“Probably so,” he responded. “So have you met any of the women you admire?”

  Eris broke into a broad smile. “I actually met Ruby Dee once. It was at an NAACP banquet. I was too through! So much the fan that night! I even got my picture taken with her. I have it on my bedroom dresser. You know how you expect a person to be a certain way and it turns out that they are even more amazing than you originally thought? Well, that’s Ruby Dee. I just love her to death!”

  “Are you still in touch with her?”

  “No. I only saw her that once—and to tell the truth, I’m not sure I would know what to say to her if I had to speak to her again. She leaves me completely speechless.”

  Troy smiled as he considered that someone as famous as Eris Perry could be that in awe of another actress. “That’s really cool, your being a fan of someone like that. I didn’t think famous people were fans of other famous people like that.”

  Her eyes still dancing from the memory of her encounter with Ruby Dee, Eris said, “We’re all human beings, and human beings are always in awe of other human beings.”

  “Fair enough.”

  They sat staring at the glowing lights that illuminated the building in front of them, just beyond the overlook. Businesses lined the streets on either side, and the lights that illuminated everything around them were strong enough that he could have photographed the space around them as clearly as if it had been day.

  Apropos of nothing, Troy said, “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since you came by the brownstone on Sunday. This has all been so surreal. I’m still adjusting to being here with you.”

  Eris stretched out her arms and gazed up into the night sky. “I don’t know why, but I feel like you’re a really cool guy, and I guess that’s why I asked you to come out with me again after what happened the other night. It’s just hard for me, though. Some times I can’t tell if a guy is really into me or if he’s into who he thinks I am from the movies. That’s the double edged sword of being well-known.”

  “I’m not gonna lie and say it never crossed my mind that you were Eris Perry, but being around you has shown me a very different side of you. I feel like I can tell you pretty much anything. When I got here this summer, I didn’t know anybody, and then you came along and now I don’t feel so—alone.”

  Eris placed her hand on his. “I know what you mean.”

  Troy lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it softly. She smiled in return.

  “So,” Eris said, “tell me about Ellison-Wright. Did you like it?”

  Smiling, Troy told her about how Ellison-Wright was on the shortlist of colleges he had considered attending and how the deciding factor for him to go there was the fact that they had offered him a full academic scholarship—that and the mass communications program was among the best in the South. He talked about his freshman dorm and about later moving off-campus into a hotel downtown that had been converted into a co-ed dormitory. He talked about what it was like to pledge a fraternity during his junior year and even what it was like falling in and out of love in college.

  “It all sounds amazing,” Eris responded, once he had finished. “The closest I’ve come to college is playing a college student on television. But I keep wondering about what I missed out on when I came here.”

  “But if you had gone to school, you wouldn’t be sitting here with me right now. I just believe that the decisions we make guide us to a singular result,” he said.

  “Something you learned in college?”

  “Not really. Just something I believe about the way the world works. You had to bring that book by Aunt Flo’s place at that exact time on that exact day for our paths to cross.”

  “So it’s like fate or something?”

  “In a way, yes.”

  His eyes met Eris’s and they locked on each other, unflinching. For the first time since they met, he felt they were actually seeing each other, unguarded and honest.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said.

  She looked at him for a moment and then leaned in, kissing him deeply. He yielded to her touch, and in their cocoon of solitude, shielded from the stray tourists wandering down Sixth Avenue or down in the courtyard, Troy allowed his heart to rejoice in the moment.

  Eris called Regina and had her arrange for a car to come and pick them up and take them back to Brooklyn. While they waited, Troy taught her how to play the “movie” game, something he and his classmates did for shits and giggles on Friday nights to blow off steam from the week’s classes. The rules, as he explained them to her, were to not just say the lines from a movie, but to deliver them in the way the original actor had done. When the other person guessed the movie, then that person got to select and perform a new line. This was the first time Troy had ever played the game with a person who was actually in movies, though, so the game was that much more interesting.

  Troy started the game off with a line from The Color Purple.

  “Uh, you had her yo way—and I had her mine—but we both had her!”

  “Danny Glover at the kitchen table with Shug’s husband, right?”

  “Yep,” he said. “Your turn.”

  “My mama used to say ta me, ‘Fleet—FLEET?—That’s my name: Fleetwood Coupe de Ville. Mama had high ideals, y’know what I mean?’”

  Troy doubled over laughing. “That’s the lion from The Wiz. Okay, here’s a hard one: ‘I wanna hate you. I wake up every morning wanting to tell you to go to hell, but I don’t. I guess you got a hold on me like that.’”

  “Really?” Eris said, smiling. “Is that your best impression of me?”

  “I can’t do the lines justice like you did. That was so classic! I remember the first time I saw you in that scene with Denzel and how I thought to myself that he was the luckiest man on earth. He had a woman like you loving him.”

