“So we have a petty falling out and it’s come to this, Sylvia? Jesus Christ!”
“Who were you having drinks with? Don’t lie to me.”
“Margaret.”
“I thought so. Oh, you know I hate that bitch. Are you sleeping with her again?”
“Listen, it’s nothing like that. She called me. She’s having some problems. And why can’t you let me in? Do you have company?”
“Don’t be ridiculous … listen … I was only up to get some water. I’m going back to sleep.”
“This is so … Listen, I have some stuff for you …”
“What is it? Can it fit beneath the door?”
“I guess …”
There was a shuffling sound.
“Oh … wow … thank you.” She was deeply touched by whatever it was. But what could it be?
“I heard there was a problem … I found them at the house.”
“Okay. But I’ve got to … go back to bed.”
“Okay … and listen … I’m really sorry about yesterday. You were right. I should have stood up for you. I love you, Sylvia.”
There was silence. Then her voice. Weaker than before.
“Okay … but now’s not a good time for this.”
So this is what it’s all about, Fire thought, as her footsteps drew nearer. She and the man had been fighting.
She knocked at the door. He told her to come in. He was slouched on the edge of the tub, his face as rumpled as his clothes. Redolent of sex and sweat, she leaned against the clothes hamper, clutching the envelope with the receipts. She was wearing a sarong now. Nakedness seemed inappropriate.
“I’m very sorry,” she said. Her voice was defensive but pleading. “I had no idea that he would come by … and … I didn’t want you to hear all that. I mean, it wasn’t fair to you. But the only other choice I had was to let him in. Which I think would’ve been worse. And why are you dressed? Don’t go.”
“What can I say,” he began, entangling his fingers in his hair. “I shouldn’t have even been here.” He was speaking more to himself than to her. He was blaming himself for the mess, and edging toward the conclusion that things could only get messier. “You’re involved and I should have just left you alone. I shouldn’t have forced things so much.”
She shifted her weight from leg to leg, her arms folded across her chest.
“I’m a grown woman,” she replied. “I can’t be forced. I must have wanted it just as much as you or else it wouldn’t have happened.”
“What is it?“ he asked without raising his head.
“I … don’t know.”
“What is it you don’t know?”
She began to think now. She couldn’t sleep with two men—well, not habitually—and in retrospect she shouldn’t have allowed this affair to happen. But what to do now? Choose, obviously. But she wasn’t prepared for that. If she didn’t have a history with either of them, the choice would’ve been simple. But this was not the case. She wanted one man in her life. That’s what she wanted.
“Could you please look at me, Fire? I hate when people speak to me without looking me in the eye.”
He looked at her. “What is it that you don’t know?” he reiterated.
She looked away. He sucked his teeth.
This is just completely wrong, he thought. It was best for him to go now and pick up the discussion the next day, when both of them had had some time and distance. But still, he was angry—less with her than with himself. And further, he felt clammy. Unlike her, he hadn’t showered since that morning.
“I need to bathe,” he said. “I feel sticky and miserable. May I have a towel, please?”
She returned from the linen closet with an orange one with white stripes. Her face was rolled tight like a cabbage.
Did showering mean that he was staying? She hoped so. But she was scared to ask. Scared of rejection. And embarrassed. He’d heard her lying. What did he think of that? That she lied all the time? She hoped not. Would he doubt everything she’d told him now … about herself and her life?
“Do you have the number for a car service?” he asked. “Or could you tell me how to get home by subway?”
“I’m not chasing you out, y’know.”
“I understand that.”
She was feeling abandoned now. Which made her angry.
“Is that your usual style?” she asked. Her lips were drawn tightly against her teeth. “To fuck women and leave them?”
“What’re you saying?” His voice was still soft and warm. That irked her. Made her feel as if none of this had mattered. So she provoked him.
“I’m saying that you feel as if sauntering out of here after fucking me makes you some kind of hero. You’re just like the rest, aren’t you?” Her voice was raised now. “You’re a sham, Fire. How could I have been so dumb—to get involved with a man I’d met on the street? I knew I shouldn’t let you fuck me. Now you feel you have some kind of power over me. Well lemme just tell you”—she jammed a finger in his face—“you don’t. Go ahead … I’m not about to beg you to stay. You got what you came for. You only wanted one thing.”
He allowed himself to be snide now. “Are you trying to get a rise out of me? Your ability to do that has diminished exponentially. I think you should desist.”
She began to reply, but held back when she felt tears starting. No. She would not cry in front of him. She had her pride.
“I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” he said. “I wanted one thing? I won’t even address that, because we both know that’s ridiculous … but let’s say for argument’s sake that is true. How many things did you want?”
“Let’s just drop it, okay? I’ll be in the living room if you need anything.”
She left him sitting on the edge of the tub, his face hard.
Fire felt a wave of resentment rise up in him. Sylvia seemed self-righteous and accusatory. Lumping this in with the fuzziness of her involvement with Lewis and her feelings for him made the prospect of getting closer to her less and less feasible—or desirable. He had planned to ask her about her relationship with Lewis. After they’d sprayed each other with their love. Not that he was calculating, but there are some things that one never risks while dangling on the brink of a great romance. As a man of experience Fire knew that nothing prevented a good fall better than firm and reasoned reflection.
