Playing Hard To Get

by Grace Octavia

  “What is this, high school?” Tasha said, annoyed. “The cheerleaders and the dumb jocks? Spare me. Wait until reality hits and the bullshit those men whisper in their ears leads to sloppy titties and tiger prints12 on their guts.”

  “Oh, don’t be so negative, Tasha,” Tamia said. “They’re just the new crop. We were them once. Right?” Tamia looked at Lynn’s wispy, happily bouncy hair, her thin, slender hands, and new skin and suddenly couldn’t remember ever looking like that. “You act like we’re ancient or something,” she tried to remind herself more than Tasha. “We’re just thirty…and that’s the new twenty…so we’re them and they’re—”

  “Ten?” Tasha watched beside Tamia as a song prompted the girls to start dancing. And when their fists pumped into the air, the entire room seemed to want to join in.

  “I guess so.”

  “Well, if I’m twenty and they’re ten, then their asses should be at home and asleep. Not up in here messing up the party.”

  “Well, it doesn’t exactly look like they’re messing up the party,” Tamia said as a couple pushed past her to get a better spot on the dance floor. “It looks like they’re making the party.” Her eyes followed the couple and she watched them encircle one of the girls on either side. She laughed and turned toward Tamia. “That’s Ava.”

  “What?” Tasha asked.

  “It’s Ava. The one I told you about that’s engaged to Charleston’s friend.” Tamia’s heart was skipping beats. Suddenly, she’d gone from watching to spying.

  “Who? Which one?” Tasha looked frantically, as if locating the betrothed beauty would make any difference in her level of disgust.

  “Right there—dancing with that couple.”

  “The white couple?”

  Tamia nodded and shook her head at how freely Ava danced with both the man and woman. It was a freedom she never understood about the younger It Girls. They didn’t seem to notice much the difference between men and women and gyrated on anything beside them. When she was new to partying, it was only white girls hip rolling on each other, but now it was everyone. She looked to see if Ava was wearing her engagement ring. It was there.

  “She is cute.” Tasha wanted to find something nasty to say to keep her mood, but really admitting to the girl’s beauty was enough to kick it up a few notches. “She looks kind of like me when I was younger.” She looked at Tamia for approval.

  “Yeah…and then you woke up.”13

  

  The faithfully entertaining frolics between foes who pretended to be friends provided just the right amount of social familiarity between both parties. Each foe knew what it was and if she was smart, she expected nothing more or less from the opposition. The complete opposite was true when the line between foes and friends was a bit softer and unclear. When a foe really thought she was a friend or a friend had secretly decided to become a foe, things got messy and especially uncomfortable.

  Fifteen minutes of spying and frowning later, Tasha and Tamia were heading to the bathroom to retouch their highly unnecessary under-eye concealer when one such line was blurred.

  “It’s Lionel LaRoche’s wife…Natasha, right?” Tasha and Tamia heard someone squeal after they’d turned from the scene on the dance floor that now included one of the football players’ ass cheeks.

  Tamia turned first, thinking she would help remind the reporter or whoever it was that she was wasting her time trying to chat with Tasha by calling her “Lionel’s wife” or “Natasha.” It was like calling LisaRaye Lisa or Lisa Raye—she hated both titles and anyone who wanted to know her needed to know that.

  “I’m sorry, Tasha—I meant to say Tasha,” Lynn said once both Tasha’s and Tamia’s eyes were on her. Free of her entourage, she thrust out her arms for an embrace. Tasha was pulled to her before she had any opportunity to protest. Lynn whispered into Tasha’s ear, “I know you don’t like that. I know a lot about you.”

  Tasha smiled her friendly pictures smile and pinched Tamia’s arm.

  “Wow, that’s something. That’s really…something.”

  “Hello, I’m Tamia Dinkins,” Tamia said, trying to shake Lynn’s hand, but she hugged her too.

  “Yes,” Lynn said, “I’ve heard of you. You both went to my alma mater—Howard. You’re on the alumnae Web site in the ‘Who’s Who of New York.’”

  “Wonderful,” Tasha said dryly.

