A Moment of Silence: Midnight III (The Midnight Series Book 3) (41 page)

The design of the marble floors was only matched by the design of the Persian rug that was perfectly placed in one area of the room. There were Tiffany lamps and tropical flowers, porcelain vases and expensive abstract paintings; even the media area could only be described as cinema and not television. An open-air professional kitchen, two bedrooms, and a greenhouse. I was sure that this was a female place, paid for by man-made money. The type of place that a man would only provide and maintain for someone close to his heart, perhaps his mother, I thought.

“This way,” Santiaga said, walking quietly in his leather Gucci driving shoes. He slid the heavy glass doors open and shut them as soon as we were both standing outside. On the terrace was a marble card table and four matching marble stools. On the table was a chessboard made of beautiful twenty-four-karat gold, with pure gold chess pieces; the king and queen pieces were detailed with genuine diamonds, and around the perimeter of the board were inlaid tiny princess cuts. It was an exquisite board, made with
fucking passion and precision. It had to be conceived and designed by someone who loved the game, felt they’d mastered the game, and for whom the game had a deeper meaning than it carried for most. I got drawn to it.

“Do you know the game?” Santiaga asked me.

“Somewhat,” I replied.

“Think you can beat me?” he asked casually.

“I think I can, but since you own that board, I think I’d have to let you win,” I said. We laughed.

“Then one day we’ll play in a broke-down little spot, on a cheap cardboard board with plastic pieces. On that day put all of your effort into it, so when I beat you, you won’t front like you let me win,” he said smoothly.

“A’ight, we’ll do that.” I put my word on it.

Facing the money-making Manhattan night lights and its unrivaled urban skyline, Santiaga said suddenly, “And if you are a good man in a bad situation who does something bad, you’re still a good man, just fighting for your own survival, like all real men have to do.”

*  *  *

“So what do you think about what Santiaga was saying?” Ameer asked me.

“I think if I don’t take some sleep, I won’t be able to figure nothing out,” I told him, and put my head to rest on my knees in the sitting position on the floor in my best friend Ameer Nickerson’s room. As I drifted off, I thought about how there was only silence coming from Ameer’s parents’ bedroom. His mother had got what she wanted, I figured: her husband, in her bed, every night. I thought of my wives, then my mind drifted back to the two women Santiaga had introduced me to in that plush penthouse. I considered what message he was relaying to me by introducing me to them at all. One thing I sensed and felt that I knew for sure was that the introduction and the manner in which he was dealing with
me that day and night, like Ameer suggested, went beyond a teen’s basketball league.

With blue eyes and blond hair elegantly wrapped into a flawless bun, the white-skinned woman in that expensive condo did not speak a word yet welcomed me warmly and was still very expressive. She approached with her eyes first, and then walked right over, reached out and touched my face with both of her palms, and opened both of my palms, then looked inside. She held my hands until the black-skinned woman, same complexion as myself, approached and took my hands from her.

Dark brown eyes. Dark brown was the lightest color on her. Her black hair was natural and each strand was twisted, instead of cornrowed, into a royal sculpture at the nape of her neck. She was thick, but not fat. Her clothing was fine fabric, her heels expensive and sturdy, not stylish. Unlike the white woman, whose hands were cold yet soft in a way that revealed she had never done a day’s work, the African woman’s hands were warm and worn like a worker’s. Her heavy hands felt like the hands of a woman who had lived, really lived and loved deeply and strongly and continuously every second of her life. They were the hands of a mother, perhaps a cook and seamstress as well. Her voice was unusual and unexpected, high pitched.

“
Son coeur est pur. Il est fidele. Il porte le couronne. Il sauvera votre vie un jour
,” she said, speaking in what I knew was French even though I do not speak any French. I tried to press her French words into my memory and store them long enough so I could speak them to my second wife and she would tell me their meaning. She is the only one whom I know who speaks the French language.

On the route back to Brooklyn in his speeding Porsche, which he hopped into after parking the Maserati at the private penthouse garage and protecting it with the car cover that concealed the beauty nicely, Santiaga said to me out of minutes of silence, “She has no tongue, the white one. Her husband cut it off.”

