Between Lovers (6 page)

I say, “It's been a while.”

“Months. Thank you for sending me your new book.”

She congratulates me on my last book, which, like the others I have written, she will collect but never read because of the earthy language and the frank content. It's too real for her world.

She asks, “Are you on tour?”

I tell her that I'm always on tour, always eating hotel food, hanging out at convention centers at somebody's expo, always keeping my mind occupied.

“I'm in Oakland. Doing a few book signings.”

There is a pause.

I continue, “And I'm visiting Nicole.”

The faux happiness between us vanishes like darkness devoured by light.

In a callous manner that rings of intolerance, she replies, “My daughter is dead.”

“Nicole is alive.”

“Chile, listen. The Nicole I gave birth to is as dead as my husband. As dead as her daddy has been for the last six years. Her eight brothers and three sisters are alive, one is in rehab, but he's stood before the church and confessed and asked for forgiveness and is coming back to the Lord, so each is doing well in their own way. My child, the one that is dead in spirit, her soul rests in an unmarked grave.”

“How can you say that?”

She remains firm. “Her body is still among the living, but her soul is dead.”

“I know it's hard, but it's hard on her too. Can you talk to her, maybe try to understand—”

“Not acceptable. Degenerative behavior is not acceptable. People can't just do what they want to in this world.” She says things that speak of infinite disappointment, of community-wide embarrassment at the wedding, the almost wedding, an event that cost thirty thousand dollars, a wasted thirty thousand dollars, and in the end she tells me, “You know, in Pakistan, men bum their women when disgraced.”

“We're not in Pakistan.”

“But we have matches. We have gasoline and matches.”

She hangs up.

My eyes are still on Starbucks. Nicole rushes out with a tall cup of the legal liquid drug in one hand. A second tall cup of the caffeinated upper is in her other hand. I know she always orders a tall cup, she always orders Kenyan with a shot of vanilla, either that or hazelnut, but never drinks half.

Coffee. Laptop.

She's a divided soul, trying to please two people at the same time.

She slows on the stairs, adjusts the laptop strap, the purse strap, balances the exotic coffees and still manages to check her watch. Her pace doubles and she struggles to whip out her cellular phone. She vanishes ten seconds before the jingle of her bracelets fade.

I rewind my tape recorder; play back the sounds of us making love. The recorder was on. From time to time I use it to interview, to capture reality. Sometimes I sit in a room filled with people and steal what they say, steal what they talk about, steal what they care about. I'm a writer, and whether the others admit it or not, we're all thieves. That's what we do.

This morning, I thought that Nicole and I would end up talking, hadn't planned on making love, not the way we did. Not as long as we did. We loved close to forty-five minutes. Any longer and the tape would've clicked when it shut off. Maybe that would've upset Nicole, maybe that would've excited her. I don't know. She's changing, becoming unpredictable.

I listen to our words, our sounds; sounds that tell me Nicole loves me. That this isn't in vain.

Then I erase it all.

The taste of Nicole lives in my mouth, her liberal aroma smolders from my flesh, her sex rises from my stained white sheets. I close my eyes and sleep a restless, fitful sleep. Like my head is on stone.

Life is not fair.

Life is not unfair.

Life just is.

Two years ago, we were living ten miles below Los Angeles, just as many above Long Beach, in one of Los Angeles County's best-kept secrets, the city of Carson. My engagement ring was on her finger and a three-bedroom house was in escrow. My plan was for us to jump that good old broom, write book after book, travel every spare moment, run races in as many cities as we could, collect those useless medals they give out, and grow old studying French and Spanish. And of course, write about it all. Vacation in Montego Bay. Stay in a beautiful villa at the Half Moon Resort. Visit Kenya, Morocco, and Egypt. In Hawaii, get our own timeshare on the big island of Kona. In Memphis we'd make love at the Peabody, then go see the ducks marching along red carpet to the Italian marble fountain. Stay at the Four Seasons in Georgetown and stroll the redbrick sidewalks in search of gifts for our friends and family. Leave the country when we became restless. Africa, Spain, Mexico, I wanted to see it all with her hand in mine. With money and health on our sides, we could move according to the season, and every night sleep in each other's arms chanting out love songs that thank the heavens.

