I’ll be so very glad when he leaves because that way I can get my drawers back (even though I can’t remember what I did with the stuff that was in them) and I’ll be glad to have the counter space back on that other sink so I can put all my nail polish and lotions and perfumes back where they were in the first place. And all my blouses and jackets that I moved for him, hey, I need that space because I haven’t even done my fall shopping yet and I will need as much hanging room as possible. And the bed. Who needs to feel his warm body next to mine every single day of the week? I mean it has really become rather cumbersome rolling over in the middle of the night and early in the morning and feeling him, and plus making love on a regular basis is so time-consuming and my hair keeps getting all messed up and I am becoming tired of eating a plum or some kind of fruit to make sure my palate is clean when I wake up and I don’t even want to think about all I’ve been going through to keep myself smelling shower fresh everywhere not to mention keeping the stubble off my legs and from under my arms and plucking my eyebrows and brushing three times a day instead of two. I mean I have really been going out of my way to make this man feel good and what have I gotten in return, what have I really gotten in return?
“Stella?” I hear him call. He is outside. It is too cold to be out there, maybe I shouldn’t go out. I’ll just stand in the doorway and answer whatever question he has. And he has certainly become Mr. Talkative since he’s been here, I mean really. Downright nosy. Now he wants to know when am I ever going to come out to my new work space and I told him after he leaves when I can focus and he told me to stop focusing on him and I might be able to focus on my work and I flicked him off because I’m a very talented person this much I know and all I’m doing is waiting for the muse to strike because it’s hard getting your groove back once you’ve lost it but he wasn’t really buying this and neither was I but it was all I could think of and so I told him I was thinking about taking some design classes and if he were living here he could maybe take one too just for fun. He told me he’d already looked in our yellow pages and saw quite a few schools and the California Culinary Institute caught his eye and just for the heck of it he called and they mailed him their brochure and he said he basically wanted to compare what they had to offer here in the States to what was available to him in Jamaica and he said it should be here today or tomorrow but he wanted to save it to read on the plane ride home.
The phone starts ringing. “What is it that you want, Mr. Shakespeare?”
“After you answer that, come on out,” he says. He is lying in the green and white striped hammock I bought from Hammacher Schlemmer’s mail order catalog right before I went to Jamaica. I’ve been afraid to lie in it because it makes me feel like I’m about to fall out.
“Why do you want me to come out there?”
“I want to talk to you, Stel-la.”
“About what, Win-ston?”
“Come out and see.”
I get the phone. “Yes?”
“Stella, how are you? This is Ralston.”
“Who?”
“Remember I met you in San Diego at Maisha’s gallery?”
“Oh yes. How are you?”
“Fine. Look. Wanted to know if we could get together and have dinner this weekend.”
“Wish I could, but I’m kind of busy this weekend.”
“Well, what’s your schedule looking like?”
“Full.”
“As in full full?”
“Yep.”
“I hear you, baby. But you can still have a friendly dinner, can’t you?”
“I guess I could.”
“Cause I’d like to talk more about your work, my work, what we’re doing and where we’re trying to go with it, you know?”
“I’d like that.”
“And hey, I’m still interested in doing some trading and I’d like to see more of your stuff. Think we can do that?”
“I think we could. Yes.”
“Then cool. Don’t be a stranger. Write my number down. And bring him too. Cause hey. This is a black thang, sister, I thought you knew that.”
“I do,” I say, and write his number down and right after I say goodbye there is a click. “Hello?”
“Is this Stella?”
“Yes it is. And may I ask who’s calling?”
“This is Judge Spencer Boyle. Rodney Wolinski, your insurance broker, gave me your number and said it was all right to call. Is this a good time?” he asks, sounding like a senior citizen.
“Actually it isn’t, Judge Boyle. I was just about to give my husband a bath.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m sorry. Did I say husband? I meant to say baby.”
“You’ve got a baby? Rodney didn’t tell me you had a baby.”
