by Kennedy Ryan
“Well, you heard her guys.” I sign another hat and sigh. “I gotta shut it down. She’s leaving me.”
“I’d shut shit down, too, for that,” a guy standing halfway between Lotus and me says, eyes crawling over every inch of her exposed skin. I want to get her out of here.
“Excuse me,” I say, pushing through the crowd after I sign one last autograph. She could meet me halfway, but does she? No, just stands still in the crowd like a daffodil planted in the middle of a traffic jam, waiting for me to reach her. Once I do, I step as close as I possibly can without touching her so she has to tip her head all the way back to meet my eyes. Our gazes lock and don’t let go. The steam rising between us has nothing to do with the ninety-five-degree weather. I draw a shallow, Lotus-scented breath.
“You’re smelling me again?” she asks, a smile tilting the corners of her eyes like a sly cat.
I allow a twitch of my lips. “Where were you going? You were leaving without seeing me?”
“No.” Our eyes hold for a second while I wait for her next words. “It’s a lot of people. I was just gonna sit on the side.”
“Oh, thanks for waiting.”
I push her hair back from her face, and trace the gold studs following the curve of her ear with my index finger. She shivers.
“You cold?” I ask, suppressing a smile.
She drops her lashes and hides her eyes. “Freezing.”
One skinny strap of her jumper droops from the curve of her shoulder, baring her collarbone so I can read the script I couldn’t make out the night of the yacht party.
“You are altogether beautiful,” I read and pass my thumb along the script marking the fragile bone. “A little reminder in case we all forgot how pretty you are?”
Her smile flickers off and then back on. “My great-grandmother used to say it to me when I was a little girl. It’s from the Song of Solomon.”
I have twenty follow-up questions for everything I learn about this woman, and I can’t ask any of them in this crowd. I reach for her hand and interlock our fingers, checking her expression for any objection. There is none.
“Let’s get out of here,” I say.
She nods and tightens her small fingers around mine. “Let’s do it.”
“You hungry?” I ask, and we walk in the direction of the lot where I left my car.
“I am.”
“It’d be a shame if we came to Harlem and didn’t eat at Sylvia’s. Have you eaten there before?”
“You know, I haven’t.” She tosses me a grin. “But I’d like to.”
The organizers kept our cars under watch during the event, so I retrieve my keys and we walk over to the truck I bought last week.
“What is this?” Lotus asks, walking slowly around the shiny silver–gray chrome beast.
“It’s Lamborghini’s SUV, the Urus,” I say, opening the passenger door for her. “You like it?”
“I guess.” She shrugs like she rides in two-hundred-thousand-dollar trucks every day. “I’m not really a car person. I take the train everywhere.”
“A true New Yorker then.” I check for traffic and pull out into the street.
“No, definitely not.” She laughs. “But I’ve adapted.”
“You’re from New Orleans like Iris, right?”
She’s quiet for a moment, and I glance over at her. Where you’re from seems like an innocuous enough question, but a shadow passes over her face. “The first part of my childhood was in New Orleans. In the ninth ward, yeah,” she confirms. “But then I went to live with MiMi on the Bayou in this little parish where they spoke French more than English.”
“You learned it?”
“Yeah, MiMi spoke French a lot so I kinda had to pick it up. Came in handy with JP.”
“You like working for him?”
“I do, but I know I’ll do something else someday.”
“Like what?”
“I’m not sure.” She leans back into the luxurious leather seat. “I love my job, but I also have this podcast called gLO Up that’s starting to get sponsors and gain a following. Or I might branch out with some specialty like lingerie or accessories. Who knows? I don’t have to know everything about where I’m going tomorrow to enjoy today, so I just take it as it comes.”
“I’m a planner,” I tell her, negotiating the Harlem streets. “I always have things mapped out, and I usually follow that course meticulously.”
“Sounds like you don’t leave much room for the unexpected,” she says, turning slightly in her seat to study me while I’m driving.
“That might be true, but when I do, I know it’s the right thing. That it’s worth going off-road for. I told you I knew I was going to law school and one day, hoped to be a judge like my father. The NBA was the biggest re-route of my life, but I don’t regret it.”
Lotus is one of the most unexpected things I’ve encountered. The day she walked into that hospital room, I wasn’t looking for anything with another woman. I was standing up to my neck in the mess Bridget had made of our lives, and was ready to put every woman in the booty-call category indefinitely. It took the space of a heartbeat, a look, and I knew there was something different about Lotus. Off-road? Shit, I was rubbernecking to get another look at her. I was turning the wheel to circle back before I even realized it.
“I think I have what I like to call informed spontaneity,” she says, pulling a knee to her chest.
“Okay. I’ll bite. What the hell is that?”
“I have a great gut for the risks I should take. Like when I met JP. I was attending Spelman and was planning to finish my business degree and maybe one day do something with fashion. It was safer, but when JP asked me to come work for him in New York, I just knew it was right. I jumped.”
She laughs and glances out the window to take in Harlem, history and hip spliced together, the iconic Apollo Theater sandwiched between Red Lobster and Banana Republic.
