Making the Hook-Up (20 page)

Such a sweet-mouth boy
, she thought. She could only keep her sanity by sitting in the watery sunshine, writing very bad poetry that she feared someone finding. She remembered every hair on her body, was reminded that she naturally walked to sway her hips; at night she wouldn't even masturbate, in case orgasm should, for one second, compromise the ache on her. The muscles inside her flexed, as if considering some delicious labor. She puzzled herself, drifting off to sleep, thinking of the horses in the old stable walls, splashing through rivers to mount her. She'd never seen a horse in Grenada; only rich people had them. Her girlfriends would laaaaugh, you see! To see her helpless thinking about this blue-eyed man, with her pussy open so, and calling. On the last night they laughed and stared until 3:00 a.m., with the peacock squawking behind them and her running out of cigarettes to suck. She swore his hands were shaking. She complained she'd left her dreams back home, because she hadn't had any since arriving.

“I had a dream last night,” he blurted.

“Yes?”

“You were in it.”

Her stomach contracted.

“Yes?”

He looked down at the table where her hands lay, pulsing.

“I'm tired.” He rose to his feet.

She wanted to die. She tried to laugh.

“So you're not going to tell me about the dream?”

He stood by the hotel doors and shook them. She wished he didn't have to go. Below her navel, her hips twitched.

He frowned. “The door's locked.”

Again, her stomach.

He laughed. “They've locked me out!” There was something inside the laugh, a tremble, a change in his breathing. They stared at each other.

“I'll go and see if the door at the back is open,” he said, and disappeared around the side of the building.

She sat on her hands. She thought of her huge double room, on the other side of the courtyard. If he couldn't get in, that was the only place to sleep. That, or the peacock pen. She looked at the peacock. All week the peacock had been singing to them. Leo explained that peacocks don't sing. He explained that peacocks make very little noise, except for the squawking of loneliness. This peacock has been looking at her with big bright eyes and blue feathers for eleven days. She didn't know whether the peacock reminded her of the man of integrity or of herself.

He was back, panting. There was fuzz on his broad chest that she wanted to smell. She looked at him. “Well?”

“I can't get in. Everything's locked, everyone's sleeping or gone home.”

She wondered if all hotels in this country abandoned their guests at night.

Kiss me, oh
, she thought. The peacock sang, even though peacocks do not sing.

“I'll just go and try something else,” he said. She watched his mouth as he said it, then strode away.

She closed her eyes. God was a sadist. She'd been so good,
but she couldn't hold on any longer. This moment couldn't be any more insane or perfect or booklike or movielike. She opened her eyes. He'd come back around the hotel and was pacing in front of the door, muttering. He was so well fashioned, so tall and tight and beautiful. She could ride him like a horse. He looked desperate, and for any other friend, she would have said it already: plenty of room with me, come.

But she would hold him down if he came to her room. Doesn't matter how big and broad he is, she would hold down the boy and kill him with her love, like Trini women at carnival.

He shook the heavy doors and looked back at her. She spread her hands, questioning, tried to smile. He shrugged and rubbed his brow. “Can't get in,” he said.

Please please please God
, she thought.
Let him come sleep with me tonight. I won't hold him down. I swear I won't. I just want to lie with him, and have that intimacy, and maybe he could want me, just for a minute, and maybe a kiss, no more, I just want to know that he wants me, that's all. Please God, amen.

Is those things you praying to God for, girl
? She could hear her Auntie Pearl's voice in her head.

His hand was warm on her shoulder. She looked up at him.
Oh, please oh, please.
She took a deep breath, and let it out.

He was so worried.

“Tell me about your dream,” she said. “Since”—her voice faltered—“since you're locked out and we have time?”

He hesitated, then moved closer toward her, intending to sit down. She shifted backward a few inches to accommodate him on the bench, which she was straddling, but he put one hand between her shoulder blades, holding her still as he swung a leg over the bench to straddle it himself. Then they were riding it like children on a seesaw, facing each other, and for one silly, sweet moment their noses nearly touched.

