by Janice Sims
Brock jokingly said, “I see you’ve been eating well. You’re filling out, bro.”
Adam replied, “Between your mother’s cooking, and Alia Joie’s, I have no chance of not gaining weight. But I’ve got a handle on it. I don’t think I’m going to aim for my former weight. I like being a bit lighter.”
“I heard that!” said Brock, who was fit but boasted a big appetite. “Where’s the buffet?”
Adam pointed in the general direction of the food, and his brother-in-law went to see what was on tonight’s menu.
Alia Joie’s friend Diana arrived last with a handsome man on her arm, as she invariably did, Adam remembered. Although Diana was one to put on airs sometimes, tonight she greeted him with warmth, introduced him to her date and went to join the others.
Soon the loft was full of folks standing around or sitting while engaged in lively communion. Drinks flowed, and delicious food was eaten with gusto.
Adam soaked up the love and camaraderie. He’d assumed he would feel claustrophobic with a full house and a bit uncomfortable around strangers, as most of the building’s residents were to him. But he felt at ease and was enjoying himself.
He was happy to hear his friends’ and in-laws’ stories and catch up with their lives. Chance and Petra shared how Chance had proposed. Alia Joie’s friend June and her fiancé, Tony, recounted their own proposal story.
After that, Alia Joie’s dad, James, joked, “Back in the day, we used to have to ask the parents’ permission to marry the daughter, before we even asked the woman we loved. You two didn’t do that? Just curious.”
Tony and Chance confirmed that neither had asked the parents’ permission before proposing. “Well, did you get down on one knee?” asked Jefferson Zachariah Johnson, or J.Z. as he was known among the other tenants, a grin on his always cheerful face. Adam had met him numerous times in the building, and J.Z. had never failed to tell him that the apartment he shared with his wife, Emma, was directly below Adam and Alia Joie’s place. And then he’d mention that he never heard any noise from their loft. This behavior puzzled Adam, but he’d never asked J.Z. to explain himself.
“I did.” Chance answered J.Z.’s question.
“In the middle of the restaurant just like in Moonstruck,” Petra supplied with a meaningful look at Chance. “He was so cute.”
Adam could have sworn Chance blushed, something he’d never seen him do. Suddenly he was jealous of all these people in love and expressing love. Their happiness emphasized the lack of the expression of physical love in his and Alia Joie’s marriage. He glanced at her, sitting between her parents on the couch. She looked up and their eyes met across the room. She inhaled, her chest heaving, and reached up to tuck a tendril of hair behind her ear, and that movement seemed like the most sensual act he’d witnessed in ages. God, he loved her so much. She deserved to be cherished. She deserved all the love in the world.
“I didn’t get down on one knee,” Tony said, smiling into June’s eyes. “We’d just completed a heart surgery together and after we scrubbed up, I turned, looked in my jacket hanging on a nearby hook, got the ring and said, ‘Would you marry me and take me away from this stressful life?’”
June laughed. “And I said yes, I’ll marry you, but since we’re both doctors I don’t think we’re going to get away from the stress. But the times we have away from this place will be full of love and laughter.”
“That’ll work!” Debra, Alia Joie’s mother, exclaimed.
“Amen,” her husband, James, agreed wholeheartedly. He smiled at his wife. “Unfortunately, my darling Debbie’s parents had both passed away when I proposed to her. But I did the traditional knee thing.”
“And I made him get up in a hurry,” Debra said. “He proposed to me in Central Park in the middle of December and it was freezing.”
“You warmed me up nicely once we got home,” James said with a naughty expression in his eyes.
“Daddy!” Alia Joie exclaimed, aghast at his behavior. “Your children are listening.”
“How do you think you got here?” Debra asked, laughing.
And so it went as the guests shared stories about their lives, getting to know each other in some cases and renewing friendships in others.
Later, when the mood was quieter and the guests had broken into smaller groups, Adam went to the bar to get his first drink of the night.
