“I graduated last May. I’m still trying to decide between medical school and real life.”
He smiled. “Good luck with that. Where did you go?”
“Northwestern. What about you?”
He wondered which one of the many degrees he would own up to having. He even had medical, law and divinity degrees. Like most Dogon-Hunters, over the centuries, he’d found attending classes a good use of daytime. And being in classes gave him a chance to interact warmly with people without really becoming friends.
“UC Berkeley. I have a degree in sociology.”
Actually, he had three degrees in sociology. He found the students in those classes to be more accepting of differences than those in the exact sciences.
“What do you plan to do with it?” she asked.
Nobody had ever asked him that question. He didn’t plan to do anything with any of them.
He’d known what his job was since age sixteen. “I have no plans,” he said.
She heard the sadness in his voice. Why did I ask him that, she wondered? Trying to sound intelligent again.
Nesta knew she was smart, she had the grades to support that belief, but she wasn’t intellectual—that was what Andre said a month ago when he dumped her. When they talked about the war, she talked about mothers losing their sons and daughters and the lies told by the government, but he wanted to talk about ancient land disputes and religions.
He told her opinions were emotional and there was no place for them in his cerebral world. It didn’t matter that her grades were much better than his or even that it had taken him six years to her four for the same degree.
She believed him. His friends did spend a lot of time talking about the reasons behind stuff and making fun of people who cared about pop culture.
“When will you know what you want to do? Ian asked.
“Did my parents ask you to ask me that?”
He laughed. “No, and forget I did. You’re young—there’s no hurry.”
“Thank you!”
He liked her sense of humor. After spending almost two hours looking at her perfect head, he couldn’t wait to see the rest of her.
She had short curly hair, a bold style in the age of hair weaves and extensions. Back in the day, African Americans would have called her hair “good hair,” meaning the kind that was between straight and curly and could grow long—yet she’d cut hers school-boy -short. He liked the confidence of that a lot. One of the bouncy jet black curls looked like it was trying to sneak into her right ear canal, and he wanted to flick it out and twist it around his finger.
He really liked that her skin was brown, not the usual yellow redbone tones found with that kind of hair. He looked at the rearview mirror again. Her eyes were huge, big brown and innocent in a playful way, like maybe she wasn’t as harmless as she appeared.
He wondered if she knew her man had given her a fake diamond. I’d buy you the real thing, little girl.
Stop it, he told himself. If nothing else, Ian believed in fair play, and it wasn’t fair for him to compete with some guy still in his twenties.
He knew he looked the part, but he’d had centuries and a lot of good direction to help him amass a fortune.
Recently he’d read in an article that a lot of woman were asking for fake diamonds because of the blood diamonds still in the market. As an African he could respect and appreciate that.
They were on a busy street with a lot of commerce. He closed his eyes again to block out the innumerable images. It had been so much easier to travel a hundred years ago when there wasn’t so much to besiege his senses. By the time he was transferred from Sao Paulo, he was suffering from headaches because of the constant visual assault.
“I believe this is our motel coming up, Ian. Your assistant said you preferred accommodations with a gym and a Jacuzzi. This one listed a health club and a pool, which was as close as I could get. I hope it’s acceptable.”
He felt a wave of embarrassment sweep his body.
“Rico tends to exaggerate my needs. I’m sure it’s fine.”
His attendant had a tendency to cut corners. Ian over-stressed his needs when speaking to Rico, knowing the young man would often fall short. It was when Rico tried to reinterpret those wishes to others that Ian often found himself shamed by his own words.
“A lot of times I tell Rico I want all that stuff so I can end up in a room that at least has a bed,” he explained, smiling at her reflection.
She smiled. “You manage him?”
“Exactly.”
She stopped the car at the Hampton Inn entrance. “Since I’m the one who gets managed by my mother, excuse me if my feeling go out to Rico.”
She was laughing as she opened the door and exited the car before he could comment.
He examined her as she entered the building. Wow, was his first thought.
Nesta was taller than she looked sitting. She was wearing black stretch jeans over her long legs and a gray hooded sweatshirt that did nothing for her obvious natural assets.
He didn’t want her checking in for him like he was some kind of prima donna, but he didn’t want to end up appearing next to her at the registration counter as if he couldn’t trust her to manage such a simple task either.
He decided he would get a luggage dolly and be waiting next to the car, letting her know he was ready to handle their luggage.
