by Clara Nipper
“Guess you’re the furniture,” I said. Our eyes met.
“Guess you’re the Negro,” she answered tranquilly.
“Why don’t you go off and do your girly stuff with some of your little friends? Go study your vaginas, have a tickle fight in your panties, play with hair bows, whatever. Just leave so I can talk to the man of the house. Where’s Max? I came to speak with Max.”
“Who are you, Shaft?”
“Damn right. Can you dig it?”
“Shut your mouth, fool.” We shared a brief laugh.
She stretched her legs in front of her on the chaise and then crossed them delicately at the ankles, causing the gauzy robe to split and fall open at the tops of her thighs. “I’m Max.”
I stood angrily. “You’re shitting me. Everybody in town has told me to talk to Max Abbott and you’re Max?”
“Yes, sit down. It’s a family name that I’ll never tell you what it’s short for, and don’t ever call me Maxine.”
I sat, trying to calm my mind. “I didn’t expect you to be a woman.”
“I didn’t expect you to be African American.”
“So what now?”
“I offer you a drink and you stay awhile…Suzy Q?”
“The name’s Nora Delaney.” I growled in response to the lighthearted insult. “And no…no…I can’t drink right now. I need to smoke too much already.”
“All right then, you ask me your questions and I bat my eyes and tell you I know nothing.”
“Nice place you got here.” I needed to change gears. Stay in control. I noticed even here inside an expensive home that the room, though cool, seemed marshy. I saw magazines that must have been exposed to the outside sitting on a counter curled into rolls and fat with wet swelling.
“Yeah, I’m a kept woman.”
“Kept? Really? I didn’t know anybody still did that.”
“Yes. Find any butch dumb enough and rich enough and a girl can have everything and great sex too.” Max inhaled on her cigarette slowly and deeply, stretching as she exhaled.
“How fortunate for you,” I said woodenly. “I sure can’t think of anything else to do with you.”
“Oh, so you’ve thought of it?” Max said, all satin.
“Isn’t that arrangement sexist? And archaic?” I didn’t care if it was or not. I just wanted to keep talking.
“Tell that to this.” Max opened the top of her robe to reveal two large scoops of breast barely sheathed in a black lace bra between which lay a diamond and emerald necklace, winking lasciviously. Max closed the robe again, clutching the neck as if she were a prude schoolmarm.
“So what does a girl like you have to do to get a cubic zirconia bauble like that?” I grinned, baiting her.
“I’m sure CZ is all you’re familiar with,” Max said. “Why, all I had to do was smile.” To prove it, Max smiled.
I rolled my eyes. “Bitch musta been outta her fuckin’ mind,” I muttered.
“Butches are easy. Even easier than men. Remember how easy butches are?” Max said, laughing genuinely, making her one and only reference to our previous meeting at the bar. She then inhaled so her chest lifted and the rosy curved tops of her cleavage were visible for a few seconds.
“I imagine the butch who would cough up for that would extract a mighty high payoff.”
“Yes, why don’t you imagine that?” Max stretched her toes. “What else can you imagine?” She tipped a grin to me.
I bent and retied a shoelace. Then I cleaned a smudge from my shoe with a wet thumb. I shook my trousers as if they’d picked up dust and I stroked my damp scalp. All devices to betray the evidence of my imagining. Sure, I imagined it; I imagined it all: Max’s legs wrapped around me, urging me on, faster, faster, harder, harder, Max’s breasts bouncing like punching balls as I made Max beg me, as I made Max contort like a monkey, as I grabbed fists full of Max’s hair and Max straightened and curved like an archer’s bow. I imagined the wet gliding, the slipping and sliding, Max’s full white bottom pink, her nipples hot and puckered, her mouth dusky and calling out to me, please, please, please more. I imagined every muscle in that lush body taut, reaching for me, for what I could do. I saw Max laid out before me, frosted with sweat and glistening, the entire naked whole of her, Max’s belly completely exposed and poised for me to do as I wished. I saw Max quivering and trembling and panting and growling and finally… No, not yet. Not quite yet.