His breath smelled of peppermint and good wine. He rearranged himself; they were no longer as close, but their knees touched and the pressure of his on hers was firm and unyielding, like he'd made a decision.

“I fucked you,” he said, almost conversationally.

She liked swearwords. She especially liked the word
fuck.

“What?”

“In the dream,” he said.

She nearly wept in relief. “Tell me.”

“I fucked you in the dream and I do want to tell you about it. But I won't ever fuck you,” he said. “That will never happen. But I want to tell you how it would be, so you know I know, that I've thought about you.”

“A gift,” she suggested.

“Yes.” He hesitated. His lips were suddenly very wet. “Does that sound stupid? Ah. I want to know if what I'm dreaming about is…what you…”

“As I like it?”

“Yes.”

She smiled and rocked from side to side to calm the spasms.

“For example. Do you like…me saying that I want to fuck you?”

“Oh, god”—her breath hitches in her throat and she pushes her vagina into the bench—“yes.”

“Is it the word, the word
fuck?”

“Mmm-
hm
.”

He smiled, like ticking off a list. “Okay. So the dream said…”

He told her about the way it would be. That her skin would smell of cigarettes and apricots. In the dream he took her throat in his hands and ran whispers up and down it and took handfuls of her wetness and rubbed it into his skin.

She told him how sticky she gets inside, that lovers have complimented her, and that she liked the idea of him smelling like pussy for an hour afterward.

He said that all the time she was groaning and he bit down on three of her fingers. She was so aroused by the idea he had to pause so she could bite a finger to show him in real life.

He said that they touched each other with concentration and that he was making sounds he'd never heard before. They spent long moments holding, no movement, he said, just heart sounds between them as she dripped down her thighs and he tried not to come. He could tell where her erogenous zones were without touching—cells and nerve endings in the palms, fingertips, up the wrist; avoid the breasts, not because he discounted their roundness, but because he knew what she needed: mouth, hands, clit, he kept saying, that's what I'd do to you, mouth, hands, suck your clit, in his clear, sweet voice: that's who we'd be together, I think. There'll be no sex, never. No kiss, no touch. This is a gift, his voice almost pleading: I want to share with you, I want to show you, do you understand how much I want to fuck you?

He said that when he pushed inside, her vagina was interwoven with delicate grooves like some kind of sentient marble, sucking him.

Rosemarie felt as if she were rain and glass, used her index finger to stroke the bench between them, then simply put her hands on her hips and spread her legs and rubbed herself against the wood.

He leaned back and watched her, still talking.

He said that he had to keep wiping his hand on the sheets because she was too wet to orgasm; that it took some coaxing, but he made her sit on his face until her thighs gave way.

Panting, she wound her hips in slow figure-eights, jerking herself along the wood. Rarely had she felt so exposed and
brave. It was like losing your virginity, a genuine waiting for something new, a revelation. She made her hands tight fists so she wouldn't touch him, because although he was smiling, and she could see his penis straining against his jeans, his eyes were so full of no.

When she finally moaned, she had to grab the bench to steady herself, head swimming, hips bucking, eyes closed. When she opened them, the man with integrity had taken himself away, and all she could hear was the stars and the creak of the oily building.

The next morning he and Leo came over to say good-bye; he opened his arms for her and they hugged and Leo looked away politely as she put her head on his shoulder and he stroked her hair, and they stood for a while, as guests streamed past. She didn't want to cry, so she didn't.

When he finally let her go, she looked up and his eyes were the Caribbean Sea.

 

 

 

 

 

I
fully understand why someone would write a song about the moon over New York City. Even after five years of living in the Big Apple, I was still spellbound by its cold, luminous beauty. But looks can be deceiving, and I soon learned why the city also had a reputation as one of the toughest in the world, especially for a small-town dreamer like me.

