Burning Desire

by Relentless Aaron

  Maybe it was just me, but this just seemed like a time for reflection. Our stomachs were fed, our buzz was minimal, and our hormonal imbalances had been satisfied (and then some!) the night before. So, this seemed as good a time as any to get deep.

  “So what do you want out of life, Stacy?”

  Without hesitation, she said, “Well, of course I want my kids to be happy. But more than that, I don’t want them to have to go through the same hurdles and challenges I had to.”

  “Life is always gonna give us that, no matter who we are,” I told her.

  “Yeah, but the unnecessary stuff, Danté. The silly stuff that we get into? I really don’t want that kind of struggle in my space. I want peace. I’ve earned that by sacrificing. But besides the kids’ being happy, I wanna be happy, Danté. And I’ll do what I have to to get that, by any means necessary. But I’ma also give what I have to get there. I want a house, but I’ma make it a home for a king to come back to after a hard day’s work. And, Danté, I’m thinkin’ that king is you.” Stacy sure had me quiet with that testimony. We kissed and hugged for an extended period of time.

  Stacy further said, “I never really wanted no superstar life. I mean, it would be nice to experience. That whole red-carpet bit in New York was like a fantasy, and I know I was trippin’ a little, but I’m just fine with someone I love, and someone who loves my kids. If I can get that, I’ll give you the world. I’ll cook and clean and wash your dirty drawers. It’s whateva, Danté.”

  “Damn, baby. All of that and the way you put it on me in the bed? You make a man wanna say woo-woo-woo!” I hugged Stacy and we kissed there under the moon like we were the only two brand-new people on earth. Yeah, I was aware that cars were gliding past and that people were hopping into and out of their parked cars; some own ers were there to more or less show off their rides and blast their music in the nearby parking lot. But right this second, nothing else mattered.

  “What was that?”

  “What was what?”

  “Stacy, that was a wolf. ”

  “Yeah, we got them out here.”

  “Yeah, we—what?” I pulled Stacy back toward the club parking lot. “Girl, you must be crazy, talkin’ like it’s okay to hang out near a wolf.”

  Stacy laughed. “Really. It’s okay, baby. I been seein’ them wheneva I’m outside of the city. But it’s just not that serious. They don’t have news flashes all up on the TV talkin’ about wolf bite, wolf bite. ” She laughed again, but that was irrelevant because right now we were crossing the street at my pace. The stroll down lovers’ lane was over.

  “Well, shit. Don’t make me no difference, ‘cause I’m back in my truck and headed back to Lawrenceville in a few seconds.”

  “Don’t they be bustin’ shots off in the Bronx, right near where you live?” Stacy asked.

  “But that’s the Bronx. By the looks of things here, your bullets are wolves. ”

  “You funny.”

  “Okay, but nevertheless, if I have my choice, I don’t wanna deal with either— bullets or wolves. How about that?”

  JUST AS we made it across the street, just as we stepped into the parking lot, a tricked-out, fire-engine-red Chevy convertible, with its reggae music blasting, pulled up to a sudden stop in front of us. And all four of the guys in the vehicle had sunglasses on. Not that I cared, but that didn’t make a bit of sense because it was close to 11:00 p.m. The driver had a brimmed red baseball cap on, the kind meant for profiling, not for the baseball field. Of course, the hat had the requisite A embroidered in white. Atlanta? Or Asshole?

  By the looks of things, these guys were up to no good, so I pulled at Stacy to move to the right. But the Chevy backed up abruptly and blocked us. When we went the opposite way, the Chevy jerked forward, blocking us again.

  “Hey, yo, we don’t want no trouble. Y’all go ‘head and have a good night now.”

  The driver threw the vehicle into park and sat up high in his seat— high enough for his ass to be where a head should be.

  “Yo, don’t be rude, dude. Me waan’ talk to dah pretty lady, dass all.” He pulled down his shades and his eyes crossed as he trumpeted his abrupt response. “We d o n ‘ t w a n t n o trouble, you say? Well, we don’t waan’ no trouble eeeder, playboy.” Even I could’ve laughed at the horrible impersonation he did of me. But there was nothing funny about this. The guys with him were also sitting up now, all of them grittin’ on me with their various head ties of black, red, and green-mixed shreds, more or less daring me to rebel. One of them had a half head of hair braided with the other half in an Afro blow out. He also had a patch over one eye. No sense in me trying to figure out that fad.

