She beckoned me with her hand, saying, “Come on.” She stifled a mild shiver. She’d never been with a woman before. And her first would be me. If she had stopped to consider how it would affect her relationship with Luther, it didn’t show. Maybe she thought being with me “didn’t count.” Like an idiot, I was the one who hesitated.
“Why do you want to do this? I know you don’t feel the same way.”
“Come on,” she said simply. “One time.”
“Why? Why do this?”
“For you.”
I was wretched. My beautiful girl naked in front of me, offering me what I had dreamed about for years, and I couldn’t touch her. “Erica, I don’t need a pity fuck.”
“It’s not a pity fuck.”
“Okay, a compassion fuck.”
“Mish…”
Waiting for me. I sat there on my bed, struggling to summon a scrap of battered, shrivelled dignity, knowing I wouldn’t win against my own desire. Then Erica said the words that sprang me into action, giving me a push. She always knew the right thing to say.
“Look, you know I’ve never been with a girl,” she said. “Don’t make me feel any more self-conscious than I do, sweetie. If I was going to sleep with a woman, I would…I would want it to be you.”
I looked in her eyes.
“I’m not just saying that,” she added.
I didn’t undress, not right away. I rose slowly from the bed, and again she shivered. The first kiss was excruciating in its awkwardness, her mouth so tense, barely yielding to my lips. She watched me as I wrapped my arms around her, doing her best to return the embrace. I held her like a precious stone I had rescued from a mine or a deep forgotten pool, cradling her in my arms, running my fingers down her back to her ass and feeling its delicious curves. I massaged her breasts, grateful that I could tease her nipples erect, and she averted her eyes, looking down, perhaps embarrassed that I could stimulate her like this. Gently, gently, I kissed and sucked on one nipple, Erica’s nipple, tasting her, working my way down her belly to pause at her hip and feel its roundness, brushing my fingers against the tight curls of her pubic hair…
She stiffened as I coaxed her with my hands to part her legs. She shuddered as my tongue made its first hesitant laps on her pussy, Erica’s pussy, the taste of her lubrication the sweetest wine I’ve ever had, and when my eyes looked up to check her reaction, I saw her own were closed. I was making her wet. I was making Erica wet, feeling Erica’s skin…
I asked her with my eyes to lie down on my bed. She was so passive. She didn’t reach out to hold me or to explore my body at all. She would let me do things to her. And, God help me, I couldn’t help myself. I parted her legs and ducked my head down, revelling in the smell of her, wanting this for years, and my greedy mouth covered her and my tongue probed into her vagina. She groaned in response, and I was thrilled. You will love what I can do for you, I thought. Better than any guy, better than any stupid man just invading you with his dick. I have softness and subtlety and I love you, really love you. I started a fast rhythm of sucking her clit in and out, and she was clenching her teeth, shutting her eyes as if she didn’t want to let go, as if she wanted to postpone her orgasm. When I finally tore it from her like a prize with the skill of my tongue, she covered her face with her hand and wailed. I undressed in a rush, and she stared at me glassy-eyed, not moving, her hands in a kind of fetal pose over her breasts while three of my fingers dipped into the sweet well of her pussy. She didn’t seem to know me. I kissed her, and she opened her mouth, tasting my tongue, but there was no passion behind her curiosity.
Her hand was in my hair, stroking me, touching my cheek like a benediction. She cupped my left breast, and I sighed with the pleasure of this small gesture. She gave me the saddest smile I’ve ever known.
“I can’t, Mish…I can’t.”
“I can please you,” I whispered, not ready to let it all slip away yet. “I can.”
I didn’t take my fingers out of her. I kept pushing them in and out of her vagina, my mouth coming down like a hawk on one of her breasts, sucking a nipple, teasing it with small bites between my teeth. Erica’s hands grabbed fistfuls of the sheets as my mouth roamed over her belly again, and I started to rub my pussy against her thigh. A little more, just a little more now, couldn’t she see how much I loved her? You give yourself to me, and I’ll gorge myself on you, her thigh above her knee getting slick with my juice as she lay on her side, coming. I keened, a shiver fluttering up my back, my eyes wet with the cathartic release of at last reaching my goal.
