Waiting to Exhale (9 page)

"About what?" I asked.

"Me. This. Everything?"

"I feel fine, except I feel like I could use a cigarette."

"I don't mind a woman who smokes," he said.

I wanted to say, "Did anybody ask you?" but instead I said, "It was just a compliment. I don't smoke," then I got out of the bed and went into the kitchen to get myself another glass of wine. I drank the whole thing, poured another one, and went back and stood in the bedroom doorway and stared at this human submarine sandwich sitting in my bed. How am I going to get rid of you? I wondered. And God, am I going to have to face you at work too?

"What are you thinking about?" he asked. He was smiling, of course.

"Oh, nothing," I said.

"You know what?" he said.

"No, what?"

"I like you, I like you a lot."

"You don't even know me, Michael."

"I like what I know so far."

"But you might not like me if you really got to know me."

"Tell me what you want, what you need."

"What?" He had this satisfied look on his face, like he had the goods on me or something.

"What's your fantasy?"

"What are you talking about, Michael?" I took another sip of my wine and found myself walking over toward the bed, which I had had no intention of doing. For some reason, this didn't feel real, it felt like . . . like a movie. I put my wineglass down and started running my hand through the few curls I had left, and all of a sudden I felt so sexy and aroused it was scary, because I was actually seeing myself outside myself, like I was on a big screen or something, and if I was, this is how I would act, this is what I'd do. So I licked my lips and looked down at Michael until he started to look like Russell, but then I remembered that I hated Russell. Denzel Washington would do, so I thought about him and gave him a wicked grin. The whole time I was rubbing my other hand up and down my thigh, and breathing so hard I could see my breasts rise and fall. This was just great.

"I mean, ideally, what do you want from a man? What would you want a man to be able to do for you?"

Michael was messing everything up, and I wished he would just be quiet. "Are you serious?" I said, snapping back to reality.

"Very."

"Everything," I said, trying to recapture my persona, but it was too late. It was gone.

"Be more specific."

I looked at him sitting up in my bed and realized that this man was dead serious. I moved the glass from the night table and put it on the floor, then sat down at the foot of the bed and said, "Are you sure you want to hear this?"

"It's the reason I asked."

He clasped his hands together and put them behind his head. For some weird reason, Michael was starting to look better. Why was that? I wondered. Since he was asking, I figured I should go ahead and tell the truth, because when I got right down to it, what did I have to lose? "I want to live in a house," I heard myself say.

"That's easy enough."

"In Scottsdale."

"I own a house in Scottsdale."

"You do?"

"Yep. What else?"

"I'd like to go away for long weekends." That's when I felt his foot ease under my crotch through the sheet, and then his big toe pushed up and made a tent inside me.

"What else?"

"I'd like to be able to eat out at least once or twice a week."

"And?"

"Get married and have a baby. Two or three."

"And?"

"Quit my job until the kids are at least seven."

"What else?"

"That's enough for now, don't you think?"

"You don't need much," he said, and motioned for me. Now I was slippery where I should've been earlier, and I sat up and walked on my knees toward the rest of him. I looked down at Michael hard, then harder, and he smiled at me. He's not that bad, I thought, and let's face it, Robin, he is a good catch, and hell, he's available. I lifted the covers and sat down on his now limp lump. Maybe I could get him to go on a diet. Maybe I could teach him how to fuck. How to use his tongue more efficiently. Maybe I could get him to go to a tanning salon, join the gym, and we could work out together. I could trim those hairs in his ears, couldn't I? I slid my hand between his legs and touched what he obviously assumed was a lethal weapon.

"I could sure get used to you," he said. He put his arms around me and closed his eyes. Then he fell asleep. I was thinking about waking him up and making him go home, but for some stupid reason, I changed my mind. It felt good having a man in my bed, even if he wasn't exactly my Dream Man.

I fell asleep too, and when I woke up, I decided that I wasn't letting him get out of here without at least giving me some iota of satisfaction. Too many of them get away with this shit as it is. So I rolled over, lifted my hips up, and reached underneath them until I found what I was looking for. I worked it until I got a rise out of it, then I sat down on it and pushed.

"What do you want?" I asked Michael, staring down at him and massaging my breasts so he could at least see how it's done.

"I think I've found it," he said, smiling.

"How can you say that, Michael?"

"Because I've been out here a long time, Robin, and I haven't felt like this in years."

"Like what?"

"This needed." After that, he nuzzled me in his arms, and for a minute I let my head rest on the cushion that was his chest. "I can give you everything you want, everything you need, if you'll let me," he said.

Without even thinking, I said, "Are you sure you know what you're saying?"

"I know exactly what I'm saying," he said. "I've been watching you for three years. Waiting for this opportunity. So yes, I'm sure."

I was so flattered that I didn't even realize what my body was doing. It pressed down hard and squirmed, then I leaned forward and whispered in his ear, "You want to make me happy right now?"

"Yes, I do," he said.

"Really really happy?"

"Really really happy," he said.

I leaned back and rocked forward again, this time gently pushing both nipples into his mouth. "You can start by sucking them gently and slowly." And he did. And he did it right, and I felt like silk, and for the next few minutes Michael wasn't fat or short or pale and I felt young and beautiful and sexy and desirable, and when I squeezed my pelvis and eyes real tight and my body exploded from the inside out, Michael felt just like the Real Thing and everything was just perfect. For once.

