by Eden Myles
Honestly, I’d never really been Susie Homemaker, even before Asia, but dinner in my parents’ house had always been something special on Sundays, particularly when my mom was alive. I’d tried to keep up the tradition. When I lived with Jerrel, my dad would come over mostly every Sunday to read the Times in the living room, watch a baseball game on TV with Jerrel, or play checkers with Asia. I never minded making dinner because it gave Asia time to spend with her grandfather. Jerrel might be out of my life these days, but I still liked making dinner for my dad, a retired beat cop who lived off his pension down in Brooklyn. Dad was getting up there in age now, and I really wanted him to sell the house and move in with me and Asia—the neighborhood was far safer—but he wouldn’t hear of it. He and mom had lived in that house down on Lafayette Street for over forty years. I knew he would die in it someday, surrounded by all of Mom’s things.
I looked over at my bounty—the buttermilk-battered fried chicken and collard greens, the corn bread and calico baked bean casserole. During the week, Asia and I ate a lot of pizza, Chinese takeout and Lean Cuisine, but on the weekends I liked to make the food my dad had grown up on. Asia liked to call it our Southern Sunday.
I was digging some ice out of the freezer for my hand when I heard the door buzzer go off, and Asia speaking to the lobby concierge about a visitor. About five minutes later, Asia wandered back in. She looked impressed, which Asia never did anymore. “Your partner’s here, Mom.”
“What?”
“The one with the funny name.”
“Wolf?”
She mouthed, He’s hot, rolled her eyes, and then pantomimed toward the dining room.
Oh God, no, please tell me Wolf did not invade the sanctity of my own home! Clutching the ice to my hand, I hurried out to the living room and found to my extreme horror that Wolfgang Beck was sitting at my dining room table, dressed in one of his “weekend suits,” which were just a little less formal than the clothes he normally wore to work. Instead of a tie, he wore a cravat, of all things. He was talking to my dad. My entire world teetered over a fiery abyss of destruction for a moment.
I stopped and just watched my family talking to my partner and gentleman—my lover, the man who had, in the course of the past two weeks of my conditioning, made himself intimate with every part of me, who had come in every orifice of my body. Wolf was explaining the concept of his seed villages to my dad. Dad and Asia listened with rapt attention—Asia, more than I was comfortable with. When Dad spotted me, he looked up with a wide, wrinkly grin. “Baby girl, you should have told me your partner was so interesting. Do you know he’s developing the Namib desert?”
Of course my dad would approve of Wolf’s endeavors. Who would not? Wolf was developing one of the poorest and most arid regions on earth and turning it into a port of trade, utilizing a form of irrigation system that he himself had created and patented. His work would bring incredible commerce to a formerly unusable tract of land. And my dad had always had a deep and abiding interest in Africa. He always said his one regret was not taking me and my mom there while she was still alive.
“Wolf, what are you doing here?” I said. I realized I sounded more accusatory than I wanted to.
He immediately stood up, and I saw he was clutching a portfolio in the hand not holding his trusty walking stick. “That photographer we were talking about—the one from Nigeria?—he sent me his work. I was passing through the neighborhood, so I thought you might like to take a look.”
Asia, sitting at the table and staring up at Wolf as if she were looking on some dazzling, ancient god, said, “You have a funny accent.”
Wolf glanced down at the girl, not offended. “I don’t have an accent, ducky. You do.”
“No, I don’t,” she said defensively.
“You just jive in one big group, putting each other on, trying to top the last line," Wolf said, doing an impressive job of sounding not white, not German or British, and about thirty years behind the times.
Asia giggled.
I interrupted. “I’d like to speak to you alone, please?” I said and motioned for Wolf to follow me into the kitchen.
“It smells like heaven in there,” he said when we were alone together. He went to explore what was cooking in my pots, then jumped up onto the edge of my counters and glanced around my industrial-sized kitchen as if he owned the place.
I offered him a stern look and pressed the ice to my burn. “Do you even know what a chair is?”
