The Importance of Being Dangerous (14 page)

The transformation of the storage room into a sanctuary for self-examination was painstaking. The plaster was blasted clean of a hundred years of neglect. One wall had been replaced with hand-carved teak, insets for pictures of her parents were cut, special frames were ordered, and beneath it Sidarra had put in a Yoruba mask and shrine for the ancestors. The other walls were red. The windows that never existed behind old blinds and boxes were replaced by one huge pane that looked down on the garden. The boxes, loose hats, and shoe trees were in an attic space now. Sidarra had replaced them with a bank of deep couches covered in plush cream-and-mocha-satin-covered down pillows. To the left as you entered was an electronic piano on a stand. Beside the instrument was a cabinet with an encased sound system. At least eight speakers of different sizes were cut into the walls and ceiling. And everywhere were mirrors.

Before she began speaking to her father in the room, Sidarra felt she had to cover her body in a robe. He would know why the pox had come. “It could be the Whiteboy money—I mean, the money we play for and invest,” she began aloud. “But I don't think that's what broke my skin out this time Daddy. Making that money is very abstract. You don't even experience it until you can turn it into a house. And I'm pretty clear about the sources. They're scum. I'm not saying it's right. I'm just saying I don't think I regret it enough to go Redbone over it. Maybe the bet they won when Eagleton died. That wasn't cool at all. His wife is grieving while I'm furnishing a brownstone with her loss. Maybe that's had an effect on me. You never know what it is. It's unconscious anyway. That's what you always said.

“No, I think it probably has something to do with this guy I'm starting to love. You know, it occurred to me the other day, and it's funny: no matter how much I think of him, no matter how long I'm at it, there's no ‘but' about Griff, Daddy. I mean, everybody gets a reservation. You got reservations about family all the
time. You have reservations about even your best friend. Things they've said you never forgave 'em for, things they do, something you wish they'd change. The longer you know somebody, the farther they are from perfection. Look at Michael. He came on a lifeboat of reservations, and he's been docked there ever since. But not Griff. I've known this guy for over a year and I
like
him, like being around him and what he says and how he says it and how the man looks when he says it, and I got no particular place I'd rather be than with him. I harbor not a single reservation. Not one.” Sidarra dropped her hands to her sides. “Except the fact that he's married.

“I'm not even sure if this is my problem, Daddy, or his. I can feel it coming off of him all the time, and I'm forced to deal with that. I don't even know how Griff feels about his wife, or how much he hides from her—or from me. I just sense sometimes that it's the only thing that could blow his cool, and I am heavily invested in this man's cool. Crazy, huh?

“That's probably why I've grounded myself up here in this room so much, where I can do no trouble but grow a few more scales or horns. Of course, if you could talk back, I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened. I wouldn't be out at night with Uncle Cicero's pool cue, I wouldn't be playing the stock market with bad white folks' money, I wouldn't be goo-goo for a married fella, and my skin would be lovely and clear. So I suspect all this is the trouble without you, Daddy.”

SIDARRA'S FATHER WAS RIGHT
about the unconscious cause of her skin condition. The itching got so bad that she went to a dermatologist, who diagnosed it as a nasty case of pityriasis rosea. Such a beautiful name for a problem conscience, much better than the clever labels she and Raquel made up in front of mirrors. Mocha Revolt. Streaking Tiger, Spotted Frog. Neither Noir. Red Arrests Rust. Raquel was also the only person other than the doctor who saw the whole quiet storm of color as it progressed from cute red pimples to burning brown swathes to flaking, itchy blobs. She helped administer the anti-itch creams as well as the historically offensive “de-pigmentator” called Fair & White. Yet none of the new information about the disease solved the mystery of just what Sidarra felt so guilty about—furnishing her new home with ill-gotten gains, marrying a married man in her thoughts, or something else.

By the time she held her Labor Day housewarming party, the
brownstone was ready for company even if her skin was not. Aunt Chickie stood on her feet all Saturday afternoon in the kitchen making collards, macaroni and cheese, and potato salad. They'd bought steaks, ribs, chicken, and fish for the new grill in back. Michael was scheduled to be the master cook, but he decided he wasn't coming. He and Sidarra had loud words the night before. A little too much vodka and Michael let her have it about all that was on his mind, including how her bad skin was a punishment for ignoring him. So Sidarra let him go. That way they would both be spared the head-to-head comparison with Griff.

But pityriasis rosea complicated her own inevitable meeting with Griff's wife, which increased her nervousness and in turn made her itch. Sidarra tried to conceal her troubled hide with tight white pants and a billowy white cotton blouse. The top had a Queen Elizabeth collar, which covered her neck at the expense of looking a bit silly; it was that or a scarf. She was also nervous about inviting enough people. Her old friends would become jealous and wonder too much about the price of everything, and in any event, she would look uncharacteristically showy. That excluded them. The creepy Raul was nobody's housewarming guest (though he managed to keep himself close). That left only the crew and some odd choices. Yakoob brought his wife Marilyn, a short, pear-shaped Puerto Rican woman with big thighs and a high-pitched giggle. Q showed up with an unknown girlfriend, Jeanette, who looked so young that maybe he picked her up at a bus stop on the way to school. Darrius Laughter brought his partner, Justin, a white man. Both were dapper in light suits and white shirts. To fill things up, Sidarra invited the contractor, Joseph, and his wife Evelyn, as well as the painter, Harry, and his wife Pearl. Of course Griff appeared at the top of the stoop with his wife, Belinda Chambers.

