“What do you want? I’m busy.”
“Watching Dr. Phil or on your way to spa appointment?” Alexis rolled her eyes and chomped noisily on her crackers to annoy him.
“Listen. I have some good news.”
Alexis picked some crackers from the back of her tooth. She was giving Leonard another sixty seconds before she hung up.
“I’m moving out.”
“Moving out?” Alexis huffed. “Where, to another room in the house?”
“Okay, be nice. But I’m calling to say that I want us to get our own place together. I can move in with you, save some more, and we can have our own house by June, only three or four months away.”
Alexis covered the phone to hide her laughter.
“I heard that,” he said. “But I’m dead serious.”
“You’re brain-dead. Leonard, you are basically looking for another mother. You need to move out and use all your own money and buy that Xanadu house you’ve dreamed so long about.”
“I have my own money. I saved about five hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars for the down payment. I want a sixteen-bedroom, four-level, mansion-style home with acres of land, three pools, a waterfall, and—”
“Slow down. I have no need for all that. That is your dream, not mine. The audacity of you to call—” Her line beeped. “Hold on.”
“Hello?”
“Alexis Chrome Wheels.”
“Who is this?”
“Rasheen.”
“Chrome?”
“Well, a Lexus is incomplete without some twenty-inch chrome rims. I wanna be those rims to make you shine.”
“Uhm, hold on,” she said, shaking her head, having to choose the lesser of two evils. She clicked over to the other line.
“I gotta take this. But call me when you have your house-warming. Good luck,” she said, and clicked back over.
“Rasheen?”
“What up, boo? I caught you at a bad time.”
Boo, again. “I am a little busy. But what can I do for you?”
“Can’t a brother shout a sistah out, maybe take you out?”
“I don’t even know you.”
“Well, ask me something.”
Alexis sighed. Why am I putting myself through this? But she decided to amuse herself “Have you been in jail?”
Rasheen cracked up laughing. “Damn, I thought you was gonna ask me something like where I live. Why a brother had to be locked down?”
“Have you?”
“Uhm, well, I got into some trouble when I was about seventeen, but can we talk about all that later? I wanna get to know you, too.”
“Rasheen, I really don’t have the time. Are you on parole or anything?”
“Not anymore.”
“Where do you live?”
“I live in Bed-Stuy. I’m a decent brother, I ain’t perfect. Let me at least take you out. And I promise you can ask me anything you want.”
“Anything?”
“Yes, I’ll even bring my credit report,” he said sarcastically. “Not a bad idea,” she mumbled.
“Wednesday after work good for you?”
“Yeah, but it depends for what.”
“For some grub, some conversation.”
“What place did you have in mind?”
“I’ll call you Wednesday about 4 p.m.”
“I know of a French Bistro down by—”
“Yo, ain’t used to a man running things?”
Alexis sighed. “Can I ask you one more question?”
“Go on ahead.”
“Who do you live with?”
“I live by myself.”
“Good, I will talk to you tomorrow. Bye.”
ALEXIS WASN’T SURE what to wear on her date with Rasheen. She thought about calling Diedre, but she didn’t want her to end up making it a bigger deal than it was. She didn’t know where they were going and decided that jeans and a matching pink twin sweater set would suffice. Their last conversation was brief, but from it, Alexis took that Rasheen was probably new at this too. He may have never dated a woman like her before, and he was most likely going out of his way to impress her. She made sure she carried her AMEX and some cash, in case he outdid himself out of money, as well.
At 4 p.m. Rasheen called.
“Ms. Lexus. Wanna meet me on Forty-second and Seventh in about a hour?”
Alexis combed her hair and caught a look at her disgusted expression in the mirror. “What’s over there?”
“You like seafood?”
“Yeah, but there are no decent spots there.”
“Trust me, I’m taking you to my favorite joint,” he said, and hung up.
Red Lobster, she thought, securing the phone back in its cradle. She didn’t even know real people said that outside of the music world. But then it dawned on her: Rasheen was in the music world.
