B-Sides and Remixes, page 7
“You can’t talk to him when Austin’s on the screen,” Tracy says.
Angie nods, kissing Aaron on his head. “Cool, I wanted to ask you something?”
“Okay,” I respond, unsure of whether I’m going to get another “you’re being pimped” speech.
“I’ve been talking to Tracy about this, and I just wanted to run it by you.” Her face becomes serious, and my curiosity is immediately piqued.
She continues. “I want to go home to see Mama—and I want to take Tracy and Aaron with me.”
I nod slowly, wondering what has brought this on. “Why now?”
“You know Mama had that scare with her blood sugar last year, and I don’t know. I guess I’ve just been thinking that we need to get square with each other. If something happened to her with us being like this, I don’t know how I could live that down.”
“Aunt Jonetta doesn’t hate you, you know.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“She’ll have to accept you if she truly loves you.”
“That’s what I’m hoping, but the last time I went home, she spent the whole time trying to get me to go to church with her so her pastor could put his hands on me and cast the sin out of my body.”
Normally, if Angie had said something like this, it would be tinged in humor, but today the words are just heavy. Now I’m concerned about her and her plan. “You sure you’re ready to go through with this?”
She laughs. “Nope.”
Tracy places a hand on Angie’s shoulder.
“You know what?” I say. “Whatever happens when you get to Alabama, just know that I’m always on your side. After all, you can only do what you can do. No one can fault you for trying to build a bridge with Aaron’s grandmother.”
Angie nods and turns to face Tracy. “See,” she says. “I told you my cousin was the shit.”
I lower my eyes to Aaron, and Angie smiles, pointing to the television. “Don’t worry. Austin’s on right now.”
13
Rhonda looks even better than she did when we first dated. I had held off on going to her Facebook page, but now that I scan through her photos, assuming that they are current, I find myself remembering all of the wonderful moments we shared before the incident that caused our break-up. This is why I hate looking at pictures of her. I end up romanticizing the past far too much.
One of her photo albums is called “My Treasure!!!” and the first picture I see is of a beautiful little girl with braided and beaded hair. She looks like a miniature version of Rhonda. I click open the album, and there are several shots of this little girl smiling and posing in various environments. One of the pictures has Rhonda and Treasure standing side by side, holding each other. I find myself unable to keep from smiling. I had often wondered whether I would ever want to see the child who was at the heart of our breakup, but now that I have, I feel a sense of peace. Rhonda just looks so happy standing there. Incidentally, there is no guy in any of the pictures, which is not surprising since Rhonda’s status is listed as “single.”
I want to hate her all over again, but I can’t bring myself to go there, not with Treasure staring through the screen at me. One thing I notice (and am immediately thankful for) is that the little girl doesn’t seem to have any features of her father. I think if Treasure looked like a blend of two people as opposed to the spitting image of one, I would have a much harder time with this. As I look back and forth between them, I wonder what Treasure would have looked like if I had been her father. Would she still look like a clone of her mother, or would she have something of mine? My ears? My nose? My eyes?
Rhonda has not messaged me directly since I accepted her request, but I have noticed that she has clicked “Like” for a few of my comments. I guess that’s as safe a way as any to ease into a conversation with a person. Still, I don’t know what I would say if we ever did speak to each other. How do you pick up from such a bad breakup?
“How are you doing?” she might ask, and I would be forced to respond, “Not bad, considering the devastating heartbreak you laid on me nine years ago.”
Surely I’m beyond that. At least I hope.
Maybe she read Soul Sista and has been following the blog. She could have just told me what she wanted from me when she sent the friendship request rather than have me sitting here guessing about what to expect next from her.
I’m probably overthinking this, I know. Maybe it’s all just innocent, but it seems these days that I am more popular than I care to be. I guess that would make most anyone more paranoid of people’s intentions.
