by Fiona Zedde
“Maybe they’ll have Merille. I think that’s more common.”
He felt surprise and pleasure at this unexpected revelation. So Merille was her real name. Something new to add to the small packet of information he knew about her.
“They can make anything you want,” he said.
“Yes, miss.” The vender, a thin, brown-skinned girl with thick thighs and a respectable ass, came around the other side of the kiosk to smile at them. A gold tooth winked from between her dark red lips. “We can put any name on any item we carry.”
“I was just looking,” Rille said.
Strangely enough, she did seem interested in the tourist trinkets. Her fascination certainly wasn’t for the girl. She barely glanced her way at all.
Rille smiled unexpectedly. “I know these things are stupid, but I love them.” She picked up a key chain with “Michelle” stitched into the leather. “When I was younger, I used to pretend my name was Michelle. It was such a simple name. You could find it on a mug or T-shirt anywhere, especially at Disney World. I wanted that.” With a twist of her mouth, she dropped the brown leather in a pile of other Michelles. “Now I can’t even imagine being that ordinary. I’d rather be Merille than anyone else.”
“But you still want a key chain with your name on it.”
She laughed and turned away from the kiosk. “Yeah, but I’ll get over it.” Rille smiled her thanks at the young girl and walked toward the escalator, clearly expecting Stephen to follow. He did.
Walking a few steps behind her, he allowed himself the pleasure of her small ass and thighs pulling tight under the dark blue skirt. She looked back at him, caught him staring, and stopped a few feet from the escalator.
“Enjoying the view?”
“You know I am.”
On the escalator slowly moving up toward the crisp blue sky and balmy Tuesday afternoon, they stood hip to hip. Stephen inhaled the light scent of her perfume mixed with sweat and the faintest traces of melted butter from her lunch. At the top, he moved in the direction of the parking garage where they’d left his car, but she touched his arm.
“Walk with me.”
Stephen looked at his watch. The hour and a half lunch break he asked Manny to cover was almost over. He only had enough time to drop Rille off at the university before making his way back to the shop.
“Okay,” he said.
He grabbed his cell phone from his back pocket and called Manny to let him know he’d be at least an hour later than planned.
“What a surprise,” Manny grumbled before agreeing to stay later.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Stephen told him.
Manny only grunted. “See you when I see you.”
Rille looked at him from beneath her lashes. “That guy doesn’t have any respect for you, does he?”
“He’s a friend,” Stephen said. “Our respect is mutual. He just tells it like it is. I like that.”
Rille shrugged. “Potato-Potatoe,” she said.
“Superficial signs of respect aren’t things I worry about.” He shrugged.
“Really?” She glanced at him sideways, lashes nearly shielding her eyes. “Then what do you worry about? What makes you lay awake in bed at night?”
He chuckled. “I don’t have any trouble falling asleep. My life is not one of those. I’m not crippled by modern angst about the state of my life and its mysterious direction. Life is good. I have everything I need.”
After his parents, after Lucas, it felt good to say these things and mean it.
“You don’t need a boyfriend, yet you have one. You want me, but that’s not something you have. That’s something you may not get. What about those dissatisfactions?”
“I’m not dissatisfied. Everything I have, I want.” He glanced at her. “If you want to ask me about my boyfriend or any potential or actual lovers lurking around my life, all you have to do is ask. There’s no need to go through China just to get to Decatur.”
Rille smiled. “You’ll learn that when I want to know something, I ask it. I’m no shrinking violet.”
Stephen nodded. At least he knew that already. And with each step they took together through downtown Atlanta, he felt closer to some further knowledge of her. Rille didn’t do phone calls so there were no giddy hours spent on the phone dissecting their lives for each other’s pleasure. She had a woman at home. If she didn’t, Stephen would be more than willing to regress to high school again. To linger on the phone until early in the morning when he should have been sleeping. To undress his life for her. To press into the bed with the phone tucked against his ear, pretending that she lay beneath him. All those things he would do if she let him. But it was not only the two of them in this.
