B-Sides and Remixes, page 13
“Will a kiss from a chocolate brotha do?” I ask. I have no earthly idea what made me say that, but it feels as natural as anything else in my current state of relaxation.
“I don’t know,” she responds. “Let me see.” She leans forward and kisses me quickly on the lips before sitting back and saying, “Nah, I need a real Hershey’s Kiss.”
“Damn, it’s like that?” I laugh, still dazed that she kissed me. It all happened so quickly that my lips didn’t even register it. I’m guessing we will need to stop the alcohol for the evening. It would be too crazy if we did something even more reckless, something that we both might regret later.
“Your lips are nice, but they’re not chocolate.”
“So where can we pick up your candy?” I ask.
“At the Hershey Store in Times Square!”
I laugh. “We have to pass at least a hundred stores that sell Hershey’s Kisses before we even get to Times Square, though.”
Denise looks me dead in my eyes, as if she has the power to hypnotize me. She touches her fingers to the skin of my arm, just beneath my sleeve, and I am immediately disarmed. I look from her hand back to her eyes.
She leans toward me, and I prepare for her to kiss me again, hoping that I can savor this one even more than the first one, but she only says, in that sweet, sultry voice of hers, “I want my kisses from the Hershey Store in Times Square.”
I nod my head. I’m starting to get a craving for some Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, anyway.
I pay the bill, and as soon as I stand up, my head begins to swirl a little. Denise stands up with no problems, her tolerance level clearly much higher than mine.
We walk outside and I stand away from her so that she can hail a cab. When one stops, I walk over and hop in alongside her. This is the way that brothas catch cabs when they are rolling with beautiful women, especially in “lighter” touristy areas at night. If you’re with a white person, that person has to hail the cab. If there’s no white person with you, you let the lightest skinned person hail the cab (a woman is preferable). And if you are traveling in a band of brown or dark brown, the only option you have in some areas is to let the beautiful brown sister you are with hail the cab. Some of these cab drivers in The City might be some racist, profiling jackasses, but they always stop for a beautiful woman, regardless of shade. That’s how we grab this cab coasting down through the Village.
I see the cabdriver sigh when he sees me get in, but he can kiss my ass with that nonsense. As soon as I close the door, Denise tells the cab driver to foot it to the Hershey Store in Times Square, and the car pulls off immediately.
“Damn, this guy is driving fast,” I whisper to Denise. “He must not want us to be in the backseat long enough for our asses to leave impressions in the vinyl.”
She winks at me and starts to push her ass harder into the seats. “Well my ass will be printed in this seat,” she responds, her voice a whisper.
“You are cool-ass people,” I say, smiling and pushing my ass deeper into the seat, too.
“You ain’t so bad yourself,” she says.
I see the cab driver glimpsing us in his rearview mirror. “Everything okay back there?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Everything is copacetic!”
Denise starts to laugh, and I begin to wonder if two people have ever been kicked out of a cab for grinding their asses into the backseat.
By the time we pull up to the Hershey Store, I know the cab driver is relieved to get rid of us. I pay him and we walk into the store.
Stuffed chocolate bars and large candy displays surround us, and I realize I could probably eat every single piece of candy in here. Denise heads right for her Kisses, and as she lifts a large bag from the shelf, I have a fleeting thought that we are no closer to figuring out this Soul Sista situation than when we started. I don’t care anymore though. I’m having fun for a change, and there will be plenty of time to worry later.
“You should come to our open mic poetry event this Friday,” I tell her.
“For real. I hope you don’t expect me to read anything,” she responds.
“You can read if the spirit hits you, but you should come just to enjoy yourself.”
She smiles. “So how much is the cover charge?”
“You’re my guest, so I got you covered,” I respond.
“Oh, Cool, you are so becoming my best friend right now,” she says. “Close your eyes.”
“Why?”
“I’m gonna give you a kiss.”
“Ha ha,” I respond sarcastically, closing my eyes and holding out my hand to receive one of the pieces of candy she has just picked up.
Her lips press against mine softly and before I know it, I am kissing her back. After a moment she steps back slowly.
“What was that about?” I ask, realizing that she has kissed me twice in one night.
“I don’t know, right?” she says. “And to think I was really gonna put some candy in your hand up until the last second.”
“You don’t hear me complaining, do you?” I say, smiling.
She returns my smile. “We can’t do this.”
“Do what?” I ask.
“This—whatever you want to call it.”
“We’re just two friends hanging out,” I say.
“Well, we should probably keep it that way—for both of our sakes.”
I nod, trying to clear my head. “You’re still invited to the poetry open mic, though,” I say.
Denise smiles. “We’ll see,” she responds. “But right now I just want to enjoy this chocolate.” She waves the bag playfully in my face.
At this moment, I realize that we might actually be far worse off from when we started earlier in the evening. Not only have we failed to find a resolution to our problem, but according to the growing feeling in my gut, we might have actually created a whole new problem to worry about.
