Endless Summer Nights (14 page)

“I wanted to be heard,” he said suddenly. “I wanted people to hear me.”

I nodded.

“So many good people came before me, they never had a chance to be heard. Better than I could ever be and they couldn’t get in the door. If they did, no one wanted to listen to what they wanted to play,” he said. “I didn’t want that to be me.”

“I understand,” I said.

“No, you don’t. It was my choice. But I made it selfishly.”

I wanted to tell Marlo that he didn’t need to explain himself to me. That he didn’t need to say anything. But I had a feeling he wasn’t saying his words to me or for me.

“I don’t apologize for my decisions,” he added. “I had some good times. Even with that bumping and grinding.” We laughed. “It made a lot of people happy. Got me and Kimya out of Detroit.” Marlo held his hands up at the map of mansions and manicured lawns dotting the land behind us and it took me back to sitting on the beach that day with my father. “Some people play ball to get here. Rap their way here. Hustle their way here. I used what I had. I don’t apologize. One day, I’ll be able to do what I want to do—on my terms.”

We walked on, the space between us dissipating. Strangers pulled in from two feet to one foot to our shoulders touching innocently to escape the freeze in the wind.

I told him about my music, my songs, how I started in the music industry. That internship I got with a label right out of college. How I thought that as soon as I got into the studio someone would hear my lyrics and buy in to my vision. But that didn’t happen. And I gave up so easily. Moved from job to job, getting further away from what I wanted to do at every turn. And then there was Kimya.

“So, what’s that like?” Marlo asked with a knowing tap on my elbow.

“You want the real version or the made-for-television version?” I asked boldly.

“I don’t think either could be very merciful,” Marlo said. “‘Duck and hide’—that’s usually the best laid plan when Kimya’s in charge. She’s always been that way. Broke or bourgeois, she knows how to push every button.”

“Very true,” I agreed.

“But she’s delicate, too,” Marlo said. “And sensitive. Sometimes I think she may be a little too weak for this industry. I can take my hits and bruises. I came out first. I know you can’t stay on top forever. But that spotlight is all my sister knows. I’m afraid of what she’ll do to keep it.”

After walking a little while longer and telling Marlo about my reason for coming to the Hamptons, we acknowledged that we were losing control of our extremities by the second and raced back to the house. When we got into the door we were so delirious from the cold we fell into each other’s arms to find immediate warmth.

Marlo thoughtfully massaged the chill from my upper arms in friendly rubs. I shuddered and clenched my arms around his waist.

“Warm yet?” he asked innocently.

“Almost!” My teeth chattered and I wondered how I’d held out in the chilly weather for so long.

“I’m sorry I let you get so cold,” he said sympathetically. “I just needed to get out of here for a second.” He looked into my eyes and we stayed stuck there with his hands on my shoulders and my arms wrapped around his waist. And then the friendly touch from people who were just strangers became something more unexpected and intimate.

I looked away. Stepped back. Let my hands fall to my sides.

We both cleared our thoughts rather loudly, as if we’d done something wrong and had gotten caught in the act.

“Tea,” Marlo said. “We need tea.”

He turned to walk toward the kitchen.

I looked around at the dark and quiet living room that had been sleeping quarters the night before.

“Where is everyone?” I asked, following behind Marlo.

“They went back to the city. I don’t think they could take the heat.”

“Really? Because of me?”

“Yeah.” Marlo headed to the stove.

“Again, I apologize. I don’t know what got into me.”

“It wasn’t just you. I was in a funk. I was happy they left.”

“What about that girl who was always hanging on to you? You can’t be happy she left,” I joked, but it came out sounding as though I was fishing for information. Maybe I was.

“Monique? Are you kidding?” Marlo laughed loud enough to wake Leticia. “She has four kids and a crazy ex-husband. I think we both know nothing’s happening there.”

“But I’m sure the ladies still love you. Must have one in every city,” I said, watching the muscles move in his back as he worked the faucet.

“Nah. Never been my thing,” he said flatly.

“Umm...you forget there are pictures and epic stories documenting your...shall we say, tour of lady loves,” I pointed out.

