what God is saying
to her like she’s some kind of prophetess.

“I want to wait,” she says.

“Of course you do.”

“Don’t you?”

I want to say very bad words in front of no, but I don’t want to scare my
wife-to-be. I just smile at her like a good Baptist and lie like a rug. “Yeah. I
wanna wait.”

“I’m a virgin, Nicky.”

“I know.”

“I’m scared.”

I feel unreasonably angry. I’m not even sure exactly who I’m so ticked
off at.

“You might want to keep that in mind before you go bouncing on a man’s
bed, or whatever your little seduction ritual is. What’d you do to Miles? I’m
beginning to feel a little sympathy for him.”

She slaps me for that. And lemme tell you, she can hit. I get up and
charge out of the room. “Screw you, Zora.”

She yells after me. “Looks like you’re mad because that’s what you
didn’t
get to do.”

“I don’t need this. Why don’t you take your sleek black carriage and head
back to your pampered princess palace? You don’t want to be here anyway.”

“Is this your way of running away, Nicky? Are you going to go write?
Where you off to this time? New York City? Gonna write the great American
novel in the Big Apple?”

I stride, trying desperately to keep my cool, into the dining room like
I actually have a reason to be upset. I’m beginning to see some really bad
similarities between me and Miles. What’s worse, she probably sees them too.
I wish I could get out of here, but I don’t even have my truck. Not that I’d
know where to go. Where do you flee to escape your own shame?

ZORA

He leaves the room angry, but he comes back in a little while. I think he’s
going to apologize, but he just gets his laptop and goes back out into the
living room.

I want to tell him that I didn’t mean what I said about him running away
to go off writing, but I’m afraid I did mean it. And I don’t like that I did.

I hear him typing. He’s probably drafting my walking papers. There’s a
phone by his bed, and I don’t ask him if I can use it. I figure I’m his fiancée, at
least for the next few minutes. That ought to be good for a phone call. I call
MacKenzie. I need my best friend.

She answers on the first ring.

“MacKenzie, I’m in Nicky’s bed.”

“Giiiiiiiiirl? What’s up with that? Hold on while I have somebody revive
me. I just had me a heart attack.”

“Don’t waste your heart attack on me. Nothing happened. I didn’t want
anything to happen. I don’t think he did either. He stopped before I asked
him to. But he still got mad.”

“First of all, stop trippin’. If you in his bed he
did
want something to
happen. That’s why he mad. But they all get mad if they don’t get any. That’s
how they’re wired.”

“Something bad like that happened with me and Miles yesterday. I
thought he was going to do what Jordy did to you back in the day.”

“What?”

She sounds like she’s going to have a heart attack for real. I try to calm
her.

“I got him going, and he didn’t want to stop.”

“Girl, I leave you alone for a few days, and you get in all kinds of trouble.
You got Miles, who never even kissed you, ’bout ready to date-rape you,
and now you in Halle Berry’s white boyfriend’s bed. Lord, have mercy. I’m
coming back home.”

“You don’t have to come home. I’m getting married.”

“Oh, Lord, I’m having a big one. It’s like Fred Sanford on
Sanford and
Son
. Girl, you ’bout to kill me. Who you talkin’ ’bout marrying?”

“Nicky.”

“Did you do it with him? I thought you said nothing happened! Do I
have to tell you the definition of sex? I know yo’ mama and daddy didn’t teach
you nothin’, but I thought at least you knew the basics.”

“We haven’t done anything but kissed, but we’re in love and we’re going
to get married.”

“When did you meet him?”

“Last Wednesday.”

“It’s only Monday, heifer! You’ve known him for five days. That ain’t even
a week. I’m about to get in my car—”

“MacKenzie, I’m in love. Have I ever said those words to you?”

She gets quiet on me. “Baby, you
have
said those words. But I know you
never meant ’em. What scares me is that you mean ’em now. I can hear it in
yo’ voice. I knew when I looked into that white boy’s face he was going to be
the one that turned you out. I’m comin’ home, Z. We gon’ work through this.
Don’t marry, or have sex with
anybody
, and please get out of his bed. Get out
of his apartment. Girl, get off the same planet as his fine self.”

“I’m going to marry him, Mac.”

“You may just do that, but not right now, baby. It’s way too soon.”

“What if I ask him to wait, and I lose him? What if I’m already losing
him? He’s mad at me. He’s in the living room writing me a Dear Jane letter.”

“Let me tell you something, Zora. You ain’t no Jane. You don’t get those
kinds of letters, and you’re not the girl to ask the kinds of question you’re
askin’. I am. You’re the girl the good guy waits for. You’re the one he gives
everything he has for. You hear me?”

“What if he’s not as good as I think he is?”

“Then he ain’t the one.”

“I’ve gotta go, Mac.”

“I’ll see you in like, eight or nine hours.”

“Don’t come home, Mac.”

“I’ll see you soon, Z.”

I hang up. I don’t know what I’ve gotten myself into.

NICKY

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels.

Paul won’t let me go. Love won’t let me go. She won’t let me go.

I really am in love.

I suck.

I want to do right by her, and I’ve never done right by a woman. I’ve
never had to. Don’t know how. Paul said when he was a child he spoke as
a child, but when he became a man he put childish things away. How am
I supposed to do that, Lord? I don’t want to lose her, but I feel like bolting
here.

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels.

I grab my Bible from off the floor by the side of the futon. It’s been sitting
there since Friday when I’d read it, planning to spend the day just me and
Jesus, and instead He sent me on a clothes-shopping mission and the journey
to falling in love with her.

I turn to the New Testament. First Corinthians, the thirteenth chapter.
Read Paul’s infamous words about how to really love and know I’ve missed
the mark big time. I want to write. I need to absorb these lessons in that way,
with a prayer as I write, that the gruff last apostle will give me roots deeper
than Alex Haley’s.

Help me, Paul. Heavy my feet long enough to get myself a real job. Make
it to the altar and the wedding night with my spotless bride, and to stay for
the babies, the spreading waistline, gray hair, and death do us part.