by Lisa Teasley
Meeting for Breakfast
Wednesday morning, Jana and Ferdinand enter Hugo’s. They are seated in the back corner, too close to the wall. Ferdinand snaps open the menu; Jana situates her springy skirt so huge it encases the chair. Ferdinand is small, brown with a solid build, and a face calling question of origin—India, Hawaii, Thailand, the Philippines. Jana is tall, dark as smoke, with a large crooked smile; ten, long, fat braids give her a Jamaican, West Indian, British black look. Jana glances around the room. Two men stare from two tables over.
“What are you having, Sweety?” With his pampering voice, Ferdinand wins back her attention.
“A spinach omelet,” she says.
“I think I want pasta,” he says, looking it over again.
“Pasta, so early?” She smiles at him lovingly, then sits up straight in her chair.
“Why not?” He grins, snaps the menu shut.
“Did I tell you I went out with Trevor and his friend the other day, just walking around Santa Monica? Anyway, when we were leaving the restaurant this old white drunk on the street, says to us, ‘How’re you niggers doing this evening?’”
Ferdinand shakes his head, squeezes her hand, which brushes softly back and forth across the table.
“It was my first time, you know, being called that. All of us were quiet until I pointed out the sunset. And we breathed in relief. But even as we drove home, the music loud, I could feel our anger, depression still hanging so heavy in the air.”
Ferdinand nods, playing now tenderly with her fingers. Jana looks at him, a smile breaking through. The waitress approaches the table, announces there is no orange juice, and leaves to get them coffee before they can order.
“I only have until 12:30 today, I have to go into work a little early,” he says.
“That’s okay,” she says, fiddling with her spoon. “How’s Connie?”
“She’s all right. Lonely, you know. We have to find her a boyfriend.”
“What happened to the man she was seeing?”
“Well, I told you he’s married, and that’s been going on for years. I bet she would love Trevor, though, don’t you think?”
“I don’t think he’d like her.”
“Connie loves black men in their early forties,” he says.
Jana moves her hands together in a tight tunnel through the air, toward Ferdinand and back.
“One physical type—so fucked up,” she says.
The waitress brings the coffee, then leaves again before they can order. Ferdinand sighs.
“I know. But she says she likes the way they make her feel in bed. No nonsense.”
“Uh-huh. Like they’re all the same. Fucked up. Anyway, Trevor is too young by her standards. Thank God.”
Ferdinand laughs, then tries to get a waiter’s eye.
“Excuse me, but we haven’t ordered yet,” he says to the waitress who holds up a one-minute finger. “And we’re hungry,” he says to Jana, putting the menu down again.
“You know Connie grew up in a very white environment. She never had to deal with anyone of color until college, and I think she is simply naive about other kinds of people that she doesn’t understand.”
“Yeah, so. Does that excuse it?”
“No. I know. Fetish. And when I tell her how much it offends me to hear jokes about Chinese people, about black people, she doesn’t understand. She thinks it’s harmless, like I’m being too sensitive,” he says.
Jana nods, sips her coffee.
“Really, she is racist, and I think in her next life she will be born a person of color, and have to deal with it,” he says with force in his voice.
A waiter finally walks up, Ferdinand gives him the exasperated look. They order, Ferdinand specifying exactly how he wants his pasta, and a good bottle of water. When Jana refuses a cup of fruit, Ferdinand orders it anyway, never missing a chance to indulge her.
“You’re into reincarnation now, Ferdi?”
“Well, I don’t know. ‘It could happen,’” he says in a mock voice.
Jana wakes up, breathing fast, holding onto the sheet beneath her with both hands wound tightly in fists. She looks at the clock, 6:30 a.m. Her head falls back slowly on the pillow. She lets go of the sheet, rolls over onto her stomach. She has had violent dreams before—knives, guns, blood gushing—but never this real, never this intense. Jana turns back around in bed, sits up, head spinning. On her small table next to the bed are her birth control pills. She picks them up, turns the case around in her hand, lies back, closes her eyes. She can see a bit of the dream again as she squeezes her eyes shut, trying at once to forget, and to call it back. She sees Connie’s loft, she sees her hands around Connie’s throat, and she can almost feel the skin getting under her fingernails. Jana opens her eyes, gets up. Cold, she puts on a T-shirt, punches the Thursday pill out of its slot, swallows it, then throws the case back to the bed. She goes into the bathroom, washes her face; when she looks in the mirror, she finds the reflection ugly. Sitting on the toilet as the early morning piss gushes, she wonders if she could wake Ferdinand in an hour. She decides against it because she doesn’t want to scare him. Then again, maybe it wouldn’t scare him at all. She gets up, goes to the desk for her typewriter. She figures if she could just type the dream out in a letter to Trevor, the sound of the keys would make her feel a lot better. Jana decides she’ll call Trevor as soon as it is a decent hour, to see if they can have lunch today. She doesn’t want to be alone—not the whole day—but working at home really gives her little choice. Her fingers fly over the keys, she lets her trust in him overwhelm her. When she gets to the part where she has to type, “Connie was dead, I actually killed her,” she looks in fright at the paper, as if it proved her guilt. She puts the word “dream” many more times in the letter, as she works her way down. Trevor will understand, she says to herself.
