B-Sides and Remixes, page 12
“Maybe in another life,” I offer.
“Maybe,” she responds, as she walks away.
22
I stare at the phone for a good five minutes before picking it up and calling Rhonda back. She answers on the third ring, right before I prepare to hang up.
“Hello,” she says, and I immediately remember the first time I ever called her, just a few hours after our meeting at the bookstore. I remember thinking about how melodious her voice sounded—as if she could say any simple sentence and it would become music once it passed through her lips. Her voice was light and soft, very sweet and sensual. I could really appreciate her voice because I had dated women in the past who had lower, heavier voices, women, who if they were to smoke, were not far from sounding like Weezie from The Jeffersons.
“Hey,” I respond. “This is Cool.”
“I know,” she says. I can tell she is smiling by the lilt in her voice. “It’s good to hear your voice,” she adds.
“It is good to hear yours, too,” I say reluctantly.
“I saw you in Soul Sista, and I’ve been following your blog. Sounds like you’re living a pretty exciting life.”
“I guess that’s one way to put it,” I say. I lie back on my bed, staring into the blackness of my bedroom, imagining the ceiling somewhere in the distance above my head. “How have you been?” I ask. I am not so much curious as I am trying to be polite.
“I am well, and Treasure is well, too.”
“I saw her picture on Facebook. She looks just like you.”
“That’s what people tell me,” Rhonda says. “I guess I’m the only one who sees any traces of Craig in her.”
My jaw tenses when she says his name. Although I have never seen his face, my imagination has constructed a million combinations for a football player-looking brother. In some of my versions he is a dark brother, like Wesley Snipes, a guy with a smooth baritone voice and muscles like he’s been pumping iron since birth. In other versions he’s a tall Christopher Williams-looking brother with some heft to go along with that curly hair. I could’ve easily walked past this dude a million times and not even known it, which made me feel all the more like the world’s biggest fool. In all of the versions, though, I hated this nigga’s guts with Hatfield-McCoy-type passion. Now I finally have a name, but I don’t have the curiosity for much more than that.
“Are you still in Atlanta?” I ask, hoping to push the conversation forward.
“Newport News, Virginia. I’ve been at NASA for about six years now.”
“Nice. And you’re not married?”
“Not anymore. Things didn’t work out with Craig.”
I start to say, “Serves you right,” but there’s no need to. At this point I’m supposed to play the role of the magnanimous ex-boyfriend, and I plan to do just that. Instead I say, “I’m sorry to hear that. But things are going well now, I take it.”
“It can always be better; it can always be worse,” Rhonda says. “ Look, Cool. I know that I’m probably the last person in the world that you expected to hear from, and I’m probably the last person in the world you actually care to hear from. I was just thumbing through the magazine and saw your picture, and it made me realize some things.”
“Like what?”
“Like the fact that I really hurt you. I really did you wrong.”
“It took a picture of me in a magazine for you to realize that?”
She sighs. “Life has just been moving so fast, and I haven’t had a lot of time to fret over things in my past. It’s hard raising a little girl alone. So yes, it took me seeing your picture to really grasp the other side of what went down between us.”
I can feel that old anger beginning to bubble beneath the surface, but I push to hold it at bay. “So you did me wrong. That was a long time ago.”
“Well, maybe. But I know that sometimes we change ourselves to deal with the situations that affect us the most. I open a magazine and see you’re an eligible bachelor, and I know deep down in my heart that you’re a great guy who could easily have any woman he wanted. I can’t help thinking that the reason you don’t is because you don’t trust women the way you used to.”
I scoff. “Aren’t YOU the dime store psychologist?”
“I’m just telling you what I think, but that’s not why I reached out to you,” Rhonda says.
I lower my forehead into my hand. “So why did you reach out to me then?”
She hesitates, and I have a fleeting thought that maybe she lied about Craig being Treasure’s father. I brace myself for anything.
“Cool,” she starts, “I just wanted to tell you that I was sorry. Sorry about everything: the way I did you, the way I hurt you.”
I start laughing softly at first, as if she is telling me some kind of joke.
She says it again. And again.
Slowly I feel my throat stiffen, and I can only sit there with the phone cradled next to my face. I’ll be damned if I sit up here and unleash nine years of pain in a huge ball of snot and tears for her edification. Instead I want to just be left alone to understand the sense of relief that comes with knowing that I was not crazy for what happened, that I had not romanticized the past unnecessarily, that I was a good man to her.
“I know this is all too little too late,” she adds, “but I wanted you to hear those words directly from me. None of what happened with us was your fault. You had never done anything to me to deserve what I did. There were just a lot of things beyond your control.”
I am silent as I listen to her.
“Not that you asked, but my relationship with Craig had never officially ended after my father died during my freshman year. He had been there for me, and when he left for the summer and started dating another girl, I was hurt. Then you came along, and you were wonderful and I really liked you.”
“But you never loved me,” I say.
