Chinatown collides with SoHo and Tribeca at Canal and West Broadway, chucking chi-chi bistros against hardware stores, stereo shops, and purveyors of fake Chanel. As the clock closed in on midnight, Fire stepped out of the subway here and strayed through the gates of love. Dressed in a red T-shirt and slack-fitting jeans, he forded Canal and strode up West Broadway in his tough, scuffed boots past cafés and bars whose faces were pressed together like a Polaroid of friends from prep school. His destination was the Marie Rose Galleries, where his friend Ian Gore was having his first show in five years. By the note in his pocket, the opening had been over for two hours. But this didn’t bother him. After twenty-five years, Ian was used to his lateness, and he understood Ian’s mood swings.
I wonder how he looks, he thought, as a doorway caught his eye. For all its pretensions, he liked SoHo. The brickwork reminded him of London and the ironwork reminded him of older parts of Kingston. He liked the scale of it. It was low. One could see the sky without trying.
As he walked along Spring Street, contemplating Ian’s life, he saw a woman walking toward him in a navy blazer with buttons shaped like sunflowers.
She was tallish and slender, with short, curly hair. And like a dancer, she walked with her toes pointed outward and her neck held loose.
Trailing behind her in the coltish breeze was a light silk scarf whose flutter he thought was romantic. As she passed, he turned around and sent her a smile, an unsigned thank-you card for having a nice vibe.
He hadn’t been to New York in a couple of years. And at Greene it struck him that the gallery had moved. Ian had forgotten to remind him.
From a phone up the block by a parking lot, across from a store named Jekyll & Hyde, he called Information for the new address. But what if they were gone? He glanced at his watch and decided to call, and as he angled to dig for pocket change, he saw the woman in the navy blazer waiting for the phone.
She had lashes like the bristles of a paintbrush and strong, rougeless cheeks.
“Are you through?” she asked. Her voice was warm but girlie—honey mixed with ashes.
“No,” he replied. “But you can go if you want.”
She accepted politely. A smile hissed across her face—a sparked explosive fuse.
His mouth was suddenly dry. He felt an urge to wet his lips. He didn’t, though, unsure of how she’d take it.
She struggled with a shopping bag.
“You want me to hold that?”
She refused politely. Then it slipped. And he grabbed it.
“Are you sure?”
“It’s okay,” she said. “Thank you.” And placed the bag between her feet.
A piece of paper fell to the sidewalk. From where, he wasn’t sure. He picked it up and read it as he leaned against a car. It was a shopping list for music: Toni Braxton, Babyface, and Gal Costa. Gal Costa? Tropicalismo … nice.
She was his age, he figured, and worked in the arts. Not music though. She would’ve been more determinedly stylish. Not fashion either—her taste would’ve had more edge. Design? Maybe. She could be an art director. But for a big firm. Not a boutique. Now where was she from? Her accent was American, but not from New York. The Midwest maybe, or California. California? Hollywood. She had the trained articulation of an actress.
In the middle of his reverie she grabbed her bag and left, and he walked to the corner, warmed by the encounter. Gal Costa. He thought of Brazil, its pungent food and sensuous music, and turned to smile again. To his surprise she was smiling after him.
“Was that your smile or the reflection of mine?” he asked, slowing down. She was about ten yards away.
She shrugged her shoulders to mean “whatever.”
“I hope it was the reflection of mine,” he said. “I wouldn’t like you to smile at me like that before you get to know me. When you get to know me I’ll know what it means. Right now I might have the wrong idea.”
She shrugged again.
“If I asked you your name, would you tell me?”
“No.”
“I promise not to laugh if it’s ugly. I’ll just refuse to use it.”
She looked at him blankly.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Try me.”
“No.”
He took her coolness as a challenge … vowed to make her laugh.
“Try-y-y meeee!” he sang, mimicking James Brown. “You know that song?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, you like Bob Marley?”
“That’s not Bob Marley,” she said. “That’s James Brown.”
“I knew that,” he said, steadying her eyes with a stare. “Just checking.”
“Checking what?”
“To see if you’re truly monosyllabic or just faking it.”
She chuckled, which encouraged him.
“Will you tell me your name now?”
“No.”
Her answer did not convince him.
“Well, I won’t ask you then. I’ll just make one up for you. I’ll just call you the woman-with-the-unique-buttons-on-the-navy-blazer-with-the-cute-nose-with-something-hanging-from-it.”
She wiped her nose quickly.
“That one hold you!”
She laughed.
“Well, I guess I’m not doing so badly.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I got you to laugh.”
“Maybe I’m easy,” she countered.
He caught a flash of tongue, a bit of pink against her teeth. He liked her more now. She knew dalliance from harassment. Many women had lost that, had sacrificed good sense for politics.
“I’ll flatter myself and say you’re not,” he said, taking a careful step toward her.
“Why flatter yourself when I could do it for you?”
“If you really want to flatter me, call me.”
“I won’t.”
“Then I won’t give you my number.”
A smile brewed behind her lips. A chuckle bubbled out. The light changed and he thought he would lose her … but she waited … stood there staring at him, studying his face … his clothes … his boots. There was mud on them. On the way to the airport he’d helped to pull a car from a ditch.