“What does your woman think of you seeing me?” he asked.
“She doesn’t like it, but she won’t stop me.”
Stephen looked around. “Good. Then I won’t expect Joey Greco to jump out of a white van any second now with a full camera crew. I’m too old for that shit.”
Rille laughed. And Stephen grinned back at her, pleased that the Cheaters reference wasn’t lost on her. Another thing he was wrong about. He was sure she wasn’t the kind to watch that ridiculous but voyeuristically entertaining show.
“What?” she asked, an eyebrow raised.
“You know what.”
“Ah. More assumptions about who I am.” She leaned closer. “I’ll have to let you know me better now, if only to shatter some of those illusions.”
“That’s a good enough reason to me.” Stephen grinned.
They ambled down the sidewalk through the busy downtown, past the train station, the stores selling incense, hats, and fake designer handbags. All the while, her slow footsteps kept up with his longer tread. A cloud passed overhead, hiding the sun and taking away some of the afternoon’s warmth. Rille put her jacket back on.
“I love this city.” She slipped her arm around his. “It took leaving here to go to college in Florida for me to appreciate everything about Atlanta. There’s so much beauty and diversity here.” She squeezed his arm. “So much to love.”
They crossed the street together, caught up in the stream of pedestrian traffic flowing from one side of Peachtree Street to the next. The smell of Chinese food from one of the nearby restaurants came to Stephen on the breeze, triggering hunger even though he’d just eaten.
“Yeah, it’s a great place to be,” he said. “I can’t imagine being anywhere else. I was born here and even though I traveled while I was in college, I never wanted to live anyplace else.”
“Home is home,” Rille said, nodding. “When I first got back from Florida, I was a mess. I wouldn’t leave the house, then once I got over myself, I just got in my car at night and drove through Decatur where my parents lived, into the city to watch the lights and hear the sounds of the people and their music.” She smiled, looking around.
Why were you a mess? He looked at her but didn’t ask the question. Soon, he thought. Soon.
They strolled past Woodruff Park, the kiosks on the sidewalk, pigeons pecking at scraps of food people dropped on their way. Although he’d never felt a need to be anywhere else, Stephen didn’t think he loved Atlanta like Rille seemed to. There just had been nowhere else that resonated with him, no place that made him want to give up this sense of home and safety and of life proceeding as it should.
Up ahead, a couple walked with a stroller. In the scattering of early afternoon foot traffic around the park, they were able to stroll slowly side by side without disrupting the pedestrian flow. A woman with a big handbag and piles of brown hair tumbling around her shoulders moved quickly past them, turning back to give a cold glance to Stephen and Rille. But Stephen caught her eye. Her face thawed and she kept walking but at a slower pace, her shoulders more relaxed. As she passed the couple ahead of them with the baby stroller, she looked back over her shoulder and smiled. Stephen smiled back at her.
Rille chuckled. “I thought she was pissed at us.”
&
nbsp; “She was. I think we were walking too slowly for her schedule.”
“And then she took one look at your face and that was that.”
“Sometimes all a stranger needs is a smile or a look from another stranger to let them know that the day isn’t that bad. Life isn’t that bad.”
“It also helps if the stranger is cute.” Rille laughed.
Stephen shook his head. “The world isn’t ruled by the superficial, you know.”
Rille squeezed his arm, smiling. “It’s sweet that you don’t think so.”
“Oops!”
She grabbed his arm as a floppy-eared gray mouse fell out of the stroller rolling placidly in front of them. The couple walked on, oblivious. Rille slipped her hand from his and scooped up the stuffed toy before anyone could step on it. She hurried ahead to catch up with the couple.
“Excuse me.” She got the woman’s attention with a light tap on the shoulder.
Startled from conversion with her lover, the woman glanced back at Rille.
“This fell out of your stroller.” Rille held up the stuffed mouse with the bright red bowtie. “Nobody stepped on it, but there’s a little dirt.”