“Oh, God, feel me, Erica, touch me, please…”
“Mish…”
“Please, please…”
She shook her head no. “I can’t…”
“You’re coming under my hand,” I whispered bitterly. “I’m making you come. All those times you fucked those guys ragged! I can make you come, and I really love you. Fuck me, honey. Love me back…Please…”
She shook her head again: no. Still whispering I love you, but I can’t, looking at me like a scared rabbit. Waiting for me to finish. I couldn’t stand the weight of that look. I was beyond tears now, past hope, and there is a pitiful state when you are naked and rejected, a kind of sleepwalking limbo where you’re not prepared to get dressed yet, but you can no longer go through the pretence of affection. I gazed at her beautiful brown body, so tense and uncomfortable with me as she lay there, knowing I would never get another chance at this intimacy. I wanted to pledge sacrifice in that moment. I thought I would have been content merely to sculpt her skin with my fingers, to let my breath mingle with the air that reached below that lovely triangle of fur. I can please you, I’d told her. And we both knew it wasn’t enough for either of us.
I know why she gave herself up to me. She thought it would break the spell. She thought the reality of having her would wake me up like an infatuated guy who had got his taste and was ready to move on. She didn’t understand: I loved her. She only had to see that. Luther had cleared a path for me in a strange way. He had shown her genuine caring, and when she responded to this, her libido followed. And I loved her better than Luther or Steven or Morgan ever could. She needed time. I saw that now. If there was nobody else in the picture, she would wake up and at last see me through the forest of male disappointments. And Luther will let her down eventually, I told myself. Didn’t men always with Erica? No one ever measured up in the end. She’ll think of me. She’ll remember my mouth and my hands inside her. She can’t deny the pleasure she felt. I would have her again, I promised myself. I would.
Crisis
I borrowed one of Erica’s cars and drove out late that night to Jill’s house. Through the lace curtain in the window, she peeked out at me and then quickly opened the door. I’d woken her up, and she stood there on the threshold wearing only a long-sleeve dress shirt, a memento perhaps from an old boyfriend. The open ends were like parted drapes teasing me with the swell of her breasts and the thatch of dark pubic fur below. Ridiculous, coming to her like a cry-baby over Erica and then aroused by the sight of her. “I need you…”
She took me in her arms, half-naked on her front porch, not giving a damn if anyone was walking their dog nearby. We made love that night, and it was incredible again. She asked me what was wrong, and I said I wasn’t ready to tell her. She said okay, I’ll give you a massage instead. I fell asleep after only twenty minutes under her clever, sensitive fingers. In fact, I slept till close to noon the next day. “Shit!” as I bolted upright from her bed, but there was a note left with a spare key on the nightstand. CALLED YOU IN SICK. HANG OUT AS LONG AS YOU LIKE. J.
I did. As a thank-you and a romantic gesture, I found a market nearby and picked up a few things to make her dinner that evening. I explored her place. One of these days, I thought, Jill should really get around to unpacking the boxes she had pushed against her bedroom wall. I checked out the books she liked, one impressive shelf devoted to African dancing styles and African art. Another shelf held what lo
oked like textbooks from her police academy days with titles like Cleaning and Maintenance of Standard Service Firearms. On a wall down in the basement, not the most conspicuous place, she had hung a framed portrait of herself in her NYPD uniform.
I sat down at her desk and discovered a white envelope next to her computer. It was unsealed with my name on it written in her hand, big loops on the “l”s in Michelle. Had she left me another note? When I opened it, the envelope looked empty. But it wasn’t. There were these tiny bits of almost transparent brown plastic, and it took me a long moment to figure out what they were. When it hit me at last, my spine went cold, and my forehead beaded with nervous sweat.
Oh, Jesus. Bits of cassette tape.
I knew where they had come from—souvenirs from the fireplace in Morgan’s loft. What the hell was she doing with bits of tape? You could see how they were shredded, charred. There was nothing she’d be able to learn from these. So what was she doing with them? And why did the envelope have my name on it?
