I Wish I Had a Red Dress (17 page)

DINNER AT DOT’S IS
always buffet, so we served ourselves and settled in a quiet corner with two steaming plates of the best soul food for two hundred miles and two tall, red plastic glasses of sweet tea with plenty of ice. I’m still old-school enough to like the fact that the aesthetic in soul food restaurants never changes. Red plastic glasses are as necessary as macaroni and cheese if you’re committed to
keeping it real.

Nate took a swallow of his iced tea and smiled across the table. I smiled back.

“Lynette Smitherman wanted me to tell you she’s very sorry for what happened the other night and she looks forward to meeting you under less stressful circumstances.”

“No apologies necessary,” he said, buttering a golden corn muffin. “If you can’t fling things around when your heart is
breaking, you probably don’t have much of a heart in the first place.”

“She’s volunteered to work on our film festival, so that’ll give her something else to focus on.” I took a bite of Dot’s special- recipe candied yams dripping in butter and brown sugar and topped with a layer of tiny, lightly browned marshmallows. If sweets get you high, you would overdose at Dot’s. I promised myself to walk twice my usual miles and took another bite.

“What film festival?”

“At The Circus,” I said, realizing I hadn’t told him about it yet. “We’re having a film series in February. I’ve been using contemporary films as a starting point for some of our discussions and everybody really likes it. The festival will give us a chance to include more people in the conversation and maybe even raise a little money.”

“How much are you charging?”

“Two dollars a show, five dollars for a weekend pass.”

Nate was intrigued. “What kind of films are you showing?”

“For us, by us,”
I said, quoting Tee. “Black films featuring black actresses.”

“Let me guess who,” he said.

“Okay.” I was curious about who he’d pick.

“Let’s see. They have to be strong, I know that. . . .” He frowned slightly, thinking. “Angela Bassett?”

I shook my head and he looked surprised. “How are you going to do strong women without Angela Bassett?”

“She almost made the cut,” I said, “but we’ve shown
Waiting to Exhale
so much we’re going to give it a rest, and
What’s Love Got to Do with It?
isn’t a black movie.”

“What do you mean? There’s hardly any white folks in it at all until the end.”

“Tee’s criteria require a black director.”

“Who’s Tee?”

I smiled. “You haven’t met Tee yet. She works with me at The Circus and she’s having a run of great ideas. The anti-Super Bowl party was one, now this festival.”

“She’s the one who had the toy gun, right?”

I nodded. “She picked all the movies too. Got any more guesses?”

“I’d say Whoopi, but she hasn’t done a lot of movies that fit your guidelines either.” He shrugged. “I give up.”

I ticked them off quickly. “Halle Berry, Nia Long, Jada Pinkett Smith and Vivica A. Fox.”

Nate nodded slowly and grinned. “Well, that’s a bevy of beauties, all right. You shouldn’t have any trouble bringing the brothers out.”

Something in the way he said it kind of annoyed me. Sure, they’re all beautiful women, but the casual assumption that that’s the only reason men would come to see their work sort of pissed me off.

“The brothers won’t be a problem,” I said, adding some pepper sauce to my greens. “The festival’s for women only.”

His fork stopped halfway to his mouth with a load of baked chicken and dressing. “For women only?”

I nodded. “Most of our activities at The Circus are like that. It helps us keep our focus.”

He put down the fork. “I don’t get it. Guys can’t even be in the audience?”

“We always have discussions afterward,” I said. “That’s a big part of what we do and it usually gets down to some pretty personal stuff. Women tend to open up more when there are no men around.”

“But it’s a public event. What are you going to do if some guys decide to show up?”

I offered Tee’s argument. “How many guys do you know who are going to come to something billed as ‘for women only’?”

“That’s not the point, Joyce.”

His tone had changed completely. Plus, he called me by my name in much the same manner Ezra Busbee had—to remind me who was in charge. I sighed and took a long, cold swallow of my tea.

In the initial stages of any relationship, personal or professional, men and women trying to talk without offending each other is like walking blindfolded across the interstate. You might make it to the other side unscathed, but I wouldn’t bet on it. It’s not that anybody’s consciously doing anything wrong. It’s just that the changes any women’s movement worth its name should have produced never got beyond a few gatherings of radical feminists and some thoroughly cowed men whose connection to the rest of us remains tenuous at best. Since it’s in our real lives that any real changes have got to take place, we’re still at ground zero. And holding.

