The Business of Lovers

by Eric Jerome Dickey

  “That’s a cry for therapy, same as it is for hoarders.”

  “I buy only what I will wear or use. Except for the wine. I buy and sell those on the side, make a small profit.”

  “You’re weird.”

  “Have you seen you at midnight dancing to Afrobeats at the Savoy?”

  She laughed softly. “You have a Schnadig sofa. Those cost three grand a pop. It’s awesome.”

  “Got it for forty bucks at the Goodwill.”

  “Forty for a three-thousand-dollar sofa? Get the fuck out.”

  “They had no idea.”

  She laughed a pretty laugh. “Blueberry pancakes work for you?”

  “Waffles for dinner, flapjacks for breakfast. God bless America.”

  “My pancakes are better than the waffles at Roscoe’s.”

  “They smell delicious.”

  “I can throw down in the kitchen. Used to want to become a chef.”

  I went to the counter, to my bills. I could tell she’d been nosey and looked at my investments with Oppenheimer, and mail from Kaiser and City of Hope. My older brother’s child support bills were mixed with my documents.

  She opened her computer again. Mocha Latte had a Samsung Galaxy View, the Android tablet with an eighteen-inch screen, and the swag to make it look like a laptop.

  I asked, “How many gigabytes on that?”

  “Sixty-four with Exynos 7580 and two gigabytes of RAM. Not easy to carry, but I like it.”

  I yawned. “Didn’t mean to interrupt you while you were working.”

  “This website isn’t for customers. It’s personal. A dating site.”

  “Didn’t mean to pry.”

  “Maybe you could give me your opinion. A man’s perspective on some shit.”

  Mocha Latte showed me her page on the singles website. Her pictures were wholesome, professional, smiling, effervescent. There were images of her hiking, dancing ballet, and rollerblading.

  I read her quote. “‘I’m looking for love. Real love. Ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can’t-live-without-each-other love.’ Sounds to the point.”

  She said, “That’s a quote from Sex and the City. When Carrie was in Paris.”

  I shrugged; that show meant nothing to me. “That quote is pretty direct.”

  “Is it too much? Sound too thirsty? Desperate?”

  “Out the gate, it could be jumping the shark.”

  “I would use a quote from Marquis de Sade, but I don’t want to seem pretentious.”

  “Do a biblical quote.”

  “Quote the Bible? I’ll never get a response. Not from anyone sane.”

  “Put up a sexy picture and a passage.”

  “What passage?”

  “Try the passage ‘I am a wall, and my breasts like towers.’ That’s from Song of Solomon.”

  “That would wake up the perverts who want me to squeeze the juice from their pomegranates.”

  “You want a boyfriend.”

  She nodded. “Boyfriend sounds so high school. I want a partner. Would be nice to date someone who ain’t dating everybody else. Or fucking everybody else. Would be nice to hold hands. To fall in love.”

  “You have a hard time meeting guys?”

  “I meet guys. But I want one outside of work. I wouldn’t date a guy who knows what I do. I don’t date clients. I wouldn’t date a man I knew would sneak away and pay for sex. At some point, he’d throw what I do now back in my face, even when I’m not doing it anymore. I want someone to engage me as a human being worthy of respect and consideration. I don’t want to be judged by my weakest moments and my darkest hours. I want a man who will celebrate me and not just want to see his dick between my lovely tits. I want someone to have my back. You know how it goes. A man knows what I do, and all he sees is a woman in the world’s oldest profession.”

  “Gigolos get lonely too.”

  “I just want someone to go to the movies with. We can check out a matinée. And we can take it from there.”

  “Then post that. ‘Someone to go to movies with. A matinée. We’ll take it from there.’”

  “Think that would work?”

  “Unless you expect him to pay and buy a large popcorn.”

  “I eat a small popcorn.”

  “I stand corrected.”

  “I’ll buy my own popcorn and buy his popcorn, if he eats a small one too.”

