Liar's Game (44 page)

Rosa Lee touched my arm. “Wait.”

“What?”

She reached into her purse, handed me an envelope.

“What’s this?”

“Womack, Harmonica, and I are giving you four hundred dollars. It’s not much, but maybe this will help you keep food in your tummy until you get situated in New York.”

“No, I don’t want to leave owing everybody.”

“It’s a love gift. We’ve been blessed a thousand times over, and we’re sharing it. From me, my husband, his father, and my little rug rats.”

Again, I held back the emotions. I whispered, “Thanks.”

“One last thing. Friend to friend.”

“I’m listening.”

“You came to Los Angeles because you were running from something. I’m not asking you to stay, because you know what’s in your heart, but make sure you know why you’re really going wherever you’re going.”

“Harlem is my home.”

“Don’t misunderstand. If you don’t know why you’re leaving, whether you go to Harlem or Australia, it’ll happen over and over. Don’t pass that on to your children. Don’t be alone on an island filled with people.”

“I won’t.”

I knew that when I left California, I’d never hear from them again. They’d fall back into their lives, and I’d go on with mine. Remember each other from time to time, reach for the phone, but never get around to making that call. Become just another face in a photo album. A name that starts to escape.

“Now come on,” Rosa Lee said. “Give my family some of those hugs and kisses before you drive toward the sunrise.”

I left work a little early because I had to stop by a piece of rental property in the 3800 block of Edgehill. A nice two-bedroom house, large living room, lots of closet space, garage, huge palm trees in the backyard. This phase of my life was almost over, so I was planning my next two moves. I was going to go home, change, then run ten miles, but when I saw Dana’s car loaded up, I parked and sat there for a moment.

Suitcases were in her backseat. Boxes in the window.

The streets were crowded with cars. Kids were getting out of Audubon Middle School, coming by in droves up Stocker, others were running through the alley, cursing each other like sailors.

Across the street a slim Hispanic woman was sitting in a red convertible Cavalier. She got out and stood next to her car. Jean shorts missing enough material to show her golden butt cheeks. Lime green sports bra. Hiking boots, thick socks hanging over the rim. Hair fire engine red with blond streaks.

She tilted her dark shades, looked at me.

I got out of Womack’s car, loosened my tie, and went up the steps leading to my stucco castle. She was behind me, struggling with her luggage trudging up the steps that led to my cave.

I turned around and said, “You looking for somebody?”

Her head raised. Brown eyes penetrated her dark shades and met mine.

Juanita’s door opened. She stepped in the hallway in a short red dress, make-up was done like she was an
Ebony
Fashion Fair model. I’d never seen her look so good. I nodded at Juanita. She ignored me.

She smiled and spoke to the woman who was behind me. “Hey, Soledad.”

The girl came to life. “You look good.”

“You’re looking good too.”

“Where are the rest of your things?”

“I’ll get my television and stuff later.”

After that, all of their words were in Spanish.

Their animated conversation kept on going. Me and Juanita passed by each other. Her eyes cut my way for a moment. A real quick, very sharp moment. I started to tell her then that I was moving out in the next thirty days, was going to let her know that I’d found a better place to live, a peaceful home that had a lease-to-buy option, but I kept my words to myself and walked through their walls of chuckles and hugs and laughs.

The shower was running when I stepped inside. Smelled Dana’s strawberry and champagne shower gel mixing with the pasta aroma coming from the kitchen. I looked at the darkened barrier over the stove; smoke would always live in these walls. My eyes fell on the suitcases and garment bags at the foot of the sofa. Dana had separated the compact discs, made three stacks. Her books were in the living room.

“Vince, that you?”

I sat down on the sofa; it creaked under my weight.

“Vince?”

I finally said, “Yeah.”

“Come here for a minute.”

“What you need?”

“Can you come here for a quick minute?”

The bathroom door was open, but I stopped just short of the door frame.

“Yeah? What’s up, Dana?”

“Step inside. I ain’t gonna bite you.”

I did. Saw her midnight skin. Light brown eyes. Water ran over Dana’s face; she gurgled.

“Vince?”

“Yeah?”

“This is hard for me to say. I mean to ask.”

“Ask.”

“Will you let me make love to you?”

“That was pretty direct.”

“Pretty much to the point.”

I paused. “When?”

“Right now.” She coughed. “I have some unfinished business, and after I take care of it, it’ll be too late for me to drive.”

“I see. What kind of business?”

“If I stayed until the morning, would that be a problem?”

I answered, “Not really.”

“Good. Well, can I make love to you or not?”

I didn’t answer. But my insides were burning for her. I closed my eyes for a while. Shut out this world and thought back to those childhood days when I had a mystical playhouse. The illusion of a life where I made all the rules. If something wasn’t the way I wanted it, I simply wished it away. It was that easy. In my play world, everything always turned out the best for me.

But this wasn’t a play world.

This was the heart of Los Angeles.

Dana asked, “You gonna leave a sister hanging?” “Sure. I’ll make love to you.”

Nothing was said, like neither one of us knew how to start this old-times-sake party.

I started having second thoughts.

Dana whispered, “Take your clothes off.”

My voice softened. “Sure.”

“What do you have to do tonight?”

“Nothing but load up your car. Why?”

“Later on, I need you to ride with me somewhere.”

“Where?”

“Take your clothes off before the water gets cold. We’ll worry about that later. If we have enough time.”

We entered a language without words. After we showered, I grabbed the jojoba massage oil. Dana pulled my red comforter from the hall closet. Pulled curtains. Lit candles. Burned incense. She lay me on my stomach and poured warm oil in her hands, spread it up my body from my feet. Rubbed me down. My back. Neck. Shoulders. Circles with her thumbs.

