Читать книгу Original Love - J.J. Murray - Страница 10

I wake up several hours later in complete darkness, sweat dripping down my back. I can’t be sleeping! I have two novels to write, and Henry wants his sassy-ass novel as soon as possible.

I scratch the sleep out of my eyes and boot up the laptop, searching old files for five years of the fits and starts of Desiree’s other novels. There are a lot of starts, but few fits for what Henry wants. But after a few hits of brown-sugared Earl Grey tea, Stevie Wonder turned up as loud as the laptop’s little speakers can handle, I start to click the keys…

…as a black woman.

A WHITER SHADE OF PALE by Desiree Holland

Prologue

I’m looking for The One on a search for the Holy Male.

I know it’s supposed to be the Holy Grail, but a man sure as hell isn’t a communion cup, although sometimes a whole bunch of whine is involved.

I’m on a quest to find my soul mate before he finds me. I mean, what kind of a romance would it be if the hero rides in on his sweaty yet majestic white horse—and it has to be a white horse, because those fantasy stories are always racist—to save me, the damsel in distress, whose hair is micro-braided and beaded and looking beyond fo-ine, only I have already kicked the dragon’s ass, sliced and diced his scaly green guts, stuffed banquet-sized dragon morsels into medieval freezer bags, and have been waiting for our hero for twenty goddamn minutes? I would not be amused by his tardiness, and I would probably be tapping the sand on my wrist-hourglass and yawning when I see our hero limping in from his death-defying battle with an arthritic squirrel.

“It’s about time you showed up, Sir Stankalot,” I would say. “Now wipe that dragon shit off my sword, put these groceries on your Caucasian horse, and let’s get us back to Camelot. You know there’ll be a party waiting for us, because that’s all those crazy white knights do. That Merlin is a wiz in the kitchen with dragon spleen, isn’t he? I hope he separates out the membrane this time, though. Cleaning dragon spleen is a lost art. And that King Arthur, he’s such a trip at parties. I hope Lancelot has the sense to keep his hands off Guenevere’s ass this time…”

A quest just wouldn’t be any fun if he found me first.

I sit back in my chair and smile. Ebony loved those old medieval romances, but I was never quite the right knight.

I see the skies getting rosier, the darkness rolling the stars away from the surface of the bay. “Now, for a little back story.” I finish my tea, the last gulp ninety percent brown sugar.

Chapter 1

I’m nobody’s damsel in distress, mainly because I shop at Wal-Mart. I’m no fashion queen, and Wal-Mart always has my size, even if I sometimes have to sneak into the plus-size section to get a blouse.

They sell a little bit of everything at Wal-Mart, but they don’t sell dragon-slicing knives. I doubt any of those malls sell them, either. I don’t like shopping at those malls, no sir. I get claustrophobic even on the escalators at malls. And on elevators, I’m the crazy lady who sweats, whistles, and stands with her hands on the crack of the doors. I’ve never ridden a horse and wouldn’t know how to swing a sword to save my life. I can barely shave my legs with an electric razor without getting a nasty burn.

I feel my own scraggly growth. I don’t intend to shave until I’m through with these novels. Call it superstition. Edie hated my attempts at growing a beard, but Ebony liked my little moustache, that first soft growth I had when I was thirteen. Most of it sprouted out of a mole under my nose, but Ebony said that it made me look “so much older.”

And all those parties at Camelot aren’t for me either. I would rather discover, search, and hang with myself or with only one other person. I’m my own best friend.

I sometimes take long walks just to browse in old bookstores. “What are you looking for?” they sometimes ask. “Everything in particular,” I tell them. “I’m looking for a diamond in the rough.”

Then they smile and say, “I’ll check the computer for that title.”

When they bring me a book or say they’ll have to order one or more of the nine romance novels (and one illustrated history of Arizona) titled A Diamond in the Rough or Diamond in the Rough, I shake my head. “I’m sure you have the particular diamond in the rough I’m searching for,” I tell them. “I’ll keep looking.”

They generally leave me alone after that, but they always shadow me, sometimes with a security guard, which doesn’t upset me a bit. You can never be too careful browsing bookstores these days. I mean, you might innocently brush up against a Salman Rushdie book and become a target of someone’s jihad.

