Tale of the Tigers: Love is Not a Game
Page 11
“We’ll be back at about eleven, if that time is okay with the two of you.”
“That’s fine,” Vetra said. Kevin saw her grab her husband’s arm. “Be sure to drive safely,” she said cheerfully.
“Yes, ma’am, I will. Goodnight and nice to meet both of you.”
“Goodnight and same to you, dear,” said Vetra. Kevin looked at Joseph and saw that he had gotten all the pleasantries he was going to get from him on this night. Still, he nodded his head at the man and received a slight, almost imperceptible nod in return. Kevin felt grateful to have received that much.
He heard the door close as he and Felice headed down the path leading to the street. She looked up at him.
“That went pretty good,” she grinned at him.
“Really? I was kind of waiting for your dad to run me out of there,” he said as they began to walk down the street toward his father’s car.
“If he didn’t think you had honorable intentions, he would have.”
“So, you think my intentions are honorable, eh?” he smiled at her. Then, suddenly, he felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up, as though his back were in the cross-hairs of some high-powered scope. He turned his head back toward Felice’s house. At one of the windows, the light from the inside framed the darkness of a tall, broad-shouldered, unmoving human being, looking unmistakably in his direction.
As he watched the car drive away, Joseph was feeling another set of eyes boring into his own back. Reluctantly, he turned around to face his wife. The two stared at each other for what seemed to be a long while. Then Joseph wearily sat himself on the couch. Taking his cue, Vetra walked over to the easy chair and sat down.
“Thanks, Joe.”
“For what?”
“For not coming in here brandishing a gun at the kid.”
Joseph shrugged. “What good would that have done? It would have made you and Felice mad at me for a long time and probably would have literally pushed her into his arms. But, don’t think I didn’t think about it.”
She chuckled. “I figured as much.”
The two gave each other shy looks, as if they were courting again.
“We should get this out of the way before one of the kids gets home,” he said.
“Get what out of the way, Joseph?” Her voice was like steel. “I did what I thought was best. Not out of deceit, but out of love--the wrong thing for the right reasons.”
“I know.”
Vetra looked as if she had been punched. “You what?”
“I said I know. Looking at the whole thing reasonably, remembering how I was back then, I can’t blame you for not telling me.” He grinned at her puzzled look. “Didn’t expect that did you?”
“You’d better believe I didn’t.” She paused and then took a heavy intake of breath. “So, how are things between us, I mean you and me?”
Joseph looked at the face that was more beautiful than when he’d first seen it long before. “I don’t know, honey. Intellectually, I understand your reasons for keeping what you kept from me, just like, intellectually I know that there’s nothing wrong with Felice dating that kid.”
“But emotionally...”
“Yes, my emotions are another story. It’s almost as though there’s a blockage in my throat every time either of the two subjects enter my mind. It’s going to take some time before I can process this stuff.”
“I guess I’ll have to be content with that.” She hesitated again. “Are you staying at Richard’s again tonight?”
“No, Baby. My place is here.”
Vetra smiled, got up from the chair and went over to sit next to him. “As it always will be,” she said as she raised her hand to gently stroke his cheek.
“This Baklava is delicious. My dad makes something similar in the restaurant.”
“I thought you said that your father’s restaurant is Creole.”
“It is, but my dad’s picked up recipes and cooking techniques from all over. He’s not so rigid when it comes to food.”
“But, when it comes to a white guy dating his daughter...,” Kevin started gingerly.
“You could tell, eh? I thought you seemed a little nervous.”
“What do you mean, ‘you thought?’” He said, grinning. “I could hear you and your mother laughing at me when I slammed my knee on your coffee table!”
Felice started laughing again. “Sorry,” she said sheepishly. “We tried to get into the kitchen in time but it was too late.”
“Your dad almost burst out laughing, too. I guess it was ‘laugh at the goofy white boy’ night.”
“Hey, it could have been worse. You could have done a Chevy Chase and flipped over the table.”
He laughed. “True. That would have done wonders for my football career.”
“Not to mention your neck.” Suddenly she grew serious. “Are you worried about my dad?”
“I’m not sure yet. Does this mean that you’ll go out with me again?”
She smiled shyly at him. “Maybe.”
“Then, yes, I’m worried about your dad.”
“Please don’t be. He’s a smart, reasonable guy, most of the time.”
“Except when it comes to his little girl.”
“I’m not a little girl.”
“Don’t I know it. But to him you are.”
“What I’m trying to say is, that I think he’ll come around once he gets used to the idea of us being...friends.”
“Friends, eh?” He grinned as he leaned across the table closer to her. “Okay, I can accept that.”
“Good because...,” she broke off. The purposefully loud conversation from another table was wafting over to them. The restaurant was a bit crowded with it being Saturday night, so both Felice and Kevin knew that they were meant to hear it.
“What’s a nice boy like that doing with her?” It was a woman’s voice. Felice turned to look at her. She looked just like Mrs. Castle, her ninth grade teacher, who had been one of her favorites. Even the large gray eyes were the same shape. However, they didn’t have in them what Mrs. Castle’s eyes had contained. And this mouth was slightly twisted, as if the woman had eaten Joseph LeCroix’s red-hot jambalaya.
