I squeezed her hand. “It’s my fault…”
“I’m in idiot,” April said. “Obviously, you and Afrodite…”
“It’s not that,” I said. “I hadn’t seen her in five years.”
“But you’re not risking your neck to find her killer just because the police suspect you, Tennyson,” she said. Her eyes were wistful. “You loved her, right?”
How could I explain it? I’d never had a chance to love Serena. Except for the last time I saw her, the day she died, I had been an employee kept at a careful emotional distance. I knew what mask Cage was talking about, because Serena wore it all the time. She had shown a few glimpses of her true soul on Monday when she admitted to me that she was having problems—maybe she’d been asking for my help in a way I hadn’t understood—but this was the first time I had seen a version of Serena I might have loved. Now, I had met her only to have to let her go all over again, and the lost promise of our chance meeting ached like a set of broken ribs.
No, I had not loved her. But maybe I was supposed to love her, and maybe she was supposed to love me, and someone hadn’t given us the chance.
Ten or fifteen seconds had gone by, and I hadn’t said a word. April stood up, sighing. “I’m sorry again. I’ll write down Tyra’s number for you. Will you tell me what she says? I’ll keep chasing Greene.” She hid her face from me.
“Of course,” I said. Her unreturned kiss was stinging my lips, but I didn’t move.
April squatted to the floor to rifle through her bag, balancing on her toes. The gossamer veil lifted from across my eyes, and I could see her in sharp focus again. She was wearing brown leather sandals with thin straps, her toenails polished copper, her heels shiny with lotion. Her legs were strong. And she had smooth, pretty toes.
I heard April whispering to herself, still embarrassed, and I couldn’t stand the idea that she would leave my home feeling diminished. I also couldn’t stand feeling so sad that I couldn’t move.What the hell? I got up and knelt beside April. Gently, I tugged at a wisp of hair near her earlobe. She shivered away from me.
“I’m not a charity case,” she said. “That only makes it worse.”
When I gently kissed the side of her neck, I felt her arteries pounding. “I’m not civic-minded,” I said. “I don’t do charity.”
“You need time to get over her,” she said. “I was stupid to do that—I just got carried away—so let’s forget it.”
Instead of answering, I rested my hands on April’s shoulders from behind, kneading circles with sustained pressure from end to end. Some of my clients were shy about sex with a stranger and only wanted a massage—at first. A good massage can answer a woman’s remaining questions. My kisses to April’s neck answered the rest.
April’s head dropped back, her mouth half-open. “You know how sometimes a person is drawn to another person, and they don’t know why? Sometimes a person’s roommate thinks she’s crazy…but it just…happens…” I nibbled to silence her, and it worked. A moan.
“Sometimes a person likes to live dangerously,” I said between bites.
“Is it all right to be like that?” April said, squirming as she enjoyed the play of my lips and breath against her neck. I captured a sliver of skin, pinching her with the tips of my teeth. She moaned again.
“A new friend of mine is just like that,” I said. “Her body makes her decisions for her. Like right here…” I reached around her to brush my fingertip against her nipple through the thin fabric of her top. Blood surged, and I felt her nipple bloom. I cradled the kukui shells and pulled them slowly across her breasts, tickling. “I think her body just spoke.”
April closed her eyes. Her squat lost its strength, and she leaned back against me. My erection poked her back, against the knotty ridges of her spine.
April was young, twenty-five or twenty-six. If I put my mind to it, I knew I could make her feel things she had never felt before; I could give her a story to tell for years. I’ve always found that being kind to others takes my mind off my troubles. After a long week, I was ready to bring someone pleasure.
I stood up and quickly locked the door so Chela wouldn’t surprise us. Then, once our privacy was assured, I shook off my loafers. With only the royal blue glow from the screen lighting me, I pulled my T-shirt over my head and dropped it to the floor. Next, I stepped out of my sweatpants, down to nothing.
Naked, I strode back to April, taking my time while her eyes appreciated me. April looked breathless, a child at a fireworks display.“Damn, you are fine,” she said. “I mean, you are straight up—”
“Shhhh.”