Browsing. That’s all Ebony and I ever did, it seems. We’d browse every store in Huntington Bay Village, trying on clothes our parents would never buy, reading magazines and comic books our parents would never allow in the house.

I make another cup of Earl Grey and try to think of what Ebony would be looking for in a soul mate. I used to know, because I was supposed to be her soul mate.

I should have never left Long Island.

Returning to my laptop, I let a little of my own character into Ebony’s character:

So what exactly am I looking for? If I knew that, I’d have found his ass already. I just don’t know.

I once saw a woman on TV who was sitting in the charred wreckage of her house after a fire. A rude reporter shoved a microphone in her face, asking, “What are you doing?” I would have said, “What’s it look like, you asshole?” but the woman on the TV never spoke. She just kept sifting through the gunk on the floor until she found one of those old Polaroid pictures, the kind you had to pull out of the camera and time for a minute. She held that picture to her chest and smiled, sooty tears running down her face.

And that’s what romance is to me: It’s like looking for that one unburnt picture in the ashes. There’s nothing to it but to do it. I just have to search high and low and in between and in between that until…I find The One who has survived the fire.

And I’ve only been searching for—give or take—thirty years.

I want a man, but not just any man. He has to meet certain criteria. Or rather, he has to accept certain things about me and not dog me out about every damn thing that I do or don’t do.

He can’t mind if I do most if not all of the cooking. I can cook, and if you ever saw me, you’d say, “She has a gland problem or she still lives at home and eats her mama’s cooking.” I don’t have a gland problem that I know of, and I haven’t lived at home for fifteen years. I’m not out-and-out flabby, but I do have a roll or two on my tummy from my made-from-scratch dinner rolls. I doubt I’d fit into any of those height-weight charts at the doctor’s office, but I haven’t met many black people who actually do. Bet there wasn’t a black doctor on that panel when they made those charts.

When I cook, I don’t use recipes or instructions. I kind of go with the flow…and whatever happens to be in the pantry or fridge. I have an extensive spice collection that even includes

…includes what? Edie did all the cooking for us, most of it unpronounceable and generally inedible, and I had the “honor” of being her dishwasher afterward. The only herbs I know come from that “Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme” song by Simon and Garfunkel. I stretch my back after standing and check out Henry’s pantry.

I blink at a couple hundred different spices. Why so many spices in a summer home? And what the hell is fenugreek? It looks like a collection of smashed peanuts and smells strangely like nutty, homemade cookies. Marjoram smells almost like Earl Grey tea, but it looks like peat moss. Coriander, which either resembles rat droppings or brown caviar, smells like green tea or warm, stale Guinness Stout. Savory, which has to be mint tea, looks like a mix of pine needles and hedge trimmings. I look closely at basil and see an apostrophe s. I open and smell some outstanding herb, which must be Basil’s stash. Henry needs some help. If I were a cop looking for marijuana, the first place I’d look would be the herb collection. I’ve heard of far too many people busted because the oregano wasn’t oregano.

Ebony wouldn’t use any of this shit. I slide bottles here and there until I see several different types of Jamaican curry powder. I race back to the laptop and type:

seven different types of Jamaican curry powder. Name another woman who has seven different types of Jamaican curry powder in her pantry. I blow people away at

Now where will she work this time? Ebony was Toni Million, an aspiring dancer working at a fancy restaurant in Ashy, and Bonita Milton, an unknown artist working at a daycare center in The Devil to Pay. It has to be a job where the reader will have some instant sympathy. I smile. She’s going to be what I used to be: a teacher.

Cherry Grove Middle School, where I teach history to seventh graders and sometimes actually do some of that damn paperwork. Whenever we have a faculty food day, other teachers ask, “What do you call it?” I tell them it’s my lunch. They always want the recipe, but I tell them that there isn’t one, it’s just something I whipped up. They look at me strangely after that, but they eat it and ask for seconds. I’m always taking home empty containers. There’s always some chicken, pork, or beef soaking in

What the hell’s that kind of sauce Edie was always abusing? Something Oriental, sweet, and brown. I check Henry’s fridge and find it. Edie and Henry share the same tastes?

Yaschida sauce and fresh veggies and salad fixings in my fridge, just in case The One makes a surprise visit. But there isn’t any alcohol in my fridge. None. No soul mate of mine is going to get drunk on beer or wine.

