No answer.
It was that drive-by time of night. The time of night when thirteen-year-olds kidnapped and raped young women, then tried to burn their bodies to make a slow night have some meaning.
I paged Dana.
Whoop WHOOP Whoop
The noise from the ghetto bird faded. Somebody came up the concrete walkway, heels click-clacking toward our stairwell. The click-clacking slowed, the way a person pauses in thought, then the pace stopped about halfway up. Keys jingled. Then nothing, no more sounds.
I went to the window. Didn’t see Dana’s car.
I pulled on my favorite worn-out Levi’s, opened my door, slow and easy so it wouldn’t creak, took a peep out. A feminine figure lingered on the stairs, stalled in the darkness of the hall, halfway up the fifteen-stair climb. Her head was down, braids dangling and covering her face while she massaged her temples. Her skirt hugged her hips, made her look like a sexy sister standing in silhouette.
I spoke softly, “What’cha doing, sexy?”
Her bracelets rattled as she moved a stray braid that was tangled in her earring. She whispered, “I’m not Miss Smith, Mr. Browne.”
“Naiomi?”
“You always step into the hall with your chocolate pendulum hanging?”
“Yikes.” I jumped, looked down at my pants; my jeans were buttoned up, nothing hanging.
Naiomi slapped her hands over her mouth to smother her belly laugh.
“Psyche, Mr. Browne. You should’ve seen your face.” We laughed, lightly, like we didn’t want to wake anybody up.
Her eyes touched the hair on my chest, then my abs, then my eyes.
I said, “Fix the light so people can see who the hell is out here.”
“In the morning I’ll do it,” she told me. She came up two more steps. As lovely as the sun was warm. She gave up a sweet smile as she repeated herself, “As soon as Home Depot opens up, I’ll take care of it.”
“Get me the bulbs and I’ll save you some work.”
“Okeydoke. Don’t let me come between you and your testosterone.”
She yawned, stretched a little, twisted side to side and made her back pop. When she moved, her blouse loosened, broadcasted the swell of her breasts. Dignified C cups living inside a purple satin bra. Wine mixed with perfume floated from her pores. Intoxicated and beautiful.
She put her back to the wall. It didn’t look like she was in a hurry to take those last four steps and get to her home plate.
We chitchatted, low and easy. Her chuckles made her breasts bounce. My insides were filled with Mexican jumping beans.
But black was the color of my true love’s hair.
Our about-nothing conversation was cut off when Naiomi’s door swung open. Juanita stepped out. Damn near leaped out. Dressed in mauve satin pj’s and a red robe. I hate to admit it, but next to my ex-wife, Juanita was the most gorgeous lemon-colored sister I’d ever met. Her green eyes darted to Naiomi, back to me, glued themselves on my bare chest.
Juanita’s words flared: “What’s going on with you two? You’re pretty . . . not exactly appropriately dressed, are we, Vincent?”
I said, “Thought I heard Dana, but it was Naiomi. We were just speaking to each other.”
“That was a lot of speaking,” Juanita said. Her eyes went back to Naiomi. With a soft voice she politely asked, “Where’ve you been, baby?”
Naiomi said, simply, “Out.”
Juanita paused, like she was looking for the right words. She was so composed it was frightening. “How many times are you going to disappear and come sneaking back in the middle of the night?”
Naiomi snapped, “Don’t you think it was disrespectful to talk to her on the phone in front of me for over thirty dang minutes like I didn’t exist?”
“She’s an old friend.”
“Then why couldn’t you speak to her in English, so I could under—”
“Naiomi, come inside and let’s discuss . . .”
Naiomi came up two stairs, slow, methodical steps. “She know we live together?”
Juanita glanced at me like I was standing in their comfort zone. I closed my door, but didn’t move my ear away. Both of them had some inaudible words. A moment later their door closed hard and locked.
Their voices rose for a short moment, then fell silent, the way people do when they stop talking and start kissing. Heat was in my chest.
I’ve always wanted to know how women made love to each other, how they did what they did when they did the do, especially since they weren’t equipped with a pole for the hole—unless they’d bought something made by Ronco. I couldn’t imagine two vaginas rubbing coarse hairs against each other like kindling trying to get a spark to start their fire of love.