I sat beside her on the carpet and cradled her, stroking her hair. Black women love to have their hair touched, despite all their protestations and worries about elaborate hairstyles. They’re justafraid to have their hair touched because of the voice echoing:There’s something wrong with my hair. I love every inch of a black woman’s head; each new scalp is a discovery. My fingertips sifted through April’s short-cropped, wiry strands, full of texture. No chemicals. No wig. No weave. She was a rarity.
April tensed at first, but when she realized she could relax under my touch, she closed her eyes.
“You wore glasses when you were a kid, didn’t you?” I said. “High school?”
She smiled. “How’d you know that?”
I brushed my finger against her cheek. “You’re a beautiful woman who’s never seen herself that way,” I said. “You’re still getting used to the mirror. You got contact lenses, your skin cleared up…and your baby fat melted after college. No more late-night pizza, a high-stress job, and boom. The men all pause. Like magic.”
“You’re scaring me,” she said, still smiling. “Is it that obvious I’m a geek?”
“Only to someone who’s curious enough,” I said. “Only to someone who makes it his business to notice every little thing about you.”
She gave me a confused look. I could almost hear her thinking:Is this just sex, or is it something else? After years of getting paid for telling women exactly what they want to hear, it’s hard to break the habit. A woman’s ears are an erogenous zone, both inside and out. But I wasn’t trying to put stars in April’s eyes; I just wanted to make her body feel good. My erection had turned to stone. There’s a point when a man’s need for sex is so strong that it’s physically uncomfortable, and I had reached that point for the first time in recent memory. Women wilt without tenderness, but they rarely need sex with the same urgency. I needed April that night, or it would hurt.
I sucked on my thumb and burrowed my hand inside her shirt to let my thumb’s damp tip roam across her nipple. April’s nipple swelled and marbled under my touch. The pliant, yielding flesh was a welcome change from silicone. Breasts, to me, aren’t about how they look; it’s how theyfeel. They fascinate me with their warm weight in my hands. Their texture in my mouth.
And they’re a portal. Breasts are the keys to the queendom.
I carefully removed April’s necklace, but I yanked off her shirt with enough roughness for her to notice. Her breasts popped free, pointing upward with a tantalizing invitation. Her large twin areolas were a dark chocolate. I leaned over, gently easing her down to the shag carpeting, and lathered her breasts, sucking on one and then the other, twirling circles with the fat meat of my tongue. Her scent baked off her skin, and I buried my face in a bed of gardenias. April had sweet, tasty breasts. They fit in my palms just right. They fit my mouth just right.
Mmmmm.
I would get her first orgasm over early.
“Oh, my…” April sounded shocked. “My…Oh, Je—” She struggled not to blaspheme. Her body writhed, her legs drawing into a near-fetal position, her knees hiked close to the side of my head. She still had most of her clothes on, and she was about to come: I could smell it in her scent, feel it in the temperature of her skin and the way she squeezed her thighs. I slid my hand on the denim between her legs, my finger probing at the stitching across her crotch. Pressing and retreating. Jus
t enough to set her free.
April gritted her teeth, quivering. “Holy…shit.”
“Can’t wait to taste the main course,” I whispered in her ear.
It had been a bad day, and I was going to take it out on April. I vowed to myself that I was going to put tears in this woman’s eyes.
I unsnapped her fly and slid my palm lightly down April’s bare back, hooking my fingers into her jeans. I pulled, and my palm met the warm plumpness of her firm, waiting cheeks. Soon she was naked, too, her body against mine. There is nothing like the feeling of new skin rubbing against your nakedness. I never get bored with skin.
I touched every corner of her, from the bones of her pelvis that made their gentle indentation above her hips, to her trembling stomach, to her waist that was so petite that I could almost reach from one end to the other when I held her between my palms. I dangled the necklace of kukui nuts on April’s soft thigh, pulling them across her neatly trimmed nest of pubic hair. One by one, the hard nut casings kissed her clitoris. April squirmed, her eyes closed.
