Scented Dreams ((A Dogon-Hunters Series Novel))

by Turner Banks, Jacqueline

“Sweetie, you’ll be fighting all the time if you’re going to react every time some pig calls me the N-word.”

  The bottle en route to his mouth stopped in mid-air. “That’s not what was said.”

  She laughed. “Okay, then what was said? What’s worse than that?”

  “I didn’t say it was worse, but I don’t want it used in reference to you.”

  She glanced at him and gave him a quick eye roll.

  “Okay, Nesta, he called you a bitch. He said something about ‘he lets his bitch drive.’”

  She laughed. Then when he didn’t join her, she touched his thigh. “It’s no big deal, Ian. Let it go.”

  “Are you laughing at me?”

  She rubbed the thigh that she was still touching. “No, I’m not laughing at you. But any man who can flip me over the way you can, who can hold me up against a wall and screw me like you did for as long as you did, thank you very much, can really hurt those little boys. You need to let them think or even say whatever they want. I believe in fair fighting, and you against them is not fair.”

  He put his hand over hers. She was right, not for the examples she gave, but she was absolutely right. No Hunter versus human fight was ever going to be fair. Which was one of the reasons Fox showed up soon after any such altercation. And, according to Fox, they were always forbidden except in self-defense. He’d been known to transfer Hunters to especially dangerous places if they couldn’t stay out of fights with humans. If they needed more action, Fox knew where to find it.

  “You’re right, but I hesitate to say that because I don’t want you to move your hand.”

  “It can stay until I need it.”

  For the next ten or fifteen minutes, the music that was playing softly was more compelling than anything either of them had to say. He found that he really enjoyed her silence. Even quiet, he felt her happiness.

  As he watched the miles to their destination decrease, he examined the landscape. Everything was as green and beautiful as anything he would expect to see in California, but he wasn’t fooled. Ian had been born in Sub-Saharan African. He craved warm weather.

  “The summers here are really nice,” she said.

  Again, his heart leapt. How does she keep addressing the issues I’m thinking about? Can you hear me, Nesta? Are you somehow tapped into my mind?

  “Maybe it’s global warming or something like that, but since I’ve been older the winters don’t seem so bad.”

  He grinned, somewhat pleased that they weren’t sharing thoughts. He tried to keep it hidden, but he’d seen so much ugliness in his long life, and his memories often left him melancholic. Her deep happiness was one of the things about her he found so attractive, and he certainly didn’t want to be the cause of a change—Fox’s threat notwithstanding. “Maybe it’s because you’re more in control of what you do in the bad weather.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When you were a kid you had to go to school regardless of the weather. Also, you were at the mercy of however your parents wanted to dress you. Now if it’s a bad day it’s your option to say, ‘not today. I’m staying in today.’”

  “That’s not entirely true, but it’s a good point.” She glanced at him and smiled. “You have an interesting way of looking at things.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And so polite,” she said in a teasing voice.

  “Are you buttering me up for something?”

  “No, but I feel I should prepare you for my parents.”

  “Surely you haven’t forgotten I’ve had the pleasure?”

  “No, I haven’t, and don’t call me Shirley,” she did her own verbal rim shot.

  In almost five hundred years, there were few new jokes, but she cracked him up. He laughed so hard tears came to his eyes. It wasn’t what she said, it was the way and the fact that it was so unexpected.

  “Stop it, I already have to pee.”

  “Why didn’t you go back at the gas station?”

  “I don’t like public restrooms, Daddy!”

  “That did sound parental, didn’t it?

  “Yeah, it did, but I’ve got to admit, I’ve never before said I’ve got to pee to any other guy I’ve dated.”

  “Lucky me.”

  She smiled, but the words, lucky me, ran through her mind. How did we become so close so fast? she asked herself. I’m the lucky one, she mused. What will I feel when he goes back?

  Nesta remembered a confession she wrote on an online anonymous confession site. What’s wrong with me? Do I lack passion? I’ve never cared enough to hate anyone. I love, but I don’t sit around thinking about dying for the ones that I love. Most of the time events in my life are funny or just interesting, not earth -shattering. My boyfriend dumped me and it hurts, but it’s more like it hurts my feelings—not my heart. Will I ever love like the rest of you on this site?

  The confession had been written about two weeks before meeting Ian. Be careful what you wish for, several posters replied, the majority rudely. They accused her of arrogance or ignorance. Two suggested that she could be suffering from depression. One teenage girl said she felt exactly the same way and she’d been afraid she was the only one.

