Finally, she gave me her home phone number. But that was because she was having problems with her PC, needed me to come by and look at it.
Wanted to get some free work out of me. Just like a woman.
A one-bedroom condo in Culver City, the side of town that used to be all movie studios but now was overpriced condos. Her place wasn’t a castle, but it wasn’t a dungeon either. IKEA-style furniture, gray carpet, white walls, vaulted ceilings, black-and-white pictures from Harlem, a lot of books. I mean, way over three hundred books, some new, most of them old, some stacked in a corner, some on a bookcase, a stack in the loft next to her white computer stand—and those were all she kept when she left Harlem.
When I got there, her phone rang. It was a dude. I could tell by the way her tone dropped, the way she sucked her jaw in, the way her body shifted away from me.
Dana wore black stretch jeans, dark blouse with three buttons open and sleeves rolled up to her elbow, silver bracelets on her right arm, scarf over her braids, glasses with small oval lenses, her look more genius than diva.
Her hand went over the receiver and she whispered uncomfortably: “Long-distance. I’ll be back.”
I pretended I was so into her computer that I hardly noticed.
She left me in the loft, reformatting her disc drive, reloading all of her software, making sure her modem and fax were connected. She took the phone downstairs, went into her bedroom, stayed gone for almost an hour.
When she came back, she had a confused lover’s disposition.
I finished her PC. She thanked me with a handshake. I left.
Told myself, don’t waste your time.
“Black Man Negro, where you at?”
I laughed along with my buddy, then told him, “I just got in from the gym, Womack. How’s UPS treating you?”
“Same way they’ve been treating me for the last ten years. Working me like a Hebrew slave.”
We talked for a while. His three boys all hopped on the phone at some point, all wanted to say hi to their uncle Vince before they got ready for bed. His little girl was asleep. I’m the godparent to his children. He’s the godparent to mine.
Womack asked, “You see my wife up at the gym?”
“Nope. Didn’t see Rosa Lee.”
“She wasn’t in Evelyn’s class?”
“She always works out up front by Dwayne. Didn’t see her.”
“She came in a few minutes ago, huffing and puffing. Said she was bone tired because she had been up there working out. Ain’t but one aerobics class at six-thirty, right?”
“Didn’t see her.”
“You drinking water?”
“Yeah. Sorry about that. Thirsty.”
“Ain’t got no kinda phone etiquette,” he said, then asked, “Were you there the whole class?”
“Didn’t miss a move.”
“Where were you in class?”
“My same old spot, up front by Robert and Jodi. Everybody asked about you.”
“Yeah. I need to get back to going to the gym.”
“Maybe Rosa Lee was downstairs riding the bike or something.”
“Said she was in class. Told me that five minutes ago.”
“Where she at now?”
“Upstairs at Daddy’s place. She ran up there to put clothes in the dryer. We’re doing all of our laundry up there and down here at the same time.”
He made a troubled sound, something so unlike him.
I asked, “What was that all about?”
“Nothing, nothing.” Then my buddy changed the subject. He perked up. “How thangs working out with that girl you just met?”
“They ain’t. She’s a flake. I’m done with New York.”
But two days later, I called Dana again. Irresistible impulse.
Four weeks of hit-and-miss conversations, another brief moment at the Starbucks in Ladera. Then for days, not a word or a returned phone call.
Friday evening, since our conversations had been going downhill, since it was an I’ll-call-you-don’t-call-me kinda thing, I had pretty much written Dana off as another flake. I didn’t expect her to ring my phone as soon as I got in from work and ask, “So, what we doing tonight?”
We ended up at Magic Johnson’s theater, ragging on people, wondering why black people in the neighborhood were so damn loud at the movies, chomping popcorn warm enough to melt the Raisinets we scattered on top.
Saturday night we drove out Pacific Coast Highway, ate dinner at Gladstones, then went out on Malibu Beach. Under a half-moon we rested on smooth rocks and talked. Wave after wave rolled in and dampened the dirty brown sand. She wore a short jean skirt that exposed her smooth legs, kissable thighs, a faded oversize Levi’s jacket, a red and yellow tam on her head. She looked like a rebel artist. I had on jeans too, baggy Levi’s I’d bought at Robinson’s-May that day just to wear while I hung out with her.
