Between Lovers (14 page)

When the girl slows her verbal rampage, Ayanna asks her what type of group she's in. The girl says that, outside of college, she's involved with a group of young people, male and female, who are working on an AIDS awareness campaign, trying to educate kids in an upward bound program.

That's when Ayanna puts on a soft smile. An intelligent smile that makes her look beautiful. And her voice, its tone has changed. Sounds beautiful, clings to the ears.

The girl tells Ayanna that her mom died from AIDS fifteen years ago. Blood transfusion after a car accident. Back in the days when nobody wanted to touch the body. Her mom had to be cremated, ashes scattered to the winds.

Ayanna offers, “Maybe I could come speak to your group one day.”

“Would you? Oh, my God. You are way cool.”

Ayanna says with a soft laugh, “Don't you have to work?”

She looks around, her eyes wide, as if she just woke up from a dream. “Hot wings. Have to get those people their hot wings.”

She takes two steps, then hurries back to leave her phone number and shake Ayanna's hand. “Didn't mean to keep interrupting you and your man.”

“He's not my man.” Ayanna motions toward me. “This guy's a writer.”

The waitress looks at me. “Oh. What do you write?”

“Fiction.”

“I don't read fiction.”

Victory rises in Ayanna's eyes.

The girl leaves, and Ayanna and I are face-to-face again.

“When you come to Oakland,” Ayanna says as if she were never interrupted, “when Nicole tells me she's going to be gone a day, maybe two, I can't eat, lose sleep. I know she's kicking it with you, I know where she's going when she packs her little bag, and I put on a big-ass smile and tell her I can handle this situation, which is whacked to the nth degree, tell her it's cool by me, tell her to go see her friend, to be happy, to get what I can't give her, that I'm not insecure. But I can't close my eyes one damn second without seeing you and her. I stare at the ceiling, wondering what you two are doing.”

“I think you know.”

“Oh, I know. Your smell gets in her skin. She thinks she's washed it away, but I can smell you on her. I can taste you on her. I taste you. Just like when you're kissing her, you're tasting parts of me. Tasting this beautiful flower. How does that make you feel? Knowing that we're already so familiar?”

It fucks with me. Can't help it. I imagine Ayanna taking bubble baths with the woman I desire and smell in my dreams; hear their catlike whines in the middle of their adrenaline-laced rhythms. I know how Nicole likes to touch herself while we love then put her fingers in my mouth. I imagine them doing the same. My heart is in my throat, trying to climb out and run for its freedom. I sit face-to-face with my enemy, evil thoughts damaging my spirits, unable to breathe out my pain.

Our enthusiastic waitress brings our drinks back, says a few more words to her role model, then moves on, making her way through the crowded room.

I sip my steaming chocolate.

Ayanna sips her wine.

She says, “Little Miss Punctual is late.”

Without warning I say, “So, you're taking your aggression out on me because you hate men.”

Ayanna speaks swiftly, but her tone isn't rugged. “No, I'm not a man-hating woman. All of my experiences add to my life. They add to the essence of me. To answer your question, which is driven by
stereotypical
thinking, I love my brothers as much as I do my sisters.”

“Just trying to see where you're coming from.”

“Kind of figured you would be shallow enough to think that,” she says. “My problem is that you're having relations with my woman.”

“Geesh. We have the same problem. Who would've thunk?”

Her eyes tighten at my sarcasm.

“Yep, you're munching my woman,” I say. “At least you are for now.”

For a moment we trade our animosities for silence, well, as much silence as we can get in a crowded room filled with rumbles and music driven by a hard bass line. We share an occasional glance, evaluating and summing each other up. In the end our eyes meet and stay that way, both of us refusing to be the first to break the stare, both of us refusing to be weak, refusing to be run away.

She tells me, “You're not what I expected.”

“What did you expect?”

“God.”

“Oh, really.”

“You're not as tall as I imagined. Not as big. Ordinary.”

