Loving Day (17 page)

“Don’t use that word. The
b
-word.
Bitch
. It’s misogynistic and too easy and loses your argument before you even start. Also, ‘crazy.’ Mental illness is a serious thing. It’s an
illness
. And it’s also misogynistic: guys are always saying women are crazy. Why not try describing her as a ‘deluded asshole’ instead?”

“Thank you, Spider. Thank you so much. Can you believe what that deluded asshole asked me to do?”

“Yes, I can. It’s foul, but yes. She has a boyfriend, man. She told you that. That means: mess. And this is messy.” Spider sticks his tongue out, twinkles his fingers like everything’s falling to the floor.

“But I thought she would get some of my good stuff and then she’d like it so much that eventually she’d leave him and Tal would have a new mommy and we would all live happily ever after.” I say it, and I start laughing, at myself, because that’s exactly what I believed.

“So Warren, I hear you’re going to join us tonight at Acousticism?
That’s wonderful. You’re really engaging in our little community, aren’t you? What about you, Spider? Are you coming this time?” Roslyn is standing there, behind us. Her posture implies no movement, as sturdy as a tree in spring. She may have been standing there the whole time.

“Oh no. This one I might have to sit out.” He looks over at me, his eyes smiling so big the lids should be curved.

My mind slides down a run-on sentence: Roslyn couldn’t have overheard that I was going to this music thing, because I didn’t say the name of the place I was going, because I just said “a date” and that’s all, which means Sun told her about us all going out, which means Sun probably tells her everything, which is why Roslyn smiles at me now like she not only knows everything I’ve been up to but has the pictures to prove it.

“You should come with me! We should go, as a date, together,” I say to Roslyn, to see what will happen. I long to see Roslyn unnerved. And if she comes undone, maybe Sunita Habersham will be off balance because of it. That’s what I want. I want to see someone else uncomfortable. It works. The tree sways a bit. I follow with, “Sun said there’s a great Ethiopian place, we’re going to meet up there first.”

“Almaz,” Roslyn shoots back. And there is no sway there. There is only rigidity. “You know what? I think that’s a fantastic idea.”

As Roslyn walks away, we both stare after her.

“You know what, man? You’re a wild boy,” Spider says when she’s out of range.

“Don’t use that word. That
b
-word,” I tell him, at which he frowns with a total lack of amusement.

ELIJAH
. I say his name for hours. I say it and I spit. Literally. Even when I’m indoors. Eel. Lie. Junk. I fucking hate him. I hate him when Roslyn picks me up in the center’s school bus. I hate him enough to fill every empty seat gaping behind us as we drive downtown. I fucking hate him. And I’m sure he’s a nice guy. I’m sure he’s a great guy. I’m sure he had the strongest of college recommendations, that there are old ladies who just think of his horrible name and start to cry because humanity has a hope after all. I forgive Sun for being his captive. For being seduced by his lies. Because they must be lies, because he must actually be a horrible person, because how else could I hate him?

Roslyn knows where the restaurant is, and insists on guiding me from the school bus by my hand. They’re sitting on the floor, on pillows. Elijah’s white. This is fine, I prepared a special hatred program in case he was a white guy, and it’s ready to roll out. I’ll have to delete the black Elijah, Asian Elijah, and mulatto Elijah mental files, but this just gives me more room to focus. He’s probably one of those white guys who think they’re enlightened just because they’ve realized the obvious
fact that black women are beautiful. He’s probably one of those white guys who think poking their pink members in black women will somehow cure racism. I don’t trust interracial couples. I don’t even trust the one that made me: I think of who my father was, who my mother was, and I have no idea why they first hooked up, let alone fell in love. I don’t know if I’m the by-product of a racialized eroticism or a romantic rebellion of societal norms. I’m fine with mixed-race unions that
just happen
, are formed when two people randomly connect. But there are other kinds of interracial couplings with suspect motivation, with connections based on fetishizing of black sexuality, or internalized white supremacy—those kinds exist too. Yes, I was in an interracial relationship myself, but I distrust my own initial motivation.

I can dislike interracial couples while acknowledging I’m the product of one. Every misogynist came out of a woman.

Elijah’s got a ponytail. It’s braided. This is a bonus, because I can hate this more and do. It’s red and he says his last name and I refuse to register it but it’s Scottish so I feel relieved in hating him without too much Celtic overlap. He’s skinny, and he wears two gold chains that shine through his open collar, and this is fantastic for hatred. It’s so good that I look over at Sun and find that my disdain is becoming so voluminous that some of my hatred for Eel-Lie-Jah is spilling over to her. I look at Sun, who looks at the menu as if bored. But I don’t think she can be bored because we’ve been having sex several times a week for months and now we’re having dinner with her boyfriend.

“Do you know what you want?” she asks me. Then she winks. Only I can see it. For the length of the time it takes for her lids to shutter down and up again, we are in the Beetle, and she is naked, on me, facing me, kissing me like she wants my tongue at the bottom of her stomach. And I blush and look down at my menu and say, “I’m just here for the pancakes.”

