Midnight (15 page)

Around three o’clock I washed down my counter. I headed down to the basement. I had brought and stored a change of clothes and some other items in the locker. Since I was going to meet the girls, I was gonna take advantage of the convenience of the basement shower stall for the first time. The water was good and hot but the air underground and the floor was both freezing. I guess Cho never had to worry about anybody trying to live down there since it was more freezing than outside.

Fresh, I spotted Akemi even when I was halfway down the block from the bakery. It was the way she stood in those heels. For the first time, I noticed that Nikes on a female’s feet don’t have the same magic as heels do.

As I came up close I saw she was wearing a black pleated miniskirt. Her shapely thighs were covered with wool tights that hid her flesh but revealed the curve of her legs. She was wrapped tight in a black butter-leather jacket well tailored to fit her shoulders exactly and ride down the curve of her waistline, hugging her hips gently. Her black leather gloves were tucked inside the belt that held her jacket closed. Her black epi-leather handbag was dangling on the tips of her pretty fingers.

“Konichiwa.”
I calmly gave them their greeting. Akemi smiled and the other one giggled.

“Um. Yesturday, we forgot to ask you your name,” the other girl said. I looked at Akemi who was looking at me as though her dark eyes could see beyond my face and into my soul.

“Midnight,” I answered. I figured that was the name to give. I had seen some Chinese movie where every character had a hot-ass name. And I knew a lot of Asian names were rooted in the weather, seasons, and the elements.

“Mayonaka,”
the other girl translated.

“Mayonaka,”
Akemi said, serious-faced, with a curl of smoke swirling around her pretty lips from when her breath mingled with the cold air.

Now I understood that
mayonaka
meant “midnight” in Japanese. For some reason, the way Akemi pushed out this one word warmed me up like crazy.

“Are you two hungry?” I asked them. Her girl translated my question.

“No, she’s nervous,” her friend translated.

“Ask her what she’s so nervous about. She’s the one who wanted to kick it. Tell her I would never hurt her.” I was looking directly at Akemi when I spoke my words. She was looking right back at me with those big dark eyes. She didn’t seem nervous to me. And I could feel the pull I had on her.

“Akemi says you look so handsome.”

“Tell her to tell me that herself,” I responded. The girl gave her my message. Akemi lowered her eyes then lifted them again slowly and spoke to me in her language. Her voice was so soft. The flow of her words sounded like the seductive whispers of Sade on her
Diamond Life
album. The soft way she spoke, I had to listen carefully and focus on her hard and block out the regular noises of the New York City streets, with the buses, taxis, horns, and hordes of people moving in every which direction.

A thought came over me real quick. I wanted to take Akemi out, just me and her. The extra girl was helpful, but she had a different feel to her. She interrupted the strong silent signals moving back and forth between me and Akemi.

“Ask Akemi if she can hang out with me on her own.” The girl looked disappointed but she translated my question anyway. Akemi answered with a bright-ass smile.

“What time does she have to be back?” I asked her friend.

“Our aunt and uncle will close the gate on their store at 7
P.M.
If she wants to ride back with us, she should be back by then. If it’s later than 7
P.M.
, she has to go straight to Jackson Heights, Queens, where they live. She should be back no later than ten. I’ll tell them she went shopping. If she goes past 10:30
P.M.
, it will be a lot of trouble for her,” she said. Now I realized that the two of them were related.

Then they began talking Japanese to each other. I watched Akemi’s mouth moving as well as her facial expressions to gauge her reactions. I could tell she was with it.

“Okay. I’ll go back to the store, then. Are you sure you two will be okay?” Akemi’s cousin asked reluctantly.

“Everything is cool. She’ll be home on time, don’t worry,” I told her.

“Oh, and she’s an art student. That’s what she likes,” her cousin said as she turned to walk away.

I knew I could have asked her cousin all these questions about who Akemi is and what she liked. She would give me quick responses in her clear American accent. But I wanted to find out for myself what Akemi was all about. Besides, I was attracted to Akemi’s Japanese accent, which sounded so much sweeter in my ear.