My birthday. We broke into my piggy bank and went to Paris that June, put on our dark shades, strutted and sashayed every rue intersecting with the Champs Élysées until the sun went down at 10 p.m. Took pictures of Notre Dame, Lady Liberty, that arch of triumph Napoleon had built, made love twice every night, windows open and a cool breeze on our skin, our echoes of passion dancing out onto the avenue, then did it again every morning, ate at so many sidewalk cafés until we were about to burst. Hiked and sweated our way up the iron stairs to the observation deck of the Eiffel Tower and looked out over the city, her hand always in mine.

So many smiles were on her face. So much love in her every word.

And after all that, we'd lounge in the bed, naked in our own little Garden of Eden.

She asked me, “What are you afraid of?”

“What makes you think I'm afraid of anything?”

“Everyone's afraid of something.”

“Failure.”

“Why?”

“If I fail, then everyone else is right.”

“About doing like your brothers and being like your daddy.”

“Yep. Have to prove my point.”

“Then you hate being wrong.”

“That too. I guess.”

“You hate to lose.”

“Hate to lose. I've always hated to lose.”

“You seem so together; so confident.”

“Enough of analyzing me. What are you afraid of?”

“Wasn't analyzing you, sweetie. Didn't mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“I'm not uncomfortable.”

“You shifted. Your tone changed. Your dick went limp. You're uncomfortable.”

We laughed.

I said, “You're the Sherlock of the century.”

“Not being liked,” she whispered.

“What?”

“I'm afraid of not being liked. Not being loved.”

“You're after acceptance.”

“If that's what all of that means, then yeah.”

I held her a little closer.

She said, “Love your legs. They look so powerful.”

“Thanks.”

“Love the way it curves. It's so pretty.”

“Let's do something different tonight.”

That night I wanted to go to the famous strip club, Folies Bergères. Had never been to one with her. Wanted my woman to escort me into a Parisian Baby lon, a place where no one we knew would be, where we'd have no accountability. Let her watch me be tantalized by another faceless woman. A creature of no real value. I wanted my woman to be uninhibited, get turned on by us doing something new together. She didn't want to go to a place like that, wanted to go eat dinner at Georges, a chic art deco restaurant on the top of the Beaubourg Museum, where we could get a table on the brushed-steel floors and see all the landmarks, spotlights on the edge of the city, watch the Eiffel Tower that was lit up like a glittering Christmas tree every night.

She sighed, sucked in her lips. It was my birthday. Every step of the way she let her protest be heard, but would do anything for me. That's how it was most of the time. Me talking her into doing something new and exciting. Her saying no, and me not accepting that as an answer.

Just like at some of the gentlemen's clubs in L.A., I saw many female customers paying female dancers for moments of enticement. Only these were African women. French women. Armenian women. That made my fiancée uncomfortable and when I heard negative words, I smiled. I nudged her, told her I wanted to watch her be entertained by another woman.

“No way.”

“It's my fantasy.”

“Sell crazy somewhere else. I'm all stocked up.”

“Baby, we're in Paris. Not like anybody we know is gonna see.”

“Don't pressure—”

“C‘mon.”

“—me. I hate it when you pressure—”

“It's my birthday.”

She sighed, made a few faces. “Sure, if it'll make you happy. I want you happy.”

