Something She Can Feel (35 page)

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Authors: Grace Octavia

BOOK: Something She Can Feel
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“I'm in love,” I said. “Love.”
“With?” He grinned.
“Y-O-U,” I spelled out, trying to tap Dame on the nose with each letter, but always missing.
“You don't mean that,” Dame said. “In the morning, when the wine wears off, you'll be back to being the teacher I've been chasing forever.” He pulled my body closer to his and we stopped dancing. “The teacher I've always loved.” He kissed me on the lips and then looked into my eyes so deeply, even in my fuzzy mind, I knew he meant every word he was saying. “Even if you don't love me in the morning, I'll always love you.”
Dame kissed me again. The next thing I felt was his tongue on my breast as my dress hit the floor in the hotel room. I didn't move. I couldn't. I just let my body feel his. His teeth around my nipples, his hands as they pulled my body closer to him. I felt like one of those palms being pressed for the sweet, intoxicating wine. I grabbed his arms and shuddered as he backed up to the bed. There, he stopped and looked at me but I was ready to move on. I pushed him onto the mattress. I got on top and bent down to him.
“I want you,” I said into his ear, pulling his hair. “I want you inside of me.”
I was in charge then, but Dame was a tease. Before he even took my request, he massaged every muscle in my body with such intensity I knew he'd been planning this for a long while. He made my body feel beautiful and delicate, even in the bright light the moon shone over the bed. As I moaned from his touch, he sighed with a tone of release that built the closer he got to my middle.
“You ready?” he asked, pulling his shorts off.
“Yes.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
I
placed my wedding band on the nightstand when I got up that morning. Waking with the sun and long before Dame, I put it there because I knew that chapter in my life was now really, really over. It had gone past words and now into action. I had to let go. And I wasn't sad, I said to myself, putting on my sarong and a pair of flip-flops. I wasn't happy either. Instead, I was just wondering what all of this meant. What I really meant when I said I loved Dame. I'd loved Evan, too. But it wasn't like this. I hadn't felt like this. Not as moving. Not as encompassing. I looked at Dame, brown and asleep in the middle of the bed with his arms wide open as if he thought I was still on top of him. This was something more. This was something I could feel.
 
We're dying for love.
That's what I wrote on the first page of the empty pad that I'd taken from my purse when I went to go sit on the beach. I looked out onto the water.
We're dying for someone to love us.
 
I thought of Zenobia and Billie ... Ms. Lindsey ... Naima ...
 
Just to feel that feeling
And know that we're not dying at all.
 
I thought of Kayla and Richard and then May and Jr.
 
To imagine that someone could be dreaming
What we're dreaming.
Hoping what we're hoping.
And then there was my mother and father, Jack, and Justin.
And praying what we're praying, too.
We're dying for love.
We're dying for someone to love us.
Just to feel that feeling
And know that we're not dying at all.
I thought of Evan.
That they're wishing what we're wishing,
And willing like we're willing,
To take the fall.
I thought of Dame. I thought of me.
These words came so effortlessly with each wave in front of me. They rolled up on me with memories of my life and with melody; they were coordinating everything I'd seen into meaning—love. Everyone was just trying to be loved. To be accepted and wanted. Desired by those they desired most. We all just wanted the same thing. Some knew what it was. Others were on a quest to find it. But the feeling was the same. The need was consistent. We wanted to be loved for who and what we were.
Sitting there out on the beach with my words, I was filled with the most spiritual emotions I'd ever felt. It was like I was right next to God, feeling something no church could ever give me—an understanding of the utterly complicated, brilliant, and amazing reality of love. And that was all God was. In fact, the ocean, the sand, the waves, the sky, the sun, that was the church, the Bible, and God. And, as May said, now I knew it was inside of me.
 
 
I sang the song to Dame over breakfast. With tears in his eyes, he hugged me and insisted I share it with Farrah. She didn't hold back her tears. She went and got some of the other maids and then, right at the little restaurant in the hotel, I was singing my first song. The melody was somewhat improvised and most times I was just going off of feeling, but the result was the same. Everyone knew what I was calling upon. They understood the urgency of the desire and by the time I was done, they were all crying into each other's arms as if the restaurant had been transformed into a concert hall and then their own hearts.
“They love you,” Dame said to me, coming up and standing beside me in front of the small crowd. He was clapping along with them and asking that I sing the song for the tenth time for a new group of people that had shown up.
“Later,” I said graciously. “Tonight. After we get back from dinner. I promise.”
“Look at you,” Dame pointed out. “You're becoming a celebrity already.”
“No, I'm not,” I said, laughing. “I just don't want to overdo it. I'm still learning the song myself. It's a work in progress.”
“Well I'm proud either way.” He kissed me on the cheek. “You took a risk and really put yourself out there.”
 
