The kids left the room, got ready so Gerri could drop them off. She came in and threw on black spandex tights, two sports bras to hold her load down, cross-trainers, a large T-shirt that made her look like a modest mom, pulled her hair back, slapped a cap on top, shades on her eyes.
Gerri massaged her cheeks. “I’m so stressed my skin is breaking out. See those pimples on my forehead? The makeup I wear at night’s not helping either. I’ve got to go to the dermatologist to get some cream.”
I asked, “That bad?”
“When a sister’s epidermis starts to feel as rough as Godzilla’s backside, it ain’t good.”
The stress level in her voice went off the scale. Her words thickened and her eyes turned darker than the bra she was wearing.
I asked Gerri, “What’s on your agenda today?”
“Well, I was going to ride out to Upland and get my do did at Cuts and Such. I can’t be riding around L.A. looking like a Groovy Ghoulie.”
“A groovy which-a-what?”
“The Groovy Ghoulies, Horrible Hall. Guess that was before your time.”
“Anything before Pac-Man is before my time.”
“Damn, I’m getting old.”
I laughed. “Getting?”
The smile left her eyes when I teased her, made me feel bad that I did. She went on, “I have a quick meeting down in Manhattan Beach—”
“With a client?”
“One’s business, the other personal. Insurance company is tripping, so I have to go see them later. So, I might call Jackie Lynch and tell her to reschedule me for tomorrow or the next day. I think you and I need a break from the madness. We need to get off this merry-go-round for a few hours.”
“I know I do. Tired of going in circles.”
“Since we are two self-employed divas—”
“That we are.”
“—let’s cancel our appointments. Play hooky.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Two things we can’t talk about for the next eight hours.”
“What?”
“The first is men.”
“The second?”
“Men.”
Our workout took us to Manhattan Beach, to a secluded strip right off Rosecrans Boulevard called Sand Dune Park. A hellified hill of sand that climbs toward the sky. We’ve walked the stairs in Santa Monica a time or two, and those are no joke, but this is the ultimate workout. Gravity and sand make you work your booty muscles and thighs and calves like you wouldn’t believe. Every time I put my bare foot in the sand, my foot sinks. People were all over the hill, huffing, puffing, giving out, cramping up, sweating buckets so they could reach the top and catch a view that led straight out into the ocean.
Halfway up, my legs were burning like somebody had cut me and poured Tabasco sauce on the wound. Last night, yesterday, so many days before were on my mind. I know that Jefferson, the singing group, her kids, and her ex-hubby were on her mind, but we talked about other things.
I huffed and told Gerri, “Come on, slowpoke.”
“I’m coming. Man, this hurts like hell.”
A sister who looked like Lisa Bonet, slender and curvacious, pretty much all legs, went by us like we were standing at a bus stop.
Gerri muttered, “Heifer. Why she gotta make it look so easy?”
We stopped talking and fought the hill, our feet sinking in the sand with each step, butt trying to cramp up, grunted our way to the top. We were in so much pain that we made ugly orgasmic faces over and over. Caught our breath, then ran back down, kicking sand everywhere.
I asked, “How you feel?”
“This is excruciating. But I love it. Back in the day, me and Melvin used to do this hill every Saturday morning.”
After a few moments of panting, we hobbled around in the sand with our hands on our hips, down where all the stay-home moms had congregated with their babies. We stretched and stared at that monster hill.
Gerri said, “Back to the top.”
“Shit. You must be on ginseng and caffeine.”
We tortured ourselves five times, each time getting a helluva lot slower, then twice we sped-walked the stairs that were next to the dune.
We grabbed our bottled water, squirted our faces to wash away the sand and sweat, then sat down on the concrete table in front of the little kiddie playground, talking about what we had promised we wouldn’t talk about for the next eight hours.
She said, “So, after last night, the wedding is off.”
“Roll the credits and tell somebody to say, ‘Sit, Ubu, sit.’ ”
“Then why are you still wearing the engagement ring?”
No answer from me. Just a surge of heat in my heart. I sipped my water, put more on my face, tried to cool off.
