Genevieve

by Eric Jerome Dickey

  There are no Starbucks with cappuccino and wireless connection, no Jamba Juice to get my daily shots of wheatgrass, no Baja Grill to get a broiled chicken burrito.

  This is the end of civilization as I know it.

  I smell her on my hands. She saturates my pores and my consciousness.

  Bubba Smith keeps talking, “You hear that Tim Burton is remaking Willy Wonka?”

  “Who?”

  “Tim Burton. Did that Edward Scissorhands movie. Loved that movie. He’s doing another Willy Wonka movie, remaking it with that Depp fella being Willy Wonka this time.”

  I force my mind to not drift, make myself say, “Hadn’t heard.”

  “With that Johnny Depp. I likes him. Good actor. Was in that Edward Scissorhands movie. Heard that Gene Wilder was making a cameo in Willy Wonka. Can’t wait for that one.”

  Across the street sits Frog’s Ink House, the word tattoo across its roof in huge black letters, as if they want every passing plane or helicopter to know this is the spot to get inked.

  Kenya remains on my mind. Her scent rises from my skin. Feel her tattoos under the tips of my fingers. The provocative words that were on her T-shirt moan and orgasm in my ear. The way she looked at me the moment we met. That wicked smile. And that hidden U-Haul.

  My mind pulled me back to continental breakfast at seven this morning, while Genevieve was still asleep. I stepped off the elevator and saw Kenya there. Her hair was in one single braid. Long pink floral skirt with blue flowers, matching necklace, black high-heeled shoes that made her taller, leaner, made her have an apple bottom. Her skirt had a lace opening at the knees, an opening that continued to display skin to mid-shin, showed off her long legs. Her skin glistened. She had herself together, looked more stunning than her zed card, not worn like she was last night, but like the model she wanted to become. Her goddess heels gave her height, added three inches to her five-eleven frame, more definition to her backside.

  She saw me looking her way and smiled, came over to me.

  She laughed.

  I smiled.

  Just like that we were in sync.

  There was enough erotic chemistry to drown a nation.

  While we filled up plates with fruit and croissants we talked about the weather, my eyes transfixed on her mouth, watching the way her tongue ring moved and clacked against her teeth.

  I said, “Your tongue ring, did that hurt?”

  “Considering what I can do with it, it was worth the pain.”

  That changed the temperature, set the tone. Simple conversation was destined to be more than simple conversation. I stared at her and knew that I was ill equipped for any kind of conversation with a woman like her, someone who had an absence of inhibition and propriety on any level. I loathed her as I inhaled, admired her as I exhaled. Loathed her because I didn’t understand the recipe, what it took to get a woman to behave like her, how to bottle what she had. Loathed her because she had a freedom that I wished Genevieve possessed.

  She said, “I have one more piercing.”

  “Where?”

  “Curious to see?”

  She smiled and walked away, went to the beverages, picked up a cup of orange juice.

  Her eyes invited me to follow her. I found my way to where she was.

  “Genevieve wasn’t too happy about your tattoos.”

  “I noticed. I have two tattoos you can’t see.”

  “I’m scared to ask what you have hidden. Okay, what?”

  “Let’s see. I have a colorful tattoo of a Christmas tree on the right side of my pussy. And I have a tattoo of turkey and dressing on the left side of my pussy. You know why?”

  I asked, “Why?”

  She leaned in closer, coyly slanting her head, lowering her voice, then staring intently into my eyes. “Because the best eating is between Thanksgiving and Christmas.”

  She walked away, her Pickwickian smile leading her sashay, looking back to see if I was pursuing her tattoos and body piercings. She headed down a hallway, away from the elevator. I caught up with Kenya, took her arm and led her inside an empty conference room filled with more aristocratic furniture and books from the era of Gone With the Wind. I expected her to try and get away, call off her bluff. Or to snap at me because of the abrupt way I took her arm. She didn’t. As soon as the door closed, she stood in front of me. Nothing was said. Not for a moment. Her hand touched my face, rubbed down my neck, to my chest, toyed with the hair on my flesh.

  My hand traced from her neck up to her jet-black hair. Her face felt so soft in my hands. I touched her cheek, felt her warm skin. My hand moved across her lips, down her neck, to her breasts. She closed her eyes, closed her eyes and sighed, trembled, inhaled, and sucked in her bottom lip, the thing a woman did when she was swallowing emotion, eating her own desires.

  Kenya asked, “What are we doing?”

  “This is wrong.”

  Kenya didn’t pull away, didn’t stop touching my face, my neck. She knew her power over men, I saw it in her eyes, a feminine supremacy she had grown accustomed to, a control she relished and still downplayed with a simple turn of her lips, a movement that created innocence.