As he stood in front of the bar, waiting for the bartender to make him a whiskey on the rocks, The Temptations’ Christmas album was on the sound system, and they were singing “Silent Night.” He watched Alia Joie standing near the fireplace, drink in hand, her head thrown back in a fit of laughter. Her father had probably told one of his ribald jokes. She looked sexy as hell in that dress, her curves delectable. He could imagine those long legs wrapped around him in the throes of passion, his hands full of her firm, round ass.
“Here you are, Dr. Braithwaite,” said the young African American man, gesturing to the drink he’d placed in front of him. Adam jerked back to attention, inwardly chiding himself for lusting after his wife, when he should rightfully be demonstrating his desires instead of imagining them.
He thanked the bartender and had turned, with the intention of joining Alia Joie across the room, when someone grabbed him by the arm.
“Adam, a word?”
Chapter 8
“Oh, Mr. Johnson,” Adam said, turning to face his seventysomething-year-old neighbor. He wasn’t surprised to see him. J.Z. was a talkative man who often waylaid him in the building while he was trying to go outside, on the sidewalk when he was going for a run or in the elevator when he was taking groceries up to the loft. Mr. Johnson always had a story to tell him about his wife and how long the two of them had lived in this neighborhood, and about his many years as a postman. Oh, the stories he could tell him about the people who had lived on this street before he and Alia Joie moved here. They were great stories. But Adam often didn’t have time to listen to his drawn-out tales. He hoped he didn’t appear disinterested to Mr. Johnson when he hurried off each and every time. He respected his elders.
He smiled at Mr. Johnson now. “I hope you and Mrs. Johnson are enjoying yourselves.”
Mr. Johnson, around five-ten and stocky with a full head of curly gray hair, which he wore neatly trimmed, smiled at him. Adam imagined he was one of those gentlemen who went to a barber on a weekly basis, just to keep looking sharp.
Mr. Johnson nodded. “We sure are. Em’s as happy as a lark.” His gaze wandered across the room and rested on an attractive, golden-brown-skinned woman in her sixties. It seemed to Adam that like many women of her generation, she was comfortable in her skin and had style and panache. She was well put together from head to toe. From the look of admiration on Mr. Johnson’s face, he agreed with Adam’s assessment of his wife.
Mr. Johnson returned his attention to Adam. “I’d like a word with you in private, if I may.”
Adam hadn’t seen that one coming. What on earth could Mr. Johnson want to discuss with him in private? In the middle of a party? And why did whatever it was seem so urgent to him?
“Of course. We’ll step into the gym.” The gym was about thirty feet away from the area where the party was in full swing. That distance should get them out of earshot of the others.
Once in the gym, Mr. Johnson took a moment to admire the room and the various means of torture within it. Or so Adam got that impression when Mr. Johnson said, “The leaders of the Inquisition probably would have loved to have some of this equipment in their day!”
Adam laughed because Mr. Johnson was referring to an elliptical, on which he routinely did cardio workouts. Some days, that machine indeed felt like a torture device to him.
“You look in pretty good shape,” he complimented Mr. Johnson. “What do you do to keep fit?”
“Young man,” J.Z. said, “I’m seventy-two years old. Walking up a
nd down the stairs in this building is quite enough. Em and I enjoy a stroll together in the mornings. She’s much spryer than I am.”
He squinted up at Adam. “Now, the reason I wanted to speak with you is that I’ve noticed something about you and Alia, and it’s concerning to me.”
He let that comment hang in the air as if waiting for Adam to decipher what he was referring to. When Adam gave him a confused look, he continued. “There’s no noise coming from up here at night, if you get my drift.” Again he peered at Adam as if he might be the densest human being on earth instead of a successful physicist.
Adam finally gave up and said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Adam wondered if Mr. Johnson was on meds and if he’d been keeping up with his doses.