“Oh, thank you,” the woman said. “I didn’t even realize it.”
She was pretty, in a Buckhead sort of way. Gucci handbag, matching heels. Perfect makeup and salon-straightened hair. A tasteful hint of cleavage decorated the unbuttoned neckline of her beige dress. She took the toy and wiped it with a napkin from her purse before tucking it into the recesses of the large bag. In the stroller, the baby—apple-cheeked with powdery brown skin and a string of drool running down her chin—slept on.
“Thank you very much,” her man said.
Stephen felt the man’s dismissive gaze on him before it settled on Rille, casually drinking her up. In his flip-flops, jeans, and Bob Marley shirt, he knew he was hardly a match for Rille, who looked both professional and sophisticated in her body-skimming skirt suit and high heels.
Oh, great. Another asshole who measures his dick by the size of his bank account.
Stephen’s mouth twitched in amusement. He shoved his hands in his pockets and did a quick inventory of his own. Designer jeans and a long sleeved shirt with the first two buttons undone. Pointy-toed alligator shoes. A man who wore his money and probably liked using it to get women other than his wife into bed. Stephen knew the type well. This man’s confidence was an expensive suit that the right person could easily tear from his body at any moment.
“I’m Trevor.” The man extended his hand to Rille then Stephen. “And this is my wife, Mariah. We really appreciate you stopping to return Mister Mouse to us.” He directed his smile at Rille. “Our baby girl would’ve been screaming the instant she realized he was gone. No one needs that.”
His wife glanced sharply at him, the smile frozen on her face. From her look, she was used to this type of thing from him, the warming of his voice, his body inclined flirtatiously toward another woman.
“It’s no trouble,” Rille murmured, taking a small but definite step back.
She aimed her words and a non-threatening smile at Mariah whose knuckles stretched tight from her grip on the stroller. “I’d want someone to do the same thing for me. So in the end I’m just being selfish.” Rille laughed softly, inviting her to do the same. But Mariah couldn’t.
“Thanks again for stopping,” Mariah said coldly, turning her freezing smile and frustrations to Rille. Trevor kept his overly friendly look on Rille, oblivious to his wife’s anger.
Stephen stepped forward. “Enjoy the rest of your walk,” he said. “It’s a beautiful day for it.” He touched Rille’s waist. “Ready, honey?”
“Yes, baby.” She said this with an ironic twist to her mouth. “We have to get you back to work.”
Rille inclined her head at the couple. “Take care of your girl.” She didn’t look down at the child in the stroller. Instead, she stared at Trevor whose leering smile still hadn’t left his face. “She’s beautiful and deserves to be happy.”
But he didn’t hear the message. As Rille turned, he looked down at her ass, ignoring his wife’s furious expression and the savage way she pushed the stroller down the sidewalk. Stephen and Rille moved away from the couple, footsteps taking them back to the parking garage and Stephen’s car. She moved stiffly at his side, obviously bothered by the encounter.
“That was so disrespectful,” she finally said, eyes flinty behind her glasses. “How could he treat her like that? They have a fucking kid together.”
She stalked beside Stephen, her heels stabbing into the sidewalk with each step, eyes narrowed as if seeing something other than the sidewalk and buildings rising up around her.
“Asshole,” she hissed.
Stephen walked at her side, silent, not knowing what to say.
Said the Spider
Sara/1994
The concrete cafeteria steps scraped against the backs of Sara’s thighs under her pleated skirt, but it was a bearable sort of pain. Something to take her mind off other things. The approaching sunset, its colors a fiery burst that covered everything in sharp contrasts of light and shadow, brought Sara’s hand up to shade her eyes. She sat on the steps waiting for Raven to come with the car so they could go shopping for bathing suits.