“Their injera is pure love. A lot of places, they use an electric oven, but they use a traditional clay oven here. You can taste the authenticity.”

Elijah says all this, and he’s very warm about it too, his eyebrows
pop up excitedly with the word
love
, and I look back at him and smile and wonder for the first time, Does he know me and his girlfriend are fucking?

“For Elijah, everything has to be authentic,” Roslyn says. So she knows him well, clearly. Well enough for there to be a slight disapproval in her statement.

“What is something worth if it’s not real? I just prefer truth. Some people choose otherwise,” Elijah says back.

Roslyn does that laugh, as though a child has said something inappropriate, and drinks, and I don’t know what the hell they’re really talking about. I hold the menu. I hold it up to my face, releasing my facial muscles from the strain of hiding disdain. I don’t read the words. I want to hold it like this all night. I could do that here, and at the concert next. Who’s that? Oh, that’s Warren. He’s very serious about what he’s going to order tonight.

“They let the dough ferment for days, then hand pound it,” Elijah says. “You really can taste the difference. If you’re like me, you’re going to love it too. And it looks like we have the same tastes, right?” and I look up, and he’s smiling at Sun. Whose response is, “You know what, I think I need to powder my nose.” Because Elijah totally knows we’re fucking.

Roslyn makes a motion with her arm like she’s going to get up and go with Sunita and I reach over and grab her hand and say, “Will you help me pick some appetizers?” with my mouth and
Please don’t leave me alone with this white boy
with every other part of my body. Roslyn gets up anyway, pulls her hand free. Before she leaves, though, I get a kiss, on my forehead, that lasts long enough that I have to be still to not hit her in the nose. And then it’s just me and the white guy who’s smiling at me.

“Let’s get out the weirdness. Let’s just get it out, set it free, send it on the road.” This is his toast, two glasses
tink
. He brought his own bottle of red wine. The label is boring and not at all hip and I’m sure that that means secretly it is.

“Hit me,” Elijah says. I look up from my glass. “Just hit me.” I put
the glass down. “Not, like, in the face, bro. I mean, the ladies are only going to be gone for a minute. Let’s have mano to mano time.”

Mano
means hand. I kind of want to punch him with mine. Not really. Just a little, but not really. I’m suddenly tired. I want to go home. I have a daughter. Tal doesn’t need this. Tal needs me to date a woman who can add something to both our lives. I don’t need this. I don’t even really need a penis anymore. It can go. I could use a tube to pee or something. It’d be awkward, but I could get over that.

“Sun said you used to be married?” Elijah asks when my silence becomes too much for him.

“Married. Divorced. The whole cycle.”

“That’s why you get it, then.” Elijah goes to clink my glass again. It’s already empty. He fills it up for me once more.

“Marriage for men, it makes sense in a world where the average life expectancy is thirty-seven. If you’re a guy in a village of like sixty, eighty people, with just a few women of childbearing age. But in our world? Never catch me getting married.” He twirls his ponytail as he talks. He twirls it faster and faster. I look at the hair; I can’t look at him. I hear the words, I even think about them, but I can’t look at Sun’s white boy as he deems to
whitesplain
the world.

“Maybe we should just kill ourselves at thirty-seven. Have you considered that?” I shoot back.

“I think her ex was, like, thirty-four? When he killed himself?” he says and it takes me a minute to even realize he’s talking about Sunita’s, and I blush at my error.

“Listen, no faux pas, really. It’s just, she’s still really sensitive about it. You should know. But like in marriage, you have to kill yourself a little, right? Inside. To make it work. A long-term relationship is sexually fulfilling for, what? Maybe three years? It’s great as it is—Sun and I have been together two—you got to get creative to make it last. So you have to make a choice.”

“You can break up.” I’m not being theoretical. I mean Sunita Habersham, and him. They can break up. The earth would continue to rotate. It would be lovely, even.

“Or you can get her to realize that our societal expectations just aren’t realistic. When you have something deep, a quickie in the shallow end never hurts anyone. We’re just apes, right?”

“Oh. Another bonobo fan.”

“That’s Sun talking. She reads all that pop geek bullshit.” Elijah points at my mouth with his long, ringed finger, poking. “Those aren’t the only apes. Did she tell you about the gorillas? What they do?”

“We didn’t get that far.” I don’t want to get any further, either. I just want the women to come back. I look in the direction of the bathroom, sure they will reappear to rescue me, but they don’t.

“In gorilla society, there’s just one guy: the silverback. And he takes all the women, and kicks the other males out. The females, they stray every once in a while, but it’s permitted because the alpha male gets what he wants.”

“Sun and I are fucking.” I say it. With little outward malice.

“I know! And thanks for your contribution to our union.”

When the women get back, we’re talking about football. The real kind that involves feet. He takes the subject there the second they enter into my peripheral vision, and I let him out of exhaustion. Elijah has some “fascinating theories” on the rise of “American futbol” and its statement on the post-isolationist attitudes in the age of the Internet. I have a theory too: that he’s an asshole.