I checked my watch and turned the ring I wore round and round my finger. I cleared my throat again and said acidly, “I’m just disappointed that a strong, liberated woman would prefer this sort of arrangement.” Dumb, but when lacking any words, falling back on righteous feminist outrage always worked.
“Where are you from, 1979? Lesbians as a collective are experiencing a new wealth. And with new wealth, the dykes who are collectors collect bigger and bigger treasures.”
“So that makes you a ho—”
“ Trophy, ” Max corrected, her eyes snapping. “Believe it or not, it’s a full-time job. Shopping, getting my hair done, getting my nails done, facials, massages, waxing, plucking, working out, getting made up and dressed up, it’s exhausting.” Max turned and laid on her hip, facing me. “And that’s just the behind-the-scenes work before the job really begins.”
“I’m sure,” I said dryly. “So you can do this, what else can you do?”
Max licked her lips and made her answer heavy. “Nothing.”
“Ohh, your life is so hard, I bet you’d trade it all in for a doctorate of your own.”
Max’s laugh was like the tinkle of ice in a glass of gin and tonic. “Don’t be silly. Skilled femmes get everything in the end.”
I shifted impatiently. Watching Max suck luxuriously on her cigarette was almost unbearable. Time to ask the hard questions and get out of here. Get some fresh air. Pull it into her lungs like a drowning woman finally breaking the surface. It would be good enough to just get some Max-free air. Who was I kidding? I would run to the bar and decompress with a pitcher of beer and a binge of cigarettes. I would nick a bright red cherry out of the garnish tray. Then I would exorcise Max with that cherry I would crush between my teeth. I would enjoy the smashing, feeling the pop. Feeling it burst as I bit down. Grinding the soft flesh to pulp and feeling the slippery fruit slide down my throat and tasting the lingering sweetness. To be drunk. Seeing Max twirl a lock of her hair as she stared at me, I realized there weren’t enough cherries in the world.
“Did you know Michelle?” I asked roughly. Get out fast.
“Only briefly.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I had an affair with her long ago.”
“An affair?”
“Yes, we slept together once.”
I continued before my mind could wander. “Only once?”
“Yes, you know, sometimes you need someone.” Max folded herself in half and rested the side of her face on her shin. “But you only need her for the night.” She blew smoke and blinked. “You know what I mean?”
“Michelle doesn’t seem like your type. Isn’t she a little…soft and feminine?” I reached over and cupped Max’s chin playfully. Max sneered and jerked her chin away.
“You don’t know me,” she sniffed.
I smiled all the way to my toes. “Oh, but I do. Whatever happened, you two never slept together,” I said and let it drop. “Then why is everyone in town saying you knew—”
Max shrugged, but her eyes glittered angrily. “Everybody,” she snorted. “Who? Two people? Three? Lesbians can be vindictive, Nora.” My name crawled out of Max’s mouth like a pornographic picture. “What do you think of our petty little Tulsa community so far?”
“It was like meeting an angry bear. I just played dead and prayed,” I answered.
Max laughed. “So you see what I mean.”
I nodded. My breakup with Michelle had been cataclysmically ugly. I shuddered just remembering it. It had been like a small personal disaster.
“So you
really don’t know anything.” I shrugged.
“Nope.” Max grinned. “Just a kept woman, sheltered and pampered and utterly naïve.”
“Oh, please.” I stood, ending the interview and dismissing Max’s preposterous remark. Without a further word, I strode to the cigarette box and snapped it open. In a split second, I closed my eyes and was lost in fantasy. Legs sliding apart under my commanding black hands, creamy, magnolia white skin yielding under my grip. Max’s curly tangle of auburn pubic hair offered up in supplication. Please, Nora, please. Open me. Spread me apart, explore me. I am Braille, I am your food, I am your water. Pull my lips apart ever so slowly. Where do your fingers fit? What if you put your mouth on me? Red on red. Can you fit inside? All of you? Let my cunt suck all of you in and hold you there, your entire body, until I am satisfied. Tell me about myself. What can you do with me? What will you do to me? And when, when, when, when? I opened my eyes and took two cigarettes and put one in my pocket and the other I perched unlit on my lower lip. “No one keeps anything from me that I really want,” I growled. I snapped my thumbnail over a match head and it obediently burst into flame. I lit the cigarette. Max lowered her eyes and smiled. Then Max stood, preparing to see me out.
