Between Lovers (2 page)

Nicole's bracelets jingle an easy song when she jerks a bit. Those eight pieces of Mexican silver are something else new, another change that defines her new self.

I lean back and stare at her bare breasts, watch her through the white plantation shutters that separate the living and dining area from the bedroom, horizontal prison bars made of wood, watch her and clear my throat, cough a bit. Her dreadlocks are getting longer; what started out as little black twisties now hang below her shoulders when she's on her feet. Her red scarf has slipped away from her head so her locks are free, covering most of her face. She wipes them away and grumbles like an angry kitten. Not a morning person. Not at all.

At first I smile, then wonder if she remembers where she is, if she remembers meeting me at the airport with a red rose in her hand yesterday morning, if she remembers saying fuck the negotiations with South Africa, ditching work, then taking me down on Broadway to
Head to Toes
and letting Ana redo my twisties. If she remembers that she was hand-in-hand and cheek-to-cheek with me last night, that we spent the evening at Yoshi‘s, first eating dinner, then watching Joshua Redman before flirting our way over to the Urban Blend Café for late-night poetry and java, ending the night with haikus that were as potent and smooth as the lattes.

Those silver bracelets on her arm jingle again. Nicole coughs. A very rough cough.

I ask, “You okay over there?”

“Dreaming.” She coughs again. “Dreaming I was at the Mid-South Coliseum with my daddy, watching wrestling. Tojo Yamamoto and Jackie Fargo were beating up Jerry Lawler.”

Those things, those dreams are about good old Memphis. That's where Nicole was born. Where part of her heart still lives. While I grew up dealing with the Watts riot, smog alerts, and earthquakes, in a liberal Babylonia where you can get a haircut on Crenshaw all day on both Easter and Christmas while NWA raps “Fuck the Police” in the background, the land of sunshine where people dance half-naked on Venice Beach on Sundays, Nicole grew up down in the Bible Belt in the shadows of Elvis Presley, STAX records, and Rick Dees singing “Disco Duck.” Rufus Thomas doing the “Funky Chicken.” Where Al Green was the uncrowned king on the black side of town. Garbage strikes and Black Mondays after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Where she told me she would see old black people addressing snotty-nosed white kids who were young enough to be their grandchildren “yes, sir” and “no, ma‘am” while those same snotty-nosed rug rats called black people old enough to be their grandparents by their first names. The land of don't pop your fingers on Sunday, don't play blues on Sunday, don't curse on Sunday, don't point at a graveyard or your fingers will fall off, can't buy liquor after midnight on Saturday until after the noon hour on Sunday.

Three times she yawns, each sounding like a soft orgasm, the kind you have when your parents are in the next room. Each time her mouth opens in the most sensuous way, each time it excites me.

I yawn too. Yawns are contagious. Yawn and inhale. The room has hints of frankincense and patchouli, scents Nicole traded in her Chanel No. 5 for, earthy and spiritual aromas that remind people of a period of Black Panthers and revolution, also of women's rights and free love.

She covers her mouth and yawns again. Then she says, “Don't believe you're up already.”

And just like that she mumbles her way back to sleep. Starts to snore. A light, intense snore.

I play with one of my twisties; pull my hair straight until it sticks out around two, close to three inches. Soon my hair will be like Nicole‘s, in dreadlocks. That sign of resistance that originated in the motherland. I hold my hair and look at those old photos again. Pictures of me and my groomsmen decked out in black tuxedos. Nicole and her bridesmaids. Most of those girls are judgmental women who no longer talk to her. Not even a card at Christmas.

Nicole groans, sits up, stretches until her joints pop, moves her tongue around the inside of her mouth, like she's fighting off the last weight of an opium-induced sleep.

She clears her throat and lays back down. “Writing?”

“Some.” I drop the photos back in my messenger bag. “Freaking laptop tripping again.”

“Told you not to buy a Compaq. Told you, but did you listen? What's wrong this time?”

“A-drive won't recognize my disk.”

“Won't recognize your dick?”

“D-i-s-k.”