 
Instead of singing, after dinner Dame and I finished our nightly walk along the beach and decided to go out for some more palm wine. Grinning and giggling about the events of the previous night, Dame teased that I was the cheapest date he'd ever had. He'd spent only three dollars on the wine.
“So, I'm cheap now?” I asked. We were in the hotel room, changing clothes.
“Oh, no,” he said. “Not last night. You were more like a pro.”
“You stop it,” I said, laughing.
“You see, I'm trying to get some more of that palm wine in you!” Dame joked, opening his bag. He pulled out a little box and opened it. Inside was a cluster of sparkles.
“What's that?”
“Some watch the label sent me,” he said, taking out the shiny thing and holding it up. “I think they know I'm about to leave, so they keep sending me these little nigga tokens.”
“Don't say that. This thing looks pretty expensive,” I said.
“It's nothing in comparison to how much I've made them. It's just a carrot they're dangling to keep their nigga in line. They think all we care about is shiny shit and cars and that all they have to do to keep us coming and in line is flash a little candy.”
“So you don't like candy?” I asked. “I see you're putting the watch on. Why not just send it back?”
“I'm bigger than this bullshit,” he said. “I'm not letting anyone predict my actions or control my mind.”
“Not even me?” I laughed, but Dame was quiet.
“No one controls my mind,” he said seriously. “Only a dumb man confuses his heart with his mind. My heart is yours, but the mind stays.”
 
 
Sure most of everything downtown was already closed, Dame and I stopped at a bar along the road. There weren't many cars outside and a few stray goats and chickens played in the street, but we could hear the music from the outside and saw a few people shuffling in and out.
“Does this look like a good place?” I asked Dame.
“Sure,” he said, opening my door. “As long as they have wine and music, I'm good.”
“I bet.” I grinned at him as we crossed the street.
“Hold up,” Dame said. “You go on inside. I'm going to get something out of the trunk.”
“You sure?” I asked.
“Yeah. I'll be right in.”
The Singer
June 23, 2008
Amsterdam
 
“B
y the time that man came and sat at our table,” I said to Pete and Kweku, who were sitting beside me at a bar in the airport in Amsterdam, “Dame and I were good and drunk. We were laughing about something and I remember that Dame's hand was on my leg underneath the table.”
“Were there many people there?” Pete asked, seemingly setting up the scene in his mind.
“A handful. Ten. Twenty,” I answered. “We were having so much fun, I wasn't paying attention. Men were coming in and out. I could tell the man knew a lot of them by how the others looked on, but I wasn't counting. It's funny the things you don't remember after situations like this.”
“Well, the conversation didn't start off badly, did it?” Kweku asked, taking a sip of his Heineken.
“No.” I swiveled my stool around and looked at the soloist, who was sitting at the piano, singing an old Liza Minnelli show tune. The man was obviously Dutch and his voice needed a lot of work to be near Minnelli's. “He kept us laughing. Greeted us like tourists. Asked what hotel we were staying at. Made some suggestions of places we should go visit. He said we looked nice together. Asked how much older Dame was.”
“He was selling himself on you,” Pete declared.
“He didn't need to. We'd already made him a friend. It wasn't until the gun came out that I even imagined anything else. The jubilant feeling from the alcohol went fast. I don't think I even heard what he said to us—something about the watch ... and us not leaving. I wanted to look at Dame, but I was too scared. I just kept my eyes on the gun and then from the corner of my eye I saw Dame jump up. Almost on instinct, I did, too. And so did the man. And then, there was a bang. Everything went still. I looked to see if the gun was still on the table. It was. The man fell to the floor and I went over. I knew he was dead.”
I was crying when I started singing my song in the bar in Amsterdam. It was an accidental crowd of tourists and workers. Some were just biding their time and others looked like this was their regular hangout. But I didn't care. I'd grown tired of talking or explaining. I wanted to sing. To make people feel what I was feeling. The soloist seemed surprised when I walked over and asked if I could sing. But I supposed he saw the pain in my eyes and he quickly got up and handed me the microphone and after keying a few notes, the final melody to “Dying” was born. I sang it through without the pad and then even added a few verses between the chorus. It was the only way I could sum up how I was feeling, escaping the sadness that engulfed me like flood water.
We walked back to our gate in silence. Kweku held my hand and Pete hung his head low. I wasn't crying anymore, but the reliving, the telling, had drained me.
“You can't tell a man,” Pete said when we got back to our seats. Kweku and I looked at him quietly, waiting for him to finish his statement. “That's it,” he added. “You can't tell a man.”
“Tell him what?” I asked.
“There's no ‘what' to it. It's anything. Everything. You just can't tell. When he's got his mind made up about a thing, you can't tell him. Not a real man, anyway,” he said. “Now, you're upset that this happened. And I understand. A life was lost there. But I'll say this: how do you know for sure that the life that could've been lost wasn't your own?”
“I guess I don't,” I said.
“You don't. But can you imagine
what that man with you
was thinking when all this was going on? Because I'll tell you now, if he's a country boy, he knew before that gun came out where the story was going. He knew how many men were in that room and what that man intended to do to you.” Pete nodded with Kweku. “See, when you were just figuring it out when the gun came out, for a real man, that was working time. You can't ever tell what was in his mind other than that he had to protect you. And you'd better be glad he did. It only shows that he loves you probably more than he loves himself. His heart was working on his mind right there. He had only one shot to get that right at that table. If he missed, if there was another gun in the room, it was coming at him next. That wasn't no Applebee's stickup. That was a showdown. Make of it what you want. But remember, you can't tell a man. Not a real one.”
 
