Love Me (30 page)

‘Mum?'

They would have heard the door slam shut the way Zed is always banging it. They would have tried some kind of damage control. My mother would have rushed down the stairs, smiling as though we all shared a secret. Her act would be casual but she would have one. I'd seen that look before, that sly sheen in her eye. It said,
What can I do? I can't help it that I'm so damned sexy.

But there was no sound, and no amused little jog down the stairs. Nothing. A few scenarios flashed through my head. I knew that my mum could be pretty random; maybe her and Dominic had taken off in his car somewhere. Maybe there'd been some kind of emergency and they'd had to leave suddenly.

I walked up the stairs calling out for her. ‘Mum?' All the rooms on the second floor were empty. I began smiling, remembering what it was like to be wrapped up in somebody, tangled in somebody. You forget about the world. She probably just didn't hear us come in, that's all. I was just being paranoid. I giggled and felt ill. I really didn't want to catch my mum right in the middle of . . .
Yuck.

So I called out over and over to warn her I was in the house. And eventually I came to the only door that was closed. I knocked. ‘Mum?' I waited. No sound.

PEOPLE START ARRIVING
at the house at quarter to ten, which is borderline miraculous. It's Labor Day and there must be parties everywhere, but it seems like ours is everybody's first stop. ‘Oh hey, Eden!' Zahara says at the door, showing off her pearlies. ‘And Spanish?!' At the sight of him, her eyebrows shoot almost all the way into her hairline, which is a long way. ‘What's up?'

She introduces us to a few girls at the door, eyeing us all the while. It occurs to me that there have probably been quite a few bets on who was gonna break Spanish of his ‘fast'. They give us alcohol and kiss us on both cheeks, commenting on our impressively big hair.

‘Y'all could supply weaves to the entire population of Brooklyn!'

We laugh, Spanish and I. But our laughter feels hollow. Ever since we met Aunt K, I've tried to stay close to Spanish but all the time my body knows where Zed is, can sense his every move. I feel off-key, drunk behind the wheel.

Zed says hello and introduces Max, and in the midst of all these brown-shaded girls Max has never looked blonder.

‘Hi!' they all say, silkily.
Zed likes white girls?
That old reprise.

‘Don't worry,' says Max, popping some gum in her mouth. ‘I'm just light-skinned.'

A ripple of tentative laughter flits around the hallway. ‘You've been practising that line in your head since this morning, haven't you?' I whisper.

‘No!' she replies. Then: ‘Yeah. OK. I got it from a film.'

The doorbell rings just as everyone is rooting for something else to say. Zed rushes off to answer it.

‘Bleak! Thanks for coming down, man, what's good?'

‘What up, what up, what UP! Greetings and well wishes, my people,' he says, walking through into the crowded hall, always loose, always chilled. He hands me a container of food. ‘That,' he says, ‘is the best curry goat you will ever taste, lady girl.'

‘He ain't lyin'!' says Zahara.

Then Zed gathers and leads us up the stairs, and I can't breathe as I'm carried along with the chattering mob right up and up and up to the top floor where I've not been in a decade. Hold firm. Make no sudden moves. The past is the past.

When I get there though, the place is unrecognisable. Aunt K has decorated her living room in purple and gold. Bright silk drapes and fairy lights sweeten the windows. It's a large room, but even so there's barely enough space to turn around. Everybody is here, it seems. Violet, Eko and Baba sit on floor cushions. Arty types lean against the walls wearing head wraps and multi-coloured bead necklaces. There are a couple of baseball cap-wearing teenagers and a woman in a sharp suit and pearls. The only person missing is Brandy.

Aunt K is the fairest of them all in a long, form-fitting, burgundy dress, her locs twisted and sculpted into a crown. She wields her trumpet, and on the dot of ten she plays a haunting solo, ‘God Bless The Child'.

I search for Zed's face and find it, and retreat. Spanish slips his hand into mine and squeezes it. ‘Why do the beautiful things hurt so much?' he asks quietly, as Aunt K reaches into every soul with her playing, drawing out the quiet. Even Eko doesn't make a sound. When it's finished, applause
swells to fill the room and Spanish puts an arm around me. ‘Did you say there was a roof terrace?' he asks.

‘Yeah, but I haven't been up there in a long time . . .'

‘Let's go,' he says, leading me by the hand.