Soon enough all of this hoopla with Soul Sista will be behind me. Hopefully by that time, C&J’s Rare Grooves will be all the better for it. And maybe—just maybe—there will be a woman standing by my side once the storm has passed.
14
Date Three
Roxanne
One of my favorite movies when I was growing up was Strictly Business, that flick with Tommy Davidson and that dude from the Cosby Show. More importantly, it was the movie that presented Halle Berry to the world as “Natalie,” the 90’s version of the video vixen.
I guess one of the things that appealed to me the most about the movie was that the nerdy guy became cool and got the girl. How contrived the plot was and how rushed the sequence of events was didn’t matter to me. All that mattered was that a square, like me, could wind up with the pretty girl.
Growing up, I had arms like pipe cleaners and weighed barely a buck soaked and wet. It took years and a lot of milk and exercising to get to my current physique. I was never the fastest kid on the playground or the strongest person at the gym, but for some reason I took to school like a fish to water. The only thing about high school was that the better I did in the classroom, the lamer I was to everyone else. It wasn’t until I got to Morehouse that being the bookish type of brother proved to be to my advantage. And by that time, there were hundreds of Natalies throughout the Atlanta University Center vying for attention. The only thing that was missing was the multimillion-dollar Savoy Towers deal to save the day.
All of this rushes to the front of my mind as soon as I set eyes on Roxanne, my third and final date. We’re standing in front of a swanky little restaurant that caters to the local Harlem buppie population, and she’s wearing a hot red dress, her long hair falling in curls onto her shoulders. Her body is bodacious in a way that seems almost exaggerated. I feel strange standing next to her. It feels as if she’s a three-dimensional super heroine and I am just a mere mortal. For some strange reason, I sense she would be the woman drawn to a professional athlete and not a fledgling entrepreneur like myself.
As we shake hands, I find my eyes unable to avoid spying her legs and hips, her small waist and flat stomach, and of course those voluptuous breasts. Her caramel skin and cat-like eyes add to the exotic allure of her aura. To put it bluntly, she looks like a video vixen. She’s the quintessential Natalie, more than Halle ever was.
As we take our seats in the back of the restaurant, I try to push all of this out of my mind. Roxanne deserves a fair shake, just like Sarah and Taylor.
There’s still some sunlight outside, and the clock on the wall reads seven-fifteen. It could be that the extra lighting makes her make-up even more pronounced.
“I been waiting forever to get with you,” she starts.
“Oh really?” I answer. “Why’s that?”
“I’m not trying to diss these other chicks, but I knew when I seen you that we was supposed to be together. And I got up this morning and read my horoscope, and you know what it had said?”
“No,” I answer, still unable to shake the “I seen you” part of her comment.
“It had said that my life was about to change for the better.”
“For real?” I say, glancing around the room. There must be a camera in here somewhere, although I figure I’m way too common to be “punk’d.”
“Whatchu looking for?” she asks.
“Oh, I thought I heard someone call my name. That’s all.”
“Oh, okay,” she says, glancing at her fingernails. “Sometimes I be thinking that someone is calling my name and it ain’t nobody. But one day, I won’t be able to go nowhere without folks being like, ‘That’s Roxanne! Heyyyyy!’”
I nod. I am momentarily at a loss for words. Finally, I say, “So you want to be famous?”
“Well, I’m already a actress, small roles right now though. I also did a few videos. So I guess I’m kinda famous already, but I really want to be more famous. Know what I mean?”
“Okay,” is all I can muster. “So what made you want to go on this date?”
“It’s like you was a cutie already, but I know this is also like reality television, too, except there ain’t no television. I figure it could be like knocking out two birds with one stone.”
One of my eyebrows arches involuntarily. “So you’re more concerned about me writing about you than you are about trying to make a connection with me?”
Sensing that things are going south, I see her shift uncomfortably in her chair. “Naw,” she says. “I’m really feelin’ you. I’m just the kind of chick that’s straight up. I’m direct. I speak my mind.”