“Chairs are boring and unimaginative.”
“Wolf…”
“Yes, my courtesan…”
“Don’t call me that, especially here. What are you doing here, anyway?”
He smirked. “I told you. I thought you might like to see the portfolio before Monday. Our photographer is quite the auteur so I suggest not letting your daughter get into it.”
“Don’t tell me how to raise my daughter.”
“Fine. Then let her see it.” He dropped it to the countertop.
I sighed in exasperation.
Wolf maintained his smirk. “You’re right. I do have ulterior motives. I’m flying out to Botswana tonight. I’ll be gone all week, at least until Friday.”
“What’s in Botswana?”
“One of my aqueducts collapsed. Some of my men were hurt.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just said, “Oh, God. How badly are they hurt?”
Wolf looked at me, all his usual good humor gone—or, at least, on hiatus. “There are a few in critical condition. I need to see after them. I may need to fly them back to the States for proper medical treatment. You understand.”
“Yes.” I sucked in a quick breath. “Your men…you care about them, don’t you?”
Now he looked insulted, the way he could sometimes when I said something very stupid. “Why would I not? They are my people, Rachaela.”
“I understand,” I said, hoping to calm him.
He looked at me gravely. “I wanted to see you before I left.” He slid down to the floor, crossed the room to me. He gathered my messy chignon of hair in his big hand. He leaned down and kissed me. It was a slow, very soft kiss. His tongue darted briefly into my mouth, over my teeth. I slid my arms under his suit jacket, against his chest. His nipples were pierced with tiny barbells. It had taken me a little while to get used to that. His free hand went around me and he rubbed his walking stick against the crack of my ass as he kissed me.
I felt something shift inside me, something that I knew was lust—there was an endless stream of lust when Wolf was around me—but I also felt something else that felt frighteningly like my heart was breaking. Wolf was going away. Only a week, so why did it leave me feeling so bereft? He let me go but took the ice from me, rubbing it gently against my burned hand. He made slow circles. “I’ll be back on Friday. And you need to look after that burn, meanwhile.”
“I’ll look after it.” Jesus, why were my eyes burning?
“Do take a look at that portfolio,” he said…and then he dropped the ice down the front of my blouse, making me jump. He said, “You’re up to nine punishments, by the way.”
“I hate you, Wolf,” I told him.
“Ten.” He kissed me quickly and deeply before I could dig the ice cube out of my cleavage, then turned and stalked from the kitchen.
I waited a few seconds, waited for my heart to slow in its insistent and stupid knocking, waited until the flush was out of my face and my eyes were dry. I heard the door of the apartment close—not a slam, but Wolf was in an obvious hurry to get to his wounded men.
I glanced at the portfolio. I flipped it open, wondering how extreme it really was. I was a little surprised to find it had medical reports stuffed into it, from both Wolf and Jasmine. I glanced over them quickly, noting that they were both in excellent health. Then I saw a crème paper with a note written in Wolf’s careful, almost monkish s
cript. He was inviting me to spend this coming weekend with him at the Dollhouse, with me as his courtesan. Jasmine would be with us. He said he’d be using the opportunity to make his final decision. So I would finally be seeing the inside of the mysterious Dollhouse—if I went, of course.
A pair of handcuffs were tucked into the portfolio, not the fur-lined kind, either, which only made my heart leap up into my throat. I snatched up the whole portfolio and took it down the hall to my home office where I locked it away in my wall safe where I kept the material for the magazine that I didn’t want Asia to find. Then, heart still knocking in my chest, my lips still tingling from Wolf’s kiss, I went back out into the dining room to join my family for Sunday dinner. I could hear the two rascals whispering their conspiracy theories even from all the way down the hall.
While I served the bean casserole, my dad said, “I like him, Rachaela. Any chance you two have something going?” He raised his eyebrows at that. He must have sensed something between us. Of course, my dad had married my mom, a white girl, so it didn’t bother him at all that my possible romantic interest was a white man. The fact that he was a white man from Africa who was deeply concerned about his people had only sweetened the deal, as far as my dad was concerned.
