Cafe Romance

by Curtis Bennett

  “Leslie, I’m sure this is nothing more than an early touch of mid-life crisis.”

  “I don’t think so. I’m nowhere near fifty. Won’t be for another fourteen years.”

  In the fog of misery and disbelief, he began to wonder if another had stolen his lovely wife’s heart. And who knows what else, along the way. But after thinking this one through, in his heart of hearts, he knew this wasn’t so. After eight years of marriage, he knew that much about his wife. Yes, they had their problems, their ups and downs, but every marriage and every relationship has had them. Still he felt compelled to ask her if there was someone else.

  “No Kurt,” she replied and convincingly. “There’s no one else.”

  Rising up, he approached her from behind and placed his strong arms firmly around her waist, pleading softly into her ears, “Leslie, pleaseee…think this one over, baby. I’m asking you, pleaseee!” For a very brief moment he stood there and rocked her slowly in his embrace, his eyes closed…hers opened and distant.

  “Kurt I have thought this over and considerably,” she said, gently pulling away. “Look, I’ve never had the sense of presence, purpose and confidence you seem to have. I want to see if I can do some things that Leslie wants to do. I want to open up my own mental health clinic. This will take a lot of courage and confidence on my part. But I want to give it a try. Besides, I’m tired of working at that damned State Hospital.”

  Kurt was trying his best not to fall apart but it wasn’t working. “Look, honey. I know I’m going to be laid off soon. But if this is about money, I’ll get another job. Listen, I’ll work two jobs, if I have to,” he pleaded as his voice cracked.

  “Kurt,” she began, using a soothing tone. She could see that he was a bundle of hurt and pain. His eyes, which registered confusion, continued to search and probe her eyes, as if the words she had spoken were incomprehensible. “Listen, this isn’t about money or how much you make or the fact that you’re being laid off or that I earn almost twice as much as you. I’m not that shallow. And before you go there, this has nothing to do with me being the older woman and you the younger man. Besides, there’s only a four year difference between us.”

  “Then what in hell’s name is this all about, Leslie?” he asked, almost demanded, as his fingers drummed nervously on the bookshelf next to him. Though she had adamantly denied being involved with anyone else, Kurt felt he could deal with that scenario much better than this one. At least that would be a problem that came with a name, a face, and someone he could face. Mano è mano. But this trendy and corrosive woman’s lib ‘Honey, I need my space’ line was very hard for him to swallow. You just don’t give up and walk away from something this promising just to have a little more space. Especially when his love was not the smothering kind.

  Hell, this is not easy for me, either, Leslie thought. Men, they have never understood women or their needs. It seemed to always be about them. This time she made sure it was about her. How else would he know? How else could she explain that she loved him but was no longer in love with him without hurting him?

  Before she answered, she drew closer to him, and raised her hand and touched his warm cheek, wondering at the sudden tenderness that swept over her. Gently, she took the palm of his hand into hers and pressed her moist lips against it.

  Taking her free hand, she cupped his hand and gazed up into his eyes and gently said, “Kurt, you have been a wonderful provider, a pretty good listener, a shoulder to cry on, and someone I could always rely on. And yes, you’ve been a magnificent lover. I really appreciate all that you have done for me. You’re a man any woman would be proud to have.”

  Yeah, any woman except you, he thought

  “It’s me. Not you,” she murmured. “I just need to branch out on my own right now. And though it may sound trivial, I would also like to lose some of this weight I’ve gained over the past two years. I love the restaurants we go to. But they’re not helping me lose weight. As I said before, I need a change.”

  “And what am I to do Leslie? We all have needs.” He shot back, as he embraced her tenderly again.

  “Don’t worry, I’m sure Tabitha, or even your ex-fiancée, would love to fulfill those needs,” she slipped in as easy as she slipped out of his first embrace.

  Talk about hitting way below the belt. He began to fume, feeling unfairly judged by Leslie. “So, this is about Tabitha and Roxanne, isn’t it?” he said, releasing her.

