The Business of Lovers

by Eric Jerome Dickey

  She commanded, “Don’t tell Christiana any details about what happened between us tonight.”

  “How does this work with y’all?”

  “Tonight? I set it up. I worked with her last night and didn’t feel like dealing with her tonight. She works my nerves sometimes. Tonight, this is my money. All of it. Her hands aren’t in my pocket on this one. If she sets up something, I pay her a percentage. If we work together, we split it down the middle. She’s fair.”

  “Okay. You don’t scream, I won’t holla. We cool?”

  “Okay, yeah. We’re cool.”

  “Regrets?”

  “Always. I have the best intentions, but I never make the right choices. They seem right at the time, but I always open the wrong door. So yeah, I have regrets.” She nodded, then said, “But the client we had . . . I had tonight, she pays well. She’s a good tipper too. So I made more money to put in my house fund.”

  “You have a house fund?”

  “I need to claim my life; the life I deserve.”

  “What kind of house you have your eye on?”

  “The crib I want costs four hundred thousand. Culver City. I don’t want to live in a black area. White areas have better grocery stores, better restaurants, better parks, and the type of black people I like.”

  “That’s up to you.”

  “But in some parts of Mississippi, I could buy three homes for that amount and it would be on the coast with what feels like an ocean view, well, the Gulf of Mexico. I can get a nice house for one hundred.”

  “Yeah, but that’s Mississippi. Confederate flags and old racism that’s being rebranded.”

  “I can handle it. I’m from Texas and can stand my ground same as they can.”

  “How and where you invest your money is your business.”

  “But I like it out here, if for no other reason than the weather. Hardly rains and can wear summer clothes in the winter. If I can save enough for a down, then get another steady job, if I get another chance to be an engineer, or go figure out how to get to law school, then I can quit this life, be back on my feet, and move my life in the direction it should be going. Even without a king, I’m still supposed to be a queen.”

  “House. Engineering. Law school. You don’t know what you want to do, do you?”

  “I feel stuck. I’m in a nightmare trying to get back to a sweet dream.”

  After a moment of silence, she reached into her purse and finally handed me what I had earned.

  She said, “Not bad for an hour, huh?”

  “Did you set me up for this? Did you and Christiana play me?”

  “The client went on and on about how she wished you had come up with us. I asked her what it would be worth to her if I called you. She wanted to be recorded, so yeah, I used that as a reason to get you to Vegas. I didn’t want to leave this much cabbage on the table. Tonight, my client was pleased. Never saw her so happy.”

  “Your client is in love with you.”

  “They are all in love with the false version of me that is presented, the version they pay for and control. That version of me shows up, acting like I always want to have sex, like I enjoy pleasing strangers.”

  “You sound like you did things you didn’t want to do.”

  “I entertained a woman. I’m straight, but I give women the GFE.”

  “Need to talk?”

  She whispered, “I’m disgusting.”

  “What?”

  “I’m a sex worker, not a goddamn sex slave. No matter how much you pay to lease this black pussy, I still choose what I want to consent to. I don’t care if you live in a five-million-dollar house on a lake.”

  “Ever turn down anything and walk away from the table?”

  “All the fucking time. There have been plenty of times I’ve said no to some disgusting request.”

  “Like?”

  She made a nauseous face. “Let’s not talk about that while we’re eating.”

  We finished our meals and our plates were taken away, but she took her time finishing another wine. I took in the room, a congregation of alligators, a sleuth of bears, and a glare of cats mixed with a coalition of cheetahs.

  I told her, “White boy at the bar is breaking his neck checking you out.”

  “I know. He’s real cute. Tall, dark, handsome. My type of guy too, aesthetically.”

  “Want to slide him your digits?”

  Mocha Latte looked at him as he smiled at her; then she turned back to me. “Nah.”

  “Sure? He’s looking at you like he loves Frrrozen Haute Chocolate.”

  “My head is filled with velleity after velleity now.”

  “And that means?”

  “When you make a wish that you know can’t come true.”

  “We can talk about it.”

  She shook her head. “You have me a little mixed-up now.”

  “How so?”

  “Really? I mean, really? My legs are still weak from you being in Le Chocolat Box.”

  “You can tell the white boy I’m your cousin.”

  “Then I’d start the relationship with a lie. It looks like we’re on a date too. I don’t want a man who thinks it’s okay to see me with another man on a date, then get my number. If I made a move, he’d think I’m just another thot.”

  “He won’t. You look professional. Like a powerful lady, because you are a powerful lady.”

  “I’m with you. He’ll ask me if I ever slept with you and that would be complicated. What would I say then? That I did, but it was professional, not personal? Say some bitch just paid me a king’s ransom to have sex with you? Say you made me have an orgasm that I can’t quite shake? But it meant nothing because we’re strangers too?”

  Her phone rang again. It irritated her, but she put on a business smile and answered.

  Her nostrils flared. “No, no, no. For the last time, I don’t accept Bitcoins for any services.”

  She ended the call.

