How Stella Got Her Groove Back (28 page)

“I don’t bite either,” he says.

“Then make your move,” I say.

“You make your move,” he says.

“I don’t know how,” I say.

“Oh, I’m sure you do,” he says.

“Help me,” I say.

“How much help do you need?”

“A lot,” I say, and he slides to the middle of the sofa and leans over in my direction and then I lean over in his direction and we purge.

“I can’t believe I’m here,” I say.

“I can’t either,” he says. “But you’re definitely here.”

“Are you sure you want to stay?”

“If you ask me that one more time, Stella . . .”

“Okay. Then up. I need to take a shower because I’ve been flying all day.”

“So have I,” he says. “But Stella, before you do, I have to tell you my bad news.”

My heart drops. “What kind of bad news? I don’t like bad news.”

“I have to work tomorrow and I wasn’t able to switch with anyone.”

“So what time does that mean you have to leave?”

“About noon.”

“That means you won’t be going to Rick’s Café with us, then, doesn’t it?”

“If we went early, I could.”

“You don’t have to feel obligated to do something with my son, Winston.”

“It’s not that at all. I’d
like
to get to know him better.”

“Why?”

“Because.”

“Because why?”

“Because I like his mother,” he says. “Now go take your shower.”

I am Ms. Bubbles in there and come out smelling like I must’ve drunk a bottle of my Calyx and the first thing Winston says when I walk into the bedroom and I see the shape of his long body through the white sheets is, “Wow, you smell good,” and I have put on this stupid summer nightie thing and as soon as I slide under the covers next to him and feel his warm body I decide that I am a grown woman and it’s okay to take the thing off which I do.

I slide over to him and here he comes with one of his deep warm please-don’t-ever-stop-kissing-me kisses and I put my arms around him his head his back and hold him as close as I can get which is not close enough and so I keep trying. He feels much stronger more sure of himself this time and I like what he is doing to me I like it a lot even though I can tell that we are both anxious. “You don’t have to prove anything to me,” I say.

“Yes I do,” he says. “I want to prove how much I care about you by how I touch you,” he says and lightly brushes his fingers over my hair. “I want you to forget about everything that’s troubling you.”

“How do you know something’s troubling me?”

“Because I can feel it.”

“Winston,” I sigh, and he holds me closer and kisses me a little longer a little deeper and makes me feel safe like sympathetic magic and I guess he feels it too because he holds me squeezes me presses me up against his chest so firmly with such urgency and his arms and hands do not fall away from me until it is daylight.

• • • •

When I bend down to kiss him he purrs and I tell him I am going for a run and he smiles and opens his eyes and waves as I put on jogging shorts and my sports bra which almost complement each other and then when I look at him for a few minutes lying in that bed with all his innocence and power I realize that I can run anytime so I take a condom out of the bedside table and place it on top and then I take off all this stuff and slide back under those sheets where Winston and I begin to bond in a major way.

“You could be addicting,” he says afterwards.

“I bet you say that to all the girls,” I say.

“What girls?”

“Winston.” I sigh. “It’s a figure of speech.”

My head is resting on my pillow. His head is also on my pillow. “So tell me, Stella, where is this going?”

I sit up. “Where is what going?”

“Us.”

“I don’t know, Winston. Where could it possibly
be
going?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know what it means.”

“You really do think I’m too young, don’t you?”

“You are!”

“Too young for what?”

“I don’t know. Me.”

“Do I feel too young?”

“No.”

“Do I look too young?”

I turn to look at him.

“Never mind, don’t answer that,” he says and we both chuckle for a second and then get serious again.

“Winston, look. I don’t really know what I’m doing. All I know is that I like you more than I should.”

“That’s refreshing to hear. Look. What are you so afraid of?”

“I’m not actually ‘afraid.’ ”

“Yes you are. You’re afraid of what you feel because it’s not fitting into your scheme of things, isn’t that it?”