  “Is it?”

  “Honey, you can’t be serious. Look, Tabitha is just a good friend. You know that. And whatever Roxanne and I had once was over a longtime ago. Long before you and I wed. And I’ve made no effort, conscious or unconscious, to see or talk to her since. You know that, Leslie. There’s just nothing there.”

  “But you two email one another and she calls every so often.”

  “What? An email once or twice a year! Two lines perhaps, at the most! Just wanting to know if I was still alive and healthy? What in hell’s name is wrong or even corrupted about that? And when she calls she calls my grandmother’s house and talks to her. Not me! And the last time she called was over two years ago, that I know of.”

  “One year ago.”

  “Okay. Okaay! One year ago.”

  “Yes, she calls your grandmother, but there always seems to be a message she leaves for you.”

  “Leslie, you’re being unreasonable and unfair.”

  “Look, it was just a passing thought,” Leslie said, in a low composed voice. “You and your female friends. I just cannot keep up with them.”

  “That’s hitting pretty low, Leslie.”

  “Whatever!”

  “Whatever isn’t good enough for me Leslie.”

  “Well, it’ll have to do for now,” she shot back in cold sarcasm.

  Dismayed by the tenor of their conversation, he shifted it back to the issue at hand…their marriage and her possible departure. With a tenderness he had not rallied to his cause in some time, he approached her and uttered, with supplication in his voice, “Honey, I don’t want to argue. And I don’t want to lose you either. I’d rather channel my energy into telling you how much I care about you. Telling you how beautiful you are. Telling you how much I need you in my world. Leslie, there’s no woman I want to be with as much as I want to be with you, no woman I desire as much as I desire you. Baby, there’s no woman I love as much as I love you. It’s important to me that you understand this.”

  “And I do,” she strained to say. But her resolve still seemed intact.

  Kurt studied her body language intently. No doubt, she had prepared herself, and quite well for this moment, he thought. She appeared void of any real emotion. Hardcore and removed was more like it. She had a resolve he had not seen before. And he knew that this did not bode well for him. In dire situations like this, he needed to see some humanity and compassion and understanding from his wife. Where was the nurturing woman he had met and fallen in love with? He pondered. This attractive but firm woman standing before him was behaving like a complete stranger, and one not hesitant about leaving him out to dry.

  “By the way, I’ve withdrawn half of what’s in our savings today. I’m putting it aside, for now. It will go towards opening up my clinic.”

  “Half! But that only leaves me ten grand, baby. How am I supposed to survive? In less than a week I’ll be unemployed and living a two-salary lifestyle on one income. How am I supposed to do that? Hell, the ten grand you’re leaving me will be gone in less than three months. The mortgage alone is $1200.”

  “Look, once my business is up and running, I’ll see what I can do to help you out.”

  “You’ll see what you can do to help me out. Leslie, I’ll be out in the streets and homeless by the time you get settled in,” he replied, his head swirling with doubt and growing anger. Why was she being so cavalier about this, so nonchalant? He pondered.

  “You’ll be fine,” she assured him.

  “Hell, that’s easy for you to say.”

  She w
as about to respond but decided not to. She did not want this to escalate into another knocked down, dragged out argument. Though distraught, she was surprised he was taking it as well as he was. She thought he might have sent some things flying her way in a fit of rage. After all, he had once thrown a bag of hamburger buns at her in the past in anger.

  “Listen honey,” he said, glaring at her intently, “Sure, I’ve made some mistakes in my life and in this marriage. I’ll admit that. But falling in love with you was not one of them.”

  For the first time he noticed her relaxing her guard a little, as she took a swallow and murmured, with reddish colored eyes, “I know. And I’m not saying that I haven’t made mistakes too. But understand, this isn’t easy for me, either.”

  “Just think about what you’re doing, Leslie. Please, baby!”

  Leslie did not reply. She stood there, staring into the far distance…thoughtfully.