It has been three days since breakfast with Ferdinand. So as the phone rings first thing in the morning, Jana says, Ferdi, out loud as she picks it up. Ferdinand’s voice comes in short gasps, unclear. Jana tells him she can’t hear him, and she knows he is in tears. She hears him suck in his breath, exhale, and she can tell now he is dragging on a cigarette. She waits for him to pull himself together, but she is scared.
“Jana, Connie is dead,” he gets out in a fast snatch of air.
“What?!”
“She was killed. Three nights ago—I just found out.”
“What? No, God, Ferdi, I can’t …”
“Remember I told you she was going to have a film crew at her place? They were going to use her loft window to shoot a scene of Loni Anderson being pushed to her death? Remember?” he asks, his words coming faster.
“And how we laughed! But—”
“Well something happened, I don’t know, that made her leave the loft, made her go into the alley next to the building, my God! There were police there, as usual with the film crews, and those dicks, those fucking assholes, let her get strangled in the alley—”
“What? What are you saying? Who could—”
“A mugger, a street person, a thug, I don’t know, I mean …” Ferdinand exhales, and she hears his breathing go fast again. Then something comes out like a screeching gasp; Jana squeezes the receiver, tries to be calm.
“Ferdi, listen to me. I’m coming over. I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Can you hang on, Ferd?” she asks, her hand over her chest.
“Yeah, just … please …” he says. Dead air.
Jana looks at the phone as if it were the killer. She runs to the bathroom mirror, puts lipstick on. She wants to be pretty for Ferdinand, she wants to be strong. She throws on a sweater, grabs a scarf, slides her feet into espadrilles. Nothing of sense is going through her head, and when she looks at the clock, she can’t read it.
Getting in the car, the squeak of the door like a chalkboard scratch shoots under her skin. She drives, trying to hum with the radio, then she rushes station changes. She stops on a classical, bass viol moans. She cries, wiping her ey
es at stoplights. In the mirror she is disgusted by her vanity. A guy stops next to her in a beat-up blue Karmann Ghia; he gives her a loving stranger’s smile. She looks at him gratefully, turns the corner for Ferdinand’s as the light turns red.
The door is open; she walks in. Ferdinand smokes on the couch, next to him is the cat with a leg in a red cast. Ferdinand puts the cigarette out. The ashtray overflows; he opens his arms to let her in. Ferdinand buries his face in her chest, and as she holds him she feels him shake. When his tears wet her sweater through, she rocks him. It is a great while before she can feel him calm. That’s when she lifts his face to look at him, kisses his cheeks, holds his head up.
“Let me get you something to drink, some water or something,” she whispers.
Jana goes into the kitchen, brings down two glasses, then a third when she spots the Sake. She brings in the two glasses of water, then on the second trip, the Sake, and the one glass. Ferdinand is drinking the water, but as soon as she sets down the Sake-filled glass, he picks it up, gulps it down. Jana puts the bottle to her mouth.
“What time is it?” Ferdinand asks.
“I don’t know.” She looks around. “Where is the clock, Ferdi?”
He points down the hall, Jana gets up to go to his bedroom. She already feels the Sake working when she sits down on the bed to see the clock.
“It’s 9:30 Ferd!” she calls from the room, still sitting on the bed, her head spinning. The dream plays again in her head; she tries to squeeze it out with her hands, but instead feels Connie’s skin under her fingernails.
“God, stop it!” Jana yells out loud.
Ferdi comes in with his water, looks at Jana on his bed. He sits next to her, puts his arm around her, kisses her where the sweater has slipped off her shoulder.
“You’re not going to work today,” Jana says.
“No, it’s Saturday,” he says. “The funeral is tomorrow.”
“Do you want me to go with you?” she asks, hoping he doesn’t.
“You don’t have to, Sweety.”
“Well, no. But if you need me …”
“It’s okay, really. Elvie is flying in tonight. He and I will go together. Don’t worry about it.”
Ferdinand lays his head in her lap, closes his eyes. She strokes his thick black hair. Fear builds up so loud it is deafening. When he is heavy with sleep, she slips out from under him, covers his body with the messy sheets. She goes to the living room, walks a circle around it, stops in front of the cat with his broken leg, he opens one eye to stare back at her.
“Tell Ferdi I’ll be back in an hour,” she tells the cat. “I just need to see someone. I’ll be right back.”
She never realized how close Trevor’s place is to Ferdinand’s. As she goes up the steps, panic sets in. She bangs on the door several times before she hears anything. When the waiting gets unbearable, she starts pushing on the door. Trevor opens it, and she flumps in. Trevor is in a T-shirt and jeans with the buttons undone; he wipes the sleep from his eyes when she falls into his arms.
“What is it? Jan, what is it?” he asks softly, holding her up. He kicks the door closed, moves her with him farther into the room.
“Hold me.”
He rubs her back, one thick braid slips in between his fingers. He holds onto it tightly, his other arm strong around her waist. He puts both hands on her face so he can see her.
“Tell me, Jana, what happened?”