The cat, Pussy Galore, took one look at Belinda from the top of the stairs and decided it was time to leave.

Belinda had clearly intended to be the vision of note among whatever human females attended Sidarra's affair, and from the git-go Sidarra had to acknowledge that she was. Just the sight of them deflated her a little. Griff arrived wearing a spectrum of browns, like the parlor walls—an auburn button-down shirt with a wide collar, a honeycomb linen four-button summer suit and pony brown clogs. Belinda followed him in like the sun shining on earth. She was lighter-skinned than Sidarra had imagined, a well-tanned butterscotch complexion, and even taller in high heels. Her thick reddish hair flowed just below her shoulders, framing her long, angular face, green eyes, and weak mouth. For an investment banker she boldly wore tight suede slacks in marigold yellow, her long, thin legs striding confidently inside. Belinda was small-chested beneath a cranberry-colored vest, but her arms were elegantly muscular, her neck like an antelope, and her exposed belly noticeably firm. The woman worked out. The woman never said no to herself.

Which included not wasting time where she didn't care to be. Belinda had no interest in spending their holiday here, but gave in at the last minute. Griff asked her to make the best of it; out of curiosity, she said she would. But the more she heard of this Sidarra woman, the more her anticipation grew caustic. Belinda took no prisoners and that included party hosts. Her first sight of Sidarra released a slow drip of competitive juice down her spine until it tasted like salt or blood down the back of her throat. Their introduction was all eyes and no blinking. The girlie handshake they approached with was quickly tossed for a real grasp. Then they took turns measuring each other's details. Once everybody was seated around the living room, Belinda took advantage of Sidarra's momentary shyness, put a choke hold around whatever initial unease her own insides brewed, and did what she was famous for at work: she ran the room.

“So tell us, Q,” she began from her privileged position on the love seat beside her husband, “what do you do?”

The big dark man in the royal blue shirt smiled to everyone. “Would you believe I'm a cop?”

“Not if you're a friend of Griff's,” she came back.

“
Ex
-cop,” Griff added.

“Retired actually. I run a bar.”

Belinda clasped her hands together, leaned up in the couch, and nodded approvingly. “And you?” she asked, looking at Q's girl.

“Oh, I'm Jeanette,” she said with a round-the-way meekness you knew wouldn't last and a thick Harlem accent that would. “What do I do? Cosmetology.”

“Cosmetology!” Belinda repeated in case everyone hadn't heard. “That's great.”

“Jeanette, we have to talk, girl,” Darrius piped up from a leather stool beside Justin. He sipped his martini through a plastic stirrer.

“Darrius,” Belinda said, turning to him next, “what do you do?”

The natural flow was to settle into Belinda's third-grade circle and wait your turn, but no one had told Darrius that. “Oh, you don't know?”

“No,” she said, looking deliberately cute, and waited for him to tell.

“I'm Sidarra's stylist, only
I
pay
her
!” His strong voice carried around the large room, and everybody laughed. “Isn't that right, my queen?” he added, calling over to where Sidarra leaned against a doorway at the circle's edge. She laughed and waved him off.

“Okay, so we got Hugo Boss in the house. How about you over there?” Belinda pointed to Justin. “Are you Calvin Klein?”

“If you'd like me to be, darling, but just for today,” Justin said, and broke up the room. Justin was a striking young white man, clean-shaven like a model, but delicately built, a brunette tussle of
well-coiffed bedhead with blond highlights up top. When he opened his mouth, no
s
went unspoken. “I'm Justin,” he waved to the group. “And I'm a funkaholic.”

“All right,” Belinda went on, applauding playfully.

“You gonna keep running this thing, Oprah?” Griff turned and said to her.

She ignored him. “How about you, sweetie?” Belinda asked Yakoob's wife. “What's your name again?”

“Marilyn,” she said with a tart Nuyorican accent that rolled the
r
in “Mari” and licked the
leen
in “lyn.” Marilyn was the color of butter in the pan, with straight, nearly black hair pulled tight in a ponytail and a pudgy, beautiful face. Kind as pie, said her full cheeks when she smiled. Her thin brown eyes gleamed with good nature, and her pretty teeth never stayed hidden for long. “I work in the pharmacy, in the Duane Reade,” she told them, sitting up, rubbing her husband's thigh for brief social support.

“Which one, baby?” Koob joked in a soft voice, looking into her ear.

“Quiet, bu,” she waved toward him.

“Nah, baby, tell 'em which one.”

She sucked her lips and elbowed him. “You know the one downtown on Duane and Reade streets?” Everyone sort of pretended to be right there. “That's the one. That's the
original
one.”

“That's how that shit got
named
Duane Reade, y'all,” he added.

“And, Koob, you're a comedian, right?” Belinda asked when the giggles subsided.

