B-Sides and Remixes, page 9
I reach in to hug her slight frame. “It’s good to see you again,” I offer, enjoying the snug feel of her body against mine.
“You, too. How have you been?”
“Well, I can’t complain. Just trying to put everything together now.”
She nods. “I bet you forgot my name until I called you.”
I laugh. “I couldn’t do that—even if I tried.”
“Why’s that?”
“You are responsible for the healthiest meal I’ve ever had in my life.”
She laughs in jest.
We walk into the park, and inline skaters and bicyclists move around us. Everyone seems to be enjoying this Saturday morning just as much as we are. But for a minute, I feel a twinge of guilt. While I typically take off two Saturdays a month at the store, I still feel uneasy about my argument with J. Maybe I should have gone in this morning as a good faith gesture to clear the air. But no. I am here with Taylor. I wonder for a moment if J is right about my absences hurting the business. He can’t be right. After all, my being on this date is keeping the name of our business in front of several hundred thousand people, free of charge.
“So where’re we headed?” I ask.
“To a picnic.”
“A picnic? I don’t see any food, unless it’s tucked in that small bag of yours,” I joke, pointing to the tiny hemp purse that hangs from her bare shoulder.
“No. My meditation group is having a picnic. I thought it would be fun for us to drop by.”
I don’t know why, but this puts me in a weird space. Not that I have anything against meditation—hell, I do it myself from time to time— but it just doesn’t feel like the best place for us to be having our date. It’s hard enough getting to know someone in an environment where the two of you are alone, but being in a group of people who may not necessarily connect with you is sometimes more trouble than it’s worth.
I chuckle uneasily. “Are they all raw vegans, too?”
She laughs. “No. They eat the whole spectrum, so I think you’ll be fine.”
“So they’ll be grilling barbecue over there?”
She shrugs, “Maybe.” Then offers, “Probably not.”
We continue walking for a quarter of a mile and finally come to a large spot of grass off to the side of the sidewalk.
“Taylor!” a thin redheaded woman calls out from a group of people seated on beach towels. “Over here!”
“Hey!” Taylor answers, taking me by the hand and walking me over to the group.
There are at least ten people of various ethnicities, all dressed casually for the temperature, all of them barefoot. Several weaved baskets sit on the towels and there are paper plates spread around with jars of colorful concoctions, breads, and even cookies on them. She takes me around introducing me to each person. The redheaded woman’s name is Phoeba, and she comes across as the leader of the group.
“Cool?” she asks, shaking my hand. “Quite a name you have there.”
I nod. “That’s what I hear.” I look down at the towels. “Nice spread. How long have you guys been out here?”
“Not more than an hour,” Phoeba says. She quickly turns to face Taylor. “So this is the guy you met through the magazine?”
Taylor nods, a smile stretched across her face.
“Not bad,” Phoeba says. “Not bad.”
The moment we sit down with the group, I realize that I will have trouble getting comfortable. Although I work out regularly, my flexibility is still not what it should be, so with no chairs, I find that I’m forced to sit legs-crossed like the others, who clearly have no problems perching themselves like that for extended periods of time. When I grimace trying to position myself, Taylor leans in and says, “You can just lie down on your side. I want you to be comfortable.”
So I do. And I’m the only one in the group who’s stretched out into the grass like a sick dog, while the others maintain a kind of relaxed and seated balance. I’m also the only one to have on shoes, since I’m leery about being barefoot outdoors—especially in New York City. Immediately, I remember the song from Sesame Street: “One of these things is not like the other....”
“Want some potato salad?” Taylor offers, as she reaches for a plate.
“Is it real potato salad or potato-less potato salad?” I ask, half-joking, half-serious.
“Real potato salad,” she responds, smiling.
“Sure.”
She spoons out some of it and hands it to me with a fork.
As I thank her, I see her look past me and rise to her feet. I angle my head and see a tall, athletic white guy with dusty blond hair. His skin has a hard tan, not one that appears to have been applied at a tanning salon. She immediately runs up to him. As he outstretches his arms and embraces her, they kiss quickly on the lips before she falls completely into his chest. While brief, the entire scene strikes me as far more than platonic. She grabs his hand, as she did mine earlier, and brings him over to me for an introduction.
“Cool? This is Norman. Norman, this is my new friend, Cool.”
He extends his hand to me, and I shake it with a firmness typically reserved for old factory guys who get a kick out of trying to roll your knuckles in their hands. He meets me back with a firm handshake, his lips curled into a casual, unflustered smile.
“Mate,” he says, nodding to me and releasing my hand.
“I didn’t think you were coming,” Taylor says, smiling at him as if his last name were Vanderbilt.
“Wouldn’t have missed it for the world!” he says, holding back his head and letting out a deep laugh.
Missed it for the world, I think. Really? As far as I can tell, this is just a casual gathering of people on a few feet of grass in an already busy park. Am I missing something here?