It's a night on the brink, almost autumn and dizzy with stars, city winking at me from below. The roof is split onto two levels and surrounded by reassuringly solid railings. Pots of plants and flowers line the periphery. Lanterns brighten the darkness. I walk to the furthest corner, where the party is a wraith of a thing and I can barely hear Aunt K's trumpet or the drums or the cheers and I can concentrate on taking in oxygen. Before I've taken in much, Spanish is snaking an arm around my tight shoulders, pulling me against his side. ‘Hey, you OK?'

‘Yeah,' I answer, although I'm not sure if it's true.

Spanish asks me if I'm cold and I say no and he says, ‘Eden . . . I . . . I just wanna say how glad I am that I met you. You throw,' he hesitates, ‘you throw my world open. Everything just feels fresh for the first time in a while and I thought I had it figured out,' he says, looking down at the view instead of at me. ‘So I'm sorry about how I've been acting but if you haven't been able to tell, I got issues. I mean, my
issues
got issues,' he laughs awkwardly, ‘you know what I'm saying? But I'm working on them, you know? For you . . .'

I can't think of anything better to say than, ‘It's cool.'

‘I just want to stay in your life, mama. All that time I thought I was just tired of it all, really I was waiting for you . . .'

‘Well, looka here!' shouts Mohican Joe. ‘Spanish done left the monastery!'

Spanish jumps around. ‘God! You asshole.'

‘What's happening?'

‘I'm 'bout to knock you out, rooster head, that's what! Need to quit fuckin' sneaking up on people, man!'

‘Chill, chill. Just thought I'd come over and say what's up. Damn.' Spanish shakes his head and laughs. Mohican Joe says, ‘So what's up?'

‘Your hair, man! That's what's up.'

‘Fool,' Mohican Joe says to Spanish, then he turns to me and says, ‘Hey, Trouble.'

I stick my tongue out at him, glad of the interruption. ‘How's you?'

‘Not as good as Spanish, obviously.'

In no time we're surrounded by guests as they spill out onto the roof. Someone brings a crate of beer and someone else starts setting up some decks and speakers. Bleak, Zahara and Nami are here, as well as Zed and Max. Everyone is drinking and chatting and laughing, except Max, who doesn't seem to know what to do with all the attention Zed is getting and all the attention he's not giving her. Spanish gets a chair and draws me into his lap and there, despite my noisy mind, I feel safe. People talk to him about his music and his politics and they give me soft smiles, like I'm part of something wonderful. Zed draws up a chair and Max tries to sit in his lap too, but he leaps to his feet. ‘It's cool,' he tells her. ‘You take the chair.'

Then Zahara asks Spanish how he got his name, since he can't speak a word of the language. ‘It's not important,' he says.

‘Come on, what's the big secret? Just tell me.'

‘Maybe you should ask Zed why they call me Spanish.'

‘Zed?'

Zed grins. ‘It's not complicated. I mean, look at the guy. He looks like one taco-eating motherfucker. It was back in school. I was a couple years older than him and he kind of looked up to me. Started following me around . . .'

‘I didn't follow your ass around!'

‘Come on. I saw my shadow less often. Anyway he was this chubby kid—'

‘Damn, player! You gotta expose me like that?'

‘Chubby?' I say.

‘When I say chubby, I'm being kind, alright? Suck it up, Spanish. You want me to tell the story or not?'

‘You wanna dance?' Max asks Zed. The decks are ready and there's a DJ playing an odd mix of seventies funk, eighties cheese and assorted hip-hop and reggae.

‘Not right now,' he says with barely a glance. ‘So anyway . . .'

‘Come on, I'm in the mood.'

‘No!'

Max looks grim. ‘Hey, Spanish! How many of those mushrooms you gave me are gonna give me a good time?'

‘I'd just take all of them and fly,' he shrugs. Max walks off and Zed carries on his story.

‘So he was just about getting into all of this black and proud shit. And it was like I was the only black guy he'd ever met, so he was all excited. Started talking about how we all gotta stick together. This kid all pale with his little curly hair. I was like, you ain't black! You are
Spanish
, chico. And all of the rest of the kids started calling him that.'

‘Amazing, isn't it?' Spanish's hand tightens around my arm. ‘The only other black guy in school is the one who stereotyped my ass.'