  A couple of the troublemakers were smoking weed out in the open air. One was very muscled and had his arms folded as some sign of strength. I ain’t no master in martial arts or no boxing specialist, but if the shit hit the fan, I wasn’t a gunslinger. First thing I’m gonna do is kick the biggest guy in the nuts right before I pull Stacy along to try to make a break for it. Ain’t no way to beat four guys intent on causing some harm. So, the solution here was to kick it out, or talk it out.

  What was strange to me was Stacy. She had her face turned away from the Chevy, and she was mumbling into her cell phone. I was hoping hers was not a 911 call, because, so far, these guys were harmless. So far.

  “Hey, lil’ momma. What’s good?” asked the driver.

  “Yo, that is her!” one of the guys with the weed pronounced. And now he too was making a cell-phone call, as if there might be some consequence here. Fuckin’ world according to cell phones.

  The driver seemed to take that as a cue, and he said, “ You know when they find out that’s yo’ ass, right?” I twisted my face, wondering what the hell he was talking about. By then I realized he w asn’t talking to me.

  Stacy, still half on and half off her phone call, swung her head around and the ghetto (all of it) poured out of her mouth like the dam had just broken.

  “Nigga WHAT. Fuck you, and THEM!” My whole body froze as I watched Stacy transform before my very eyes. I had seen some parts of this personality in a couple of our arguments, but never this aggressive. She was loud enough to be heard by half the parking lot. And, given the circumstances, a few witnesses might be just what the doctor ordered. Hell, we were outnumbered and, the worst-case scenario, outgunned.

  All the while, Stacy’s head was wagging, her neck cranking, and her arms flailing.

  “You need to get a fuckin’ life, that’s what you need to do. Come on, Danté.” It was a direct order from Stacy, and the way she cursed at them, with the drawl in the words, seemed to make it that much more poisonous. Shit, she had me scared, and I’m the man loving this woman. Now she was pulling me away from these cats like this had come to an end. But it seemed that hers was a perfect response to their bullshit because they didn’t push the issue. The car didn’t block us again.

  I couldn’t help but think, Damn, I love this woman! But I didn’t wanna speak too soon, because (as they say) it ain’t over till it’s over. After a tongue-lashing like that, there was no telling where this would lead or what in God’s name brought all this to my face. It was when I looked back over my shoulder to see one of the weed smokers (the one on the cell phone, with the two-way hairstyle) make a gesture in our direction that I realized this might be just another page in a short story. I couldn’t tell whether it was directed at me, at Stacy, or at both of us. Either way, I smelled trouble.

  “Stacy? You looked like you were ready to go toe-to-toe with those guys.”

  “Well, wasn’t it you tellin’ me I shouldn’t be afraid? Ahem? I sort of remember somebody sayin’, ‘You can’t go through life being afraid. You do what you gotta do. For you, and for your children.’ “

  Damn. This woman has total recall like a mafucka.

  “You don’t let anything get by you, do you?” She wagged her head in that no-nonsense way. I went on to say, “I’m not suggesting that you be afraid, Stacy. What I am suggesting i
s that you avoid any unnecessary confrontations, especially when we’re outnumbered two to one. I mean, okay if you want that, I guess I’ll hafta fight and yell, and swing and dig somebody’s eyes out until I’m lying in a hospital bed wishin’ and prayin’ and healin’. But I’d rather not if I don’t have to.” I knew better than to let her get a word in, otherwise she’d inevitably talk her way into an argument. She’d be angry at me, or else spiral into a mood swing, which often resulted when it was clear that I was right and she was wrong. Of course, the last plate on that menu was no sex, maybe for a week. Any way you sliced it, I could not win.

  When we got back to Momma’s house, I circled the Blazer to let Stacy out, and she no sooner took me into her embrace.