  “Tasha, I was trying to get in contact with you a few weeks ago. I got last-minute tickets for a tea Michelle Obama was hosting in midtown. It was for influential wives, who also happened to be businesswomen—but then I realized you closed your artist-management firm.”

  Had Lynn been looking, she would’ve seen that Tamia was shaking her head for Lynn to stop speaking, but she just kept going. While Tasha had only managed Lionel and two overaged rappers during her brief, yet spirited tenure as a business owner, after having Toni and moving to Jersey, she had little time and lost lots of inner-city connections. So she officially had to shut down what was left of her operation. It was a painful departure from the only career choice or true private life Tasha had ever known, and to make herself feel better, she’d shoveled it beneath piles of silence and denial.

  “Yeah, well, that’s in my past.” Tasha’s voice was soft, resolute, everything Tamia hadn’t expected. Tamia turned to be sure it was still Tasha who was standing beside her.

  Lynn was laughing.

  “It doesn’t have to be in your past,” she said, holding Tasha’s arms at the wrists. “The city still needs you. You’re hot.” She bit at her lip in a way that confused how Tamia and the man who was standing behind the group listening understood “hot.” Did she mean Tasha was “hot” or her work with artists was “hot”?

  “Thank you,” Tasha said. “I can’t say I’m not.”

  “Look,” Lynn said, sliding a shiny black card into Tasha’s hand and whispering in her ear. “This is my private card. I know lots of people who would be happy to help you get started. When you’re ready to come back into the city, give me a call.” She kissed Tasha on the cheek and looked into her eyes. “Yeah, you’re hot.”

  

  Kyle’s head was spinning around on the floor again. Only, this time, it was on the living room floor of the Harlem brownstone. Troy was standing by the front door wearing a coat.

  “You gonna pick me up?” the head asked a nervous Troy, who knew somehow she was naked beneath her coat.

  “Pick you up?”

  “Yeah…so we can go. We’re on our way to hell. You burned the church down. Broke my head off and ate my body. We have to go to hell.”

  Now a Biggie Smalls song was playing in the background.

  “I’m ready to die,” Kyle’s head sang along with Biggie.

  “But I don’t want to go to hell! I don’t want to die,” Troy cried.

  “It’s too late. You’re already dead.”

  Then, in the way that waves come quickly up on sand, the woman and the head were away from the comfort of their living room and in the backseat of a funeral car. Kyle’s head was wearing a top hat Troy’s grandfather used to wear to funerals. Troy’s once black coat was now red, matching her fingernails, shoes, and lipstick, which stained her teeth.

  “Y’all going to hell?” the driver of the car asked, turning around. It was Sister Glover. She was smiling big from behind Troy’s wedding veil.

  “We sure are! My baby and me,” said Kyle’s head.

  “No, we aren’t. We want to go someplace else—I have money. I can pay,” Troy tried, reaching into her pocket, but there was no insides and her hand went right in between her bare legs.

  “Can’t pay to go someplace else,” Sister Glover said.

  “That’s right,” Kyle agreed.

  “Good thing y’all got together. Pastor, I was worried you would choose a good Christian wife, grow the house of the Lord, and spend your life in eternal heaven,” Sister Glover added, turning completely away from the wheel of the moving car and thumbing through an old B
ible with pages falling out everywhere. “But you got her and now it’s so clear, y’all are going to hell. Both of you. How wonderful. I am so proud. Here it is—here’s the Scripture—”

  “No need to recite it, sister,” Kyle said jovially. “My wifey can do it. She knows the words. She knows the Word!”

  They both looked at Troy and from nowhere the words of a Bible verse she’d only skimmed came charging from her mouth.

  “Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil. She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.”

  “Proverbs 31. Amen and hallelujah and shalom and selah and what else?” Sister Glover said.

  “Umm…Praise the…Whatever…doesn’t matter. Put the pedal to the metal and get us to hell!” Kyle’s head wobbled and rolled onto the floor of the car.

  Troy was awakened by a spill of sweat that slipped from her forehead to pool in her ears. Exhausted by her dream, she sat up slowly. She wasn’t afraid or scared. Not rushing down to her prayer closet or racing to pick up her Bible, which had fallen into the center of the bed between her and Kyle. Her shoulders fell. She looked at Kyle and began to cry.