Yes, it was my fantasy. My birthday hard-on. My freaky-deaky wish. I loved making her nervous. A dancer came over, a girl with dark, pretty hair, thick black eyebrows, a stranger who spoke no English, but understood how to move in a rhythm that went beyond language. Light-brown freckles on her arms and shoulders. Very attractive. So beautiful. Ten American dollars for one song. I paid, motioned at Nicole and the dancer smiled, said
oui mademoiselle
and went to her without hesitation. It was strange seeing another woman that close to Nicole. The dancer started out facing her, touching her own breasts and sides, dancing with the rhythm of a swaying palm tree. It wasn't hardcore. Not like watching a video with Heather Hunter and Taylor Hayes. It was erotic, like watching the women make love in
Emmanuelle.

And when it was over, Nicole was quivering like a child who had just gotten off her first roller-coaster ride. As we left that place, her sweaty palms gripped my hand like they were a steel trap.

I asked, “You okay?”

She stared off into space. “Happy birthday.”

Not much was said in the taxi. Most of the time she would make comments about the narrow streets and how wild the drivers were, how they always seemed to be on the verge of an accident.

Again I asked, “You okay?”

“Happy birthday to you.”

“Hungry?”

“Happy birthday to you.”

“Want to go to Man Rays?”

“Happy birthday, happy birthday, happy birthday to you.”

“You okay?”

Her words were distant. “Wanna stop and get some Vaseline?”

“Are you pissed off?”

“I'll let you do your thing tonight, you know. Anything for you. It's your birthday.”

“You okay?”

“Stop asking me that, please.”

Back at the Hotel Bedford, after a long, hot bath, we ordered room service, lit candles, put my Ondine Darcyl CD in the player, listened to her soothing rendition of “Autumn Leaves,” “La Vie en Rose,” and “Black Orpheus,” all in French, some with a Brazilian feel, all jazzy and beautiful. Savored those sounds as we ate cod and mashed potatoes, sipped White Bordeaux, and rested underneath a golden duvet on white linen sheets that smelled like spring.

When the music stopped Nicole asked me, “Would you fuck her?”

“Who?”

“The French girl you picked to dance for me.”

“Hell, no.”

“Even if I wasn't here?”

“Not even if you were on the moon.”

“Men don't pick women they wouldn't fuck.”

We experienced a soundless moment, one great enough to be put in Holland's Museum of Silence.

Then she snapped, “I close my eyes and I can't stop seeing her ... I smell her perfume all over my skin... and I can't stop tingling... I still feel her breasts on me.”

I swallowed.

“Her breasts ... they... they felt ...”

I shifted. Hanging on her every word.

“She touched me, something happened. My nipples ... they... I was so wet ...” Her anger changed, evolved into a rambling confession spoken in shame. “Her breasts, so soft, when she rubbed them up and down my skin, oh God, when they touched my face, her nipples became erect, like little bitty penises, I wanted them in my mouth, and the way they felt on my skin...”

She lost her breath. My heart pounded, saliva thickened while I waited for her to come back to life.

In a whisper of amazement she said, “Never felt like this before.”

“Not even with me?”

There was a pause. A pause, a trembling lower lip, heavy breathing, and no answer. Nicole pulled me on top of her. Begged me to love her hard, love her deep, love her strong, to come inside her. That was the first time she made painful sounds and cried while we made love.

I stopped, asked if she was okay.

She forced me on my back, climbed on me with impatience and a solemn face, not singing and laughing like she usually did, eyes watery, chewing her lips, chest heaving, doing all she could to hide the tears. She raised her hips and howled as the peak of me rushed into the dampness of her, spreading her open, stretching her out. Heat and softness moving against my fire and hardness.

Then she stopped. Didn't slow down, stopped. Sat there tugging at the hair on my chest, lips twisted, eyes diverted, her heat turning cool. She fell from me, collapsed with her face deep inside the pillows, hid in her own world, breathing harder than a woman in labor.

My palms were sweating. I tried to hide the trembling in my hands, wanted to erase the shakiness in my voice. I reached for her, but didn't touch her. I was too scared.

“Do you hate me?” she asked. “You brought me all the way to Paris, and I'm messing up your birthday. I bet you hate me, don't you?”