The Importance of Being Dangerous (4 page)

He looked up at her from his chair. “Then you shouldn't have done it. You're a rude person. I don't know why they'd let such a rude person up in here.”

She stood back. “You serious? I really offended you?”

“Hell yeah, lady. What's your problem? I don't need somebody stepping on the microphone like that. Shit. I'll talk when I wanna keep talking.”

“You're funny,” she smiled.

“You're not,” he smiled back, and stood up. Then they both started laughing. “I'm just bullshitting with you. It's all good.”

They got to talking. Like most women with a pulse, Sidarra was well versed in men's attentions. Not that a man was necessarily attracted or was ready to make a move. But men can't help signaling whether there is any room for sexual interest or not. It had nothing to do with being married. It had to do with being a man, and it had to do with being the particular woman she was. No matter how jacked-up she might have looked that day, and in spite of whatever the heck happened to the good taste and style she used to flaunt a million heartaches ago, she knew what she looked like naked. And that almost always had an effect on men. But not Yakoob. As they talked, Yakoob never gave a hint of that kind of interest. She felt safe in his presence.

“Hey, I'm getting ready to break out of here and go shoot some rack, so unless you wanna get down, it was nice meeting you. I'll see you next week, Sidarra.”

“Pool?”

“Stick, darling. Yeah. Pool.”

“I play pool. I mean, I like to.” She had to scratch her head at the novelty of the idea. She thought about Michael and Raquel stuffing themselves with movies and French fries back home. “I should ask my friend. Have you met Griff?”

Griff stepped up as if he'd been waiting in the shadows for his cue. The short walk uptown and cup of coffee had started to become a nice little habit between them after the weekly meetings. That's when they realized that all three of them were tall people. Sidarra was almost five foot eight. Yakoob was a shade under six foot two. Griff was six foot four, and as he stepped up to eye Yakoob and shake his hand, he sort of presented his superior height with a little extra meaning. “Let's go,” he said.

“I know a place downtown,” Yakoob said.

Sidarra called home to Michael on her cell phone to say she'd be running late, and off they went.

They drove in Yakoob's old Chevy to a billiard parlor upstairs on Amsterdam in the Seventies. As the two men talked and laughed in the front seat, she sat back and watched the city out the window like a girl playing hooky. All of a sudden, life, after one of Sidarra's worst days at work, had served up this scene: her in a car with two brothers from an investment club heading the wrong way from her man and her daughter, about to shoot some rack.

But that was as far as her mind would wander. She didn't even really want to talk. She wanted to get the kind of clarity that comes with a stick in your hand and pure angles before you. The pool hall was warm, low-lit, and long.

“What'll you have, hon?” Griff asked her.

Oh, probably just a glass of the house red, Sidarra was about to say. Then it occurred to her to be exotic without knowing exactly how. “Can you recommend something exquisite?”

Griff's eyebrows lifted. “Exquisite? Hmm.” He squeezed his fingers to his chin and stared at her as if he were taking a drink measurement. “My mother—I mean my second mom—was a sophisticated lady and very sweet. I remember she used to drink an old-fashioned martini named a sidecar. This is the kind of place that just might know how to make it. Want to try one on me?”

Did she ever. Exquisite—a word she never used—was just right.

By the second sidecar, she was feeling smoother. She had a quiet storm musical thing going in her temples as she played the games. Later, when she saw Griff's figure striding back across the wide-open room to their table, she was feeling good enough to do something she would never have done if you'd asked her to the day before: she dropped her eyes all over his hips until he was standing right in front of her. “For you,” he said, holding the third sidecar.

“Delicious,” she declared. “Whose break?”

“Yours, Sidarra,” said Yakoob, Tanqueray in hand. “Um, got a question before you do.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Just how much goddamned pool do you play, sister?”

She looked up from the green felt of the table to see them both waiting heavy for the answer. “Oh, well, almost never. Anymore. But I used to play a lot, you know. Back in the day.” That made them chuckle into their drinks. “I had an uncle who played quite a bit, and he taught me how to line things up correctly and all. It's fun. I forgot about pool.”

The strange fact was, they
all
could play. You put your average three strangers together to play pool, especially three people off the street without their own personal cue sticks or gloves, and each game is going to be a long game. They're going to miss a lot, laugh, and generally talk about the world they live in. Not these three. These three could play. By the third game, balls were pocketed with regularity. Sometimes it looked as if somebody might not even get a chance to shoot. Sure, they talked. They talked about trying to keep faith in the stock market. They talked about who had a family at home (all, so to speak) and who could stay out all night (none of them). But apart from the conversation, each seemed to choose shots with a high degree of difficulty. When they made them, they stopped pumping their fists pretty soon and just went on shooting.

