One Night (4 page)

I said, “Guess they won't be having a merry Christmas.”

“Not many of us will.”

“Where were we?”

“Art. You were telling me who you liked, what you would buy if you had money.”

“That is a long, long list. If I was filthy rich, my crib would be a museum filled with art by Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Picasso, da Vinci, Turner, Donatello, Monet, Rodin, van Eyck—”

A loud crash from the parking lot jarred everyone in Hawaiian Gardens and Lakewood.

Customers jumped up. Waitresses stopped waitressing. The damaged car's alarm went off.

The man who had left after arguing with his wife had backed out of his space, no doubt still in a rage, and slammed into the rear quarter panel of the luxury car. They pulled back in, adjusted, accelerated, backed up fast, and slammed the luxury car again. They were fighting, had been slugging it out like Rihanna and Chris Brown on repeat since they'd left. He reversed again, and it looked like he was about to rip away the whole side of the luxury car.

I said, “Oh my God, they hit your car, they hit your car, they hit your car.”

They rammed the car again. The driver fought his wife as he backed out of the parking space.

I said, “Damn, they're about to do a hit-and-run.”

His hands were fists and his jaw was tight, like he was about to change from Don Draper to Samuel L. Jackson in
Pulp Fiction
. His body language said he was about to sprint out there and kick ass. Only he was looking at the news, not the accident. His attention went against the current.

The driver backed out, threw his car in drive, turned his lights on, and sped away.

The man from Orange County did nothing. He stopped watching the news and did nothing.

I said, “Aren't you going to get their license plate number and call the police before they—”

He used his remote to turn his alarm off, then looked around at the people in the restaurant.

I ran to the front door and came back, said, “I'm calling the police.”

He glanced up at the surveillance cameras. “No police. Not yet. We're not ready.”

He said that like if the police came, they'd take me away. I didn't know if that meant he'd turn me in, so I put my phone down. He didn't bother to go look at the damage. The rest of the people in the restaurant had their eyes on us. The rich man. The brown girl with dreadlocks. They waited for one of us to do something. I sat back down, watching him, but his eyes were back on the television and the news.

A guy ran in from the winter rain and hurried to the waitress, and she directed him to our table. The guy had seen the accident and had written down the car's make, model, and tag number. He ran and handed the information to the man from Orange County, who thanked him and shook his hand. The guy stood there for a moment, waiting for his excitement to be reciprocated, and when it wasn't, he lost that expression that said he was a hero, looked perplexed, then scratched his head as he walked away, left the restaurant, got into his car, and drove away. The man from Orange County tore up the information.

Everyone kept looking at the damaged luxury car. A few people went out to inspect the damage themselves. Amazed, people inside talked about the fight, regretted they hadn't had their phones ready to record and post it, and continued to rubberneck at someone else's personal tragedy. A man and a woman had had a fist fight in front of us, and since it was no one famous, it was just entertainment. I thought it was a great time to talk, to take the opportunity to scrutinize the forces of culture, gender, and race, but he wasn't talking. He had gone dark. We looked out the window. Sirens and flashing lights lit up the Christmas season. He looked down at his hand, over and over, like he could see its pain.

I sat back and counted the cars creeping by, many with Christmas trees on their roofs.

He said, “It's my wife's car.”

“That's your wife's car? Someone just jacked up your wife's car and you don't care?”

“Ordered it for her back in June. One of her Christmas presents.”

“That's a two-thousand-and-this-year car? And it's
one
of her presents? Just
one
?”

“It's a two-thousand-and-next-year automobile with all the overpriced bells and whistles. Leather-lined wooden iPod drawer. Teak decking. Has pop-up dash speakers. Rear-seat champagne cooler.”

“Has she been inside the new car yet?”

“Not yet. Hadn't officially given it to her yet.”

“Now it's damaged.”

“It lost its value the moment it left the car lot. Just like my marriage did when I left the church.”

“I still would've chased those jerks and run them into a ditch.”

Food arrived.

I had wanted a fried cheese melt, the one that clocked in at about thirteen hundred calories, but he ordered a low-calorie salad, so I ordered the same, thinking I could eat salad now, then stop at Roscoe's and get chicken and waffles with the guy I was dealing with, when he finally called me back. Chicken and waffles and some private time until sunrise. I was lost in thought for a moment. The man from Orange County started eating.