I figured she knew all about Chinatown and Asian things. And I could tell that she liked me and wanted to get to know me better. So, I decided not to stick around down there. I would just bring her into my world to see how she reacts and handles that.

It was the end of February. The cold air made us move more swiftly. I saw the bright-orange powerful sun overpowering the light-blue sky, but throwing its heat to the other side of the world. I could see the cold air lingering around Akemi’s lips as she breathed in and out as if she was actually smoking a cigarette. But she wasn’t. I slowed down a bit and watched the way she moved. She turned to see what I was doing behind her, and smiled when she thought she knew. I picked up my step and she walked behind me from that afternoon into the night.

We hopped on the number six train from Chinatown to 125th Street in Harlem. From the look on her face, it seemed like everything she saw uptown was brand new.

First stop was the record store. I wanted to pick up a couple of joints. The owner of the shop was from South Africa. He had a cool vibe. So whenever I was in the area, I threw some business his way. When we walked in he was playing “Mbube” by Miriam Makeba. Akemi seemed to like it. Her head was rocking to the beat. Her little foot was tapping on the floor.

“Look around,” I told her and gestured with my arm.

The store owner switched the vibe and threw on Salt-N-Pepa, “The Show Stopper.”

When I was ready to go she had one record in her hand. It was Eric B. and Rakim, their first joint, “Eric B. Is President.” I flipped the album around in my hand, checking out the cover. Recently, I had heard that hot-ass joint rocking around my way on a tape. The beats were crazy and the rhymes just reminded me of my Brooklyn block and all of the characters, situations, and everyday happenings. I could understand how somebody who never lived around my way might buy this joint to make themselves feel like they was walking in my hood. But then again, really walking through my hood would be a reality check for anybody who didn’t live there.

I bought her
Hot, Cool & Vicious
, the Salt-N-Pepa album, and paid for everything else and we stepped.

I needed a line up. I took her to a barbershop where I had only got a cut two or three times before. I told her to sit down. She did, but within seconds she stood right back up. She preferred to look around. She might as well walk around staring at everything ’cause everybody in the shop was definitely staring at her!

As I’m getting my cut she’s watching me watching her through the mirror. Sometimes she would disappear from my sight because I had to hold my head still for the cut. The barber, with his back to her, asked me, “That’s you, man?” referring to Akemi. “That’s me,” I answered. “She’s different. But she’s baad,” the barber acknowledged.

That was something I had to get used to in this country—men commenting on the next man’s woman. Back home, this was a wrong move, unheard of. Out here in the U.S. this was common.

After he hit me up with a fresh cut, the brush, and the talcum powder, I paid and tipped the barber. When I turned around, Akemi was holding a handful of my hair in her palm.

“What are you doing?” I asked her, also gesturing with my
hands. She just smiled. She opened her purse and dumped my hair inside a small, nicely crafted, embossed tin box she had with her for some reason. She closed the top on the box and dropped it into her purse.

She held up her finger as if to say, “Wait one minute.” She went into the bathroom and washed her hands with the door wide open.

In the Foot Locker she stood staring at the kids’ rack. Just like I thought. She purchased a kid-sized pair of white Nike Uptowns. I bought some dunks too.

It was bugged out being with her. There was almost no talking but a whole lot of eye contact and signaling.

On the street she grabbed my hand from behind to stop me from walking farther. She wanted to turn into the Mart, an indoor Black version of some of the outdoor flea markets in Chinatown.

She walked into each stall one by one, starting with the art stores, which were up front. There were several paintings of and by African Americans for sale. She flipped through each painting quickly then paused on a particular one. I watched her run her fingers slowly across the surface of one picture, feeling the texture the same way I would imagine a blind person would do.

In the jewelry stall she wanted her ears pierced. She bunched her hair up and held it with her hands so the woman could see her ears clearly. What captured me were her fingers. I noticed how on each of her natural fingernails she had one Japanese letter painted on in black. Each fingernail glistened as each letter was coated with a layer of clear polish.

The woman placed a dot on each of Akemi’s ears with a marker. Akemi gave me a glance. I knew she wanted me to hold her hair for her, so I did. It was soft and very long and felt good in my hands. Her face looked even prettier, her profile now not hidden by her hair. I stood looking at her neck.