  Earlier, at the motel, she’d thought about how it was the original day of his departure and she’d had to fight back tears. What’s going to happen when you leave next week? Is this what feeling feels like?

  “When will you know if you’re going to med school and if it’s going to be UC Davis?” he asked.

  “I need to make a decision soon. I applied during my junior year at the university. I took the MCAT last April.”

  “How did you do?”

  “Not bad.”

  “Number, please.”

  She was impressed that he would even ask. “I scored a respectable 10.1. That, with my GPA, should get me into somebody’s med school.”

  “Ahh-yeah!” he said, imitating the popular slang meaning “of course.”

  She smiled. “Thank you, but it’s not as good as it sounds. UC Davis wants a 10.5, and Michigan, another one of my choices, wants an 11.4.”

  “Wow. Have you mentioned any of this to Fox?”

  “No, why?”

  “He has a lot of connections.”

  “I wouldn’t want to. . .”

  “Nesta, use whatever you can to meet your goals. Do you believe everybody at every school is there by merit?”

  “No, of course not. I’ll think about talking to him this weekend.” It pleased her tremendously that he cared. “Do you and Fox, as you call him, get along?”

  He sighed. “This might not make any sense, but I’m very fond of Fox and I believe he likes me, but we are not friends. I work for him, period. I’ve known him for a very long time, but I don’t have a clue as to who he is.”

  “There are things you’d like to know about him?”

  “Absolutely. Like where does he live? Have you ever seen him with a date? Have you ever seen him eat anything?”

  Nesta laughed. “He has homes in many places, but he lives in my parent’s home when he’s near Chicago. I’ve seen him with many women over the years, but never the same one twice, and now that you mention it, I haven’t seen him eat. But he must eat, right?”

  “You would think, but who knows?” Ian hesitated to say anything about Fox being a god because he didn’t know how much Nesta knew about that.

  “He drinks very expensive cognac, but I’ve seen him put an ice cube in it and then throw it away when it gets watered.”

  “I do know that—I keep it in my home for him, and I’ve threatened to kill Rico if he touches it.”

  “I want to meet this Rico character.”

  “And I hope you get that chance.” He knew the only way it was likely to happen was if she visited him in California.

  “So do you have girlfriends all over like my uncle Ogo?”

  He got very serious. “Of course not.” He thought about his next words carefully. “Nesta, I’m not promiscuous. I’ve had casual sex
before, but not repeatedly and not with the same women, and no casual human pick-ups since the early seventies. What we’ve had this weekend is something I take seriously. I assumed you felt the same?”

  Chapter Seventeen

  She took the exit for Winneketa. Making sure he saw her smile, she too thought before she answered him. “I’m glad you feel that way. I’m not one for casual sex myself, but I was telling myself I needed to be ready for whatever you wanted this to be. Does that make sense?”

  He was surprised that her words angered him. “No, you’re a beautiful and intelligent woman. You can and should dictate how you want to be treated.” He hoped she realized that the edge in his voice wasn’t directed at her, but at a society that could make such a perfect woman doubt herself.

  A wave of pure lust ran through her. “Damn, Ian, does a man have to get to your age to say things like that?”

  “If that’s true, the human race is doomed.” He saw her confusion. “Because humans don’t get as old as me.”

  “I know.” She wasn’t confused, just again lamenting the end of their time together.

  “My brother is living large,” he said as they got closer to her home. The homes in the area were spacious and beautiful.

  “You all think of yourselves as brothers?”

  “Yes, many of us do. Our natural families are long gone.”

  She heard the sadness in his voice, and it reminded her of how her father sounded whenever he spoke of his family. “I’m sorry for bringing it up. I learned a long time ago not to ask my dad about his family.”

  “I really think that’s part of the problem. The only people who ever ask me about my life in Mali are other Hunters and Trackers.”

  “I don’t understand; why is that a problem? I doubt if many people can think of you as African.”

  “Talking about them keeps them alive. I can’t picture my grandparents anymore, and I’m losing the image of my parents.”

  “I have a friend who’s studying to be a police artist. A lot of that work is done on computers now. Why don’t we get with her and have her make pictures for you?”

  He stared at her so long, she thought she had said something wrong. “Ian, I didn’t mean anything by that. I was just trying to help.”

  “Can you pull over for a moment?” he finally asked.

  “Of course.”

  The street was a beautiful tree-lined residential avenue with homes that had to run at least a million dollars, even in Illinois.

  He looked around and nodded. “This is really nice.”

  She nodded. “Why did you want me to pull over?”

  He had to remember why—the street had distracted him. “I wanted to tell you how much what you said meant to me. It’s a great idea too. I wonder why I never thought of it?”