Chapter
4

"Tarik!" "What?"

"Turn that music down!"

"What'd you say?"

"I said turn that damn music down!"

Gloria was yelling from the upstairs landing, right outside her bedroom doorway, where she was standing butt naked, and didn't move until she could barely hear Run-D
. M. C
. "Now would yo
u p lease call the shop and tell Phillip I'm gonna be about twenty minutes late."

"Ma, why can't you do it?"

"Because I'm getting ready to take a shower, and look, Tarik, don't give me a hard time today. Just do it!"

"I'll be glad when I'm old enough to get my own pad so I can stop being your slave."

"What did you say?"

"Nothing."

Gloria swallowed her blood pressure pill dry, put her bathrobe on, tied it as far as it would go, and stormed downstairs. She was perspiring, mostly because she was about sixty pounds overweight. Tar- ik's saxophone was hanging around his neck. She felt like strangling him with it, but instead she put her hands on her hips and glared up at him. "Look. I don't know where you're getting this nasty little attitude from, but you better get it corrected. Today. Is something bothering you, Tarik?"

"Ma, why does something always have to be bothering me? I can't find the phone."

"Forget it." She walked over to the couch, flipped all four pillows over until she saw the portable. As always, he had been the last one to use it. She started punching the buttons on the phone so hard that her index finger slid between them, and she had to hang up and dial all over. "I know one thing-if you don't watch the tone of your voice and change this attitude, the only way you'll see Public Enemy is if they come to this house. And come Friday, if that report card looks anything like it did last time, you'll be using Morse code to talk to all your little girlfriends until I see some improvement. Do I make myself clear?"

Tarik, who was well over six feet tall, looked down at his mother and said, "I'm doing the best I can, but it's never good enough, so why don't you just go ahead and ground me now?"

"Hello, Phillip?"

"Gloria, sweetheart, what's up?"

"I'm running late. Would you check to see what time my firs
t a
ppointment is?"

"Do not fret, honey. I've got everything under control. Sister
Monroe already called and said she'd be a little late, and I told the old biddy if she had any errands to run, to take all the time she needed and go ahead and do 'em. Just kidding," he said. "Bernadine had to cancel her eleven o'clock appointment. She said Onika was sick and she had to take her to the doctor this morning. And, honey, some drunk driver hit Gwen's son on his motorcycle last night, but he's okay. Just a few cuts and bruises. And if you ask me, I think they should outlaw those damn things, they're too dangerous, and anybody in their-" "Phillip?"

"Okay. I moved Sister Monroe into Bernadine's slot."

Gloria looked at the clock above the fireplace. It was nine-fifteen. "What about Desiree? Is she there yet?"

"Take a wild guess."

Gloria just shook her head. Desiree was starting to get on her nerves; she was always late, always backed up, and lately the customers had been complaining to Gloria about her. Gloria had hired her less than a year ago, because all of a sudden it seemed like half the black women in Phoenix wanted more hair, and Desiree specialized in weaves. So Gloria didn't want to lose her; she brought in too much money. But with Joseph gone all this week, she'd been shorthanded. "Thanks, sugar," she said, and hung up. "Tarik?"

"Yeah, Ma."

"What?"

"I mean, Yes, Ma."

"Look. Who was it that asked if he could drive his own car in his senior year?"

"Me," he said, lowering his head.

"And who was it that's gotten almost straight A's for the last five years?"

"Me."

"And now, all of a sudden, whose last two reports cards had too many C's, and a D plus in gym?"

"Mine."

"So what am I supposed to think?"

"Eleventh grade is harder, Ma."

"That's horseshit, and you know it. Tarik, sit down for a minute."

"Do I have to?"

"I said sit your behind down."

Tarik walked over to the sofa and picked up a peach-colored pillow and put it in his lap.

"Put that pillow down."

He slung the pillow back where he'd gotten it and then looked bored.

Gloria sat down in the leather chair opposite him and just looked at him for a minute. She wasn't thinking about her shower now, or what time she'd make it into the shop. "At the rate you're going, if you don't hurry up and clean up your act, you may not see the inside of a college."

"So?"

"So?" Gloria felt like slapping him across the room, but she hadn't hit this boy since he was thirteen, when he started looking down at her and his hands were already twice the size of hers. "Oh, so now that you're grown, you've decided you don't want to go to college, is that it?"

"I think I want to go into the navy."

"The what?"

"The navy. What's wrong with the navy?"

"Nothing is wrong with the navy, but you still have to have a high school diploma. They don't want any dummies in the navy."

"Oh, I get a couple of C's and one lousy D, and now all of a sudden I'm a dummy?"

"Did you hear me call you a dummy?"

"No."

"You're a smart boy, Tarik, and I don't want to see you end up like some of these hoodlums out in the street. I just wanna know why your grades are going down."

"I just told you."

"Does your daddy's coming here tonight have anything to do with why you're being so testy?"

"No."

"Then what's bugging you?"

"Nothing's bugging me, Ma."

"Did he say something on the phone that upset you?"

"No!" he said, and jumped up from the couch. "Look. I haven't seen the man in two years and he calls and just decides he can fit me into his schedule and I'm supposed to stop everything because he wants to see me? For what? We don't have anything to talk about, and it's not me he wants to see; it's you."

"That's not true, and you know it. He didn't have to call. He didn't have to offer to take you to the Grand Canyon, but he did."