I'm Your Girl (22 page)

I
had no luck retrieving my review on my own, so I wrote e-mails to Amazon’s customer service and technical support for help before clocking out and going home. I should know within twenty-four hours how to fix everything, but I wish—

I wish I hadn’t been so hasty to judge that book. And the things I said about D. J. Browning—who is really David Jack Browning, blue-eyed, somewhat handsome blond man—were harsh! I did everything but call him a racist, and now that I know him a little better, I know in my heart that he isn’t a racist. He’s a little misguided, maybe. I mean, he’s using
Essence
as his handbook for the modern black woman. Though
Essence
tries, it cannot possibly cover every aspect of the modern black woman.

And he wants to put
me
in the book!
Me,
of all people! I’m not in
Essence
. My body type is not in
Essence
. The clothes I wear are not featured in
Essence.
The hair products I use…Okay, they’re in
Essence,
but that’s not the point. Jack needs a real, live, actual sister to be his technical advisor, not some made-up, done-up, skinny models with their curves in all the right places. He needs someone like me to help him write a decent book.

He needs me.

A man needs me. This is…odd. But does he know he needs me? I mean, does he know that he needs my help? Maybe my original review will prove to him that he does. Maybe I don’t need to take back what I wrote. Maybe my review is the kick in the pants that he needs to write a real book.

And maybe it will shatter his ego. I’ve heard of authors pitching a fit over Amazon reviews they thought were unfair, and I’ve heard of some reviews simply disappearing because an author—

That’s an idea. I’ll convince Jack that “Nisi’s” review was unfair. Then, he can get it removed, and I don’t have to do a thing. Yes, that’s the way to do it. I’m sure his publisher will do something to protect him.

No, no. It was my mistake, and I’ll have to fix it.

But what if the review can’t be taken back, and Jack finds out that I wrote it? That’s silly. How would he ever find out…unless I told him? I can never tell him that I wrote it. Never. It would break his heart.

And mine, too.

I have to call him. Our conversation didn’t end as I wanted it to end. Actually, I didn’t want it to end. He was so easy to talk to, despite all his “ums” and “uhs.” Wait. I was “uming” and “uhing,” too. I probably sounded so desperate.

But, what if his wife answers? If she’s even there. And why wouldn’t she be proud anymore? If she’s white—and she has to be to dress Jack that way—maybe she’s not proud of him writing about Ty. Maybe she thinks he’s writing about his fantasies with a black woman. I’ll bet that’s it. She’s jealous of Ty, and maybe his original white woman was based on his wife, and she’s not happy about the changes. I know it would piss me off if my man wrote about someone like Ty. “Where’d you meet her?” I would ask. “How do you know so much about her?”

Jealousy may be overworked in fiction for a very good reason: it’s
everywhere
in real life.

Yeah, that would be hard to explain. I mean, he could say, “Honey, they’re only fantasies. They’re not real. This is fiction. I made her up out of my head.”

Hmm. I wouldn’t buy it for a second.

I look at the phone. I should call him anyway, at least to get the LOC number, like I said I would. But…it’s late. Strange black women calling late at night could confirm his wife’s fears. But how would she know I was black? I speak clear, “white” English as well as if not better than most white people in Roanoke. Oh, but then she’d ask, “Who was that, honey?”

I know
I
would.

Shoot. Whom can I talk to about any of this? Mama? Not a chance. As soon as I say “blue eyes,” she’ll be clutching her chest. Reesie? No way. She’d say something like, “I
knew
you were adopted.” Daddy? Hmm. Daddy might understand. I’m his “baby.” He always listens to me…and reports
everything
I say directly to Mama.

I look at the ceiling. God? I know You don’t share my business with the world, and I’m kind of confused right now. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know if I should get my review back or not. I don’t know if I should call Jack or not. I don’t know if I should even care so much for a man I just met who might be married!

Help a sister out.

Amen.

I
’m cutting fat off the chicken breasts while the Crock-Pot warms up, and though it’s a mindless task, I can’t stop thinking.

You really told her off.

No, I didn’t.