“I don’t like him, Mother,” Asia stated emphatically, poking at her beans with a fork. “He’s old and stuffy.”
***
THE WAR OF THE ROSES
The black T-shirt had the silhouette of an exotic dancer bending over on it and words beneath it in bright, glittering silver that read: IF YOU’RE GOING TO RIDE MY ASS AT LEAST PULL MY HAIR. If this were any other circumstance, I might have found it clever and maybe even a little bit funny. But the T-shirt was on my thirteen-year-old daughter Asia, stretched too tightly over her almost negligible breasts, and there was no way in hell she was leaving the house with it on.
“You are such a fucking hag!” she screamed at me as we squared off in the middle of the kitchen. “Maybe if you got laid once in a while you wouldn’t have that stick up your ass!”
I leaned against the closed refrigerator door and crossed my arms, one hand wrapped around a bottle of Avian. I gave Asia steady eyes. Two weeks ago, her outburst would have been contagious, and we both would have wound up screaming at each other before she stomped off to sulk and I went to take an extra dose of Zoloft. But I had learned something in the last couple of weeks, something very important, something that kept me calm even in these situations.
I wasn’t Asia’s best friend, her confidante, her giggly girlfriend. I couldn’t be Asia’s best friend—at least, not right now. Maybe in a year or two, maybe even sooner than that. But not now. Right now, Asia didn’t need a best friend. She needed a mother. I pursed my lips and said in a low, steady voice, “If you don’t change, you can’t go with Daddy this week.”
“Well, fuck!”
“You’re already two down, kiddo,” I told her, unscrewing the bottle and taking a drink. “That’s two hours that’s been cut into your curfew so far. So now you need to be back home at eight o’clock instead of ten.” I gave her mom eyes. “Do you want to keep going?”
Asia glared at me but shut up.
“Very wise.” I took another sip of water. “Upstairs. Now. Your dad’s going to be here any minute.”
While Asia stomped upstairs changing, I went out into the hallway to make certain she had packed everything. She had her rolling luggage all set up, plus her favorite heavy plastic shoulder bag with Raven Symone all over it. I was surprised she was taking it; I would have thought she’d outgrown Raven by now and moved onto gangbanga rap. When I checked inside, just to make certain that she wasn’t carrying any party favors in the form of drugs or condoms, courtesy of her boyfriend, I found even more clothes—a lot of sparkly little bits that didn’t exactly look appropriate for a week in the Hamptons, but I decided I didn’t want to ride Asia too hard. She was changing out of that T-shirt. It was a minor victory.
When Jerrel had first proposed that Asia spend a week with him, I’d initially balked. But then I reconsidered. After all, Jerrel wanted to spend two weeks out of a month with his daughter—and I knew damned well he was doing it just to spite me. So why not let him have his week? I knew Jerrel. I knew that after a few days of being locked in with Asia kicking around, being bored all the time, acting out, and interfering with his barely legal harem of girls, he’d reconsider those divorce demands of his. The thing about Jerrel was, he was basically a child. You had to treat him as such.
The doorman buzzed up and I went to let Jerrel in the apartment. He looked very fit in his white sports suit and black knit shirt. He’d shaved his head and propped a pair of Ray Bans on top of his forehead. He looked very much the playa. “Hey, Rache,” he said when he stepped into the foyer. Jerrel had a deep, booming voice I’d once thought of as very romantic and James Earl Jones-esque.
“Jerrel,” I said, very civil-like. “Asia will be down in a minute. Wardrobe malfunction. Can I get you something to drink while you wait?”
“Water, if it’s not too much trouble.”
I went back into the kitchen to retrieve another bottle of Avian. Jerrel followed me in and whistled. “You redid the kitchen.”
“Not really. Just moved a few things around.” I turned away from the refrigerator and noted that Jerrel had been admiring my ass while I’d been bent over, and not my kitchen. I handed the frosty bottle to him.