25
In the safe confines of my bat cave, I stare at the dark ceiling, the earth around me continuing to move slowly, but the monotony of blackness stabilizing me so that the alcohol doesn’t do a number on me. I inhale slowly, feeling the cool air of the room move through my nostrils. I am suddenly aware of my lips, and I can still imagine Denise’s lips pressed against mine.
I want to kick myself. What the hell am I doing, I think. I must be out of bad ideas so I have to invent new ways of messing up my situation. Couldn’t I see any of this coming? I know it wasn’t all her. I definitely didn’t mind any of the things she did. In fact, I wanted her to do them.
I can still see that amazing smile, her dimples dancing in her cheeks as she looks at me. Her eyes are doe-like beneath her old school glasses, and her reddish-brown Afro puff complements her brown skin in a way that makes me think of chocolate. She really is beautiful, but not in the look-at-me way that a lot of other women try to be. She has a quiet, almost understated, beauty that doesn’t really take hold of your imagination until you are apart from her.
I close my eyes, suddenly aware that there is a part of me that, I hesitate to admit, likes her. And this is exactly what I don’t need when I have to comb through these other train wreck dates to produce a “winner” for the magazine. For a fleeting moment, I consider if I might be able to choose Denise, but I realize that wouldn’t be advisable, given the resources that Soul Sista has already invested in this process. Plus, I doubt if Denise is really interested in me in that way. The alcohol was probably more to blame for everything that’s happened than anything else. All I’ve managed to do is confuse the hell out of myself even further.
I walk over to my stereo system and turn on some Slakah the Beatchild and wander back to my bed. The mellow groove quickly envelops the quiet room, and I recast my gaze at the pitch-black ceiling.
As much as I try to ignore my evening with Denise, I find that her smile is there every time I close my eyes. And even more, I find myself unable to suppress my desire to see her again.
Before we open the store the following morning, J and I hold one of our semi-monthly meetings. The first thing I ask him is whether or not he’s committed to us continuing the business in the way that we’ve been doing it.
I expect him to take offense to the question, but he only sighs, as he weighs the question.
“At one point I was thinking we could go strictly virtual with our store and carve out our own little space like Okayplayer.com, but I like being able to walk into a physical store and sell things to our customers, face-to-face. I like seeing people discover new music,” he says. “You just can’t get that from iTunes. But I’m not gonna lie to you, if it wasn’t for business picking up over the last few weeks, I might’ve toyed with the idea that we should try something else.”
I nod. I know he’s just being honest. “I really want to see us make this store work,” I say. “I didn’t even know that I could want to see something succeed as much as I want to see this place succeed.”
“I can tell. You’ve gotten more dates from this business than you can probably stand,” J says, laughing.
“I did it for us, though.”
“Of course,” J says. “I would’ve done the same thing.”
I know J is making light of the situation only because he probably feels differently. The bottom line is that I haven’t been here as much as I would’ve normally, and while I can say it was part of my marketing obligations to the business, I have essentially been in and out of the store on what basically amounts to a series of dates. In any other business, except maybe prostitution, to take off so much time for personal interactions would be tantamount to gross neglect.
“Dude, I just want to thank you for being patient with me. All of this has been more than I expected, and I know I haven’t been here all of the time, but I just wanted to let you know that I appreciate you and what you do for us here.”
J nods, and I can see in his eyes that my sentimentality has softened him. “Hey, Cool, that’s what business partners do. We support each other. And if it hadn’t been for you and this Soul Sista thing, we might not have gotten that influx of customers over these past few weeks.”
I know he is being both generous and modest, but knowing him like I do, I have to let him tell it with his spin.
“So did you ever decide what you were going to do about the situation with Soul Sista?” J asks.
“Dude, I don’t have a clue the first. If I could have it my way, I’d just pick Denise.”
J bucks up. “Denise? The chick who keeps calling here?”
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
“Can you even do that?”
“Probably not.”
“Hold on,” J says. “When did you start talking to Denise? You guys went out on a date or something. Inquiring minds want to know. Inquiring minds GOT to know. Fill a brotha in!”
“I don’t know. We’ve met up a few times to discuss all of this blogging stuff.”
J’s left eyebrow arches. “Aha!” he says authoritatively. “Spending all of that time around her must have sunk into your brain.”
“I think I was cool with everything until last night. We went out to discuss whether I still needed to pick someone, and we got a little tipsy and might have kissed,” I say.
“Might have?”
“Did,” I say. “We did kiss.”
“How do you go out with someone on business and end up kissing?”
“I don’t know. It kind of just happened.”
“So now you call yourself liking her, too?” J asks.
I shake my head. “This is different. With the other women I had to work to find out what we had in common, but with Denise, it all just came naturally.”
J lowers his head, shaking it as if he can’t believe I could make things any more complicated than they already are. “Well, there’s only one thing you can do in a situation like this, especially if you have to pick someone.”
“What’s that?”
“You select the woman you want to build something with.”
“Even Denise?”
“Only if you’re willing to tell the truth this time.”
