Let the Lover Be

by Sheree L. Greer

  “You’ve got old hands,” Kiana had told Karyn once. They sat in the darkness. The basement of the house Kiana remembered growing up in. Mrs. Joyce’s house. Call-me-Mrs.-Joyce-not-grandma’s house. Mrs. Joyce had died. Left the house and everything in it to Karyn. The sound of feet above their head. Mahalia Jackson’s haunting voice rising above the murmuring voices.

  “I’ve got Mama’s hands,” Karyn had said. She rubbed them together then held them out. Kiana took them in her own trembling hands. Flipped them over.

  “They’re nice hands,” Kiana said. Tears attacked her eyes, the piercing burn of a thousand spears.

  Karyn pulled her into her arms and held her. The memory faded. The embrace a precursor to a promise to join the other mourners upstairs, the promise to eat something, the promise to clean herself up. On her way to the bathroom, she caught a glimpse of neighborhood boys outside the back door smoking and passing a paper-bagged bottle of something between them. Their faces somber and tight against the cold. Their breath puffs of hot mist against the November chill. She hadn’t made it to the bathroom, and even though the men didn’t want to share their drink, told her she was too young, the streaks of dried tears and trembling in her chin compelled them. They shared. She drank. And drank. And drank.

  An ambulance screamed past. Genevieve lifted her hand abruptly, and Kiana jumped. She watched as Genevieve crossed herself and muttered something under her breath.

  “Another habit from your nana?” Kiana asked. She said it quietly, her voice a whisper as if she’d truly traveled into her past, the thousand miles back to Chicago, her throat tired and raw from the cold of that back porch and the burn of Wild Turkey.

  “Something like that,” Genevieve said. “It’s a blessing. For whoever got themselves jammed up in that ambulance. Hope they can get fixed up, and if not, safe travels from this world to the next.”

  “Safe travels,” Kiana repeated. She peered through the blinds though the ambulance had long gone, the siren as faint as all her memories.

  “Yeah,” Genevieve said. She returned her hand to Kiana’s thigh. “It’s a small thing, but it means a lot.” She squeezed. “Do you know what I mean, baby?”

  Kiana, holding her beer in one hand, placed the other on top of Genevieve’s hand. She looked at her own hand, thinking again of Karyn, which meant thinking of her mother, thinking of comfort and safety. She denied herself the memory of care; she drank up those memories and submerged them into darkness with everything else. It didn’t have to be that way. Genevieve, more than anyone ever before, showed her that it didn’t have to be that way. Maybe she was starting to get it.

  “It’s a well-wishing either way. Live or die, be well,” Kiana said.

  “Exactly.” Genevieve smiled at her.

  “I’ll drink to that,” she said. She lifted her glass and gulped the last of her beer.

  Chapter Twelve

  Kiana folded her clothes slowly and carefully placed them in her bag. She looked at the clock on the nightstand. She had returned from lunch with Genevieve with a resolve of steel. She needed to go home. They hadn’t had a formal good-bye, she and Genevieve, but they both knew it was best. Genevieve had pulled her into a hug, pressed her face in the crook of her neck, and whispered against her skin that it was best that she go. Kiana knew it. She nodded and squeezed Genevieve tight, an understanding settling in her bones. She needed to step back; she needed to talk to Karyn and sort things out. There was nothing else to be done.

  Michelle was getting married in two days. Her feelings for Genevieve were too complicated at best, convenient at worst. Kiana lifted a T-shirt and smelled it. It stank of sweat and booze and smoke. She rolled it up and stuffed it in a corner of her duffle bag reserved for worn panties and socks. She looked around the room and sat on the bed. She swiped her phone from the nightstand. Karyn still hadn’t called. Kiana had left three messages for her during the cab ride from Mother’s to the hotel. She was ready to come home. She needed to come home.

  A series of short, sharp knocks sounded at the door. Kiana jumped. She tossed her phone on the bed.

  “Who is it?” she said, creeping toward the door.

  “Room service,” a male voice said.

  “I didn’t order any room service,” Kiana said. She stopped at the door and peered through the peephole. A young man in black slacks, gold vest, and white collared shirt stood cradling a covered ice bucket in his arms. He knocked again and Kiana pulled back from the door.