We struggled through two sets of twenty push-ups.
Gerri told me, “At least be the man’s friend.”
“You care about Vince, don’t you, Gerri?”
“You want the politically correct answer or the honest-to-God truth?”
“Let’s try the truth.”
“Yep. Hell, right now I wish I had seen him before you did.”
“He’s single. Go for it.”
Then she looked sad. “I don’t like feeling old. Don’t like feeling used up. Don’t like this dating thing. I’m feeling old, feeling tired.”
I asked her if she was still seeing Jefferson.
“For now,” she added. “We have too much business.”
“You sleeping with him?”
“Sex is in limbo. It’s not about sex anyway. Hell, I’ve gone two years without sex. I can do it again if I have to.”
“Well, good for you. Coochie lockdown ain’t my style.”
She spoke in a distant whisper, “This was supposed to be my cash cow.”
I asked, “So, what’s up with the Butter Pecan situation?”
Gerri picked at her nails. “We had to have a business meeting.”
“We being who?”
“All parties involved in this stupid three-way. Look, I’ve invested; I have to protect my kids’ money. This record deal could be our cash cow.”
“How much you spend so far?”
“Too much to throw my hands up. Studio time ain’t cheap.”
“And what happened at the meeting?”
“Well, Jefferson told her he loved me. Typical stuff a man does when he’s up against the wall. Did all of that drama in front of Butter Pecan.”
“So, he dissed her.”
“She played herself. He just told her where his heart is, that’s all.”
I sucked my jaw inside. “How did Butter react to that noise?”
“Pissed off. Rejection ain’t easy.”
“Been there, done that, wrote a postcard.”
“After our group discussion, I made her an appointment for tomorrow.”
“You made her one?”
“Her money is nonexistent, so I’m paying.”
“Whose idea was this?”
Gerri swallowed. “The girl has no money, no job, can’t take care of herself, no maternal skills. Raising a kid is more than a notion, Dana.”
“If you’re making her do that, I don’t know. That’s a crime.”
Gerri sounded full of remorse, bothered down to her bones when she said, “Butter is young. She’ll recover. Time is on her side.”
I didn’t know what to say. At the moment I really wasn’t too sure if I wanted to be near Gerri.
Her pager hummed; she had it attached in the X of her sports bra, under her sweaty T-shirt. She read the display. “Some idiot’s been paging me all week, and all they put in is three digits.”
“Probably some pervert who got your pager number off one of your bus benches.”
“Wouldn’t be the first one. I don’t recognize the prefix, unless it’s a cell phone. Information said it’s a West Virginia area code.”
I rocked a second. A light blue truck pulled up behind us, stopped where the street ended and the park began. Two young brothers were inside. One was on a cellular phone. I’d seen them checking us out while we went up and down the hill. Watching butts at sunrise. They saw me looking back, played it off, and stared at the ground.
I asked Gerri, “Why don’t you let Butter and Jefferson handle their own business, then you go on and meet somebody else?”
“With my luck, I’d meet a preacher, he’d embezzle church funds and buy me a big house, then his wife would come and burn it down.”
“Not funny.”
“Not laughing.”
“You are too cynical this morning.”
“Dana, my situation ain’t like yours. You can date whoever, whenever. I get leery every time I have to start over. I can’t bring anybody into my home. For all I know, he could be a woman beater, have bad credit. Hell, I have a daughter who is ten minutes out of her training bra. And I can’t have my kids see me with a lot of men. Outside of their daddy, they know I’ve been on a date or two, but Jefferson is the only one they’ve met.”
Seconds ago, a pin pricked my heart when she said bad credit.
She rambled on, “My outlook has changed, I’ll admit that much. Anybody who stays in this wretched dating game long enough will change. A fool buys you a snack at KFC, he thinks he’s gonna get a coochie coupon.”
“At least you get offered a snack. Men I meet just want a coupon.”
Light-hearted chuckles came from our sweaty faces.
She said, “They talk about us, but the brothers have twice as much baggage. And the ones hitting forty, damn, when they take those fly suits off, their guts look like a tub of Jell-O. You can see how they’ve let themselves go to the dogs. Not the kinda man I want in my bed.”
