by Lori Johnson
“No, thanks, I’m good,” she muttered, still silently seething.
“Cool then,” Yazz said. He cut his eyes at Aliesha before stretching an arm over Willie’s shoulders. “Come on, Willie, man. Let’s roll on down here and see about getting us some chicken, a goat, and maybe even a little hardworking Mexican gal or two.”
Aliesha watched in silence as Dante finished tidying his workstation. A couple of minutes had passed since Yazz and Willie’s departure. But rather than dissipate, the irritation that had seized and twisted her guts with Yazz’s every word had only worsened. By the time Dante finally beckoned her to his chair, her insides were spinning and twirling like an open stream of white-water rapids.
She wasn’t sure why she was still so upset. She’d certainly heard worse, and it wasn’t like Dante had cosigned any of Yazz’s ignorance. Still, she clung to her anger as if it were a buoy, the one thing that might keep her from drowning in the churn and swirl of an uncertain sea.
Without uttering a word, Dante combed out her hair and began cutting it. A solid five minutes passed before he shut off his clippers and, while standing behind her, asked, “So, what’s your boyfriend’s name?”
She stiffened, narrowed her eyes, and said, “Why?”
He restarted the clippers and said, “No particular reason. I’m just trying to make conversation, is all.”
Aliesha lapsed back into her moody silence. But when Dante moved in front of her and began trimming the hair around her face, she found herself blurting, “For what it’s worth, his name is Javiel.”
Dante’s gaze bumped against hers. He nodded and said, “Javiel. Hmm, I bet he’s in a line of work that requires him to make use of his hands a lot, isn’t he? And before you bite my head off, no, my name is not Yazz, and no, that wasn’t some sly segue to an incredibly stupid and politically incorrect joke about migrant workers.”
The tight corners of Aliesha’s lips relaxed, and something she saw in Dante’s eyes soothed her warring spirit. “Actually, you’re right. He does work with his hands. He’s a draftsman. But he’s also a very talented artist and painter. How’d you guess?”
Dante stepped away from her and examined her head. “I don’t know. You just look like the kind of woman who’d be with a man who works with his hands.”
Inwardly it horrified Aliesha that Dante had not only honed in on her attraction toward him but felt comfortable enough to tease her about it. Still, she managed an awkward laugh. “In spite of your protests to the contrary, I’m starting to believe you’re about as full of it as your friend, Yazz.”
Dante smiled. “Yazz is all right. He doesn’t mean any real harm. He’s just got a lot of growing up to do and he hasn’t quite learned yet how or when to shut up.”
Aliesha wasn’t sure she concurred, but rather than challenge Dante’s assessment, she decided to drop the topic altogether. “So what about your girlfriend?” she asked in an attempt to toss back the ball Dante had originally bounced her way.
“My girlfriend?” Dante said, his voice rising an octave.
“Yeah, what does she do?” Aliesha pressed, even though she wasn’t really sure she wanted to hear the answer.
Dante cleared his throat. “Well, at the present time, she doesn’t exist. It’s been a while since I had a steady girl.”
Torn between relief and disbelief, Aliesha spent a few seconds processing the information before she offered him a softly worded, “No disrespect, mind you, but I’ve gotta say, that’s really kind of hard for me to believe.”
“Yeah? Why is that?”
While staring at his reflection in the mirror behind his station, Aliesha decided to take a chance on truth. “You just don’t strike me as the type of guy who’d be alone for any length of time.”
“Well, it’s not like I don’t have a couple of female friends who’ll come over and keep me company when the nights get too long and lonely, if you know what I mean.”
Aliesha found herself rolling her tongue to remove the bad taste that had risen in her mouth. “I see. So you’re into that whole ‘friends with benefits’ type of thing?”
He laughed. “What? You don’t approve?”
She shrugged. “Hey, you’re grown. It’s not like you need my or anyone else’s approval.”