  “You must not want to get to my parents.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You asked me to pull over just to say that.”

  “No, Nesta, it’s not a just. I really miss my family, and the thought of having pictures of them, people who lived before we knew anything about photography, is very important to me.” He took her hand from the steering wheel and opened it. He planted a kiss in her palm.

  She turned off the motor. She slid over and reached for him. Their lips met, and for a few minutes it was just the world and the two of them.

  “I need to tell you something,” she said when their lips parted.

  “Okay.” He held his palms flat against both sides of her neck.

  “I feel like I’ve been deceitful this weekend.”

  His heart skipped. Could I have been that wrong about her? Is she really engaged and cheating? “Who have you deceived?”

  “Not you, but my parents and my uncle.”

  He relaxed. “Do you want to talk to me about it?”

  “Yes, I need to say it aloud, because I’m not going to talk to them about it.”

  She seemed to be waiting for him to say something, so he said, “go on.”

  “Ian, I’ve always known something was different about the people in my life.

  When I was very young I used to sneak around and try to catch them talking about it, but they always seemed to know when I was behind a door or not really asleep. Later I pretended to be a preoccupied teenager so they would say things that I would work out later. That worked better.”

  He smiled; he knew she was smart.

  “I knew my father had a lot of money that other black men didn’t have, and I knew he wasn’t doing anything famous or illegal to get it. I knew my mother had a lot of history and family, but my father had a few tall, handsome friends who were closer to him than my mother’s family to her. None of it made sense. At the same time, my family knows a lot of the talented tenth, as wealthy blacks have been called, but they were adamant about not joining any of the clubs and societies. It was important that I didn’t draw a lot of attention.”

  “Did that make it difficult to have friends?”

  “Not really. I knew the kids who were in those clubs, and they always invited me to activities, I just didn’t join. It’s not like there’s an overabundance of black kids on the North Shore.”

  “I guess not.”

  “To be honest, I think I sparked more interest by saying no. By the time I got to college I was able to pledge my mother’s sorority, and it was all good.”

  “I was wondering why this stuff wasn’t blowing you away. Why don’t you want to tell them?”

  “I don’t want them to think I was ever anything but happy.”

  “Were you?”

  “A little lonely sometimes, but mostly happy. My mother wanted more kids, but it just wasn’t in the cards. I just don’t want them to feel guilty about anything.”

  He thought about her “confession.” “Nesta, I can’t imagine any one of the three of them looking at you and feeling anything but pride.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  Minutes later, they pulled up to the large home.

  “All right,” Ian announced. “Now I know I’ve been underpaid!”

  Nesta laughed. “I have a little pull with the boss. Do you want me to talk to him?”

  Ian’s face got serious. “Darling, whatever you do, don’t let my name come out of your mouth in front of Fox.”

  She laughed again.

  He smiled. “I’m serious. There’s not much in this world that scares me, but Fox isn’t of this world.” As soon as he heard the words leaving his mouth, he knew he had said the wrong thing.

  “What are you saying?” she asked, fear starting to form in her big brown eyes.

  He cupped her cheeks. “Nothing, sweetheart, I’m just kidding. There’s nothing about Fox that should ever scare you. He loves you.” He spoke using the voice he used to wash memories and hoped like hell it would work.

  “He loves me,” she repeated.

  And I’m well on my way, Ian said to himself.

  “Me too,” she said.

  “You too what?”

  She shook her head, looked at him, and then cracked her neck. She looked at him again as if she’d just awoken to find him sitting in her car.

  He wanted to pursue what had just happened, but Dot was standing in the doorway waving them in.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “As well as can be expected. Before we go in there, I want to say you won’t hurt my feelings it you decide you’ll be more comfortable getting a hotel room.”

  He smiled and, with her mother looking, fought the urge to touch her face. “It’ll be fine, Nesta. Let’s go before your mother shimmies herself into a seizure.”

  “Good description, I’ll have to remember that.”

  “Welcome to our home,” Dot said as she hugged him.

  He wondered why the greeting made him feel emotional. Since returning to the States, he’d become accustomed to African Americans being huggers. Lately it seemed all Americans were picking up the custom. His breath caught in his throat as he said, “
Thank you for having me.”

  Stepping into the foyer, he couldn’t imagine what the house would cost on the erratic California market, but he had little doubt that Kingsley and Dot had paid considerably for it. It surprised him because Fox and the church elders warned against ostentatious displays of wealth. His own home, which Fox had secured before Ian returned to the States, was appraised at a little over six hundred thousand.