Naughty or Nice (3 page)

H
i, young lady. I'd like to look at this rug.”

“No problem,” I tell her.

I'm just getting on the floor at work before a middle-aged black woman spots me, maneuvers around all the white girls on the floor, and comes over to me. She's short, salt-and-pepper hair, a round woman wearing thick glasses; reminds me of my paternal grandmother.

I ask her, “What size do you need?”

She tells me, “Six by nine.”

“We have those right . . . right . . . Here you go. Would you like to see a rug pad?”

“Love your voice. It's pretty, like a singer. Sarah Vaughan comes to mind.”

“Thank you. Would you like to get a rug pad, also? They only cost five dollars, and you can cut them so you can use them under different rugs if you like.”

“I'll take one. My Lord, my Lord. How did you get that burn on your face?”

She cringes, then sounds sad, and that rattles me for a moment.

I struggle with a smile.

I say, “Happened . . . The burn is from a long time ago.”

“You're too pretty to have something like that marking your face.”

“Uh . . .” I lose my momentum, then regroup. “Do you . . . Do you have any kids?”

“No man is ever gonna want you with your face like that.”

I ask her, “Do you have any kids?”

“Kids. Of course I have kids. And a husband. And grandchildren. And—”

“Then the rug . . . I mean the rug pads will be perfect for you.”

She scrunches her face. “Rug pads?”

“Keeps the rug from sliding, so your kids . . . I guess your grandkids'll have fewer accidents if they run through . . . You get the picture.”

“Lord, have mercy. Was that burn an accident?”

I ignore her and ask, “What colors do you have in the room?”

“I dunno. Let me think . . . peach, yellow, mauve . . .”

“Know what pillows would look great with that rug? Let me show you.”

I keep talking, never giving her time to ask any more questions. By the time I get in control and finish doing the “up sale” routine, pushing as much merchandise as I can, she's buying three rugs, rug pads, all kinds of candles, candle trays, pillows, and two bar stools.

Everyone in the store is busy, so I have to take her mountain of merchandise to her car.

She gives me a five-dollar tip and tells me, “And I'm telling you this, old black woman to young black woman. Get a perm; get rid of that African hairstyle. Put some color in your hair, and get that earring out of your eyebrow if you want to make it in this world. Maybe see a doctor about your face because the right man ain't gonna look at you twice if—”

“Thanks, but I have to get back inside. Our seasonal sale is keeping us busy.”

She nods. “Remember what I told you.”

“Thanks. Happy holidays.”

I hurry by cars and see my reflection, the history on my face keeping up with me no matter how fast I move. My image
meets me in the reflection of the glass doors as I rush back inside Pier 1, smiling. Then a hundred mirrors echo the burn on my face.

First chance I get, I leave the floor and go to the break room. My left hand wants to shake, but I won't let it. The memory tries to come back, and I can't stop it.

Some days history is silent.

Today history screams.

R
unning. Riesling. Sex. Those are my three vices.

First and last, I'm a runaholic. I started pounding the pavement right after my divorce. That was seven years and damn near seventy pounds ago. I was married at twenty-six. By the new millennium standards, a bona fide child bride. That screeched to a halt when this heifer—a bulimic bitch from Boston—sent me a Polaroid of her and my husband butt-ass naked in my bed. Bitch was nice enough to make sure the Fed Ex man left the porno pic on my doorstep on Christmas Eve. Even put the photo inside a very nice Hallmark card, wishing me happy holidays and a prosperous new year. Manipulating skanks can be so cold and calculating. I asked my lovey-dovey-hubby who the fuck that was, and all he could do was look like he was about to have a stroke and shout,
“Where you get that?”

And boy did we argue and fight.

He started coming at me with crap like, “Well, whoever she is, she ain't fat enough to have her own zip code. Look at your chain-smoking ass. You walk around smelling like the butt of a cigarette and, what, you expect me to pass that up? You're a dead fuck anyway. Learn to suck a dick and move your ass and you might be worth something. Hell, fucking you is one step below jacking off.”

Five seconds later I had to call the paramedics because I had
shoved my chubby foot so far up his narrow butt he had to get an ass-ectomy in order to get my three-inch pump surgically removed.

But, hey, when I look back at those photos, I was a little on the fat side, the sister he dumped me for wasn't. Didn't matter. We were both immature and loving on borrowed time. Actually I should thank him for the motivation. I tossed the pork out the fridge, gave the red meat to a neighbor I couldn't stand, bought some running shoes, put one foot in front of the other, and changed my own life. Reebok and some open road is better than Jenny Craig any damn day.

Wine is simple. I love me a glass of Riesling.