  I told her, “We. Need. To stop.”

  She nodded. “You are Sister’s husband.”

  “And you are my wife’s sister.”

  She leaned and brought her lips to mine, moved in slow motion, put her lips to my lips, eased her tongue inside my mouth, gave me her tongue ring, and our tongues danced and danced and danced, danced until her hands began to wander and touch and feel and explore the length and girth, until I wanted to explore her insides. She moaned. She sighed. She gave me all the sounds I longed to hear. Sensual sounds, a song of promise. We did that until pleasure felt inevitable, until kisses tasted and felt like hot honey, until nature’s lotion begged to flow.

  Voices were in the hallway, loud enough to kill our momentum.

  We backed away.

  My erection was as obvious as the hardness of her nipples.

  Without taking her eyes off me she moved to the other side of the room, her fingers first caressing her breasts, her nipples, then touching things as she passed. She cleared her throat.

  Her coy smile. Her gray eyes. Her tongue ring.

  She asked, “How did you meet LaKeisha?”

  I almost stammered. “Genevieve.”

  “Whatever.” Her voice remained a soft whisper. “How did you meet Sister?”

  I took a hard breath, readjusted to this new mood, told her we met over the ‘net, were invited to a speed-dating service, one where a group of professionals who were either too busy to date, or had no dating skills congregated and gave each other three minutes to impress.

  She asked, “How does something like that work?”

  I told her. A dark room with candles and wine. Soft jazz. Sensual setting at a mansion in Bel-Air. Everyone dressed in black, a few men in tuxedos. Women were at tables. A bell rang. The men changed tables, went to the next woman. Three minutes. Bell rang. , Men moved on to the next table. At the end of the evening you filled out forms, checked boxes, who you wanted to get to know better, and if they felt the same, then information was passed on.

  What was good about that evening was that you had an idea of who you were sitting across from. People who were not into infidelity, lowering their partner’s self-esteem, people who were financially responsible, had at least a bachelor’s degree, and no children.

  A thousand dollars bought you the illusion of being on a level playing field.

  That night I asked Genevieve what else she wanted to tell me about herself. She said “Nothing.” She was a private person. I was the same. We both smiled at that. For me that was good enough. Maybe even perfect. Over the last few years I’d dated women who were divorced and all they talked about was their bad marriages and what bastards their exes were. I’d dated women who had children and all they talked about was their kids.

  It was just us. No families. Like Adam and Eve.

  Ke
nya said, “Three minutes.”

  “Yup.”

  “Love at first sight?”

  I smiled a weak smile. “Fools rush in.”

  Then I moved across the room, stood near her, close enough to smell her perfume. She moved closer to me in response.

  She said, “So you don’t have to belabor the point if it’s not going your way.”

  “Belabor?”

  “The three-minute thing.”

  “Yeah, guess so.”

  “Sounds very efficient,” Kenya said with a twisted smile. “Like Sister.”

  “She is. Everything in her life is planned.”

  “You?”

  “I’m the disorganized one. I throw darts at a board. She maps her life out.”

  Kenya raised a brow. “Don’t tell me that she still writes everything on big cardboard.”

  “It’s more sophisticated than cardboard.”

  “Good Lord.”

  “She will be the next Oprah.”

  Kenya shakes her head. “You don’t want that.”

  “Why not?”

  “If she becomes an Oprah, heaven forbid, then you’ve got the slow Stedmanization of your manhood, which could be your worst nightmare.”

  “Stedmanization?”

  “Eric Benet was Stedmanized by Halle Berry. Ben Affleck would’ve been Stedmanized by J. Lo. That was why he bailed. Now Marc Anthony is with J. Lo and about to be Stedmanized. No man should ever want to exist in a woman’s shadow.”

  I said, “Well, there goes your invitation to The Oprah Winfrey Show.”

  She laughed a soft laugh, her voice again like the whispering of girls. “You’re kind of funny, you know that? Cute and funny.”

  I asked, “How did you get to Stedmanization from three-minute dating?”

  “Be honest. Was that three-minute dating thing… did you like that shit?”

  “Yep. Much better than taking a woman to dinner then finding out she has three kids and an ex-husband, listening to her babble about a job she hates, delinquent child support, and an ongoing custody battle from appetizer to entree to dessert.”

  “I have at least twenty-one questions that I always ask a man.”

  “Is that right? Like what?”

  “Hmmm. Are you looking to be sexually involved exclusively, when was the last time you had sex, family plans, last time you had sex, have kids, want kids, have a baby momma, got baby momma drama, if you have a baby momma are you still having sex with her, ever been to prison, been fucked in the ass, do you fuck men in the ass, do you fantasize about fucking a man in the ass or letting a man fuck you in the ass, when was the last time you had sex, stuff like that.”