“The light changed, y’know, Miss No Name. You coulda crossed.”
He took another step toward her. She didn’t back away.
“And you have another call to make”—she looked at his shoes again—“Muddy Waters.”
“No, I don’t,” he replied, concocting a story. “I lied to get a chance to talk to you.”
“Lying?” she said. “An admirable trait.”
“And as we speak,” he replied, “I’m composing grand epics … about how you wrestled me to the ground and forced me to take your number.”
She laughed like a higgler.
“Is someone waiting for the stuff in that bag?” he asked. “I hope not.”
“Unfortunately, yes,” she replied.
“Unfortunate for her? For you? For me?”
“Why do you think it’s a her?” She smiled awkwardly.
“If a man was waiting for you, you’d be gone already.”
“Oh! That is so sexist.”
“Sexy?”
She bit her lip and looked away. “Maybe I’m here because he’s patient.”
“Is he?”
“Not really.”
He raised his brows. She laughed again.
“So he’s probably missing you, then.”
She shifted the bag to her other hand. “I hope so.”
“You don’t know?”
“I mean … I mean … you can’t swear for people.”
He lowered his voice. “Are you missing him?”
“Not really … I mean …” She checked her watch. “He should be pulling up around the corner any minute now.” She laughed nervously. “Maybe I miss him … I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking about it.”
“How long you been together?”
She calculated quickly. “Going on two years.”
“Nice,” he said.
“I guess,” she replied.
“And you don’t know if you’re missing him? You know. You just don’t want to tell me.”
She suddenly became distant.
“By the way,” he said, trying to reconnect, “can I call you to tell you I’d like to see you again?”
“Sure,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Who should I ask for?”
“The-woman-with-the-man-she-doesn’t-miss. People are waiting for me. I’ve gotta go.”
She began to back away. He asked for her number again and she told him no.
“It was nice to have met you, Miss No Name.”
“It was nice to have met you too, Muddy Waters.”
He stopped. She stopped as well. A passing car side-lit her face. She was a portrait framed by Gordon Parks.
“It would be nice to see you again.”
“I don’t feel the same way.”
“Why?”
She glanced at his shoes. “I could fall for a man like you.”
“What kinda man is that?”
“One who makes me laugh.”
“Is that right?”
“That’s the point. It’s wrong … so wrong for me to have these …” She aborted the word.
“Feelings,” he said.
“Yeah … feelings, like I know you from somewhere … or that you’d be nice to know.”
“Yeah? You like me then?”
“I think that’s obvious.”
“Why you like me?”
“Because you’re smart.”
“Actually, I’m retarded.” He crossed his eyes … made her laugh again.
“And on top of being smart you have nice teeth—a man should have nice teeth. Not necessarily perfect teeth. But nice ones—and you’re bow-legged. You remind me of a cowboy. You’re my high plains drifter. And I like your nose.”
“My nose?”
“It’s very sleek … like a jaguar.”
“The car?”
“The cat,” she said, ignoring him. “You’re very feline, you know. Your hair is like a lion’s. Plus you have really nice skin. I wish I were as dark as you.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
They stared at each other, unsure what to say.
“So what do we do now?”
“Go about our business,” she said, “and wonder, what if?”
“What if what?”
“What if, what if … you know …”
“It would be really nice to see you again, Miss Sweet Words.”
“That would break the rules of flirting. I’m sure you know them. You do it so well.”
“No, I don’t,” he said, trying to stall her.
“Yes, you do.”
“Okay … take care then.”
“Okay, Clint.”
She whistled the theme from the The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, smiled, and walked away. He watched as the night consumed her. Then he called the gallery, and headed east to Crosby.
The street was dark and lonely. Grungy. Gloom seeped out of the ground like tar. In the nearground, beneath a scaffold, a red flame bloomed and withered, and a voice cut through: “Yow, faggot.”
He trailed it across the cracked sidewalk into the shadows of what he saw was a doorway. His first thought was, He hasn’t gone, he’s still here. Then he thought about the last time he’d seen him, how badly that had ended, and wondered if this time would be different.
Am I still upset? he asked himself. He thought about the money, forty thousand pounds. He wasn’t sure. But it had never been the money. It had always been the treachery and the lies.
He formed the face in his mind, saw its decay, saw the beauty that remained insistent. When Ian was young he’d resembled Haile Selassie, especially in the forehead and the eyes.
“Yow,” Fire said as Ian stepped into the light. “Good to see you.”
They hugged and parted quickly.
“Tink you miss this,” Ian said, glancing into Fire’s eyes. He killed the cigarette on the heel of his shoe—his black loafers looked expensive. His pants fit loosely. He’d lost some weight. His hollow cheeks were rutted, and he’d chipped a tooth. Through his shirt, his joints were knots of rope. Miss Gita would be sad to see her boy.
“So how everything?”
“Yuh nuh know … cyaah keep a good man down.” He held his face low. “Can I ask you something? How it feel to be a six-footer?” He looked up again, his eyes set close like the barrels of a shotgun.
This is shit, Fire thought. Is this all you have to say after all this time? And how should I reply? The opposite of being five-seven?