Sniffling, she wipes her eyes with the back of her hand, looks at his forehead, tense with worry. She runs her fingers across the line there, down to the few stray hairs between his eyebrows, back up to where the tiny curls begin on his head.
“Hey, hey, hey, Jana, talk to me. What is it?” he whispers, holding her still.
Jana concentrates on his face, puts her finger on his nose, then down to the space where it sinks in just above his lips, now slides it gently down so he can give her fingertip a soft wet kiss. He holds on to her, her mouth open, kissing his neck, slowly, then his ear. She pulls back away far enough to see his face again.
“You are the color of dark honey,” she whispers to him, and he smiles. She takes his hand from her waist, and slowly again, puts each finger to her mouth. As their breathing comes heavier, she pulls on his finger with her mouth, sucking it so it hurts. As if worrying for a moment that this is wrong for a first time, Trevor pulls away from her an inch, a short hesitation, then he roughly brings her face to his lips. They fall to the floor.
Later, they lie there for a long time, still, silent. Jana’s thigh sticky between his, they are gone now into a half-sleep.
When she feels him stir beneath her, she wakes him up.
“Trevor,” she begins tentatively. “I killed her.”
“What? What are you talking about?” He opens his eyes.
“I killed her,” she says with definition. Trevor moves out abruptly from under her.
“Jana, what are you talking about?”
“Didn’t you get my letter?”
“Which letter?” he asks, irritated.
“The one about the dream, Trevor. Connie’s dead. It wasn’t a dream. I killed her.”
Trevor sits up, holds onto his head, looks at the floor, looks at their legs, their feet still entangled. He snatches himself from her, stares her straight in the eye. She puts her arms around her breasts to cover them. He sits there for a long time, moves his hand awkwardly back across his spine. He straightens up, his eyes widening.
“It couldn’t have been a dream,” she continues. “I can’t
remember driving down there, but I can feel the skin under my fingernails! I must have killed her, because she is dead.”
Trevor looks at her in horror then around the room. Jana feels it ticking, about to go off. She reaches for her clothes; he grabs her arm, squeezes it firmly.
“Now, you listen to me. You are confused,” he says with anger. “You are going to have to slow down. There is no way you killed her, just because you found out she was dead. You dreamed you were strangling her—a very strange coincidence—but, the thing is, you must be psychic.”
“No. I don’t remember going downtown but I can feel the skin under my fingernails. You see? That couldn’t have been a dream. She was strangled, Trevor! Ferdinand called me this morning! I am so fucking scared! I don’t know what to do. What should I do?” she asks, getting hysterical.
“Now stop it!” he says, more angrily now. “Get a hold of yourself!” On his knees now, he shakes her up. “Why would you kill her? For what reason? This is insane! You went to sleep, you had a dream, it is as simple as that. When did you wake up? You were home! Nothing was different, it was only a dream!
“Dreams are only … the … the … subconscious trying to resolve the day’s events. If you really killed her, you would have been dreaming about what you were going to do now that you have done it, rather than dreaming that you were doing it—understand me? Yes?” he says, still holding onto her shoulders.
Jana nods, tears begin, and she shakes her head.
“Now of course, I am right,” he says softer now, “There is no way you did it. You were just working off frustration, what you were feeling, like you said in the letter. Your resentment came out in the dream. Or you are psychic. Right?”
“You have to tear up that letter, Trevor.”
“Of course, yes,” he says, beginning to sound hysterical himself, “I’m going to tear it up now. But you have to try and forget all of this. Put the whole damn mess behind you!”
Trevor stands, grabs his clothes with him, disappears into the bedroom. Jana sits on the floor, still naked, hugging herself. She hears Trevor rustling around in there as she puts her clothes on. When she hears him close the bathroom door, she walks out of his place and into the street, deciding the thing to do is go home.
Wednesday morning again, Jana and Ferdinand meet for breakfast at Hugo’s. This time they are seated in front by the window. Jana’s fat braids are gathered up together on top of her h
ead in a big ponytail with a giant red ribbon. She smoothes her skirt out from under her, wiggling in her chair like a flirt. Ferdinand watches her, smiles; they look at each other like they have gotten over everything. Then Jana feels a twinge of panic and suspicion at this quick recovery in Ferdinand.
“What are you having, Sweety?” he asks.
“An omelet, of course,” she says, smiling. Jana looks around her, wiggles in her chair again, then scoots into the table to get closer to Ferdinand.
“How was the funeral? Or shouldn’t I be asking?”
“I really don’t remember it,” he says, looking at the menu. “Should we get french toast too?”
“Oh. You don’t want to talk about it.”
“It’s not that at all. It’s just that I made my peace with it.”
“Yeah? Well, that’s good, Ferd, I’m glad. I really didn’t know her well, but it’s been hard seeing you go through this. I worry about you.”
“Well, I made my peace with it. I said to myself, Connie will come back as a better person.”
“You really believe that, Ferd? I didn’t know you were so into it.”
“Yeah? Well, it’s nothing to ‘get into,’ you just know that it makes sense. And Connie really was a racist. She is better off dead.”
“What?”
“You heard me. She’s better off dead. Now she can come back and deal with things as a person of color.”