THE LENA WHO climbed into Hernan’s Jeep on Friday evening did not look like the Lena who taught down the hall from him at Brae Hill Valley High School. Her lips were the color of shiny pomegranate seeds. Her eyelids shimmered. She smelled like an island to which Hernan would gladly have bought a one-way ticket.
But all he said was, “Nice dress.”
It wasn’t even really a dress, but rather a continuous piece of fabric that wrapped around her, staying in place due to some undiscovered law of physics. Tiny seashells hung from the bottom, clicking against one another as she settled into the passenger seat. “Thanks. You look good, too.”
Hernan wore jeans and a green polo shirt. He’d been to Club Seven once. It was tucked into one of the sketchier side streets near downtown, and if he remembered correctly, it didn’t have much of a formal dress code. Now, with Lena sparkling at his side, he wondered if he should have dressed up more.
“So,” said Lena, “I guess this is where we start talking about school and then keep talking about it for the whole night?”
“Yeah, well, that is the default setting.”
But they didn’t. Their conversation flowed as easily as the freeway’s nighttime traffic, not even pausing until Hernan pulled onto the exit ramp.
“Wait,” said Lena, as he turned down a side street to park, “you know where Club Seven is?”
“Yeah, my sister’s college friends threw this Latin-music party there.” Then, realizing this might make him sound like the type of twenty-nine-year-old who spent his time at college parties, he added, “It was a while ago. You?”
“Yeah. I’m kind of a regular on poetry night.”
Hernan turned off the car and walked around to open Lena’s door. They crossed the street together, close enough to renew his hope that this might be a date.
It soon became clear that Lena was more than a regular. The bouncer knew her by name and waved the two of them past the cash box. They got drinks and found a table next to the stage, where a woman in tiny shorts was reading into the microphone from behind a paper.
“I’m ready to find a man who respects me for me,” she said, shifting nervously from one exposed leg to the other, “who sees all I can be / If you can see me as more than just the skin I’m in / I can see past your past sins / and at last we’ll build something that’s built for last-in’.” Then she hurried off the stage as the crowd clapped politely.
The emcee reappeared, his skinny build and giant Afro giving him the appearance of a walking microphone. “One more time for our new poet. She a poetic virgin, y’all. Show her some love!”
The applause blended into an old-school hip-hop song that reminded Hernan of his college days in Austin. By the time he turned to share this with Lena, however, the emcee with the microphone hair had appeared at their table.
“This is Deejay Jay Jay,” said Lena, rising from her chair to hug him, “from Radio Four-Twenty.”
The deejay handed Lena a clipboard, then turned to greet Hernan. “You a poet, too, or just here to watch your girl perform?”
“Just watching.”
“Well… enjoy.” Deejay Jay Jay waited for Lena to hand back the clipboard, then vanished into the backstage darkness.
“I usually try to do a poem when I come here,” Lena explained. Her eyes perused the room as if she were expecting someone.
Hernan, too, surveyed the club. Except for a dim glow near the bar, most of the illumination came from the spotlights focused on the stage: red on one side, blue on the other. The colors highlighted the contours of poets’ faces as they performed. There was a poem about smoking weed that got a lot of applause, poems by women in various stages of heartbreak, a lone white guy doing a poem about being the lone white guy doing a poem. Also, Hernan had been right about the dress code: most of the guys in the club were wearing jeans. The women were dressed up, though, and Hernan watched two skinny women wobble toward the bar, tugging at their dresses. Nearby, a group of bigger women talked and laughed loudly at a table, as if to say, This club was built around us.
And then there was Lena, who projected a mix of assurance and insecurity that made her hard to categorize.
The music paused, and Deejay Jay Jay came back onstage. “One more time for our favorite white guy! Okay, okay—our only white guy.”
“I think I’m up next,” Lena whispered. “Wish me luck!”
“Next up, we have the teacher y’all wish you had when you were in high school, here to drop some inspiration. Let’s give it up for Miiisss Leenaaa Wriiight!”
