Cheaters (26 page)

“Not as erotic as yours.”

She sipped, then casually gazed into my eyes.

Seconds passed before I moved my eyes from her charm.

She laughed.

I smiled. Felt like a silly teenager.

She said, “Shy?”

“Not really. Just being cautious.”

“Don’t worry.” Again she sipped, gazed at me. This time I didn’t turn away. My eyes asked her to tell me what was on her mind. Asked her to read and reject what was on mine. She said, “Darnell, I’ve had you on my mind a lot. Too much.”

“Same here.”

“Same there? So, you’ve had
you
on your mind too?”

I laughed. “You’re so silly.”

“When I need to be. I was kissing Bobby last night, and

your face popped up in my head. I almost called him your name. It was strange as hell. I’ve known him for months, but all of a sudden I blanked out and couldn’t remember who he was.”

“I was with my wife.” I paused. “I imagined she was you.”

A long pause. Tammy shifted like she was very uncomfortable. Finally she said, “Well, I guess that’s checkmate.”

She moved her eyes away.

“Darnell, if you weren’t married…” Her words trailed off.

“If I wasn’t married and you weren’t seeing Bobby, right?”

“No.” Her hand drifted across the table and touched mine, rubbed like she was making a wish, her long fingers moving back and forth across my palm. “Just if you weren’t married.”

“If I wasn’t married,” I started as I held her hand, absorbed the softness in her damp palm, imagined each of her fingers inside my mouth, “I’d take that offer.”

“Even if I was seeing Bobby?”

“Even if you were seeing Bobby.”

“Then it’s a good thing you have a wife.”

“Yeah, it’s a good thing.”

She took her flesh back. Maybe I let it go. Don’t know. Tammy sipped, put her questioning eyes back on mine, held her lips to the molds of her cup. Her scrutiny made me wish this was years ago. I watched the way her puffy lips moved, how they opened and closed, then caressed the edges of the cup, saw how the lines of contemplation flowered in her wheat complexion whenever she stopped laughing and had a serious moment. She gazed at me and those lines went away, made her seem five years younger, like a naive college graduate.

She said, “Still think I’m fantastic?”

“Yeah. I do.”

She made a sound that could’ve been a laugh.

I asked, “What was that all about?”

“You tell me my story is sensual. Chanté read part of it and called me a freak. Karen thought I needed to address the masturbation issue for women too.”

“What masturbation issue?”

“About how it’s taboo, and how women aren’t brought up and taught to enjoy sex, that women shouldn’t be afraid

to touch their own bodies, and women don’t need men to be validated. She brought up the issue of how some cultures still practice clitoridectomy, you know, removal of a woman’s clitoris and labia—”

“I get the point.”

“Guess I went too far that time.”

“Well, the clitori-whatchamacallit is a bit graphic.”

She raised a brow. “And masturbation isn’t?”

I shrugged. “Not at all.”

“Karen wanted me to add a one-woman Water Pik sex scene to my play. That’d get me kicked out of the theatre. But then again, Water Pik sales might shoot through the roof.”

As I laughed, I tried to put Dawn’s face on Tammy’s body. Anything to remove the crime of having an intimate conversation.

Her beeper went off. Her electronic leash let her know, let me know, that she was being summoned, being missed by somebody, somewhere else. It reminded me of the same reality in my life.

I asked, “That your boyfriend?”

“Told you, I don’t have a boyfriend. I’m too old for that.”

“That was Bobby?”

Her voiced rang with disheartenment. “Yeah.”

“You have to go?”

She tapped her watch, spoke firmly. “And so do you.”

“Yeah.”

We were both parked on Hollywood Boulevard. Two minutes later we were saying good-bye at her car; I gave her a hug.

I told her, “What I feel for you isn’t right.”

“Who you telling. I think about you all day, Darnell. I’ll have you on my mind the rest of the night.”

“While you’re with Bobby?”

Instead of answering, she kissed me. Not a tongue kiss, just leaned in and pressed her lips up against mine for a moment. She moaned; so did I. Neither one of us closed our eyes. I think closing our eyes would’ve been too symbolic for both of us.