After she finishes dissecting me, I tell her, “You're not what I expected either.”

“What did you expect?”

“Lucifer in a push-up bra.”

“That's Nicole's mother.”

We crack up. I don't want to laugh, she doesn't want to laugh, but we both know Nicole's mother.

I think she's done, but she keeps going. “And speaking of Beelzebub, why did you call Nicole's mother as soon as Nicole left your fuckhaven the other morning? Talk about a wuss.”

“That's enough.”

“What was that supposed to prove?”

When my expression shows hostility, she backs down. That surprises the hell out of me.

I take a deep breath.

Ayanna knows too much. Knows all about me, about Nicole's family, knows all the soft spots to strike to deliver pain. She has the kind of knowledge you learn in stolen moments.

Again, my mind drags me naked across barbed wire, takes me where I don't want to go. I imagine them lying in the bed like cats, peach-scented candles burning, Sting playing low and easy, licking each other's genitals, singing each other love songs in response to what they feel. The think lines in Ayanna's forehead, the vein that keeps rising and falling in her neck, the stiffness in her jaw, the way her teeth grind off and on, tells me her imagination is working overtime too.

Ayanna stops tapping the table, checks her watch, looks at me again. “Please understand me. I don't have anything against you. Not yet. I don't know you; don't want to know you.”

“Ibid.”

“I hate what you represent.”

“Ibid.”

“What the hell does ibid mean?”

“Same as above. Feeling's mutual.”

“Feeling's mutual.”
She mocks me, then chuckles, shakes her head, messes with her heart-colored mane. “You don't have a clue what I represent. Or how I feel. Or what I'm going through.”

She shifts. I join in with her incessant tapping. Two instruments out of tune.

She tells me, “I love her better than you can imagine.”

“How do you figure?”

“Because of what I'll do for her. Because you love with your dick. Let's face it, all men do.”

“Do we?”

“A woman's libido is connected to her heart.”

“And a man's dick?”

“To his nuts.”

I say, “Lay off the crack pipe.”

“I love from my heart.” Ayanna speaks like I'm a child. “A relationship is built on trust. Not sex. I say this through experience. Love ain't sex and sex ain't love. Do you love her or are you just fucking her—”

“Fucking her?”

“Glad you're not hard of hearing. Do you like fucking her when it's convenient for you to pop up here for a couple of days and get your swerve on?”

I smile and lean so close she can feel my breath. “You know what
fuck you.”

“Not if I was out of batteries, cucumbers were extinct, and you were the last dick on this world.”

That halts me. This time I say, “Touché.”

She sips her wine. I lean back and sip my hot chocolate. Our words are harsh, but the tone is easy, at a lover's volume. No real frowns. Poker faces. Two players trying to win with the hand they've been dealt. People at the tables on either side of us can't tell our true relationship. The room's too noisy for our voices to carry.

I glance out the window, peep at the shops across the cobbled walkway.

My heart double-times.

Nicole is right there. A stone's throw away. Inside Jack's Bistro, in the bakery part, sitting on a barstool. Sipping coffee. Eyes trained on us. Watching, watching, watching.

Ayanna's eyes follow my interest, look to see what changed my expression. Her reflection jumps when she sees Nicole.

I ask Ayanna, “Did you know she was over there?”

“No. When did she ... she's been right there?”

“Watching us like we're a damn science project.”

For a moment we lean forward and whisper like players on the same team. For a moment.

Nicole has on jeans, gray sweater, brown leather coat, shoes the same tone as her jacket. Exposed, she comes out of Jack's and heads straight toward the window. She has an expressionless face, and then she crosses her eyes and sticks her tongue out. Makes that cute monkey face. A juxtaposition of moods.

We laugh at her silliness; she smiles.

Ayanna extends her left arm toward Nicole, the one with the bracelets, makes them jingle. Nicole hesitates, then does the same, extends her left arm, makes her bracelets sing back. Like a ritual.