She said, “You’re so tense.”

She kneaded the back of my legs. My arms. Palms of my hands. Each finger. Turned me over and saw how erect I was, but she ignored that part of me as it reached for the sky. Her touch had a syncopation, healed the aching that running had left in my feet. I fell asleep for seconds at a time. She anointed my genitals with warm oil. Held on to that part of me with her left hand, massaged with her right. Stroking in slow motions, then faster, her energy flowing into my body. The room became tropical. Gentle breeze creeping through my open window.

With the heated oil, I did the same thing to her. Massaged her head to toe, rubbed her temples, eyelids, lips, ears, breasts, worked the kinks out of her muscles. Touched her like it was the first time. Like it was the last time. With my mind trying to remember all of her. Her body had more tension, muscles harder than marbles, but I worked them until the rocks became pebbles, and the pebbles disappeared. So many sexy sounds came from her mouth, sensual expressions all over her face. I spread her legs and anointed her with oil. Massaged that womanly part of her, my fingers easing inside that passage to pleasure. Her breathing a sultry song. Her hand was on me, holding firm, massaging me high and low, close to orgasm.

“Let me get a condom.”

She said, “I’ve got one in here with me.”

I asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Jesus, I feel like crying.”

It was dark when Dana woke up and got up off the floor, the place we had made our last pallet. Both of us had made love, long and strong, but afterward neither one of us said much. Went right back to being polite.

She said, “Thanks for what you did.”

“You’re thanking me for sex?”

“No. My taxes. My desk fees.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Thanks anyway.”

“You’re welcome.”

We hadn’t held each other while we napped. No pretense. She eased into her ripped 501s, put her hands over her breasts, rummaged through the tumbled white sheets, found her pink bra, stuffed it into her back pocket.

“Thanks, Vince.”

“You don’t have to keep thanking me for your taxes.”

“No, for the sex. I needed to release some stress.”

“So you used me.”

“You’re stressed too.”

“What makes you think that?”

“ ’Cause you tried to kill me with your penis.”

“You tried to smother me.”

“I slipped. We had too much oil on us.”

Soft chuckles, then awkwardness.

I said, “Stuffy in here. Want me to open the window?”

She shrugged. “A helicopter’s out there.”

“Didn’t notice.”

She said, “Wait till it goes by.”

“You gonna shower?”

“No. I wanna smell like you for a while.”

I grabbed my jeans.

She asked, “You heading for the shower?”

“I’ll hang on to this fragrance.”

She pulled on her NYU sweatshirt. “Get dressed. Traffic should be better. It’s time for me to make my run.”

“It’s almost nine. Where you gotta go?”

“Just get dressed.”

“We going to see Gerri?”

“Just get dressed.”

She wiped her hands on her backside, touched her face, tugged at the belt loops on her jeans, pulled her hair from her silver earrings. Did everything but look at me.

I said, “I hope you remember more than just us sleeping together.”

“Me too. There’s more to me than just that.”

By the time I was dressed, she was at the door, jingling her keys in her hand, purse over her shoulder.

“Hurry, Vince. I need to pick this up before it gets too late.”

Dana drove the 10 eastbound beyond downtown L.A. and the Arco Towers, sped by the 710 interchange. For a while traffic was meaner than Mike Tyson. Forty minutes and thirty miles went by. We zipped by Cal Poly Pomona, headed up Kellogg Hill.

I said, “You driving me to New York?”

“Gum?”

“Sure.”

She opened a pack of Big Red, licked the stick top to bottom, then eased it into my mouth. It was so much sweeter.

Dana’s troubled eyes matched her solemn face.

I stared out the window at the cars on the freeway. Eighteen-wheelers were clogging the two right lanes like cholesterol in a fat man’s arteries.

I spoke in an even tone. “All the times that we’ve walked as friends and slept as lovers are over.”

“No more cohopulating.”

“Right,” I agreed. “No more cohopulating.”

Time for us to become strangers. Tomorrow she’d be taking this same freeway without me. The essence of her would diminish from my corner at Stocker and Degnan. Her taste would be overwritten by another woman’s flavor, and the physical pleasures of what we had would only be a memory. That’s the way love goes away. Details of nothing conversations become muddled. Words become vague. Images fade like a picture left out in the sun. But what’s felt inside lingers for eternity.

Almost an hour passed.

Dana told me about her lunch with Rosa Lee, about the things she had said, the philosophy she had spouted over their vegetarian meal. The part about the guy who was hawking her, that actor she had insulted, should’ve made me feel bad. What Dana told me let me know that my paranoia made me overreact. It was easily explained away.

Dana chuckled. “She said you were tripping.”

“I’ve been known to trip from time to time.”

“I’ve noticed.”

But what about the brother’s cellular phone? When I stood on that barren side street and clicked it on, it was static-filled, not one hundred percent clear, yet it sounded like Rosa Lee’s voice on the other end. After she got home, she had cried and talked to Womack half the night. About what, he never said. I let that be between him and his wife. But I do know this much: all the things Rosa Lee had said to Dana about being multigenerational, those were the things Womack had told her when she got in from Lucy Florence that night. Things that made her break down and cry in her husband’s arms.

With the sunrise things were better over on Fairfax. Womack told me that he was a great father, but somewhere down the line he had forgotten how to be a great husband. Had to steal moments to nurture his relationship with Rosa Lee, treat her like she was more than the mother of his children, like she was a woman with the needs of a woman. He was working on getting that back.