Читать книгу Letting Loose - Joanne Skerrett - Страница 15

There were times when I felt totally beautiful, smart, content with all the decisions I’d ever made, and generally at peace with my life. Those times were very rare. For Whitney, however, the issue was when didn’t she feel that way? She wore optimism like her skin. I just didn’t get it. She didn’t have the right because her stuff was just messed up. Messed up!

We waited forty frigid minutes before we were seated at an okay table at Stephanie’s. The place was very popular, on Newbury Street, and thus jumping on this Saturday night. Fine by me because the crackling excitement in the room was charging up my sputtering mood.

Whitney was positively glowing and happy. The sex was that good, she said.

Hmmm…Good sex. I’d stopped talking about sex with Whitney once things got out of control with bête noire. By out of control I mean once I’d started sleeping with him. I hadn’t planned it. But that’s what all adulterers and their coconspirators say, right? He was a stay-at-home dad who picked up and dropped off his boys every day at the school. He’d left the corporate rat race to stay home with his kids and pursue his dream of becoming a writer. He was living my dream. Although, I’ve never really written anything and I probably never will. But I like to think that if I ever got myself together that I could maybe someday write a great novel.

We chatted about his son Trevor at first. Trevor was highly intelligent and belligerent, so there was much to talk about. Before I knew it, we started to talk about more personal things. Then every extramarital affair cliché one could ever dream up happened to me. I felt like I was living in a Danielle Steel novel. I let him lie to me, stand me up, make a fool out of me for a year and a half. Then his novel was published. The school, the surrounding neighborhood, everyone began to gossip about who the “temptress teacher” character could possibly be. It didn’t take long for them to figure it out; I was the only black female on the staff. The school asked me to leave because they were cutting back on costs, but I knew it was because the scandal was just too embarrassing. His wife left him temporarily and then came back once she threatened to beat the hell out of me and I apologized to her and vowed that I’d never go near him again. That had been my last brush with good sex. I really don’t miss it that much.

“What are you going to have?” Whitney asked, frowning at the menu. She once had a slight weight problem. In her typical single-minded and focused way, she decided that she was going to lose weight and just up and did it. Six months later, she’d gone from a size 12 to a 4. I don’t think I ever heard her complain about being hungry or being sore from exercise.

“I don’t know.” I looked around the restaurant. Everything was shimmering gold against black or deep brown. I loved the décor. People were laughing, eating. The food smelled delicious. I love Stephanie’s. I think I once saw Woody Allen in here, though I wasn’t sure.

“So, anyway, he’s just so passionate about human rights. It’s a huge turn-on,” Whitney said.

I sipped my virgin frosty drink. I got it that Max, the Tunisian, was passionate about human rights. What I didn’t get was the part that she’d quickly glossed over while we were sitting at the bar waiting for a table: The part about him personally protesting the PATRIOT Act by not reporting to Immigration as our paranoid government requires all Arab men to. To Whitney, this added to Max’s allure; it made him so brave, and “passionate.” To me, that was a bit too out there. And I would know. My roommates have not missed a hell-raising protest since I’ve known them. They burned Bill Gates in effigy in Seattle, slashed tires on a Ford Denali in Detroit, laid in coffins in Times Square before the Iraq invasion. I was quite familiar with civil disobedience in the name of political passions, but Kelly and James were U.S. citizens; this Max guy was on a student visa. For crying out loud, he was a frigging scientist at MIT. From Tunisia! Profile, anyone? I’m sorry, I told Whitney, he fit the terrorist stereotype to a T. She glared at me.

“He is not a terrorist! Just because he won’t surrender his civil rights to Bush’s authoritarian regime…”

I decided to mess with her. “They’re gonna come looking for him some day. You don’t want Alberto Gonzales kicking down the door to your crib. Know what I’m saying?”

She rolled her eyes. “They’re not going to come after him. And even if they do, so what? The research he’s doing…He’s working on a cure for diabetes…He knows a lot of powerful people….”