I was impressed. The old Jack wouldn’t have even gone to the customer service counter. He would have folded up his receipt, stuffed it in his pocket, and gone home.

I still don’t like conflict.

But didn’t it make you feel good to speak your mind?

Yeah. A little.

You asserted yourself with plastic bag head, just as you asserted yourself with Diane.

We only talked a little bit.

It was the most you’ve talked to anyone except me in months!

I was babbling, wasn’t I?

No. Not really. You might have given her too much information about the book. You’re not the book, Jack.

I know that.

You should have told Diane about Noël and Stevie.

Diane was—and is—still a stranger to me. I can’t dump all that on her.

You left her with too many questions about you.

So, I’m a man of mystery.

You should have asked her out
.

Huh?

You should have said something like, “I know this is kind of sudden, but would you like to have lunch with me sometime?”

I couldn’t say that.

You make your characters say things like that all the time. Just…write yourself something to say.

Not a bad idea. I always think better on paper. But why lunch?

So she’ll know it’s not serious. Lunch is friendly. Dinner, though, that means serious.

Why?

Because…because it’s dark outside usually, and darkness was made for love.

Quit quoting from
Wishful Thinking
. I’m trying to put that book behind me.

It was a good line.

It could be considered a racist line, too.

You think too much.

But obviously not enough. I should have asked her out, right?

You still can. Go back to the library tomorrow and ask her.

Tomorrow?

You have any plans?

No.

And, if she accepts—

If?

Okay,
when
she accepts, that could lead to a New Year’s Eve date
.

She’s working on New Year’s Eve.

Right. Until nine. The celebrations don’t start until midnight…when it’s dark…and darkness was made for love.

Geez, I nearly just cut my finger off. I have to stop thinking about Diane. She’s not like any of the women in
Essence,
and yet she’s…more.

Now you’re thinking.

She did ask for my phone number.

She sure did.

Noël didn’t do that. I had to ask.

Maybe it’s a black woman thing.

Or simply a “Diane thing.”

Maybe.

You need to think outside the racial box.

While I slice up the onion—and tear like crazy!—I think of Diane. It feels so strange. For five years only Noël has been in my head, and now…Diane. She has a clear, distinct voice. It’s not a lilting, melodious, or “cute” voice. It’s a voice I can listen to. And her eyes aren’t, well, “pools of starlight” or some other such nonsense I wrote to describe Ty’s eyes. They’re…soft and open, though they roll around a good bit. And her smile? It doesn’t set the world on fire or stop traffic or sparkle. It just…moves me. And her body wasn’t anywhere in
Essence
. She isn’t “bootylicious” or “fly” or “da bomb.” She’s plainly…attractive. That’s it. She’s attractive. From the tone of her calves to the curve of her…
form
, from the light from her face to the kindness in her eyes, Diane is…genuinely attractive to me.

I like her.

I wipe tears from my eyes, some of them caused by the onion, the others caused by a single thought: I like her.

Noël would like her.

How can you say that?

They might even have been friends.

Yeah. They might have been.

The phone rings.

It’s Diane!

No, it isn’t. It’s dinnertime, so it’s probably some telemarketer.

I pick up the phone, and it nearly slides out of my hand.

Your hands are sweaty.

Shh. “Hello?”

“Hi, this is Jenny Dwyer.”

Who?

“I called about the car yesterday.”

“Oh, yeah.” The drive-by lady.

“I must have missed you today. The car looks real nice. How does it drive?”

“Uh, I don’t normally drive it. It’s my wife’s car.”

“Oh, is she there? I’d like to talk to her about it.”

I sigh. “Um, she’s not here at the moment.”

Why didn’t you tell her the truth?

I’m not ready.

Yes, you are.

“When will she be back?”

I clear my throat. “She won’t be back, uh, Jenny, because she died six months ago.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.”

Not as sorry as I am.

“Well, um, hmm. Uh, when can I drive it?”

I feel a little weight come off my shoulders. “Anytime.”

“How about tonight?”

She is so eager! You’re a magnet for eager women, Jack!