  

  As Troy contemplated getting out of the bed, getting into her car, and getting as far away from her reality as possible, Tasha was getting a better look at what she swore were crow’s-feet crowding the undersides of her eyes—they weren’t.

  “Any more concealer and you’ll look like a corpse,” Tamia said, standing beside Tasha as she hunched over the basin to get closer to the mirror. Both women could feel the bass from the music outside rattling through the sink top.

  “They’re like cracks…little cracks under my eyes.” Pulling her eyes back from the sides of her head and then pushing them closer together, she turned to Tamia. “See them? See the difference when I do this?” She pulled her eyes back. “And when I do this?” She pushed them in.

  A woman waiting to wash her hands walked out after it was clear she couldn’t get past them.

  “Well, when you scrunch your face up like that, I see many things.” Tamia laughed, before turning to look at her own eyes.

  “Maybe I need surgery. A blepharoplasty…maybe a whole face-lift…. Look at my forehead.”

  “Tasha, stop it,” Tamia said, looking at her friend for a while. “You know, I can’t believe he’s going to marry her.”

  “Who?” Tasha pulled her forehead back from either side and pushed it back in again.

  “Nathaniel—Charleston’s friend,” Tamia answered. “She’s just so obviously a gold digger. She has no class and less history. The girl’s only in because of how she looks. Did you see her out there? She’s probably sleeping with one of those basketball players. I wouldn’t put it past her. He could do so much better.”

  “Oh, who cares, Mia?” Tasha said. “A shallow man finds a shallow woman? They deserve each other, if you ask me. I thought he was a delicious,14 anyway.” She paused. “Do you think I should get cheek liposuction?”

  Tamia had no language to communicate how ridiculous she thought her friend sounded. She just glared at Tasha’s reflection in the mirror as Tasha pulled her cheeks in and out like a fish.

  “What the fuck?” Tasha pushed her face closer to the mirror, and then closer again.

  “What?” Tamia asked.

  Tasha climbed up on the basin and angled her chin toward the mirror.

  “A hair…Look! Another…fucking hair!”

  “Where?”

  “On my chin! Right here!” Tasha shrieked and turned her chin toward Tamia.

  There was a curly, short gray hair poking out from the right side of Tasha’s chin.

  Tamia covered her mouth to stop from laughing.

  “It ain’t funny! It’s not fucking funny at all! I’m aged. I’m old. I’m dying.”

  “Oh, don’t be ridiculous. It’s just a stupid chin hair.”

  The hair was so long, Tamia reached over and just plucked it from Tasha’s chin.

  “I get them all the time,” Tamia added. “They have a cream for it.”

  “It’s true. I’m dying…like an old cow out to pasture,” Tasha cried dramatically.

  “You’ve never even been to a pasture…probably haven’t seen a cow.”

  “First the platinum hair in my basement15…then this one on my chin…next I’ll have a beard and mustache. You know black women can’t get electrolysis.”

  “You’re overreacting. Bring it in and calm down. What’s got you so on edge lately?”

  “It’s everything. Everything,” Tasha admitted, looking at her reflection. “Sometimes I sit and look at myself in the mirror like this and I think I can see myself. Like I’m still me and everything, but I wonder if I’m the me I thought I would be. When I was younger I was gonna go out and take over the world. Now I feel like the world has taken over me. I’m a mother of two who lives in the suburbs. I take Pilates on Wednesday and spin on Friday. That’s my life. Predictable…And then I die.”

  “No…and then you wake up and stop dreaming, because you are not dead yet,” Tamia said. “Don’t just give up. You can still have everything you ever planned for…you just need a new plan to get it.”

  And then it was like a pinch on her thigh or a prick on her thumb…Tasha had an idea.

  “You’re right,” she said, amazed at what was cooking up in her head.

  “Really?” Tamia was astonished her words had any effect.

  “Not you…I mean you…you and her,” Tasha explained quickly. “I need to move back to the city. Back to Manhattan to reclaim my life. You heard that Lynn out there…she said I’m still hot. She said I have it. She said people could help me.”