The day I finally closed my restaurant and sat in the window seat of my small apartment staring up at that deceiving moon was the worse day of my life. Admitting defeat had been tough for me, but night after night of nearly empty tables would make a believer out of anyone. I took what I saw as their rejection of me personally and hard. I'd never wanted anything but to become a celebrated chef.

I grew up on a small island in the Bahamas, raised by my grandmother from whom I inherited a love of food and a deep appreciation for my African heritage. Her dream was that I would someday take over the small but thriving down home- style restaurant she owned.

But a little island in the Bahamas hadn't been big enough to contain my dreams. I'd studied in Paris and spent a year roaming the Tuscan hills in search of amazing ingredients I could incorporate into my grandmother's recipes. I thought I had to adapt their simplicity to appeal to a more sophisticated palate. I'd altered them so much that even my grandmother wouldn't have recognized half of them as her own. I'd destroyed their soul to appeal to the masses and in the process changed myself until I was nothing more than a watered-down version of the person I was meant to be.

I was still trying to figure out exactly who I was as I stared at the last ten years of my life and dreams all crammed into the space I'd once called home but which now felt like a museum of my failures. There were pieces from the restaurant I just couldn't bear to part with, things I hadn't been able to donate or sell; the artwork from my last trip to Africa still in boxes, never having made it onto the shelf it'd taken me an entire weekend to set up. The restaurant had consumed my life, as had the city. It'd taken everything I had to offer and left a hollow shell I now had to fill with a personality and a purpose.

The phone rang and I allowed the machine to take care of whoever was invading my wine-infused pity party.

“Hey Mia, Miss Busy Bee.”

I groaned at the cheeriness in my best friend Zoë's voice. It irritated my last nerve. “God, it should be illegal for anyone to be so happy,” I said as I listened to her babble.

“How 'bout picking up the phone and calling once in a while? Now that you're a big city chef you don't have time for the little people?” She laughed, assuring me there were no ill feelings behind her words.

Zoë was important to me. She'd supported me fully in my dreams, had listened while I rattled on about the amazing life
I would have. Even when we were young Zoë knew she would spend her life on Harbour Island. She'd married her high school sweetheart and now spent her days running after adorable four-year-old twin girls and filling her art gallery with beautiful paintings for natives and tourists alike. She didn't dream of becoming the next Picasso or Basquiat. She was content just being Zoë.

I'd never found that kind of contentment, maybe because I was always changing myself into what I thought someone else wanted me to be. Maybe I needed to go back home and start all over again.

 

From the moment I stepped off the plane in the Bahamian capital of Nassau, I knew I'd made the right decision. I saw going back home as my failure and my saving grace. This was where I needed to be and the cloying heat welcomed me home like the prodigal daughter returning to the fold.

I loved coming home to the romance of a Bahamian summer. There's nothing quite like it. She announces her presence with cloying heat that's slightly unbearable and yet somehow sexy. She's never far from your mind and clings to everything like a jealous lover desperate to be unforgettable. She slips boldly into cleavages, slides down backs, teasing you with a whisper of cool air. She switches from seductive to moody in seconds with sudden spurts of rain and more wet heat.

The most pleasant way to get to my oasis of Harbour Island from Nassau was by the boat that left the Potter's Cay dock twice a week in the evenings just before the setting sun. As I waited to board the boat, I enjoyed a bowl of conch salad and chatted with the local fishermen. The air was alive with treasures of the sea, brought in earlier in the day and wonderfully fresh.

I'd missed the openness of my Bahamian people, their still trusting nature even in the crowded metropolis of Nassau. I
listened to their voices flowing seamlessly through strains of reggae music and felt a measure of peace. This was where I belonged. I was connected to the dreadlocked rasta selling savory peanuts on the street. He gave me a big smile when I purchased a bag. The women selling their wares against the backdrop of the ocean enticed me to their tables with smiles and simple hellos. Their singsong accents flowed over me like my grandmother's caress. This was my island in the sun, my Nirvana, my little piece of heaven on earth.