“That’s all show for the cameras.” Marlo put the kettle on the stove and turned on the gas. “You know that. I’ve had my share, but this industry is lonely. Especially for a successful man. Once you get past the gold diggers and undercover gold diggers with degrees, you realize there aren’t many people you can invite in. Everybody wants something.”

“So, you’re telling me you’re not dating anyone?” I asked, frowning suspiciously.

“I haven’t been on a date in over a year. And before that, there was nothing significant. I think the highlight of my dating was catching a woman I thought I loved buying a positive home pregnancy test online. After that, I threw in the cards. Love is too hard on a brother. Besides, any woman who gets close to me will have to get past my jealous, crazy sister.” Marlo turned to the cabinet beside the stove and started mumbling something about tea. “I know there’s some blueberry in here...blueberry and Ceylon chamomile.”

“What are you over there talking about?” I got up on a stool at the breakfast bar.

“Making tea,” Marlo said.

“I know. I mean like... You’re making tea?” I laughed. “And the gumbo last night. It was great and everything, but how do you know how to make that? It’s not the manliest thing you could be doing. Just saying, you were on the cover of
Maxim
in your boxers. Searching for blueberry tea isn’t what you would expect from someone willing to show his undies to the entire world. Great picture, by the way.”

“I’m a big brother. My mother worked two jobs trying to stay off welfare while I was at home watching Kimya. I had to learn my way around the kitchen.” Marlo found the blueberry tea just as the water started boiling in the kettle on the stove.

“That’s very surprising. I never would’ve guessed that about you.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.” Marlo turned away from the stove with two cups of steaming tea in his hands. He walked to the breakfast bar and handed me one.

“Yes—there is a lot I don’t know. Like why you’re being so nice to me,” I said randomly. “I’ve been nothing short of horrible the whole time we’ve been here. Why are you being so nice?”

“Good question. I think it may be because I don’t get told ‘no’ often. Not from anyone in my circle. Definitely not from someone’s assistant. Most people give me whatever I want. You’re the first in a long time, besides my sister, to tell me ‘no’ to anything. And, yes, you were horrible. But, I guess I liked it.” He smiled at me.

“So, being horrible is all I need to do for you to remember my name?” I asked, setting the cup down on the counter for the tea to cool. “Five years I’ve been working for Kimya and we’ve never had a conversation.”

He laughed and stepped back to give me a once-over. “It’s nice to meet you now. And I like what I see.”

I sucked in my gut and smiled my best smile for as long as I could and after a second I realized that Marlo had already stopped looking at my body and he was looking right into my eyes again. I didn’t look away that time. “Wow,” Marlo said finally, averting his eyes.

“What?”

“Nothing.” He turned away and I could feel his nervousness. He went back to the cabinet. “I was just thinking—you want some honey for your tea?”

“No,” I said. “I like my tea raw.”

He looked back at me. “Me, too.”

* * *

Night outside on Long Island grew deep black. But inside that house it was daytime wherever Marlo and I went. Laughing and sipping blueberry tea, we went from the kitchen to the living room. We talked about everything. My favorite cheese. His favorite rappers. My least favorite Kimya song. His least favorite borough. My worst date. His worst nightmare. And then we talked about our dreams. How we both wanted to make great music that touched people. That explained a love we knew was out there, but that, ironically enough, neither of us had found. And for so many reasons. Then came the stories of heartbreak. Falling in love and out of love with so many things. People. Places. Family. Dreams. I wanted to tell him about my father, I felt that I should, but I wasn’t ready. I kept thinking it would be too much. I didn’t want to cry in front of him. Burst out in tears as if my father had just died yesterday. Still, after just hours together, I felt that I could go there with Marlo. I just wouldn’t.

A little past 3:00 a.m. and we were up in his room, me sitting on the bed playing my guitar and him on the floor singing. He sang every song I knew how to play and sometimes I just played my heart and he improvised. It felt so old in an interesting way. As if we’d been going to that beach house together and singing that way for a long time. Just making music together. Holding the tune as Marlo sang so tenderly and reverently, I pretended that history in my head was ours.