No, I’m not. One wants information on a book, and the other wants a car. Neither wants me.

You never know…

“How about tomorrow…morning, around nine?”

“Sounds good. I’ll see you tomorrow morning. Bye.”

“Bye.”

I hang up.

See how easy that was? And Jenny is a perfect stranger.

I didn’t have to face her or see her reaction. That made it easier.

Easier is good.

Yeah.

So when Diane calls…

Shh.

After mixing the onions with the soup and the soup mix and pouring the goop over the chicken, I turn the Crock-Pot on low and head for my office. As soon as I sit and get a fresh screen, I start typing:

Where do rainbows go when they’re done…rainbowing?

English is too limiting sometimes. “Rainbowing” should be a word. I mean, what else do rainbows do? They rainbow.

Roy G. Biv. Hmm. He sounds foreign. He probably isn’t from around here, which is somewhere lost in the South, where everyone has the same old, dull Southern names and accents. Good ol’ Roy G. flies in during a storm as if to mock the thunder, sneer at the rain, raise a colorful eyebrow at the lightning, shrugging clouds off his back. That’s my kind of man, and if he
is
foreign, he can marry me to become an American citizen. I can give Roy G. Biv his green card.

So much potential color for my life…

What makes a rainbow anyway? Maybe the clouds do, pressing them out like linguini or sweating them out like Play-Doh. And what makes them go away? Do breezes blow them around? How do they stay locked in place during a storm? And who would ever chase them?

Besides me?

I’ll bet there’s a rainbow with every storm, and I just haven’t always looked with my soul hard enough to see it.

I’m not after the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Just a man.

A man like Roy G. Biv.

That was poetic.

It’s a bit too flowery.

At least it sounds like a woman might say it.

It wasn’t a woman saying it. It was me.

You want…a
man
like Roy G. Biv?

No, but I wouldn’t mind having a woman who thought like she did.

You’re getting heavily into your feminine side, aren’t you, Jack?

Maybe.

I reread the screen. There’s something…wrong with it.

It’s soft.

It’s crap, and I should delete it.

Noël would have liked it.

Yeah, she would have. I’ll keep it.

Good.

T
he phone is staring at me. It’s been staring at me all night. Occasionally it even shouts, “Call him!” As a result, I’ve read the same freaking page of
The Da Vinci Code
at least fifteen times!

I’ve picked up the phone at least ten times, but I can’t force myself to punch in the number. I’ve never called up a man
first
in my life…which might be one reason I’m twenty-five and still an unmarried virgin. Hmm.

But the man is
supposed
to call the woman. It’s in all the romances I read. I mean, there she is, by the phone or window or up on a lighthouse, waiting for her man to call/visit/ come home from the sea.

He doesn’t have your number, Diane
.

Oh yes he does! He could always call the library!

You’re not at the library, Diane
.

Oh yeah.

I need more courage.

There’s pound cake in the fridge. That will give me enough courage. Sugar can do that.

No. I shouldn’t eat sweets after nine. I need to just pick up the phone and call him.

I pick up the phone.

What if he’s not there? What if his wife answers? What if no one’s there?

I set the phone back down.

If no one’s there, do I leave a message for him to call me back? I could do that, but…then I’ll fall asleep with the phone in my hand, and since I’m an active sleeper, I’ll most likely make a long distance phone call to Fiji by accident. If his wife’s there and he isn’t, I could…play it off as a…fund-raiser for the library. It might work. And if no one answers, I’ll…just hang up.

But he’ll see my name on his Caller ID! And so will she! Unless he doesn’t have Caller ID, but who doesn’t have Caller ID these days? He has to have Caller ID, and when he checks for a message, there won’t be one from me. I hate when that happens to me. Someone calls for whatever reason and doesn’t have the decency to leave a message. That’s just plain rude.

Yet, I always call the person back anyway. Why is that? Am I a “rude person” magnet or what?

I dial Jack’s number, and after five rings with no answer, I become rude and hang up.