For Sidarra, pool felt like a sudden return to her heyday, when she was fourteen, almost beautiful, and she got to play for hours under her mysterious uncle Cicero's watchful eye, the balls gleaming on the bright green table like jewels for the taking. Always in the background was his deep and complicated jazz music, like the birdfighting of crazed horns amid a soft rain of cymbals. “Gwon, girl!” Uncle Cicero would grunt as she'd dream up some uncanny angle. “Good idea.” Then
pop!
She'd drill it. “Smart girl,” he'd
mumble as the ball slow-rolled down the tunnel. “Don't take a bow. Just think ahead.”

To Uncle Cicero, pool was the perfect game. On a proper table and a level earth, it is the only game decided completely by the skill of the player, he would say. The physics merely are what they are, and each player controls force and spin, angle and outcome with no one and nothing else to blame. For centuries, the games humbled kings and focused the minds of monks before prayer. Men could learn a lot about themselves around a pool table, he'd say, and so could she.

Except that, by ten o'clock, those sidecars were starting to work on Sidarra, and Yakoob was a little drunk too. Griff alone was Hennessy, and Griff was cool.

“My man here is a law-yuh, and homegirl is an administrator,” Yakoob said.

“Was,”
Sidarra mumbled. They heard that even over the bad rock music and looked over at her. “I don't wanna get into that tonight,” she said.

Yakoob went on, banking in a shot. “You and your lady got kids, Griff?”

Griff kept his face in his drink. “Nuh,” he coughed.

“All them years and no kids.” Yakoob took another shot.

Sidarra wasn't too drunk to take note of that answer. Griff was caught wondering if he had actually told them how long he'd been married. Maybe that was the Hennessy. “What about you?” he asked Yakoob.

“Daddy? Me?” Yakoob sighed. “Can't say so yet, I'm afraid.” He giggled nervously. “Five years in the pen with my old lady and still no luck trying to bring me home a son.” The statement seemed to make Yakoob miss. He sat back down on a stool and, instead of finishing a thought he left hanging, let out a loud, unconvincing yawn. “But you're blessed with a little girl, huh, Sidarra?” He watched her nod as Griff stood up to take a turn at the
table. “Lucky she wasn't caught up in that fire in the Bronx. Can you believe that shit?”

The mere mention of the four little girls sobered her instantly. “It wasn't a fire, Koob,” Sidarra explained. “It was a small explosion in a furnace, all the way in the basement of that school. It was the fumes that got the girls. Toxic fumes.”

“And they all had asthma.” Griff spat from a crouch before shooting at a ball.
Pop!
He let go and the balls scattered loudly. Griff had seen the evening news.

Yakoob looked incredulous. “Well, if there weren't no flames, no smoke, no fire, why didn't they just get the girls out?”

Sidarra shook her head. “I don't know. They were in a little room—a janitor's closet, taking a test, Yakoob. The proctor assigned to them was just an aide, an untrained young person just there to watch. She probably panicked. She was probably afraid if she stopped them from taking the test, all hell would break loose in the district office. By the time she finally came back to the room with someone who could make the decision, the fumes had overcome one of the girls.”

“What the fuck's the matter with them people?” Yakoob asked in disgust.

“They work for the New York City Board of Miseducation,” she answered matter-of-factly.

“But you work for the Board, too, don't you?” Yakoob followed, smiling at her. Sidarra didn't enjoy the tease. “Sorry,” he said. “At least that's gonna be four little rich girls when Al Sharpton gets through with the school.”

Sidarra pulled up and stared bitterly into Yakoob's face. “No, baby. No, not four.” Yakoob looked back at her quizzically. “You didn't hear? Two of those little girls died. The toxins set off an asthma attack. They died of asthma attacks. Another was clinging to life when I left work today.” Yakoob wasn't a funnyman at all anymore. He seemed to take the news personally, scanning the
dark floor of the pool hall. “So only two may live to see any money,” she said somberly.

Griff had been angrily shooting balls in the background. “No they won't,” he said flatly, and took another loud shot across the long table. “From what I understand, it looks like the company that fucked up the air ducts is an independent contractor. They'll get sued, but the city will be immune.”
Bip!
Griff shot a ball into the corner pocket. “The company will have limited liability, and its insurer will drag out the suit until the girls' families take a low-ball settlement just to pay off their attorneys.”
Bang!
He took another angry shot without looking up. “That's how it works. Two, three years from now, those poor girls won't see shit. You gotta have money to sue companies.”