A car alarm went off. I peeped out. Dana was struggling to get her Q45 into a spot right under the window. She bumped a Montero truck; its alarm came on. She bumped the black Chevy van behind her; its alarm came on. She’d pissed off half of Leimert Park.
I slid under the covers, closed my eyes until she sat on the bed and changed the radio station from R&B to soft contemporary jazz. She leaned over, kissed my face. Rum spiced her breath. Her hair held pounds of fresh smoke, perfume fresher now than when she left this evening. A nasty combination.
I asked, “Where you been all night?”
“With Gerri.”
Dana saw my eyes go toward the digital clock: 2:59. She shifted.
She yawned. “I’ll be drinking coffee and taking No-Doz tomorrow.”
She told me that a girl from Jefferson’s rap group came by and told Gerri that she was sleeping with Jefferson.
She said, “Hell broke loose.”
Dana stepped into the shower; I stood on the other side of the clear plastic curtain and eye-savored Nubian excellence in motion. Wondered what our children would look like, sound like, act like. I watched her scrub her skin like she was trying to make herself two shades lighter. She gargled with Plax, gently washed her face with Noxzema. She wiped the cream off her skin, saw me staring, blushed, and the tipsiness made her glow. Dana was definitely tipsy. Too tipsy for me to let it slide.
“Dana, you shouldn’t be driving around like that.”
“Like what?”
“After you’ve been drinking.”
Her response was, “There are a few things you shouldn’t be doing too.”
“Like what?”
Dana turned around, let the water run over her back, looked me in the eyes, and said, “Have you heard from Malaika?”
“That came out of nowhere.”
“Well, Malaika, Kwanzaa, all of that came out of nowhere.”
“Why did you ask me that?”
“Why are you so evasive when I ask you about your daughter?”
“I’m not evasive.”
“I could ask you a thing or two, but it’s late, dealing with Gerri drained me, so I’ll tell you what I know just to save some time.” She hesitated. “You’ve still been sending checks to Malaika.”
I tried not to blink, tried to hold that same blunt stare that Dana had, but she’d softly pushed me into a corner.
I asked, “You’ve been going through my checkbook?”
She chuckled. “Maybe Malaika called and told me. Am I wrong?”
“Dana, don’t play games.”
“Well”—she put soap on her scrungie, soaped her body down—“if it’s a game, you’re the one who made it that way.”
“Is this your liquor talking?”
“I’m buzzed, yeah. Not as much as you think. Enough to let you know shit’s on my mind. And it hurts me to pretend that everything is okay.”
“Like what? What’s on your mind?”
“We talked about that situation you have with your ex-wife, and as a team we made a decision how we would handle that issue financially, and you’ve gone behind my back and done your own thing. Is that behavior what I should expect from you after we get married?”
I didn’t say anything. Not a dime of the money I was sending had come out of her bankrupt pocketbook.
She rinsed the soap off her body. Turned the water off. Motioned for me to hand her a towel.
I confessed, “I sent a check. So what? It was only a few dollars.”
She asked, “Okay, then what did you mean by a few more dollars?”
I didn’t know what she knew, so I played it down. “It’s no big deal.”
“It is a big deal. You said that you might be looking at another layoff. A couple of houses fell out of escrow, my desk fees are behind, so I’m not pulling down as much money as I thought I would.”
“What if my child grew up hating me because I didn’t send money?”
“You’ve been watching too much Ricki Lake.”
“Well, the last thing I need is to end up on the
Ricki Lake Show
trying to explain my side while I’m getting booed by her audience.”
Dana turned the shower off, then looked at me and rat-tat-tat-ed her words: “Hell, how important can you be to them if two years go by and they can’t take the time to at least send a ten-cent postcard?”
Silence.
Dana softened her quick-tempered tone, tried to sound more rational than emotional. “See it from my point of view. You’ve been sending them money, living in a second-class apartment, driving a second-class car, and Malaika and her second husband have been getting all the benefits of watching her grow up. I hate to be the one to burst your bubble, but if you asked me, they don’t need you, don’t want you, don’t care about you.”