26
After I compose the initial rough draft of my last blog entry, I reread it several times, debating whether or not I should proceed with submitting it. Before I wrote it, I replayed all of the dates I had been on and reread the previously published blog entries. It dawns on me that my selection could’ve been any of the three women I went out with, if the first dates were any indication. My date with Sarah had gone well. Part of me had even considered calling it a day right then. After all, what was the point in going out on the other dates if I already had someone I could get along with? But then there was my date with Taylor, and she showed equal promise. Frankly, Taylor wasn’t the type of woman I had ever really thought I would date, but I felt that there was something there beneath it all, definitely something worth exploring. Even Rochelle had some potential initially, although I don’t know how much of that date was really genuine on her end.
But just as quickly as those situations had bubbled with potential, they all popped in my face.
As I finish reviewing this final blog entry for the umpteenth time, I close my laptop. I don’t want to send it out just yet. I still have a day before the deadline, but I already know what I want to say. The only thing I want to do now is see Denise one more time. What she thinks of this is more important to me now than it has ever been before.
It’s nearly five o’clock in the evening when Denise returns my call. I’m surprised at how nervous I am when I hear her voice. I want to ask her if I crossed her mind today or if she thought about last night as much as I have, but instead I play the cool role, hoping to live up to my name.
“Sorry it’s taken me a while to get back to you,” she starts.
“That’s no problem. I know how it is when things get hectic.”
I decide to push on the conversation a little. “I really enjoyed myself last night.”
She chuckles under her breath. “I had a good time, too—much better than I should have.”
“Don’t say that,” I respond. “You deserve to have as much fun as you can stand.”
“If only it were that simple.”
“It really is that simple.”
We sit silently on the phone for a few seconds before I start to speak again. “We should get together again.”
“And do what?”
I wonder if she is tempting me or distancing herself. “I just want to be around you.”
“Awe, isn’t that sweet,” she says playfully. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea though.”
“It’s funny that you would say that. I’ve been thinking about last night, and I wanted to talk with you about the connection we made.”
She sighs. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea either.”
“We can just get together to talk. I promise we can keep it simple and platonic. I just want to see you again,” I say. I hate to plead, but at this point I’m not above it.
“I have to go to an event tonight down near Union Square. I have an extra pass if you want to go with me.”
I have to hold my knee down to keep it from bouncing beneath the counter. I want to blurt, “Hell yes, I’ll meet you,” but I tone it down several notches and just say, “That sounds good.”
She gives me the address and time, and I let J know that I have to head out early yet again, but thankfully Ray-Ray is here tonight until closing.
J only offers one note of advice: “Make sure this is the situation you really want to be in, because one night of drinking, in and of itself, does not constitute grounds for a relationship.”
I nod, knowing that while he’s correct, the butterflies in my stomach are already far ahead of me.
I arrive early to Union Square and decide to wander through Barnes & Noble to occupy myself. Everything reminds me of Denise, though, and I wonder how I came to be captivated with her so quickly. Even as I think back, I realize that I was drawn to her the moment I saw her. I tried to ignore it since we were both pieces of a business transaction, but I don’t think I ever really stopped taking notice of her in the subtle ways that one does when he shouldn’t be looking at all. Even when I walked out on her at Blockheads, I was kicking myself the moment I did it. But the deal was closed at BBQ’s. I wanted to be close to her, to touch her and be touched by her. The first kiss was what summoned the idea that there could possibly be more between us, but the second kiss made me want her in a way that I haven’t wanted a woman in quite some time.
I walk to the magazine rack and find myself gravitating toward the latest issue of Soul Sista magazine with Janet Jackson on the cover. I flip to the masthead page just so I can see her name in print: Denise Mallory, Lifestyle Editor. My stomach starts to turn flips just looking at it, and I realize that I’m just being damned ridiculous about my infatuation with her.
I sent out my blog entry, which details my growing and ultimate attraction to Denise, moments before I caught a cab down here. I have no idea of whether or not she will have checked her work email before I see her, but if she has, I will at least be in a position to explain why I wrote what I wrote. Part of me thinks that the idea for my entry alone is absurd, because it defies the expectations of the readers in a number of ways, mainly because Denise was not one of their selections and because I’ve never written a single thing about any of the outings (which can’t rightfully be called dates) that I have experienced with her. I figure the worst that could happen is that Soul Sista will just refuse to publish my blog entry, but at least I will have, from a professional perspective, delivered to them what they requested of me. It’s not my fault that what I’ve written might fall outside of their expectations.
I put the magazine back on its rack and find a seat where I can check my e-mail and mess around with a few apps on my smart phone. After a while, I want to stand and stretch my legs again, so I walk around the bookstore, browsing the spines of books by my favorite authors, ones that I already have in my personal library at the bat cave. After I have walked around each of the four levels, I glance at my watch and see that the time I was supposed to meet Denise is quickly approaching. I take the escalator down to the first floor, thinking to myself that I should’ve brought flowers with me or something.