“I don’t know. Back in my day, we didn’t take nigger gals out to dinner before we did our business with ‘em.
“Times are changing.”
Kevin looked over at the man. He was a dead ringer for his father--the same Herbert Hart who had taught him that about most of the countries in the world; who had taken him to India; who had taken him along to Washington D.C. to protest South African apartheid.
Kevin sprung up out of his chair like the lightning for which Malik had nicknamed him.
“Kevin, don’t do it,” he heard Felice’s firm voice say. “They’re stupid.”
He appeared not to heed her words. He noted, with grim satisfaction, the fear on the faces of the couple, as they saw the large young man coming toward them. He then heard them gasp in relief as he passed them by to head toward the maître’d station. He turned to wink at Felice, as he heard her laughter waft over to him.
Ten minutes later, as the loudly protesting couple was being escorted out by the restaurant security, Kevin sat down to face Felice again.
“I thought you were going to turn their table over,” she said to him, grinning.
Kevin grinned evilly. “I think they did, too. I felt like it, but that wouldn’t have gone over well with the owner, who’s a friend of my dad’s.”
“And if you did something like that, it would be all over the papers, probably on the front page.”
“Well, my motives were a little self-serving, yes. But, as my dad says, the clout is mightier than the sword.”
Felice’s face was unreadable. “I guess. You know if we...hang out together, this type of thing is bound to happen again. You can’t have everyone ‘thrown out.’ Like on campus, for instance. There’s bound to be someone who doesn’t like us hanging together. Your friend, Mandy comes to mind.”
“White…” she filled in.
“And 21,” he finished sheepishly.
She laughed at his expression. “I guess it became an expression for a reason.”
“Yep,” he sighed. “Probably if you asked Malik, he’d tell you the entire history of the saying. He’s a real pain in the... butt about that stuff.”
Felice giggled. “You know it’s not like I haven’t heard the word ‘ass’ before. I might have used it a couple of times, too--in relation to donkeys, of course.”
“No!” Kevin said with mock surprise. “My pristine image of you is ruined.”
“Oh well. Seriously, there will be more incidents like that one. Maybe not so blatant, but we’ll get some funny looks.”
“I don’t see why, especially on campus. I see lots of interracial couples there. As a matter of fact, I’ve hardly ever seen Malik with a black girl.”
“That’s probably because there aren’t so many.”
“There’s quite a few that I’ve taken note of. Malik and I counted one day. Almost every black girl we saw was alone or with another girl, including you.”
“I’m not terribly social,” said Felice evenly.
“You seem pretty social to me,” he smiled at her.
“Well, when a guy shushes his harem just to say ‘hi,’ you’ve just got to talk to him.”
He reddened slightly. “That wasn’t my harem. They’re just my...”
“Groupies?”
“...friends.”
“Oh.”
“You sound a little jealous.”
“Of them? I don’t think so. Just curious is all. Must be a jock thing. Male jocks. My friend Adrienne doesn’t have a horde of guys following after her.”
“Adrienne Anderson?
“Yes.”
“I know who she is; the star of the women’s round-ball team. That’s your friend?
“My best friend.”
“Hmm. Too cool. As for no men following after female athletes, it’s because no one thinks that a female athlete is going to be rich when she graduates.”
“True.” She paused for a moment. “So you plan on being rich when you graduate, eh?”
“If my dad can swing it. He’s going to go full time as my agent when I get to the NFL.”
“Sounds cozy. Do you love anything besides playing football?
He looked at her intensely. Rarely had any girl ever asked him that question. “Yes. Yes I do. I love animals: Dogs, cats, fish, and horses. We’ve got the first three at my house and my uncle has a ranch in south Texas that we go to every year to ride. I like a lot of other animals, too.”
“You think you’d be a vet, if you weren’t playing football?”
“I had thought about it, yeah. But, I also wouldn’t mind being a lawyer like my dad.”
“You can do that and play football, too, you know.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“You don’t sound too convinced.”
“That’s ‘cause I’m not,” he grinned. “I know myself. Once I get to the NFL, I don’t think I’ll have the discipline to concentrate on law school.”
“Well, you know better than I do, but I bet if you put your mind to it, you’d make it.”
He looked at her quizzically. “So what are you going to be when you grow up?”
“A lawyer, thanks for asking,” she said sarcastically.
“That figures. You know how to make a good case. Wait ‘til you meet my dad. Soon as he finds out that you want to be a lawyer, you will be able to do no wrong in his eyes.”
They chattered on, with Kevin not even realizing what he had just said. He had never taken a girl to meet his father.
An hour later, as they pulled up in front of the LeCroix house, both of their minds were churning in anticipation, exhilaration, and fear. After they parked, Felice sat impatiently waiting for Kevin to come around and open her door.
“Mademoiselle,’ he said, as he opened the door.