He’s going to get drunk on me.

I never could get enough of a buzz from Edie alone. She didn’t take my breath away, just what little money I had. So whiskey sours made her somewhat sweeter, and even when they didn’t, they at least made me numb. Ebony, though—the girl made me high. Drunk. Intoxicated. Shit-faced. Not exactly a romantic thing to say, but it was true. The girl made me shit-faced drunk with happiness. Ebony was and probably still is the most beautiful person that I have ever met, only she never seemed to notice it. She was—and I’m sure that she still is—a natural beauty. We’ll just have to make this version of Ebony a natural beauty who doesn’t think she’s beautiful.

The One can’t mind if I’m not beautiful. I’m what you might call naturally rugged-looking, like I been in a few fights. I’m not homely or anything—I have some sexy-ass eyes and thighs, now—but I just haven’t been blessed by what White America wants in its caramel-covered black beauties. I’m thick. I’m intimidating. I’m The Commodores’ “Brick House.” I have long fingers and toes, long skinny feet, tiny ears, dark brown eyes, and the darkest skin allowed by law in the state of Pennsylvania.

I once got pulled over so a cop could check my tinted windows, then he says, “No, everything is okay.” Asshole. If I tinted my windows any more than they already are, no cop would ever see me.

I’m not sepia, café au lait, ginger, mocha, coconut, or any other tropical flavor. I’m black, and I’m beautiful, only my hair doesn’t seem to know it. My hair looks good the day it’s done, then flies away little by little until the next time I have it styled. My students can tell what day of the week it is just by looking at my hair—and my clothes. I generally start out nice and professional and end up wrinkled and tacky. Rack Room supplies me with comfortable shoes, and when I’ve done all the laundry, I sometimes find outfits that match like they’re supposed to. It’s not easy, though, because I know that washer of mine has something against me. Dark clothes go in dark and come out gray, lights and whites go in white and come out gray, and grays go in gray and get grayer. If you take me in from a distance, I look like I play for the Oakland Raiders in their silver and black uniforms.

What else, what else, what else? How does she get around? And does she like to get around? If she’s driving around Pittsburgh, the pothole capital of America, she’ll have to hate driving with a passion.

My soul mate can’t mind if I don’t drive. I own an SUV, a Suzuki Sidekick, but I don’t like to drive. Too much stress, too many decisions, too many street signs to read, and too many potholes to avoid while someone’s on my ass honking and flipping me off because I actually drive the speed limit in this town.

Oh, and the accidents. The first one wasn’t my fault. A sneaky light pole in a parking lot jumped out behind me one night. Blew out my back window and flattened my spare. And the second accident, well, let’s just say that one-way streets in downtown Pittsburgh should be outlawed. The cab I hit wasn’t damaged too badly, but the cabbie showed up in traffic court practically in traction, a neck brace turning his face beet red. My monthly car insurance payment is almost as high as the mortgage payment on my condo. I really should sell the Sidekick, but I might need it one day…probably to pick up The One who has never found the damn time to get his own damn license.

Hobbies? Ebony had so many, but one she stuck with was reading. And what she read and shared with me opened my eyes in so many ways…

My Boo has to be someone who likes to read, who consistently finds time to read, who makes time to read, who even schedules time to read. In other words, he has to be anal as hell about reading.

On my lunch breaks, I cross four lanes of traffic to a park, where I walk by any man who is reading something other than a newspaper or magazine. Then I check him out and what he’s reading—in that order. If he’s old and stank, I keep on walking. And if he’s younger and doesn’t smell too bad, I slow down. If I’ve already read the book he’s reading, I try to start a conversation. “That’s a wonderful book, isn’t it?” I ask. I’ve noticed that the word “wonderful” is used a lot on the back covers of paperbacks. Most times I get nods, a smile, an occasional grunt. One time, though, a white man, who looked Italian with his twisted nose and hairy eyebrows, actually said a complete sentence. “I know,” he said in such a way as to tell me: “Get lost, wench.” If I haven’t read the book, I search it out, blow off all my grading, and read it that very night. Only the next day, the man has gone on to another book or isn’t reading that day. If I can’t finish it by the next day, I sometimes sit where the man had been reading the day before hoping he’ll come by. That hasn’t happened…yet.