She combed her blunt-style bob until it was perfectly straight, flipped the ends up, and sprayed on some sheen. In twenty minutes, she was in a cab headed downtown.
THE CABBIE DROPPED her right on the corner of and Forty-second Street and Seventh Avenue, and immediately Alexis remembered why she hated this part of the city. It racked her nerves and made her extremely edgy as she dipped and bumped through throngs of tourists who always seemed to be looking up and not ahead. The cool April breeze made it more bearable. She walked across the street just in case Rasheen was on that side. That was when she saw his baseball cap and baggy jeans waving at her to cross back over. She hustled back on the other side, where he was waiting with a charming smile.
“Sorry about all that, I thought I would have gotten here before you,” he said, taking her hand.
She took it back. “So where are you going? I’m getting cold,” she said, looking at the flashing billboard and lights around her. “You said a seafood place.”
“Yeah, we going right here to Red Lobster,” he said as they walked together up the street.
Alexis smiled uncomfortably. “Is that place still in business?”
“What!” he said, looking at her bewildered. “Red Lobster is never going nowhere. They made seafood popular,” he said as he buried his hands in his jean pockets.
“I wouldn’t necessarily call it food.” Alexis saw the look on Rasheen’s face that showed his disappointment in her attitude. She decided to be a bit nicer.
Once they were seated, Rasheen started up his ode to Red Lobster again. “I’ve been eating here since I was a kid. My mom had a birthday here last year. My sister always be having her book club meetings here. Yo, my brother even proposed to his girlfriend here. Not this one, but the one in Long Island. That’s the best one. I’ll take you there, next time,” he said, scanning over the menu.
Alexis nodded. She didn’t see a thing she wanted. Everything was fried or drowned in butter. She was so close to suggesting the Blue Water Grill at Union Square, where she would be happy to pay, but something told her to hold on.
“See anything?” he said. “I’m getting the Ultimate Shrimp Feast.”
“I think I’ll have the, uhm, broiled seafood platter,” she said hesitantly.
“You aight?”
“I am. I just never ate here before. Their seafood is not exactly fresh,” she said, forcing a smile.
“It taste good!” he said in defense. “Trust me, roll with me. When you try those hush puppies, man, you gonna just be coming here for that! And the seafood is fresh. It says it right here.” He pointed to an item on the menu.
Alexis sympathetically patted his hand. She realized he had a different mentality. Where she was used to asking the maitre d’ for the fresh catch of the day before she even made a reservation, he was just fine with what he was given. That was never usually enough for her, in most areas of her life. She always demanded the best.
Rasheen ordered some margaritas and placed their dinner orders. The petite waitress laid down a basket of hush puppies. Alexis inhaled the baked scent, and her mouth, surprisingly, began to water.
Rashe
en broke one in half and fed her. “Try it,” he said, holding it to her mouth.
She took it from him, rather than eating out his hand, and chewed. “Mmm,” she said, her eyes lighting up. “These are delicious. Soft, cheesy flavor. Mmmm.” She took a whole one and ate that too.
Rasheen looked on as Alexis ate three hush puppies in a row. “I’m sorry,” she said, covering her mouth as she chewed. “I didn’t think they would be that good.”
He smiled. “Don’t apologize. You hungry. Eat.”
And eat was what Alexis did. Their salad orders came, and the lettuce wasn’t warm and wilted as she expected, but cold and crispy. She was beginning to feel relaxed with Rasheen, who didn’t mind her appetite, which she normally had to downplay. He didn’t even mind that she had crumbs by her plate. She even put her elbows on the table and didn’t care what fork she used.
“Can I have some more hush puppies?” she asked the waitress. “Leave room for your dinner. I’m telling you—they take real good care of you here.”
Alexis nodded with her mouth full. She could barely talk. And before she finished her salad, their entrees came.