He watched her as she returned to the car. Two guys walked on either side of her, both of them obviously vying for her attention and falling all over their helpful selves. He noted that she moved with a fluid confidence, the kind that came to beautiful women only if they had the mind and personality to match the extraordinary outer package.
His mind returned home, to Mali, and he was again a little boy watching the women in the market place.
She walks like a Malian. His mind hadn’t been home in such a long time, and the mental trip felt good.
When they got close enough to see and assess him, the two guys did an immediate U-turn that looked synchronized. Nesta laughed aloud.
“I think my new friends found you a bit intimidating,” she said, stopping less than two feet in front of him.
She thought about Andre. Would the stranger intimidate Mr. Intellectual?
Had he not been leaning against the car, Ian would have backed up. He wasn’t used to people invading his personal space. He looked down at her feet to see if she was wearing heels. Her shoes were sneakers.
“How tall are you?” he asked.
“Five ten,” she said.
He thought he heard a defensive tone in her answer. “I’m six four. I would have guessed you were about six even.”
“Okay, I might be five ten and a half.”
“Whatever it is, it looks lovely on you.”
“Thank you, and before you ask, I’ve never modeled and I’m not interested in it.”
“Noted.” Apparently her height was a sore spot. Why it would be so in the present day was baffling to him, but he didn’t want to say anything to make her uncomfortable.
“If you’ll be so kind as to open the trunk, I’ll load the luggage,” he told her.
“I just have a garment bag. I doubt if we need a dolly.”
Again he felt weak in her eyes. He had a garment bag and a mid-sized carry-on.
“Okay, no problem. Give me your bag and I’ll take it to the room.”
She froze. “We have two rooms.”
“Yes, of course. I’ll put your bag in your room.”
She opened the trunk and handed him the bags. “They’re rooms 219 and 221. The woman at the desk said it’s closer to walk through the lobby. I’ll park the car.”
He was still standing in the driveway with the bags as she drove away. He felt like he should find the two guys who had walked out with her and form a club. He felt every bit as foolish as they’d looked when they’d made their retreat.
Chapter Three
Carrying the bags was never an issue. Ian knew there was
nothing likely to be in her closet that would have been too heavy for him to handle, even with his own stuff in toll.
It was the awkward, not in control appearance he’d been trying to avoid. It was the change in the cut of his clothes on his body that sent a shiver down his spine.
That’s the attitude that makes young women call me sir, he told himself. As he thought more about it, he realized he rarely did anything, apart from his night work, that would spoil the crisp lines of his tailored clothing. Even at night, while dispatching Sangsue, he wore the clothes for the job.
How prissy is that? he asked himself.
He really thought about it as he looked for the room number, probably for the first time in his long life. It’s not like I have a problem getting dirty.
He considered it a good night when he was at the least a little sweaty. He thought about the times in the recent past when he’d come home splattered in somebody else’s blood. But on such nights he entered his home heading straight to the shower. He always threw out the bloody clothes.
As good as if felt to rid the world of another Blood Sucker, after a fight Ian looked forward to the water running over his body—especially if there was blood. He thought it was because he’d had such a difficult time in the beginning taking a life.
Back then there was no shower, but dumping the bloody wash water into the earth was when he prayed for the souls of those he dispatched and for his own soul. Some Hunters argued that Sangsue had no soul. How else could they feed from humans? they asked. But Ian disagreed. We all do what we have to do to survive.
Now, centuries since his first kill, every night he would look at the drain at some point during his work shower and still pray.
“Why am I thinking about all of this now?” he asked himself.
He tried to open the door that separated the rooms. It was locked from the other side.
“Who were you talking to?” Nesta asked from the open doorway.
He turned and faced her. He started to lie, to tell her that he was singing, but he looked at her eyes. There was no judgment, just curiosity
“I was beating myself up about something that I can’t change. At least not right now.”
“Oh. Do you want to borrow my parents? They can do that for you.? And they do it well.”
They both laughed. He joined her in the hallway and waited while she swiped the card in her door slot.
“I can never work these things.” she said.
The green light appeared, and she hurriedly tried to push the door handle.
“Are we being chased?” he asked.
“Very funny. I didn’t want that light to turn red on me. Like it just did!”
“Would you like me to open your door?”
“No, I won’t let it defeat me. And by the way, I’m not saying I’ve had a lot of experience with motel doors.”
“Understood.”
They entered on her third try. He hung her garment bag in her closet.
“Thanks,” she said. “I would have just thrown it across one of the beds.”
He looked at the garment bag, then the bed, and back at her.
She laughed. “That’s funny. You do that dry wit thing well.”
