Decadence (16 page)

Again my phone rang. It was my mother. The woman never slept.

My mother said, “Nia?”

“Yes?”

“Where you?”

I put on a strong Trini accent, did that so the people standing next to me chatting and flirting wouldn't understand one word. “I'm leaving a club. You're not going to believe this. I ran into Chris.”

“Chris Pine, Chris Evans, or Christopher Darden?”

“Chris from Hampton. The football player.”

“Did you kill the sonofabitch?”

“No. Caught me by surprise.”

“Where are you?”

“At a club with a girlfriend from . . . from one of the social groups that I belong to. I turned around and he was looking at me like I was naked. Didn't recognize him at first. I was shocked, to tell the truth.”

“And what he say?”

“The moment I realized who he was, I walked away. Didn't recognize him.”

“You didn't recognize him at first?”

“His ras gone and he have a Procter and Gamble look now.”

“He's clean shaven. Is he attractive?”

“Not to me.”

“But he did say something to you?”

“He was with his wife.”

“Same bitch?”

“Swear jar. Yeah. Same bitch.”

“What she had on?”

“Not much. She had on nice heels. I just remember the shoes.”

“Look, I'm just calling to tell you six more interviews have been booked.”

“Mommy. Serious? How many interviews will I have to do?”

“Now. One more thing. We need to talk about the counteroffer from The Production Company.”

“What's the problem?”

“They don't want to give you a fair ceiling.”

“Insulting. They make their profit and they refuse to pay the writers accordingly. James Thicke has ranted about that so many times. I can't deal with it, Mommy. It's a bunch of crap. Work your magic when you counter. Just let me know the outcome.”

“You okay?”

“I hate this shit.”

“Swear jar.”

“Still hate it. If you weren't a coproducer I wouldn't be a part of this. I would have done one film. One. Then I would've gone back to being invisible like J. D. Salinger. Pay me, then let me be who I am.”

We ended the call.

Seconds later I texted Rosetta, told her that I was fine. Ended the text with six happy faces.

Four hundred miles, countless counties, and one Southern state later, exhausted, I took to my sofa, surrounded by boxes, and curled up underneath a blanket, lost in the reminiscence of my secret rendezvous, of the good and bad that had happened in that secret place.

I could not get Chris out of my mind.

The moment that I closed my eyes and felt sleep attempt to take over, my phone chimed. It was a text from Bret. I was tempted not to read it. But I had made a promise. I had to go meet him.

BE READY FOR THE MUD RUN IN THIRTY MINUTES. WILL PICK YOU UP IN FRONT OF J. CHRISTOPHER'S.

Trying to count how many times I cursed would be like trying to count the drops of water in the ocean. Before I dressed, I went to that dusty box of memories, and once again I looked inside.

There was a letter underneath Chris's photos, three pages long, folded. It was from Rigoberto. The man who had been my lover's best friend. His
tigre
. Rigoberto's words. We had danced closely, intimately, with very little movement, occupying a single tile, as he had held me and allowed me to cry over another man, his best friend. This letter was Rigoberto's confession of love. Another memory rose from the dead.

I took a quick shower and grabbed my bag. Again my phone chimed. I cursed again. I rushed to see if Bret had sent me another text.

It was a notification from Facebook.

Chris Eidos Alleyne had sent me a friend request.

After I crawled into the big pickup truck
and we pulled away from the parking lot that housed J. Christopher's, driving toward the East-West Connector, Bret said, “You okay this morning?”

“I'm fine.”

“We didn't sleep in the same bed last night, did we?”

“What?”

“Did we wake up in the same bed?”

“No. What do you mean?”

“Good morning.”

“Oh, I'm sorry. So rude of me.”

“Good morning. That's what we usually say when we see people in the morning.”

“Good morning, Bret. How are you?”

“I'm fine.” He laughed. “Here's the brochure. Printed it out.”

I had on a heavy coat and sweats. No makeup. No lipstick; only lip gloss. Trainers. Hair was pulled back. I looked nothing like the vixen who had been in the halls of Decadence a few hours ago.