As the water jets buzzed his head, he thought about how they’d met by chance, how they’d met again by greater coincidence, how he’d pursued her, how she’d resisted, how he’d charmed her, how she’d relented, how he wasn’t sure if she knew what she felt for him, how he wasn’t sure if she knew what she felt for the man, how he knew what he felt for her, and how vulnerable that had left him.
Something had to give.
She was sitting on the couch when he came out of the bathroom. He went to the kitchen for some water. Would she like some? he asked, dropping a wedge of lime in his glass. No, she wouldn’t, she said, without looking at him.
He sat next to her on the couch.
“I’m going to take a shower,” she said, staring ahead at the TV.
“Okay,” he replied.
She didn’t move though. She was waiting for someone to say the right thing. Preferably him.
They were inches apart, but their attitudes projected leagues of distance, like black and white riders in a subway car.
“Are you hungry?” she asked, trying to make conversation.
“Not really.” He slurped the water.
“Do you want me to call to find out what happened to the pizza man?” She turned halfway toward him.
“I’m not hungry,” he said, without looking at her.
This flustered her. This lack of attention. “Well, you were so concerned about him and his family a few minutes ago, I thought you’d want to know.”
“Yes, that was a wonderful pie, wasn’t it? Pie in the face.”
“Do you still want that cab number? I can’t find it.” She was lying.
She was only saying this to give him a path to come to her.
“I’ll just take the subway.”
She was angry now because he didn’t take the opportunity she’d offered. “So you’re leaving then?”
“I think it’s the best thing.”
“Go ahead. Do what you want.”
“At least I know what that is.”
“And what is it?” she asked quickly.
“I should correct myself. I know what I used to want.”
She stomped away to the bathroom and slammed the door. Fire finished his water, washed the glass, and left, as the sound of the shower filled his head like a round of applause.
chapter six
On Monday morning, blades of light slipped through the blinds and slashed her face. Torpid from melancholy, she barely stirred. Fire was gone.
She’d made three calls to his hotel, leaving messages the first two times and discovering with the third that he’d checked out, which saddened her because there was so much that she wanted to tell him. She would not have answered the doorbell if she’d known it was Lewis; she’d wanted Fire to spend the night with her; she was feeling something for him that she had never felt before. But she also needed time to make up her mind because Lewis, after all, had been in her life for a while. They had a history and that had to count for something.
But there was something else that she was feeling, that she would not have said: that it scared her that he could be satisfied with just the basics in life. She aspired to more than that, and had achieved many of her aspirations, and she didn’t want to slip, didn’t want to be with anyone who she thought might bring her down.
That Lewis was ambitious was not insignificant, she told herself as she dressed for work. What was so wrong, she asked herself, for wanting to be in a relationship with someone who was driven in the same way that she was?
And further, was it pragmatic for her, as a black woman over thirty, a member of the demographic group that was least likely to be married—irrespective of looks, talent, or education—to enter a relationship primarily for love?
She left for work in a pensive mood. Her first stop was accounting, where she dropped off the receipts. Then she dragged herself to an editorial meeting, announcing her arrival with little more than a polite nod to her colleagues assembled around the conference table in Virgil’s office.
“Hey, Sylvia, what’s the matter?” asked the art director, a fey man in a pink shirt; he had a birdlike face to match his movements.
“Nothing,” she replied blankly.
“You need an aspirin?”
“Girlfriend needs some dick,” said the travel editor, whose three chins were dusted with four different kinds of doughnut sprinkles.
Virgil entered the room. Smarting from the DeVeaux issue and his on-again crush on Lewis, he opened the meeting by picking on Sylvia.
“What do you think about this idea?” he asked. “A four-page story on ecotourism in the Caribbean? Y’know, the Blue Mountains in Jamaica, the Caroni Swamp in Trinidad, the El Yunque rain forest in Puerto Rico—”
“I think it’s great,” she said, pretending to be excited. She knew better than to disagree.
“I think it’s crap, actually,” he replied, lighting a cigar. “Black people don’t like nature. It reminds them of cotton fields. Let’s feature the all-inclusives. They buy lots of ads.”
I need to get out of here, Sylvia said to herself as her colleagues championed Virgil’s idea, a story they’d done every January for the last three years.
She began to recede into herself as the meeting dragged on, wondering how she’d come to this. She’d had a sense of mission when she began. She’d actually believed that she could make a difference. Bring in better writers. Develop a global vision. Energize the copy. Galvanize the art direction.
Shit, she’d even thought she could be honest about the shortcomings of public figures who happened to be black, or more accurately, light brown.
Searching the faces around her for passion, she found none. Like her, the others were all there for a paycheck. Some of them, she remembered, used to come to meetings with ideas. But that lasted for the first year at most, by which time they learned the rules. If an idea didn’t start with Virgil, it was bad. After he’d claimed it, it was good. If an editor cared to debate this, she was bad. After a closed-door session, she was good—or fired.