  I asked, “You okay?”

  “Entitled rich boys are a trip. Those fatherfuckers overpay white girls and underpay us. They want you to go around the world bareback, let them come wherever, and pay half of what they give white girls.”

  “Fatherfucker?”

  “Because my dear, sweet, bourgeois-ass momma ain’t got nothing to do with this.”

  Her phone rang again.

  She put on her fake smile and answered, “Hello, love. You make your flight? You missed it and now you have to spend the night in Los Angeles? Aww. I can’t come back. As soon as I left you, I booked an all-nighter. Well, I can’t bail on them. I am with them now. Until noon tomorrow. So sorry, baby. So sorry. My driver? He dropped me off and went home. I think he turned his phone off. Sorry, my love. Yes, next time.”

  She hung up, then massaged her temples.

  “Mocha Latte?”

  “She went too far. Tonight, she went a bridge too far.”

  She ordered another glass of wine. Drank it slowly.

  I asked, “Want to go to a comedy club?”

  “Are you asking me out on a date?”

  “I think we need to laugh.”

  “I read that children laugh three hundred times per day. I’ll bet I used to laugh two thousand times a day. I used to be a very happy person. My incidents of laughter have decreased to an abysmal level.”

  “Yes or no? I can get us in for free. One of my brothers is a comic.”

  “There are more of you?”

  “Two more.”

  “Right, right. I saw the picture at your apartment.”

  “I share a dad with one brother and a mother with another.”

  She hesitated. “No. Not in the mood for comedy.”

  “Want to go back to Savoy? Or we could roll up to Hollywood and listen to some music.”


  “Take me home. Well, to the place I’m crashing.”

  I paid the bill and we stood to leave. The white guy at the bar was still checking her out as we exited. He liked what he saw. She smiled at him. Ball was in his court now. He didn’t come to her. She didn’t go to him.

  Stalemate.

  We didn’t go straight to valet. Cool Cali night. We walked Fairfax, passed all the shops.

  She shook her head. “Mind if I address the elephant in the room, then never speak on it again?”

  “Sure.”

  “Three levels. Jesus. Two times like that with Penny.”

  “You’re mad at me.”

  “Dogs get mad.”

  “You’re angry.”

  “It was like I was gone from my body, existing inside a duet from the opera Figaro, and I resided inside every note. I felt you, the way you made my nerves come alive, how you made me feel spiritual; you were the instrument that inspired my aria. Three levels deep. Was like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was orchestrating my orgasms while Luciano Pavarotti held me tightly and sang lovingly in my ear, a song only for my soul to feel. That was how that felt. I felt something I never knew existed.”

  “Orchestrated.”

  “And you were a damn good conductor. Not only in the way of being the leader of a musical ensemble, but also a conductor by its other definition. It was like you were magical, some unknown and undiscovered object that permitted an orgasmic series of electric currents to flow through my soul.”

  “Wow.”

  “It was a Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique for sex.”

  “Double wow.”

  “You made me orgasm like a pig.”

  “Triple wow. And you know a sounder of swine can orgasm for like thirty minutes, right?”

  “And my legs are still shaking. I see why Penny is batshit crazy when she gets around you.”

  “She was that way when I met her.”

  “And to be honest, I know why you get a little crazy around her.”

  “You know her.”

  “She gets going and makes Bruna Surfistinha look like she’s the rookie of the year.”

  We made eye contact, then smiled a knowing smile.

  We made it to the corner at the same moment a Tesla stopped at the red light, its music up high, jamming “Best Part” by H.E.R. like they had been sent to be our personal DJ. Baby-making music washed over us and I took Mocha Latte’s hand, touched her waist, eased her to me, slow danced on the sidewalk.

  She said, “Really? You really going to do this?”

  “I’m doing this.”

  “You just tried to send me to a white boy, and now you all up on me like I owe you money?”

  I held her close, and she rested her head against my chest. The red light changed, and our DJ drove away, but we didn’t stop swaying. Traffic zoomed by, people yelled at each other, and we danced. Eyes dreamy, she took terse breaths. Permission was in her eyes. I kissed her again. It was short, sweet, greedy, and stirring. She was easygoing in my hands, soft here, firm there. I held her just above the curve of her ass and inhaled her as she did the same. Lips against hers, I looked at her, saw only the engineer, the woman with roots in Bakersfield and Texas.

  We kissed again. Kissed and danced and let thirst lead the thirsty.

  She whispered, “Brick.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Words do things to a woman, more than sex.”

  “I say something wrong?”

  “‘Beauty is an aphrodisiac of which you are not in short supply. I see an abundance.’”

  “Should I apologize for being honest?”

  “No apology is required. Now I know what I need the right man to whisper in my ear. I know how the next man I fall in love with should make me feel in bed. He has to take me three levels deep.”

  “I feel like I did something wrong. On every level.”

  “You won MVP tonight. We were definitely like Roc and Shay for a minute.”

  “You’re mad.”