What about your mother Miss Gita? The one that lives with me now—that works for me as a maid because her son, the famous sculptor who made the cover of Time magazine, bought a car with the money I lent him to buy her a house so she could have somewhere to live in case an overdose killed him. And where is the Benz now, Ian? Repossessed … like the house in Paris and the Prince Street loft and the beachfront villa in Barbados.
“You want a cigarette?” Ian asked.
“I done smoke eight years now. You know that.”
“Yeah … I forgot.”
They fell into silence.
“So where’s Claire?”
Fire began to blame his anger on fatigue. It wasn’t fair, he thought, to be mad at him, after all that he’d been through.
“She’s inside.”
“So what you doing out here? Just come for a smoke?”
“That … and waiting for some beer. We was playing some poker upstairs and run out.” He glanced at his TAG. “The fuck a-take so long?” He glared at Fire. “And why you take so long?” Fire began to answer but he cut him off. “Y’always have a rassclaat reason.”
Silence reclaimed them. Filled their lungs. Made their breathing uneasy.
“So how’s I-nelik?” Ian asked. He lit another Newport. Took a deep drag … glanced at his shoes … willing Fire to read his mind. Being here isn’t easy, he wanted to say. I always feel useless in front of you …
“He’s awright,” Fire said, hoping Ian would ask about Miss Gita, hoping also that he wouldn’t ask about his father.
Claire was having a smoke outside the gallery when Fire and Ian arrived.
She started toward them, her form swinging loosely in an A-line dress that draped from a collar of beads. Her skin was black like a seasoned wok, and her dreads were long and crinkled. She was French, from Martinique.
“How are you?” Fire said as he hugged her. Her body had the heft of an upright bass.
“You were right about him, y’know?” Ian said. “The fucker always late but him always show.”
Fire stamped kisses on her cheeks.
This is the way it should be, Fire thought, as he remembered Lisbon. The villa they shared in the Alfama and light in the afternoon. Ambition mattered more than fame then … and friendship more than money. Fame and money. Ian had come to New York to find them. Mine them, he’d said. But after he found the mother lode the shaft caved in and trapped him.
“I love the both of you,” Ian said as he joined their hug. “It should always be this way.”
Fire looked at Claire and raised his brows. They were more than Ian’s friends. They were mother and father and brother and sister, nurse, teacher, counselor—specialists in seeing and satisfying his needs.
Headlights lurched around the bend.
“Oh, fuck,” Ian said. “It’s Lewis.”
“The prick?” Claire asked with a chuckle.
“He’s too fake to be a prick. The man is a fucking dildo. Send him home, nuh Claire. Is your gallery.”
She made a funny face at Fire and rubbed Ian’s neck.
“So who’s Lewis?” Fire asked as the lights grew brighter.
“A collector,” Claire said through the crook of a smile. “He’s got some money. He’s my best client. He made his first million in college—exporting skin-fading to Nigeria. Then he made even more money on Wall Street doing whatever people do there. Then he left that a coupla years ago and started this company that does something with inner city housing … some nonprofit development thing … I don’t know. What I do know, and I guess what I really care about, is that he buys a lot of Ian’s work.” She turned to Ian. “So you better behave.”
Lewis pulled up in a black Range Rover. At first Fire thought he knew him, but soon realized his error. He looked like a model he’d seen in an ad for Duke hairdressing cream.
“Hey, guys,” Lewis called, “how are you?” His voice was warm and measured. Ian sucked his teeth. Claire said a bright hello. Fire nodded politely. “I’ll be right back. I’m gonna put this in a lot.” The engine revved. The big wheels turned. The rear lights faded to black.
He was tall, Fire saw when he returned. And muscled. Very gymned. He could see it through his T-shirt, which was tight and ribbed like a condom. He had a really firm handshake, and had learned in a course, Fire guessed, that it was important to look people directly in the eye when being introduced.
“So what’s going on,” Lewis said, turning to Ian. “Is Sylvia here?”
“She gone to get some beer,” Ian replied. “She’s been gone a while though. Maybe she meet a man. Women like men, y’know. Trust me.”
“That was funny. But do you know what’s funnier? I didn’t bring my checkbook tonight.”
Claire giggled and Lewis laughed.
“Don’t patronize me.” Ian’s cigarette glowed like a nova.
“Why not?” Lewis said with a laugh. “I’m your biggest patron.”
Claire sensed a flare-up and motioned Ian to be quiet. Lewis chuckled and went inside. Ian spat the butt against a car.
“I don’t know wha Sylvia see in dat pussy.”
Claire rubbed his back. “Love is blind, Ian.”
“You see love when you see them?”
She glanced at Fire. “That’s not my business.”
Ian shrugged his shoulders and went inside.
Fire was curious now. “Why Ian don’t like him?”
“Who does Ian like? But in all fairness Lewis is an asshole. He’s very condescending. Sylvia and Ian have gotten tight, and I think Lewis feels threatened by that. And Ian doesn’t think that Sylvia should be with Lewis. He thinks she’s settling. But who cares?”
“So who is this Sylvia?”