That was dumb. He might have been in the bathroom or the shower or out walking his dog. He seems like a dog person, and I don’t know why I think that. It must be his former shagginess. He might have even been giving his son a bath or reading his son a bedtime story or taking out the trash or…messing around with his wife!

Eww.

Or he might have been asleep! He looked so tired.

It is kind of late. Oh, Lord, I probably woke him up, he couldn’t find the phone, and now he’s seeing my name on his Caller ID, his wife is seeing my name on the Caller ID, and—

Time to play it off. I dial Jack’s number again.

He answers on the first ring. “Hello?”

He doesn’t sound groggy. “Hi, Jack.” Good grief! I just said, “Hi, Jack”! I’ll bet he hates that joke!

“Hello, Diane Anderson. Did you just call a minute or so ago?”

He has Caller ID all right, but at least he has my number somewhere in his house. Or apartment? No, he seems like a man with a house. And a dog. “Oh, yeah. I didn’t think you were home.”

“I was downstairs writing.”

Of course he was, Diane! He’s a writer. What else would he be doing? “Well, I don’t want to disturb you.”

“It’s okay. Do you want the LOC number?”

Oh, yeah. That. And that number is the reason
he
thinks I called. “Of course. That’s why I called.”

I write down the numbers as he reads them, and I read them back to him. “Thanks. I’ll be sure to get our preorder in tomorrow.”

“Great.”

And then there’s silence. We’ve just taken care of the “reason” I called, and now there’s static-filled silence. I hate silence, unless Mama’s on the other end.

“So, uh, how’s your writing going?” Whew. Hopefully this will start a conversation.

“Better.”

Better? Just…better? How vague is that? I want to ask him if he’s been writing about me, but I just can’t. “Well, that’s good.”

“I’ve been writing about you.”

And now my face is on fire. How do you respond when a man says
this
, especially if he’s writing “better” and about you? “You have?”

“Yes.”

“Um, great.” Why can’t I put together a decent sentence? And why didn’t I eat some of that pound cake? I don’t have enough sugar going to my brain! “That’s, um, that’s great, Jack.”

I hear him sigh. “Listen, Diane, I have something to tell you that I should have already told you.”

I brace for the worst. “Okay.” Time to hear about the wife and kid…or kiddies? Maybe there are other rugrats or there’s one on the way….

He sighs again. “When I brought those books back that day, um…this is hard for me.”

Books? Oh, yeah. Strange way to start, but…okay. He’s going about this from the very beginning.

“I found those books in my son’s room…where I’ve been sleeping for the last six months.”

Teenaged no-ironing wife kicked him out of their bedroom? Is this where he tells me he’s leaving his wife?

“And I’ve been sleeping in his bed because…my son, Stevie, and my wife, Noël…died in an accident last July.”

Died. They…died. He’s a widower. Oh, that’s so sad! And now I’m sad! I was pestering him about his wife and son, and he was standing there…dying inside. I can’t even imagine the heartbreak he’s feeling! But why was he still wearing the ring when he was shaggy?

“And anyway, I don’t know if you even remember, but when you gave me my change for the fine, you touched my hand. I hadn’t let anyone, I mean, no one had touched me for the longest time, and, um, you did.”

I hear him sobbing, and I start to tear up. I’ve given change to countless patrons, and to think that this one time…just a
touch
. And the next time I saw him, I didn’t even
see
him because he had changed so
much
.

And now I’m rhyming while I’m thinking.

Why didn’t I see him? Was it because he was a cookie-cutter white man? Or was it because I really wasn’t looking?

But he saw me. Jack saw me. A man saw me as more than just a name on a badge behind a counter in a public library. Lord, I need to work on my blind spots.

“I’m sorry,” he says, finally. “I shouldn’t be dumping all this on you.”

“It’s okay.” I walk into the kitchen to get a napkin and dab it at my eyes. “It’s okay, Jack.” And it is. It’s okay. I’m okay with this.

“I’ve been meaning to thank you for…touching me, even though you didn’t know you did it. This must sound so strange.”

“It’s not so strange.” The slightest touch
can
change a life. “Remember, I work at a public library.”