“Good luck,” called Hernan as Lena hurried into the darkness.
A moment later, she stepped out onto the side of the stage, beaming at the cheers of the crowd.
“Okay, y’all. This poem is called ‘What You Really Need to Know.’ ”
“Yeah!” came a yell from the back of the room.
“Lesson one: never hide.” The blue spotlight caught the angle of her cheekbones.
“Lesson two: show your pride.” The red light highlighted her eyelids and full, shiny lips. “Because your fate is not for the world to decide.”
From the stage, she exuded a confidence Hernan had never noticed in person. She slowed, sometimes, to let certain lines sink in, then suddenly sped up, rhyming within rhymes in a display of verbal acrobatics that would have left most speakers breathless.
“You say / you want extra credit / well, I don’t give that / you go get it.” The crowd fell under Lena’s spell, listening, watching, listening-and-watching, listeningandwatching until the senses became inseparable, and Hernan felt himself pulled along with them. He was one of those rare scientists who knew magic when he saw it.
Then, at the end of a fast-paced drum roll of a stanza, Lena stopped, looked around the room, and raised one eyebrow dramatically. “And that’s…” She held the microphone out to the audience.
“What you really need to know!” The crowd finished the poem for her.
“Thank you,” Lena whispered. Then she left the stage to a roar.
A moment later, she emerged from the stairwell, accepting compliments with the smile of a celebrity as she made her way back to Hernan.
“One more time for Miss Wright!” said Deejay Jay Jay. “I bet there are a lot of guys out there hoping to be Miss Wright’s Mr. Right, if you know what I mean.”
Hernan knew.
Lena slid back into her chair and let out a breath, giving him a conspiratorial look.
“Nice job,” said Hernan.
Thanks, she mouthed.
The speaker near their table drowned out any further chance at conversation.
“Next up, we got a man who’s been missing from the scene for a minute. He’s been letting the whole country know how we do it down here, but now he’s back to show he ain’t forgot about us. I guess you could say he’s here to take us to the… Nex… Level!”
The room burst with the biggest applause of the night as a tall man with dreadlocks stepped between the red and blue lights. He withdrew the microphone, then raised the stand with one hand and slowly placed it behind him, flexing his muscles—it seemed to Hernan—a bit more than necessary.
“Tonight”—Nex Level smiled—“I got something for the ladies.”
The cheering sounded noticeably more female now. The guys in the audience were busy arranging themselves into confident, heterosexual poses.
“Or maybe I should say”—the poet licked his lips—“my queens.”
Hernan crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair.
“I gotta be careful with the words I choose, ’cause the words we use / contain the power of suggestion. That’s why when I rhyme / I say it’s high time we question…”
This was no longer the intro to the poem, Hernan realized. It was the poem itself. Nex Level’s language had picked up speed and lifted into the air without warning. It seemed dishonest somehow.
“The mechanism by which / we learn to call a woman a bitch / when what we mean is”—Nex Level paused, then slowed his cadence—“fellow soldier.”
From somewhere in the dark, a woman’s voice called, “Rewiiiinnnnddd!”
Nex repeated the lines. “I said it’s high time we question / the mechanism by which / we learn to call a woman a bitch / when what we mean is… fellow soldier.”
Hernan, apparently, had missed the mechanism by which this lesson was learned. He did not call women bitches.
“Strong sistas holdin’ the whole world on their shoulders / hustlin’ home from two jobs / to throw down in the kitchen / overcoming overwhelming odds under unfit conditions…”
Shouts and claps and finger snaps crackled behind Hernan’s head as he watched the stage. He didn’t really follow the poetry scene, but he’d still heard of Nex Level. Over the summer, a video of the poet’s performance from a rally against police brutality had dominated Facebook for days. Even Hernan’s sister Lety was a fan. What he noticed now, watching from up close, was the way Nex Level locked eyes with various women in the audience who were “through with hopin’ and wishin’ / sick of single-handedly handling life’s mission…”
The poem seemed to be nearing its end. Hernan snuck a look at Lena.