The Florida mud run was going to be insane. Bret had said that it was a 5K, but it was a 10K with more than thirty military-style obstacles along at least six miles of filth, muck, and, of course, mud. I didn't complain. We stopped by Walmart Supercenter on East-West Connector in Austell and stood in line behind a lanky redneck wearing a tattered coat, golden Jesus on the cross, and a T-shirt that read
49%
MOTHERFUCKER
51%
SON
OF
A
BITCH. He was buying drain cleaner, camp fuel, and Lime Out stain remover.

Bret said, “Somebody's cooking meth.”

“Those are meth ingredients?”

“Those are the ingredients used to produce meth, a Southern pastime as American as apple pie and baseball. Dumb ass. He's buying everything at one store. And he's using a credit card.”

I yawned, rubbed my eyes, and looked down at my phone again.

The friend request stared at me.

That sonofabitch Chris Eidos Alleyne wasn't qualified to become my
friend
, not even in cyberspace. But now he wanted to become my
friend
on Facebook. At first I had wanted to open every window and scream,
Hell no
north, south, east, and to the west, but I added him.

I added him because I wanted to see his life, wanted to satisfy a burning curiosity, the curiosity that came with being a creature built on a foundation of feelings, wanted to become a Watcher and walk through all of his pictures, wanted to take a stroll through his postcollegiate life and see him and his wife, their wedding, wanted to see their life together, wanted to see what happiness they had shown his true friends on Facebook over the years. After I added him, as I stood in line in Walmart with Bret and rednecks who were stocking up for their meth factories, within five seconds Chris sent me a message composed of ten digits. Area code. Exchange. Number. Ten minutes later another message arrived, this one composed of words. He asked me to call because he wanted to make sure that I was okay.

Bret said, “You okay over there?”

“I'm fine. I'm running on fumes, but I'm fine.”

With Bret I was not a woman, but a girl. A girl who loved to have fun. A girl who wanted to express her sexual fantasies.

Repressed sexual tension ebbed and flowed between us.

I bought non-cotton pants, thin calf-high socks to prevent arch strains, water-friendly hiking boots, and layers of cheap T-shirts so I could pull them off one by one as they became too heavy, because the mud would stick and soak into cotton and add as much as ten pounds. With my exhaustion, I was in no shape to take on a challenge made for gods and fools. But I had promised. Bret had shown up in an F-250, a vehicle made for the environment, and he said that he'd let me sleep as he drove down I-75 into gator land.

I browsed Chris's Facebook page. Thousands of pictures of him and Siobhán. There were photos of them in the snowy mountains in California and on the warm and sunny beaches of Florida. In other photos they were in Northern Italy, in Venice, standing in front of beautiful canals, sipping champagne and riding gondolas through the waterways, each picture more romantic than the one before. Palazzo Cavalli. Venetian Palace. Then Florence, Italy. Fijian islands with the in-laws. Tahiti on a beach. Napa Valley. The Bahamas. Hawaii. Rome. Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park in Australia. Outside of St. Helena Lighthouse on Lake Michigan. Kensington Roof Gardens in London. Baja, Mexico. Hundreds of photos of his wife doing mission work. She still fed the poor. I found the section I wanted. There were wedding pictures from when they married in Bali, Indonesia, an exotic beach wedding, the same place they had their honeymoon. I knew that they had married. I knew when. I had been so fucking distraught that day.

Bret said, “You okay over there?”

“Stop asking me that.”

“Then stop looking like you're stressed out and preoccupied.”

“Geesh. Now what's the problem?”

“I'm here with you and you're on the phone. That's pretty rude.”

“That's what society does nowadays. We have no etiquette.”

“I do. Put the phone away or I will throw it out the window.”

I put my phone away. Made myself stop the madness.

I said, “Crank up the music. Let's burn down this barn.”