Sun sits right next to me. Close, next to me. I think this means something. I think, we are not just splashing in the shallow. We are swimming in the deep sea of love! The language of that is so horrid it sends me into a depression that lasts through the main course and into a third bottle of Cabernet.

“They have horrible wine here, unfortunately,” Elijah says, comparing the last two house wines to his contribution and I don’t know, maybe he’s finally right about something, but it’s still the kind of drink that makes things not hurt so much.

“Just amazing body. I love Madagascan grapes. We were in Madagascar—when was it, last year? Eighteen months?”

“Maybe,” Sun says. She leans over, brushes against my shoulder.
“Or a long time ago, or whenever.” Sun says the last part to me. It’s almost a whisper. It’s almost just for me. It’s almost intimate, except for the fact that it’s addressed to everyone and so it isn’t.

“It was a buddhavistic moment of clarity.”

“It was okay. I guess.” Sun sniffs, then she shoots back another glass of the cheap stuff.

“It was…one of those rare moments of connection that you get. The rhythm of the drums. The surf. The rustle of the wind through the leaves. And my little Sunny.”

The Sun of this moment goes, “Okay, does anyone have a cigarette?” She gets up and walks out the door. I can see her through the window, looking left, looking right, and then nothing. She’s gone.

“Isn’t Madagascar where you encountered Chlamydia?” Roslyn asks, and I want to go home now. There is a flutter on Elijah’s brow, the reaction to a faint breeze of an ill wind, but nothing more. I reach for my wineglass and it’s just a pool of drips at the bottom, the last bottle offering slightly more of the same.

“Charuprabha. Her name was Charuprabha. But yes. That was there. She was working with Tossing a Starfish.” To me Elijah says, “They do work with the poor in the Vohipeno region. Very powerful stuff.”

“Oh, she was wonderful. I remember her visit. So well. Also, who was the Swedish friend you made? Katnis. That was it. Katnis Lumner, the young thing with the long blond hair on her legs. You make so many friends in the world, Elijah! So many connections!” Roslyn finishes her glass as well.

There are still words coming out of Elijah’s mouth, but I have reached my limit of Elijah sentences, so feel absolved of having to listen.

“Go outside,” Roslyn says into my ear, while he’s still talking. And then Roslyn pats me on the head.

I feel myself trying to get up, and I feel drunk. Tal would be mad. For her, I refuse to stumble. I refuse to recognize the uncertainty of my horizontal stability.

Sun found cigarettes. She smokes one. I walk over, and Sun keeps
staring straight off to the street, one arm around her stomach. She’s wearing the white outfit again, the one she wore when I first saw her at the comic convention. There’s a jacket now, a Russian hat with flapping fake-fur ears, and the draping of a hand-knit scarf to accommodate the cold, but it’s the same.

“You wore that the first time I saw you,” is what I say to her, but it sounds like “I love you” and I don’t even know if that’s true. I usually don’t know till much later, and then from the intensity of the loss after everything goes wrong. I said I loved Becks, and I can think of Becks now, place her in a day like this one. See Becks wrapped in the red wool scarf she used to wear, those worker boots she thought made her look more working class, the ones that went into the closet forever when she became a professional. I can see Becks stumbling ahead of me, giggling drunk, as we walked through the dark from the bars of Mumbles, ocean to the right, hoping for an available minicab somewhere in the buildings to our left. I remember seeing that sight, and knowing I loved her, that I loved a mousy-haired Welsh girl named Becky, and I remember that and feel nothing close to that now. I can live in the moment, but I can’t trust the moment. This moment, where Sun exhales and I see all the smoke and I, too, want to spiral around inside her, it could be lying as well.

When Sunita turns, it’s sudden and as deliberate and forced as the smile. The earflaps jump. The rest of the smoke inside her comes out of the forced corner of her grin, and the cigarette is flicked to the street beyond.

“Don’t worry, Warren, they can’t give you cancer if you sacrifice them to the sewer god.”

“We can just go now. We don’t have to go to this concert, you know? I’m tired. This was enough. Come with me. You could spend the night.”

“Oh, come on. Nobody likes a quitter. Didn’t you like your meal? I thought the food was fantastic!” Sun’s still smiling. She wants me to be smiling. If we’re both smiling, our lips will be too tight to verbally unpack what the hell happened in there.

“That’s Elijah? That’s the boyfriend?”

“He’s okay. He can be fun. Really.”

“Wow, so that wasn’t a joke. That’s the person you’ve chosen to be your real boyfriend. Okay.”

“Hey, I don’t have to justify him to you. My relationship with Elijah shouldn’t be threatening to you, Warren. It’s a separate relationship. It has nothing to do with ours.” It comes out quick. It was already prepared, loaded in her head, and waiting to be delivered.

“So you admit it. We have a relationship.”

“Sure. Fine. But I have one with him, too.”