“Well, since you put it that way, yes.”

“You know that American saying, I’m sure.”

“What saying?”

“Shit happens.”

Okay. That is true. Shit does happen. This has happened. I’ll give him that. “What about you, Winston? What are you afraid of?”

“Nothing,” he says.

“You have to be afraid of something.”

“Honestly?” he asks.

“Honestly.”

“Spiders and insects. All insects.”

“I don’t mean that kind of scared.”

“Then what kind
do
you mean?”

“I mean, oh, never mind. Tell me, Winston,” I say, looking at the fan swirling slowly above us, “what do you want out of life?” I’m thinking that this question should give him a little jolt.

“I want to be a good person, a worthy person, a strong man that people can depend on and know that my word is my bond, and I want to be charitable and loving and love a woman so deeply she won’t ever want to be rid of me because I hope to be the light in her life. And making a decent living is pretty high up on the list too. How about you?”

“I feel the same exact way you do,” I say, and swallow.

“Look, you asked me. And I’d like an answer as well.”

“Well, I want to find my place in the world—at the table, so to speak. I want to give away warmth. I want to love a man so hard it feels soft and I want him to know that it ain’t over till the fat lady sings. I want to see how far I can go alone and how far I can go with someone else. I want to be smarter. I want to be the best mother friend sister lover I can be. I want to respect other people’s feelings as much as I can and I want to figure out how to make a living without actually having a job.”

“But you have a job.”

“Had.”

“What happened?”

“I got canned.”

“No kidding?”

“No kidding.”

“When?”

“Right after I got back from Jamaica the first time.”

“Why didn’t you tell me, Stella? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“And what are you doing back here?”

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t have a job, Stella.”

“But I still have a life,” I say.

“So why did they release you?”

“Because they reorganized my department and I didn’t make the cut.”

“Do you feel bad about that?”

“Not really. What I really feel is relieved, if you want to know the truth.”

“I can’t imagine.”

“Have you ever been fired?” I ask.

“No. This is my first job,” he says.

“It figures,” I say.

“Don’t tease,” he says. “Now let me ask you something, and be honest with me if you can. Do you have any particular plans for yourself?”

“Nothing too specific right now.”

“So are you sort of searching?”

“It feels like I’ve got one foot on the path, yes.”

“Would you let me help make your search easier?”

And all I can say is, “I think you already have, Winston.”

“M
OM
,
WHERE
’
S
W
INSTON
?”
Quincy asks, leaning over the upstairs railing. I was beginning to wonder when they’d wake up. It’s almost noon. I could tell they were both zonked last night and I was amazed that they admitted it. Now the Wicked Witch of the West appears behind him, white crust all around her pretty brown lips. Her hair is sticking out like a black halo and with her little pink nightgown on she looks like she’s about to do that Peter Pan thing. “Good morning, Auntie Stella,” she says in her high-pitched voice which she should pray at night she grows out of by her teenage years.

“Good morning, Chantel. Quincy, can’t you say good morning?”

“Good morning, Mom. Where’s Winston? What time are we going to Rick’s Café?”

“Slow down. First of all, Winston had to go to work and he apologizes for not being able to come.”

“Aaah, man!” he moans.

“He’ll be back.”

“Do
we
still get to go?”

“Of course. But I forgot we had talked about snorkeling this morning even though it’s lunchtime now.”

Quincy looks at his watch. “What’s the time difference again, Mom?”

“Three hours.”

“You mean it’s already twelve noon here?”

“Looks that way.”

“Mom, why’d you let us sleep so long!”

“Because apparently you needed it.”

He runs down the stairs and goes over to the front door, opens it and looks out. “Wow,” he says. “Chantel, come look. The beach is right there. Mom, can we go to the beach first?”

Chantel walks down the steps like a girl and saunters over next to him. She is still rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

“Look, Quincy,” I say. “Slow down, okay? First things first. This is the deal. It’s our first day here, so let’s do this. You two take your showers and then we’ll get something to eat and how about we hang out on the beach and then go snorkeling at three since we missed the nine-thirty boat and we can go to Rick’s tomorrow.”