I’m not crazy, so why do I do this? Just in case The One has read it. Then we’ll have something more in common. Online book clubs have helped me a lot in this area. I’d never join a book club, though I really enjoy discussing books. Book clubs are just too communist for me. “Everyone this month will read this book,” they say. Well, what if I don’t want to? What if I’d rather read several books simultaneously? Just last week I

What would Ebony be reading now? She always loved the ocean and the beach, and in Pittsburgh, it’s all about rivers—the Ohio, the Allegheny, and the Monongahela. I hook the laptop to Henry’s phone, and after stressing over all the access-number choices, I get on America Online and run a few book searches with “river” in the title at Amazon.com. Once I have a collection, I continue to type:

was on a river kick and read The River, Cane River, Bridge Over the River Kwai, Mississippi Solo, Mystic River, and even cracked Huckleberry Finn for the climactic river scene. I even looked up whitewater rafting and paddleboat trips on the Internet.

Since I believe the number seven is magic, I once read

Seven, Ebony’s magic number. I wore that number in Little League, in CYO basketball at St. Pat’s, in Pop Warner football, and even taped it to my T-shirt whenever I played street hockey for the P-Street Rangers. “I like your number,” Ebony told me the first time we met. My number was one of the reasons she said she became interested in me. “It was like a sign or something,” she said.

Another book search later, and I continue plucking the keys:

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, The Seven Daughters of Eve, Seven Up, The Seven Sins of Memory, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, The Seven Storey Mountain, and The Seven Steps to Nirvana. And what did I learn? The number seven helps writers sell books. I haven’t started on all those alphabet mystery writers yet, but I will. I’ve got plenty of time, and because I am who I am, I’ll be starting with the letter Z. Those authors have some writing to do to catch up with me!

Maybe I should name my book Searching the Seven Seas for Ebony. Henry would say it wouldn’t fit on the cover, and Eliot would say it wouldn’t fit on a movie theater marquee. I count the syllables. Ten exactly. Carlton Muse, the blank verse poet, would probably have an ear-gasm. Writing wouldn’t nearly be as frustrating if the title you lived with for a year or two was actually accepted by the marketing department.

I re-read Ebony’s back story so far and realize that I’ve created a lonely middle school teacher who would rather…what? She’d rather write, just like me. Maybe she’ll even have an “I’d Rather Be Writing” bumper sticker on her Sidekick. Let’s make her an aspiring writer:

My One and Only can’t mind that I’m a frustrated novelist who has more rejection letters than pages of a novel. I looked into the whole subsidy publishing thing, but I didn’t have the fifteen grand up front. I checked out POD (Print-On-Demand) publishing, but it sounded too scientific. Saying “I am a POD author” might freak people out. I guess I could go to Quik Copy and crank out my novel and slap some staples on it, but I only have a ten-percent discount card at Quik Copy, and the machines I choose always chew up my originals.

But it isn’t about the money. Okay, it’s a little about the money, but it’s more about validation. I want to be noticed as an adequate writer. Not a great one. Just adequate.

And paid enough to quit teaching seventh graders for all eternity.

Several of my rejection letters contain the word “idiosyncratic,” and a few even say my work is “quirky,” “strange,” and “eccentric.” I always like to keep the reader guessing…which is probably why my novel’s plot is too unpredictable and unbelievable. “Too dense for mass consumption,” one letter states in bold italics.

What’s my novel about? Well, it’s kind of an autobiography, and it tells the tale of a normal, regular, middle-aged hoochie in search of her Boo.

It’s not as depressing as you might think.

I titled it A Regular Woman the first time around, mailing it to every publisher and agent in New York, many of whom didn’t have the decency to write me a rejection letter. Maybe they thought it would be about a woman who didn’t have a problem with constipation. The second time around, I changed the title to The Quest for the Holy Male and maybe changed a paragraph or two. Same result. This time I’m sending it out as Soul Quest. I think it’s a snappy title, and all the publish-it-yourself books teach you that a good title will often sell a bad book. Case in point: Bad as I Wanna Be by Dennis Rodman. I never should have read that book. It has ruined me for life when it comes to plotting my stories because it has no plot.