Yakoob sat mildly stupefied on his stool. Sidarra held her knees and sighed. She didn't know about the legal obstacles facing the girls' families. And she had no idea how this back-page story from her daily work had made it into the mood of her clandestine pool game with two men. She certainly didn't expect to be sharing her outrage about it with them. Now, only sarcasm came to mind. “And if I know the Board of Miseducation, the company that's responsible for the accident will probably get the contract to fix it.”

“Ain't that a bitch,” Yakoob said into his gin.

“This is the real reason you need money,” Griff said, resting his cue on the table and walking over to where they were sitting. As his presence drew closer, Sidarra looked up his long leg and smiled naturally. “Protection against fools. Avoidance of a humiliating death, you know?” Finally he noticed Sidarra's eyes glowing slightly beside him. “And maybe some well-deserved good times, am I right?”

Their glasses touched.

The game changed. It went quiet for several turns. No looks. No handclaps for good shots. No helpful groans when somebody missed a tough one. Just playing.

“So you're a computer whiz, huh, Koob?” Sidarra asked.

Yakoob smiled. His friends called him Koob. “To pay the bills, baby, but not really. Don't laugh, y'all, but I'm a comedian. I guess you could say that I'm about as much a comedian right now as you're an administrator, Sid.”

She liked that. Her friends used to call her Sid.

TUESDAY NIGHT WAS GETTING TO BE THE STRANGEST NIGHT
of the week. The investment club met then, and that meant Sidarra would come home late to find her daughter groggy or already asleep. It meant Michael would be staying over, and it meant she would have enjoyed a night having coffee with Griff or playing pool with him and Yakoob. A few weeks had passed since her demotion at work. The first paycheck with the pay cut had come, and Sidarra found herself a little deeper in debt. Because he had bought her gold hoop earrings as a consolation present and was helping her by staying with her child, the debt was piling up to Michael in particular. Especially for sex.

“Why don't you put that paper down, girl,” Michael said from the bedroom doorway. Sidarra was sitting up in bed reading the stock pages of the
Wall Street Journal
. “I suppose those numbers might move if you don't watch them, but I doubt it. Hey, I know
a happy little number that's about ready to move up and down for you.”

She appreciated the joke and that he didn't laugh at it for a change, but she was not feeling sex at the moment. He was. Michael wore an old-style satin boxer's robe he'd caught on sale at Macy's. He found his own body irresistible in it. He stepped toward the bed and did a little shake-and-bake punching dance, then tugged at the sash until the robe opened. “The champ wants to know if you're ready to go a few rounds.”

The champ wasn't quite ready himself, but it wouldn't take much. She glanced up at Michael's heavy paunch, the tiny knots of black curls on his chest, and the tight hydrant of a penis, still flaccid but alert to sirens in the distance. Sidarra smiled politely, folded the paper to the side, and stood up. In real life there's no such thing as being beyond another's hopes, even if the mismatch is obvious to all. Whatever Sidarra had, Michael wanted badly. He often acknowledged the physical mismatch between them with a trembling heart and premature ejaculations. Yet no one else had presented himself to her with any lasting kindness or flattered her sincerely. She didn't like to admit it to herself, but she knew her body was his secret solace, the dream that had eluded him for fifty years. Every time they had sex he was as grateful to her for giving it to him as he was the first. Sidarra wanted to feel like that too one day.

She put a hand on his chest and gently pulled the satin collar closer to her on the bed. He let out the first low moan once he was sure this was no tease. When he lay back, she let her own housecoat fall open, revealing her full round breasts in a white lace bra, the hourglass curvature of her tummy, and the delicate white lace panties that seemed barely able to stretch across her wide brown hips. Still wearing glasses, his eyes thrilled with hunger. Wagging tall above his formidable stomach, his little champ grew heavy,
then hard. Sidarra was not the kind of lover who liked to hold his penis in her hand. She had never held it in her mouth. But because she felt she owed him tonight, she pulled off her lingerie slowly, kept her eyes on him, and slid down the bed. When her mouth was just an inch or so above his dick, she hummed to it, opened her lips, and let a thin line of saliva cool down the bulging head. His legs shook around her shoulders, and over the horizon of his belly she could see his eyes roll back in his head. Wet with spit, his penis rocked between her breasts. She held each with her hands and rolled him into a stupor.

“Lord Jesus, you been so good to me!” he called out.

And it didn't take long to be too much for him. Sidarra, who couldn't remember the last time a man's sperm had met any part of her face, lay on top of her spent boyfriend as cool semen dripped from her chin.