For a while Bret played music by Brantley Gilbert and I joined in as he sang and I became his dashboard drummer, then when I caught on to the lyrics, I sang along. I tried to sing the ball of fire out of my system. We were loud and had become a country rock band. Then that country soul number “Who Says You Can't Go Home” kicked on and he was Bon Jovi and I was Jennifer Nettles. I didn't know the lyrics, but I faked the funk. Bret was just as silly. I'd never seen him act silly. It kept my mind occupied. Chris. His wife. Prada. My mother. The movie. My life. Things from the past. Hopes for the future. I was able to suspend thoughts of it all and live in the moment. A wave of exhaustion washed over me. The next thing I knew I had my trainers off, feet up on the dash, and was sleeping with the angels.

Five hundred miles later, on the fringes of Tampa was where we connected with military warriors and career runners. Marines, US Air Force, Navy, as well as groups from the police forces and fire departments, hick chicks, country divas, rednecks, brown necks, black necks, yuppies, buppies, muppies, civilians of all backgrounds had registered. Most of the vehicles had bumper stickers that let me know that they were either marathon runners or participated in triathlons. I was glad to see that at least half of the participants were women. We all smiled and nodded but we knew that in our hearts this would be about female competition. In that group of three-thousand-plus adrenaline junkies, there were a lot of kids amongst the ultra-athletes too, a lot of preteens and teenagers, again both boys and girls. This was their passion. After I had greased up and coated my toes, inner thighs and nipples and any other place that might blister, Bret and I connected with three more couples. We were all on the grass stretching and momentarily we became a team. As soon as we were corralled and the gun sounded, we took off racing, running, climbing over six-foot walls, slipping on sludge and gravel, sliding and crawling through swamp-thick mud like we were in Vietnam. As a collective, we were panting and spitting out damp earth and trudging through muck. It tried to suck my boots off my goddamn feet. I was out of breath by the time we had to use our upper-body strength to balance on a rope so we didn't fall into a muddy lake. Then we were jumping over bars as people screamed out encouragement. The part I hated the most was when I was on my belly swimming underneath some contraption that rose out of the ground like a snake, dark brown water splashing in my face and up my nostrils. Mud didn't scare me. I was from Trinidad, so earth mixed with tears from heaven didn't send me into a panic. Earth was part of J'ouvert, the days before Ash Wednesday, when we were baptized by the new dawn, mud and music being part of the celebration. I just had never run in the muck. It was beyond exciting. A great challenge. Bret encouraged me to keep my knees up and helped me keep my pace as we jogged through knee-deep muck. It felt like the ground had swallowed me. It was an obstacle course that made strong men surrender, weak women cry, and caused me to curse and swear and growl and grunt and lose my given religion. I finished second in my division. Exhausted and pushing it, I had finished before a lot of the military men who were built like Thor and He-Man. Nameless, mud-faced women hugged me and with broad smiles they congratulated and welcomed me. When we were done, Bret congratulated me too, smiled and patted me on my ass two times. That simple contact stoked my fire, a fire that never fully went out, its pilot light always aflame, but I didn't let it show that my secret garden had wanted him again since our zipless night had occurred. Agony assaulted me from head to toe. Every hair on my body cried. In the end we all had to stand close to be hosed down by the fire department, so while we were on the pavement in the group shower, as music blasted from gigantic speakers, we danced and it became a gigantic wet T-shirt contest. The firemen loved that part, especially the girls with the big tits. The women loved that part as well. Soaked, many of the men had removed their shirts and when their pants were soaked, you could see the bulges from the packages they carried. Bret looked sexy as hell. A couple of the women who had aerobic bodies had worn tights and had muddy camel toes. By then I was down to a sports bra and the running tights, discarding all that I had worn as I was running. Mud remained caked inside of my ears and my hair was slicked to my head, begging for shampoo and a deep conditioning. My manicure was destroyed and filth was wedged underneath my nails. I used more than a half-dozen towels trying to get clean enough to feel comfortable. Then I used another half dozen trying to dry myself off. But there was so much dirt and slush and swamp on me that I didn't think that I'd ever be clean again. Soaking wet, bottled water in hand, Bret and I sloshed over and looked at the photos. At the finish line I had looked like Miss Swamp Thing. Soon I was sleep-deprived yet energetic, high on adrenaline in a crowd of revelers drinking beer, eating barbecue. The power of the group. For a moment, I saw all of them naked, covered in orgasmic mire. I imagined them copulating in the sludge. I had only gone once, but Decadence was in my blood now.