Ian smiled, but he had no idea what she was talking about.
“So what’s the plan? Will you need me to drive you anywhere tonight?” She went to the bag and unzipped it while she talked. “If you think there’s going to be a lot of driving, I should probably gas up before it gets dark. Sometimes it’s impossible to find a gas station in these one horse towns.” She removed a long floral lounger and a pair of fluffy house shoes. “I’m one of those people who have to get out of their clothes as soon as they’re inside.” She threw the lounger on the bed and then put the shoes on top of the lounger, bottom side up.
“Then I’ll let you get comfortable.” He moved toward the door. He couldn’t get the image of her naked under that floral lounger out of his mind.
“No, wait a minute. Do you want me to go pick up food for you or do you want to eat out?”
“By pick up you mean fast food?”
“We passed a lot of places coming in.”
“I was hoping we could sit down somewhere and dine. I asked the woman at the desk about a nice place, but she wasn’t especially helpful.”
“Dine? See, that word scares me.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t bring any dining clothes.”
Why did I say dine? “By dine I mean eat, that’s all.”
“We’re not talking Denny’s here, are we?”
He sighed. “It really doesn’t have to be a big deal. . .”
“But you would like it to be a bigger deal than Denny’s?”she interrupted, smiling, and then she laughed. “It’s okay, my parents are the same way and if they’re coming tomorrow, I better find a decent place to eat.”
She compares me to her parents! I might as well forget it. “What do you mean, if they’re coming tomorrow?”
“While I was parking the car, my mother called to tell me she and my dad were going to drive down here tomorrow to talk to me.”
“That sounds heavy.”
“Tell me about it. They would never give up a Saturday to drive over here if it wasn’t, but they won’t give me a clue. All she said was my uncle is coming to Chicago on Sunday and he wants to see me, but they need to talk to me before he gets here.”
“Ummm.” He knew he sounded like an idiot, but he couldn’t begin to advise her. It had been so long ago and such a different world when he’d had parents. “How’s their health?”
He saw the sadness wash over her face.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“No, as far as I know they’re not sick, but my mind went there too. It is the logical thought, isn’t it?”
“No, Nesta, not if they appear to be healthy. It’s probably nothing. You’ll laugh about this tomorrow.”
“I hope you’re right. But meanwhile, I’ll go down to the desk and find out about some good places to eat.”
“Good luck with that.”
Smiling again, forcing her parents from her mind, she said, “I have a way with people.” She left almost immediately, and Ian returned to his room using the connecting door.
She compared me to her parents. He couldn’t get the thought from his mind. He thought about the clothes he’d brought. He was the young fashionable dresser among the Dogon-Hunters in Sacramento, but there wasn’t a pair of jeans in his bag. There wasn’t a pair in any of his homes either, except for the leather ones he wore sometimes when he worked.
About twenty minutes later he was watching a sports show when he heard her return.
Another half hour had passed when she knocked on the center door.
He’d removed his shirt and shoes and didn’t have an opportunity to retrieve them before she entered. She gasped when she saw him,; which surprised him. He grabbed his shirt from the hanger and apologized.
“I should have waited for you to invite me in,” she said.
Since she was wearing her lightweight lounger and he could tell the only thing she had on under it was a dark-colored thong, he didn’t understand why his bare chest and stocking feet would be a big deal. “How did it go?” he asked, ignoring the strange look on her face as he buttoned his shirt.
“Are you kidding? She was a fountain. She said the university always takes people to The Dish, it’s one parking lot up from Kmart’s, and another good place is Bistro 157— she called the food phenomenal. But for her money, the best place is Don Quixote. She said the wait staff is very friendly and it’s family owned and operated.”
She sat on one of two chairs in the room. He could have kicked himself for not offering. He sat on the foot of the bed.
“Wow. Are we talking about the same young woman? Black girl around your age?”
“That’s her. She said you were cute, but she thought you had the air of a narc. She doesn’t do drugs, but she didn’t feel comfortable sharing with you.
‘Sharing’ was her word.” Nesta laughed, but her expression changed when she looked at him. “Ian, it’s no big deal. I learned a long time ago that you’re not going to be liked by everybody.”
“But. . .never mind.”
“No, tell me, but what?”
“But people usually like me.” He hated how his voice sounded when he said the words aloud.
“Well, that hasn’t been my experience. And it sure didn’t help that until I was in junior high school my father’s job required him to move around a lot.”
Scented Dreams ((A Dogon-Hunters Series Novel)) Page 2