I blinked and adjusted my focus, asked, “Aren't you going to bless the food?”

“Jesus wept.”

“The shortest verse in the Bible.”

He said, “One noun. One verb. A complete sentence in my book.”

“Don't plagiarize. Be original. That was written over two thousand years ago.”

“But I guess nowadays if Jesus wept, everybody would call him a punk, like they did that Republican guy. Mary can weep, but if Jesus came back to this world and shed a tear—”

“Whatever. Bless the food.”

“Bless the food we're about to receive for the nourishment of our bodies. Amen.”

“Amen.”

“And Jesus wept.”

“Whatever.”

He stabbed his salad with a fork and asked, “Where do you live?”

“Where people don't let other people hit their cars and get away with it without a body bag.”

“East L.A.?”

“Leimert Park section. Heard of that area? Middle-class blacks live there.”

“Where the body of Elizabeth Short was found?”

“When white people lived there. My apartment isn't far from where they found the Black Dahlia.”

“Never been to that area. They did serious damage up there during the last riot.”

“You heard of Leonard DuBois?”

“The comic?”

“I live in the same apartment he used to live in. Was hoping it would bring me good luck.”

“Small world. I used to do business with the guy who was his best friend. Tyrel Williams. He was my mentor back in the day, during my college days. He helped me get my company going.”

“You own a company?”

He nodded as he asked, “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Oh. Sorry. Your eyes. The colors. Didn't see them when we were at the gas station. They're interesting. Just an observation. Not flirting. They caught me off guard. Didn't mean to stare like that.”

I blinked, felt my heart beating faster, like drummer Buddy Rich was doing a number inside my chest. Butterflies broke free, moved around my stomach. That rarely happened to me.

I shook off the butterflies and asked, “What's your situation at home? You're not telling me something; that much I see in your body language and eyes.”

“You're reading my body language?”

“The black eye? The bruised knuckles? Did you beat your wife and go get dinner? Is that why you don't care about your wife's new car getting banged up in the parking lot? Is this about your wife?”

“Haven't seen my wife today, and again, she hasn't seen what was her present. I was in D.C. I had business in Gaithersburg, but we wrapped up a day early, and everyone was ready to get back to his or her family. I was, too. So I rebooked, flew back into John Wayne Airport this morning. Got home and she was gone. She didn't expect me in so early, I guess, and had left her iPad on the kitchen table. She went to work out early. So I guess you could say that I did the same.”

“She wasn't home and you went to play racquetball.”

“Got in the way of a racquet. And I did hit a wall with my fist.”

“Fingers tapping the table—that means you're not comfortable.”

“You're reading too much into a little tapping. Keeping time with a song inside my head.”

“Don't talk to me like I'm a yokel. You're lying about something. A lot of something.”

“Am I? Are you a mind reader as well?”

“You're not giving me much direct eye contact. You're a liar.”

“If I look at you, you get offended. If I don't, you think I'm a liar. Which should I do?”

I laughed. “You got me on that one. I still think you're lying. I pick up on other people's feelings. No matter how hard they try to hide what they're feeling, I pick up on it.”

“That's how you know who to con.”

“You're a liar.”

“Same for you. I met you as a liar, so as far as I know, every word from your face is a lie.”

“I lie all the time.”

“That was probably a lie, too.”

I chewed my salad and looked into his eyes. Time slowed down. That is why people don't look at each other. Eye contact does things, causes changes in the atmosphere. Eye contact creates wars, creates fights, but eye contact also creates arousal. I felt the weird, pointless tingles, and I read his face and his smile. I tried to look inside him, see what he was feeling, while at the same time guarding myself.

I cleared my throat, maintained a straight face, asked, “What's the big issue at home?”

“Who said it was a single issue?”

“Fine. Is it a bunch of small issues?”

He stabbed at his salad, hardly took a bite. “We have issues large and small.”

“What's the primary argument all about?”

“We argue over dumb things. Every day she has to create a fashion video of what she's wearing—clothes, makeup, the whole nine—and upload her never-ending vanity on both YouTube and Facebook.”

“Vain, or just very confident. I can't call that one. How's the communication between you two?”

“Every conversation becomes an argument that ends up being a mudslinging match.”