“What is the point,
Nate?
”

My tone should have alerted him to the possibility of dissent, but he plowed ahead.

“The point is, this festival sounds like a great idea, not just for women but for the guys I’m trying to work with at the school every day. I think you’re limiting its potential positive impact by arbitrarily excluding males.”

I raised my eyebrows. “We didn’t do it arbitrarily. We did it because men always change the focus of any discussion until it’s about them. How
they
feel. What
they
think. What
they
imagine the women in the room are thinking. I just don’t have any interest
in that anymore. No matter how much progress the girls make, the boys are stuck, always trying to be the center of the universe.”

I shrugged the idea off like it was too ridiculous to be considered. “Or they don’t care about anything except trying to sweet-talk some poor woman who’s trying to listen or they get nervous because it’s all too new and start being rowdy and disruptive because that’s what they know best.”

“I thought it was our job to teach them otherwise,” Nate rumbled.

“That’s
your
job,” I said. “I work with young women.”

“But what good does it do if the lessons only work when there’s not any guys around?” he said, sounding exasperated. “Don’t they have to be able to apply this new philosophy to the real world?”

Of course he was right, but I was too. We sat there for a minute pushing our food around and trying to find some common ground.

“It’s not my decision,” I said finally. “Tee’s in charge and then the group votes.”

He looked at me. “Is the vote final?”

“It is when they take it. So far, they’re still in the planning stages.”

“Then I need to make an appointment to talk to . . . Tee?”

She would have loved the idea of Nate asking for an appointment.
The West Wing
had nothing on The Sewing Circus!

“What do you want to talk with her about?”

He leaned across the table, wanting to convince me. “About another way of looking at this thing. About a way for me to bring some of my guys from the school over in a way that won’t disrupt anything.”

“I think she’s pretty much made up her mind about that.”

“Fifteen minutes is all I ask.”

I hesitated. It would be a great chance for Tee to practice her negotiating skills with somebody other than me, and if he could convince her, including the boys might make for some interesting discussions. Besides, it really isn’t my decision. It’s theirs.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll ask her.”

“Thank you!” He sat back, relieved, and grinned at me. “You make a brother work hard, you know that?”

I grinned back. We had gotten over our first real gender skirmish without charges of “male bashing” being bandied about and no personal animosity surfacing at crucial moments. That made me really happy.

“Didn’t your mama ever teach you the rhyme about that?”

He shook his big smooth head. “Not that I recall.”

“Man must work from sun to sun, but woman’s work is never done.”

That made him laugh out loud and throw up his hands. “You don’t ever quit, do you?”

“Nope,” I said. “But every now and then I take a night off, and you know what?”

His voice was a hopeful rumble. “What?”

“This is one of those nights.”

I KNOW THIS IS
a dream because I’m dancing. It’s a party. No. A nightclub. A Cuban nightclub? It’s a tiled balcony, I know that, and there’s surf crashing near enough to hear it. There’s music. Guitars. Other dancers are far enough away so that all I know of them is the echo of their laughter.

I am dancing with my Mitch and then Nate walks by and smiles, waves. I wave back and turn to Mitch, who is also waving.

“I like him,” Mitch says, swirling me around expertly as if in the afterlife he has suddenly become Gregory Hines.

And I say, “I like him too.”

And then Mitch leans over and kisses me. “I know, baby,” he says. “Don’t you think I already know?”

I woke up tasting the salt spray on my lips and listening for the sound of slow guitars.

I SAW NIKKI IN
town today. She hasn’t been around as much lately because her hours are still crazy at the club. The place seems to open early and close very late. She says they even have a lunch special. I wonder what it’s called:
burger and a booty?
I resisted the temptation to ask her if she’d seen Junior, but she must have read my mind because she volunteered it.

“If I tell you something, will you promise not to tell Tee?”

“No,” I said. That kind of preconfession bestowing of coconspirator status is always a trap. I never agree in advance to keep anybody’s secrets but my own.

Nikki looked surprised, then she grinned and shook her head. “You a trip, Miz J. You don’t never break. I bet somebody could wake you up in the middle of the night and you’d still be right on point.”