I held her shoulders, sliding our bodies together. I wished we were slick with oil or wet from the shower, but I still savored the delicious contact. Then I let the stubble on my chin tickle her chest and stomach as I leaned back on all fours, and my face sank into the heat between April’s legs. I smelled baby powder and moist skin alongside her unmistakable uniqueness, seasoned by perspiration and her body’s juices.
I began cautiously. I never want to douse a woman’s fire, since so much female sexuality is about building and creation. Some women can’t stand anyone’s hands on their clit except their own. I rubbed my face against the top of April’s thighs, kissing them gently. Then, I kissed her pelvic bone, and next her inner thigh. I gently massaged her labia, capturing her ultimate prize in its folds, rubbing and stimulating her without direct touch in the moist center. April moaned, my signal.
My tongue went to work.
Never underestimate the power of the tongue. Back when I was working, I did daily tongue exercises to keep up with my clients’ demands. I’ve met women who never experienced oral sex because of selfish partners, and that curiosity led them to me. Some of my clients wanted head and nothing else, so I learned to work out my tongue like any other part of the body: in and out, up and down, poking it out as far as possible, circling.
At first, I only flicked my tongue at April. She moaned and hissed immediately, as if I’d struck a match to her.Gentle, gentle. I tested her with my fingertip, and she was wet. That was all I needed to know: I’m blessed with the power to roll my tongue, so I curled it into a tube, pulled her wide open, and rubbed my tongue directly against the sides of her clitoris. April shrieked as her clit surged.
“Wait,” she gasped. “What about…?”
“She’s wearing headphones,” I said. “Be loud.”
I plied April with my index finger, slipping inside her. April was tight, but my second finger nudged in easily beside the first. While my rolled tongue massaged her one way, my fingers massaged her in another. I hooked my index finger upward an inch and a half, and I felt the rough, swollen sponginess I had been searching for: her G-spot.
April shrieked again, and her body bathed me with warm fluid. She stiffened from head to toe. I angled my hand so the pad of my thumb rested behind my fingers, on the puckered, sensitive spot behind the vagina most women hardly explore at all. I didn’t try to insert my thumb without lubrication, but the pressure was enough to widen April’s scope. She bucked, jabbering. I couldn’t resist: I leaned lower and offered my tongue instead, exploring the region between her cheeks most men are afraid to taste.
I showed April no mercy.
By the time intercourse began, April was nearly hoarse and bathed in sweat. I rolled her onto her stomach, her legs pushed together, and straddled her from the rear. My legs hugged hers. I braced my arms and nudged myself slowly into her slippery vaginal walls from behind. Her skin was hot even through a lambskin condom. I felt her pulsing, gripping as I vanished inside her. When my pelvis pressed against her slick buttocks with no farther to go, April hissed like a tire losing its air. An animal’s growl rose from her throat.
A subtle shift of angle, and I probed her G-spot for the second time.
April screamed. And screamed again. Her body flopped beneath me. Her fingers clawed at the shag carpeting, pulling fibers free. I felt her squeezing me. Milking me.
“Omigod…omigod…omigod…OMIGOD…”
Most women live their whole lives and never know what their bodies are capable of feeling. It’s a tragic loss.“Yes…” I whispered in her ear.
She writhed again, whimpering. I gazed at April’s face, which was profiled flat on the floor, slack-jawed and spent. Her eyes were open, but she didn’t see me.
How could she? April’s eyes were overrun with tears of pleasure.
It was eleven by the time I walked April out to her white PT Cruiser, which was parked in my driveway. She was scattered after our session, and hadn’t said much. I smiled when I saw her hand trembling slightly as she fit her key into her door.
Again, I scanned up and down the street. I didn’t see any cars that didn’t belong, but I didn’t want to linger either.
“Is that a gun?” April said, noticing the .44’s bulge in my sweatpants.
“No. I’m just happy to see you,” I said, and leaned over to kiss her forehead.