As she walked in the door after work, I greeted her like a wife, telling her I’d made dinner, bought her flowers. It took me three hours to work up the nerve to ask about the envelope.
“Oh, that,” she said casually. “That’s simple. I found these bits of tape in Morgan’s fireplace, and my friends in Homicide let me hang on to them for a while. They weren’t very impressed with my ‘evidence,’ but, hey, you never know. I jotted your name down because I was making a mental note to ask you about them.”
“But—but why me? What would I know?”
Jill shrugged. “Maybe nothing, I’m taking a wild stab in the dark here. I figured since you’re so organised and you keep Erica’s schedule, you had to keep track of Morgan and the others when they were all working together on Drum. I thought, you know, maybe Morgan mentioned something to you about what he was working on.”
“Not that I can remember,” I said tightly. “And you’re working on a false assumption. I didn’t have to care where the others were. Just Erica.”
She waved it away. “Worth a shot. Sometimes when I have a problem, I carry little reminders around with me to help me think. I know it sounds like a weird habit, but it really does help. I look at them, I study them, and it gets my brain working. I thought I’d do the same with those tape bits. You remember I told you the killer wanted to make it look like a robbery? I did say that his murderer must have killed him for something he wanted.”
“You did say that, yeah.”
“It’s so strange these bits of tape in his fireplace. I don’t think Morgan would have tossed his cassette tapes in there. You don’t burn something unless you really want to get rid of it. Perfectly good rubbish bin in his kitchen.” She closed the envelope. “These are worthless, I guess.”
She put the envelope on her desk. She wasn’t throwing it away.
“Whatever they wanted, they must have got it, and now we’ll never know.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say to that. I wanted desperately to change the subject, so I asked, “What did Erica say? About my absence?”
Jill looked distracted for a moment. “Oh. Not much. She said she knew you weren’t sick. She said you two had an argument, and it was her fault. She said she’d been a real bitch to you lately, piling on the work, and that she’d smarten up and give you some room. She said that apartment’s your home, and you shouldn’t feel like you have to leave because you two had a fight. Oh, and she said she’s your friend first, always will be, and she does love you.”
I nodded, making no comment. So it was to be like that. I suppose I shouldn’t have expected anything else. She was my friend, and she was telling me she would stay my friend, but she could offer me nothing more, certainly not what I wanted. I could, however, keep my job. I could keep my place in her life. Erica wanted things the way they’d always been.
“Look, honey,” said Jill. “Maybe it would be a good idea if you showed up for work tomorrow at the office. Do it in stages if you like. Then, when you’re ready, you can go back to the apartment. Crash here for a few days, I don’t mind. I’ll swing by your place to pick you up some clothes—”
“No, that’s only delaying it. I should go home. I’ll be all right. Erica’s good to me—most of the time.”
“She’s the best,” chirped Jill.
I hugged her and said I’d stay one more night.
As I lay next to her that evening, I couldn’t sleep. Wondering if I had got too smug, if Jill was playing with my head while she played with my body. No. Don’t be paranoid.
I actually worried more about Jill than Erica, knowing my beautiful girl would never speak of giving herself to me, ever, ever, ever, not until I won her completely once and for all. That would take time. For now, I had to go back to playing the good friend. I could settle for that temporarily. I closed my eyes and drifted off, determined to forget all about hidden innuendoes and shreds of burned cassette.
Two weeks later:
“We need to talk,” said Erica.
Oh, shit, I thought. Nothing ever good follows that phrase. And I was right. There was something in Erica’s tone as she asked me to sit down that wasn’t the voice of a friend, but an employer. She waved me to the sofa, and I sat in a very guarded pose, my knees together, hands in my lap. Erica sat forward on an ottoman, her own hands clasped together and her voice low, as if breaking the news to me that my dog died.
“Luther’s asked me to live with him,” she announced.
I couldn’t say anything.