And sex, well, ain't a lot been jumping off. I don't think any woman wants to spend that time between Thanksgiving and Valentine's Day living and loving a capella, while everybody else was getting presents and flowers. Too many parties to go to, the kind where people show up in couples. Hmmm. Well, the last man I was seeing (the last one I considered a boyfriend, meaning he was on the A-list, meaning I was seen in public with him, my sisters met him, and my friends knew him) that ended eight months back. A long time to be without fondness, compliments, and genuine affection.

That's not to say that I've been using all of this real estate for a paperweight. Time to time, I gets mine. My old A-list boyfriend is not to be confused with the ones who fit into the B-list category. The B-list is the occasional date and sex category.

The C-lists were the dicks in a glass jar, straight-up booty calls who came to my rescue and put out a raging fire, the ones who showed up after dark and left before the morning newspaper was tossed on the front porch. Booty calls don't count. Those were all about tension relief, when a man stunt doubled for a worn-out dildo and hooked you up before you went postal. Those were the sexual escapades that would never make it on your résumé of carnal activities. You denied them the way Bill denied Monica. No photos, no videos, no stained dresses, no proof.

After almost three seasons of C-listing, I was ready to find me a potential for the A-list. The problem was that I was thirty-plus, the age where a woman wanted to find a man so she could have a child. The problem with that was that men my age were trying to find a child to make their woman.

I said nothing from nothing left nothing, posted my info out at Yahoo!, BlackVoices, NetNoir, Match-dot-com. That had me as nervous as a felon in a high-speed chase because I was scared that somebody I knew, maybe an ex—especially an ex—would see my picture out there with that cute header
RUBY DEE SEEKS HER OSSIE
. But at least I wasn't as direct as the sisters who had pictures of themselves with their lips wrapped around bananas. If my ex (pick one) ever saw some crap like that, he would call me up laughing so hard that he'd be barely able to get out his words, “Is it that bad? Have you stooped down that low? Damn, Frankie. Shit so bad you have to advertise to meet a man?”

So anyway, I wiped my apprehension on my jeans, dipped into my reservoir of courage and downloaded my cute little picture. Silver bracelets, skin tanned from working out in the sun. Five-foot-nine, down to one-hundred-sixty pounds (actually one-hundred-seventy, but what's the point of being on the Internet if you're not going to lie?), sexy legs, in search of single, widowed, or divorced—the last two being the types of men that, ten years ago, I wouldn't have touched with a ten-foot pole. Especially the widowed. Last thing I wanted was a widow man who had the ghost of a dead soul mate following him around like Michael Myers on Halloween.

Then I sat back and waited.

The first day, not a single e-mail. Talk about feeling cyber-rejected like a mofo. Even e-mailed myself to make sure it was working.

I mean
zero
e-mails.

Then the next day, I logged on and, wow, over sixty e-mails. Forty-five with pictures attached. Half sent photos of themselves butt naked, holding onto their coffee stirrers. If that was
the way a brother said hello, taking me to Bible study wasn't the first thing on his mind.

Three were from women who wanted to know
ARE YOU LIBERAL?
and
LET ME LOVE YOU LIKE NO MAN CAN
and
WANT TO MEET ME AND MY HUSBAND IN LAGUNA NIGEL?

Delete. Deeeeee-lete. De-fucking-lete.

Talk about being a magnet for losers.

And to make things worse, I should've been more specific and said no Jheri curls, brothers who wear pink curlers, played-out pimps, wanna-be gangstas, street pharmacists, or gold-tooth-wearing hustlers. The list was shorter, but would never be that damn short.

I didn't delete the cute ones. Or the ones that had coffee stirrers the size of my arm. Talk about a leg-crossing challenge. I kept a copy of those perverts in my Personal Filing Cabinet, added them to my own private collection. Never know when I might be alone on a cold, rainy night, sipping wine and needing a little visual stimulation to get my juices flowing.

And the white men, they e-mailed in droves. Sent all kinds of virtual cards, called me two hundred kinds of beautiful. Damn. But I had to update my profile to let them know that Willie Wonka wouldn't be getting into this chocolate factory.

Then, this brother sends me this pic and damn, he looked like Denzel on his Oscar-winning night. I moaned out a sweet hallelujah and smiled. I did not hesitate to e-mail him back. He was the kind of brother you'd want to put on a Santa suit and come down your chimney every night of the year. First we were talking about investment strategies, mutual funds, going over all sorts of red-hot funds that sizzled. After a few late-night conversations our exchanges became pretty hot and heavy. What's the point of being online if you're not going to dim the lights and talk some freaky talk?

Then he typed, “Let's meet.”

“You don't waste any time.”

“Not when I see what I want.”

“You haven't seen me yet.”

“Meet me at Reign on Friday night.”

I typed, “Around eight sound cool?”

“Perfect. I'll be the one holding the yellow roses.”

