Black Silk

by Retha Powers

  Darla wished she herself were wearing jeans so she could feel the seam run roughshod over her clit as she shifted her weight again and again and again. Without thinking she sat on the barstool behind her and crossed her legs.

  Dusty sank two more balls before Shelley got a chance to have her way with the table. She put up a fight, but in the end it was Dusty’s table again.

  Darla squeezed her legs together one more time then peeled her damp legs off the vinyl stool when she thought no one was looking.

  “You must be Darlene?” Dusty approached her, just as she stood upright.

  “I am. You can call me Darla though but only if you go easy on me.” She put out her hand. “I’m still learning. You don’t learn if you don’t try.”

  Dusty nodded again as she took Darla’s hand in both of hers. “Pleasure, Darla. Would you give me a minute though?”

  “Sure.” Darla sounded chipper. She hadn’t thought about quarters and went to the bar for change. Shelley was talking to the euchre women. Darla wondered what about as she got her quarters and headed back to the table.

  Between the backward letters that from the outside spelled PAT’S BAR & NO GRILL on the window next to the door, Darla made out Dusty’s outline as she replaced the receiver of the pay phone. Darla was arranging the balls in the triangle when Dusty reentered, her boots sounding purposeful as they came through the door.

  “Someone special?” Darla inquired in what she wanted to be perceived as a knowing way.

  “Yeah. She’s someone special.” Dusty had revelation in her voice. “I’ve got a thirteen-year-old daughter at home. She’s got a friend spending the night.”

  Darla paused, surprised at the answer—envious and awestruck.

  This woman’s got a daughter. I want one.

  This woman is someone’s mother. I want one, Darla thought to herself in waves of emotion, no words.

  I’d like to live inside your belly make your brain my summer home… Darla recalled the words of the performer from earlier in the evening.

  “Wow, she’s a lucky girl.” Darla dropped the eight-ball into place with the slide of the triangle like Shelley had shown her.

  “I don’t know if she sees it that way, but thank you.”

  “She will someday.” Darla was sure of it.

  “Humph.” Dusty responded in a quick burst of air that said I hope you’re right.

  “Now break up those balls in that way that you do and let’s play.” Dusty got three balls in on the break.

  “See. Now how did you do that?” Darla made a production out of being impressed and overwhelmed. Tonight had been a night of two large impressions—almost to the point of revelry. Revelry is far too rare.

  “It’s just geometry.” Dusty laughed.

  “No, it is not.” Darla had heard this line before but had never begged to differ. “It involves speed and weight and a third dimension. It’s physics, I tell you. Physics.” Darla let the rubber bottom of her cue stick drop to the floor. The exclamation point to her declaration.

  “You know you’re right.” Dusty paused, their eyes conversing in a language foreign to both of them. “But I guess if you think too much about all those things instead of just playing and letting your body flow with the game, it can mess you up.”

  Onlookers gave up on watching their game and wandered to nether regions. The two players were oblivious. Together they were a country with a culture, a language, a land all their own.

  They played and flirted. Dusty covering Darla’s back their arms touching for their entire length and Darla allowing herself to be coached. They complimented each other admiring and desiring—enjoying this momentary paralleling of trajectories— each aware that the draw between them was something more than sex and something that they would not unleash. Not in this context. Not yet.

  Darla was floating when the game was over. She had forgotten about her Scotch and her sister-in-law hawking from the corner. Dusty put her hand on Darlene’s shoulder. “I can’t stay out late tonight, but that was the most fun I’ve had in I don’t know when. Thank you.” Dusty bore into Darla’s sable eyes with her lion ones.

  “Me too, Dusty. Thank you.” Darla grabbed Dusty’s hand.

  “Until next time?” Dusty squeezed.

  “Until next time.” Darla squeezed back then let go.

  They did not exchange numbers—that would be too tempting. One of them would give in and a phone call would come too soon.

