by Cat Oars
“I want to suck your blood,” he chuckled with a deep, dark tone. I rolled my eyes and wished I could say what I wanted.
“Are you making my cake already?” he asked while checking out my behind. If he only knew how often strangers ring my doorbell and run in and out, he would have been more at ease while sneaking in on the down-low.
My kitchen is like a café nestled at the end of a cobblestone street in a dark alleyway of Paris. Visitors stop by all the time when they are at wits end and need a friend who will listen to their woes. I have lots of experience in turning out straight trade after living in the Stuy for more than five years. I understand, first hand, what men of color go through when sneaking out of closets.
It’s not as simple as deciding that one has a few scratches that need itching when a hustla wants to diddle with another dude. One slip could cost a thug his reputation in the ghetto – a world where there are almost never second chances. This one was different and I needed to work him very carefully. It was not only the sexy motorcycle he drove, his baggy Dickies with the big bulge or his perfect teeth and big fat juicy lips that caused me to salivate. It was his aura. There was something about Francais that I wanted to possess. There he was in all his dark beauty standing inside my little love nest. Stiff one night stands come a dime a dozen in Bedford Stuyvesant, but men who stare at my ass like he did send me over the top and are capable of making me write bad checks and bake for them whenever they need something warm in their stomachs.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I have a different plan for your birthday,” I explained.
“What’s that?”
“I’m making you my signature lemon meringue pie.”
“Isn’t that the stuff Patti Labelle sang about?”
“Yes it is.”
“Never had it, but knock yourself out, Chaz.”
“How did you know my name?” I inquired, somewhat paranoid.
“It’s on the mailbox. It reads ‘Charles’, but that’s too white for a boy wit flava like you. Chaz is your new street name,” he said while sitting down on my white sofa. “You don’t mind if I light this up do you?” he asked.
I lit a Glade candle and placed it on the white marble coffee table and offered him the lighter.
“Nice space. I like how there are no walls in here – openness. Nice fish tank. Damn, this place is the joint.Yo dude, you got a pool table!”
“Go check out the back yard; I fixed it up,” I said, while scattering flour across my kitchen table. “There’s a vegetable garden back there.”
On his way out he offered me a hit on the blunt.
“Maybe later,” I said while mixing flour and salt in a glass bowl.
He stayed alone in the backyard for a long time. By the time he had returned I measured out a cup of Crisco and began blending it with two cups of flour and a teaspoon of salt. I dribbled in a few tablespoons of ice water and he watched closely with his sexy eyes as I slowly formed a ball of dough from the mixture and flattened it with my hands before reaching for my marble rolling pin.
“This is how fresh pie pastry is made,” I explained. “I hope you don’t mind, but I think you will like my pie better than a cake that comes in a box. He pimp walked back to the sofa and put his feet and Timberland boots up on the coffee table. After fluting the edges of my pastry inside a pie pan and placing the naked shell in the oven, I carried the two lemons and a grater and sat down next to him on the sofa and began to carefully remove the yellow zest of the lemon.
“You got a bitch?”
“Naw, I’m laying low for a while,” I mumbled.
“I got plenty, dawg. But I ain’t got one yet who can take dis rod night after night,” he said, mesmerized at the powdery pile of lemon I neatly scraped onto a black saucer.
“I hear that. Friggin’ bitches,” I said in authentic rapper tone.
“I see you play chess.”
“Oh that. That’s not my chessboard. It belonged to my roommate. I can play, but not like he did.”
“I’m da master at chess, dawg, especially when I’m stoned.”
I returned to the kitchen and divided my eggs into yolks and whites. I told him he shouldn’t touch the chessboard and its pieces.
“Why?”
“Did you ever hear of a Ouija Board?”
I poured the yellow part of the eggs into a saucepan with almost a cup of the salvaged cornstarch and a quarter cup of water. I stirred in the lemon zest and squeezed the stripped fruits above the pot and added their juices to the pudding-like concoction and sweetened the meringue with a few handfuls of sugar.
