“Interested in me
how
?”
Teddy chuckled. “Down, boy. Bob Watson is an old-fashioned cock hound. He thinks being on the down low means you’ve been eating a lot of pussy.”
Kwame laughed, but he was glad. All he needed was to run into Bob Watson at one of these Atlanta clubs on
DL night.
It wasn’t even a question of being
outed.
If they were both there, neither one could mention it to outsiders. Teddy said it was sort of like the Mafia. If everybody’s a killer, nobody goes to the police. It was more a question of his own expectations, and maybe even a little hero worship. Kwame wanted Bob Watson to be who he appeared to be; a happily heterosexual, extremely successful businessman whose closet housed nothing more complicated than a few whispering ghosts of long-forgotten mistresses and a succession of interchangeable lovers under the age of thirty-five.
“I ran into him at LaGuardia two days ago,” Teddy was saying. “We were waiting out bad weather, so we had time to have a drink and catch up.”
“Is that when he asked you about me?” Just the idea that his name had passed Bob Watson’s lips was thrilling.
“He didn’t ask me about you specifically. Give me a little credit here for representing your interests.”
Kwame grinned. “You know I appreciate it, brother. Go on.”
“What he said was he had an opening for a bright young architect with a strong planning background. I told him he had one of the best right in his own backyard.”
“You said one of the best?”
“That’s a direct quote,” Teddy said, finally pushing his plate and wiping his mouth one final time with the white linen napkin. “Here’s his card.”
Teddy reached into the pocket of his perfectly tailored suit, pulled out a creamy white business card, and handed it across the table to Kwame. The clutter of cellphone, office, and home phone, e-mail address, street address, sky pager, and title all had been eliminated in favor of two words,
Robert Watson,
and one ten-digit number.
“So what happens now?”
“What happens now is he’ll call you next week to set up an appointment. Knowing Bob, he’ll probably take you to lunch, pick your brain for a while, and offer you the job.”
That scenario was even better than Kwame’s dream. Even in his subconscious, he had not been bold enough to fabricate a job offer. “Just like that?”
The card felt smooth between his fingers.
Teddy grinned. “Well, I did have my office send him a true and impressive list of your many accomplishments, along with my strongest possible personal endorsement. That ought to get the ball rolling.”
Kwame wanted to jump across the table and hug Teddy. “Well, I owe you one, man. This could be just the break I need.”
Teddy shook his head slowly and looked at Kwame. “You don’t owe me anything. This is all about how qualified
you
are. You’d be a big asset to any firm and the only reason you can’t see it is because your Atlanta sojourn has wreaked havoc with your self-confidence.”
“You think so?”
Teddy was not known for being a flatterer. “I know so. Bob Watson isn’t doing you any favors. He’s interested in you because you represent his big three.”
“What big three?” Kwame was still loving the words
Bob Watson’s interested in you.
“Smart, talented, and photogenic.”
Kwame laughed. “
Photogenic?
That’s pretty superficial.”
“Not really. Intelligence and talent are always a winning combination, and as far as being superficial, it’s a media world, brother. What are you gonna do?”
Kwame tucked the card in his pocket.
Teddy kept talking. “Plus, don’t overlook the fact that your ever-lovin’ mama is going to be the mayor as sure as I’m sitting here. Bob Watson is nobody’s fool. Hiring her son couldn’t be bad for business.”
Kwame bristled. “I would hate to think he’s only interested in me because he wants to get close to my mother.”
“This is Atlanta, brother,” Teddy said, grinning. “Everybody wants something from you, so get that self-righteous tone out of your voice and figure out what you want from them. At least that way, you’ll be trading even.”
Kwame wanted to argue as Teddy signaled their server, but what was the point? He knew as well as anyone that Atlanta was as cutthroat as New York or L.A. It just had a bigger smile and a whole lot more Southern charm.
“You know I met Bob when he was on the faculty at Yale,” Teddy said, pulling a platinum American Express card out of his black Coach wallet and handing it to their server. “I introduced him to Marian.”
Marian was Bob Watson’s brittle, beautiful second wife. Kwame couldn’t help but smile.
“What?”
“Nothing.” Kwame shook his head. “You’re just such a bourgie bastard, that’s all. You probably met her at Martha’s Vineyard.”
“Exactly. That’s where they grow women like that.” Teddy signed the check, left a generous tip, and then looked across the table at Kwame. “So, I’ve eaten my way out of the possibility of sex with my wife until the pork passes out of my system, settled your damn future, and tipped the waiter more than he deserved. Are you going to show me your place or not?”
“Absolutely,” said Kwame, sliding out of the booth. “It’s about ten minutes away, just over the line.”
Teddy chuckled as they headed for the door.
“What?”
“Nothing. Just the way you said that.
It’s just over the line.
That Hamilton Negro has got a serious hold on y’all.”