  “Why not buy a large and share?”

  “I don’t like people touching my popcorn.”

  “Would you spring for Raisinets?”

  “I could do that.”

  “And a large bottle of water?”

  “Don’t push it.”

  “Double standards.”

  “A bottle of water at the movies costs more than two gallons of gas.”

  “That’s the problem with the black woman.”

  “He’d best be willing to roll with a frugal sista who will fill her bag up with goodies from Walgreens and be ready to drink a two-for-a-dollar soda. Only an idiot pays five dollars for a bottle of water you can get at the grocery store for twenty cents, if you buy in bulk, and I buy in bulk.”

  “That’s the Mocha Latte I met last night. Welcome back.”

  We made plates and sat at my small kitchen table. She was chatty. An irritating morning person. Mocha Latte said nothing about seeing me and Christiana on the sofa last night, as one colloquy led to another.

  I asked, “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”

  “That’s an odd question to ask someone over delicious blueberry pancakes.”

  “I’m an odd guy, especially when I’m eating delicious blueberry pancakes.”

  She shrugged. “I was engaged to two guys at the same time.”

  “How did that work out?”

  “One guy had met my family. The educated one. I love smart men. Want to have smart babies. The other one hadn’t, and never would meet my family. He had a little too much thug in his blood. A street warrior. I want strong babies. My family would have crucified me upside down and burned the cross if they knew about him.”

  “Tell me more.”

  “One of my baes grew up in the streets. Eastside dude. I liked his common sense. You can’t get that from a textbook. He was the one I really wanted to marry. The bad boy fed the beast in me, but the logical part of me rejected him. I didn’t see a good future. He was always broke, didn’t have a degree, would never be rich enough to travel the world like I want to do to get this wanderlust out of my system. I knew we’d never have much, would never be much better off than we were at the start because we’d spend the whole marriage in a box living off my salary, if I had a salary. But I was happy when I was with him, and he was amazing in bed. He was a fantasy. He could go and go and go. He was twenty-nine and I knew that when he made it to fifty, he’d still be screwing like he was half his age. But I knew my family would have had a fit if they had ever seen me with him. He let his pants sag, had tats on his neck. But he had sixteen-inch arms and a dick to match. Yeah, I wanted the bad boy who had no real potential.”

  “You must have fantasies about being a single mom and conjugal visits every Thursday.”

  “I have never seen a prison, nor do I know where one is, and will never go to one. Like my daddy says, ‘If a nigga goes to jail, do not call me for bail. Enjoy your cell and pray your way out of that hell.’”

  “Good to know you know where to draw the line. South of solidarity.”

  “The nice Westside lawyer was the résumé-perfect guy. Nice house. No kids. But he wanted kids. Kids. All he talked about was us having six kids. That scared me. Six kids? Who has six kids these days? That would be me being knocked up and wobbling on swollen feet for fifty-four months of my life.”

  “Eastside dude. Rapper or drug dealer?”

  “Nei
ther. But he had to hustle to get what he had. I want a leader, not a breeder.”

  “Breeder?”

  “Those guys breed you and leave you in the Single Mom Sorority, then go off to drag more women across the burning sands to initiate them into the same sorority, just to keep you from being lonely.”

  “At least they’re considerate.”

  “Eastside turned me out. I had a rude-boy awakening. Lots of sex makes a woman feel happy all the time, even if the relationship isn’t the best. Helped with my migraines too. I get migraines bad. Sex always helps. Like medicine. Things would get bad for a minute, but sex would wipe that all away. We did it everywhere but the bed. It was good for him too. Reduced his chance of getting prostate cancer later on in life. Men who come at least twenty-one times a month have a better chance of not getting prostate cancer.”

  “You’re not only adventurous, but thoughtful and selfless.”

  “I looked out for my man. Actually, I looked out for both of them.”

  “The other guy, the Westside lawyer, he wasn’t a good lover?”