“Ain’t a Ouija board some witches’ shit?” he asked.
“Yes it is,” I said while I stirred the brew on the stove and waited for it to thicken.
“My roommate said those chess pieces were hand carved by a man who raped and murdered seven women and one man in Los Angeles. I’ve always been too spooked to play with that. When I touch it, I get really strange vibes.”
He held up a wooden horse and carried the board along with all its pieces to the coffee table.
“The only vibe I am getting is the urge to play a good game,” he said. “Are you smart? Can you play?”
As I poured the lemon mixture into my baked shell I promised to take him up on his challenge, but only after I got the pie in the oven. He walked over to my butcher block table and stared as I plugged in an electric mixer and began whipping the egg whites until peaks formed. After a foamy substance appeared, I slowly added some sugar.
“Do you want be white or black,” he asked.
“I wanna be black,” I said while pouring the white meringue over the lemon mixture.
I placed the masterpiece in the oven after carving “Francais” into the waves of whipped egg whites that covered the meringue like puffy clouds in a warm June sky.
We faced off at the chessboard. I sat on the floor and he remained on the sofa. I could not believe the handsome man who I met on the street only a short time ago was now sitting inside my apartment. It’s not true what they say about blacks, they all don’t look the same. Even their hair is of different textures and shades, just as with white folks and most are far more intelligent than society recognizes. It was obvious his perfect white teeth were not originals, but nonetheless, that meant he had a damn good dentist. Mine are worn and tattered and barely strong enough to bite a forbidden fruit or an apple. I get nervous around people with bright white teeth, especially men who smile like sunshine with dark skin to contrast the pearliness. Perhaps I am just jealous because of the gaps on my gum line and poor bonding. I thought perhaps my teeth would turn him off so I smiled at him only with my lips. Very few manage to squeeze a full-fledged smile out of me, no matter how funny they are, but I smiled inside when we started to play the game.
His eyelashes were long and black, like the legs of a spider. He blinked them rarely and looked from side to side, almost bashfully. Perhaps he wasn’t comfortable hooking up with a white guy. He relit the blunt and handed it to me. I took a little puff but didn’t inhale.
“Hit dat shit right!”
I sucked hard and immediately felt myself relax. Suddenly I didn’t care that my teeth were a mess. He reached across the back of the sofa while taking several pulls and picked a boogie when he thought I wasn’t paying attention while I was setting up the pieces. I knew he felt at home in my house.
“Honestly, I only know how the pieces move. I really don’t know how to play the game well,” I explained before the first move was made.
“It’s alright dawg, just go with your instincts.” He lifted one of the little figures in the front row and slid it two spaces forward. I faced off that little bugger with the same exact move.
“Wait a minute, I’m black and I go first,” I said. I’ve since learned that’s wrong.
“You do know how to play dis game, don’t you Chaz?”
“Better than you know, Francais.”
He ma
naged to put me in checkmate before I had a chance to move out my queen.
About ten minutes had passed and I realized that the pie in the oven was probably done. Because one pre-bakes the pie shell and cooks the meringue in a saucepan, it is not necessary to bake it for very long. The egg whites, which line the top of the dessert, turn golden brown and if left in too long, the pie will look unappetizing. The carving of the letters “Francais” in the white meringue worked perfectly. The pie looked far more exotic than a typical birthday cake.
“Happy Birthday” I said as I pulled the gift from the oven.
He jumped from the couch and came into the kitchen. I believe he was touched, but downplayed the moment.
“You are a dude and I ain’t ever saw a pie like that. Even my grandma never made something like this on my birthday. What’s it taste like?”
“It has to cool off first, and it should be chilled a little. Re-match?” I requested.
As the second game started, I felt a strange vibe from touching the chess pieces. I hadn’t gone near the haunted board and its hand carved characters since the day a while before when I was sitting alone in the living room, watching Martha Stewart Living on TV, and the bishops, knights, kings and queens started moving around on their own. I wasn’t high when the aberration first occurred. But they certainly moved on their own free will.