  For Kurt, there had to be a better explanation for her wanting to leave. And he was determined to get to the bottom of this. After all, their love had been a formidable and passionate love. Their devotion was one that had been built on trust and sharing. And when it all came together, it clicked like mom’s great country cooking. It was like hot melted butter over country biscuits and cinnamon sweetened yams and like hot giblet gravy over sliced oven roasted turkey. Besides, where was he going to find another woman and lover that could rival Leslie, especially in their hay days?

  Leaving Leslie to her thoughts, he went into the living room and sat down on the sofa. This was going to devastate his beloved grandmother who had not been feeling well lately. Leslie and she were close, almost like mother and daughter instead of just granddaughter-in-law.

  Still dazed, Kurt pondered his seemingly bleak future. As the late and soulful balladeer Donnie Hathaway and songstress Roberta Flack once sang, “Where is the love?”

  Kurt was left to ponder, what in Hell’s name happened to mine?

  Chapter 2

  A sudden loud and piercing sound snatched Yvette Robinson abruptly from a dream world of endless possibilities. In the blinking of an eye she found herself back in the finite world of the living. Strange as it may sound, the last place this ebony beauty wanted to be was among the living, especially after the fiery dream she had just awaken from. Dark and handsome, her breathtaking flamingo dancer stood tall above her vulnerable ravishing form, unaware he was about to experience the erotic tune-up of his life. That’s when her sexually charged dream was abruptly shattered. The culprit was her panicky alarm clock. The deafening tone, which seemed to intensify with each passing thought, brought on a splitting headache. Talk about being sexually frustrated and starting the day off on the wrong foot. To top it off, it was raining outside. Gray skies. Gusty winds in from the bay. A brisk heavy downpour. A mild headache. Not a good combination at all. For a Monday morning, Tampa Bay was not where she wanted to be.

  Reaching across the wide bed, she fumbled about, half dazed, until she found the off button and silenced the alarm. The early morning intrusion and the fact that she had been out late the night before partying combined to make her head throb.

  Reluctantly, she rose up out of her satin covered bed. Picking up the remote, she pressed a button and the table lamp came on. The television popped on, too. She pressed a second button and the lights on the 55-gallon aquarium across the bedroom lit up also. Oh, the wonders and marvels of remote control technology. If only I could control a man with one of these, she mused.

  Clad only in a loose, half unbuttoned blouse, she walked groggily towards the tiled bath to start her hot shower. After she adjusted the water temperature, she retrieved a clean bra, panty and linen. As mother always said, “Cleanliness is next to Godliness.” Still, it was too early in the morning for an invigorating shower, but she knew she had to get with the program, or be late for work, or so she thought.

  Striding halfway across the room she paused, uttering above a whisper, quite slow and deliberately, "Damn! I-don't-believe-this! I really don’t believe this.” More incredulously, she added, “What unearthly cloud was I on when I set that alarm last night? I mean, how could I forget that I’m off today? How?” With her blood simmering just below the boiling point, she quipped, “Leslie, you really know how to screw up a good dream. Somebody, anybody! Kick me in the ‒.”

  She never completed her statement.

  The phone abruptly rang.

  “I’m sorry. I must have the wrong number,” the sexy male voice said and nothing more.

  “Why me?” she thought before saying. For the second time in two weeks she found herself in this too-early-to-rise predicament. With dejà vu written all over the moment, she crawled back onto the warm cozy bed and buried her head under the satin covered pillow and went back to sleep.

  Hours later, a more benign Yvette stirred and cracked open her dark brown eyes. After a yawn and invigorating stretch she rejoined the living for the second time in one day. On her way to the shower a sheepish grin spread across her face for she had somehow managed to pick up where she had left off in her dream, and was finally able to give that tall dark handsome Latin stud the sex-education of his life. The man was good, she mused. He definitely knew how to please a woman. And she knew she was as equally good to him. Whoever said women were not the “hot and bothered types” don’t know the first thing about women. As she often explained to her male friends, “Women got nature too, mind you.”