I told her, “Something has happened since I met you.”

“Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want to get too deep.”

“You kiss me, then say you don’t want to get deep?”

“I didn’t
kiss
you.”

“What was that?”

“That was a stage kiss.”

“A stage kiss?”

“Right.”

“What’s the difference between a stage kiss and a real kiss?”

Her tongue slid in and out of her mouth, made circles in the air, tantalized and tortured the soft winds, teasing me.

She told me, “Do the same. Come closer. Do it with me.”

I stood inches from her face. Mimicked her movements.

She sighed, winked, then whispered, “Now, if I had kissed you for real, that’s what it would’ve been like.”

“What happens if I kiss you for real?”

“You turn into a frog.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

If you took away the urine stench of the gritty sidewalk, the rush of traffic blaring by on Hollywood Boulevard, the teenagers who were ready to exchange sex for their next meal, the homeless who kept moseying by like tattered zombies, it was the ideal moment to kiss.

The tingling, electrical sensation that was ruling my insides made me move toward her in a romantic way.

Tammy backed away, not right away, and not easily. Her face glowed with pain from resistance, breathing roughened, came in short bursts, like that subtle move had taken all of her energy.

I stopped my pursuit, adjusted my clothes, readjusted my mind, let my breathing slow. In a soft tone I said, “Let me know how far to let this go.”

Her eyes went to the pavement. “I’m over here trying not to debauch my own morals, so I can’t be strong for you, Darnell.”

I nodded. What she was telling me was that she was feeling weak herself. Control was close to being lost. That she needed me to keep us from living in the wrong.

She sighed, then confessed, “I told my momma about you.”

“Sounds like you’re the one getting deep this time.”

She massaged her right hand with her left. It made me feel good to know that I wasn’t the only one who felt jittery.

She tilted her head, twisted her dark lips, licked them top and bottom. “I actually told her that I’d met somebody nice, but I didn’t tell her you were married.”

“What did she say?”

“She wanted to know if you were a white man.”

She laughed.

I smiled.

She sounded nervous as she added, “If I drive out to Needles, since you really want to know who I am, I might take you. That’s if you can get away for a day. It’s a four-hour drive one-way.”

“Thought you grew up in Laughlin?”

“Outside of Laughlin. In Needles. The middle of nowhere. It’s the Arkansas of the desert. That’s what my momma says. I haven’t been out there in almost two years.”

“Why haven’t you been back home?”

She answered, forthright, “A woman ain’t supposed to look back when she’s running. Looking back slows a sister down.”

I left that at that.

She slid into her car, blended with the bright lights of the big city, and headed up Highland. I followed her up the 101 as far as Lankersheim, took the 134 freeway to the 210, licked away the lipstick she had left behind, zipped through Pasadena feeling guilty, merged with 57 and found my way to the 60.

For the first time in my life I wondered if I’d become rigid in my life. Is that what my marriage had done? Had I given up my right to exhilaration and freedom?

Or was I becoming as primal as the fools I hung out with?

An hour had passed. Once again I reached my hidden, sterile community that had one entrance, one exit. Whenever I came home I felt like Batman slipping away from the real world back inside the Batcave.

Batman. A man with two faces.

Longing made me pull over near the darkness and quiet of Lemon Creek Bicentennial Park. I pulled out my cellular phone, dialed Tammy’s number.

She didn’t answer. Inside, I felt some unwarranted heat.

Then I was back home, on the corner of Avenida Grulla and Avenida Deseo, staring at me and Dawn’s two-story home with the tile roof and the perfectly manicured yard. At all the other two-story homes that maintained the same facade of happiness. The only way to know the truth of every household would be to go inside. But, like me, everyone kept their doors closed.

A click of my remote and my garage door whirred open, shattered silence, and announced that I had come back. I sat in the garage for five minutes wiping away anything that was left on my lips. I crept out and stood near the washer and dryer.

Tired. Sleepy. Body heavier than a boulder.

I touched the hood of Dawn’s car. Warm.

The house alarm shrieked the moment the door opened; it took me a good five seconds to shut the wailing off. I’d made it deep into the hallway before I heard the television in the bedroom turn off. Sounded like soap operas. Dawn recorded those in the daytime, then played catch-up with that fake world at night.