“Right,” he says, his voice less weepy. “But if I put any of this in a book, no one would believe it.”

A few minutes ago, I wouldn’t have believed it either. Right. A touch exchanged with change. Sure. But now…“I believe it, Jack, because I know it can happen. It just did, right?”

Silence.

“I’m, um, sorry I didn’t recognize you right away today, Jack.”

He laughs, at least I think it’s a laugh. Kind of…throaty, but nice. “Today is how I used to look. I mean, well, you know what I mean.”

“I understand.”

More silence.

“I’ve lost so much weight.”

I smile. “You did kind of look like a scarecrow.” Now why did I say that? I mean, other than the fact that he
does
look like a straw-filled stickman in his clothes. He’s a blond Ichabod Crane…who saw his own headless horseman this past summer. Oh, what a shame!

“Yeah. I forget to eat sometimes.” He coughs. “Speaking of eating, would you like to have lunch with me sometime?”

Whoa. I just called the man a scarecrow, and he asks me to lunch. I would trash this whole scene if I had read it in a book, but here it is happening to me!

“Uh, I mean, you know, Diane, to discuss your character, the one in my book. I could maybe…interview you.”

He’s trying to play it off as a “professional” arrangement. Should I let him?

No.

“You mean you’d be taking notes during our date?” Oh my Lord! I just used the D-word. He was just asking me to lunch, and I think I’ve just made it into a date.

“Oh, um, yeah, that would be tacky. I won’t take notes.”

It
would
be tacky.

“I’ll, uh, just take you in.”

Blink-blink.

“I mean, I’ll…I’ll just talk to you, Diane.”

I don’t know, getting taken in sounds kind of fun. But he hasn’t questioned the D-word yet. Maybe he didn’t hear me say it. “So, we’ll just talk during our lunch date.”

“I’d like that.”

Is “lunch date” the same as “date”? Hmm. I have to be sure. “Are you asking me out on a date, Jack?”

A slight pause. “If I were asking you out on a real date, I’d ask you out to dinner on New Year’s Eve.” Another pause. “But I know you have to work, so it would have to be a late dinner.”

I smile. He has actually thought this through. But has he thought it
all
the way through? “It would probably be hard getting a dinner reservation this late. I mean, it’s just two days until New Year’s.”

“I can call around. I have plenty of time.”

He still hasn’t asked me officially. “So, are you asking me out for New Year’s Eve, Jack?”

He clears his throat. “I’d, um, rather ask you in person, Diane, and by then I ought to know where we can go. So, will you go with me or meet me somewhere for lunch tomorrow?”

I smile. “Sure. Where?”

“I was hoping you’d tell me. I don’t normally eat downtown, so I don’t know what’s good and what isn’t.”

I don’t eat out downtown much, either. Hmm. But, I’ve always wanted to go to this one place…. “How about Bandini’s on the Market?”

“Great. What time suits you?”

“My lunch hour starts at twelve-thirty, so…twelve-forty? It’s only a ten-minute walk for me.” Hint-hint: Pick me up, Jack. It’s supposed to be cold.

“Could I pick you up in front of the library at twelve-thirty-five?”

He’s quick! “That would be great.”

“Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow in front of the library at twelve-thirty-five.”

“Great.”

More silence, but it’s the kind of silence you swim in and enjoy, waves of silence filled with tingling, sweaty fingers and warm hands.

“I’m glad you called, Diane.”

I’m glad I did, too, but I can’t just…jump for this man. “And I was only calling about the LOC number.”

“Oh, yeah. Well, I’m glad you listened…and accepted.”

I’m glad about that, too, but I’m still not jumping. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Jack.”

“Okay. Bye, Diane.”

“Good-bye, Jack.”

Click.

I…have…a…date!

I, a twenty-five year-old suede sister with some junk in my trunk am going out to lunch with a six-foot, skinny, ashy, blond-haired, blue-eyed scarecrow.

Lord, we are going to clash so badly!

And, for some reason, I can’t wait!

It’s about time I had
some
kind of life.