I Wish I Had a Red Dress (6 page)

“DID YOU KNOW I
was named after a poet?” Nikki Solomon said as soon as I walked into The Circus the next morning. Tomika had opened up early and Mavis was watching a video of
The Lion King
in the community room until her friends arrived, which on Saturday, was usually about noon. When she saw me, she waved and pointed enthusiastically at the TV screen.

“Nala!” She smiled, her pleasure in the big-eyed female cub undiminished after more viewings than she or I could count. I waved back and threw her a kiss.

“Don’t change the subject!” Tee said while I hung up my coat. “We ain’t talkin’ ’bout no poetry.”

Nikki rolled her eyes and frowned. Tall and voluptuous with dark velvety skin and big smoky eyes, she was widely acknowledged
to be the prettiest girl in Lake County, but this morning she looked edgy and tired.

“Ask her about her new job, Miz J.” Tee sounded a little edgy herself.

“Can you just chill for a second”—Nikki looked annoyed— “and let me tell her my own news in my own way?”

That’s not a good sign,
I thought. “In my own way” means putting the best face on something that is probably a very bad move.

Nik’s mother went to high school with me. Jasmine was a beautiful girl who grew up thinking that was all she needed to be. She moved to Detroit after we graduated and married a man who agreed with her, had Nikki and started eating. She gained a hundred pounds in one year, and her husband, taking that to mean their contract was null and void, divorced her, kissed his daughter good-bye and headed for the West Coast, leaving no forwarding address. Jasmine packed up, skipped out on her last month’s rent and moved back here.

Nikki inherited her mother’s good looks, and by the time she hit puberty, she was a real beauty. When Junior Lattimore spotted her in his sister’s gym class, he demanded and got an introduction, swept her off her fourteen-year-old feet with his eighteen-and-a-half-year-old thuggish charm and the rest is history.

I tried to get the conversation back on a positive note.

“You found a job?” I knew she had been looking, but there aren’t many jobs around for nineteen-year-old women with limited literacy and only the most cursory understanding of basic job skills. “Where?”

Nikki looked uncomfortable. She twisted the poetry book miserably in her hands, its diversionary potential useless in the
face of Tomika’s relentless demand for the truth—
the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

“At that new place out by the interstate.”

Tomika snorted rudely. The two of them had grown up together and they fought like friends but forgave like family.

“Which one?” I tried to picture which of the fast-food emporiums had decided to unleash the undeniably high-strung Nikki on their unsuspecting customers.

She didn’t answer right away, casting one last look at Tomika, who rejected the unspoken plea for a little slack.

“Don’t be lookin’ at me all pitiful,” Tee said. “You took the job, so
represent.
”

“It’s a club,” Nik said carefully.

“A nightclub?”

“Sort of, but it’s open in the daytime, so I won’t always have to be workin’ late.”

She offered this last with a hopeful look and I smiled encouragingly. “That’s good, right?”

“Go on!” said Tomika.

“Go on
what?
” Nikki snapped at her. “I’m not talkin’ fast enough for you?”

“You’re not talkin’ straight enough for me, how’s that?”

“Maybe I should go out and come in again,” I said.

“You ain’t gotta do all that,” Nikki said. “Tee just mad ’cause she don’t think I should be dancin’ and I don’t see nothin’ wrong with it, and besides,
it ain’t her decision to make.
”

“Dancing?”

“
Strippin’,
Miz J. She scared to say it, but that’s what she gettin’ ready to do for a livin’. Let these niggas watch her take her clothes off!”

“At least I’m gettin’ paid for it!”

Tomika just looked at her. “I wouldn’t be braggin’ about no shit like that if I were you.”

“But you
ain’t
me, okay?”

“Hold it,” I said, more sharply than I meant to. I turned to Nikki. “You’re working at a strip club?”

“Yes, but it’s strictly legit! They even got dressin’ rooms and a bouncer.”

A bouncer?

“And ain’t nobody sellin’ no drugs up in there either.”

I wanted to say,
Girl, where is that community college application I gave you? Have you filled it out yet?
But I made myself ask the only relevant question first. “Do you want my opinion?”

She hesitated. “Will you be mad if I say no?”

I shook my head.

“Then
no!
”

“All right then,” I said. “Good luck and be careful.”

Tee looked at me like I had lost my mind, but I try to be real clear with myself and with them about this whole advice thing. I only give it when they want to hear it. Sometimes, it’s hard for me to watch the things they do and not offer an opinion, but they’re not children. I figure everybody has the right to figure out how they’re going to pay their own rent.