I look at Taylor, who leans her back into my chest playfully, still facing Norman. I place my hand on her hip and I feel her fingers brush over my hand. Norman smiles and begins to greet the other people who have risen from their towels. As he steps around us, I lean down and whisper in Taylor’s ear, “What was that about?”
“He’s just a friend,” she responds.
“Oh, okay,” I say.
As she turns around to rejoin the group, I take her hand again, pulling her gently toward me. “And what am I?” I ask.
She smiles at me. “Don’t be silly,” she says. “You’re my friend, too.”
Hours later, seated at a cafe on the Upper West Side, we sip tea and watch people walk by. I’m still bothered about earlier, although I can’t say specifically why. It’s not like we’re in a relationship. Still her kissing that guy unnerved me a bit. I try not to think about it too hard. After all, she’s had to sit by and read about me going on dates with two other women.
“You all right?” she asks. “Penny for you thoughts.”
I look up from my mug and offer a smile. “It’s a beautiful day. I’m glad you asked me to come down here.”
She nods. “I hope you didn’t mind that I shared you with my friends for a few hours.”
“Not at all.” I am not sure if this is a lie or not.
“So can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
She interlocks her fingers on the table. “I know this is only our second time going out, but I’m curious. How compatible do you think we are so far?”
I inhale deeply. “I think you’re very intelligent, very centered, very focused. You seem like a pretty wonderful woman.”
“Mmm,” she muses. “You’re not really answering my question.”
“There’s definitely potential,” I say.
“Fair enough,” she responds.
“So what do you like to do?” Up until that moment it never occurred to me to ask her this very basic question.
“I love yoga! I go at least four times a week, and I am trying to get certified to teach classes.”
“Really? I have absolutely no flexibility—as you already know,” I say, laughing.
She laughs along with me. “You just have to take it in small steps. I’m pretty flexible, but I am not on the level of some of these people who can bend themselves into the most extreme positions.”
“But don’t people do a lot of farting in yoga?”
She shakes her head, trying to suppress a smile. “No more than people would fart doing anything else.”
Hearing her say the word “fart” sounds cute coming from her mouth.
“So what is your day job now?” I ask.
“I work at an after school program for at-risk youth. It’s pretty cool. I love kids. I hope to have a team of them one day.”
“What’s a team?”
“At least five.”
“Whoa,” I say. “You serious?”
“No,” she responds, chuckling. “But you should have seen the look on your face. Priceless.”
She is so beautiful, and all I want to do is lean across the table and kiss her, but I can’t bring myself to follow through. Maybe it’s the thought of seeing her kiss that guy from earlier. Even though it wasn’t a French kiss, it still looked as if there had been some underlying familiarity in it.
“Taylor? Is that you?” I hear a male voice say from behind me.
“Lewis!” she screams, jumping to her feet. She runs over and wraps her arms around a tall, bearded white guy who, even in the day’s heat, gives off the rugged look of a lumberjack on vacation. He leans down and kisses her squarely on the lips in a manner too reminiscent of the kiss I saw from earlier. She brings him to our table and introduces us, and like deja vu, I am looking into the eyes of another man who has apparently had some kind of relationship with her in the past—one that apparently is open enough for her to not be afraid of kissing him around me. I stand and shake hands, put on my best face, and count the minutes until he continues walking down the street.
“I’m just curious,” I start, as Taylor and I return to our chairs. “These guys you keep running into, are they ex-boyfriends?”
“I don’t do ex-boyfriends.”
“What does that mean?”
She sighs. “You remember I told you that I don’t believe in titles?”
“So you run simultaneous relationships then?”
“No,” she says. I can see she is becoming bothered my implications. “They are all my friends.”
I nod. “Well, okay. Let me ask you this: have you ever been intimate with either one of them?”
She shakes her head, clearly annoyed. “Cool, I don’t really think that’s any of your business. I didn’t ask you if you were having any intimate relationships with anyone. I mean, for all I know you could have been getting it on with any of these other girls you’ve been going out with.”
I blush, but pray like hell it doesn’t show through my brown skin. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“I’m not upset,” she responds, “but I think you’re assuming a hell of a lot on a second date.”
For a moment we sit in silence, and I wonder if it’s worth trying to clean up this situation before taking my black ass back to Harlem.
“Can I ask a question?”
“It’s a free country,” she responds, her voice more curt than I would have expected.
“How often do you go out with black men?”
She smiles, her defenses cracking slightly. “You’re the first in a while.”
“So why me?”
“Why not you?”
I take her fingers and place a kiss gently atop her hand. She looks at me and smiles.
We continue to sit and talk as the sky darkens around us. When we finally rise to say goodbye, we both realize that we are saying goodbye for more than just the evening.
17
I was once at a park in Washington, DC, when I saw a guy riding a bicycle run into a stop sign and get swept clean off of his bike and onto the ground. The funny thing was that the sign had been in front of him the entire time, but he was just so focused on his pedaling that he never looked up to see it. That red octagon was much more than a sign; it was an instruction the man ignored at his own peril. Talk about ironies.