She smiled at him as she climbed out. Stretching to her full height, she was nearly as tall as he was due to her shoes. Her own nervousness was starting to subside as she saw that he was far more nervous than she. As she watched him apprehensively run his hand over his own hair, she gently tucked her arm under his.
“Would you be so kind as to escort me to my door, sir?”
“Sure thing, M’lady, if I don’t fall over first.” They laughed as they made their way up Felice’s front walk.
Kevin felt his knees nearly give out on him as Felice tucked her long-fingered hand under his arm. He made some small joke and, as they both laughed, the other part of his brain said, here it comes!
Why was he so nervous? He’d kissed lots of girls before. Granted, he had never kissed a black girl before, but
it appeared that they had two lips just like everyone else. He turned to look at Felice’s lips. The lip stick she had been wearing had worn off and she hadn’t bothered to replace it. She didn’t need to. Her lips were wide, brown, and smooth. Next to her shining brown eyes, they were the most attractive part of her face....
“Kevin?”
“Yes?” For some reason he hadn’t noticed that they had stopped at her front door.
“Dinner was really good.”
“I’m glad you liked it. What did you think of the company?”
“He was okay too,” she teased.
“I guess I’ll have to settle for that. See you on Monday in the Quad around eleven?
“Eleven it is.”
Kevin had in his mind to turn and make his way back down the walk, when Felice took both of his hands in hers and gently kissed him on the lips.
He was nearly frozen with surprise, however his lips responded.
“See ya later,” she said after pulling back, grinning at the stunned look on his face.
A slow smile spread across his face. “You bet you will.”
Tale of the Tigers
Chapter Seven
Malik trudged on his long, powerful legs away from his last class for the day in a bad mood. Or, at least he was showing his bad mood to the outside world, which was unusual for him.
As was so with Kevin, nearly everyone on campus greeted him as he passed, whether they knew him or not. Normally, Malik was very humble about his small-town celebrity status and, unlike many of his teammates, made a conscientious effort not to appear to be an egomaniac, but not today. Instead of the sunny, warm “hello/hi there” that was his customary greeting to every living soul who passed him, all that could be gotten from him was a terse “hi” on this day. He was furious, and for a man who was very slow to anger, this was a scary situation.
Usually, Malik rolled with the punches and he had taken a lot of punches in his lifetime. Sometimes it seemed as though no one in his life would accept him for who he was; no one, but his father and, sometimes, his friend, Kevin.
A genius is what he was; a certified genius. He had been given the standard IQ test at age seven. Afterward, the authorities at his elementary school had wanted to skip him forward two grades, from second to fifth, but his late mother wouldn’t allow it. A compromise was struck and Malik skipped only one grade.
“The boy is going to be enough of an outcast as it is,” he had overheard Cynthia Hayes say to his father. “You know how our people are, Elijah. They are like crabs in a barrel. Let one try to climb out of the barrel, and they do everything they can to pull him back down. You should know quite well. It was done to you and your two other sons.”
“So does that mean we should ‘keep our place?’ I’ve had enough of that crap, Cyn. I may not have been the
perfect father to Randy and Alex, may not have been there when they needed me, and may not have encouraged them when they needed my encouragement, but I can at least try to do better by Malik. And, I won’t be doing that if I teach him to hide the fact that he’s smarter than damn near everybody, black, white, or indifferent.”
&
nbsp; That conversation had shaped everything that Malik was. From that day to this, he had struck a sort of compromise in his life, with the abetting of his father. He would show the standard face to the world at large, black or white; that of the entertainer. Privately, however, Malik Hayes made the most of his gifts.
For his part, right after the IQ test, Elijah Hayes had (unsuccessfully) submitted his seven-year-old son to be a member of MENSA, and both parents had supplemented their youngest child’s education outside of the dismal public school system through libraries, museums, science fairs, and the like. Malik was Elijah’s pride and hope: his last chance at bringing a functioning man-child into adulthood and Malik knew this. He would not let his father down.
Malik’s parents were older than most of his peers’ parents due to his being a late-in-life, unexpected child. Randall was his oldest brother, nearly old enough to be his
father. Neighbors had occasionally reported seeing Randy, staggering out of an alley or coming out of a known dope house. Alexander, ten years Randall’s junior, had chaffed under his father’s restrictions and had moved out at age sixteen. He had been in and out of juvenile corrections, had been a known gang member, and had had no legal job that Malik had known about. When Malik was twelve, Alex had been killed, shot in the back of the head, by unknown assailants. Witnesses, however, had known who they were. But none in his/her right mind went to the police. Cynthia Hayes’ health, both emotional and physical, had been permanently impaired by the murder of her son and she had succumbed to a fatal stroke not many years afterward.
Such varying influences had taught Malik to play his own special game. His superior intellect told him that if he wanted to be able to get along with his peers, he would have to find something that obscured the fact that he was a consistent honor student. He found two things: an innate sense of humor and sports.
His father had, at first, discouraged his involvement in sports: “you’re not going to grow up to be another court jester or gladiator.” But Elijah had relented under pressure from his wife. “The boy’s gotta have some outlet for all that