A cool breeze came up and raked our skin.
I said, “Jefferson is fine.”
“That the man is. Too fine. He’s gonna be a hard act to follow.”
She shook her head and chuckled.
I asked, “Wanna share that joke?”
“You know why it’s hard being a woman?”
“Nope,” I said with mucho sarcasm. “I have no idea. School me.”
“You watch TV and all they talk about is being an independent woman, how we don’t need men, uh-huh what-the-fuck-ever, and the moment you step into a supermarket, every magazine from
Essence
to
Cosmo
to
Body and Soul
has articles on how to get a man, how to lose five pounds so you can keep a man, how to get rid of a man, how to find your soul mate—we get so many mixed signals, what we’re supposed to do?”
When her words faded, I asked, “You believe in soul mates?”
“Whoever invented that crap needs to be shot. If I have a soul mate, and he has a soul, with my luck he’s a short man living in China.”
“I take that as a long-winded no.”
“A big
fat
no. You find somebody and you work at it, good or bad.”
“Then why aren’t you still with Melvin?”
“Why aren’t you with Vince? Why did you leave Claudio?”
No answer, just a lot of thoughts.
I asked her what I’d asked her before, “You love Jefferson?”
“Falling in love is easy. Being in love sucks.”
“I take that as an evasive yes.”
“Some days it feels like life is passing me by. I want a chance at happiness before this cow goes dry. Don’t want to be sad and lonely.” She whispered that, then gave me a painful smirk. “Jefferson makes me feel like I’m still young. Melvin, every time I see him, the wrinkles in his face make me feel old.”
“Wow.”
“Dana, that older-woman, younger-man thang looked easy in the movie.”
Another breeze came to visit us.
I told her, “Close your eyes. Think beautiful. What do you see?”
She did. My road dawg started smiling wide, looked almost like a child, and talking so crisp and clear: “My folks’ house on Sterling Street and Giles Road. St. Mark Baptist Church on West Twelfth. Little Rock Central High School. Daddy coming home from his job at Kroger. Momma making Sunday dinner on Saturday night. Us on the road to Hope, Arkansas, to see my momma’s people, car smelling like fried chicken and sweet potato pie.”
She opened her eyes and that smile slowly went away.
“I never should’ve left Little Rock. Should be with my momma, teaching social studies at Central High or something.”
I whispered, “You can always go back. That’s why it’s called home.”
“Nah. Too late. Too much water under this bridge. Cost of living is cheaper back there, I could get a huge spread for what I pay now, but it would be too much of a culture shock. My kids wouldn’t be too thrilled to be hanging out at a watermelon festival with a bunch of mosquitoes.”
We laughed.
“And you think the picking is slim out here,” she said. “How do you tell the single men in Arkansas?”
“How?”
“They have both teeth cleaned.”
Gerri laughed. I didn’t get the joke. It was too South for me.
“Pager is blowing up.” Gerri shifted and took her pager out. “Same number again. I have over twenty messages from the same idiot.”
We headed into downtown Manhattan Beach and grabbed some grub on Highland and Thirteenth. The Good Stuff was another spot with an ocean view, where the world was European and shorts and sandals were the dress code.
Earlier, Gerri said she had a meeting with someone. Ten minutes after we made it to the restaurant I saw who it was. It was Melvin.
They stayed to the side, away from me so I couldn’t hear, talked for a while, ended up laughing about a few things. He reached out and held her hand. Gerri smiled and blushed, the way a woman does when a man tells her how good she looks. She walked him back outside. I saw them cross Thirteenth Street to the meter parking. She tiptoed and they kissed, lip to lip, and hugged again before she came back inside and sat at the table with me.
I asked, “What was that all about?”
“Nothing. He’s picking the kids up when he gets off today.”
“Is he working?”
“Yeah. He found a gig at a small company not too far from here.”
That was all she said. We ordered. She was still quiet.
Me and Gerri made eye contact. A weak smile came over her face.
Her words were so human. “Yes, Dana. It is possible to be in love with two men at the same time.”