Chapter 29
Yolanda had never felt at home in the studio apartment, but even still, the moment she walked in, she had the feeling someone had been in there. When she went to the closet to hang up her coat, she knew for sure. The door didn’t close all the way and would open back up if you didn’t lean on it til you heard it click. She had closed it the night before, but now it was open a crack.
Yolanda needed to get out. She changed into her running gear and examined the front door. There were no signs of a break-in, not even scratches by the lock.
She pulled on her running windbreaker. It had a big pocket in the back, in which she put her kanji book, her cell phone, her FBI credentials, and her keys.
She was nearly to the top of the hill when she realized that she was jogging toward Cartwright by default. She thought of Jimmy, then accelerated, the burn in her muscles driving the thought away, distracting from any feeling in her chest, except the rasp of her lungs as she breathed heavily.
She tried to empty her head as she ran. Focus only on the sensations in her body. Her lungs, her legs, the cool air on her face.
She was halfway around the path when he came up on her left side. “You come here looking for me?” he asked coolly.
“You said you jogged at noon,” Yolanda said looking at the sunset. “If I had thought you’d be here, I would have gone to the gym.”
“Well, I couldn’t quite get it together today. I’ve been kind of fucked up since I broke up with my . . . I was gonna say girlfriend, but she wouldn’t even agree to that, so I don’t know why I’m so surprised it didn’t work out.”
“A piece of advice,” Yolanda said. “Don’t say ‘whatever it is, we’ll handle it together,’ if you don’t mean it.”
“Lesson learned,” he said. “Next time I’ll add a disclaimer: ‘unless you’ve completely betrayed me.’”
“You know what? Fuck you, Jimmy. That’s the problem with you progressives or leftists or whatever you call yourselves. You act like anyone who doesn’t agree with you is an idiot. What did Marcus say? Law enforcement were just members of the working class who’d been manipulated to go against their people? Maybe that was me. Maybe I was somebody who didn’t have all the fucking information.” She put on a burst of speed, but he caught up with her.
“You didn’t realize you were lying?” he panted.
“I didn’t realize the damn FBI was lying!” she said, exasperated. “We’re not all from the Bay Area and so goddamn politically enlightened. We don’t all have Black Nationalist parents who tell us what the government is really up to. Some people are from Midwestern towns where everyone watches Fox News and believe what the preacher tells them. Some people are from places where everyone doesn’t have a goddamn ‘question authority’ bumper sticker on their car, from places where you get your ass kicked if you question authority, so you just do what you’re told. And it doesn’t make them stupid, it just makes them people in a bad situation.”
“So what are you saying? That you didn’t know any better? That you didn’t know you were lying to me? Lying to people who trusted you?”
“My body didn’t lie to you, Jimmy. I didn’t lie about what I felt, only about who I was.”
“Well who the hell are you? Are you some person from the Midwest who’s in a bad situation?” he asked, sarcastically.
“No,” she said. “Some people are from everywhere and nowhere and we just learned to be whatever people wanted us to be and we just focused on being the best at everything and hoped maybe we could get by without . . . without anybody. And maybe we finally let somebody in and showed somebody who we really were. And maybe we picked the wrong fucking guy.”
“You lied to me, Yolanda.”
“Yes, I fucking lied, but I was trying to remedy that. If you want honesty so much then be honest, yourself. Why did you bail on me?”
“It’s so damn obvious,” he said. “Why you gotta make me spell it out?”
Yolanda could feel tears rising. “Spell out what? What the hell are you talking about?”
“I told you!” Jimmy’s face was tight and the words came out through clenched teeth. “About the girls in high school. The worst of times.”
“Jimmy, what we have . . . what we had was totally different,” Yolanda said.
“Was it? Or were you just fucking me to get information.”
“What information?” she asked, exasperated. “What information was I supposed to get? I was fucking you because I was falling in love with you, and I told you I worked for the FBI because it had become obvious that I was on the wrong side. I tried to resign from the case the next day and they wouldn’t let me.”
“That’s supposed to persuade me?” he asked incredulously. “That you tried to resign from the case. But you’re still working for the FBI?”
“I got no net, Jimmy!” she yelled. “No savings. No family. And, without the FBI, no job references. My only other job was indicted by the feds. Without the FBI, I’m homeless and jobless.”
“You didn’t tell me any of that.”