“Nice girl. You’ll meet her soon. She’s a frustrated writer who’s been working on a novel for the last six years. She’s a magazine editor at Umbra. She’s good people, and a really good poet. She’s published two collections.” She peered at a figure in the distance. It wasn’t who she thought it was. “Ian has a point though. She and Lewis are kinda different.”
Fire followed Claire inside and walked himself through the show, a collection of cast-iron tableware with a floral motif. What’s this about? he thought. He picked up a vase shaped like a tulip. The work was nice, very detailed, but he wasn’t sure if he would call it art. He’d never tell Ian this—not now anyway—but the place looked like a sample sale at Pottery Barn. The work was too—he searched for the word—neutral. It lacked perspective and conviction, subversion and commentary. Where was the wisdom and the humor? Ian’s work used to be ironic. Now it was simply iron.
He saw some plates embossed with sunflowers and thought of the woman in the navy blazer. She hadn’t lost her irony. Muddy Waters.
Water. He had to take a pee. His thoughts were still with her as he stood over the bowl. His cock filled his palm like a fat iguana. He should’ve asked for her name and number again. No, he shouldn’t have. She was involved … like Blanche had been, and in any event, pressing her might have turned the sweetness into vinegar. She had a vibe about her, though, that woman … and those sunflowers … it was all quite interesting … the sunflower field in the dream … the sunflowers on her blazer and again in Ian’s work. Did this mean something? Could she be the one? No, she couldn’t. She was involved, and therefore unavailable.
He tried to forget her as he went upstairs to the office, a loft above the gallery floor with ocher walls, a wooden floor, and a pressed-tin ceiling.
Lewis asked him to join the poker game. He told him he didn’t know how to play. It was one of his inconsistencies that he didn’t like to gamble though he loved to court adventure.
Claire suggested dominoes. But before she could retrieve her set the doorbell rang.
“Are you hungry?” she asked before leaving to answer it.
He said yes and she told him there was food in the kitchen and directed him to follow her.
“It’s good to see you,” she said at the foot of the stairs.
“It’s good to see you too.”
Her brows began to rise. She released her lower lip and her mouth began to open, but she changed her mind.
She went to get the door. He passed beneath the office, down a wide hallway to the kitchen, which was tiled in black and what he thought was gray until he adjusted the dimmer and a fine rain of light washed over the stainless steel fixtures and the marble-topped workstation that filled the space like a carrier in dry dock. Rummaging through the fridge, he found and placed on top of this Intrepid some grapes, a fruit tart, conch turnovers, a platter of farofa, and a bowl of feijoada.
He’d given up red meat for six years now, but like most of his actions, had not in fact declared it. With a few exceptions, he was wary of definitions, not because he was indecisive or undisciplined, but because he believed that bearings were more important than boundaries. Instead of definitions he preferred guidelines—points of departure that gave him the confidence to range across borders without losing his way.
Feijoada. He stared into the eyes of the soft black beans and smelled the garlic sweat of cow tongue and salt pork, and thought of the women of Salvador, their skins as smooth as banana leaves, spicing their pots on Sundays with cheap cuts and scrap meat as they’ve done since the days of slavery. A little pork wouldn’t kill him, he thought. But then it might. He replaced the feijoada in the fridge. On the edge of his focus, footsteps came closer and a voice called out: “Excuse me, could you give me a hand?”
He straightened up, and turned around. Standing before him with one arm along the door frame and the other weighed down by a shopping bag was the woman in the navy blazer, backlit from the hall, her skin shining like an almond glaze, her lips trembling like beds of earth about to burst with seed.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “This is so embarrassing. I didn’t expect to see you of all people here … and I … and I’m … I’m …”
“You are …?”
She leaned backward through the doorway and glanced left and right.
“Sylvia,” she said, her brows furrowed deeply. “Sylvia Lucas.”
“Adrian. Adrian Heath. But people call me Fire.”
She rested the bag on the floor, and gazed at him, slicing wide arcs across his body, trying to dissect him.
“Where’d you get your buttons?” He was thinking now of all that he’d heard about her.
She told him, as she rested the bag on the other side of the room, that they were not the originals but details she’d added on her own.
“I’m sorry to put you through this,” he said as she unpacked. “You didn’t want to see me again. But we both keep bad company.”
“It’s okay.” She turned her back to him.
“I’d like to give you my number,” he said, driven by the momentum of habit, “so you can call to arrange another coincidence.” He was sure now that nothing would happen. He’d already met her man.
“I shouldn’t take it,” she said without looking. “I’m never going to use it.”
“That’s okay. Paper is cheap. And you won’t have to give me yours. We will only be in touch at your convenience.”
She turned around, puffed her cheeks, and began to crease the paper bag against her body, working in the deliberate order of measuring, scoring, and folding.
“I think we should go,” she said when the bag was the size of a change purse.
He held his number out to her. “Take it,” he said softly. “There is nothing to fear.” He wagged his head when he said this, and closed his eyes in a languid blink that calmed her like a soothing fan and made her want to trust him with his muddy boots and knotted hair and basic Timex watch. She liked his mouth. It made her think of her clit as a shrimp in butter sauce.