One piece at a time, back and forth they went, the black and white pieces, until eventually one of the colors lost. It seemed as if two ghosts were matching wits over the game of strategy. It frightened me terribly and I remain convinced that chess set, created by the hands of a mad man, was possessed by evil spirits. The weed intensified the strange vibes and sensation I felt when making my moves while playing Francais. I picked up my horse and slid it one space up and two spaces over and snatched his queen without consciously planning the attack. I thought I heard a faint scream of a woman outside.
“Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“Never mind,” I said while realizing those voices from the board were returning and I would have to conduct another exorcism to clear out the negative energy in my apartment.
“What da hell? Damn, how did I miss that?” he asked.
I looked him in his eyes and smiled widely, showing my ugly teeth.
He formed a fist and brushed it against my shoulder in a playful way, realizing he had met his match.
Mallory on Everest
Ghostofmajestic,
MATTEO LOVES HIS FATHER JACK, and Jack loved his son. Jack saved all his pennies and bought a Dodge Viper the year after he left Matteo’s mother. Jack found a new, younger wife soon after. Jack’s son spends most of the year with his mother.
“Do you want to drive when we get to the island, Matt?” Jack asks Matteo as they sit in Jack’s cherry red Viper with the top down.
The ferry Sankaty bobs this way and that in grey upset seas. The Viper sits on the deck nestled between a black Cadillac Escalade to the rear and a Chevy van in the front occupied by ten latte-skinned day laborers. Jack interprets that look in Matteo’s eyes, that look that springs from a mind wading through deceit. Jack wonders if his son has reached that age when parents fall from heroic pedestals and all that grown-ups seem to say are lies. Matteo is also turning a tinge of green as the ferry deck tosses back and forth. Each time one of the swarthy landscape workers pops out of the back of the van and leans over the steel railing of the Sankaty, Jack feels his own bile rising up his throat.
“Just keep your eyes on the horizon, Matt, like I told you,” Jack says, laughing at both his son’s discomfort and his valiant own attempt at keeping up manly appearances. Matteo, having weathered enough of his father’s influence, just wants to get back to his grandfather’s Nantucket beach house. His grandmother will be baking the Ferrari lasagne in the kitchen and his mother will be packing up his things now in the upstairs guestroom. He is eager to return to a place where those things beneath you do not move according to the wind, or tide, or vanity or youth. Matteo believes this place is called Manhattan.
* * *
To Matteo’s surprise, Jack throws the keys into his lap after he parks his Viper behind the A&P on Candle Street. Matteo forgets his seasickness as his finger rubs along the ridges of the gleaming keys.
“You’re nearly a man now Matt. Next week is your twelfth birthday you know. In a few years you’ll be legal,” says Jack as he walks around the back of the convertible and opens the passenger door. Matteo gets up and walks around the shark-like hood, his knees wobbly from both weak nerves and the last remnants of seasickness from the ferry passage. Jack is not kidding his son.
“Now, you know what I’ve taught you?”
Matteo had remembered these lectures on the finer points of handling a manual transmission, but these lessons had remained abstract, fluid and vague. Success would require a touch that Matteo does not believe he possesses. He had driven a friend’s brother’s VW Bug before and had handled the four speed without problem. He had only shifted six gears in his mind.
Still, it all comes easy. Matteo turns the key in the ignition then presses the fat red button to start the engine. He slips it easily into first and rolls out tentatively onto Candle. The ferry traffic has already gone by on its way to other corners of the island. Matteo is happy to find the roads devoid of cars just one week before the start of tourist season. They roll down Old South Road past the rotary circle, Matteo driving in second gear most of the way, the eight cylinders whining in protest at the high revs.
“Put it in third,” Jack commands.