You have no idea,
Kwame thought, opening the door for Teddy and glad all over again for a night outside the gates of Hamilton city. He wondered what Blue’s reaction would be to his deception of Aretha. All the possibilities were too scary to consider, so he pushed them to the back of his mind. At this moment, there was no fear greater than the possibility that his friend would suddenly change his mind, feign fatigue, and go back to his hotel to crash without having sex. As keyed up as he was, such a move was guaranteed to send Kwame out into the clubs alone, searching for the satisfaction he found only in the places he never meant to go to, but that always felt like home once he got there.
“Shall I ride with you?” Teddy said casually, but his voice was suddenly thick with the same possibilities that were dancing around in Kwame’s head.
“Sure,” Aretha’s husband said, popping the locks on his gray Honda and sliding in behind the wheel as Teddy leaned in the passenger door, grinning at Joyce Ann’s car seat strapped securely in the back. “I don’t have to ride in the baby seat, do I?”
“The only thing you got to worry about riding is me.”
Teddy laughed out loud and swung his long legs into the car. “And just think, you used to be afraid of phone sex,” he said as Kwame backed out of the Paschal’s lot and headed for Nelson Street.
“I used to be afraid of a lot of things.”
Teddy laid his hand on Kwame’s knee. Most of the old warehouses in the area were still being renovated and at night the urban pioneers still went home to their suburbs and their dreams of a life without the endless Atlanta rush hour. For now, Kwame and Teddy had the neighborhood to themselves. The dark streets they were traveling were empty at just after nine o’clock. At a deserted corner with an endless red light, Teddy’s hand moved up slowly.
Without waiting for the light to change, Kwame turned down a narrow street that ran behind his building. Knowing nobody ever walked there at night, he pulled the car over and stopped.
“What are you afraid of now?” Teddy said.
“Shut up,” Kwame growled, his excitement almost unbearable as he put the car in park and turned off the lights.
Teddy didn’t hesitate, knowing his friend’s answer to the question. In this moment, Joyce Ann’s daddy was fearless.
13
I
t was almost eleven o’clock by the time Aretha left her studio and stepped outside. The big blue front door clicked shut behind her and she turned to look at it before she started down the walk and headed for home. Pulling her jacket around her shoulders, she saw that the door needed a little touching up. She had done the door project when she was only eighteen. Five years later, the paint was looking a little less vibrant, a little less like something special, and more like just another fading front door.
Aretha frowned at her own carelessness. A neglected
anti-evil-eye device
was worse than no attempt at all. Maybe that was why her life was falling apart. What had happened? Everything had been so good, and then all of a sudden it wasn’t. Or had it been all of a sudden? Had there been signs all along that she had missed? What if in her mad rush to be with this man, she had ignored the warnings like the people always do in the horror movies even though there is blood seeping through the wallpaper and strange noises emanating from behind the wine cellar’s locked door? Maybe that’s the power of really great sex, she thought. It clouds your vision until all you want is
more.
Crossing at the corner, Aretha tried to remember the last time she and Kwame had had great sex. She felt herself wanting to modify the definition of
great
so that she could count a few recent exchanges that had showed promise, but had never achieved anything approaching the sweating, straining, licking, lifting, groaning
grindingness
that distinguishes great sex from the simply adequate, where everybody gets off, but the earth does not move.
It had been more than a year, but Aretha wasn’t sure how much more. Could it really be
two
years? Since before Joyce Ann was born? She couldn’t remember. At this point, she couldn’t even remember if she had stopped wanting to, or he had, but the reality was that sex had become an every-other-week,
what-the-hell
kind of exchange. Admitting the sorry state of her sex life made Aretha feel sad and her feet slowed down without her realizing it. The end-of-summer wind in the trees was a soft whispering sound above her head.
She had read about relationships where people were sexually obsessed with each other, but she’d never been in one until Kwame. Her fear of AIDS and pregnancy had made her vigilant since she’d become sexually active her junior year in high school. It had been great curiosity, not a great love affair, that led her to bestow the onetime gift of her virginity on a shy young man who afterward sculpted her nude body in stone in such loving detail that she blushed seeing it in the gallery as part of his senior show.
Between that first fumbling effort, complete with slippery, uncooperative condoms and a final verdict of close but no cigar in the female-orgasm department, and her first unforgettable night with Kwame, Aretha had had two other lovers. Both possessed abundant energy and an openness to new ideas that matched her own. She became proficient at role-playing and was delighted to discover the utterly safe, totally dependable pleasures of mutual masturbation.
But being with Kwame back then had been different. She had realized that she didn’t want to be creative anymore. She had wanted to experience sex the old-fashioned, preplague way with no latex anywhere in sight. She realized she had never had unprotected sex, and in that sense,
she was still a virgin.
The thought excited Aretha so much she knew she had to plan for the next moment when she would be wrapped in Kwame’s arms and her hormones would take over. At that moment, she knew safe sex would be just one more thing to think about tomorrow. She had scheduled an HIV test in the hope that her willingness to take one would prompt him to do the same. Once they were both certified HIV-free and monogamous, they could pick a birth-control method and let nature take its course.