“You didn’t hang around long enough to get any details. Filled in all the blanks with worst case scenarios and walked out.”
The sun was setting as they came across the bridge, and their footfalls pounded in synch as they jogged across the resonant wooden planks.
Jimmy spoke quietly. She could just make out the words above the sound of their footsteps and heavy breathing. “In college, I promised myself that I’d never again be with a woman if I didn’t know that she liked me for myself. I drive a beat-up car. I don’t make a lot of money as a professor at a women’s college. I don’t attract gold diggers. Most adult women don’t need help on biology tests. So finding out you were an agent just brought back that old teenage angst.”
“I used to read this book that said ninety percent of success at anything is determined by your attitude.” She leaned over and poked him hard in the chest with two fingers. “It’s not that you don’t trust me, you don’t trust yourself. You know right in here that I was falling in love with you, but you don’t trust it. My mistake.”
She put on a burst of speed, thinking that was the final word on it. But then he sped up and grabbed her hand. “I’m sorry.”
She stumbled, but he put his other hand on her shoulder to steady her. They both slowed to a walk. “You’re a couple days too late,” she said bitterly.
He reached to pull her close. She suddenly felt drained of energy, and the two of them stood in place.
He put his arms around her. “I’m sorry I let old insecurity get the better of me.” He ran a hand through her damp hair. “I love you, Yolanda. I really do.”
She could feel his heart still racing from running. “I’m sorry I lied,” she said.
They stood in the clasp, both their heart rates that had just begun to slow from the run speeding up again.
“So what now?” he asked, as they started to walk, to give their muscles a chance to loosen and cool.
“I’ve gotta tell RBG.”
“How?”
Yolanda shook her head. “I have no idea.”
* * *
That night they made love in Jimmy’s bed. Silently, both for fear of the FBI listening, and because there was nothing else to say. Yolanda the competitor was absent from the bedroom. She lay on her back and let her body melt into the bed beneath him. She wrapped her legs around his hips, her arms around his neck, and they hardly broke eye contact. He would lean down and give her the most tender of kisses, his tongue soft in her mouth, but then pull back and look in her eyes. He held himself up on his elbows, stayed tuned in to her every movement.
“I know it’s not fair to ask you this,” he whispered in her ear. “To ask you now, but I can’t help myself. Be my woman, Yolanda. Please tell me you’ll be my woman.”
Yolanda knew it wasn’t fair. Wasn’t right to ask when she felt so defenseless, when she could feel him moving inside her and the heat between them would determine that the answer to anything would be yes. Let’s rob a bank. Let’s buy a house. Does that feel good, baby? You like it like this? But Yolanda had hungered since they left the jogging path, had wondered on the ride home, in the shower if he would reiterate his request to lock it down. She was too scared to ask, convinced that she was only barely back in his good graces.
So when he asked, his voice barely a murmur, his breath warm on her ear, his hips cradled between her open thighs, with him pulling in and out of her like a tide, she couldn’t refuse, wouldn’t have considered it even under the most sober conditions.
But she couldn’t bring her vocal chords to engage, couldn’t synchronize breath with articulation.
“Yes,” she mouthed the word, their eyes locked, hips locked. Silent tears streamed down Yolanda’s temples, pooled in her hair, her ears, stained the pillowcase a darker blue. She wrapped her legs around him and drew him into her as deeply as she could. yes. Her face wet. yes. Their eyes locked. yes. The heartbreaking tenderness of it. yes. yes. yes.
Yolanda woke slowly the next morning. Opening her eyes, the bright green numbers on the clock said 5:12.
Jimmy lay facing her on his side, snoring gently. As the dawn approached, a pale light stole into the room, illuminating the planes of his face. For a moment the beauty of him distracted her. She considered kissing him awake, pouring herself onto him, and initiating a replay of last night. Afterwards, they had lain pressed against each other, only untangling after several limbs had fallen asleep, and then, still feeling pins and needles in her arm, Yolanda dozed off, curled in against Jimmy’s chest, her head on his arm, his knees pressing gently at the backs of her thighs. They were back together. No. They were really together for the first time.
By the time Jimmy finally woke up at 8:36 AM, she had the outline of a plan. She kissed him, despite their morning breath. He reached for her hips, but she planted her feet and pulled him out of bed. The time had come to truly figure things out. They put on sweats and went out onto the steps where they could talk.