Suddenly, I pinned Max to the wall, my cigarette smoking itself in my hand. I pressed with my weight and stretched to my full height. Max let out a tiny gasp of surprise. “You move just like a panther,” Max whispered. I stared down at Max with smug satisfaction. I brushed a curly red tendril of hair from her face.
“Say you don’t want it. Look at me and say it, ” I hissed, passion forcing the words into Max’s ear.
Max looked up very slowly. She seemed to be struggling to veil the snapping fire in her eyes. Finally, she tilted her mouth and said, “I don’t want it.”
I laughed. I could feel Max’s curves through our clothes. I leaned down again and spoke to Max’s collarbone. “Keep saying that over and over. Maybe you’ll convince one of us.” Then I stepped back, regarding Max, looking for the crack, but there was none. Triumph and defiance mingled in her manner as I replaced the cigarette in my mouth. Max watched all of this silently, absorbing all, revealing nothing.
We talked as we walked to the front door.
“But perhaps those people you spoke to wanted us to meet.” Max’s tongue trembled at the corner of her mouth. Its seductive pinkness…its shining wetness… “For numbskull reasons of their own. But then we hit it off…and we—”
I shook my head. “I don’t need any more trouble.”
Max approached, desire rising from her robe in hypnotizing waves. “No trouble at all.” Her voice was smoky and swirly.
I jerked open the door, surprised at my own force, and pushed it into Max.
Max just smiled, her eyes dark and twinkling. “Kissing a black man is just like falling face first into a velvet pillow. I wonder if kissing a black woman is the same?”
Max’s lower lip hung open, and to me, it looked like a dewy slice of peach. I gripped the doorknob and walked out, after first leaning into Max and whispering, “You’ll never find out. I came here for nothing. ” Then I slammed the door without meaning to. I looked back and saw Max watching from the window, her robe untied and open, exposing her bra and black panties. Perspiration pooling in all my hollows and creases, I got in my car and before I drove away, I looked again at the house. Max was gone. Because of her absence from the window, I had to clench my fists to keep from returning at a run. But I was angry. And upset. Angry because Max hadn’t offered me the simple relief of a cigarette. Upset because I knew that if I succumbed, this Max would be no casual piece of ass. She would be a wild ride. The kind of ride that you know is dangerous but you get on anyway thinking you have the guts and the strength to do it and when you get off, you’re changed. Maybe weaker, maybe stronger, maybe destroyed completely, you’re different than the you that climbed on with such a gaming spirit.
Before I backed out of the driveway, I had to wait for pedestrians to pass. A group of white women out late. I watched them in the rearview. I shook my head noticing their butts. Oh, how I despised anemic, flat asses. I hated when Michelle would put on clothes and ask, does this make my butt look big? I always wanted Michelle’s butt to look big. To say no to a woman asking that question was an insult. An insult enough to mean that that woman was sexless with no juice, life, or appeal. Women should fatten their asses and parade their succulence proudly. I would personally guarantee that such an action would result in more and better sex. Women should always want the answer to her butt looking big to be a resounding yes! Then, a tumble into bed. I glanced again at the house where that round, ample fruit of an ass still called to me.
I drove down the one-way street and when I was sure Max couldn’t see, I put the car in park, pulled the emergency brake, and turned off the lights. I gripped the steering wheel like a life preserver, relishing the ice cold air blasting into my face from the air conditioner, and I breathed deeply for several minutes. Ducks quacked on the lake as they floated in the darkness. I considered slipping a hand into my trousers for some relief, but something told me that I needed a sharp edge for this business. So I concentrated on my breathing and banishing Max from my mind. How could Max have gotten to me? It’s not like pussy had just been invented.
After perhaps twenty minutes, I was ready to leave. Just as I was reaching for the lights, something caught my eye across the lake at Max’s house. With the landscape lights in her yard, I could see her garage door opening. Then headlights. Next, a car pulled from Max’s garage onto the one-way street and started to slowly coast its way around the lake toward me to leave. I ducked out of sight. As the car passed, I caught a glimpse. It was Michelle’s car. I was sick of these mysteries already and decided to follow it.