  “My character was supposed to be despicable—at least that’s the way she was written in earlier drafts—but they changed the script a bit before production and made my character a little more complex. I’m glad for that. I doubt anyone would even remember that role if they hadn’t.”

  “I went to see that movie three times, just to hear you say those words.”

  “Three times? Really? I think I’ve only seen the final version of the movie once. But I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

  He reached for her hand and felt her fingers interlock with his. “I know the car is on the way, but I wanted to ask you favor.”

  “What?” Eris said, looking a bit surprised.

  “I want you to stay with me tonight,” he said, then quickly added, “We don’t have to sleep together. I just wanted enjoy your company until I fell asleep.”

  “Whoa, that’s quite a request to lay on me. We’ve only been out twice, and to be honest, there’s still a whole lot that I don’t know about you. If we’re gonna hang out, we need to take it real slow. I have to be careful because the level of trust I have to have before I go there with a man has to be strong enough to get over my fear that he would turn around and sell a story to The Enquirer.”

  “What happened there? With The Enquirer thing?” Troy asked.

  Eris sighed, as if she were unsure she wanted to go into the details. “I was dating this guy named Leighton,” she finally said. “I met him at a record store in The Village. This was a little over three years ago. He played in this Afro-Punk band, and I just thought he was really something special. He said all the right things and did all the right things. We took in the city together. He wrote songs for me. I would even run my lines with him. That’s how close we were. And although we’d only been together roughly a year, I was starting to see the possibilities of something more long term. I had even considered having him move into my place. When you love someone that much, you don’t think anything of when they snap random pictures of you around the house while you’re lounging in your underwear or getting out of the shower. I knew he did photography on the side, but I thought it was more like a jack-of-all-trades artist thing, kinda like when Miles Davis started painting. I wouldn’t have thought in a million years that he would turn around and sell those pictures to a tabloid. I thank God that I wasn’t actually naked in any of them!

  “But it wasn’t so much that they tried to concoct a story around his pictures as it was that he betrayed my trust. I would have done anything for that man, and to think he cared so little about my feelings—about me—that he’d go behind my back and do that to me hurt me more than anyone will ever know. The only person who really knows what I went through with Leighton is Flo. She was there helping me to get out of the funk I was in. I was so depressed and felt like I couldn’t trust anyone, but Flo wouldn’t give up on me.

  “I remember one day she came over to my place and I was buried under a quilt on my couch, cartons of ice cream and all kinds of shit lying around the room, my curtains drawn tight, blocking out all of the light. She rang the doorbell for fifteen minutes, until I finally crawled out from under the quilt to answer the door. She came in and turned on the lights and started fixing up my place. She reminded me of what happened with Dante Wilbourne, how he had cheated on her with all of those rap video prostitutes, and told me that I had to pull my shit together, how I couldn’t roll over and play dead just because some man did something to hurt me. She refused to give up on me.

  “I think that’s why we’re as close as we are, because up until then, she was my friend, but after Leighton, she became my big sister, or the closest thing I ever had to one.”

  Troy didn’t know what to say as he listened to her. He had been heartbroken while he was at Ellison-Wright, particularly when he was pledging his fraternity and his girlfriend at the time had dumped him, claiming it was impossible for them to fix their relationship when he was pledging and had so little time for her. All he had was his line brothers to help him through that time in his life, and his heart went out to Eris because she had had to deal with that type of situation, too.

  “For whatever it’s worth,” he said, rubbing her hand, “I’d never hurt you like that. I’ve been through that experience, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”

  She squeezed his hand gently.

  “What do you really want from me?” she asked, her voice quiet and serious.

  “Just to enjoy your company. Yes, I’m seriously feeling you, but you’re also the only real friend I have here—and I like that. I love hearing your voice, seeing your face, feeling the softness of your lips against mine. I know you have a life and all and that this is just another week in your life, but to me this is the illest moment in my life, bar none. I’m wide open like James Evans’s nostrils.”

  She chuckled and then leaned over kissing Troy lightly. “Do me a favor. Don’t assume what I’m thinking. You don’t know if this is just another week in my life or not. If this was all just some trivial stuff, I would not be spending my time with you. I don’t think either one of us has time to play games.”

  Troy nodded. “My bad. You’re right.”

  The Town Car Regina called for earlier pulled up to the curb a few feet away from them. They hopped in.

  “Where to?” the driver asked.

  “Brooklyn Heights,” Troy responded.

  For the first few blocks, both he and Eris sat in silence.

  “Is everything all right?” he finally asked quietly.

  Eris looked at him and smiled. “Just thinking.”

  “Thinking about what?”

  “About whether or not I’m gonna go home with you.”

  Troy was unable to conceal the huge smile growing across his face. “What can I do to help you make up your mind?”

  “I don’t know. I guess it’s just a matter of trusting you.”

  “Well, what can I do to make you trust me?” he said.

  “I just need some time to think.”