Then something happened.

“That’s not the right chord,” Marlo said, getting up as I tried to open Al Green’s “Simply Beautiful.”

“Yes, it is,” I said, but what I heard was in contrast with my proclamation.

“Something’s wrong. I don’t think you’re muting the top E string.”

“I’m doing it right.” I started playing again as he sat on the bed behind me.

“Sunny, put your middle finger on the D string.” He wrapped his arms around my body to place his hands over my hands in position on the guitar.

We began again together. And that time it was perfect.

“That’s it,” Marlo coached, and I played the opening again on my own. “You make me proud,” he joked.

I laughed and turned to him. And just when I was about to say something to ease the magnetic tension I was feeling with his arms around me, he kissed me on the cheek.

Still in position on the guitar and in his arms, I spun my head back around so quickly to look away from Marlo and his lips. Had I just imagined that?

“What was that?” I asked.

“It was what I was feeling,” Marlo answered quickly. “Sunny...what are you feeling?”

The night, the place, the time, the beautiful man sitting behind me, so many things... And what was I feeling?

My first instinct was to clench up, to move away and say we needed to stop, cease and desist and go our separate ways. Who did he think I was? Some groupie who’d sleep with him because he sounded so good singing Al Green in my ear?

But my second instinct, the one that would prove more tumultuous than the first, was open. Open like the beach at sunset, a city street after a snowstorm, a balloon slipped from some little girl’s fingers. Open in so many ways. And I wanted to be encountered, touched and set free, all at the same time. And all by that man behind me. “What the hell!” I cursed.

I gave the guitar a resting spot on the floor and stood in front of Marlo with my arms at my sides, my head cocked to the side, trying to drink all of him in through a haze of sleepiness and pure lust released. Whatever was about to happen, I wanted it to be known to me that this was my decision. If it went nowhere or everywhere, it was my decision. I was making it.

I pulled my shirt off, threw it to wherever and bent down to kiss Marlo, who was still seated on the bed.

But he stopped me. “No. Wait.” He gently pushed my chin up, so I’d be standing erect again. “I want to see you.”

Arms back at my sides, I looked at him looking at me as though I was a new thing. All of the breasts on all of the women he’d seen all around the world, and staring at my torso, I could read the ideas of what to do next in a furious storm in his mind. I was nude and nude. Bare to his desires.

Marlo wrapped his hands around my waist; they were big and strong, and made my waist seem like something precious.

He closed his eyes and shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what was happening.

I wrapped my hand around the back of his head and played with his hair and just as I was about to try to kiss him again, he pulled me to his mouth and started kissing my belly button like a man intent to worship. This spot wasn’t commonly erogenous for me, but something in his lick made me yield to him, so I found my body leaning into him, leaning for him, seeking more from his lips and tongue all over me.

His hands went to my breasts and the touch was a welcome distraction from the chill in the room.

He looked up at me from my belly button, through the chasm between my breasts with eyes of contemplation. We locked into each other’s eyes, his hands on my breasts, mine playing in his hair, our bodies leaning in.

“Is this what you want to feel?” Marlo asked so directly I couldn’t look away or think about my answer.

“Yes.”

Marlo’s hands left my breasts and moved to undo my waist-tied skirt as he kept watch on my eyes. He moved with care that still managed to be spontaneous and raw.

Soon, my skirt was on the floor, my cotton panties were straddling my ankles and Marlo’s tongue had moved from my navel to my thighs, to the inside of my thighs. To that, I cooed or purred loudly. And something lifted me up onto the bed and then onto my back. I opened my eyes to the ceiling, and as Marlo worked I felt as if I was drunk or high and kept reminding myself that I was in my right mind. I heard echos of Antha and Candice and Willow and Leticia talking about this man that other night at No. 8. Their anthropological rapping about his beauty from head to toe. And there he was with me.

Marlo announced that he was done but not finished and stood up on the bed to pull down his pants.

Looking at him nude, I considered that I needed to forget everything I thought I knew about sex and learn new possibilities in his body. Every rumor anyone had ever said about what was in his pants was true.