“If I am, somebody in here owes me fifty cent for that last one.”

“I get half of it!” Marilyn added. The group laughed nervously. “So what do
you
do, Belinda?” Marilyn asked.

“Yes,” Darrius said, “what
do
you do all day?”

“Well,” she pulled up to the edge of her seat again, “I'm an investment banker.”

Long silence from those who knew what that was. “Oh yeah?” Marilyn said with a little excitement. “At what bank—like Citibank? That's my bank.”

Belinda tried to be gentle. “No. Not that kind of bank. I'm with Smith Barney.”

What else could anyone say? They'd all seen the TV commercial with the fat white Englishman smoking a pipe in a library somewhere and bragging about what he had and how he'd
earned
it. Marilyn, her hand on Koob's knee, just nodded and smiled. Game over, people started to stand up.

The pairing off began at once, mostly so folks could peek around the house, at least the parlor floor. Q immediately asked about the grill. When Sidarra hesitated about who was cooking, Q stepped up. Darrius and Justin strolled over to Jeanette, and Jeanette and Justin wound up outside in the yard beside Q for the next hour. Raquel spent some time slapping Koob five, until she decided to show him and Marilyn how well she could run and stop short on the new Persian rug. Aunt Chickie was polite with the construction people for a while, then left them on the bench and went back to the kitchen. Belinda stepped in and out of conversations but mostly circled her husband.

“I want the tour, Sidarra. Frankly, I think it's overdue,” Darrius said.

“Okay, Darrius,” Sidarra answered, but nervousness shot through her again, and the skin behind her left ear began to itch a little. With other people in her home, she could really see the extravagance and reached instinctively for the presence of Griff and Yakoob. “You got it. But hang on just a bit and let me get some other folks, too.”

Sidarra collected Yakoob, Marilyn, Griff, and Belinda and they were soon heading up to the third floor.

“It looks like I need to join this investment club y'all got,” Darrius said. “My God.”

Silence on the stairs. “Let's go up to the top floor first,” Sidarra said. “That used to be my apartment. Now our bedrooms are on the third floor.” They reached the top and Sidarra stood aside as they walked into the open space. “This is our family room,” Sidarra declared with muted pride.

Several old walls with chipped and fading paint could no longer contain loneliness or grief or the smell of fast food up there, and Sidarra tore them down. The natural light they used to trap scattered freely over the shiny floors and nestled in the Oriental rugs. Most of the remaining walls were now blues, aquamarines, and periwinkles like sky. Artificial light fell on a few framed pictures, a painting of a reclining brown woman stretched across the longest wall, two large philodendron trees arched from ceramic planters, and sparse but comfortable furniture invited calm. The group broke up and started walking around individually, peering at things, inspecting politely, asking questions, oohing on occasion.

Belinda eyed Sidarra from behind. She watched the physical closeness shift ever so slightly between Sidarra and Griff. She watched Griff for signs of anything at all. Bad rash or not, this was a beautiful woman, Belinda thought, with the thick, curvaceous musculature black men coveted most and a warm complexion. This house explained a lot about Tuesday nights, more than Griff ever told. Nothing he ever described in the past mattered now. Sidarra and her husband were clearly “good” friends. They could be hiding a deep privacy, for all she could tell. The question was, how good was this friend?

Yakoob stood in front of a raised platform on one side of the room. Sidarra had built it to replace her office, and her father's desk sat in the middle below pictures of him and her mother. A computer table stood beside it.

“Well, damn, Sid! Ain't you gonna even plug your PC in?” Koob laughed. “Look at this. Poor little gigabytes. Dust all over
the keys and shit. Somebody musta told you this was modern art. Hate to tell ya: it ain't.”

“It's just a badass job,” Griff told Sidarra when they were almost alone in a corner of the loft-like space. The apparent privacy allowed his familiar tone to return, and she allowed herself to blush. “I'm very happy for you. This is what you worked for, Sid, what you deserve.”

But someone had been eavesdropping. “Amen,” Darrius declared near a window overlooking the street. “Magnificent! You done it, girl!”

“What's in here?” Belinda asked. Sidarra had not intended to allow anyone to see her little room, let alone Belinda. Belinda seemed to notice the mild panic her question caused and planted herself more firmly in front of the door. “May I see it? Is it private?”

Griff's radar went off and he came to Sidarra's aid. “C'mon, baby. This is a housewarming, not an engineering report. That's Sidarra's private space.”

“She can tell me if it is.”

Sidarra collected herself. “No. Sure, you all can see it. Lemme get the key out of the desk.” She walked past Yakoob to one of the compartments in her father's desk. The others gathered expectantly near the door to the mystery room. “I just don't want Raquel in there when I'm not home,” she explained. Then Sidarra fiddled with the lock, all eyes on her, and opened the door to the former storage room.

The room's decor was smart-ass proof, so nobody said anything at first. Sidarra walked in, but no one dared follow her into the sanctuary right away. Except Belinda, who slipped inside without hesitation. “What do you do in here?” she asked flatly.

“C'mon, Belinda,” Griff said.

“Griff, please,” she said, waving a hand in his direction.