‘Whatever, man. Would you prefer “James”? Anyway, you're the one who started everyone off calling me Zulu.'

‘Only after the “Spanish” thing started. Besides, your name didn't hurt you much.'

‘I made it my own.' Zed shrugs. ‘I don't waste my time fighting the world on everything. But “Zulu”? Talk about “perceived skin colour”! First it got shortened to Zoo, then
Zee, then this rich little British kid from school called me Zed once and that was that. A nickname for life.'

‘For both of us,' adds Spanish. The recounting of this story has done nothing for his mood and I'm starting to feel not great about everything again. All this history between them. It's freakish.

‘Wow . . . I never knew that!' says Nami, turning up from nowhere and inserting herself into the conversation. She's standing next to Zed, flicking her yak hair and pulling at the super-tight hot-pants she's wearing. ‘I thought Zed was your real name.'

‘No, it's Aaron,' I say a bit more loudly than intended, but she doesn't even look at me. She's started off with her ‘Damn, you look good!' speech again. The slapper.

‘Eden?'

‘What?'

‘Eden, I just asked you,' says Bleak patiently, ‘if Zed or Spanish played you any of their collaborations that they recorded?'

‘No,' I tell him.

‘You wanna dance?' Nami asks Zed, and he says, ‘Cool.'

She leads him a short distance away and they start dancing and grinding it up to an old nineties dancehall tune. She's tack personified in her cheap glam look, dropping her fast behind and shaking it. I wish Aunt K would come up and see this. She'd probably throw her over the railings.

‘Girl, it's bananas! I need to give you a copy of Zed's new EP. The joints are ridiculous, ma. Completely different. I've never seen him write so deep. He's always been a clever writer, but lately his material has profundity, you know what I'm saying? And a lot of heart.'

‘Really? Good for him.' I want to go back down to the basement. It's too noisy, much too noisy up here. Zed's hands are on Nami's hips.

‘Well you're gonna hear some of it later anyway . . .'

‘What do you mean?'

Then Brandy sweeps onto the roof and shouts, ‘Boss lady wants all the musicians downstairs, so ya'll better shake it fast!' She looks at me. ‘You have on the prom dress!' She claps. ‘You are working it, girl! Wow.'

‘Thank you. Hey, Brandy!'

‘Yeah?'

‘How come you weren't around earlier? You missed Aunt K on her trumpet.'

Spanish makes his way downstairs with a kiss for my forehead.

Brandy says, ‘I was just summoning my courage, girl. Summoning my courage.'

‘For what?'

‘Because tonight my life is gonna change, Eden.' She smiles, exhales, and pats her hair. ‘I'm gonna ask Violet to marry me.'

I gasp. ‘Really?'

‘Really . . . I should have done it before. She was giving me all the signs, saying she wanted us to tell everyone we were together, start thinking about our future. But I was too scared. I mean, I didn't know what I had to offer a woman like Violet. I only want to be with her, but it's never been simple for me and mostly I don't even know if I want to be in panties or boxer shorts. What kind of stability is that? But then I got this letter from your Aunt K in Saint Lucia. She didn't say anything. She was just writing about her trip and all, but suddenly I just knew: it was enough for Violet and me to want to be together. We'll sort it out.'

‘Oh my God!' I give her a long hug, like a sister. ‘That's amazing, Brandy. Good luck. Who cares about the surface, anyway? It's so rare to find somebody you fit with and have it stick. I wish you the best!'

‘Thanks,' she says. Beaming, happy, brand new. ‘You seen her new hair?'

‘Yeah,' I smile. ‘It's wonderful!'

‘Those cheekbones of hers were
born
for a boycut!' says Brandy with a theatrical roll of the eyes, and then a wink.

Zed catches me in the hallway. ‘Hey,' he says, easing himself off the wall, like he's been waiting. ‘I never got a chance to say how good you look in that dress. It really suits you.'

‘Cool,' I say and push past. I can hear Aunt K introducing Violet up to the mic in the other room.

‘Damn,' he says, hands in the air, ‘is that how we repay compliments these days?'

‘Whatever.'

‘Eden,' he touches my shoulder, ‘come on, “thanks” would be nice.' He ventures an awkward laugh. I stare at him, with neither the feeling nor the inclination to laugh in return. ‘Seriously, what's going on with you?'