 

I valet-parked and stepped into Reign, my sashay as smooth as butter pecan ice cream, glam to the bone. The place was humming. Reign was a New York–style, trendy hangout made of marble, polished steel, and plastic smiles. A 90210 watering hole where broke-ass people congregated over apple martinis and pretended they weren't broke-ass people; social drinkers about to socialize their way into an AA meeting. Brothers had Maxwell and D'Angelo demeanors. Sisters were diva-fied, weaves as seamless as their panty lines, most of them lounging at the bar, where the bad lighting hid every flaw.

Five after eight. No Denzel in sight.

Then this sister in a short dress sashayed in, a B-list actress strutting in full diva mode, her backside so well defined, so big and round that brothers stopped breathing and started watching her moneymaker like it was the NBA finals. Every woman gave her the “that slut ho bitch” look.

The claws came out and the mumbles began.

“Bitch can't even act.”

“Only reason she works is because she licks coke off the director's dick
.”

“She wears more makeup than a transvestite.”

I crept to the ladies' room and checked myself out, hoping my outfit didn't make my teaspoon of rooty tooty fresh and fruity booty look flatter than Arkansas after a tornado. I was in a hot spot filled with man-hungry women and women-hungry men, people who were preoccupied with superficial attraction, so all of this 38-32-42 was in the mirror for a few moments, doing some last-minute primping.

I walked around the bar comparing my natural locks to all the fake hair, my café au lait complexion to the ones that looked like a whiter shade of pale, then to the ones that were dark and lovely, wondering how my black dress compared to their shiny, stretchy and tight clothes.

Still no sign of my damn Denzel. Ten after eight. He was ten minutes late.

I was taking out my cellular phone when somebody said, “Frankie?”

I turned around and saw a face from my past. Felt like I'd been injected with potassium chloride. He was fine as hell, dressed in grays and blacks under a leather jacket, hair short and neat.

I said, “Nick?”

Nicolas Coleman. An old A-list lover. A very A-list lover. Always awkward running into somebody you'd been intimate with, especially when you had hoped he wanted more from you.

I made myself smile. “Hey, stranger.”

“Didn't recognize you at first.” He looked surprised, like he had said my name, but still wasn't sure that it was me. He finally got his words together. “Damn. You are looking good.”

“You too.”

Then he moved into my personal space, touched me, hugged me. I wasn't ready for that. All of a sudden whatever karma we had shared, the energy he had left inside me, tingled to life.

“Look at you,” I said, pulling away. “I see your books all over. Big baller shot caller.”

“Your locks . . . wow . . . nice. You . . . damn.” Again, his expression told me that he was surprised I'd lost so much weight, but he didn't know how to phrase his thoughts. “You are looking good.”

I gave up a morsel of a nervous laugh. “You just said that.”

Our hair let us know how long it had been since we'd seen each other. Last time I saw him his hair was in twisties and my hair was in a bob. Since then, I've cut it all damn near to the bone and it's grown back, framed my face and hung down my back and over my shoulders, colored deep brown with golden tips. Back then his hair was longer, hip and bohemian, and now he was clean cut.

I said, “I see a wedding ring.”

He smiled.

I asked, “Nicole?”

“Nah.” The spark in his eyes dwindled, then came back. “Somebody else.”

“Somebody else?”

Back then, his whole world was about this girl Nicole. Always Nick and Nicole.

He got off the subject, asked me how my sisters were doing, yada, yada.

I went back to what was on my mind. “So you and Nicole finally parted ways.”

“We did.”

There was a moment of silence between us, a slice of quiet so small, yet it was louder than the clatter in this joint. In that silence I thought about that night he was having so many problems. The night he was coming unglued. His family was tripping, his preacher-man father didn't like his work. Nicole was driving him insane. And he called me, needed to talk.

We met for drinks.

Conversation.

Back to my place.

More drinks.

The fourth glass of Riesling kicked in and I jumped bold, told him to
snap the fuck out of it, that confused, selfish bitch doesn't care about you,
then kissed him and risked rejection. Bold enough to kick off my shoes, slap my titty in his mouth, put my hands in his pants, and lead him into my bed. I straight up offered my body as a salve for his anguish. Or took his to salve my own.

Penetration changed everything, especially amongst friends.

Back then I had a boyfriend. A decent brother that I just couldn't get into, not on the level that I wanted, especially when I wanted somebody else. And I knew Nick was hooked on Nicole. So, Nick probably saw me as . . . Never mind, I'm not even going to go there.

And now he was wearing a wedding ring and I was surfing for prospects out on the Internet.

He asked, “What happened to your book?”

“Well, lots of rejections. Then I got into buying property. Had to help Livvy with her wedding. And Tommie . . .” I shrugged. That simple question about my book, especially coming from him, taunted me. “Did some traveling. Brazil. Amsterdam. Other places. Got sidetracked.”