B-Sides and Remixes, page 14
I’m only on the corner for about ten minutes before a cab pulls up, dropping her off across the street from me. As she rises from the cab and smooths out her black mini-skirt, I admire her shapely hips and the way the fabric embraces her form. Everything about her is proportioned and perfectly fit. Though I try to push away the thought of being intimate with her, I know that she could love me down in a way that would leave me fantasizing about her hours—maybe days— afterwards.
“Sorry I’m running late,” she offers, as she crosses the street.
“Not a problem,” I say. “I just got here myself.” Reaching in my backpack, I take out a small bag. “I have something for you.”
“Really?” She takes the paper bag and opens it. She begins to laugh. “I almost forgot about this,” she says, a smile spreading across her face. The twinkle of her smile is like a soft feather being stroked beneath my navel, and I can feel the butterflies fluttering within.
“I told you I was going to give you one. And you said that you would wear it if I did,” I say, happy to see her holding up the C&J’s Rare Grooves t-shirt and admiring it.
“Pink?” she asks, her voice full of humor. “I look like a pink kind of girl to you?”
“Actually you look like a beautiful woman who could wear pink just as easily as she could any other color.”
“Aren’t you a smooth talker,” she says.
I watch as she puts the t-shirt back in the bag. Secretly I would love to see her in that t-shirt—and nothing else.
“Do I get a hug or anything?” I ask. “After all, I brought you a t-shirt all the way from Harlem.”
She laughs and says, “Of course.”
She leans in and embraces me, and I hold her, allowing myself to enjoying the soft feel of her chest pressing against me. Before I release her, I lean in to kiss her, but she turns her face giving me a solid cheek.
“Whoa,” I respond, feeling as if I got kicked in the chest. “Did I do something wrong? I didn’t mean to offend you or anything.”
She looks at me as if she is embarrassed by the situation. “I just think we should keep everything professional, you know.”
I’m at a loss for words as I consider this, and I wonder if I have done something to upset this delicate balance that we’ve established. In my mind, I’ve been cool and nonintrusive, patient, and far from clingy. Suddenly, it dawns on me that she probably hasn’t read my email yet.
When I’m finally able to find the words, I say, “Denise, if I did something to rub you the wrong way, please let me know.”
“You didn’t do anything. Last night was just a bit extra for me.”
Please don’t blame it on the alcohol, I think to myself.
“I might have had too many drinks and let things go too far,” she continues.
Shit.
I reach for anything. “Well, can I ask you a question?”
She looks like she would rather do anything else, but she agrees, probably because she knows that she just dissed me and delivered a bomb to me all within two minutes of our meeting.
“Denise, are you attracted to me?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“Could you please answer that question for me?” I say, trying to steady myself.
“Yes. Of course I am. You are a very attractive man,” she responds.
“And do you think that we get along well?”
“Well enough for what?” she says, shifting the burden to me.
“Well enough to spend more time getting to know each other,” I say, attempting to sound unfazed.
She shakes her head as if to clear her thoughts. People move around us, and there is a line beginning to form at the door to the club a few yards down the block.
“Cool,” she finally says, “what do you want from me?”
I inhale deeply and pace my words. “I want to get to know you better.”
“Know me better how?”
“In the way that a man and woman get to know each other when they realize they have chemistry.”
She smiles, but not in that affectionate way. She seems increasingly bothered with my line of questions, but I feel like I am unable to let the situation get dismissed so easily. I’ve always been a person to fight for the things I wanted, and if she’s going to shoot me down, I want her to do it in a way that removes all hope from the table so I can try to shake her from my thoughts.
“Cool, you’re a nice enough guy, but we can’t do this. Maybe my inviting you here tonight wasn’t such a good idea.”
The sting is so hard that I realize whatever I say to her next will clearly affect not only our evening, but any future involvement we have with each other.
“Okay. But can I say one last thing, and I promise after this I will not bother you with anything else.”
She nods.
“I never asked for any of this—these dates or this blog or even this situation of us standing here talking about all of this right now, but I understand that we all make decisions and life just happens in the meantime. I didn’t know you would creep into my dreams or that you would find some magical way of knocking me off my feet. And then you kissed me. And I know it’s easy to stand back and blame it all on the drinks, but I believe that drinks bring out the truth, not the lies. I know I was intoxicated, but it wasn’t off of the liquor. It was off of you. Now I can’t shake the thoughts of your lips pressed against mine, the sweet music of your voice, the way you smile. Now all I do is dream about you.”
She smiles. “You are so corny.”
I can’t tell if she is joking or not. Her smile doesn’t tell me either way. I wait patiently, hoping for some clarification.
“Every Stevie Wonder song in the book?”
“What?” I ask, confused.
“You just used all of these Stevie Wonder songs to describe me. Am I supposed to be your Stevie Wonder lyric girl?” she asks, her voice still ambiguous.
“I swear I didn’t know I was doing that, but now that you mention it, you are my Stevie Wonder lyric. You are my choice.”