Slowly, she placed her palm on his. He let it rest there. She watched as his eyes changed from suns into moons and his face assumed the gravity of evening. Things were happening inside him that she didn’t understand, things that she suspected had to do with her, things that made her nervous—for they were things she’d like to do with him. In her head she heard a poem that she’d written the week before, “Dreaming of Mango”:
Sunshine on some full-smack lips,
mango dripping on the chest,
sweeter at the raisin tips
that look out darkly from the breasts.
“I think we should go before we get in trouble,” she said.
He smiled. She hoisted herself onto the workstation, and let the sight of his mouth suck her in.
“Why am I doing this?” she asked. “Getting myself in trouble. Jeopardizing something I already have. Something … I don’t know what to call it. But something …”
“That you don’t want to lose.”
“Right.”
“What would you do if it suddenly left you? Would you chase after it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe not,” she said slowly.
“Maybe yes?”
“Maybe,” she said. She saw his lips now as through a microscope. The wrinkles and ridges that trapped his saliva. “One part of me would want to, and the other part would not. I don’t know. I really don’t know.”
“Think about that before you call me.”
He gripped her hand. And she blinked. And when she opened her eyes, thinking she was about to tell him to let her go, something rushed from his direction. This thing, this exploding ball of wetness, shorted for an instant her memory and will, so that she didn’t realize at first that it was she who had kissed him and not the other way around, and further, that it was she now—or a stranger who was misusing her body—who was opening her legs so that the body of this man whom she was pulling toward her for motives she didn’t understand, but which she realized she must now resist, could press itself against her, reconfirming her as soft by the hard truth of its intent. His waist was at her knees now, rushing toward her dampened groin. His lips were beginning to part now, and she could see their underside, where terra-cotta became wet clay.
She had less than a second to act. And as she jerked her head to the side and closed her eyes, preparing for the adventure of impact, her involvement with Lewis, faced with its mortality, projected its history inside her head. She’d met him on the grass courts at a friend’s house in Martha’s Vineyard. He was sitting on the sidelines, shirtless, his muscles filmed with sweat, a strikingly handsome man. At first she thought he was a model, but as she learned when they met again at a dinner party, he’d grown up in Baltimore, the son of a shop clerk and a mechanic, and had become a millionaire through hard work, good schools, and a little bit of luck. He was unmarried, without children, respected by his peers and well connected, as evidenced by the people who made it their duty to say hello—filmmakers, congressmen, musicians, and bankers. And at some point in the evening, she asked him to write an investment feature for Umbra. The piece, which was never done, because he could never find the time, became the pretext for twice-weekly phone calls, which gave way to long lunches at good restaurants, then dinners and weekends, then … this.
What had been the real attraction? It wasn’t just his looks. It was more than that. It had to be. It must be. She couldn’t remember. Then she thought of something. At some point early on it came up that she’d recently bought a Catlett silkscreen, and they began to talk about art. Was that it? She didn’t know. She’d never considered their happiness before. And here she was trembling in fear—her own fear of flying. This must not happen.
As soon as she said this—which may or may not have been aloud—Fire’s kiss skidded across her cheek. She ran to the door, straightened herself, and went to join the others.
Fire returned from the kitchen with the beers, which she’d forgotten, and found her leaning against Lewis on a tasseled sofa that sat across a table from some velvet chairs. Her legs were drawn up, and she was shuffling a deck of cards while Lewis and Claire talked business about a pair of candleholders. Ian was in a corner muttering into his cell phone.
Fire held the tray in front of Sylvia and she reached out without looking, which pricked him, although he knew her intent was not to snub. At the last second, as her fingers began to curl around a Red Stripe, he tilted the tray, causing a minor chink and splash. He derailed her focus as she helped him, rummaged her eyes for something—something he couldn’t describe, something he knew he’d know on sight.
“I see you two have met,” Claire said, chuckling with Lewis.
“And I’ve made a big splash.”
Sylvia dabbed her pants with a napkin. Fire held his hand toward her. She took it charily as if it were a fish and said her name, framing her words with a fragile smile. He squeezed her hand secretly, wondered why, and concluded that he was teasing her. She was, after all, teasing him. It couldn’t be more than teasing, he told himself. It must never be.
Smiling, he introduced himself. His voice flowed like water over river stones. She creamed warm sweat in his waiting palm.
“Nice to meet you,” she said. “Don’t worry about the spill.”
“There are more to come. I’ll be serving the drinks tonight.”
They didn’t speak for the rest of the evening, but carried on a private intercourse through looks and gestures. A raised eyebrow meant, “Hi again.” A stroke down the nose was, “I like you.” Smacked lips said, “We’re really mad.” And a lowered head urged, “Let’s stop this now and get on with our lives”—which he thought would be easy because he lived in Jamaica to begin with, and would be leaving New York in two days. But also because she was involved.
Late in the evening, after being quiet for a while, Sylvia raised her eyebrow again, triggering in Fire the memory of the first time he’d thought about sex. As he sat on the floor sorting records, he saw again the tenement yard ringed with zinc sheets where he spent as many summers as he could with his uncle I-nelik, a pudgy dread whose features were always hidden behind welding goggles and a beard that hung in clots. He saw the shotgun houses, scrubbed to pastel softness by the heat, and the wandering bands of mongrels—mangy beasts whose teats flip-flopped like paper bags.