“Oh yes, I’ve got a baby all right. And boy, what a big baby he is,” I exclaim, and then I thank the judge for calling and wish I could’ve told him that his best bet would be to stop by the Rossmoor Retirement Condominium recreation center and maybe he’d have a better shot at finding himself a hot little number in there. I place the phone in the cradle and saunter on outside into the stinging night air and I stand over my baby. He stretches out the canvas of the hammock to make room for me and I just look at it. “I can’t get in there,” I say.
“Why not?”
“There’s not enough room.”
“I’m making room.”
“I’ll fall out.”
“I’ve been in here for over an hour and I haven’t fallen out. It feels like you might, but you don’t.”
“I don’t like that feeling.”
“You don’t like the feeling of falling?”
“No.”
“You mean you don’t like feeling out of control.”
I give him a how-did-you-know-that look and then switch to a you-think-you-know-so-much look.
“Come on. Get in,” he says. “I won’t let you fall.”
And see, this is what I mean. This is what he can do that kind of bothers me. He makes me comfortable and I’m not used to feeling this comfortable with a man and the thing is I know it’s stupid to resist but oh, Stella, get in the fucking hammock and so I listen to the woman in me and I get in and Stella knows what’s best for me because once I feel my body drop down into against Winston’s I know he’s not going to let me fall anywhere but here.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“I’m okay,” I say as my nose brushes against the hair on his chest. “I’m just cold.”
“How’s this?” he asks and puts his arms around me.
“Better, but it’s freezing out here.”
“Okay okay okay. Don’t move,” he says and gets up and I feel like I’m falling for real as I roll to the center of the hammock and the sides roll up so that I feel like a piece of corn on the cob inside some husks but before I know it he’s back with the down comforter from the bed and he slides in next to me and turns on his side so that his heart is against my back and God he feels good these goose feathers feel good and I am so warm I could sleep out here like this. “Now,” he says.
“Now,” I sigh.
“How are you feeling, Stella?”
“I’m feeling just fine. And you?”
“Not so good.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m having a hard time accepting the fact that I am leaving in a few days.”
“I am too, actually.”
“Well, you haven’t said anything.”
“I didn’t know how to tell you.”
“You could’ve said something like, ‘Winston, I’m having a hard time dealing with the fact that you are leaving.’ You could’ve said that.”
“And how would you have responded?”
“Well, I would’ve said, ‘Stella, you know I love you, I love being with you, I love what we are doing and how I feel, how you make me feel, and I don’t want to leave. Ever.’ ”
“You would’ve said that?”
“Yes. And how would you have ans
wered?”
“I would’ve said you don’t really have to leave except that I don’t want you to lose your job because of me.”
“And I would’ve said but I would be happy to quit that job as it means nothing to me, not even one tenth as much as you do, and Stella, I can always get another job.”
“You would’ve said that?”
“Absolutely.”
“And what is it you would do in America if you had stayed?”
“Well, I would apply to school and work on becoming a certified chef with a specialization so that it would be easier for me to get work in this country and I would work doing anything until such time, as I am not the type of man who could tolerate being taken in by a woman, you know, I mean I would have to earn my own way and help out in the household, you know?”
“Yes, I think I do.”
“And then if this woman that I loved would allow herself to not feel the need to be in control of everything all the time and just admit that she feels what she feels and if she is scared she should know that this guy named Winston loves her enough, that she doesn’t have to worry, and she should tell him what she’s afraid of and he will comfort her because even though he is not rich and probably never will be he cares about her so much and he hopes it will be enough and he would really like to be her most trusted friend and once she accepts this then maybe they could perhaps even get married.”
“Married?” I ask and twist my body over so that I am now facing him.
“Yes, married,” he says. “If she loves him as much as she claims and even half as much as he loves her.”