“Iris thought I was crazy,” she continues, her words losing their levity. “We fought and didn’t speak for a while. Not just because of that, but . . .”
She rubs the band on the ring finger of her left hand.
“Anyway.” She shakes her head like she’s casting off unpleasant memories. “It wasn’t for very long. Nothing comes between us for long, not even each other.”
“You and Iris have always been close?”
“Yeah,” she says. “She’s about a year older and we’re cousins, but have always been more like sisters. I think of Sarai as my niece.”
That reminds me of something odd and awkward I need to ask her. I can’t not ask her about this, but I’ll wait until we’ve parked and are settled in the restaurant.
“Mr. Ross,” the Sylvia’s hostess greets me warmly. “Welcome.”
It used to disconcert me when people I didn’t know already knew me.
“Hi.” I smile, polite and to the point. “Got a table for two?”
“Of course.” She bites her lip and glances up at me almost bashfully. I know this look. The I reaaaaally want to ask for an autograph, but I won’t look.
She seats us in an out-of-the-way booth, for which I’m appreciative. I’m not one of those guys who can’t leave the house without being mobbed, but my height makes people look twice. And on that second look, many of them recognize me. I don’t want a lot of attention on my first date with Lotus.
Is this a date?
Are we still just friends?
Was it ever simple?
I decide not to define it, but to just enjoy it. To enjoy her.
I stick to water and Lotus orders one of Sylvia’s signature Bloody Marys with Ketel One and triple-strength hot sauce. She takes a sip and hisses. “Ahhh. That’s got a kick.”
“What are you getting?” I ask, scanning the menu for anything that fits my regimen. My options are pretty limited.
“I thought about the chicken and waffles, but I think I’ll get shrimp and grits.” She sets the menu down, her smile a little wistful. “Maybe I’m
missing home.”
“You ate that a lot in Louisiana?”
“Yeah. I’ve never tasted it better than MiMi’s. And her étouffée was delicious, too. Really everything she cooked was the best.”
“New Orleans is a fascinating place,” I say, thinking this might be a good segue into the awkward question I need to ask.
“There’s no place like it.” She gives me a sudden grin. “You’d love all the jazz. Have you ever seen the second line?”
“Second line?”
“Like the funeral marches with the jazz bands?”
“On television or whatever. Not in real life.”
“In voodoo, they celebrate after death to please the spirits who protect the dead.” She stares at me as if waiting for something, and for a moment, I wonder if she already knows what I want to ask.
“Can I ask you something that might be a little . . .” I search for the right word, but for what I want to ask, I’m not sure there is one. “. . . awkward?”
“More awkward than kissing me for the first time in front of all my friends at a party?”
An unrepentant grin kicks up one side of my mouth. “About the same level of awkward.”
“Oh, okay. Then go for it.”
I reach across the table and take her hand. Her glance bounces from our linked hands to my face and back again.
“I get these, I think.” I touch the three fingers adorned with tattoos of the moon in various phases, and then caress the band on her ring finger. “But I wanted to ask about this.”
Her fingers clench in my hand, and the look she slants up at me is sharp, alert. She doesn’t voice permission, but nods for me to go on.
“You remember when we saw each other a few months ago at that Christmas party?” I ask. “You were with Iris and August, and brought Chase with you.”
I hate even mentioning that guy’s name, but he said something that leads to my question.
“I remember,” she replies, her eyes steady on my face.
“You gave Sarai a ring you made that resembled this one, and the one Iris wears. What’s their significance?”
She watches me for a few seconds without speaking, probably suspecting that my follow-up question is even more awkward. “My great-grandmother MiMi,” she says. “Mine and Iris’s, made one for me and one for Iris. It’s a gris-gris ring, like a talisman for protection. I never take it off.”
“Okay, and that night Chase said it was somehow connected to voodoo?” I leave the question open-ended for her to explain as much as she’s willing to share.
“Chase always runs his mouth about things he needs to be quiet on,” she replies, stirring a straw in her Bloody Mary. “Gris gris is a voodoo practice. Amulets, jewelry that invoke protection for the people who wear them. MiMi made them, along with potions and herbs and other things to help people when they had problems.”
I frown, trying to assimilate the information into something that makes sense. “So she was . . .” I clear my throat, not sure if I want to hear her answer. “What did she do? What was she?”
“She was a voodoo priestess, Kenan.”
Lotus may as well have said her great-grandmother was an alien who immigrated from Neptune. I wait for her to say she’s joking. Gotcha. Psych.
“Lotus, what does that even mean?”
She looks at me unblinkingly. “Many of the women in my family practiced voodoo.”
“You mean like during slavery or—”
“MiMi was the last one who practiced, and she only passed away two years ago. That was her livelihood.”
My smile dies off. I’m not sure how to approach this. Lotus looks perfectly serious. “Do you practice voodoo?”
“Practice is a strong word.”
“Uh, no. Voodoo is a strong word. I mean, do you actually believe in it?”
She doesn’t answer for a few moments, but twirls a stalk of celery in her drink.
“I decided that wasn’t my path,” she says. “I am who I am, Kenan. I can’t change my blood. There will always be things in my life I can’t explain to other people.”