When she’d shared her results with Kwame a few nights later, he laughed. She was confused until he reached into his pocket and pulled out his own test results, dated the same day as hers. They both took this as a sign of mutual devotion and celebrated with an absolutely amazing weekend of unprotected sex in every possible permutation. Of course, she got pregnant. That was when everything changed.
Aretha tried to shake off the feelings her thoughts were stirring up. Her worries were spoiling her walk home. It was only five blocks between her studio and their house. The streets were lined with beautiful old trees and lovingly restored Victorians whose peaked roofs and gingerbread-house affectations recalled an era of porch swings and high-button shoes and family dinners nightly at six when Daddy came home from work.
That’s not the way it works anymore, Aretha thought, wondering if those women with husbands and fathers and brothers and sons had figured out something that continued to elude her. Had they found a way to be wives and mothers and lovers and friends? Had they juggled their disparate selves without complaint, made their lovely homes havens of domestic bliss, and, in the process, earned their husbands’ love and their children’s devotion?
Aretha didn’t believe it for a second. It probably had been just as hard for them as it was for her. Maybe that’s just the way it is, she thought, turning the corner onto her street. What was the old R&B song her dad used to play all the time?
That’s the way of the world?
She didn’t know if this thought comforted or depressed her. What she did know was that when she opened her back door the house was empty. It was midnight.
14
Z
ora Evans got on the northbound train to New York City at eight o’clock. By nine-fifteen, she had eaten a delicious dinner of roast chicken and mashed potatoes and shared a heartbreaking conversation about the war with a couple from Slidell, Louisiana, whose only son was currently serving in Iraq. When she told them she was a student at Spelman College on her way to D.C. for a meeting with other student activists who were questioning the war, the father leaned across the small dining-car table as if he had a secret he wanted to share.
Taking a deep breath, he assured her that his son was not a coward, but lately the boy’s letters had become increasingly desperate. The last few had so upset his mother that they were on their way to see their congressman to demand some answers. The woman was thin and sallow with a pinched, worried expression that softened only when she showed Zora a photograph of her son, a freckle-faced redhead with big ears and the barest suggestion of a mustache.
They hugged her at the end of the meal and told her they knew their son and the other boys and girls over there would appreciate what she was doing and to keep up the good work. She watched them walking out of the dining car, holding on to the seat backs to keep from stumbling as the train rocked its way toward their nation’s capital city, and rededicated herself to being a force for peace in the world.
When she got back to her little roomette, Zora pulled out her pajamas, brushed her teeth, splashed some water on her face, hung her clothes on a hanger in the narrow closet, and slipped into the bed that John, the sleeping-car attendant, had made up while she was at dinner. Train travel was too slow for most people, but she loved it. Something about being on the train made her feel connected to America in a way she rarely did at any other time. She propped herself up on the two pillows in their crisp white cases that John had stacked neatly at the head of the bed and smiled to herself as she pulled out the letter that had arrived at her apartment this morning. The pale violet paper smelled like violets, too, and her mother’s slightly loopy handwriting filled the page completely.
Dearest Girl of my heart,
her mother wrote in silver ink:
I’m so happy that you are going to be a part of this gathering of young people who are going to stop the war and change the world. I’m proud of you, baby. As you know, D.C. can be a strange and terrifying place sometimes with all the weird energy and habitual lying that goes on there every day the goddess sends sunshine. So I thought as you start your trip, it couldn’t hurt to focus a little energy on keeping you safe and peaceful in an environment that is usually neither.
Zora loved her mother’s letters and she always obeyed the handwritten instructions that came with them.
This particular spell does not require an audible, as the football guys say. Just put your hand over your heart to affirm that you will be fully present in the moment, thank the goddess for this journey, and bring back tales of Amazonian adventures to tell your mama! Listen hard! Think hard! Speak up! Be safe! (If you have sex, that is, which is not required!!) Love you madly!
Zora carefully refolded her mother’s letter, put it under her pillow, and turned out the light in her tiny sleeper. She snuggled down under the thin, pink blanket the railroad provided, glad she’d brought her favorite flannel pajamas to keep her cozy. Suddenly the train rounded a gentle curve of the track and the full moon came into view outside her window. It looked so big and impossibly bright she almost felt like she could reach out and touch it. She could just imagine her mother, wrapped up in her favorite shawl, standing on the porch, soaking up the moonbeams and whispering her favorite prayer into the wind.
Zora laid her hand on her heart like she used to when she was a Brownie scout and they were ready to take the Brownie oath, but this time she wasn’t going to pledge or promise anything. She was simply going to share the prayer her mother had told her would suffice even if she never learned another.
“Thank you,” she whispered softly, watching the moonlit countryside flying by outside her window and realizing that even though she was on her way to talk about protest marches and petition drives, she had never felt more like an American in her life. She knew she was earning her membership in a long line of outspoken women and passionately committed men who understood that loving your country meant speaking up as loudly when it was wrong as you cheered when it was right. She was grateful for the chance to be in their number.
“Thank you,”
she whispered one more time, and then she slept.