  “Room service for Kiana Lewis,” the young man said.

  Kiana peered through the hole again. The man sighed, smacking on gum and rolling his eyes. He looked at his watch.

  “Look,” he said, “I’ll leave it outside the door. It’s paid for.” He popped his gum impatiently and leaned forward, cutting his eyes and looking into the peephole himself.

  Kiana pulled the door open. “I didn’t order anything,” she said.

  “Well, someone did.” The man shrugged and stood awkwardly, tapping his fingers on the side of the bucket and rocking back on his heels. He raised his neat, arched eyebrows and flipped a swoop of chestnut brown bangs off his forehead.

  Kiana stood back and let him enter her room. He set the bucket on the desk and looked around. “Checking out?”

  “Tomorrow morning,” Kiana said.

  The skinny man shrugged and popped his gum. He slid a steak knife, a lime, and a small container of salt out of his vest pocket and set it on the desk next to the bucket. “Enjoy,” he said with a tight smile.

  He left the room. Kiana glanced at the desk. An opened, but nearly full, bottle of Southern Comfort sat in the corner near the lamp; two clean glasses and an empty ice bucket crowded the opposite end of the desk near the hotel services binder and notepad. The newly placed bucket, still covered by a white linen napkin, sat near the edge of the desk flanked by the knife, lime, and glass salt shaker. She walked over to the desk and picked up the knife. Her cell phone sang and buzzed. A text message. Clutching the knife, she went over to her phone.

  Michelle’s message was simple: Get yourself in the mood.

  Kiana smirked and shook her head. She looked over at the bucket. Without lifting the napkin, she knew full well what was in it. She knew by the lime and salt that it was tequila, but from Michelle’s message, she knew it was Cuervo.

  Jose Cuervo was the one liquor Michelle drank beside Malibu, which to Kiana wasn’t much of a liquor at all. Michelle had brought out a bottle of Cuervo one cold winter afternoon in February. The hawk was in full force, the wind chill well below ten degrees. The weatherman warned people about the bitterness of the day, urging people to stay inside unless absolutely necessary. Kiana and Michelle huddled beneath covers and kept each other warm against the clacking of the overworked but underperforming radiator in their apartment. Michelle had jumped up and dashed into the kitchen, her thermal pants sagging on her small behind and her sweatshirt swallowing her petite shoulders and thin arms.

  “I hope you’re thinking what I’m thinking,” Kiana had said. Michelle shot a quick glance over her shoulder and ordered her to get more blankets.

  “Make my cocoa Irish. If you know what I mean,” Kiana said pushing herself off the couch and going into the bedroom for more blankets. She stomped her feet until her jogging pant legs met her ankles, and she stuffed her hands into the pouch of her hoodie. She pulled the comforter off their bed and rolled it up to carry it into the front room. Music blasted from the living room, Beres Hammond’s “Rockaway” chasing away the dullness of the gray afternoon. Kiana had dropped the blanket and found Michelle in the front room, her sweatshirt and thermal pants flung across the leather chair. She rolled her body to the saxophone and electric guitar of the Jamaican riddim. Her white tank top rode up on her taut belly; her long caramel legs flexed and stretched out from royal blue panties. She clenched a wedge of lime between her teeth and carefully moved her arms as she held two shots of golden tequila in each hand.

  “I didn’t even know we h
ad that,” Kiana had said, pulling her hoodie off and pushing her sweatpants down her thighs. She joined Michelle in the center of the living room, the radiator hissing and ticking, the windows shuddering from the freezing wind cutting across the lake and colliding with the window of their third floor apartment. Her skin flushed at the scent of Michelle, the spicy-sweet breath of gardenias, and even in her white v-neck T-shirt and black boy-shorts, Kiana felt enveloped in warmth. She took one of the shots and leaned in to kiss Michelle, who passed the wedge of lime from her mouth to Kiana’s with a pinch that sent sharp, tart juice dripping between both their lips. When Kiana secured the wedge in her own mouth, Michelle smiled.

  “I’m full of surprises,” Michelle had said, downing her shot in one gulp.

  Kiana had followed suit. They did two more shots before fucking to the point of exhaustion, sweaty, hot, heavy exhaustion in the middle of the floor.