This was the problem. I cannot say again how smart Whitney is. Matter of fact, if I asked her now she could tell me where St. Tropez is and probably its off-season population and GDP without even stopping to consider the question. But there was something that happened to her brain whenever a penis became involved. The same brain that could master a regression analysis would turn to mush and pretty soon she’d be spouting nonsense as in the above.

“Whitney, seriously, I’d be careful with this guy.”

“Oh, come on. You think he’s in Al Qaeda or something?”

I couldn’t help but giggle at that. “If he were that devout, he wouldn’t be having sex with you, getting drunk with you…I’m just saying be careful of those passionate men. They always seem to get you in trouble.”

She brightened up at this statement. “Oh, so it’s not him you’re worried about. You’re worried that I’ll fall too hard for him and then go off the deep end when things don’t work out?”

Bingo, I wanted to say, but I just sipped my frosty drink.

“I’m not that person anymore, Amelia. I mean, I worked out all my issues at McLean. That thing with Tosin…I was just lashing out at him because I was taking his rejection as an extension of those feelings of rejection I had as a foster kid.” She was reciting a therapy session, obviously. “I’m all over that. Max is just what I need now, just fun, sex, no strings. Besides, he’s only here for another six months; then he’s going to France to continue his research.”

What a relief. How much damage could they do in six months?

“But what about Duncan? Big D?” I asked. We ordered from a friendly waitress who looked like she could be a model. I tried not to stare at her skinny legs, but they inspired me to get grilled salmon with vegetables instead of something slathered in cheese or cream sauce.

Whitney shrugged. “I think he wanted something serious. He kept wanting to have these deep conversations.” She made a face.

“Like, what’s the meaning of it all?”

She ignored the crack. “Did I tell you Max went to Palestine when Yasser Arafat died?”

It was my turn to sigh. “So, what does he think of you being this independent, sassy woman about town if he’s such a traditional Muslim?”

She was on her third glass of wine. Max loved wine, and of course, he’d introduced her to so many new ones since they’d been hanging out, she’d said.

“That doesn’t really come up. We both know we’re just in it for the sex. Unless it turns into something more.”

“Something more like what? Are you ready to convert?”

“Calm down, okay. He finds me sexy and intellectually challenging,” she said, making quotes with her fingers. “It could turn into something.”

“Right. But you didn’t answer me. Would you convert to Islam if it did?”

“You mean like start wearing a burka and stuff?”

“Whitney, I can’t stand it when you start talking like an airhead.”

“What?” She brushed a dreadlock off her shoulder.

“Why are you putting this guy on such a pedestal? You said he’s just in it for the sex….”

She looked up at the ceiling as if seriously pondering my question. “Wellllll…He’s so angry and he wants to change the world…kinda like your Caribbean guy.”

Can’t really compare the two, I thought. My so-called Caribbean guy did not wear a kaffiyeh and call America the Great Satan.

“You mean, angry like Bakari?” Bakari was another of Whitney’s mistakes. He was an African-American studies major who was trying to revive the Black Panthers to its former prominence. Whitney had fallen hard for him. Unfortunately, his revolutionary leanings straightened out when he was accepted into Yale Law School. Whitney dumped him shortly thereafter, but not before she cursed him out in broad daylight at Downtown Crossing. I was there when she called him a “bitch-ass, spineless, corporate sellout.” This is the same Whitney who works for Microsoft. But in her defense, she at least didn’t pretend to be a revolutionary. I wondered what would happen if her little Muslim revolutionary came up with the cure for diabetes and sold out to Merck or Pfizer.

“So when are you gonna go see him?” Whitney asked.

I shook my head as I took a bite of my grilled salmon steak. I really wanted fries and a huge burger, but I’m doing so well. Even my spin class instructor had noticed the difference. “Wow,” she’d chirped, sidling up to me in her barely-there little workout outfit. “You’re looking great these days.” That had made my day. Big-time!