Her lashes raise to reveal the pride in her eyes. “I feel no need to explain them. I don’t hurt anyone, and I help when I can.”
The server comes to take our orders, but that interruption doesn’t dispel the tension my question introduced, and as soon as she leaves, we resume our fascinating, if slightly odd, discussion.
I search her expression for some clue to this lovely enigma. “So do you believe in spells and potions and stick-pin dolls and—”
“I believe we don’t know everything,” she cuts in. “And I believe there are forces at work bigger than me.”
“Forces at work? Lotus, I know you grew up with these . . . superstitions, but—”
“These superstitions, as you call them, have roots going back to Africa, to Haiti, to people who had nothing to depend on but their faith, whatever form that assumed. That was part of how they survived.”
“Exactly,” I say. “Religion is a cultural coping mechanism. They had nothing to depend on, so they made these constructs to give them something they believed could save them—could improve their lives or guarantee something better when they died.”
Her full lips tighten, then loosen into a tiny smile.
“You don’t believe in an afterlife?” she asks
“I believe in now. It’s the only thing I can see and prove. It’s rational.”
“One man’s rational is another man’s cowardice.”
“You think I’m a coward because I’m not religious?” I ask.
“No, but I think faith, real faith, requires bravery. With every prayer, we risk heartbreak.”
“So prayer and voodoo?” I ask. “How’s that work?”
“People would come see MiMi with their Bibles in one hand, and leave with one of her potions in the other. Voodoo and religion grew up together in Louisiana like kissing cousins, whether it was the Baptists or the Catholics.” She laughs, resting her chin in her hand. “MiMi started and ended every session with prayer.”
“Session?” I rub the back of my neck, not even sure I want to know but asking anyway. “What happened in those sessions?”
Her expression shutters.
“MiMi was the most important person in my life,” she says, her voice stiff and starched. “I won’t expose her to mockery. I want to keep liking you, and I’m not sure I could if you thought of her as foolish or said the wrong thing.”
“Hey.” I put my hand over hers. “I don’t mean to insult your great-grandmother, or your mother, or—”
“MiMi was the last. My mother didn’t practice.” She looks away and toward the door. “Neither did her sister, Iris’s mother. Neither did our grandmother.” Her lips thin and twist with cynicism. “Now they were the ones who really knew how to cast a spell on a man.”
I want to ask, to probe, but Lotus said before there were things she didn’t want to share yet.
“I just need to know you’re not making dolls of me and sticking needles in them or something,” I say to lighten the atmosphere.
A smile dispels her sober expression. “I save the dolls for the really bad guys.”
“I’m not sure if I should laugh, feel reassured, or run for the hills.”
“There’s the door.” She tilts her head toward the entrance. “If you want to run.”
I drag a glance over her wild hair, and sultry eyes, the high, full breasts straining against the sunshine silk, and the lips that beg to be kissed.
“I’ll take my chances,” I finally reply.
She doesn’t answer, but the knowing look she gives me all but says that’s what I thought. The server brings our food, giving me the chance to shift the topic to less dangerous ground.
“That looks good.” I point my fork at her shrimp and grits.
“So does yours.”
I ordered a veggie plate of black-eyed peas, collard greens, and macaroni and cheese.
“You don’t eat meat
?” she asks, scooping the shrimp and grits into her mouth.
“I don’t eat fried meat generally,” I clarify. “And that seems to be their favorite thing here.”
“Well it is soul food,” she says with a laugh. “What’d you expect? Why’d we come here if you don’t eat this stuff?”
“I thought you’d like it, and Sylvia’s is one of those things you should do when you’re in Harlem.”
“I’ll have to take you around Brooklyn some time. You can never do everything in New York. And summers here are my favorite.”
“I’d love to see Brooklyn. I have to go to Philly next week to check on some business interests. Maybe when I get back?”
“Maybe. I wouldn’t want you to think I’m trying to change the conditions of our . . .” The look she sends me is half-teasing, half-earnest. “. . . friendship.”
“Friends do things together.”
“Mmmm,” is her only answer, accompanied by a smile. “So what’s so special about the Rucker?”
I go with her change to a safer subject.
“It’s a proving ground,” I answer. “All the greats go there at some point, some of them playing against local guys who never made it to the NBA, but are as talented as the professionals. If making it was purely based on talent, I certainly wouldn’t be in the NBA. It’s hard work. Staying out of trouble. Understanding the system and working inside of it.”
“Who are some of your favorite players?”’
“The Big O, for sure.”
“I’m a fan of the Big O myself,” she says with a straight face and teasing eyes.
It takes me a second to put that together, and visions of Lotus mid-orgasm make me choke on my black-eyed peas.
“Very funny,” I say, coughing and sipping my water. “But I meant the other Big O, as in Oscar Robertson, the first NBA player to average a triple double.”
“I’m sure he’s great, too.” She shrugs, and that damn strap falls away from her shoulder.
“Why the Song of Solomon?” I ask, nodding to the script tattoo on her collarbone.
“It was MiMi’s favorite. She was a romantic at heart, and the Song of Solomon is one of the most romantic pieces ever written, in the Bible or otherwise.”