“From what I understand,” Mr. Johnson said, sounding a bit exasperated, “you’ve been gone for a long time. You’ve been back over a month now, and you and Alia are as quiet as mice up here. I hear the other young couple who live in the apartment next to ours all the time, but you two? Nothing!”
It finally dawned on Adam what Mr. Johnson was alluding to: he and Alia Joie weren’t making the bedsprings talk, as he’d heard his father say on occasion.
What business did this man have asking about their love life?
His irritation must have shown on his face because Mr. Johnson held up his hands in surrender and said, “Now, don’t get all offended. I might not be explaining myself to your satisfaction yet, but bear with me.”
Mr. Johnson went and sat down on a weightlifting bench. Adam, holding his anger in check for this invasion of his privacy, leaned against the wall and waited for the older man to explain himself.
“I noticed how you were looking at Alia a few minutes ago,” J.Z. began. “Like you’re a man dying in the desert and she is the water that can save you. Like a lovesick puppy. Like a—”
“I think I know where you’re going,” Adam interrupted him. “You saw me looking at Alia Joie as if I want her. Well, you’re right. She’s my wife and I love her. I’ll always want her.”
“Nah, I saw more than that in the way you were looking at Alia,” J.Z. said. “You looked like a kid with his nose pressed against the window of a candy store. But he doesn’t have any money in his pocket. You looked like you wanted her, but you couldn’t have her.”
Adam started to deny it and then thought better of it. It had been his experience that when your elders wanted to tell you something, it was best to let them talk. So he kept quiet.
J.Z. took a deep breath. “When I was a young man, I was drafted and sent to Vietnam. Em and I were engaged and she promised to wait for me. That wait, which was supposed to last a couple of years, lasted four because several of my buddies and I were captured by the Vietcong. We were beaten and starved, treated like animals. I don’t know what your experience was like, but any time someone holds you against your will it’s no walk in the park. After we were rescued and I came back home, I couldn’t go through with marrying Em. I didn’t feel worthy. I felt like dirt. I believed that she would’ve been better off without me. I wished I’d died instead of come home to a life I had no idea how to live anymore. But Em felt differently. She was just happy I’d come back home alive. She’d faithfully written me every week, even though my letters were few and far between. It’s not easy writing during a war.
“Em and I eventually got past my initial problems. I got healthier. My mind felt more settled. I remembered how much I loved her, even though she never forgot how much she loved me. We set the wedding date, got married and on our honeymoon night, I was like a limp noodle.” He paused. “We’re both men here and I don’t think we should be embarrassed to talk about the facts of life.”
Adam, who was riveted by his tale by now, nodded.
“You see, I believed that everything was just fine and once Em and I got married, we’d live happily ever after. I thought the war was over for me. Back then we didn’t know anything about the effects war has on survivors. I mean, they talked about something called shell shock and that just meant the soldier had mental problems, but nobody defined those problems or how to solve them. We’d never heard of post-traumatic stress disorder. So here I was with a new bride who, believe me, was expecting me to perform my husbandly duties, and I didn’t know why I couldn’t. I was looking at Em the way you were looking at Alia. I wanted her so badly!”
“So how did you solve the problem?” Adam asked, stunned that J.Z. had hit on his problem so astutely. It showed that you shouldn’t judge a person based on your first perception of him. Listening to an ex-postman’s tale appeared to be positively affecting him more than six sessions with Dr. Klein had.
J.Z. carried on in a serious vein, his tone low and reverent.
“I was lost and, back then, it never occurred to me to seek help from a mental health professional. I was going to have to solve my own problems. Em was an innocent. She held tight to her virginity, and there was no intimacy before marriage. She expected to have a normal, healthy sex life now. And I was disappointing her.”
Adam could relate to that. He felt he was disappointing Alia Joie, too. This story was beginning to resonate more and more with him.