“But we’re getting near the turn-off for grandpa’s house,” Matteo answers, fearing the coming downshift before the turn.
“We’ll take the long way down by the airport.”
Matteo doesn’t make the turn and instead drives south along the long route. Oncoming cars begin switching on their headlights in the dusk. The May air chills as the sun sinks under the horizon. The gearbox objects to the clumsy foot on the clutch as the driver shifts into third.
“Matteo, you need to help your mom now. She’s changing her job. It’s a big jump. I think you’re going to have to move, but it’s hard to move in the city you know, so I think she wants you to stay here with grandma and grandpa until things get settled down.”
It is difficult for Matteo to concentrate both on the driving and the words his father is saying. His fingernails dig deep dimples into the leather steering wheel. The Viper is now in measurable excess of the island-wide speed limit. Three minutes later, Matteo drives the Viper into his grandparents’ driveway, nearly crashing into the same van of Mexican landscape workers that had rocked back and forth on the ferry. Spanish curses follow them as Matteo has another close call, this time with a mailbox.
“Shit, Matt! You’ve got to slow down!”
Matteo doesn’t answer, putting the car into park, the gears grinding. He slams the car door and walks down to the beach then turns back toward his father, but his last offending words are lost in the breeze rounding the dunes.
* * *
So how would Jane break the news? Three generations of Ferraris sit around the dinner table passing around a bowl of tossed greens. Jane decides to make an announcement after she has finished her salad. The sun had fallen over the edge of the sea and the wind had begun to howl around the eaves of the old beach house. Perhaps these evening winds were blowing from a gale to the east.
“I have a new job,” she says after popping a final cherry tomato into her mouth.
“A new job? What happened to the old?”
This comes from Edward Ferrari, Jane’s father, while dropping a heaping helping of lasagne onto his plate.
“Macy’s is downsizing. The marketing department is on the butcher’s block. We all could see it. I decided to test the waters before it was time to go.”
“You think you would have been laid off?”
Wrinkles of concern deepen along the eyes of Josie Ferrari, Jane’s mother. She
had previously believed that only Detroit autoworkers were ever truly laid off. She wondered if they actually did that to white collar types also.
“Five in my department already have been.”
“So who are you working for now?” asks Edward. “I hope it’s a step up.” Jane raises a glass of Pinot Noir to her lips, decides not to drink, and declares her new role in the work world.
“I’m the new merchandising manager for Penthouse Media Group.”
Jane’s mother moves to directly face her daughter so that all shadows and lines disappear. The wrinkles vanish. She appears much younger than her fifty-eight years.
“I’m sorry,” her father says. “Who?”
This time, Jane decides to drink some wine. She takes an ample swig.
“I’m the merchandising manager for Penthouse Media Group.”
She sticks to her script, distributing stress along the whole line so that no one part is more significant than the other. Is Penthouse more important than manager? No. Is merchandising more stressed than media? No. The announcement flows out of her like water, the beginning no more wet in judgment than the end.
“Penthouse? Isn’t that a magazine?”
Oh dad, why must you go there, Jane thinks to herself.
“Yes, and the Web site, and the video library, and the merchandising channel which I am responsible for.” Mother Josie looks down upon her second gin and tonic of the evening, then over to Matteo poking at his green beans and bacon. The red flush in his cheeks betrays what she thinks must be shame. Jane realizes something she had never thought before. Children are the only ones who blush. Edward remains silent. He thoughtfully conspires to support his daughter in a way that will not appear insincere. For a loving father, his mind on the cusp of acute Alzheimer’s, such plans evolve very slowly.
“You’re not planning to model for them are you?”
“Why must you go there?” Jane thinks this aloud.
* * *
“Matteo?”
“Yes, mom?”
“Do you remember when grandpa had to first start taking care of himself?”
Wind howled among the ridges of Matteo’s ears. Its force was enough to blow sand up and sting naked shins. The wind was too powerful now for kites tethered to boyish hands by hopelessly weak strings.