She lowers her head and looks away. “What if I don’t want to be your choice?”
“Then I’ll leave you alone and never bother you again. I’ve already sent you my blog entry, and you are the one I pick. If you want to run it, fine. If not, I will understand. All I want is the chance to get to know you better.”
The line at the door continues to move as the club begins admitting people with the proper passes. Denise looks in the direction of the door. I can sense that she is ready to go in, but there is nothing in her look that is inviting me to accompany her.
“I know you’ve got to go do your job, and I know I just dropped a lot on you just now,” I say. “And I know you probably need some space right now.”
Her eyes are piercing, and for the first time, I realize that I have made a huge mistake.
“What gave you the right to write about me? Huh? You were given specific instructions. I even went out on a line for you—repeatedly—this entire time. And this is the way you repay me? By making me some kind of spectacle for my own readers?”
“That’s not what I was trying to do,” I say. “I just wanted to tell the truth about how I felt.”
She looks at me, gnawing slightly on her inner cheek. “Damn, Cool! Is everything about what you want?”
I want to say “no,” but I don’t think I should say anything. She is more upset than I expected she would be, and frankly, I don’t know what to do.
“I’ve got a job to do now,” she says, turning and walking away.
I want to call out after her, but my words, once so sure, betray me. I can only watch her as she heads into the club, alone.
27
Rather than return home, I pick up my phone to check on Angie and to see how her trip to Alabama went. After several rings, she answers, her voice actually more upbeat than I expected it to be.
“Cousin!” I say. “How are you doing?”
“I’m good, Cool. Just trying to get Aaron ready for bed. What are you up to?”
“I had some plans that fell through, and now I’m down just off of Union Square. I figured since we haven’t talked since you got back that maybe I could roll through before heading home.”
“That’s cool. Tracy has been tired from the trip, so she’ll probably be out like a light when you get here.”
“I understand,” I say. “I can be over there in about thirty minutes or so. I think I’m gonna walk. I need to clear my head.”
“It’s like that? Damn. We definitely need to catch up when you get here.”
“So I take it everything went good with Aunt Jonetta.”
“We’ll have to talk about that one, too.”
“Well, okay then,” I say, attempting to fight the urge to start inquiring in more detail about her trip.
When I hang up the phone, I cross the street and start heading west. With minimal lighting between the avenues, I find myself walking through the shadows, passing the occasional person who seems more afraid of me and my blackness than the more probable dangers lurking in the alleys between the buildings, things like cat-sized rats and would-be muggers.
With each block I pass, the sting of Denise’s diss starts to lighten, but I still wonder what went wrong. Did I come on too strong or did I just come at her the wrong way? Did I misread something last night? Did she not kiss me, too? Did we not laugh and talk and enjoy each other’s company? I feel like I’m incapable of reading any kinds of signals at this point.
I come to a light at the intersection of 19th Street and Fifth Avenue, and I wonder what’s next for me. I pray that things go well with the poetry reading tomorrow night, and I realize that while my love life is probably of interest to only a handful people at this point, it’s become of major interest to me. At this point, I don’t even know if any of this has adversely affected our bottom line at the store. Part of me just wants things to go back to the way they were before any of this started. But now something is awakened in me, and I find myself craving the companionship of a woman, the right woman. I thought Denise would be that person, but I guess I set myself up to be wrong about that, too.
“Hey, dude,” a brother with dreadlocks says as I reach the opposite corner.
I look up, unsure of whether I need to be in defense mode or not.
“The t-shirt!” he says, pointing to my C&J’s Rare Grooves shirt. “That place is off the hook! Hold up. Dude, you’re that guy from the store, aren’t you?”
I nod. “What’s up,” I say, dapping him and thanking him for being a customer.
“Man, I try to make it up there every month to see what’s new.”
I try to place the man’s face, but I can’t really remember him. This is probably the side effect of my persistent absence at the store.
“Have you been following my blog?” I ask.
“What blog?” the guy responds.
“On the Soul Sista website.”
“That women’s magazine? You got something on their website?”
“Well, I used to,” I say.
“Ah nah, man. I ain’t even catch that. Should I check it out?”
I shake my head. “It’s not about the music, so I wouldn’t waste time with it.”
“Oh, a’ight. Be easy then. I’ll probably check you in a few weeks.”
“Most definitely,” I respond as he walks away.
I stand there, pleasantly surprised. Apparently Soul Sista’s website doesn’t control all of our customer base after all. There are still people out there who simply appreciate our business for what it is, minus all of the rah-rah and hoopla we’ve managed to drum up over the past few weeks. The guy who just walked away was the kind of customer we went into business for in the first place, and the fact that I didn’t recognize him as a loyal customer grates on my nerves just as much, if not more than, Denise’s dismissive behavior. Maybe somewhere along the way I’ve become detached, lost in this maze of life. I want to run after the guy and ask him his name, but I know that that moment has come and gone. I try to remember his face as best I can so when he comes back to the store, I can acknowledge him.