“That’s it?” Tomika sounded incredulous. “’Good luck and be careful’?”

“What would you suggest?”

“Tell her what you think!”

“What’s the difference between that and giving advice?”

She looked completely exasperated with me. “Givin’ advice is tellin’ people what to do. Sayin’ what you think is more of a
this is how I see it
kinda thing.”

Nikki was watching us with interest, glad the focus was off of her, even temporarily.

“Show me,” I said.

Tee looked at me, then turned to Nikki and flipped her braids over her shoulder. “Okay, here’s the advice.
Quit!
Go tell them you quit and don’t do no more stupid shit like that as long as you live!” She took a deep breath. “But here’s what I think.” Her voice was calm. “I think you deserve better than that, Nik. I really do. That’s why you need to quit. Not because it’s dangerous or crazy or nothin’ else except for the fact that you
better than that.
” She leaned over and hugged Nikki, who hugged her back, hard, then stepped away quickly and left the room without a word.

Neither one of us spoke for a minute and then I picked up the poetry book that had been left behind.

“Nikki Giovanni,” I said, remembering when I gave this book to Jasmine back when we were both in high school, amazed she still had it and even more amazed it had taken her almost twenty years to share it with her daughter. “That’s the poet she’s named after.”

Tomika, at the window, didn’t say anything. She was watching Nik get into her car and drive off toward the danger just like they always do in the horror movies; gripping the wheel, gritting her teeth and swearing she doesn’t believe in ghosts.

EVERYTHING WAS IN PLACE
for the anti-Super Bowl party tomorrow. All I had to do now was drop off the keys I’d promised Nate and do my grocery shopping. Otherwise, dinner was looking like another round of leftovers and that wasn’t going to get it.

I was looking forward to a night to myself. It was my intention to take a long hot bath, make a fire and see how much of
Booty Call
I could get through before I fell asleep. I’ve been trying to keep up with as many of the young actors as I can. My current interest was Vivica A. Fox. I admired her work in
Why Do Fools Fall in Love?,
especially her character’s vulnerability even as the woman’s life added harder and harder layers.

I liked her even more in
Set It Off,
especially when she gets angry at the timid girl in the gang after their first successful
bank robbery. She denies her a share of the money but then comes back to apologize, saying “it’s not you I’m mad at” with the perfect blend of rage and resignation.

I liked her in
Independence Day
too, and appreciated the dignity she maintained even when they made her do a scene backstage at the strip joint with her incredible body fully on display. So when I heard she had made a movie called
Booty Call,
I wondered why. I hoped taking a look at it might help me understand.

When I pulled up to Baldwin High School at four-thirty, the building was empty. All the team practices and Saturday activities were over, but Nate had told me he’d be lifting weights, so I headed for the gym. I graduated from this school and the halls are full of good memories. When we moved here, I was fifteen and about to start my sophomore year. I left behind a boyfriend who I had allowed to kiss me passionately whenever we could find a place to do so, which wasn’t that often since neither of us could drive and my parents were not about me having company when they weren’t home. I knew better than to even
think
about going to my boyfriend’s house when his parents weren’t there, since I was lovesick but not crazy.

The only time we broke the rule was right before my family left town and we were desperate to express what we regarded as undying love before my father’s dreams ripped ours to shreds. We spent an endless, sweaty, nerve-racking afternoon trying to get as close to having sex as we could without removing a single article of clothing. A week later, I arrived a Baldwin High, lonely, heartbroken and convinced the best part of my life was over. Then I met Mitch and realized how wrong a person could be.

I opened the big double doors to the boys’ gym and Tupac Shakur’s voice brought me up short with its unique combination of rage and defiance and love and confusion and a sensuality so
specifically black and male that he still stands alone, all these years after the tragedy of his death.

At the far end of the room, Nate was doing sit-ups on an incline bench with his hands behind his head. He was wearing black sweatpants and a sleeveless T-shirt that said pistons on the back and, even at this distance, gave me an unobstructed view of his huge arms and gigantic shoulders. From where I was standing, they looked to be sculpted of dark mahogany. Still unaware of my presence, he stood up and stretched to his full height. His massive size, plus the macho music and the smell of generations of young male bodies, bathed in sweat and ruled by raging hormones, joined forces to make me feel like a female interloper in an environment geared to another sensibility altogether.

That’s when he turned around and saw me, waved and headed in my direction, stopping to turn down the boom box so Tupac was a whisper not a shout, and we could greet each other without shouting.

