Between Lovers (10 page)

“Even the nonconformist conforms.”

“To who?”

“To the nonconformists.”

For a moment, we sit and say nothing. We're planes in a black cloud, spiraling out of control.

Nicole whispers, “I'm trying to include you in all of my life. I want you to see all of me.”

Silence.

“Enough bullshit,” I tell her. “If I give you this fantasy, are you gonna try to get back to where we were?”

Those bracelets sing when she raises her hand to her face. “Things have changed over the last few months.”

“What things? I need you to be who you were before you moved up here. I want my inexperienced, body-shy, frigid country girl from Elvisland to come back to me.”

She says, “Evolution moves forward, never backward. Butterflies never become caterpillars.”

Some time goes by. Some talking. At some point I hold her. Touch her. And that naughty grin blooms on her face. The one that starts in the left corner of her mouth, and expands with desire. We lay back under the covers. And we explore each other. The magic is always there. The chemistry remains so strong.

I put my mouth on her breast, a hand between her legs, tell her, “You're wet.”

Her bracelets jingle as she moves me up and down. “I know.”

“When did you get wet?”

“When you opened the door. How many times do I have to tell you that you have this effect on me?”

“Thought you were mad.”

“I might get mad, might scream and shout and hit you upside the head with a pot, but Bermuda is never, never, never mad at you, don't you know that? She always welcomes you.”

I kiss her. Touch her.

She says, “Seven years and I still excite you?”

“Just like you did in the Jeep.”

Her tongue traces from my chest until the heat from her mouth consumes that growing part of me. She used to be afraid to do that, now she won't stop until I beg for mercy.

She stops savoring, stares at my handle with studious eyes. “Hard to believe all of this goes in me.”

We turn, and like cats, we do each other at the same time, slow and easy.

Her tongue traces up and down as she moans. “You are the pussy-eating king, you know that?”

“Why, thank you.”

“You always give me honeymoon sex.”

I look at Miss Bermuda. Talk to her. Touch her. Taste her. I love her aroma on my face.

Nicole shudders. “
Oooo
. You're making Bermuda quiver.”

My phone rings again. We're too busy pleasing each other to stop.

She pulls her locks and squirms. “I want you on top of me.”

I say, “French. Ask me in French.”

“Baise moi.
Ooo, baby.
Baise moi.”

The phone rings again.

Nicole bucks, pulls me deeper inside her, slaps my ass in a steady rhythm, chants how much she wants me, needs me, loves me.

I wake in the middle of the night, and Nicole isn't in the bed. The curtains are open and the light from the moon and stars let me see that she's not on the other side of those plantation shutters, working. Looks like she left me in the middle of the night. Then her voice wafts to my ears from the bathroom.

“How was I supposed to know you locked yourself out of the house?” She sounds sweet, sensitive, so caring. That immeasurable passion is there, being given to her soft-legged lover in a tone I thought reserved only for me. So concerned. Maybe she's crying a bit. “How did you... called a locksmith? Two hours? In the cold? I'll give you the money... no, I'll give you. .. please... Ayanna ... don't be difficult. Okay. Okay. Sorry, baby. I'm so sorry. No, I didn't do that on purpose. You called here? The Waterfront? He answered. Why didn't you say something? You called back... we didn't answer. We were... were... yeah... busy.”

The taste of Nicole marinates the inside of my mouth, and I'm drowning in jealousy.

I ease out of bed, walk to the bathroom door, and like heading into a fire, the smoke, Ayanna's voice gets hotter, thicker. Nicole's in the darkness, door cracked, and I can hear Ayanna's voice. It sounds as if she were here with us. First her name. Now this. Ayanna is invading my senses one at a time.

Loud and clear I say, “Nicole?”

She jumps like a child. The rattle of those bracelets tell me that I scared her to hell and back.

I've heard Ayanna. And now Ayanna has heard me.

Nicole swallows. Bracelets jingle again, ring in a rhythm that lets me know she's raising her hand to cover the phone. “Be there in a second.”

“What's up?”

“Using the bathroom. Be there in a second.”

“You're on my dime.”

I turn and take a step toward the bed. As soon as I do, the bathroom door pushes closed, clicks, and her words become muffled mumbles laced with stress. I watch the clock. Ten minutes go by before she flushes the toilet and comes back out, slips her c-phone back in her purse, gets back in the bed. For a while we don't touch. First her foot rubs against my leg. Then her hand massages my back. When I don't move it away she comes closer, cuddles up next to me and I feel her breath on my neck, gets so close I can't tell where I end and she begins.

We run an easy six miles at the crack of dawn. When we get back, I have a message from André. He's in town for another day. Nicole picks out my clothing before she leaves, that's about seven-thirty. Once again I stand in the window and watch her hurrying into Starbucks, then see her come out with two cups of liquid brew.

Around nine-thirty, I put on my sweats and head into Berkeley.

I cruise up College and find a metered spot near an eatery called Crepevine. Not too far from the college, an area where Jerry Garcia-looking xippies—those are Generation-X hippies—with matted dreadlocks stand on the crowded streets outside the university doing palm readings, Janis Joplin does body piercing, Jimmy Hendrix is selling incense, Joni Mitchell has a deal on crystals, and beatniks who look like Shaggy from Scooby Doo offer to write your name in a grain of rice. A liberal freak fest.

André gets to the restaurant five minutes after I do. He has on a dark sweat suit, leather coat.

He says, “This one of those healthy, tofu and wheat-grass places?”

“Yeah. Like Simply Wholesome in L.A.”

“Man, I'm having withdrawals.”

“Need a smoke?”

“Naw. Need me some pork. Some red meat or something. At least some catfish.”

“They have pork here. That's why I told you to come this way.”