Nicole heads through the crowd out front, a line that has grown at least forty yards since Ayanna came to my table, and Nicole struggles her way toward the front door.

The fire in my loins; my obsession.

In the moments that she's no longer visible, when we're no longer visible, we stop smiling.

I tell Ayanna, “Like I said, I've been with her for seven years.”

It's taking a long while for Nicole to get inside, to make her way to the front door. The place is so packed, is becoming a borderline fire hazard, and security is working too hard, all the GED-looking rent-a-cops acting like they're in the Secret Service, keeping people from coming inside. Nicole smiles, and when the guard tries to assert some minimum wage authority, she frowns and points toward our table.

I repeat, “Seven years. You're just a bump in the road.”

As Nicole approaches, Ayanna says, “I've known her for eight years.”

Her tender words slam me headfirst into a brick wall.

“So, blind man, who is the thief?”

My mouth remains open like the capital letter “O.”

She says, “Stop looking like you have lockjaw.”

I close my mouth. “You're playing games.”

“I don't play games. Not even bid whist on the Fourth of July.”

I try to hide the fact that she's cutting into my skull with a knife. She's good. A worthy opponent.

When Nicole gets close, we both give her happy faces and wait to see which one of us she will hug first, on which side of the table she will sit.

Nicole stops shy of the table, smiles an ethereal smile, and with the sweetest voice tells us, “Let's go. This place is too crowded.”

Ayanna asks, “You sure?”

Nicole tisks and shakes her head. “If assholes could fly this place would be an airport. Let's bounce outta here before my peaceful spirit leaves me acting stupid.”

I leave enough money on the table to cover my drink; Ayanna does the same for hers. She leaves her business card and a healthy tip for her number-one fan.

We take the cobblestone walkway toward the Amtrak station, then turn around and come back, eye browsing all the specialty shops. We pass a few homeless women, another brother wearing a shirt that screams STOP THE EXECUTION OF MUMIA ABU-JAMAL!

Nicole says, “Ayanna's mother is a fascinating woman. She's German and Dutch, born in South Africa, and raised in San Antonio, Texas. Her dad is from Kalamazoo, Michigan. But she grew up in D-town, went to Pershing High School, graduated valedictorian, then moved out here to go to Berkeley on a full scholarship.”

“So, genius,” I say to Ayanna. “Your mother is German?”

“And Dutch. Problem with that? You're looking kinda yellow yourself. If we did a DNA test, bet we'd find some traces of Thomas Jefferson in your blood too.”

“Just saying. You don't look it.”

“How am I supposed to look?” she says with stem eyes. “You sound bigoted over there.”

“My mom's Creole: French, Indian, black. I'm the Rainbow Coalition, so how bigoted can I be?”

Ayanna nods. She didn't know that. She knows a lot, but not all.

Nicole says, “Her dad met her mom when he was in the military. Beautiful couple. Beautiful.”

Nicole seizes the opportunity to start a political conversation, one that I've seen on Montel Williams and Jenny Jones too many times to count. Talking about racism is futile and after listening to my old man preach about it all my life, tonight it numbs me, has gotten to the point where it doesn't move me.

But Nicole has a way of pointing the conversation in her chosen direction. It feels like this is a warming up exercise, something to reveal character and expose comers of our value systems. She's trying to paint a clear picture of Ayanna for me, also letting her lover know who I am, maybe even rationalizing why her lover should appreciate me as well. She's selling me Ayanna the same way she tries to sell me Oakland, feature by feature.

Nicole argues, “Personally I think people like status quo. Are afraid of evolution. I mean, let's be real: if Black people mix with Europeans, if Caucasians procreate with Asians, if Mexicans make babies with African-Americans, what's the worst case scenario?”

With mild sarcasm I say, “Me.”

“Anyway, mankind will still be here,” Nicole replies. She's nervous, choosing her words. “Narrow minds will become wider. But when change is in people's faces, everybody goes into panic mode, everybody freaks out and starts to worry about what they would lose, and not what they would gain.”