“I don’t know. We’ve been e-mailing every day back and forth for the last two weeks, and it’s starting to feel so…so weird.”

“You’ve talked, right?”

“Yes, three or four times.”

Did we talk? If only she knew. I didn’t tell her that my phone bill would probably be a week’s salary and that it had gotten to the point where I had to hear his voice every day else I’d get all crabby and depressed. I know that’s not a good thing, but addictive behavior is in my genes.

Last night I’d barely gotten any sleep. The memory of the conversation still made me feel like I was living inside a kind of mocha frapuccino heaven, with swirly whipped cream on top.

He’d called me late and immediately said, “This is getting out of control. We spoke this morning but I feel like it’s been days.”

“It has,” I’d replied. “It’s been like eons.” If I’d heard anyone else speak those words I would’ve wanted to stab him or her repeatedly. This was me—unromantic Amelia, saying ooey gooey stuff to a guy. But it felt good.

“I’ll have to mortgage my house to pay your phone bill.”

“Oh, please. How was your day?”

“I worked out, then I worked, and tried not think of you. Didn’t work.”

“Same here. We’re so pathetic.”

“I liked your new pictures,” he’d said. I tensed up. I’d let Kelly take some new pictures of me since I’d lost these last couple of pounds, just so he could see that I was on the way to being less, um, less ample.

“Thank you.” At least he didn’t mention my weight.

“Ever think of traveling to the tropics to get some sun on that beautiful skin?”

“Are you saying that I look pale?”

He laughed. “I’m not walking into that one. I’m just saying you’d have a good time down here. There’s lots to do. Great food, great people.”

“You’re sounding like the tourism board chief.”

“I do my part to help the economy.”

“So this is not about you. It’s your patriotism doing the talking?”

“Yeah, that and my other selfish interests.”

“I see. I’m considering it. I’d like to do my part to help the Dominican economy.”

“I admire your generosity.”

“Awww, thank you.”

“I’m serious, though. I want you to be a part of my life.”

“I…okay. Yes, I feel the same way.”

And so it went. We talked about everything and nothing, and four hours later I was yawning but still unwilling to say good night. This was big trouble, indeed.

“So, why not go visit? Go down on spring break.”

Huh? Whitney interrupted my thoughts.

“Please stay here with me on earth while I talk to you.”

“Oh, sorry.” I rolled my eyes back at her. “I can’t go there alone.” I had never left the country in my entire life. Heck, I’d only been out of the state of Massachusetts about five times.

“You wouldn’t be alone. You’d be going to meet him! What are you afraid of? Live a little.”

It wasn’t that I hadn’t thought of it. And we, Drew and I, had talked about it, but I was, as Whitney said, afraid. What if I hated it there? What if he hated me on sight and I was stuck in a foreign country for a whole week, miserable and alone?

“I’d offer to come with you, but I don’t want to be away from Max….”

“The sex is that good, huh?”

“Ooooh, girl, yeah, it is. Usually I have to be with a brother to get that kind of action, but this man is smoking…”

I tuned her out. I couldn’t help but be a little envious. I wondered if I would describe Drew as smoking if we were to ever, um, find ourselves in that situation.

“Wouldn’t it be cool if you went down and you guys just hit it off and you move down there and live happily ever after?”

“Thanks, Whitney. I never once thought of that the whole time I’ve been talking to him.”

“It could happen,” she said. “Well, no. You’d find some way to screw it up.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“Seriously, though, Amelia, if I were you I’d go down there and lay out on the beach, go diving, know what I mean? It’s not just about going to meet him. It’s about getting away from this place for a week.”

“Yeah, you have a point. I’ll think about it.”

Later that night in bed I did think about it. So much that I could feel sand trickling between my toes as I fell asleep. I could smell the salty ocean in my dreams. Hear calypso music swirling and thumping like my heartbeat. See a ferociously beautiful sun high up in a clear blue sky. I didn’t want to wake up.