“Oooh! Thank you, baby,” he sighed, still breathing hard.

“That's what you're supposed to say when it's all over, papa. It ain't over.” She got up from the bed and wrapped her housecoat around her shoulders. “I'll be right back.”

This could be another effect of the sidecar martinis, she thought as she wiped semen from her face in the bathroom mirror. She took a hard look at her body. She leaned over the sink to see her hips and pubic bush below. She studied and craned, pushing the porcelain corner of the sink between her legs to see her sides. The cool thick edge touched the lip of her vagina just lightly enough to send a ripple up her spine. She leaned again, held the sides of the sink in both hands, and let the weight of the feeling last another second. Masturbation didn't surprise her. What surprised her was feeling so horny for Michael. That just didn't happen very often. When she went back into the bedroom, ready to take him inside her, she found only a large body deeply asleep to a chorus of snores. Before she could get mad, Sidarra was back at the bathroom sink. She locked the door and thought of Griff. That's
something she never would have done before. Now, it was something she could not wait to do again.

 

BY THE END OF THE SUMMER
, the newspapers kept reporting record stock market gains for just about everybody except Sidarra. It wasn't for lack of trying. Sidarra would stay up late at night, studying charts on the computer and comparing stocks. The language of investment was slowly beginning to make sense, but it was a challenge. Many of the reports Charles Harrison recommended turned out to be a bit dated or erroneous; magazines she found on her own proved more helpful, but still intimidating. For all her hours of work, she hadn't lost any money. But her $7,500 investment was now worth all of about $7,610, and it was time for Raquel to get new school clothes. They chose one of the hottest days in August to walk to the shops on 125th Street. And because she heard they would be getting shoes, Aunt Chickie asked if she could come along, too.

Chickie was Sidarra's mother's only living sister and was seventy-four years old. She had been called Chickie since the early days when she was the pride of the Dean girls. They all had moxie, a little extra style, and above average minds, but Chickie was the only one who looked the part of a starlet. She lived the part, too, as a young woman married to a Harlem showman who took her to Paris to live for a while in the fifties. Aunt Chickie's visits were always an event when Sidarra was growing up. She spoke French in between English sentences, wore perfume nobody had ever smelled before, and brought clothes you couldn't find in the United States. Her husband Melvin, the entertainer, was a chocolate-colored man with chocolate-filled suit pockets. The sight of them together started Sidarra's pubescent dream of being a lounge singer. They seemed to live the best way a person could: with cash, with the world's respect, and without barriers. And they were kiss-
on-the-street in love the way she never saw with her own parents. But that's where it all ended. One night on the Champs-Elysées, Melvin had a stroke and collapsed at the side of a white female acquaintance. He was dead before the ambulance reached the hospital. After that, Chickie came right home to America, poor and brokenhearted. Now, she was an arthritic woman with diabetes, surviving alone on Social Security in a two-room senior apartment on Edgecombe Avenue. Like a long-forgotten tattoo, the only thing left of her former glory was her name.

“Why are we going in
here
?” Raquel asked as Sidarra led them into a Payless ShoeSource.

“Thank God it's air-conditioned, that's all I know,” said Aunt Chickie.

“We're pretending, that's why,” Sidarra told Raquel.

“Pretending what?”

“We're pretending that we're poor and this is the best Mommy can do this year. Try it. It'll be fun.”

“Oh, I'm real good at this game,” Aunt Chickie said, slowly making her way over to the first place to sit down.

Raquel wasn't sure she liked it, and walked down the long, dark aisles of shoes in her size wearing a distinctly funky face. Sidarra's plan was to wear her out by looking upstairs and down at every possible pair of shoes she might like, making her try them all on, then bringing the five or six finalists over to try on again in front of Aunt Chickie.

“How 'bout these? I like these okay,” said Raquel. She was pointing to an open-toed pair of patent-leather heels.

“They're a little hoochie-mama, don't you think, Raquel?” Sidarra asked, holding the shoe up to the light. “I mean, this is a little more heel than I think you'll be needing for a few years, sugar. And how you gonna wear that one in the snow?”

Raquel was undeterred. “I guess I could wear some other shoes
when it snows. Or we could just get some boots to wear over them, couldn't we?”

She sounded so reasonable that Sidarra was being pushed into an absolute “No” when she had hoped to avoid that. Being in Payless was bad enough. “Oh, Raquel. We can't get these as a matter of conscience. Yeah, I've read about this manufacturer. Scobi. Yes. I recognize the name. I own a few shares of their competitors. Did you know that the thing about Scobi's is they use forced child labor? That means that kids your age make these shoes in Taiwan. They're not allowed to go to school or play outside. All day long, separated from their parents, they put 'em at a long table and make them make shoes.”