“Hey,” he said, smiling, seeming to get bigger and bigger the closer he got until I realized I actually had to look up if I didn’t want to spend our conversation gazing at his nipple line. “How long have you been here?”

“I just walked in,” I said. “I didn’t want to stop you. . . .”

Up close, he was so beautiful and alive that I wanted to touch his skin, stroke his shoulders, tug that earring in his ear. I could practically feel the heat coming off of him in waves. How old was he anyway? If I could establish once and for all that he was out of the range of age acceptability, maybe I could stop this involuntary lusting after him before it got completely out of hand.

“I was almost finished,” he said, wiping the sweat off his
forehead with a massive forearm. “Takes a little longer to keep everything together once you get past forty.”

Past forty?
Well, that eliminates the
old enough to be his mother
defense. I was on my own, staring temptation in the face, or, more accurately, in the chest.

“Of course, you don’t know anything about that,” he said, endearing himself to me forever, even if he was teasing, maybe flirting just a little.

“Right,” I said, laughing and handing him an envelope that contained the keys, the alarm codes and directions to the house. “That’s everything.”

“Great,” he said. “Maybe I’ll go by there on my way home tonight.” He grimaced slightly.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he shook his head ruefully. “I don’t want to start thinking of the Motel 6 as home.”

I nodded sympathetically. “I understand. It’s kind of like thinking of McDonald’s as dinner.”

“Exactly!” He looked pleased that I understood.

“I think you’ll like this house.”

“Have you been in it?”

He still doesn’t understand how small this town is.

“The owners are friends of mine.”

“How tall are the ceilings?”

I shrugged, trying to remember. “Just regular, I guess. About like Sister and Bill’s.”

He looked relieved. “Good. I looked at a place when I first got here and I swear the ceiling was less than eight feet. I felt like it was resting on top of my head.”

Here was my opening. He’d brought it up without any prompting from me, so a follow-up comment was not out of line.

“How tall are you?”

“Six eight.”

Why did that make me blush? Maybe because he was standing there, sweating and looking so effortlessly sexy that my brain couldn’t help going back to the question we would have had to ask each other if he had shown up when we were sixteen-year-old virgins without a clue:
If his feet are that big and his hands are that big, what about his . . . ?

“I think you’re the tallest person I’ve ever met,” I said.

He grinned down at me. “How tall are you?”

“Five six,” I said, adding half an inch in self-defense.

“Well, I’ll make you a deal.”

“What’s that?” I was trying unsuccessfully not to look at his arms, his shoulders, the way his big, wide back tapered down so dramatically that he looked like the mustachioed strong man in the old circus cartoons.

“If you don’t ask me ‘how’s the weather up there?’ I promise not to call you ‘shorty.’ ” Even without the biceps, his smile was worth the price of admission.

I laughed. “It’s a deal, but I have to confess that the night I met you at Sister’s, it was the first thing that popped into my mind.”

He groaned.

“Sorry,” I said, “but at least I managed to restrain myself.”

“At least that’s something, I guess,” he said, still smiling that megawatt smile.

“The house lights are on a timer so you don’t need to turn anything on or off when you leave,” I said.

The Smitherman sisters weren’t due back from New York for another week. In the meantime, I could handle the transaction and present his occupancy as a fait accompli when they returned.

“Thanks,” he said, folding his arms across his chest. I wondered if he wore his earring when school was in session. He had it on now, and even in his workout clothes, it gave him the look of an exceptionally fit pirate.

“I’d better get going,” I said, wondering how long it would take for me to get used to his size. More than two days, obviously. “Let me know what you think after you take a look at the house.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” he said immediately.

The Motel 6 must really be working his nerves. I could picture his feet hanging off the end of the bed; the mirrors reflecting him only from the shoulders down.

“All right,” I said, heading for the door. “I’ll be at The Circus most of the day.”

He fell in step beside me easily. For someone who had worked up a good sweat, he wasn’t the least bit funky. When we got to the door, he reached to open it for me.

“Don’t step out,” I said, sounding maternal. “You’ll catch cold.”

“I’ll be careful,” he said, watching me like Gregory Hines keeping an appreciative eye on Loretta Devine in
Waiting to Exhale
as she goes home to make him a plate of fried chicken, collard greens, candied yams, a slice of ham and some cobbler. He watched me all the way down to the end of the hallway. How do I know that? Because when I turned around to check, he waved.

Busted!
I thought, and I didn’t even care.