“Oh.”

“I see where your mind is at.”

She puts her hand over her eyes and giggles, sets free a very sensual, very vulnerable laugh. I wonder if she shoves her corporate image aside and acts this sweet and kind with her other lover.

She asks, “Cycle power?”

“Four times. It still can't find the d-i-s-k.”

“Oh, you got jokes.”

“I got jokes. Clock runs slow. Crashes whenever I'm on-line. What you think?”

“Device manager might have a conflict”—she stretches again, covers her mouth, sets free another orgasmic moan—“or too much junk is running in the background. I'll look at it later, sweetie.”

She's a smart woman. I love that. Intelligence is a wonderful and powerful aphrodisiac. To me, it enhances beauty, makes an ordinary woman look like a movie star.

She smiles. “Had so much fun yesterday. You make me feel so young, you know that?”

“You are young.”

“You are too good for my ego.”

We're not old, but we're not young. Way beyond high school, far enough beyond college where our colorful and idealistic dreams of the way life should be have been painted over by the realities of this world. We're not quite at the point where gray hairs are popping up in ungodly places, although we do have a few. I'm six years older than she, but not close to the point where I need to get my prostate checked every hour on the hour. But with the way time flies, not that far away either. In some ways, Nicole seems older. In this world, women mature faster and age faster than men.

Nicole is staring at that borderline age where a woman needs to make those maternal decisions, before the egg-dropping bartender in her womb dims the lights and starts screaming last call.

I'm at that age where, if it doesn't happen in the next few years, I'll never be a young man with a child. If it happens, I might end up being an old man with a hyperactive rug rat that I can't keep up with for more than a minute. Or if too much time slips by, I'll be an old man sitting on a park bench, eating a cold tofu sandwich, and watching other people have fun with their kids.

She says, “You really should move to Oakland. We could kick it strong, like we did in L.A.”

She's been telling me that since she moved here.

I say, “Tell me this: if I did buy a crib up here, how would that work out?”

“What do you mean?”

“Don't go stupid on me.”

“Not playing dumb, sweetie.”

“Which one of us would you kick it with on the regular?”

The radio kicks on, setting free voices on 98.1. The news says that the temperature is around forty-six going up to fifty-eight and cloudy, maybe rain in a day or so. Nicole stretches, takes her time about turning the volume down, attempts to use the distraction to save her from answering my question.

I put the pressure on: “Which one? A queen can have only one castle.”

She runs her tongue over her teeth and stares at the ceiling, says, “Love you.”

“Why do you always change the subject when you get uncomfortable?”

Her eyes go to the clock, then to the phone. She wants to check in; I know she does. Last night, while we were together, her pager started blowing up. Each time she looked at the number on the display. Each time she sighed. Then came her cellular. Five times in five minutes, she looked at the caller ID on her c-phone and didn't answer. She was restless, waited for a good moment to excuse herself and sneak out of the restaurant with her itty-bitty cell phone in the palm of her small hand, coming back sounding a little strained, as if she were being pulled in two directions, being torn in half.

Just when I think she's about to reach for the receiver, she relaxes back into the softness and warmth of the bed. Kicks the covers away, lies there naked, skin still moist from the massage oil, her right arm over her face. Her small, wondrous breasts reaching for the ceiling. Her golden-brown skin glowing.

I stare at her innocence, at the softness of an oval face that possesses the quality of a woman-girl-child, and my penis throbs. I touch myself as I watch her in her most vulnerable state, then I'm seeping. I want to get duct tape, tie her up, put her on the Amtrak, steal her from Oakland, take her back to L.A., to where we were when we were engaged, before that trip to Paris, before this indefinite state of disrepair.

I've been with her for seven years; we were engaged four years ago, and for the last year, she's been living here in Oaktown. Came up after the wedding. Alone. Needed space to think. And now that hiatus has changed into a long, frustrating year of uncertainty that has dragged by, and my feelings haven't changed. Sometimes I know that I'm going insane, especially when I don't hear from her for days, maybe a week, if I don't get an e-mail, if she doesn't return my e-mail. Firecrackers pop inside my head, and I go crazy when I imagine that her love is moving away from me, racing in a new direction, while mine remains in place, like a stone that is forever a part of the Roman Colos seum.

