Liar's Game (5 page)

“Is that why you came up, to see if I was lying?”

“And to potty. Weak bladder.”

“Hope that didn’t disturb you too much.”

“Sweetie, I’m from the big city. I’ve passed by Dumpsters and seen homeless people having sex. That was nothing. It just caught me off guard. Made me feel, I dunno, silly and nervous.”

After the bathroom, she dried her hands on a paper towel in the kitchen, then lingered around the living room, made her way down the hallway, and checked out the rows of pictures.

“Wow. These are nice.”

Dana was talking about my black-and-white prints from the civil rights era: Rosa Parks on a bus; blacks fleeing a burning Greyhound bus somewhere in the South; brothers marching, wearing signs that let it be known that I AM A MAN.

She moved on to the photos of my parents, made a few nice comments, then eased her way down the hall to my James Patterson, Walter Mosley, Stephen King, and other novels on my nightstand.

Then she was in my den of sin, my bedroom. Next to my old, cold bed.

Her eyes roamed, then she sang out, “Alrighty, then. What’s up with the video camera in your bedroom?”

I said, “Just in case.”

She smirked. “Nice boys are always perverts.”

My eyes went to the videotape that was on the pine dresser. The video held erotic moments of me and my ex-wife.

Dana kicked off her shoes, and my bitter thoughts left the room.

I moved into her space, put my hands around her waist, pulled her hips up to mine. Her breathing thickened. Her eyes had the soft and sensuous glow a woman possesses when she wants to share her tongue, let it dance in a man’s mouth for a while. I put my face close to hers, felt her warm skin, inhaled the sweet breath she exhaled, touched noses, moved from Eskimo kisses to tongues grazing, then deep tongue-on-tongue business.

The room’s temperature shot up a thousand degrees when my hands strayed to her breasts. She crooned, face blossomed with an illicit smile, quivered and let me know that was a dangerous spot. In no time flat I had her blouse open, her breasts out of that satin vault, tasting her softness, licking the midnight off her rising nipples. Dana made sweet babylike sounds, moaned and squirmed away from that good feeling, but I didn’t let her go. The heat was overwhelming, so I tried to stop, but she pulled me back for more nurturing.

So many things about a woman I had missed for too long: the voice, the sugary aroma, the intimacy, the conversation that came in the midnight hour. Trembles rolled through me, turned me on. More kisses. More erotic agony. She pulled me closer, adjusted my erection on the bull’s-eye, pushed her flesh into mine and matched my slow grind.

Her body was famished for what my body was craving, I could tell.

“I’m serious about who I give my body to.” She said that with an edge and looked me dead in the eye. “You seeing somebody? Let me know now.”

“Nope. I told you that. Nobody.”

“I’m not saying I expect a commitment, I ain’t that stupid, but at the same time I ain’t looking for a one-time, two-time fuck.”

“That makes two of us.”

“And I don’t want somebody walking in here starting no shit.”

“No problem.”

All of that sounded like a forthright business transaction, but in the end, after I signed on the dotted with my word as my bond, her expression softened, became innocent, let me know that she was a kitten, that her sarcasm and attitude, even her laughter, were her defense mechanisms, what enabled her to survive out in the world’s concrete jungle on her own.

She tilted her head, chewed a corner of her bottom lip, whispered in a rhetorical tone, “We can’t do this. I can’t do this. Not this quick. Getting naked too soon always leads to problems.”

Another hot and humid kiss rekindled our fire. I ached to become familiar with that New York woman in ways I could only imagine.

She groaned, “Damn, sweetie. What are you trying to do to me?”

My unrelenting, unending seduction was inside the next kiss.

Throbbing, aching, about to go crazy with these illicit feelings. Then came the sound of a woman having an orgasm. The moan started low, like a cat meowing, then grew. She praised God in the sweetest voice, called Jesus. Yet the slow ride to heaven wasn’t in my apartment. The wail of passion had crept through my wall from next door.

Listening to them rock and roll just inches away had excited me for months on end. I bet they were over there, tipsy, feeling so good that their eyes were rolling into the back of their brains, touching each other. Turned me on so much I’d sit up at night with my penis standing tall, looking at me with one eye, like Mr. Happy was pondering the origin of the universe.