He looks over at Chantel as if he’s waiting for her to concur but what neither of them realizes is that
this is
the plan and they will participate in it regardless. They give each other the nod and the spokesperson looks over at me and says, “That’s fine with us, Mom.”

“So let’s get busy,” I say.

“When’s Winston coming back?” Chantel asks.

“Maybe tomorrow or Saturday. Depending on if he can get time off.”

“He’s cute,” she says and has the nerve to blush.

She is too grown, I think, and I am wondering just how good she might look in a nun’s habit.

• • • •

After we eat a hearty lunch I begin my afternoon the normal way with my virgin piña colada. Some things remain the same, I think, as we pull our chaise longues close to the edge of the water. We can see our villa from where we perch ourselves and after I rub the kids down with number 35 sunblock off they go into the water where they will stay for the next two hours until it is time to snorkel and then we will snorkel and then they will come back to the beach until dinnertime.

I read, and I am somewhat bored in a way but not really. I love watching the kids romp and in fact as I watch them I realize how much I envy them. How clear of debris their world is right now. How long will it stay that way? I wonder. I hope to keep Quincy free of as much bullshit as I can. I want him to know it’s out there but I also want him to know that he has the option of joining in or standing on the sidelines and letting it pass him by. He is a smart child. Quick. Which he got from me of course and I am hopeful that he will continue to be a dorky kid who happens to be a cute dork which is just fine with me.

“Are you Anita Baker?”

I look up and see a security guard standing above me. He is jet black and looks sort of like Wesley Snipes, which kind of throws me off for a minute but he is definitely Jamaican. “Me?”

“Yeah, mon,” he says, lifting his policeman’s hat up and immediately dropping it back down.

“No. Afraid not.”

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

“What’s your name, mon?”

“Stella.”

“You got a last name, Stella?”

“Stella’ll do. And you are?”

“Frisco. That’s my name.”

“Nice to meet you, Frisco.”

I sit up because he is standing over me and I don’t like this feeling of him looking down at me especially since I’m wearing my chartreuse two-piece with the Wonderbra foam pads.

“How long you ’ere for?”

“A week. Just got here.”

“Those your kids?”

“Yes,” I say to keep it simple.

“Where’s your husband?”

“Back at the Ponderosa.”

“Where’s that?”

“In Nevada near Reno.”

“Reno?” he asks and I can tell he’s trying to picture it on the map but can’t quite get it together.

“I’m sorry. It’s closer to Las Vegas,” I say.

“Oh,” he says, smiling confidently now. “He couldn’t get away from the job, is that it?”

“Precisely. He owns a casino.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Well, he has partners of course.”

“Wow, so you guys must do all right then, huh? But you have to if you’re staying at this hotel, hey?”

“We fare pretty well, I guess. Well, look, Cisco—”

“Frisco. As in San Francisco.”

“Okay. Frisco. I don’t want to be rude, but I think I’m going to get in the water. It is a scorcher out here today.”

“That it is,” he says. “That it is. Enjoy yourself, now,” and he tips his hat and walks over to a short palm tree where his bench apparently awaits him and he sits there and will sit there, watching the three of us in the water on a regular basis for the next several days. I will learn that Frisco works two jobs, that he is thirty-four years old and is looking for a wife, especially since he has been working hard and can now afford one. He will say he didn’t want to get married if he couldn’t pay for his children’s education. I will ask him why the children that he doesn’t even have yet will need to go to private school and he will explain to me that because the public school system is a farce the only way to guarantee that your children are well educated is to send them to private school which costs lots of money and Frisco feels that by the end of the summer he should have himself a wife even though he doesn’t have any immediate prospects but he has a feeling she’s headed his way and he’s sure that sometime in the next year he will be a father.