A warning to me maybe
, I thought. About the consequences of
talking too much, or talking too much about him and his business in particular? But it was a warning I didn’t need or fear. On my own, I am mindful.

Or maybe Santiaga was sharing a personal secret, or making a confession, or maybe, by introducing me to the women, he was just trying to show me another aspect of himself for some reason.

I was certain that these women were not women he was involved with intimately. They were both at least twenty years over his age. It crossed my mind that the black-skinned one might be his mother. If so, his father would have to be a white man, I thought. Santiaga’s skin color was a degree away from white, not even close to tan without a long trip to a tropical island or even the desert, where the sun scorched and roasted anything and anyone who has a drop of melanin. I thought some more. Maybe the white woman was his mother and his father was a black man.

Is there an African man who would cut off his wife’s tongue?
I thought to myself. Each wife’s tongue is so soothing and precious to a man, in my experience. The mouth itself, an opening so intimate, second only to the opening buried between her thighs.

Ameer was asleep now, and laid out on his bed in his party clothes, his red suede Pumas still on his feet. I was still seated on the floor, the wall behind my mattress. I gave up the fight between my mind and my body, and just let go.

*  *  *

“Something different,” Chris said. He was talking about his riding instructor, Lila, a slim blonde of maybe nineteen years young, who had just mounted the horse where he was already seated. Now she sat closely behind him. “There are places in New York that the everyday New Yorker never even knew existed,” he said, referring to the riding course that was hidden inside Van Cortlandt Park in Inwood, at the northern tip of Manhattan.

Lila reached her arms below his arms and grabbed the reins. She began touching his hands until she had them positioned how
she wanted him to hold them. Then she placed the reins under his control. “Yes, now you are holding them the right way, your thumbs up,” she said.

They were both seated in the saddle on top of a beautiful oil-black female horse named Medusa, with sculptured legs and a black mane of hair as long and soft and straight as the flowing human hair that lay on my first wife’s back.

“Medusa? Like the one from Greek mythology who when you look at her, turns men into stones?” Chris asked her, flossing his school smarts.

“It depends how you look at it,” Lila explained. “We call her Medusa because of her ‘paralyzing beauty.’ When anyone looks at her, they come to a complete standstill, almost as if they are under her spell.” Her words seemed to place Chris under a spell.

“First, let’s adjust your posture,” she said to Chris. Then she turned to me seated solo on my speckled dirty white horse, whose skin pattern was more cow-like than anything else, and completely unimpressive. “Are you watching?” she asked me. I smiled at Chris. “Yeah, I’m watching,” I answered her calmly.

“Balance out your weight so that you are not leaning more to the left or to the right,” she said, touching Chris’s sides with her fingertips. “Stay centered in the saddle.” She pressed her body against his back. “Don’t lean forward,” she said after feeling his body’s reaction to her body touching his. “Now, a careful review of what we have learned so far. You will have to remember it all for the times when you are riding alone. Approach her slowly and gently,” she said, referring to the horse. “She senses your temperament. Only match yourself up with a horse that has similar energy to your own. If she becomes agitated, she’s not the one for you. If she is calm and welcoming, sense that and touch her, petting her gently. Stand in front of her, never behind.” Lila reviewed her previous instructions.

“And always mount her from her left side,” Chris added. “And hold the reins firmly but not tight, keeping your hands in the right position.” Chris demonstrated after summarizing.

“Good,” Lila praised him.

“Now can we ride?” Chris asked.

“Patience,” she said softly. “You are learning her slowly. Remember she is responding to your posture, your movements, no matter how slight or severe. Let’s line up your body,” she said, touching Chris’s ear. “You ears should be aligned with your shoulders.” She moved her hands to his shoulders as he continued to carefully hold the reins. “Your shoulders should be aligned with your hips,” she said, now holding his hips from each side. “And your hips should be aligned with your heels.” She tapped the back of his Beef & Broccoli Tims. “Don’t push your feet too deeply into the stirrups,” she advised him. “Balance on the balls of your feet. Got it? Do you think you could handle her alone?” she asked Chris.