The temp in L.A. dropped at least fifteen degrees at night, and the beach was even cooler, borderline cold, so the chill that came with the night made Dana snuggle next to me to keep warm, her shoulder against mine, close enough to know there was a taste of magic riding the ocean’s salty breath.
She was relaxed, serene enough to talk about how she grew up. Went to four elementary schools in three years. A rough time for her and her mom. Her dad was in Florida, remarried his first wife and started a new family. Things were tight. In those early paycheck-to-pay-check years, her mom moved a lot, sometimes trying to stay one step ahead of the landlord, but things got better.
“So.” Dana sighed. “I said what the hell. I needed to get away. Nothing was keeping me there. Nope, nothing at all.”
Leftover love was in her voice.
Dana told me, “I used to put on events with this guy I was seeing. Bands in Harlem, did quite a few book signings with some writers—those were a headache. Rappers were hard to deal with, but some writers and their Talented Tenth egos . . .”
This wasn’t the conversation I wanted to have, didn’t want to hear her ramble on about her ex, not when I was sitting on the beach on a star-filled night. This was buddy plan kinda talk. She’d put me on the friendship train. I sneaked a peek at my watch, gave up on the romance, ignored the sounds of the ocean and the glow of the moon over our heads, and went with the flow. “So, what happened between you and your ex?”
“Picture this: middle of the night, we’re in bed, this girl shows up.”
“Sounds scary.”
“It was. When I woke up, she was over me, screaming. I hadn’t figured out left from right, or up from down, before she attacked me.”
“What happened?”
“I opened up a family-size can of whup ass on that bigtitty heifer. Police came.” Her words trailed off, faded the way a person does when they wish they hadn’t told you the first part. “It was a mess. Wretched.”
“That was when you broke up?”
“We got together a few times. Wasn’t the same. Didn’t want to keep doing a circle dance in a yo-yo relationship.”
I should’ve told Dana then.
I opened and closed my fingers the same way I was opening and closing my mind, imagined my ex-wife’s damp, curly hair, the strawberry scent it held after she washed her mane. Remembered the last time I touched her the way a man touches his wife. I’d loved her to a depth I never thought possible. She’d hurt me to a depth I never thought curable, betrayed me and I’d lost my motherfucking mind. Went insane. I’ll never live it down.
Dana spoke on other things. With every word, she was more real to me. So far from being perfect. That was why I was so attracted to her.
I asked, “Where’re your folks?”
“I buried my mother three years ago, the Saturday before Mother’s Day.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“Momma worked at a publishing company in the Village, busting her butt housekeeping, moved up to the cafeteria and got a job as a cashier, went to school in the evenings, eventually became an editorial assistant.”
“Impressive.”
“I was so proud of her.”
“Your dad still in Florida?”
She tossed a rock out toward the ocean. “He died right before Momma did. Heart attack.”
“Sorry to hear that too.”
“Don’t be,” she said in a joking way, but still with the kind of finality that let me know a deep story lived there. “It’s not like they remembered to put my name on the obituary.”
I nodded. Had empathy for her old man.
“I loved ’im, just didn’t like the way things turned out. I said some things that hurt him, but I apologized. It hurts a kid when their old man promises to call, or promises to write, and doesn’t.”
No words were spoken into the light winds for a moment.
She mumbled, “Yep, I come from a family of weak hearts.”
Dana didn’t have to say it, but for a woman to leave New York and jet to Los Angeles, a place where she had no friends or family, ran here before she had a job, things had to be pretty rough in her life at the time.
Me and a past I couldn’t erase.
Her and a past she was trying to escape.
Between us, we had more issues than Stephen King had books.
So much baggage, so few baggage handlers in this world.
She asked, “You want some gum?”
I answered, “Sure.”
She pulled out a stick of Big Red, licked the stick top to bottom, then eased it into my mouth. Did that without expressing any emotion.