He was eight years old, on his way with I-nelik to Harry J’s for the first session of what would be Marley’s Natty Dread. They were driving along Molynes Road in the yellow Alfasud that I-nelik had bought before he left dentistry. As usual, they talked about whatever was on I-nelik’s mind. This day it was sex. He wanted to know if Fire had had it. Fire wasn’t sure. “Is that like kissing?”
I-nelik laughed and asked if he’d ever woken up in the night and heard his mother breathing like an asthmatic. Fire told him yes.
“That,” I-nelik said, “is sex.”
“But what if Daddy kill her?”
“Well, in a sense, you daddy kill her every night, but him have a special way of pumping her back to life.”
He thought about his mother’s gasps, and began to really fear for her. What if his father’s pump should fail? Would he, as a male and the only child, be asked to revive her? One time when they went to Walt Disney World—he must’ve been four then—they all slept in the same room and he’d seen how his father held his mother at night … heard the words he breathed into her neck … but didn’t see anything that looked like pumping.
Pumping. For reasons he didn’t understand at the time, the word made him aware of his body, its different parts and their differing capacities for giving and receiving pleasure.
There was a thing he did in private, with what he called his puppy, a secret thing only he knew about, a thing he’d discovered by accident one day while crawling under I-nelik’s house. Sometimes he’d do this thing while a girl from the neighborhood watched.
She’d caught him doing it in a burned-out car in an empty lot behind the primary school, and swore that she would spread the news unless he bought her a pack of Smarties. He didn’t think he was doing something wrong. He thought it was natural but private, like a bowel movement. So for the same reason that he wouldn’t want to be famous for taking a shit in an old car he went to the shop and bribed her.
After she guzzled the box she confessed that she hadn’t come to the car by accident—that she used it for the same purpose. But before he could start a turf war, she told him they should share it. It was nicer when you did it while someone watched, she said. He asked her how she knew this. She said she used to spy on her neighbor, and when he caught her he asked her to watch. Sometimes he would give her a smalls if she helped him.
“Help him how?”
“Help him fingle it.”
“How much?”
“Fifty cents.”
He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. How could anyone do that? he wondered. Nothing would come between him and his puppy, especially another hand. His puppy was the smoothest place on his body. Why should he surrender the pleasure of touching it? The girl’s neighbor was a fool, he thought. He should charge her. Not the other way around.
“You have money?” she asked.
He told her no.
She would only watch then. She wouldn’t touch.
They met every day that summer, arranging by coded signals the exact time to arrive. Sharing this secret made him feel both powerful and vulnerable, powerful because he knew something that others didn’t know and vulnerable because it took just one person to make everyone know it.
Sylvia made him feel the same way.
He watched her more intently as the night went on, noticed little things about her, that she sucked her tongue, for example, when she was thinking, and cracked her neck when she felt pressured. Sylvia spoke with a subtle lisp, and on her chin was a shallow dimple, the lasting impression of a mother’s kiss. Intellectually, she was her man’s superior, but she mostly restrained herself. Fire saw it in her eyes, the way she pulled the shades down to make his light shine brighter.
“Oh come on, Lewis, Isabel runs away with Tristão because she wants happiness.” They had finished playing poker and were discussing John Updike’s Brazil, which Lewis was reading in paperback. “Why is that unrealistic? Because she is white and he is black? She is rich and he is poor? You can’t judge a novel by real life, Lewis. A novel is its own reality.” Sylvia looked at Claire for support. “She runs away with him at first to rebel against her family—because he’s forbidden, sexually and otherwise—not because she loves him. The love comes later, and that’s what carries the story—the lengths to which they go to preserve this love.” She glanced at the others, then settled on Lewis, who was unimpressed—which upset her. Why couldn’t he understand? Why was he so literal? “You might understand it better if you read The Romance of Tristan and Iseult by Bédier. Brazil is essentially the same story set in modern times.”
“I can’t imagine anyone doing that,” Lewis replied. “Have you ever heard of anyone doing that, Sylvia? Anyone you know?” He looked to Fire for reinforcement. “Why can’t novels be like real life? I don’t think that’s asking too much. I’m sure poor people would run away with rich people. But I don’t see many rich people sitting around waiting for the pauper with a bag of love.” He paused … seemed to remember something. “Well, maybe I’m speaking out of turn, because there’s this guy I went to Wharton with, Marcus Reid, brilliant guy—a shoo-in for senior vice presidency—until he ups and marries a word processor. I couldn’t believe it. He fucked his life in a single stroke.”
Ian sucked his teeth and opened another Guinness.
“How did he ruin his life?” Fire asked. He didn’t know enough about the business world to see the analogy.
“Well, for one, he stopped getting invited to the right places—where he’d meet the right people and make the right connections. His peers, and more importantly his bosses, considered him a loser. In any event, he might have actually preferred to stay away from certain situations, y’know. I’m sure his wife felt awkward whenever she was introduced to the kind of people she normally worked for. Bottom line: it just doesn’t look good.”
The room was silent.
“Is there something wrong with them being in love?” Fire asked.
He was giving Lewis a chance to redeem himself. He didn’t want to think the worst.
“Well, let’s just say I wouldn’t waste my time falling in love with someone like that.”
