Don’t Ever Wonder

by Darren Coleman

  “Get up on this thing, boy,” Dee shouted over the music as he began to manhandle the girl. He grabbed her waist and began to pump her like a wild animal right on the dance floor.

  “That’s what I’m talking about,” the deejay shouted as he looked over at Dee and Brendan and gave them the thumbs-up.

  Brendan was thinking that he must have been out of the loop. He loved a good party like the next man but it just wasn’t his style to shake it like a Polaroid picture. When he hung out with his two best friends, Cory and Nate, they all seemed to play it real cool. Cory almost never danced, but when he did he was too reserved to get truly freaky on the floor. Nate, on the other hand, loved to dance. He was smooth enough to take a girl’s panties off on the floor and no one, except the girl he was dancing with, would ever know he’d done it. As Brendan watched Dee do the ghetto Lambada with this girl, he longed for the days when he and his crew hung out.

  Graham Cracker took the mike and asked, “I’m about to slow it down a little, is that all right?” He then put on R. Kelly’s “Step in the Name of Love” and the entire ballroom erupted. Couples ran to the floor to get their grind on and some folks fled the floor just as quickly. Brendan turned to walk away from Dee and his dance partner and headed for the bar.

  When he reached the bar he heard a voice behind him. “Are you buying me one too?”

  He turned around and saw a light-skinned sistah with high cheekbones and hazel eyes staring at him. “You talking to me?”

  “No, I’m talking to myself,” she laughed. “Is that a problem?”

  “No, it’s no problem. What are you having…drinking?” Brendan asked with a smile on his face.

  “Sex.”

  “Huh?”

  “I said a Sex on the Beach.”

  “Oh, okay.” He ordered their drinks and Brendan’s mind slid away for a second when he’d only heard the word sex. “I didn’t know people still drank those,” he added as he looked her up and down. She was well dressed. She had on a pink cashmere sweater, a tight pair of Seven jeans, and a pair of Louis Vuitton boots.

  “Well, I’m not one to switch up every time something new comes out.” She reached for her drink and said thanks and then added, “Once I get something that works for me I like to stick with it for a long time.”

  “I see.” Brendan shot back.

  “Do you want to come over and sit with me for a minute? All my girls are on the floor and I just want to chill for a few moments.”

  “Sure. Can I get your name?” Brendan asked.

  “Tanisha. What’s yours?”

  “Brendan.” She nodded and began to walk. Brendan followed and did what all men do when they follow a woman. His eyes locked on her behind as it switched back and forth. He had a moment to notice how her sweater cradled her body and dipped into the small of her back. She had a small waist for such a big bottom.

  She turned swiftly when she reached her table and caught him staring. She responded with a smile as if she’d hoped he would have been doing just that. She took a seat and Brendan sat beside her. She spoke but he couldn’t hear her so he scooted closer. “So do you hang out a lot?”

  “Not like I used to. Both of my best friends moved out of town the same week and you know it’s hard to replace your crew.”

  “Both moved away and left you behind? Poor baby.” She smiled.

  Feeding into her pity routine he responded, “Yeah, my man Cory got married and moved away to New York for his job, temporarily though. My other partner, Nate, he was going through some drama so he had to just get away.”

  “Nate?” she paused. “The name sounds familiar. I had a homegirl who used to date a Nate who moved away. Her name is India.”

  Brendan shrugged his shoulders to indicate he didn’t know who she was.

  “So who are you with tonight…don’t tell me your lady.” She smiled as she sipped her drink.

  “No, I’m with another buddy of mine. Actually, my barber,” he continued, “I’m real cool with him too. He hangs out with my regular crew from time to time but he’s always been into some shady dealings so we kind of had to limit the contact with him. Nothing against him, just you gotta be careful out here these days.”

  “I understand,” she said.

  Brendan added, “Lately though, he’s kinda chilled out and left that fast life behind so I don’t mind coming out with him.”

  “Plus you don’t have anyone else to hang with,” she laughed.

  Brendan smiled and laughed. “Right.”

  “So, Brendan, do you have a lady, a wife, or whatever?”

  She caught him off guard with her question. Brendan looked into her hazel eyes and was hypnotized. Time slowed down and he took a minute to think about his life. Trina was cheating on him. Renée was about to get married. Tanisha seemed nice enough. She was definitely a cutie with Beyoncé-quality booty. He needed something to change his luck, so he replied, “No, I’m kinda between relationships.” He immediately thought of how Nate always ran game on women by deceiving them so much that they wouldn’t recognize the truth if it smacked them in the face. He always got what he wanted by doing just that, at least until Kim committed suicide. “What about you, do you have a man?”

  Brendan was surprised when she answered, “Yeah, unfortunately. Remember I told you that I stick with something for a while. In this case though, I think that I may have stuck around a little too long.” She sipped her drink and then said, “But there’s always tomorrow.”

  They sat and finished their drinks and talked until the lights came on. Tanisha was a nurse at Southern Maryland Hospital. She owned a town house in Clinton, Maryland, which was fifteen minutes outside of D.C. Her boyfriend didn’t live with her but to her dismay he spent a lot of time camped out in her crib with her remote on his lap. She told Brendan that she had been thinking of ways to get him out of her life for months. Brendan didn’t give as many details of his life because he, of course, had started lying to her out of the gate. When her girl friends came to the table to get their coats she whispered into Brendan’s ear, “I hope that I can see you again.”