A surprised glint in April’s eyes told me she had hoped for a different kiss. Somehow in all of the nakedness and touching, we had never finished the kiss she tried to initiate. I thought I had seen a similar fragile look when I told her I needed to go to bed—with no invitation to spend the night. Misunderstandings rarely happened on the job, but I had to be more careful in real life. The kiss to April’s forehead was most honest; I didn’t have room for any other kind. Like I said, a kiss is never just a kiss.
“So…you’ll call me tomorrow or…whenever?” she said.
I held April’s shoulders and gave her a reassuring smile. “I had a great time. I’m glad you came by. Yes, I will definitely call you tomorrow.”
A wicked grin. “Oh, I’m glad I came by, too. You have gifts.” April tipped upward to kiss me lightly on the lips, but she didn’t push it. “Let me know if anything bad happens. If…you need my help with Chela, or anything else. I mean it.”
“I will. That means a lot to me.”
You can write me letters in jail,I thought.
Once I watched April drive away safely and locked my door, I called the number April had given me for Tyra. It was late, but something told me Serena’s sister didn’t live by the early-to-bed-early-to-rise credo.
Tyra answered on the first ring. “What took you so long?” she said. “I need to meet you tomorrow.” I heard a man’s voice near her, and she shushed him, telling himNone of your damn business. The man grumbled back in return.
“You were a little upset the last time I saw you,” I reminded Tyra.
“Look, I’m going through a hard time, a’ight? Somebody killed my sister. Sorry I slapped you. I’ve got more to tell you about Serena. Something you need to know.”
Inwardly, I sighed. I didn’t look forward to fighting off Tyra’s advances, or pretending to enjoy them. “Why don’t you tell me now?”
“It’s more like something I have toshow you.” She gave me an address. “It’s the apartment building on the corner.”
My suspicions raged, since Tyra was tight with M.C. Glazer. “Why?”
“It’s where me and Reenie grew up. You want to know about her past? Well, I’ll walk you through it nice and slow.”
I’ll just bet you will,I thought. “Why do you care about helping me?” I said.
“Why do youthink, fool? She was my sister. Blood is stronger than anything else, and cops are full of shit. At leastsomebody wants to make things right.”
She sounded convincing enough, but my inner alarm bells drowned out her voice.
“I went by Mackey’s,” I s
aid. “No one remembered seeing you Monday night.”
“First off, you better check your tone. I don’t know what you’re trying to say, but I don’t appreciate it. Second of all, you’re a liar. You sent that reporter with her little Payless shoes and bougie attitude. Tomorrow, I’ll tell you where I really was. Three o’clock. Don’t be late. And be on time, or you won’t see shit.”
Oh, I’ll be early,I thought. I would meet Tyra at the address, all right. She was my only lead now that Jenk was dead, and I couldn’t afford not to. But I knew long before I hung up the phone that I wasn’t going anywhere near Tyra Johnston without a gun. That was a depressing thought, but it fit right in with all the rest.
I fell asleep in my screening room, watching Serena.
THIRTEEN
THE DRIVE BETWEEN HOLLYWOOD HILLSand West Covina always seems long, but never as long as when I set out against the flow of rush-hour traffic the next morning to drive to Hope Rehabilitation Center. Arnaz was right: I had to tell Dad my troubles before someone else did. I was probably too late.
I brought Chela with me, rousing her from sleep. I had no choice. Chela insisted on a grande iced caramel macchiato from Starbucks before she would get off the sofa, but after her caffeine fix she stopped complaining. I still hadn’t decided where I would stash Chela when I met Tyra later, but at least I knew she would be safe at the nursing home. Safer than the patients, anyway.
“You should call Mother. Tell her you’re all right,” I said as we drove.
“I already did. I called her when I was locked in your pantry all day.”
I glanced at her, surprised. She was staring away from me, toward the traffic. A black-and-white speeding in the lane alongside me made my heart catch. The car passed, but I was on alert, expecting Lorenzo and DeFranco to show up and run me off the road.
“And?” I said.
“And what?”
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