She pauses before answering, “Not the way you wanted me to.”
I see myself as a senior in college with dreams of spending my life with her. I had absolutely no clue that I was alone in my thinking, and that thought makes me feel foolish now—nine years later.
“So what now?” I ask. “Are we supposed to be friends?”
“I don’t know, Cool. I guess all of that is up to you. I just wanted to let you know that I felt bad for the way things turned out. If you never want to speak to me again, I can totally understand that—and respect that.”
I massage my temples with my fingers. “Well, I appreciate your telling me everything. You know what’s fucked up though? The illusion of shared history.”
“What do you mean?” she asks.
“When two people experience something, and one of those people thinks the world of it, but the other doesn’t. That’s the illusion of shared history. That’s me walking around looking at our memories with this perfect golden lining around them and you looking at them as expendable things that you just lived through.”
“I wouldn’t put it like that,” she says.
“Well, how would you put it then?”
She says, “What we experienced was great. It’s just that we were at two different emotional places at the time.”
As I consider this, I realize that I have to let all of this weight go. I have carried it with me for so long that I thought it was a part of me. I can’t change anything that has happened in the past, to me or to her, but I can change how I choose to be in this moment.
“Thank you,” I say.
“For what?” she says.
“For giving me the opportunity to deal with the truth directly.”
She is quiet for a moment.
“Maybe one day we could be friends again,” she says.
I lift my head and look out into the darkness of my room, my eyes now better adjusted.
“Maybe,” I say, but at this moment I cannot tell if I am telling the truth or not. I can only tell that I need time, the kind of time that sheds the past to make space for the future.
23
While my life has been going in what feels like a million different directions at once, J has been implementing his earlier plan of getting an open mic poetry event going. The three of us have since been throwing ourselves into this idea whole-heartedly. After some brainstorming, we figured out a way to accommodate a small crowd of people and still maintain floor space for our products. J expects roughly fifty or so people to show up. I expect more—more than what I feel we can comfortably accommodate, but I want to see his idea succeed, and I figure having too many people want in is the kind of problem that we’d actually want to have, versus the alternative.
Sitting around allowing our marketing to be anchored by Soul Sista has run its course. We didn’t ask anyone’s permission to exist, and it makes little sense that we would stop trying to push ourselves to the next level on our own blood, sweat, and tears. At the end of the day, if we allow the situation at Soul Sista to sink us, then that’s on us. We can’t spend our days feeling like we have little control over what we’ve created.
As we review our checklist for the event, the store phone rings.
“Hello?” I answer.
“May I speak to Cool Brown?”
I can tell by the sweetness of her voice that it is Denise, and I want to kick myself for even thinking about the sound of her voice in that way.
“This is he. Denise, is that you?”
She laughs. “Yes. You’re good,” she says.
“I just know your voice. That’s all,” I respond.
“I wanted to call you first.”
I shake my head, but I know she can’t see me. “You just wanted to let me know that the final nails have been placed in my coffin?”
She chuckles. “I guess I should apologize for the way things went down the last time we met up. I had a lot if time to think about what you said. So I went back to my boss and told her that we should stand behind your decision to not do the retraction.”
All of this is new to me, so I sit quietly, listening to make sure that she is saying what I think she is.
“I convinced her to let you finish what you started, and the editors will issue a statement acknowledging a respect for your privacy as you make your selection.”
Now I feel like an ass. I can still remember the way I walked out on her, leaving her with those two gigantic Blockheads burritos. I immediately launch into my own apology.
“I never should have walked out on you like I did. I’m sorry I did that.”
“Don’t sweat it,” she says. “I know the situation was tight, so I can’t blame you. No telling how I would’ve felt if it had been me in the same situation.”
“So where do we go from here?” I ask.
“You just pick up where you left off and do the best you can to finish your dates and make a decision,” Denise says.
“They’re all gone.”
“Who? All of the women?”
“Yes,” I say.
“So you’re telling me that none of the three situations has any potential left in them?” Denise asks, her voice beginning to turn.
“Nada.”
“Oh shit,” she mutters in a way that concerns me.
“What? Talk to me,” I say.
“It’s just that I fought for you to get this chance. Now I feel like a damn fool.”
My mind begins to race with different ideas. I definitely don’t want her to catch flack from something she was doing for me as a favor.
“Don’t worry. We can figure out something,” I say, not having a clue as to what I’m talking about. “Do you want to grab a drink after work or something? We can come up with something.”
I can tell she’s pondering this. When she finally opens her mouth to speak, she tells me to meet her at the BBQ’s down in the Village, the same location of my date with Taylor that went awry. I agree, hoping to put her at ease while I discuss a few options with J and Ray-Ray.
It’s already 3:00 in the afternoon, roughly three hours before I’m supposed to meet up with her, and while that might seem like a long time, when you don’t have a clue as to how to fix a situation that seems largely beyond your control, that three hours may as well be five minutes.