  Brendan’s chest poked out a bit. “No doubt. Gimme your number.”

  “I can only give you my work and my cell, you understand?”

  “That’s fine. When should I call you?”

  She smiled. Brendan used a sweet and genuine approach. Even in his mack mode he still came across as a gentleman. “I’ll leave that up to you, but don’t make me wait too long. Good night.” And she walked off to catch up with her girl friends.

  Brendan stood there with the napkin in his hand that she’d written her number on. He was excited because in his opinion he had met the most gorgeous woman in the place. He caught up to Dee at the door. Dee had two honeys with him. One was his dance partner from earlier in the evening. “Yo, B, we gonna go get some breakfast and head back to my crib, or we gonna head back to my place and get some breakfast. It’s whatever. Right, ladies?”

  “That’s right,” they answered.

  “B, this is Carmen and Pam.” Pam was his dance partner.

  “Hey, nice to meet you,” Brendan replied.

  “So you ready to roll?” Dee shot back.

  “Honesly, Dee, I think I’m gonna take it on in. I ain’t trying to start too much drama.”

  Dee sucked his teeth and shook his head. Brendan caught that he was disgusted with the respect that he was showing Trina. “Man, F that.” He leaned over to Brendan so that the two ladies couldn’t hear him. “Man, these hoes are ready to get loose. You want me to handle both of them by myself? Look at Carmen. She is tight.” Brendan took a glimpse at her. She wasn’t bad looking at all. Her weave could have been a little less obvious but that wasn’t Brendan’s reason for passing.

  “Another time. But you have fun.”

  “Suit yourself, nigga,” Dee said and backed away. He grabbed both girls by their asses and said to them, “I guess I got to handle all this coochie myself.”

  The girls la
ughed and Pam said, “Dee, you so crazy.”

  Carmen added, “Nigga, you better have some Viagra at the crib ’cause it’s early.”

  “Viagra my ass. King Kong ain’t got nothing on me.” He shouted, imitating Denzel in Training Day. “You better hope your booty gets wet like the Niagara Falls, ’cause I am gonna put in work.” They all laughed as if they did that sort of thing all the time and headed for the door.

  Brendan headed for his car and thought about what the rest of Dee’s night would be like. Dee was the closest thing to Nate that he knew. The major difference between them was that Dee focused more on quantity of women, where Nate was concerned more with quality. Dee would screw a high school senior or a senior citizen if she looked good to him. He didn’t care what the woman had going for herself. Nate wanted only women he considered to be top-flight professionals and entrepreneurs. They also had to be fine but the looks weren’t the only qualifier for him.

  Brendan was glad that Nate had rubbed off on him in that manner. He wasn’t fooling around with any chicken heads just because they came clucking in his direction. If and when he left Trina, it would be for something much better. As he drove up Pennsylvania Avenue headed toward the Beltway he thought about Tanisha. The image of her in those jeans flashed through his mind and before he knew it he had dialed her number.

  7

  The Notion or the Motion?

  Life was never supposed to be so complicated. For years after my college sweetheart Shelly and I broke up because she was going to grad school out of state, I had secretly wondered what it would be like to have her back in my life. I never told a soul. During the six years that we were apart, she often crept into my dreams, stealing my heart over and over again. Sometimes the dreams were haunting because they felt so real. I would actually see us back together doing the small things that make a couple fall so deep in love. I’d dream that I was watching her shop and try on clothes while I looked forward to the day that I would be able to afford to buy her everything her heart desired. Other times I could smell her skin and hair in my sleep. I’d reach out for her only to find an empty bed.

  Sometimes we would be making the sweetest love and I would awaken with my heart beating faster than if I had run an actual sprint. Those dreams were the worst kind of torture because once I woke I’d realize that there would be no experience to equal what I felt in my imaginary paradise. Shelly’s sex was the ultimate and after her, though some were great, none took me to the heights that she did.

  It’s crazy how life and decisions change everything. Now I was lying next to the woman whom I had dreamed about. Our daughter was in the next room, safe, healthy, and beautiful. I was set financially. Yet in my heart or my mind, I couldn’t decide which, I still felt a deep emptiness almost like I was missing out on something.

  It had been three weeks since Nina had left New York. Shelly and I had been fussing ever since over the smallest of things. What was for dinner, when bills were to be paid, how much money she was spending, and how much I was working all became major obstacles to our harmony. Part of our problem had to be my indecision to commit to the marriage. Like so many married couples, I had gotten married without realizing that it meant dealing with the other person as they were. I thought that we would marry and things would go back to where they were seven years ago. I only came to see that Shelly and I no longer knew each other. The other part of the problem was that I was missing Nina and taking it out on Shelly every chance I got.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about the coffee date Nina and I had after running into each other in the rain. During which she had admitted that she still loved me.