  “I’m sorry to bring you so much trouble, Danté. It’s just—”

  I hugged her back, loving how she had just laid all her burdens on me at a moment’s notice.

  “What is it, Stacy?” I asked this and noticed a tear falling.

  “One of them: the one with the patch eye.”

  “The crazy hair?”

  She nodded against my chest. “That’s him. That’s who shot my ex. His name is Theo. But we was in the same school. I know his name is Theodore Jefferson Barnes.”

  Wagging my head, unable to make sense out of anything, I said, “You think you have a problem with him? You think he’s comin’ after you?”

  Stacy was sobbing now. “It’s just all twisted, Danté. How he gonna shoot my man and then the same girls he rollin’ wit’ gon’ come at me ‘n’ claim I set ‘em up.” Stacy was a mess, mascara running from her eyes and weak at the knees as I held on.

  There was no smooth way to do this, but I had to try to change the subject quickly. I had watched this woman digress and spiral in the past and I knew she wanted to experience this drama. I knew that she was comfortable revisiting these moments, these people, and the emotions that went with them. The trick was to pull her out of this quick so that she wouldn’t fall so deep that I couldn’t retrieve her. Wow. What I go through to love a woman.

  “BABY, NOT that this has anything to do with what happened back there, but I was wondering if there’s an agenda for the week. I mean, are we gonna relax? Are we gonna do some sightseeing? Maybe take the kids to the movies or an indoor amusement park or something?” I was so desperate trying to brush that whole bit from our minds; trying to get Stacy’s mind on something else, using her children as the bait. Yes, it was desperate, but necessary.

  Stacy seemed to be stuck. Her eyes cleared up, but she was clearly confused by the change in subject. There was concern in her eyes and then she cocked her head to the side some; really confused. I knew, though, that the mention of her children would throw her off. But not to the point that she’d do what she was doing now, staring at me like I was a bad habit.

  A WHOLE week went by since the altercation (if I can call it that) near the parking lot of the Red Alert event at Flambeaux. During the week I got more familiar with Jason and Jackie. Jason was kicking my butt less and less with the Red Faction— but of course, all the butt whoopings he was dishing out added up— while little Jackie got comfortable holding my big finger with her miniature hand. Her hand was so soft, and her smile so cute, that I couldn’t help wondering where their daddy was. Somebody, somewhere, was missing out on all this good love from the little people. His little people.

  Besides the kids, Stacy and I did at least four to five different restaurants, we caught a couple of movies, and I got to do some real-estate research. Wow. Everywhere I looked they were building brand-new communities; brand-new spacious homes that could be purchased for cheap. Cheap meant two to three hundred thousand dollars. The buyer wouldn’t have to put any money down if his or her credit score was in the 600 range. Not only that: the developers of these homes were (across the board) picking up the closing costs. That really made it easy and affordable for home buyers. And cookie-cutter special or not, a two-hundred-thousand-dollar home here in Atlanta, if repositioned most anywhere in New York, could be a nine-hundred-thousand-dollar home. Even a million-dollar home. Just the mere idea of the incredible difference in the value placed on a home was attractive. And the house wasn’t built with materials that were cheaper or less expensive— that wasn’t it. Even I knew the price of a two-by-four in New York and how the cost wasn’t much different down in Atlanta. It was all about location, location, location. And the availability of land was minimal in Manhattan and its surrounding boroughs. So, naturally, real-estate sellers or own ers in the suburbs try to squeeze every cent out of potential buyers just because of the proximity to New York City, where all the jobs seemed to be. Atlanta, on the other hand, was rich in jobs if you went downtown. There were also remote jobs at factories and corporations like Coca-Cola, Quaker Oats, CNN, and so many others that planted themselves along industrial parks and so forth; but even those are limited positions when you weigh them against the population in Atlanta and how it’s grown by the millions over the past de cades. So, needless to say, to get to and from any of these good jobs, you gotta have a car. And if you happen to live an hour out of the city, you just might run into traffic troubles and even relationship troubles, since a lot of your at-home time will be absorbed by I-85, or I-285 and its ridiculous rush-hour mess.