“So you actually choose who you want to be in love with, just like so?” He snapped his fingers.
“Yes.”
“You’ve never just met somebody and you just felt a spontaneous … almost, well … like … a spark between the both of you?”
“When I was a kid, sure. But I can’t afford to do that now. That kinda love isn’t practical. I have too much at stake.”
Silence fell again. A more intense one.
Ian glared at Lewis. “You’re so fulla shit,” he said quietly. His eyes were bleary and his speech was slurred. He sneered, then smiled, then tried to go back to sneering again but lost his way, inadvertently creating the kind of warped-genius expression perfected on screen by John Malkovich. He tilted his head and drained the bottle at arm’s length, splashing his lips like a toilet seat. “So if Sylvia was an editorial assistant you wouldn’t deal with her?”
“Well … I’m not saying that, but … I mean … maybe I wouldn’t have met her … so I guess I wouldn’t … I don’t know.”
Ian wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and leaned across the table. “What you mean you don’t know?”
“Look, Ian,” snapped Lewis, “Sylvia and I have what we have, and it’s none of your business.”
“Why is it such a big deal to say that you’d be with your woman no matter what kinda work she did?”
“Why is it your concern?”
“Why you cyaah answer?”
“Why is it your concern?”
“But why you cyaah answer, Lewis?”
“Don’t fuck with me, Ian.”
Lewis was pointing at him now, and Ian began to laugh. He glanced at Fire for support. Fire looked at the floor to avoid embarrassing Lewis—but not before showing Ian the sparkle in his eyes. Claire, who had grown accustomed to this kind of catch-up, watched the whole thing in ironic amusement, expecting it to fade any minute. But it continued, gathering volume like a landslide.
Sylvia slammed the book on the table. The men continued to jabber. So she shouted, “Stop. It’s getting out of hand!”
Ian narrowed his eyes. “Sylvia, you’re such a bombo. You don’t see de man don’t love you? Is not you him love—is what you is. Dat don’t bother you?”
Fire kept his head low. He didn’t want to see it. Didn’t want to compound the woman’s embarrassment.
“It’s none of your business, Ian. It’s not your business at all.”
“So hol on. You woulda be with him if he was a transit worker or a manager at a McDonald’s?”
“It’s none of your business. We have what we have and we’re happy.”
“Let’s go, Sylvia,” Lewis said. “I don’t need this shit. And I don’t want these candleholders, either.”
Fire looked up. Sylvia was standing on the other side of the table, her hands on her hips—which seemed wider now but also less erotic since being dusted with political fallout. Mix-up was not a good thing.
“Goodbye,” he said, extending his hand. “It was nice to have met you. Nice meeting you, Lewis.”
Lewis ignored him. Sylvia held his hand and squeezed it. It felt tight. He let go.
As Sylvia began to walk away, Claire pulled her to the side and they spoke quietly. Lewis said he would meet her in the car.
Ian began to laugh. “Fuck you,” he screamed, pounding his bottle on the table. “You fucking fake, you.”
“I am not a fake,” Sylvia shouted. Claire covered Sylvia’s mouth and tried to calm her.
“Who the fuck talking to you?” Ian replied. “I was talking to Lewis. Ah, throw me corn, me never call no fowl. Let her go, Claire. She think I fraid for her.”
Claire told him to shut up and walked Sylvia downstairs. She came back shortly, unsure of what to say or where to begin.
She turned to Fire. “How can I make a living if he behaves like a shit? He needs to know when to shut his damn mouth. Those candleholders were the only things that sold today. And because of this prick,” she pointed at Ian, “Lewis returned them. Luckily, Sylvia wants them.” She wiped her face with her palms. “So at least we can say we sold something.”
“Fuck Lewis,” Ian muttered. “Fuck Sylvia too.”
Claire sighed.
Ian began to mutter incoherently.
“Go to sleep,” Claire snapped. “Tomorrow we have a date.”
“I not going nowhere with nobody.”
“Yes, you will. Just get some sleep.”
“No way. I’m drunk. I’m sleepy. I’m pissed and … I’m beginning to piss.”
A wet spot spread on his pants.
“He’s not going to make this barbecue tomorrow. I can see that. Fire, why don’t you meet me there?”
Sylvia sat with her body against the car door as they crossed the George Washington Bridge, trying to distance herself as much as she could from Lewis. Her hands, tired from being rolled into fists, rested in her lap. In her mind, she was still in the gallery, the argument was still going on, and she kept hearing the question again. “So if Sylvia was an editorial assistant you wouldn’t deal with her?” What did it mean, she wondered, that he had basically said no? Would she be with Lewis if he were a transit worker or a manager at a McDonald’s? She wasn’t sure. She asked herself if he would be the same person, if he’d be able to hold the same conversations, if he’d be equipped with the same intelligence and have the same values and opinions.
How much of us is what we do?
And who was she?
Was she a writer with a day gig at a magazine or was she a magazine editor who wrote on the side? There was a part of her that said she was whatever paid her bills. At heart, she was a writer though. She knew that. But writers don’t have security … and she needed that. Security was important to her. Which is why she’d never managed to take the time off to finish her novel. Would a writer without money be like a word processor? She looked at Lewis, who thought this meant she wanted to speak.
