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SOMETIMES, WHEN I AM looking for something, I can never find it, no matter how high or low I search. I often told myself that I needed a place to keep everything so that I could easily locate what I’m looking for when I need it. I am yet to create that place.
What I’ve discovered though is that sometimes, when I’m looking for something else, the thing that I could not find the previous week shows up. That is the way it was with me now and the dating game. I wasn’t actively looking for anyone yet someone showed up, much to my surprise.
I was standing in line at the bank one morning before heading out to work. We were allowed two hours of bank-time every month to do whatever business we chose. Seeing that I had no classes that morning, I went to close an account that I had assumed was closed since I had no money in it. However, I got a bill charging me for an empty account so I had to settle that immediately. It was a good time of day to be at the bank, especially in January – guava season we called it since it was hard to get money to spend after all that had been wasted at Christmas time.
The line was short but my head was in a novel, a supernatural thriller made popular by the upcoming movie version that promised box office gold. I always walked around with a novel and a notebook: the novel to read whenever I was detained and the notebook to jot down any brilliant ideas that had a way of popping up in my brain whenever they pleased. I was startled by someone taking me by my arm.
“Hey, good-looking.” I broke into a smile and kissed the cheeks of the “red woman” standing beside me. She was Kim who used to attend the same church I did.
Like many West Indian women, Kim’s ample butt was accentuated in her pair of jeans. Because of the low neckline of her tee shirt I could not help but notice her round breasts that looked up at me like puppies crying out for attention. That was one thing I liked about Kim: she did not care too much about what people thought of her. She was an attractive woman with a beautiful singing voice and did not care to fit into the mold that other people would have liked to put her in.
“It’s good to see you.”
“You look good.” I blushed. I wondered if the woman next in line agreed. “What have you been up to?”
“Same old, same old.” I hated talking private business for John Public to hear so I allowed the lady behind me to go to the teller so I could have some time alone with Kim.
I checked her finger and found it bare. “Why that man sticking so? He’s not afraid of losing you?”
“We’re taking care of that later this year. Don’t worry. How about you? Are you letting all of this go to waste?” And she discreetly let her hand run down my back to my gluteus maximus, pinching it just a little.
I laughed a deep throaty laugh, conscious that I was drawing attention to myself, but unable to do anything about it. Another thing I liked about this beautiful woman next to me was that she said exactly what was on her mind. In that moment I wondered why we had never hooked up. She was a successful designer who owned her own boutique. She was attractive. Why had she tried to set me up with her best-friend who was a police officer instead of hooking up with me instead?
But the same things I liked in Kim were the things I disliked. I wanted a woman who needed me, who was not so opinionated, who knew how to compromise. I imagined life with Kim would be ablaze with passion; there would be intense moments, day or night, when we would give in to our primal urges. And there would be times of heated arguments for Kim liked being right and liked having the final say on every matter. She reminded me of my mother, and the idea of having a complaining, controlling woman so close to me was enough to keep us in the friend zone.
“Are you seeing anybody now?” she continued.
“My eyes are always open.” People usually did not believe me when I told them this, but I had mastered the art of meeting a woman, scanning her fingers for a wedding ring, checking out the body, her aura and her speech patterns and spitting out a decision about whether or not I wanted to get to know her better, all in ten seconds flat. There were very few affirmative results and usually they were the married ones. I had heard it said many times that it would get harder to choose a mate with the passing of the years since I would get more settled in my ways and a woman would be an intrusion in my life, upsetting my equilibrium. My response to that: Whatever.
I remember telling Sarah once that I did not mind having a wife once she gave me my space. Her expression said what planet are you from? But I plunged ahead anyway and told her that I wished women were like robots that we could turn on when we needed them, and then turn them off and put them in the closet when we did not want them harassing us. She understood why I was still single. I was yet to find a woman who agreed with me when I told her that separate homes for a man and his wife would be the key to a long and satisfying marriage. It would be an ongoing courtship, when both parties are at their best with each other.
Kim said to me, “The European Film Festival is on now and I’m going with some of my girlfriends. It would be great if you could come. I’ll introduce you to Desiree.”
I was always up to meeting a new woman. “Tell me more.”
“She’s the mad one in the bunch. She’s a dynamo, just cut off all her hair; she’s your age too, single with no kids.”
I was worried about her being my age. Most women I knew who were my age looked my age and I was not too happy about that. “I can hardly wait.”
I gave her my phone number again since she had changed phones and my number was stored on the last one. After leaving the bank I went shopping for a new shirt and cologne for my date with Desiree and made it in the nick of time for my first class of the day.
Kim had not exaggerated in her description of Desiree. She looked like she was in her twenties and was definitely a live wire. We chatted easily about everything: the silly French movie which embarrassed me with its excessive nudity, the type of cheese the pizzeria was using (if it was cheese at all), religion and politics, and yet managed to smile through the discourse on and on into the night.
“Look at the time,” one of the ladies said. It was almost midnight. We all had to be up early the next morning, Sunday, to be at church. It was the first Sunday of the month and they were having communion in memory of the last supper of Christ with his disciples.
“Where did the time go?” I wondered aloud. “We will have to do this again soon.”
Desiree smiled at me with her eyes. “Definitely.”
I walked Desiree to her car when the other ladies went to the bathroom. Who was going to see them without their makeup at that hour of the night anyway? But I was glad for the opportunity to be alone with my date.
“You are pretty amazing,” I said to her. She blushed like a schoolgirl.
“Thank you.” Her head was bowed but I could still see a smile on her lips.