Neither one of them spoke again until he’d finished with her cut. On passing her the mirror, he said, “We doing a wash today?”
“Sure,” she said. “And what about my eyebrows?”
He looked away from her and said, “Yeah, well, I know that’s what we agreed on. But if you don’t mind, I’d really prefer to do them another time.”
“Okay,” she said. On failing to decipher his body language, she asked, “Is there a reason why?”
“Well, if you must know,” he said, still avoiding her gaze and sounding right sheepish, “right before you came in this afternoon, I caught Yazz using my tweezers to pluck his nose hairs.”
Aliesha shook her head, laughed, and followed Dante to the dark room in the back. This time when he opened the door and flipped the switch alongside the wall, it didn’t take her eyes long to adjust to the change in light. She noticed, almost immediately, how the corner containing the shampoo bowl and the reclining chair appeared encased in an odd sort of shimmer and glow. The phenomenon, though strange, only increased her eagerness to sit down, lean back, and submit herself to the process. She couldn’t help but succumb to a sigh of relief upon doing so. The rush of the hot water, the repetitive stroke of Dante’s thick fingers over her scalp, and the gentle massage of his Big Mama’s shampoo into her hair felt even better than before. This time, however, she kept her eyes shut and succeeded in squelching her desire to moan.
She didn’t permit herself to look at Dante until he’d finished the wash, shut off the sprayer, and was dabbing at the stray drops and rivulets of water dancing across her forehead and sliding down her temples. Upon easing open her lids, she took note of both the seriousness in his face and the tenderness in his eyes. When he finally stopped moving the towel and rested his gaze against hers, she nearly stopped breathing. For a moment, she could have sworn he had every intention of leaning over and kissing her.
Instead, he asked, “Your man like your hair this way?”
She moistened her lips and wondered why all of a sudden they felt so incredibly parched. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know. He has yet to say anything about it and I have yet to ask him.”
After Dante helped her sit up, he finished toweling dry her hair. While he worked, Aliesha noticed the slim paperback peeking from his smock pocket. “New book? Or the same one?”
“Same,” he said without bothering to glance down.
“Surely you’ve finished it by now,” she said. “You’re not having problems with it, are you?”
He paused and smiled. “What? Now you think I can’t read?”
She cringed. “I’m sorry. I guess that did sound rather condescending.”
He assisted her to her feet. “You ever read it?”
“The Metamorphosis? Yeah, it’s been years, though,” she said as she followed him from the room. “If I remember correctly, it’s about a man who upon awakening discovers he’s turned into a roach.”
“Yeah, I guess that pretty much sums it up, huh?” Dante said as they reentered the main room of the barbershop.
She longed to ask more questions, specifically about the book, but had a feeling he wasn’t exactly raring to give too many answers. Disappointed, but figuring there’d be yet another opportunity on some other occasion perhaps, she allowed him to finish her blow-dry and style without any additional interrogation.
After she paid him, he donned his iPod and walked her out, like he’d done at the end of her first visit. On stepping outside, rather than thank him again and bid him a friendly and prompt good-bye, she asked, “So, what’s the tune this week?”
He pulled out his earbuds, gave them a quick wipe, and passed them to her. On inserting them, she closed her eyes and lis
tened for a good thirty seconds to the sad, poignant lyrics of Curtis Mayfield’s “We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue.”
“Is it always Curtis Mayfield?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Now what did you caution Yazz about earlier? Don’t go putting me in a box just yet, Miz Professor. There’s a lot more to me than what you see.”
The way he’d said it made it sound like both a challenge and an invitation. She relished the thought. A smile lit up her face and, rather than leave, she lingered. “So you really think I look like a cross between Erika Alexander, the actress who played Max on Living Single, and India. Arie?”
Dante shrugged. “Depends.”
“On?” Aliesha said.