“Understandably / asking for a man who understands you.”
Lena’s eyes were fixed on the stage.
“Ladies, I know life got you stressed / but true beauty manifests… in how you handle what life hands you.” It was on this last line, which set off a chorus of shrieks and applause, that Nex Level aimed his gaze directly at Lena. Then he smiled.
From the corner of his eye, Hernan saw Lena smiling back.
Moments later, Nex Level descended from the stairs behind the stage, his eyes reconnecting with Lena’s as he emerged from the darkness. He offered an innocent grin, shrugging as if to say he didn’t know what the fuss was all about. Hernan waited for him to pass, but he lingered near their table as the applause died down.
“Nice poem,” said Lena.
“You, too. So you’re a teacher, huh?”
“Yeah.” Lena giggled. “This is my friend Hernan. He works with me.”
Hernan’s hopes for the night plummeted. One didn’t need to know much about human courtship rituals to know friend was code for ruled out as a potential mate.
“Oh, yeah? Where y’all teach at?” The question was directed at both of them but clearly meant for Lena.
“Brae Hill Valley High School,” she answered.
“No shit. You work at the Hill? Them roughnecks don’t give you a hard time?”
“Nah, I’m from Philly. We got worse schools up there.” She didn’t seem to mind that she did not sound like an English teacher.
“Well, I wish I had a teacher like you when I was in school.”
Hernan hoped Lena recognized Nex’s lame-ass pickup line for what it was.
But she gave no sign of this. “I saw you at that rally over the summer. Love your stuff.”
“You mean you never saw me rhyme before? Don’t tell me this is the only poetry spot you go to.”
Lena nodded.
“Well, we gotta get you to another club one of these days—all that talent you got. How about I give you my number?”
“Nah,” said Lena, though her voice held a flirtatious modesty. “I don’t take men’s numbers.”
Hernan’s heart soared. She’d asked for his number at the back-to-school meeting.
“If you want to talk to me, you’ll call me.”
Hernan’s heart sank. She’d asked for his number at the back-to-school meeting.
“Oh, I see. So you the old-fashioned type. Well, Missss Lena”—Nex swept out an arm and bowed in an exaggerated display of gallantry—“any chance I could get your number?”
Hernan rose from the table. “I’m gonna get another drink.”
“Hey, I got a hookup on drinks here,” offered Nex Level. “When you go up there, just tell them you with me.”
“That’s okay,” said Hernan. “I’m good.” Seven dollars was a more-than-reasonable price for an excuse to leave the table. The plastic cup of Jose Cuervo was a bonus. Hernan squeezed the wilted sliver of lime into the tequila. He sipped slowly, keeping his eyes on the stage, until he glanced over and saw Lena sitting alone again.
“Sorry about that,” she said as he slid back into his seat. “I’ve been wanting to see if he would come do some poetry for the kids.”
“Okay. Well…” The statement didn’t seem to call for an actual response so much as a beat of response-like noise.
“Most of his poetry isn’t like that,” she added.
Hernan looked at his watch to avoid looking at Lena. She didn’t really owe him anything, he reasoned. She’d been planning to come here anyway. And she’d invited everyone at happy hour. It was he who had jumped at the possibility, and then later offered to pick her up. He was the idiot who thought they might be on a date. At least he hadn’t done anything to give himself away.
“You look like you’re ready to go,” said Lena.
“Yeah. It’s getting late.”
They cheerfully avoided the subject of Nex Level the whole way home.
“So, you think we won our first game?” asked Hernan.
“Oh, wow,” said Lena, “that was tonight, wasn’t it? To be honest, I don’t really pay that much attention to football.”
“Uh-oh. Don’t tell the rest of Texas.”
Lena drew out her laughter as far as it would stretch. Then she asked, “Did you have fun?”
“Yeah. Good club.” He tried to sound like he meant it. “You’re very talented.”
He turned up the radio to drown out the silence that followed.