  “No. Just have a heart that’s filled with so many little wishes right now.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  I said, “The most expensive bottle of wine in the world is a bottle of Romanée-Conti Grand Cru, and one bottle of said wine costs about eighteen thousand dollars. It is considered the perfect burgundy and tastes of rich fruit and exotic spices with black cherry aromas. That’s what you taste like. A bottle of Romanée-Conti Grand Cru.”

  She held me tighter. “Words, Brick. Words.”

  “Why does it bother you when I compliment your superlative natural beauty?”

  “Because I am a black woman and grew up down south receiving more pejoratives than compliments.”

  I tasted her again, kissed her until she shuddered and pulled away from me.

  She was chocolate. I loved to eat chocolate. I whispered, “One more.”

  “Damn you.”

  I kissed her again. Passersby blew their horns and cheered for late-night romance.

  We both needed something, something that was beyond sex, something more profound and intangible.

  After the dance, after a dozen kisses, my car was waiting at valet. She moved with charm school sophistication, and the valet opened the car door, let her ease in like a lady, bottom first, knees together, and that southern girl swung around properly. As we drove away, her left hand covered my right; we interlocked fingers while I drove, no words spoken between us while we were stuck in the Ethiopian area’s one lane of traffic. Over and over, her middle finger tickled my palm.

  CHAPTER 25

  BRICK

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER, I parked Miss Mini on Stocker. Not until then did Mocha Latte let my hand go.

  Like a gentleman, I opened her car door, let Mocha Latte out. She stood tall, adjusted her clothing, sighed at the world that had been mine for a few years, some judgment about me or her life passed but kept to herself. Mocha Latte stood motionless and beheld the Afrocentric neighborhood where she was squatting. So many thoughts were on her mind. She snapped out of her trance, adjusted her secondhand dress, then took slow steps, moved like a sophisticated lady, like she was Jackie O., as we walked up the worn stairs to my sixty-year-old apartment building.

  I asked, “Want to come over and kick it on my oversize classic sofa a bit?”

  “Uh, no. No need to ask me to Netflix and chill.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “What happened in Vegas, well, that was Vegas.”

  “You can have the bed. I’ll crash on the oversize classic sofa.”

  “Keep it professional. I’ll go and let Christiana watch over me.”

  “I can watch over you. I know you sleepwalk. I’ll keep you safe.”

  “I’d misprize to waketh up from mine own deep catch but a wink with thy cock in mine own that from which we speak, down mine own throat. Or I wouldst waketh up with thee consuming mine own pussy.”

  “I wouldn’t do that. Hashtag I support Time’s Up. Hashtag I support Me Too, too.”

  “You know my secret. You know how I sleep. It could happen, and it would be my fault.”

  I shook my head. “It wouldn’t be.”

  “Besides, I need to sleep so I can pick up my Rubicon in the morning. I left it parked before the job with Christiana and Penny.”

  “I’ll drive you. No charge.”

  “Nah. Uber. I don’t need you. Might kick it in the Valley. Or drive to Santa Barbara to get away. Guy on a dating website wants to meet. He responded to that corny stuff about going to movies.”

  “You met somebody.”

  “Told him I might do a daytime-brunch thing, just to connect, see what he’s about.”

  “Who is he? Okay to ask that?”

  “He’s an engineer too. I get to be a ner
d again, for a while.”

  “Smart, like you.”

  “He’s a mechanical engineer at Aim Systems Network.”

  “You didn’t say that earlier.”

  “I know. Was on a date with you and didn’t want to spoil it.”

  “Was it a date?”

  “For about five minutes it felt that way. You took me to Sweet Chick. Paid for it. Kissed me. Danced with me in the streets like we were Ginger and Fred. If that’s not a dream date, I don’t know what is.”

  I paused. “Hope the rendezvous works out for you.”

  “A favor, please?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Wine?”

  She followed me to my crib but stayed in the front door. I gave her the Château Margaux Red ’98. It cost seven hundred a bottle retail. It was my favorite wine. I’d hoped to one day open it and share it with a woman who loved me as much as I loved her. Men fantasized too. We were just as foolish as women.

  She dug into her purse. “Twenty-five dollars cover it?”

  “Sure.”

  “May I smoke here? I need to get my head right before I go across the way to Penny’s place.”

  “Sure.”

  “Won’t take but two seconds. I only puff a couple of times and I’m good.”

  Mocha Latte sat on my classic sofa, opened her purse, took out an ink pen, then took out a strip of aluminum foil. She put the pen on the foil, used the pen to roll the foil into a tube, then bent the tube in half. She reached into her purse and took out a small plastic container. Popped it open. She had balls of Orange Kush. Mocha Latte rolled up a joint and fired up the weed. She took three hits, inhaled hard each time, exhaled slowly, and when she was done self-medicating, she put the fire out, put everything away, stood, and headed for the door.

  In a humble tone, Mocha Latte asked, “Do you think I’m lovable?”

  “Of course you are.”

  “I miss kissing. You made me realize how much I miss . . . I miss swapping and swallowing bacteria.”