  The ride home had seemed endless and Darla was glad to see Fish at home when she arrived at last. This making peace with time thing would be difficult. He was lovely there in the middle of their futon with his guitar and a notebook. Three different novels and a dictionary were strewn heavily on the otherwise downy surface.

  “Hey, pumpkin.” He tossed his dreads back from his face.

  “How was your time? Did you meet anyone? What did you see? Tell me about it.” He was full of questions as usual.

  “Shhhhhh.” Darla kneeled then crawled up his side and on top of him. “Shhhhhh. Let’s make a baby.”

  Summer in the City

  _________________

  by Margaret Johnson-Hodge

  Heat.

  Not just Manhattan in the middle of August heat, or the strip of asphalt, brick, and cement that was Fourteenth Street heat, that place she had come to when life at home wasn’t enough and a one-bedroom walk-up seemed like some gift from a God who understood what she’d needed most at that time of her life.

  It wasn’t just the unforgiving tiny three-window one bedroom that surrounded Mora. This heat was special, arriving without warning, blossoming like a dragon that’d slept through the ages. It was her soul hungry to connect to that other self, the one she’d misplaced on purpose when her last relationship had failed her miserably.

  It was a fire that the circulating fan could not cool, the old-fashioned claw-footed tub full of tepid water could not quench, nor the fresh-from-the-refrigerator Heineken master. And it had been waiting for her the moment she opened her eyes.

  Touching herself there could not take it away; the force of the shower massage could not tame it. Candles, cucumbers, the dildo too large to ever belong to a real somebody could not salve it. Mora was in need of other, something beyond herself, outside of hands, devices, and oblongs unattached. She was in need of the one thing she had deemed unneeded that Fourth of July when he had left her waiting there at the South Street Seaport, making her convert the café table like a momma bear, growling at anyone who drew too close.

  She had sat there all afternoon, nursing bottles of Evian, trying to keep her straight-from-the-shower hair coiffed against the ocean breeze, the watermelon lip gloss shiny on her lips, the essence of her patchouli oil fresh upon her body because it was how he liked her—kind of raw, kind of wild, kind of natural.

  She had abandoned her hair dryer, her curling iron, and her MAC finishing face creme in the name of him. Had abandoned Tiffany perfume for little bottles of body oil sold on the corner of West Eighth and University. She had given up hip-hop and alternative rock because he loved jazz too much to even consider it. Waiting patiently that Fourth of July, Mora realized she had become someone other in the name of love.

  Mora decided she would not miss him, would return second by second to the self she had been. She would straighten her hair, wear full face every day, and douse her body like a cheap whore. She did not wait around for the phone to ring, did not anticipate finding him loitering around her building, did not hope for an accidental meeting in the subway. She let it all go, coming back to herself like sap falling from a spigot. Not fast, not slow, but steady, in drips. Pieces of herself reclaimed bit by bit.

  Now weeks later she found herself, nipples hard, butternut-brown body rosy, uterus swollen, and moisture oozing with a need she had not anticipated. In need of his sweet fingers inside her, deep.

  He had been the first man she’d known who mastered the delicate art of finger to clit, the stroking, the pressure, the
contact, the absence when she was about to come. He prolonged it, making her twitch, beg, plead. He touched her like he knew her, like she was special, precious, delicate; a garden there for his discovery; a deity greater than he would ever be.

  It was a skill she herself could not master, nor could the man two floors up whom she’d attempted it with. It was a gift she found herself longing for.

  Mora rolled onto her side, knees drawn, belly tight. Smelled the fragrance of her lower self, trembled deep. Flat on her back she went, the sheet a canopy poofing in the air. Mora swallowed, waited, soft cotton on her skin. It fell upon the top of her thighs, the hard ridges of her breasts, the slope of her belly. Her body arched, tiny movement upward, pulled away, hungry, open, and wet.

  She had not planned on him ever claiming her like that, he just a street musician with Cuba flowing through his veins. But his smile had been a promise he delivered with the magic he possessed in his hands.