As the drinks flowed, Alexis checked in with herself. She was having fun. The seafood platter wasn’t exactly the best she’d had, but it did hit the spot.
“So you said you had some questions,” Rasheen began.
Alexis put her hand over her mouth as she chewed. “Yeah, I do. I forgot though.” She smiled over at him.
“You have your own place, right?” she said, dipping her shrimp in cocktail sauce.
“I do, kind of. I got the basement apartment in a house,” he said. “But I know I gotta get up outta there soon.”
Alexis wasn’t surprised. She knew a guy like Rasheen had a story. “Why do you have to leave?”
“I just do. A man need his own space. I seen some apartments in East New York. Plus, my job just gave me a raise. Know what I mean? So, it’s either an apartment or a car.”
Alexis thought his choice was a smart one.
“So where you live? In the city?”
“Upper West Side. I got a decent place. It’s a condo. My mom owned it first,” she said.
Rasheen grunted, fiddling with his platinum crucifix pendant. “I guess you used to dating brothers who got the big houses and big cars, huh?”
“I’ve had my share, but I always have my own. I expect the men I’m with to have more or less the same.”
“I’m a be straight up with you. I ain’t got a lot. But I’m working at it. I ain’t never went to college, been to jail for a marijuana possession some years back, and I am still working on getting my credit right,” he said, cracking his crab leg in half. “That’s my story.”
“I think you better stop there, before you make me lose my appetite,” she said, waving him away.
He laughed. “Got damn, you a feisty one. I like that. I do,” he said in a softer, syrupy tone. “I can handle you.” He sucked the crab meat out of its shell.
Alexis paid close attention on how he handled his plate. He was an aggressive eater, not leaving a crumb untouched, and was even messy at times, sucking sauce from his thumbs. Surprisingly, that aroused Alexis. He didn’t seem at all shy or intimated around her either.
When the check came, Rasheen handled that like a pro, too. Alexis sneaked a look at the bill and was astonished to see it was barely fifty dollars. She thought Red Lobster was a place she had to visit more often. After dinner, Rasheen walked her to the corner to get a cab. “So you gonna call me?”
“Listen Rasheen, you are nice and everything, but we can be friends. And we’ll make dinner my treat next time. You take care,” she said as a car stopped at her feet.
“Yeah, aight,” he said, and winked at her.
In the car, she thought about how she was attracted to him in some odd way that she couldn’t put her finger on.
ALEXIS HURRIEDLY PREPARED her apartment for a visit from her mother, who had been in France for the last month researching an exhibition on Franco-Haitian art. Anytime her mother visited her, she made sure the place was in top shape. Because it belonged to her mother at first, she always gave an unwelcome critique on Alex’s taste for colors and style. If there was one person Alexis wasn’t good at standing up to, it was her mother. She had remembered her mother as an elegant statuesque woman who made sure she sat up painfully straight as a little girl. A classy, straight-shooter type of a lady whose pewter flask and cigarette case were always nearby.
Alexis finished tidying up her master bedroom, putting her shoes away, dusting the furniture, and stacked her dishwasher with plates that she had forgotten to wash from the night before. She had once had a maid, but her mother fired her.
As soon as she tucked her last shoe under the coach, the bell rang.
“Mommy, hi,” Alexis said, hiding the dustpan behind her. She was almost thirty, but around her mother she felt like five.
“Sweetie, don’t even think of touching me with that dustpan in your hands. Go ahead, finish what you were doing,” she said, kissing Alexis on both cheeks. With a quick stride, she walked into the apartment and parked herself right on the couch.
As Alexis washed her hands, she silently counted to twenty before she heard her mother’s first complaint.
“Darling, can you come in here, please?” she called from the living room.
Alexis stood at the doorway, drying her hands.
“Where’s that beautiful Monet piece I had left for you here?”
“That was two years ago, Mommy. I told you before I sold it,” she reminded her.
Her mother removed her black shades. “No, you didn’t.”
“I did. You told me that it was okay,” Alexis said, sitting across from her.