Time to throw in the sex, as if I’m the one experienced enough to write about it. All I had growing up was this incredible fantasy life. And Ebony. But I guess most writers who saturate their books with steamy sex are writing about what they’ve never done, either. Fantasy, that’s all it is. Ebony will just have to be more like me in this book:

The One also can’t care that I’m not that experienced. The first time I made out was on a balmy Friday night in high school. The boy had a zit on his chin. The next day, I had a matching zit on my chin. The following Monday, we were the “Zit Couple” at school.

It was a very short relationship.

It was tough for me in high school. I had braces for six years to cure a vicious Bugs Bunny overbite and crossed front teeth like the creature in Alien. I had so many teeth pulled that I almost became addicted to “sweet air” at the dentist. Though I have very nice teeth now—a couple of friends even say my teeth look like dentures—no high school boy could look at me then and see into my smile’s future. And I still wore a retainer at night in college. I freaked out this one brother during my first marijuana experience. He thought my face had melted or something.

Maybe marijuana wasn’t all that he was doing that night.

And my first time was horrible. I was on the beach during spring break in Florida with a bottle of Hennessy and a boy—in that order—and the next thing I know, a cop is shining a flashlight on my ass. We never found the boy’s underwear, and I found sand up in all my crevices for days after that. I haven’t been completely celibate ever since, but I think I’ve got enough saved up to satisfy The One. At least I hope I do.

I have to give Ebony a shortcoming, something that embarrasses her that Johnny…Nicoletto will help her overcome. Where did “Nicoletto” come from? Must be a name from back in my childhood. What kind of shortcoming can I give her? She, of course, will rock his world, but nothing embarrassed Ebony. Nothing. Everything that girl did she did with style, grace, and flair, and she could dance so gracefully and—

Hmm. Would it be too ironic to have a black woman who can’t dance? Oh, the letters Desiree will get. “Every black person I know can dance, ho!” the letters and e-mails will shout, probably in all capital letters. But not all black people can dance well, so why should I perpetuate a stereotype? This version of Ebony is going to break more of those so-called “rules” that book critics demand never be broken:

I guess the main thing my soul mate can’t mind is the fact that I can’t dance. I can’t dance. At all. At least I can admit that, unlike that Vanilla Ice fool. I’m a little embarrassed about it, but at least I have the sense to stay seated at clubs while other hoochies practically have sex on the dance floor with their dance partners. That isn’t dancing.

That’s public dry humping.

At a sock hop in middle school, a friend of mine told me that I danced to the words and not the music—and I didn’t even know the words. At my junior prom, I danced so wildly that I accidentally kneed my date in the groin. He sang like Michael Jackson for the rest of the night. In college, I enjoyed pinballing around the mosh pits, and even there I was a klutz. I know, a tall black girl flying around in a mosh pit isn’t exactly what Malcolm X was talking about when he said, “By any means necessary.” Anyway, I’d jump up when the rest of the moshers would hit the floor, and I would dive into their arms, only to end up with my nose corkscrewed into the floor.

I used to watch Happy Days when I was a kid and wish that I could dance like those freckled white kids. It looked so easy. Maybe I was born in the wrong decade. I even took a free dancing lesson from Arthur Murray Dance Studios. I more or less learned the bossa nova, and that night I went to a club and tried it out, only to find that doing the bossa nova by yourself looks wack. The dancers around me gave me plenty of room, and for that I’m grateful, but…

No, I’m no dancer. So my soul mate has to know that I can’t dance, and he can’t care that I can’t dance. He can’t mind if I nurse a drink at a club while he dances the night away. But he has to go home with me.

If he wants to.

I look up and see sunbeams winking on the bay. I am wasted, my eyelids as heavy as the waves rolling in, but I have one more chapter in me. I throw open every window in Henry’s apartment, put “I Wish” on repeat-play, and let my fingers roll:

Chapter 2

I used to be a basketball star. I was a playground legend. No boy could outplay me. Maybe that was why I had so few dates. Still, it got me a scholarship for a full ride to Pitt.

Then I got pregnant. Didn’t mean to. Just sort of happened. I don’t want to talk about it because it happened so long ago, and my baby daddy isn’t worth talking about except to say that he’s been in and out of prison more times than those Hollywood stars go in and out of rehab. I’m not even sure where he is now, and I don’t give a shit. I’m my daughter’s mama and daddy, and that’s all that’s really ever mattered to me or to her.