  “Traditional. You know, same positions, no toys. Kinda quiet in bed. He made love. It was emotionally good. I needed that too. He treated me like I was his Meghan Markle. Opened car doors. Bought me flowers. Candy. Husband material. He was responsible. Had a great credit score. Cops would pull him over and not harass him.”

  “You found him safe and boring.”

  “My family saw prestige; my relatives saw dollar signs; and everybody kept pressuring me about the damn wedding, but I was considering going to Vegas to marry the roughneck. Almost did once. We headed to Vegas. Before we got to Victorville, his hoopty overheated and broke down, thank God. He was glad too. He wanted a big wedding. Wanted a backyard wedding at his momma’s house in Moreno Valley. Wanted his family, everyone from Compton to Chicago, to be there. The lawyer’s family wanted a big wedding too. Only they wanted it to happen in Beverly Hills. Would have been filled with professional people. His momma liked me. And I didn’t want to disappoint our families. I was stressed. Had migraines every day. Head hurt so bad I thought I was having a stroke. Skin broke out. Had a rash. I literally was trying to figure out how I could pull off two weddings and have two husbands. The only way it could work would have been for me to tell both of them the truth, become both of their wives, and come up with a deal. But that shit wasn’t gonna happen. I think I liked it better knowing that they didn’t know. That was the part that stimulated me. I got to be two people. We all have this thing called duality, you know? I rocked the hell out of mine.”

  “Do you have regrets?”

  “Enough to fill an Olympic-size pool. I know I sound confusing. I know I do. But I guess you have to be inside of me for it to make sense. I want to be liberated, and I want to be in a relationship. I want stability, but when I had the option to marry a man who had a career and everything together, I kept dealing with a guy who would give me nothing but good dick and hard times. And now that I’ve lost my job, now that I’m hustling like this, I crave stability. I want my old life back. I took it all for granted before my life went downhill. I’ll admit that. When I was engaged to both men, I was living in the moment more than really thinking about the future. Then the future found me. Yeah. I had the best of both worlds because one man had money and status, and the other man was making me sweat. Do I have regrets? Fuck, yeah. Every fuckin’ day I live and breathe regrets.”

  I nodded. “Everyone has regrets about something.”

  “I made a bad turn. Life went south. Someone else is living my life and I’m living a lie.”

  “How old are you?”

  She grinned. “I’m twenty-three online. Sometimes twenty-one. Clients like young girls. But on my dating page, I’m twenty-nine. I use my real age. No lying about my age if I’m going to end up dating.”

  “You look twenty-one.”

  “I keep it tight.”

  “Kegels?”

  “You got jokes. Early in the morning, you got jokes straight from the corny farm.”

  “There’s a farm?”

  She asked, “How old are you?”

  “I’ve been alive over one billion seconds.”

  “You count every second?”

  I nodded. “Sure do. And I try to make every second count.”

  “One billion seconds.” She chuckled. “Do the math on that one for me.”

  “I’m thirty-one, give or take a few hundred thousand seconds.”

  “You look younger. No more than thirty.”

  I swallowed a forkful of pancakes, washed it down, then asked, “Where are you from?”

  “I was born in Malakoff, Texas; lived there until I was eight, then grew up in Bakersfield.”

  “You don’t sound like Texas and don’t smell like Bakersfield.”

  “Yeah, I was a farm girl in Texas and was a bougie middle-class black girl in Bakersfield. Both of my parents are professionals. I went to private schools, went to church every Sunday, Bible study on Wednesdays, sang in the choir, but I’ve always had a rough side that only the bad boy knew about.”

  “College?”

  “The UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science. Took differential calculus, integral calculus, multivariable calculus, linear algebra, physics, mechanics, electricity and magnetism, material chemistry course, and computer programming. That doesn’t include the writing requirement and the university’s humanities and social science distribution requirement.”

  “Get out.”