The place isn't fancy, but down-to-earth like the rest of the area. We stand in line and order, then we hunt for an open spot, and dump our coats in an empty chair at our comer table.

He grabs the sports section of the
Oakland Tribune.
I have a
San Francisco Chronicle.
I flip the pages, read about local politics, about how President Bush refuses to help California with the energy crisis, and then about the rolling blackouts.

A waitress brings our food. I have a three-egg omelette with spinach, tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, and cheddar. André has a Denver omelette and a short stack of strawberry pancakes.

“You see that shit?” André says. “Cal stomped UCLA by damn near thirty.”

“Yeah,” I answer and put my paper down on top of our coats. “But UCLA stomped Stanford like they stole something, and Stanford is ranked numero uno.”

We talk about CSUN, Webster State, Arizona, Oregon, the bulk of the PAC-10, and the conference stand ings while we eat.

Then he tells me, “Toyomi showed up.”

I chuckle. “Damn. So, she actually came through? Just like that.”

“Just like that.”

“Big baller.”

“Here's the trip part,” André says. “She said you looked familiar too. Then after I told her who you were, she got all excited, and then that was all she talked about. ‘Dem damn books of yours.”

“Stop playa hating.”

“At 2 a.m. when my dick is hard enough to knock out Tyson, I don't want to hear a woman say nobody's name but mine.”

He tells me about the night. No hard details, just a loose man bragging about his latest conquest.

He says, “She's working on her master's degree.”

“Where?”

“Some college out in Palm Springs. Says she's going for her Ph.D. right after that.”

We eat, stare out at all the shops, at the flower children and revolutionaries passing by in heavy coats, some with umbrellas in hand, anticipating another winter storm.

André looks like he's in a trance.

I ask him what's on his mind.

“Man,” he sighs, “I've been thinking about all the women I've been with. Was looking at Toyomi. Listening to her. That girl is fine. L.A. face and an Oakland booty all the way.”

“And it sounds like she's smart.”

“She's intense too. Never been with anybody that damn intense.”

“Sounds like she was educating you last night.”

“No doubt. I was thinking, man, I don't believe I just met her fine ass and I'm hitting this.”

I tell him, “I feel ya.”

“Funny how that is. You meet a sister, get all excited, then after the orgasm, you want her gone.”

“You, not me.”

“My bad. Me, then.”

I sip my orange juice and listen. Last night I gave him all of my burdens. Now, no matter how much I'm thinking about Nicole and her offer, no matter how irked I am about Ayanna's calling and I-paging when Nicole is living on my dime, it's his turn to talk, to unload what's on his chest.

“Yeah,” he says. “Outside of my ex-wife, seems like it's always like that.”

I nod. “Instant gratification. Nothing but instant gratification.”

“Maybe I have a defect. You've been with Nicole for as long as I can remember, and I've been married and divorced, and I've been with so many woman I can't remember some of their names.”

“Hell, if I'm sticking with the same woman, maybe I have the defect.”

We laugh a little.

I nod.

He tells me, “She skis with Four Seasons West. They're going up to Mammoth pretty soon.”

“I need to get some more skiing in this season too. Haven't skied since Winter Carnival.”

“She asked me if you had a woman, ‘cause she got a friend named Shar who digs your books too.”

“Nah, but thanks. Not available.” I smile. And that proverbial lightbulb clicks on in my head. “That's why you still here in the Bay. Chilling out so you can kick it with Toyomi.”

“I don't have another gig for four days, and that's at Mixed Nuts in L.A., so I decided to kick it up here one mo' day. She's gonna try to leave her meeting early. We're gonna hang out.”

“You check out of your room?”

“Yeah. Leaving in the morning. Wanna spend some q-time with my daughter.”

“Got a place to crash?”

“Toyomi's suite.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that. Toyomi, she's different.”

“Guess she's not a chain-smoking, codependent alcoholic that don't read.”

I give him a bigger smile. He does the same thing.

I don't bring up Nicole. Don't tell him about her solution to this triangle we're in. I want to, but I think it's best that I don't. He's my buddy, but he doesn't need to know all of my business.

Not long after that, he leaves again.

By eleven-fifteen, I'm in my rental car, dressed in black wool and black leather. Wearing CK cologne. Twisties giving me that artistic appearance. The high-tech navigator is on, giving me digital directions to my next stop, and my cell-phone's earpiece is in my right ear. I'm making my way through the congestion on Broadway, creeping up the gritty streets leading through downtown.

Pops asks me, “What city are you in?”

“Oakland. Trying to get to MLK so I can get to Marcus Books.”

My pop's voice is that of a raspy, southern-fried blues singer, the type that keeps his mega-church filled with spiritual women with high hemlines.

And I have another tone when I talk to my old man. Not the hip and crazy one I have when I'm talking to one of my homies. Not the intimate one I have with Nicole. Like Eve, I guess I have three faces. Most people have just as many hats, just as many versions of themselves.

An ambulance siren screams in the cold as I ease by construction near Walgreen's. A lane has been shut down and construction workers are jackhammering the asphalt to little chunks. Buses are weaving in and out, making it hard to get two feet without having their fumes for dessert.

Pops grunts, his thinking noise. “How is our girl Nikki doing?”

With him, she is always Nikki. The nickname she had as a child. I see her as Nicole, a woman.

“She's cool. We hung out. Did a jazz joint. Ran. Having fun.”

“Her situation changed?”

“Still the same.” Before my old man can get going in that direction, I ask, “Where's Mom?”

“Shoe shopping. Nordstrom's having a sale.”

“Hide your charge card. She'll close that store down.”

He presses on, “You still trying to rescue our lost sheep, son?”

He takes the conversation back to Nicole. He's good at manipulating conversations, good at persuading. He doesn't see it that way, but at times I see it that way.

“I don't agree with your wording, but yeah, I'm still trying.”