  Street urchin was what she thought that day she’d spotted him half a block away, playing his conga, his ritual, near private, as if he were master drummer in a Bimbe. In her mind’s eye Mora saw him clearly, head back, nappy/curly hair six inches too long from his scalp. But it was the music, hands hitting tight skin, that drew her eye. The rhythm carrying her until she was nearly upon him. Mora made her way through the tight cluster of spectators, saw eyes stretched so far up only the whites showed. Sweat on his brow, mouth turned up in a grimace, he was lost and gone away from the gathered crowd.

  She could not look away from the passion that encompassed him. Mesmerized, she watched until he had played his final rhythm, the conga’s music fading in the air. His eyes opened, found hers, full of secrets, a quick desire. One that filled her and she was willing to share.

  “I felt you coming,” he would tell her later after a trip to the Cuban coffeehouse, the stroll to Washington Square Park. “Knew you were there before I looked,” he said passing her a joint. “I was calling for you, with my music. Knew you would arrive.”

  She laughed at his nerve but held fast to her first impression, that he was just a street musician with Cuban roots and nappy wild hair. Nothing would come of them. He was just a blip on the screen of her life to be forgotten.

  Then he stopped her, just beneath the Washington Square Arch, and leaned against her, his breath hot, spicy, near foul against her ear. When his chest moved against her breast that swelled and throbbed with its own tempestuous beat, she knew how wrong she had been.

  When his right hand moved between them and fiddled with the button of her jeans and he slid warm and callused fingers into the band of her thong, she knew. When he touched her there like she never knew she could be touched, her orgasm coming too swift and fast to savor, she was without doubt.

  And as the soft glow of dusk filled the late-Saturday-afternoon sky and he drew his damp fingers to his nose and inhaled them, eyes never from hers, Mora understood that she would never see him as a street urchin again.

  He had primed her without knowledge, had seduced with mere sight and sound. It was the conga he had played, the eyes closed, strained back; the wild woolly mane, the fire that burned deep inside his dark brown eyes. It was oppression and a need for freedom, words that sang music without request. It was a calling to which she responded, giving her no other reply than yes.

  Mora was happy to discover he wasn’t homeless, had a job and a real roof over his head. She was happy to see that he only wore his hair wild when he was performing on the streets and that other times he wore it greased and brushed back in a little ponytail. She was happy to learn that he was not involved with anyone and hadn’t been for a while; that he didn’t cheat, saw only one woman at a time, and was what they used to call faithful.

  He cooked like his touch, passionate and intense. He read her poetry in Spanish, burned candles and incense. He held fast that the revolution was coming and the sleeping giants would awake. He was a throwback to the early seventies, though neither one of them had been born.

  Mora just went on with him awhile, she working at a Barnes and Nobles bookstore, and he, the unemployment office. She did not involve him with her friends and he didn’t introduce her to his. Their world was circular, encompassing, a creation of their own.

  It had been his idea to meet at the South Street Seaport and take in the Fourth in style. He had to run up to the Bronx to see his family but promised to meet her by noon.

  He never showed.

  It had been the sitting, the waiting, the vulnerability of being alone that got her thinking. It had been the minutes passing, constant glances at her watch that forced her to review their life. It became the solitude she felt with thousands of people around her. The endless calls on her cell phone to his apartment, and the empty hollow of unanswered rings.

  She would go away as he had entered her life, unexpectedly and without forewarning.

  That had been her plan and it had worked until now. But the heat of summer had found her and she was missing all that he was. Missed him even as she touched herself, fingers gliding slippery and wet, deep inside of her as she moaned and pushed trying to reach the secret place. She came fast and empty. Caught her breath. Fires still burning in the aftermath, in no rush to go away.

  Her want.