I laughed. “I don’t know about that. I’m just not very good at keeping secrets.” Especially from Tomika. The effort required was not only superhuman but doomed to failure. She always finds out.

“Okay, well, how about don’t tell her unless she ask you
specifically?
”

“What are you talking about?” These were kids’ games. If she was old enough to take her clothes off for a living, she was old enough to take responsibility for whatever she was so reluctant to confess.

She glanced over her shoulder like she half expected to see Tee walking into the drugstore aisle where we were standing surrounded by fingernail polish and eyelash curlers and a dusty display of old school supplies. “Junior came into the club.”

Her expression was a mixture of nervous triumph and cosmic confusion.

“When?”

“Two nights ago—but nothin’ happened. That’s what I’m tellin’ you. He sat up front, but he couldn’t do nothin’, he couldn’t say nothin’, unless he
paid.
He was just another customer.”

I wondered if that was really progress, but decided not to ask.

“Don’t you think that’s a trip?” Her smile was strained, waiting for my response. “Now he payin’ for what he used to get free!”

The bell dinged as the front door to the small store opened and Nikki glanced up nervously. She knew this wasn’t a positive thing, or she wouldn’t be so nervous. There was more to this story. All I had to do was wait for the other shoe to drop.

“Why didn’t you tell Tee?” I said.

She rolled her eyes. “Tee don’t wanna hear nothin’ ’bout Junior.”

“I think it’s dangerous,” I said. “You should tell them not to let him in if he comes again.”

She looked at me like I had taken leave of my senses. “As long as he a payin’ customer, I don’t get a vote on if he come in or not.”

“Tell them he’s harassing you.”

If she had any doubts about my sanity, that removed them. She sighed. “Half the girls in there being harassed by somebody.”

I wanted to tell her something encouraging; something wise and practical that would help her move from this phase to the next one with a minimum of risk, but nothing came to me, so I changed the subject.

“Are you going to be able to come to the festival?” I said. “You know we’re going to do it up right.”

“I gotta work,” she said.

“Come late,” I said. “Knowing how much Tee likes to talk about movies, we’ll probably go till midnight.”

“Good thing you not showin’ Denzel,” she said. “You’d be there all weekend.”

We were both relieved to share the laugh.

“Well, I gotta go,” she said.

I hugged her, and when she stepped away, she looked around one more time to make sure the coast was still clear and then lowered her voice.

“You know what’s really weird?” she said, as if degrees of weirdness had been the topic under discussion.

“What?”

“Sometime, not all the time, but sometime, I still miss him.”

“Junior?”

She nodded. “I know it’s messed up, but that’s the truth. We’re supposed to tell the truth, right?”

Was that the sound of the other shoe hitting the floor?

“Right,” I said. “But what do you miss?”

She shrugged helplessly. “That’s the problem. I don’t know! We just been together so long, you know? He the only man I ever had and it’s like . . . it’s like that oldies tune my mama play all the time.”

“Which one?”

“I may not be the one you want, but I’m sho’ nuff the one you need.”

Jasmine was obviously still a Smokey Robinson fan. I looked at her daughter standing there searching for answers to her problems in the lyrics of old Motown tunes and wondered if I could do better. If she was simply missing Junior sexually, maybe a self-pleasuring ritual or two would be helpful. But if his absence was creating an emotional need too, more serious deprogramming was in order, and the cosmetics aisle was probably not the best place to do it.

“Nik,” I said, “remember how hard it was for you to stop smoking?”

She nodded, the memory of nicotine patches and diversionary lemon drops fresh in her mind from her battle to quit last year.

“And remember how your body was telling you that you wanted cigarettes even though your brain knew they were killing you?”

“You sayin’ I’m addicted to Junior?”

“Doesn’t it feel kind of like that?”

She thought about it for a minute. “Sorta.” She shook her head, looked around at the aisles full of remedies, pills, potions
and lotions to cure what ailed you. “Think they got an anti-Junior patch up in here somewhere?”

I hugged her again. “Come by and talk to me next time you get a day off.”

“It’s a deal,” she said, with her first genuine smile of the day.

I could tell she was relieved to be able to confess her ambivalence. I hadn’t promised, but I don’t think I’ll mention it to Tee right away. Their living arrangement will help make Nik stronger, but that was only going to happen if their tenuous partnership could hold. Any sign of Junior on the horizon was not going to be a step in the right direction.