“I understand that. I totally understand that. I was with someone . . . six years ago . . . and that was the way it was. Started off on that high, then after a year we hit rock bottom and crashed.”

“I can relate. She went from her actions showing me she loved me to saying she loved me, but her actions no longer lined up with the conversation.”

“Showing is always more important than telling. Show me and I'll never ask you to say it.”

“She no longer loved me as I was, and wanted me to change. I gave up a lot to be with her.”

“We all give up part of ourselves to be with anyone. Relationships change our trajectories.”

“I guess we do. But with a good love, we could gain even more than we'd ever imagined.”

“Are you heading toward indifference and just saying it is what it is, and doing what you have to do on the side?”

“Nothing on the side. Not for me.”

“Kids?”

“No kids. We tried the second year. At least I thought we had tried.”

“You're confusing, and I think you're lying. Do you cuddle?”

“What?”

“Cuddle. Do you and your wife cuddle at night? People should cuddle naked. I'm a cuddler.”

“Not anymore. She turns her back to me.”

“Maybe she wants you to snuggle up on her booty and get it from the back or something.”

“She sleeps downstairs in the family room, on the sofa in front of the television, most nights.”

“Sounds like, as they say in the Caribbean, pussy gone frost. Sex got boring?”

“Not for me. When you love someone, sex never gets boring.”

“When you don't?”

“It's just a way to ease the tension built up inside your body.”

“Oh. Hmm. Is she a lesbian and pretending to be straight?”

“None of the carpet in-house has been munched, as far as I can see.”

“How often do you have sex?”

“Very seldom. But when we do, it's a real quick event, like wham, bam, thank you, roll over, wash up, and she's on the iPad playing Candy Crush and I'm surfing Netflix, looking for a movie.”

“I guess the honeymoon phase has ended.”

“Most people should get a divorce right after the honeymoon. Some should during.”

Then he gazed into my eyes. I tried to read him but was fascinated by the colors of his eyes.

In a tender voice, I said, “You have one bluish-green eye and one brown eye.”

“Oh. Yeah. I do.”

“Both have gray circles around the iris.”

It was a mutual gaze. People around us probably misinterpreted it as the look of love.

The direct eye contact caused arousal. But it also created hostility.

I felt both. It was a hostile arousal.

I didn't know how to respond to that sensation.

I asked, “So are you unhappily married, or regretfully married?”

“What's the difference?”

“Unhappy is how the other person makes you feel. You want it to work, don't want to divorce, live day to day in a comfortable state of distress and embarrassment, and you have hope, so much hope, but it's hard. You're not going anywhere, and it's more about the hopeful heart than divorce court.”

“And regretfully married?”

“Regret is when you wish you had never married. You hate yourself for your choice, and for that you project that hate and animosity and anxiety from your black heart to your partner. You punish them day in and day out because you want them to be as miserable as you are.”

“In that case, I am the unhappy one, and I think my wife has always been the regretful one.”

“And you don't have a girlfriend? I'm going to ask you that over and over.”

“I've realized there are many types of women—two in particular. When I was single, a certain type of woman was attracted to me: the single woman. But there were a lot of single women who had boyfriends, but wanted something better, or were experimenting with their desires. Now, my wedding ring attracts married women. So I guess there are a lot of unhappily married women. A lot of women living with regret.”

My tone softened. “Take up many offers from those living in Unhappyville and Regretville?”

In what sounded like a tone of regret, he said, “None.”

“Other people know you have problems at home?”

“No one has a clue. In pictures, around friends, we seem to be the perfect couple.”

We held eye contact. My nostrils flared and my pupils dilated. His pupils dilated.

He played the stare game. I played the stare game.

The stare remained unbroken. We gazed. Inhaled. Exhaled. Gazed. Inhaled. Exhaled. I wanted to lick my lips, but I didn't. His cell rang and that broke the stare, ended the challenge. He looked down at his phone, saw the number on the ID, but he didn't answer. He shifted with the energy of the restless, his mind on something powerful. At last, I could breathe. I managed to lick thoughts away from my lips. My nipples ached, and I could barely breathe. I swallowed and looked away from his eyes.

Susan was smiling.

She hadn't smiled in a long time, and rarely with that much enthusiasm.

I kept my knees together, legs closed like Chick-fil-A on a Sunday.