Her mother huffed. “Perhaps, I did. But thinking of it now, it would really spruce this place up some,” she said, blinking her long, thick eyelashes rapidly.
“I’m a minimalist. I don’t like a lot of stuff around me. You know that.”
“I just thought with age, you’d probably get a little more inventive,” she said, slipping off her leopard-print capelet.
“Want something to drink?”
“I got it right here.” Her mother pulled out a shiny steel flask engraved with her initials T B W.
“How was France?” Alexis clasped her hands together to listen to one of her mother’s usually entertaining travel stories.
“Boring as hell. I’ve been there every other year for the last ten. Once you tried the champagne, had the croissants, tanned on the Rivera, and shopped on the Champs-Elysee, you’ve basically done it all,” she said, taking a sip from her flask. “So what’s new and exciting with you?”
“Nothing,” Alexis said, picking up an issue of Vogue that sat on her wooden coffee table. “Except I kicked Leonard to the curb.”
“Why’d you do a thing like that? His mother is so lovely,” she said.
“Because he and I have different goals. I wasn’t about to waste my years on a man who’s still hanging on to the umbilical cord.”
Her mother shrugged as she picked a piece of lint off her smooth gray slacks, which matched perfectly with her purple fitted sweater. “Well, since you put it that way. You know I called you last night and left a message that I’d be coming.”
“I know, I got that,” Alexis said, running her hands through her loose, long tresses. Her mother’s own hair was short and tapered to the sides.
“Were you out on a date?” Her mother tilted her head to the side as if she was trying to be as tactful as possible.
“I went out to eat with a friend.”
“His name?”
Alexis wavered on just how much she should reveal, but her mother’s opinion mattered. “His name is Rasheen.”
“Ra-ra-what?”
“Raaasheeen,” Alexis pronounced with a chuckle. “He’s the friend I was with.”
“Oh, Lord, is he a rapper or something?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Sweetie,” she said, touching Alexis’s knee. “Do we need to talk?”
“Mommy, I’m fine,” she said, gently removing her mother’s hand. “He’s probably someone I won’t ever see again. We just had dinner.”
“I don’t know the boy, but his name just tells me he comes from one of those black families that—well, you know—just act crazy.”
“You mean the poor ones,” Alexis said, rolling her eyes.
“Yes, I mean them. You didn’t tell him where you lived, did you?” Alexis chewed on her finger. She resented her mother’s probing. It was like anything she did regarding men was wrong. She just wanted her mother to say she was doing something right—for once. “I didn’t tell him exactly.”
“Good, because I would hate to see you keep wasting your time on these men. You need to really get yourself together. At your age, I was married and pregnant with you, and doing quite fine painting from home.”
“Maybe that’s why you’re divorced now,” Alexis spewed.
Her mother stuck her chest out and raised her chin. “That’s not the point.”
“Mommy, why are you here? To just remind me of how much of a disappointment I am?”
Her mother’s chest collapsed. “I’m sorry, sweetie. I just came by because I missed you. And frankly, I get lonely uptown in that big ole penthouse all by myself. Your daddy and his young little plaything—”
“Please, don’t talk to me about Daddy. I don’t want to hear it,” Alexis said, flying off the couch.
“You’re always on your father’s side. Even though he didn’t even spend a lick of time with you when you were growing up.”
“At least when he did, he didn’t use the time to put me down.”
Her mother twisted off the cap from her flask. “I know you probably hate me, but I did the best I knew how.”
Alexis buried her face in her hands. She wasn’t in the mood for her mother’s martyr speech. She hated the guilt she was made to feel anytime she protested something. “I have to get to bed early tonight. I have an appointment in the morning.” Alexis rose from the couch and opened the front door for her mother.
“Fine, kick me out,” her mother said, adjusting her capelet around her shoulders. “Just like your father did. Don’t come running to me when you need a shoulder to cry on the next time you get dumped!” Her slipped on her shades and jetted out the door.
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