  “Long way from driving a tractor, but I still love driving a tractor when I’m back in Malakoff.”

  “You’re a genius.”

  “Thirty-six courses in four years. While I was working, engaged to two men, and juggling two lives.”

  “All that, and you like bad boys.”

  “Bad boys, but not criminals. I don’t date men who have records.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t have a record player.”

  “Corny.”

  “But true.”

  “What did you do between driving a tractor and now?”

  “I was an electrical engineer. I led a team of six people.”

  “No shit?”

  “It bored me. I think I enjoyed college and research and learning and being under pressure for projects better than I did living and working in the real world. College was exciting. Greek shows, keg parties, football games.”

  “You invested all that time in college and didn’t like the gig?”

  “All we did was go to meetings and talk about the work we should have been in the lab doing.”

  “You were fired?”

  “About two thousand were made redundant. People with master’s and PhDs were sent home like our degrees were worth less than a GED. I noticed how blacks and browns were let go but white men were safe.”

  “How did that make you feel?”

  “Being a black woman with a degree, a woman who had followed the white man’s blueprint for achieving the American dream, without a job and not hirable because I was overeducated, that was some disappointing shit. Was on unemployment until that ran out, then went two more years without getting a bite. Burned through my 401(k) paying a mortgage on a town house on the ocean I’d eventually lose. Yeah. Shit was a humbling wakeup call. I learned that black Harvard graduates have the same shot at a callback as white state college grads. White people are assumed to be smart. Black people are assumed to be dumb, even with an advanced degree. You feel me? And being a black woman, that puts us last on the list, no matter how well educated we are. I think I fucking gave up for a while.”

  “How’d you end up taking this exit off the freeway?”

  “I was sleeping in my car. Was too proud to go back to Bakersfield or Malakoff. Going back would mean I had failed. One bad decision led to another and the
missed-meal cramps kicked in, so I took a chance and did like Penny said she did, went after that quick-money thing. By the hour, it can pay more than having a PhD. Work smart for a week, then go on vacation for two months. You say you’ll do it once, or twice. No job was coming my way, still had bills, still had to eat. We live in a capitalistic society. Without money, you’re no one; you’re invisible.”

  I nodded. “And once upon a time you had two men ready to get you to jump the broom.”

  She laughed. “Once upon a time, this black girl from Malakoff had two bad-ass engagement rings, from two men born in California. Had to wear one based on who I would see that day. Once I mixed the rings up. The lawyer noticed. I told him I was getting the one he bought me cleaned and had borrowed one from one of my sorority sisters to wear in the meantime, so men would always know I was engaged.”

  “You were a hot mess.”

  “It was wrong, but never really felt wrong, not as wrong as it should have felt. No one man can give a woman all she needs. I had fun and intellectual stimulation. I had love. I had great sex. Miss it sometimes. I’m at an age where I shouldn’t play around. If I’m going to have kids, I need to start over and get serious with somebody. With the right somebody. With someone who can support my dreams and won’t be turned off by my nightmares. My life seemed so much better then. I was still an engineer. Now I’m someone else. Where I am now, I never saw this occupation as an option, let alone as becoming a part of my reality. A temporary part. Shit. I am tired of being broke. I need a break. I need to be carried. But I want to be crazy about him too. I want the love to be red-hot fire.”

  “You want to have kids.”

  “Yeah.” She paused. “Having a baby and not being married wouldn’t fit into my image. No matter what I’ve done, being pregnant and not married is . . . I just can’t go that route. Others can, and good for them. I can’t. My mother is all about image. I was raised that way. Money, image, and associations. I’m a sorority girl to boot.”

  “Anyone else know that you had a double life?”

  “My former best friend knows everything. She tried to do an intervention.”

  “She dropped a dime?”

  “Not sure. She knows my business. And I know her business as well. She needs Jesus and ten interventions. I picked up her cell phone by accident. She had all kinds of dick pics in her phone.”