“So what do you want to see happen tonight?”
“I figure we could get something to eat—and talk, you know? And if you feel like it, we could go back to my place and see how things go from there.”
While I had considered the possibility of one of my dates wanting to get intimate on our first date, I never could have predicted the bluntness that Roxanne was putting on the table right now.
“Why don’t we just take everything a step at a time?”
She smiles weakly. “Yeah, that’s what I meant, you know? Let’s just see how it goes. But know that I’m already feeling you, so it’s more on you than it is on me.”
We order. This time I order a seafood cioppino, a tomato-based stew of shellfish, shrimp, and calamari poured over a bed of linguine. Roxanne orders a filet mignon and a lobster tail. Yes, tonight we will actually exhaust the per diem given to me by Soul Sista.
“So tell me about your store?” she says, sipping on a glass of chilled white zinfandel.
“We’ve been opened for almost a year—up here in Harlem. Our store is called C&J’s Rare Grooves, and we specialize in carrying soul artists, particularly smaller acts and indies.”
“Like who?” she asks.
“Carmen Rogers, Conya Doss, Eric Roberson, The Foreign Exchange, Donnie, The Fuzz Band, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Jimmie Reign. The list goes on and on. You ever heard of any of them?”
She shakes her head and then stops. “Hold up. Did you say Foreign Exchange? Ain’t that the group that did that song with that girl?” She starts humming the song, and her voice is in pitch-perfect.
“You’re talking about ‘Sincere’ with YahZarah? Yeah, that’s them.”
She starts smiling. “That song is hot! I heard it at one of my girl’s cribs and asked her to make me CD. I just don’t be knowing who these people are, but I know the songs when I hear them.”
I look at her, nodding. “I could put together a list of people for you to check out. Hey, you can even come by the store, and I’d be happy to play some of their music for you.”
She takes another swallow of her zinfandel. “That’s what’s up.”
“So who do you like to listen to?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she says. “A little bit of everybody.”
I lean forward, urging her to give me a few names.
“I don’t know,” she says again. “Raphael Saadiq, D’Angelo, Lalah Hathaway, India.Arie, Raheem DeVaughn. You know, those kind of people.”
I can feel the awkwardness from earlier lifting. “You ever been to the Capital City Jazz Fest in Columbia, Maryland? They have one every June.”
“Are you serious? I been to the last three. Me and my girls go every year.”
I am now visibly smiling. “So I guess we could have met before. I’ve been going for the past five years.”
She starts chuckling. “Well,” she says, “when I go, I don’t be dressed like this.”
“What does that mean?” I ask.
“I be going to kick back when I go there, so I ain’t dressing like I’m going on a date. We just be rocking jeans and baby tees—and baseball caps,” she adds. “You can’t get loose when you all did up.”
Now as I look at her, I realize that there’s much more to Roxanne than the exterior she’s presenting to me right now. From the sounds of it, she might actually be my musical soul mate. Still seeing her looking like a cover model for King magazine is straining my ability to make the connection to who she really is.
“You know, you didn’t have to get dressed up for this date. We could have kept this really laid back.”
She smiles, and this time I look beneath her make-up and hair, and I see a sista who is naturally beautiful, but somewhere along the way she realized that she could doll herself out to get much more attention.
“I wanted to make sure that if anyone saw us together, they knew how we did it,” she says.
“I see. Well, let me tell you something,” I say, my tone softening. “What we do is not about what other people think. This is our time. Our chance to get to know each other. Don’t worry about people checking for us. I don’t live my life that way. I just want us to have a good time.”
She looks confused for a moment. “So you woulda rather gone out with the Capital Jazz Fest me?”
“No,” I answer. “I would’ve rather gone out with the real you.”
She holds up her empty glass, and a server appears to refill it. She looks down into the glass, seemingly distraught.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“I’m blowing it, right?” she asks, and I am taken aback. This is the most vulnerable she’s appeared all night.