  “Whoa. I didn’t mean all of that,” Tamia said. “I was just suggesting maybe you switch your gym classes or add a hobby…knitting or Parcheesi…not up and moving back to the city. What about the girls? And Lionel? What are they gonna do?”

  “They can come with me!” Tasha jumped off of the counter and fixed her dress. “I’m moving back to the city!” she confirmed. “I have to go get Lionel. I have to tell him.”

  “I don’t think it’s—”

  “You can’t talk me out of this. I know it’s right. I feel it.”

  Tamia tried not to frown at her friend. Tasha always “felt” something.

  “Okay. I guess so…. But—”

  “Not another word!” Tasha sounded so excited. “Let me get Lionel and I’ll meet you out front. You still want a ride home, right?”

  “Um…” Tamia looked at her watch. It was a bit before 11. Late for people going to work in the morning, but early to end a New York night. “You know, I might make a stop before heading home. You two go on without me. I’ll get a cab.”

  “You sure?” Tasha asked, picking up her purse.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, give me a buzz when you get home. I want to be sure you got in okay,” Tasha said. “It’s a jungle out there.”

  The friends kissed and Tasha walked out of the bathroom to begin her new life…only by the time she would find her husband and get him alone, she would go soft and lose her courage.

  “That woman is crazy.” Tamia laughed, pulling the card Malik gave her from her purse and looking at the address beneath the soft bathroom light. She still hadn’t decided if she was going, but something about the invitation, from Malik, and the idea of seeing him again kept it on her mind.

  She pulled her purse onto her shoulder and was about to walk out of the bathroom, but there, at the lower corner of her eye, she saw twinkling, like a spinning star, in the dull darkness of the bathroom.

  She turned her head a little and noticed that it was coming from beneath the closed door of one of the two stalls she thought were empty. She looked and saw that the sparkling was actually a familiar disco-ball clutch, hanging from a metallic string.

  “Is someone in there?” Tamia called, wincing at the thou
ght of the last someone she’d seen with that purse having heard what she’d shared with Tasha moments before. Really, while the exquisite accessory was quite expensive, it wouldn’t have been silly to consider that anyone else at the party might have had one identical to the one Tamia had seen. It was possible. But right then, considering the law of bad luck, it was also implausible.

  The stall door clicked open and out emerged a screw-faced Ava.

  She didn’t look at Tamia. She headed right to the basin, where she washed her hands and replaced her lip gloss with the focus of a shooter.

  Afraid to move or even speak the apology she was editing in her mind, Tamia just watched her.

  “You know,” Ava said, “with all of the bullshit women face, you’d think we’d be able to stop shoveling shit on other people.” She looked at Tamia and a fire that long ago seared certain sides of her heart into something unrecognizable could be seen. “The young me, the one who came from the projects in Memphis and ran barefoot to the bus station with the last $20 my mother had in her pocket the night her pimp killed her, would’ve come out of that stall and beat your ass.”

  “But…I…I…” Tamia tried, but she was too flustered to speak. Her heart was pounding through her ears. The closest she’d ever come to a fight was with a pimp named Diamond at a strip club in Los Angeles.

  “No. There’s no reason to explain, or apologize. Don’t be scared, because I’m not that girl anymore,” Ava said. “See, she was easily upset when people said shit to her that she knew was true. But now I’m grown and I can accept my own shit. So, you’re right. I am a gold digger.”

  “Ava, I didn’t mean to say it like that,” Tamia tried. “I don’t even know—”

  “You’re right,” Ava cut her off. “You don’t fucking know me. I’ve seen bitches like you all my life. You don’t know what it’s like to starve. To be hungry and dream about shit like this. Places like this. It’s all you can think about. And then some nigga is up in your face, breathing on you because your mother is dead now and he says, ‘Keep yourself pretty and you’ll get out of here.’ I got out of there and I remembered what he said. So, you’re motherfucking right I’m a gold digger. And, yes, Nathaniel probably could do better. He could probably have picked one of you stuffy-ass, fake hoes. But he didn’t. He chose me.”