Black Silk (25 page)

“Are we there yet?” As the words passed through her lips into the humid night air where they seemed to hang before dissipating,
she realized that Shelley had been signaling right and was about to make her exit.

Shelley laughed, “Why are you in such a hurry girl? What’re you running from? Or are you running to?”

“I just need some movement, honey, some fun.” Darla ignored the main body of the question not knowing the answer or not wanting
one. Her buzz was wearing thin but she ignored that fact and pretended that sobriety was not steadily creeping up her spine.
She changed the radio station until she found Salt-N-Pepa and began to dance in her seat drowning out thought with sound and
motion.

“Can I have one of those?” Darla pointed at the pack of cigarettes in Shelley’s breast pocket. They both realized that Darla’s
question could have been interpreted as a request for Shelley’s right breast but both were too sober to acknowledge the double
meaning and find it funny.

“You gonna smoke it or are you just gonna get it all wet and ruined like you usually do?” Darla retrieved the pack and put
one in her mouth. She continued to dance until the parking brake was set in the gravel parking lot.

The broken ground could have posed a problem with Darla’s shoes but she strode toward the door like she’d grown up natural
out of rocks and broken glass. Shelley increased her stride behind her arriving at the door just in time to open it for Darla.

The air inside was thick with smoke and noise and innuendo. Shelley added their names to the board—Shelley then Darlene under
Dino and Pearl and Dusty—then moved toward the bar. Shelley was the only person besides Darla’s mother who called Darla, Darlene.

Darla surveyed the women present all wrapped up in whatever was their own revelry except a few. One certain She stood in the
opposite corner in a nicely worn denim shirt open over a black tank top and hanging out over black jeans. Something about
the way she observed, intrigued Darla.

“Any requests?” Shelley was back from the bar with her club soda and Shelley’s Scotch. “Come on help me pick.” They headed
to the jukebox, Darla taking hurried sips of her drink anxious to melt into her surroundings instead of resting outside waiting
for some enzyme to usher her across the invisible membrane.

“Natural Woman” came on as they made their selections. Darla began to sing and move. “Play some more Aretha. And mix it up
with some stuff you can dance to,” she said between lines.

She sang the words with a conviction that she didn’t recognize was a longing to feel, to savor, these symbols and spaces and
notes, to roll them around in her gut and be intimate with each nuance behind them and the gaps in between. She shifted her
weight enjoying the feeling of her damp thighs rubbing together.

“Play that one”—Darla slowed to a sway briefly and pointed to Mavis Staples—“and that one”—she pointed again, to Dusty Springfield
this time. “‘Son of a Preacher Man,’ that’s a good song.” Darla was feeling good again. She was not drunk but her words had
a new comfort and confidence that was not all her own.

Darla dared a larger sip of Scotch and sucked her teeth as she swallowed. The burn was good. She had started drinking Scotch
because she liked the way it made her feel when she tried it with her coworkers at the restaurant where they worked. But more
than the feeling she was quickly taking to the flavor, the aroma, the whole process. She took a deep breath, the smooth amber
seeming almost in contrast to the bright fluorescents of the jukebox before them. In an instant Darla remembered that she
had the cigarette from Shelly in her bag.