“No, you’re not blowing it,” I say. “In fact, I think you’re a pretty chill woman.”
She lifts her head slowly, attempting to hide her smile.
When our dishes finally arrive, I spend the rest of dinner talking to Rochelle Nichols, not the facade of Roxanne.
We don’t leave the restaurant until just after nine. Rochelle stops walking and places a hand on my shoulder. “Give me a moment,” she says. “These shoes! Ooh. I don’t know if I can keep walking in these things.”
We haven’t walked more than a block. I look at the sidewalk and realize that we’ll have to flag a cab, because I wouldn’t wish walking barefoot on this dirty ass New York sidewalk on my worst enemy.
“Okay,” I say, placing my hand around her waist and moving us back out of the way of pedestrian traffic. Her body is soft, in an alluring way. The irony is that she might’ve looked unreal before, but she feels one hundred percent real now. “Where would you like to go? I’ll get us a cab.”
She exhales as she considers this. “We can go back to my place so I can change.”
I don’t know if this is an extension of her bedroom invitation from earlier, but the strain in her face seems real—and we obviously won’t be getting very far down any street in this city if her feet are hurting.
“Okay,” I respond.
I escort her to the corner and hail down the next cab. As we take our seats in the back, the cab driver asks, “So where to?”
I look at Rochelle. She looks at me without saying a word. Then she turns to face the driver. “Flatbush Avenue,” she says.
Damn, I think to myself.
We’re headed all the way to Brooklyn.
Don’t get me wrong. I love Brooklyn.
I love the people, the neighborhoods, the flavor. But I live in Harlem, USA, which is almost like another planet. To get to Brooklyn, you have to drive down the BQE or head towards City Hall and take the Brooklyn Bridge across. To put it plainly, we are taking a trek, and when you factor that we are in a cab, that constitutes a trip.
As we speed along in the cab, cutting back and forth between other traffic, I realize that the chances of my getting out of Brooklyn and back to Harlem tonight are slim to none. There just aren’t enough cabs running the distance back and forth between the two places at night. Factor in that we’re dealing with two gentrified neighborhoods known primarily for their high black populations (although the white populations are steadily increasing), and my options for getting home tonight rest solely on my ability to hail a gypsy cab or wait indefinitely for the subway to come through. Or, and I am trying not to focus on this option, I can just wait and catch a cab the next day when the sun rises.
We pull up to an old brownstone apartment building, and I pay the driver. A few of the guys on the block start speaking to Rochelle immediately.
“Damn, shorty! You look so good I’d drank yo bathwater with a crazy straw!” one guy says.
Another one says, “I’d suck yo toes!”
I look at Rochelle, and she only smiles, so I brush off the comments. No need in defending her honor if it’s not being insulted.
I place my hand on the small of her back and escort her through the gate in front of the building, and for a moment I feel like I’m replaying Kid’s date with the “around the way” girl from the movie Class Act.
A guy calls out from behind me. “Man, I’d rob a bank to be you tonight!”
I don’t bother looking back.
She unlocks the door, and I walk in behind her. We take the stairs to the second floor, and as she sways her sexy ass just inches from my face, I realize that I’m more drawn to her than I would’ve admitted earlier. Before she opens the door, she turns to me and says, “You’ll have to excuse my mess. I didn’t expect to be coming back here with a man, so don’t trip if you see things laying around.”
“Well, okay,” I respond, not sure what to make of her comment, given her earlier invitation for me to come back here and apparently see her place like this.
As soon as she opens the door, I immediately understand her warning. There are things everywhere. No food or anything else, for that matter, decomposing on the coffee table or the floor, but there are dresses and shirts on plastic hangers dangling from half-opened doors. Clearly, she must buy clothes that can’t be placed in a dryer. In addition, every other doorknob has a purse hanging from it. The main area of her apartment simply looks like the inside of anyone else’s closet.