He took it in his big hand but didn’t immediately open it up. He took pains to look innocent. “How’s your dad?”
“Good. Arthritis has been bad, though.”
Jerrel’s eyes traveled over me like two bits of metal being dragged up my body by force of an invisible magnet. I was still wearing my office clothes, a white blouse cut just low enough to be a little disarming, and a black pinstripe business skirt just short enough to make men look, but not so short as to make a tramp of me. I could have worn my usual pants suits this week, since Wolf was in Africa, attending to his men, and I didn’t have to worry about conditioning—hell, I’d worn pants for years at the office while building up the magazine, hoping I’d garner more respect from the men in the industry—but now I’d gotten into the habit of wearing flexible, prettier, and slightly more revealing clothes for Wolf, and I was having trouble breaking the habit. I still liked my pants, but I thought how it was nice to look like a woman, sometimes. “You look good, Rache.”
“Thank you.”
“Really good.”
“Jerrel.”
“I’m just stating the obvious.”
I started moving past him, toward the foyer, but Jerrel put his hand on my arm, halting me. “Look,” he said in that deep, velvety-soft voice of his, the kind of voice you normally hear in a fantasy-movie voiceover giving you the back story—or a porn movie during a money shot—“I know we’re fighting about everything…the divorce papers, Asia…but is there any way we can stay friends? I worry about you, Rache. I don’t like that you’re all alone all the time…”
“I’m not alone.”
The stunned look on Jerrel’s face took me aback. I couldn’t believe Jerrel’s ego, that he was so shocked by the possibility of me seeing another man. I felt a surge of anger I quickly dampened down. I knew he thought I would never do better than him. He probably thought I was going to wait around in the wings while he ran out his mid-life crisis, banging everything in a skirt. Well, he was very wrong about me. He didn’t know me at all.
“You’re seeing someone?” he asked, sounding almost accusatory, like I was cheating on him.
“As a matter of fact.”
“Anyone I know?”
“No,” I said, and left it at that.
“I just ask because I worry about Asia, Rache. About what she might be exposed to.”
This from the man I later learned had banged my maid of honor at our wedding. “I’m not dating a pedophile, Jerrel.
I assure you that you have nothing to worry about.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“What do you mean?”
Jerrel shook his head slowly back and forth. “Still playing the Big Boss Lady.”
“Yes,” I said, crossing my arms. “I am the Big Boss Lady, here and in the office. It’s my job. I’m sorry that hurts your manhood so much, Jerrel. But the fact of the matter is, I can take care of myself.”
“God, you’re still such a fucking bitch…”
I pressed my lips together. I was about to say, And you’re a playa, Jerrel. You always will be. So don’t lecture me on how to raise my daughter. But before I could, Asia bounded into the kitchen.
“Daddy!” she cried, and threw herself into Jerrel’s arms. Jerrel clenched her tight and then told her all about their coming week, how he meant to take her looking for a horse all her own. Asia, of course, was just child enough still to be ecstatic. She couldn’t have a horse in the city, but out in the Hamptons, Jerrel said, the sky was the limit.
I stalked quietly by them both and out into the hallway to help Asia carry her things downstairs.
***
“Ein Unglück kommt selten allein.”
I looked over at Wolf in the driver’s seat of the roadster and said, “Did you just clear your throat?”
Wolf smirked. “I said, ‘when it rains, it pours’.”
I turned in my seat a little and looked at him. “You don’t use the German much.”
Wolf seemed to think about that. He’d come back from Africa smelling like Africa, but with a lot more German cluttering up his speech. He said it was because the hospitals in Botswana were still very much under the control of the South African German population. His men had all pulled through, and he hadn’t needed to fly them back to the States for treatment, but it had been touch and go with some of them. “Around the early part of the 1990’s, the South African government declared English the official language of Namibia,” he explained. “I was eighteen at the time, and up until then, German was all my parents spoke, though they did know English. It took me a while to learn. But I still think in German.”