“I’ve been kinda re-thinking my career,” she went on. “Steven’s death kicked the crap out of Brown Skin Beats. They’ve got his back catalogue, and we know they’ll squeeze every last goddamn thing out of the studio sessions to cut and paste together a last album. But the label is circling the wagons. They don’t want to just throw weight behind the rest of their artists. They want to build a whole new producer team so they never have any problems with the talent going off the rails, performers overdosing or having breakdowns or just losing it.”
“I—I don’t understand,” I said. She was all over the map, first talking about her and Luther then about her career and then about the business. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying BSB is throwing a whole lot of money at Luther to be their new Creative Director for the East Coast division,” she explained. “A lot of money. They were bowled over by his work on my new album and a couple of others. And they’re talking about moving him to the West Coast in nine months to have him take over the main operation.”
“But that’s Luther,” I cut in. “You’re the one who always wanted to be independent. Remember how you tied yourself up with Steven and—”
“I remember, honey. But Luther’s not Steven. And Luther’s turned out to be right, you know? I’ve lost my way, I think. When I came down here after high school, I wanted to make music. I wanted to reach people. And lately, I’m on auto-pilot. I’m cruising on my name. I don’t think my songs are as good, and it’s not that I’ve run out of things to say, I’ve just moved further away from knowing what the hell I’m talking about! I got so much bling-bling and shit, and I’m caring so much about photo ops and promotion, and how the hell did I let myself get talked into thinking of movies?”
“Aaliyah did it, Samantha Mumba, Beyoncé Knowles—”
“Good for them. That’s not me. I’m tired, Mish. I want to write my songs and record when I’m inspired. Luther’s saved my ass on this album, he really has. BSB will probably throw me a dump truck full of money for two more, and after that, I won’t need to push so hard anymore. I got to look to the future, and I want to try my hand at producing. Luther thinks I got good instincts for it. We’ll make a good team.”
“That’s what you said when you hired me.”
She frowned at that. “I’m not abandoning you, Mish. This could be good for you, too. Look, you’re still technically on staff at BSB, and Luther’s going to pull a few strings. You’ll be Deputy Manager of the Promotions depa
rtment for the East Coast division. You can even keep the same office there.”
“Terrific.”
“Well, be a little bit grateful, girl,” she snapped irritably. “He sold them on you. They don’t know how hard you work. They just look at your title as ‘personal assistant.’ Luther’s the one who told them about your great ideas for the album art, how you got Vibe to do that profile, the concert in Zimbabwe…”
I didn’t say anything for a moment.
“I want you to know,” she said, softening her tone, “this isn’t about you and me, and…Well, how you used to feel. You know that, right?”
I tried to shrug it off. “Of course not—”
“Luther’s asked me, and we’re going good so—”
“No, I understand, you don’t have to say—”
“We got to strike when it’s hot, you know?”
She clapped her thighs, obviously relieved that issue was out of the way.
I shrugged and told her, “Sorry, it’s just that it sounds like everything’s happening so fast.”
She reached out and took my hand in hers. “Oh, Mish, there’s time. We got months to go! You’re not rid of me yet.”
With a nervous laugh, we hugged each other.
“All that’s happening for now is I’m going to start using this place as more of an office. Luther wants me to move in with him as soon as I can, but, hey, that just means I pack a few bags of clothes. I got knick-knacks and CDs and my toothbrush there, it’s like I’m already settled. Hey, look…This is still your home. You’ll make good money in that new job, and I can lease this place to you at a friend’s bargain rate. What do you say?”
“S—sure. You know I love it here.”
“Happy endings all around, Mish. You’ll see.”
I nodded my head and smiled. Happy endings all around, Michelle. She rubbed my arm in friendly affection and said she had to get going, she was hooking up with her man for lunch. Hey, did I want to tag along? Trying to give me a soft landing. I gave her my bravest smile and said, “No, thanks, I’m good.” I should pop in to the label offices to sign off on those promotions she’d agreed to. I watched her hurry out the door, and in the cold silence of the apartment, I heard the distant bell for the elevator. I sat and thought.
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