  Not one accustomed to leisure time off from work, she spent the better part of the afternoon updating her recipe files on her personal computer and cleaning up around her three year old Lakeview condo. It was just a week earlier that her refurbished bedroom, and adjoining master bath and shower area, done in shades of cranberry and claret, had been completed. It was the final phase of a two-part makeover. Phase one was the installation of her combination Roman bath and whirlpool, which was partially enclosed by matching cranberry and claret colored drapes with a crescent valance. Phase two was the installation of a wood grain floor in her kitchen. The look was luxurious. Mongolian elegance! And that’s exactly the way she wanted it. Her taste had always registered two or three digits above her normal salary, until recently. Her childhood dream was always to come home to a place that was elegant, relaxing, and pleasing to the eye. Chic, as the French loved to say.

  A modern day woman, Yvette was an independent professional woman who aspired to become the owner of a five-star restaurant. A single mom, she realized she existed in a man’s world, but she was a woman to be reckoned with, if the circumstances called on her to be. Raising a son on her own helped a lot, too. It allowed her to give back the love she herself had missed and had been denied when her father passed away. It was lung cancer that claimed him. Often times, she felt that her father’s early demise contributed to her less than stellar social life with men. It was the father-daughter interpersonal relationship thing she felt she had missed the most growing up.

  As she remembered revealing to her best friend, one afternoon, “I was only ten when my father passed away. And the experience left me unglued for the longest time.”

  “I can imagine,” her best friend Juanita had replied as she nodded with empathy.

  “Just seeing him lying there still, just void of life, traumatized me. My dad was my heart. I couldn’t believe he wouldn’t be around anymore.”

  “Believe me I understand,” Juanita chimed in. “My father died when I was seventeen. It was so sudden. A stroke, I believe. For us girls, adolescence is a time we generally seek the adulation and reassurance and approval of our fathers.”

  “You know, I couldn’t have put it better. Sometimes I wished there was a way to reach beyond the grave. Oh, the things I would ask my father about life, about relationships, about love and about sex.”

  “Sex?” Juanita shot back, as her mouth dropped open.

  “The opposite sex, that is.”

  The two smiled.

  “Are you and your mother close?”

  “Close
, but not as close as I’d like to be. I mean, we talk and all. And she’s been very good about sharing what she knows about life and relationships, in general, with me. And believe me, I am quite inquisitive. But the things she rarely elaborates on, or just plain won’t touch, are the subjects of love and sex. I often wonder if it’s on purpose.”

  “I know the feeling. It’s like being dropped off in uncharted territory, as far as men and romance are concern. Not that your daily thoughts revolved solely around men, or that you are a playa hater, but if you’ve experienced anything like I’ve experienced, you probably feel like I do, that the men you meet and date rarely looked beyond a weekend of self-indulgence. I’m talk’n partying, gambling, boozing, and a woman’s warm body to satisfy the desires of the flesh.”

  “God, you put that so well, Juanita.”

  “That’s because I’ve been there…and done that.”

  “I guess I expect more out of men, Juanita. And I want my men to expect more of me, not more out of me, if you get my drift. It’s important to me that men understand that I’m more than just someone's pleasure cruise. If there’s anything that gets my blood pressure up it is superficial men with supercilious intent.”

  “That’s right! Whatever the hell that word means,” Juanita threw in with a chuckle, as she basked in the afternoon sun. “You know, our parents reared us to be women of good taste and good manners.”

  “I agree. And I expect no less in the men I decide to show an interest in. Hell, it’s not like I really need a man right now. I’ve got a good job, a nice pad to return home to, and I can cook, thanks to my dad, who taught me the great cooking skills I have.”

  “And boy can you throw down, girlfriend! I’m talking gourmet cooking. Hell, the best I can do is dream about being half as great a cook as you.”

  “Thanks, Juanita. I just wished I were as great with men as I am with cooking. One day I hope to find a kind man who’s interested in a wholesome relationship, one I can find comfort and excitement and security in.”