Seconds later Dana had me against the wall, came to me like what she’d heard had turned her on just as much. She rubbed me, ran her hand over my crotch like she was trying to see if it was enough for her to consider changing her mind. Rubbed and rubbed and rubbed. Made wishful moans. My hand was under her skirt, fingers dancing inside a wet spot.

“Damn, Vince, why you have to go and touch me there?”

Thong panties. Very little hair down there.

While we stood in the fire we had built, lived in that heated moment of lust and indecision, we were breath to breath, eye to eye, her face saying that she didn’t know if she should trust me. And to be honest, that was a two-way street.

Dana murmured, “You have condoms?”

“We can run out and get some.”

She made crinkles in her nose. “Not even one?”

“Not one.”

Which was a lie. Magnums were on standby. I didn’t want her to think this was an every night thing, didn’t want to devalue what she was offering me.

Then she nibbled my lips and whispered, “I have a couple in my purse.”

I thought I had chosen her, but Dana had chosen me. Women always choose. Men, we just live with the illusion that it was our idea.

She lay across my bed on her stomach, propped up on her elbows, loose braids shadowing her face, the venetian blinds slit enough for moonlight to brighten her mystical skin. Jean skirt with white stitching caressing the round of her backside. Silver bracelet on her left arm, anklet on right leg. Watching me with dark eyes, eyebrows arched to perfection, silent, an unreadable expression, analyzing me.

She said, “Take your clothes off.”

I kicked out of my shoes, unbuttoned my shirt.

She whispered, “Slow. Take ’em off slow. Let me watch.”

I did and she worshiped me with voyeuristic eyes. I stood before her butt naked. Not dangling but not erect. Either way, no shame in my game.

Her eyes went up and down my body, lingering in the middle the longest.

She swallowed, lips barely parted, tongue running across her lips.

I undressed her. Rubbed, kissed, and praised her flesh.

She asked, “Your sheets clean?”

“Yeah.”

She crawled under the covers, pulled the sheets and dark comforter up to her neck, became modest, while I unwrapped the condom she’d pulled out of her purse, first struggled with opening the damn thing, then with rolling it on, feeling like if I took too much time she would get turned off.

Then it was on. Secure and withstanding. My body went to hers.

She was nervous. I was anxious.

She squealed.

I backed off. “Ooops.”

“Aim that thing—wait, sweetie, hold on, let me do it.”

She touched me, then licked her full lips, those eyes filled with hunger and amazement. And challenge. Her face softened, became vulnerable as the tip of me broke her skin, went beyond those moist folds.

I went into her world, listened to her hiss sweet sounds that invited me deeper inside. “Perfect, Vince, you feel so perfect.”

Short nails slid back and forth across my butt as I dissolved into the beauty of the feeling. Her head jerked up, those tight eyes went wide. She gasped for air, made eager, greedy sounds, nibbled my neck, and she rolled so subtle, so intense, so right.

She slowed me down, her words hot and sexy. “Hold on, sweetie.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Be a pace car, not a race car.”

“Okay.”

“Make it last longer than a Puff Daddy remix.”

We sweated like a spring rain, moaned nice words, groaned religious phrases, laughed because it was so damn good. Then the nervous laughter faded, was suffocated by cannibalistic cries, swallowed by the slow and easy rhythms that echoed from rocking and rolling on my squeaky bed.

“Dana, baby, slow down—”

“Soooo purrrrrr-fect.”

She was there; her nonstop chanting begged me to go faster. Her light brown eyes rolling, hips thrusting, back arching, face flaming with pain and pleasure, those small hoop earrings bouncing with her dance.

Slow and easy went away when I grabbed her braids, pulled her open mouth on mine, swallowed her tongue, ate all of her sounds. Pace car became race car. Unrestrained, uninhibited, desperate enough to make my headboard slap the wall in pulses. Down below, she was hotter than the desert sun, as soothing as a fire on a cold day. I loved a woman who could come like that. Loved the way En Vogue sang out her sensuality.

We consumed each other like we’d found water after a six-month drought.