He laughed. “Primarily on whether or not you think that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”
The twinge of embarrassment she saw in his face and heard in his laughter made her smile grow brighter. But rather than submit to the allure of seeing just how far he’d be willing to indulge the flirtation, she shook her head and turned to walk away.
“Say, Miz Professor,” Dante said.
She stopped, her heart pounding against her chest as she wondered what he’d say next. He waited until she’d turned and faced him again before he continued. “Be sure you ask your man what he thinks.”
“About what?” she asked.
“You know,” he said, tapping an index figure against his temple. “Your hair.”
A wave of somberness overtook her joy, and without the barest hint of the smile that had been there only seconds before, she said, “Sure, I’ll do that.”
A boyfriend? Well, at least it wasn’t a husband. Not that either was something Dante had a mind to or a stomach for dealing with or navigating around, especially after having already wasted half a lifetime doing so.
“You just look like the kind of woman who’d be with a man who works with his hands” had been the partial truth he’d shared with her as apposed to the fully stripped one . . . you look like the kind of woman who needs to be held and stroked and caressed on a regular basis . . . the one that had actually been streaking through the dark corridors of his mind. Try as he might, Dante couldn’t keep himself from wondering if this boyfriend, this draftsman, this Latin lover, artist wannabe, was falling short in some essential area, if he owned neither the hands nor the heart for holding this woman like she needed to be held . . . for touching her where she needed to be touched. What else, Dante wondered, would account for the interest in him Aliesha appeared so unwilling if not unable to hide.
Nope, I can’t. Not with her. Not this time around, he silently vowed even though the role of “odd man out” appeared to be one to which he’d been permanently assigned. A number of experiences, but one in particular, had Dante all but convinced that he’d landed in his own private Hades where, for reasons unknown, he’d been sentenced to reach for all of eternity, apparently, toward a woman who’d forever remain just beyond his grasp. Perfect wasn’t something he’d ever been, but damn, what kind of sin could he have committed in this life or the last to warrant such a horrible plight?
If it mattered any, he felt a considerable amount of remorse at having been less than honest with Aliesha—not only about the whole “a man who works with his hands” bit, but the eyebrow thing as well. Yes, he had caught Yazz using his tweezers on his nose hairs, but that had been little more than a convenient excuse, particularly in light of the well-stocked beauty supply store right next door. The uncomfortable and unadulterated truth was, Dante didn’t trust himself to peer into Aliesha’s eyes for any length of time. He wasn’t ready for her to know, just yet, that the current between them ran both ways and at the same, if not an even greater, level of intensity.
So he’d done his best to keep the conversation and his interaction with her light and easy. And being that he enjoyed making her smile and hearing her laugh, it had been anything but a difficult or thankless task. Besides, his being able to work his fingers through her hair had already become something of a pleasure-filled bonus and one that helped ease the pain he felt at once again being denied a woman he didn’t know how to keep himself from wanting.
Even though Aliesha was making it excruciatingly difficult for him to stay strong and true to the all-or-none promise he’d made to himself, Dante couldn’t stand the thought of her becoming the next notch on his belt, much less the newest Laylah in his life. She didn’t deserve that. Nor did he. So, he understood that a full and steady application of the brakes was in order, even if it meant turning the speeding cart upside down as it barreled through the turn with him still securely buckled up and strapped down on the inside.
CHAPTER 18
The two occupied opposite corners of her king-sized bed. Aliesha sat on the left side, near the foot of the bed and with her legs folded beneath her yoga style. Spread open in front of her was the same textbook she’d been leafing through at the barbershop earlier in the day. Next to the book sat a note-riddled legal pad. On the right, at the head of the bed, Javiel reclined with a mountain of pillows propped behind his back. Next to him sat the sketchpad and the charcoal pencil he’d abandoned for the television’s remote.
For a moment, the dense fog, which constantly loomed between them and often totally obscured their view of one another, had appeared on the verge of lifting. A surprised Aliesha had found herself greeting a refreshed and considerably less uptight Javiel upon his return from his weekend outing with the fellas. To her relief, even their Sunday morning church date at Garden View had come and gone without a single troubling incident.