I didn’t like what she’d said, not one bit, but maybe there was some hard truth in Dana’s argument. They’d been gone a couple of years, and they would be away four more. Not a postcard. To them I was probably as significant as a single grain of sand blowing across the Mojave Desert.
“Vince, let’s call this an amnesty moment.”
“Okay.”
“Have you lied to me about anything else?”
“Nope.”
“Think real hard.”
“Nothing to think about.”
“Sure about that?”
“What, you know something that I don’t?”
“Last chance to get the skeletons out of your closet.”
“Dana, if you have something to say, then say it.”
“I’ll give you the utmost respect if reciprocated.”
“Meaning?”
“Do unto others as you want done to you.”
“Is this how you get after you’ve had a bit too much to drink?”
“If it is, then I need to drink more often. Maybe you need to have a drink with me. Well, Vince, I’ve done some hellified thinking, and you know what? From now on this relationship is like skydiving.”
“Once again. And that means?”
“You’re up to strike two. You’ve got one mistake left.”
“What was strike one?”
“Play stupid.”
Dana threw her towel across the room, then went and got on the phone. She called Gerri. Talked loud enough for me to hear that something was really brewing on her buddy’s side of town. Only talked a hot second. I had a feeling that she did that for my sake, to ease my mind about her being gone until the middle of the night. After that she pulled on a big NYU T-shirt, went into the bedroom, and sat on the bed. I followed.
She went to the dresser, fidgeted with her jewelry box, and glared at our bills, most of them hers, glanced at Kwanzaa’s pictures.
Dana said, “Why haven’t you ever put our picture in a nice silver frame to match your daughter’s?”
“They’re just pictures. Don’t start tripping.”
“I’m not tripping, I’m just asking. Geesh, can’t I make any suggestions without you biting my damn head off ?”
“They’re just pictures.”
She picked up the wooden frame that housed our studio photo, then eased it down in front of Kwanzaa’s photo.
I asked, “Why did you do that?”
“They’re just pictures, right?”
“Dana, don’t come in here at three in the morning trying to make something out of nothing, all right? It’s time for us to hit the bed.”
“And that’s just a bed too, right? Your old honeymoon bed.”
Dana strolled toward the kitchen. I let my toes open and close, made fists with my feet, did the same with my hands, massaged my temples, closed my eyes as tight as I could. Wished she’d’ve stayed her black ass out in the streets.
A second later she came back over and eased into my lap. She had please-forgive-me eyes. Her mood had changed. When she touched me, my mood changed too. I hated she could soften me up like that.
She kissed my forehead in some sort of an awkward apology. “Are we going to be okay?”
“I hope so.”
“Head hurts. I’m hungry.” Dana shook her head like she was rattling secrets around, then kissed my lips. “Be my hors d’oeuvres and kiss me for a few minutes.”
The mood was broken, but I tried to get it back with a bucket of smiles, and a few soft kisses on the spots that usually made her wiggle, rubs on the tender areas that usually make her purr. Things got warm, but they never heated up. No wiggles. No coos. Her tongue had no passion or flavor. Rain had fallen on our flames. She broke away, went into the kitchen, and made herself a plate. When she came back, a blank expression was on her face.
I asked, “What’s wrong?”
She took a bite of her spicy baked chicken wings. “We need to get out of this box and get a house before we get married.”
“Where did that come from?”
“Guess since I was at Gerri’s condo. Hell, if she can do it and she’s by herself with two kids, I don’t see why we can’t do the same.”
After she ate, I took her plate into the kitchen, washed the few dishes we had. I dried my hands, put the dishes away, and headed toward the secondhand bed. Knew nothing first-class would be happening between our sheets but sleep.
The top of the chest of drawers had been rearranged. My child’s picture had been put into the plain wooden frame. The picture of me and Dana had been put in the silver frame and stuck up front.
At five a.m., while Dana slept, my second sight woke me up. I slipped from between our sheets, eased her purse from the foot of the bed, and took it into the bathroom. She had tickets to a comedy jam in Carson.