When she was done, when I was done, when our hurricane was downgraded to a tropical storm filled with cinnamon kisses, my lady love put her damp face on my chest like she was listening to my inner rhythm. She panted out her words, “Put your hand on my chest, feel my heart. Whew. I had back-to-back moan-gasms.”

“Moan-gasm?”

“Yeah. A moaning orgasm.”

Then there was silence between me and the stranger in my bed.

It was like both of our minds were outside this room. The romantic fantasies and energy of lust had taken flight, our spirits in two different places. A beautiful New York woman was in my arms but my mind was on my old life, my ex-wife, my child I missed so much it blistered my heart.

I disturbed the quiet and asked Dana, “You have to work today?”

She jumped, came back to this room. “Yeah. Open house in Inglewood.”

“Can you stay awhile, or do you have to raise up?”

“Sure.”

More silence. Naked, vulnerable, not knowing what to say.

I told her, “Your legs are so toned. You a runner?”

“Nah. I’ve lived in walk-ups damn near all my life.”

“Walk-ups?”

“Apartments that don’t have elevators. You walk up five floors eight or nine times a day while you’re carrying books and laundry and groceries, your legs’ll have muscles too.”

We spooned. She was different from L.A. women. Exotic in my eyes. I wanted her to talk all night long, but the sandman cometh. That was how the sun came up on us. In the blink of an eye, morning was there. Every day a million miracles begin at sunrise, and I’d woken with one in my bed, holding me close, keeping me warm.

She showered, did her female hygiene thing, then wore my black shirt over her black panties while she cooked pancakes and seafood omelettes. She never stopped talking, wore a smile that refused to go away.

When the fun was done, she said she had to go.

Minutes after I walked her to her car, I called my ex-mother-in-law’s out in San Bernadino. Got the answering machine—she always screens her calls—but didn’t leave a message. Didn’t really know what to say.

The black tape I owned, the VHS with erotic memories of me and my ex-wife, loving on the same bed, the same worn mattress I was with Dana on last night, I took that six-year-old tape out and played it once again. Anger, love, confusion, all lived inside me as I watched. Pictures of my daughter were on that shelf too. I gazed at my child’s image, saw traces of me in her round brown eyes, traces of my old man’s narrow face on her chin, her full lips like my mother’s. Seemed as if none of that life was real. I was dead to them. I tossed those memories from my failed life back on the top shelf of my closet, pretended that space was the back of my mind.

In the evening, I took Dana down to Long Beach, and we shot pool at this blues club right off the promenade. Back at my crib, I made her a salad and heated up some blackened catfish for dinner. She was in a great mood. A naughty kind of mood. Talking while we fed each other, sex while we rubbed sweet fruit on each other’s flesh. Teasing and touching.

We sat out on my back porch for a while, wrapped in a blanket, staring up at the crescent moon, talked until it was the beginning of a new day. We showered again, changed sheets, and crawled back under the covers, kissed a while, touched each other. She told me, “I’m too dry. And sore. We’re gonna have to get some kind of lubricant, sweetie.”

“I’ll get some tomorrow.”

She yawned. “Don’t buy anything with spermicide nonoxynol. That irritates me like you wouldn’t believe. Make sure it’s hypoallergenic.”

An adrenaline rush came back, this time a wave of heated fear. Lines had been crossed. Too much talk about tomorrow, too many promises.

She chuckled. “You know the funny thing about sex? The more you do it, the more you wanna do it. Whatever brain cells are in charge of my sex drive, they’re on fire. Make sure you have some Crisco tomorrow.”

Laughter and yawns.

Dana closed her eyes and whispered in a sensitive tone, “Thanks.”

“For what?”

Her words were fading. “God, I’ve been so stressed. Didn’t realize how much bad stress good sex takes away. Haven’t been this relaxed in months.”

As I held Dana, I didn’t ask her what she was troubled about. One way or another, we all had problems. My mind was on mine, but not so heavy.

Out of nowhere she said, “I’m getting my phone number changed to a private number on Monday. I’ll leave it on your machine.”

“Why you getting it changed?”

“To prevent problems.”

“What kind of problems?”