J.Z. continued, “I’m an old man now, Adam, and I’ve given this some thought. Men are taught from birth that their power, their manhood, lies in their penises. Think about it. If you believe in the Bible, you know that Adam was created first and given the task of naming all the animals. Eve was created specifically as a helpmate for Adam. Men were given physical strength. My point is, by virtue of his penis, the male has enjoyed certain privileges. Men ruled the world for a long time and they ruled it because they took it by force, using sheer physical strength. From the beginning, men have been taught that their manhood is attached to their penises. That’s the starting point of their identity. Our psyches are so attached to our penises, a woman who has a sharp tongue can make it wither with words. In essence, we believe our manhood depends on our penises functioning properly. So is it any wonder that when I went to Vietnam, where my freedom, my power, was taken from me, my manhood was, too? But I’m telling you now, Adam. Your power is not in your penis.” He stabbed at his forehead with a finger. “Your power is in your brain, and you tell it what to do. You do. Not anyone or anything else. If you want Alia, you will satisfy her. And that’s the end of my speech.”
J.Z. sighed and looked at Adam with brows raised, as if wondering if anything he’d said had made sense to him.
Adam pushed away from the wall he’d been leaning on and ran his hand over his head, thinking. J.Z. might not be as eloquent as some college professors he’d heard speak over the years, but yes, he made a whole lot of sense.
No one was stopping him from making love to Alia Joie except himself. This was his body, damn it. Those bastards who had kept him from her for over two years were not going to win. His experience hadn’t defined him. He was his own man.
He smiled at J.Z. “How could you have known what I’ve been going through?”
J.Z. smiled back at him. “Because I’ve been there. We’re from different generations, but I know what a man who’s been stripped of his self-esteem looks like. I’ve seen one looking back at me in the mirror more than once in my lifetime.”
On impulse, Adam hugged the older man. Then he held him at arm’s length, still smiling. He felt elated. He felt as though, in his mind, he’d broken down a barrier that had been hampering his normal way of thinking. He felt more clearheaded than he’d felt in months. He grabbed J.Z.’s hand and shook it.
J.Z. grinned. “Good luck, Adam.”
“Thank you,” Adam said, still shaking his hand. “I don’t know if what you said has cured something inside my head or not, but I appreciate your willingness to talk to me, even though you don’t know me well.”
J.Z. laughed at that. “Alia talked to me and Em about you all the time.”
This didn’t c
ome as a surprise to Adam, but Alia Joie hadn’t mentioned how close she was to the Johnsons. However, he remembered she’d told him when she’d given him a tour of the building that he’d soon realize that J.Z. and Emma Johnson were the soul of this building.
As they turned to leave the gym and rejoin the party, Adam asked, “What did she tell you about me?”
“She said you were the most intelligent, and also the most humble, person she’d ever met,” J.Z. answered without hesitation.
“That sounds like something Alia Joie would say,” Adam told him. “However, in the great scheme of things, I’m not that smart. And if not for my ego, I might not have waited this long to realize how lucky I am to have her.”
“You’re really lucky,” J.Z. agreed with him. “If Em and I had ever had a daughter, I would want her to be just like Alia—generous, brilliant, hardworking and let’s not forget beautiful. I could go on.” He winked at Adam. “If I didn’t have Em and I was thirty years younger, you’d have some competition.”
Adam laughed. “I bet I would.”
When they returned to the party, Emma Johnson made a beeline for them. She gave J.Z. a stern look. “I looked around and couldn’t find you anywhere. You haven’t been doing what I expressly asked you not to do, have you?”
J.Z. must have looked guilty to her. She grabbed him by an ear and J.Z. cried, “Em, take care you don’t pull my ear off!”
Adam could tell they’d had this conversation before because Emma Johnson was livid. She didn’t forget her manners, however. She peered up at him. “Adam, I hope my husband hasn’t been putting his nose in your business. Honestly, he means well...”
Adam smiled at the lovely lady and said, “On the contrary, Mrs. Johnson...”
“Call me Em, sweetie,” she cooed. She still had a firm hold on her husband’s ear.