  ——

  DESPITE THE challenges, ATL is still (in my view) a hot spot, and the place to be. And it’s not just anybody who’s finding their home here: it’s celebrities, businessmen, and little people like me. Black people are calling Atlanta the New Mecca or the Modern-day Harlem. I wasn’t so sure about that. With wolves, frogs, and snakes making their presence known in and out of the woods, maybe a better name for Atlanta might be the Rural Harlem. Still, I’d rather negotiate with wild animals than live bullets any day.

  Another thing is, Atlanta residents aren’t afraid to support and vote black mayors into office. And now that it’s happened for more than a few terms, it’s become normal to see a black mayor. Even a black woman as mayor. Try that in the Hamptons, or South Beach, Florida, or Palm Springs, California. In fact, Atlanta’s airport is the biggest in the world, and is run mostly by black employees. One of the restaurants Stacy and I went to was at the airport, and the restaurant was operated by mostly blacks. After a while, as an outsider looking at all this for the first time, you’d think that white folks might feel a little displaced, or even irrelevant. But then that might just be good old-fashioned redemption? And I don’t know about most others, but I love myself. And loving myself means loving other people who are a lot like me. Self-affirmation is what I’ve heard it called. And I suppose that’s why so many people who like to cook buy cooking magazines or watch the cooking channels. I suppose that’s why people who practice the same religion then eat together, socialize, and picnic with one another and support one another through cooperative economics. So, too, are the folks in Atlanta supporting one another, even if its black managers run white-owned franchises; it still serves to put checks in folks’ pockets and food on the tables of many families. And socializing together and sharing time and space together. Sure, you have your bad apples; but that’s the case everywhere you go. I’m not saying that I’m gonna all of a sudden up and move down here, especially considering the consistency and the roots my family has developed in New York. I just realize that Atlanta has it goin’ on. And even if I’m not living here, I would at least like to consider scooping up one of these properties so that I, too, can watch my money grow.

  WEEK TWO, and I was doing more fixing than sightseeing and vacationing. By that, I mean, Mrs. Singletary’s home had some issues I couldn’t help working on. The banister (leading from the first floor to the second) was loose. Part two of the two-car garage door was stuck, and so for a while there was only parking for one car. And whoever had their car outside in the notorious Atlanta heat got their ass fried the moment they got in the driver’s seat. Mrs. Singletary also had an ant problem, so I played exterminator, went down to Home Depot, and out of my own pocket I purcha
sed what was necessary to get rid of the insect issue. And, that wouldn’t be the end of it because the ants would surface again in the future. You just had to maintain the practice of taking care of shit, something I knew I wouldn’t be around to do. But all along I’m thinking it’s a nice gesture to do this for them. After all, I do it for her sister up north. And thinking about that got me laughing while I was working, telling myself I could easily identify Mrs. Singletary in the Bronx by calling her Singletary North, and in Lawrenceville, the sister would be Singletary South. Danté, the name butcher. Meanwhile, besides exterminator and fix-it man, I also grabbed some paint and spackle from Home Depot and I filled in those nicks and scars that decorated the walls in most of the house. And to do things really right, I knew the interior walls had to be painted throughout; but to myself I’m saying, I’m only fucking your daughter, we’re not married yet. Shit, I’m still a free man!

  The laughter was keeping me sane because my ass was not supposed to be working. But then again, I felt right at home and relaxed doing just what I loved. So, call me crazy, but this is me.

  While I’m doing some last-minute cleanup, the house is about to get noisy again. I was sure the honking horn outside was Stacy and the girls returning home. They’d been gone all day, like they were most weekdays, running the kids to and from day camp, dropping Mrs. Singletary off to work, and doing I guess what ever it is that girls do when they group together. I didn’t mind. The spare time did me good; I got to correct some issues at the house, and (I hate to think this way, but) sometimes Stacy and I could use the distance. We were still working on havin that entire mont h with absolutely no arguing. I figure, if we could get a month in, we could get six months in. If we could do it for six months, then we could manage a year. If we could practice being happy for a year, then it would surely be a joy to live together.