But for all its drawbacks, the job had perks. A good salary, comp tickets to exclusive events, and a direct connection to the black power movement—leading figures in the arts, entertainment, sports, and business.
And in any event, it would be hard to leave. She’d gotten lax since she’d been there. Why pursue excellence if it wasn’t required? So her book of clips was less impressive than when she arrived from The New York Times Magazine four years ago. Further, Virgil banned the staff from freelancing, so she hadn’t been able to publish work of the highest quality elsewhere. Ideally, she wanted to work for a Time or a Vanity Fair or a New Yorker—a publication where she could stretch out and show true brilliance. Maybe then she’d be motivated to work on her novel.
But then there was something else to consider. If she left black publishing, she would lose stature, not in the larger world of professionals, but in the smaller world defined by race, where her status was inflated because so many talented black people lacked the access needed to gain the qualifications and experience she had. She was like a third-world student with an American engineering degree who can choose between an entry-level job at Bell Atlantic, where she can grow in value and experience, and going home to become Junior Undersecretary for Telecommunications with a villa and a chauffeur and direct responsibility for maintaining the four rotary-dial telephones in a far-flung province.
Which to choose? Satisfaction or status? She was thinking about this when the meeting came to a close.
She called Claire when she got in that evening, suspecting that Fire was there, hoping that he would answer, unsure of what she would say. She paced her room as she dialed, changing from her cream-colored pantsuit to a light brown shift.
She would apologize immediately, she said to herself as the phone rang. Yes, she would do that first … then … she didn’t know … she would just—
Claire clicked over from the other line. “Hallo.”
“Oh, hi Claire, how are y—”
“Fine, but I can’t talk now. I have to rush a friend to the airport. Can I call you back?”
“Oh, which friend is this?” she asked, taking pains to sound disinterested.
“Fire … I’m sure you remember Fire. You were flirting with him shamelessly on your doorstep.”
“Oh him? Oh, stop, we were just joking around. Tell him I said hi.”
She wished for the courage to ask to speak with him. But so many things were rushing through her head. He might accidentally say something to give Claire the idea that they were having, or had had—she wasn’t sure—an affair. What would she do then? Their world was so small. Claire knew Ian, Margaret, and Lewis. Margaret and Ian had recently broken up, and according to Fire, she and Phil were together now. That tramp. And of course Margaret and Lewis used to be involved.
“Do you want to tell him yourself?” Claire asked.
“No. It’s all right,” she replied. “Just tell him Sylvia says hi. Who knows? He’s probably forgotten who I am.”
She heard him in the background, urging Claire to get off the phone, and began to wonder if he knew with whom Claire was speaking.
“Listen, Sylvia, I’ll talk to you later,” Claire said. “We have to go, okay?”
He must know for sure now, she thought. In fact he must have raised his voice to make me hear it—to torture me. I opened up to him in ways I’ve never opened up to Lewis. He knows more than Lewis about my past, my insecurities, my passions, my sexuality. Jesus, how can he not know that I’m sorry?
“Listen … Claire … could you ask him …”
“I really can’t talk,” Claire
said. “We have to go. He’s already missed one flight. Bye-bye.”
“Okay, but could you tell him that—”
Click.
She sat in silence with the phone against her ear, listening to the dial tone. She was in the kitchen now, sitting on the countertop with her feet on a stool. What if he’d answered the phone, what would she have said?
Would I have told him that I love him and miss him? she thought. She began to hope that she would have. She didn’t know. Suddenly she was feeling abandoned, and the hands of the clock on her wall were whittling time like a pocketknife, and there was nothing she could do with the pieces.
book three
chapter seven
Dear My Son,
I hope this leter cachis you in the best of helth. I hold my head and cry when Fire come back an tell me that he see you becus I thout I would go in my grave and not here from my ondly son. I get the money that you sen for me with Fire thank you but Im an old lady I dont have any use for so much. I dont really want for anyting. Fire have me retyred. I have a nice room for myself and he use to kuorrel if I pick up even a pin, but I tell him that I am boring when I dont have nothing to do so I cook and take care of my littl garden. I am trobling with my heart nowaday. Im going on haiti years old now. I can dead anyday so come and look for me. Son rich or poor you are my son no mater what hapen I am glad to see you. My birtday is coming at mont end and Fire ask what I want I tell him my son to come and he say right and ask you. I tell him if you cant get to come then to go to Jerusalem and see were Jesus walk woud be my other wish. As I say I dont have much use for mony so here take back a tosand pounds and by a plane ticket if this can by it and come for my birtday next month in october. If you cant come keep the mony and come another time. I am so glad to fine out your adres to right you. I learn to right a littl bit well now so you will here from me again. And dont tell Fire I send the money for you or he will kuorrel with me. Dont let me die before I see you my son. I will pray for you that you will fine a nice yung lady to care for you. Fire to. He need the same. Boat of you are good childran.
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