“I would like to see you again. May I have your number?”
“Are you sure you want to get involved with an old woman like me?” She was looking me directly in the face, the smile still lingering on her lips.
“You’re as old as I am,” I offered. “Besides, you have so much energy that I have trouble believing that you’re really – well, as old as you claim. God knows you certainly don’t look it.”
“You know all the right things to say.”
“It’s easy with you. They are true.”
She gave me her number and it took me a while to move my legs when she drove off with all her girlfriends giggling, dying to know what I had said to her and what she had said to me and what we were going to do next. I stood in the nearly empty parking lot thinking that this was the first time in a long time that I had felt what I was feeling: a longing for female company – a specific female’s company. Was this what it meant to fall in love? Desiree had just driven off and I was missing her already. I longed to see her again, to hear her voice, to smell her perfume and to feel her touch like the moment that night when I passed a glass to her and our hands met.
This is it, I thought. This was the one I had been waiting for all my life, the reason why it never worked out with anyone else, and she had been worth the wait.
*
IT WAS THREE HOURS past my bedtime but I still had trouble falling asleep. I could not get Desiree out of my mind. So I did the next best thing: I started to daydream about her.
In my daydreams, we were married and had two kids: an eight-year-old girl, Marissa, and a five-year-old boy, Peter. We had spent the day at the beach and were now descending the hilly road back in my Jeep, singing a series of children’s songs: “Old Mac Donald,” “Bits of Paper” and “Itsy Bitsy Spider.” At one point we stopped at the lookout and took in the heavenly view of the sunset; I thanked God that I was alive with a gorgeous woman to share my life and the beautiful children he had blessed us with.
When we got home that evening, Desiree bathed the kids while I cleaned out the Jeep. Then I went to the kitchen, heated up the food and we had dinner. It was Marissa’s turn to say grace. We ate amidst chatter about a day that had been well spent and our plans for the next day.
I washed the dishes and then joined Desiree in reading to the children and praying with them. The children fell asleep as soon as we took the lights off and when I looked at Desiree I knew what was going to happen next.
She had been giving me hints all day. I had read enough books on relationships to know that, for women, foreplay started long before the bedroom. She had been giving me the look all afternoon. Little was said between us yet we were tender with each other – the way I would hold her hands to help her up, the way she brushed away food that had lodged itself at the side of my lips, the way she had looked at me when Peter asked about a thong he had seen a woman wearing at the beach.
The tenderness between us spilled over to the children too and we were especially gentle with them, entertaining more of their chatter and questions than usual. I felt like a peacock trying to impress the object of my desire and it was going to pay off – big time.
Desiree and I made love that night and I imagined every movement in slow motion. I discovered erogenous zones of her body that I never knew existed and I gave her more pleasure than I ever thought possible. And she reciprocated.
We fell asleep in each other’s arms, satisfied, happy, and secure. There was no love greater than ours.
When I woke up from sleep the next morning I felt a longing for Desiree. How foolish! I had only imagined a happy life with her yet it had felt so real. I prayed that God would make it happen and left the house confident that he had heard my plea.
As soon as I got home from church I called Desiree. I wanted to take her to the beach that afternoon, not for a swim, but for a long walk at sunset, to get to know her. I had always told myself that by now I was a good judge of character and I did not want to be one of those people who spend years courting before they finally decided to marry their partner. I could be ready to marry in six months – with Desiree, fewer.
But she did not answer her phone so I imagined that she was still at church. I took the time to catch up on sleep and when I woke up just before two that afternoon I called again. Still no response. Odd. I called her every half hour after that until six o’clock but I always got the same recording from the telephone company: “The unit you are trying to reach is either switched off or out of our service area. Please try your call again.” I finally gave up. She must have been out of the service area. Why else wouldn’t she answer her phone? But I had to be sure.
I called Kim. “Hey, Clay, we had a great time yesterday.”
“Me too. Let’s do it again soon.”
“You bet.”
“Kim, did you see Desiree today?” I asked as nonchalantly as I could.
“She was in church this morning. She really enjoyed your company.”
Thank God, I thought, and a weight slid off my shoulders. “I’ve been trying to get her all evening but her cell phone is switched off. Either that or she is some place where she can’t get reception.”
“She’s at home. At least that was her plan this morning. You sure you have the right number?” When she rattled off the number for me I realized that though the digits were the same, the order was different. Had I entered them correctly? Had I been so lovestruck last night that I’d made such a dumb mistake?
I could not wait to get Kim off the phone to call Desiree.
“Hello?” Her voice was like music to my ear.
“Hi, Desiree. This is Clay.” There was silence. “Hello?”
“Yes, I’m here.” Her tone had changed and I panicked.
“I was trying to get you all afternoon. But it looks like I got the numbers all mixed up.” She said nothing. “I was hoping to get together again with you, just you and me, if that is okay, sometime soon.”
There was a long pause. “I don’t think that will be a good idea, Clay.”
What? What have I done? But what about last night? “Excuse me?”
“Clay, I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong impression, but I’m not looking for a boyfriend now.”
You nasty liar! “I’m sorry too. My mistake. I won’t trouble you again.”
*
THOUGHTS OF WHAT I had done to Belinda came back to haunt me now. What goes around comes around, my mother used to say, and now I was paying tenfold. I had led Belinda to think that I might be interested in her and she was probably still sitting by her phone waiting for me to call. Now the tables had turned and it did not feel good. I had stuck my head out and it had been chopped off. At that point the prospect of joining the priesthood was all too appealing.