“She does,” I say. “She tells me all the time. It’s kind of getting on my nerves if you want the truth, listening to her go on and on about how she can’t believe she’s fallen in love with this young man from Jamaica that she met on vacation, but her problem is that she is afraid of marriage because of what she’s seen it do to love, how much you actually lose, for instance, like spontaneity: everything seems to have to be planned out in advance, and she does not always want to know what is going to happen next; and then how about passion: it gets pushed out of the way or maybe even shoved over and down to the bottom of the list of needs to that list of wants and is now considered superfluous, and where there used to be joy and laughter and warm smiles all of a sudden they cross over the picket line and everybody’s pissed about something stressed out every day and so she feels that marriage is just so misrepresented, so overrated and not at all redeeming and plus it changes people and she does not want to be changed.”
“But she would be marrying a different kind of man than she has grown accustomed to in the past. She would be marrying someone who shares her lust for life her enthusiasm her sense of wonder and he is excited by her independence. She would be marrying someone who appreciates the differences between them, who loves to disagree with her because he enjoys watching her get worked up because he gets a charge listening to her rant and rave and he is grateful that he has met a woman who is already a grown-up, one who thinks, who has opinions and does not go along with the program, but he also likes the fact that she is made of good stuff and she is smart enough to know that happiness is here for the asking and this could be their very own adventure.”
“She appreciates hearing all this but she knows that even though Winston loves her right now he is too young to be thinking about marriage.”
“He disagrees.”
“That’s too bad, because she believes from the bottom of her heart that if he were to marry her, in a year when she is forty-three and then when she is forty-four—if it lasted that long—he would regret ever doing this because her hair will be getting gray and she will begin to get those wrinkles.”
“He knows that wrinkles and gray hair do not make her any less attractive and besides she will have earned them and plus she already has some gray hair in a luxurious place and she should know by now that he fell in love with what he saw inside her, not simply what he was able to see with his eyes.”
“But he will look at younger girls.”
“Of course he will look, but he will love the older one,” he says and puts his face closer, right in front of mine, so that our nostrils are touching. “Are we finished?” he asks.
“I guess so.”
“I’m serious, Stella.”
“Winston. Okay. Let’s say hypothetically speaking that we were to like get married. I mean really: how long could it possibly last?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s a good answer,” I say.
“But who does know, Stella?”
“You’re right. Who does ever know?”
“So,” he says and wraps his arms snugly around me.
“So,” I say and slide mine under his.
And then suddenly he just lets me go and it feels like I’m going to tumble out of this hammock but for some reason I really don’t care, because I mean how far down could I really fall? I mean there’s grass under this thing and then there’s this moist soil beneath the grass because the sprinkler system comes on every morning and . . . “Stella?”
“Yes, Winston?”
“So will you marry me?”
I look at him for a few seconds and then I give him a deep juicy succulent kiss and then I take an even closer look into those sincere eyes and I say, “Are you sure you know what you just asked me?”
“Yes, I know what I just asked you.”
“What?”
“I just asked you to marry me.”
“Ask me again.”
“Stella, will you marry me?”
I turn away to look over at the swimming pool for no particular reason except to maybe catch my breath and then I look up at the black sky that has absolutely no stars which is like totally perfect because they are not necessary and so I ponder this thought this notion this gesture this whole idea for a few more seconds and then I smile at Winston and press my lips softly into his and I do love this man I do I do but I look at him one more time to make sure he’s like for real and when I see that he is I take a deep breath to make sure I am real and Stella girl accept the fact that you finally got something you wanted, that it’s okay to enjoy him this moment go on and make this move feel this groove fool go ahead jump dive in deep fly swirl girl you have earned this you deserve this you can take this to the bank, so when I like hear all this advice and stuff being given to me by this mature in-the-middle-of-her-life woman who knows what day it is what time it is and whose name happens to be the same as mine I am like totally sold swayed convinced so I just go ahead and drape my arms around this beautiful man named Winston Shakespeare and I say, “Okay!”
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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How Stella Got Her Groove Back Page 33