A car pulled into the roundabout. In the haloing light, it could have been any make of car, any color. Was that Raven in the driver’s seat? The figure climbed out of the car, its silhouette obviously male. Maybe the next one. But something tugged her attention back to the driver, back to the boy with the fluttering Afro who stepped into the sun. Sara’s belly clutched. Her throat dried. Syrus? But the driver came closer and materialized into a freckle-faced boy with a shock of bright red curls, long arms, and an indifferent glance in her direction as he passed. Sara blinked against the wind that blew in her eyes, sparking sudden tears.
“Hey, little Sara.”
She swallowed and turned, preparing her face for Rille. Rille stood perched two steps above her with a leather backpack hanging off one shoulder.
“Hey,” Sara said, feeling the unease in her belly subside in the wake of Rille’s smile.
They hadn’t spoken since the night of the party, almost two weeks ago, but Sara had thought about her often. From the corner of her eye, Sara noticed the freckled boy appear and disappear behind the glass windows and steel columns of the cafeteria. His hair waved at her as he vanished for the last time.
“How have you been?” Rille asked in her smoky voice.
“Pretty good. You?”
“Not bad. I heard from Devi you’re in the study group they have at the café on Wednesday nights. I didn’t know you were in that philosophy class.”
The study group? So far, the get-togethers seemed more like a reason for her classmates to gather over coffee and have arguments about abstract things that had nothing to do with real life. Sara enjoyed it.
Getting out had felt good, especially when she found out that Devi was in her class. Devi flirted with Sara, even after what had happened at Rille’s party, and insisted on buying her drinks and even walking back with her to the dorms that night. Devi didn’t try for a good night kiss at Sara’s door, but her breath teased Sara’s lips during the smiling farewell. “I’ll see you in class.”
“I am in that class,” Sara said to Rille. “It’s one of the new things I’m trying.”
“Sounds fun.” Rille moved lower on the stairs, squinting against the glare. Was it vanity that prevented her from wearing sunglasses and hiding the alluring glow of her eyes against the blazing Florida sun? “Do you want to do something after class tonight?” she asked.
Sara blinked, not sure if she’d heard correctly. She opened her mouth.
“I hope I didn’t keep you waiting for too long!”
Raven’s shout came from the open window of her green Honda Civic as the car stood idling the wrong way in the roundabout. One sandaled foot stood flat on the ground outside the car. Her head and an arm hung out the windo
w.
“Um. No.” Sara picked up her purse and stood to face Rille. “I already have plans. But maybe later.” Before Rille could respond, she hopped off the steps toward a scowling Raven.
“What did that bitch want?” Raven asked, as soon as Sara got near the car. She didn’t appear concerned that Rille was still standing there, watching them.
“Not much. She wanted to do something later.”
“Like what, fuck you over again? No way.” Raven slammed her door and put the car in gear. “She is such bad news. The last thing you need to do is hang around her again.”
But Sara was barely listening. Instead, she watched Rille, still standing on the steps, grow smaller in the rearview mirror.
Wanted
Sara/1994
“And don’t forget, your papers are due in my office mailbox no later than three thirty p.m. next Thursday.”
Professor Holloran dropped his chalk in the long tray that ran the length of the blackboard. As he brushed off his hands, chalk dust billowed up around him, dancing in the sunlight flooding the large classroom. He sauntered to the podium.
“Twenty pages. Ten point Courier font. One inch margins. Anything else and your paper will get an automatic F.”
Holloran braced himself against the wooden podium and forced his steely gaze on each of the sixteen faces in the classroom. Then, as if satisfied each student knew he was serious, he grinned. His hazel eyes sparkled like holiday lights above his ruddy cheeks. “If you have any questions, see me after class or in my office later today. Class dismissed.”
Sara blew out an explosive breath as she stood. “Jeez!”
“You look worried. Don’t tell me you haven’t started your paper yet?” Devi bumped into Sara’s shoulder as she came up from the seat behind, adjusting the strap of her bag across her shoulders.
“Of course I started. I’m just not done. Hopefully, I can find a free machine when I get to the computer lab tonight.” Sara walked out with Devi, mentally calculating how many hours it would take to finish her philosophy paper, the first essay over ten pages she’d ever had to write in her life.