“Do you know how much money I’ve spent on Ian’s work in the last year?” Lewis asked. He was ready to fight again. He was upset with her for buying the candleholders after he’d returned them. “Close to eighty thousand dollars. If it wasn’t for me he woulda starved to death years ago. And I need to take his shit? Nobody else takes his shit! He should kiss Claire’s ass every chance he gets. She’s the only one in New York who still shows him.”
He glanced at Sylvia. “He needs some cutting down. He punched Victor Aarons—one of the biggest gallery owners in New York—because Victor jokingly called him a ‘fartiste.’ And don’t forget the time he pissed in a bottle of PJ and sent it to a critic who’d given him a bad review. That was years ago, but it still goes to show what kind of person he is. Nobody wants to touch him. I’m one of the few people who supports this little shit, and he tells me, ‘Fuck you.’ Fuck me? Fuck me? Oh, no, fuck him! Fuck him, and fuck anyone who sides with him.”
“Does that include me?”
“Do you side with him?”
“On some things, yes. So what does that mean?”
“It means f—”
“I must have missed that,” she replied, smugly.
“You didn’t miss a thing,” he said through his teeth.
“Oh? Then what did you say, Mr. Cole?”
“I said f—”
“Yes?”
“F … forget about it.”
“That’s what I thought you said.”
“Don’t talk to me like that.”
“I can speak to you any way I please.”
“Delude yourself.”
“In a lot of ways, maybe I have been.”
“What does that mean?”
“I know what it means, that’s all that matters.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Nothing.”
“Here we go—something suddenly becoming nothing.”
She began to think of Fire. What did he think of her? Had the argument changed his view? She began to feel him now, the lines in his palm, the buds on his tongue—and smell him. His scent was comforting … like a new book … or mown grass after evening rain.
“Lewis,” she began slowly, “if I abandoned you, would you chase after me?”
“What is this? Poetic question hour?”
“Just answer me,” she said. “If I abandoned you, would you chase after me?”
“Look, Sylvia, I don’t want to start another argument with you, and I sense one coming if I don’t say the right thing.”
“You’re avoiding my question. Just like you avoided Ian’s.”
He drummed his thumbs against the steering wheel. What was her problem tonight?
“Sylvia,” he began quietly, “I’m sorry for all this, and I suppose you are too. This is just so … so … it’s just not good. Look at what we’re doing. We’re fighting over a pair of candleholders. A pair of stupid candleholders. You know what? Why should they come between us? Let’s turn around right now and take them back to Claire. They’ll be out of our lives and we’ll be fine again.”
“But I want them.”
“Why?”
“They’re beautiful … and … it’s hard to explain … it sounds so hokey.” She was thinking of Fire’s hair now, how much she wanted to loose her fingers in that palm grove reclaimed by wilderness.
“Go ahead, it’s okay—talk to me.”
“I have this attraction to fire that I can’t explain.”
“You’ve never mentioned this before.”
“I know. I didn’t know it myself until tonight.”
“I see.”
“I don’t know, Lewis. It was just spontaneous, I guess. It just happened like”—she snapped her fingers—“that.”
“Why would anyone be so attracted to something so dangerous?” he asked, suppressing his urge to laugh.
“The warmth. Sometimes a little warmth is worth a burn or two.”
He pretended to understand, and slowly pulled out of the conversation. They rode along in silence for a while, until at some point, without notice, she asked to be taken home. Without uttering a word he swung around and drove her to Brooklyn Heights.
“Are we still going to Diego’s barbecue tomorrow?” he asked. They were parked in front of her building now, a brownstone on a narrow street lined with trees.
“I think we need some space. I need to figure out some things.”
“I guess that means no then. I guess we’re headed for another one of those patented Sylvia withdrawals. That shit is just so tiring. So how long is this one gonna last? You know what? I ain’t even gonna sweat it. See you when I see you.”
“Goodbye, Lewis.”
He watched her till she shut the door. She didn’t look back. He put his seat back, fumed a bit, then drove home to Englewood.
Sylvia took a shower and lay on top of the sheets. It was the quiet time of morning, close to dawn. The windows were open and the breeze was as soft as powdered skin.
A cinnamon candle, thick and brown, squittered light across the room, dropped some on her belly, where it pooled in her navel and spread down to her pubis, coating the hairs, making them feel like starchy grains of rice when she touched them … as she was doing now. Whirling them between her fingers as she rubbed her belly, which the light had filmed with a glaze that made her skin not amber, but caramel, a murky, sticky dark like molasses. It gave her greater confidence in her sensuousness, made her want to know her body in a new way—the old way really, but with a new curiosity. What would he feel if he touched me?
She got up and turned on the fan, switched it to low, angled it to lick her thighs when she lay down again. She brushed herself with feathered strokes from her forehead to her knees, her fingers spread wide, her wrists held loose to accommodate the changing topography—the dunes of her breasts, the drifts of her ribs, the quicksand yield of her hips.
It was nice to have met you. She felt heavy, waterlogged. She squeezed her thighs. She was ready for release. Leisurely, then urgently, she stroked herself to sleep.