Well, you know Pitt didn’t want me after that, which is pure bullshit. They couldn’t wait a few months for me to have the baby and then get back into shape. I wouldn’t have been good for recruiting or something, I don’t know. As big as I got, I might not have fit in the team picture. But the shit doesn’t work the same way for the brothers. Seems like every last one of them has a baby somewhere, but that doesn’t stop them from keeping their scholarships. They all have to be covered with tattoos and have a few chaps to earn high NBA draft choices.

So I had my baby—a little girl I named Candy—and started taking classes at Allegheny Community College while working as a housekeeper at the Airport Marriott. It wasn’t my house, but I kept it. You wouldn’t believe the shit that I had to clean up in that fancy place, and let me tell you, rich people’s shit stinks, too. Worst four years of my life, but Mama and Daddy made it tolerable by keeping Candy for me, and I finished my associate’s degree in child development in four years. Oh, I had a Jamaican man, Phillip, try to marry me, but he was only a cook at the Marriott. Probably needed me to keep his ass in the country.

At twenty-two, with the cutest four-year-old being spoiled rotten by my parents, I got it in my head to go to a real college. I got accepted at Clarion, walked on to the basketball team, and I kicked some serious ass for two years. There isn’t a single-season rebounding or scoring record at Clarion that I don’t still own to this day.

I also picked up my history degree along the way. Why history? I was always good at it, I wanted to know every little thing about every little thing since the day I was born, and I knew I could get a job somewhere teaching in the inner city because I’m black. There aren’t many of us left teaching, much less teaching in the ’hood.

Now I’m teaching some of the orneriest suburban seventh graders, every last one of them trifling, and I’m also coaching Cherry Grove’s girl’s basketball team. Despite all my knowledge and mad skills, we haven’t won but five games in the last ten years, and all five wins came against some Christian school that looked heavenly but played like hell.

The girls at Cherry Grove just don’t have a single clue as to how to ball. Oh, they all know how to dress, because all their shit matches, right down to the little balls on their footie socks. But the bitches trip over the damn painted lines on the court half the time, fix their hair before they take a shot, check out little boys when they should be rebounding, and cry because they chipped a nail while dribbling. Trifling. I’ve tried to quit coaching them for the last four years, but no one at Cherry Grove wants to endure the embarrassment I’ve been through.

Candy? That child is smart, so maybe I created her all by myself. She got her daddy’s sleepy eyes, but that’s it. She’s tall, and she can ball. But she’s at Duquesne University on a partial academic scholarship because I didn’t even let her apply to Pitt, and she is kicking ass in all her classes, but she won’t play on the basketball team.

“I’m not into that anymore, Mama,” she tells me. “I can’t be a doctor if I’m at practice all the time.”

That’s right—my little girl is going to one day be a surgeon or a researcher or something medical like that. My baby is going to take care of me.

It’s lonely in the condo without her, but it’s okay. It’s like I’m starting over or something. I know I still got game, I know I could probably contribute something to those WNBA teams out there even though I’m no model like that Lisa Leslie wench, but…I’m planning on getting a master’s degree in education so I can get out of the classroom and into an office behind a damn desk where I can punish all these trifling, snot-nosed chaps. I’d make a good administrator. I’d be Ms. Joe Clark, and I wouldn’t need a bullhorn or a bat. I have the “stare,” and I know I make at least one crusty-faced boy pee his pants every week with that stare when I’m on hall duty.

Unfortunately, a master’s degree costs money, and when your daughter only gets a partial scholarship to a private university, you have to rearrange your priorities. So I’m taking one night class at a time for the next, oh, seven years. Instead of jumping right in and getting bored to death with classes like “School Management,” “Curriculum Review,” and “Secondary School Law Mandates,” I take a class in technical writing.

On the first night, I arrive early at Allegheny Community College and take a seat in the back row in a comfortable burgundy chair in front of a slate gray table. There isn’t a single desk in here, and I already feel more like an adult. Out of habit, I slide my hand under the table. Not one bulging glob of gum. Maybe I should get a master’s and teach somewhere like this. I mean, the room is carpeted, and the walls and ceiling are soundproofed. It’s quiet. I like quiet. Seventh graders aren’t quiet even though I make them be quiet. Shit, sometimes when the chaps aren’t making any sound, I hear their little bodies growing.