After service, instead of driving her to the nearest fast-food joint for a take-out meal of burger and fries (a convenience that would keep him from missing too much of whatever televised ball game he was raring to see) Javiel had suggested they dine downtown at Wilhelm’s, a new German restaurant she’d once casually mentioned wanting to visit. Over lunch, a smiling and laughing Aliesha had happily indulged Javiel’s playful teasing about her doting surrogate parents, the Phillipses, and Garden View’s sincerely spirited but awful-sounding men’s choir. When he’d started telling her the details of his Saturday fishing expedition, rather than zone out, like she might have in the past, she’d listened with interest and had been genuinely touched by the desire he’d expressed to treat her to a picnic down by the lake as soon as the weather turned warmer.
They’d had such a uncharacteristically pleasant time all that day and even later that night, Aliesha had, yet again, talked herself into putting off her plans to bring up the whole dead fiancée issue. But in the days thereafter, the air between them had again slowly thickened and ever since driving off the parking lot in front of Wally’s Cool Cuts, Aliesha had felt her buoyant mood tumbling steadily downward. As she sat in the corner of her bed with anxiety riding her neck and shoulders, like a backpack full of broken bricks, she couldn’t help but feel like an inexperienced skier trying desperately to outrun the avalanche on her heels.
“Would you mind turning down the volume if you’re going to do that,” she asked as Javiel aimed the remote at the television and flipped from one channel to the next.
He frowned. “Can’t you finish that later?” he mumbled in reference to the lecture notes she’d been working on for the last half hour.
She cut her eyes at him. “I’d kinda prefer to finish it now.”
He lowered the television volume a notch and said, “What’s got you so grumpy this evening?”
“I’m not grumpy,” she said.
“Yeah, you are,” he said. “You’ve been snapping at me ever since I got here.”
Unable to deny the small amount of truth in his assertion, Aliesha shoved her legal pad inside her book and tossed them both aside before crawling toward Javiel’s side of the bed. On reaching him, she snuggled against him, fingered the buttons on his shirt, and said, “I’m sorry.”
He planted a kiss on her lips and said, “That’s my girl.”
She drew her fingers over his chest, but before he got t
he wrong idea about her intentions, she said, “You know, Javiel, ever since the last time your mother and I spoke, there’s been something on my mind.”
“Yeah? And what might that be?” he said.
“Is there a particular reason you’ve never mentioned anything to me about your fiancée, Evelyn?”
Javiel sat silent and still for a moment. “Probably for the same reason it took you so long to tell me about Kenneth,” he said, when he finally answered. “It wasn’t exactly the most pleasant episode in my life.”
She could tell by his chilly tone that he wanted her to drop the subject. But she’d grown tired of giving in to his wants. “Why’d the two of you break up in the first place?” she persisted.
When he turned toward her, she saw an ugliness in his eyes she’d never seen before. “Why do any two people break up, Aliesha? Things just don’t work out sometimes.”
She nodded and bit her bottom lip before she said, “You want to know what I think? I think you’re being deliberately evasive.”
His eyes grew colder and all of the color disappeared from his face. “Is that a polite way of calling me a liar? What in the hell did my mother say to you anyway?”
“It’s not what she said, Javiel, as much as what she didn’t say that disturbs me. And I just thought I’d bring it up rather than keep jumping to my own conclusions, which, by the way, don’t exactly paint you in the most favorable light.”
“Well, the thing you might want to keep in mind about my mother, Aliesha, is that she has a flair for being overly dramatic. Now as far as Evelyn is concerned, what happened between us was painful and tragic. And for now, that’s all I care to say about it.”
When he shifted his gaze back to the television, Aliesha had to talk herself out of snatching the remote from his hands and hurling it across the room. “Wow, just like that?” she said. “End of story and on to the next topic?”