“I can,” he said thoughtfully. “But it would be better if you ride with me for today since it’s my first lesson.”

I was cracking up on the inside. She kicked the horse. She had told him to kick her. But Chris replied, “I don’t want to hurt her.”

“You are not hurting her. You are guiding her, so she will know what you want her to do,” Lila said, and they were off. Medusa, walking like she wanted to evoke an emotion; Lila, both hands around Chris’s waist. My horse rode beside theirs.

“Don’t be too stiff. Move your hips with the rhythm of her body so she can move freely underneath your weight,” Lila said. “Relax . . . She feels what you feel. If you’re tense, she will panic and react. That’s not good for you or for her. Now if you want her to trot, squeeze her with both legs and do this with the reins,” she gestured, “and she will trot for you.” Both of our walking horses merged into trotting.

The sound of the hoofs in the soil, the bounce of the beast, the trees seeming to revolve around me, and the motion and speed all moved me. The sun beaming down on my back massaged me as I was riding and imagining my second wife riding. She sparked me to do this, although she had no idea that she did, or of what I was doing at the moment or where I was doing it. I knew Chiasa had mastered horseback riding, and I wanted to make it possible for her
to continue with it since she loved it. I didn’t want her missing her horse or her country too much. I wanted her to want to be with me, to have whatever she wanted or was accustomed to, and to feel fully content. To do that, though, I had to catch up with her first, become fully capable in her hobby. When I take her riding, I’m gonna ride with her like I’d been doing it all my life, like I’m an expert. Like I am leading her. As a man, I had to do it just like that.

“Have you ever rode horseback? I’m sure you have,” Chiasa had asked and said to me one late night as we lay between the sheets.

“I ride,” I responded.

“Really!” she said super excited.

“A camel,” I said.

“A camel!” she exclaimed and then laughed.

“Seriously. You know I’m from the desert. We raise, ride, race, and rely on camels,” I told her.

“Oh,” she giggled. “I never even considered that.”

“Maybe you’ll teach me how to ride camel? Take me to the desert where you’re from,” she said softly.

She wanted to go everywhere I’ve gone, and be every place I’ve been, and do or at least see everything I’ve done and seen.

“I was born in Khartoum, that’s the city. My father has a second house in the countryside. Then we spent most summers in the south with my grandfather.”

“Your grandfather! I want to meet him,” she said, excited. “Let’s write him a letter and plan a trip there.” She was always about action, even when she was naked on her back, being caressed and her breathing was giving away her complete pleasure.

“He doesn’t have an address,” I told her.

“Everybody has an address,” she said, laughing.

“Nah,” I said, rubbing the inside of her thighs.

“Yes they do!” she said, exhaling.

“Uh-un, to find him you’d have to travel through the desert and then the jungle until you reach his village. There’s no post office there and no mailbox,” I told her truthfully.

“No mailbox . . . ” she said softly.

“How do they get mail?” she asked.

“They don’t want mail. Everybody they know and love is already in the village.”

“No, not you and your father. Your grandfather must love both of you.”

“He does. But he is the elder, so we have to go to him. My grandfather would say that if my father and I are not in the village where he is and where he has always been, we are in the wrong place.”

“So fucking cool,” she said. “The wrong place, huh? Well then, we’ll go to him. After you make me feel good, please draw a map.” She kissed me.

“A map?”

“From your house in Khartoum to your grandfather’s village,” she said sweetly.
Only if life was as simple as it is for her,
I thought.

I mounted her. No more words, just heated gentle kisses and deep, slow stroking. And, a lot of love and breathing. That’s how I ended up taking horseback lessons, to keep up with my incredibly swift and curious second wife.

“There has to be more than one riding coach,” Chris said to Lila. Our first lesson had ended and we were all three standing in the stables, where we had returned Medusa and my horse, named “Easy Does It.”

“Of course—there are twelve instructors, to be exact. It all depends on your scheduling requests. Michelle was supposed to teach your friend, but he called in sick at the last moment, unfortunately,” Lila said.