Our bedroom door was closed. I turned the knob. Locked. Called her name. No answer. Tapped on the door. Covers rustled, but not a word.

I said, “What you think I’m going to do, rape you?”

No answer.

I wouldn’t be surprised if she had a chair wedged against the doorknob to prove a point.

That was fine by me. I didn’t want to see her anyway. Not right now. To tell the truth, I didn’t want to see anybody. I wanted to cover up all the mirrors in the hallway because I didn’t want to see myself for fear that I might not recognize me.

A moment later I was in our shared office, reading the last pages I had written on my novel, then switching sentiments and gazing at some of my professional books:
Civil Procedure Before Trial, Black’s Law Dictionary, Community Property in California.
The title of the last one hit me hard, jarred me out of my mishmash of thoughts, pulled

me away from my self-imposed fantasy. That fantasy was both writing, being what I desired, and wishing that I was desired by a wannabe star, someone I had no business yearning for from the first moment our eyes touched.

If that was what bad communication at home drove a person to do, then I was facing the on-ramp to the road of disaster.

Community property. That book was glowing, pulsating, humming.

The toilet in the master bedroom flushed.

I called Dawn’s name. No reply.

I’d done divorces for others, had to listen to them swear and squabble over nickel-and-dime material things, had witnessed them damning each other to eternity over community property.

I went into the guest room, undressed like a stranger inside my own house, and crawled into a cold bed.

I worked a half day on Friday because I had to go to the dentist for a checkup and to get my pearly whites cleaned, waxed, and shined. Since my appointment was out east in Ontario, I got my nails and toes hooked up, then decided to call Karen and leave her a message before I headed back home. I wanted somebody to hang out with in the thick of tonight. Tammy would be busy doing her rehearsal thing, so I figured that me and the militant could play Dynamic Duo. Karen surprised me by answering her phone. I thought she’d be at work until the DMV closed down.

I chimed, “Miss you, too. I was worried.”

“About what?”

I’d been scared for her ever since I witnessed all of that loot she had stashed in the trunk of her car. “It’s the

mother hen in me. I haven’t seen you or Tammy, and I get worried when we’re not face-to-face.”

“Worried or lonely?”

I laughed. “Both.”

She laughed but sounded distraught. “I really want to talk to you about something.”

“I’m on the way over.”

A coldness ran through me. That feeling a person gets when something’s not right was all over my body.

Karen lived about twenty-five minutes away, off the 60 at the Blaine/3rd Street exit, the same freeway off-ramp where I’d met Stephan Mitchell. The Timbers were the two-story wood and stucco apartments that she’d been cooped up in for the last four years. The place was okay, I guess, but I wanted Karen to do better.

I walked in her first-floor crib, hugged her. She had on her ripped jeans and an orange sports bra. A Glen Ellen winery baseball cap was backward on her head, covering her new hairstyle.

I said, “You permed your hair?”

“Yep. I took off work today and bowed down to the chemicals. I’m conforming to the Anglo standards of beauty.”

“And you put it in spirals?”

“Yeah.”

“Damn. Let me see, let me see. Why are you hiding your do?”

She twisted her lips. “‘Cause I don’t care for it. I should be wearing natural locks like Cassandra Wilson, or have my do did like Lauryn Hill, instead of this Barbie doll looking mess.”

She eased her cap off. Even though it reminded me of the good ship Lollypop, her hair was the boss. Looked good on her itty-bitty head and cute shape’. And I knew that her do had to cost a pretty penny to get hooked up.

I picked up on the marijuana odor that permeated everything she owned, smiled my best smile, and asked, “You been getting high?”

“Don’t start with your bitchcraft as soon as you come in the door. Bring me some positivity for a change.”

I said, “I’m just asking. What’s that smell?”

“Herbal incense.”

I sniffed again. “What kind?”

“A scent of the sixties called patchouli. It awakes the desire for peace and love. With the kind of corruption that’s going down, with it being open season on African American women that’s what the world needs.”

The way she said that jarred me. “What’s wrong?”