She squinted when the jewelry gun pinched her piercings into place. Her eyes filled up with water but no tears fell down.

I tied her hair into a slipknot and left it that way. She seemed to like it. She rocked it that way for the rest of the night.

In the airbrush booth, she pulled her new Uptowns out of the Foot Locker bag and cracked open the box. She wanted her joints spray painted. She looked through the vendor’s art book for a sample of what kind of design she wanted him to put on her sneakers. After a while she couldn’t find one she liked. She pulled out her wallet and laid her cash on the counter. She picked up the airbrush gun to gesture that she wanted to paint them herself.

“Nah, she can’t do that,” the cat told me.

“Take your money. Let her try,” I said. “She’s an artist.”

She adjusted the nozzles and started painting her own sneakers. The designs she was making had thinner lines than the design samples the guy showed us. She got intricate with it. It only took seconds to see she was real nice with her hands. She used only one color, black. When she was through with one sneaker, the guy was asking me if she wanted a job. When she finished her second sneaker, the next customer was trying to get her to stay and do hers next.

Outside, the orange sun was replaced by the white moon. The blue sky gave in to the black night. There were very few stars shining in Harlem, yet there were a few trying to break through. It was clear and cold. The sidewalk vendors lined the whole of 125th Street. The people were still out walking, talking, dancing, and keeping it moving.

I was feeling hungry. We walked across Seventh Avenue. Akemi’s eyes searched the buildings, into the windows, empty lots, churches, and alleys. We ended up at a spot named The Jamaican Hot Pot. We sat down at a table in the
small dining area there. I ordered chicken curry for her and stewed chicken for me.

In the men’s room I washed my hands and face. They didn’t look or seem dirty, but every New Yorker knows when you ride the trains and walk the New York City blocks, the dirt just accumulates. I brought a wet napkin back to our table and cleaned Akemi’s hands. Her fingers were slim and soft and relaxed into mine. She just sat watching me intensely.

When she first tasted the curry sauce, the scotch bonnet peppers made her eyes fill with water again. She ate some of the chicken and all of the cabbage and carrots.

While sipping on some carrot juice, she began to draw a picture on a white cloth napkin, using an unusual marker with a long point shaped like a paintbrush. After some strokes I was surprised how I could really see my own resemblance in her drawing.

She held the cloth up and drew a smile out of me. Then she laid the cloth out flat, went into her purse, and pulled out a thin-tipped red marker. In quick artistic strokes, she wrote in Japanese letters down the right side of the cloth.

“Mayonaka Hansamu,”
she said, looking me dead in my eyes. I could feel her admiration pouring down all over me. It felt good. It relaxed me a bit and drew me in further.

The red Japanese letters against the white napkin looked wicked to me. I wanted to keep the drawing, but she folded the cloth up and put it in her purse. By now I figured that’s where she kept most of her secrets.

I paid our bill. Yvonne, the Jamaican owner of the restaurant, gave me the mean look. I gave her an extra tip for the cloth Akemi took.

I’ll admit the whole while we were walking back down Seventh Avenue, I was thinking about myself. Here it was Saturday night and for the first time ever, I was on a date
for self with a female. I knew it wasn’t supposed to be happening, but I made myself feel all right by staying in public places with her, not doing anything I or anyone could consider improper.

On 116th Street in Harlem, on the steps of Columbia University, I sat her down. It was a nice spot, especially at night. They kept bright white holiday lights on their maple and oak trees all year around. The bright lights lit up the inside courtyard. Students from all around the country and all around the world and New Yorkers moved back and forth and sideways, across the campus from building to building, some of them chilling on top of statues, some of them chilling behind statues, some of them seated to the side on the steps with their books piled up next to them. Others were gripping hot cups of coffee or buying hot cocoa or tea.

This was a place I came every now and then, because this was a place where my father had been and spent a lot of time studying and socializing. I would sit here alone sometimes, thinking of answers to my own questions first. Then I would think of what my father’s answers and suggestions would be. Sometimes I would wonder if I was standing in the same space where he had actually stood several years ago.