  As the car drove onto the Brooklyn Bridge, Troy could see the abyss of darkness resting between the two boroughs. The East River was out there somewhere, beside and beneath them, and soon they would be on the other side of the bridge, in Brooklyn, minutes from the brownstone. Eris still had not said anything to him or the driver about her intentions.

  The car seemed to move quickly through the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood, and Troy silently wished the driver would slow down to a creep—just until he knew what Eris had planned to do.

  The Town Car pulled up in front of the brownstone, and Troy opened his door, which was facing the curb. Once he stood up, he noticed that Eris had not moved.

  He extended his hand to her. “Please come with me.”

  She looked at his hand for a moment, the car idling in the darkness of the street. “Don’t make me regret this,” she said, taking his hand.

  Once they walked up the steps of the brownstone, Troy looked back. The car was already gone, and Eris had chosen him.

  8

  Trust

  Eris took a seat on Troy’s bed and kicked off her heels, while he stood in the corner hanging up his blazer.

  “I need to hop in the shower. I sweated my ass off earlier, and I don’t want to have you talking about how funky I am,” he said.

  Eris chuckled, while looking around the room and taking in Aunt Flo’s interior decorating.

  When he saw that she was caught up in the layout of the bedroom, the Ernie Barnes prints on the walls and the various African American collectibles situated around the room, he added, “You’re welcome to join me.” He meant it in jest, but when he saw the surprised expression on her face, he backpedaled. “I’m just joking.”

  “Whatever. You know that was a real invitation,” she responded, needling him.

  “I was just saying something.”

  “Well, I think I’ll be just fine. You can do this one by yourself,” she said playfully.

  “I’ll be back in a few minutes. Just make yourself comfortable.”

  Troy left Eris stretched across the bed, thumbing through the copy of Mama Day he had brought up earlier from the library, while he walked down the hall to hop in the shower.

  As he stood beneath the blast of water from the shower head, he wondered what Eris was doing while he cleaned himself. She had agreed to stay with him for the night, so he tried to interpret exactly what that meant to her. In college if a woman slept over at his apartment, that meant something was definitely going down on the sex tip. Just from Eris’s mannerisms he knew that she viewed the situation a bit differently. She would kiss him and do things to show she liked him, but there was clearly a line that she was choosing not to cross at this point. As he pondered this, he realized that she was much more than someone to whom he was physically attracted; she was a friend. He loved talking to her, and he realized that was hardly a poor consolation should she not kiss him again that evening.

  Once he finished showering, he tossed on the mesh basketball shorts he used as pajamas and a loose fitting t-shirt. There was nothing impressive about what he slept in, but he doubted he needed to be impressive given the fact that he would not be seducing her then. If she had decided to join him in the shower, that would have been another story. But she hadn’t.

  Troy entered the bedroom to find Eris stretched across the bed in one of his extra-large t-shirts and little else. The book was open in front of her as she lay on her stomach facing the direction of the pillows. From this angle, he could see the smoothness of the backs of her shapely legs extending from beneath the t-shirt and the rise of her ass like a gorgeous Georgia hill stretching the cotton fabric above it. The visual of her lying there in his clothing was beyond arousing, and he found himself stiffening under the mesh of his basketball shorts.

  “Hey,” he said. “I’m really feeling your change of clothes.”

  “Well, I needed something to sleep in, so I hope you don’t mind that I grabbed one of your t-shirts out the dresser.”

  “Not at all. I’m not gonna lie, though. You look sexy as hell in that shirt.”

  Eris smiled, rolling over and scooting to the edge of the bed closest to him. “So you have me here. Now what?”

  “You mean it’s really that simple?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Just tell you what I want to do?”

  “Surprise me,” she said.

  “Well—” he started.

  “Just don’t say what I think you’re gonna say. Be more original than that.”

  “But how do you know what I’m gonna say?”

  “You’re a guy.”

  “That’s cold—and it’s a stereotype on top of that,” Troy said, laughing.

  “So you weren’t gonna say that you wanted to have sex with me?”

  “Huh?” he responded, blushing. “What do you mean?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Why? Would that have been so wrong, I mean given the circumstances?”

  Eris stood up and approached him, pointing a finger softly into his chest. “You told me that you wanted to fall asleep talking to me. That’s all you said. So, Troy, you should probably get to talking.”

  Her mannerisms were entirely coy, and he sensed she was a few seconds away from flat-out seducing him. Still, he marveled at her control of the environment. Everything was completely subject to her authority, and he loved every moment of it.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” he said. “I guess I should start with that.”

  “Okay.”

  “And I had a wonderful evening.”

  “So far?”

  “So far,” he repeated. “And I can’t stop thinking about kissing you.”

  He lifted her chin so that their lips met, and he savored the smooth, free movements of her tongue against his. He could feel her fingernails gently caressing the back of his neck and the warmth of her body pressing itself steadily against his.

  She lifted her head, allowing him full access to her neck, and as he traced his kisses along her nape, he could feel her breath in soft, staccato exhalations, tickling his skin.

 

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