The whole thing had happened so quickly that when he slammed into it, it sounded like the blast of a shotgun. When the crowd of us who had witnessed the accident walked over to him, we immediately knew he was in bad shape. One woman standing there had asked if he was dead. I shook my head. “No, just unconscious,” I said. What gave me the license to make that diagnosis? Nothing, other than the fact that I knew for the guy’s sake that he needed to be alive so that he didn’t find himself the posthumous recipient of the dreaded Darwin Award, one of those recognitions reserved for people who died under the most absurd of circumstances.
Another guy who was standing nearby had already placed a call to 911 for an ambulance. By the time it arrived, the guy was conscious, but dazed. I don’t have any idea of how many stitches he had to get to close up that massive gash on his face, but I imagine that he might still be wearing the scar wherever he is in the world today.
I slammed into my metaphorical stop sign when Ray-Ray came in for work on Monday morning. Even now, as I sit here tracing through everything that has happened, I wonder if J and I can rebound from this new turn of events.
I hadn’t thought anything initially when Ray-Ray walked in, covering his mouth with his hand and pointing at me.
“Oh snap!” he had said. “Oh snap!”
I looked over at him, confused. “Dude, what’s up with you?”
“Tell me you didn’t, Cool. Tell me it ain’t so!” he said, bending over and stomping around in a small circle like an overexcited preacher.
“Ray-Ray,” I said, pulling rank. “Get yourself together. This is a place of business.”
He stood up, straightening himself out. “My bad.”
“Now,” I said, “what’s this all about?”
“Word is on the street about you, son! For real!”
“Word about what?”
“You and that vixen. They say you wore her out like Zumba!”
I stood there, my mind racing like Usaine Bolt on juice.
“All I gotta ask,” Ray-Ray said, “is was the shit good? A nigga has to know.”
At that point everything around me turned into white noise. I could scarcely make out Ray-Ray telling me about the different rappers who had had sex with the infamous Roxanne. All I could think was that the one thing I regretted had come back to haunt me with a vengeance.
By the time J walked in, he was already joining the conversation. “So much for the t-shirt idea,” he huffed.
Even Denise had called the store several times, but I couldn’t bring myself to call her back. I just needed time to think.
And here I am now. Still thinking. No farther along.
I see J up front googling articles on his computer. He turns back to me. “Cool, these blogs are talking up a storm about you this morning.”
I’m not even sure I want to know what they’re saying, but J offers me a few comments anyway.
“They say that you were typical, trying to get with the video vixen. But what most people are talking about is how you lied on your last blog entry, talking about it was on some regular date shit. And you know, Roxanne ain’t no regular date chick. One guy is even comparing you to Clinton. He’s here saying that if you were lucky enough to get some brain, then just be a man about it and own up to it.”
“Okay,” I finally say. “Enough.”
I stand up and stretch my arms. “I’m taking a walk. I need some fresh air,” I say, before stepping out of the store into the bright morning sunlight.
Angie agrees to meet me at a cafe near Chelsea Piers. While I take a cab down to West 22nd Street, I try to plan my strategy for dealing with everything that’s going on. The first thing I want to do is call Rochelle to find out if she knows anything about this stuff. Is this just a rumor coming from neighborhood speculation, or did she actually put the word out herself? I reach for my cell phone and dial her number, but she doesn’t pick up. Now I’m left to try to put things together on my own—at least for the time being.
When I pull up to the cafe, I’m relieved to see that Angie is already seated at one of the tables out front.
“Cousin!” she says, standing to embrace me.
“Angie, I can’t tell you how good it is to see you right now.”
“Baby, calm down and have a seat. You look like you’re about to lose it.”
I fall into my chair.
“Well, if it’s any consolation, I didn’t know anything about any of this until you called me, so clearly everybody in New York is not in the know,” she chuckles.
I shake my head. “I need to call Denise and find out what the deal is.” Then I remember Sarah.
Shit!
This day is getting worse by the minute. If I read her vibe right, she definitely wouldn’t touch me with a ten-foot pole if she heard anything about this Rochelle business. Right now I can’t think about that though. I have too many other pressing issues.
“Have you talked to that girl yet?” Angie asks.
“I tried to call her from the cab on the way here. I couldn’t reach her.”
“Cool, with your ties to music and all, I figured you’d recognize that chick from that Big Boze video.”
I start chewing my lip, a bad habit I have when my nerves start to work on me. “You know I don’t watch music videos on television. My artists don’t have a lot of videos in rotation.” I shake my head. “So she really was famous then?”
Angie shrugs. “Depends on who you ask. She’s famous in a C-list, pin-up girl kind of way.”
At times like this, I wish I had gotten more information about these women ahead of time so that I could better vet the situation before going out with them. But what did it say about the readers of Soul Sista that they would hook me up on a date with such a notorious woman?
“I’d try her again,” Angie says.
I grab my phone and hit redial. This time the phone picks up.