  Kiana’s phone rang and vibrated again, bringing her out of the memory. Michelle again. An address, then: My last night of freedom.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Kiana leaned on her elbows at the bar and watched the door while bobbing her head to the hypnotic beats blasting overhead. She hadn’t ordered anything. She didn’t need to. The gritty burn of tequila and lime still tickled the back of her throat and slowed her pulse, the muscles of her heart moving in waves instead of beats. She didn’t register the people around her, the few people lining the bar, the small groups in collections of lifted hands, stomping feet, and rolling torsos. A couple fell into the bar from the street. They stood in the doorway, linked arm in arm, their heads on a swivel. Laughing and slapping each other’s arms, they finally cleared the doorway. Kiana pushed herself off the bar.

  Genevieve stood at the entryway of the club. Everything around her dissolved into a blurry mix of colors, an abstract painting where only her form, defined and disarming, was captured with clear, indisputable lines. Her sleeveless dress fondled every curve of her hips and thighs, the white sheath stopping a few inches above her knees. She ran a quick, nervous hand across the bows of clavicle beckoning from the scooping boat neck of her dress. Having traded her casual ensembles of khaki skirts, halter tops, and sandals, she looked taller and more elegant than Kiana could have imagined. She walked toward Kiana, who finally made her feet work and met her halfway.

  “You look absolutely…amazing,” Kiana said. She wished she could think of another word, something more descriptive, more impressive, more accurate. Drinking Genevieve in from head to toe once again, finally taking in the grace in her shapely lips and the brilliance of her smoldering honey eyes, she became certain the word hadn’t been invented yet.

  “Thank you,” Genevieve said. She brought her hands together in front of her and clasped her silver pocketbook with both hands. “You look good, too.”

  Kiana shrugged. “You’re just being polite,” she said, looking down at the same black slacks and gray button-up she had worn the day they met.

  Genevieve smiled at her. “I’m just being honest,” she said.

  “I’m just trying to keep up,” Kiana said, tugging on the cuffs of her shirt and grinning.

  “Tell the truth, shame the devil, baby,” Genevieve said with a sly smile.

  Kiana cracked up. “Thank you for coming. I didn’t know if you would. And if you did come, I imagined you’d only come to talk me out of it.”

  “You said you needed a friend. And since I’m the only friend you have down here, I had to come, right?” Genevieve said. “Especially since your other so-called friend is good for nothing. You had anything to drink?”

  Kiana finger-picked her afro. “No,” she lied. She swallowed a quick burst of bile in the back of her throat. “I need to do this clear-headed like I mentioned on the phone.” Heat prickled at the base of her neck as she reconciled the two shots of Cuervo she had before she showered. A warm-up for someone like her. A small boost. And the hotel shot glasses were practically thimbles. Besides, the steam of the shower giving way to the moist cool of the late night air practically aerated the last of her buzz anyway.

  “Good,” Genevieve said. “The way you explained it, this closure is important. And when you get on your flight tomorrow…” She paused and placed her palm between Kiana’s breasts. “You’ll be well on your way to healing. You can find answers while you’re up in the clouds and as close to the big man as we can get on this side of the dirt.” She smiled with her mouth but not her eyes. They looked sad, a quick moisture shining in the strobe lights. She blinked and looked away.

  Kiana swallowed hard. She took a deep breath and extended her arm. “Shall we?”

  Genevieve nodded and tried another smile, this time her eyes played along. She linked her arm with Kiana’s. “Let’s go,” she said.

  They walked deeper into the dark club, past the dance floor where bodies undulated to the rapping snares and thumping bass drums. Couples of every combination clutched each other around the waist, pressed against each other’s thighs, hips, and asses to music blasting from large overhead speakers, the sound raining down on them in torrents, their bodies soaked in sweat. Once past the main club area, they pushed through a heavy door with PRIVATE etched in the shiny wood surface. They entered a tight hallway, the walls lined with brass sconces and shadowboxes. The music hushed to a trembling throb. Looking at each other before glancing over their shoulders at the closing door behind them, they walked slowly toward another door at the end of the hall. A tall, buff white man with a chiseled face and spiked Billy Idol hair folded his bulging arms, his barrel chest nearly swallowing his clipboard. He looked at Kiana quickly, his eyes cold and green. He settled his eyes on Genevieve and his look softened, but only for a moment. The cold slickness came back, this time following the curves of Genevieve’s body, so slow and arrant it could have left a slime.