  Pulsing, ebbing, flowing, even as she maneuvered her way down the crowded strip of Fourteenth Street, discount stores sporting wares off their awnings, vendors setting up their trade. She caught her reflection in a store window. And even in the faint likeness she could see the hint of rose along her cheeks. And she could feel in love with the smooth brown legs, the way the straps of her sandals put her ankles in bondage. She could have stopped traffic with the extra swell in her breast, how the slight breeze played leapfrog with the end of her short floral shirt. In heat now, she was certain a stranger could smell her, primal and raw.

  Mora walked, relishing the delicious contact where her thighs touched. Tiny spasms, like sparks of fire, ignited with every step she took. On the edge, want deep, the need to come again pulsed through her as she remembered the feel of callous hands.

  Drums.

  Faint as the warm breeze, inexact in its location, the sound was there. She looked around her, the heat of the city filling her, a mosaic of sound and color, motion and noise.

  Mora searched for the location of the drums as wetness glided into the hollow of her panties, thin cotton unable to contain the dew. The inside of her thighs became a fast motion of skin and stickiness, slippery and sliding as she pressed on.

  Drums calling, she answered, feet moving of their own accord. She bypassed Barnes and Noble as if she were not due at work in seven minutes; a gazelle moving across the African plain.

  It was his hands, the magic of those fingers she could not resist. It was her heart forgiving and her soul on fire. It was the heat that was August, touching what she deemed untouchable those many weeks ago. Was Oshun and Shango, the ancient gods he had spoken of so reverently.

  It was more than makeup, beyond hip-hop and abandonment at the South Street Seaport. It was the Mora who needed, the Mora who wanted, the Mora who welcomed the transgression. She walked, breeze carried and drum ridden, possessed, he a god riding her soul.

  “I knew you would come.”

  But she disallowed his assertiveness, holding fast her ground, legs planted firmly on the hot concrete, the sun a beam of heat upon her head.

  “I knew,” he repeated, rising from his stool, hoisting the drum inside the duffel bag, the crowd moving off knowing the show was over.

  She looked upon the woolly hair, the eyes of burning brown. Settled upon the hands of sweetness. Felt their magic, luscious music upon her soul. She stood watching the man who had her in his power, unable to resist the capture, unable to break free.

  “See, even now, you are feeling me…”

  Yes, she was a puppet on a string. Her whole body pulsed, yearned, hungry for freedom. That release only he could give.

  “Tell me no Mora,” he teased, the duf
fel bag hoisted on a strong brown shoulder. “Go ahead and tell me,” he whispered as he took up his stool.

  But Mora could not speak, could only wait for him to join her, and without words they swiftly moved away.

  A comet crashing toward earth, leaving a trail of burning rock and insidious gas, she hurried, platform shoes made clumsy in her quickness, he beside her matching her stride for stride.

  They entered her apartment, a hurricane in the making. He closed the door, carefully laying down his conga and stool. She stood there, hard nipples, round beneath the cotton, thighs wide, steamy, damp.

  She closed her eyes, parted her lips, waiting for him to touch her. Swaying, she just wanted an end, but he stood his ground, curious and calculating, hesitating; he tasted her need.

  He drank deeply from her hunger. Feasted greedily on her want. Was determined to witness just how deep her desire burned before he would take a single step.

  Mora swallowed, trembling like an airborne leaf. Whispered “please” soft and low, the simple word painful. He reached out, took the edge of her top, moving it slow up over her chest. Her arms raised, body tingling at the rough cotton, and brief kisses against her skin.

  She shook, legs weak, longing for the support but not strong enough to find it. Prisoner, she leaned back her head as he moved woolly hair against her nipples.

  The air grew hot, moist, her essence filling the room with its aroma. Back and forward, nappy edges like silk moved.

  “So wet,” she muttered, a secret she could no longer contain. “Please Fernando, please,” his name heavy off her tongue.

  It drew his fingers, curious, testing. They danced along her belly, the contact making her quiver. Her pelvis lurched toward him, an attempted lasso, but he was a patient lover, rush not a part of his game.