Raquel listened with great interest as long as she believed her mother, and Sidarra maintained a look of grave concern on her face. “Really?”

“Isn't that terrible?”

“Yeah.”

“So let's not support that kind of stuff. Why don't you put 'em back on the shelf?”

Raquel didn't hesitate. She practically threw the shoes down in disgust and wiped her hand on her shirt. For the next hour or so, Raquel was distracted, her brows furrowed, wondering to herself how an eight-year-old could make a shoe like that.

Finally they got back to Aunt Chickie with four pairs of contenders to choose from. Aunt Chickie was sitting right where they'd left her, holding a Payless bag and talking with an elderly gentleman standing above her with a silver-handled cane in his hand.

“Pardon me,” Sidarra said to them. “I thought you needed shoes, Aunt Chickie?”

“I'm fine, honey. Thank you.”

The man smiled broadly, revealing two gold teeth. He bowed his head, winked at Aunt Chickie, and turned for the door. “I'll see you then,” he baritoned on his way out.

“Who was that?” Raquel asked.

“He had a lovely smile, didn't he?” Aunt Chickie answered, watching the man walk gingerly into the sun.

Sidarra looked down at her aunt. Still so beautiful, she thought. Body broken but the spirit unbeatable. That's how I was gonna be. “Well, here are Raquel's choices.”

After spreading them out to lots of exaggerated oohs and aahs from Aunt Chickie, Raquel made her selection. Two pairs costing just $12.99 plus tax. Sensible blue with the silver buckle and brown suede Timberland knockoffs for styling. Raquel actually looked happy as she walked up to the register with her mom. Sidarra pulled out her last good credit card and handed it to the teenage cashier. They waited. And waited.

“Ma'am, your card's been declined,” said the expressionless teenager with all the quiet discretion of a boom box.

“I'm sorry?” Sidarra asked. “The card is fine. It must be your system.”

“Run it again!” Raquel demanded.

Her daughter's tone caught Sidarra by surprise. She didn't even know Raquel knew what that meant. “Raquel. Don't use that tone with her.”

“Run it again!” Aunt Chickie called out from her seat by the door.

The teenager ran the card again. And again. Chastised by an eight-year-old and an old woman, she must have figured it was better to wear out an arm than to argue. But the card was declined every time. Sidarra had exceeded her limit. Maxed out on just fourteen bucks. So she asked the young woman to hold the shoes for her and told her she would come back after she went to an ATM. Sidarra hoped that was true, for her sake and her daughter's, and they walked back out into the stifling August heat.

“Ghetto shopping, baby,” Aunt Chickie said. “That's what happens. Broke-ass machines. That's all.”

Sidarra and her only aunt did not always get along well, but given her brothers' unwillingness to help her out, she was left the duty to look out for her. Their mutual reluctance and Aunt Chickie's diabetes episodes were the reasons Mrs. Thomas had been pressed into babysitting service most days after school. But there were times like this when Sidarra wouldn't want anyone but Aunt Chickie with her.

“Did Mommy embarrass you a bit in there?” she asked Raquel.

“Nah.”

“Well, that's just how it goes sometimes. I'm not sure whose mistake it was—probably mine. But the important thing is I'm working on it, so don't worry.”

They needed to walk as far away from that embarrassment as they could. Sidarra took them each by the hand and marched them back and forth, a half block this way, a half block the other, totally indecisive. But Aunt Chickie could barely walk, and the sun was beating her up bad. In front of the Apollo Theater they crossed 125th Street between the cars. They made it to Lenox and crossed the wide avenue. Once they reached the other side, Raquel was annoying them with questions about how kids could make patent-leather shoes, and Aunt Chickie was breathing hard.

“I gotta stop,” she gasped, her eyes almost closing and one hand on her chest. “I, uh, need to get into some cool, Sid.”

Sidarra finally stopped. She and Raquel looked over at the old woman and nearly panicked. “Okay. You right. Let's just ease over next to the building there and get some shade. I'll think of something.”

She thought about the Theresa Hotel, which was just back across the street. Maybe they could sit down in the investment club conference room and pull themselves together. Maybe there would be air-conditioning in there. But all of a sudden Aunt Chickie spoke up.

“Would you look at that,” she said, her eyes fixed inside the
huge pane of storefront glass beside them, and her finger rising to point.

“Wow. That's a beautiful dress, Mommy,” said Raquel, her mouth open.