  “So you have a list. You make lists.”

  “Not like Sister.”

  “A list is a list.”

  “Deuce was… guess if he slept with that ugly shit, he was sleeping with everybody.”

  I didn’t say anything. Her abrupt bitterness shut me down.

  She shook her head. “Three-minute dating.”

  And just like that her bitterness went dry, its faucet turned off.

  It surprised me that Kenya took all that in without any hard questions, just nodded in a way that said that what I’d told her didn’t surprise her, that it sounded like the sister she knew, the one who was efficient, her life mapped out and posted on a wall facing the rising sun.

  Kenya asked, “You ever wonder about love?”

  “What you mean?”

  “Love. Why does it come? Why does it go away?”

  I shrugged. “For some of us love comes into the room, kicks her shoes off, finds the most comfortable sofa, and lies down, rests, has no intention of going anywhere. For others love walks in smoking a cigarette, checking her watch every two seconds, jittery, with one hand on the doorknob, heart rate up, always in sprinter’s position, ready to run.”

  “You sound like a professor.”

  “Is that a bad thing?”

  “Not at all. Just sounds like you’re a smart man.”

  “You came up with Stedmanization and now you’re calling me smart?”

  She laughed.

  I said, “I’m trying to figure it all out. I have more questions than answers. Not smart.”

  “AIDS research?” Kenya smiled. “A smart man.”

  “What happened between you and your fiance?”

  That stalled her. Any happiness she had drained away. “Don’t know. Time, I guess.”

  “Time messes us all up. Forces us to change, to evolve. If you ask me, the problem is we evolve. We change. If only we could stay where we were. Inside that moment of bliss.”

  “Yeah, that would be cool.” She sighed. “I’ve seen my friend’s relationships crash and burn. They all start off so nice. Then everything seems to go bad. Mortgage. This. That.”

  “Normal things do us in. Maybe we don’t evolve, maybe we digress.”

  “You’re confusing me.”

  “I’m confused.” I shrugged. “Trying to think it out. Trying to make sense of it all.”

  “Of all what?”

  “Of life. Of the things I feel. Of my own desires. Of myself. Why I feel restless at times.”

  “So, that’s it.” She nodded like she understood. “The bottom line is that we change.”

  “Without a doubt. We get lost in a maze.”

  “Okay, since you’re the smart one, how do we not get lost in the maze?”

  “Shit, the question is if we get lost, how do we find our way back home?”

  I saw it in her eyes. There was an undeniable energy between us the moment we met. I licked my lips and sighed. She parted her lips, made her tongue ring dance a sensual dance. Staring at her was like spending an idyllic vacation in the tropical South Pacific.

  I told her, “Your skin is beautiful.”

  “Have Choctaw in my blood. Lot of us do. This used to be part of the Choctaw Nation. Creek and Cherokee were in this part of the country too. Until the government rounded up all the Native Americans and forced them to move west to Oklahoma.”

  “Didn’t know that.”

  “Don’t tell me that you don’t know Sister is part Choctaw?”

  “I know that. Just didn’t know this was part of the Choctaw Nation.”

  “I see some Native American in your features. See it in your skin tone too.”

  I nodded. “My great-grandmother. My mother’s grandmother. She was buried on Seminole sacred ground in Brackettville, Texas. I don’t know a lot about her, just saw pictures. She didn’t talk about her Indian heritage. She had bad experiences as a child.”

  “We’re black, part Choctaw, part Cherokee, some Irish from what I hear. Part of our family is white. Pasty skin with red hair and green eyes. The South is a mixed bag of tricks.”

  I said, “Sounds like your relatives cross-pollinated more than flies in Mendel’s lab.”

  She smiled. She had no idea what I meant, but she smiled. I stared into her gray eyes and science fluttered through my mind, theories on splitting and blending, chromosomes. When two plants bred, the variations of their traits were combined. I shifted, stopped studying her, ceased considering what was dominant and recessive, quickly shut that analytical part of my brain down.

  She softened her voice and asked, “Can we stop bullshitting now?”

  “Yes.”

  She said, “I really want to kiss you again.”

  “Do you?”

  “That kiss was like a double shot of espresso.”

  “Was it?”

  “Don’t act like you don’t know. Surprised me.”

  “Did I?”

  “Had my clit doing the Harlem Shake.”

  “You had me at hello.”

  She paused. “In my room.”

  “Sure you want me to come down there?”

  “Might show you my other piercing.”

  “Where is it?”

  She winked. “Guess.”

  “Did that hurt?”

  “Trust me. It was worth
it. Every time I cross my legs I get closer to heaven.”