  “But sometimes love isn’t enough,” she’d said. I’d listened to all her reasons why she could never take me back and why it would never work between us. Amani has been through too much already. Nina’s family would never forgive her for breaking up Shelly’s marriage. Finally she broke down and told me the most serious of all her reasons. “Cory,” she had said, staring into my eyes, “you hurt me like I have never been hurt. You have destroyed my faith in love. Loving you like I did was supposed to be enough and yet it somehow wasn’t. The one thing I’ll always remember about you is the pain that I felt when you walked away with her. When you married her.”

  When she said those words I finally realized how bad I had hurt her. I tried to assure her that I was sorry for the hurt that she’d suffered at my hands. I told her that I would do anything to erase her pain. “There’s no way you can do that, Cory.”

  “I can try.”

  “Try what? Try to rewrite the past, undo the deeds.” She laughed. When she got up to leave I knew that there was no making it up. I felt so hopeless and desperate that I was afraid to even try to change her mind. I simply walked out with her and watched as she hailed a cab. In parting, she said something that stayed on my mind from that day until this moment. “Cory, have you figured out your biggest mistake?” She continued without giving me a chance to respond. Instead she took the blank look on my face as an indication that I had not. “You chose the sister who loved the idea of Cory Dandridge after being with the sister who loved the man.”

  I rolled over to look at the clock and saw that it was already ten minutes to six. Shelly would be getting up for work soon. Before she left she would make breakfast for Amani and lay her uniform out. When I got up I would only have to see her to the door. Like clockwork, Mrs. Lamar would knock at seven thirty and pick Amani up and walk the three blocks to school with her. She would be there to pick her up at three thirty as well, along with all the other day-care providers. Needing to feel close to Amani, I felt compelled to walk her to school. We headed out the door together and up the block, hand in hand.

  “Cory, why are you taking me to school today?” she asked.

  “I thought I asked you to call me Daddy or Papi.”

  “Oh yeah. You know I keep forgetting stuff all the time,” she answered.

  “Okay, but try.”

  “So why?” she asked again.

  “I just wanted to. I want to spend more time with you.”

  “Why?”

  I should have known what I was getting myself into. “Well, because you are my daughter and it’s important that you and I always have a bond. No matter what.”

  I was thinking about my father saying the exact same words to me as a child. He had passed many years back and although I missed him, I liked to think that he had shown me that a father’s job was to nurture as well as protect.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “You understand that?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “Good.”

  We crossed the street and headed into the courtyard in front of her school. The East Manhattan Primary Academy cost fourteen thousand dollars a year to send a six-year-old. There was a diverse mix of students who attended and the students had some of the highest scores in the nation on standardized tests. Amani had been introduced to French, Italian, and Japanese and could subtract and tell time with the best of them. Reading was an afterthought; she was already a grade ahead when we moved to New York, but the accelerated program at the school was pushing her even farther along.

  I kissed Amani on the forehead and watched her take off when she saw one of her friends. “Kali,” she screamed.

  “So you’re Amani’s dad.” I heard a voice behind me say. I turned around and saw a light-complexioned man heading my way. He extended his hand. “I’m Ricky Reyes. Kali’s dad. Kali talks about Amani all the time at home.”

  “Oh yeah. That’s great.” I shook his hand. We exchanged a firm grip.

  “Yeah,” he laughed. I couldn’t see his eyes through the dark shades he was wearing. He reminded me of Lenny Kravitz, except taller. “I met your wife a couple weeks back when she picked Amani up. She’s nice. I told her that she looked like she needed to be riding in a Mercedes…as I tell everyone I meet.” Then he pulled a card from his pocket. “I’m part owner of a Mercedes dealership on Long Island. No surp
rise when she told me that you already own one, but I have some outstanding values. She said she was interested but maybe she lost the card. I would love to put you two into a new Benz, so don’t hesitate to call.”

  I looked him up and down. Did he just say my wife was nice? Did he say she was interested? “No, you go ahead and keep that for someone who might buy one from you,” I offered as I refused to accept his business card. “We aren’t in the market right now.”

  “Well, I also own an art gallery in SoHo and a jewelry store over in the Diamond District, so I’m sure I could interest you or your wife in one of my pieces.” His hand was still out holding the card.

  My cordial smile left my face and I said simply, “That’s quite all right but like I said, we don’t need any of your services.” Then I turned and headed off.

  As I hopped into a cab I began wondering what kind of approach he had given Shelly. He was very pushy and seemed way too arrogant for his own good.

  “Where to?” I was surprised when the cabdriver asked. In New York the cabbies usually don’t even say hello. They let you sit down and look at you like you’re crazy if you don’t immediately give your destination.

  “Thirty-second and Madison.”

  I sat back in the cab, staring out my window, watching the people as they moved toward their jobs. It was late April and spring was in bloom, although there was still a chill in the air. I started thinking about my marriage and wondering if all this thinking about Nina was my way of fighting the adjustment to a new life filled with responsibilities. There was no denying that I did love Shelly. At the same time, it was obvious that things were different than what I had expected. I was torn between trying to have a family with someone I thought I’d be in love with forever and someone I thought I wanted to be in love with. My life was turning into a Sade record and I needed to flip it before was too late.