 
With Pete's words in my ears, I tried to play that scene in the bar over and over in my head through the night on that plane. I couldn't sleep; I couldn't rest. I just kept trying to see in my memory how Dame might have known what was happening. Where he'd prepared himself. But I couldn't. My eyes were on the stranger, on the wine, on Dame's hand on my leg. I wasn't looking for anything but a good time.
“So what do you think about what he said ... about Dame and not judging him?” I said to Kweku after turning to see that Pete was asleep.
“He had his points, you know? But then, I guess the only people who can say how you should or could feel are the people who were there.”
“I guess I'll never know, then,” I said.
“You know. Listen to your heart. Do you think this man is a killer or a man in love? I think that's what Pete was saying. I think that's what you have to decide.”
“But that still doesn't answer why he left me alone. He said he regretted bringing me there. He said it was a mistake,” I reminded Kweku as I started to cry again.
“Wait,” he said, patting my shoulder. “You missed some of what Pete said. The biggest part.”
“What?”
“No man wants to feel vulnerable. We try all of our lives to be cowboys, separating our hearts from our minds, and when you pushed Dame over the edge, you reminded him that his heart will always win out. No man wants to remember that. That's female territory.”
“I guess you're right.”
“Never listen to a man when he's angry—in a rage. You ought to listen to him when he's resting. When he thinks no one else is listening and you'll discover, without fail, what's in his heart.”
Hearing this, I could finally rest. While I hadn't solved what happened, I knew that Dame loved me. If I never saw him again, I knew that, at least.
I was awakened from my nap by an announcement that the plane was preparing for landing in Atlanta.
“Ooooooh,” I said, stretching and looking out of the window at the sun. “How long was I sleeping?”
“Quite a while,” Kweku said. “Long enough for me to get through the last of the contracts.” He pointed to the empty tray table where the contracts had been.
“Wow,” I said. “I guess I was good luck.”
“You certainly are.” Kweku took a pen from his jacket and reached for my pad. I was holding it in my hand. “I want to give you my number—at the office. I work in the music industry and I think maybe you should come to our office.” He wrote down his number on a blank page. “I can't promise anything, but I can put you in front of the right people.”
“Are you serious?” I asked, looking at the Georgia number.
“After hearing what I heard last night, I know I can't leave that voice in Alabama,” Kweku said. “It's time for the whole world to hear it. Give me a call.”
I took the pad from Kweku and slid it back into my purse. After I promised him a dozen times I'd call, the voice over the speaker asked that we buckle our seat belts for arrival. I was home.

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