By the time I reach Angie’s apartment, I’m in a fairly tranquil state, although the pain and shame of earlier are still lurking somewhere beneath the surface. When Angie answers the door with her customary bear hug, I can tell that she needed to see me just as much as I needed to see her.
“I hope I didn’t wake anyone with the buzzer,” I say.
“No. Everyone’s knocked out, and both of them sleep hard, I’ma tell you,” she says, ushering me into the den, where only the light of a lamp next to the couch and the flat screen television are on. I take a seat on the couch, while Angie hits the switch on her favorite La-Z-Boy recliner and gets comfortable.
“So how was the trip to Alabama?” I start.
“You thirsty?” Angie responds, getting up from her chair and walking into the kitchen.
“Sure. What you got?”
“A little orange juice and Tanqueray? That okay?”
“Sure,” I respond. Even after all of these years, my cousin’s default alcoholic drink of choice is still gin and juice. She was the quintessential Snoop Dogg fan back in the day, and I suspect that old habits die hard.
She returns a few minutes later with the drinks, and I repeat my question. “How was your trip to Alabama?”
She places her drink on the end table next to the recliner and sits down, pulling the switch as she nestles back against the cushions.
“About as good as you could expect,” she says.
I nod and take a sip of the drink. Strong as usual. If it weren’t for the orange color, I would think it was straight gin. “Did Aunt Jonetta give you grief while you were there?”
“She was true to form, and I guess I could just take that whatever way it needs to be taken,” she responds.
I put the drink down and look at her. “Do I have to keep asking questions, or are you going to tell me what happened?”
Angie takes a long swig, rotating the glass in her hand, as if such a concoction only needs to be rotated a few times to create the perfect balance of citric juice and “kick a hole in your chest” alcohol. When she finally looks up, she says, “You know we drove all the way there, right? All the way down to Birmingham. Damn near took us twenty hours. And it wasn’t easy with a baby and a wife who was paranoid that everything south of DC posed some kind of KKK threat the family. By the time we finally got there, I was about ready to pass out. So that’s the way I was feeling when we finally pulled up in the driveway.”
I nod my understanding and take another sip from my glass.
“So when I pull up,” she says, “I see Mama walking up to the door. I don’t know what I expected—a glow in her face, a smile or something—but she sees me and looks at me like I’m some kind of Jehovah’s Witness standing at her door trying to give her some stuff she don’t even want. I’m like, ‘Mama, it’s me! Angie!’ And she opens the door and starts to come down onto the porch, but then she sees Tracy and Aaron and stops in her tracks. I keep on walking toward her though. I want to hold her and see if she remembers what it’s like to be hugged by her only daughter. When I finally get to her and wrap my arms around her, the first thing she says is, ‘Every time I see you, you look more like a man.’ And then she added on, ‘You know it’s not too late for you to get saved.’ Cool, I can’t tell you how quick she cut me on that, but I played like I didn’t even hear her. I mean, we had just come all that way.”
As Angie continues to describe the awkward way in which her mother met her wife and son, my heart goes out to her. I don’t know why I thought things would’ve gone much better for her. When I called Angie earlier, her voice sounded fine, but now it’s like just dragging up the memories of her trip requires us to both get buzzed just to put it out there on the table for discussion.
“You know the worst part of it?” she says. “She never even offered for us to come inside. We did all of this nonsense standing out in front of her house like we wasn’t a damn bit of nothing.”
I can’t wrap my mind around Aunt Jonetta doing that, but then again Aunt Jonetta is known for some pretty strict and conservative behavior. But to treat your own daughter and her family that way, especially after such a long drive, is just one of the meanest things that I have ever heard of anyone in our family doing. At that moment, I realize I have no reason to ever communicate with Aunt Jonetta from here on out. Any woman who would treat such a beautiful person like Angie like road kill has no purpose in my life. I down my drink and lean forward, elbows on my knees. “What did you do then?” I ask.
“I told her that this was my family and that I wanted her to meet them. I even hoped that she would see Aaron’s cute little face and want to hold him, but she didn’t. She just stood there looking at us. All she could say is that she would pray for us that our son would not go to hell with us. At that point, I knew there was nothing else I could say to her. We got back in the car and drove down the street to the gas station. I pulled over to the side and just started crying. I cried so hard I thought my body was gonna break in half. If it hadn’t been for Tracy trying to comfort me, I think I might’ve scared Aaron with all my boo-hooing.”
I shake my head, still upset with Aunt Jonetta. “Want me to make you another drink?” I offer.
“Nah. I’m good,” she says, placing her empty glass on the end table. “After we left the gas station, we started driving back towards Atlanta. I was just about to get on I-285 to bi-pass the city, but Tracy told me to stay on I-20. We ended up checking into a hotel and going to that new aquarium over there. By the time we walked around for a bit, I started to feel a little better. It’s funny how we had to only drive two hours over just to fit in. To Tracy’s credit, she saved the weekend. After we left Atlanta, we stopped in Washington and just hung out, hoping we could catch a glimpse of the Obamas, you know?” she says, laughing.