Around three a.m., we pulled up in front of my peach stucco apartment complex at Stocker and Degnan. Stocker Avenue is a main east-west throughway, lined with two-level stucco apartment buildings that have been here since the 1940s. Single-family homes were on the side streets—the sections that had less traffic and pandemonium. This was a world of African Americans, Hispanics, and others, all living under the shade of palm trees in Mexican-style homes and apartments.
At the same time I turned my engine off, a golden CJ-7 Jeep parked right behind me. Two women got out before we did, passed by my car laughing and giggling. Naiomi, the dark one who had big legs and a short black dress, saw my face, perked up, and waved. Juanita, the mulatto one, looked back to see what her buddy was waving at, what had slowed her giggles, then briefly smiled.
In a skeptical tone, “Who’re those women?”
“My landlords.”
“Uh-oh. Sure that’s not your woman?”
“Nah. Just my neighbors.”
She paused. “Mind if I use your bathroom before I head home?”
“Just don’t be critical. Martha Stewart didn’t show up this month.”
A soft, uneasy chuckle. “At least have two-ply tissue.”
“I can handle that.”
We crawled out of my car about the same time as Juanita and Naiomi disappeared into our shared stairwell. By the time we made it into the staircase, Juanita and Naiomi were up at the top, in front of their door. So close that I couldn’t tell where one of them ended and the other one began. Juanita had on a red miniskirt, yellow blouse thin enough to show the outline of her dark bra, colors that looked good on her skin. Naiomi’s black dress clung to her Jamaican-born backside. Not a big butt, just noticeable, shapely, and hard to deny.
They were breast to breast, sounding like they were about to explode with desire, sloppy kisses, voracious noises, hands rubbing on each other, tongues wildly snaking in and out of each other’s mouth. Naiomi wore a lot of silver jewelry, and every piece sang when she raised her hands and eagerly cat-stroked the sides of Juanita’s face.
Dana had frozen.
I blinked out of my voyeurism, cleared my throat. “Evening, ladies.”
Naiomi caught her breath and backed away from Juanita, let her purse slide to her right shoulder, then ran her hands over her reddish brown braids. “Hey, Mr. Browne.”
Naiomi was a couple of years older than me. I didn’t know much about her, just knew that she was Jamaican, from Oklahoma, divorced with a kid. She works part-time at a health center, counseling people with STDs, does the meals on wheels things and takes lunches to people with AIDS, teaches aerobics on the side.
Juanita ran a hand over her blond hair, evaluated Dana in the blink of an eye, but didn’t share any words. With her left hand, she pulled out her keys, twirled them, then unlocked their dead-bolt and two other locks.
Juanita’s in her early thirties, from Compton, the well-maintained section that no one ever sees on the news, went to Berkeley, teaches at UCLA’s extension program from time to time, but as far as I know, outside of keeping this building in tip-top shape, she never does much more than that. With her trust fund, she’s on easy street. Her folks own several pieces of property between here and the 110 freeway, this building being one of the nicest.
I had stopped halfway up. Wasn’t enough room for all of us on the landing, so I paused. The passageway didn’t have a breeze, so the stagnant air was filled with two kinds of sweet perfume, three if you counted Dana’s, and a hint of wine and romance. Both of them were glowing, had lustful eyes.
Dana was two steps back, eyes on the peach walls, more than likely uncomfortable, but I was six steps behind two of the most beautiful women in L.A. County. Well, they were in my opinion. I wasn’t trying to stare at Naiomi’s mound of almond joy, but it was right there. A buried treasure hidden in plain view.
Juanita’s head jerked, her eyes shot my way, caught me staring at the round of her woman’s backside. I yanked my head up and away; our eyes collided like two cars in a head-on collision. She frowned. Gave me a grimace louder than the sirens in the background. Her lips moved like she was about to embarrass me in front of Dana, but Juanita put her hand on Naiomi’s perky backside, held that embankment like it was her private joy, glared down at me as her bosom buddy opened their door.
A simple territorial nod from Juanita as she vanished.
Their door closed, three locks clicked on.
I breathed again, opened my door, and let Dana inside my place.
She dropped her purse, covered her mouth with both hands, and chuckled. “Yikes. Guess that wasn’t your woman.”