After talking with J and Ray-Ray, I’m no closer to a solution for this latest development. J wants me to revisit Taylor for the sake of bringing about a conclusion that at least makes sense on a fundamental level. Ray-Ray suggests that I just argue for three new girls, citing Flavor Flav’s second season of Flavor of Love as an example. I decide that there is another option that no one has thought of yet, and as I find my way to BBQ’s, I have no clue whatsoever of what that other option is.
I actually arrive before Denise does, so I stand outside under the awning waiting and watching people walk by. Standing there feels like deja vu. I half-expect to see Taylor with her curly, fluffy brown Afro walking by. I can still remember the glow of her golden skin and how I had once wanted to be wrapped in her arms and legs. Then I see her with her “friends,” the men she can’t bring herself to call “ex-boyfriends,” and I’m reminded that I would’ve never been able to have a committed relationship with her. Personally, I just don’t think she really wanted one. Another side of me wonders if I could’ve been in a relationship with a woman who didn’t eat anything that I did. On the surface it’s easy to say that something like that is not a big deal, but after a barbecue or two, I don’t know if I would still feel the same way. I could never cook my favorite dishes for her or share my favorite restaurant meals with her. I know it sounds trivial, but food can be sexy to me, and I feel like that would be something we would have missed out on.
Almost completely lost in my thoughts of Taylor, I almost don’t notice Denise easing up on me.
“Hey, Cool,” she says, her voice tired and not as buoyant as it was earlier.
“Denise,” I say, taking in her tired look. “Please give me a smile, or I’ll feel like I have destroyed your week.”
She musters a smile, just enough for her dimples to appear.
“We’re gonna kill some fried wings and a few drinks and come up with something so that everybody is happy.”
Denise shrugs and follows me inside. We are seated near the back of the restaurant.
“I just don’t know how we can fix any of this. You will have to tell me what happened with these women where you ended up empty-handed.”
I start with my last date with Taylor and explain to her why things didn’t work out. Then I explain the Rochelle situation and how it adversely affected my connection with Sarah.
“How do you fix any of that?” Denise asks.
I shrug my shoulders. “I haven’t quite figured that part out yet. Is it possible to get some more selections from your readers?”
Denise shakes her head. “Rachel already didn’t want to spend any more time and effort on this, so I seriously doubt she would give you any more chances. Whatever you choose to do has to be done with the situation you’ve already started.”
“Something told me you were going to say that,” I respond. “Well, what if I just write one last entry saying that I couldn’t find someone from the three women the readers selected?”
Just then, the server appears and takes our orders. We settle on piña coladas with 151 shots and a giant plate of fried wings.
“I thought about that, too. It would be the truth, but it would be awfully anti-climactic.”
I nod. “But it would be the truth, and that has to count for something, especially since I’ve already been accused of being dishonest.”
Denise smiles. “This whole thing is just proving to be much more than I had anticipated.”
“This was your idea?”
She laughs. “I thought you knew that.”
“Well, now I do. I’m curious. Why me and not some other Joe?” I ask.
“You were the one who got the most mail, and from reviewing your bio, you just seemed like a pretty decent guy, someone who could do this thing in such a way that it would be both entertaining and classy.”
I nod. “You know, my cousin told me that I shouldn’t have ever done this, that I was pimping myself by doing all of this.”
“That was never my intention,” Denise says.
I shrug. “Either way, I have to say that this proves to be much more than I think either of us expected.”
The server appears and places our Texas-sized drinks on the table. We lift the 151 shots.
“A toast to making sense of all of this,” I propose.
“Sounds good to me.”
As our plastic tubes clink, I decide to relax and let all of the cards fall where they may.
24
After three drinks Denise and I are no closer to a resolution, but we have managed to compare notes on every important R&B album of the 80s and 90s.
“NE Heartbreak was a great album, but Bobby Brown’s Don’t Be Cruel was a more important album for his career,” Denise says.
I laugh. “You’re basically comparing the production of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis to the production of Teddy Riley. That’s like comparing apples and oranges.”
“Maybe. But Teddy owned that period in music. Keep in mind Keith Sweat’s first album had just dropped and Guy’s first album was on the way.”
I smile. Denise and I must have been born from the same pod. “Not to be too hyperbolic here, but New Jack Swing saved my life!”
“Yours?” she says, grabbing the last wing on the plate. “I can’t tell you how many times I played that New Jack Swing remix to that Jane Childs song!”
“I Don’t Wanna Fall in Love,” we both say at the same time and burst into laughter.
I look at the fact that our glasses are empty and the plate has only crumbs and bones from the fried wings.
“Want me to order us some more drinks—and wings?” I ask.
“You know what I really want?” she says.
“No,” I say chuckling. I can still feel the buzz of the alcohol flowing through my body.
“I really want some Hershey Kisses!” She giggles like a schoolgirl, and I can tell that we are both a little tipsy.