Chapter Eight
The driver was a lone black female. Following, I kept what I hoped was a safe distance. I had never tailed anyone. We drove and drove through deserted streets. The prettiness of the town evaporated, grew industrial, then abandoned, then ugly.
At last, the woman parked at Tisdale’s Barbecue, a quaint white bungalow with big windows and hand-painted signs. It was open until three a.m. when things around here must really jump. I pulled into the gravel parking lot of the tiny A-frame bar next to Tisdale’s. Then I walked toward the barbecue place, suddenly feeling queasy and scared. What if there was real danger here? I shrugged. All would unfold in due time.
*
“If a nigga could just get a motherfuckin’ breath!” I shouted, leaning on the car for support, filling my chest with soaked air. I pictured my lungs blooming with mold, my armpits growing slidy with moss, tadpoles burping out of my mouth, my skin dripping saltwater. When I felt calmer, I lit a cigarette. The air was drier when I smoked.
I imagined lying on my back, Max’s ample weight pressing me flat as Max straddled my eager face. I looked into the seed of heaven and strained to reach it. Max teased me, remaining out of reach as I got madder…
Compelled by my impulsive nature, I entered Tisdale’s and was embraced by warmth and the savory smells of wood smoke, tender, juicy meat, and sweet, spicy sauce. There were several busy, loud groups, laughing and eating, enjoying their glorious mess. The woman I followed sat alone in a corner, eating ribs. I stepped up to the counter and ordered the same.
“Sweet or sour?” the enormous woman behind the counter drawled. She was the color of milk chocolate and had beautiful glossy skin that was clear and shiny with oil. She wore a head rag and a stained white apron.
“Sweet or sour what?” I asked uncomfortably. This was the first time I had been anywhere in the South and also the first time I had ever had what I suspected to be authentic barbecue. I felt the woman in the corner staring at her.
“Sauce,” the counter woman answered.
“Sweet.”
“It’s mighty hot.” The woman eyed me, full of doubt.
I regained some composure and smiled seductively. “Just the way I like it. Hot and sweet.”
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“Uh-huh.” The woman rolled her eyes and took my money. “No refunds. I’ll bring it when it’s done. Have a seat.”
I walked over to the person I had tailed and asked if I could sit with her. She let her eyes wander pointedly over the two empty tables nearby, then back to me. I resisted any explanation and just stood silently. At last, the woman shrugged and shoved a chair out with her foot. With a nod of thanks, I sat. The woman picked up another rib with both hands.
“I’m Nora Delaney.” I gave my power smile.
The woman let go of her rib with one hand and without wiping it, she stuck it out for me to shake as she growled, “Sloane.”
I shook her sticky, greasy hand briskly. Sloane had big muscular mitts thick with yellow calluses on the palms. I swallowed, just slightly uncomfortable. I remembered taking dates to Ethiopian restaurants in LA so I could check out their hands. Ethiopian food came without any utensils, so I was free to observe my dates’ style and grace as they ate. This woman’s hands told me: caution.
“Sloane Weatherly?” I asked.
“Yep.”
“I’ve heard of you from a couple of people.”
Sloane looked up, grinning unpleasantly. “Ah, my reputation precedes me.”
I laughed, unable to relax. Usually, I was the intimidating one, the strongest one, the predator…in my game, in my job, in my love life. But this bulky-bodied butch was a little scary. She was built like a fireplug and every ounce was muscle. The way her shoulders bunched over her plate, Sloane reminded me of a grizzly devouring a salmon. I was solidly muscular too, but I felt like a toothpick in comparison.
“Places are open later here than I would’ve expected. I thought you’d roll up the sidewalks at six,” I said, attempting humor.
Sloane studied me without blinking. “We only leave open the places we need. The absolute essentials. ”
“Here’s your dinner.” The counter woman set a tray of ribs and sauce, coleslaw, potato salad, white bread and butter, whole jalapenos, a slice of raisin pie, and a strawberry soda on the table. “Enjoy.”