Nicole asks, “Sweetie? Be my coffee and wake me up.”

I know what she's asking, can tell by the wanting sound in her voice.

I go toward the bed, step over my stone-washed dungarees, her velvety thong underwear, Lycra top, stylish high-heeled boots with an animal print, shoes she no doubt paid too much for, other things taken off in a heated moment. I move her empty wine glass away from the edge of the pine nightstand, crawl under the blue and beige covers, move my cool body against her warm flesh, my soul asking hers to desire me in the same way I hunger for her.

The pinkness of her tongue reaches for the pinkness of mine. My morning breath mixes with the tart taste on her tongue. Her hand comes to my face, rubs my flesh up to my short twisted mane. Hair in a style similar to hers. My attempt to become like the creature I see as so perfect. When she changes, I try and change along with her.

She kisses me and I forget the rest of the world. Her lips touch mine and all that matters is Nicole.

My wide hands touch her small breasts. I lick her nipples. Nicole shivers, moves her backside against my groin. So electric. So intense. My finger goes under the cover, eases inside her wetness, curls in a come-here motion, and when she's ready, it vibrates against her nerves in the sweetest rhythm, like David Benoit playing “Linus and Lucy” on his baby grand piano, her moans the song I love to hear.

My rhythm is corrupted when I wonder how she responds when her other lover touches her. If that same crooked smile covers her lips as she coos, if that devious expression comes across her face then.

In a lousy French accent she begs me,
“Mange moi.”

“Nope.”

“Mange moi, mange moi, mange moi.
She misses your face.”

Love it when she wants me like that. Love her to beg. Her begging pumps my ego up ten notches.

I put my hand before her open legs, light-brown legs that open like a book she wants me to read. I take the long route: kiss her feet, savor each toe and feel the arch rise in her back, enjoy her calves, her thighs, get close to where her legs meet, to where her sun shines so warm it can tan my face. My skin grazing her flesh, my tongue lapping those thighs in a catlike rhythm, and she shudders. She glows. That makes me smile so wide it hurts.

My tongue snakes down her skin, glides over the silver ring in her navel. She opens her legs, spreads her wings, and her eight silver bracelets jingle as she pushes the top of my head down. I push her knees toward her shoulders, widen her, lick across her slivers of hair, taste that meaty part of her, write a soft message of always and forever on her fleshy folds, show her how much I love her nectar.

She woos, “I love, love, love the texture of your tongue, that makes me, that feels sooooo—”

She spasms, eyes open wide then tighten and remain closed. Her hips move with fire.

Her hand palms and rubs the top of my head; she pushes her hips toward me, plays in my hair.

She catches her breath, swallows. “I should call her Bermuda.”

“Why?”

“Because you stay down in the triangle so long, sometimes I think you're lost.”

We laugh some more and then she hums with the radio as I play in her love.

“What ...
ooooo
... in the hell....
damn, sweetie
... are you doing down there?”

“Working on a sequel to
War and Peace.
Want me to stop?”

“Do and I'll hurt you. You ... misspelled two words. Erase ‘em ... write 'em again.”

“What words were those?”

“Antidisestablishmentarianism and psychoalpha discobetabioaquadoloop.”

My flesh touches a special spot and she curses, coos, jumps with pleasure.

Her eyes are on fire when she pushes herself up on the palms of her hands. Watches me and chews her bottom lip, lets out low, intense growls: “That's my spot damn that's my spot my spot my spot.”

I know she lets somebody else do the same thing. Another mouth, another tongue, another set of teeth. She's never said, but I know. So many nights I've imagined them together. I'll make her forget that motherfucker. I'll get her back to me, one way or another. She belongs with me. I work harder at loving her, work longer, and want to be better, always have to be better, want to make her forget any other tongue but the one she's feeling now.