Bret held my hand as we walked back to the muddied truck.

His touch refocused my attention.

I said, “You said that there are mud runs all over the country.”

“Pretty much. Why?”

“This was fun. Epic pass.”

“You looked so angry.”

“Not angry. Came in second and I'm pissed because I didn't finish first in my group. Someone was better than me. Number two is not a winner. Number two is just the leader for the rest of the losers.”

“You're too hard on yourself.”

“Which war have you heard of where second place was praised? Life is about winners and losers. Life can be hard. Life is hard on us all, especially hard on the living. Becomes one thing after the other.”

“That's true. That's so fucking true. Life beats us up and tries to wear us down. Don't knock yourself. You did a great job.”

I blinked Siobhán from my mind. “But you're right. I did it. On little sleep I ran six miles. Makes a beach run look like nothing.”

“You're amazing. Honestly, you're the only woman I know who will run in the rain, then get down in mud and crawl like she was trying to break out of a prison located in the middle of swampland.”

“Your . . . your kids' mother . . . did she . . . did . . . does she work out with you?”

“Never had much in common. I like fishing. NASCAR. Going to the Redneck Resort Mud Park in Sweetwater, Tennessee. Jet-Skiing on Allatoona Lake. Doing five-K runs for autism or pancreatic cancer. She thought pretty much all extracurricular stuff like that was a waste.”

“The mother of your children, if it's okay to ask, what does she do for a living?”

“She's back in Macon, Georgia. She lives in the old historic district with her parents. She works part-time three days a week at The Fresh Market on Forsyth Road. That's Macon's version of Trader Joe's and Whole Foods. The nights that she's off she's sitting on her tush at her parents' home, watching reality television half the night. Can't live without VH-One. Or Bravo. Says she's going back to Mercer and finishing up her law degree at some point. It's all talk. Nothing but her pipe dreaming. Unless they offer a major in dominoes or spades I don't see her going back. So I make a lot of drives back and forth to Macon.”

“Macon, Georgia. We just drove through there to get down here.”

He nodded. “I was going to college up in Chattanooga, UTC, when I met my wife. Ex-wife. We met up in Nashville at a blues club in Printers Alley. Bourbon Street Blues and Boogie Bar. She was going to Mercer in Macon. She was with her friends and I was with mine. Downtown Nashville is like Bourbon Street in New Orleans on a Saturday night. Lots and lots of drinking. We all started dancing, drinking, then went to another bar, think it was the Wild Beaver Saloon, then after that we ended up at another bar, can't remember the name, but we did karaoke and she rode the bull for the first time.”

“Okay.”

“I was in my first semester, got her pregnant not long after we met, carelessness on both of our parts, but I liked her and married her at the courthouse as soon as I found out, dropped out to get into the military so I could get a steady check and benefits. It all happened pretty fast. Yeah. So it goes. We met up in Music City and seems like not more than a couple of months had passed before we were getting married at the courthouse and I was on the way to boot camp. Had another baby two years later. I spent most of my marriage deployed, so I barely knew her. We barely knew each other in the end, outside of dancing.”

“Sounds like a pretty exciting relationship.”

“Not even close. She went Carrie Underwood. Court stuff, she didn't take too kindly to that. She wouldn't let me see my kids. I tried to be nice but ended up going to court and exposing how unfit she is to be a parent. She rode up in the middle of the night and took keys to a four-wheel drive I had back then and showed the world how bad her spelling really was. Spelling like that, she never would've made it out of law school. While that was being repaired, she came back and beat the headlights on my rental with a bat and slashed the tires. Yeah, Carrie Underwood jacks up your truck and Reba McEntire blows out your eardrums and Miranda Lambert shoots you and Taylor Swift slanders your name and Laura Bell Bundy drags you naked and Kellie Pickler lets you get hit by a bus. Country girls. Ain't nothing like 'em.”