I have to get me a teaching gig like this. The lights work, the clock works, and I bet that computerized thermostat by the door works, too. At Cherry Grove, I have to cuss and fuss at the custodian to get any of that shit working, and most times I have to rub an ice cube on the thermostat in my room to get the heat to come on. And the toys! The teacher has a huge TV/VCR hanging from the ceiling at the front of the room with speakers on each wall, an impressive computer on his desk that is hooked to the TV, and an overhead projector from this century. My overhead at Cherry Grove smokes like a crack addict every time I turn it on. I look with envy at the file cabinets with locks and the garbage can with a plastic liner.

I would love to teach history in a room like this. But it wouldn’t be all white man’s history. By the time I got through community college and then to Clarion, I was white man’s history-ed out. I’d probably teach world history or one of those upper level courses in African history. I know all of that, and if the state of Pennsylvania would let me, my seventh graders would know all of that, too. But no, I have to teach to the damn statewide test, mainly on the history of Pennsylvania. Oh, I throw in lots of art history because I love the work of Jacob Lawrence to death, but there’s only so much I can squeeze in because of that test.

A strange assortment of mostly old, married, white, and wrinkled people surround me, including an Italian guy who sits next to me.

Time to invent Johnny. Hmm. The critics roasted my last two main male characters, saying they were too weak, wimpy, and easily controlled. Johnny can’t be, even if he’ll look a little like me:

He isn’t bad-looking, maybe in his early forties, gray hair, coal-dark eyes, taller than me, paler than the moon. No wedding band. He smiles at me as he sits, so I cut off all the Italian jokes in my head. He has a nice smile, and it makes his eyes look mysterious. I hope he sits next to me for the next fifteen weeks.

And since there aren’t any brothers up in here, I might actually learn something about technical writing without getting hit on. I don’t want to be saying, “No, I am not a freshman, and no, you cannot have my phone number, and yes, I am old enough to be your damn mama.”

Though the attention might be nice.

Some white dude with a pockmarked face and thick glasses comes in and says he’s Professor Holt. He calls roll, and half of the class is missing. When he gets down the alphabet to where I should be, I don’t hear my name. Probably because I added the class so late. I’m most likely at the bottom of his roll sheet. When he calls out “Johnny Smith,” the Italian man next to me says, “Ciao.”

I have me some wicked-ass thoughts concerning “chow” after that and start imagining all sorts of things, like how Johnny’s pale skin would look against my firm, black, round booty, but he definitely isn’t a “Smith.” Who’s he trying to fool? Maybe he’s in the witness protection program.

And that’s exactly where Johnny will be. Not exactly believable, but at least the critics can’t say Johnny’s soft. I know I’m leaving myself open for attack—“What are the chances that she happens to meet a guy at a community college who’s in the witness protection program?”—but anything’s possible in romantic comedies.

“Welcome to Creative Writing,” Professor Holt says.

Say what?

“We don’t have a text for the class, though you might want to pick up a copy of The Elements of Style from the bookstore.”

“Excuse me,” I whisper to Johnny.

“Yes?”

“Did he say ‘creative writing’?”

“Yes.”

“This isn’t technical writing?”

“No.”

“I’m in the wrong place. I’m supposed to be in technical writing.”

He smiles. “You want to take technical writing?”

I’d much rather be creative. “Not really.”

“Then you are in the right place.”

Damn, he’s got some fine eyes, but what the hell’s that accent? He has to be from Brooklyn or something. “What should I do?”

“See la professore after class, and he will make the change.”

Damn, he has a fine voice with just enough Italian accent to wet my panties. “Just like that?”

“Just like that.” He leans closer, and I get a whiff of some exotic cologne. That shit definitely isn’t Old Spice. “What is your name?”

“Ebony.”

“Ah, a good name for you. You are a precious tree.”

And then I shiver. I literally shiver there in that heaven of a classroom. Yeah, I say to myself, I am in the wrong place at the right time.

I push away from the laptop and massage my lower back. I know it’s only a prologue and two chapters, but there are three parts, right? This ought to hold Henry for a while, maybe even get me a real advance.

Now if I could only hold the real Ebony…

Drifting off to sleep moments later on the couch, I dream of my precious tree, my E., my Ebony.