  “Excuse me,” Kiana said. She stood up straight and squared her shoulders.

  Genevieve shot her a look to stand down. Kiana wanted to ignore it, but she let Genevieve handle it. She reminded herself that Genevieve could take care of herself. She liked that about her, the sweetness that turned hard in an instant. Over the past few days, those shifts had been directed at Kiana, Genevieve going from an intriguing softness for her mouth to explore to a challenging toughness that threatened to crack her teeth. Kiana smiled.

  Genevieve crossed her arms and cleared her throat. Her eyes narrowed and hardened. “Our names are on the list, not down the front of my dress,” she said.

  The man smirked and looked down at the clipboard. “Your names?” he said with a sigh.

  Kiana still didn’t like his tone. She wanted to snatch the clipboard from between his meaty paws and crack it over his bullet head. He must have felt Kiana’s stare because he looked at her and twisted his lips in challenge. Kiana flexed her jaw and leaned forward. He shook his head dismissively and turned his attention to Genevieve, speaking directly to her and ignoring Kiana completely. “Your name?”

  “It’s her name you want,” she said. Genevieve took a step back.

  Kiana came forward. She slid her hands in her pockets. They trembled. She needed to break something. To drink something. The green-eyed bouncer infuriated her, the way he leered, the dismissive smirk on his thin, dry lips. Everything felt wrong. Her fingers ached inside her pockets. She curled them into fists. Tense and anxious, she looked to Genevieve for calm.

  “My name is Kiana Lewis,” she said. “I’m on the list with a plus one. This”—she reached her hand behind her and Genevieve took it—“is my plus one.”

  The man twisted his lips. “Yeah,” he said, stepping away from the door. He unclasped the red velvet rope that stretched across the heavy wooden door, a gold plate etched with VIP in fancy script. He grabbed the long brass handle on the door and pulled it open. He rolled his eyes as Kiana gestured for Genevieve to go first.

  “After you, baby,” Kiana said. She threw a sidelong glance at the bouncer, who scoffed and crossed his massive arms across his clipboard. Gene
vieve smiled and walked through the door, pulling Kiana forward by reaching behind her and hooking her fingers onto the front of Kiana’s pants.

  Kiana smirked and raised an eyebrow at the bouncer. He sighed and turned away from them as they walked into the darkness beyond the door.

  Once inside, the bar caught Kiana’s eyes immediately. Long and taking up an entire wall, the clear, elegant glass bar glowed in the dark. Orange, red, yellow, and blue lights illuminated the bar from below, the colors dimming and giving way to each other in slow intervals as if taking cues from hypnotic rising and falling keyboards and electric guitar licks sliding around the room. Bottles lined the wall behind the bar, glasses of every shape and size hung overhead; the two bartenders, both dark-haired, olive-skinned women in tight black dresses, slid martini glasses and gimlets from the suspended racks with ease. There were no barstools, but a small group of blond-haired white women huddled at the far end of the bar, whispering to each other and sipping oversized glasses of blush wine. Opposite the bar, floor-to-ceiling two-way mirrors offered the VIP guests a view of the dance floor, bodies grinding and bumping to music only they could hear. Inside the VIP room, the mood was significantly more chill. The crisp air-conditioned air snapped at Kiana’s skin as she looked around. A slow reggae groove eased about the room. Kiana could barely make it out. She listened, held her breath, and recognized Gregory Isaacs moaning to his night nurse, the longing faint but unmistakable.

  Michelle’s laughter rose up from a group of women seated on a large sectional. Her back to the door, the sound of her laugh, joyous and carefree, danced its way to where Kiana and Genevieve stood. Kiana stiffened. Genevieve found her hand and squeezed it.

  One of the women, who sat next to a cinnamon-skinned woman with curious eyes and a wide mouth, lifted her face and smiled a tight-lipped smile in Kiana and Genevieve’s direction. Carefree tendrils of copper hair framed her pale face, her sharp, straight nose and thin lips a contrast to the messy pile of hair curled on top of her head. Michelle turned around, a slight grin playing at the corners of her lips. She nodded at the women seated around her and walked over to Kiana and Genevieve.